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"In Biafra in 1968, a generation of children was starving to death. This was a year after oil-rich Biafra had seceded from Nigeria, and, in return, Nigeria had attacked and laid siege to Biafra. Foreign correspondents in the blockaded enclave spotted the first signs of famine that spring, and by early summer there were reports that thousands of the youngest Biafrans were dying each day. Hardly anybody in the rest of the world paid attention until a reporter from the Sun, the London tabloid, visited Biafra with a photographer and encountered the wasting children: eerie, withered little wraiths. The paper ran the pictures alongside harrowing reportage for days on end. Soon, the story got picked up by newspapers all over the world. More photographers made their way to Biafra, and television crews, too. The civil war in Nigeria was the first African war to be televised. Suddenly, Biafra's hunger was one of the defining stories of the age-the graphic suffering of innocents made an inescapable appeal to conscience-and the humanitarian-aid business as we know it today came into being. "

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.

THE BEST ASSIGNMENTS ARE FREE…. In Thoughts at 11:12am They are gifts we give ourselves….. You already know the ones…the ones that really terrify you. The ones you think you can't handle. The ones you think are way, way, beyond your capabilities. Gateway assignments. The ones you need to take. They come in on the phone (rarely) or in the email of your imagination as loud as the "TERRAIN! TERRAIN! TERRAIN!" warning in the cockpit. You must respond. You must engage. Increasingly, these are the ones you give yourself. On the other side of that job, win, lose or draw, you will be a different photographer, and presumably, absolutely, a better photographer. Like a redwood, you just accumulated another ring. You could liken it to a scar, the way things go in this business. I try not to think about it. But here's the beautiful thing about scars. They are on the surface. Not attractive perhaps, but at the end of the day, inconsequential. They don't affect your core.

The Research Center Collections are central to the VSW mission to support the "creation, presentation, collection, preservation and education" of media based arts. VSW's focus on the aesthetics, cultural history of media, and social use of images has developed a collections policy which includes both creative work and vernacular images, as well as items that represent the history of media use. The Independent Press Archive has 5000 artist's books -- the largest collection of artists' books in upstate New York. This Archive is complemented by the Illustrated Book Collection, which contains illustrated books published from 1694 to the present day that display all aspects of engraving and photo-engraving practices and all forms of imaging technologies from wood engraving to xerography. These collections are supported by a Research Library of 20,000 books concentrating on the areas of photography, filmmaking, video, bookmaking, media studies, and the cultural practices of image making. The Photograph Collections contain 27,000 original photographic or photo-mechanical prints made by 2,200 known photographers and more than 600,000 examples of vernacular or anonymous images in the form of lantern slides, stereo cards, snapshots, postcards and news agency photographs. These collections hold examples of every type of photographic practice from the family snapshot to the fine art print and include work of every era from the daguerreotypes of the 1840s to digital prints from the present day.

"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

Twitter Literacy (I refuse to make up a Twittery name for it) Post-Oprah and apres-Ashton, Twittermania is definitely sliding down the backlash slope of the hype cycle. It's not just the predictable wave of naysaying after the predictable waves of sliced-breadism and bandwagon-chasing. We're beginning to see some data. Nielsen, the same people who do TV ratings, recently noted that more than 60% of new Twitter users fail to return the following month. To me, this represents a perfect example of a media literacy issue: Twitter is one of a growing breed of part-technological, part-social communication media that require some skills to use productively. Sure, Twitter is banal and trivial, full of self-promotion and outright spam. So is the Internet. The difference between seeing Twitter as a waste of time or as a powerful new community amplifier depends entirely on how you look at it - on knowing how to look at it. When I started requiring digital journalism students to learn how to use Twitter, I didn't have the list of journalistic uses for Twitter that I have compiled by now. So I logged onto the service and broadcast a request. "I have a classroom full of graduate students in journalism who don't know who to follow. Does anybody have a suggestion?" Within ten minutes, we had a list of journalists to follow, including one who was boarding Air Force One at that moment, joining the White House press corps accompanying the President to Africa.

