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Seeing Barack Obama Through the Viewfinder

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Click on the 'Listen' button above to hear this interview. 

In the months since he left the White House, chief photographer Pete Souza’s photos and subtle trolling on his Instagram and Twitter pages has earned him millions of followers.  His images of former President Barack Obama taken over the years, posted in contrast to President Trump, draw thinly veiled comparisons to their differences in style.

And Souza has plenty of images to chose from. When he was offered the job as chief White House photographer, he accepted, and convinced Obama and the White House to give him unprecedented access.  

“It was not totally given to me," said Souza.  "I had to earn his trust and I had to push for access to make sure I was able to create this photographic archive.”

Part of that photographic archive can be seen in Souza’s new book “Obama: An Intimate Portrait."  But it’s just a glimpse of the nearly two million photos that Souza took over eight years, an average of more than 600 photographs a day, which for anyone — even a White House photographer — can be a challenge.

Click on the 'Listen' button above to hear the full conversation with Souza, and check out some photos from his Instagram account below.

One year ago today: the annual White House Tribal Nations conference in Washington, DC.

A post shared by Pete Souza (@petesouza) on

Man's best friend. This was actually the first day that the family met Bo.

A post shared by Pete Souza (@petesouza) on

Hug someone you love today.

A post shared by Pete Souza (@petesouza) on

Going way back to 2006 when Senator Obama was visiting Africa with his family. Happy Birthday Sasha!

A post shared by Pete Souza (@petesouza) on

Camp David, 2012.

A post shared by Pete Souza (@petesouza) on

On #womensequalityday a flashback to our visit to Women's Rights National Historical Park in 2013.

A post shared by Pete Souza (@petesouza) on

President Obama with a victim of Hurricane Sandy. There are no Democrats or Republicans hurting in Houston; there are just Americans. At a time like this, it shouldn't be about selling baseball hats or commenting on crowd size. It's about helping our fellow human beings. Pets too. This storm is catastrophic, not epic. Thousands of people are affected. Please consider donating to the many charities doing good work in Texas and other states to come. I am donating to the Red Cross and other local charities today but please feel free to comment on other worthy charities that you would recommend to me and others. (UPDATE: As one of your fellow followers points out, The NY Times has a good list of how to help victims and avoid scams. I posted the link in my profile. But keep suggesting others.)

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TBT: Five years ago today. Waiting to be announced at an event in New Hampshire.

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This segment is hosted by Todd Zwillich 


Instagram Crowds May Be Ruining Nature

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You scroll through your friend's Instagram feed and see the most beautiful setting, and think: "I want to go there." And so you do.

According to travel photographer Brent Knepper, you are part of the problem.

In The Outline's article "Instagram is Loving Nature to Death," Knepper says that thanks to the photo sharing app, some of the best-kept secrets of the natural world are drawing big crowds and literally altering the landscape.

Knepper tells NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro about some of the idyllic locations that are seemingly being ruined because of exposure on Instagram.


Interview Highlights

On Horseshoe Bend in northern Arizona

Horseshoe Bend is this beautiful spot 7 miles up the Colorado River from the Grand Canyon. It's in the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, and the bend is very unique as far as waterway travels down there. It makes a complete 180-degree turn in a canyon 1,000 feet deep.

From the viewing point at the top, you get this amazing view of this horseshoe shape, hence the name. It's a rugged, remote spot, and it's a very lovely place as long as you're willing to share it with a crowd. ...

I ran the numbers after doing a little bit of research, and the numbers do check out. On Instagram, Horseshoe Bend's popularity, in its hashtag or in its geotag, is normally 10 times as popular as anything else in that area.

On why some visitors and construction are the problem

Well, popularity is very important. The outdoor world needs more visitors and more accessibility. The difficulty with managing that side of it is that construction effects can have averse conditions applied to the natural areas, if you start doing different buildings. It's not that all visitors are a problem, of course; it's just some places tend to have people who neglect responsibilities of their visitorship.

On other spaces that have changed

In my article that I wrote for The Outline, I illustrate two other places that have also changed as a result of overwhelming popularity, specifically on Instagram. A smaller one, in Colorado, is Conundrum Hot Springs. After it became a spot to easily find on social media, the amount of visitorship went up really high. And the problem, since this is a very remote location where people hang around for a long time in the hot springs, is that they ran out of places to go to the bathroom. As a result, Conundrum Hot Springs had to be shut down for a little bit, while park rangers were up there with shovels to relieve that issue.

Bathrooms were not built. They literally had to shovel up everyone's waste and pack it out for them.

