"I became a photographer and not a person" ~ Photojournalism as Morally Troubling?
Labels: moralism, photojournalism, Political Not Ethical
“What we need is a critique of visual culture that is alert to the power of images for good and evil and that is capable of discriminating the variety and historical specificity of their uses.” - W.J.T. Mitchell. Picture Theory (1994).
Labels: moralism, photojournalism, Political Not Ethical
Labels: Museums, philanthropy, political economy
Labels: Dawoud Bey, portraits
Labels: Mercenaries, Olympics, political economy
Labels: Inequality, interviews, philosophy
Labels: Data Graphics, Unions
No one beside libertarian ideologues and Republican politicians like Romney should find this observation troubling. But they surely should have the good sense not to embarrass themselves when Obama utters truisms about the social-political-economic infrastructure on which "job creators" and "entrepreneurs" build businesses.So the bottom line is that the Internet as we know it was indeed born as a government project. . . . Private enterprise had no interest in something so visionary and complex, with questionable commercial opportunities. Indeed, the private corporation that then owned monopoly control over America's communications network, AT&T, fought tooth and nail against [its predecessor] the ARPANet. Luckily for us, a far-sighted government agency prevailed.
It's true that the Internet took off after it was privatized in 1995. But to be privatized, first you have to be government-owned. It's another testament to people often demeaned as "government bureaucrats" that they saw that the moment had come to set their child free.
Labels: elections, internet, Obama, Republicans, Technology
Labels: Ai Weiwei, Economics, Legal, New Documentary Films, Political Theory, social science
Labels: Alexander Cockburn, Journalists, Obituaries
Labels: Heroines, Obituaries, Unions, women's rights
"The arts are not something separate from us. I think that when we deal with . . . hierarchical notions of culture, we tend to think of the arts as something we go to, rather than something that is a part of us. And I guess my life experience with music has always been the opposite. It’s always been that we are the arts. And I say that with the utmost humility, because when I say “we” I don’t mean “we artists,” I mean we, as humanity. It’s something that has to be continuous with our daily lives, and I’m not interested in creating some kind of distance, or some sort of divide, between the arts and life as we live it every day." - Vijay IyerI stumbled across an interview with jazz pianist Vijay Iyer (follow link above) about whom I have posted here before. I picked out this passage mostly because it seems to me as continuous with Dewey's notion of 'art as experience.' Iyer is from the local area. I've never had the chance to hear him perform live, but very much anticipate getting the chance to do so. And while I am here I will plug the latest in a string of astoundingly good recordings that Iyer has released in recent years.
Labels: Dewey, jazz, Music, Pragmatism, Vijay Iyer
Labels: Heroes, Mandela, South Africa
"Around the world, followers of architecture with a capital A have focused so much of their attention on formal experiments, as if aesthetics and social activism, twin Modernist concerns, were mutually exclusive. But Medellín is proof that they’re not, and shouldn’t be."I lifted the comment above from this article in The New York Times which recounts the renaissance of Medellín, Colombia. I just tonight came across the link courtesy of Fonna Forman. There is an interesting entanglement of architectural focus on public space, cultural activism, and democratic participation at work here. No panacea promised, just a hopeful example.
Labels: architects, democracy, Latin America, Public Space, spaces
According to the FSA web page Parks once explained to an interviewer that he could not simply depict racists "and say, 'This is a bigot,' because bigots have a way of looking just like everybody else. What the camera had to do was expose the evils of racism, the evils of poverty, the discrimination and the bigotry, by showing the people who suffered most under it." So, unlike [Larry] Towell who is claiming that we should not depict the powerful, Parks is claiming that is is difficult, if not impossible to do so. Hence, for Parks, the need to focus on those who endure racism and its indiginties rather than on those who engage in racist actions and practices.Just so. These images carry that recognition into practice.
Labels: Gordon Parks, race
Labels: Alva Noë, authenticity
This Land Is Your Land
Words and Music by Woody Guthrie
This land is your land This land is my land
From California to the New York island;
From the red wood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and Me.
As I was walking that ribbon of highway,
I saw above me that endless skyway:
I saw below me that golden valley:
This land was made for you and me.
I've roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts;
And all around me a voice was sounding:
This land was made for you and me.
When the sun came shining, and I was strolling,
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling,
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting:
This land was made for you and me.
As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.
In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?
Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.
© Copyright 1956 (renewed), 1958 (renewed),
1970 and 1972 by Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc.
& TRO-Ludlow Music, Inc. (BMI).
Labels: football/soccer, sports, women
Labels: Cuba, Omar Rodríguez Saludes
You can argue that vegetable seeds are the seeds of the new revolution. But the garden is an uneasy entity for our time, a way both to address the biggest questions and to duck them. “Some gardens are described as retreats, when they are really attacks,” famously said the gardener, artist, and provocateur Ian Hamilton Finlay. A garden as a retreat means a refuge, a place to withdraw from the world. A garden as an attack means an intervention in the world, a political statement, a way in which the small space of the garden can participate in the larger space that is society, politics, and ideas. Every garden negotiates its own relationship between retreat and attack and in so doing illuminates—or maybe we should say engages—the political questions of our time.In particular, Solnit connects the preoccupation with local agriculture and gardening to the larger struggle against corporations like Monsanto who hope to patent as much of the growing process as they might.
Labels: Food Politics, Mexico, Rebecca Solnit
Labels: Legal, political economy, Stiglitz
"We can’t know the full story behind this self-portrait, or behind the many thousands of images left in a storage locker in Chicago. But we can look at the range of Maier’s work and see the tantalizing evidence of artistry and ambition, and we can look at the expression of the woman reflected in the sheet mirror and see her indisputable pleasure. This is no frumpy old bird woman looking at her own pathetic destiny. This is a woman who knows what she wants, who has chosen to do her work free of judgment and commerce, and who is in charge of the scene."
Labels: Critics, David Levi Strauss, Dyer, self-portraits, Vivian Maier, Women in Photography
Labels: Best Shots
Labels: Afghanistan, Iraq, Mercenaries, Political Not Ethical, War
Labels: democracy, Democrats, experiments, Obama, political economy, Roberto Unger
Labels: Obituaries
Labels: political economy
Moreover, this new proposal is deeply confused. If we have an debt, then it must be because the military adventures that the Bush and Obama administrations have been sending troops off on are justifiable. But if they are justifiable, we should be sending our own kids. My own view is that we have been sending kids off to foreign wars for nothing. The Iraq fiasco was wholly unjustifiable. Much of the Afghan occupation is likewise. Not my wars. No debt. In fact, since my tax dollars have been going to finance the Iraq and Afghan adventures, I already have "paid" for something I never wanted or approved.
Finally, as I have noted here before, there are many people doing many things not involving violent conflict to whom I believe we owe an obligation and deep thanks. Why not aim our energies there?
__________
P.S.: Nothing I say here entails that the U.S. Government can shirk its obligation to veterans - those men and women who have been recruited to serve in the military however ill-advised the policies underlying that recruitment might be.