Title : A Duplicate Name Exists On The Network
link : A Duplicate Name Exists On The Network
A Duplicate Name Exists On The Network
- welcome. really the first ofour major lunch events, what we'll call the brown bag lunch. (michael laughs) i'm saying that, i'm making a little pun
A Duplicate Name Exists On The Network, on the old title of michael's organization called bagnews, which has now changed. this is the current reading the pictures and that will be it hence force.
but i met him when he was bagnews, so we call this our brown bag lunch, a series that will goon, we hope, indefinitely open to the public, butfor students primarily. you're all welcome tobring food in the future. i believe that's our policyfor these things if you wish. we have some guests herealso from the outside. we have faculty here,a lot of mixed people. i want to thank marvin heiferman
who introduced me to michael shaw. i give you our little history. marvin and others on our faculty have been talking about theissue of visual literacy, of learning how to use the picture image as language, understanding it better than perhaps we presently do even though this group probably understandsit better than most. i met michael, what, two years ago
and we were planning aseries of symposiums, which because of this constructionactually didn't occur. we hope to have him back repeatedly because i think thatmichael, what he's doing with the image, with the news,with images that we consume every day and which inform usevery day, or don't inform us, is very important tounderstanding our world. many of you have heard me say i think that imagery, particularlyphoto lens based imagery
is the ectoplasm of ourbeing, and it's the stuff that we have to work with, make, conceive, and frankly interpret every day. we have very few toolsto properly interpret it. i think the great role of this younger generation is to figureout how to be the creative interpreters of all thatimagery that's out there. michael comes to thisout of great passion, a long term commitment,but he is by profession,
a clinical psychologist, whichmeans that he's gonna bring another depth to theunderstanding of the images. he's from california,educated in california, lives in berkeley, and haslectured all over the country, i suppose the world aswell on this subject. but he's kind of thecenter of this website, and he's been here in newyork several times to speak. he will be speakingsaturday at photoville. with no further ado ithink it's up to michael
to give us the background thatformulated this organization. thank you, welcome. (audience applauds) - thank you, charles. can everyone hear me alright in the back? okay. as charlie said, i'm michael shaw, the publisher of reading the pictures, a nonprofit visual andmedia literacy site.
launched in 2004, we're the only site analyzing news and documentaryphotography on a daily basis. we also host the readingthe pictures salon where we work with professionals from the photo world and visual educators to analyze visual coverage ofthe top stories of the day. we're closely followed by the news and visual media, thephotojournalism community, photojournalism and communicationprograms, and citizens
interested in socialimagery and visual culture. if you're looking for us you can find us on multiple platforms,notably our own website, as well as twitter,instagram, facebook, youtube. a great way to follow us is to sign up for our week in re-view email. i'm here to talk about what we do but just as much i'm hereto talk about what you do. to talk about how news imagery operates
in the culture, and how tospeak, read and use the language. today i wanna do three things. i want to discuss trendsin visual news, culture, and social media so you'llbetter appreciate how the craft is becoming morelinguistic, more artistic, more experimental, more social, and more crossover, melding with other types of photographyand photography markets. i wanna show you how social media
has been shaking up news and information in a social sphere, allowing more opportunities for creation and expression. then i wanna describe our site as an outgrowth of these developments. i wanna describe how weanalyze news and media images for meaning, trends,context, and fairness, and how we've built a professionalrole, and now an evolving nonprofit business aroundthese sets of skills.
let's talk about visuallanguage and symbolism. i believe as the culturebecomes more visual, we are able to read and communicate in an increasingly moresophistacted way strictly in images. this is an elegantexample, a very simple one, where the imagery in this memoriam cover, the cover, along with the shapes, translates directly into words. i don't think i even haveto translate it, right?
this photo, by landon nordeman,a fashion photographer, covering this year's presidential campaign for time by the way, there'sanother crossover example right there, was one ofthe most interesting photos that came out of thedemocratic convention. it's a brilliant illustration of exactly what we're talking about. without using a word, itdescribes how conversant we are in images and symbols, and how much
we express our preferences this way. that everything in the culture in fact is subject to visual inspection, election, and judgement, and that these are primary narrative tools of howyou and i communicate now. symbolism is nothingnew to photojournalism. still, it seems photographyas social language seems to be moreconfidently and consistently taking advantage of visual metaphor.
there is powerful symbolism here in the half naked demonstrator, protesting france'sattempt to strip workers and the labor movement inparis of rights and benefits. as president hollande goes towar with the rank-and-file, how does the photo capturethe essence of human labor? think the importance of a strong back, or back breaking work, and in terms of a battle, think about the government
wanting nothing less than theshirts off the worker's back, or the goal of breakingthe back of the resistance. we might think of metaphorsin terms of words, but metaphor, literally,is visual language. if you're familiar withtomas van houtryve's project, blue sky days, he used adrone flying over specific locations or events in the usto mirror specific us drone strikes that took place overseas. you can see how he's makingpowerful use of visual analogy.
we're all familiar with the reports of the us military, ifinadvertently, bombing wedding parties inafghanistan or pakistan. here, van houtryve brings it home in the most chilling and suggestible way, capturing this scene over awedding in central philadelphia. talk about visual language, the recent edward snowden cover forthe new york times magazine is all about the public image and how
snowden's been depicted ina new film by oliver stone. the fact that snowden is in hiding, so technically invisible,except on screen, the way he's widely identifiedwith covert surveillance, and the issue how of stone is also engineering snowden's story and image, all captured through thepresentation of rolling screens and the suggestion of datainterference in the photo illustration is pretty sophisticated.
how many people have seen this by the way? oh, fantastic. one of the most brilliantpolitical statements i've ever seen is before you,and it's completely nonverbal. this is michelle obama's official portrait in 2009, in the blueroom of the white house. i'm 100% sure that she chose the setting and the context, and since i don't think anyone's seen thispicture, can you tell me
what you make about it orwhere the statement is? - [audience member] jefferson? - that's jefferson in the background. she had been organizing a lot of tours right from the first dayof the administration, them moving in, and a lotof school children from dc. one thing that she was promptlypointing out in the tour is that in the blue roomthis photo of jefferson, he was not only a slave ownerbut he actually had slaves
working for him in the whitehouse when he was president. so pretty incredible symbolism. this white house photo comesfrom michelle obama's visit to the brown versus board of education national historic site in topeka, kansas honoring the supreme court decision ending legal segregation in public schools. challenging the post racial ideal they largely ran on in2008, michelle obama,
dressed in black as shestands under the colored sign, emphasizes in 2014 howlabels, racial divisions, and the stigma of the other, exist today and in fact hang over her head. as society becomes morevisually sophisticated, photos acquire more capacityand complexity by more commonly referencing well knownphotos and paintings. this photo by michelle frankfurter of a guatemalan woman hoping to enter
into the us by freighttrain, was published by smithsonian magazine online. we labeled it im-migrant mother. later, we asked michelleabout it, and she said any comparison to migrant motheris completely intentional. this acclaimed photo of the migrant crisis by sergey ponomarev, who shoots for the new york times, seemsto derive some power from the likeness to a famous painting.
