227. Cuba Imagined

  "Cuba Imagined" by Pedro Meyer Marginal Notes on Cuban Photography Curated by Juan Antonio Molina   Dur: 4:48 min   "Cuba Imagined" is now available for iPod video

Wednesday, 13 January 2010

229. I Photograph to Remember

"I Photograph to Remember" by Pedro Meyer The Art of Storytelling Curated by Jonathan Green Dur: 33min.   "I Photograph to remember" is now available for iPod video  

Wednesday, 13 January 2010

231. Selfportraits

  "Selfportraits" by Pedro Meyer Pedro Meyer’s Self-Portraits Curated by Vesta Mónica Herrerías   Dur: 4:21 min. "Selfportraits" is now available for iPod video

Monday, 28 September 2009

233. Life among the Social Causes of Photojournalism

          Christian Poveda, a photographer born in Algeria, had devoted his work to portraying conflicts in almost all of Ibero-America. In the 1980s his lens focused on the ups and downs of El Salvador, a country that he loved and that captivated his soul.             The international community has been moved by the recent murder of French-Spanish photojournalist Christian Poveda. Who killed him and why? It seems to have been the work of at least four of the protagonists of his last documentary, La vida loca, which deals with the Maras and gangs in El Salvador. The world will have to wait for the results of the investigation, while his body is repatriated to Spain.   But, who was Poveda? Here we’ll try to render a semblance of this singular journalist. It is always difficult to be objective when a colleague dies, particularly when he is assassinated at one of the best moments of his life, when he was on the verge of premiering his most recent work in Paris and Mexico.   Christian Poveda was in Mexico only 72 hours before he was killed by unidentified individuals in a land that he deeply loved, El Salvador. He had come to Mexico only a few days earlier to give a week-long workshop as part of the third photography meeting, organized by Mauricio Palos and held in San Luis Potosí. This was his first and last course given to a group of professionals, including a staff member of Excélsior, Abdel Meza, a photojournalist who shared his final days with him.   Abdel told me that in that workshop, Christian insisted on transmitting the idea of how we should get involved in our work and always be honest with the individuals that were the object of our obsessions. And he practiced this to its utmost. He presented his complete documentary to the workshop participants.   Christian went to El Salvador with the Nikon cameras and lenses that he had bought from Sebastián Salgado (a special edition made for the Brazilian photographer), according to what he told me years ago at the photojournalism festival in Perpignan. Poveda spent more than three years in El Salvador and close to two working with the Maras and the 18, rival gangs who killed each other daily. He proposed to document their human side and their everyday life, including birthdays, romances, visits to doctors, and arrests. During the course of his work with them, several of them died and he even documented their funerals and the community’s pain each time they lost a member.     He used to say that it was that dedication that led him to become a paternal figure for the gangs; kids, who were mostly orphans or abandoned by their parents, found a generous person and an authority figure in him. Christian visited them every day, even at times without intending to film anything, just to stop by and see them to see how they were going and thus to establish a unique bond of intimacy. There in San Luis, he said that Bambam, one of the Maras, had called him on the phone to ask him for some sneakers when he went back to San Salvador.   Poveda was one of the founders and a curator of ES Photo, an annual program for collective photography exhibitions in El Salvador. Its fifth exhibition was planned to start this weekend.   Christian Poveda’s parents were Republicans and they were exiled during the Spanish Civil War.   He was born in Algeria during the French occupation, at the end of which he went back to Paris for refuge six years later. He gained fame for his coverage of the Polisario Front in the Western Sahara. He also worked on the U.S. invasion of Granada, and historical events in Argentina, Chile, and El Salvador during the civil war more than twenty years ago.   He began his career as a filmmaker in 1977, dealing with conflicts as well as customs and upbeat events in African countries and throughout most of Ibero-America. During the 1980s, Poveda formed part of the contingents of war correspondents who covered the news and documented combat between the forces of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front and the Salvadorian Army.   After the peace accords were signed in Mexico on January 16, 1992, Poveda became interested in the complex problems that arose after the war and he decided to investigate the phenomenon of violent antisocial groups that called themselves “the Maras.” He spent his last three years in El Salvador filming a documentary, La vida loca. During the course of eighteen months, he documented the daily life of the criminal bands, particularly the members of the gang known as the Mara 18.   