Conceptualizing the Migrants
What’s striking to me is how the news imagery of the world-wide migrant crisis is all over the map when it comes to representing these individuals.
Continue Reading
Greenwald on the Depiction of Trump and Ramos as Mirrors
The image seems to specifically key off Greenwald’s criticism of a WAPO article drawing an equivalence between Ramos and Trump as provocateurs.
Continue Reading
The Virginia TV Murder and the Cincinnati Cop Video: The Larger Gesture
With eyes out for symbolism, that arrangement of the hand and fingers is as representative and fraught as any other in this country today.
Continue Reading
More Katrina in Retrospect: Blinded by the Light
The question we asked at the time, and we're asking still, is why the photos published inside the Superdome were so artful and distant?
Continue Reading
Since Katrina, What’s So Different? — Outside the Crawfish Shak
One thing that characterizes a good deal of these retrospectives is the sense that: that-was-then-and-this-is-now. What stands out to me is how much the racial schism then mirrors the racial schism today.
Continue Reading
On the TIME Trump – American Eagle Shoot … Beyond the Ha, Ha, Ha
If you get too (or completely) distracted by Trump, either through offendedness or amusement from the farce, you’re going to miss the deeper take-away here.
Continue Reading
Newswire Pix: Were it Not for the Culture of Surveillance
I doubt this random newswire photo would have enjoyed the same kind of distribution were it not for the present-day security state.
Continue Reading
Why We’re Changing Our Name
Our choice wasn’t difficult, considering we’ve actually been using this phrase as a tagline since, well... that Bush-Kerry election.
Continue Reading
Campaign 2016: The Rapture
If we can be less dogmatic for a second about our own jadedness, what is divine is that hope is still out there.
Continue Reading
When Different Wire Photos on Same Story Address Different Racial Audiences: “Go Set a Watchman”
Who, between these photos, is invited to see themselves as Watchman’s audience?
Continue Reading
The 1% Two Ways
If the term “two Americas” (or two Londons, or, in this case, two Shanghais) is largely understood as a metaphor, what are we to make of it here?
Continue Reading
On the Photo Coverage of the One Year Anniversary of the Ferguson Crisis and the Death of Michael Brown
I was looking and hoping for imagery that got underneath the more stereotyped depiction of violence, anger and despair.
Continue Reading
The First GOP16 Cattle Call: Our 3 Pix of the Night
In this troglodyte moment, you can see the boys behind Ms. Kelly back there tittering.
Continue Reading
From His Own Perspective: The Seductive Power of the Instagram Migrant
Of course, we would hope that the migrant diaspora in our media diet would reflect the greatest realism, but that’s a whole different thing than the migrant telling his or her own story, taking his or her own pictures, and controlling his or her own narrative.
Continue Reading
On the Empire State Building Endangered Species Spectacular: I Want to Believe
I want to believe that what I’m experiencing here is demonstrably more than just do-good shock-and-awe.
Continue Reading
Killer Cop Arraigned in Cincinnati (Confused by How Much Social Media Thrives on Shame)
One thing the shaming obscures is the extreme moral contrast between Tensing and the cops.
Continue Reading
On Light, God, Photography … and That Moment Just Before the Bad Thing Happens
The point isn't that photography is God, or that God is a photograph. But we are in fact dealing with a mode of communication that freezes time and space, obeys its own laws, is both visual and grammatical, and does more to generate meaning—and generates more meaning—than we can...
Continue Reading