I first heard about Princess Hijab in a thread on Flickr. Essentially she covers fashion and beauty ads in public displaying the rote half-naked women with a black hijab shape. The main point of the Flickr discussion was the ethical acceptability of defacing public or private property in the name of anti-consumerism. While I personally wouldn’t practice defacement of private property for political purposes, the more I thought about this issue, the more I became convinced that this goes beyond consumerism or body image issues to the more visuals-pertinent use of public space.

When some argued that she should’ve gone through proper channels and bought public ad space instead of defacing existing ads, it became clear to me that this section of the law is pretty corporation-friendly. One individual (or, to be more general, non-profit/commercial entity) with limited financial funds taking out one or two ads against companies with six or seven figure ad budgets plastering every bus stop, bus, billboard, and sidewalk all across the country? Whether you believe this is fair or not, it’s indisputable that moneyed corporations and their ideas, if they can be called that, dominate our culture visually.

There is no comparable action by individual to counter such a mass of visual input, and I have to say I’ve become sympathetic to her way of working even if I also feel for the owners of the properties that she defaces, who have to clean it up.

Maybe there should be a required balance of ads and PSAs in public, just like how a certain number of radio frequencies or TV stations are reserved for non-commercial stations. Even so, it is rather David vs Goliath. I loved Hulu at the very beginning before the bigger advertisers bought in. The ads were all PSAs for good causes. If our public spaces where filled with a different kind of image, would our society would have different values or priorities?

Anthony Karen

I’d been sitting on this post for a long time, but recently, in that same Flickr group, we began discussing Anthony Karen’s photoessay (Aryan Outfitters) on the seamstress who produces robes for the Klan, and some people seemed to think that photos like those are implicitly sympathetic to their subjects. In my mind, anyone familliar with any photojournalism would know that this is not true. Yet there are some people who think that it’s bad to depict the perspective of the morally marginal. But I suppose this goes beyond photography – think Humbert Humbert and Nabokov, or, more recently, exhibitions of propaganda art.

To me, these two issues are tightly related. My theory is that our mass overexposure to advertising is training many of us to read all visuals like ads. If it’s shown, it must be promotion, and our intellectual reaction is to judge whether we want to buy (into) it or not. I don’t think this is happening on a conscious level any more.

Lately I’ve been reading books about art and commerce, as well as on luxury branding, so this problem seems huge to me. Is it? Or do we really develop a true immunity to ads with repeated exposure? I guess the more pointed question is whether consumerism is virtually entirely visuals-driven, and if this means anti-consumerist campaigns should be aimed at changing behavior or at combatting the influx of consumer visuals.

Digital Devices Deprive Brain of Needed Downtime

At the University of California, San Francisco, scientists have found that when rats have a new experience, like exploring an unfamiliar area, their brains show new patterns of activity. But only when the rats take a break from their exploration do they process those patterns in a way that seems to create a persistent memory of the experience.

The researchers suspect that the findings also apply to how humans learn.

“Almost certainly, downtime lets the brain go over experiences it’s had, solidify them and turn them into permanent long-term memories,” said Loren Frank, assistant professor in the department of physiology at the university. He said he believed that when the brain was constantly stimulated, “you prevent this learning process.”

Even though people feel entertained, even relaxed, when they multitask while exercising, or pass a moment at the bus stop by catching a quick video clip, they might be taxing their brains, scientists say.

In all of these Carr-like articles we are talking about constant new digital stimulation, right? Not simply use of devices to, say, do work. It’s not really so much digital stimulation as stimulation period? If that’s the case it seems as with many things, to come down to an issue of self-control and discipline, whether you can resist the draw of the internet for the sake of your own health or sanity…

Weng Naiqiang

A slim little book I picked up last year at 798 Photo. If you’ve ever see the drawings in elementary Chinese textbooks, some of the scenes Weng documented seem very familiar. I always thought those were idealizations, but from these photos, it looks like plenty were actually enacted.

So sad that this year I won’t be in Beijing to pick up some more stuff…

Ma Hongjie

A couple of years ago, someone at KZSU found an album of promo and snapshots, song lists and expenses, from the ’80s, of a cover band called Fusion. I’ve finally gotten some scans up for fun. Take a look for some big hair and tight pants.

One night we stayed with a Native American family and looking around the house and grounds, it was very clear that they were fervently Christian. I was reminded of the chapter of text in The Last Days of Shishmaref about Christian missionaries and the natives of Alaska.

