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Author:ZoneZero
    At ZoneZero we are pleased to announce the selection of 12 of our galleries by the Siggraph 2007 curating committee to be part of the ZoneZero gallery at this year's Siggraph Annual Conference in San Diego. The work of the selected ZoneZero artists will be projected as part of this important gathering of digital innovators. The exhibition was held at the San Diego Convention Center from August 5th- August 9th. The exhibition will then tour with the ACM SIGGRAPH Traveling Art Show. We invite you to take a look at the website of the organizers: siggraph.org   We would also like to take advantage of this occasion to remind you just how important your contributions are to us. ZoneZero offers a unique opportunity to make your work known to the world, so take advantage of it! Send us your images to be considered both for the gallery and portfolio sections. Also, don't forget to take a peak at the selected galleries if you haven't done so before.   Our congratulations to all participating photographers.   Shahidul Alam Brahmaputra A journey to one of Asia's greatest rivers http://www.zonezero.com/exposiciones/fotografos/shahidul/index.html       Jean Marc Caimi Kids http://zonezero.com/exposiciones/fotografos/caimi/index.html           Shadi Ghadirian 'Qajar' and 'Like Every Day' (Gallery 1 and Gallery 2) http://www.zonezero.com/exposiciones/fotografos/ghadirian/index.html           Oscar Guzmán The City of Galvez http://zonezero.com/exposiciones/fotografos/guzman/index.html             Pok Chi Lau China 1979-2005 Asian-Americans http://www.zonezero.com/exposiciones/fotografos/chilau/index.html           Daniel Machado The Rodelu Family http://www.zonezero.com/exposiciones/fotografos/machado/index.html             Pedro Meyer I Photograph to Remember http://zonezero.com/exposiciones/fotografos/fotografio/index.html             Uri Nesterov Ukraine http://www.zonezero.com/exposiciones/fotografos/nesterov/index.html               Francisco Mata Rosas Mexico Tenochtitlan http://www.zonezero.com/exposiciones/fotografos/matafco/index.html             Inés Ulanovsky Photos of you http://www.zonezero.com/exposiciones/fotografos/ulanovsky/inicialeng.html                 Wyatt Gallery Katrina-Tsunami, remnants after the storm http://zonezero.com/exposiciones/fotografos/wyatt/index.html             Li Zhensheng Red Color News Soldier http://www.zonezero.com/exposiciones/fotografos/zhensheng/index.html               August 2007         http://zonezero.com/magazine/articles/siggraph/index.html    
Sunday, 19 August 2007
Author:Incisive Media Investments
  In a landmark case, JK Rowling, author of the phenomenonally successful Harry Potter series, has lost a privacy battle against one of the world's biggest celebrity agencies, writes Katie Scott. JK Rowling has lost her bid to win a High Court injunction banning the further publication of an image of her infant son.   The photograph showed the author and her husband, Dr Neil Murray, pushing their then 20-month-old son in a buggy down a street in Edinburgh. It was published by the Sunday Express on 3 April 2005 with a piece about Rowling's approach to motherhood. The image was taken covertly using a long lens by a photographer working for the international agency, Big Pictures. The author claimed the image violated her son's right to privacy and applied for compensation under the Data Protection Act 1998.   The newspaper settled with the author but Big Pictures opted to defend itself against the claim. And the verdict, on 7 August, from Mr Justice Patten, went its way.   While the judge recognised the author's efforts to keep her children out of the limelight, he ruled that 'the law does not in my judgement allow them to carve out a press-free zone for their children in respect of absolutely everything they choose to do... there remains an area of routine activity which when conducted in a public place carries no guarantee of privacy'.   Test case   The judge also recognised that this was a test case 'designed to establish the right of persons in the public eye to protection from intrusion into parts of their private life even when they consist of activities conducted in a public place'. He went on to draw a distinction between a child or adult 'engaged in family and sporting activities and something as simple as a walk down the street or a visit to the grocers to buy milk'. He said: 'The first type of activity is clearly something of a person's private recreation time intended to be enjoyed in the company of family and friends. But if the law is such as to give every adult or child a legitimate expectation of not being photographed without the consent on any occasion on which they are not on public business, then it will have created a right for most people to the protection of their image. If a simple walk down the street qualifies for protection then it is difficult to see what would not.'   But the Judge admitted that rulings in cases of this sort could not be reached by considering simply if the claimant was in a public or private place. He said: 'In my opinion, the widespread publication of a photograph of someone which reveals him to be in a situation of humiliation or severe embarrassment, even if taken in a public place, may be an infringement of the privacy of his personal information. Likewise, the publication of a photograph taken by intrusion into a private place (for example by a long distance lens) may in itself be such an infringement, even if there is nothing embarrassing about the picture itself.'   Appeal likely   Mr Justice Patten also granted Rowling leave to appeal, and Charles Swan of media law specialists Swan Turton added his certainty that the author will use this right. 'This judgment is likely to be appealed from the High Court to the Court of Appeal, and may then be appealed again to the House of Lords. Both the High Court and the Court of Appeal are bound by the decision of the House of Lords in the Naomi Campbell case (BJP, 12 May 2004). If this case is appealed all the way to the House of Lords then it may review its decision in the Campbell case in the light of the subsequent European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) decision in the case of Princess Caroline of Monaco (who won a case at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) citing that images published of herself and her children on holiday breached her right to have her private and family life respected under Article 8 of the Human Rights Convention, BJP, 14 July 2004). Swan added: 'If JK Rowling loses in the House of Lords she can then take her case to the ECHR. So this is only round one in a potentially long-running legal battle and I wouldn't be surprised if the author emerges triumphant at the end of it all. This could have significant implications for photographers and agencies as it would broaden the scope of privacy law in the UK'.   Agency victory   However, for the time being, Big Pictures remains victorious. Chief executive Darryn Lyons said in a statement that he is delighted at the verdict. 'We were surprised to be served with Court proceedings in relation to a photograph, which in my view is totally unremarkable. We made every reasonable effort to reach an out of court settlement of this matter but unfortunately this could not be achieved. We were therefore left with no option but to defend ourselves and are delighted that the Judge recognised that David Murray had no cause for complaint.' The Murrays, however, expressed their disappointment at the ruling and stated that their claim seemed to 'have been misunderstood'. 'We see no legitimate reason why David should have his photograph taken and then published in the press.' Big Pictures was awarded £40,000 interim costs pending the outcome of any appeal and a final costs assessment. A temporary ban has been placed on the publication of the image also pending any appeal.     August 2007 © Incisive Media Investments Ltd 2007  
Friday, 17 August 2007
Author:Picture New York
      Dear friends, please take the time to read the petition of fellow photographers and filmmakers whose right to photograph in public space is threatened by a new set of rules currently under consideration in New York City. The petition calls for the city to dismiss the regulations and hold a new public hearing so that the community has a saying in the shaping of the new policies. We invite you to sign the petition and show your support on this very important issue. We invite everyone to participate, no matter where you live, since it is an issue that affects us all, even as tourists.   www.pictureny.org/petition/index.php    
Monday, 13 August 2007
329. Nueva Luz
Author:En Foco
    En Foco and Nueva Luz   En Foco is a non-profit organization that supports contemporary fine art and documentary photographers of diverse cultures, primarily U.S. residents of Latino, African and Asian heritage, and Native Peoples of the Americas and the Pacific.   For over 30 years, it has been in the forefront of documenting the artistic journeys created by artists often overlooked by the mainstream media and the arts. Through its programs, artists are free to explore or reinvent cultural traditions, challenge preconceived notions, and engage audiences in a manner that honors all.   We are delighted to present the newest issue of Nueva Luz photographic journal, featuring the work by Larry McNeil, Dulce Pinzón and Sama Alshaibi with an essay by Hannah Frieser from Light Work in Syracuse, NY; and an article by Native American curator Nadema Agard, about her upcoming exhibition "The Fort Apache Connection" The PDF will be available as a free PDF download for the next 40 days (24 of July to 4 September 2007).   Some browsers open up electronic PDF files in the same window you are browsing on, this could cause you to lose the PDF file when you get off-line.   To make sure the Nueva Luz PDF file is downloaded to your hard drive: 1. On the "Nueva Luz" icon, right-click the mouse, (apple+click on Mac ) without releasing it and a menu will pop out.   2. Select the "Download Link to Disk" or "Save Link to the Desktop" option to select the location to which the PDF file will be downloaded.   PDF File Size 3.90 Mb   To find out more (or subscribe to the publication), visit www.enfoco.org "Nueva Luz" was available to be downloaded until January 10th 2007. Please register here in order to receive our Newsletter as well as other gifts.         http://zonezero.com/books4sale/nuevaluz/index.html    
Sunday, 12 August 2007
Author:Pedro Meyer
    After more than a decade of writing our monthly editorial for ZoneZero, I have decided to take a rest giving myself a sabbatical for the next twelve months. Nonetheless, you will be getting some very exciting editorials as I have invited some of the best people from all parts of the world, who can write about photography to replace me. It will, I am sure, be a very interesting exercise to get this diversity of minds and ideas and read what they have to say, as usual you will be able to interact with them in our forums.   I will not be that far from you even though I will not be writing the editorials. I will remain committed from the side-lines, to make sure we maintain the quality that you have come to expect from ZoneZero. Hopefully we will come up with new ideas that will give ZoneZero the continuous update that is required in a medium -the internet- that never stops changing.   During this time, I will be engaged in a variety of new activities, all running concurrently. I am going to move to a new home very close by, as I am leaving the place I have lived in for the past 25 years, so it can become the new home for the Pedro Meyer Foundation, which will be involved with the advancement of photography in a variety of fields, but mainly in the area where digital technologies intersect with content. The program of activities to be announced in the near future will be made available to you through ZoneZero.   We are also in the process of organizing the largest exhibition that has ever been presented of Mexican Photography in China. It will contain the work of 45 photographers. If you want to see what the the work we are going to show looks like, you are welcome to take a look at www.fundacionpedromeyer.com this is the first exhibition sponsored by the Pedro Meyer Foundation.   And lastly, I'm in the process of presenting next year a retrospective of my own work entitled HERESIES; it is going to open in sixty museums around the world, simultaneously, in October 2008. And for this, of course, we are also in the midst of editing and designing a book/catalogue to go along with the exhibition.   One of the more important aspects of this project on which we have been working now for four years, is the data base of all my work. Over 300,000 images and an untold number of documents, all accessible over the internet. What this database allows, is to begin a dialogue on how to change a "dead archive" into a "live" one, and thus changing the entire dynamic of what has been historically done with archives be that of photographers or for that matter any artist. The database is completely homemade, for we have programmed, designed and captured the data here in our Mexico City studio. The access to the database has at this time allowed 20 curators to work on diverse aspects of the Heresies retrospective, and all working simultaneously from different parts of the world. In due time we shall also be announcing how you can access all this material, stay tuned.   Pedro Meyer August, 2007 Coyoacan, Mexico   As always please joins us with your comments in our forums.         http://zonezero.com/editorial/agosto07/august07.html  
Thursday, 02 August 2007
Author:Edgar Pulido
  Date: July 26, 2007 6:21:03 PM   Hola Un saludo, he leído y navegado por la página casi desde sus comienzos, no recuerdo cuanto tiempo ha pasado, y ahora que me registro por segunda ocasión, ¨la primera fue hace mucho¨ me da nostalgia y a la vez emoción el pensar.. ¨como dice el editorial¨ la tecnología se nos vino encima... Un Saludo a todos en zonezero   Atentamente Edgar Pulido  
Thursday, 26 July 2007
Author:BBC News
