PHOTOGRAPHY WEBLOG

Voor de vierde achtereenvolgende avond gingen duizenden Iraniërs gisteren in de hoofdstad Teheran de straat op om te protesteren tegen het islamitische regime. In één lange file demonstreren ze, al toeterend, vanuit de auto. ,,Dood aan de dictatuur!''

In a tense atmosphere in central Tehran, Islamic militiamen probably from the Basij volunteer force tied to Iran's Revolutionary Guards, manned checkpoints and looked carefully into vehicles circling the streets around the university campus.

"They pulled some people out of their cars and beat them with their fists and sticks. Even young girls were beaten," a photographer at the scene said. "I've seen at least 10 injured people. One man had a knife wound," he added.

Bronnen: NRC, Reuters.


Iranian students sit in the street amidst the debris of a night of demonstrations. foto Isna

This is a 1949 photograph by Louis Faurer titled "Philadelphia, Pa. (I Am Paralyzed)." A retrospective of the work of Faurer, a street photographer whose unflinching black-and-white images captured the grit and poetry of mid-century city life, is making its final stop in Philadelphia, the city where he began his life and his art.

Reporters Without Borders today protested against the action of the Paris police in manhandling freelance photographer Benjamin Béchet and abruptly confiscating his camera without any explanation as he was covering a demonstration on 10 June at the Garnier opera house.

"We are outraged by the unacceptable methods used by the police to prevent this press photographer from practising his profession," Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Robert Ménard said in a letter to police chief Jean-Paul Proust. "I ask you to provide us with an explanation of this incident and to arrange for the camera to be returned to Béchet at once," Ménard added.

Béchet went to Opera Square at around 10 p.m. to cover negotiations between police and about 100 demonstrators shut inside the Garnier opera. A person wearing a plain-clothes policeman's orange armband tried to grab his camera as he began to take photographs of a series of arrests. When Béchet resisted, shouting that he was a journalist, three members of the riot police pinned him to the ground and handed his camera to the plain-clothes policeman. They then released him but did not take a note of his identity and he was not told how he could recover his camera.

Bron: RSF.

In het navelstarende Nederland is er weinig belangstelling voor, maar in Teheran nemen de onlusten tussen progressieve studenten en de oproerpolitie zulke grote vormen aan dat er wellicht sprake is van een nieuwe revolutie tegen het islamitische fundamentalisme en haar leider Ayatollah Khamenei. Al drie nachten woeden er hevige gevechten rond de universiteit van Teheran.


foto ISNA

Vanmiddag in het Parool: PANORAMA AMSTERDAM

De stad gefotografeerd in breedbeeld. Een bijzondere tentoonstelling die begint in het jaar 1862.

Vrijdag 27 juni opent Wilfried de Jong om 17.00 een tentoonstelling van wielerfoto's van Cor Vos in het Nederlands Fotomuseum, Witte de Withstraat 63 in Rotterdam.

Wielrennen is de passie van de Rotterdamse sportfotograaf Cor Vos. Al ruim 30 jaar heeft Vos een bijzondere positie in de internationale wielerverslaggeverij. Hij behoort tot het selecte groepje van zeven fotografen dat van achter op de motor de Tour de France en de wereld-bekerwedstrijden op de voet volgt.

Te zien zijn o.a. foto’s van de Tour de France, de voor- en najaarsklassiekers, portretten van wielrenners en een interview met Cor Vos. Met deze tentoonstelling wil het museum laten zien dat sportfotografie, evenals andere vormen van fotojournalistiek, niet alleen in kranten en tijdschriften, maar ook in een museum getoond kan worden.

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Kashmiri farmers begin planting rice in their fields on the outskirts of Pattan village, 27 km north of Srinagar. With abundant early monsoon rains and a good snowfall, the farmers in the Kashmir valley hope to reap a rich harvest.

