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Author:Dan Biferie
  Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1999 19:21:45 -0500   Greetings Pedro, What an excellent article. I will pass it along. When you were in Daytona Beach last year, one of my colleagues, Eric Brietenbach, was a skeptic of the Internet. He felt that it was depersonalizing and created an environment that separated us from one another.   Guess what? He met his "future spouse" over the Internet at one of the singles' places. My colleague is like a school boy in love.   The net is marvelous for democratizing our ability to communicate. That is why places like ZoneZero knocks the socks off of major institutions (with unlimited budgets) on the net.   As I mentioned in an earlier correspondence, grad students at the University of Florida (and around the world, I am sure) look are inspired by your good efforts.   Keep up the good work,   Dan  
Wednesday, 03 November 1999
Author:Karin Wagner
  Date: Wed, Oct 13, 1999, 2:44 AM   Hej! I am a doctoral student at the department of art history at Göteborg universitet in Sweden. My thesis is going to deal with digital photography. "The digital caleidoscope - revolution or tradition?" is the title. I'm going to examine what kind of pictures that are made by some nordic photographers who are using digital technigue, and also make interviews with them. Zonezero was the first site I discovered when I started looking for digital photography on the net, and I think it is the most comprehensive and valuable site I have found sofar. I browse the gallery every now and then, and I have also read some of the editorials. I appreciate the site very much, and I hope you will keep going, adding new stuff as well as keeping the archives.   I have two questions: I would like to buy the CD-ROMs of Pedro Meyer, but I don´t find them on amazone. Where can I buy them?   The other question is more diffuse, it's about a series of photography I saw on the web a year ago. It's about people working in the computer business, maybe programmers in Silicon valley. When you go forward, you get the next picture as usual, but when you go backwards, you get the last picture in negative, and another text. Does this description ring a bell? I can´t find it again, and I think the series might be interesting from the point of view of narration.   Hälsningar Karin Wagner ----------------------------------------  
Wednesday, 13 October 1999
Author:Glenda Kapsalis
  Date: Mon, Oct 11, 1999, 2:40 PM   Dear Pedro, During a recent trip to Greece, I visited with Elias Eliades from . He relayed to me that you had commented on my work on his site and told me about zonezero.com. I immediately took "a look" and was thrilled by zone zero! It is the best work I have seen anywhere on the web.   Some of my work recently was also put on (Greek Photo Web) and I have been corresponding with Massimo Pizzocaro. He is also a great fan of zone zero. Neither of these sites was interested (at least on line) in my favorite work from Mexico - people! Since you expressed an interest in my work, I would like to submit some to zone zero if that is possible. My current project is a book on man's loss of connection to the land.   I hope this address works. The one Elias gave me doesn't seem to.   Sincerely, Glenda Kapsalis  
Monday, 11 October 1999
Author:Pedro Meyer
    If digital photography is supposed to be so great, why don't we see a lot more interesting work? Is a frequent question I hear. A good friend of mine recently sent me a note with the following commentary: " Some sage or other made the observation to the effect that it is interesting how art changes without improving. I have in my library a book of drawings by Rodin. The only thing he used was a pencil and the dirt on his hands, which was considerable since he was a sculptor. No technology can really improve on that. I also have a book of drawings by Egon Schiele about which I would say the same thing. Is a digital image by your favorite artist really better than a painting by Massacio? Does anybody out there beat Picasso, Mattisse, Braque, or for that matter Weston, Sommer, Strand?"   My response was that these comparisons, at best, were unfair. If you review the biographies of any of the artists mentioned above, you will discover that in their own time, not one of them had anything close to the prestige or recognition that time has bestowed upon their work. So why are we supposed to come up with equivalents in the digital era after only a decade of production. Compare this to painting or sculpture which has enjoyed centuries of previous historical perspectives. How can anyone compare such art forms and their artistic development with that of digital art. Just think how long it took for films just to move from being silent black and white presentations, to those of sound and full color.   The second objection I had to my friend's statement referenced earlier, was with regard to the part about "art only changing without improving". Of course the validity of new digital technologies, can not hinge solely on the fact that you can make "new" things. These "things" have yet to pass the test of time, don't they? However, I am not concerned at all that over time digital photography will pass such tests of maturation. The only question is when will that happen? And for that I am afraid there is no reasonable answer. In the meantime however one would have to make sure not to go on comparing apples and pears? If you see a great film, and then compare it with the work of Mattisse for instance, what would we end up comparing anyway?   Most probably the reason that the development stage we are in is so slow in producing substantial new work has to do with the learning curve related to all that concerns new technologies. It used to be that artists would complain that the cost of equipment was their main stumbling block for not entering the digital era. In reality they had never given much thought to making the transition, because they felt, and rightly so, that they had to continue what they were doing in order to ascertain their livelihood.   The most important costs are in fact not the tools, but the time investment needed to learn how to use them. Which by the way, is turning into a never ending proposition, no sooner have you learned how to use one set of tools that these are rendered obsolete, and you have to continue "upgrading" everything, including obviously your own knowledge about it all. As a good friend reminded me tonight, painting and other arts have seen much less radical activity in tool design and materials evolution. For example the watercolor brushes used today are not that dissimilar to those used 100 years ago. Tempera paints are mixed today as they have been for centuries and still utilize the same pigments, and fixer has been fixer for quite a while.   There is a steep cost of transition (analog to digital), at least for the generation that was brought up in the pre-digital era skills. One has to learn and unlearn a great number of assumptions of how to work. One has to also learn about fields usually unrelated to still photography. Sound, video, animation, new printing methods, the Internet. Even drawing and writing. Future photographers, will need to be more like a Renaissance person than anyone thought possible or required!   It is no longer viable to become a professional photographer, without historical awareness related to this art form. "Clicking the shutter" is no longer the main ingredient in this evolving pie. You also have to have more sophisticated ideas of what you are doing, and in which direction you are heading both conceptually as well as technologically.   Having said that, it becomes obvious that the range of knowledge today has to be wider than at any previous time. No longer is photography just associated to the production of straight pictures, such as Weston or Strand might have produced with their 8 x 10 cameras, or Cartier-Bresson with his Leica. Even the extremes of "straight" style , pictorialist to photo secessionist, are not so extreme when compared to the range of modern style. From tools to print techniques to capture devices, the variants themselves are enough to slow evolution and confound comparative efforts.   What has to be learned as we enter the next century is enormous, that in turn delays the entry point at which the field becomes rich with all sorts of new works from which to choose and creatively explore the varied production options. Productions that will actually take advantage of all the new expressive possibilities that can be created with the new tools that we have, and thus offer new directions for photography. Something I see already happening with cinema/video more than in still photography.   Maybe we all just have to wait for the four year olds to make their mark in the digital era.     Pedro Meyer October 99   For comments please write in our forum section at ZoneZero     And don't forget to read "Learning in a New World"         http://zonezero.com/editorial/octubre99/october.html    
Friday, 01 October 1999
Author:Victor Korchenko
  Date: Sat, 4 Sep 1999 22:21:27 +0300   Please, place me on your mailing list.   The motto of your website 'from analog to digital photography' well describes the evolution of my photographic interests. I am a Russian photographer who was doing large format contact prints using old wooden cameras. It was the purest analog photography. Now I've posted my pictures on the net, purchased digital equipment and starting a computer manipulated photography project. One of the inspirations for this turn was your site.   Yet I find that digital photography is a different media, not a further development of traditional photography. My eye used to see reality through the lens of a camera and chemical processes, digital photography is looking at the world through the lens of imagination. It is more about transformation than reflection. For me doing analog and digital photography is like living two different lives. Yet I love both and don't want the digital to kill the analog.   Please see my photographs (analog ones) on May they be interesting for your site? How can I submit my work to be published at ZoneZero?   Thank you.   Victor Korchenko  
Saturday, 04 September 1999
Author:David Pringle
  Date: 08/31/99 10:02 PM   Mr. Beardsley, I am a student at the Center for Photographic Studies at the Daytona Beach Community College campus. Currently I am working on my 4th and last semester for graduation. I read your article on the "Zonezero" site and would like to thank you. I have on several occasions come up with basic concepts that I would have liked to shoot, but have been worried about the "social norm" that I would be moving against. I have let other peoples' concerns influence or halt my work. I feel that the human body, male or female, is the most beautiful creation on this planet. No two are alike. No two are of the same sensuality. Your article made me look at what I was fearing. It wasn't that I feared taking risky photographs... it was that I was afraid of people seeing into my own sensuality. I was afraid of breaking the "norm". Thank you for allowing me to see that I was allowing society's fears to stop me from expressing myself.   Sincerely, David Pringle  
Tuesday, 31 August 1999
Author:Jose Antonio Muerza
  Date: Tue, Aug 24, 1999, 4:47 PM   hola amigos de zonezero.com   Mis más sinceras felicitaciones por su exelente pagina que es conocida y visitada a nivel Internacional. Mi nombre es Antonio Muerza, vivo en el Edo. de Mex; tuve la fortuna de colaborar en los eventos de Fotoseptiembre y V Coloquio Latinoamericano de fotografía, apoyando en el area tecnica de produccion para poder dar de alta mi servicio social en 1996.   En este evento tuve la fortuna de conocer al Sr. Pedro Meyer dando una demostración, era un proyecto de una familia que era fotografiada año con año y contestaba preguntas hechas por los visitantes.   Humildemente me dedico a la fotografía y desde hace 2 1/2 años a la fotografía digital. En su pagina uno encuentra trabajos de diferentes artistas y quisiera saber que debo hacer o que requisitos llenar para poder enseñarle mi trabajo al Sr. Meyer, creanme que su opinion seria de gran valor artistico y formativo.   En este momento participo en un concurso llamado Primer Concuso de Fotografía Digital "Milenio Digital" convocado hasta el mes de Agosto de por la revista Fotozoom y espero resultados a principios de Septiembre.   Por el momento me retiro, no sin antes, reiterar mis más sinceras felicitaciones.   Atte. Antonio Muerza  
Tuesday, 24 August 1999
Author:Edgar R. Meade
  Date: Tue, Aug 24, 1999, 2:26 PM   Querido Pedro,   Fathers and Sons es una maravilla!!! Gracias por compartirlas. Lei las cartas hace unas semanas y se me quedaron en el corazon. Hoy las he vuelto a buscar, y denuevo senti la emocion de la primera vez... tristeza, cuestionamiento, duda si lo que hago como madre es lo correcto o no.... "I wish there was some way we could fast forward through the difficult times..." que antojo en momentos de poder hacer esto.   La carta de tu amigo de Bangladesh es.... que quieres que yo te diga.....? La historia del padre, el tacto, la cercania.... Habra tenido tiempo para fotografiarlo? Y yo que empece a fotografiar a mi madre hace unos años, y ahora lo he dejado... Les cuesta trabajo el paso del tiempo... y el que yo sea fotografa.   La historia del hijo y su lucha.... Aprender como madre a admirar y aceptar por encima de todo.   Y bueno, un regalo extra en cuestion del quehacer fotografico.... fue el comentario que te hace sobre la dificultad cada vez mayor de obtener una buena imagen... que bien escuchar que a otros les pasa igual.   Pedro, no siempre me doy el tiempo para con calma navegar por tus caminos... hoy fue especial, gracias. Un abrazo, Vida  