do you know which one i'm talking about? (audience members chattering) what? that wasn't the one i was thinking, it's probably a betterexample than mine, but. in recent years, news photography has become more artful, vivid, more colorful, and is makingmore use of emotional language. to put it in a largerperspective in helping you see
the trend, we did a posttitled 20 years of ebola and how photography has changed. in the instance above, we compared a photo by jodi bieber, published inthe new york times magazine from the outbreak in the year2000, oh, and by the way, this is a picture thatwon a world press award, with an image from the 2014 crisis. i'll show you that in a second. keep in mind though thatworld press winning photos
are judged the best, the most powerful images of the year, and the most vivid. so this is how thatdesignation in the year 2000. but you can comparethis shot with this one by john moore, taken in monrovia, in 2014. that's much more dramatic, more vivid, more colorful, in theillustration of death. here we see a shot of amedical worker from zaire. this is may 1995, this is 20 years ago.
compare that to another shot by john moore of a us navy microbiologistin a navy lab in liberia. it's a photo that'sdramatic, even cinematic, in both a heroic and a sci-fi way, it's a wonderful statement of precaution, commitment, technological acumen,and also delivery of care. compare also this photo of aid workers in rwanda that's back in 2005. compare it to glenna gordon's photo
from monrovia in the wallstreet journal, september 2014. not only does it have a lot to say about the fraternity of aid workers, but it also shows how mucha very simple visual detail, and a large dose of emotion,can carry a news photo now. let's look at how newsphotography has been melding with art, documentary, andcommercial photography. this reuters photo was taken during the synchronized divingevent at the rio olympics.
the games, their own mashof cultural politics, advertising sports and entertainment, offers a dazzling arrayof amazing photo effects. to me they look like whirling dervishes. this wire photo of a photograph leaning against a headstoneat arlington cemetery was taken on the 10th anniversary of the start of the iraq war. what getty's chip somodevilla captures
in the most liminal way, no retouching, no filters, is that iraq was a ghost war, and now, so many of its vets are too. the echosight project uses anoverlay technique to present more complicated narrativesin a more literal way. if news photography is not given nuance and too often minimizes the complexity of like everything, in this case urban communities, this overlay,
which was published by al jazeera, appeared after the civil rights protest and unrest in ferguson and baltimore. what it does is balances the opening of a boys and girls club in ferguson with a member of a dirt bike gang tooling down the street in baltimore during a march protestingthe death of freddie gray. looks really good up there.
this animated gif was created by artist, nancy burson, for a liberal magazine. all these examples of artists who are now moving into the editorial sphere. burson pioneered the use ofdigital morphing technologies in a collaboration withresearchers at mit in the mid 70s. the title is what if he were black, asian, hispanic, middle eastern, indian. again, it's saying a lot about trump,
race, racism, andmulticulturalism with no words. how do you represent people who have been made invisible in a media photo? how do you illustrate a news event like the mass kidnapping of 276 girls from their school in northernnigeria by boko haram? as a documentary approach,borrowing the school's uniforms from the students'parents and photographing them together, waspowerful but not unique.
what was more unique, andthis is becoming a much wider practice, is thatglenna gordan's photos were commissioned by news publishers,the wall street journal and time specifically for a news audience. the next point i wannamake about today's news photo has to do with storytelling. also borrowing fromdocumentary photography, news images, even within the single frame, are becoming largercontainers of information.
let me show you in a short case study. last year we saw an interestingproject time published about the police in philadelphiaand it got us thinking about the history ofpolice ride-along photos. shot by permission under protection and effectively over theshoulder of officers, the police embed in photostories in major publications by prominent photographersgoes back decades. the difficulty though is howstereotypical they can be,
and have been by race, bylocation, by situation, and by partiality to the police, or sometimes, antagonistic to the police. the story narratives aretypified by the police force in a primal battle withblack or latino youth. major stories have beenuniformly photographed in notoriously dangerous inner-city, low income, african americanor latino communities, and they are largely captured in the dark
or in black and white against housing or stores that areimpoverished or decrepit. typically featuring thechase, violent confrontation, and suspects detained and subdued, often still invoking deadliness or menace. this photo was taken by james nachtwey in los angeles, 2004, and these are all very major photo storiesover that period of time. this photo was taken by joerodriguez in los angeles
in 1995, published innew york times magazine. this was taken by paolo pellegrin in 2012, in rochester, published in die zeit. this was taken by antonio bolfo, photographer and formerpoliceman, 2008 in the bronx. this photo was taken by bruce davidson in 1985 in the new york citysubway for new york magazine. these are undercover policemen. ultimately, the realchallenge for the ride-along
has to do with context and what happens beyond the drama and the polarization. what is lacking, then, is the fabric, or the chemistry, the more daily dynamics. for that reason, i'd like to contrast these images i've shown you with several by natalie keyssar taken injuly 2015 in philadelphia. what is keyssar doing withher ride-along images that previous stories havelargely been missing?
above all, they tell stories. the photos are also dramatically routine. in contrast to other ride-along stories, the shoe never drops. if the driver may get stopped, perhaps for a nuisance reason,he doesn't shot or arrested. in this photo, the policesearch this man's car and then let him go, and thephotos are complex, layered, filled with concurrentaction and layers of meaning.
all in one picture, the mothersand families have their take on the cops and they alsohave their take on the kid, and very uniquely, theyhold the higher ground. another accomplishment of the photo is that the realm of the street and the realm of the homeare not separated at all. the photos are dynamic. instead of fixed expressions and gestures, you see people looking,surmising, summing, calculating.
they convey true interaction, observation, learning, or imprinting. you can imagine the kid on the car remembering this moment, while the kids down the street have seen this all before, while a girl elects not to engage. even the incongruity is powerful, the affection for the dogbalancing out the other stresses. the photos are ambiguous in the best way.
they are not prejudicial, and they are not presenting evidence. they not only defy moral judgement, but the depictions of the roles actually challenge the stereotypes. in this case, shifting from antagonist to advocates, the policerespond to a call about a threatening ex-boyfriend,and end up filing a report. notice by the way how thepoint of view swivels around.
as much as we see the situationfrom the cops' vantage, we also see it from the ground up, through the eyes of a toddler, and through the perceiving eyes ofthe teenage girl in blue. keyssar then also levels out the power by framing out the police men's heads. the tension portrayed in these photos don't come from violenceor the exercise of power, but the day to day tension,the day to day tension
of the police and the community having to deal with each other, while negotiating the same space. most clearly, the community space. here, a captain shouts with a woman in her kitchen who called him to discuss routine problems from theabandoned house next door. the caption notes, "this woman has lived "in the precinct since the 50s,
"and was one of thefirst black residents." if the photos are stylish,as in the officer's pose, and this is a bigconsideration these days, style, it's also in theservice of more information. perhaps keyssar hinting at self-reflection or second thoughts onthe policeman's part. the first year copisolating and ostracizing the older kid on the bikebecause for the moment he fit the descriptionof a shooting suspect.
