577. Jan Arabas | Permission

  Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 02:13:37 -0400   I am a Professor of Art and Graphic Design at Middlesex Community College in Massachusetts, USA. I am developing a course on the history of visual images on the World Wide Web. One of my lectures features your Web site.   You may read my lecture at http://www.artoftheweb.org Click on Week 6 and scroll down the page.   This course will be part of the University of Massachusetts eLearning Network, an online division of the state university system.   I would be very interested to get your reactions to my lecture. I would also like to request your permission to archive the pages of your Web site that I discuss in my lecture. The archived pages would be placed on a password protected server at my college and would only be available to registered students. Because this course is a history of the Web, I feel that it is important to preserve the pages that I discuss in my lecture. Your site is an important part of Web history and I very much hope that you will allow me to preserve a portion of it as I have described.   Please contact me with any questions that you may have at my email address.   Thank you Jan Arabas   Professor of Art Middlesex Community College  

Thursday, 30 May 2002

579. Donovan A. | Great site!

  Date: Wed, 08 May 2002 09:58:11 +0000   ZZ,   What a nice surprise to find your website tonight. Congratulations on bringing something so real and sincere to internet users. You have succeeded in keeping it tasteful, unique, and exciting without becoming a marketing banner board.   Please register me in your list of members.   Thank you, thank you, thank you, Donovan A. Redondo Beach, CA USA  

Wednesday, 08 May 2002

581. Elena Kachuro-Rosenberg

  Date: Tue, 7 May 2002 22:36:28 -0400   Hello,   I came to your site via a link from another and found myself fascinated by what you've done. The seriousness, integrity, and quality of the text and images housed at the site are remarkable. Thank you. I shall be back, again and again.   Elena Kachuro-Rosenberg  