On Vance Creek Bridge

Vance Creek Bridge is probably the most famous spot within the Instagram niche. It is the second-tallest bridge in the U.S.; it's privately owned and is about a two-hour drive outside Seattle.

Its location was revealed in 2012 on Instagram and since then, visitorship has just exploded. The railing company that owns the bridge has tried to slow down the amount of people visiting it by putting up a fence and then excavating the whole area around the bridge before it drops down over 300 feet towards the river. They haven't been successful with that, and as a result of vandalism, graffiti and a couple of unresolved campfires that caught the bridge on fire — they're just going to tear it down now.

On why people visit these places

There's definitely a community aspect of it. There's nothing wrong with seeing a cool space on the Internet and deciding to go there. It's just, maybe, don't start fires there, and clean up your poop.

NPR's Digital News intern Jose Olivares produced this story for digital.

Copyright 2017 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

New Exhibit Shows Off Special Effects Pioneer Ray Harryhausen's Lasting Works

"Obama: An Intimate Portrait" By Photographer Pete Souza

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Pete Souza spent eight years in the White House, photographing President Barack Obama.

“He was so comfortable in front of the camera,” Souza says. “Meaning that he didn’t really change how he did anything. The presence of my camera didn’t affect him in one way so I was able to make these really intimate pictures even on his first day.”

From the fun to the solemn to the iconic (see below for examples), Souza’s photographs defined an administration. He joins us to offer a glimpse inside Obama’s White House.

GUESTS

Pete Souza, Former chief official White House Photographer for President Barack Obama; former director, White House Photo Office; former official White House Photographer for President Ronald Reagan; @petesouza

For more, visit https://the1a.org.

© 2017 WAMU 88.5 – American University Radio.

Copyright 2017 WAMU 88.5. To see more, visit WAMU 88.5.

Review: A Shore Thing

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The Stephen Shore retrospective opening Sunday at the Museum of Modern Art could not have come at a better time.  In an age when iPhones have turned most everyone into a wandering photographer of medium-to-low talent, Shore offers a model of straight photography at its most lucid and ravishing. Well-known in photography circles, he earned his first fame with scenes of small-town America, bright, crystalline landscapes with blue skies, big, ‘70s-era cars and poetically empty space.

A native New Yorker who is now 70, Shore was visibly influenced by the American tradition of street photography. It flourished in the 1950s, and was based on the idea that travel and adventure and chance encounters with piquant strangers were likely to improve your photographs. The style went out of favor in the 1970s, when Cindy Sherman and the so-called “Pictures Generation” spawned a vogue for studio-based photography — pictures that might be posed or staged or altered on a computer, and which made explorations of the city or hinterlands seem voyeuristic and passé.

Shore, by contrast, continues to travel widely for his work, and he follows a host of self-imposed rules that disallow for any kind of manipulation or post-production alteration. He claims he never crops his pictures. And he does not stage them. He makes them without using props or models or flash bulbs. Rather, his usual practice is to work with available light, preferably of the brightest kind. He heads to random-seeming locations — from Granite, OK, to Columbia, SC, to Bucha, Ukraine — to  practice his own form of extreme looking. When he decides to snap a picture, he gives himself only one chance to get it right, and then moves on.

His failure to work in a single style, and the difficulty of summarizing his various experiments over the years, has probably hindered his reputation. He is not a household name, and one hopes that the MoMA show will broaden his following. His best photographs, I think, have less in common with street photography than with Edward Hopper’s paintings, featuring rooms and landscapes that are devoid of people but seem breathtakingly alive in their stillness.

Consider, for instance, “Breakfast, Trail’s End Restaurant, Kanab, Utah, August 10, 1973,” which is set in a diner, and endows a plate of pancakes with the sumptuousness of a Dutch still-life painting. It’s all so appealing — the table has a pre-touched pristineness, with its white napkin still folded in place, and a glass of milk filled to the brim. Diner tabletops and their homey offerings are one of the few subjects that recur in Shore’s work over the decades, a reminder that we are all seeking to be fed, and photography of this quality can be pretty filling. 

 

PHOTOS: Peep At The Toilets Of 7 Families Around The World

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If you search for images of "toilet" on Google, you'll get a page of sparkling white ceramic toilets.

That's the typical toilet for people in a high-income country. But not every toilet looks like that.

To get a better idea of the range of toilets around the world, take a look at Dollar Street. It's a project that catalogs everyday objects — like toys, soap, stoves and of course, toilets — to provide a snapshot of life at different income levels across the globe.

