Shooting Wide Open

No doubt you’ve heard of all the SOPA protests online today. CNET has a run-down of SOPA and Pro Publica has a page with a list of House Reps by state and their stand on SOPA. You can contact them if you’d like to make your voice heard, especially if you live in a state with Congressmen who support the bill.

“I have been through hundreds of towns and cities in every climate and against every kind of scenery, and of course they are all different, and the people have points of difference, but in some ways they are alike. American cities are like badger holes, ringed with trash, surrounded by piles of wrecked automobiles, and almost smothered with rubbish. Everything we use comes in boxes, cartons, bins, the so-called packaging we love so much. The mountains of things we throw away are much greater than the things we use. In this, if in no other way, we can see the wild and reckless exuberance of our production, and waste seems to be the index.”

- John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley

Two interesting videos about stuff. First, the Story of Stuff, “a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns.” Aimed at kids, but what that really means is that everything is said very simply and directly. Definitely a liberal point of view. I’m of two minds about the political spin – if they had toned that down, maybe there’d be more of a chance it would be played in more classrooms.

Second, a TED Talk featuring Jan Chipcase, who talks about cellphones and calling cards being used (and importantly, reused) as a method of transfering and loaning money with interest. He makes the distinction between the stuff that we own, carry, and use. In developing countries, a whole industry has sprung up involved in fixing cellphones and other electronics. It’s pretty telling that when I take my cheap phone or shoes or printer to a repair shop and ask for it to be fixed, the repair guy inevitably asks me why I don’t just buy a new one. Well, isn’t it obvious? Because I already own this one!

On a positive note though, I did run into a branch of the Berkeley tool lending library. (There’s also a version in Oakland.) You need a tool, you borrow it from the library instead of buying it from Home Depot for one project and then letting it sit in the garage. This could work for some types of toys and sports equipment – instead of a garage sale or hand me downs, just donate to the local toy library. This would solve the problem of kids getting bored with toys a week after you’ve bought them, and you’d only buy them if the kids break them. It seems pretty obvious – to avoid having housefuls of stuff, just share some commonly used things within a community. Why should a library be limited to books and media? Sort of like Zipcar.

Pete Souza, White House Flickr stream

I don’t know if Obama’s advisors are especially good for this sort of thing, or whether in the 8 years Bush sat in office, using social networking has become par for the course for everyone, but the White House’s photostream is fascinating. Pete Souza’s documented everything from meetings with foreign dignitaries, a glimpse of the Situation Room, little moments with family and what happens when the president wants to order in a burger joint. Most of the photos are candid in the true sense and they’re obviously slowing releasing photos from a few sessions, but there are a few real gems in there. It does look like the more photogenic candidate won, doesn’t it?

It makes me want to watch the West Wing start to finish, especially that campaign season – Alan Alda’s great in it. Come to think of it, those writers got it pretty right – minority candidate who isn’t taken seriously in the beginning wins after going against a moderate Republican!

Aron Gent

Last month I read that the SF Chronicle was likely to shut down. Now, it seems like the Seattle Post-Intelligencer will do the same. Hopefully web-only versions will remain, and small community grassroots rags will pop up. Has the West Coast been harder hit than the East?

In that vein, Slate has started a Flickr group called Shoot the Recession and encourage readers to submit photos of not only closed storefronts but also silver linings and unexpected side effects:

We welcome photos of closed stores and vacant homes; they’re clearly part of this story. But we would like to encourage our readers to find surprising ways of recording this recession. Take a shot of the contents of the box you brought home with you when you were laid off. Take a shot of the handwritten sign at your local coffee shop apologizing for the price hike on two eggs, any style. Rather than shooting the empty storefront, take a portrait of the local druggist who just closed up shop. NPR recently reported on the brisk business mechanics are doing these days as drivers are holding on to their old cars longer — document the silver linings as well as the ominous clouds.

4 stores that have closed in my neighborhood in the past few months – a video store, CD store, chain grocery and a window store in an adjacent area. There must be more, but these are on my habitual rabbit trails. The closing of the chain market leaves the neighborhood without a major grocery. Word on the street is that the store was not really in the red, but at the same time not making enough of a profit to be worthwhile for headquarters. Strangely, people seem to eat out often enough in this city that I haven’t really heard too many complaints. Ever since moving into the city, I’ve shopped at a couple of small corner markets, so I’ve been immune to the effects of the closing.

