Who was J Dudley Johnston, and why did this Royal Photographic Society award I received get named after him? Pam Roberts described him as “a link between photographers of all countries and all persuasions, a visionary and a man with a passion for research and for dissemination of information.” […]
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On September 9 I received the J Dudley Johnston Award for Writing about Photography, conferred on me by the Royal Photographic Society (U.K.) at its Annual Awards gala. I take particular pleasure in the fact that this comes as unsolicited peer recognition. . . . […] The publication of such a glib, superficial and ill-considered “psychoanalytic” attack on freelance activity beneath a sensationalized headline was obviously intended as a provocative act; I found myself impelled to respond. A great many of my professional colleagues and close friends — artists, writers, photographers and others — have chosen to exist in what this remarkable diagnosis so condescendingly calls a “lowly status,” and they don’t strike me as inherently any more neurotic than the average late-twentieth-century American. […] Artforum finally perked up its ears and noticed that something’s happening here (though they don’t know what it is). A brief notice in their March 15, 2010 online International News Digest, titled “SPECTACULAR POLAROID AUCTION PUT ON HOLD?” summarizes the situation in a lengthy paragraph. Another county heard from. ARTnews, meanwhile, notified me that they wouldn’t be interested in the story until it concluded — surely a notable position to take for a monthly magazine with “news” in its title. My, but the art press is all over this one . . . […] |
 SPJ Research Award 2014All content of this publication is © copyright 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 by A. D. Coleman unless otherwise noted. All materials contained on this site are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced for commercial purposes without prior written permission. All photos copyright by the individual photographers. "Fair use" allows quotation of excerpts of textual material from this site for educational and other noncommercial purposes.
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Ernest C. Withers and the F.B.I.
How this news of Ernest C. Withers’s complicity with the F.B.I. will affect public and critical regard for his work I can’t say. The revelation doesn’t invalidate the work he did as a documentarian and photojournalist, but it surely nuances my response to know that he was slipping prints of some of these images, and other documents, and verbal information to his handlers on the sly. […]