Part of the Italian Wheelchair Fencing Team, Airport Rome

Within one hour the Paralympic Games 2008 will have its start with the official opening ceremony.

Same worries, thoughts and questions regarding the political issues as with the Olympic Games, nothing has changed.
With the addition that, at least here in Italy, the attention given to the event and the athletes is very reduced, I hope for them to have a huge success, proving once more that ability and disability isn’t tied to missing bodyparts, but that it is a mental question (in us, normally abled people!).

Official Website Paralympic Games 2008

Paralympic Sport TV on Youtube

Larry Towell is one of the most impressive bw “photojournalist” I know of.
Almost all of his pictures have this unique perspective, real power, while simultaneously looking so natural and ease.
The framing and point of view is almost never repetitive, often very surprising, just perfect.

What I like very much is to sit down, watch and study his photos again and again.

I recently read an article of Larry Towell on CBC newsworld. It is a short and interesting read.

Pictures of his series “The Mennonites” you can watch here.

Additionally, there are three very good Essays on magnum in motion.

The Land from my front porch which also shows a exhibition of Towell (click right on essay and then play). The prints must look awesome in real. Has anyone seen them yet?

Land and Identity and

Katrina

More recent work, I found, are the multimedia presentations Swaziland and South Africa which cover the theme AIDS in africa.

The war in Georgia is on the headlines these days and Bush and Putin who once barbecued finally show their true colours.
Some pics about the war are shown here

Interesting is also this article:

Israel backs Georgia in Caspian Oil pipeline, posted some days before the war has been started.

“Moscow has repeatedly demanded that Jerusalem halt its military assistance to Georgia”

Now, you could simply change Jerusalem into United States of America, as Putin articulates direct and open words to Cheney/McCain.

It shows once more, how perfidious Cheney is the puppet master. When I read the article of the nytimes from above, I think, with McCain as puppet, it will get ice cold again.

The world depends on each other. Without money from selling oil, the russia economy will falter. They have nothing but raw materials.

That damn tune I can’t get out of my head ever since I heard it the first time. :-)

Not really, just stumbled over this site, where you can design your t-shirt and win the contest.. guess I’ll never understand this kind of (to me superficial) hype around politics..

Interesting what he has to say to his people, there’s something for everyone, even for the kids, younger than 12.

Link to the press release

So you need a official to give approval?

My latest two photographs, caused some controversal comments in the american visitors dominated apug online gallery, so that I finally deleted them there.

After that I searched on the Internet.

The topic nude children photography is not “solved” at all, although it is that old.

I realised, that you could even loose your kids, wife and life and be put “on a list”.

So, if you are not an artist, and photograph your own kids, it may be even worse.

Isnt that strange?

How a photo can ruin your life. (Please read page 2)

“Faces of Evil shows the faces of the cruellest and most infamous dictators of our time, from Mao to Hitler to Mugabe. Hans Weishäupl took photographs of over 350 people in each dictator’s country and pieced particular parts of them together to create a new and alarmingly lively look for each of them.”
(via Conscientious)

Very interesting work in my opinion and great use of digital image manipulation. Visit the project’s website (beware of annoying sound) for more information including a short making-of video. Larger pictures can be seen on spiegel.de.

(Picture © Hans Weishäupl / Spiegel Online)

Barbara Klemm and Stefan Rohner interviewed for arte tv, there will be a documentary about her photographic work. Here a moment during a talk about street and human photography between the two artists and the students attending Rohner’s workshop in Ludza.

As I write I’m watching the opening ceremony of the Beijing 2008 Olympic games.

Here the photo gallery, not long and we’ll find something on youtube too, for sure.

Personally I have very mixed feelings, on one side there’s the desire to see human rights respected, free expression, a free Tibet, but on the other side there are other countries much more democratic, at least on paper, who don’t respect human rights either and impose their way of living and thoughts on others.

How can we ask the athletes, who are preparing themselves since years, not to attend the ceremony? Why should they solve problems the political and economical world isn’t able to solve?

2 very interesting short movies about Alec Soth’s portrait style and his large format choice.
Alec Soth: Portraits
Alec Soth: The ground glass