also, keying off the invitationof the kid in the foreground they urge us to read thephotos for ourselves. an important element in storytelling is the ability to use timeas a narrative device. consider this horriblescene from an attack on a foreigner in johannesburg. the fact the rock is frozen before it hits the man's face promptsus to stop time and consider what has precipitated such an act,
and what the consequencesshould be, or shall be. if you've been concernedhow much media images have made refugees and themassive migrant crisis look helpless and pitiful, afp dida smart and effective thing. taking the top picture ofa myanmar refugee on a boat off thailand, thephotographer went to indonesia a week later to identify the refugees and photograph them again to flesh out the story and reinforce their dignity.
this is actually a very unique photo whereas political factions rail against illegal immigrants as a security threat and for taking jobs away from european or american citizens,photographer, mark abramson, embedded himself with an undocumented hispanic gardener to demonstrate how thoroughly americans depend on and rely on so-called illegals.
what's even morewonderful about this photo of the homeowner lying in his pool while he employs the immigrant, mostly living in legallimbo, to pick up his trash, is that the bakersfield homeowner also happens to be a policeman. nothing has changednews, culture, politics, and photojournalism more thanthe impact of social media. i wanna show you some examples
how it has not only transformed news and cultural informationin a social sphere, but has created, and this is for amateurs and freelancers just asmuch as news agencies, new opportunities forcreation and expression, and for bringing concern,photography, and visual activism to the social, web, and into public space. yes, nobody has used it better than the white house, as the obamas,
as visually savvy as they were already came into the office as platformslike twitter and instagram were just achieving critical mass. first let's consider the viral image where photo editors atnewswires and major news organizations used to chooseand prioritize what we see. today social media, inother words you and i, have taken over the curation role by recirculating, well,anything that strikes us.
in this case, the worldwide power and attention of the alan kurdi photo demonstrated the urgency of the migrant crisis. viral photographs also have been the conduit for new social rituals, behaviors, and what we call memes. in response to the michael brown killing, citizen-police violence and incessant racial profiling, the handsup, don't shoot gesture,
the sign that signifiespassive cooperation surrender, and sometimes fruitless surrender, become a physical, thena combined physical and visual protest andempowerment response. it took off immediately as you can see in this scene outside theferguson police department the very next day aftermichael brown was killed. then it becomes art andcultural iconography from there. i could've said the exactsame thing but showed
in an earlier loop where we were looking at trayvon martin and the hoodie, and how fast that became a signature. now, sadly, we havethese events in charlotte and tulsa the last few days, you wonder how that loops gonna workalso in terms of how we make meaning and iconographyout of the current events. this photo went viral two years later. in this case, the image of ieshia evans
protesting the killing of alton sterling in baton rouge is a lot more poetic. reuters certainly had no idea this photo would explode over socialmedia the way it did. the reasons are a little more mysterious. i think it has a lotto do with empowerment in the face of so much anger and rage over the killings of the armedbut not threatening sterling, as well as philando castile in minnesota
within days of the other event, this scene has an almostsupernatural quality. it appears like evans, in the most dignified state, somehow turns the armed russian kinetic riot cops into stone. think of the phrase i am a man, or in this incarnation, i am a woman. call it a remarkable visionof poise and rootedness. evans is as rooted as that tree.
thinking again about tomasvan houtryve's drone project, the artist jr, now well known for his massive outdoorhumanitarian photo displays, created this giant earth portrait in a heavily bombed region of pakistan where drone attacks regularly occur. it's specifically designed to be seen by western drone pilots. here, portraiture, installation art,
and visual activism literallyreframe and reface a war zone. another photo-activist organization to keep your eye on is dysturb, a coop of top-flight photojournalists. they have been postingconflict photography in well trafficked spots, mostly safe and often well off ones, incities all around the world. this picture brought the syrian army's use of chemical weapons in damascusto the streets of paris.
with social media, also comes growing visual independence and peopletaking back their own image. that's a massive challenge though when western media still controls so much web share and mind share in shaping our political and culturalperception of things. but there's hope there, for example, tens of thousands ofrefugees coming to europe have cell phones with cameras on them.
so why is their plightfiltered and narrated to us by western photojournalists in such gorgeous scenes ofweakness and helplessness? the journalists clustered in packs on the shores of coasts of lesbos. to understand what i mean,compare these photos. these are from lesbos by the acclaimed western photographer, james machchtwey. another.
and this one. contrast those with this photo being offered like a specimen here, right? this photo, published by time, was taken by photographer eyad abou kasem, himself a syrian refugee,photographer and refugee, who escaped from damascus to europe in the summer of 2015crossing to greece by boat. it's a wonderful commentaryon the western photographers
though lying in wait tophotograph all these incoming migrants and how they'reused as media fodder is not lost in the so-called anonymous. as eyad wrote, "the scene on the beach "was my first welcome to europe. "i framed the shot to look like "the behind the scenes of a film, "or even a cheesy advertising of us. "even before starting my journey,
"i knew was going to take this picture. "it seems so obvious to me." given the number of artful boatlanding pics i've seen just this week, more obvious tohim than to us, for sure. now let's turn to reading the pictures to better understand how we analyze news and media images for meaning, trends, context, and fairness. while i'm doing that i hope you also
consider what we're about in terms of the opportunity outthere for all of you to build a role and aniche in the information landscape around your ownvision and craft with pixels. simply put, our goal is visual and media literacy, to help people see and read cultural, media,and political images focusing on headlines, major social and political events, orimportant social issues.
we spend a lot of time looking at the media depiction of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, class,for better and for worse. in this instance we did apost back about the media photos depicting new york'spreparation for hurricane sandy. while it's easy to findshots of preparations in front of saks, orcorporate headquarters like goldman sachs, or thenew york stock exchange, we couldn't find oneimage, and believe me,
we look hard, from the traditional media picturing storm preparationsfor the homeless. this photo from vanity fair, a profile of msnbc morning's joehosts, mika brzezinski and joe scarborough, it's aclassic example of sexism. ostensibly an equal team, scarborough is first among equalsand brzezinski looks like a stripper doing a table dance. (audience laughs)
but atlantic's liz mundy by the way notes the importance of erotic capital for women inbroadcasting journalism. so i imagine she accrued quite a lot of capital from this photo. this recent news photo of black female west point cadets raising theirfists parallels the famous cadet image known as the old corps photo. it created a storm of social media,
many including the new york times, equating the gesturewith black lives matter. in the article though, a westpoint graduate and mentor to many of the women inthe photo, said it was more a statement of unity,pride, and sisterhood. but all of us know thatcadets are not robots and the beauty of photographyis that it can mean both and neither at the same time. i'd call this a mirror of the times.
