When I can immediately and decisively disprove part of a book’s opening statement its credibility suffers, and my interest wanes. Having my own words and positions distorted to buttress Peggy Cousineau-Levine’s rationale for her study certainly didn’t help me engage with her project. If that’s what Canadians need in order to validate their sense of autonomous cultural identity, they stand on very shaky ground. […]
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Arguing that only a Canadian can understand Canadian photography verges on solipsism. And chastising non-Canadians for not venturing their considerations of such Canadianness, which Canadians would reasonably consider presumptuous, creates a double-bind stuation. […] Chancing upon Cousineau-Levine’s volume at a book party in Montreal when it came out, I was amused to open it back in my hotel room only to find it had as its jumping-off point this extreme misinterpretation of my work by a Canadian ― a grammatical misreading that serves as the partial foundation for her entire book. Thus, in her opening paragraphs, Cousineau-Levine undermines her own subsequent argument and impeaches her own scholarship. […] Right now, New York City, certainly one of the major international hubs for photography and photo-based art, has only two or three active and knowledgeable critics of photography ― the same number it had in 1974, four decades ago, when the photo scene here was a fraction of its current size. Pathetic. […] |
 SPJ Research Award 2014 |
No End of “Innocence”
Apparently it’s a gift that keeps on giving. There’s simply no end to the Innocence of Muslims story. Now the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that Google must remove from YouTube all versions of Mark Basseley Youssef’s anti-Islam provocation. […]