The documentary is a faithful and committed record on the gang phenomenon. It was presented at the San Sebastián Film Festival in September 2008 and at professional meetings, such as the ones held in Morelia, Havana, San Luis Potosí, and Helsinki.   On September 2, 2009, he died after he was shot in the Salvadorian barrio of Tonacatepeque, some 16 kilometers to the north of the capital, where he had been working on his film.   Here it is worth pointing out that when he finished the final cut and secured the respective funding, including the support of Canal 22 [the cultural channel] in Mexico, he decided to premiere the film at a university in El Salvador, an event that was attended by at least a dozen of the gang members who appeared in the documentary. They say that when the film was over, the members of the Mara left in silence and filled with the rage documented from their own lives. A few days later, as a result of what they had seen on that screen, they lashed out against their eternal enemies. A small war broke out while Poveda was in Mexico.   El Salvador has a population of 5.5 million people. It is a nation where more than ten people die each day from gang disputes, which leave a total of close to 300 dead per month. The deep roots of that violent culture that seeks resolution through the death of the other should come as no surprise to us.     According to statements made by Édgar Romero, a photojournalist and joint-organizer along with Poveda of the Fourth ES Photo Festival, a line of investigation that has to do with the fact that La vida loca was on bootleg DVD stands in only three days, and it was being sold at a dollar per copy, but the gang who was featured in the film added a tax of three dollars, and they spread the rumor that Poveda was economically benefiting from it. When he returned from Mexico, he went to see them to deny it and also to defend his work, because he was very careful about copyright, according to Romero.   An article from the Spanish newspaper El País coincides with this. Citing Salvadorian sources, it implies that the documentary filmmaker had had differences and even faced threats from the gang members, as a result of the illegal distribution of the audiovisual material in the streets of the capital. According to the paper, Poveda attempted to resolve these differences.   We will never know the motives of whoever took Poveda’s life with four shots, three of them in the face.   In the neighborhood of La Campanera, in Soyapango, La vida loca, filmed with a camera held on his shoulder, captured the daily life of members of one of the main gangs in El Salvador, the Mara 18. The gang is characterized by its own language, tattoos, codes, and high levels of aggression, violence, and criminal activity.   This group and the Mara Salvatrucha are equals in cruelty. Moved by the utter denial of everything including death, they are living a merciless war. Some of these young people were killed in the course of the filming, which is captured in the documentary.   They are known as Maras in Central America and they are a copy of the model of Los Angeles gangs, created by the Salvadorians who migrated there during the civil war at the beginning of the 1980s. The Mara Salvatrucha and the Mara 18 arose there. These are the two main rival gangs that oppose each other today, although there is no ideological or religious difference between them that might explain this fight to death that pits poor against poor.   Salvadorian journalist Edu Ponces describes the reality of his country in this way: “El Salvador is the example for the world of everything that should not be done when it comes to violence.”   A couple of years ago, Christian Poveda spoke out against plagiarism that, he claimed, Isabel Muñoz (a Spanish photographer) had perpetrated against him, by copying the subject, style, and focus that he had used to begin his work in El Salvador. To date, that dispute has continued without reaching any resolution.   At the closing of this edition, five individuals have been accused in El Salvador in the course of the investigation of the murder of French-Spanish photojournalist and filmmaker Christian Poveda. According to the local media, the suspects are a member of the police force, Juan Napoleón Espinoza, and four alleged members of the Mara 18, José Alejandro Melara, "El Puma"; Luis Romero Vázquez, "El Tiger"; Calixto Rigoberto Escobar, "El Toro"; and Nelson Lazo Rivera, "El Molleja", the group of gang members portrayed by Poveda in his documentary La vida loca.   May condolences go to his family and to the community of professional photojournalists who today mourn his death.   Ulises Castellanos September 13, 2009     Other links in Zone Zero: La Vida Loca (Posthumous Homage) In Memoriam       http://www.zonezero.com/magazine/articles/castellanos/index.php    