Tuesday, 24 August 1999
Author:Kelly Duane
  Date: Wed, Aug 11, 1999, 1:01 PM   Folks at Zone Zero,   Hello there. I came across your Web site and was very impressed by both the photography and the site. I was blown away to be honest, by many of the photographers whose work you host, from Jeff Jacobson to Fred Langford Edwards, from Dan Biferie to Dore Gardner. Additionally, being a native Californian I was thrilled that the text was in both English and in Spanish because it so obviously reaches out to a wider audience.   All very inspiring.   I work for an online company, called @Home Excite and we have created a dedicated photography area on @Home Network (cable modemservice) calledMaking Pictures and we would love to showcase, license and promote the work of several of your photographers online as well as providing a link to your site to drive traffic there and increase awareness about the site itself.   Every week Making Pictures showcases a professional photographer and an @Home subscriber who are publishing photography online in a unique and creative way. We work with Photo District News, Digital Journalist, Foto8, and Double Take Magazine, to name a few other online photography magazines.   We have showcased dozens of photographers and some are below for your review:   Duane Michal   Dirck Halstead http://www.digitaljournalist.org/feature1.html   Alan Dorow http://www.journale.com/BIRTH/birthshock.html   Katrina Wittkamp http://www.untitledmagazine.com   Ron Haviv http://www.photoarts.com/haviv/bloodandhoney/   Pete Turner http://www.peteturner.com     Our service is on a proprietary cable network. Which means only @Home subscribers can view our content. (There are estimated 600,000 subscribers currently.) The service is a broad band service which brings high speed service to people's homes, making the viewing of photography a painless experience. I can send you access urls and passwords so you can see the site for yourself and get a sense of what we do. I would love to speak with you on the phone if you can spare a moment and I can answer any questions that you might have.   Please give me a ring at 650-569-5909 or email me a good time to call you. I am not in on Thursdays and Fridays, but will get in touch as soon as I can after I hear from you.   Sincerely, Kelly Duane   MORE INFO:   Making Pictures is a photography service which is offering photography education, resources and tools to our rapidly growing cable modem subscribers.   Making Pictures is more than just professional and amateur photography galleries. This area is a content service for photographers to develop and digitize film, create and distribute digital images, and become better > educated about the latest imaging products. For all it is a showcase of broadband photography exhibits to serve as an inspiration to our subscribers > to make more pictures, with the appropriate imaging tools.   We showcase six photographs from each online gallery without manipulation and incorporate them into our customized user interface. By incorporating these images into our interface we will be able to maximize the subscribers experience and enjoyment while viewing your photographs. This is meant to highlight your work, promote your online photography gallery by linking out and give our members a greater understanding of the photographers career. We will be mentioning why your work was the pick of the week and we also wish to display a headshot of the photographer along with a concise biography. @Home Network distributes high-speed interactive services to residences and businesses using its own network architecture and the cable industry's hybrid-fiber coaxial infrastructure. Our subscriber audience is growing rapidly with the help from our cable partners and we announced 210,000 subscribers by Q3 1998 and presently we are closing in on about 300,000 .   --------------------------------------- Kelly Duane    
Wednesday, 11 August 1999
Author:Pedro Meyer
    By now I have heard so many arguments about the intrinsic advantage of the "real" gallery space over the internet variant, that I find it deserves looking into in more detail. One recurrent theme that comes up is the idea related to touching photographs.   As there are many sides to this issue, I will arbitrarily start by looking at the sensorial nature that is being allegedly lost. I wonder when it was the last time that anyone reading this was allowed to "touch" any of the pictures in a traditional gallery or museum. To the best of my knowledge photographs are for the most part protected under glass or acrylic when exhibited in such spaces; or when one is invited to view a print that is not mounted, out come a pair of white cotton gloves to avoid coming into direct contact with the photograph. So obviously there are definite boundaries to this issue of touching which always seem to be forgotten.   Not all photographic images we get to look at are in the form of prints. There are also the transparencies or slides mounted on cardboard or plastic; or we have the negatives ( color or black and white) mostly to be seen through a protective envelope. In a very strict sense, in none of these instances we get to actually touch the image. What we do touch, if at all, is the support or strata on which the image is deposited. The image is obviously not something that our fingers can wander across. The image as such only takes a physical reality within our brain cells.   This actually is a very interesting notion, because if we can never touch an image in it's present analogic iteration, what is all the fuss about when it becomes digital? The idea that because it is now digital it becomes an untouchable presentation is actually not the case. Not because it is "touchable", because it isn't, but because it was never the case before either. In other words, there has been no real change, we are just touching different things, different strata. That on which an image is deposited.   For instance, instead of a frame we now have a monitor. In both instances the image is below a protective surface, be that glass or plastic. We can print an image today much as we could yesterday. When the photograph is made with a digital camera, the electronic file is obviously not something that I can touch, but then neither is a negative. Or one would imagine that you never want to touch your negatives, even if you could just because the strata allows that to happen. Which leads us to wonder why all this nostalgia about touching, when to begin with, everything we are taught to do with pictures is about "not touching". Do not touch the negative, the slides, the prints. All for good measure of course, but in fact it is all about not touching. So now that we have the means to actually work with images without having to worry about our direct physical contact, the first thing that so many bring up is this longing for a sensorial contact which never existed in the first place.   Today the image is as much under "glass" (monitor) as when the thing hung framed on the wall. However there is one very important advantage to the digital image when seen on a screen: it is back lit. The actual tonal range that a photograph can offer when viewed on the computer screen is larger than when the same image is printed out on paper. The same thing happens when you view a transparency on a light box, and then compare it to the print made from that same photograph. The first always looks to have more depth to it.   However let me introduce a new concept into this equation. The longing to touch an image can actually be done in ways never ever thought possible before. Today, when I have a digital photograph up on the screen, I as a photographer can with the aid of my mouse, or stylus, touch and transform every single pixel of the image, in ways that have no correlation to any previous experience. I certainly never had the tools to touch every single grain within a traditional photograph.   The action of transferring the pressure from my finger on to any portion of the image has no parallel in chemical based photography. I can darken a single pixel if I want to, by just placing the right amount of pressure -with the chosen tool to do so- through the use of my fingers.         The sensorial transference from my hand to the image, by way of the mouse or pen, is beyond any previous experience in the field of photography. So who said you can't touch a photograph? Or think about the touch screens where viewers are actually encouraged to touch the image, precisely the opposite to the notion of "do not touch". Who said that the sensorial aspect of photography has been lost?.     Pedro Meyer August 99     http://zonezero.com/editorial/august99/august.html      
Sunday, 01 August 1999
Author:Pedro Mateos
  Date: Tue, Jul 20, 1999, 8:23 AM   Hola Pedro. Permíteme que te tutee. Te escribo desde la península (Ibérica). También llamada España. Concretamente desde Puerto Real / Cádiz / Andalucía. En primer lugar debo felicitarte por tu página: Zonecero. Es magnífica. Posee lo que, desde mi punto de vista, ha de poseer todo espacio web: sencillez y estética al servicio del contenido. Y este último es decididamente sorprendente. Tras algunos años de deambular por estos lares, el descubrimiento de la misma ha sido una sorpresa de lo más grata. La "mezcla" de autores que realizas... magisral. No te digo más. Sólo una pregunta. Cómo eliges a los autores para las exposiciones virtuales. Para mí sería un honor poder expener en tu pagina. Actualmente tengo un trabajo colgado en la siguiente dirección, por si quieres echarle un vistazo. En la misma puedes encontrar cuantos datos te sean de utilidad. Puedes entrar en ella por dos sitios:     Un abrazo y hasta paronto.   Pedro Mateos. Puerto Real. Cádiz  
Tuesday, 20 July 1999
Author:Pedro Meyer
    It used to be that up to the 80's photographing on the street and walking around with a camera was a safe practice. If you respected people's privacy and were gentle in your approach towards the subjects, more often than not, people were either glad to participate in the ritual or at worst tolerated it.   I started to notice a gradual disappearance of what traditionally was called "street photography". I could not find a suitable explanation for that until I traveled extensively throughout the United States in pursuit of fulfilling a Guggenheim Fellowship that I had received; the subject of the project was to capture street life in the United States.   Two major issues came to my attention. One was the disappearance almost everywhere of any downtown life. Those parts of the city had become populated mostly by parking lots and empty streets, with whatever was left of "life" taking place inside tall buildings. What used to be a bustling environment around commerce, had now been displaced towards the "shopping mall" located in the suburbs. "Street life" changed from being in a public -city- space to that of a private -corporate- one, the mall. The malls usually forbid one to walk around taking pictures. I was personally evicted several times for doing so without permission: I was on private property, I was told.   In this latter environment, any traditional "street life" worth photographing has practically evaporated anyway. The second issue that emerged was safety. In those areas of the city where indeed some life was worth photographing, it was not such a hot idea to walk around with a camera hanging from your shoulder or neck. Tough neighborhoods had lots of life, to be sure, but unless you BELONGED, you would be safer not making yourself present with such equipment.   In Mexico, which has always been a bastion for street photography, this practice also suffered, but here it was more safety related, than from "life" displaced to shopping malls. Although there are a number of such commercial centers which imitate the American shopping centers, street life is still pretty much prevalent throughout the rest of the city. However, walking around with a camera is not something you want to do so readily, that is, if you want to avoid being mugged and loose your equipment aside from any physical danger which might come your way in the process of such a holdup. Today, walking around Caracas, Rio de Janeiro or Bogota is not very different from the experience of Mexico City. It stands to reason that if you are walking around with a camera, amidst poverty, the provocation to be relieved of your possessions can be understood as some confused notion of distributing wealth.   All these realities are in marked contrast to the experience I've had in most of western Europe, where walking around in the street with a camera does not carry the same security connotations as in the Americas. In most of Western Europe they have better safety records as well as plenty of life going on in their downtown quarters. Compare downtown London or Milan, to Houston, Pittsburgh or Los Angeles, and you will think that life in such US cities had been extracted with a technique like liposuction. There is little life left on those city streets.   The question is then, given that the Europeans have ampler resources to create "street photography" images, why is it that not more Europeans have made it their tradition than what can be observed today. One line of thinking is that this tradition has been conceptually exhausted. Another is that such imagery does not sell very easily, it isn't decorative enough I would venture to guess, and therefore is discouraged as not sellable. A third possibility has to do with what is being published these days and therefore might have the possibility to generate income. In reality there is a close relationship between the decline of "street photography" with the downward spiral that has been experienced in the photographic marketplace during the late nineties by documentary photographers or photojournalists.   