Twitter Literacy (I refuse to make up a Twittery name for it) Post-Oprah and apres-Ashton, Twittermania is definitely sliding down the backlash slope of the hype cycle. It's not just the predictable wave of naysaying after the predictable waves of sliced-breadism and bandwagon-chasing. We're beginning to see some data. Nielsen, the same people who do TV ratings, recently noted that more than 60% of new Twitter users fail to return the following month. To me, this represents a perfect example of a media literacy issue: Twitter is one of a growing breed of part-technological, part-social communication media that require some skills to use productively. Sure, Twitter is banal and trivial, full of self-promotion and outright spam. So is the Internet. The difference between seeing Twitter as a waste of time or as a powerful new community amplifier depends entirely on how you look at it - on knowing how to look at it. When I started requiring digital journalism students to learn how to use Twitter, I didn't have the list of journalistic uses for Twitter that I have compiled by now. So I logged onto the service and broadcast a request. "I have a classroom full of graduate students in journalism who don't know who to follow. Does anybody have a suggestion?" Within ten minutes, we had a list of journalists to follow, including one who was boarding Air Force One at that moment, joining the White House press corps accompanying the President to Africa.

n asbestos fibre the diameter of a human hair is actually a cluster of two million individual fibres which could fit onto the head of a pin. If inhaled, minute fibrils can work their way deep into the lungs, where they cause asbestosis, lung cancer or mesothelioma, an otherwise unknown cancer of the lining of the lung or the abdominal cavity'. All of the three principal types of asbestos, white, brown and blue are carcinogenic, blue being the most deadly. Mesothelioma is invariably fatal and associated with the inhalation of asbestos fibre, usually blue asbestos. Even the most trivial exposure might result in mesothelioma, which can be latent in the body for forty or more years. Once the cancer becomes active, death follows inexorably within about twelve months. After witnessing the excruciatingly painful death of a friend who contracted mesothelioma I did some exploring of the aftermath of the mining of blue asbestos in Australia and South Africa. These are some of the photographs that resulted. In this introduction I briefly review a few of the factors at work in that aftermath.

THEORY - "The Indecisive Moment: Frank, Klein, and 'Stream-Of-Consciousness' Photography" THE INDECISIVE MOMENT: FRANK, KLEIN, AND 'STREAM-OF-CONSIOUSNESS' PHOTOGRAPHY By Gerry Badger "Frank … and Klein brought to the decade a feeling for its woes which, in retrospect, synthesizes it for us. There hovers in their work an oppressive sense of the odds against which people struggled, the dismal mood and chance of defeat that lowered the emotional horizon. This was all the more striking because of the general affluence of the period, underway shortly before the start of Frank's and Klein's major effort, in the great boom of 1955. These transplanted photographers found live and visual metaphors for the bleakness of this Cold War moment, and the deadness of the things in it. For those who remember the era, these photographic evocations of it have the keenest resonance; for those who came later, The Americans and New York offer a wondrous guide."

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.

Playing "god" in a digital age: The thin line between art and the subjectivity of photojournalism Jarle recently commented on the post "Crazy light", in which I wrote: "We are constantly challenged to make scenes that are less than interesting, more interesting." The question that this raises, however, is when and how are the conventions of honest visual reportage bent for the sake of making images more compelling? Jarle continues: Correct. We all strive to make our photos more interesting. But, ethically and philosophically speaking, isn't this in direct conflict with the "our pictures must always tell the truth" mantra? There's often a thin line between photojournalism, "art" and subjective, commentary photography. And, playing the devil's advocate, what's the difference between adding motion blur in Photoshop and using a slow shutter speed? I'll start out by agreeing with much what Jarle has said here. From a purist perspective, "Straight" photography should be a style of photography that records what the eye witnesses without elaboration or embellishment. For the most part, this form of photography, what is photojournalism today, has remained pretty much true to form. At the same time, it is possible to find quite a few examples of photojournalism from the 1980s to the present day, that deviate from the normal conventions.