Sunday, 13 September 2009

235. The Black Snapper

  The Black Snapper, an online magazine for talented photographers from all over the world, dedicates a week to talented young photographers from Brazil, selected by Joana Mazza, exhibitions coordinator of the FotoRio photo festival.   Featured artists are: Gustavo Malheiros, Gabriel Jaruegui and Micaela Vermelho, Guy Veloso, Anna Kahn, Thiago Barros, Luiza Burlamaqui and André Arruda.   The Black Snapper supports the FotoRio exhibitions of these emerging photographers by showcasing them online to viewers in more than 120 countries worldwide.   The Brazilian photography week starts on September 11, at 13:00 (Amsterdam time). Don't miss it!   The magazine website presents a new artist every day, in a dedicated slideshow comprising of 8 to 20 images. Weekly selections are made by guest curators.   A worldwide community of photography professionals and experts supports the project. Website url: www.theblacksnapper.com       About The Black Snapper   The Black Snapper is a showcase for emerging talent from around the world. Our basic philosophy is to utilize the dynamism of the internet to facilitate the presentation and hopefully the discovery of talented photographers. The diversity of guest curators makes a selection process more objective; there will not be a single person whose individual taste and preferences dominate the content.   Guest editors discuss their motivation behind their selection. The presentation of each photographer includes an introduction and caption texts for all relevant photos. Each photographer may publish links to their own website and/or relevant agency, gallery if applicable. The accompanying text and comments will provide context and a deeper insight into the presentation.   Presenting one photographer each day and contextualizing the work sets our project apart from many others, it is a unique feature and one, we believe, is very appealing to visitors and photographers.   One of the primary aims of this project is to support the emancipation and promotion of photography in Africa, Asia and South America.   The website refreshes daily at 00:00 on the international dateline and has an archive section. This allows viewers that are more interested in an in-depth approach to browse through back issues that keep curators’ selections (weeks) complete.   Our mission statement and background   The Black Snapper is a project created by designer Frank Kloos and documentary photographer Diederik Meijer, based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The Black Snapper aims to create an online community that will inspire photography professionals and photography enthusiasts worldwide. The Black Snapper is entirely built on our passion for photography. We want it to find its own place as a medium that is instrumental in the development of contemporary photography.   The Black Snapper is supported by a growing community, amongst whom:   • Abbas (Magnum Photos) • Aleksandr Glyadyelov, Ukraine • Aperture Foundation, USA • Bamako Encounters, African Photography Biennial, Mali • Candlestar, UK (curator for Iran) • Canvas International Art, The Netherlands • Centro de la Imagen, Peru • Centro de la Imagen, Mexico • Chobimela International Photo Festival, Bangladesh • Jorg Colberg, USA • Dutch Fund for Visual Arts, The Netherlands • Eye Curious, France (2nd curator for Japan) • FotoRio, Brazil • Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts, Japan • LatinStock, Argentina • Mannheim Ludwigshaven Heidelberg Photo Festival, Germany • Gilles Mora, independant curator, Spain • Moscow House of Photography, Russian Federation • NRC Next newspaper, The Netherlands • Photo Museum Province Antwerpen, Belgium • Photoworks, UK • Sittcom, stage for Central European Photography, Slovakia • Stills Gallery, Australia • Taiwan International Visual Arts Center, Taiwan • The Guardian Weekend magazine, UK • Photoworks, UK • The Museum of Photography Seoul, Korea • The New York Times Magazine, USA • Three Shadows Photography Art Center, China • Hercules Papaiaonnou, curator of the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography, Greece • Vrij Nederland magazine, The Netherlands   Amsterdam, September 6, 2009       http://zonezero.com/magazine/articles/blacksnapper/index.php    