The project was created by Anna Rosling Ronnlund, the co-founder of Gapminder, a group that uses infographics to explain the world. In 2016, she commissioned photographers to take photos of objects in over 264 homes in 50 countries.

Here is a selection of toilet photos from Dollar Street. Jennifer Foster, a technical officer for PATH's WASH portfolio, a global health nonprofit, provided insights into the different types of toilets. Foster works on public health issues — primarily water, waste treatment and sanitation projects.

Copyright 2017 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Lebanese Photographer Visits U.S. Cities Named 'Lebanon'

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Copyright 2017 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

From Moonscape To Lush: Photographs Capture California Drought's Story

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In California, an extremely wet winter put an end to the state's record-breaking drought. Heavy rainfall also produced welcome spring scenes — like replenished reservoirs and fields in bloom.

"It's a completely different look," says Justin Sullivan, a Getty Images photographer who took before-and-after style photos of drought-stricken areas. "It's just like a velvety green, lush landscape now — compared to just dry, brown, almost like a moonscape before."

Sullivan's photos show how one of the wettest winters on record is bringing the land back to life. In early 2014, Sullivan documented the drought at its worst. He shot photos from a helicopter above reservoirs like Lake Oroville.

"It's a little surprising to see the recessed water in reservoirs that reveals banks that are 50, 60, 100 feet tall," he says on NPR's Morning Edition. "They look like little mini-mountains and then a little river running through them."

Fast-forward to this spring.

Earlier this month, California Gov. Jerry Brown declared an end to the state's drought emergency. Now, many of those desolate landscapes Sullivan captured look completely different. So he went back and tried to re-create the same shots.

"We just wanted to show the contrast," he says, adding that it was a tricky assignment. "Obviously, landscapes change over the course of three years. Trees grow bigger. So it was difficult to just remember in your mind exactly what lens you used and how you approached it."

Sullivan downloaded the 2014 images onto his iPad and brought it with him when he shot the "after" photos. In trying to re-create the exact same frame, Sullivan had some luck on his side.

In one side-by-side set of photos, the 2014 version shows a man walking his dog. The man is surrounded by dead grass, with the San Francisco skyline in the background. When Sullivan returned to the (now green, grassy) hillside this year, he was able to snap a photo of a woman walking another dog in almost the exact same spot.

"Sometimes they just work out perfectly," he says.

Copyright 2017 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Newly Discovered Andy Warhol Art Up For Auction

The Influence of Affluence

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In her exhibit “Generation Wealth,” Lauren Greenfield, a photographer and documentary filmmaker, chronicles how evolving perceptions of money, status and celebrity have transformed societies around the world. The show, on display at the International Center of Photography in New York City, includes interviews, documentary footage and nearly 200 photographs. 

To Greenfield, the election of President Trump is closely related to the rise of a populace consumed with materialism and public displays of wealth.

"The Values of 'Generation Wealth' give rise to Donald Trump's ascension," said Greenfield. "He expresses a lot of the values and a lot of the themes in the work. The importance of celebrity; coming from reality television; fake it ’till you make it; the love for gold and the aesthetics of luxury; having beauty pageants and beautiful women as an expression of success, that's important to our President.”

This week on Money TalkingCharlie Herman talks with Greenfield about how the fixation on celebrity and displays of status give insight into American culture (as well as in other countries like Russia and China) and of our politics today.

"Generation Wealth"

International Center of Photography, 250 Bowery, New York

Showing through Jan. 07, 2018

Todd Webb's New York Of The 1940s/50s

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Todd Webb was an iconic photographer who spent all hours of the day capturing the people, buildings and avenues that made up New York City during the 1940's and '50s. Sean Corcoran, Curator of Prints and Photographs at the Museum of the City of New York, Daniel Okrent, an American writer and editor who served as the first public editor of The New York Times and Betsy Evans-Hunt, Executive Director, Todd Webb Archive, join us to discuss I See a City: Todd Webb's New York.The book features some of Webb's most captivating images from that era.

A book party and signing to celebrate the publication of "I See a City: Todd Webb’s New York" with Betsy Evans Hunt, Sean Corcoran, and Daniel Okrent will take place Dec. 13 at 6 p.m. at The Curator Gallery (520 West 23rd St., between 10th and 11th Ave.).

Note: Jonathan Capehart guest-hosted this segment of "The Leonard Lopate Show."

 

'I Came, I Saw, I Selfied': How Instagram Transformed The Way We Experience Art

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You are suspended in an endless dark chamber as thousands of red, green, yellow and blue lights flicker across the air like tiny diamonds in the sky.

