Back to all topics Robert Hariman
96 Posts
Notes Photo May 12, 2013

Modernism: Past the Dynasty and the Mad Men

Individuals still have their preferences, of course, but modernism is now a period style rather than a dynastic order.

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Notes Photo February 23, 2013

The Ghost in the Machine

Fashion isn’t timeless, but the photographer’s artifice has captured something about photography itself.

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Notes Photo January 17, 2013

The Aleppo University Bombing and the Banality of Good

A well functioning civil society is one in which you don’t have to worry about civil war. The university represented the last space where that was possible, and now that has been lost as well.

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Notes Photo June 15, 2012

Flying into the World Trade Center? Or, Just Photography's Fourth Wall?

The plane’s silhouette cuts through the screen with terrifying force–indeed, it is the presence of terror as it evokes the image of those planes hurtling into the twin towers on September 11, 2001.

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Notes Photo May 25, 2012

HuffPo Amps Up the Culture War

If this direct comparison of Obama with Jesus Christ doesn’t play to conservative invective, I don’t know what does.

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Notes Photo February 27, 2012

Cairo, Damascus and the Surface of Things

With photographers risks their lives to photograph the political events of our time, we might take more time to notice the details.

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Notes Photo February 6, 2012

Bart Starr Meets Starship Troopers Meets Cleopatra: Super Bowl as Cosmic Mashup

Science fiction has always been about the present, and about the relationship between politics and society. The Super Bowl is a relative newcomer, but thanks to the power of spectacle it’s catching up fast.

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Notes Photo January 18, 2012

Fashion Watch: All Hail the Aristocrats

Even today, bourgeois morality remains alive and well.

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Notes Photo November 28, 2011

Simeon to Cyborg: Is Anti-Democratic Meme (& "Arresting" Pics) Dooming Progressive Protest?

The photo may be fitting too well with the anti-democratic meme of late that progressive movements are incoherent. Worse, he looks grotesquely simian, as if political demonstrations were a form of devolution.

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Notes Photo October 12, 2011

Compassion Bashing

"In a society given over to greed & arrogance, compassion could be a revolutionary idea."

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Notes Photo September 12, 2011

Beyond Commemoration Sunday: Remembering to Forget

This is how the US should look: a gleaming city. It need not even be a “city on a hill.” Unfortunately, the photograph is not from Milwaukee or Buffalo or New Orleans or Portland or any other American city. Welcome to the Jinzhou New Area on the northern...

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Notes Photo September 1, 2011

Just Being Myself

If I had to pick one image to represent the human condition, this might be it.

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Notes Photo July 31, 2011

Let's Play Army Men!

For those of us who spent countless hours of our childhood playing with World War II combat figurines, this molded amputee is a shock to the memory system.

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Notes Photo July 21, 2011

What's Really Ruining America: Graffiti!

The pairing of two explanations–one where culture harms the economy, and the other where the economy affects culture–is not journalistic objectivity; no, it’s a false equivalence, and one that encourages the reader to believe that the state should be treating symptoms rather than causes.

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Notes Photo July 9, 2011

A Different Angle on the Shuttle Program

The dream, the image suggests, was to get just one pod through to some unknown egg. Humanity wouldn’t conquer anything, but if it was found by the right host, some version of the species could spread across the galaxy.

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Notes Photo June 13, 2011

Seeing Double in Afghanistan

If you think about it, this photo may be one answer to the question that hangs over the war in Afghanistan. That question is, what are we seeing, really?

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Notes Photo April 27, 2011

Chernobyl and the Spirit World

Chernobyl is now a ghost town, which is one reason this mural is so powerful. The photographic record documents one abandoned habitat after another: schools, hospitals, office buildings, homes, everything had to be abandoned. Harder to capture are the many illnesses, deformities, and deaths caused by the...

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Notes Photo February 24, 2011

Collective Bargaining and Catastrophe

When disaster strikes, we can learn how it is that all bargaining is collective bargaining.

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