Well, damn, I deserve what I get for mentioning taxes in a lead-in. Let's pretend I didn't do that, okay? It makes me feel kind of useless to spend my time not publishing comments.
More on topic, Jim Nash mentioned that there are some large JPEGs of Lewis Hine pictures at shorpy.com, as indeed there are. Including many which I've never seen before, which is exciting for me.
Those of you who don't visit Shorpy, or have never heard of it, might not know that the site itself is named after the subject of a Lewis Hine photograph:
December 1910. Shorpy Higginbotham, a 'greaser' on the tipple at Bessie Mine, of the Sloss-Sheffield Steel and Iron Co. in Alabama. Said he was 14 years old, but it is doubtful. Carries two heavy pails of grease, and is often in danger of being run over by the coal cars.
(Photograph and caption by Lewis Wickes Hine.)
Shorpy Higginbotham died in a mining accident, aged 31.
Poking around the Hine photographs on Shorpy, I was interested to see how the site's community dives into researching the pictures and their elements. Consider this one—the commenters have figured out the real name and age of the "newsie," the location of the store, and even the fact that the toilet paper in the window was made by the Waldorf Company, whose employee education program was the ancestor of the still-thriving Waldorf Schools.
That led me naturally enough to the site of Joe Manning, "author, historian and geneologist," whose site I have actually surfed past before, looking for pictures, without realizing its full import. Joe's "Lewis Hine Project" involves tracking down what happened to the subjects of some of Hine's pictures.
February 1910. Addie Card,12 years old, anemic little spinner in North Pownal Cotton Mill, Vermont. Girls in mill say she is ten years. She admitted to me she was twelve; that she started during school vacation and would 'stay.' (Photograph and caption by Lewis Wickes Hine.)
One of Lewis Hine's most famous child-laborer photographs is of Addie Card, an "anemic little spinner" in a Vermont cotton mill. A book author, Elizabeth Winthrop, wrote a novel inspired by the photograph, imagining the life of the girl in the picture, who she named "Grace." But she became curious about the identity of the real person in the photograph, and asked Joe Manning to help her find out more about her.
Joe Manning's account of several months of detective work starts here.
It's not a fast read, but his search certainly succeeded—he was able to track Addie Card through marriages, divorce, a lost child, and all the way to her headstone (she died in 1993). He met a number of her descendants and uncovered several later pictures of her, and one possible earlier one, including a picture of her as an old woman.
Based on Joe's researches, Elizabeth Winthrop wrote a short article for Smithsonian magazine about Addie, which can be found here.
And to think, there are probably similar stories waiting to be uncovered about so many of the pictures on Shorpy...if you've never visited, don't do it when you're in a hurry.
Mike
Send this post to a friend
Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon
Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.
The rare Sumatran titan arum is open at the Kenneth Post Lab Greenhouses at Cornell University. Watch the people photograph it in real time. Flower photographers regnant!
Mike
(Thanks to Bobby B.)
Send this post to a friend
Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon
Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.
Featured Comment by Andreas Weber: "From my experience with 'La Diva' in the Stuttgarter Wilhelma I can say that the smell varies a lot in intensity from one flower to the next. And some of it's smaller brethren easily dwarf the 'titan' in that regard ;-) I've been rather close to the big one in July 2008:
[If flower pics be your thang, Andreas has some nice ones on his website. —Ed.]
Added by Andreas 3/20: "It's a good thing that I don't have to pay for traffic on my site. The last two days saw about as much hits as the entire year before."
Featured Comment by J. Robert Lennon: "I was there last night! There's something inspiring about watching hundreds of people show up just to see a flower bloom. And stick their noses into its reeking maw. As soon as we got home my wife threw all her clothes into the laundry and still felt personally tainted when she got up this morning."
Featured Comment by Steve Wolfe: "I shot a timelapse using my D700 a couple years ago of a Titan arum opening at Ohio State University. My wife added titles, stills, and (licensed) music. If you're interested, here's a link to our video on YouTube. By the way, I sat with that smelly thing for six hours to shoot this. After a while the odor kind of grows on you :-) ."