Tuesday, 07 May 2002

583. Kiss The Past Good Bye An Epitaph for Creative Camera

    I am writing with a sense of regret. No: tears are more to the point. The magazine I edited for many years is no more. Creative Camera, lately retitled 'Dpict' is no longer part of the photo firmament, and I weep at its passing.   The Arts Council of England decided to cut off funding to the magazine, even though it raised 60% of its income through sales. (In statistical terms 'CC' out-performed Covent Garden Opera). It may not have been perfect, but for more than 30 years it was an outlet for photographer's thoughts and expressions.   DPICT's critical and enquiring take on photography was built on Creative Camera's legacy of risk-taking publishing. Over three decades its pages were home to strong and distinctive voices - writers and artists such as Roland Barthes, John Berger, Victor Burgin, Jo Spence and Helen Chadwick. As an important forum for the appreciation and critical reception of photography, Creative Camera became a key part of the scene it surveyed.   During its first decade the title spoke for a new generation of photographers who yearned for an alternative to outmoded 'club' photography. Afterwards, the magazine specialized in showcasing innovative forms of photography and publishing critical and informative articles about the camera image in a broad cultural context.   Based in London, it had a world-wide circulation and over 30 years the magazine became a byword for quality in photography. The price for its fierce independence, however, was sacrifices by everyone involved, and over-reliance on financial assistance from the Arts Council of England.   The arts have always needed patrons - not because they lack worth, but because people must be constantly prodded to reexamine their values; it is when the arts are most disregarded, that we are most in dire need of them. This is why I find myself deeply disturbed at the fact that photography is being ignored in the general mire of post-modern confusion.   To sever it at the jugular is to pay a higher price than could be imagined; it doesn't help that the cost to resuscitate the corpse of serious photography will be huge and that people have lost their livelihoods. It is genocide, pure and simple: with these seemingly small actions humanity's terms are slowly aligned to bureaucratic agendas, making baboons of the bean-counting kind the more popular species of our planet. Sadly, we could soon be overrun.   What follows is a brief and anecdotal history of Creative Camera- a tragi-comedy to celebrate its existence and lament its passing. First let me introduce a cast. Topping the list of characters (you might call them eccentrics ) who made the magazine possible is Colin Osman, the first publisher, whom I once described as 'having a taste for improbable ties'.   Next is me. I grew up with 'Creative Camera' and didn't wear a tie. I was a closet hippy, an idealist who eventually learned to be a business man. Then there was Bill Jay, editor and inspirer. Now enter two more characters - David Hurn and Tony Ray-Jones, both photographers with a sense for how magazines tick.... Tony died from leukemia in 1972 but David has done better and is still trotting around Wales (where he lives) and the world taking pictures.   Although different in temperament they both gave Bill Jay ideas and support. And both were wedded to an idea of excellence in photography. Me too, but that came a little later, after all, I was only a kid with enthusiasm. I had to prove myself. Bill eventually went to the USA where his talents were more valued. He has written a number of books - the latest is 'Sun in the Blood of the Cat'.   Before Bill came two South Africans; Sylvester Stein (publisher) and Jurgen Shadeburg (editor) and a magazine called 'Camera Owner'. Jurgen resigned in 1967 and returned to being a photographer. Stein was going to close the magazine. Enter Bill Jay who wrote for that magazine ('turned a trick' in common parlance) and contributor Colin Osman.   Colin was an intelligent person who had fallen in love with photography while running a family publishing business which produced a weekly newspaper for pigeon fanciers. It was highly profitable if somewhat surreal for non pigeon people like me,. Colin, while relatively wealthy, was not afraid to use his money for things that captured his imagination.   Between them he and Bill engineered a name change and co-opted Colin's wife, Grace, to take on much of the administration. Meanwhile the pigeons continued to flutter and lay money on the table.   Creative Camera was effectively subsidized by a bunch of birds. Colin was and remains a most remarkable person who put his money where his mind was. He embodies my idea of a grand socialist. Given the incongruity of the circumstances, ( I mean, can you imagine hanging out with a bunch of pigeon fanciers who were more deranged than any photographer?), my years working with Colin were memorable. He was more like a father than an employer.   Photography has had few better friends, other than photographers, who are necessarily self obsessed. Colin's ideas were to put those obsessions into broader circulation - because he thought them to be worthwhile. He used photography to explain himself to himself and others too. I went to 'CC' with a genuine sense of respect. At the time it was one of four magazines with international circulations that tried to address the notion of 'photography as art'. Or, as we put it, 'photography as a medium of personal expression'. The others were 'Camera' from Switzerland, 'Aperture' from the United States and 'Camera Mainichi' from Japan.   We were a happy little union of like-minded souls. We wanted to try and tell a truth in photographs. Sometimes it was big tits, sometimes big guns but always big ideas.   There were other magazines, of course. Colin made frequent visits to Eastern Europe to conduct 'pigeon business' and would return with prints, magazines and books from a very active photographic culture. In retrospect I can see that I was an arrogant young Turk and not afraid of my opinions - a trait I have carried with me into middle age.   Time and experience has tempered my arrogance, but not my opinions. It was opinion that drew the picture of my life. And I got mine from photography.   I write this because 'CC' was so personal, though not individual to me. It would be impossible to list all the people who influenced the magazine. Over the years we published an extraordinary number of people; some famous, many not.   We loved young photographers, and old and ignored photographers, as well as classicists and iconoclasts. It was a wonderful time and we meshed with a burgeoning international interest in the medium. I once traveled across the United States from the boarder with Canada to the boarder of Mexico, meeting dozens of photographers.   