Michael Kamber, photojournalist and founder of the Bronx Documentary Center, and photojournalist David "Dee" Delgado pick their top three favorites from The Brian Lehrer Show's annual top photo "sitting on your phone of 2016" contest, plus they talk about the Bronx Photo League's new book, called "Jerome Ave."
David's "pics":
Michael's "pics":
Congrats to the winners!
Photo by Mercedes Dorame
In 2009, artist Mercedes Dorame received a gift from her father — a CD filled with images of her family, some of whom she had never seen before. It was a new window into the history of her family, members of the Gabrielino-Tongva Tribe who had for generations been based in present-day Los Angeles and the surrounding area.
The Gabrielino-Tongva Tribe, historically known as the San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians, is one of hundreds of tribes that remain unrecognized by the federal government, leaving them without reservation land and disqualified from many types of federal funding. For years, tribes hoping to gain recognition have been faced with a lengthy, expensive process.
READ NEXT: New rules could make it easier for Indian tribes to obtain federal recognition
“I think that because we don’t have reservation land, we’re kind of a splintered group. There’s been a lot of contention. And I really think it’s because there is no central place to have ceremony. There’s no central place to remember. There’s no central place to bury our dead,” Dorame said.
Shortly after she received those family photos, Dorame began to project those images onto different locations in her apartment and then photograph each composition. The result is “Living Proof,” a series of photos that brings her family’s history directly into her present-day environment.
Photo by Mercedes Dorame
Dorame, now based in Los Angeles, said the work is part of an effort to illuminate the survival of her tribe’s culture amid a historical legacy of violence toward Native Americans in the U.S., including land theft, kidnapping and forced assimilation. She said her grandparents rarely spoke of their heritage until later in life.
“It’s really hard to acknowledge the gaps in your own history,” Dorame said. “It’s hard to acknowledge that there are these kind of holes and places that you don’t know how to fill it in.”
Photo by Mercedes Dorame
The photos also counter stereotypes of Native Americans that have often appeared in mainstream popular culture — many of them generated in Los Angeles, her home city, she said.
“People really expect a certain image when they think about Native Americans. That image, for a lot of people, was created in Hollywood, in Los Angeles,” Dorame said. “LA created this kind of image of what people think of when they hear ‘Native American.'”
Photo by Mercedes Dorame
Dorame said her work was highly influenced by her role as a Native American cultural resource monitor, working at excavation sites to give recommendations on how cultural artifacts or human remains should be handled, a process that is mandated under California law. Her father, who has often served in the same role, introduced her to that work in 1999.
“It’s so personal because it’s your heritage, it’s your culture. It’s very challenging work,” she said. “I see that burden on my father so often. And he always tells people, ‘Remember these words: this was somebody’s mother, or father, or aunt, or child. Remember the human element.’ Because sometimes it becomes so clinical. … I think our biggest role is to keep the human element a part of the process.”
Dorame aims to “spark interest” with her photography and other artistic work, bringing new attention to her tribe’s cultural legacy and present.
“So much of what I want my work to do is bring visibility back,” she said. “I want people to know that we as a tribe, we as a people, still exist.”
See below for more photos from the series.
Photo by Mercedes Dorame
Photo by Mercedes Dorame
Photo by Mercedes Dorame
Photo by Mercedes Dorame
Photo by Mercedes Dorame
The post ‘We, as a people, still exist’ — artist illuminates Native American history with family photos appeared first on PBS NewsHour.
Editor's Note: The photos in this story may be distressing to some viewers.
More than one year later, the photo that woke up the world to the Syrian refugee crisis remains indelible: three-year-old Aylan Kurdi lying face down on a sandy beach in Turkey. The Syrian boy's lifeless body had washed ashore after the rubber boat carrying him and his family — to what they had hoped would be new lives in Greece — capsized.
Now the image has become the focus of a study examining how a single photo of a single individual could stir the emotions and arouse public concern more powerfully than statistical reports of body counts, which at that point — five years into Syria's civil war — had reached the hundreds of thousands.
Until the photo appeared in September 2015, people did not seem focused on the humanitarian crisis in Syria. But Aylan's photo mobilized empathy and concern, soon bringing in record donations to charitable organizations around the world to aid the victims.
As the study shows, however, such immediate outpourings can be short-lived. The number of average daily amount of donations to the Swedish Red Cross campaign for Syrian refugees, for instance, was 55 times greater in the week after the photo (around $214,300) than the week before ($3,850). By the second week, the donation totals had already begun to decline, but still topped $45,400. After six weeks, the amount had leveled further, down to around $6,500 — less than in the previous weeks but nonetheless higher than the original figure.