Or at least that's how it appears in the selfie you just posted on Instagram. Yayoi Kusama's "Infinity Mirrors" – mirror-lined rooms that seem to go on forever – is part of the latest art craze to take over social media. Immersive exhibits are driving people to museums in search of the perfect snapshot.

Arielle Pardes, senior associate editor of technology and culture at Wired, tells Here & Now's Jeremy Hobson that the explosion of "made-for-Instagram" art exhibits is creating a market for art that is intended to be reinterpreted by people online.

"Youcan sort of skip that whole first part where you have an artistic process and an artistic critique of something, and just go straight to the selfie by building a space that exists primarily for replication online," she says.

In a TED Talk last year on "Art in the Age of Instagram," JiaJia Fei, director of digital at the Jewish Museum of New York, highlights the ascendance of "Instagrammable" exhibitions since the social media platform launched in 2010.

"You think of Yayoi Kusama and her Infinity Mirrored Room ... and then artists like James Turrell or the Rain Room at MoMA," she said in the TED Talk. "These are artists who really have very critical bodies of work, but [created installations] that have taken on new meaning because of social media."

Many of the masterminds behind these exhibits admit that creating social-media-worthy art was a key goal. In San Francisco, the 12,000-square-foot Color Factory features a pit filled with 207,000 plastic yellow balls, a giant Lite-Brite game and a life-size coloring book.

"Our goal was that every exhibit be three things," founder Jordan Ferney told the San Francisco Chronicle. "It would be conceptual; very photogenic and do well on social media; and be an experience that you couldn't get anywhere else."

Across the country in Washington, D.C., the interactive "sensory art experiences" at Artechouse seem tailor-made for Instagram. But the art and technology museum's founders deny social media played a role in their process, despite the fact the museum has been tagged in more than 25,000 Instagram posts since it opened in June.

"There are people who would like to come tell a story," Artechouse co-founder Tati Pastukhova told The Washington Post in November, somewhat acknowledging Instagram as a main driver for the museum's more than 65,000 visitors.

The deeply engaging quality of this art lends itself to social media because it allows the viewer to have a stake in the artistic process, Pardes says.

"Part of it has to do with the fact that these exhibits are very very immersive, so you can go to it," she says. "And rather than just sort of staring at a piece of art on the wall, you actually become a part of the art."

While the hunt for the perfect Instagram photo is driving a lot of people into art museums, Pardes says some museum curators argue that can distract from thinking critically about art.

"If you're expecting that you go into this space and you get a great photo ... and you get to show people that you were there, then maybe that's not exactly what the artist had intended," she says.

Pardes also argues the art in these exhibits takes on a different meaning when it is blurred by commercial interests. Before the New York location of the Museum of Ice Cream closed for the season earlier this year, 30 sponsors paid to have their brands featured. "Tinderland," a section of the exhibit sponsored by the dating app Tinder, prompted people to discover their "true flavor match."

This potential divide among artists and consumers illustrates how social media has influenced our behavior. Pardes says even restaurants and retail spaces are redesigning their spaces to make them more appealing for social media.

"In the pre-digital photography era, the message was: This is what I'm seeing. I have seen," Fei said in her TED Talk. "Today, the message was: I was there. I came, I saw, and I selfied."

Copyright 2017 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Here Come The Penitent Penguins: The Comedy Wildlife Photo Awards Are Back

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Penitent penguins. A seal aghast. A turbocharged wigeon, a vain gnu and a kickboxing kangaroo.

The Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards are back. This year's winners were announced Thursday morning.

The annual awards are "ingeniously titled to avoid any confusion," according to their website, and recognize images that are "light-hearted, upbeat, possibly unpretentious and mainly about wildlife doing funny things." Like a fox pooping in one of the holes on a golf course, for example. Not a lot pretentious about that.

Photos are judged on both technical excellence and comedic value of the captions, which is why we can't take credit (and won't accept blame) for the goofy captions above.

This author could go on all day about the various other finalists for the 2017 competition. (Did someone say mustachioed jackrabbit?) Better, however, to let some of the artists (photographers, not the wildlife) speak for themselves.

The finalists are about equally split between professional wildlife photographers and people who take photos mostly for fun. George Cathcart says he's been interested in photography since he bought his first camera back in 1968, when he was serving in the Vietnam War. "Cameras were cheap at the PX," where soldiers could buy things, he recalls.

He got back into photography after he retired a few years ago, and started taking pictures of birds and aquatic wildlife. "I love elephant seals," he says. "This time from December through February they're giving birth and mating," so there's a lot of drama on the beach.