The first photo is a corner of a little souvenir stand set up by the Native Americans. There were a lot in the area, and there were no customers at any of them. It was the off season, but it still made me a bit sad.

Earlier in the trip, we met with some folks from Navajo Nation and they reported how retailers buy their blankets and ware for very low prices (ie $30-50, if that) and then sell them in their boutique shops in town and export abroad for a huge mark-up (ie $300 up to four figures). So now the Navajo are thinking of selling direct on the internet. I wish them the best of luck, but I do wonder if it’s a doomed venture, since these wares are the types of things people buy while traveling on vacation, not while sitting at home contemplating purchases. I wonder why they can’t simply charge higher prices of the middlemen, but I suppose when you’re poor, you aren’t in a position to refuse small amounts of money in hopes of a future of larger amounts.

The trip was a real eye-opener. We focused mostly on water issues, but in addition to having traded their Colorado River water rights away for very little (say, one community center) before Las Vegas became what it is today, the native tribes in the Southwest also have to deal with the consequences of having mining operations on their lands – the illnesses, the tailings piles. Recently the EPA declared that they were responsible for their own environmental standards on reservation lands, but essentially this means that the US government is no longer respnsible for enforcing environmental regulations on reservations, and since the tribes don’t have the capacity to do any sort of large scale clean up or enforce the regulations, the real world result is that there’s very little in the way of regulation.

The ruling council seems to be prone to the same porblem that the rest of us have with representation. The politicians don’t really understand the local circumstances. Those who are in power, who have wealth try to protect it for themselves and their progeny.

Technically more in an older tradition of rhyming speech-song than rap (the instrument is, I believe, a handheld castanet-like instrument constructed of two rectangular strips, not a cheesy drum machine), but how can it be taken as anything else by the western world.

As far as I can tell social networking is pretty much all blocked in China still, so this little blog is going on auto again. See you in a bit.

Just saw this photo over at Jackonary. Awesome.

America in Color from 1939-43

(via LPV)

Apparently China is about to build huge buses that basically swoop over passenger cars, carrying riders on a raised level. The video of a short presentation given by one of the, I assume, design team claims that the vehicle can track white lines on the road and thus does not need rails. Supposedly each vehicle can also carry up to 1200 people, if I’m understanding him correctly. That sounds a bit high, and makes me wonder how the cost scheme is going to work if they don’t run at full capacity most of the time. Not to mention how in the world sidewalks would accommodate that number of people waiting for one. Sounds like it would take a good 15 minutes just to load one.

But if they can get the kinks and the accident prevent worked out (driving in China isn’t exactly orderly, and I assume they’d need to implement a truck lane), it’s a clever plan to take advantage of existing infrastructure to reduce pollution. I doubt it’d really reduce the amount of passenger car traffic though.

Unfortunately I won’t be able to see any on my trip since I won’t be in Beijing, but even if I was, they are hoping to have the tech side of things wrapped by late August and begin construction by the end of the year, so I’m too early for once. Cross my fingers that there’ll be something on it at the Expo though.

What would you call this sort of vehicle? In fact, if you have a clever name for this thing, drop a note by the end of the month and the cleverest name gets this little volume (catalog to this exhibition). (I’m sure it already has a name, but I bet it’s not clever.)

The Lens Blog ran an interview with Stanley Greene: Stanley Greene’s Redemption and Revenge. Do you remember when you realized that the camera suited you better than anything else?

Greene: I wanted to be a musician. I wanted to be Jimi Hendrix, but when I heard Jimi Hendrix, I realized I could never touch him. I wanted to be a painter, but Matisse and all those guys were ahead of me. And I wanted to be a writer, but you know, Richard Wright and all those guys.

And I looked around and all there was was Gordon Parks and Roy DeCarava. I could compete, and I knew I could bring something. It’s like Miles Davis. He was a drummer. But when he picked up a trumpet, he realized that he had found his instrument. When I picked up a camera, it was like one of those movies.

Then a bit on heart over technique, especially when it comes to disaster tourism:

NYT: I have been hearing this from a lot of older photographers: that the young photographers today are technically amazing, they have learned what an amazing photograph looks like, but they sometimes lack a variety of influences or a certain humanity.

Greene: They don’t have humanity. They are definitely much better technically. They know that backwards and forwards. And they should. It’s their generation. But at the same time, because of all that technology, they are losing the humanity.

