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On the Barbie/SI Swimsuit Cover: The Advertorial Girl
So let me ask you: is it a promo for an American sport magazine's yearly franchise editorial feature or is it an advertisement for an iconic American children’s doll?
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On the Russian Military Using Unmarked Uniforms
If soldiers are not wearing insignia, they are partially out of uniform; if they are partially out of uniform, they are that much closer to being private militias, gangs, or thugs.
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On that 26-Year-Old "Putin" - Reagan Photo in Moscow
All told, the photo is compelling for reasons that have little to do with its underlying accuracy.
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Sochi 2014/Crimea: We Are All Neville Chamberlain?
Watching the tanks roll and the blood spill this week, what it points to is a great yet silent miasma as if the Olympics took place in a bubble.
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Cold War Kiss: On Russia, the U.S. and the “Return to Normalcy"
It could be humans caught up in the worldly tensions between Eros and Thanatos. Or, it could be a “Return to Normalcy” where the war was “cold” and we could identify who our enemies were.
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War III or the Oscars?
Who knows what pace and flow means anymore living in this buzzing world.
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For a PC Oscars, Ellen's Actually Not-So-Cheesy Intervention
If the Oscars were set to celebrate racial equality and gay rights last night (both themes reflected in the leading films this year), I don’t think the assembly expected to take on class, too.
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Murder as Damn(ed) Good Art: Robert Hariman on Organized Crime World Press Winner
The mob knew it wasn’t enough to kill its enemies; the killings had to be displayed to the viewing public. But the photographer isn’t a lackey of the mob.
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Towell from Kiev (and Canada): the Cream Rises to the Top - Updated
this photo is jarring for the woman in the fashionable jacket putting her hand to the shield -- as if pushing (or pushing back) with the strength of modernity.
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Netanyahu Gives Merkel Hitler's Mustache. Or: How Photos So Easily and Often Remind Us of Other Things
Sometimes the connection between one visual and another is so blatant, it commandeers our mental hard drive. Of course, what raises the Netanyahu Merkel Hitler photo to "epic" is all the irony that gets baked in too.
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Those News Anchor Threesomes with Frank and Claire Underwood
Maybe the vanity and professional incest in Washington is so matter-of-fact, one wouldn't stop to think anything at all about the nature of the cameos.
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More on the Photo Exploitation of Kiev: Esquire's Hashtag Mining
Going back again, you can see how Esquire was looking for matches that were not only the most dramatic, garish or ironically artful but made the subject in the "before" photo seem almost clownish or callously vain.
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The Petal
Isn't it interesting how much a subject's personality can influence the way we respond to a more impressionistic photo?
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Stacy Kranitz: The Rape of Appalachia
I find Caudill’s complicated legacy a reminder that there is a lot more to the evolution of a people than the victimhood that has been placed upon them.
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The Real Winners of World Press Photo 2014: The Palestinians
If it's a sad commentary on the state of the Western news media gaze, it's a pleasure and a relief to see Palestinians as "not one thing" -- to see Palestinians who are secular and devout; who do "regular things"; who don't spend every moment seething; and who experience...
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Pussy Riot vs. Cossacks at the Olympics: A War of Images (This Time)
Who knows what will happen when the Olympic spotlight is no longer trained on Putin.
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The Pictures Standing Out: Kiev Afire
Between the newswire and the Twitterverse, yesterday's photos from Ukraine were both intense and inescapable. Here's a collection of the most prominent.
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Sochi is Boring
Not that the Olympics aren't a hallowed institution, by the way, but so were college athletics before the Sports-Industrial Complex ate them.
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Thoughts on John Stanmeyer's 2014 World Press Winning Photo
In a day and age where specific conflicts, atrocities and human rights abuses beg for poignancy and advocacy, feting Stanmeyer's photo can either be seen as the loss of an opportunity, or else an incredibly daring choice inviting multiple conversations about what the photo is/ isn’t and does/doesn’t.
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If We Had Only Seen Hoffman in Pain
One of the profound things about photographs is how they can live simultaneously in the present and the past. People do not though.
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