Featured Comment by David Dyer-Bennet: "I don't want to think what sort of pollinator that flower is built for. From the smell, apparently a predator of some sort, too. I'm pretty sure I don't want to be there when it shows up!"
Mike replies: It is clearly meant to be pollinated by zombies. I wouldn't hang around it at night, just to be safe.
Most end-of-the-year picture sets consist of pictures taken in that year. This one's a little different...it consists of 82 pictures from a set of negatives found years ago in a thrift shop. From the available evidence, these pictures will turn 100 years old in the coming New Year—the poster (who, as far as I can tell, is anonymous as well) figures they were taken in 1912. The number of stars on this flag is one of the clues.
Not only do I find some of the pictures fascinating—snapshots they might be, but whoever took them was actually a pretty good photographer—but I think it's telling that they're now "on exhibit" worldwide after being scanned and posted on the web. That part, at least, is very 2012.
Mike
(Thanks to Lynn Burdekin in Sydney)
P.S. Warning: the parent site where these pictures are posted is a bit sketchy, and admits to being vandalized regularly for its extreme political views. I don't see how any reader looking at the pictures could be harmed by this in any way, but I figured you should know.
Send this post to a friend
Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon
Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.
Featured Comment by Alan Anderson: "The sign in one photo gives clues that the photos were taken in the foothills and slopes east of a line connecting Ventura and Santa Barbara California. The courthouse (?) may have been Ventura County. The naval photos were taken either in San Diego or Long Beach California, both ports used then as now by the U.S. Navy. The older Officer wears two stars, at that time the insignia of a Rear Admiral; his cap device shows he is in the U.S. Navy. Obviously a well-to-do family with acreage planted as new orchards and a processing plant. They also have the connections to arrange a visit to part of the Pacific Fleet."
Featured Comment by Kevin Purcell: "The 46 star flag reminds me of the Simpson's episode (3F20, 'Much Apu About Nothing') in which Apu becomes a citizen with Homer administering the citizenship test:
Homer: Please identify this object.
Apu: It appears to be the flag that disappeared from the public library last year.
Homer: Correct. Now, we all know the thirteen stripes are for good luck, but why does the American flag have precisely forty-seven stars?
Apu: Because this particular flag [chuckling] is ridiculously out of date! The library must have purchased it during the brief period in 1912 after New Mexico became a state but before Arizona did.
Homer: Uh...partial credit.
"So it's a shame it didn't have 47 stars then we could precisely date it :-)
"It's often interesting how much extra date or time info (e.g. from shadow angles) you can get from ephemera in unknown photos."
No, I'm not talking about this
Kirk Tuck announced on Friday that after two weeks away from his popular blog The Visual Science Lab, he's decided to start back up again today. Good news. Tipping the scale in a positive way were the hundreds of comments and emails he received expressing appreciation and asking him not to quit.
Kirk tells me he's still going to write a monthly column for TOP, which I hope he can do.
Mike
Send this post to a friend
Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon
Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.
Edwin H. Land of Polaroid
"In the memorials to Steven P. Jobs this week, Apple’s co-founder was compared with the world’s great inventor-entrepreneurs: Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Alexander Graham Bell. Yet virtually none of the obituaries mentioned the man Jobs himself considered his hero, the person on whose career he explicitly modeled his own: Edwin H. Land, the genius domus of Polaroid Corporation and inventor of instant photography."
The article is "The Man Who Inspired Jobs," written by Christopher Bonanos, from the World's Best Photography Magazine.
How to impress women
Meanwhile, I got the following Jobs tale from my pal Pete:
Long ago I spent a workday with Mr. Jobs during the "Lisa" release, doing photo work. Sometime during the day this story came out and it was memorable.
Steve was in New York during the previous week. He notoriously didn’t carry a wallet or keys and so forth. (For most of our day he was in his socks—no shoes, although he put a tie on for a couple of shots.) He found himself in his hotel’s bar and was in conversation with two nice women. They treated Steve to drinks. But when it came his turn to buy, he didn’t have any money. The two women didn’t know who he was, just a nice guy who had no money. He told the ladies the he was good for the cost of a round of drinks as he would get some money from his traveling companions.