# posted by Jan-Edward : 17:07

De Australische tak van de christelijke jongerenorganisatie YMCA verbiedt het gebruik van mobiele telefoons met een ingebouwde camera in haar 300 zwembaden, sport- en fitnesscentra. De organisatie vreest voor misbruik van de camera's in omkleedruimten of bij het zwembad, aldus de BBC. De maatregel volgt op een advies van een Australische organisatie voor zwemonderwijs. Zij wil de moderne mobieltjes verbannen uit alle 3000 openbare zwembaden. In Japan hebben verscheidene fitnesscentra de camera-mobieltjes al verboden. In Saudi-Arabië mogen ze al helemaal niet worden gebruikt.

Een zegsman van telefoonproducent Nokia vindt de ophef overdreven. Volgens hem is de aandacht voor alleen de telefooncamera's onterecht. Als er al een verbod moet komen, dan moet dat voor alle camera's gelden. Hij onderstreept dat er ook uiterst kleine digitale fotocamera's op de markt zijn. Nokia wijst er ook op dat de handleiding stelt dat de privacy van mensen niet geschaad mag worden door het gebruik van het camera-mobieltje.

Bronnen: BBC, Nu.nl.

In BD/De Stem vandaag een artikel over Martin Parr onder de titel De fotograaf van de wansmaak, en twee pagina's in de kunstbijlage van de Volkskrant (inclusief storende fouten).

The technical part of photography, how to develop and print, these are the easy parts. They can be taught. What cannot be taught, is how to be expressive, how to be original. My belief is that, as in any art, these are things that will be reflections of your own spirit, and your own obsessions.

Dave Beckerman

Nu verkrijgbaar in Nederland: het boek From the Front: The Story of War through Correspondents van Michael Sweeney.

Directeur Michiel Munneke van World Press Photo heeft onlangs betoogd dat zijn organisatie een "onaantastbare positie" als internationale wedstrijd heeft. Aan eigendunk blijkbaar geen gebrek, maar wedstrijden als Picture of the Year en de NPPA Awards staan ook in hoog aanzien en zijn qua organisatie minstens zo professioneel. Niet voor niets waren er onlangs bij de uitreiking van de NPPA Awards aanzienlijk meer topfotografen aanwezig dan bij de World Press Photo Awards, en zeker niet alleen de winnaars die hun prijs kwamen ophalen.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists expressed deep concern today about the safety of two European journalists detained in Laos on murder charges, while Amnesty International demanded assurances that they would not be tortured. The CPJ said in an open letter to the communist country's president that it fears the journalists are being punished for reporting on ethnic Hmong rebels in a remote area of north-eastern Laos.

"Your government has long denied the persistence of the anti-communist rebel movement and has suppressed information about the military efforts to crush the insurgency," the CPJ said in a letter to President Khamtay Siphandone.

The Laotian government announced yesterday the arrest on June 4 of Belgian photojournalist Thierry Falise, French cameraman Vincent Reynaud, and their Hmong guide, Naw Karl Mua, who is a US citizen and a pastor. It said the "three foreigners ... cooperated with bandits to kill a village security man" in Xieng Khuang province. It has refused to say where they are being held. The CPJ is "deeply concerned about the safety of the two European journalists and their American guide" and calls for their "prompt and unconditional release", the letter said.

Bron: Daily Telegraph.

A well-known photographer was in jail Wednesday on two felony sex charges after one of his models died of an apparent drug overdose at his studio. Radford police on Saturday charged photographer Robert Edward Lee Shell, 56, with one count of sodomy against the model, 19-year-old Marion Franklin, police spokesman Ryan Funk said. A Radford grand jury brought a second charge of object sexual penetration on Tuesday.

Shell, an author of photography books and the editor-at-large for Shutterbug magazine, is known for his nude photography. He was being held without bond in the New River Valley Regional Jail. Franklin, who modeled under the name Chloe Jennings, died from an apparent drug overdose June 3 at Shell's studio in the 200 block of West Main Street, Funk said. The official cause of death is still being determined by the medical examiner's office, Funk said.

Bron: New River Current.

Leesvoer voor de vakantie, nu als paperback al voor 12 euro te koop:



The Bang-Bang Club was a group of photographers who covered the last years of apartheid in South Africa. Two surviving members tell the story of the four remarkable young men who made up the original group, the relations between them, and also the story of the end of apartheid.