'CC' was my passport. I met just about everybody who was anybody. The same was true of Europe- I went from Sweden to Spain. It was a lucky life made possible through passion, hard work and a sense of conviction. As well as all the photographers I knew, I met poets and painters, architects, anarchists and art historians. I was even introduced to members of the Royal family and got to photograph Yul Brynner, a keen pigeon fancier. I mention this not for self regard but to give some context.   I left the magazine in 1978 to involve myself in book publishing, then became entangled in teaching, exhibition curating, and writing books.   Judy Goldhill took on my role, then in quick succession came Mark Holborn and later Susan Butler. Each added their own flavor and each was supported by Colin. Judy's contribution was largely visual, Mark's visual and verbal and Susan provided a hybrid mix of feminist polemic coupled to academe. Each arena was appropriate to recording its time and the shifting sands of photography as it re-defined itself. Meanwhile the pigeons were cooing more softly and not so much money was on the table.   Time to call in the thought Police, i.e., The Arts Council, and get some dosh. Colin did this. and was required to form an editorial board. This motley crew included me. The financial incidentals came from the presence of the 'Racing Pigeon' , so no rent to pay, no salaries to cover (at least in my case) , free photocopier and so on.   But we were not selling enough copies of 'CC'. This is a common tale in photographic publishing when it is done without compromise. Some of the necessary expenses, like typesetting and printing were partly covered through book selling. For a while 'CC' had the best stock of photographic books in town.   But one day in 1986 Colin phoned and invited me to lunch. He told me that he was going to close the magazine - even with its Arts Council grant he could no longer provide a personal subsidy. I protested. Not about the lunch you understand but about the concept of losing an important and long lasting contribution to visual culture.   We hatched a plan to keep the magazine alive and I became editor and publisher. I sorted out the finances, found new premises and hired Eileen, an art history graduate from Sussex who had worked for Colin. Eileen was magnificent. As I would pace up and down our tiny office juggling too many balls she would make sage remarks of a kind I needed 'Come on Pete, you're not Superman'.   I thought I was, but ( Dept of True Confessions) I was wrong. So we got along with reviving the magazine, keeping it visual and literate but backing away from the pomp of art history. There was a formula to that kind of writing which I found irritating. And I was trying to make the kind of magazine I would want to read. Meanwhile the Arts Council was going through its own changes, trying to balance the voices of a multicultural society with those of Thatcher's Britain - 'survival of the fittest and Devil take the hindmost'. I was given a few raps over the knuckles for being obstinate and Euro-centric, but I had rescued the magazine and was able to manage its finances.   So we got along by fair means and a great deal of support from the photographic community, most particularly from those who felt disenfranchised. We got other kinds of help too - volunteer workers, free accountancy, financial advice and a great deal of hand-holding.. Image-makers, writers, typesetters, printers all came to the aid of the party. We had a great group of Trustees too who shared in my enthusiasm. I thank all of them , not by name but they know who they are. The Arts Council got a bargain. But like their counterparts in other countries they looked a gift horse in the mouth and didn't like the teeth.   David Brittain is another very important member of our cast. Just like Bill Jay and myself he had been to art school (Glasgow School of Art) and worked as a journalist for a photographic magazine. I liked his style and got him to contribute to 'CC'. It lead to a job working with me - David had a finger on a pulse that I was beginning to lose under the pressure of keeping our little boat afloat and we got on well, probably because we were both quietly mad but knew the disciplines of magazine making. His input allowed me to spend more time on the administration side - boring but necessary. It became a symbiotic partnership.   When I left the magazine for the second time (1991) I put it in David's hands because I knew he understood its spirit. I feel proud for him and what he did. Just like me he had to deal with shit hitting the fan yet still managed to pull off a thoroughly contemporary magazine. Major effort and minor money is what happens in the art world.   Then, about a year ago, my intuition was telling me that something was up; for a little and under-capitalized publication to have ridden the waves of financial change and the vicissitudes of arts fashion for more than 30 years is a testament to tenacity, but it also worried me that it needed loads of dosh and a sense of readership with an editorial responsibility. We lived in times with altered parameters, money talked much louder than it used to and original voices and visions are harder to find. Unfortunately, I was prove right, and I now find myself writing these words, saying good-bye to Creative Camera. In retrospect, I find my years with Creative Camera were the most rewarding; my involvement with the magazine from 1969-78 and again from 1986-91 became a succession of personally defining moments.   I met just about every one in Europe and the United States who cared about this medium: from Paul Strand and Walker Evans, to Henri Cartier-Bresson, Brassi, K_rt_z and Bill Klein; Bill Brandt, Don McCullin (or was that Don McSullen?) , Phillip Jones-Griffiths , Chris Steele-Perkins, Martin Parr, Marketa Luscacova , Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind, Fred Sommer, Robert Doisneau, Mary Ellen Mark, Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Ralph Gibson, Gilles Peress, Paul Caponigro, Ansel Adams, Minor White - the list could go on and on and would include a large number of women and persons from the so-called ethnic minorities. not to mention a whole host of museum people, historians, dealers and the general wierdos who gather around our profession.   Of course I wear rosy glasses while looking back, even if they are smeared with tears. Yet, despite the inherent subjectivity involved, I write with the voices of many very committed photographers I met throughout the world, who spoke to me of how the magazine had affected them, sounding in my ears. That I was party to this process is a source of pride.   Creative Camera was a large part of my life from 1969 onwards. It made my heart beat. Let us hope that even though the name has ceased to exist, something of its legacy will still beat loud and incessantly in the world of photography.   Peter Turner         http://www.zonezero.com/magazine/articles/turner/turnereng.html  