Joe McNally shoots assignments for magazines, ad agencies, & graphic design firms. Clients include Sports Illustrated, ESPN Magazine, National Geographic, Life, Time, Fortune, New York Magazine, GEO, Golf Digest, Discover, Men's Journal, Business Week, Rolling Stone, New York Stock Exchange, Target, Sony, GE, Nikon, Lehman Brothers, & PNC Bank. In addition to having been a recipient of the Alfred Eisenstaedt Award for outstanding magazine photography, McNally has been honored numerous times by several of the following: Communication Arts, Applied Arts, Photo District News, Pictures of the Year, The World Press Photo Foundation, The Art Directors' Club, American Photo, and Graphis. Joe's teaching credentials include: the Eddie Adams Workshop, the National Geographic Masters of Contemporary Photography, the Santa Fe Workshops, the Smithsonian Institute Masters of Photography, Rochester Institute of Technology, Maine Photo Workshops, Department of Defense Worldwide Military Workshops, and the Disney Institute. He has also worked on numerous "Day in the Life" projects. One of McNally's most notable large scale projects, "Faces of Ground Zero - Giant Polaroid Collection", has become known as one of the most primary and significant artistic responses to the tragedy at the World Trade Center. Joe was described by American Photo magazine as "perhaps the most versatile photojournalist working today" and was listed as one of the 100 most important people in photography. In January 1999, Kodak and Photo District News honored Joe by inducting him into their Legends Online archive. In 2001, Nikon Inc. bestowed upon him a similar honor when he was placed on their website's prestigious list of photographers noted as "Legends Behind the Lens".

10x10™ ('ten by ten') is an interactive exploration of the words and pictures that define the time. The result is an often moving, sometimes shocking, occasionally frivolous, but always fitting snapshot of our world. Every hour, 10x10 collects the 100 words and pictures that matter most on a global scale, and presents them as a single image, taken to encapsulate that moment in time. Over the course of days, months, and years, 10x10 leaves a trail of these hourly statements which, stitched together side by side, form a continuous patchwork tapestry of human life. 10x10 is ever-changing, ever-growing, quietly observing the ways in which we live. It records our wars and crises, our triumphs and tragedies, our mistakes and milestones. When we make history, or at least the headlines, 10x10 takes note and remembers. Each hour is presented as a picture postcard window, composed of 100 different frames, each of which holds the image of a single moment in time. Clicking on a single frame allows us to peer a bit deeper into the story that lies behind the image. In this way, we can dart in and out of the news, understanding both the individual stories and the ways in which they relate to each other. 10x10 runs with no human intervention, autonomously observing what a handful of leading international news sources are saying and showing. 10x10 makes no comment on news media bias, or lack thereof. It has no politics, nor any secret agenda; it simply shows what it finds. With no human editors and no regulation, 10x10 is open and free, raw and fresh, and consequently a unique way of following world events. In 10x10, we respond instinctively to patterns in the grid, visual indicators of relevance. When we see a frequently repeated image, we know it's important. When we see a picture of a movie star next to a picture of dead bodies, we understand the extremes that exist in our world. Scanning a grid of pictures can be more intuitive than reading headlines, for it lets the new