In Editor & Publisher vandaag een artikel over de toenemende greep van het Witte Huis op fotojournalisten. Zij krijgen steeds minder ruimte hun werk te doen rond het Witte Huis, terwijl de persbureaus worden voorzien van gelikte handout foto's van de persdienst van president George Bush jr. Door onduidelijke bijschriften wordt in de media verhuld dat het niet om journalistieke foto's gaat.

Susan Walsh, president of the White House News Press Association and an AP photographer, believes the situation might change if the public knows it is being fed a sanitized vision of White House behavior. "We don't take the team pictures from the Dallas Cowboys," she said, referring to the AP. "We put our foot down on them. We should do the same thing with the White House. "We are getting less and less access."

Bron: Editor & Publisher.

Onder de titel Cruel and tender presenteert Tate Modern in Londen een overzichtstentoonstelling over het realisme in de twintigste-eeuwse fotografie. Er is werk te zien van een twintigtal meesters van de documentaire fotografie, onder wie Walker Evans, Robert Adams, August Sander, Bernd en Hilla Becher, Rineke Dijkstra, Martin Parr, Thomas Ruff en Garry Winogrand. Het is de grootste fototentoonstelling die ooit in Groot-Brittannië gehouden werd.

De titel is ontleend aan een criticus die het werk van Walker Evans typeerde als een vorm van ,,tedere wreedheid''. Daarmee wordt bedoeld dat de fotograaf in zijn beelden de werkelijkheid scherp en ongenadig weergeeft, maar tegelijk blijk geeft van een warme betrokkenheid bij zijn onderwerp. Veel van de ,,pure fotografie'' die op de tentoonstelling bijeengebracht is, houdt het midden tussen vervreemding en engagement. Een vroeg voorbeeld zijn de portretten van boerenfiguren die August Sander maakte op het Duitse
platteland.

Veel van de getoonde foto's zijn mijlpalen in het collectieve geheugen. Je ziet er zowel het Amerika van de crisisjaren dertig -- zoals het werd vastgelegd door Walker Evans -- als de indringende recente groepsportretten van Thomas Struth of de bebloede stierenvechters en de vrouwen in de verloskamer door Rineke Dijkstra. Cruel and tender heeft ook oog voor de omgeving waarin we leven, van de industriële architectuur van Bernd en Hilla Becher tot de indrukwekkende fabrieksinterieurs en supermarkten die werden
vastgelegd door Andreas Gursky.

Liefhebbers van fotografie vinden in Tate Modern ook een tentoonstelling van Wolfgang Tillmans, die twee jaar geleden bekroond werd met de Turnerprijs.

Bron: De Standaard.

Many well-known figures from the world of entertainment and sport have agreed to help Reporters Without Borders by taking part in another Star Photos event, this year sponsored by French actress Sophie Marceau. The press freedom organisation has given each of them a disposable camera and asked them to capture glimpses of their daily lives and things that move them - such as visiting the Cannes Film Festival, their pets, behind the scenes of a film set, their friends, and so on.

The filled-up cameras will be auctioned at a charity gala in Paris on 16 June and the money raised will help Reporters Without Borders continue its work defending press freedom around the world and convincing the public of the need take a stand in favour of freedom of expression. Last year, the 53,000 euros raised at the first-ever Star Photos auction helped solve the financial problems of Afghanistan's first magazine for women, Malalai, provided support for the families of five jailed Burmese journalists, including Win Tin, who has been imprisoned for nearly 14 years, and paid for hospital treatment for Ukrainian journalist Tatiana Goriacheva, who had hydrochloric acid thrown in her face.

Reporters Without Borders hopes fans of the stars will attend the auction. Those who buy the cameras can develop the film and discover the 24 surprises the celebrities have left behind for them.

Bron: RSF.

Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières) today called on the Laotian authorities to release two freelance journalists, Belgian photojournalist Thierry Falise and French cameraman Vincent Reynaud, who were arrested a week ago after preparing a report on the desperate situation of the Hmong ethnic minority and the frequent clashes between Hmong rebels and the armed forces.