Today the images that sell well are those that depict stars, people that are either famous or nearly famous, the "wanabes" (want to be: famous). They come from the world of sports, film or music, or simply because of their wealth; mind you no teachers, poets, or farmers. The emphasis today IS on celebrity photographs. I believe this is the outcome of societies whose values have become more individualistic than ever before. The celebrity is, by definition, self-centered and narcissistic. The images of "life on the streets" had to do more with genuine concerns for the other, a sense of the collective, a more humanistic photography if you will. Today even those topics which would like to express a degree of humanity at large, tend to play to the most basic sentimentalism. Which together with "celebrity pictures" have become the other great topic of most publications and television presentations. Hard news which are very close to Soap Operas, that is what sells. And the distinction between them is ever smaller.   So where do we go from here? If I was forced to make some sort of prediction, I would venture to say that the Internet will play a major role in reviving both the interest and dedication to a more humanistic photography. The photographic community has always had a very healthy dedication to such imagery, and I am sure the Internet will provide ways and means to make such work more readily available again as the risks -from an economical point of view- will be diminished, and the niche markets will surely develop to give support to such work.   Digital technologies will play a major role in all of this happening. With photographers being able to spin off both video and still images from the same source, there is going to be a redeployment of what have been the traditional destinations for such work. Already there are film makers who are using modest camcorders to create films that are later being upgraded to 35mm for mainstream cinemas. In the process they can also document as would a still photographer with such images being used for other purposes than strictly a film.   Some digital cameras are today less obtrusive and visible, therefore can be carried around with less risk. They can be shot from angles that are usually not associated "with taking a picture". I have been surprised of how many times I have been able to photograph in situations where the expectations of me holding a camera to my eyes would have impeded me from taking the picture.   We can repurpose videos and pictures towards the Internet in new ways, to do so is obviously going to be a transition that depends more on the issues of bandwidth ( the speed at which you can access the information) than on the interest people have for certain topics. With these potential new markets, new possibilities will emerge for photographers, where content will be the driving force.   We have had some experiences at ZoneZero which are encouraging. The work that we show, as you well know if you are a frequent visitor to our site, is one of photography with content, all within a humanistic tradition. With the number of visitors continually on the rise, we sense there is indeed an interest for such work, in spite of all the opinions to the contrary.   We can imagine that at some point in the near future, we will be able to support the site both through advertising, commerce at our site ( the sale of books for instance is also on the rise) and contributions from sponsors. We will also be giving courses in everything related to photography, which we hope will also generate some income. We do not think it is too farfetched to make the operation self-sufficient, and to be able to support the work of photographers.   Maybe the tradition of "street photography", like all else in contemporary life, will have to find a new way of making images even though the intentions and the gaze might be similar. With new markets, will come new opportunities. What I am most confident about is that the need to comment on human nature and ordinary life, will not fade away, but rather come back with considerable strength.     Pedro Meyer July 99   For comments please write in our forum section at ZoneZero       http://zonezero.com/editorial/july99/july.html      
Thursday, 01 July 1999
Author:David Sisso
  Date: Mon, Jun 28, 1999, 12:25 PM   Estimado Pedro Meyer: Mi nombre es David Sisso y soy el Editor de Fotografía de la edición argentina de la revista Rolling Stone. Asiduamente visito ZoneZero por interés personal y profesional. Permítame decirle que la página es una valiosísima fuente de información y consulta. De hecho, y aunque le parezca extraño tratándose de una colega que trabaja en mi país, el motivo de este e-mail es solicitarle algún dato que me permita contactarme con Helen Zout, ya que el teléfono que figura en Zone Zero ya no corresponde a su domicilio.   En Rolling Stone estamos trabajando en una gran informe sobre SIDA y yo estoy interesado en la posibilidad de publicar su trabajo. Muchas gracias.  
Monday, 28 June 1999
Author:Ming Ta
  Date: Fri, Jul 23, 1999, 9:57 AM   i was wandering who was the photographer who was featured as the cover page last month about the self-portrait. because i was just looking for it, and now i can't find it anywhere. i thought her work was excellent.....could u please direct me to the certain collection on your website?   i need to check it up cause it is the inspiration for an english essay, and i want to ackowledge the particular person......   thanx   PS - i'm not quite sure if the photographer was featured last month or a few months ago, however, it was about 'self-portraits'......   PPS - keep up the great work.......i've been recommending this site to everyone i know.......truly fantastic!   ------------------------------------------   Date: Sat, Jul 24, 1999, 1:04 PM   thanx for the guidance...it was exactly what i was looking for... was that u who was featured as the photographer in 'editorial 14'?   i really like the kind-of 'synopsis' which accompanied the work of art... very, very thought provocking... i think that it is truly magnificent! i can't find the words to describe it...it is awe-inspiring...   with so much great digital images, i am amazed at how easily your site is setup for such ease of access to any material...and now with the revised layout - it is even easier to navigate...   your website should win much more awards! just keep up the good work, and thanx again for your help...   ming ta  
Saturday, 26 June 1999
Author:Momo
  Date: Tue, Jun 15, 1999, 10:31 AM   Pedro: You know, I am getting back to work after a 10-week project away from my gallery. Yesterday, I visited Zone Zero and will tell you that I am so proud of you for:   1. Staying on-line 2. Developing a community 3. Constantly improving Zone Zero 4. Staying away from hype to provide excellent content   So, you could say that I am a fan to stay... Yes, I love your place. momo  
Tuesday, 15 June 1999
Author:Colin Jacobson
  One of Englands' most distinguished picture editors plays games with old images.     Go to exhibition        
Friday, 11 June 1999
Author:Dirck Halstead
Date: 06/02 3:17 PM Received: 06/02 3:38 PM From: dirck halstead, dirck.halstead@pressroom.com June, 1, 1997.   Last week, while covering the visit of President Clinton to London, Newsweek photographer Wally McNammee and I found ourselves parked in a pool bus in front of the Churchill Hotel in Mayfair.   We both found ourselves saying the same thing.."do you remember Grantville Whither's last appearance ?"   As we all know, news photographers spend lots of time waiting for their next picture. No matter how big the story, those long hours of tedium often lead to mischief. The White House Press Corps can be the naughtiest of the lot.For the past two decades, one of the legends of the group has been Grantville Whithers.   Sir Grantville Whithers is one of the most distinguished photographers in the world. A member and former President of the British Royal Photographic Society, he has been an intimate of Kings, Queens, Prime Ministers, and Presidents. His access to the rich and powerful is unsurpassed.   Grantville Whithers also does not exist.   Nobody knows for sure when he first appeared on the scene of major events around the world, but we suspect he may have been the conconcotion of photographer Robert Doherty, until recently the Washington Photo bureau chief for the Associated Press. Created out of boredom, Lord Whithers was designed to test the mettle of young photographers on the first foreign Presidential travels.   At least one of his targets quit the business following his encounters with Whithers.   Over time, Doherty found accomplices in spinning his web, including McNammee, and I must admit, me.   In 1982, Nancy Reagan journeyed to England for the Royal Wedding of Diana and Charles. In her press corps were Doherty, McNammee and me. Also making his first overseas trip was a young United Press International photographer, Chaz Cancellare.   Chaz was the nephew of famous UPI White House photographer Frank Cancellare, and had only been covering the White House for a few months.   Chaz found himself tossing and turning on his first night in London. Shortly after dawn his bedside phone at the Churchill Hotel rang. The groggy Chaz picked it up to hear the following lucid tones of a British gentleman.:   "Mr. Cancellare..Whithers here ! Sir Grantville Whithers   "I am a great admirer of your late Uncle Frank Cancellare. We were comrades in the press pool during the war, and his kindnesses to me , I must say I have never forgotten. I wonder if it would be possible for the two of us to meet for a bit of tea this morning ? I am very near your hotel, and if you could possibly be so kind as to meet me down in your coffee shop in the next half hour, and I would be most grateful."   Chaz stumbled out of bed, and threw on his clothes and made his way to the coffee shop. For the next hour he sat at a table waiting for his visitor. Finally, he went to the cash register to inquire if anyone knew of Whithers, and the waitress handed him a note that read, "I'm frightfully sorry, but I have been detained, but I will try calling you in the next few hours."   Chaz returned to his room, where he sat by the phone until finally it was time to join the pool for the first photos of the day.   By late that night, jet-lagged, Chaz went to bed, but no sooner had dozed off than the phone rang again.   "Mr. Cancellare, Whithers, here, I must offer you the most abject apologies, but Lady Diana required my presence almost all day, and I'm just now free. I know you must be exhausted, but if you will be so kind as to meet me in the bar, I would like to make you a proposition".   Chaz again got dressed and stumbled into the lobby bar. It was deserted.He sat down at the bar to wait. In a few minutes the bartender handed him the phone.   "Mr. Cancellare, Whithers here again. I'm just so dreadfully sorry for my rude behavior, but I was called at the last minute by the Palace, and had to scurry off.".   By this time, Chaz was steaming and he was about to say so, when Whithers continued.       "Mr. Cancellare, as I told you this morning, I have always felt an obligation to your wonderful uncle, and perhaps, with your indulgence, I have a way to repay my obligation. I must request your utmost discretion on this matter for reasons which I will soon make clear."   By now, Chaz didn't know what to think, as Whithers continued, " as you may know, as a past official of the Royal Photographic Society, I have been fortunate over the years to obtain the patronage of the Palace. As a consequence, I have been privileged to be allowed to put a remotely operated camera in the Royal Coach as Lady Diana and Prince Charles ride to the Palace from the wedding ceremony. My purpose of course, is to be able to record the event not for commercial purposes, but as my wedding gift to the Princess.   However, there is no reason why I could not allow your organization to process the film, and use the photographs, with the explicit understanding that you may never reveal how you obtained the photographs. You may claim all credit for them, provided that you return the original negatives to me later in the day. Of course, if anyone should discover that such a camera exists, the repercussions would be dreadful.   So, Mr. Cancellare, does this offer sound interesting to you ?"   Chaz's head was now spinning.."oh my God, the most important exclusive of all time !! And it can be MINE ! "   As Chaz burbled how pleased he would be, Whithers concluded "Magnificent, Mr. Cancellare, your Uncle would have been very proud."   At this point in our story, accomplices were enlisted. The first was Charlie McCarty who was then in charge of UPI pictures in Europe. Charlie was filled in on the Whithers caper, so he would be prepared for the next developments.   After another sleepless night, Chaz called the London UPI bureau to tell them about the good fortune that had befallen him.       McCarty, who took the call, was suitably impressed, but he warned Cancellare,"Don't let this one fall through your fingers, kid!"   For the next few days, Cancellare was. to say the least, distracted.   Another accomplice who was drafted was Brenda Draper, the London picture editor for TIME magazine. Brenda became Grantville Whither's loyal secretary, who was now calling Cancellare regularly with updates on his movements, and why it was that Whithers kept missing appointments with him, due to the pressures of conferring with the Royals in their country estates.   As the wedding day approached Cancellare was becoming frantic. No matter how hard he tried, he kept missing his appointments with Whithers. He would pace back and forth in his hotel room, not going out for meals, as he began to see his future slipping through his hands.   In desperation, he called the UPI bureau, and this time reached Ted Majeski, the pictures managing editor. Majeski had not been alerted to the scam. Chaz blurted out that no matter how hard he had tried, he had been unable to get back to Whithers to make the final arrangements.   Majeski suspected that another organization had somehow gotten wind of the big exclusive, and they had made a better offer. At this point afraid that UPI would be scooped he called the Palace press secretary to demand access to Whither's photographs.   Now, Scotland Yard was called in to the case. Who was Grantville Whithers, and how he had he managed to infiltrate the Royal coach? Calls went out from Scotland Yard to all news organizations trying to find out who this Grantville Whithers was dealing with.   I got a panicked call from Brenda Draper, who had been called into the office of TIME bureau chief Bonnie Angelo, to find out what she knew about this plot. Her instructions were if possible to get the exclusives for TIME, and if that couldn't be done to expose Whithers.   Now with the Royals, Scotland Yard, and all news organizations frantically trying to find Whithers, and Chaz Cancellare near nervous exhaustion. Whithers decided to disappear.   He hasn't been seen since, but you never can tell, he might surface again one of these days.   Chaz Cancellare eventually went on to law school, and today he is an attorney, specializing in fraud cases.   http://www.zonezero.com/magazine/articles/halstead/dhalstead.html        