critique aside, we'reconstantly recognizing images that create amore balanced depiction and goes against type or stereotype. taken for nat geo, national geographic, this photo from flint byphotography wayne lawrence depicts three kids pickingup clean drinking water. kids who, have not for their skin color, could be seen as kidsfrom elite private schools returning home to park avenue.
here we see a married couple, the photo also referencing the american flag, enjoying a moment ofbliss at an international gay rodeo associationevent in little rock. earlier i talked about visual democracy and the importance ofpeople, especially outside the west, taking back their images. that's why a feed of everydayafrica, an instagram site, and the related visual sites are so vital.
given the number of photos we see in american news photo galleries equating the african continentwith poverty and primitivism. here we see a familyshopping at a supermarket in kinshasa, democraticrepublic of the congo. this photo by the photographer ruddy roy, and i highly recommend you follow him if you do not already on instagram, was published by the timeinstagram site following
the police shooting of altonsterling in baton rouge. the photo counter programsso many media pictures of protest vandalism and violence. the man is cooking food forpeople who congregated every day at the triple s food martwhere the shooting took place. what's particularlyinteresting is how fire, a notorious symbol of social unrest, here instead stands forsupport and care taking. again, conditioned as we are to think
of the syrian refugee camp in jordan in terms of misery and squalor,this is an extraordinary photograph by alixandra fazzina from noor. it depicts an 18 year old syrian bride in the zaatari camp's hair salon preparing to be we'dthat day as a refugee. we're also concerned with context, and particularly the balance between information and drama in a news photo.
you'll hear us, if you follow the site, use the term infotainment a lot. to often what we see in a news photo is the sensationalism, the spectacle, shock, horror, overwhelmingthe actual news. what makes a great newsimage today as we see it, and any strong social imageactually, is that the picture lends all its muscle tothe informational value. did that happen in the incredible
photos coming out of the ukraine uprising in kiev square in january 2014 that lead to the overthrow ofthe pro russian government? in a situation that mightnot be that politically relevant or familiar toamerican news consumers it seemed like these photos were more about the spectacle,evoking medieval times, or in this photo,middle-earth, science fiction, or even the famous apple 1984 commercial.
but what about this one? the question for us is how much does this photo shock andintrigue in a little bit of a freaky way, the vatican being a huge and highly skilled prmachine, as opposed to how much does the impact lend itselfto the appreciation that this more humble and sociallyminded jesuit pope is that comfortable and determinedto engage the most inflicted? we're interested in a photo as propaganda,
pr, political spin, and how news and social images canbecome overtly commercial. this screenshot is from a series of vice videos in whichthey embedded with isis. refusing to disclose the terms of the arrangement, the question about the imagery is the documentary value versus the promotion ofvice and the isis brand, the terror organization being extremely
media savvy or at leastthey were at that time. starting from the firstdays of the administration, using its own photographersand its own social media, the administration hasbeen able to control access, photo access, while providing entrancing, profound, and supposedly candid photos to an appreciative media to such an extent that today the public hardly distinguishes between photos
taken of the president byprofessional independent journalists, and photos 100%produced by the white house. in publishing this photo of obama mirroring rosa parks on that same bus at the henry ford museum,that's the context for the photo, sorry,what most of the media let slip by though when this photo circulated everywhere, was the fact that, in this not even candid moment captured
that there's press involved,there's no independent media. in fact it was a white house photo completely formulated and composed during an obama campaign fundraiser, while, you'll see,members of the photo press were having to stand over on the side. this photo was veryhard to find by the way. the other one wasn't. this photo by annie leibovitz for vogue
using the hurricane sandy disaster and a celebration of newyork's finest first responders to also promote new york's other finest, its fashion designers and fashion week. in our minds, anyway, we saw this turning editorial photography into commercial art, we called it thecommodification of disaster. we're also interested inhow and how much people have become publicbrands, and how the role
of public service, politiciansare just public servants, they're in our employment,has been overshadowed by political and cultural celebrity. what bigger and better case study could you have than you know who, that right now, politicallyanyway, he's bigger than elvis. it's common these days for famous people, especially politicians and heads of state to employ personalphotographers or seek out
the most highly crafted publicity. in this case you can see thequeen and the royal family have been also embraced byannie leibovitz and vice versa. to me, the most interesting element of the picture is actually the handbag. yes, the portrait ofthe great grandchildren ooze adorability, evermindful of the royal franchise however, and i thinkthe queen is all the time, the hand off of the bag also stakes
out the mandate for generations. trump's secret cousin.(audience laughs) the boogeyman, a supporting actor in the 2016 campaign reality show, and giving a talk tomorrow night that's just on the campaign photo. so i'll be back hereand there won't be any duplication at all by the way, none. people got really bent out of shape
that rolling stone used this photo of the cute boston marathonbomber on their cover, pulling this photo from his facebook page. but that was the whole point. far from glorifying him, thequestion was what happens when the terrorists look like us? what happens when media source images also from facebook and instagram? so the cute boston marathon bomber.
as i mentioned, we are alsointerested in aesthetics, or the growing artistry of news photos as the trade continues toborrow from fashion, art, and the full range ofcommercial photography. again in each case ourquestion is how much is the artistry of the imagecomplimenting as opposed to fighting with or evenoverwhelming the actual news value? this photo led off a reutersslideshow, isn't that great? isn't that amazing?
i love this. the photo led off a reuters slideshow last november set in belgium. from the tone of thephoto, would you imagine it's about the security response following the coordinated terror attacks by isis in paristhat killed 130 people? it's actually a soldier on ashopping street on high alert. would you say the journalism holds its own
compared to the pull offashion and street photography? as a beautiful and in fact placid image that appeared in various news slideshows, what this depicts, as youcan see from the caption, and you actually can't see thecaption here, that's great, are pre-bombing warningfliers over ghaza city during the israel hamasmissile war in late 2014. not so placid. more so than ever, international tragedies
provide the opportunity for leading photojournalists tocreate interesting work. this photo, from the malaysiaairlines crash in ukriane in which government rebels shot down a passenger plane witha surface-to-air missile feels like it is crossingthe boundary into art. on the other hand, taslima akhter's photo, how many people have seen this before? oh, that's good, that's encouraging.
taslima akhter's photo is one of the most powerful to emerge from the devastating collapse of an unsafe garmentfactory in dhaka, bangladesh. in this case, far from gratuitous, the colorful fabrics and the sense of an embrace for all eternity succeeded in bringing wide attention, condemnation, and calls foraction, for the factory owners who had put thousandsof workers at dire risk.