    The growing problem of accessing old digital file formats is a "ticking time bomb", the chief executive of the UK National Archives has warned.   Natalie Ceeney said society faced the possibility of "losing years of critical knowledge" because modern PCs could not always open old file formats.   She was speaking at the launch of a partnership with Microsoft to ensure the Archives could read old formats.   Microsoft's UK head Gordon Frazer warned of a looming "digital dark age".   Costly deal   He added: "Unless more work is done to ensure legacy file formats can be read and edited in the future, we face a digital dark hole."   Research by the British Library suggests Europe loses 3bn euros each year in business value because of issues around digital preservation.   The National Archives, which holds 900 years of written material, has more than 580 terabytes of data - the equivalent of 580,000 encyclopaedias - in older file formats that are no longer commercially available.   Ms Ceeney said: "If you put paper on shelves, it's pretty certain it is going to be there in a hundred years.   "If you stored something on a floppy disc just three or four years ago, you'd have a hard time finding a modern computer capable of opening it."   "Digital information is in fact inherently far more ephemeral than paper," warned Ms Ceeney.   She added: "The pace of software and hardware developments means we are living in the world of a ticking time bomb when it comes to digital preservation.   Historically within the IT industry the prevailing trend was for proprietary file formats. Gordon Frazer, Microsoft   "We cannot afford to let digital assets being created today disappear. We need to make information created in the digital age to be as resilient as paper."   But Ms Ceeney said some digital documents held by the National Archives had already been lost forever because the programs which could read them no longer existed.   "We are starting to find an awful lot of cases of what has been lost. What we have got to make sure is that it doesn't get any worse."   The root cause of the problem is the range of proprietorial file formats which proliferated during the early digital revolution.   Technology companies, such as Microsoft, used file formats which were not only incompatible with pieces of software from rival firms, but also between different iterations of the same program.   Mr Frazer said Microsoft had shifted its position on file formats.   "Historically within the IT industry, the prevailing trend was for proprietary file formats. We have worked very hard to embrace open standards, specifically in the area of file formats."   Microsoft has developed a new document file format, called Open XML, which is used to save files from programs such Word, Excel and Powerpoint.   Mr Frazer said: "It's an open international standard under independent control. These are no longer under control of Microsoft and are free for access by all."   But some critics question Microsoft's approach and ask why the firm has created its own new standard, rather than adopting a rival system, called the Open Document Format.   Instead, Microsoft has released a tool which can translate between the two formats.   Ben Laurie, director of the Open Rights Group, said: "This is a well-known, standard Microsoft move.   "Microsoft likes lock-ins. Typically what happens is that you end up with two or three standards."   The agreement between the National Archives and Microsoft centres on the use of virtualisation.   The archive will be able to read older file formats in the format they were originally saved by running emulated versions of the older Windows operating systems on modern PCs.   For example, if a Word document was saved using Office 97 under Windows 95, then the National Archives will be able to open that document by emulating the older operating system and software on a modern machine.   Ms Ceeney said the issue of older file formats was a bigger problem than reading outdated forms of media, such as floppy discs of various sizes and punch cards.   "The media it is stored in is not relevant. Back-up is important, but back-up is not preservation."   Adam Farquhar, head of e-architecture at the British Library, praised Microsoft for its adoption of more open standards.   He said: "Microsoft has taken tremendous strides forward in addressing this problem. There has been a sea change in attitude."   He warned that the issue of digital preservation did not just affect National Archives and libraries.   "It's everybody - from small businesses to university research groups and authors and scientists.   "It's a huge challenge for anyone who keeps digital information for more than 15 years because you are talking about five different technology generations."   The British Library and National Archives are members of the Planets project which brings together European National Libraries and Archives and technology companies to address the issue of digital preservation.   He said that open file formats were an important step but there was still work to be done.   "Automation is a key area to work on. We need to be able to convert hundreds and even thousands of documents at a time," he said.     © BBC News           http://zonezero.com/magazine/articles/timebomb/index.html      
Monday, 16 July 2007
Author:Philip Gefter
  Curator of Photohgraphy, Dies at 81.   John Szarkowski, a curator who almost single-handedly elevated photography’s status in the last half-century to that of a fine art, making his case in seminal writings and landmark exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, died in on Saturday in Pittsfield, Mass. He was 81. The cause of death was complications of a stroke, said Peter MacGill of Pace/MacGill Gallery and a spokesman for the family.     In the early 1960’s, when Mr. Szarkowski (pronounced Shar-COW-ski) began his curatorial career, photography was commonly perceived as a utilitarian medium, a means to document the world. Perhaps more than anyone, Mr. Szarkowski changed that perception. For him, the photograph was a form of expression as potent and meaningful as any work of art, and as director of photography at the Modern for almost three decades, beginning in 1962, he was perhaps its most impassioned advocate. Two of his books, “The Photographer’s Eye,” (1964) and “Looking at Photographs: 100 Pictures From the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art” (1973), remain syllabus staples in art history programs. Mr. Szarkowski was first to confer importance on the work of Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander and Garry Winogrand in his influential exhibition “New Documents” at the Museum of Modern Art in 1967. That show, considered radical at the time, identified a new direction in photography: pictures that seemed to have a casual, snapshot-like look and subject matter so apparently ordinary that it was hard to categorize. In the wall text for the show, Mr. Szarkowski suggested that until then the aim of documentary photography had been to show what was wrong with the world, as a way to generate interest in rectifying it. But this show signaled a change. “In the past decade a new generation of photographers has directed the documentary approach toward more personal ends,” he wrote. “Their aim has been not to reform life, but to know it.” Critics were skeptical. “The observations of the photographers are noted as oddities in personality, situation, incident, movement, and the vagaries of chance,” Jacob Deschin wrote in a review of the show in The New York Times. Today, the work of Ms. Arbus, Mr. Friedlander and Mr. Winogrand is considered among the most decisive for the generations of photographers that followed them. As a curator, Mr. Szarkowski loomed large, with a stentorian voice and a raconteurial style. But he was self-effacing about his role in mounting the “New Documents” show. “I think anybody who had been moderately competent, reasonably alert to the vitality of what was actually going on in the medium would have done the same thing I did,” he said several years ago. “I mean, the idea that Winogrand or Friedlander or Diane were somehow inventions of mine, I would regard, you know, as denigrating to them.” Another exhibition Mr. Szarkowski organized at the Modern, in 1976, introduced the work of William Eggleston, whose saturated color photographs of cars, signs and individuals ran counter to the black- and-white orthodoxy of fine-art photography at the time. The show, “William Eggleston’s Guide” , was widely considered the worst of the year in photography. “Mr. Szarkowski throws all caution to the winds and speaks of Mr. Eggleston’s pictures as ‘perfect,’ ” Hilton Kramer wrote in The Times. “Perfect? Perfectly banal, perhaps. Perfectly boring, certainly.” Mr. Eggleston would come to be considered a pioneer of color photography. By championing the work of these artists early on, Mr. Szarkowski was helping to change the course of photography. Perhaps his most eloquent explanation of what photographers do appears in his introduction to the four-volume set “The Work of Atget,” published in conjunction with a series of exhibitions at MoMA from 1981 to 1985. “One might compare the art of photography to the act of pointing,” Mr. Szarkowski wrote. “It must be true that some of us point to more interesting facts, events, circumstances, and configurations than others.” He added, “The talented practitioner of the new discipline would perform with a special grace, sense of timing, narrative sweep, and wit, thus endowing the act not merely with intelligence, but with that quality of formal rigor that identifies a work of art, so that we would be uncertain, when remembering the adventure of the tour, how much our pleasure and sense of enlargement had come from the things pointed to and how much from a pattern created by the pointer.” Thaddeus John Szarkowski was born on Dec. 18, 1925, in Ashland, Wis., where his father later became assistant postmaster. Picking up a camera at age 11, he made photography one of his principal pursuits, along with trout fishing and the clarinet, throughout high school. He attended the University of Wisconsin, interrupted his studies to serve in the Army during World War II, then returned to earn a bachelor’s degree in 1947, with a major in art history. In college, he played second-chair clarinet for the Madison Symphony Orchestra, but maintained that he held the post only because of the wartime absence of better musicians. As a young artist in the early 1950s, Mr. Szarkowski began to photograph the buildings of the renowned Chicago architect Louis Sullivan. In an interview in 2005 in The New York Times, he said that when he was starting out, “most young artists, most photographers surely, if they were serious, still believed it was better to work in the context of some kind of potentially social good.” The consequence of this belief is evident in the earnestness of his early pictures, which come out of an American classical tradition. His early influences were Walker Evans and Edward Weston. “Walker for the intelligence and Weston for the pleasure,” he said. In 1948, Evans and Weston were not yet as widely known as Mr. Szarkowski would eventually make them through exhibitions at MoMA. By the time Mr. Szarkowski arrived at the museum from Wisconsin in 1962 at the age of 37, he was already an accomplished photographer. He had published two books of his own photographs, “The Idea of Louis Sullivan” (1956) and “The Face of Minnesota” (1958). Remarkably for a volume of photography, the Minnesota book landed on The New York Times best-seller list for several weeks, perhaps because Dave Garroway had discussed its publication on the “Today” program. When Mr. Szarkowski was offered the position of director of the photography department at the Modern, he had just received a Guggenheim Fellowship to work on a new project. In a letter to Edward Steichen, then curator of the department, he accepted the job, registering with his signature dry wit a reluctance to leave his lakeside home in Wisconsin: “Last week I finally got back home for a few days, where I could think about the future and look at Lake Superior at the same time. No matter how hard I looked, the Lake gave no indication of concern at the possibility of my departing from its shores, and I finally decided that if it can get along without me, I can get along without it.” A year after arriving in New York, he married Jill Anson, an architect, who died on Dec. 31. Mr. Szarkowski is survived by two daughters, Natasha Szarkowski Brown and Nina Anson Szarkowski Jones, both of New York, and two grandchildren. A son, Alexander, died in 1972 at age 2. Among the many other exhibitions he organized as a curator at the Modern was “Mirrors and Windows,” in 1978, in which he broke down photographic practice into two categories: documentary images and those that reflect a more interpretive experience of the world. And, in 1990, his final exhibition was an idiosyncratic overview called“Photography Until Now,” in which he traced the technological evolution of the medium and its impact on the look of photographs. In 2005, Mr. Szarkowski was given a retrospective exhibition of his own photographs, which opened at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, touring museums around the country and ending at the Museum of Modern Art in 2006. His photographs of buildings, street scenes, backyards and nature possess the straightforward descriptive clarity he so often championed in the work of others, and, in their simplicity, a purity that borders on the poetic. From his own early photographs, which might serve as a template for his later curatorial choices, it is easy to see why Mr. Szarkowski had such visual affinity for the work of Friedlander and Winogrand. When asked by a reporter how it felt to exhibit his own photographs finally, knowing they would be measured against his curatorial legacy, he became circumspect. As an artist, “you look at other people’s work and figure out how it can be useful to you,” he said. “I’m content that a lot of these pictures are going to be interesting for other photographers of talent and ambition,” he said. “And that’s all you want.”   Philip  Gefter © New York Times, Published: July 9, 2007   John Szarkowski John Szarkowski, who died on the 7th of this month, had a long run and made, to say the least, a big impact on the world of Photography. If you want to read about his many accomplishments and enormous influence, there are plenty of places to do that. This is simply a brief memory of the first time I met him: In the early 1980s, the Photography department at the Museum of Modern Art had what was essentially an open door policy for looking at work (for all I know, it may continue to this day). No appointment was necessary; you simply put your pictures in a box, brought them in by Wednesday afternoon and left them with the secretary at the front desk. On Thursday morning, the photography curators would gather and go through all the portfolios that had been dropped off. You'd then come by in the afternoon to pick up your stuff, and that was usually that. The best you'd get was a form letter, thanking you for giving the staff the opportunity, blah, blah blah...Of course, every once in a great while, someone would get lucky and sell the museum a print or two. I first brought my own pictures there in 1983. When I came to pick them up, the secretary informed me that one of the curators wanted to speak to me. She walked back into a hallway while I stood at the desk, stunned. I heard someone say "John will talk to him", and about fifteen seconds later, John Szarkowski was offering me his hand, "Bladen?", he said. "It's Baden", I mumbled. "Ah, Baden. I'm John Szarkowski." "I know." "You do? OK, well, let's go into my office." We sat down across from each other and he, I think, began to tell me how much the department enjoyed looking at my work. I say 'I think', because I was terribly nervous and, even though I could hear his words, their meaning didn't register. He began to refer to specific images in my portfolio, but his descriptions sounded entirely unfamiliar. Before long, I was convinced that he had confused my work with someone else's. "I think you've made a mistake," I finally blurted out, " I don't think you're talking about my pictures." Szarkowski paused. "Well, maybe you're right. Why don't we bring them in and take a look?" 'Ain't this the story of my life,' I'm now thinking. 'The only reason I get an audience with this guy is because he thinks I'm someone else...' So they bring in a Fiberbilt case full of photos and, lo and behold, they turn out to be mine. I left the museum that day with one less photograph in my portfolio, and the promise of a check for $125. Not a lot of money for a photograph, even in 1983, but it gave me a sense of confidence that I have rarely, if ever, felt since. The Idea of John Szarkowski, to appropriate a phrase, may have fallen out of grace in the past decade or two; his writings, according to several schools of thought, smack of an old-fashioned patriarchy. While this view is not entirely unjustified, I continue to believe that no one has written more clearly, more compellingly and more beautifully about photographs and photography. In The Photographer's Eye, Looking at Photographs and many of the other books in what is practically a bottomless bibliography, John Szarkowski had the ability to illuminate truth, seemingly effortlessly, with simplicity, elegance and clarity. KB Covering Photography       http://zonezero.com/magazine/obituaries/szarkowski/index.html    
Monday, 09 July 2007
Author:Pedro Meyer