Cathcart spent about a week going down to the beach in San Simeon, Calif., every day. One day, he saw a young male elephant seal posturing at another male. "Clearly, he objected," Cathcart says. "As soon as I took it, I knew I had something. It cracked me up immediately."

He titled the image, which is included above, "WTF?!"

Then, there's Carl Henry. Henry is from Houston, right on the migratory path for lots of birds going and coming from South America. When he started as an amateur wildlife photographer about 15 years ago, people assumed he photographed birds. They were wrong.

"I don't like birds," Henry says. Or at least he thought he didn't like them. Turns out they're all right, and even got him a spot as a finalist in this year's competition.

It was on South Georgia Island, near where Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton is buried. "I saw the three penguins heading for the church," he recalls. "I thought it would be a good photo."

It is.

Henry thinks it could have been even better. "I think one of the disadvantages of my photograph is that the penguins aren't as prominent. And then you realize, um, they're penguins."

Anyway, he's happy to be a finalist. "Every needs a laugh these days," he says. Something to make you feel like this.

Copyright 2017 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Outcry Over Photo Showing The Face Of A Girl Allegedly Being Raped

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On April 28, the magazine LensCulture posted a photo of what appeared to be a man raping a girl who looks like a young teenager.

The magazine — which has nearly a million Facebook followers — was using the photo to promote a competition in partnership with Magnum Photos, which cost $60 to enter 10 photos. "Don't miss out!" the post said, a few sentences above the photo.

The caption said the girl is 16 and is being forced to have sexual interactions with a "client" in the red-light district of Kolkata, called Sonagachi.

The girl is on her back, looking up at the camera, with a naked man on top of her. Her face is in full view. Her identity is not concealed.

Based on the content of the photo and its caption, the photo violated UNICEF's ethical guidelines on reporting on children by showing her face, which makes her identifiable, according to human rights activists.

The agency writes: "Always change the name and obscure the visual identity of any child who is identified as a victim of sexual abuse or exploitation."

The photo infuriated human rights activists and photojournalists.

"I've seen some moral bankruptcy in photojournalism, but this is the most extreme," says Benjamin Chesterton at Duckrabbit, a film production and training company, who first wrote about the photo. "This is a photo of a child sex slave being used to promote a for-profit competition by Magnum — the most prestigious photo agency in the world."

The incident also brings attention to a broader issue in photojournalism, Chesterton says: How the Western media depicts — and often demeans — young women and girls in poor countries.

"This is the elephant in the room: how we view the suffering of distant others," says human rights activist Robert Godden of Rights Exposure, which helps nonprofits and governments create effective and ethical campaigns. "What if this photo series was taken in the U.S. or the U.K. — would the girl have been presented this way?"

He adds, "Another good question to ask is: If this was a family member of mine, would I want them portrayed like this?"

Amid a barrage of protests from readers, photojournalists and human rights activists, LensCulture took down the photo hours after it was posted.

"But at this point, the magazine said nothing," Chesterton says. "There was no statement, no acknowledgment of the absolute human rights abuse of that young woman, of that child."

Two days after the image first went up, LensCulture issued an apology on Facebook for making a "serious mistake in judgment" in presenting the photo "out of context."

But the magazine defended the photo and its photographer, Souvid Datta:

We'd like to emphasize that we believe the work of the photographer was carried out with great ethical care and in close collaboration with the subject portrayed; by contrast, our own posting was hasty and presented the situation without proper context.

Datta did not respond to NPR's email request for an interview.

Within a few days of the controversy's start, the validity and ethics of some of Datta's other work came under fire.

Datta has been a highly regarded photojournalist since starting his career in 2013. He has won several prestigious awards, including ones from Getty Images and Magnum Photos. And his work has appeared in The New York Times and National Geographic.

On Thursday, Datta admitted to Time to doctoring images. The photo of the girl led to a closer look at Datta's other work, which led to accusations of plagiarism.

He admitted to taking a portion of a photo from influential photographer Mary Ellen Mark and inserting it into his own work without attributing it to her. He also admitted to taking other people's photographs and submitting them in photo competitions.

At that point, LensCulture changed its view. On Thursday, May 4, the magazine's CEO Kamran Mohsenin told NPR that they no longer believed the photo was "taken with great ethical care."

"Clearly that picture, in particular, is not appropriate in any context," Kamran says.

Shortly after LensCulture spoke with NPR, the magazine issued a new apology on Facebook:

"We condemn the lack of ethical standards used to create the photograph in question, and we apologize for publishing the photograph (which should never be published anywhere)."