Friday, 04 June 1999
Author:Telépolis
  Date: Mon, May 25, 1999, 11:26 AM   ¡Enhorabuena!   Nos es grato comunicarle que su web ha sido seleccionado como Interesante en el Directorio Temático del portal-web Telépolis, por lo que aparece en un lugar privilegiado dentro del mismo.   De los miles de webs que están referenciados en nuestro directorio, sólo los mejor diseñados y los que aportan una información más relevante adquieren la categoría de Interesante.   Reciba un saludo afectuoso y una enhorabuena por la calidad e interés de su presencia en Internet. "Telépolis, tu punto de partida en Internet" http://www.telepolis.com  
Tuesday, 25 May 1999
Author:Susana Shanahan
  Date: Mon, 24 May 1999 23:42:05 -0300   Soy descendiente de irlandeses, vivo en Buenos Aires, soy periodista he visitado vuestra pagina y es realmente FABULOSA, me encantaria tener mayor informacion sobre Ustedes y poder ver que posibilidades existen de que mantengamos contacto frecuente.   Les cuento que tengo,desde 1996 un programa radial PLum Pudding para los descendientes irish y para los celtas de argentina. Ademas trabaje en el diario mas viejo de los irlandeses en America el The Southern Cross y en Celtic News una revista y el periodico Argentine Irish Times.   Espero sus noticias y nuevamente felicitaciones por las notas, por la idea de juntarse. Espero poder unirme a UStedes y brindarles informacion de aqui.   Afectuosamente Susana Shanahan  
Monday, 24 May 1999
Author:David Lauer
  Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 01:58:52 -0500   Bueno, soy David Lauer, mi dirección electrónica es.   Soy literato hecho fotógrafo y me encanta la propuesta de tener un espacio abierto al diálogo sobre la fotografía y otros temas de tanta importancia para nuestro mundo. He visitado este sitio varias veces en el pasado y me da mucho gusto verlo crecer, mejorar.   I live in Chihuahua now, and am a bilingual border person who has travelled extensively. I don´t really know what more to say, don´t know to whom I am speaking (which makes it rather strange) so I guess I will leave it at that and thank Pedro, et. al. for a fascinating space.   Gracias,   david  
Wednesday, 19 May 1999
Author:César La Rosa
  Date: Tue, May 18, 1999, 1:55 AM   Mis queridos amigos,   No es la primera vez que los visito; en realidad lo he hecho muchas veces y cada visita ha sido para mí, una experiencia difícil de describir con palabras. Como amante de la Fotografía y el Arte en general, no quiero dejar pasar esta oportunidad para felicitarlos y desearles siempre todo lo mejor.   Hoy tuve la suerte de ver "Padres E Hijos" y más que nunca hoy me siento feliz de haber tenido la suerte de tener un padre como el que tuve que me enseñó a apreciar, querer y admirar lo más grande y hermoso que tiene el ser humano; la Sensibilidad. Gracias por darnos la oportunidad de acercarnos a Dan Biferie, Shahidul Alam y E.R. Beardsley con sus fotos y sus cartas. Esta noche, les aseguro, ellos tocaron mi corazón.   Les agradecería me incluyeran en su Lista de Correo para poder estar informado de los cambios que realicen en su excelente Página.   Nuevamente, los felicito de todo corazón.   Un amigo,   César La Rosa  
Tuesday, 18 May 1999
Author:Rubén Martínez
      GOSPEL   From "The Acts of the Apostles": ...there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues...   I. Postborder Cultures A cholo from the Purépecha Plateau in Michoacán strolls down the main street of Nahuatzen, pushing past grandmothers in shawls and peasants in muddy boots. He's wearing his Oakland Raiders cap backwards and his head is shaved East-L.A. style. He's got his Nikes on and his baggy pants. He's wearing a sleeveless T-shirt to display the tragicomic mask tattooed on his shoulder with the slogan "la vida loca."   He goes into a video arcade with his buddies and spends an hour killing ninjas, blacks and Arabs. Each time he kills a bad guy he screams: "En la madre, motherfucker!" Then he climbs into his ranfla, a broken-down '79 Datsun with North Carolina plates, and he goes cruiseando through town singing the refrain from a golden oldie: "My angel baby, my angel baby/oooh I love you, yes I do..."   At eight o'clock, with the church bells ringing, he heads home, where his grandmother in long traditional braids awaits him. She greets him in Tarasco, the Purépecha language, and this postborder tough guy, with the utmost respect, answers in his ancestral language.   They sit in the living room, turn on the Samsung TV hooked up to a satellite dish on the roof, and they spend a couple of hours wachando MTV, CNN and the soap opera "De pura sangre."   Meanwhile, back in Los United States: I know a young Chicano whose folks emigrated from that very same Purépecha Plateau 20 years ago following the lettuce harvest in Watsonville, California, the watermelon harvest in Kentucky, the tobacco harvest in North Carolina, the orange harvest in Florida, then working a bit on the railroad in Nebraska, as room cleaners in a Dallas hotel and, at last, settling down in Southern California where they straightened out their papers and bought a modest home in a San Fernando Valley neighborhood affectionately rebaptized "North Hollywood, Michoacán"-where three generations ago, Mexicans picked oranges and it was neither North Hollywood nor Michoacán.   This young man was an outstanding student in high school, loves biology and is now a sophmore at UCLA. He speaks English and Spanish perfectly and can even say a few words in Tarasco. He used to be a fan of death metal and trash, but today he belongs to the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA). He spends every weekend deep in the woods of the Los Padres National Forest, a mountainous area north of Los Angeles where an old Indian from the Chumash tribe teaches Indian traditions to young Chicano radicals and preaches about a spiritual war in which the bronze race will recover its dignity.   This Purépecha and very Chicano postrocker goes back home after the sweatlodge ritual and spends a couple of hours with his parents and brothers and sisters watching a bit of MTV, CNN and the soap opera "De pura sangre."   GOSPEL Words from "The Adventures of La Gaby" (scandalously suppressed by Cardinal Ratzinger), the hottest Jalisco transvestite at El Plaza, a Latino gay club on La Brea Avenue at Third Street in Hollywood, California:   My love we're always departing splitting ourselves in two tearing ourselves apart departing; it's a never-ending I-leave-we-leave leaving that takes us nowhere and everywhere oh sweetie! but you're so cute...       II. Movement, Agitation, Continuity If we observed the present through the lens of the bullshit past, we'd say that Mexico's previous national identity is once more under attack by free-trading yanqui invaders and that each satellite dish is a direct challenge to the kingdom of her holiness the Virgin of Guadalupe. We'd say Chicanos are a bunch of stupid "pochos" with no right to call themselves Mexicans, and that the narco-cholos of Michoacán are threatening the nationalist spirit of beloved Mexico. We'd say, "What a shame Purépechas watch MTV, CNN and De pura sangre instead of cultivating their patch of corn in bare feet with the tools of antiquity."   For those who persist in thinking that a linear border separates what it means to be Mexican, Indian, Mestizo, Chicano, etc., history has passed you by. Those who still cling to the notion of "the spiritual Indian" deny the Indian present: that Indians can be and are as modern as the "postmoderns" from any of the planet's great urban centers. In fact, more Indians live in cities than in the countryside, and an enormous number of Mexican Indians live on the northern side of the border. In other words, the Indians frozen in dioramas in Mexico City's Museum of Anthropology and History that Mestizos so admire, are more inquisitive, more on-the-move and more in touch with modernity than the Mestizos themselves. Indians are the people who work on "the other side" and come back with a new television set and VCR to enjoy the movies of Steven Seagall. Just as Mestizos lament the supposed loss of the Indian past, they see Chicanos and their supposed identity crisis as tragic. But those who see a "loss of Mexicanness" in Chicanos don't know much about themselves. In many ways Chicanos are more "Mexican" than the Mexico City middle class, whose gaze is ever fixed on New York and Paris for the latest chic standard.   Middle-class Mestizos have set up a false dynamic. They believe the future lies in the North (in the United States or Europe) and the past in the Purépecha Plateau (or the Lacandona Jungle or the Sierra Tarahumara). The truth is that time and space no longer obey such primitive borders. The future lies on both sides of the border, as does the past, and the present is everywhere: satellite dishes and cholos in Michoacán, neo-Indians and Mixteco soccer teams in California. Everything moves, everything changes, everything remains. It seems that the only ones who feel comfortable in these rough seas are Indians and Chicanos, who understand that the future and the past coexist in the present.   More than a loss of identity, what is happening is a continuation of the process of mestizaje in which Indians and Chicanos can put together a cultural package of their own choosing. Culture is an organism that must adapt to new surroundings to stay alive and continue growing. Hence the young Mixtec who lives in Fresno, California and who no longer speaks his native language is still a Mixtec-if he chooses to keep on identifying himself as Mixtec. At the same time, as philosopher Oswald Spengler noted, the landscape also continually adapts to new organisms that emerge: today, gringos consume more salsa than ketchup, to mention a superficial gastronomical fact rather than enumerate the obvious ways in which gringo society increasingly relies-economically, socially and even culturally-upon Latinos in the United States.   The future won't necessarily annihilate the past: tradition and novelty can cohabit in the present. In the towns of the Purépecha Plateau, the same house that has a satellite dish pointed at the heavens may belong to a bruja who cures "evil diseases" with herbs and Tarot, or by a trilingual teenager--Spanish, English and Tarasco--who loves the Transmetal as much as pirecuas, the region's traditional music.     To view this process as bad to cultural health is to project an image of Indians as passive victims of history. And that is precisely the worst stereotype created by Mestizos about Indian identity. A few months ago a young activist woman from los United whose parents had emigrated from India arrived in Mexico City. She had one of those strange backpacks that gringos and Europeans like to carry when they go to the Third World (as if they were heading off on safari in search of elephants and aborigines). She thought the capital was awful: "So many white people," she said. So much noise, so many lights, so many buildings, so many cars. Of course she left the city to find the Tzotziles in Chiapas. They have no need for electricity, television sets, or shoes or books, she said excitedly. Indians live au naturel. How cool!   Similarly, because of their inferiority complex vis a vis gringos and Europeans, Mestizos from the capital invent myths about Indians in order to feel that they themselves are modern. When a Mexico City mestizo turns nationalist and takes a neo-indigenist stance in front of foreigners, it is the height of hypocrisy. When I first came to Mexico City as an adult, over ten years ago, college teachers and leftists in general treated me paternalistically. Poor Chicano, they told me. In your country you suffer from the scourge of racism. Here in Mexico we have no identity crisis. Give me a fucking break!   