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Because It Feels So Good When I Stop, 1 (1974)

It is impossible to discuss the “problems of photography criticism” as though they were clearly formulated and widely agreed-upon issues, consciously faced by a diversity of critics familiar with each other’s relative positions, and known to an audience engaged in active observation of critical interactions and the concepts emerging therefrom. This is very far indeed from being the case. […]

Ring In the New: 2016

I found watching the video slideshow of NASA’s chosen images for the 1977 Voyagers’ “golden records” a deeply surreal experience. The selection and sequencing strike me as curious, and, if I experience them that way, what would a sentient being with no knowledge of life on this blue marble make of them? […]

Alternate History: Robert Capa and Magnum (3)

From the evidence we can draw a clear conclusion: Partners in the Capa Consortium, including Magnum’s members and its administrators, do not scruple to contaminate the record with misinformation, outright lies, falsified “evidence,” and whatever fanciful elaborations they feel like making up concerning Robert Capa’s D-Day experiences and the subsequent fate of his negatives. […]

Alternate History: Robert Capa and Magnum (2)

Staking Out the Claim

In his unauthorized, workmanlike 2003 biography Blood and Champagne: The Life and Times of Robert Capa, Alex Kershaw, describing the motives behind the founding of Magnum Photos, wrote as follows:

“Since 1945, Capa had been active in the American Society of Magazine Photographers. He had eloquently […]

Alternate History: Robert Capa and Magnum (1)

Magnum has straightforwardly become a privately owned capitalist venture, with the photographers as stakeholders. When Patrick Zachmann denounced me in Athens, therefore, he did so to protect his own investment and those of his business partners, as any elementary Marxian analysis would conclude. […]