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Roy DeCarava (1919-2009): A Farewell

Roy DeCarava’s work itself — and what I might call the situation of that work in the field of photography when I came to it in the late 1960s — presented me with some important challenges as a writer about photography, and a chance to define in public some fundamental principles of my own project as a critic and historian. Few people understand what such an opportunity means to a critic, and how rarely it comes along. […]

Bad Start to 2010

I discovered that I’d awakened from my enforced Van Winkle-ish hiatus in a different country, politically speaking. When I took to my bed in December, national health care was a done deal, and Massachusetts was a blue state. Now an undistinguished faux-populist Republican, Scott Brown, represents the Bay State in the Senate, which bodes ill for anything beyond an eviscerated health-care bill dictated by the GOP, Big Pharma, and the insurance cartel. More significantly, when I crawled under the covers both federal and state laws prohibited corporations from making substantial contributions to political candidates, and Tom DeLay faced serious jail time for violating those laws. . . . […]

Bring On the Tweens

This blog’s subscriber base has grown slowly but steadily since my first post of June 1, 2009. I’m grateful for the willingness of subscribers to stick with me as I develop my own approach to blogging, which falls somewhere between cultural journalism and critical essay-writing, a far cry from casual blogging and tweeting. […]

Earl Coleman (1916-2009): A Farewell

My father, Earl Maxwell Coleman, passed away on October 12, 2009. Earl was known to the photography community as the publisher who founded Da Capo Press, a humanities division of its parent company that began by issuing reprints of some significant photo publications, but soon moved into the production of new works as well. […]

Polaroid Collection: Update 11

I think it is incumbent on the Polaroid Corporation to answer some increasingly urgent questions. To wit: How does the Polaroid Corporation account for the discrepancy between the repeated estimate of 22,000-24,000 prints in the collection, given out by the Polaroid Corporation as recently as summer 2009, and the official inventory of 16,000 presented to the Minnesota court in spring 2009? Can the Polaroid Corporation verify its actual acquisition and legal ownership of all the works it claims as its outright property in the Polaroid Collection, above and beyond authorization from the courts to sell them? […]