  I have heard time and time again, how the market for photo documentary work is shrinking and there is no work to be found, and the little there is pays very poorly.   The question to be asked is if this statement is true, and if so what can be done about it.   In general terms I think there is indeed a big change in the size and scope of the market for photographic work available to freelance photographers. Today there are numerous solutions for those in need of photography to illustrate whatever is needed, other than hiring photographers to do such jobs. With online stock photography being just one of the many options to those in need of photographs, to the fact that with digital cameras many people have taken to make their own pictures rather than hiring someone for that purpose. Check the following article on corbis images.   So let us agree on the fact that the market has changed enormously. I would ask further, why are so many photographers so surprised? Unless they have been living a cave over the past decade, they would have probably noticed how everybody else's job has also been radically transformed. Why would it be any different for photographers? Just ask any musician how their jobs have been in a process of total turmoil.   When I was a kid there was a man who operated the elevator in the building where my father had his office in downtown Mexico City, He would also repair watches as he brought people up and down all day long. He would sit on a little stool and have a nice tidy little desk beside him, which would hold all the parts of the watch he was repairing as well as his work tools. He had found a way to service the continuous flow of people in and out of his elevator, while also being able to concentrate on his watches. He was always looking up with one of those special eye pieces that work as an enlarging glass, in his right eye, and then looking back at the watch. I never ceased to be amazed at his ability to cope with two such different jobs.   As you can well imagine today that elevator is automatic and does not require someone sitting there all day long to operate it. The watches he used to repair have been replaced by cheap watches that are better replaced with new ones, rather than spending on a repair. I don't know what became of this man, but I do know that both jobs he had no longer exist.   So rather than feeling sorry for oneself, it is best to move on, and ask, now what? How will a photographer survive in todays world?   The answers of course depend on where one is living, but in general it is reasonable to imagine that the variables are not that huge. The first basic question is, who actually needs your service? Stop thinking in terms of what you need, but rather in who you can provide a service to. If you can start making a list of who it is that might need the type of photography you like doing, then it is just a matter of finding who those potential clients are and start contacting them. Check the article on Times Magazine.     You then compete with other photographers on the basis of price, or on the basis of the uniqueness of your photography, or on both. But be prepared to consider that this is a process that is constantly in flux, in other words, you can't think anymore in terms of just sitting back to relax once you found the answers to your question. The market is changing all the time, and what might be a good solution today will no longer be so in a year or two.   I googled "photo agencies" and came up with over 19 million pages. That should tell you something about what is going on. The largest photo agencies are finding that they have a hard time competing against newer smaller agencies that charge a fraction of the price that the bigger agencies are charging, and this process will keep on changing as people figure out how to deliver a service for the best price possible while still making a profit. Something, which by the way, the larger agencies have not been having.   Complaining will not help in finding any solution to the changing market place. Searching for ways to offer a service, is what will be a much more promising route.     Let's look at some ideas:   A- Read all your local newspapers for interesting stories, or go out to local community centers, and hear what the locals have to say about their lives. Surely something will come up that will catch your attention. Be careful to choose ideas that are VISUAL, as you are going to produce a a photographic story. Try to imagine, as well, how the local can be of interest to the universal. In other words, doing a story that only touches upon the interests of the local people makes it less appealing on a world wide scale, and indeed we are in a world wide market place.   B- Add value to the images you are taking. For instance, in addition to the pictures you took, you could deliver a color selection that you can take to print. Place the images into a PDF presentation. In short, help the client make the best use of your images. You can even make printed books, to give to your clients. Increasingly wedding photographers are using such techniques, even going to the extent of making video presentations to go with the pictures, that will allow the newly wedded couple have a one stop shopping experience for all their visual needs.   C- Think of yourself in terms of a story teller, rather than simply a photographer. That will open up all sorts of creative ideas, consider who needs stories that have not been told before, or told as well. You now have all kinds of new delivery methods, which can go from an online over Internet presentation to CD ROM/DVD; PDF; formats. There are many more publications of every sort now, than at any time before.   D- If you were a very good printer in the lab, you might use the expert eye that you developed over the years, in order to solve new problems. Printing with a digital printer, still requires that expert eye trained to see what a good print looks like. Or you could scan images for a living, this is not such an easy job and is highly valued.   E- Add sound to your still images. That is another way of enhancing values and finding new clients. There are a number of web sites (New York Times, Washington Post) who have been publishing stories were use multimedia.   F- The sole market for educational and training programs is larger that it ever was in the past. Contribute more than just attempting to deliver the pictures, try to contribute ideas that are related to educational programs which might need video feeds or texts.   G- If you like food, then you have a world of ideas to explore just taking pictures of food preparation in places that are new, other than the traditional kitchen and well lit studio. These are fun stories, and offer an array of possibilities for documentary photographers.   H- I don't know why documentary photographers always have to think in terms of making pictures of the down trodden, the poor, or the exploited, in short, stories of injustice. I always find it very suspect when the photographer thinks that his or her ax to grind can only be by addressing histories that are hugely dramatic, such as wars, famine, drought, plague, invasion or destruction. What about the other side of life? I am thinking of the very wonderful story by Lauren Greenfield, Girl Culture Or her recent story she did on the super rich in China.   I- I don't think there is a woman, man or child, that has not gotten some sort of spam mail, offering penis enlargement products, or fake Rolex watches. Yet I have never seen anywhere a story related to all of these, so called "industries". I am sure there must be someplace in the world, a warehouse from which all this stuff gets sent out. I could also imagine, that someone must produce all these items, but where? how? who makes all these watches? in China? what do those factories look like? How many fake Rolex watches get made each hour? And all those women students who offer their bodies over the internet, in every variety of peep show possible, in order to supplement their income as "students". That is a culture unto itself, where are all those stories?   J- the excuse that there are no major magazines interested in publishing interesting stories is probably untrue. What I think has happened is that the major magazines are the ones that are in a process of publishing remission, but that does not mean that there aren't hundreds and hundreds of new publications, all over the world, which use a lot of photographic essays. Every time I travel by plane, I find the pocket in front of my seat, all sorts of publications, that use lots and lots of photography. Just go to a new stand, and count the number of magazines that you can find there.   K- If you look at what happened with commercial television, and apply the same sort of analysis to photography you will see what I mean. Sure, the large television networks have lost audience, but does that mean that people are watching less television? I don't think so. They are just watching it through different channels, such as cable for instance, or Youtube over the internet, or DVDs. Yes the markets have changed, but not so the consumption of video images and stories. Story telling is alive and well.   I am sure that you can contribute any number of even better ideas to this roster of possibilities, the whole point is to bring out the notion that we have a lot more to gain, by thinking constructively rather than complaining. And just as in any other endeavor at this time, we as photographers have to also find ways to adjust our work to the prevailing change of winds. Remember, "it is not the gale but the set of the sails".   Pedro Meyer July, 2007 Coyoacan, Mexico   As always please joins us with your comments in our forums.     http://zonezero.com/editorial/julio07/july07.html    
Monday, 02 July 2007
Author:David Schonauer
    We just learned that Richard Whelan, one of the great writers on photography in the 20th century, has died. Whelan passed away two weeks ago—for some reason, the New York Times has yet to publish a biography—but his family hasn’t released the cause of death. He is being buried next to the photographer Robert Capa, the subject of one of his biographies, in a Quaker cemetery in upstate New York tomorrow.   Besides Robert Capa, Whelan’s biographical subjects included Alfred Stieglitz. He also wrote the book on Robert Capa’s brother, Cornell Capa, the photojournalist and founder of the International Center of Photography in New York. Whelan was also the consulting curator of the Robert and Cornell Capa Archives at the ICP and a longtime faculty member at the ICP school. At the time of his death Whelan was working on two new projects for the ICP. One was an exhibition of Capa work based on new research. He was also working on a show about Gerda Taro, Capa’s lover who was killed in Spain. For most of us who love the history of photography, Whelan’s crowning achievement was his book “Capa: A Biography.” In Whelan’s hands, Capa’s life came off as both epic and intimate, the story of an extraordinary man as well as a story about the meaning of history and art.   David Schonauer June 2007         http://zonezero.com/magazine/obituaries/whelan/index.html      
Sunday, 01 July 2007
Author:Nemanja Brankovic
  Date: June 25, 2007 9:14:14 PM   Well, actually I have been visiting you site for a long time. In first I was learning how to become a photographer and I discovered what I want to do for the rest of my life. Observing the portfolios that the people have on your site inspired me to experiment and learn new things. I would like very much to receive your bulletin and also to participate with my portfolio.   Thank you very much, Nemanja Brankovic  
Monday, 25 June 2007
Author:Luis González de Alba
    I got tickets to the premiere of the opera “Frida”, in Spanish, but I gave them away the night of the show. I hate Frida Kahlo and her era. It’s not hatred without motive; I’m convinced that the very attitude that has taken to such heights a mediocre painter obsessed with her misfortune (For God’s sake! Why didn’t that tram finish her off?), is the one that forces Mexico to remain a poor country. Mexico has plenty of resources, in contrast to Korea, Singapore and Ireland, which were examples of underprivileged countries 30 years ago. These nations used to produce massive tides of immigrants, but they are rich today, because they chose to follow a path opposed to the one of Mexico.   Let’s go into detail. Frida, with her Tehuana costumes, is the very example of a woman that can’t work in a factory or even take a bus to go to work. In regard to her painting, she represents what the American Art market can draw out of its sleeve. The times of Frida and Diego are the times of cheap nationalism, which is the foundation of the policies that keep us chained to poverty and preserve the defects that hold the Mexicans back. One of these defects is xenophobia: foreigners always come to steal from us, and the proof is that they become rich as soon as they arrive here, according to a wise old taxicab driver. It is not that a self-absorbed people watches back and sees them prosper quickly because they work harder or have better education or skills. No. They take advantage from Mexicans.       This is ludicrous. However, I have my own reversed xenophobia. I see that the children of foreigners (such as the offspring of a German: Mr. Kahlo) are always the ones that impose us folklore as the only possible future: “Why do you want to get rid of your traditions?” The folklore-loving foreigners and their Mexican intellectual counterparts call upon eye-catching popular customs, such as embroidery, and disregard all of their oppressiveness. Indians are advised to preserve traditions that produce poverty by themselves, such as the “direct” democracy by show of hands, that keeps a chieftain forever in power, or the “mayordomías” (personal duty of paying for communal religious festivities), this custom annihilates what Marx called the “primal accumulation of capital”. The fiestas make pretty nice photographs, but they condemn people to remain without a water supply or a cement floor in their homes, and with no other healthcare that the one provided by the local shaman (Gabriel Figueroa made a lovely portrait of him). A woman carrying a beautiful water pitcher makes a much better picture than a woman opening a faucet. How can anyone compare the beauty of a stone grinder to a vulgar electric blender? This self-righteous crowd wants to ban hamburgers in Oaxaca but doesn’t mind the APPO (Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca) hooligans burning down theaters.   A great deal of Mexicans believe the government’s fairy tale of Mexico owning its oil. This is why PEMEX has to open new refineries with private capital in Texas, thus creating jobs for Texans, they don’t realize that if the Value-added Tax goes from 15% to a generalized 10%, that means is less, not more. The surveys say that Mexicans oppose the free market system in the production of energy, although the bad telephone service of today is immensely superior to the one we had when the telephone company “belonged to us”. Just like Frida to her wheelchair, they remain attached to the ideological crutches imposed by governments since 1917. They will not let go of Frida, Diego, the Muralist Movement or our glorious stone age past.   We are indoctrinated in our schools to feel as the children of the vanquished instead of the children of the conquerors. Few people bother to question this doctrine. Mayan astronomy? They could predict eclipses, but they thought a giant snake devoured the sun. There was not an explanation of nature within nature itself, which is the basis of science. The Aztecs were still hunters and collectors in the 1300’s. The Mayas had gone through that stage 1000 years before, and the Chinese 8000 years before. This indoctrination comes from the time of Frida, a time in which the unions of workers and other corporations joined forces with the government and taught us that the government, like the Divine Providence of yesteryear, would take care of all our needs.   All of this can be seen in the cult to Frida Kahlo, which is not her fault. She was merely a dreadful painter that obsessively made self-portraits, and promoted hairy Mexican girls.   Luis González de Alba   Luis González de Alba (1944) was the 1968 student movement leader. He is the author of the book Los días y los años (The Days and the years, Publish by Era 1971) and numerous novels and works of scientific circulation.     http://zonezero.com/magazine/articles/gonzalez/index.html    
Friday, 08 June 2007
Author:Mariana Gruener