It might actually be a good thing in the short term since there has been talk of the local Saturday farmer’s market adding a day during the week. Eventually, however, a Whole Foods is slated to come in. Despite convenience, I wish it wouldn’t.

Sage Sohier

I watched a Masters of Photography episode in which Edward Steichen comments on the truncated truth of a still image:

No one has ever made either in painting or in photography, a complete portrait of a person. I don’t think that’s possible in any one picture. For example everyone has the capacity for laughter and tears, and there’s no place in between that captures the whole thing.

Then I read (more appropriately, looked at) John Szarkowski’s The Photographer’s Eye. In the introductory essay, he quotes art historian William Ivins Jr. to make the point that photography is an interpretation, not a true record of reality:

the accepted report of an event is of greater importance than the event, for what we think about and act upon is the symbolic report and not the concrete event itself.

It’s true, not just of photography. The bulk of our working knowledge and perception of the world is acquired through written and visual accounts rather than direct experience. We learn through textbooks, see other parts of the world, other peoples, in videos. When a bomb goes off in Gaza, we trust the papers, trust television to relay what’s happening. That our reality is filtered and shaped by books and media is something so obvious I’m shocked I’ve realized this only now.

Last Wednesday I had a conversation with an acquaintance much older than I am who remembers the Cold War about how we inexplicably forget historical lessons despite how painful it was to learn them. At the moment, it seemed to me that “we forget” is a fairly vague way of describing what happens to our relationship with articles from the past when time passes, but in light of Szarkowski, clearly we forget because once those with direct experienced die, we’re left with only an indirect record which is less evocative, less real, somehow less trustworthy.

This makes sense. Of course our own direct experiences are more reliable than any secondhand account. We’ve come to rely on secondhand sources for information about contemporary events, but what about the past? There’s less of the past on the web, and when keeping up with current events is already like drinking from a fire hose, most of us don’t bother to dig through past lessons anyway. In the modern globally-connected world, when our decisions now have such an accelerated and far-reaching impact, maybe this is hurting us.

And there’s another problem. Visual information is at once more eye-catching and more ambiguous. Szarkowski also points out how terrible still photography is at factual narrative independent of text simply because it’s a frozen moment infinitely prolonged and will never rival video/audio and text for chronology. This is partly the result of a photo’s inability to call a thing by its name. We can’t affix labels, denotations and clear connotations to photos without text or audio. News photos, after all, always have a caption.

This is exactly what Jim Bourg, head photo editor of Reuters, says to Errol Morris as they talk about a photo of Bush standing in the rubble of the towers after 9/11: “That photograph is not the most compelling picture visually unless you know where it took place and when. The caption on that photo is certainly crucial.”

This is part of a larger conversation (Mirror Mirror on the Wall) on Morris’ Times blog with the photo editors of three wire services about photos they selected as representative of Bush and his administration. All three editors selected a version of a photo of the expression on Bush’s face the moment Andrew Card informs him of the 9/11 attacks, which is the perfect illustration of Bourg’s (and Szarkowski’s) point.

Paul J. Rrichards/AFP

The photo itself is not descriptive. If you didn’t know the historical context of the photo, it would just be an unremarkable shot of two men. Bourg is the only one out of the three who refuses to read anything into it. Vincent Amalvy (AFP) thinks the expression is blank, indicating confusion. Santiago Lyon (AP) thinks it’s just a picture of a man listening intently. Coincidentally, earlier in the conversation, Bourg had said:

It’s interesting to see how differently people will interpret the same picture, how a strong supporter of the president will see a picture one way and a critic of the president will see it a different way. There have been some pictures of President George W. Bush where the reactions have actually gone all over the map, where some Bush supporters see interpret the image as taking a cheap shot at him. Other Bush supporters see that same moment as endearing or showing off his character, showing that he’s a regular kind of guy.

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I rather expected more from Morris in terms of analysis and questioning, but it’s worth a look if only for what the editors say about access to politicians. Lyon says at one point:

In America when you are part of the presidential pool, you move everywhere with the president. It’s not that way in other countries. When Barack Obama became the president-elect, there is the same access, same obligation as from the president to be as transparent as possible. He can’t decide, “No press now, yes, no.” In France or in Spain or in Germany or in the Middle East or whatever, it is different. The president decides where the press can go and where they can’t go. Here it is different. It’s one of the good points about your democracy. The power of the press is a reality in this country.

Jim Young/Reuters