When we get to the point where we start digging up graves to make photographs, I think we are in trouble. When we get to the point where a woman is standing there with a bucket, trying to hold her guts in, and we are trying to get the right frame, and chimping at the same time we are doing it, we are in trouble. “Wait a minute, I need to take this picture, but I need to do an interview with you, but also, I need to shoot some video. Do you think you could keep that bucket there and maybe a little bit more, so we could see the blood running out?” And she is just shell-shocked.

…First thing, I think that photographers need to get away from the computer and get out and walk around the communities that they photograph. I think that a lot of photographers are taking nothing away.

And there is a thing called disaster tourism. That is disgusting. I am sorry. But that is disgusting: to bring people, like they are going to the zoo, and show them how to take pictures.

And finally, some words to live by:

Greene: Because I think — at the end of the day — we have to be diplomats. I don’t like the word “photojournalism.” It’s been bastardized. I am comfortable with the idea of being a photographer, just being a photographer. I don’t want to be an artist; I want to be a photographer. That’s what I do. And a photographer is someone who looks at the world and tries to make some sense of it for themselves, and for everyone else. And that’s what I want to do.

Contraband includes photographs taken 24 hours a day of over 1000 items detained or seized from passengers and express mail entering the U.S. from abroad. Over five days, in both the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Federal Inspection Site and the U.S. Postal Service International Mail Facility, Simon documented items including counterfeit American Express travelers checks, overproof Jamaican rum, heroin, a dead hawk, an illegal Mexican passport, deer penis, purses made from endangered species, Cuban cigars, counterfeit Disney DVDs, khat, gold dust, GHB concealed as house cleaner, cow manure tooth powder, counterfeit Louis Vuitton bags, prohibited sausage, undeclared jewelry, steroids and an ostrich egg. – Steidl

Reminds me of this photo from American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar.

All items in the photograph were seized from the baggage of passengers arriving in the U.S. at JFK Terminal 4 from abroad over a 48-hour period. All seized items are identified, dissected, and then either ground up or incinerated. JFK processes more international passengers than any other airport in the United States.

(via A Photo Student)

Turns out I’ll be going to China a little earlier than expected, which means, unfortunately, I’ll miss Bob Dylan in Monterey this August because travel plans changed, but in anticipation I had been reading the Essential Interviews, and came upon this, in an interview with Nora Ephron in ’65:

Great paintings shouldn’t be in museums. Have you ever been in a museum? Museums are cemetaries. Paintings should be on the walls of restaurants, in dime stores, in gas stations, in men’s rooms. Great paintings should be where people hang out. The only thing where it’s happening is on radio and records, that’s where people hang out. You can’t see great paintings. You pay half a million and hang one in your house and one guest sees it. That’s not art. That’s a shame, a crime. Music is the only thing that’s in tune with what’s happening. It’s not in book form, it’s not on the stage. All this art they’ve been talking about is nonexistent. It just remains on the shelf. It doesn’t make anyone happier. Just think how many people would really feel great if they could see a Picasso in their daily diner. It’s not the bomb that has to go, man, it’s the museums.

Hmmm.

Color a Sound from blair neal on Vimeo.

At the least, tech makes consumption more about making and less about out of the box. Reminds me of Marc Levoy’s Frankencamera (watch out! web 1.0 site coming up!), which NPR
did a little piece on last year. It’s not what most people have time or patience for, but who knows what weird efficient things we’ve got up our own sleeves.

Either way, I really like the idea of the Edit button in programs. Instead of just being able to set certain parameters for predefined functions, wouldn’t it be cool to be able to change the function in a fundamental way? I suppose if your programming chops are good enough you can do that now by designing your own stand-alone program, but I’m hoping this will become easier for laymen. It’s not quite there yet, but the idea is seeping into consumer programs like Max for Live.

Combine this with the touchscreen technology (Max for iPhone?) and it could all get very visually appealing and interesting.

Hey, computers weren’t all that impressive when they first came out either. We’re still at the beginning of things – you don’t tell a five year old that his drawing sucks, right? Check back in 10 years…

There’s nothing like the feeling of being content with a newly processed photo. Even if you know that by next week you will probably have changed your mind.

“We are going to be the largest net hirer of journalists in the world next year,” AOL’s media and studios division president David Eun said last month in an interview with Michael Learmonth of Ad Age. Many of the jobs will be added to its hyper-local venture, Patch, while the majority of AOL’s freelancers will work for the company’s content farms. These two areas into which AOL is ambitiously expanding are the fastest growing sectors of the journalism market.