  Perhaps you are of the likes of Katrin Eissman, who realized that she could not get all she wanted to express with a single camera shot and decided to make image composites. She started out cutting photos with her scissors, put them together with tape or did photo-montages in the darkroom, until one day she found that a computer offered the possibility of putting her ideas to practice in a much faster, easier and simple way.   This new book by Katrin is the kind you want to keep right next to the coffee mug because it will often get you out of trouble. This book is for anyone using Photoshop who wants to get acquainted with or would like to improve his or her selection techniques.   The book has four sections:   * Tools and selection techniques * Working with layers * Masks * Selecting and working with very detailed images.   Katrin explains that, before starting to manipulate an image, we must be very clear about what we want to accomplish, this will enable us to decide which is the most appropriate selection method. We tend to use recipes and each image requires something different due to its color, texture or the way it will be combined.   We must take into account that the original digital photos (the ones coming from the camera or scanner, the background layer) are like the negatives, so they should not be altered. She advises to make a copy of the background layer file before starting. Even though this takes up space of your hard drive, you cannot afford the risk of losing an image if you have second thoughts.   She recommends to always have a camera with you, so you can shoot your own image bank, this will ensure that you have the material you need, according to your needs and personal style.   The book opens up the door to use tools that are forgotten because they are so intimidating, like the pen tool. She tells us effective ways to use it, and makes us understand that mastering this tool requires patience.   “Masks are your friends” is the title of a chapter that seeks that the reader will lose the fear of using this technique. The function of a mask is to control, which part of the image will be modified and which will not. Katrin suggests a variety of efficient solutions, with tools I thought were meant to do other things, such as filters, channels, layers and color contrast, which render impeccable selections without having to spend long hours painting with the brush tool or clicking the mouse hundreds of times.     Anybody using Photoshop must understand that layers are crucial. They allow us to work without destroying or altering previous steps. Layer masks are the program’s soul, they provide the ability to combine images without destroying them. They allow you to move, hide, mix, experiment or combine different shapes- all of it without losing a single pixel.   The comprehension of the examples and techniques used in the book demands, in my opinion that you work only with the shown examples, this means that you must follow recipes that are appropriate for those images. That is why you have to try them out with your own pictures and be sure that you’ve learned something that can be applied to your own work.   Katrin tries to keep the spirits high in her book, since many times we think that making a selection takes less time than it actually does, we tend to loose our patience, but she is able to come up with funny remarks that helps us to relax. It takes time to process everything that is taught in this book, and be able to master the tools, so we will not overwork our photographs and they look the wrong way for abusing the tools. The important thing is to have an idea of what we want to accomplish with our image, and to look for the best way to do it, not to be an expert in techniques that we don’t know how to use.   I give the book two thumbs up. I enjoyed doing every exercise and discovering the many things that can be done with the program. It is not easy to understand, you need to have previous knowledge of Photoshop and be familiar with digital image manipulation. But you must keep it near you, because it will get you off the hook Reading it once is not enough, you will keep coming back to it over and over. The selection process requires patience, lots of practice and creativity.   Mariana Gruener       Katrin Eismann Internationally recognized artist, author, and educator who has been working with digital imaging tools since 1989. Katrin's extensive teaching and speaking engagements address the latest tools and techniques of digital imaging and the impact they are having upon professional photographers, artists, and educators. She has taught and presented in Europe, Asia, South America, and throughout North America. Katrin studied photography and electronic still imaging at the Rochester Institute of Technology. She was the first intern at the Kodak Center of Creative Imaging in Camden, Maine. Three years later she was the Director of Education and had implemented a rigorous curriculum that focused on imaging, design, and multimedia. In 1998: Katrin co-authored; Web Design Studio Secrets and Adobe Photoshop Studio Secrets, 2nd edition for IDG Books; chaired two Thunder Lizard Productions Focus on Photoshop conferences. In 1999: Silicon Graphics Computer Corporation selected Katrin to participate in the Vanguards of Visual Computing Program. In 2000 she taught at numerous workshops and at the School of Visual Arts in NYC. In 2002: Katrin received her MFA degree in Design from the School of Visual Arts in NYC.       Photoshop. Masking & Compositing by Katrin Eismann Máscaras y montajes con PHOTOSHOP. por Katrin Eismann Spanish Edition Edited By Editorial Anaya   This wonderful book by Katrin Eismann which is a must for every photographer, is now also available in Spanish language.       http://www.zonezero.com/magazine/dcorner/gruener02/mask.html    
Friday, 01 June 2007
Author:Mariana Gruener
  On the introduction of this book we read: “Our photographs contain our memories and our legacy, they connect us to our family and friends. Even if they are cracked, yellowed or damaged, we don’t throw them away. No matter how tattered or faded a photograph is, it still helps us remember and learn about the past”.   The latest edition of Photoshop by Katrin Eismann helps everyone -from retouching personal photographs to professional portraits- to get started in Photoshop 7.   The structure of the book is based on the order of steps Katrin recommends for working on the images. First, there are your Photoshop basics, then file organization and finally the use of tools. She suggests to do color correction prior to eliminating impurities and damages of the image. She shows several creative ways for retouching portraits and the techniques used by the pros in advertising. Katrin illustrates the reader how to solve a problem in several manners sharing tips from her expert friends.   One of the features of this edition is the possibility to download the images used in the book for practice from www.digitalretouch.org   Other good pieces of advice from Katrin include learning the shortcuts on the keyboard, thus keeping away from the arm strenuous mouse and avoiding filters and utilities that do not have specific values for risk of over altering the image. She stresses the importance of working with layers, of grouping them and assigning them names and keeping the original image unaltered. This enables you to do corrections step by step avoiding waste of time and effort. She also suggests to step back and taking a good look before using the most obvious tool. Seeing how the image is constructed will take you to the more efficient ways of dealing with a problem.   Kim stresses that there are no recipes, it is important to be creative and have good knowledge of the tools to use them in different kinds of images. Even though the book focuses on portrait restoration and retouching and the many ways to increase quality, its techniques and tips are useful for other kinds of photography.   One of the great things about this book it that the multiple techniques and ways shown in it keep you from giving up on significant photographs that are practically on the verge of disappearance.   The book focuses on making the subject look good. Chapter 9 deals with techniques to make people look slimmer or teeth whiter, improving the tones of skin color and deleting unwanted individuals. It is quite a fun chapter however, as Katrin herself points out, these recommendations are based on certain aesthetic standards that emphasize a prevailing beauty ideal that is not the only one that exists or should exist.   Chapter 10 will come in very handy for those dwelling in advertising and fashion photography. These kind of images demands a subtler retouching that is vital for advertisements, such as flashlights reflecting on the eye, trimming down the inexistent potbelly of a model, or making her look tanned. The book has a light mood, cracking a few jokes while explaining the different techniques. The book is didactic and has plenty of examples, but in my opinion practicing with the same set photographs to try to get the same results of the book limits the understanding of the tool’s capabilities, to solve a different problem would force to improve the learning of the technique.   There is a number of books on Photoshop on the shelves, the programs evolves every year, on the one hand getting user-friendlier but on the other more complex. When selecting a book one must take into account that Photoshop is a very extensive program that can be used for very different purposes, from the slight improvement of a good photograph and the restoration of a very damaged one to the creation of imaginary worlds or people. There are no limits to what you can do with Photoshop if you have an idea; it is a question of deciding what you want to know. If you want to go for portraits, Katrin Eismann’s book is a good choice.   Mariana Gruener       Katrin Eismann Internationally recognized artist, author, and educator who has been working with digital imaging tools since 1989. Katrin's extensive teaching and speaking engagements address the latest tools and techniques of digital imaging and the impact they are having upon professional photographers, artists, and educators. She has taught and presented in Europe, Asia, South America, and throughout North America. Katrin studied photography and electronic still imaging at the Rochester Institute of Technology. She was the first intern at the Kodak Center of Creative Imaging in Camden, Maine. Three years later she was the Director of Education and had implemented a rigorous curriculum that focused on imaging, design, and multimedia. In 1998: Katrin co-authored; Web Design Studio Secrets and Adobe Photoshop Studio Secrets, 2nd edition for IDG Books; chaired two Thunder Lizard Productions Focus on Photoshop conferences. In 1999: Silicon Graphics Computer Corporation selected Katrin to participate in the Vanguards of Visual Computing Program. In 2000 she taught at numerous workshops and at the School of Visual Arts in NYC. In 2002: Katrin received her MFA degree in Design from the School of Visual Arts in NYC.       http://www.zonezero.com/magazine/dcorner/gruener/restore.html      
Thursday, 31 May 2007
Author:ZoneZero
Vilma Espin, the wife of Cuba's acting leader Raul Castro and for years one of the most important women in Cuba, died last Monday, June 18 in Havana. She was 77. Espin fought alongside Fidel Castro during the Cuban revolution and married his brother Raul shortly after the revolution. Espin's power base was the Federation of Cuban Women, which she founded in 1960 and fashioned into an important pillar of support for the communist government. She served as its president for four decades, with virtually every woman and adolescent girl on the island listed as members.       She was credited with improving the status of women in a society known for its history of machismo by articulating the need for a more equal environment between the sexes. She gave prominent voice to improvements in maternal and child health-care policies as well as the need for women to educate themselves. She successfully lobbied for passage of the Cuban Family Code of 1975, which codified the duties of men to participate in household responsibilities, such as child raising. "From the feminist perspective, she empowered women in a home to say to a husband, 'It's my national, patriotic duty to work, to volunteer in the community," said Ileana Fuentes, executive director of the Cuban Feminist Network, a Miami-based social-needs organization that tries to help women in Cuba. "Whether you are for or against Castro, that's an empowering tool for women." June 2007       http://zonezero.com/magazine/obituaries/espin/index.html    
Thursday, 31 May 2007
Author:Vesta Mónica Herrerías
    Whenever the Magnum agency is mentioned, the names of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa and David Seymour immediately stand out among the founding members list. However, there is another founding member that -perhaps because of his shyness and modesty- has been forgotten: British photographer George Rodger.   This makes Carole Naggar’s biography of Rodger; George Rodger, An Adventure in Photography 1908-1995 a book of great importance that not only allows us to get close to one of the top photo reporters of the 20th Century, but also tells us about an unknown episode regarding the founding of the most important news photo agency of the world. Anyone that reads this book will understand the passion that a photo reporter has for his work, and realize that to talk about Rodger’s legacy and his importance, certain aspects of his personal life cannot be left out. It might come across as an exaggeration, but whenever Rodgers was away from the battlefields, he suffered from migraines, nightmares and severe depressions.   It took several years to Rodger to find his true vocation. Since he was a child he was independent, quiet, discreet and adventurous. At 17, due to his bad behavior his father pulled him out of school and sent him to work in a farm. Completely bored, a few moths later he managed to board a cargo ship to the Middle East and did not stop traveling ever since.   Even though he started to take photographs at 15, his dream was to become a writer. During all his lifetime, he recorded his experiences in his dairy, to which Naggar was given access to write his biography. At 21 Roger decided to try his luck in the United States, but 1929 was not a good time to find a job, even so, he survived the Great Depression working in several factories and farms. In 1935, he went back to England, morally defeated and with no money. He casually spotted an advertisement in the BBC´s newspaper The Daily Telegraph, which would change his life. They required a photographer. Rodger got the job with a 6-photograph portfolio, thus embarking in a new phase of adventures and stories, but also of terrible personal tragedies that shaped his character and work.   After a couple of years of working for the BBC and improving his technical knowledge, Rodgers resigned and looked for a news agency to represent him. By then it was clear to him that his calling was to be a photo reporter. He got himself a Leica and a Rolleiflex and set out to take pictures. He started to publish in many magazines and from the very beginning, wrote his own captions. Rodger was a photographer that told stories.   During the German bombings of London in1940 Life magazine hired him. The success of his stories prompted Life to send him to Africa as a correspondent for two weeks, which became two years. Rodger took advantage of his experiences during the Great Depression and began to deliver his best work. In time, he befriended the great photographers of his time: Robert Capa, Hans Wild and Bill Vandivert.   Many of his pictures rapidly became icons, among them the ones he took at the Berger-Belsen concentration camp in1945, a few days after the liberation of Germany. These photographs, well known all over the world, haunted Rodgers the rest of his life, he refused to look at them for the following 45 years.   During WW II Rodgers was a Life correspondent in 61 countries. He used to say that his goal was to photograph common people in extraordinary situations with a touch of humor. Africa was his passion. He returned there another15 times to do documentaries of several tribes.   The book alternates its narrative with quotes from Rodger’s diaries, his letters to his first wife Cicely (from whom he spent long seasons away) and letters to other friends and relatives. This allows us to reconstruct his puzzling personality and understand why he took such risks during his assignments.   In 1947 Robert Capa decided to found a news photography agency that secured the complete independence, protected the copyrights and commercialized the work of its members. Rodger, Cartier-Bresson and David Seymour were the only ones invited. Finally, the agency also included Bill Vandivert and his wife, Rita, who was to be the president and director of the agency’s New York office. Maria Eisner would be the treasurer and secretary of he Paris office. To improve coverage, Capa divided the world according to everybody’s personal interests: Seymour would be in charge of Europe, Cartier –Bresson of the Far East and China, Vandivert of the U.S. and Rodger of the Middle East. This organization has enabled this agency to overcome the many difficulties and remain one of the most important up to date. Carole Naggar’s book is a remarkable biography of this photographer. Nevertheless, we would expect a warmer narrative from Nagger, George Rodger’s close friend and collaborator for more than 18 years. Exacting readers will be hindered by the conventional chronological order of the 20-chapter book and a certain -somehow unecessary- details of the photographer’s personal and intimate life. Apart from these flaws it is quite an enjoyable book and without question an indispensable material for those interested in the history of photojournalism.       NAGGAR, Carole: "George Rodger, an adventure in photography 1908-1995", Syracuse University Press, New York, 2003. Other books recommended by Carole Naggar on George Rodger: George Rodger: Magnum Opus by Colin Osman and Martin Caiger-Smith (1987) George Rodger en Afrique Carole Naggar (1984) Catalog of retrospective exhibitions Humanity and Inhumanity: The Photographs of George Rodger. Barbican Galleries in London. Vesta Monica Herrerias (México): At the moment lives in Paris, where she is doing a PHd on Mexican bourgeoisie at the Sorbonne Nouvelle University.   http://www.zonezero.com/magazine/articles/rodger/rodger.html    