Still more promising, there was a 10-fold increase of the number of monthly donors signing up for repeated contributions, growing from 106 in August 2015 to 1,061 in September 2015, with only .02 percent of them opting out of the commitment by January 2016. From this, the study concluded, iconic photos may lead to some sustained commitment even beyond the immediate surge of donations.
To learn more about how the photo powered our emotions, we spoke to the report's lead researcher, Paul Slovic, a University of Oregon psychology professor and president of Decision Research, a nonprofit organization that studies human judgment, decision-making and risk perception.
The interview has been edited for clarity and length.
How did you measure the emotional impact of this photo?
We looked at the number of Google searches for "Syria" and "refugees" and "Aylan." Before, there was very little interest in the Syrian refugee crisis. Afterward and for approximately the next month, the searches [for each of these terms] spiked.
We also looked at donations to the Swedish Red Cross, which set up a fund specifically to aid the Syrian refugees.
Not only did the photo wake people up to make an emotional connection to the situation in Syria. But where people had an avenue for action, like donating, they did.
Why did this photo in particular carry such an impact? What is the psychology behind that?
It is an open question why this photo among so many stands out. In my opinion, there are a number of things going on. One is that the child is very young, nicely dressed and looks like he could have been one of our own kids.
Another is the situation: He is coming with his family seeking a new life, and they were so close yet not quite making it. That adds to the special story. Another element is that we don't quite see his face, you see the side of his face, so you can project onto him the face of someone you know. You cannot distance yourself as easily.
In your paper you mention other emblematic photos, like that of the naked 9-year-old Vietnamese girl fleeing a Napalm attack. Is it easier to have empathy for one person who is suffering than to feel compassion for large numbers of people who are suffering?
It's not that people are not compassionate. But that compassion has to be aroused, and the datashows that the photograph helped do that.
In addition to the cognitive impact that [a humanitarian crisis] is happening, you have to [evoke] emotion and feeling. Emotion is a critical factor in helping us understand an event, and it is a motivator that impels action as opposed to just abstract thoughts. Writers know this [when they] impress upon us the importance of a larger issue by telling the story through the eyes of one individual.
In other words, you can identify with an individual but not so easily with an abstract statistic?
We call Aylan an "identified individual victim." It is similar to the way The Diary of Anne Frank and Eli Wiesel's Night also helped galvanize attention to the Holocaust.
Aylan's photo provided a window of opportunity for individuals to give and to feel [empathy] for the situation, and that is good.
A 1989 photograph of Donald Trump tossing a red apple was installed today at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. The museum is known for having one of two complete collections of presidential portraits, the other belonging to the White House. This portrait of President-elect Donald Trump, however, isn't one of those official presidential portraits.
The image by photographer Michael O'Brien became part of the museum's collection in 2011 as a gift from Bill and Sally Wittliff, along with 16 other portraits taken by O'Brien. While it wasn't known at the time that the photograph would one day represent a president, acquiring the piece helped the museum get ahead in one of its common practices. "We acquire pictures of the presidents before they become president — we have pictures of Andrew Jackson when he was a general — or of presidents when they are in the private sector. It's part of our coverage of the news and the contemporary history of the United States," David Ward, senior historian at the museum, said in an NPR Facebook Live interview today.
Trump's official presidential portrait won't begin to take shape until later. "Toward the end of the presidential term we work with the White House, and they work with an artist to commission an official portrait." Ward explained. "It tends to be an oil painting, it tends to be large, it tends to be expensive, it tends to be more monumental."
This photograph has led many lives, nearly disappearing into obscurity. In 1989, Trump posed for O'Brien, who was on assignment for a Fortune magazine story on American billionaires.
From the beginning, O'Brien knew he wanted to place Trump against a backdrop of a bright blue sky and cotton ball clouds, a sky he says was inspired by the surrealist painter Rene Magritte. The apple was a last-minute addition, he told NPR. "On the day of the shoot I thought, 'It needs some type of action, something unexpected but telling.' Bingo! A big red apple popped into my head ... It was sort of subconscious the apple. It was sparked by a color scheme, and I later realized it was symbolic of New York."
When the image was published for its original purpose in the Sept. 11, 1989 issue of Fortune, O'Brien was disappointed. "I was heartbroken; a good shot has gone to waste," he said. "That issue along with the newspaper and magazines goes out with the kitty litter." But about a year later, Random House asked O'Brien for the rights to use the image for the cover of Trump's autobiography Trump: Surviving at the Top. Over 20 years after that, the image was acquired by the museum.