other things we do at our site, we address ethics and best practices. we've uncovered misrepresentationin a major photo contest, and the staging ofphotographs in war zones. we'll also do photo forensicand investigative analysis. in this case we showed how a guitar had been placed in multiple photos in multiple locationsover a span of four days by a reuters freelancer workingfor the syrian resistance.
that's like an absolute no-go thing to do. it was used as a prop,it was not even playable. the guitar only has three strings, and you can see that here. here it's handed off. i don't know, what the hell,the mask impacts his singing ability but it was handedoff to another fighter. it's odd that the man's left hand on the fret board is positioned
to hold down the stringsthat aren't there. here's the guitar in still another reuters news photo placed in a portrait of a rebel in a aleppojust two days before, taken by the same photographer. to verify it was the same instrument, we identified the same pit marks on its side across several of the photos. now that these photos arebeing published much larger
it makes our jobs a lot easier. those like 400 by 600swere tricky to work with. here on the photographer's facebook page, kind of audacious, we see him walking down the street carrying thesame guitar with the same missing strings and thesame pattern of detail. this is one of the mostimportant posts we've ever done. it's actually here but i'llcome to it in a second. the mylai massacre attracted mass
public awareness largely due to the 1969 public release of graphicphotographs taken by army photographer, ron haeberle,published in life magazine. according to life's caption of this iconic american photo, these villagers were huddled in terror moments before being killed by american troops at mylai. while the massacre is widely recognized as a military atrocity and an act
of mass murder committed oncitizens and noncombatants, appreciation of the event as an act of mass rape and sexual abuse as well has never materialized inthe american consciousness. in spite of a luminous testimonyshortly and then for quite a while after the massacre happened. based on research by valeriewieskamp, a phd candidate in rhetoric and publicculture at indiana u, we link the testimony to thefamous photo in order to ask
the question how come everybody knows about the napalm girl but no one knows or speaks of the black blouse girl. in the post we detail how the woman buttoning her blouse had just been sexually assaulted by us officers before she and thesevillagers were killed. this is all documented inthese congressional hearings. as valerie wrote, "when itcomes to the us military,
"acknowledgement of massmurder is more tolerable "than sex, sexual assault,and rape even to this day." in terms of carving out new opportunities and creating new methods and models for analyzing news images,our biggest contribution at our site to visual and media literacy is our unique offering thereading the pictures salon. we're actually working with one now for the university ofmaryland with marvin.
the salon brings togetherthe world's leading photographers, photo editors,and visual academics, and other subject matter experts, to analyze how the visual media frames to key social and politicalevents of the day. typically held onlineusing webinar software and google hangout, it's atwo hour panel discussion in which a 10 image editcompletely drives the discussion. so we're talking to the photos.
we've done 24 of these programsincluding our first one in 2008 on the photocoverage of the afghan war. back then our panelists by the way actually used a group chat room to discuss the photos via text. since then we've done programs on the presidentialcampaign, the migrant crisis, how surveillance is pictured in the media, we looked at the visual framing of kiev
and the battle for independence square. you'll see our old name on alot of these slides by the way. the debate over white house photo access. the photo coverage fromthe syrian civil war when there was still coverage to speak of. the legislative battleover reproductive rights. the visual politics of occupywall street, and the visual framing of the greatrecession, and many others. here we see photographer dennisbrack as part of our salon
and white house photoaccess participating from the white house media room in our hangout. by the way that is not a very fancy setup they've got there, you should know. i guess it's taxpayer paid. to get a sense of what ourhangout looks like from a panel's perspective, hereon the bottom, you'll see mike davis, a professor atsyracuse news house school, and former white house photoeditor under george bush.
rit photograph professor, loret steinberg. new york times photographer,stephen crowley. the other two people on the panel represent the first time that two women, white house photographers ever appeared in a public forum together before. so below you'll see samantha appleton, the second slot there whowas the obamas' photographer for i think two years, and then
here's barbara kinney andshe was a photographer in the clinton white house, and in fact she's now hillary clinton'scampaign photographer now. i should add we've done these live also, not just online, and we've collaborated with many academic andinstitutional partners including photoville,and i'm gonna be doing a panel on saturday nightat photoville, little plug. here we are at columbia talking obama
showing he's just a regular joe. in discussing a representativeedited media images we bring a process anda value to the exercises that actually surprisingly rare, and that is reading the photograph. you might think it's a natural thing, especially among photo professionals, to talk about the content of the photo, especially after people risktheir lives to make them,
and then they give anenormous amount of time to frame and compose them, andthen artfully process them. the standard though evenat photo conferences full of professionals is to takea quick look at a photo, then talk about, jump to the politics of the image, or what it was like to be there, or what camera gear was used. in our salon on the otherhand, we wanna think about why that black males are onlyrepresented by their sneakers,
or talking about white house security. what actually did happen the night two gate crashersactually photographed here going through thepresidential receiving line actually attended awhite house state dinner for the prime minister of india on the other side of obama there. or how much the western coverage of the syrian war preferences images
of destruction and injury over scenes of humanity, commerce, self-reliance. if you check out the salon section on our website or our youtube channel, you'll see we not onlypost the full replay, but we also producecrafted highlight clips that capture the mostinsightful commentary while zooming in on and moving around key images of the site,another way of reading.
i have a short clip toillustrate what i mean. - [cara] this is a news service photo from reuters made last september, and this was in the contextof hungary and border issues. - [glenn] well i'm chomping at the bit to get into it because it'sjust so loaded in so many ways. for one i think it's anextraordinary picture, just the way space is being used and how much information is here,
clearly with the reportersin the background just covering this one verynonchalantly, one on the run. the man on the left, a refugee shouting, the surgical mask ofone of the authorities, and then the background, at how draconian the hungarians have approachedthe migration crisis. of all the countries they have certainly been the worst in their treatment. this young boy, howhe's clutching this baby
as if it's like a doll, it'san extraordinary picture. - [shani] there's a sense of everybody on the move doing theirduty, and the outcome of doing your duty in thisway i think is quite clear. to me it's very much a story or a photo of lack of care, of twochildren in the focus of the photograph beingsurrounded by adults, not seeming to offerthem any type of support. all in some ways are attacking,
from the guy on the right hand side over the surgical mask,but also the photographers quite aggressively andinstrumentally focused on the child. - [cara] also the kind of structure of the image is really kind of circling. so if you insert yourself inthe photographer's position as being part of the circle,there's kind of no way out for that child in the middle. - [anne] i'm struck by thephotographers, but i'm also
struck by the kind ofdifferent lines of the arms that are kind of reachingout or grabbing the boy. the person with the bluehand pointing at the child, the arms kind of reaching out. - [michelle] theconfrontation between the guy with the mask and the man on the left, it's kind of like quantum physics. what impact did the price of so many media have on his intensestopping of these people?