We Chicanos (or in my case Chicano-Salvadorans born in Los Angeles who now live in Mexico City), a bit like Buddhists, know that stability is a state of movement. To put it simply, these days people who don't move die. Which happens to be the opposite of the motto of the latest operation of the Border Patrol: "Stay out, stay alive" (rhetorically displaying on the border fence the bodies of those illegals drowned in the Rio Bravo or who died of thirst in the desert as they tried to cross).   But there are many Mexicans who know that to stay alive is to move. Economically, culturally, linguistically, sexually. Therefore, given what we have affirmed here, we offer       THE PLATFORM OF THE WETBACK PARTY:   The problem is not the language we speak nor the accent with which we speak it.   The problem here is the Border Patrol.   The problem is not being gay, straight, bi or transvestite.   The problem is AIDS.   The problem is not whether we're Catholics or Pentecostals or Sufis.   The problem is lack of tolerance, and the fact that the state, the Catholic Church and other social and economic powers encourage intolerance by promoting the false image of a homogeneous nation.   The problem is not street vending or prostitution or drug addiction.   The problem is neoliberalism, which leaves many people without any chance to participate economically or culturally in the process of globalization, while it benefits the middle classes of the United States and Europe who so like to dance salsa, eat Thai food and attend the performances of Guillermo Gómez- Peña.   GOSPEL From "The Book of La Licuadora (The Blender)" (also scandalously suppressed by Cardinal Ratzinger), the biggest and toughest of the people smugglers in the town of Cherán, Michoacán:   They screwed us once those assholes from the gringos' Migra. But watch out next time 'cause now< we're armed with more than the water on our backs. They don't call me La Licuadora for nothing...   III. Utopia and Apocalypse   In the United States, homogenizing untruths are promoted by the conservative and liberal establishments (Republicans and Democrats) as well as by the marginalized left. It has been said, for example, that with Latino majorities in several U.S. cities "la raza" will finally be able to exercise some political power to counter xenophobic measures like California's Proposition 187, or the infamous welfare reform signed by President Clinton. Indeed, in the November 1996 elections, new Latino citizens voted overwhelmingly Democratic and succeeded in ousting California Representative "B-1" Bob Dornan, a Republican nativist from the Pleistocene Age, with young Democrat (and, need we metion, Latina) Loretta Sánchez.   But we Latinos in los United aren't the least bit homogeneous. We're Salvadorans and Guatemalans, Cubans and Puerto Ricans, Hondurans and Colombians and Nicaraguans, and among the Mexicans you've got to distinguish between recent arrivals, second- and third-generation Chicanos, and the Hispanos of New Mexico whose roots in the Southwest reach back centuries. What's more, we're middle class and working class, white and black and Indian, Catholic and Pentecostal and Jewish. We're everything we are on the other side (that is, in Latin America).   It's hard to imagine the Miami Cubans always agreeing with the California Chicanos or the migrants from Zacatecas always getting along with those from Michoacán (just remember the rumbles between those two in St. Louis, Missouri, which left several dozen dead or wounded). On both sides of the Río Grande we are immersed in a rapid process of mestizaje: cultures and subcultures bloom like the thousand flowers of Mao. For us, this process creates new utopias and new apocalypses simultaneously.       For example, in the barrio of Compton in South L.A.-famous all over the world for its African-American gangs and rappers like Ice Cube-the Latino population (most of them recent arrivals from Mexico and Central America) is threatening to displace the African-American community. As this demographic change occurs, two opposing realities confront each other on the streets of Compton. On the one hand is a racial and class conflict between Blacks and Latinos: the appearance if not the reality of competition between the two for the few poorly paid jobs left in Southern California. "Pinches mayates," say the Mexicans of the Blacks. "Fuckin' wetbacks," say the Blacks of the Mexicans.   Yet, out of this seemingly apocalyptic situation emerge new possibilities. Two years ago in Compton High School, a young Salvadoran was elected president of the student council. He won votes from both Blacks and Latinos. Because the kid speaks English and Spanish. Because he listens to rap and oldies and boleros and rock. Because his girlfriend is Black. Because he was practically born in the barrio (he came from his country of birth when he was six) and he can speak African-American English and Spanish equally well.   We have two presents, two contradictory futures: the chaos of a modern Tower of Babel, or a new Pentecost in which all will understand each other even though we end up speaking different tongues. What threatens us with a new Babel is the economic rupture that pits "marginal" groups against one another over the crumbs of the new economic order, an order which clearly will not offer the majority access to the American dream. As the dream of a better life is thwarted for Mexicans in New York, African-Americans in Chicago, Turks in France, Nigerians in England and Purépechas in Michoacán, desperation grows, and with it, desperate attempts to survive: crossing the border in Arizona and risking dying of thirst in the desert; getting into drug trafficking, prostitution, street vending, the thousand ways you can live off the black market. Or unburdening yourself through violence aimed at people like yourself, like the Zacatecans and Michoacaners who bust each other's heads in St. Louis, or the Mexican "18 Street" gang and the Salvadoran "Mara Salvatrucha" gang who battle over Los Angeles's Pico Union barrio.   Political unity among Latinos, if it ever happens, will be only momentary. The struggle against Proposition 187 in California was a classic example. In 1994, days before the vote that approved the anti-immigrant measure, more than 100,000 people marched in Los Angeles, including plenty of Chicanos and Salvadorans, from recent arrivals to third-generation Americans. After losing the vote, however, the movement fell apart. Desperation and frustration can bring people together, but it can also accelerate fragmentation. Today we are more fragmented than ever, which is terrible, which is beautiful. When the false homogenizing constructs of the past break up, awareness of our diversity (and tolerance, I hope) will increase-along with a sort of existential anguish. If "essential" Mexico doesn't exist, what can we use to fill the void? If the melting pot doesn't exist, how can we reconstruct the American Dream?   This is not a time for unearthing old bullshit or for hanging your head. It is a time for expanding our concept of identity, of tolerance, of democracy. What's crucial is finding a way to connect our processes of cultural and social migration with our economic situation-and forming alliances across the lines of race and ethnicity to confront class inequity head-on. Because by now we all know, as has been said in Chiapas, that where there is hunger there can be no democracy. Or as any of the postborder Pure'pecha kids would say: if there ain't no job, let's head for the other side!         Rubén Martínez can be reached at: ruben62@aol.com Ruben Martinez is an editor at Pacific News Service. Based in Mexico City and Los Angeles, he is working on a book about the cultural and political ferment of the borderlands for Metropolitan/Holt Books.       http://www.zonezero.com/magazine/articles/martinez/manif.en.html    
Tuesday, 11 May 1999
Author:Pedro Meyer
                A Keynote Address by Pedro Meyer at the SPE Conference, Los Angeles, California.   It's with the greatest of pleasures that I take this opportunity to share with you a few thoughts and ideas regarding the technological sea changes brought about on photography, which I believe will affect all of us here tonight.   If you can believe this, at one time I was also ten years old. Between my tenth and thirteenth year, my life changed completely: I had discovered the existence of photography.   I can well remember those moments when I would hold my breath as my eyes visited those little white sheets of paper immersed under a liquid, watching as the magic of the image would appear before my very eyes. I must tell you that I thought that those precious moments of shear amazement would never come back to me, ever again.   But lo-and-behold they have, almost forty years later, with the appearance of personal computers. Only this time the initial excitement has never ceased; every week there is yet a new development which makes last week's surprise look tame in comparison. Twelve years later, the magic continues for me on a daily basis, it never ends, because I'm always starting.   What had captured my imagination as a child were some very modest sheets of paper, exposed by contact and developed in tiny 5x7 trays precariously placed over the toilet seat. What has captured my imagination more recently has been the Internet, a medium which offers something just as unassuming but exhilarating as those initial small images. Only this time they appear on the screen instead of the developer. Here I am, fifty years later, being able to tell you with great excitement that my days of childhood are starting all over again.   Nice as this sounds, I also know that what I find so exciting and pleasurable is not every person's cup of tea. I am well aware that for many of you the simple idea of "new technologies" causes ripples to go down your spine.   Already Nicoló Machiavelli identified in his most famous work, The Prince (1532), "Nothing more difficult than to invent a new system, nothing more dangerous, since the possibilities for success are few. Whoever wants to build a new system makes enemies of all those who benefited and had privileges in the old system, and will receive little support from those that will derive the most benefit from the new order. Their reservation is due on the one hand to their fear of those that oppose them, the defenders of the old regime, and on the other, their skepticism; they don't believe in the new as long as its superiority has not been proven"   Let us listen to the words published on the Internet by a modern day skeptic: "In a culture where new and alluring technology tends to easily seduce us by its wonder into a kind of sleepy stupidity, we need personal defenses for protection from our own dangerously naive enthusiasm. In this world of blinding techno-hype, our survival demands that we learn to shield ourselves from the seductions of technological eloquence"     He goes on to state: "Culture always pays a price for technology. For every advantage a new technology offers, there's always a corresponding disadvantage. All technological change is a Faustian bargain".   With this sort of simplistic rhetoric one doesn't get very far, given that one could easily apply the same logic to anything in nature. For example, wolves have recently been restored to the Yellowstone National Park, after discovering that they represent a very welcome and needed element in the ecosystem of the park and after having been hunted into near extinction. This return of the wolves has been accomplished over the strong protestations of those that perceive such wolves as a threat or at best a nuisance. Tobacco brings harm to millions of smokers, yet it also represents a means for survival to tens of thousands of farmers. Yesterday's floods bring along the promise of new yields in the crops of the following season. As you can observe, the threat of catastrophe, or a "Faustian bargain" can be found wherever one chooses to look. It goes without saying that for every advantage there will always be a disadvantage. Otherwise, how to explain that people do drugs, expose themselves to AIDS or defend the right to own a gun.   I have yet to find evidence for many of the theoretical fears presented by those who declare themselves as guardians of the good order. It goes without saying that technologies can be abused, but so can antibiotics, and this hasn't stopped them from being used properly. I guess that anyone can take issue with something that is exaggerated in its application. As Nicolas Negroponte recently pointed out, even reading for five hours every day is probably not in the best interest of a child, as good and important as reading might be, one has to introduce diversity in a child's upbringing.   How about all those arguments against technologies because they alienate us, or dehumanize our relationships, or what have you; they seem to be more often than not just a provocation. People in pursuit of their ambitions have wrecked more havoc on mankind through their greed, than any examples of technology I can think of.   I don't believe that the present day tribal wars in Africa, with hundreds of thousands killed, have much to do with computers, but with the problems left behind by the departing colonial powers, or for that matter, the dead-end in the lives of literally millions of human beings brought on by the bureaucracies out of control in the socialist nations of the recent past, they had nothing to do with computers either. If anything it was their absence on which so much of their power was based. Lack of controls and information have a wonderful way of ofuscating the goings-on behind the scene. The destruction brought about by massive bombing missions in Vietnam and Cambodia, as the ex-secretary of defense MacNamara recently pointed out, was the folly of politicians and their personal ambitions, not of the tools they had available for inflicting destruction on to others. Those same tools could have been used in a legitimate way for defense purposes as the title of the office he held is named.   