Today the portrait hangs under wall text that reads "2017 Inauguration, Donald J. Trump."
When asked about having his picture represent the next president, O'Brien said, "It's pretty wild. I'm surprised. It was like a picture lost behind a stove, and now it's repurposed."
The Trump photograph will be on view through February 26, 2017.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Finally tonight: As former President Obama now embarks on life after the White House, flying to California for vacation, few people had as intimate a view of him as the man tasked with taking his picture.
John Yang is back with that story.
JOHN YANG: For the past eight years, Pete Souza has watched history through the viewfinder of his camera.
PETE SOUZA, Former Chief Official White House Photographer: To walk into the Oval Office every day, to walk along the Colonnade to photograph this man every day has just been a unique experience.
JOHN YANG: He was behind the scenes for world-changing events, like the May afternoon in 2011 when U.S. special forces killed Osama bin Laden.
PETE SOUZA: This was in the Situation Room. You can see in the faces how tense this was to watch.
The interesting thing to me is, you can see the brigadier general that is sitting in what would be considered the president’s chair. And he stood up to give the president his chair. And the president’s like, “No, no, no, you stay where you’re at, because you’re in control here. And I will just pull up a chair.”
JOHN YANG: There were days of sadness, like preparing for the 2012 prayer service for the young victims of the Newtown, Connecticut, school shooting. It meant President Obama would miss his own daughter’s dance recital. Instead, he went to her dress rehearsal.
PETE SOUZA: Sasha’s participation was, I think, in three of the 16 performances. So, when she was dancing, he was totally focused on watching her. And then, when she left the stage and other people were dancing, he was editing his speech.
And you can see just the — that little subtle look on his face. He’s still very emotional.
JOHN YANG: Emotions that would touch Souza as well.
PETE SOUZA: Newtown was the one time where I had tears. It was very difficult to watch him greet these families.
Just imagine all of them meeting the president for the first time in the worst of circumstances. And I would say that was the one time where, emotionally, I couldn’t hide how I was feeling.
JOHN YANG: And you’re not just capturing the moments of history, the big moments of the presidency. You’re capturing the small, human moments as well.
PETE SOUZA: And, to me, those are my — probably my favorite moments is little unexpected gems, as I call them, that happen on occasion.
JOHN YANG: Like this otherwise routine Oval Office meeting with a departing staff member and his family.
PETE SOUZA: The man’s son Jacob asked the president if he could feel his head, because his friends had told him that he had the exact same haircut as the president.
So, President Obama just kind of leaned down, and Jacob feels his head, and click.
Over the years, this had kind of taken on somewhat of an iconic status, just because it showed the kind of person he is, meaning President Obama.
JOHN YANG: Did you have any sense that it would because so iconic, so symbolic?
PETE SOUZA: Absolutely not.
(LAUGHTER)
PETE SOUZA: Even after we posted it on WhiteHouse.gov, I just didn’t realize how significant it would become.
JOHN YANG: It’s one of many images Souza has captured of Mr. Obama with children.
PETE SOUZA: I feel the joy and the disbelief that the president of the United States is lying on the rug of the Oval Office, hoisting up a little girl in her elephant costume.
There’s that picture of him flexing muscles with Superman, or getting zapped by Spider-Man.
JOHN YANG: Were you surprised when he sort of flies back when Spider-Man slings the web?
PETE SOUZA: Sure. I mean, it’s, like, completely unexpected.
And I always tell people that the only pressure of my job is to make sure I’m ready for those moments, and try not to mess them up.
JOHN YANG: After two terms, the president jokes about his graying hair, but Souza says the man he sees through his camera lens has been constant.
PETE SOUZA: You know, I have got to say that the core character of this man has not changed one iota. I mean, I think he’s still the same person he was that I met in January of 2005, when he was first elected to the Senate.
Has he gotten older? Well, sure, but this is what happens, not just to a president. But, in terms of, like, his character, I honestly don’t think he has changed at all.
JOHN YANG: For the PBS NewsHour, I’m John Yang at the White House.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Whatever your political views, you have to admire those photos.
And you can watch our entire series The Obama Years, in which we spoke to many leaders in the outgoing administration. That’s on our Web site, PBS.org/NewsHour.
The post The Obama White House, from the man behind the lens appeared first on PBS NewsHour.
At Goats and Soda we're always watching the developing world.
A group of international photographers is doing the same thing — but from a drone's perspective.
We mined the website dronestagram (think Instagram for drone pics) for the most riveting drone photos of the developing world from the past year. Here are a few of the eye-catching images we came across and the stories behind them.