was he acting for the camera as well? it wasn't set up as a photo op. when you're surrounded by that many media how does it change the reactionof the guard or whoever this man is in the mask and the glove? - that's reading a picture, isn't it? our latest field of play endeavour, experimentation, it's instagram. what's a lot of fun about instagram for us
is it's allowing us to branchout beyond photojournalism. it's again another waythat i feel like i'm closer to what you do, what you'reabout, what you're studying, what you're interestedin, than i was a week ago, a month ago, certainly a year ago. we are interested inbringing more commentary to this space with ourrelatively new feed. 500 million users on instagram and how many are reading those pictures?
is it possible that we're the only ones? what we're doing therewe call microanalysis, responding to photos that wefind and repost along with a sentence to a paragraph ofresponse, no more than that. in the photo from a famouswax museum we were wondering if these two figures areindeed equally tooled. we even did a takeover. in this case on photographer,mark peterson's feed. peterson is a popular redux photographer.
he's been shooting the campaign for msnbc. his site has 90,000 followers. in our case though the takeover was all about the commentary. mark provided us uneditedphotos to choose from, then we picked what we liked,and we added the words. with this photo of mark phelps, at the end of the rio olympics, these are some examplesof the riffing we've done.
we wrote, "not your typicalreaching the pinnacle portrait. "seems to speak to how much he "had to go through to get there." talking about analogies again, along with this photofrom the washington post, we wrote, "relax, it'sjust a weather photo. "not that it escaped the editors, though, "that there's more than a hint "of apocalypse in these uncertain times."
(sighs) the original photo byphotographer matt black from his ongoing project,the geography of poverty, and if you're not familiar with his work, i recommend that very highly also. this picture was taken ata homeless camp in fresno. he's been going around the country shooting in towns where very, very high percentage of the populationis under the poverty line.
we wrote, "this is a wonderful "example of matt black's gift. "the only thing thatexceeds the uniqueness "of the scene or the depth of respect "is the intelligence of the symbolism. "counterprogramming the stereotype "of the homeless as damned and aimless, "black presents them as sentinels." finally in response topatrick fallon's exquisite
king's river photo for reuters, we wrote, "beauty is the inextinguishable problem "with fire and news photography." these are all thedifferent ways to find us. we look forward to hearing from you. we're very democratic, very open access. so if you have images, thoughts, takes, especially on instagram imagery, we're just a tweet or a email away.
thank you for your time. i'm sure that we'll have some questions. - [audience member] you said at one point that the readings that you're doing are fairly common, and youwould expect them to be common. so my question is why nowwould common be so radical? - so radical? - [audience member] yeah. if, as you say, your readings are common.
in other words, you would expect people, intelligent people, to look at, spend time with, analyze the iconography and the various stylistic devices. but it doesn't happen. so what you're doingis relatively radical. so my question becomes whywould that now become radical? what's happened to us? - why are the readingscommon but uncommon?
why are they common or whywould i expect them to be common but also then put themout as radical also? i think that one explanation is that the deconstruction of images, the reading of social and cultural images, or it's easier to understandwhen you're talking about the reading of advertising images, is really threatening to people, and can cost people a lot of money.
if they spend five, six,seven million dollars for one super bowl ad, and in the ad a woman is beating up her husband or hitting him over thehead with a bag of doritos, the last thing that theadvertising industry wants is for us to sayoh, well i understand what's going on there, you know. they're exploiting this because of that. i think that's one reason we don't have
visual literacy taught in schools. images are, well i sometimes talk about we live in a persuasion society. to the extent that powers that be whether it's the advertising industry or whether it's the whitehouse or the military can entrance us withimages that are layered with all kinds of symbolism and meaning that reinforce a lotof behavior, you know.
i don't think that peoplewant that deconstructed. that's one way to answer the question. i don't know. in a way too it's hardto answer your question. you guys, and coming here and talking in an environment likethis is really exciting, 'cause you know, i cansay here's the image, and did you see thator notice the handbag? you guys are trained to see that.
you may be looking at so many images or you've got like 19 things on your mind so it's not like when you're looking at all this cultural imagery,you're deconstructing it. but you're at least trained to do it. other people just kind ofsort of do it intuitively. if they read one ofour posts, we're trying to effect these aha momentswhere people are like, oh, yeah, of course, oryeah, or i don't think
you're fishing on that,that seems to really like connect, resonate with my experience when we look at a lot ofthe civil rights images. i don't know, i think it's not necessarily an acquired skill, it's a skill that can be cultivate anddeepened, or it's just like to reminder yourself to read. so it's a big question. - [audience member] i wasstruck by you sort of slipped
in there that perhaps the reason we don't have visual literacy taught which is something i'vealways felt should be taught that there was a sort ofnefarious reason for that. i'm wondering if you could expand a little bit on how articulatedyou think that reason is. i mean, is it something that is actually fought against or is itjust sort of circumstantial there isn't that because itgoes against cultural codes?
does that make sense? - yeah, it's a great question. i guess it's a longlist and we start to say here are things that arelike really important that are not culturalvalues and are not taught. teaching children toread emotional language, teaching parenting, teachingpeople basic nutrition. once you start talkingabout visual literacy on a list like that, i'mnot sure where it falls
or how much to say it'snefarious as opposed to that these are our cultural values. why are we all sitting here in a culture where, whatever, it's 50% of the dollars we pay in taxes go to military. i don't know, these are questions that are bigger than me butjust because, but my interest is in visual literacy, in media literacy, and speaking truth to visual power,
and just being more conscious in that way. so that's just my end of it. but wow, you know, you start pulling the thread on that suit,it's like, uh. (laughs) - [audience member] who funds you? - we actually just became a 501(c)(3), so we're pursuing grant money. we have some advertisingrevenue from our website. we have some generous donors that
have been backing us from day one. we're like the little engine that could. but we hope with the501(c)(3) and all the work that we've done thatwe'll be able to start really developing some grant funding. also the salons, we'restarting to work with larger partners and getting more, and those projects arebecoming more elaborate. so that's part of it all.
i did wanna say that just being here, i actually gave a lecture atscad three of four weeks ago, and i would've given a different presentation today if i hadn't been there. but i really could sense,and we talked about the hunger that these photo students had in terms of really bringing their work, not just to the culture, but also finding opportunitiesin terms of jobs,
and careers, and projectsthat are more applicable. i really felt, especially with instagram, i see you guys really focused when i started showing those images. but i think that whetherwe're talking about matt black is doing or what we're doingusing the platform that it really is this spacethat's a creative space, and a commercial space,and expressive space, and that there reallyis a lot of opportunity.
more opportunity than ever, i think, with the skills you have thanthere have been in the past. i've actually worked in art schools and design schools and i just think, that especially you lookat the every day sites and there's a lot of opportunity out there to take your project into a dialogue, and then have it build intosomething that really becomes a business, and creates real opportunity.