Sunday, 06 September 2009

237. Staff

  Founder Director Pedro Meyer pedro@zonezero.com Pedro Meyer is one of the pioneers and most recognized representatives of contemporary photography. He was the founder and president of the Consejo Mexicano de Fotografía (Mexican Council of Photography) and organizer of the first three Latin American Photography Colloquiums. Besides his artistic photographic work, Pedro Meyer has been a teacher in various prestigious institutions, as well as the curator, editor, founder and director of the renowned photography website ZoneZero. He was awarded the prestigious Guggenheim grant in 1987, the Internazionale di Cultura Citta di Anghiari in 1985, in 1993 he received the National Endowment for the Arts in conjunction with Jonathan Green and the California Museum of Photography in Riverside. He has also received numerous awards in Mexican Photography Biennales and the very first grant destined to a Web project, awarded by the Rockefeller Foundation.   In 1991 he published the very first CD ROM in the world that combined images and sound titled “I Photograph to Remember. He is also the author of the books “Tiempos de América” (American Times), “Espejo de Espinas” (Mirror of Thorns), “Los Cohetes duraron todo el día” (The Fireworks Lasted All Day). His book “Truths and Fictions: A journey of documentary photography to digital” edited by Aperture, was also made later into a CD ROM by Voyager in 1995. “The Real and the True” published by Peach Pitt Press came out in 2005. His latest book “Heresies” was published by Editorial House Lunwerg as part of his world-wide retrospective which was shown in over 60 museums simultaneously in October 2008. For more information visit: pedromeyer.com   Technology Coordinator ZoneZero Board Member Alejandro Malo alejandro@zonezero.com Alejandro Malo was born in Mexico City in 1972. He studied Electromechanical Engineering and Communication at the UNAM. He has participated as a promoter and director of several cultural and editorial projects since 1993. His articles and essays have been published, both in printed and electronic publications, amongst which the now extinct “Park & Read” edited by the Dusseldorf University, stands out for being the fist multi-lingual online literary magazine. Since 1997 he has been a professional information technology consultant, specializing himself on cultural projects, amongst these the most important being Fundación para las Letras Mexicanas, Internacional de Cultura, and 17, Instituto de Estudios Críticos. He joined the zonezero.com staff fist as an external consultant, and as of november 2009 as webmaster. Multimedia Design  Programmer Ehekatl Hernández ehekatl@zonezero.com Ehekatl Hernández has a B.F.A on Graphic Design form the National School of the Arts in Mexico City and a Masters on Multimedia Applications from the Universidad Politécnica in Catalunya, Spain. He has been working as a graphic designer for over 15 years. He has also worked on the development and execution of various web and multimedia projects. He has taught courses on web design at UNAM. Currently he works as a consultant for various institutions and directs two projects: Design-lab and Radio-b.org. For the last eight years he was worked as a designer an web programmer for Zonezero.com and Pedro Meyer Fundation. Art Director Webmaster Elisa Rugo webmaster@zonezero.com Elisa has a B.A on Visual Communication, with specialization on Creative Visualization from the University of Communication in Mexico City. She has also studied Photography and Publicity and has attended workshops on Painting, Art History, and Commercial Photography. She has been collaborating as a graphic designer at zonezero.com since 2005, and has been in charge of administration of several of the site’s sections since then. She also helped bring to life Pedro Meyer’s Hersies Project in 2008, participating in different tasks related to the organization, design, and communication aspects of the project. As a freelance, she has been part of a wide range of diverse creative projects where she has worked as a web designer, art director, and as a photographer. She helped to conceptualize and execute a workshop on photography and identity with indigenous communities of La Sierra Norte de Puebla. She also worked on the catalogue that documented the results of the workshop.