Wednesday, 30 May 2007
Author:Doifel Videla
  I     THE PROJECTED OPTICAL IMAGE   In December 2001, an eventful conference was held in New York, crowning two years of intense research during which the painter David Hockney collected evidence to prove the thesis that the nature of painting was radically altered when it adopted the projected image as a tracing pattern. According to Hockney, this change took place in the city of Bruges as early as 1430, that is, at the beginning of the Renaissance.   The book Secret Knowledge: rediscovering the lost techniques of the old masters is the outcome of this research and presents the paintings themselves as "scientific evidence". A comparative analysis that places hundreds of images next to each other ordered chronologically from 1300 to 1870 illustrates an irreversible change in the way the Flemish, and later on the Italians, painted from the middle of the fourteenth century onwards. A study by Charles Falco, an optical scientist at the University of Arizona, demonstrates the use of optical devices (concave mirrors and magnifying glasses) and suggests the possible methods used to take advantage of the projected image to trace drawings or produce the necessary marks for the creation of lens-based paintings. Such a technique would have given an unmistakable optical look to the paintings that would soon be found all over Europe.     In this way, the use of the projected image as a tracing pattern would have become the basic means of registering visual reality in the Renaissance and during the next four centuries. This optical-graphical tradition would continue until 1839 when it was replaced by the optical-chemical system—better known as photography—, freeing painting at last from what Hockney has called the "tyranny of optics".   If we take an ordinary magnifying glass and place it some 20 cm from a wall opposite a window, we will be able to see the projection of a small inverted image, analogous to what we can see with our eyes. This principle—which was also used in "magical" shows since ancient times—is based on a natural phenomenon that can be observed even without the use of a lens (by means of a pinhole in a wall of a darkened room). This phenomenon had already been described by Mo Ti in China in the 5th century BC, by Aristotle in the 4th century BC and by the Arab Alhazen of Basra in the 10th century AD. Giambattista Della Porta, for example, in his book Magiae Naturalis of 1558, recommended the use of the camera obscura to help painters achieve correct perspectives. All subsequent versions of the optical camera, including present-day digital cameras, are based on the same principle: a lens produces an inverted image of reality that is then recorded.   Hockney recreates one of the possible techniques employed to paint with the assistance of a concave mirror. From Hockney's Secret Knowledge, p. 76.   Hockney's thesis now reinforces the fact that optics has played a major role in the visual arts. From tracing the projected image by hand, to the chemical fixing of the image on a photographic plate and the current means of recording it using a CCD chip, it can be said that what has changed is just the recording system, not the underlying principle. Whether or not optical instruments are used to produce an image could even form the basis for a typology of the visual arts, in contrast to the one based on the medium.     II   PHOTOPTICS   Some four years ago, in my classes for film students at Arcis University in Santiago de Chile, and in several workshops, I began questioning the term photography, which comes from photos = light and graphos= writing or drawing. I was bothered by the fact that the term photography was used to name a chemical system invented precisely to replace the graphical system.   The error originated, in my opinion, not only with the name itself, but also with its definition. Any book on photography defines a photograph as an "image obtained through the action of light on a photosensitive material." If we took this as our starting point, then a bikini line on tanned skin would fit our definition perfectly, as would the mark left by any object on a newspaper exposed to the sun, or the marks on metals such as silver, bronze or copper. Clearly, we would never have come up with photography as we know it by paying heed to such a definition; even though in this field no one seems to care about definitions. However, an accurate definition that can encompass not only photography, but also analogous disciplines such as Renaissance painting, cinema and video, is possible. An example of this definition could be: "Manual, chemical or electronic recording of an optically projected image", or more concisely: "The recording of a projected image". Unknown. The Miraculous Mirror, 18th century. Engraving. International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester, N.Y.   On the other hand, if we wanted to give a name to this definition, we would clearly need to include the term optic because if light is not organized optically, as occurs in our eyes, it loses all meaning by not providing an image and becoming just a radiant chaos. If, for example, we defined writing as the action of ink on paper, without mentioning the pen as the organizing element, we would have to accept that an inkblot on paper is writing. In recent years I have proposed the term Photoptics, which could stand for optically organized light.   Optics, as a system that organizes light, gives birth to a kind of syntax that is analogous to the distinctive features of the human eye and can be understood by our interpretative system. This optical syntax allows us to make sense of notions such as focusing, framing, choosing a vantage point, varying the perspective, etc. This role of optics goes far beyond the recording system, which can vary (it can be a pencil, a photographic plate, a CCD chip) without altering the continuity and conceptual unity of the visual syntax and can be decoded by any person with an optical education. On the other hand, images that are not generated through an optical process are the expression of associative mental images, rather than visual representations, and they have played a different role in the history of the visual arts. A classic example is children's painting, which is very similar in most parts of the world, and omits entire portions of the visual reality in order to obtain a mental representation. These images represent the child's understanding more than what he or she actually sees. Lens-based images are point-by-point mappings from an analogous source, such as the projected image. For them to work, they need to create a matrix first, and this is precisely what Renaissance painting did by submitting itself to the optical pattern, unconsciously transforming itself into a kind of photography.   Hans Holbein. The Ambassadors, 1533. In the foreground, a skull that has been deformed through optical means can be observed. From David Hockney's book, p. 56.   The title of Hockney's book "Secret knowledge…" reminds us that the use of projected images was kept secret for centuries. I would claim that it was not a secret as such, otherwise Hockney would not have been able to find sufficient evidence to prove his thesis on so short notice. It could rather be the result of a deliberate attempt at providing painting with a sacred and supernatural aura. This can easily be understood if we recall that for centuries painting served a religious function, that the Inquisition prohibited the use of optical instruments and that in general no painter would have cast doubts on his own reputation by giving technical explanations to the public and his competitors. The truth is that before the advent of optical devices nobody, no civilization or culture, had managed to produce "realist" paintings, and suddenly, after this date, most painters showed an almost incomprehensible talent for them. It goes without saying that various generations of painters had to pass through a long period of apprenticeship, surrendering rigorously to the “tyranny” of optical instruments, before this concept was finally accepted as "natural".     The "secret" fell into oblivion and the quasi-religious desire for the existence of demigods in the pantheon of arts could count on the accomplice negligence of most collectors, admirers and museum curators. After all, why look for explanations if time itself would take care of erasing all traces? As Hockney explains, the use of computers would change all of this by making it possible to discover by simulation the type of optics and techniques that could have been used. After all, paintings cannot be hidden and they are themselves the evidence that a projected image was used as pattern.   Carel Fabritius. 1625. View of Delft with a Musical Instrument Seller's Stall. The optical deformity was probably created by the use of a camera oscura with a wide angle lens.   The silence regarding the explanation of the supernatural character of “naturalistic” painting would also have different consequences, particularly for the invention of photography. III   150 YEARS OF SOLITUDE, PHOTOGRAPHY'S LONELINESS   As we have seen, the natural principle behind the projected image was known since Antiquity. Projection systems, based on a small hole drilled through the wall (pinhole) of a darkened room (camara obscura) and acting as a lens (by diffraction), have existed at least since the 14th century. Projection using concave mirrors was already possible in the 15th century. The replacement of the holes by lenses in the camera took place in the 16th century. Portable optic cameras would be used in the 17th century, and the camera lucida would finally be invented in the 18th century. There is then a whole history of cameras without film, which demonstrates two fundamental ideas: first, cameras were actively being used to the point that they were constantly being improved and second, film was not (nor is) essential. Four centuries of cameras without film versus one and a half of film-based cameras prove this point.     In 1839, during a period filled with inventions, finding mechanical methods that could replace manual activities was a common occurrence. The search for a chemical procedure that could record the images generated in optical cameras was not an exception. As Albertus Magnus had already described the photosensitive properties of silver salts in the 12th century and the German chemist J.H. Schulze had experimented with them in 1727, only one question remained unanswered: How could the image formed on a photosensitive surface be preserved in broad daylight? In other words: How to fix the image? Several painters and photographers would soon answer this question: Herschel (1818) and Talbot (1835) in England, Hercule Florence (1833) in Brazil and Nicephore Niepce (1827), Hippolyte Bayard (1839), and Louis J. Mandé Daguerre (1839) in France. Therefore, when the official date of the birth of photography was resolved, what was actually discovered was the fixer. In relation to the centenary presence of optic images, the daguerreotype was probably not understood as a revolution but as an improvement on painting. Hence Delaroche's famous pronouncement before the invention of Daguerre: "From today, painting is dead!"   Unknow photographer. Jabez Hogg making a portrait in Richard Beard's studio, 1843. Daguerreotype. Bokelberg Collection, Hamburg.   The daguerreotype was invented by the painter Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, who would be known to history not as a painter but as a photographer. In his case, as in the case of many other painters who transformed their ateliers into photography studios, the legacy of painting would be brushed over. In an age filled with inventions such as the telegraph and later on the gramophone, the pictorial inheritance would be silenced by the photographers themselves, who wished to portray their activity as a novelty and also by painters who were still tied to the secret of their optic past. We know that a few years later, faced with the impossibility of continuing to paint in accordance to the canons of optics, painters would chose to return to the tradition of associative mental images, abjuring from any notion of optics and at the same time challenging it through what has been called "Modernism".   Paul Cézanne. Five Bathers, 1885-7. From David Hockne's book. Pág. 194.   Nevertheless, this omission would have important consequences for the newly born discipline. Through the term graphos, its name would continue to be associated to the art of drawing and it would persistently be considered part of the graphic arts. For example, the first photography book, issued by Henri Fox Talbot, would be titled The Pencil of Nature (1844-46). This means that there existed a tradition that chemical procedures could not erase. While presented as a novelty, in the practice—and with good reason—it did not manage to think of itself as such, imagining pencils where they were not present anymore. This dichotomy would split photography in two apparently irreconcilable tendencies. The first one, which called itself pictorialist, continued the ancient tradition of the optical-graphical system, preserving its style, its genres (portrait, landscape, still life, nude, etc.), its painted backgrounds, its poses, and devoting itself with great success to coloring daguerreotypes, retouching negatives, creating compositions with various negatives (a technique derived from the Flemish painters) and other types of painterly effects. The other tendency, which was more up to date and did not carry the weight of painting on its back, will see photography as a neutral means of recording visual reality, in the same way as a microphone, which will be used with greater freedom but probably with a more limited or improvised sense of aesthetics.   Oscar G. Rejlander: The Two Paths of Life, 1857. Photograph composed with the use of more than thirty different negatives.   Having gained only the recognition of the scientific community and having been rejected by painters who had not converted to photography, the question “Is photography an art?” could only cast doubts, leading ultimately to the rupture between both tendencies. The incomprehension of its true nature—a recording system for optically projected images—, the disconnection with its hundred-year-old inheritance, the incongruence of its name and the absence of a true definition will create a sort of schizophrenia in the practice of this discipline, generating important delays in the acknowledgement of its true worth. The sense of abandonment shared by photographers will be without parallel and will endure for all of the 19th and 20th centuries.   Illustration by Nadar. The ingratitude of painting refusing the smallest place in its exhibition to photography to whom it owes so much. Engraving from the Journal Amusant, 1857.   With the arrival of the 21st century, the widespread change from chemical to electronic recording devices and the adoption of the digital system are starting to erase the divisions that will permit this discipline to recover its century-old inheritance and start to take advantage of the best of both worlds: precise neutral recording and infinite (mathematical) manipulation.   Since the invention of film and the chemical process in 1839 were celebrated as the beginning of photography, today, when film and the chemical process have their days counted, we can say with all certainty: Photography is dying!     IV   THE CONCEPTUAL UNITY OF A HUNDRED-YEAR OLD DISCIPLINE   If painters had acknowledged the use of lenses and camera obscuras as soon as they started using them towards the beginning of the Renaissance, the Church might have expelled them from the painter's guild and the discipline would have received a different name. Perhaps something having to do with light, with optics and with drawing, maybe "light draftsmen", or simply "photographers". The history of photography would have made its official appearance in due time and the invention of film would have been interpreted as a modernization made possible by the Industrial Revolution, in the same way the telephone replaced the telegraph without losing sight of the concept of communication at a distance.   