An Island Home
Zorik Olangi grew up on Malaita, which is part of the Solomon Islands in Oceania. He's now a post-graduate trainee in obstetrics and gynecology in nearby Papua New Guinea but returns home often — along with his drones, which he flies as a hobby to take aerial photos.
"Coming from a rural remote area, I always wondered what my island looks like from the air," Olangi says.
He says the village pictured here, Lilisiana, is known for its expert sea navigators and fishermen — and its shell jewelry. In fact, Olangi tells us, shells from this region were used for thousands of years as currency.
The homes pictured, according to Olangi, are built from mangrove trees found in nearby forests and have roofs stitched from palm leaves. He says they could be built so close to the lagoon's edge because the waves break far from the shore.
Over the years, Olangi has seen more homes built out of modern materials and families placing a greater emphasis on education.
His big fear for his island is climate change. "My only worry is that the sea levels are rising and these villagers will surely be affected."
Romanian Sheep, Seen From The Sky
Professional photographer and videographer Szabolcs Ignácz captured this shot while on assignment for the World Wildlife Fund in his home country, Romania. He passed this herd of sheep along the road in the village of Marpod, in Romania's Sibiu County, and launched his drone to take this photo (and some mesmerizing video, which can be seen at his website, DroneMob).
Ignácz says Marpod is in the heart of Transylvania, where traditional Saxon houses nestle in the mountains. "I might compare it to the Shire from Lord of the Rings," he says.
Many of the 800 or so residents are farmers, Ignácz says, noting that some have found success moving into organic farming and tourism.
'Lion's Rock' Towers Above A Sri Lankan Jungle
Jerome Courtail, a French travel and aerial photographer based in London, traveled to Sri Lanka with the intention of photographing the ancient palace and fortress complex of Sigiriya. Known as "Lion's Rock," the UNESCO World Heritage site towers above the surrounding jungle. To launch his drone from the ideal place, Courtail tells us, he hiked through dense jungle, surrounded by hostile monkeys.
Cambodian Children Couldn't Believe What They Saw
This image was captured by Christopher Honglin of Mauritius while on a trip to Cambodia with his girlfriend — and his DJI Phantom 3 drone.
When the couple visited Tonlé Sap River region Honglin says, "Kids were in awe at the sight of the drone. We wanted to share how their village looked from the top. They couldn't believe their eyes."
For more drone images from around the globe, visit dronestagram.
At first glance, the snapshots featured on yolocaust.de look like any other ordinary selfies. People are smiling, dancing, juggling or striking a yoga pose. But if you move the mouse over an image, the background switches to black-and-white stills showing scenes of Nazi concentration camps. Suddenly, the pictures become profoundly disturbing. People are pictured dancing on corpses or juggling in mass graves.
The photo montage series is Berlin-based Israeli satirist Shahak Shapira's response to visitors snapping what he sees as frivolous selfies at Berlin's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Germany's national Holocaust memorial site. His project has sparked a debate over where to draw the line in an age in which most experiences are filtered through the lens of a smartphone and shared online. The name of his website — "Yolocaust" — is yet another provocation, with its reference to the acronym "you only live once."
Shapira, 28, was born in Israel and emigrated to Germany at 14. His maternal grandfather narrowly escaped the gas chambers when Polish Christians hid him from the Nazis. His paternal grandfather, Amitzur Shapira, was one of 11 Israeli athletes murdered by the Palestinian terrorist group Black September at the Munich Olympic Games in 1972.
Shapira takes umbrage at what he sees as the mindless behavior of posting selfies at a site marking the extermination of 6 million Jews. His aim, he tells NPR, is not to shame people or join the rampant backlash culture that dominates social media — but to "make people stop and think about where they are in the moment" and what it means to visit a memorial.
Berlin's Holocaust memorial, an unrelenting grid of 2,711 concrete slabs located near the Brandenburg Gate, is "a place for reflection," Shapira says, "not just another backdrop for goofy selfies."
Shapira had been thinking about the Yolocaust project for about a year before he launched it last week — the day after Bjoern Hoecke, a member of the right-wing, populist Alternative for Germany, or AfD party, called the memorial a "monument of shame" and called on Germans to stop atoning for the Nazi past.
Hoecke's remarks sparked widespread outrage in a country where facing up to Nazi crimes is ingrained in the culture and education system. Even Frauke Petry, the AfD's leader, has distanced herself from Hoecke, describing him as a "burden for the party." But she did not overtly criticize his remarks, and on Monday, the AfD leadership decided against throwing Hoecke out.
Hoecke's rhetoric is widely considered an election campaign tactic, part of an AfD strategy of "targeted provocations." Although the AfD is not represented in Germany's federal parliament, this could change when voters go to the polls in September.
