Back to all topics Robert Hariman
96 Posts
Notes Photo April 13, 2017

Seeing War For What It Is: Ridiculous

War is not fashion and suffering is not funny. But the photo of this missile is both familiar and odd enough to seem uncanny.

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Notes Photo March 9, 2017

Through a Glass, Darkly: Visibility in Trump’s America

It seems to me that the news photo too often is showing us only the aftermath. Too much of the damage is being done off-stage.

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Notes Photo February 23, 2017

Getting Above the Chaos: Science, Photography, and Beauty

The world can seem lost to white noise and alternative facts, lurid emotions and garish displays of moral ugliness. Which may be why I find these images from the Observatory in Chile to be so comforting.

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Notes Photo December 19, 2016

Why Photographs Don’t Stop the War

Photographs may have long wave influence, but they don’t end wars or famines or otherwise stop history in its tracks.

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Notes Photo December 7, 2016

Aleppo as the 21st Century Hiroshima?

Considering how much conventional warfare is excused because it is assumed to be less destructive than nuclear weapons.

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Notes Photo July 15, 2016

Into the Twilight Zone in Nice

The world seems to be pitching into another reality, one that is more unreal than real, both present and still to come, and defined primarily by separation and violence, and by madness and helplessness.

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Notes Photo June 30, 2016

When Gag News Photos Are No Joke

Growing inequity leads to more demonstrations and other protests, and to violence. And to more gag photos.

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Notes Photo April 6, 2016

No One Thinking About Nuclear Summit? Listen to the Ruins.

The nuclear summit was important–unless, that is, you don’t mind having Your Town looking like this.

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Notes Photo March 3, 2016

The Ruins of the Space Program

If you liked the space program, it will be a mixed blessing. If you like ruins, however, you will feel right at home.

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Notes Photo February 8, 2016

Fashion Week: Visions of the 1%

One of the fashion themes this year is that wealth is here to stay.

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Notes Photo December 22, 2015

Star Wars Optics and Socialist Dreams

Incredible, isn’t it?  So perfectly designed and yet so strange.  Ultramodern and yet medieval, like a space ship on a surveillance mission and a castle readied for battle, set off by itself in forbidding isolation and yet connected somehow to distant galaxies.  The tableau is so unique and so...

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Notes Photo November 27, 2015

The Latest Terror Attack and a 19th Century Painting

I doubt that the photographer was thinking of Caillebotte’s work when snapping the photo in Brussels, but the connection is there in several ways.

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Notes Photo November 3, 2015

Photographing the Refugee Crisis: The Significance of Less Context

Let me suggest that the more interchangeable the images, they more they point toward the full significance of this historical moment.

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Notes Photo April 18, 2015

Spring Time in the Dust Bowl

This photograph doesn’t tell us anything important that we don’t know, but it does provide the means to think about what we would rather ignore.

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Notes Photo April 11, 2015

Waiting for Peace to Arrive at the Syrian Bus Stop

Whatever the back story, the moral is the same: warfare demands exceptional resilience and inventiveness to survive, and people respond in kind. ...Which is why the scene is heartbreaking.

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Notes Photo March 6, 2015

The Problem With War is Not That it's Eternal, but That it's Persistent

There always has been war, there always will be war, and only fools think otherwise. Thus, the full honor due to those in battle today can be paid only by placing their memorial within the unbroken continuity and epic scale of myth.

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Notes Photo February 27, 2015

The Face of Battle in the Ukraine

War is far more than battle, from the extensive organization that is required to project power and hold territory, to the thousand ways that it disrupts, distorts, corrupts, and shatters entire worlds.

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Photo February 12, 2015

Perhaps Our Images Provide Opportunities to Turn Terror Into Something Else

The central monument in a civic plaza, yet looking more like an idol demanding sacrifice, the image radiates a dark vibe across the urban space.

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