Renowned photojournalist Donna Ferrato agrees that the photo is not appropriate in any context.

"There's no editorial value at all to this image. It's sensational, and it's incredibly damaging to the victim," says Ferrato, who did groundbreaking work documenting domestic violence in the U.S.

"When I first saw the photo used in the ad by LensCulture, I was really devastated," she says. "It disgusted me that there are two men in the room with this young girl. There's the 'client,' paying to have sex with her. And behind the client, stands the photographer, who has been paid, through grant money, to take photographs of the girl being used.

"All this photo says is, 'We men are in power, and we can do anything we want. The photographer can do anything he wants,' " Ferrato adds.

Last week, Datta, the photographer, posted a comment about the photo and the controversy to his Facebook page, which has been taken down.

In the statement, he said he was "horrified" that the photo was used to promote a competition. And the girl in the photo "is now an adult and has given her consent to use her photo."

Datta also defended the image of the girl:

She asked me to photograph this interaction — fully aware of my intention to publish this story widely in an attempt to create constructive awareness ... Where some see the image and point to the anonymity of the client and apparently undignified exposure of an underage girl, I see the astounding resilience of a young woman who takes ownership of her reality — unlawful, deplorable and bleak though it is — and determines to be more than what her circumstances have forced upon her. I see a woman who wants to speak directly to viewers, saying if you actually want to understand my perspective "then look into my eyes and see what I feel."

Human rights activist Godden doesn't agree with Datta's choice of showing the girl's face in the photo. He says that shocking photos such as this one aren't helping girls in Sonagachi, trapped as child sex slaves.

"Protection of children is always top priority," Godden says. "If this photo was exposing a practice that was unknown or hidden, then you could possibly justify exposing a child's identity to document what's happening."

Such an exception was made recently with child and adult slavery issues in the fishing industry in Southeast Asia and construction in the Middle East, Godden says.

Another example is Nick Ut's iconic war photo, showing a 9-year-old girl, naked, running away from a napalm attack in Vietnam. Historians credit that photo with changing the public's opinion about the war.

In the case of child slaves in Sonagachi, Godden says, the problem has been well known to activists and governmental officials for years.

"Human rights activists have been working on this issue for decades," he says. "Awareness is not the problem, in my opinion. Now it's about technical support to these girls and countering corruption in those country. It's not about shocking photos."

Copyright 2017 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Photographing The Furious Stampede Of The Kentucky Derby

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Copyright 2017 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

PHOTOS: Malick Sidibe Shows Mali's Youth With A Groovy 'Twist'

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Flared-leg pants, oversized glasses and hats. Unflinchingly proud expressions. Groovy dance moves.

This was the youth culture of 1960s and 1970s Bamako, the capital city of Mali. And it was captured by Malian photographer Malick Sidibe, bringing international recognition and big deal awards. And it's being celebrated in the first major posthumous exhibit of his images, "Malick Sidibe: Mali Twist," which is at the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain In Paris through February 25. Sidibe died in April 2016 at age 80.

Sidibe's history with photography is a fascinating one. He was born in 1935, and spent his childhood "walking barefoot in the bush with the oxen," he told Brigitte Ollier, who developed the current exhibit with curator Andre Magnin, a longtime admirer of Sidibe's work. But Sidibe's father decided he should study. At school, Sidibe discovered he had a knack for drawing. His artistic ambitions shifted, however, when he landed a job working for a photographer. Before long, he opened his own place, Studio Malick, which beckoned with a neon sign — and the chance for immortality.

"I think photos are the best way of living a long time after you die," Sidibe once told Magnin. "That is why I invested my whole soul in them, my whole heart, to make my subjects more beautiful."

Visitors to the exhibit can see vintage prints as well as some made exclusively for "Mali Twist" from negatives preserved by Magnin. Here's a sampling.

Nuit de Noel, 1963

Named one of the 100 most influential images of all time by Time Magazine, this photo taken at the Happy Boys Club on Feb. 23, 1963 — the eve of Ramadan — was the product of serendipity. Ollier notes that the two teenagers are brother and sister, and she had been dancing with other partners earlier in the night. But Sidibe was ready with his camera at just the right time, as usual. As Magnin writes, "His photography was based on what loomed up, what happened by chance, the good connection. He counted on presence, immortalized moments. Nuit de Noel, with its infinite softness and gentleness, is an instant snatched from time."