Monday, 22 April 2002

585. The story of the frogs and the Titanic

    I have often been surprised how many things change around us that we do not notice on a day-to-day basis.   There is this famous experiment with frogs where if you take a frog and place it in a pan with water sitting on a stove, and then heat the water slowly until it boils, the frogs will eventually die in the boiling water having never jumped out of the pan. However if you take a frog and place it in that same pan containing already very hot water, the frog will jump out immediately and save itself from being fried to death.   How does that apply to us with regard to digital photography, you will ask. I’ll tell you. Most people do not quite realize that the technological changes that are taking place around us on a daily basis are a bit like the boiling water. I do not suggest that we will die as a result of all these changes, but certainly they can introduce substantial changes in our livelihood to make the going rough, that is unless we sit up and take notice of what is going on, and plan accordingly.   The first thing we should be aware of is that digital photography is only a very very small part of the overall technological revolution going on in the world. The significance of this notion has to do with how we envisage the depth of the technological transformations surrounding us. Some photographers entertain the misguided notion that what is changing for photography is like some option that you can choose to ignore. Like choosing between types of film, papers, or cameras, for instance.   Well of course you can always choose to ignore anything, some people in fact have done just that, in the midst of a war they choose to ignore the reality surrounding them, usually with quite perilous consequences. Some members in my own family ended up being exterminated in concentration camps during WWII because they could not bring themselves to believe that what was going on had much relevance to their personal lives and therefore acted accordingly.   So let us review a few ideas that can shed some light on this story. If digital technology is already prevalent in all our telecommunications, and will soon become part of how television is broadcast; cinema is to be presented; and if video, and photography are now all going digital; nothing to say of all the gadgets in cars, kitchens, toys. It is affecting how we shop; how we entertain ourselves; how we learn and educate others and ourselves; conduct business; deal with sports; how medicine is being practiced and last but not least, how war is being carried out with digital technology being an integral part of modern warfare. If all this is taking place, then I believe that it is a safe bet to state that we can only view digital technology as it is applied to photography as a very small companion to this massive technological transformation of all our societies.   To somehow consider that photography could or would remain an isolated island not subjected to all these transformations is nothing short of delusional.   Obviously, you can dismiss all the evidence that is out there and suggest that it will not come to pass in quite such a dramatic way as I suggest. The problem with that approach is that it does not recognize the speed of change (remember the frog?). I must admit it is a difficult call, to know how fast things will actually change (heat up); but change they will, about that there is, I believe, total certainty. So if things are to change sooner or later, my personal inclination is to take the bull by the horns as early as possible, not leave it for later. The advantages are obvious. Those who change first, have an important competitive advantage over those who become involved at a later stage.   Changes are always difficult to adapt to, so if something is to begin with, already complicated, why not make it easier on oneself by assuming the needed changes on your own terms, rather than waiting till they are imposed on you by external conditions?   I have already seen instances of photographers who refused to implement digital technologies into their production, lose significant portions of their business to other photographers who could produce equally compelling work at a far lower cost.   I have seen business after business dealing with the printed image, in one form or another, fall on the way side just because the onslaught of technological changes introduced changes so great that they could not cope with them, in due time.   For those just starting off in life and pondering where to go and learn about photography, my advice is to choose those places that offer the most advanced information as to what is going on now. To go today and learn all about darkroom work is like training in steam engine technology. Interesting? Probably. However, to earn a living, probably not.   In a recent discussion with a friend of mine who runs a teaching institution, he was telling me that today the number of students seeking work shops and wanting to learn traditional technologies (both in film and photography) was considerably higher, than those asking for digital equivalents. I was not surprised at all, with that piece of information. After all, the momentum is just starting in the direction of digital technologies. But think about it, if it takes you four years, let us say, to cover all the learning you have to do, then would it not make sense to learn for what is going to be needed four years from now?   When you emerge from your four year training period, you would probably want to have acquired those skills that are needed at that time, not have to start all over because what you learned is no longer applicable in the market place. For instance, you learned how to work wonderful prints in the dark room only to find out that the local newspaper that can hire you, is all digital and not interested at all in your dark room skills (they don’t even have a dark room anymore). Or you go to the local museum archive, and discover they are now working only with digital technologies. You turn up at a corporation to work in their internal publications department, as a photographer, and discover they now work all digital; you set up your studio to do school pictures, and discover that your competitors do all their work using digital formats, underselling you by a wide margin. We can go on, in every possible direction and the story will always be more or less the same.   Some of the worst offenders in this transition period are the very people who should be leading the learning curve, the teachers. Too many are simply holding back others for fear of making their lack of knowledge the issue. They argue and defend the “old regime” simply to maintain their privileges and cover up their ignorance. Many times even their superiors lend support to such attitudes for lack of real knowledge of their own. All of this will simply have to work itself out in a Darwinian evolution of the species, with the survival of the fittest. With the statistics showing us that in the United States, 48 million youngsters between 5 and 17 use computers, that is 90% of that population, we see that in a couple of generations the change over will have been completed in spite of the teachers who are holding others back.   Many of the kids are actually teaching each other rather than waiting for an adult to come up with solutions. Games are one example, some of these are quite complicated to understand and deal with, yet six and seven year olds, are managing quite well to teach each other in a network of information that should make adults take notice. I have yet to see the equivalent network of my seven year old and his friends, with that of my photographer colleagues and their willingness to participate in such structures. Their spontaneous idea of sharing knowledge within their network is a world apart from that of adults who would benefit mightily from such an approach.   The Titanic as it appears, did not have to crash into the icebergs the night that it sunk, the disaster could have been averted by merely paying attention to the elements surrounding them and acting accordingly. Captain Smith ignored seven iceberg warnings from his crew and other ships. If he had called for the ship to slow down then maybe the Titanic disaster would not have happened. Arrogance also seems to have been an important part in the mistakes made that night. The belief that the ship was unsinkable.   We should be able to take our cues from the frogs and it should be possible to see that the disaster aboard the Titanic did not need to happen either. In much the same way, the photographers’ learning curve to acquire the working knowledge to be proficient in the digital age which is not an easy or quick fix, should be dealt with in a timely manner. I have said it in many forums; the most difficult part of it all is to have the time needed to learn and practice. As any surfer will tell you, you want to ride the crest of the wave, not have it come crashing down on you, we therefore need to think ahead and look around to understand what has to be done and the need to network.   In that spirit, let us have a discussion on this topic, the benefit of the Internet is that it is a two way street, and you can express your opinions in our forums. Give us examples of why you agree or not with your own personal experiences and what your plans are to deal with the undergoing changes.   Pedro Meyer April 12, 2002 Mexico City   For comments post a message in our forum section at ZoneZero         http://zonezero.com/editorial/abril02/april.html      