The women were unsure of his promise but paid for the drinks. At his next turn, he again promised money from his friends; they were late, but would arrive soon. He told the women that he and a friend (Woz) started a computer company in California and that he was paid well and was good for the drink money. The women were more leery at this point about fronting money to this guy with promises and no wallet. Then Steve remembered that his photo was to be on the cover of the current TIME Magazine. He told the women that if they would follow him out to the corner newsstand (in the rain) he would prove to them that he was good for the drink money and was not BS-ing about his work in California. Well, they went out into the rain and saw his photo on the cover of TIME—and the three of them went back to the hotel bar, where the two women bought the next round.
Mike
(Thanks to Steve Rosenblum and Pete)
Send this post to a friend
Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon
Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.
Featured Comment by Avram Levi: "Playboy re-published an interview with Steve Jobs from the 1980s. At one point he talks about Dr. Edwin Land: 'You know, Dr. Edwin Land was a troublemaker. He dropped out of Harvard and founded Polaroid. Not only was he one of the great inventors of our time but, more important, he saw the intersection of art and science and business and built an organization to reflect that. Polaroid did that for some years, but eventually Dr. Land, one of those brilliant troublemakers, was asked to leave his own company—which is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard of. So Land, at 75, went off to spend the remainder of his life doing pure science, trying to crack the code of color vision. The man is a national treasure. I don’t understand why people like that can't be held up as models: This is the most incredible thing to be—not an astronaut, not a football player—but this.'"
Featured Comment by Michael O'Donoghue: "Well—we all know what happened to Polaroid...."
Everybody's a comedian photographer: Comedian Louis CK says, "I take a lot of pictures. I am very, very into photography...I'm going to show you all the equipment I brought with me. I'm not showing off here. I'm not rich. I just spend all my money on cameras. It's important to me." Read about his "main dude" (favorite camera). (Hint: "It's not even an SLR. you have to line up images in the rangefinder and hope for the best.")
Thieves with very good taste in lenses: Thieves broke into the headquarters of the high-end cameramaker Alpa in Switzerland on Wednesday night and made off with dozens of Rodenstock, Schneider, and Alpa/Zeiss lenses. If you come across any offers for Alpa lenses for sale, be sure to check the serial number against Alpa's stolen merchandise list. We hope Alpa gets its lenses back, in which case a Swiss jail will soon be hosting some discerning optical connoisseurs.
Gottlieb online: The Library of Congress has posted a large number of historical jazz photographs by the late William P. Gottlieb on its Flickr pages. We linked to Adam Bernstein's NPR obituary when Bill died in '06.
Cab Calloway by Bill Gottlieb
DxOmark likes what it sees: DxOmark has evaluated the new Nikon J1's sensor and compares it favorably (all things considered) with larger ones.
Looking up from lamentations, or why my Canon printer sucks: The Inky Fool traces the ancient origins of the Canon name, and uncovers its connections to his balky printer. We liked this.
Canon's next killer cam: You've probably seen this, with some of the details of the upcoming 5D refresh:
If you can't see the video, try this link. A shame it's a fake! If there's one single camera that is the most loved by passionate photographers, it's probably the 5D in whatever its current iteration is, so the ground-tremors of the coming Mark III are already generating huge interest.
Mike
(Thanks to Sandy Rothberg, Vlatko Juric-Kokic, Pascal Sauvé, Lynn Burdekin, and Rob Young)
ADDENDUM: Almost forgot this one—it now appears there are two famous vampires in our midst—John Travolta's doppelganger has been found as well, in an old photo described as a ruby glass ambrotype. I don't think the similarity in this case is quite so strong—apparently the seller doesn't either, since he'll let his treasure go for $50,000 instead of the $100,000 the guy with Nicolas Cage's vampire wanted. (Thanks to James for this.)
Send this post to a friend
Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon
Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.
Featured Comment by Jeff Glass: "Uh-oh, gush warning. Oh for crying out loud, Louis CK is one of, if not the, best comedians around and now I find out he's also into photography, which is my passion, and shoots film only, as I do, and shoots a Leica, which I do too (M4)! For christ's sake, I LOVE YOU, Louie! A stalker is born...."