This week, Hiar tackles the content farms. Ironically, they use a CC photo from Flickr (of an HDR-ed tractor – how relevant) to illustrate the story, which focuses on the experiences of freelancers who work for places like eHow:

She began working for Demand in 2008, a year after graduating with honors from a prestigious journalism program. It was simply a way for her to make some easy money. In addition to working as a barista and freelance journalist, she wrote two or three posts a week for Demand on “anything that I could remotely punch out quickly.”

The articles she wrote — all of which were selected from an algorithmically generated list — included How to Wear a Sweater Vest” and How to Massage a Dog That Is Emotionally Stressed,” even though she would never willingly don a sweater vest and has never owned a dog.

“I was completely aware that I was writing crap,” she said. “I was like, ‘I hope to God people don’t read my advice on how to make gin at home because they’ll probably poison themselves.’”

Next week, the hyper-local coverage trend, which might more directly relate to the state of photojournalism. Although… content farm : stock photography?

(Thanks, Fo!)

KZSU received a copy of An Autobiography of the San Francisco Bay Area, Pt I and the music director thought it was up my alley. It’s a little collection of photographs from Bay Area photographers like Larry Sultan, Jim Goldberg, Michael Jang, John Chiara, and on and on. The volume isn’t large enough to serve as a reference, but the artist statements in the back of the book were pretty interesting, especially the ones that ventured away from explanation of process to include something of the artist’s own personal experience…

Katy Grannan, Gail and Dale, Pacifica (II)

California sunshine is relentless, even cruel. A lifetime spent in the Northeast makes me suspicious of so much sun, but out West there is no hiding from it.

In upstate New York I photographed a girl who planned to move to California to become a rockstar, or a tattoo artist. She called after returning east to her mother’s house, a year or so later, to say things hadn’t worked out in California. She couldn’t find work. She used to many drugs and was robbed by her friends. Upstate New York was better, she said.

I thought about this girl when I moved to San Francisco. I saw people like her everywhere: in the Mission, in the Tenderloin, downtown on Market Street. How could it be that she – that they – had misunderstood the light?

Oscar Wilde famously stated, “Anyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco.” Many of us are still looking for whatever it is we believe the West offers: reinvention, escape… We believe it will be easier here; it will be different.

The sun is shining.

Chauncey Hare, from This Was Corporate America

And then there’s Chauncey Hare’s black and white statement to match his black and white photo. Somebody needs to make a documentary film about this man. It would be fascinating. Or maybe just unsettling.

These photographs were made to protest and warn against he growing domination of working people by multinational corporations and their elite owners and managers.

Richard Misrach, David, from Telegraph 3AM

In contrast, Misrach’s thoughts on the political efficacy of his earlier work:

I began this project when I was twenty-two years old. For almost two years I roamed the five-block stretch of Telegraph Avenue from Dwight Way to the UC Berkeley campus with a camera on my shoulder. I think the fact that I asked permission and was working slow on a tripod actually made people curious and receptive to what I was doing. In every photograph, the street people were looking directly into the camera. This was very important to me. It both suggested their willing participation and their confrontation with the rest of the world. At first I was pretty intimidated, but over time I became a fixture of the Avenue.

It was my first serious attempt at making formally beautiful prints of political content. I also recognized for the first time that creating social change and making art might in fact be at odds. This was a real eye-opener that I’ve been trying to deal with ever since. After Telegraph 3AM was completed, I felt disillusioned. Instead of making an effective political statement, I felt like I ended up with a coffee table book. I’m not sure what I was expecting at the time but it seemed that I had failed. I hadn’t created social change or made particularly great art, but it did get me to reconsider how photography actually functions in the world. Thirty-five years later, I find that the work in fact effectively captures a historical moment. So, perhaps I was too hard on myself back then.

I’m starting to think that political statements in still photography only really effective ask questions instead of declaring things. Experimental photos prompt, what is this a picture of? And much of photojournalism essentially asks the viewer, why do we allow this to happen? To me, there’s something about the muteness of a still that brings more questions to mind than answers.

Not to sound like a 3am self-help infomercial, but… I mean, have you ever found an answer in a photograph? Are photos even supposed to be articulate? I’m reminded of a great quote by Colum McCann in Let the Great World Spin:

The disconnect between his mouth and his mind. That’s where the camera came in.