Nowadays, the abundance of declassified documents, the information that is shared on the net and the advances in computerized tools allow us to review historical interpretations more rigorously. With greater frequency we see that history has been colored by myths, omissions and constructed truths. One of these weak links is art, with its attachment to less than adequate scientific standards and the concentration of myths of a religious nature in which "beliefs" often replace understanding. Even though trying to examine facts rationally might not always be welcome—and might even be considered "heretical" or "insane"—it is worthwhile to side with those who have fought in the past for a clearer and less prejudiced view of things, a perspective that has allowed human beings to evolve and assume their own capabilities.   Today, as always, our appraisal of reality is mediated through our sense organs, which transform perception into data. More than ever before, the eyes have become our privileged sense organ and optical organization has become a universal language. Images created with the assistance of optical instruments populate the day-to-day life of big cities and exercise a decisive attraction on distant towns. The real key to the production of images—be they painted, printed or projected, still or moving—is found in the phenomenon of optical projection. An accurate understanding of this fact should lead us to create a branch specific to the arts uniting all the disciplines that fit the definition of "a recording of an optically projected image".   Erwin Blumenfeld. What Looks New,1947.   The only way we can move beyond the conceptual fragmentation surrounding the varied production of optically based images is to consider the phenomenon in its historical totality. This implies assimilating four centuries of "naturalist" painting, starting with Renaissance painters, as a direct precursor of photography and cinema. Only this global understanding can lead us to comprehend the mechanics of the evolution of the image and understand, for example, the implications of the adoption of the digital system of notation.   The fact that the optical image shares today the same coding system as graphic art, text and sound, poses several questions with regards to its future. Answers to these queries can only be advanced provided that we have a global vision of the historical dimension, the cycles and the general trend of the phenomenon. In a certain sense, the adoption of the digital system is placing the counters back to zero; we therefore need to understand what we mean by zero. Clarifying these questions would clearly be beyond the scope of this article and could well be the subject of another article. Let's leave these questions open, on the foundations we have just described and let's judge the fairness of this reasoning, trying to think differently for one moment. Perhaps the answer lies in what we had always intuited.   The horizon is wide open; let's move ahead.   Doifel Videla   William-Adolphe Bourguerau, La Vague, 1886. From David Hockney's book, p. 195.     http://www.zonezero.com/magazine/articles/doifel/doifel.html        
Tuesday, 29 May 2007
Author:Pedro Meyer
    Nowadays, when we discuss about new technologies, and I hear that they are not available to everyone, I wonder when was that, if ever, the case? Certainly those Underwood typewriters which today look to us as having such a romantic aura to them, were never something that was available to the masses.   To begin with, you needed some basic skills to use them, first would be the knowledge of the language you are writing in, and then the other is that you need to know how to type. Not everyone has those skills. That has not changed today with new technologies either, regardless if you are using a computer or an Underwood typewriter there are certain abilities you require in order to make it work for you.   What we had in Mexico in the fifties, for those that needed to write love letters and did not know how to write them, or those in need of filling out forms and who did not have a typewriter, was for someone to help. A scribe sitting on the street at a minuscule table together with his typewriter and open for business was the solution. Some fifty years later, the only thing that changed is the type of typewriter being used. Today they are using IBM electric typewriters, but still no computers with word processors.     It's fascinating to observe how very slow the pace is at which new technologies are being implemented in certain areas that are resistant to change. One could also think of the dark room in certain schools of photography as the equivalent of these street scribes that do not find it convenient to move from the analog world to the digital one, even though everything around them is moving in that direction. I am sure they have very legitimate reasons to justify their decisions; in the case of the electric typewriter it would be that you have the equivalent of a printer and the word processor all rolled into one very easy to deal with unit.     I do believe that all these new technologies that the digital world tends to offer, are not conceived to be so easy to use. Increasingly they become more and more complex, even though their price tends to come down. However, with regard to these complexities it's only a matter of time, when due to competition, they will also make products that are far easier to use.   As that happens over time, they will also become more accessible to most everyone. One good example are digital watches, that are so cheap that most people have access to owning one, and not because they are cheap do they necessarily become unreliable. Telling time was something that at one point in history was done mainly by instruments only accesible to a very few, let alone being reliable.1 This is not how things are anymore today.     New technologies, have always been associated with changes related with how things are done, and how things can be done is usually associated with new cultural possibilities.   I still recall some fifty years ago, when migrant farm workers came to the city to find a way of making a living, they had a hard time adapting to the notion of time that was used in the factories at which they sought work. The notion of producing along shorter periods of time than their usual sunrise and sunset references, was not such an easy transition to adapt to. Such concepts we tend to forget today as we take for granted that everyone understands time in the same manner. Well, neither is time the same all over the world, nor are the notions of how technologies can be adopted.   Pedro Meyer May, 2007 Coyoacan, Mexico   ________ (1) In 1714, the British Parliament offered a cash reward to anyone who could invent a clock accurate enough for use in navigation at sea. Thousands of sailors died because they were unable to find their exact position, because the exact time was needed to find longitude, and pendulum clocks would not work at sea. For every minute lost by a clock, it meant that there would be a navigational error of 15 miles, and sailors died because they were lost or smashed against rocks because they were unable to figure out their exact position. Then, in 1761, after 4 attempts, John Harrison finally succeeded at inventing a small clock accurate enough to use for navigation at sea. This tiny pocket watch lost only 5 seconds in 6 and ½ weeks. (back)     As always please joins us with your comments in our forums.         http://zonezero.com/editorial/mayo07/may07.html    
Monday, 28 May 2007
Author:Trisha Ziff
Crossing Over, the recently published book by Ruben Martinez, from Metropolitan Books (Henry Holt and Company New York), is perhaps now a more relevant read than ever as the events of September 11th have spawned a new fervour of U.S. Jingoism. Its fall out can be seen everywhere, as Mexican trucks in California and beyond switch home country flags and their "I love" stickers for the stars and stripes, in a desire to blend in. America's new security only heightens the plight of Mexican and Latin American immigrants who continue to cross into the United States, but their position as undocumented workers is today all the more perilous with the present border controls and INS crack down.   Martinez's book reflects a warmth and humanity, to those he depicts without putting them on a pedestal of alternative heroism, on the contrary their humanity is precisely imbedded in their contradictions. Ruben follows the exodus of one extended family, the Chavez clan from Cherán, Michoacan to California and Missouri and Wisconsin. The family are Purépecha, the very word meaning people who travelled. While many American's still remain wedded to the fantasy notion of the melting pot, Martinez argues a very different position, that these migrants far from fitting in, are engaged in changing two worlds, that of Mexico and the United States simultaneously, creating new complex highbred cultures which affect all aspects of life both north and south of the border.   This book is a must for those interested in border culture, immigration and beyond that great reportage writing!       Extracts from this project were made in conjunction with ZoneZero, as Martinez and Joseph Rodriguez documented together for ZoneZero the migration trail see: The New Americans     http://www.zonezero.com/magazine/articles/ziff/ruben.html    
Monday, 28 May 2007
Author:Pedro Meyer
  One of the problems that I get to hear most often, has to do with training. If someone states that they are interested in learning how to work digitally in photography then "what school do you recommend ?" is the next question that always follows.   The best advice that I can give you, is to teach yourself and have a network with whom to remain in touch to deal with certain questions. So how does one go about teaching oneself, and above all why do it that way.   For one, if you go to take regular school courses, you have to acknowledge that the speed at which you are taught is not necessarily your own. You might be slower or faster in grasping ideas, but when you have to work within a group, there is the inevitable average that sets in, and that might not have much to do with your own personal needs.   Then of course there might not be a school in the area were you live that teaches digital photography, so this argument alone goes a long way in giving you a good reason for teaching yourself.   Then also you might want to invest your time in learning certain things and not others. We all have a limited time schedule, so it works well when you can concentrate in learning specific subjects. Oh! I almost forgot, it is also cheaper, by a considerable margin.   Teaching yourself however is not that simple or for that matter the ideal solution for everyone, it requires in addition to discipline some tools (books, tapes, etc.) that if they are not the right ones, you end up creating a lot of frustration for yourself. To our good fortune however, there is an ever increasing number of suitable tutorial tools which can show you step by step how to learn digital photography or making videos, to name just a few.   Katrin Eismann, has just published one of such books for teaching oneself, which we can highly recommend. The title of the book "PhotoShop Restoration and Retouching", is a bit misleading, in that the book offers more than what the title promises. I imagine that they narrowed it down for marketing reasons, however you can rest assured that you will get more than you bargained for.   The examples are largely centered around the "Restoration and Retouching" functions of the photographer, but anything you will learn from this book you can also apply to what ever direction your personal photography actually takes you to. You can be a documentary photographer or an architectural or landscape photographer, and for these and other instances you will find a wide array of applicable ideas throughout this book.   The texts are very well written, the design and layout is clear and concise, there is humor, and a lots of images to show along the way in a step by step procedure that even if you happen to be "slow," you will get it. They even have a web site linked to this book for your further explorations. The paper on which this book is printed, I found to be of very fine quality, which allows for good reproductions and easy reading. There is definitely good production value throughout this book.   The publication holds up well until we get to chapter 10 (fortunately, the last one), which is dedicated to Glamour and Fashion Retouching. Some of the examples are out right cheesy and not up to the integrity in the rest of the volume. The part on "Digital Liposuction," already the name, is straight out of a Florida tabloid. A perfectly lovely model whose thighs are nothing to be ashamed off, has been slimmed down according to some questionable esthetical considerations, that makes one wonder how they could have gotten it so wrong in what is otherwise a quite wonderful book.   The whole notion of retouching a picture in order to change the way one looks should not have gone without some critical comments alongside the alterations that are being taught. The author herself, a very good looking woman without any further retouching, goes into this whole illustrated exercise of transforming herself, so as to fit into some preconceived notion of how she ought to look. It is obviously her privilege and choice to make herself out as she fancies, but any critical thinking on such matters is as important as teaching us how to do a nose or lip job on anyone. Why do we even want to alter a face, should not be left unquestioned. None of the alterations offered had anything to do with artistic expressions, they belonged strictly in the realm of the most banal thinking with regard to how a person should look in an age of "glamour."   Maybe in a future edition the up and coming digital photographer will find more than was offered in a timid last paragraph of "closing thoughts."   There, Katrin Eisemann, did let us in on a secret, that in fact all these "fashion bodies," in a strict sense, did not really exist. As it stands now the chapter started out with some superficial observations about natural beauty more akin to a cigarette safety disclaimer such as "smoking causes cancer", than a healthy confrontation with stereo types that only tend to be perpetuated when they are not dealt with adequately.   In spite of this last very flawed chapter ten, the book is excellent and very well worth buying. You will not go wrong in using it as a tutorial in a program to teach yourself many interesting techniques about digital photography.   Buy this book at Amazon.com and support ZoneZero       http://www.zonezero.com/magazine/dcorner/meyer/restore.html    
Sunday, 27 May 2007
Author:Trisha Ziff