When we blame technologies for many of our present day ills, we tend to forget where we come from. The history of mankind throughout the ages and civilizations hasn't been precisely an ideal model which one could say has worked so brilliantly, were it not for technologies. Far from it, if anything, I would venture to say that the overall quality of life has improved to some degree by their use, even though this has been accomplished unevenly between rich and poor, and north and south. One can still see improvements even among those groups which some reactionary anthropologists would like to keep protected from what they say are the "evils" of modern day life. Where "hand made huaraches", which are very hard on the feet, are exalted, these same critics have no compunction in wearing themselves the comfortable sneakers they so decry for having displaced the huaraches.       I find the practice of child abuse or sexual harassment to be a lot more pervasive and responsible for social ills, than any of the much maligned new technologies. I don't believe that one can embrace anything without a critical eye, but having said that, it's also in our best interest to delve beyond the facile commentary based on other simplistic interpretations, to the point where in some intellectual and artistic circles it's almost considered as a badge of honor to be ignorant of what technologies have to offer, let alone actually use them.   I know we have strayed a bit from our course, but then I hear quite often many of these arguments against technologies which makes me consider that these issues are better addressed at the outset, rather than have them linger on in the background without being discussed. Should you agree with some of my premises this leaves a bit more room to immerse ourselves in the issues pertaining to the world of photography without being distracted or dismissed for "our sleepy stupidity or our dangerously naive enthusiasm", as that critic on the Internet would have it. Even though his observations where not addressed to anyone in particular, I consider that at the very least they deserve to be rebutted.   Given that the topic I suggested I would speak about is the "renaissance of photography", we can't overlook the fact that we find ourselves amidst a total revolution the likes of which have not been seen since the onset of the industrial revolution. Photography is but a tiny part of this recent technological sea change, and the transformations are not only in the tools we might decide to use, but in how we as people will eventually respond to some of the issues brought about by such changes. One of the fundamental topics deals with our perceptions of the world as seen through the looking glass of photography.   Let us concentrate for a moment on one of the hottest issues around, and which keeps so many minds in fierce debate and at odds with each other. I'm talking about the "representation of reality", issues such as THE TRUTH in photography (whatever that means for each one of you). It has puzzled me time and time again, why this item of "veracity" should be such a hot topic, when in fact the issue of reality and its representation is such an old one, which precedes photography by literally, centuries.   I am reminded by Maurice Tuchman (Senior Curator Emeritus at the LA County Museum of Art) that crucial chapters of the story of art history have suggested that art's highest achievement is, in literal effect, duplicity: the counterfeit of the appearance of the natural world. According to legend there was this competition between two rival Greek painters Zeuxis and Parrhasisus; Zeuxis painted such realistic grapes that the birds flocked to peck at them. Confident he had demonstrated his superior artistic skill, Zeuxis demanded that Parrhasisus unveil his painting, so that the comparison could be made.   Triumphantly, Parrhasisus revealed that the curtain covering his painting was in fact the painting itself ­Zeuxis himself had been deceived.   I think it's time for us to revisit our collective notion of what a photograph actually deals with. It's my impression we have been pecking at photographic images for the last one hundred and fifty years, much like the birds did with the grapes in Zeuxis painting, trusting we were dealing with reality itself. Only now with a heightened awareness brought on by the notions of what digital photography can accomplish, are we beginning to discover what photography was all along: the very act of deception. Parrhasisus has won once again. The black and white "Moon rise over Hernández" by Ansel Adams, was just that, the photograph itself, and not the landscape.         Mark Haworth-Booth, curator of photographs at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, guides us with patience and great care through the intricacies of what Camille Silvy had accomplished in his 1858 image named "River Scene, France" by creating an image composite from various negatives. In his revealing study, Haworth-Booth narrates how Silvy's "River Scene, France" may appear to have been taken with a wide-angle lens, and goes on telling us "but this effect results in part from the optical effect of the oval format. A rectangular mask placed over the photograph establishes a quite different general impression. The clouds, as they do in the photolithographic version of Aguado's 'Ile des Ravageurs', greatly accentuate the perspectival depth". The difference clouds make to a landscape was well described by a contemporary critic: "A sky should convey the effect of space, not surface, the eye should gaze into, not upon it, and instead of coming forward and throwing back every other object it should retire and bring the landscape into prominence. Landscapes without skies, with only a uniform white tone above the ground, were found wanting by critics. They lacked atmosphere. But the blue sensitive negatives of the time made landscapes with skies an almost impossible challenge." Silvy apparently solved the problem by photographing a landscape and the sky separately, on separate negatives, and probably on different occasions and in different places. He joined landscape and sky at the printing stage. This process had already been publicized widely by Hippolyte Bayard in 1852. This method became a widely accepted practice at the time. With great foresight, Mark Haworth-Booth consulted in 1982 with Ansel Adams, as to his interpretation of "River Scene, France" and these were the words in the letter of response: " You will note that there is a dark value in the trees above the bottom cloud line. This indicates that the masking was not done adequate in this area ( it is not apparent in the trees to the right)". He also detected "something 'phoney' about the light-edged clouds along the horizon; they look to me as they were retouched in." Adams also thought that "the little shed on the left looks dodged or 'bleached'". He pointed out that "there is no reflection of the clouds, the water foreground has been burned-in and the roof of the little shed is in the area of the main burn-in, and consequently darker than expected.... The right hand side of the picture is in a different light from the left hand side. There is a definite 'dodging' area above the roofs on the far left." Adams concluded, we are told by Haworth-Booth : "It is pretty good optically. The 'old boys' did some remarkable 'cut and paste' jobs; I am surprised that the green foliage comes through so well....Apparently it was quiet water and very little wind ( if any)". After reading these remarks I recently asked Sarah Adams, if she thought that her grandfather would have taken to digital photography, to which she responded: "Yes, we believe Ansel would have been immersed in digital technology. Several possible reasons: a. More environmentally sound b. Archivability / restoration of older negs c. Greater access to color realm d. The newness of new tools; recently learned that at the 1915 Pan-American exposition in SF at the age of 13 he taught himself quickly the art of typing and taught others at a booth!!?!:) e. Access to photographic manipulating tools: dodging and burning, etc." I was intrigued by her response, in particular to the last sentence, where she refers to the tools of manipulation, with the dodging and burning, leaving, as I see it, the most important opportunities of digital transformations in the realm of the etceteras. In an oblique manner however, she does acknowledge all that can be accomplished with such tools, as she leaves the door open with that very useful expression that fits so well when we need to be imprecise, etcetera. I don't say this in a critical manner, because there is no room for that; my observations relate to the anecdotal value of how someone chooses to describe what promises to be the biggest transformation of photography since it was first discovered. She is certainly in plenty of good company when it comes to describing the tools that promise to unlock the future of photography as etceteras.         During a recent trip that I made to London, I came across a wonderful painting by Turner at the National Gallery: "The Fighting Temeraire". This particular painting created a furor at the time, because the painter had taken the liberty, for aesthetic reasons, to alter the right order in which the tug's masts and smoke stack ought to go. We are told that the most telling detail in the picture of the ship is a vacant space. A jack-staff would formerly have been fixed to the top of the bowsprit cap; it is now missing. When in harbour, and she had been in harbour for 26 years, the "Temeraire" would have flown the red, white and blue union flag from her jack-staff. From the moment that she was sold out of the Navy, the "Temeraire" could no longer fly the flag. Where the union flag once flew, the tug's smoke now ascends. The full poignancy of the lines Turner adapted from Campbell can now be understood:   The flag which braved the battle and the breeze, No longer owns her.     The angle at which the tug's smoke is emitted is crucially important in making this point. It must belch out from a funnel sufficiently far forward and sufficiently tall for the smoke to be seen as fiery as it leaves the funnel, and seemingly still acrid as it pours backward over the bowsprit cap and through the "Temeraire's" masts. To achieve this effect, Turner ignores all contemporary steamer designs, and all his own first-hand observations of steamers, by placing the funnel foremost in the tug, in front of its mast. Turner's "mistake" in placing his tug's funnel before its mast is evidently deliberate: R.C. Leslie perceived it to be Turner's 'first, strong, almost prophetic idea of smoke, soot, iron and steam, coming to the front in all naval matters'.     To Turner's annoyance, the positions of the tug's funnel and its mast were to be "corrected" by J.T. Willmore in his engraving of 1845. Arguments over Turner's alleged "mistakes" over the position of the tug's mast and the direction of his sunset were revived nearly forty years after the exhibition of his painting, and have hardly ceased.   In the finished engraving, Willmore "clarified" many details which Turner had deliberately left indistinct. R.C. Leslie told Ruskin thirty years later that 'the rigging of the ship in this engraving was trimmed up and generally made intelligible to the engraver by some mechanical marine artist or other... the rigging is certainly not as Turner painted it. As well as extra rigging".   Willmore added a crow's nest, extra gun-ports and, for good measure, cables running out of the "Temeraire's" hawseholes. No cables by which the tug could tow the "Temeraire" are visible in Turner's picture. But Willmore's boldest alteration was to transpose the tug's funnel and its mast. This "correction" appears to have been done without Turner's knowledge. Other changes show how the poetry of his painting is diminished by the engraver's determination to define details which Turner had chosen to leave indistinct.     What is so astonishing is to see in today's digital world, some of the same debates being brought up and with the same sense of self-righteous outcry for what is considered to be the none-altered version of a picture.           Here are some comments taken from NPPA-L, the National Press Photographers Association e-mail list server, and from messages posted to the above address.     MYSTERY OF THE MISSING POLE, SOLVED! There has been some heated back-and-forth discussion on the net concerning an allegedly manipulated image in the May 1995 issue of LIFE magazine (John Filo's Kent State Pullitzer-winning picture). The original photo shows a fence post appearing behind the head of protestor Mary Ann Vecchio; the photo in the May issue of LIFE does not. As LIFE's director of photography, I wanted to respond directly, clearly and put the matter to rest. LIFE did not and does not manipulate news photos. The photo we published was supplied to us by our photo library, the Time-Life Picture Collection, the second largest such repository of catalogued images. Amazingly, the fence post had been airbrushed out by someone, now anonymous, in a darkroom sometime in the early 1970s. The picture had run numerous times, without the fencepost, and without anyone taking notice: in TIME (Nov. 6, 1972, p. 23) PEOPLE (May 2, 1977, p. 37), TIME (Jan. 7, 1980, p. 45), PEOPLE (April 30, 1990, p. 117), to name just a few publications. On deadline, while closing our May issue, the LIFE photo department contacted photographer John Filo, hoping to secure a repro quality print, as is customary at LIFE. Since we could not obtain a print from him directly in time to make our run, we went with the photo we had, not realizing a pole had been removed. One can only wonder why the missing pole hasn't been noticed the previous times it has appeared, even though literally millions of people have seen the fence-post-less photo in publications dating back 23 years. At no time would LIFE's photo, art or production department intentionally alter a news photograph. >David Friend >Director of Photography >LIFE Magazine   The following letter is a response posted on that same bulltetin board on the Internet:   I'm astonished that no one noticed this from 1972 until now, until Muskegon Chronicle staff photographer Ken Stevens pointed it out to me. Apparently Ken Stevens has attention to detail beyond millions of people who have seen the image over time, or has cared enough to notice it and been outraged enough to mention it and inspire this entire discussion. First question: How does an altered photo get into the Time-Life Picture Collection? The Associated Press has transmitted and re-transmitted the "real" version many times. We have it in the Muskegon Chronicle print and digital archives in its original version.   