Magnum’s biography is not just a narrative of funny anecdotes, personal heroism, or critical interventions aimed at the cognoscenti. To me there’s a real narrative, a true set of values behind the myth. It’s a frat-house given to sophomoric antics with members sometimes capable of making extraordinary pictures. […]
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All members of the Capa Consortium — ICP, Magnum, Time, Inc., John Morris — face the 75th anniversary of D-Day, coming up in June 2019, on which occasion Capa’s D-Day photos and the contextualizing tale thereof will once again have a central role — whether in its original and now discredited mythic form or in an updated, realistic, credible, fact-based version. […] Researchers should not have to jump through hoops, devious devious tactics, or resort to threats of adverse publicity in order to gain access to archival materials. That smacks more of some government agency requiring detailed, exact FOIA requests than it does of a responsible repository ostensibly welcoming scholars. […] I mourn the closing of Views, not only (or even primarily) because I was its founding editor and felt a parental relationship to it but because that journal, and a baker’s dozen like it, have proven essential to the recent literature of photography. They provide the historical trace of what’s gone on in various parts of the country, they serve as testing grounds for younger writers and editors, and they function as stages for thoughtful commentary from all of us. […] |
 SPJ Research Award 2014 |
Election 2016: Image World (17)
It’s Mourning in America
… after the rudest of awakenings. And while the ugliest, scariest presidential campaign of my lifetime, by a factor of — I can’t even pick a multiplier — has ended, the waking nightmare has barely begun. Given his age, Donald Trump will not likely run again (he’ll […]