Wednesday, 02 September 2009

239. Time Line

Aquí va la Linea de tiempo de Zonezero durante los últimos 12 años

Wednesday, 02 September 2009

241. Documentary Photography Project Newsletter Summer 2009

  Call for Work: Moving Walls 17 Deadline: Friday, October 23, 2009. The Open Society Institute invites photographers to submit a proposal and completed body of work for consideration in the Moving Walls 17 group exhibition. Since its inception in 1998, theMoving Walls exhibition series has featured nearly 100 photographers whose work addresses a variety of social justice and human rights issues that coincide with OSI's mission.   Please note that this year’s exhibition program will also include a new Emerging Photographer Travel Grant to support the professional advancement of select Moving Walls photographers who have not received much exposure.   Call for Work: The Aftermath Project Deadline: Monday, November 2, 2009. The Aftermath Project, a grantee of the Documentary Photography Project, seeks submissions for a yearly grant competition open to photographers worldwide covering the aftermath of conflict.   Save the Date: Moving Walls 16 Opening Reception Location: OSI-New York Date and Time: September 29, 2009, 6:00 - 8:30 p.m. RSVP to this event The Open Society Institute Documentary Photography Project is hosting an opening reception for Moving Walls 16, featuring work by Stefano De Luigi, Benjamin Lowy, Eugene Richards, Tomas van Houtryve, Paolo Woods, and Zalmaï.       Open Society Institute Summer 2009       http://zonezero.com/magazine/articles/osi/index.php    

Saturday, 08 August 2009

243. Moon Landing Pics: "Gee-Whiz" Afterthoug

    Boingboing.net | Mon July 20, 2009     This is, perhaps, the most famous photo from the Apollo Moon landing. It was taken by Neil Armstrong, who shot most of the pics taken on the Lunar surface using a Hasselblad 500EL camera outfitted with a Zeiss Biogon f-5.6/60 mm lens and 70mm Kodak film that was "thin-based and thin emulsion double-perforated.     Called the Data Camera, the 500EL used on the Moon was modded with a special silver finish to boost the hardware's ability to withstand extreme thermal variations (the middle camera pictured here has the silver finish). The Data Camera also featured a glass Reseau plate, which produced a 5x5 grid of little crosses you can still see on the image. NASA used the markings to help account for film distortion and calculate the angular distance(s) between specific points in the image.   Pictured above is Buzz Aldrin, who appears in the bulk of the Moon landing pics. In fact, there's essentially only one photo of Armstrong taken while on the Moon, a blurry close-up of his reflection in Aldrin's visor.   Although a lot of brainpower went into creating the camera taken to the Moon, Aldrin says little planning went into the photography itself, which is why he became the unofficial star of the Moon.   From Aldrin's book Magnificent Desolation:   "Neil shot most of the photos on the moon, having the camera attached to a fitting on his spacesuit much of the time while I was doing a variety of experiments. I didn't have such a camera holder on my suit, so it just made sense that Neil should handle the photography. He took some fantastic photographs, too, especially when one considers that there was no viewfinder on the intricate Hasselblad camera. We were basically "pointing and shooting." Imagine taking such historic photographs and not even being able to tell what image you were getting. Unlike the digital camera era of today, in 1969 we were shooting on film, typically looking through a small optical opening on the back of the camera that corresponded with what the camera's lens was "seeing." But with our large space helmets, such a viewfinder would have done little good anyhow. So, similar to cowboys shooting their sixguns from their hips, we aimed the camera in the direction of what we wanted to photograph, and squeezed the trigger. Given that ambiguity, it is even more of a credit to Neil that we brought back such stunning photographs from the moon. if you look more carefully at the reflection in the gold visor on my helmet, you can see the Eagle with its landing pad, my shadow with the sun's halo effect, several of the experiments we had set up, and even Neil taking the picture. It is a truly astounding shot, and was the result of an entirely serendipitous moment on Neil's part. Later, pundits and others would wonder why most of the photographs on the moon were of me. It wasn't because I was the more photogenic of the two helmet-clad guys on the moon. Some even conjectured that it must have been a purposeful attempt on my part to shun Neil in the photos. That, of course, was ridiculous. We had our assigned tasks, and since Neil had the camera most of the time we were on the surface, it simply made sense that he would photograph our activities and the panoramas of the lunar landscape. And since I was the only other person there . . . Ironically, the photography on the moon was one of those things that we had not laid out exactly prior to our launch. NASA's Public Affairs people didn't say, "Hey, you've got to take a lot of pictures of this or that." Everyone was interested in the science. So we did the science and the rest of it was sort of gee-whiz. We had not really planned a lot of the gee-whiz stuff that, in retrospect, proved quite important."     You can purchase a 16x20 print of the above pic and other Apollo-11 shots from Moonpans.com           http://zonezero.com/magazine/articles/leckart/index.php    

