Lost in the Waves
It’s seems ironic that Susan Sontag died Tuesday, just as waves and waves of images — professional and amateur — were pouring forth from the South Asian tsunami. Sontag was keenly interested in the function of photographs as cultural artifacts. From a political standpoint, she expressed concern that “picture...
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All the Trimmings
Right after I went away, I collected a few images I thought were particularly telling. Did you see this one of the ceremony in which Bush presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Gen. Tommy Franks, Paul Bremer and George Tenet for their contributions to the Iraqi campaign? What...
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Parting Shots
I thought I would enter into evidence one last example of the media’s distortion of John Kerry. This shot is from Time Magazine’s end-of-the-year issue. To summarize my own thoughts, I can’t deny that Kerry, at times, is a man of two minds. For much of the media to...
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Putting Down The Paper
As promised, I will be putting down the paper for a few weeks, and heading out. …However, I’ll be back on or before December 30th (if I’m even able to stop that long) to look at more pictures. Happy Holidays!
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Show of Support
It was if, for one day, the campaign was still on. George Bush, the war President, had come to Camp Pendleton in California to rally the troops. The result, if you look over the major newspapers and wire services, were dramatic images of the president from the back, from...
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The Flash Of Early Warring
The best news images from Iraqi are the ones that prefigure the direction of a story days or even weeks before someone puts words to it. If you read the NYTimes this Sunday, you would have noticed references (in several places) to a potential Iraqi “civil war.” However, I’d...
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Chemical Reaction
The exciting news last week was the stunning announcement that Dow Chemical was finally taking full responsibility for it’s role in the Bhopal chemical disaster. A spokesman for the company made the declaration in an interview on BBC news, issuing a formal apology to the victims and declaring that...
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Oh, Death
This shot, from the NYTimes two Friday’s ago, was the second prominent image of murdered Iraqi bodies on the front page that week. Whatever other things the photo editors had in mind, it seemed they were initiating a new level of disclosure for human corpses. At the same time,...
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Today Sunday Morning — Tomorrow, The World!
Isn’t it just like (us) progressives to defend an advocacy ad embracing non-discrimination toward church-going gays and minorities? The ad I’m referring to — for the United Church of Christ — was recently rejected for broadcast by several networks, including CBS, NBC and UPN. CBS and UPN determined that...
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Leaving the Country
I just wanted to provide a brief “heads up” about upcoming downtime. I’ll be keeping the pace until this Thursday or Friday, and then I’ll be away for a couple of weeks. (Not that I’m taking the advice of some of my more hardened critics, but yes — I...
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Framed
This morning, I found myself on page A3 of the NYTimes, looking at a picture of a guy looking at three pictures, with one of them appearing to look back at him. The image accompanied an article speculating on the fate of Kofi Annan. The shot shows a visitor...
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Fort Knocks (Or, “Your House Is My House” — Part II)
I took a little heat a week and a half ago for raising the issue of the way U.S. troops were treating homes and property in Fallujah (Original post). While presenting an image of a couple soldiers sleeping in an occupied home, I asked what was appropriate in terms...
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Tutti Barghouti
Two weeks ago, in my new “Icon Watch” section (link), I provided some visual documentation suggesting jailed Palestinian leader, Marwan Barghouti, might be on his way to becoming the “replacement icon” for Yasser Arafat. It now appears that, after ruling himself out of the race to head the Palestinian...
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Georgeleeza Rice — Part 2
One or two cartoons back, I did a composite drawing of Bush and Rice. My point was that the new cabinet nominees were notable for their lack of identity or differentiation from Bush. If it seems that the administration consists of just a few players who basically meld together...
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California Dreaming (Or: Mary Meets Jane)
A major story this week is the Supreme Court medical marijuana case. The court is set to decide whether two plaintiffs, Angel Raich and Diana Monson, can continue to use marijuana for medical purposes. If you read news accounts (link), a main point that is continually stressed is the...
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