  There is something about Daily Report, which draws me to return to it. A book as the title indicates of images taken each day during the last year of the millennium by French photographer Frank Horvat; a visual diary. It is not as though every image presented is memorable, or that the narrative flows with a determined conviction. This book has a quieter power. Perhaps what intrigues the viewer is precisely its considered mundane qualities, yet, it lacks banality. Horvat does not attempt to be monumental, there are no gimmicks or shocks. These are not epic images, yet they do reveal a great deal of information about certain specific worlds.   A modest book in many ways and yet Horvat’s visual diary is simultaneously a valuable undertaking. Beautifully printed, on high quality, heavy duty paper its form reflects a similar sensibility of precision and caring as the content. A simple idea, which could easily have been repetitive and uninteresting, but Horvat manages to maintain an energy, interest and rhythm that is sustained throughout the year. The book itself is compact, brick-like; it reminds me of one of those block calendars where you peel off each day which, as the year progresses becomes thinner and more manageable. Or a flip-book, which tells a narrative, but in this case there is no narrative, just a series of non-sequitur which when run together produce a sense of pleasant chaos. Like a Codex there is no necessity for a linear reading; there is ultimately no structure or revealing narrative that demands the calendar be observed. It is a book that can be returned to; images that can viewed one day at a time or the year in one sitting.   Horvat’s record of 1999 is a personal testimony without the pretensions of being any more than that. However, how reflective is this of his normal year? Funded in part by Kodak France and other corporations, the reader is left unclear about issues, which are significant to a reading of the overall content of the book. One cannot but speculate, how much did the funding of this project influence and change the structure of Horvat’s days during 1999? Did this funding “free-up” his time from other jobs in order that he concentrate on A Daily Report, or provide him with the financial support to travel for this book? Or would his year have been the same with or without the grants? The author does not indicate any of these details, so the reader is consequently left wondering to what extent does the book in the end reflect an “authentic” year in Horvat’s life or did he create a “specific” year, designed around the requirements of this book? Which came first for the image of each day? Important issues which remain unanswered.   Horvat writes, in his introduction, “I took no photographs of war, of misery, of suffering or of madness; not because I am indifferent to these calamities but because I have never felt that I had either the moral justification or (in the case of war) the physical courage, to confront such situations through my lens.” His response reflects his own privilege and choices. Another photographer in a different geographical context or time, might not have such choices. Horvat, born in 1928 spent World-War II in Switzerland. We have no indication what those years were for him as a young man, who knows what makes a photographer chose to photograph or to turn away from images of conflict or calamity and who is to judge? Is there a hierarchy of value in image making?   This is a book full of the other moments that are the staple of our lives. The scenes that are often missed and left unrecorded. Each moment held, a pause, a trace as it passes consciously till the next. Moods that change – and change again. The majority of these moments, images in this book, appear to have been discovered not created, not those crucial decisive moments which many photographers patiently stake out, nothing here appears overly considered. The living appears to have come first and the photographs then knitted into that year of living. Carefully observed but never forced.   I speculate, how as the months passed Horvat’s relaxed eye may have become more concerned with the issue of repetition, or even boredom with the discipline of the daily need to make and record one image. No days off from behind the camera. Where was Horvat’s camera on the morning of January 1 2000, or ten days later? Finally was there time off? Or did the process continue? A new habit hard to break, or perhaps an earlier one just reinforced?   The world Horvat offers the viewer is a combination of internal and external spaces, just personal enough to give us a sense of the man behind the camera, but never crossing defined boundaries. “I did not try to reveal my sexuality or that of others, because I have never done it in the past and at my age it would be unseemly to start.” Yet it is an intimate record. A testimony that one can reveal an essence of ones’ being, without exposure. Horvat appears a solid man, comfortable in his own shoes and with his years. A man with a keen eye for detail and an apparent need for order and restraint.   Daily Report is a book, which oozes with the concerns of European street photography, of the flaneur, and is bound up with the specificity of that gaze. Horvat’s eye reflects concerns which dominate twentieth century French photography, images of the street, documenting daily life. In the 1950’s he met Robert Capa and Cartier Bresson and later moved to London where he worked for both Life Magazine and Picture Post. A man whose eye has been steeped within a humanist tradition, a populist, consumed with the concerns of visual narrative. Horvat sites himself as a participant within a community of both ‘documentary’ and fashion photography. He photographs those he encounters in his report, his friends; Joseph Koudelka in his kitchen (also Spartan); Véronique Leyrit, visited over a trip to Paris; a portrait of Helmut Newton, the bridge of his glasses reflecting the identical intonation of his eye brows. Marc Riboud still photographing in Italy, Cartier Bresson, with his biographer. Photographers whose work and concerns are unique yet all who as individuals are important contributors to twentieth century European photography.   On May the fourth, Horvat visits his friend, Edouard Boubat, a photographer whose own body of work reflects similar concerns to those of Horvat. He makes a portrait of Boubat, his eyes still keen and smiling. Within weeks Boubat is dead. Horvat photographs the funeral and the coffin of his friend. The only day in the year represented by more than one image. A quiet homage in itself, as if the rhythm of his year paused and something more needed to be said. A day that stands distinct from all the others. The photograph of Boubat’s coffin in the ground so similar in form to the first image in his book of the new bath. These two photographs become inseparable, January 1st and July 2nd; cleansing and death. Looking into the grave of Boubat is a strangely intimate image, not sentimental. No different to looking into an empty bath and speculating about the bather.   The following days images reflect a sense of time pass and of loss. A sad photograph of Jean Michel Horvat, the photographers son with his son, Grégoire, followed by a lonely street scene. Nothing is said, just whispered images which connote reflection. Horvat’s book is filled with images of his family, his partner Véronique Aubry, his children and grandchildren and their friends, warm and alive. His family fill a large place in his world. These are tender and sensitive images of people used to his camera and gaze, yet they are open uncluttered images. Despite the intimacy of the relationship to him, he photographs each one of his family members with a visual separation and independence.   Another theme, which ripples through his diary are images of animals. There is something uniquely European in the legitimacy of the male gaze on a kitten, or to be more precise uniquely French. In other visual cultures these images I speculate might be seen but left unrecorded.   Many of Horvat’s days are represented by visual ‘one liners’, seen and recorded. These are not monumental images but quietly noticed instances of the absurd. As they year progresses we encounter fragmented parts of Horvat’s body with the fantasy that by the end of the year perhaps we might have glimpsed the whole. On March 13th a hand; on April 18th a foot; a self-portrait in a hotel bathroom on June 1s reveals a torso with the face obscured by the camera; both hands, August 2nd. and then, finally in December as the year is ending, Horvat pictures himself, sick with a cold, it is as if illness has precluded all other possibilities and reluctantly Horvat has no other choice than to turn the camera on himself.   The year ends as it began back in his home in Cotignac, France, with his partner Véronique Aubry who worked with Horvat editing this book and the millennium ends with the symbolic cleansing ritual of leaf burning.       http://www.zonezero.com/magazine/articles/ziff/dialyreport.html      
Saturday, 26 May 2007
Author:Yukiko Launois
  Application deadline for the 2007 Howard Chapnick Grant is July 15th, 2007. Please download an application form from the link at www.smithfund.org.   The annual grant of $5000 is NOT intended for the creation of photographs, but in support of the ancillary field of photojournalism, such as editing, research, education and management.   The grant was established to honor the memory of the enormous contribution to photography by the late Howard Chapnick. He was president of Black Star photo agency from January 1st,1964 to December31st,1989. His career, which spanned for 50 years, was dedicated for photography and photographers with such passion and love. He discovered, nurtured, and promoted some of the world's most talented photojournalists. The annual award will assist the individuals who wish to follow in the steps of this unique leader in the field of photojournalism, Howard Chapnick.   Application should be submitted to: The Howard Chapnick Grant c/o International Center of Photography 1133 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10036   If you wish your submission returned to you, please enclose the return postage.   For inquiries, please contact: Yukiko Launois 125 East 87th Street 4B New York, NY 10128 yukiko125@aol.com           http://zonezero.com/magazine/articles/yukiko/index.html      
Friday, 25 May 2007
Author:Nell Farrell
  I slept well last night, cozy and warm in the silence and pure darkness. For breakfast I had hot coffee and sweet bread, sitting in the sun. But I feel hungover, tired, used and abused.   I feel like my body has been handled by fat, clammy male hands, my throat stings from stale cigarette smoke, and I smell flat, warm beer. I have just read through Boystown.   Cheap bodies, cheap clothes, cheap beer, cheap smokes, cheap sex, cheap love. None of it questioned, all of it accepted at its falsified face value. The men and women (and occasional children) in these 1970s anonymous brothel-town souvenir snapshots never considered that their image might end up in an art-photo book in post-modern, post-feminist times.   “Perhaps the power of these photographs lies in the fundamental fact that no myths are being created or sustained,” writes photographer Keith Carter in his essay at the back of the book. There is nowhere to hide anything and no one cares to anyway; they’ve come here to La Zona de Tolerancia (The Zone of Indulgence) to do the very opposite. This tempts poetic conclusions about these photographs’ expression of basic human needs and desires, and the ways and places we’ve created to fulfill them; conclusions about the universality of lust and its satisfaction among all men and among all women (though functioning very differently between the genders); about the fact that prostitution in its many forms has never been absent from the human experience; about how beauty transcends, can be found in anywhere; and the specific aesthetic and fantastic allure of a risky, underground lifestyle.   For me, this book is about the women. While it is the men who are making the moves (kissing, grabbing, fondling, and most often holding on possessively), the men who have come here from many desert miles away, the men who are looking for and paying for a service, in these photographs they are one-dimensional characters. They are obvious and pitiful. The women, conversely, are extremely present, both for the camera and apparently to themselves as well. My experience of this was similar to that of Carter: “On first viewing, I thought the women looked understandably detached. After a longer look it seems to me that they are detached, but only from their male companions; they are fully present to the photographer.” The men look pitiable because they are so glaringly unaware that the inhabitant of the body they cling to is in another world; not far away, not dreamy nor in denial, but not partaking in their fantasy--just playing the game as far as the little change purse that lies on most of the beer bottle-laden tables which foreground a majority of the images. Many of the women’s gazes could be a wink to the photographer, and to us, “can you believe this guy?”   Their facial expressions and body language have shockingly little to do with the physical moment. Even when they do strike a “sexy” pose, it is often with such lack of enthusiasm that it hardly seems it would satisfy the customer. None of the photos in Boystown are sexy, really. There is no pleasure, no sensuality—a hand holds a breast but there is no visible sensation, and no interaction. Although sex itself is absent from these photographs, you would never mistake one of these couples to be sitting in a roadside diner—revealed is a complex farce of romance and companionship, and exploitation and need.   One of the early spreads in the book is a series of portraits of prostitutes in a photographer’s studio (that is, posed in front of a ratty curtain or bare wall, alone and straight on).   Here the women are far from interchangeable (although Cristina Pacheco writes in her essay that they serve as, if not feel themselves to be, “all the women and none”). Some are heartbreakingly worn down, a few are coy or expressive of their sensuality, one laughs openly, another smiles with the most kind and honest face you could find anywhere. There is a middle-aged woman in a blond wig that only serves to make her look awkward. Some women look like battered wives, used rags, abused girls. Some wear so much eye make-up that the rest of their face becomes invisible. Some look masculine, some are fat, some are having fun, some are beautiful.   You can’t help but wonder where they live, what they think about. You can’t help but wonder how integral our physical experiences are to our spirit. Is it possible to overcome this hard physical life or, although you maintain your distance and your memories, does it define you? Do so many of the women in these photographs look uncomfortable for the impossible expectation of a glamorous pose in the farthest place on Earth from Hollywood? Is it the itchy plastic get-up they have squeezed themselves into? Is it the camera, hired by the client, capturing them in a “two-dollar universe”? Or is it perhaps their very life that makes them uneasy in their own skin?   The photographers who circulated in these whorehouses and the women who worked there probably saw each other night after night; there is no artifice between them, even in this setting that begs it. In some of the images there seems to be a tenderness or a familiarity between the client and the prostitute, and I let myself imagine that they have a deeper relationship. But despite these aspects that let those depicted exist as individuals, after pages and pages of drunk-man-grappling-half-naked-woman shots, they start to look the same. On the very page where I felt I couldn’t take it anymore, having reached some level of tedium or surfeit, the nature of the photographs changed. A woman with a bandaged head lies in her bed, alone. In another children overflow the laps of what could be a young mother and her own mom. Interestingly, here the women’s gazes are shrouded; not cold, but not inviting. This is their private world and they have no reason to let us in.   Bill Wittliff, the collector of these anonymous images, comments that there are more: “along with the standard party pictures there were portraits of the prostitutes, snaps of street urchins, busboys, musicians—indeed a cross-section of that whole cloistered world....” As a historical or sociological study this book would be more complete if the rest of the “town,” and more of the private lives of the sex workers, were revealed. We are now so used to the tell-all, show-all manner of investigating the “other side” that the book in fact seems strangely trapped within the walls of the brothels. This collection of photographs thereby becomes a challenge to the reader. If you are willing to take on what they show, and still try to understand what they don’t, this is a powerful book. The essays allude to the rest of the place, and to the stories of the characters, but the photographs force us to understand the defining factor: the night. And yet, in that context, “... the humanity we see in these faces seems to compel us to look squarely at whatever uncomfortable truth lies beyond” (Carter).   If I had read Keith Carter’s description of Boystown the place before looking at the photographs, the business and the lives depicted would have been clearer cut, and more horrible. Before I really understood what kind of place this was, and only knew that it was a cluster of brothels on the Mexico side of the Texas-Mexico border, I could imagine life stories for the women, ponder US-Mexico cultural dynamics, even enjoy the beautiful reproduction of these salvaged photographs. Carter’s description, though, is chilling. “It was surrounded by high adobe and cinderblock walls topped with razor-wire and broken glass.... At the lower end of the scale were the cells—along walls of repeated doors and windows—and sitting outside of every one a prostitute, each one older, uglier than the one before her.” Heavier on the bitter than the sweet, even as these photographs are of a world that revolved around what is love and sacrifice, they are witness to the harm we do in our desperate search to dull the pain of being.   Buy this book at Amazon.com and support ZoneZero.   Boystown: La Zona de Tolerancia: With esssays by Cristina Pacheco, Dave Hickey, and Keith Carter Afterword by Bill Wittliff Aperture, in association with the Wittliff Gallery of Southwestern and Mexican Photography at Southwest Texas State University, 2000       http://www.zonezero.com/magazine/articles/nell/boys.html      