Featured Comment by Rob Atkins: "The Cab Calloway portrait it just a classic, capturing all the joyfulness and vivacity of his music. Hi de ho.
"P.S. Cab is obviously thinking about the 5D Mk III."
Featured Comment by John: "Thanks for the link on the origins of the name Canon—made me laugh. :-)"
Featured Comment by Matt: "Since you've been posting links to photos of strangely familiar looking faces, I thought I'd send you doppelganger #3 from the USC Digital Library: Sean Penn as a bunny hunter."
Think there's no obesity epidemic? Colorado, currently the skinniest State in America, would have been the fattest had they reported this year's figures just 20 years ago. Heard that one on the evening news.
Awesome infographics: Look, ye mighty, and tremble—at how, when it comes to the size of their photo assets, Flickr dwarfs the Library of Congress—and Facebook dwarfs Flickr. (Check "The World's Largest Photo Libraries.")
What country springs to mind when you think about child exploitation? Probably not Canada—but British Columbia has the most permissive child labor laws in the world, says Joel Bakan in The Globe and Mail. Children as young as 12 can work any job except in a mine or a bar, at any time except during school hours. That's worse than Afganistan or Haiti, says Bakan. Most at risk: children of recent immigrants.
Super Canon rumor: We're only three days from Nikon Day (big announcement expected on Wednesday) but the Canon 1Ds Mark 4 (question: will it or won't it be "IV"?) might be announced in October—with (or so the rumors have it) a full-frame 56 million pixel sensor. Also coming, the 5D Mark III, and possibly a cheaper full-frame DSLR with a lower pixel count than the new 5D3.
It ain't the '90s anymore: The once-hip Raiders have lost their mojo, along with the status of their swag as pop fashion, but the major U.S. sports team losing fans the fastest, according to 24/7 Wall Street, is the Cleveland Indians baseball team, which has lost 56% of its fans since 2000 (measured by attendance). But even that pales next to the once-popular beer people no longer drink: Michelob, sales of which are down 72% just since 2006.
Who'd a' Thunk? Two things you'd never guess are good to buy from Amazon: diapers
The fastest car you can buy is a...Nissan: Yup. In case you've been wondering, the 2012 Nissan GT-R Black Edition is the fastest production car you can buy new in the U.S.*, faster than any Ferrari, Porsche, or Lamborghini: zero to sixty in 3.1 seconds. A 2012 model, it's been available for most of 2011—for a mere $91,000, far below the cost of many "name" supercars. Got this from Yahoo!, if I recall.
Blink and miss it: Leica Camera can't keep the M9-P in stock. B&H got a small shipment in on Wednesday, and they were gone by Saturday.
You know what they say: Oh well.
Mike
(Thanks to Adam, Vlatko, and The Week.
Photo from an Ebay auction.)
*There has been dispute over this in the comments, as I knew there would be. I don't buy it. It's too much of a stretch to call either the SSC or the Veyron "production cars." The SSC is hand-built in the dozens and at full throttle sucks down a gallon of fuel every fifteen seconds. And according to Wikipedia, the total output of Veyrons was 300, which you just might be able to call "production" volume...except that was over six years. Total sales in 2011? Nine. And according to Jeff they cost 2.7 million dollars each.
Not production cars, sez me. There are always going to be one-offs, race cars, engineering daydreams, the toys of the überrich. The list I read included only real cars that mortal people actually buy to use as cars.
But you can have the asterisk if you want it, s'okay with me...(but before you go away, have a look at this—thanks to Tee for the link. Note that that wasn't even the Black Edition.)
"Open Mike" is a series of (mostly) off-topic posts by Yr. Hmbl. Ed. that appears now and again on Sunday.
Send this post to a friend
Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon
Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.
After the explosion, he saw "bits" of himself in a tree, and took stock of what was missing (an arm and two legs). Then he took stock of what remained—right hand, eyes.
And he thought, "I can work."
From the World's Best Photography Magazine this morning, the amazing tale of the rehabilitation of photographer Giles Duley—"pulled along by what would seem an incurably upbeat mind." I'll say.