Friday, 12 April 2002

587. Anna Harlan | Thank you

  Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2002 12:16:44 -0800   Thank you for such an amazing site! Anna -- Anna Harlan Assistant Program Coordinator   Production Division School of Cinema-Television University of Southern California  

Friday, 05 April 2002

589. Juan Carlos Guarneros | ¡Felicitaciones!

  Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2002 12:50:22 -0600 (CST)   Estimado Maestro:   Deseo felicitarlo enormemente por los múltiples logros de ZoneZero y por promover interesantes proyectos de participación colectiva.   Agradezco en nombre de muchas personas su dedicación y esfuerzo por mantener el espíritu del desarrollo en la fotografía.   Sinceramente, Juan Carlos Guarneros Huerta  

Friday, 29 March 2002

591. José Granata

  Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2002 22:40:18 -0200   SOY JEFE DE FOTOGRAFIAS DEL PERIODICO, EDITORIAL DIARIO LA CAPITAL DE ROSARIO .PCIA. DE SANTA FE REP. ARGENTINA , Y DESDE MUCHO QUE VEO LA PAGIAN Y ES EXELENTE, DE MUCHA UTILIDA PARA NUESTRA TAREA COMO REPORTEROS GRAFICOS DE UN MEDIO DE COMUNICACION GRAFICO, ESTAR AL DIA DE TODO LOS INFORMES DE ESTA ,.-MUY BUENA  

Wednesday, 27 March 2002

593. The Pentagon Way

  I landed in Tel Aviv aboard a plane from Newark airport, exactly nine days after the World Trade Center disaster and after three flight cancellations by an airline that was more eager to reestablish its domestic flights than to tend to its international routes. The cab from the airport drove into Tel Aviv through the "Shalom" highway entrance, slipping past the two tallest business towers in the Middle East, fleetingly recalling the city I had just left, and then entered Kaplan Street, which had been temporarily renamed "The Pentagon Way" to commemorate the disaster.   Go to exhibition    