Shapira says his website is not a direct response to Hoecke's outburst but is propelled by his own concern about the political shift to the right in Europe and the U.S.
In this vein, Shapira's uncomfortably tweaked selfies recall the anti-Nazi photo montages of Berlin artist John Heartfield, who, wanted by the SS, fled Germany in 1933. Heartfield's cut-and-paste political art appeared on the covers of anti-fascist publications in Germany, ridiculing Hitler and condemning the horrors of the Third Reich. Like Heartfield's jarring montages, Shapira's images are intended to shock, to agitate and challenge behavior — in this case, unthinking selfie habits.
They've certainly received attention. Shapira's website immediately went viral, receiving more than 1.2 million hits within its first 24 hours. Shapira says he has received thank you emails from Jews around the world who lost family members in the Holocaust, as well as emails from history teachers and Holocaust researchers planning to use the website in their lessons and lectures.
The German tabloid BZ Berlin called the idea "as simple as it is ingenious," but praise has not been universal. Some newspapers, like the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, questioned the acceptability of using images of the dead in such a fashion.
The British left-leaning weekly New Statesman voiced similar concerns — but about the selfie-takers, not victims of the Holocaust. Calling the project "worryingly sensationalist if not censorious," it asked whether publicly shaming visitors to the memorial — which is what many see Shapira as doing, regardless of his insistence otherwise — "risked shutting people out."
The memorial's architect, Peter Eisenman, told Der Spiegel when it opened in 2005 that he didn't expect visitors to be overly reverent. "People are going to picnic" at the monument, he told the magazine. This week, in reaction to Shapira's website, Eisenman seemed unperturbed by selfies taken at the site. He told the BBC: "People have been jumping around on these pillars forever. I think it's fine."
While Berlin's Holocaust memorial lists behavior it deems inappropriate for visitors — including jumping off the concrete slabs — some have questioned the ethics of Shapira's own online conduct, since the selfies he has altered on his site have been plucked from people's public social media profile pictures without permission.
Those who find their photos on his site can request to have the images taken down. As of Tuesday, most people had done so, and Shapira says he has complied with the requests. "Almost everybody apologized," he says.
Shapira hopes the remaining selfie owners get in touch. He expects the site to be empty in a couple of days.
That, he says, will be its "ultimate success."
There’s a beautiful photography exhibit of work by Sid Grossman (1913-1955) at the Howard Greenberg Gallery in Manhattan. It’s the first Grossman solo exhibit in 30 years!
The photographer lived a short, productive life having co-founded (with Sol Libsohn) the Photo League, where street-photography and social consciousness came alive in the New York of the 1930s. Here’s a Fishko Files piece I did several years ago on the group.
Grossman's photos of people - in Union Square, at Coney Island, at festivities on Mulberry Street - are full of the life and energy of the city. The show also features several photos from Central America, where Grossman was a photographer during World War II.
Sid Grossman’s career ended abruptly toward the end of the 1940s. By then he had become a victim of the anti-Communist crusade of that era, and never got free of it. Soon after, the Photo League, too, crumbled under the pressure of rumor and innuendo. It folded in 1951.
The photos are well worth a visit in the exhibit's last two weeks. Some of Grossman’s students – including Rebecca Lepkoff and Marvin Newman, both interviewed for the radio piece above - have work on display as well.
Howard Greenberg Gallery
41 West 57th Street
www.howardgreenberg.com/
Exhibition continues through February 11
Special panel discussion February 8 on the work and teachings of Sid Grossman at the Greenberg Gallery, 6 PM
In the documentary “Don’t Blink: Robert Frank,” we spend quality time with the New York photographer and filmmaker, now in his 90s. While Frank has been a reluctant interview subject in the past, director Laura Israel gets him to open up about his influential works including “The Americans,” his famous book of candid portraits; his film “Pull My Daisy,” featuring the Beat writers Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg; and his relationship with the Rolling Stones at their peak in the '70s. His photo-taking advice: "Keep your eyes open. Don’t shake. Don’t blink."
— Thom Powers and Raphaela Neihausen
For more information, click here to visit the official film web site.
Objects hold history. They're evocative of stories stamped in time. As part of The Washington Post's coverage of the Smithsonian's new National Museum of African American History and Culture, people submitted dozens of objects that make up their own lived experiences of black history, creating a "people's museum" of personal objects, family photos and more.
Historically Black brings those objects and their stories to life through interviews, archival sound and music. The Washington Post and APM Reports are proud to collaborate in presenting these rich personal histories, hosted by Michele Norris and narrated by Keegan-Michael Key, Roxane Gay, Issa Rae, and Another Round podcast duo Heben Nigatu and Tracy Clayton.
