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THEORY: "Through a Glass, Darkly: Photography and Cultural Memory" Through a Glass, Darkly: Photography and Cultural Memory By: Alan Trachtenberg, Social Research, Saturday, March 22, 2008 "I don't know why a Replicant would collect photos - maybe they were like Rachel - they needed memories." In the role of the bounty hunter Rick Deckard in Ridley Scott's 1982 cult classic, Blade Runner, Harrison Ford utters these words with a bitter edge. Assigned to "terminate" the beautiful Rachel, an "android" especially menacing because she's almost (almost!) indistinguishable from a "real" person, Deckard lusts after her and wants to be sure she's human, not machine-made, before bedding her. Based on Phillip K. Dick's brilliant science fiction novel of 1968, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? the film adds the bit of sentiment about collecting photographs to the otherwise unmitigated darkness of Phillip Dick's vision of a near future. The year is 2021, and by means of mechanical replication--the electric sheep of Dick's title--warm-blooded animal life has been all but totally replaced by replicants, copies or duplications of almost forgotten originals. Memories of real sheep and toads and living human flesh are struggling against the irresistible tide of a programmed second-order reality unburdened by personal or cultural memory.

"The story is a machine for empathy"

In October of 2004, photographer Alec Soth went on assignment for LIFE magazine to capture weekend soldiers at an Airsoft military simulation in Joelton, Tennessee. In anticipation of his upcoming Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program exhibition, filmmaker Mike Dust traveled alongside Soth for this three-day excursion, interviewing and shooting alongside him as he worked to capture images for, both the magazine shoot as well as for his personal work. A number of these photographs (Odessa, Joelton, Tennessee, 2004 and Josh, Joelton, Tennessee, 2004) became part of the exhibition Alec Soth: Portraits at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts the following spring. The video piece created during that shoot was installed in the gallery as an accompaniment to the exhibition. The video is broken into three segments entitled On Assignment, Portraiture, and The Ground Glass.

Long before the first public announcements of photographic processes in 1839, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, a scientifically-minded gentleman living on his country estate near Chalon-sur-Saône, France, began experimenting with photography. Fascinated with the craze for the newly-invented art of lithography which swept over France in 1813, he began his initial experiments by 1816. Unable to draw well, Niépce first placed engravings, made transparent, onto engraving stones or glass plates coated with a light-sensitive varnish of his own composition. These experiments, together with his application of the then-popular optical instrument, the camera obscura, would eventually lead him to the invention of the new medium.

Sunday, March 19, 2006 Lighting 101 Intimidated by the idea of off-camera lighting? Don't be. We are pretty much starting from scratch, so no worries. The first posts will be about what kind of gear you will need to do the minimalist strobe thing. When we are done having our way with your wallet (remembering that light gives you far more bang-for-the-buck than does fast glass or the latest digital camera or 300/2.8) we'll move into basic technique. And after that, we'll keep it going with periodical essays and ideas on how to improve (or refresh) your lighting ability. When you've worked your way through the basics of designing your light kit and learning how to use it, make a point to browse some of the examples in the "On Assignment" section. Those will be updated constantly, too. So keep checking back. You will likely have some questions along the way. Sadly, it is not possible for me to take the time to personally answer all of the one-to-one lighting questions that pop up. So try to resist asking them in the comments section. The only people reading this behind you are the people who are, well, behind you. You will find the one-to-one knowledge bank you seek in the Strobist Group on Flickr. There, you can ask away and get the diversity of response that you need. These are the lighting grad students, so to speak. They know this stuff, and are very enthusiastic about sharing their knowledge.

Through the Lens of Time: Images of African Americans from the Cook Collection is a digital collection of over 250 images of African Americans dating from the nineteenth and early twentieth century, selected from the George and Huestis Cook Photograph Collection at the Valentine Richmond History Center. The digitally scanned images on this site are of prints from glass plate negatives or film negatives taken by George S. Cook (1819-1902) and Huestes P. Cook (1868-1951), primarily in the Richmond and Central Virginia area. The Cook Collection consists of over 10,000 negatives taken from the 1860s to the 1930s in Virginia and the Carolinas. The lens of a camera can both reflect and refract reality, and it is important to understand that a photograph, like any work of art, can tell us as much about the photographer as the photographed. These photographs of African Americans provide an interesting combination of examples of African American life and the white photographers' perceptions of that life, often at least tinged by stereotypes. While some photographs more obviously represent one or the other, it is an interesting exercise to attempt to determine which photographs were taken in a completely spontaneous manner and which ones were posed or staged by the Cooks. These photographs of African American life in turn-of-the-century Central Virginia are valuable both as conveyers of unique historical information and as examples of the nascent art of photography. Their preservation by the Valentine Richmond History Center and their digitization by VCU allows everyone from historical researchers to school children to access and learn from this fine and rare resource.

n October of 2004, photographer Alec Soth went on assignment for LIFE magazine to capture weekend soldiers at an Airsoft military simulation in Joelton, Tennessee. In anticipation of his upcoming Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program exhibition, filmmaker Mike Dust traveled alongside Soth for this three-day excursion, interviewing and shooting alongside him as he worked to capture images for, both the magazine shoot as well as for his personal work. A number of these photographs (Odessa, Joelton, Tennessee, 2004 and Josh, Joelton, Tennessee, 2004) became part of the exhibition Alec Soth: Portraits at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts the following spring. The video piece created during that shoot was installed in the gallery as an accompaniment to the exhibition. The video is broken into three segments entitled On Assignment, Portraiture, and The Ground Glass.

In October of 2004, photographer Alec Soth went on assignment for LIFE magazine to capture weekend soldiers at an Airsoft military simulation in Joelton, Tennessee. In anticipation of his upcoming Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program exhibition, filmmaker Mike Dust traveled alongside Soth for this three-day excursion, interviewing and shooting alongside him as he worked to capture images for, both the magazine shoot as well as for his personal work. A number of these photographs (Odessa, Joelton, Tennessee, 2004 and Josh, Joelton, Tennessee, 2004) became part of the exhibition Alec Soth: Portraits at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts the following spring. The video piece created during that shoot was installed in the gallery as an accompaniment to the exhibition. The video is broken into three segments entitled On Assignment, Portraiture, and The Ground Glass.

It's easy to mope and groan about the economy, our industry, and the inevitable changes that are taking place. But, let's look at the glass half full and get inspired to make the most of the situation, eh? Listed below are 15 inspirational packages and sites for you to peruse. I have featured many of them in the past, but hopefully this collection will motivate you to get excited about your potential and what lies ahead …

The window of a Humvee rolling through Baghdad's dangerous streets is essentially a television, watched in the dark. The glass is dirty and three inches thick: everything has a hazy and muted look, like a rerun of an old seventies movie. Humvees are dim inside even on sunny days; you can see out, but Iraqis can't see in, any more than a sitcom character can see us when we watch. Even the proportions are right: the older Humvee windows have the squarish shape of an old-fashioned picture tube; the latest armor kits feature wider, more horizontal windows, like the letterbox of plasma screens. And these screens show, for the American soldier-viewers, the day-to-day life of seven million souls: Iraqi children walking to school, men lounging in chairs outside of businesses, a food seller grilling meats. Women swathed in black abayas (so rare before the invasion and so common today) shuffling through the streets. Tall concrete blast walls, everywhere.