Thursday, 14 March 2002

595. Magical Thought and the Digital Reconstruction of New York

    Past and Present: From Aztlan to New York Before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors to Middle America, several strange portents had already given word of their existence: comets, flashes of lightning, fires, idols that conveyed ill-fated messages, demons that warned of an imminent tragedy, two-headed men, people who spoke in trance, rare multicolored bird specimens, and mirrors hidden in mysterious caves. Thus, to understand the catastrophe of the present, Montezuma and his priests turned to history to find the explanation to what was happening. But, as Tzvetan Todorov suggests in The Conquest of America: Everything would lead us to believe that the portents were invented after the fact; but, why? […] Instead of conceiving the event as a purely human, although admittedly unparalleled, encounter–the arrival of men who were hungry for gold and power–the natives assimilated it within a network of natural, social and supernatural relations where the event abruptly loses its singularity: in a certain sense, it becomes domesticated, absorbed by an already existing order of beliefs. The Aztecs were able to perceive the conquest, that is, the defeat, and at the same time overcome it by integrating it into a history conceived in accordance to their own demands […]: The present becomes intelligible and at the same time less inadmissible the moment we are able to see it already foretold in the past. (1) Besides the fact that some important events seem to have been prefigured by preceding signs of forewarning, as if we were dealing with reticent and erratic warnings that escape the future to caution us now, in the fleeting present, it is significant to note that this kind of magical reasoning still survives in the rational world so dear to the West. A similar phenomenon to that of the omens among the Aztecs, could be observed after the suicide attacks on the Twin Towers (how distant that event seems now!), including certain signs that in retrospective could have foreshadowed the tragedy: the numerous allusions to terrorist or outer-space attacks on the United States in movies, or the album by the hip-hop group The Coup which showed on its cover the two rappers joking in front of an exploding World Trade Center (the album was pulled from stores, and scenes with imposing buildings were cut or replaced in several movies which had not yet been released). Even if we regard the Aztec's way of thinking as passive because of its tacit acceptance of the inescapable nature of the invasion and conquest, the attitude of New Yorkers and Americans in general is not less magical, in spite of having been created and encouraged by film imagery and by the belligerent official discourse that sees the United States, ever since it was founded, as the strongest and most righteous country in history. Hence their inability to envisage an act of extreme hatred aimed at their civilization. Hence the ferocity of their response to Afghanistan and the arrogant reiteration of their supremacy over the world. The magical frame of mind of the Mesoamericans helped them to sublimate the defeat in terms of a past that predicted a thorny, yet inescapable future. The magical thought of the Americans made them overcome the greatest tragedy in their history for the sake of their dominance over the rest of the world. Catharsis and Reconstruction They are almost completely gone now, yet a few hours after the atrocious and spectacular event, anonymous hoaxers from around the world circulated dozens of jokes and digital images on the web that ironized the tragedy with greater or lesser wit: an absentminded tourist having his picture taken on top of one of the towers while one of the Boeings approaches from behind/ King Kong, mounted on the towers, catching one of the planes in mid air as the other plane flutters around him/ Spiderman wondering where the Towers had gone/ a new electronic version of the two magnificent buildings designed by an imaginary Mexican architect with two openings that would permit airplanes to pass through their structure without difficulty/ an enormous phallus-shaped construction replacing the old WTC and daringly presiding over New York/ New York's skyline in 2006 strewn with mosques/ A long Arab veil covering the face of the Statue of Liberty/ and, in the same vein, a whole flood of images (which are also commentaries and valid statements) in the midst of which one could see the grotesque scene of Bin Laden sodomizing a distressed President Bush. As in a lavish Hollywood superproduction, digital technology made possible the cathartic or playful reconstruction of the urban landscape of the great city of glass and steel.   