Fans de James Brown, 1965

Whether it's a motorcycle, a radio or in this case, a James Brown album, the young people posing for Sidibe liked to showcase their most prized personal possessions, writes Yale University's Robert Storr, who met Sidibe in 2007 — and was photographed by him — while preparing for the Venice Biennale. ("Without the premeditated verve of his local subjects I was unable to rise to the occasion sufficiently to make the picture memorable," Storr admits in his contribution to the exhibit catalog.) Sidibe, in an interview with Magnin, offered his theory on why music mattered so much to the youth of Bamako in that era. "This is only my opinion, but I think young people in those days really liked the twist and rock and Afro-Cuban music because it allowed boys and girls to dance together, touch one another, and dance close," he said. "That was not possible with traditional music."

Les faux agents du FBI, 1974

In an interview with Magnin, Sidibe explained his regular routine: "I would be in my studio until 10 or 11 at night, because the nightlife started late. Then I would go off to the clubs with my bike, until 5 in the morning!" At each stop during the evening, he'd announce his arrival by letting off his flash, which was met warmly by the young revelers, who were excited to welcome him into their world. "I went to their parties like I would go to a movie or a show. I moved about, always looking for the best position. I was always on the lookout for a photo opportunity, a lighthearted moment, an original attitude or some guy who was really funny," he said.

Pique-nique a la Chausee, 1972

The setting changed on hot Sundays, when folks gathered by the Niger River. "People took picnics and we spent the day out there," Sidibe explained. "The boys would bring battery-operated record players and records. We made tea, swam and danced in the open air. I took a great deal of off-the-cuff photos, and I liked doing that a lot. You might get the impression that these photos are posed but in fact they are nearly always natural."

A la plage, 1974

It's Sidibe's perspective that makes his photos stand out, according to Storr, who writes, "Sidibe's is an intimate, avid, nonjudgmental insider's view of the people of his generation, his town, his milieu." Sidibe himself recognized the importance of his relationships with his subjects. He said, "I was an elder for all those young people. They looked up to me rather than respected me. It was better for me that way because if people respect you too much they do not dare to have fun with you."

Circa 1969

The challenges of studio work were what made it appealing to Sidibe. "You had to arrange the person, find the right profile, light the face properly to catch the outlines and features, and find the right light to make the body look beautiful. I also used makeup. I used positions and attitudes that suited the person well," he said. And he cared about the details: "You have to be careful because the photo might be ruined by a mere blink of the eye, which could make the person look tipsy."

Un jeune gentleman, 1978

Filmmaker Manthia Diawara, an NYU professor, reminisces about growing up three blocks from Sidibe's studio. "My brothers, friends, and I used to go to Chez Malick, not only to have our pictures taken but also to admire the photographs of Bamakois we admired most in their bell-bottom pants, large belts with copper buckles, 'chemises cintrees,' and Afro hairdos a la Jackson Five."

Les amis dans la même tenue, 1972

"When I look at Sidibe's photographs today," Diawara writes, "they still remind me of all the dance steps that we used to do in the late 1960s and early 1970s, from the twist to the pachanga, the jerk, the "glissade," and the camel walk."

Sidibe, joking with Diawara, once told him a joke about Diawara's ethnic group, the Maraka: "One day, a Maraka man, who had just returned from Paris, came to my studio to be photographed. He had brought along his favorite perfume and put it on right before I took the picture, thinking that people will smell the perfume, when they see the photo!" Diawara writes, "I still believe that you can smell the perfume coming out of the well-dressed men and women in his photographs; similarly, you can hear the music, see, and admire the dance moves of the youth of Bamako."

Vicky Hallett is a freelance writer in Florence, Italy. She was previously a reporter and fitness columnist for The Washington Post.

Copyright 2017 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Lebanese Photographer Visits U.S. Cities Named 'Lebanon'

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Copyright 2017 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

A Drone's Eye View Of The World: Hippos, Palm Trees, Motor Scooters

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In the countries that we cover in our blog, we sometimes focus on the problems they face. But the images in the International Drone Photography Contest remind us that every country has many sides — and that a photo taken from above can offer a special perspective.

Here are three drone's eye views of the developing world that were among this year's contest winners.

Serengeti hippos

Yannick Wavre, a 30-year-old lawyer in Geneva, Switzerland, captured these hippos mid-river, at a spot in Tanzania's Serengeti National Park. "I was there with my wife for a few days as part as our honeymoon," he wrote to NPR via email. They were waiting for wildebeest to cross the river when they noticed a group of approximately 20 hippos waking from their nap and approaching the water. Because hippos tend to sleep or lie in the water during the day, this was an unusual opportunity to see them in action, so "we decided to have a closer look."