Thomas Keenan - Mobilizing Shame - The South Atlantic Quarterly 103:2/3 The South Atlantic Quarterly 103.2/3 (2004) 435-449 Mobilizing Shame Thomas Keenan What difference would it make for human rights discourse to take the photo opportunity seriously? Not the photo ops on behalf of human rights, but the ones coming from the other side, the other sides. What would it mean to come to terms with the fact that there are things which happen in front of cameras that are not simply true or false, not simply representations and references, but rather opportunities, events, performances, things that are done and done for the camera, which come into being in a space beyond truth and falsity that is created in view of mediation and transmission? In what follows, I wish to respond to these questions by focusing on what, within human rights activism and discourse, has come to be known as "the mobilization of shame." Shame and Enlightenment It is now an unstated but I think pervasive axiom of the human rights movement that those agents whose behavior it wishes to affect -- governments, armies, businesses, and militias -- are exposed in some significant way to the force of public opinion, and that they are (psychically or emotionally) structured like individuals in a strong social or cultural context that renders them vulnerable to feelings of dishonor, embarrassment, disgrace, or ignominy. Shame is thought of as a primordial force that articulates or links... Project MUSE® - Download/Export Citation * MLA * APA * Chicago * Endnote Keenan, Thomas, 1959-. "Mobilizing Shame." The South Atlantic Quarterly 103.2 (2004): 435-449. Project MUSE. [Library name], [City], [State abbreviation]. 22 Apr. 2009 . Always review your references for accuracy and make any necessary corrections before using. Pay special attention to personal names, capitalization, and dates. Consult your library or click here for more information on citing sources. Keenan, T

Dorothea Lange: The Photographer As Agricultural Sociologist By Linda Gordon To a startling degree, popular understanding of the Great Depression of the 1930s derives from visual images, and among them, Dorothea Lange's are the most influential. Although many do not know her name, her photographs live in the subconscious of virtually anyone in the United States who has any concept of that economic disaster. Her pictures exerted great force in their own time, helping shape 1930s and 1940s Popular Front representational and artistic sensibility, because the Farm Security Administration (FSA), her employer, distributed the photographs aggressively through the mass media. If you watch the film The Grapes of Wrath with a collection of her photographs next to you, you will see the influence.1 Lange's commitment to making her photography speak to matters of injustice was hardly unique-thousands of artists, writers, dancers, and actors were trying to connect with the vibrant grass-roots social movements of the time. They formed a cultural wing of the Popular Front, a politics of liberal-Left unity in support of the New Deal.

Taking Stock By Angela Wolff Back in the 80s and 90s, "stock" was the name of the game. The economy was good, the market was hungry, and agencies hustled to get their photographers the biggest clients at the best rates. But then came agency consolidation. New contracts were issued, and many photographers felt their "agents" had become vendors, chipping away at prices, demanding higher sales percentages, and leaving their photographers to fend for themselves. Some photographers have become frustrated and have left the stock game altogether. Others have simply decided to take matters into their own hands. Many are collecting fees from images still represented by the big agencies, while cultivating profitable stock models of their own. They have found ways - by creating their own e-commerce sites, by capitalizing on niche specialties, by maintaining hands-on relationships with buyers, or by turning low-profit deals into moneymakers - to make the most of the current stock market. The photographers we talked to all said that, when licensing their own images, they garnered higher fees than agencies would have. Not just higher than the percentage split they'd usually see on their commission statements, but fees higher than what agencies typically charge their clients in the first place. The reason: As the big agencies gobbled up more and more small agencies and subsequently cut their image libraries, they not only offered lower revenues to their photographers, they also gave their clients fewer options and fewer services.

Bill Frakes is a Sports Illustrated Staff Photographer based in Florida. He has worked in more than 100 countries for a wide variety of editorial and advertising clients. His advertising clients include Nike, CocaCola, Champion, Isleworth, Stryker, IBM, Nikon, Kodak, and Reebok. Editorially his work has appeared in virtually every major general interest publication in the world. Bill won the coveted Newspaper Photographer of the Year award in the prestigious Pictures of the Year competition. He was a member of the Miami Herald staff that won the Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of Hurricane Andrew . He has also been honored by the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards for reporting on the disadvantaged and by the Overseas Press club for distinguished foreign reporting. He was awarded the Gold Medal by World Press Photo. He has received hundreds of national and international awards for his work. The total content of this entire site, all text, graphics, code and photographs are protected by copyright. Violation of copyright will be actively prosecuted. None of the images on this site are to construed as an endorsement by the individuals photographed or the holders of any of the marks pictured. It is simply Bill Frakes photographic portfolio.