Second question: If this was a traditional print how is it possible that the retouching wasn't noticed? The reproduction of the image in LIFE indicates a "bad" job of the removal of the fence post. Even at 72dpi on the Michigan Press Photographers Association World Wide Web site you can see how poorly it was done. Should this have raised eyebrows, especially when the article was dedicated to the capturing of 4 historical moments that "altered the way we thought and felt about ourselves." Digital images are very easy to alter. Our readers know that this can happen, so why should they believe what they see? They should be ABLE to believe that what they see is indeed a "photographic record" of what was actually there, because of the credibility of the SOURCE of the information. The photographer, therefore, has a huge burden of responsibility to maintain the credibility of his images, and the employer (publisher) in turn has a burden or responsibility to the photographer as well as the reader to do the same. Readers should be able to believe our product because of the SOURCE. We need to achieve our own level of excellence and, personally, be leaders to maintain the credibility of our profession. This must be done by each individual. Once the SOURCE cannot be believed, photojournalism is dead. (Signed)   Brian Masck Technology Coordinator, Muskegon Chronicle Michigan Press Photographers Association       We have all heard these arguments before, and what they all have in common as I see it is style over substance. To begin with, the idea that it's the pictures that should be trusted in order to defend a profession is not understanding the nature of photography in the first place. Why should anyone trust a picture, just because it's a photograph, that is shear nonsense. I don't see journalists all heated up because we disbelieve what people write about. I think on the contrary, they deal with the credibility issue by doing something that I have yet to see happen in the photojournalistic community, and that is, to actually confirm from a second source the information that is delivered. Actually the reverse happens, the image is used as a way of confirming texts, when in reality the picture can be as we now know, just as questionable a source as the text is.   How much more sense would it make if that irate technology coordinator from the Muskegon Chronicle would say "from now on, what we are going to do, given that we are now more conscious that any image can be altered, is to guarantee our readers, that the content of the image satisfies the same demands placed on our writing. The image is not to be given credibility just because it's a picture. The responsibility for guaranteeing the integrity of the information is with the publication, not with the medium. All pictures, such as with text, are confirmed from several different sources when in doubt; otherwise it's the photographer's responsibility to deliver an image with integrity towards the events, which in turn will be constantly monitored. We understand that integrity is not a matter of how the picture was made, but what it's supposed to communicate. Just as we don't oversee if the writers do so by hand or type on a computer, our photographers are free to use any tool they want. The veracity of an image is not dependent on how it was produced, anymore than a text is credible because no corrections were done to it. And by the way, we shall also guarantee that the captions to a picture will always be as accurate as any of the other parts of our paper."   The nice thing about this approach is that it makes sense. It frees photography from the burden of trying to accomplish something for which it is ill suited. The other version just reproduces a modern version of the Inquisition. After all, they apparently were in the same business, that of controlling, not the integrity of thoughts, but how they adhered to what should or could be considered as truthful. The Inquisition was a tribunal of the Roman Catholic Church formed to suppress heresy. I sense that, in some quarters, digital alteration is today seen as heresy.   In closing let me bring you a little story which I read about 25 years ago in a little book, long out of print. The book was Art and the Creative Consciousness by Graham Collier. The author narrates how a few years ago a major London gallery mounted a comprehensive exhibition of Vincent van Gogh's drawings and paintings. It was a hot summer, he tells us, as he remembers the discomfort of standing in the long queue of people patiently seeking admission. Inside, one painting in particular attracted large groups of people.       It was the painting of a Cypress tree on the road to Auvers (which is reproduced here for you, courtesy of me being able to search and find it on the Internet, need I say more?). The writer tells us that a short time later he was in the south of France at Arles, the old Roman town ( and may I also add, now also a center for photography) where Van Gogh made many of his landscapes, when one morning he had a sudden desire to see the real Cypress trees that had inspired the painter. His inquiry led him first to the local librarian and then to the curator of ancient monuments, before he found himself at four o'clock in afternoon facing a "van Gogh" cypress. Here is the photograph that he took that day.       He tells us that the tree appeared massive, tremendously solid and substantial, at which point he realized how two-dimensionally flimsy and fragile the painting was. He thought how strange it was that thousands of people should wait in line to regard a flimsy image when they could come down to Arles and see the solid, real thing. But then a question arose: "Which is more real, the tree in the field or the image of the tree as interpreted by the painter?" For there were no people in line to see the tree in the field". He goes on "I have to admit that the tree in the stubbled wheat field was a disappointment. It had none of the fiery growth or dynamic color displayed in van Gohg's painting. Despite it's concrete monumentality it was just a tree, whereas the painting was the tree plus something else. It is obviously the 'something else' that draws the crowds, and that is the magnetic attraction of art".   The Mexican poet Veronica Volkow wrote, "With the digital revolution, the photograph breaks its loyalty with what is real, that unique marriage between the arts, only to fall into the infinite temptations of the imagination. It is now more the sister of fantasy and dreams than of presence."       I believe photography has taken on a new lease on life, finding itself at new crossroads where the documentary image as well as the artistic expression will evolve on to new levels of magnetic attraction, where the image will be distributed in ways never seen or heard of before, telling the same old stories of mankind if you will, but in so many new ways that we shall find renewed inspirations. That is why for me this is the Renaissance of Photography.   Los Angeles, California October 1, 1995               http://www.zonezero.com/magazine/articles/meyer/01.html      
Tuesday, 11 May 1999
Author:Trisha Ziff
  This is a new and Unusual Dialogue between Chicano, Irish and Mexican artists, writers and composers addressing themes which their divergent cultures share in common: Identity, Discrimination, Exile, Hybridity and Multiculturalism, among others.     Go to exhibition      
Monday, 10 May 1999
Author:Guillermo Gómez-Peña
  "(Mexicans) are simple people. They are happy with the little they got...They are not ambitious and complex like us. They don't need all this technology to communicate. Sometimes I just feel like going down there & living among them." Anonymous confession in the web   I: Tecnofobia:   My "low rider" laptop is decorated with a 3-D decal of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the spiritual queen of Spanish-speaking America. It's like a traveling altar, an office and a literary bank, all in one. Since I spend 70% of the year on the road, it is (besides my "World Link" phone card of course), my main means to keep in touch with my agent, editors and collaborators spread throughout many cities in the U.S and Mexico. The month before a major performance project, most of the technical preparations, and last minute negotiations and calendar changes, take place in the mysterious territory of cyber-space. Unwillingly, I have become a techno-artist and an information superhighway bandido.   I use the term "unwillingly because, like most Mexican artists, my relationship with digital technology and personal computers is defined by paradoxes and contradictions: I don't quite understand them, yet I am seduced by them; I don't want to know how they work; but I love how they look and what they do; I criticize my colleagues who are acritically immersed in las nuevas tecnologías, yet I silently envy them. I resent the fact that I am constantly told that as a "Latino" I am supposedly "culturally handicapped" or somehow unfit to handle high-technology; yet once I have IT right in front of me, I am tempted and uncontrollably propelled to work against it; to question it, expose it, subvert it, and imbued it with humor, radical politics and linguas polutas such as Spanglish and Franglé.   Contradiction prevails. Two years ago, my main collaborator Roberto Sifuentes and I bullied ourselves into the net, and once we were generously adopted by various communities(Arts Wire, and Latino net, among others) we suddenly started to lose interest in maintaining ongoing conversations with phantasmagoric beings we had never met in person(and that I must say is a Mexican cultural prejudice: if I don't know you in person, I don't really care to converse with you). Then we started sending a series of poetic/activist "techno-placas" in Spanglish. In these short communiqués we raised some tough questions regarding access, identity politics and language. Since at the time we didn't quite know where to post them in order to get the maximum response; and the responses were sporadic and unfocused, our interest began to dim. For months we felt a bit lonely and isolated(It's not hard to feel marginal and inconsequential in cyberspace). And it was only through the gracious persistence of our techno-colleagues that we decided to remain seated at the virtual table, so to speak.   Today, despite the fact that Roberto and I spend a lot of time in front of our laptops (when we are not touring, he is in New York, and I'm in San Francisco or Mexico City) conceptualizing performance projects which incorporate new technologies and redesigning our web sites, every time we are invited to participate in a public discussion around art and technology, we tend to emphasize its shortcomings and overstate our cultural skepticism. Why?   I can only speak for myself. Perhaps I have some computer traumas, or suffer from endemic digital fibrosis. I've been utilizing computers since 88; however, during the first 5 years, I used my old Mac as a glorified typewriter. During those years I probably deleted accidentally here and there over 300 pages of original texts which I hadn't backed up in discs, and thus was forced to rewrite them by memory (Some of these "reconstructed texts" appeared on my first book "Warrior for Gringostroika", Greywolf Press, 1994).The thick and confusing "user friendly" manuals fell many times from my impatient hands. I spent many desperate nights cursing the mischievous gods of cyber-space, and dialing promising "hotlines" which rarely answered, or if they answered, they provided me with complicated instructions I was unable to follow..   My bittersweet relationship to technology dates back to my formative years in the highly politicized ambiance of Mexico City in the 70's. As a young "radical artist", I was full of ideological dogmas and partial truths. One such partial truth spouted that high-technology was intrinsically dehumanizing(enajenante in Spanish); that it was mostly used as a means to control "us" -little techno-illiterate people, politically. My critique of technology overlapped with my critique of capitalism. To me, "capitalists" were rootless(and faceless) corporate men who utilized mass media to advertise their useless electronic gadgets, and sold us unnecessary apparatuses which kept us both, eternally in debt(as a country and as individuals) and conveniently distracted from "the truly important matters of life". Of course, these "important matters" included sex, music, spirituality and "revolution" California style (meaning, en abstracto). As a child of contradiction, besides being a rabid "anti-technology artist," I owned a little Datsun; and listened to my favorite U.S. and British rock groups in my Panasonic importado, often while meditating or making love as a means to "liberate myself" from capitalist socialization. My favorite clothes, books, posters and albums, had all been made with technology by "capitalists"; but for some obscure reason, that seemed perfectly logical to me.   