He says that for him to make sense of what happened to him, he has to make it advantageous to the work he does. I guess that covers the tripod mount fitted to the prosthetic of his missing left arm.
Some people are made of firm stuff indeed. Good luck and godspeed, Giles.
Mike
(Thanks to Jeremy Thomason)
Send this post to a friend
Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon
Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.
Featured Comment by John Camp (a.k.a. John Sandford
(Note: I linked to John's books here not in the interest of any sort of commercialism, but because it's directly pertinent to the content of this comment. John's one of the hardest working guys I know, and an inspiration himself in that regard, to me at least. —Ed.)
No, not in the news, on the news...the evening news, that would be. The evening television news is apparently (whether out of laziness or an attempt to be hip, I can't tell) leaning ever more heavily of late on the sort of internet flotsam that makes the web such a timesink. I happened to switch from "ABC World News Tonight" to "NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams" last night, and ABC was running a teaser for an upcoming segment with the seagull security camera thief that I linked to* a couple of days ago. (I can't find a robust link for the segment, but it covers additional incidents as well, including the one below. You'll have to search for it on their website if you want to see it.)
Crested Black Macaque, Self-portrait (camera provided by David Slater)
NBC, meanwhile, did its own little "fun" feature on this viral meme proving that even a monkey can be a photographer (which at least a dozen people have sent to me, so no hat tip). (There's a little more detail and some additional still here.) Poor crested black macaque might be getting its 15 minutes of fame just prior to its own extinction, but as far as I'm concerned this is absolutely one of the best self-portraits ever in the history of photography.
Mike
UPDATE: Chris Cheesman at Amateur Photographer talked to David Slater, who says that some of the news reports about the crested black macaque pictures have been exaggerated. (Note however that even Amateur Photographer couldn't resist a bad pun in its title.) Thanks to Rex Kersley for passing this along.
*Whether out of laziness or an attempt to be hip, I can't say
Send this post to a friend
Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon
Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.
Featured Comment by Tom Swoboda: "I keep telling people that one doesn't have to be very intelligent to be a photographer."
Featured Comment by ed g.: "So, does the monkey own the copyright? Will he hire Maisel's lawyer?"
Mike replies: It's a complicated case, but probably qualifies as a co-authored work. The monkey doesn't look like the litigious sort to me. :-)
Featured Comment by Bill Rogers: "Hey! That's my uncle!"
Featured Comment by Mani Sitaraman: "Why all the disrespect? The photographer, C.B. MacAque, clearly has more talent than many photographers. We may be having more fun with this than a barrel of humans has any right to...."
Observed on Craigslist:
Sheesh!
Mike
(Thanks to Rob Atkins)
Send this post to a friend
Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon
Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.
Featured Comment by Mike Hess: "Do you think they asked the photographer if they charge to remove the watermark? The rates might not be bad...."
Truths about twisters: Continuing the discussion about tornadoes following the "Joplin" post, there's an article at the Times this morning called "The Facts (and Fiction) of Tornadoes."
MR on the SD1: Pursuant to the news of the pricing of the SD1, the esteemed Michael Reichmann, who is intimately familiar with that end of the market in ways your humble servant is not, has written a typically trenchant analysis of this week's most controversial number at the always-interesting L-L. I only wish I'd discovered this before I spent the time writing half of what would have been a worse essay on the subject.
All in all, not a great week for Sigma—considering it's also just been sued by Nikon for lens stabilization patent infringement.
André Kertesz, from the portfolio "A Hungarian Memory"
Swann's way: To provide some perspective on the recent auction record price set by a Cindy Sherman print, at the recently ended Swann Galleries' auction "Important Photobooks and Photographs," the top lot was "A Hungarian Memory," a portfolio of 15 silver prints, 7.5x9.5 inches in size, by André Kertesz. The portfolio, limited to 100 sets of pictures (and seven artist's proof sets) taken between 1914 and 1923 but printed in 1980, had a pre-auction estimate of CDN$18–22,000, but realized CDN$48,000 (£30,230, US$49,052) (CDN$3,200 per print), a record for the portfolio. The entire auction catalog can be viewed online and makes for a nice snapshot of the kinds of photographica that are bringing good prices in the current market.