Research Institute Home Conducting Research Photo Study Collection Photo Study Collection Guide to the Photo Study Collection and Database Search the Photo Study Collection Database The Photo Study Collection's two million photographs facilitate supplementary and original pictorial research for the study of fine arts from antiquity to the modern period. The collection's strength lies in the photographic reproduction of western art, architecture, and decorative arts. Patrons can conduct productive research on the history of collecting (provenance, art market, connoisseurship), iconography, conservation, historiography, and the history of reproductions. Approximately half of the photographic holdings in the Photo Study Collection are represented by descriptive, non-pictorial records in the Photo Study Collection Database, which is available online to all users. This research database is a work in progress, mostly comprising these descriptive records. Images will be added to the database periodically. The holdings of the Photo Study Collection are available for research by stack readers and extended readers. Initial appointments with a Reference Librarian are strongly encouraged. For appointments and reference inquiries contact Library Reference.

Welcome to the Hub -- the world's first participatory media site for human rights. Through the Hub, individuals, organizations, networks and groups around the world are able to bring their human rights stories and campaigns to global attention and to mobilize action to protect and promote human rights. Watch and forward the 60-second Hub video. What You Can Do On the Hub The Hub is an interactive community for human rights, where you can upload videos, audio or photos, or simply watch, comment on and share what's on the site. You can use each media item on the site to encourage individuals to learn more and to get involved by providing direct links to resources, advocacy groups, campaigns and actions that they can take to make a difference. Additionally, you can connect with groups or create one of your own to feature your work on the Hub. Every week you can watch the three most urgent videos contributed to the Hub, and hand-picked by our editors. Who can join the Hub? Anyone with a valid email address can join the Hub. Users of the Hub include human rights workers, students, academics, filmmakers, journalists, activists, teachers and concerned citizens worldwide.

The first thing that struck me about Renzo Martens' new film Episode III - Enjoy Poverty (2008) - confusingly, the second in a trilogy - is the artist's resemblance to the young Klaus Kinski. The numerous close-ups of his sweaty, troubled face (filmed by the artist himself on a hand-held digital camera) echo those of Kinski in Werner Herzog's Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), Fitzcarraldo (1982) and Cobra Verde (1987). The second thing that struck me, despite its supposed exploration of the exploitation of third world poverty by aid organizations and news agencies, is how the film rehearses themes present in Herzog's films. Each depicts a European living outside their comfort zone struggling to assert themselves in harsh, unfamiliar terrain, and ultimately realizing the futility of their endeavours. The third thing that struck me, after sitting through 90 minutes of Martens meeting aid agencies, photographers, plantation workers, guerrilla fighters, singing Neil Young songs to himself and attempting to convince the residents of a small village to let him set up a neon sign flashing the message 'Enjoy Poverty Please' - was how contradictory the film was.

History of Photography is an international quarterly devoted to the history, practice and theory of photography. It intends to address all aspects of the medium, treating the processes, circulation, functions, and reception of photography in all its aspects, including documentary, popular and polemical work as well as fine art photography. The goal of the journal is to be inclusive and interdisciplinary in nature, welcoming all scholarly approaches, whether archival, historical, art historical, anthropological, sociological or theoretical. It is intended also to embrace world photography, ranging from Europe and the Americas to the Far East. The journal aims to provide a significant resource to diverse communities, including, but not limited to, academics, curators, independent scholars, undergraduate and postgraduate students - indeed, anyone with a serious interest in the history and practice of the medium. The journal encourages submissions from young scholars, while also seeking to publish work by established authorities in the discipline. Over the past three decades History of Photography has become an indispensable source of documentary texts, new and original scholarly articles, novel interpretations, and original thinking in this field. History of Photography is a peer reviewed journal overseen by the Editor and supported by a board of scholars of international standing.