Monday, 20 July 2009

245. Nokia nosing closer to cameraphone convergence?

    Dpreview.com - July 15, 2009   It’s very easy, when you spend any amount of time learning and writing about one area, to focus in on that niche. We may spend most of our waking lives thinking or talking about digital cameras in the dpreview office but it’s worth remembering that there’s a whole world beyond digital cameras – there are camera phones, for example.   Finnish handset giant Nokia contacted us because it considers it latest phone/camera/music player, the N86 8MP, to be its most sophisticated photographic device yet and thought we’d be interested. It was always likely that there would be some convergence between compact cameras and camera phones so we thought we’d take a quick look, to see how close this 8 megapixel camera phone brings us.   Damian Dinning has previously been a product manager and product development manager for Minolta and Kodak and has been made responsible for fine-tuning the image performance and future product guidance at Nokia. He spoke to us about the work Nokia has been doing to develop the N86: “We’ve been focussing on low-light performance and the speed of the device. The prime mission is to record the moment in a wide range of situations.   It’s at this point that Dinning makes his first use of the term ‘24/7,’ which occurs frequently enough in our conversation that it sound remarkably as if it might be part of the product’s ‘key messaging’: ‘As part of a 24/7 lifestyle, you never know what situation you’ll find yourself wanting to shoot in.’ What the company has done to make the phone’s camera useful at any time is to offer a bright, wide-angle lens: 28mm equivalent with a maximum aperture of F2.4.   ‘We’ve also increased the speed of the camera. We’d like to go even further with this but we’re getting pretty close to average digital compact camera responsiveness, in terms of autofocus speed, shutter lag and shot-to-shot time.’   Despite the admirably fast autofocus and the provision of a dedicated zoom rocker, our experience of the phone is that its camera mode is considerably less easy to use than a major brand compact. However, you can customise the menu to include options such as exposure compensation, which is not something you can say about many telephones.   The company’s size as, the world’s largest handset maker, does give it the luxury of being able to shop around for sensors: ‘we’re not tied to one company, our size means we can work with many different vendors and work with multiple suppliers,' he says: ‘The sensor is 1/2.5”, it’s the same as in a typical compact camera. It’s one of the latest generation CMOS sensors and is the most sensitive on the market.’   The result is a phone that suggests using its 8MP mode for producing A3 sized prints. Dinning explains: ‘We’re using noise reduction which means the files end up being smaller – the compression is about the same as a typical compact camera.’ However, we have doubts about this claim, given that the Nokia’s images tended to average around 1.2MB – rather than the roughly 3.5MB images produced by the eight megapixel compacts we looked back at.   However, it is clear that concessions have been made to ensure the images can be sensibly transferred off the camera. ‘We’ve had some 20x30” prints made and, when viewed from a normal viewing distance, they’re amazing. There’s a limit to how many poster-sized prints you can fit in your walls though. A lot of these images will be used on community and sharing sites such as Facebook, Flickr and MySpace. It comes back to usage – we have a pretty good balance between image quality and having a small file size to increase the uploading speed.’   ‘Image quality is always a balance between multiple parameters,’ Dinning concedes: ‘We choose to prioritise vibrancy of colour, even though we may have compromised other areas to offer that vibrancy. We’ve conducted extensive benchmarking and have found that punchy, vibrant colour is something that people prioritise highly’.     Despite these limitations, the company clearly understands the importance of a good lens. The Carl Zeiss-branded lens module is made of four aspherical elements that are aligned during manufacture using the sensor’s image output. Each module is then calibrated individually, to take into account its alignment and this calibration data is stored on the phone. ‘It’s been quite a challenge’ says Dinning: ‘It took us two years to develop. We work with Carl Zeiss, who have been involved right from concept through to production, pushing the quality of the lens forward.’   However, the use of a prime lens, albeit one with a useful focal length ‘for the 24/7 user’, means that the 3X zoom offered is entirely digital, which has a devastating effect on the camera’s resolution. The zoomed images are up-sampled back to 8MP, with rather interesting results.     ‘There’s no optical zoom yet,’ says Dinning: ‘there have been previous models with optical zoom but they were more of a camcorder in your pocket. The N86 8MP offers personal navigation and a really good music player as well as a camera – a broad range of capabilities. If we were to throw all those away we could perhaps free some space up for an optical zoom but we need the technology to develop a bit further before we can offer them all together.’     Despite this, Dinning feels the N86 8MP is ready to replace compact cameras in most situations. ‘We’re not suggesting they should be a replacement for DSLRs but in terms of where you can take it and where you’d want to take it, it has a lot to offer the 24/7 photo enthusiast. I think there’s a lot of evidence that people have been using their phones in the place of compact cameras already.’         http://www.zonezero.com/magazine/articles/butler/index.php      