Elliottisms: From his advice on how to succeed as a photographer—"be an heir and do it on the side"—to the Cartier-Bresson photo that first inspired him, it's always fun to read Erwitt—his lack of pretension is always refreshing. An interview by his son Misha and his other children.
Thoughtlessly tweeted: There's a long but fascinating discussion about Stephanie Gordon's space shuttle snapshot by Bob Sullivan of MSNBC's The Redtape Chronicles that asks the question: When is sharing stealing? Curiously, there's another, similar picture in e-circulation taken with a cell phone at 37,000 feet by American Airlines pilot Lorrie LeBlanc, which you can see at National Geographic.
Mike
(Thanks to Bill Mitchell and Vlatko Juric-Kokic)
ADDENDUM by Ctein: Bob Sullivan's article is not entirely correct—see Christine Valada's comment to it for some corrections.
Send this post to a friend
Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon
Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.
Featured Comment by Jay Frew: "Re 'Thoughtlessly tweeted': According to the Astronomy Picture of the Day website (for Wed, 25 May, 2011), this shot, taken from a shuttle training aircraft, is not copyrighted:
Photos by francescco
Regularly, something needs to come along to prove to me that I haven't seen it all. Francesco Capponi at Lomography.com is the latest in that long line with the "Pinhegg," a pinhole camera made of an eggshell.
The last three needed ingredients on his list are "Stubbornness," "Patience," and "More Patience," which I can believe—four successes required more than 50 eggs.
Mike
Send this post to a friend
Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon
Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.
Featured Comment by Lynn: "I can see this is no yolk...how much do I shell out for one?"
This is one of the stranger things I've encountered in the field of journalism where photographs and photography is concerned.
Photo: Failed Messiah
Unless this is some sort of hoax, it appears that the orthodox Jewish newspaper Di Tzeitung has published the Pete Souza photograph of the White House situation room at the time of the mission to eliminate Osama bin Laden—but removed the two women in the scene from the picture. The paper ran the picture with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Counterterrorism Director Audrey Tomason gone.
The paper reportedly observes a religious proscription against depicting women.
I won't judge that, but the strange thing here is that responsible journalists would then run the picture at all. The manipulation clearly falsifies the scene and the historical record, and just as clearly violates the White House terms of use for the photograph. Rabbi Jason Miller, writing at The Jewish Week, also says, "To my mind, this act of censorship is actually a violation of the Jewish legal principle of g'neivat da'at (deceit)"—although I can't be the judge of that either.
It seems to me that if you can't publish pictures of women, then you can't publish pictures of women; okay. But to publish an altered photograph is wrong in several ways.
Read commentary at TIME.com's Newsfeed, which has links to other sites reporting the story.
Mike
UPDATE: Di Tzeitung has issued a statement of apology to the White House and the State Department that reads in part, "Our photo editor...in his haste, did not read the 'fine print' that accompanied the picture, forbidding any changes." The statement notes that "the Jewish laws of modesty are an expression of respect for women, not the opposite." (Thanks to juan for this.)
UPDATE #2: I've received several emails from practicing orthodox Jews who either say they have not heard of this practice or that it is, in their experience, not typical of orthodox practice.
Send this post to a friend
Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon
Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.
Featured Comment by Peter Klein: "The Yiddish-speaking ultra-Orthodox ('Haredi') Jewish sect for which this paper exists is very small. Most mainstream Orthodox Jews would find their interpretations of Jewish religious law quite extreme. As would more liberal Jews (such as myself) who make up the vast majority of American Jews.
"Now, to explain (though not to justify) what the paper did.... In Orthodox Judaism, one follows all 613 commandments in the Torah (the 'thou shalts' and 'thou shalt nots'). Over the centuries, a body of Oral Law evolved, via discussions among learned rabbis about how to best follow these commandments. This was later written down in the Talmud.
"The Oral Law includes a concept called 'Building fences around the Torah,' whereby in order to be sure that they always follow the original commandment, the community follows a stricter practice. This is how 'Thou shalt not seeth a kid in the milk of its mother' became the elaborate 'kosher' practice of separate dishes for meat and milk-based foods in traditional households, and a prohibition of eating one kind of food within several hours of the other.