During World War II, a labor shortage obliged the military to hire African American women with mathematical skills to help make complicated computations for warplane designs. This small team of black women faced discrimination but eventually would help NASA astronauts land on the moon. One woman whose grandmother was a "computer" helps tell the story.
The Million Man March of 1995 is recreated through the conversation between a young woman and her father, who attended it. He talks about how the event changed his life, and she recalls what it meant to see a poster of the march hanging on the wall of her father's den since she was a girl.
And James Van Der Zee was a celebrated African American photographer who documented black New York for much of the 20th century. Van Der Zee was New York's leading black photographer during the Harlem Renaissance. His images emphasized the dignity, beauty and prosperity of black people at a time when the dominant culture didn't.
Listen Wednesday, February 15 at 9pm on 93.9FM
Explore all of our Black History Month programming here
Explore African-American history with the New York Public Radio Archives
On display at the "Photography and Discovery" exhibit at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass., is a photo of two men dressed in traditional Arab garb in a carpeted room (above). They're smoking a pipe. It's a beautiful photo, but it's not from the Middle East. It was shot in a studio in London by photographer Roger Fenton. The men in the photo are white Europeans, dressed up and posing as Arabs.
The whole thing is staged — as are several of the exhibit's images. The photos were taken in the 19th and early 20th centuries, roughly the first 75 years of photography. This was also a time of rising European colonial power. European empires needed justification for subjugating vast swaths of earth, and photography could frame the Arab and Asian world in a way that supported the empire, says Ali Behdad, a professor of literature at UCLA and author of Camera Orientalis: Reflections on Photography of the Middle East.
Take the photo of the pyramids at Giza, shot by prominent 19th-century photographer Francis Frith. The pyramids are in the background, and the surrounding sands are desolate save for two picnickers and a pack animal. The terrain is majestic and the pyramids tall and timeless, if crumbling slightly.
Like the photo of the pipe smokers, this photo was staged. The picnickers are members of Frith's photography crew, as the museum label notes. And the people of Giza — the third largest city in Egypt – are nowhere to be seen. "It's to make it seem this place is a historical ruin that needs to be fixed up by Europeans or appropriated by them," Behdad says. The British occupied Egypt 20 years after the photo was taken.
Because of the camera's eyewitness quality, people believed that what they saw was true, says Luke Gartlan, a professor of art history at the University of St. Andrews.
The museum takes care to explain the story behind the images, says Jay Clarke, the exhibit curator. Labels beside the exhibited photographs identify when white men engaged in brown face, and the photos of crowded France beside a barren Burma add to the idea that some countries were barely populated.
"The exhibition certainly does present a Eurocentric view," Clarke says. "We only recently began to collect works by non-Western artists."
The idea of using photos to make a political statement, meanwhile, continues to this day. In the Middle East, Behdad says, news and contemporary photography often depicts Arabs as "terrorists, people who oppress their women. That perpetuates the kinds of policies of exclusion that we see in Europe, Holland, France and the United States now. It's about image. It's about perception."
But in recent years, there has been more and more photographic and video documentation from people in developing countries. Video blogs from locals in besieged Aleppo flew across the world through news coverage and social media, for example. "Our history has always been written by people other than us, specifically in photo," says Sima Diab, a Syrian-born photojournalist based in Cairo. "In the last six to 10 years, however tough it's been, [news and life in the Middle East] has been documented extensively by locals."
That's a far cry from the days when two white Europeans could pose as Arabs in a London studio. But whether this new wave of photos will have the same influence as the images of the past is still an open question.
The image that won the 2017 World Press Photo of the Year award was described by one jury member as the "face of hatred."
It shows a shouting, suit-clad gunman standing in an art gallery in Turkey's capital, one hand holding a weapon, the other pointing to the sky. On the ground next to him is the crumpled body of his victim, Russian Ambassador Andrei Karlov.
Associated Press photographer Burhan Ozbilici, who happened to stop in at the gallery in Ankara on his way home from work on Dec. 19, 2016, was just a few feet away from the shooting and documented the harrowing event.
"I remember thinking: 'I might be killed or injured, but the Russian ambassador has been shot. This is very big news, so as a journalist it is my responsibility to stand and do my work,' " Ozbilici said in an interview with World Press Photo's Witness magazine. "Even if I was killed, there would still be photos."
Jury members made it clear there was a difficult debate over whether selecting the photo might send the wrong message.