Friday, 25 May 2007
Author:Nell Farrell
  Geeks: How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet out of Idaho By Jon Katz (Villard Books, 2000) This book will make you wish you'd paid your dues while there was still time. Like learning a foreign language or musical instrument, becoming a geek is best done in the formative years, well, the anti-formative years: adolescence. The very idea that this would be a desirable goal shows that a quick reshuffling of the social hierarchy has occurred. I missed the very possibility of becoming this new kind of geek by just half a generation. And the difference between the traditional geek and the now self-proclaimed, indispensable-to-the-"suits," cutting-edge techno geek is absolute. "… It makes no sense to try, or even to want, to fit into a place where you don’t belong…. It’s not going to happen, and if it ever did, it’s not what you would want anyway…. It’s a delusion. The trick is to take something that’s painful, and to make it so trivial that it’s inconsequential. Just walk away and make it trivial. My advice to geeks? If you don’t like it, leave, leave fast, make it trivial. Come to terms with who you are." —Jesse Dailey protagonist de Geeks. Letter received by the author from a geek. Page 3 of the book The reasons why, on the other hand, are the same as they always were. Alienation. Otherness. Escape. There are moments when you will cringe with trepidation or else with sympathy for them and for us. Because what Jon Katz is chronicling in his book Geeks are the internal workings of the geeks themselves, not their machines. If you are reading this review, if you pick up the book, you are probably a sympathizer. In which case, beware; Geeks may bring up painful high school memories and it may make you mad. Mad at a society that literally and in all senses of the word tortures those, especially the young, who don't want to or can’t conform, often meaning those who are smart, creative, provocative, and inquisitive. And as one geek's mom e-mailed to the author after the Columbine tragedy in Littleton, Colorado (http://archive.salon.com/special/littleton/), "I would like to see any adult report for work and be taunted, humiliated, harassed, and degraded every single day without going stark, raving mad." (page 172) And the trepidation? Katz blows away any beliefs you may have about violence being a direct product of video games and the Net, but he is frank about the negatives of what it means to be a geek. (I use the term here in its new definition, which Katz describes as "A member of the new cultural elite…. Now running the systems that run the world.") People often create an alternate online life if their incarnate life is only providing them with hurt and bitterness. And the dues are, in my estimation, high: a majority of waking hours spent in front of (or in?) the computer. The cause and effect are lack of face-to-face human interaction, world experience, physicality. And what does that lifestyle do to society, to those individuals, and to the information have-nots?   Jon Katz became interested in investigating the cultural phenomenon of what he calls Geek Ascension, and began communicating via e-mail with many people who identify themselves as such. And that's how he met Jesse Daily. "He was a working-class geek who had done almost everything it was possible to do to and with a computer, and who'd graduated from high school a year earlier, Jesse wrote. He was working unenthusiastically but diligently in a small computer shop in dreary Caldwell [Idaho]. He shared an apartment with a classmate and fellow Geek Club alumnus, Eric Twilegar, who had a different kind of dead-end job: selling computers at Office Max in nearby Nampa. They spent most of their lives online, Jesse said, gaming, trawling for music, downloading free software." Thus began what turns into a very personal, in fact endearing, relationship between the author and his "subject." Katz visits the guys in Idaho, hangs out in their apartment (cave), observes their days and lives. He is unable to keep his journalistic distance, however, and begins to guide them in making changes in their lives. Although at first this seems like an infraction on Katz' part, he is up-front with the reader about his rather fairy godfather-like hand in Jesse and Eric's subsequent journey to Chicago and role in their struggle to get into college. Geeks reads like a novel, or even a diary—I devoured it in a few evenings. There are moments when it is sentimental, figuring Jesse as a "wolf child" in need of saving. At times it veers off into stories apart from the theme, of the college admissions rigmarole for instance. Katz devotes a section of the book to the aftermath of Columbine, a trauma for countless kids all over the country who were persecuted in the resulting media-driven witch hunt—those who wear black, game, are social outsiders, etc—and a turning point in the group consciousness of geeks. It's a tangent, but again the author's personable presence both in his narrative and in his own actions carries it off (he communicated with thousands of kids as a result of his writing and speaking out for a soul search of the society-deep motivations behind the incident). These deviations, however, somewhat undermine the theoretical aims of the book. If this was to be a chronicle and exploration of the hows and whys of a specific cultural byproduct of US society, I wanted more answers, indeed more questions, about the nature and implications of a life dominated by technology. But what Katz does achieve is a delicate personal story in the face of a tsunami-like cultural paradigm-shift. I guess the proudest thing about being a geek is that we start out tending to be behind, physically, socially, and experientially but we improve. We are the ones who are not satisfied with a nine-to-five job (don’t ask how many things I work on besides my day job), not satisfied with Club Med vacations or Red Lobster cuisine (what percentage of techies are vegetarian these days?), not satisfied with ourselves. We improve whenever and however we can. At least from my experiences, at fourteen, my friends were pretty undistinguished in many ways, but I look around and we’ve ended up with clearer goals, better ethics, and fuller lives than the more conventional folks around us. The money hasn’t hurt either. :) —Rustin August 1998. Letter from page 71   If you have a comment to make about this book, it will take you about five minutes to find Jon Katz’ e-mail and start up a personal correspondence with him. I was shocked by this discovery. How simple. How revolutionary. Society knows that we are teetering on the edge of a new universe, but no one yet knows how big or small it really is. We get turned around by our old-fashioned legal structure, our general fear of change, our apathy. We are left behind by the rapid multitude of changes. See what Shawn Fanning did with his website Napster. And all the hackers out there who work twenty-four hours a day undermining The System and creating a new one. It’s exciting. But until we work out the snarls that our geeks are creating—or rather, understand them as the complicated, ever-changing structures that they are—we as a society will continue to be afraid of them, and they will continue to work in a world apart.     What is being a geek all about? Anarchy. Pure and simple. It’s not throwing spherical bombs and wearing a cape and wide-brimmed hat and plotting to bring down the government…. It’s the ultimate in anarchy, dragging Joe Normal into the fight by teaching him what Freedom is, and letting him infect his friends. I work on a help desk for a big ISP and I get the greatest glee telling folks that what they read, what they do, can’t be traced... The more people that know this, the less the triumvirate of government, industry, and media can get away with what they do now. As Mr. and Mrs. Normal, and their strange kids take the power back. :) —Ken. Letter from page 97 This book is about paradoxes. Simultaneous connection and removal. Alienation and community. Inclusion and exclusion. I found myself cheering Jesse and Eric on in their quest to succeed in this life that they have in many ways chosen, knowing it is different and embracing that. I found myself lauding and a bit envious of their creed: an inexhaustible and completely self-driven curiosity and desire to learn and create (how often do you see that in mainstream US culture?), belief in self-reliance and the individual, the building of a meritocracy, and a hard-won "open invitation to the greatest party in the world" (page xix) —the Internet. At the same time that the Internet is billed as the most exciting and possibility-laden invention of all time, the fact of the matter is that in it these kids are finding a badly needed safety net. It's fabulous that they have found, or created, anything—hence the subtitle of the book—but the need for it comes from nothing positive. And in order to keep up their knowledge and involvement, they have to forego smelling the roses, literally. But this group of hunched over, anti-society techies is also well-read and intellectually engaged. Geeks doesn't pass judgement on this lifestyle; the subtext is 100 percent supportive, while at the same time the story line is one of the need and achievement of expansion. If it didn't quiet my reservations, this book does make clear that the term "real life" is not the opposite of "life on the screen," and for the blur of the line between them, one cannot decry the validity of either. It will be Jesse who figures out how to mesh the two. Writings by Jon Katz: Jon Katz writes for Slashdot: News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters. http://slashdot.org/ Jon Katz articles on Hotwired. http://search.hotwired.com/search97/s97.vts?Action=FilterSearch&Filter=docs_filter.hts&ResultTemplate= news.hts&Collection=news&QueryMode=Internet&Query=%22jon%20katz%22 “Introducing Geek Screens” by Jon Katz. http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,12686,00.html Jon Katz writes for the Freedom Forum’s site. http://www.freedomforum.org/ Excerpt of Geeks. http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/stories/story/0,10738,2434426,00.html Mentioned in the book: “ICQ ("I Seek You") is a user-friendly Internet program that notifies you which of your friends and associates are online and enables you to contact them.” http://web.icq.com/ Other book reviews: Book review on The Scene Online http://www.valleyscene.com/book0600.html http://www.zonezero.com/magazine/articles/nell/geeks.html      
Thursday, 24 May 2007
Author:Nell Farrell
A movie based on a novel, a written description of a photograph, a painting reproduced in a gallery in cyberspace. This is remediation. One media grows out of another, creating an entangled vine. None exists or even makes sense without those that came before. The computer game Myst creates a real world for so many people because all their lives they have been watching, and believing in, movies made from a similar point of view. So, reassuringly and somewhat disappointingly, the authors of Remediation convincingly explain how it is that there's nothing new under the sun; though to be sure we are experiencing exciting interpretations, variations, and renovations. This book is therefore accessible to those, like myself, with little experience, but much interest, in "new" technology. Sections on Theory, Media, and Self are connected by hyperlinks; the reader is invited to skip around or to just plain skip. And the graphics chosen explicitly illustrate the theories presented. The authors have formulated what they dub the double logic of remediation: immediacy and hypermediacy. When you forget about your own circumstances and feel for a moment that you are part of the story being told, you are experiencing immediacy. It's being moved to tears at a sad movie, or forgetting your own self while experiencing Virtual Reality. Bolter and Grusin show the search for immediacy to be a passion, a driving force, an obsession in Western culture. We become complicit in our own plot to give ourselves an authentic emotional experience through media. An interesting question results: Are we hiding from a superficiality, a void, in our "real" lives? Or is this desire for first-hand experience through media—immediacy—a valid exploration of one's standing in relation to his or her (mediated) world? When the Pathfinder landed on Mars equipped with what served as Webcams, the Jet Propulsion Lab's site was jammed with millions of hits, although "there was nothing to see but a rocky desert and an undifferentiated sky." The fascination was with the media. (page 58) The authors call this hypermediacy. If relating directly to the story (immediacy) provides the satisfaction of locating one's self in the context of the world (or perhaps at times offering escape?), then primary contact with the medium (hypermediacy), gives one the feeling that he or she is taking direct action. The most interesting moment in all of this is when and where you draw the line between "mediated experience" and "real life." Was Jurassic Park a good movie because you felt suspense and fear? Or was it amazement at the special effects? Well, both. "Hypermedia and transparent media are opposite manifestations of the same desire, the desire to get past the limits of representation and to achieve the real." (page 53) And so a vicious circle begins. Everything is both immediate and hypermediate; all experience is mediated and mediated experiences are real. While reading this book in a café, I overheard two different tables discussing the Internet, later, I dreamed about a book, and now I find myself observing myself watching movies. In its desperation to illustrate immediacy and hypermediacy, this book falls into a self-laid trap. In their survey of different media (ten in all, including digital photography, photorealistic graphics, digital art, and film), the authors deduce each to be either one logic or the other, and then admit that each is both. Additionally, after describing each media there is little room left for definition, proof, and further questioning of related concepts, cited but not developed, like the theory of the gaze as masculine, self-identification through media, or results of communications contents (like pornography or violence). This book did hone my awareness of ways media presents itself and how we may respond, but the logic becomes circular. Media and reality, immediacy and hypermediacy; they eat each other's tails, and in the center but out of the loop, is I. Where is the human being in all of this? For it doesn't only matter how a story's told or what kind of story it is, it's the person who's experiencing it that makes or breaks the success of the media. The authors give the sole visual experience overwhelming power, not taking into account how and why a person may suspend, or not, disbelief. It is disappointing to read that we have not found a completely new form with which to express ourselves, and that with cyberspace we have not created a parallel universe. Perhaps this is a more realistic take. Still, I wonder, if we can experience immediacy and hypermediacy simultaneously, could they become one? What will happen when an artificial experience is so immediate that it cannot be categorized as hypermediacy? With new tools do we not create new forms, languages, and cultures? In addition to provoking questions such as these, this books raises others, known but now remediated, about self and knowledge of the world. It doesn't always answer them, but instead respectfully leaves that for the fast-approaching future. Robert Lowell. Vanishing Point. A work of digital art that vacillates between transparent immediacy and hypermediacy. (c) Robert Lowell. For other reviews of this book and related sites, please see: Webzine book review and response review http://www.altx.com/ebr/reviews/rev9/r9kir.htm Excerpts of the book by chapter http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/~bolter/remediation/book.html Paper by the authors on "Remediation and the Cultural Politics of New Media" http://www.ntnu.no/sts/content/Papers/Remediation.html http://www.zonezero.com/magazine/articles/nell/remediation.html
Wednesday, 23 May 2007

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