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The New York Times is running a slideshow by photographer Jan Grarup about life in the Daadab, reportedly the oldest refugee camp in the world. "The strength of the project rests within its immediacy," Mr. Grarup said. "It has an honesty to it." I was in Daadab not so long ago myself. I may not have been there for long but I was there long enough to notice that life in the camp wasn't one you would wish on the  worst of your neighbors -Kenyans and Somalis from Somalia aren't the best of neighbors. In the camps there is of course suffering but I would also have loved to see images of the children that were playing in the camp, images of the schools set up, images of the street with all the shops where refugees who've refused to be victims of circumstances are taking charge and rebuilding their lives. Where are the photos of the weddings that happen in the camp and where are the photos of people who despite their many tribulations, still observe prayers without fail? Where are the photos telling the other side of the story?

Center for Citizen Media Rotating Header Image The Decline (and Maybe Demise) of the Professional Photojournalist Dec 4th, 2006 by Dan Gillmor. The rise of the citizen journalist is not a new phenomenon. People have been witnessing and taking pictures of notable events for a long, long time. And they've been selling them to traditional news organizations just as long.

VII Photo Panel: Why Photography Still Matters Long, long ago, when picture magazines arrived in millions of homes once a week, and people still read newspapers, a news photo could have an immediate impact on public opinion. Images of fire hoses turned on men and women wanting to exercise their right to vote mobilized thousands of voter registration volunteers. An image of a naked girl running down a road to flee a napalm bombing curdled public opinion about an already unpopular war. But in today's fractured media, with so few publications showing serious photography, can a photo really make a difference? The answer, according to participants in the panel discussion held last night at the VII Photo agency office, is yes. Each panelist-a Congressional aide, a human rights activist and a photojournalist-gave examples of the surprising and sometimes unexpected ways that photos of human rights issues have moved individuals to take action.

VII Photo Panel: Why Photography Still Matters Long, long ago, when picture magazines arrived in millions of homes once a week, and people still read newspapers, a news photo could have an immediate impact on public opinion. Images of fire hoses turned on men and women wanting to exercise their right to vote mobilized thousands of voter registration volunteers. An image of a naked girl running down a road to flee a napalm bombing curdled public opinion about an already unpopular war. But in today's fractured media, with so few publications showing serious photography, can a photo really make a difference? The answer, according to participants in the panel discussion held last night at the VII Photo agency office, is yes. Each panelist-a Congressional aide, a human rights activist and a photojournalist-gave examples of the surprising and sometimes unexpected ways that photos of human rights issues have moved individuals to take action.

Long-Form Multimedia Journalism: Quality Is the Key Ingredient As a producer of social documentary projects-viewed on digital platforms-Brian Storm talks about the excitement of doing journalism in this way, at this time. A conversation with Brian Storm MediaStorm describes its mission as ushering in the next generation of multimedia storytelling by publishing social documentary projects incorporating photojournalism, interactivity, animation, audio and video for distribution across multiple media. Brian Storm is the president of MediaStorm, a production studio located in Brooklyn, New York, which publishes multimedia social documentary projects at www.mediastorm.org and produces them for other news organizations. In an interview I did with Brian on December 30, 2008, he spoke about how he envisions the future of long-form, multimedia journalism from the perspective of its creation, distribution and economic viability. An edited version of our conversation follows.

In the summer of 1973, photographer Stephen Shore set out on that quintessential American adventure - the cross-country road trip. Starting in New York City, he made a long loop around the nation, going through Michigan, North Dakota and Idaho, off to the West Coast, and then followed a southern route all the way back to New York. During his month-long trip, he kept extensive records, noting where he stayed, what he ate and what television programs he watched. He collected postcards of the places he visited, kept all of his receipts and, not unexpectedly, took hundreds of pictures. Now, 35 years later, his entire journal has been reproduced and published in a book fittingly titled A Road Trip Journal.

Thursday, October 30, 2008 Nick Turpin Ditches his SB-800s for a Cell Phone (RSS and email subscribers may have to click on the post title to see the video.) Remember Nick Turpin, who did those beautiful SB-800-lit street portraits of thriller writers for Arena Magazine? Now, he has ditched even those and is shooting his current month-long campaign for Samsung using only a cell phone. No DSLRs, no flashes, no female assistants holding long poles. And he is not even in control of what he is shooting -- you are. Your clicks on each new photo in the the evolving site decide where he is going next. It is live now, at The Photographic Adventures of Nick Turpin. You can follow his cell-phone video diary from his trek via his YouTube Channel, too.