Wednesday, 15 July 2009

247. Photographic Intelligence?

    Making a case for "photographic intelligence" is the purpose of this editorial. One of the clear changes in the digital era, is how intelligent photography has become.   Imagine, today our pictures are pregnant with every conceivable piece of information as to how, where and what the image was made with. What lens and what f stop was used, what camera, what exposure speed, if one used flash or not, or better yet, if the flash went off at the time of shooting, let alone that you had a flash connected. The latitude and longitude of the place the image was taken, the hour of day or night it was taken. The serial number of the camera you used and a myriad of other pertinent information.   And now the images are being cataloged according to the smiles, the faces within the image. In other words, all the pictures of each one of my sons, for instance, gets separated and placed into their corresponding folder with their name on it. And all of this, automatically of course.   You can go into Google and search for a specific image, let us think of a sunset for example. And then lo and behold, you can make further selections according by color. The browser will respond offering you a wide assortment of pink sunsets, if that is what you were looking for. You want to compare it to green images? then a click away and you have such an alternative being displayed on your monitor.   One can of course add to the images, not only key words to make the picture easily retrievable at a later date, but you can also add sounds. You can add a verbal message to your image, or a sound track which might be relevant. You can add to the image a URL address on the internet, to connect the image to further information to that what is strictly contained within the picture taken.   If you compare all this wealth of data contained within the digital file of a photograph, to just the plain negative or slide of the past, one can start to visualize that a new form of photography has clearly emerged. And we have not even touched upon the intelligence of the cameras themselves and how they have been changing photography, that will be for another editorial.   Photographers have yet to understand what the implications are of all this abundance of information. Of course it does not make a single image any better due to such an array of data. But that would be like dismissing a library with all of it's volumes because it does not make you wiser by walking past the book shelves. I think you get the point, you also have to read the books, and not only that but make sense of the content as well.   We need to begin and make sense of the potential that lies dormant in the information that our digital photographic archives contain. As I go through my digital archive, and look at all the feedback coming from those images, and then compare it to my autistic negatives, I find that we have a lot of exciting times ahead.   Please let us hear what you have done with your intelligent photographs, and what you believe will be taking place in the future with all this potential.   Pedro Meyer July 2009 Mexico City, Coyoacán         http://zonezero.com/editorial/july09/july09.php    