so i wanted to say that,you know, all us here. - [charles] what youjust said is very much the mission of this department, that indeed there are allkinds of new platforms, opportunities, businesses,entrepreneurial enterprises to deal with the making, the parsing, the understanding, thedelivery of the image and of the lens image inall kinds of new spaces. this is a person whodid this out of passion
who's got a day job by the way. all of you saying what ami gonna do with my thing? well you all have toinvent these platforms. you have to invent these iterations. there's so much imagery out there that needs to be understood,needs to be used, needs to be repurposed, needs to be made. just making pictures tohang on a wall in a gallery in chelsea isn't the only opportunity.
that's why we're doing thisseries the way we're doing it. i wanna encourage everybodythat tomorrow night there's another presentation about the subject that's most on the minds of probably everybody, at least in the back of our mind, ourelection, and how we deal with it. you can bring your guests as well if you just let us know ahead of time that you're bringing your guest.
i'm sure there are morequestions, don't hesitate. somebody back there had one. - [audience member] i'm not so sure if this is strictly a question, but it's a feeling that i've had. i feel is more, the biggest challenge about understanding imagery,are you able to hear me? - yes, yes. - [audience member] i thinkone of the biggest challenge
for this generation is the apathy. i feel that compared to words, imagery has this certain amount ofseductive hope to it that satisfies us enoughthat doesn't require us to kind of go beyond that seduction, 'cause i'm looking at thispicture, it looks nice and i have maybe fiveseconds of attention span. it satisfies that fiveseconds, i'm ready to move on. whereas prior to this,let's say 20, 25 years ago,
where i had to read a wholearticle in the new york times or the post or something likethat, i'm forced to read it for like 20 minutes beforecoming to a conclusion. but now with imageryincreasingly replacing words as communication, partof me had been trained to look at it fast, tobe satisfied faster, and then not be required tokind of look deeper into it. i'm at that age wherei see that transition. i didn't grow up texting.
it took me three years before texting. that was a big thing for me. i couldn't figure outwhy people liked to text. so what i see now withinstagram and things like that, i mean my eyes are totally fulfilled. but yet now i have no more energy left to parse anything else. i'm ready to see the next picture. so part of is that we're retraining
ourselves as producers of images to have less and less attention span. so to me the biggestchallenge now is apathy. as creatives, how do we break that apathy? how do we create this experience as image, visual creatives to factor that in into the things that we make? so i'm not sure if this is a question or statement but feel freeto kinda talk about that.
- no, i think it's a reallyinteresting question. i guess i'm gonna date myself a little bit in the answer not just because of my age but also the fact that i've been looking at hundreds of pictures aday for the last 12 years, and also watching how the environment has changed and these platformshave come into existence to see how the information moves around. i actually completely disagreewith this idea of apathy.
i think what's amazingto me, and also again, using what we've done as an example, eight years ago, five years ago, you know, things were very serial. we're dealing with news photos, the ability to meet people and communicate these ideas was doneat these serial events that would happen over at thesedifferent intervals of time. the fact that now you canhave these things happen
in a matter of eighthours, and this happens at the end of the week, itmay not be that efficient, and where you're coming at the world and your practice let's say,might not be clarified enough at this point in terms of howyou're putting things together and then having interchange,and dialogue, and feedback. but i think that the waythings are working now have an efficiency that are extraordinary. we can now put something out, get reply,
the way that you see theculture replying to things, doing that on a purely visual level. it is actually stunning tome that i didn't have to say the term purple rain when iput that picture up there. of course you're art students so you know, and again that's like a verysimple example, but still i think things aregetting really efficient and really robust in termsof visual life out there, and cultural life, and political life.
but you do have to find yourway to enter and process it. you had a question. - [audience member] it might be a little bit too big but i was just wondering if you could expand on that idea you mentioned of persuasion,if you could expand, i forget the exact term you had used, culture of persuasion, i think it was. is there any chance youcould expand on that
or is that too big of an ideafor like a 45 second q and a. - well maybe there's a better example. - [audience member] repeat the question. - oh yeah, he was asking if i could expand on the idea ofpersuasion, persuasion society. what's really funny is that the word propaganda seemed to have disappeared. now it's all about, you know,we live in a marketing culture and there's a whole lotof things i can't lecture
on anymore because what struck me as being offensive where you had thiskind of crossover between, or this co-option ofsomething in the culture and something that was commercial is now like, you know, everybody buys it. i just saw that moviesully and there's the guy doing the little riff on the snickers bar. it was like eight yearsago, five years ago where i was like if i saw thatkind of product placement,
i would like, this is bullshit, you know. so the way that now commercialism has ingrained itself intothe cultural narrative and all these other kinda, you know, whether it's politics, or gender, and health, and education,everything's sponsored by this person and that person. you were talking about photoville earlier, actually we were talking before.
what's great about photovilleis that sam and laura will not take corporate money tomake that thing huge. it's already the biggest photo festival in the united states, but they like beg, borrow, and steal to put it on because they're not gonna be sponsored by nikon, canon, this one and that. because what happens? then those guys wanna havetheir photographers in,
and then we start talkingabout they're choosing their photographers that are doingthe consciousness work. okay, so that's good, but that's also then already you've got a compromise where these strands are pulled together commercially as opposed tohaving this more real autonomy. i don't think realautonomy exists anymore. that's why i thinkinstagram on the one hand is very cool and potentially powerful.
you have the every daysites and all of that. but at the same time four months ago instagram sponsored and took five of their leading photographers whohave hundreds of thousands of followers, very highlyrespected photojournalists, and they have them all shoot fleet week. so there they are basically creating a commercial for the usmilitary being on the uss baton, creating this extraordinarilyamazing, gorgeous photo
that their hundreds and thousands of followers are digestingand don't understand that this was something that was brokered. nobody paid any money, that'swhat was really amazing. that just blew my mind. so i guess that is anexample of how we don't even talk about, we don't even use the term commercialismlet alone propaganda. it's just marketing.
it's trump, trump's the perfect, you know, he's the embodiment of this. - [audience member] all the free coverage just from his behaviors andhis comments, and those things. - but he says his credential is that he's really good at that. that's like terrifying. but we value that, people value that, 'cause you know that's kindahow the culture is operating.
- [audience member] touchingon some of the images you were talking about,like the less expected images such as the embed with the police or the images that ruddy roy does. i follow ruddy roy andinitially when i was first told about him and i glanced on instagram, and at first it wasn't those images that you typically see onthe front page of newspapers. it took me a second toinvestigate a little bit further,
and i'm glad that i did because now i enjoy his work a whole lot more. but talking about thefuture of photographers that wanna capture imageslike that of the real behind the scenes things, notjust what's expected. who is the audience that we're trying to get with that, 'causeright now i feel like it's smaller circles of people that are more invested in photography.
but how do we, in thefuture, expand on that more to like build that audience? 'cause with my own worki'm trying to be more well rounded in the images that i make. i'm not trying to just get those, oh, this is the action shot,or oh, this is, you know. but at the same time iwant that work to be seen and appreciated, and not just like, what's happening in this one?