"On the Internet, everybody is a millenarian. Internet journalism, according to those who produce manifestos on its behalf, represents a world-historical development-not so much because of the expressive power of the new medium as because of its accessibility to producers and consumers. That permits it to break the long-standing choke hold on public information and discussion that the traditional media-usually known, when this argument is made, as "gatekeepers" or "the priesthood"-have supposedly been able to maintain up to now. "Millions of Americans who were once in awe of the punditocracy now realize that anyone can do this stuff-and that many unknowns can do it better than the lords of the profession," Glenn Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor who operates one of the leading blogs, Instapundit, writes, typically, in his new book, "An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government and Other Goliaths." The rhetoric about Internet journalism produced by Reynolds and many others is plausible only because it conflates several distinct categories of material that are widely available online and didn't use to be. One is pure opinion, especially political opinion, which the Internet has made infinitely easy to purvey. Another is information originally published in other media-everything from Chilean newspaper stories and entries in German encyclopedias to papers presented at Micronesian conferences on accounting methods-which one can find instantly on search and aggregation sites. Lately, grand journalistic claims have been made on behalf of material produced specifically for Web sites by people who don't have jobs with news organizations. According to a study published last month by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, there are twelve million bloggers in the United States, and thirty-four per cent of them consider blogging to be a form of journalism. That would add

"Courts have long ruled that the First Amendment protects the right of citizens to take photographs in public places. Even after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, law enforcement agencies have reiterated that right in official policies. But in practice, those rules don't always filter down to police officers and security guards who continue to restrict photographers, often citing authority they don't have. Almost nine years after the terrorist attacks, which ratcheted up security at government properties and transportation hubs, anyone photographing federal buildings, bridges, trains or airports runs the risk of being seen as a potential terrorist. (Can an entire downtown be declared a no-photo zone?) Reliable statistics on detentions and arrests of photographers are hard to come by, but photographers, their advocates and even police agree that confrontations still occur frequently. Photographers had run-ins with police before the 2001 attacks, but constitutional lawyers say the combination of heightened security concerns and the spread of digital cameras has made such incidents more common. "

" It's been very fashionable to focus on the weakness and the banality of America, but what I wanted to say is that it's also a very exciting and fascinating place. - Joel Sternfeld, 1987 Joel Sternfeld's projects can perhaps be divided into two general groups: site-specific landscapes somehow connected to human presence (though people are rarely present in them) and shot during distinct periods of time, and a more ranging, long-term examination of the United States accomplished largely by photographing Americans contextualized by their environments. "

About Blueeyes Blueeyes Magazine is an online documentary photography magazine devoted to publishing new long-term project work. It is a labor of love created by a dedicated group of people who believe in the power of still photography. The magazine was created in 2003 in response to declining editorial space for documentary images, following in the footsteps of the now defunct Untitled Magazine to publish pictures that support and celebrate passionate and personal photography.

SEPIA (Safeguarding European Photographic Images for Access) is a EU-funded project focusing on preservation of photographic materials. On this website you will find information about : * SEPIA publications: SEPIA reports, articles and recommendations * research: 'scanning equipment and handling procedures', 'preservation aspects of digitisation', 'ethics of digitisation' and 'descriptive models for photographic materials' * news and events: containing announcements and press releases about the latest SEPIA news and a calendar of events. * Links & Literature contains reports, articles and references to relevant resources * 'To Have and To Hold' offers some guidance in finding information about the long-term preservation of all kind of photographic materials. It contains an introduction to the history of photography, historical photographic processes, digitisation and preservation of photographic materials and list of relevant resources selected by SEPIA experts * Six SEPIA partners have made a representative selection from their collections around the theme 'Constructing Europe'. Each presentation shows how an aspect of modern society evolved in a particular country. Although developments were different in the various countries, the exhibition taken as a whole provides a sense of an emerging modern Europe. * training: about SEPIA workshops, seminars and the national SEPIA training events * orginal proposals for SEPIA I and SEPIA II

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.

Historical photographic collections are an essential part of our cultural heritage. The growing interest in photography, as a form of artistic expression as well as a visual record of past times, has raised questions about how to treat photographic materials in a responsible way. These questions are not only relevant to collection keepers in archives, museums and libraries but also to anyone with old family albums at home. This website will offer some guidance in finding information about the long-term preservation of all kind of photographic materials.