Reynaud and Falise, who is a regular contributor to the French news weekly L'Express and Belgian media, were arrested along with three or four Laotians.

Bron: RSF.


Thierry Falise

‘Ik kan me voorstellen denk dat ik het met de geit goed zal kunnen vinden. Na een uurtje bij de geitenselectie zag ik er al tegenop straks, na een week in elkaars gezelschap, weer afscheid van haar te moeten nemen. Ik ben nog meer benieuwd hoe dat gaat met die schipper, die ik niet ken. Ik ben eigenlijk een solitair iemand. Die schipper kan veel erger worden dan die geit. Met die geit komt het wel goed.‘

Arnon Grunberg vaart met een geit door Nederland.

Diplomats in Laos say a Belgian reporter and a French photographer have been arrested while researching a story about ethnic Hmong rebels. The two Bangkok-based men were detained on Thursday in Xhieng Khuang province, northeast of the capital Vientiane.

Diplomatic sources in Vientiane have told the AFP news agency they were informed of the arrests on Monday by the Lao foreign ministry. It's not known what charges the men face or where they are being held.

Bron: AFP.

The Israeli military has reprimanded an officer for firing at an Associated Press photographer in an armored car bearing press markings in the West Bank City of Hebron 19 months ago. The photographer, Elizabeth Dalziel, was not hurt in the shooting.

Dalziel had passed an Israeli military checkpoint and entered the neighborhood of Abu Sneineh, where she encountered two Israeli armored personnel carriers and a tank. She stopped the car and was taking photographs when she heard a shot hit and crack the windshield. The car, which is painted white, had the words "TV" in black lettering on the sides and back of the vehicle. She quickly reversed and sped away from the area. She said at least five other bullets hit the body and windshield of the car and flattened a tire. Dalziel said she did not see anyone firing, but she said the shots appeared to come from the general direction of the Israeli army vehicles.

The army had no comment on another case in which AP photographer Hathem Moussa came under fire last month in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun. Five bullets hit his armored car as he left an area where two dozen Palestinians were throwing stones at Israeli tanks. Moussa was not hurt. His white car, marked on four sides with "TV" spelled out in phosphorescent orange tape, was hit by bullets in its back and side windows. AP filed a complaint with the Israeli military, which said it was investigating.

Bron: Associated Press.

A federal judge has ruled that the U.S. government can keep millions of photographs taken by Adolf Hitler's personal photographer, ending a 20-year dispute over their ownership.

The case began in 1983 when Billy Price of Houston, who collects Nazi memorabilia, joined the heirs of Hitler photographer and friend Heinrich Hoffman and filed suit to obtain the paintings and photos. They charged that the materials were illegally seized by the U.S. Army near the end of World War II.

U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. ruled May 30 that Price and the Hoffman heirs waited too long to reopen the case. He also ruled that the government could keep a photo archive of some 2.5 million photographs, some of which were used in the Nuremberg trials after World War II.

Bron: Washington Post.

Blending in with boring England: Martin Parr

Madonna has recorded a glamorous new video in which she wears £15 million worth of vintage jewellery.

She also dresses up as a string of famous actresses from the 1920s through to the 1970s in the promo for new single Hollywood.

The video, directed by photographer Jean-Baptiste Mondino, is described as a cross between Vogue and Express Yourself.

Photojournalist Larry Towell will be in Paris July 3 to accept the Henri Cartier-Bresson Award. He won the prize, worth € 30,000, for a photo study he has called "a personal and poetic perception" of Israel and Palestine. When it is complete, the pictures will be exhibited at the Cartier-Bresson Foundation.

"I'm 50 years old. I've been plugging (away) my whole life," Towell said yesterday of his most recent award. He was in New York, discussing projects at Magnum Photos, where he is a member. The award is named for Henri Cartier-Bresson, the French photographer credited with helping establish photojournalism as an art form.