"In the end we felt that the picture of the Year was an explosive image that really spoke to the hatred of our times," jury member Mary Calvert said in a statement. "Every time it came on the screen you almost had to move back because it's such an explosive image and we really felt that it epitomizes the definition of what the World Press Photo of the Year is and means."
For juror João Silva, this photo gives a sense of the current global moment: "I feel that what is happening in Europe, what is happening in America, what is happening in the Far East, Middle East, Syria, and this image to me talks of it. It is the face of hatred."
But the jury's chairman, Stuart Franklin, has publicly stated that he found the choice morally problematic. In an opinion piece published in The Guardian, he said he admires Ozbilici's bravery and skill, but voted against his image. Franklin says his reasons highlight a debate that dates back millennia:
"Placing the photograph on this high pedestal is an invitation to those contemplating such staged spectaculars: it reaffirms the compact between martyrdom and publicity. ...
"To be clear, my moral position is not that the well-intentioned photographer should be denied the credit he deserves; rather that I feared we'd be amplifying a terrorist's message through the additional publicity that the top prize attracts."
Calvert told The New York Times that jury was "rewarding the photographer, not rewarding the crime" — and the image is a powerful, historically relevant record of our current moment.
Ozbilici told Witness that his work "represented a long tradition of good, independent journalism and good news photos." And that makes him "happy and proud — proud of all good journalists, those living and those who have been killed doing their work, at a time when people are trying to manipulate the media, and the quality of journalism is often ignored."
As someone who never sleeps, New York seemed like the perfect place to move. Bill Hayes, recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in nonfiction and the author of Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me (Bloomsbury USA, 2017), describes being an insomniac in New York, taking pictures and developing a relationship with Oliver Sacks.
Martha Karsh joins us to discuss The Beatles A Hard Day’s Night: A Private Archive, a new collection of previously unreleased publicity photos from The Beatles’ 1964 film, “A Hard Day’s Night.” In 2001, Martha Karsh and her husband, Bruce, bought the rights to behind-the-scenes images from the making of the film from the film’s producer. The book, edited by Martha, containing hundreds of the candid images, was planned as a surprise 60th birthday present to Bruce.
New Yorker staff writer Jelani Cobb joins us to discuss his recent article, “Prodigy of Hate” (Online title: "Inside the Trial of Dylann Roof") about the federal trial of Dylann Roof in Charleston, South Carolina. Mike Gunton, creative director at the BBC and executive producer of “Planet Earth II” joins us to discuss the series. Martha Karsh joins us to discuss The Beatles A Hard Day’s Night: A Private Archive, a new collection of previously unreleased publicity photos from The Beatles’ 1964 film, “A Hard Day’s Night.” Sharon Begley, the senior science writer for STAT, joins us for our latest Please Explain on compulsions to discuss her latest book Can’t Just Stop: An Investigation of Compulsions.
Can you capture the energy of a city in just one image?
That's the idea behind Metropolis, a book of photos of the world's megacities by Dutch photographer Martin Roemers. The images illustrate the rapid rise of global urbanization. In 1994, there were 14 cities with a population over 10 million. In 2016, there were 29, according to the U.N.
Roemers was inspired to tell this story after going on a trip to Bombay many years ago. "I was struck by what I saw. It was so crowded, chaotic. There's a smell, there's a noise. It's intense," he says. He wanted to translate that feeling, distill the city's characteristics into a single photograph.
That mission took him on a journey to five continents. From 2007 to 2015, he traveled everywhere from Lagos to Los Angeles. Roemers learned a lot of things along the way in both the rich world and the poor world. In developing countries, he saw how people built slums and houses where they probably shouldn't, how in Mumbai, the beach is used as a toilet. Religion plays a big role in shaping a city's personality. In Lagos, he said, taxi drivers would stop to do their Friday prayers right on the street.
Most of his photos show busy intersections — places, he thinks, that display the city's infrastructure and also show signs of everyday life: shops, billboards, signs, traffic, people on the street.
"I wait until every element falls into place," says Roemers. That could mean waiting for a rickshaw to pass a lady waiting for a bus as a train whizzes behind. "And at that moment, I push the button."
This month, a selection of photos from Metropolis will be exhibited in the Anastasia Photo Gallery in New York and the India Habitat Centre in New Delhi. Roemer hopes to show his work in every city that he documented in his book.
Some of Catherine Opie’s landscape photographs once hung in the White House. Her work comprises a wide variety of subjects, including her own experiences with breastfeeding, Elizabeth Taylor’s possessions, Tea Party rallies, football players, and her lesbian S/M community. Opie tells Ariel Levy that despite the many political differences between her and her subjects, she is “an optimist in relationship to humanity” —and never, ever snarky. Levy’s Profile is called “Catherine Opie, Secret Selves.”
