We’d know nothing of the truth about the death of Eric Garner if bystander Ramsey Orta hadn’t made and immediately posted a video. That video of the Staten Island police beatdown on Garner, and still images derived therefrom, plus other documentation by other concerned citizens, have gone globally viral. So this is about images. […]
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I don’t aspire to greatness as an artist, or even to consideration in that category. If I’ve exceeded your expectations of the rewards of engaging with criticism, I’d prefer to think that I’ve expanded your definition of what criticism can do, rather than that I’ve stepped into some parallel universe and switched roles. […] Unexpectedly, the dismantling of the myth of Robert Capa’s adventures on Omaha Beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944, and the subsequent fate of his negatives became the year’s main project at this blog. I also took up the collapsing market value of post-secondary degrees in studio art and photography; the willful, mindless destruction of an excellent example of such a program in Vevey, Switzerland, which I witnessed firsthand; the photographic strategies and style(s) of Shelby Lee Adams vs. his claim to documentarian status; and the insidious agenda of the “internet everwhere” tendency. […] Kim Kardashian, intent on extending her 15 minutes of fame indefinitely (or at least milking it for all it’s worth), will release a book of selfies next April. This gives a whole new meaning to the term “vanity publishing.” Titled “Selfish,” priced at $19.95, under the prestigious imprint of Rizzoli International Publications, it will run 352 pages and include more than 1,000 selfies — surely as redundant an act as one could conceive for someone whose image has become inescapable. […] |
 SPJ Research Award 2014 |
Film the Police (2)
My new policy: Film the police anytime I see them interacting confrontationally with members of the public. I recommend you do the same. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. The price of freedom from a police state is constant surveillance by the citizenry of those who benefit most directly from the creation of a police state — the police. […]