Taking photographs is to symbolically snatch away the object we photograph. In some cultures, when he takes a photo the photographer usurps the soul of the photographed person. In the west we have gotten rid of the soul a long time ago, but we have replaced it with intimacy, that luxury of the 20th century, we need to preserve at all cost as before we looked after our “immortal part”. One myth replaces another and establishes a new system of taboos and prohibitions.
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Top Secret America – A Washington Post Investigation
After 9/11 the government has built a national security and intelligence system so big, so complex and so hard to manage, no one really knows if it’s fulfilling its most important purpose: keeping its citizens safe.
video part1/3
“CAMERA, CAMERA is a stunning new documentary that shows Laos through the fascination and confusion of a traveler’s lens. The directorial debut of award-winning cinematographer Malcolm Murray, the film was written and features interviews by journalist and author Michael Meyer, and was produced by New York Times staff photographer Josh Haner. Throughout CAMERA, CAMERA, Murray and Meyer recreate the experience of traveling in Laos, a fragile yet deceptively brutal world. From ancient temples to mountain villages, in jungles and on rivers, we see what travelers see and discover what they don’t as the plot moves deftly from the comical to the taboo, reveling in the experience of Laos and lingering on things left unsaid. CAMERA, CAMERA is a documentary for anyone who has traveled to or taken a photograph in a foreign country. The film quietly calls upon viewers to ponder the multifaceted and often ambiguous impacts of travel and photography on citizens of two worlds.”
The official website of the movie is here, it also contains a trailer and some stills. I didn’t see the movie, but the trailer is looks promising. It should be featured at the LA Film Festival 2010.
Watch the multimedia slideshow and the small gallery at her website
The website and the pictures are to support http://sheedsociety.org
“We are a small but highly efficient community-based organization addressing the social problems faced in particular by the local female sex workers and their children who suffer from oppression, poverty, illiteracy and abuse.
Sheed Society strive to strengthen Health, Education, Environment in our community, the Red Light Area of Lahore, Pakistan since 1995.”
You can support them yourself by donating to specific projects here
©Rodrigo Abd
do we need bloody smashed bodies to understand what is a earthquake?
do we need burning bodies to understand what is a earthquake?
what do we want to achieve with these bloody images?
Nicola Boccaccini say at Lightstalkers:
Lightstalkers: zoriahs-haiti-workshop-ideas-and-direction
“”"Ethics? I don’t see ethics in photojournalism nowadays, …generally I see only competition in a new type of commercial photography.
…and workshops, in a world overflowed by images are only a simple solution for photographers to make money in other way.
No more sentimental or personal approach in photography, nor the joy to teach something to new generations!
It is very sad but, in my point of view, this is reality.
MONEY vs ETHICS?
MONEY ALWAYS WIN!”"”
On Feb. 1, 1960, four students from all-black North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College walked into a Woolworth five-and-dime with the intention of ordering lunch…
wonderful personal story
quote: “dont you ever ever stereotype anybody in this life until you at least experience them and have the opportunity to talk to him” minute 5ff
>1:1photo magazine, number 5 Winter 2009-10
“The visual arts have been reluctant to erase the frontiers between the erudite and the popular, between art and daily life. From its beginnings art photography has tried to raise walls of isolation, distinguishing itself from the “other photography”. Stieglietz already tried to find acceptance for photography promoting a salon art, using the paradigm of painting. Musea contribute with their celebratory politics and galleries with the craze of unique or limited or numbered copies and managers with their demands of exclusivity. The mannerism of photography schools goes in the same direction… the “democratization” of photography and today’s easy access do not improve its quality, but they do open up opportunities to speed up the permanent changes and mutations that are needed to keep photography alive.
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