Mohammed Mohiedin Anis, or Abu Omar, 70, smokes his pipe as he sits in his destroyed bedroom listening to music on his gramophone in Aleppo’s formerly rebel-held al-Shaar neighborhood on March 9. Photo by Joseph Eid/AFP/Getty Images
The image has spread quickly across the Internet: a man listening to a gramophone in what’s left of his bombed-out bedroom in Aleppo, Syria. The AFP photographer who captured the moment, Joseph Eid, says he thinks knows why it struck a chord with so many.
“I’m a war photographer and I’ve seen lots of atrocities. This one is different,” Eid said this week from his office in Beirut. The image shows the tragedy of war, but it also shows someone rising above it through the transcendent power of music. “It talks about life.”
The subject is 70-year-old Mohammed Mohiedin Anis, who is also known around town as Abu Omar. He owns a collection of 1950s vintage American vehicles that would make any auto aficionado drool.
A 1958 Chevrolet Apache truck is parked in rubble from the fighting in Aleppo, Syria. Photo by Joseph Eid/AFP/Getty Images
He inherited the two-tone 1957 Mercury Montclair, cherry red 1949 Hudson Commodore, canary yellow 1958 Chevrolet Apache truck and more than two dozen others from his wealthy father.
Anis and his prized cars were first featured in a 2016 video by Karam al-Masri of the Agence France-Presse:
A team from AFP, including Eid, a correspondent and videographer, went back to find the man earlier this month. The once rebel-held city had taken a beating when government forces regained control last year. The remaining Aleppo residents, all of whom seemed to know Anis, directed the team to his house — or what was left of it.
When Anis came to the door, Eid said he felt moved by the man’s advanced age and determination.
A 1947 Plymouth is parked in Mohammed Mohiedin Anis’ garden, which holds other spare parts for his collection of cars. Photo by Joseph Eid/AFP/Getty Images
“We didn’t think an old man like him would survive all that happened, especially in the last few weeks of the battle of Aleppo,” Eid said. The man greeted the reporters like old friends and took them into his garden, crammed with spare car parts for his beloved cars.
The cars that line the block are now shattered remnants of their former selves. The upper level of Anis’ home is similarly demolished, but amid the debris is another lifeline – a manual gramophone which operates without electricity.
An overhead view shows the bombed-out neighborhood in Aleppo where car enthusiast Mohammed Mohiedin Anis still lives. Photo by Joseph Eid/AFP/Getty Images
A beat-up 1948 Buick is part of Mohammed Mohiedin Anis’ car collection. Photo by Joseph Eid/AFP/Getty Images
Anis likes his music like his cars: 1950s golden oldies. When asked if the old gramophone still worked, he put on one of his favorite recordings of Syrian singer Mohamed Dia al-Din. But not before retrieving his scotch-taped pipe. “I cannot listen to my music without smoking my pipe,” he told the reporting team.
Anis crossed his legs and entered a meditative state, Eid said. “He forgot about us for a while. When I saw that, I told the others to leave. I took the pictures from the entrance of the room.”
The Arabic music transported Mohammed Mohiedin Anis to better times. Photo by Joseph Eid/AFP/Getty Images
It took several moments for the man to awake from his reverie.
He was intent on returning everything to what it once was.
“‘I can start back from zero. I’m willing to rebuild my house, factory and cars,’” he told them, Eid recalled. “‘Nothing will break me or take me down or force me to surrender. Keep your spirits high no matter what.’”
Eid said he left the house feeling elated. AFP may visit the man again in another year to see how he’s doing. “I’ll make sure to tell him what an inspiration he has been to thousands of people.”
Despite the destruction all around him, Mohammed Mohiedin Anis smiles as he opens the trunk of his 1949 Hudson Commodore. Photo by Joseph Eid/AFP/Getty Images
The post Photo of a Syrian man listening to records in his bombed-out bedroom is about life, not war appeared first on PBS NewsHour.
Elias Weiss Friedman, better known as The Dogist, is the Internet’s favorite dog photographer. He’s developed a daily practice of taking stunning portraits of other people’s pups and in the past three years he’s gained 2.4 million followers on Instagram. Kurt met Friedman at the dog run in Washington Square Park and he walked him through some essential tips for taking better pictures of your pup. Special thanks to Delaney Simmons and Thatch, and Sahar Baharloo and Frankie.
A full list of dog portrait tips can be found in his book, “The Dogist: Photographic Encounters with 1,000 Dogs.”
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