- so you're asking that doing something that's unique, something that maybe isn't too like kind ofidentify with style and form. doing something really,having a unique vision, how do you find an audience for it? - [audience member] i guess,well let me put it this way. making those kinds ofimages and i like to, and hopefully i'll get better at it, and i have like an instagramfeed, and some people follow.
but who's gonna want those images? 'cause the newspaper's not gonna want them 'cause they can't throwthem on the front page. photojournalism, in traditional print form, is on the decline. i'm just wondering, youknow, it's an uneasy feeling going into this and whatthe future's gonna be with just like the instantgratification that we have. i mean, i love instagram,but at the same time,
it's kinda like a double edged sword. - yeah, an analogy might bethe political campaign too. i think what happened was four years ago, or i guess eight years ago,there was an unknown guy running for the presidency,wasn't really known. there was so much dirt out there in terms of him not being american,and he was running against john mccain, i thinkwhat happens is the american people got the sense ofthis guy's character.
they felt like one guy's really erratic and the other guy, there was a vibe that came through, family man, steady, stable. the country was in a complete free fall. i think that i trust the audience and the visual consumer tothat kind of degree also. so i don't know, when you're talking about finding an audience,i think that's less important a concern, andthat may sound insane,
you sitting there and being where you are, and me standing here,but at the same time, i think that in termsof the visual economy and in terms of the compassion spectrum, i think if you're creating something that is, 'cause that's what you guys do, that's what we're all aboutis how's like one different way or another way to say the same thing that's been said a trillion times.
this is really incredible,it's taking these tropes and flipping it completely. i think if you can do that, and develop the ability to do that, and start to do it more consistently, and of course you do have to network 'cause we are in this persuasion thing and the marketing. you have to do that, but if you've got the vision then i thinkit's gonna find an audience,
and i think that audience is gonna grow. i just completely believe that 100%. - [charles] if i could just add to that, that photography, probably video too, (mumbles) has always beenabout this kind of search. if you go back to gustave le gray and the photographers of the 19th century who first photographed war,or brady for that matter. he set up a studio around the corner here
and le gray did one in london. there weren't studios andthere weren't galleries for these things in those days. the whole history of photography from stieglitz forward is about the image maker also being thecurator, the entrepreneur, the interlocutor, the editor,the so on and so forth, to create the audience for something that that person believed inas a means of communication,
and a means of creative position. so i don't think it's really that different today for many of you. i think you have, infact, perhaps the ability to reach bigger and at the same time more select audiences of your choice than any group of people in history. i think you just have to decide you have to be your own curator,
maker, deliverer, blah, blah, blah, and do it groups aswell, and collaborative. frankly, michael is aperfect example of it. so do it! take advantage of it, we have faculty members here who aredoing it all the time. - yeah, i think that one point you made there is really important. there is no mass market anymore.
there's also i think this idea that we're gonna reach themasses, but even with the media, it's been so segmented and partitioned. so matt black's, i don't know what he has, a hundred thousand,a 120 thousand people on instagram, that's a huge audience. the other thing that'sreally important to remember, if there's one thing i saidtoday, but it's hard to believe, is that like when you thinkabout a picture like this.
okay, it was taken by a news photographer, but the thing is that ten years ago, qfive years ago, the photoeditors at the new york times and time and all of thesedifferent media organizations, they were the arbiters of what we saw. they controlled what we saw. at this point they have lost almost complete control ofwhat becomes, you know, prioritizing what imagery we see.
they are now choosing stuff from newswire, they're putting stuff on their websites, but where it goes or how something gets voted up, and what takes off. this picture was like the number eight in a reuters slideshow fromthese protests in baton rouge out of like a 35 pictureedit and they had no idea. this thing just went(mimics engine revving). what captures the imagination,and what has power,
and what has currency islike, that is up to us. it's really important to appreciate that, and the way that you know that's true is start watching the media and start looking at where the pictures came from that these editors areputting in the publication. half of them are pictures that either came from a non-professional,or a freelancer, or what's really interestingis that something
that came out of a middle of an edit that they didn't runthe first time around, but when (mimics enginerevving) like that. now they're using it or they'rewriting articles about it. even five years ago you were not seeing photo stories about thispicture that went viral, this picture that went viral,that picture went viral. viral didn't even exist. so in terms of how the lifespan of images
and what captures the imagination,this is like wide open. not wide open of talking about how much we're seeing all these picturesof coming off the boat, but still there's a lot of opportunity and maybe more opportunity because so much of it is just like click,click, click, you know. - [audience member] could you maybe talk a little bit about your feelings about sort of that democratic impulse,
and the upside of that,and if there's a downside to the sort of diminishingof the professional firewall or gatekeepersas something that exists. i mean with this image for instance, to me it's a powerfulimage, i saw it all over. but it also is a really simple image. it's a very simple juxtapositionbetween good and evil, and i'm not sure thatit's a great photograph. i think it's a really simple photograph
and i understand why it wouldbe elevated to that status. so maybe there is a downside. - yeah, i was just gonna grab that one. it's a good point and it'ssomething i worry about a lot because you know, and itties back into trump also. i think it was matt taibbiwas writing the other day and he's saying like youkinda get what you ask for. as much as we're gonna write articles about the candidatesposition on the economy
and this and that, andhealthcare and everything, people just like run to thelatest, what did he say now. i think that's really trickywhen it comes to photography, and especially like youguys, when you're talking about a very serious body of work, then you start to look atthings that are like a lot flashier, and sexier,and this is a problem. we do live not just inthis commercial culture and marketing culture, but we also live
in this kind of flash, celebrity culture. again, over my pay grade to understand how to fix that, but i do think that what makes amazingphotographs, and the thing like the ruddy royphotograph, and actually the photograph fromferguson too with ieshia, is that a lot of the really good work right now is going both high and low. i read a lot of critiqueabout that photograph.
a lot of people said thatthis is an easy photograph to make, it's really, in away, it doesn't run that deep. yes, that's partly why it was so amazing. but at the same time, andespecially if we're reading and intuiting the communication,the visual communication, her stature, the factthat she's not getting caught up in the hysteria, the dignity. especially, another layer on that photo is that you rememberthe man who was killed
in minneapolis, st. paul, remember we saw the almost hour facebook live stream of diamond, i forget herlast name, the girlfriend. if she hadn't done that, i'm not sure we would've seen that picture go viral. because in some way she was channeling something that we just had experienced, it was this extraordinarypoise and dignity while her boyfriend's being killed.
so i think amazing photography is both going high and lowtoday, and i don't think we should apologize for either end. - [charles] i think we have (mumbles) but this has been terrific,what we continue to get. i wanna respect michaelfor the work on his site and inspiration, andwe all appreciate that. thanks a lot. (audience applauds)- thank you.
At the end this articel A Duplicate Name Exists On The Network
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