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16 Posts
Notes Photo March 10, 2015

On Men Cross-Dressing in Kabul, Istanbul in Support of Women's Rights

I’m wondering if these displays might also reflect a shift in consciousness when it comes to sexual identity and gender roles.

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Notes Photo February 10, 2015

The Masking of Damaged Vets (With an Appearance by Hannibal Lecter). Photo by Lynn Johnson.

While the mask purports to give voice to his inner pain, it also makes it possible for us to observe him (from a distance) without actually seeing him.

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Notes Photo January 2, 2015

America in the Age of Ferguson: A Child's Letter to Troops in Afghanistan

If the collection captures the day-to-day life of the war machine at holiday time, what it more inadvertently offers is food-for-thought about the country's social priorities and racial character.

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Notes Photo June 23, 2014

Staring Our War in the Face

Using the President's suit to simulate a simple dark background, the gaze makes its own larger statement.

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Notes Photo April 4, 2014

Remembering Anja Niedringhaus: She Was Ironic, Too

Her photography was often brilliant, not just as reportage, but as subtle commentary. If others have captured Anja the documentarian, the humanist or the advocate for women, these images demonstrate her gift for irony.

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Notes Photo August 1, 2013

Rita Leistner: Looking for Marshall McLuhan in Afghanistan #2 – That Indecipherable Taliban Message

The importance of man’s oldest technology—language—is all but ignored in modern military training. And yet, military conquest and empire building has always been connected to language.

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Notes Photo October 2, 2011

“Out, Damn Spot!”

In America's war on terrorism (given our Christian sensibilities), "cleanliness is next to godliness.”

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Notes Photo May 8, 2011

Alan Chin: Through the Champagne Spray – Report from Ground Zero upon bin Laden’s Death

A crowd gathered at the World Trade Center site (Ground Zero) to celebrate after President Obama announced the killing of Osama Bin Laden.

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Notes Photo April 15, 2011

Soldier-Taggers: Afghanistan as Fight Club

Street art depends on disrupting the order and values of everyday life. Except, that is, when it's riffing off of "Fight Club" and posted on a NATO military base in Afghanistan.

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Notes Photo April 13, 2011

Great Pic from the Benghazi Street, Hanging Up on 3rd World Stereotypes

Props to the NYT for this photo this morning on Libya. It high time to defy the stereotypes.

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Notes Photo October 25, 2010

When We Decide to Know

Usually I avoid rubbing your face in it, but not today. This image, which has been sitting on my desktop for a few months, is offered out of anger, grief, and extreme frustration with press, public, and the Obama administration--and most of all with the public.

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Notes Photo September 26, 2010

Jeremy Lange's "War At Home": Surge Babies

Jeremy Lange's third post from the War At Home: Death in uniform, surge babies, and cupcakes.

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Notes Photo September 18, 2010

April Rabkin: Election Posters Highlight Propaganda Surrounding Afghan Election

It is an inspiring sight, at first: the streets of Afghanistan are saturated with campaign posters. They're on storefronts, roadside billboards, even festooning lampposts like holiday streamers. Democracy must be blooming, right?

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Notes Photo July 26, 2010

The Fog(ging) of War

The fact of the matter is that we have been shown evidence of virtually every one of these concerns over the past, long, ten years and we have chosen not to see them. Like the soldier in the photograph above, caught in the rotor wash of a MEDEVAC helicopter...

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Notes Photo July 5, 2010

July 4th: Dover and New York

The Fourth of July in America: Scenes from Dover and New York

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Notes Photo July 2, 2010

Waiting Your Turn in the Machinery of Death

This photograph from Kabul, Afghanistan could have been captioned “Return of the Body Snatchers.” Gallows humor is pretty cheap, but it may be as sane a response as any other to another suicide bombing.  The attack last week killed 18 people, wounded at least 47 others, and generally made...

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