Photojournalists committed to making poverty visible, via AmericanPoverty.org. Commentary on this effort from the New Yorker’s Photo Booth blog.
Photojournalists committed to making poverty visible, via AmericanPoverty.org. Commentary on this effort from the New Yorker’s Photo Booth blog.
Rest in peace, Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth.
This photo is one of thousands of previously unpublished civil rights-eta photographs discovered in a cardboard box in an equipment closet at the Birmingham News in 2004. The paper made them public in a series of stories and photo exhibits in 2006. See the full online collection here.
I offered a reading of this particular image on BagNews in 2006.
Image credit: “March 6, 1957: The Rev. Shuttlesworth is stopped before entering the whites only waiting room at Birmingham’s Terminal station. This photo came one day after the Alabama Public Service Commission ruled that the waiting rooms must remain segregated. Robert Adams, Birmingham News.” 
BAGnewsSalon, Oct. 16: Analyzing Media’s Visual Framing of the “Great Recession.” Join us for a real-time, online discussion starting at 1 pm EST. Nate Stormer of UMaine (go Black Bears!) moderates, and there’s an amazing lineup of photographers, including Anthony Suau and Michael Williamson. I’ll be there (late, sadly), commenting on the history of visual representations of poverty. Join us, and send your students and friends!
I had the pleasure of meeting photojournalist Brendan Hoffman last week on a panel about presidential visual politics at AEJMC in St. Louis. Brendan and another colleague spent time in Iowa ahead of the Straw Poll this past weekend, and made some compelling images of candidates and voters. I love this triptych especially. Is this what citizenship looks like? Maybe.
More of their homage to Iowa voters.
Picturing America?
David Campbell has a really smart commentary today on why photojournalism seems to be “afraid of home.” Though he admits he’s generalizing a bit, he observes that photojournalism seems most vital and romantic when it’s operating offshore. But he also argues that there is much good work happening on the home front, and mentions specifically a project I’m especially excited about: Facing Change/Documenting America, a collective of photographers and writers that claims to be inspired by the FSA and devoted to the creation of a digital, visual public sphere. Now, comparisons to the FSA might be more figurative than literal (the FSA was funded by the federal government while Facing Change is an independent non-profit), and the question of what constitutes a “public sphere” and whether we have one is complex to say the least (I’m teaching a whole class on that this fall). Even so, I’m all in.
Take a look at the archive they’ve built already, and you’ll see why.
BAGnews named a top 20 photo blog!
Breaking news! BAGnewsNotes was just named a top 20 photo blog by LIFE.com. Of The BAG, it wrote
Examining the tiniest, seemingly mundane details of an image to extract its power, its meaning, and its message, the Notes blog (part of a larger site featuring original photography and live interactive discussions) fulfills its mission of “reading the pictures” by starting provocative conversations about how the media illustrate the biggest stories of the day. … BagNews Notes may not have all the answers, but in raising the questions, it offers a compelling new lens through which to view our politics, culture and, of course, pictures.
Congrats to the BAG and also to my BAGNews and Twitter friend Pete Brook at Prison Photography. Check out the other blogs on this list too. Several of them are new to me and I can’t wait to get lookin’.
Taryn Simon on how she accesses secret sites where she photographs. More TED talks for this week in visual politics.
New Book Alert! In this Slate interview, Barbie Zelizer discusses her new book, About To Die: How News Images Move the Public (Oxford, 2010). I’m really looking forward to reading Zelizer’s book. Among her other talents, she’s exceptionally good at contextualizing photographs in light of the norms of photojournalism that ground their production.