In their renowned book The Morning of the Magicians, Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier retell the story of a monk from the future, doing penitence in the desert, who finds a circuit diagram explaining the functioning of some archaic electronic device. He however thinks it is a sacred manuscript illustrated by a famous saint who lived before the nuclear holocaust and devotes himself to decorate it with calligraphy and traces of color. (2) We can imagine the amazement of the archaeologists of the future when they discover photographic evidence of the Twin Towers—for instance, the post cards of New York which were withdrawn from stores (3)—before and after the plane crash—i.e., the digital reconstructions—and conclude that there once existed a civilization capable of rising from the ashes. Or that in the end it disappeared having fallen victim to a devastating nuclear bombing, as is suggested in the last scene from The Planet of the Apes, in its first and unsurpassable version, when Charlton Heston stares in astonishment at the half-buried remains of the Statue of Liberty. New York has been a legendary and universal city almost since its foundation. If the unbelievable terrorist attacks shocked almost everyone in the world, it was because New York had somewhat managed to "detach" itself from the US: not only is it one of the most important capitals of art, culture and finance, but it is the home of all the nationalities of the world, a melting pot where Italians, Irish, Jews, Latin-Americans, Africans and Asians thought they had found the best of all possible worlds. The city of Warhol and Rockefeller, of the Marx Brothers and Talking Heads. The prototypical city of the future, busy and optimistic, antithesis of the somber Los Angeles of Blade Runner. The city of all races and all people, as is proven by the sad fact that among those who died in the Twin Towers there were people from a hundred different countries.   Art and Memory To perpetuate the memory of the disaster, several New York-based artists have come up with various suggestions. The sculptress Louis Bourgeois has proposed constructing on the ground once occupied by the towers a monument to the dead where their names would be inscribed. The conceptual artist Barbara Kruger has thought of the construction of a park around the remains of the structure of one of the towers. John Baldessari, on the other hand, proposes the construction of a park with two rectangular meadows indicating the place once occupied by the towers and planting in the adjacent area a number of trees equal to that of the victims; where the parking lot was located, he suggests building an amphitheater permanently displaying the faces of the people who died on September 11th. Several other artists, residents of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, which was located in Tower One, simply propose the virtual reconstruction of the buildings that formed the WTC. A beautiful digital image appeared on the cover of several American and European magazines (El País Semanal, for example): the illuminated silhouette of New York stands out against a dark sky crossed by two towers of pure light disappearing into the skies. As we know, digital photography is a space where different times and places can come together naturally, as is the case of New York, timeless setting of traditions and cultures, both primitive and postmodern, in constant movement, cohabitation and renewal. Perhaps none of the virtual humorists have recreated New York after the attacks correctly: new towers or more mosques? It is conceivable that where the towers once stood a peaceful garden will be constructed honoring the memory of the six thousand citizens of the world that lived and worked in the legendary, endearing, dazzling city that never sleeps. Paradoxically, the towers will disappear from maps and from movies that have not been released, but they will continue to exist in the millions of digital copies that will travel the world, drawing a passing smile, a grimace of surprise, a nostalgic look. Share your thoughts about this article with Rogelio Villarreal 1. Tzvetan Todorov, La conquista de América. El problema del otro, Mexico, Siglo XXI, 1995, pp. 82-83. [The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other, University of Oklahoma Press, 1999]. (back) 2. "Cántico a san Leibowitz", by Walter M. Miller, in El retorno de los brujos, Barcelona, Plaza y Janés, 1990, p. 265. [A Canticle for Leibowitz, Bantam Books, 1997]. (back) 3. Only to be rapidly replaced by postcards with the image of the Twin Towers before and during the plane crashes… The postcards are printed and distributed by City Merchandise and the proceedings, as can be read on the back, will be donated to the victims of the disaster. (back)     http://www.zonezero.com/magazine/articles/villareal/nydigital.html    