Monday, 13 July 2009

249. New York Times Magazine Withdraws Altered Photo Essay

  UPDATE, 5:57 p.m. ET: The New York Times has published a new editors' note about the altered photo essay that was published in Sunday's Times Magazine. The newspaper says "most of the images did not wholly reflect the reality they purported to show." The note does not address which photos were altered, or whether the photographer misrepresented them to the editors. PDN has tried to reach Edgar Martins, the photographer, but has not heard from him. Here's the Times' note:     "A picture essay in The Times Magazine on Sunday and an expanded slide show on NYTimes.com entitled 'Ruins of the Second Gilded Age' showed large housing construction projects across the United States that came to a halt, often half-finished, when the housing market collapsed. The introduction said that the photographer, a freelancer based in Bedford, England, 'creates his images with long exposures but without digital manipulation.'   "A reader, however, discovered on close examination that one of the pictures was digitally altered, apparently for aesthetic reasons. Editors later confronted the photographer and determined that most of the images did not wholly reflect the reality they purported to show. Had the editors known that the photographs had been digitally manipulated, they would not have published the picture essay, which has been removed from NYTimes.com."   ----------------- UPDATE, 5:03 p.m. ET: The New York Times plans to run an editors' note about the altered photographs in tomorrow's paper, according to Kathy Ryan, photo editor at The New York Times Magazine. -----------------   EARLIER POST: The New York Times Magazine has withdrawn a photo essay by Edgar Martins — described in print as having been produced "without digital manipulation" — because several of the photographs show signs of digital manipulation. The photo essay, which ran in the July 5 issue of the magazine, shows abandoned real estate projects.   An editors' note now appears when you try to view the online version of the essay.   In the Sunday print edition, the Times Magazine made a big deal out of the fact that the pictures weren't digitally altered. Here's how the magazine described Martins' essay (emphasis ours):   "Last fall, The New York Times Magazine commissioned Edgar Martins, a 32-year-old Portuguese photographer based in London, to capture on film the physical evidence of the real estate bust in the United States. Martins, who creates his images with long exposures but without digital manipulation, traveled from rural Georgia to suburban California, visiting large construction projects that began during the speculative boom years and then came to a sudden halt, often half-finished, when the housing and securities markets collapsed."   Update: Working from a copy of the Times Magazine, PDN has identified evidence of manipulation in three of Martin's six published photos. A blogger first noticed the project was suspect based on a photo that ran online only.   In all four cases, unlikely repetitions of elements suggest that they are composites or have had some elements covered up.   One picture shows an evenly-lit room in an unsold mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut. The room appears near-perfect in its symmetry, down to have two identical thermostats and light switch plates facing each other on opposite walls. There are also repeating patterns in the leaves on the floor.     Another picture shows a Las Vegas development with construction fencing in the foreground. The piece of fence on the left is a perfect mirror of the one on the right.     A third picture, of a home in Dawsonville, Georgia, has a patch of trees repeating in the background.     The question of manipulation first surfaced on a message published Tuesday on Metafilter, a community blog, which accused the photographer of using a mirror effect in one of his photos of a house under construction. That photo ran only on the Times web site. A poster used an animation to show that the photo was too perfectly symmetrical—even the wood grains on boards matched perfectly.     Times Magazine photo editor Kathy Ryan confirmed that the Times learned of the alterations from a reader, and that altered photos appeared in print and online. She said an editors' note was planned for Thursday's paper. No one answered a phone number listed on Martins' Web site, and Martins did not immediately return an e-mail.   Martins' work has been described as free of manipulation before. The publisher's description of his 2008 book "Edgar Martins: Topologies" begins: "With artful composition and controlled framing—but no digital manipulation—Edgar Martins creates sublimely beautiful views of often un-beautiful sites."   by Daryl Lang July 2009 Photo District News       http://zonezero.com/magazine/articles/pdnpulse/index.php      

Tuesday, 07 July 2009