"I really love photography as a hobby," Wavre said but had become fed up" with traditional landscape-style photography. Drone photography, which he has been doing for about a year, allows a different approach.

Tropical island beach, Dominican Republic

Drone photographer Valentin Valkov, 33, was born in Bulgaria and lives in the port city of Varna, where he works at a telecommunications company. He had been a still photographer for seven years when, he recounted via email, "One late night in 2012 I was watching YouTube and saw amazing drone footage that blew my mind. I immediately made a note in my wish list.
 And soon, I bought my first drone and started to fly." Drones, he continued, "helped me elevate my work to the next level, capturing the way I see the world in a new perspective."

The Dominican Republic was already a special place for him when he took this photo last June: "This is where I proposed to the love of my life. After we merged we come back to spent our honeymoon.
 And then after I bought my drone, I knew that I must come back again and show this beautiful country from above." This particular photo depicts palm trees and beach in Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic. He also captured drone video footage.

Thailand bridge with scooters

Based in the U.K. and Thailand, photographer Tom Sweetman captured this aerial drone shot of two individuals on their motor scooters crossing this narrow bridge over the Ping River in Chiang Mai, Thailand, last June. By taking this small bridge, locals saved riding an additional 5 kilometers — about 3.1 miles — to the main bridge, he learned. Sweetman took up drone photography about a year ago as a hobby. "I love to explore [beyond] tourist trap places and experience more local places and landscapes," he said. "I travel the world with my phone and drone documenting" the places he visits and "staying curious."

Diane Cole writes for many publications, including The Wall Street Journal and The Jewish Week, and is book columnist for The Psychotherapy Networker. She is the author of the memoir After Great Pain: A New Life Emerges. Her website is dianejcole.com

Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

A 70-Year-Old Photograph, A Brand New Lens

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Click on the 'Listen' button above to hear this segment

Jessica Bennett of the New York Times and Koa Beck of Jezebel recently talked on The Takeaway about consuming art and popular culture in the #MeToo era. But what about the way we consume history, or the iconic images that have come to represent the way we remember history?

An iconic photo -- "V-J Day in Times Square" -- was taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt in 1945 as news spread that Japan had surrendered. World War Two was over. Celebration broke out in the streets and the photographer captured this seemingly jubilant moment.

But the image has a backstory many don’t know. And today, Koa and Jessica say it feels more relevant. Especially given conversations around #MeToo. The Takeaway gets their take, and hears from listeners on whether we should reevaluate pieces of history like this one.

This segment is hosted by Todd Zwillich.

 

'America From The Bottom': Documenting Poverty Across The Country

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For the past four years, Matt Black has tried to document poverty in the U.S. He's traveled to places where it's both very common and often overlooked, trying to make poverty more visible to America.

Black, who is an associate member of Magnum Photos, has been working on a project called The Geography of Poverty. He's traveled about 100,000 miles across 46 states, and some of his photos appear in the current issue of Time magazine.

Black spoke with NPR's Scott Simon about the project and what he's learned about poverty in the U.S.


Interview Highlights

On what he sees across the country's landscape

What I see is this wide gap, this perception gap between, you know, these mythologies of America that we like to tell ourselves, that it's a land of opportunity and so on, and the lived experiences in so many communities, you know, across the country. I mean the fact of the matter is, the growing gap between rich and poor in this country is consigning people to a fate that is largely inescapable. If you are born poor in America today you are likely to die poor. If you are born rich, the same.

On reflecting on the photo he took of a man in his home in Sunflower County, Miss.

You know, one of the things I heard repeatedly on the section of this trip that took me through the South was that, you know, these communities really were the front line during the Civil Rights Movement 50 years ago, but many of the benefits of that era and of that movement went elsewhere.

On what he's learned about what it means to be poor in the U.S.

You know, to me in the end poverty is not really an economic question. It's a question of power: Who gets their needs met, which communities get their needs met and which communities don't. And that's what I'm attempting to photograph here — it's not poverty in an objectified sense, but poverty in the sense of a lived experience. OK, what is it like to be here? What is it like to have your reality surrounded by these certain totems of power, social power? Is your street paved or is it not? Do the street lights work or do they not? When you go downtown are four of the five businesses on a certain block, are they shuttered and closed? What is the effect upon people's sense of self? A community sense of self? And so on. All of these glimpses that you catch out of the corner of your eye but that form the environment of living or growing up or, you know, experiencing America from the bottom. From the most brutal bottom.

NPR's Isabel Dobrin produced this story for the Web.

Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.
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