Tuesday, 05 March 2002

597. Jesica Bolaños

  Date: Sun, 24 Feb 2002 20:29:03 -0600 (CST)   HOLA MI NOMBRE ES JESICA BOLAÑOS, TRABAJO PARA EL PERIODICO VANGUARDIA EN LA CIUDAD DE SALTILLO, COAHUILA MEXICO, TRABAJO COMO EDITOR DE FOTOGRAFIA Y ME GUSTARIA QUE ME REGISTRARAN EN SU LISTA PARA PODER RECIBIR INFORMACION SOBRE USTEDES.   LLEVO TIEMPO CHECANDO SU PAGINA Y LA VERDAD ESTA MUY INTERESANTE, EL USO DE LA TECNOLOGIA DONDE INCLUYEN EL DISCURSO DIGITAL EN IMAGEN, EL TEXTO Y EL AUDIO NOS BRINDAN UNA COMUNICACION COMPLETA.   ADEMAS DE LA PRESENTACION DE DIVERSOS TRABAJOS REALIZADOS POR LOS FOTOGRAFOS QUE SON EXCELENTES.  

Sunday, 24 February 2002

599. 20:02 20/02 2002

  February 20th is the date that something will happen that will never happen agai At 8:02 p.m. this day, for one minute only, it will be 2002-2002-2002, or more accurately 20:02,20/02,200 Because there are only 24 hours on the international clock, this will never happen again So why not celebrate this event We invite you to see the contributions that ZoneZero's community has shared with us.   Go to exhibition    

Wednesday, 20 February 2002