"A lot of photographers are known for being first to arrive, being brave, dodging bullets," Towell says. "I tend to be the last to leave. It's like anthropology. You stay with the people. At first they're uncomfortable with you, they feel staged. But then you blend in and they become themselves. It's long-term, it's committed and it's personal. Also," he adds, "less saleable." In 1993 he was accepted into the Magnum photographers' co-operative, which sells his work and finds financial backing for his projects.

Bron: London Free Press.

When you look at a Leica rangefinder - small, quiet, accurate focusing with interchangeable wide-angle and normal lenses of high speed - there is no digital equivalent. The small, unobtrusive rangefinder camera continues to have a real place in the world of journalism. It travels well, doesn't scream, "I'm taking your picture," can be independant of batteries and/or travel with a small supply of non rechargables. The lenses are small. And the film can be very fast.

And, if you want something even smaller and less obtrusive, if you want to be mistaken for an idiotic tourist rather than a nosy photojournalist, try the high end point-and-pushes like the Minilux or Contax T3.

The digital cameras that compete in this world are often bigger in size and lesser in image quality than their film bretheren. While I've seen excellent results from these smaller cameras on the printed page, they don't even approach what a tiny piece of film can do with a 40x50cm or larger print - even when that film is black-and-white and exposed at EI 1600. Come to think of it, many of the "professional" digital cameras can't compete in that world.

Finally, there is a look to a well made silver print that is unique and inherently beautiful. Ink sits on top of the paper; silver doesn't.

Bill Pierce

The June issue of The Digital Journalist, the monthly magazine for visual journalism, is now online at http://digitaljournalist.org.

Back long ago, when zoom lenses were a novelty and their optics a joke, I relied totally on the "normal" 50mm lens that came with my old Nikon F – the first "real" camera that I ever owned.

It was a 50mm Nikkor f.2 – a fast lens 40 years ago and a fast lens today. Why? Because at 50mm the lens was, as the name implies, normal. It merely had to approximate the "normal" range of vision of the human eye – and not, for example, have to keep things aligned and sharp at an extremely wide angle.

Sharp. Fast. Normal. (What more do you really need?)


Frank van Riper

Getty Images announced its latest industry awards recipients. Some of the company's top news, sport and creative photographers have been honored recently with the most prestigious awards in the industry, from the National Press Photographers Association awards, which honor the best in photojournalism, to the UK Sports Photographer of the Year awards for the best in sports photography, and the Association of Photography awards, honoring creative photography.

Most recently, seven of Getty Images' news photographers were winners of the prestigious National Press Photographers Association's "Best of Photojournalism 2003" awards. Getty Images photographers took home more awards than any other news agency, garnering 11 awards including "Magazine Photographer of the Year," which was awarded to Ami Vitale, one of Getty Images' top photojournalists. In addition to being named "Magazine Photographer of the Year," Vitale took Third Place in the "International News Story" category. Additionally, two Getty Images photographers received three World Press Photo awards earlier this year. Ami Vitale was awarded Third Place for "General News Story."

Also noteworthy, eight Getty Images photographers were recognized at the Picture of the Year International (POYi) awards. Ami Vitale received a Third Place Award and an Award of Excellence. The contest accepted more than 23,330 entries from 1,310 newspaper, magazine, online photographers and editors.

Bron: Getty Images.


Kashmir-Dal Lake. foto Ami Vitale

Vannacht om 01.25 op BBC2: Pecker, een hilarische speelfilm van John Waters.

Satire based on the New York art scene. Pecker is an 18-year old blue collar kid who works in a Baltimore sandwich bar. He loves snapshots of the world around him and when he is 'discovered' by a trendy Manhattan art dealer he becomes the toast of the NY art world, but success has a price. [1998]

Niet vergeten te tapen, want hij is in Nederland niet op DVD of VHS te koop.

Britons poured over new photos of Prince Harry on Sunday, looking for clues into his lifestyle at Eton College ahead of his graduation. The 18-year-old younger son of Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana takes his last exam on Thursday at the exclusive English private school.