Aims & Scope Visual Studies is a major international peer-reviewed journal published on behalf of the International Visual Sociology Association. The journal publishes visually-oriented articles across a range of disciplines, and represents a long-standing commitment to empirical visual research, studies of visual and material culture, the development of visual research methods and the exploration of visual means of communication about social and cultural worlds. Visual Studies is a key resource for all disciplines that engage with images, society and culture, and sets the standard for the scholarly use of visual material. The multidisciplinary character of the journal is reflected in its attention to visually-based research in sociology, anthropology, cultural and media studies, documentary film and photography, information technology, education, communication studies as well as other fields concerned with image-based study. The aims of Visual Studies are to: * Provide an international forum for the development of visual research. * Promote acceptance and understanding of a wide range of methods, approaches and paradigms that constitute image-based research. * Reduce the disparity in emphasis between visual and written studies in the social sciences. * Promote an interest in developing visual research methodology in all its various forms. * Encourage research that employs a mixture of visual methods and analytical approaches within one study. * Critically reflect and contribute to the dialogue surrounding 'the visual' across the social sciences and humanities. * Provide an arena for in-depth exploration of various approaches, particular methods, themes and visual phenomena. Most articles published in the journal are accompanied by appropriate visual material, and the journal encourages visually-led submissions.

Assistance Wanted Photographers and Assistants have their say. Wanted: Hard working, energetic, responsible person able to carry 90-pound bags and rewire small electronics. Must not be afraid of heights or susceptible to motion sickness. Be equally as enthusiastic about working with fashion models and celebrities as with livestock, inanimate objects, mops and brooms. Must be able to wake up early, work long hours and function on little sleep. Valid driver's license and passport required; multiple languages a plus.

Nan Goldin & Patrick Wolf The Balland of Sexual Dependancy UBS The Long Weekend @ Tate Modern London 24.05.08

Home in Elephant London College of Communication has embarked on a long-term project to document the regeneration of Elephant and Castle in south London. A new book featuring the first batch of MA students' work examines the theme of 'home'

War Reporting: the view from the frontline lcc2.gifWar has come to Polis in the shape of a course I teach at the London College of Communications. After the delights of my 90 minute-long 'history and concepts' lecture we got the real thing from journalists who work at the frontline. And our two guests this week have certainly seen conflict up-close. Newspaper foreign correspondent Kim Sengupta and American photojournalist Danfung Dennis are both outstanding war journalists who take their trade seriously. This report from Polis intern Molly Kaplan.

It wasn't all that long ago when I was interviewed for Black Star's terrific new project on photojournalism ethics. The book could not come at a better time for an industry that is trying to redefine itself in the face of public cynicism and distrust. Here an excerpt from the text. Photography has always been about manipulation....Even the smile is a form of manipulation, because it may mask the true feelings of the subject."

"dvafoto - photojournalism - M. Scott Brauer and Matt Lutton Matt Lutton and M. Scott Brauer share their work and others' Ethical Transgressions in Marco Vernaschi's Coverage for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting Apr 23, 2010 by M. Scott Brauer 3 Comments » What started as a long accusation in a lightstalkers thread has turned into a large-scale discussion involving a Pulitzer Center apology and coverage on the Guardian website. Marco Vernaschi's coverage of child sacrifice in Uganda (another with the offending image removed and another) for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting initially looked like a hard and gritty glance into a little-known-outside-of-Africa problem of ritual child sacrifice. Issues of exoticism and the colonialist view notwithstanding, numerous bloggers began lobbing serious allegations of paying for access, illegally exhuming a child's body to take pictures of the corpse, child exploitation, and outright fabrication. A Developing Story raised some strong questions of both Vernaschi and the Pulitzer Center. The Pulitzer Center took time in responding to the allegations. Other bloggers led the charge, with Anne Holmes of Vigilante Journalist providing invaluable investigation into the case with Ugandan authorities. Holmes had previously interviewed Vernaschi for her blog and has retracted those articles due to concerns about Vernaschi's ethics and journalistic process. The Pulitzer Center has issued a statement responding to these allegations, in which it agrees that the bounds of journalism, ethics, and human decency were crossed. Asim Rafiqui has a great perspective on the issue, as does Tewfic El-Sawey. Pay special attention Rafiqui's analysis of the motivations for a photographer to manufacture a story as regards the media eco-system of photojournalism awards, publications looking for sensationalism, and historical portrayals of Africa. "Mr. Vernaschi's transgression is not just that of an individual, but of an indust