Luckily, my family never lost their magical thinking and sense of humor around technology. My parents were easily seduced by refurbished and slightly dated American and Japanese electronic goods. We bought them as fayuca (contraband) in Tepito neighborhood, and they occupied an important place in the decoration of our "modern" middle-class home. Our huge color TV set for example, was decorated as to perform the double function of entertainment unit and involuntary post modern altar -with nostalgic photos of relatives, paper flowers, and assorted figurines all around it; and so was the humongous sound system, next to it, with an amph, an 8-track recorder, 2 record players and 17 speakers which played all day long, a syncretic array of music including Mexican composer Agustin Lara, Los Panchos (of course with Eddie Gorme), Sinatra, Esquivel, Eartha Kit, tropical cumbias, Italian opera and rock & roll(In this sense, my father was my first involuntary instructor of post modern thought). Though I was sure that with the scary arrival of the first microwave oven to our traditional kitchen, our delicious daily meals were going to turn overnight into sleazy fast food, soon my mother realized that el microondas was only good to reheat cold coffee and soups. The point was to own it, and to display it prominently as yet another sign of modernidad. (In Mexico, modernity is conceived as synonymous with U.S. technology and pop culture).When I moved to California(and therefore into the future), I would often buy cheesy electronic trinkets for my family(I didn't qualify them as "cheesy" then). During vacations, to go back to visit my family with such presents ipso facto turned me into an emissary of both prosperity and modernity. Once I bought an electric ionizador for grandma. She put it in the middle of her bedroom altar, and kept it there -unplugged of course, for months. When I next saw her, she told me: "Mijito, since you gave me that thing(still unplugged), I truly can breath much better." And she probably did. Things like televisions, short wave radios and microwave ovens; and later on ionizers, walkmans, crappy calculators, digital watches and video cameras, were seen by my family and friends as alta tecnologia (high technology), and their function was as much pragmatic as it was social, ritual, sentimental and aesthetic.   It is no coincidence then that in my early performance work, cheap technology performed ritual and aesthetic functions as well. Verbigratia: For years, I used video monitors as centerpieces for my "video-altars" on stage. Fog machines, strobe lights and gobos, megaphones and voice filters have remained since then, trademark elements in my "low-tech/high-tech" performances. By the early 90's, I sarcastically baptized my aesthetic practice, "Aztec high-tech art", and when I teamed with Cyber Vato Roberto Sifuentes, we decided that what we were doing was "techno-razcuache art". In a glossary which dates back to 94, we defined it as "a new aesthetic that fuses performance art, epic rap poetry, interactive television, experimental radio and computer art; but with a Chicanocentric perspective and an sleazoide bent."   II: Mythical Differences   The mythology goes like this. Mexicans(and by extension other Latinos) can't handle high-technology. Caught between a preindustrial past and an imposed modernity, we continue to be manual beings; homo fabers per excellence; imaginative artisans (not technicians); and our understanding of the world is strictly political, poetical or metaphysical at best, but certainly not scientific. Furthermore, we are perceived as sentimentalist and passionate creatures (meaning irrational); and when we decide to step out of our realm, and utilize high technology in our art (most of the time we are not even interested), we are meant to naively repeat what others-mainly Anglos and Europeans- have already done.   We, Latinos, often feed this mythology, by overstating our "romantic nature" and humanistic stances; and/or by assuming the role of colonial victims of technology. We are always ready to point out the fact that social and personal relations in the US, the land of the future, are totally mediated by faxes, phones, computers, and other technologies we are not even aware of; and that the overabundance of information technology in everyday life is responsible for America's social handicaps and cultural crisis. Paradoxically, whether we like it or not, it is our lack of access to these goods what makes us overstate our differences: We, "in the contrary", socialize profusely, negotiate information ritually and sensually; and remain in touch with our (still intact?)primeval selves. This simplistic and extremely problematic binary world view portrays Mexico and Mexicans, as technologically underdeveloped, yet culturally and spiritually superior; and the US as exactly the opposite.   Reality is much more complicated: The average Anglo American does not understand new technologies either; people of color and women in the U.S. clearly don't have "equal access" to cyberspace. Furthermore, American culture has always led the most radical(and often childish) movements against its own technological development and back to nature. Meanwhile, the average urban Mexican is already afflicted in varying degrees with the same "First World" existential illnesses produced by high technology and advanced capitalism. In fact the new generations of Mexicans, including my hip generación-Mex nephews and my 8 year-old fully bicultural son, are completely immersed in and defined by personal computers, Nintendo, video games and virtual reality(even if they don't own the software). Far from being the rrrroomantic preindustrial paradise of the American imaginary, the Mexico of the 90's, is already a virtual(and therefore mythical) nation whose cohesiveness and fluctuating boundaries are largely provided by television, transnational pop culture, tourism, free market, and yes, the internet.   But life in the ranchero global village is ridden with contradictions: Despite all this, still very few people south of the border are on line, and those who are wired, tend to belong to the upper and upper middle classes, and are related to corporate or managerial metiers. Every time my colleagues and I have attempted to create a binational dialogue via digital technologies (ie. link Los Angeles to Mexico City through satellite video-telephone), we are faced with a myriad complications. In Mexico, the few artists with ongoing "access" to high technologies who are interested in this kind of transnational techno-dialogue, with a few exceptions, tend to be socially privileged, politically conservative and aesthetically uninteresting. And the funding sources down there willing to fund this type of project are clearly interested in controlling who is part of the experiment.   The zapatista phenomenon is a famous exception to the rule. Techno-performance artist extraordinaire El subcomandante Marcos communicates with the "outside world" through a very popular web page sponsored and designed by Canadian liberals(It is still a mystery to me how his communiques get from the jungle village of "La Realidad", which still has no electricity, into his website overnight). However, this web page is better known outside of Mexico, for a simple reason: The Mexican Telephone company makes it practically impossible for anyone living outside the main Mexican cities to use the net, arguing that there are simply not enough lines to handle both telephone and internet users.   "The world is waiting for you-so come on!" ad for America On-line   III: The Cyber-migra   Roberto and I arrived late to the debate, along with a dozen other Chicano experimental artists.   When we began to dialogue with US artists working with new technologies, we were perplexed by the fact that when referring to cyber-space or the net, they spoke of a politically neutral/raceless/genderless and classless "territory" which provided us all with "equal access", and unlimited possibilities of participation, interaction and belonging, specially "belonging"(in a time in which no one feels that they "belong" anywhere). Yet there was never any mention of the physical and social loneliness, or the fear of the "real world" which propels so many people to get on line and pretend they are having "meaningful" experiences of communication or discovery. To them, the thought of exchanging identities in the net and impersonating other genders, races or ages, without real (social or physical) consequences seemed extremely appealing and liberating(and by no means, superficial or escapist).   The utopian rhetoric around digital technologies, specially in California, reminded Roberto and I of a sanitized version of the pioneer and frontier mentalities of the Old West, and also of the early century futurist cult to the speed, size and beauty of epic technology(airplanes, trains, factories, etc.) Given the existing "compassion fatigue" regarding political art and art dealing with matters of race and gender, it was hard to not see this feel-good philosophy(or better said teosophy) as an attractive exit from the acute social and racial crisis afflicting the U.S.   Like the pre-multicultural art world of the early 80's, the new high-tech art world assumed an unquestionable "center", and drew a dramatic digital border. And on the other side of the tracks, there lived all the techno-illiterate (and underfunded) artists, along with most women, Chicanos, Afro-Americans and Native Americans. Those of us living South of the digital border were forced to assume once again the unpleasant but necessary roles of undocumented immigrants, cultural invaders, techno-pirates, and virtual coyotes (smugglers).   We were also shocked by the benign or quiet(not naive) ethnocentrism permeating the debates around art and digital technology, specially in California. The master narrative was either the utopian language of Western democratic values (excuse me!!) or a perverse form of anti-corporate/corporate jargon. The unquestioned lingua franca was of course English, "the official language of international communications"; the theoretical vocabulary utilized by critics was hyper-specialized (a combination of "software" talk; revamped post-structuralism and psychoanalysis), and de-politicized (post colonial theory and the border paradigm were conveniently overlooked); and if Chicanos and Mexicans didn't participate enough in the net, it was solely because of lack of information or interest, (not money or "access") or again, because we were "culturally unfit". The unspoken assumption was that our true interests were "grassroots" (and by grassroots I mean, the streets in the barrio, our logical place in the world), representational or oral (as if these concerns couldn't exist in virtual space). In other words, we were to remain painting murals, tagging, plotting revolutions in rowdy cafes, reciting oral poetry and dancing salsa or quebradita.   IV: 1st draft of a manifesto: Remapping cyberspace   In the past two years, many theoreticians of color, feminists and activist artist have finally crossed the digital border without documents and, as a result, the debates have become more complex and interesting. Since "we" (as of now, the "we" is still blurry, unspecific and ever changing) don't wish to reproduce the unpleasant mistakes of the multicultural days, nor do we wish to harass the brokers and curators of cyberspace as to elicit a new backlash, our strategies and priorities are now quite different: We are no longer trying to persuade anyone that we are worthy of inclusion(we are de facto insiders/outsiders at the same time, or temporary insiders perhaps, and we know it). Nor are we fighting for the same funding(since serious funding no longer exists specially for politicized experimental art). What we wish is to remap the hegemonic cartography of cyberspace; to "politicize" the debate; to develop a multi centric theoretical understanding of the cultural, political and aesthetic possibilities of new technologies; to exchange a different sort of information (mytho poetical, activist, per formative, imagistic); and to hopefully do all this with humor and intelligence. Chicano artists in particular wish to "brownify" virtual space; to "spanglishize the net", and "infect" the lingua franca;.   With the increasing availability of new technologies in our communities, the notion of "community art" and "political" or politicized art is shifting dramatically. Now the goals, as defined by activist artists, are to find innovative grassroots applications to new technologies; to help the Latino youth literally exchange their guns for computers and video cameras, and to link all community centers through the net. Artist made CD-roms can perform an extremely important educational function for the youth: they can function as community "memory banks" ("encyclopedias chicanicas"). But to attain all this, the larger virtual community must get used to a new cultural presence-the cyber immigrant/mojado; sensibility; and many new languages spoken in the net. All this is yet to be attained.   Guillermo Gómez-Peña, lives and works between Mexico City and San Francisco, Calif. and can be reached at NAFTAZTC@AOL.com   http://www.zonezero.com/magazine/articles/gomezpena/gomezpena.html      
Monday, 10 May 1999

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