To mark the occasion, Saint James's Palace allowed a photographer for the Press Association news agency to record his life -- and the first results appeared in the Sunday newspapers. One showed the fresh-faced Harry in front of two paintings he made which featured lizard motives. Another had Harry in his Etonian bow-tie uniform hamming it up with a gorgon statue on the school grounds. But the most dissected image featured Harry, smiling as always, sitting in a black leather armchair in his room, surrounded by the following:

A black and white Mario Testino portrait of his mother.
Pin-ups of British glamour model Caprice and actress Halle Berry.

The only book was a Testino album.

The photos of Harry were issued on the heels of a glowing interview, with pictures to match, of Prince William at Saint Andrews University in Scotland. He turns 21 later this month.

Bron: News24.


Foto Kirsty Wigglesworth

Thousands of naked people lie down in the street at daybreak in Barcelona, Spain Sunday June 8, 2003. U.S. photographer Spencer Tunick gathered together more than 7,000 people for the nude photo session, Tunick's largest work yet.

foto Kevin Carter

HI TIME MAGAZINE HI PULITZER PRIZE
VULTURE STALKED WHITE PIPED LIE FOREVER
WASTED YOUR LIFE IN BLACK AND WHITE

KEVIN CARTER

CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK
CLICK HIMSELF UNDER

KEVIN CARTER

Manic Street Preachers - Kevin Carter


Kevin Carter

South African photographer Kevin Carter documented the violence and the tragedy during the Apartheid era. In 1984 he shot his first Time cover and ten years later he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for a photograph of a vulture awaiting the death of a young Sudanese girl. After taking the photograph he "sat under a tree and cried and chain-smoked."

In April of 1994, only days after Carter received the Pulitzer Prize, his best friend and colleague photographer Ken Oosterbroek was shot while covering a firefight outside Johannesburg. Three months after the shooting, Carter (who was out celebrating the Pulitzer at the time of his closest friend's death) took his own life. His suicide note read, "I am haunted by the vivid memories of killing and corpses and anger and pain... of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen."


A wounded Greg Marinovich is assisted by photojournalist James Nachtwey, while the fatally wounded Ken Oosterbroek is seen in the background. 18 April 1994, foto Juda Ngwenya.

Photography is jazz for the eye.

William Claxton

Eindelijk in herdruk: Winogrand: Figments from the Real World.



The first comprehensive overview of the work of Garry Winogrand, long out of print and difficult to come by, contains an eloquent and important essay on the life and work of the photographer by John Szarkowski and a lavish plate section presenting the photographs thematically. Grouped under the following titles-- Eisenhower Years, The Street, Women, The Zoo, On the Road, The Sixties, Etc, The Fort Worth Fat Stock Show and Rodeo, Airport, and Unfinished Work-- many of the 179 plates are works that had never before been published. The last section includes 25 pictures chosen from the enormous body of work that Winogrand left unedited at the time of his death in 1984.

In his essay, Szarkowski, who knew the photographer well during most of his career, describes the development of Winogrand's pictorial strategies during his years as a photojournalist, the increasing complexity of his motifs as he pursued more personal goals, and the challenge posed for other photographers by the powerful and distinctive authority of Winogrand's best work, "with its manic sense of a life balanced somewhere between animal high spirits and an apprehension of moral disaster." Winogrand seems, in fact, the central photographer of his generation.

Ook Arrivals & Departures: The Airport Pictures of Garry Winogrand ligt binnenkort in de boekhandel.

Martin Parr's influences: "Robert Frank, Garry Winogrand, John Hinde, do I need to go on?"


foto John Hinde

Wie denkt dat de fotografie van Martin Parr buitengewoon origineel is, moet het boek Our True Intent Is All For Your Delight : The John Hinde Butlin’s Photographs maar eens aanschaffen. Hinde was een perfectionist die in de jaren zestig armoedige Britse vakantiekampen vastlegde, in dezelfde stijl die nu vooral van Parr bekend is. Zijn foto's worden gekenmerkt door het visuele geweld van de wansmaak en het massavertier. Hij had een zwak voor kitsch en felle kleuren.