"What Di Tzeitung did is an extreme example of the above. To be sure that they don't break a Biblical commandment about female modesty, they simply don't publish pictures of women, period. In this case, the temptation to publish a newsworthy picture that included women was too great, so they found a 'creative solution.'
"In their minds, they are simply following God's law, as interpreted by the rabbis they follow. The rest of us may roll our eyes, but that is irrelevant to them."
By Ctein
Once again, as per the vox populi mandate, I'm going off-topic. Be warned: This column is guaranteed to waste your time if you read beyond the first paragraph. Why? Because the subject is my favorite web comics. If web comics don't interest you, then reading any further will waste a little of your time. If web comics do interest you, you're at risk of finding one here that you aren't already reading that you'll like. Which means it will waste lots of your time.
You've been warned. Don't come crying to me when you no longer have a life.
I read way too many web comics. There are a pleasant way to relax, nice bite-sized breaks from concentrated work, and occasionally a great rationalization and excuse for not working when I should. 'Sides, I can stop reading them any time I want. Really.
Let me say, upfront, that I'm one of those people whose humor is influenced by their politics. I envy folks who can laugh at anything, apolitically, but I'm not one of them. And, as is no secret, my politics run radical-left, sex-positive, and techno-philic.
(Note to those about to fire off some political or ad hominem rant: don't. Mike probably won't allow it, anyway.)
That means I enjoy "Tom the Dancing Bug" by Ruben Bolling, an oft overtly-political (example) weekly. Personally, my favorite subjects are Lucky Ducky and Justice Scalia, The Fighting Judge. On the other hand, I find "Mallard Fillmore" consistently unfunny. If your funny bone is also politically influenced, but you run on the conservative side of things, you'll find some of my faves unappealing. That's cool. I'm only trying to save you from my idiosyncratic tastes.
A famous panel from the brilliant xkcd
"Wondermark," by the multitalented David Malki, is the classic four-panel self-contained joke. It's always witty; it occasionally makes me laugh out loud, (example). Like "xkcd," which everyone here already knows about so I need not belabor its brilliance, Wondermark's multilayered. It doesn't stop with just the rollover; the title and the header lines also tie into the main joke. There may be other layers I miss.
Malki also writes essays. This one is entirely on the topic of photography and might even be more than you ever wanted to read on the subject of body image, photographic retouching, and portraiture, being over 5,000 words and spanning two millennia.
"Way Lay" by Carol Lay is invariably a gem. Rather than being a four-panel joke, each strip's a graphic short story done in a single page. Humorous in an O'Henryesque way.
"Nobody Scores: A Little Comic About Disaster" by Brandon Bolt is mostly black humor about mostly-slacking twentysomethings and their entirely fantastical and surreal schemes for dealing with the world. What Seinfeld would have been if Seinfeld were funny. Which leads me to...
Jeph Jacques' "Questionable Content," also about an assortment of indie-rockish twentysomethings, the coffee shop where they hang out, and their attempts to deal with the world. It's a full-page comic like "Nobody Scores," but "Questionable Content" is an ongoing story. Some strips stand alone, my all-time favorite being this, which is workplace-friendly only so long as your boss doesn't actually read over your shoulder.
This is what Friends would have been if Friends were funny.
If I praise Jeph, I must also praise his nemesis, Sam Logan, whose full-page "Sam and Fuzzy" strips form an ongoing series of graphic novels. A bit less realistic, too, unless you consider a twentysomething slacker with a cynical talking teddy-bearish companion and the world's most inept underground (literally!) criminal organization, The Ninja Mafia, to be realistic. If so, I might enjoy visiting your universe.
Mustn't forget "Pibgorn" by Brooke McEldowney (of the wonderful, syndicated strip "9 Chickweed Lane"). It's like this, y'see: A fairy, a succubus, and a church organist walk into a comic strip.... Beautifully illustrated, glacially paced sometimes to the point of frustration, and often witty and erudite in its dialogue. Here's where it starts.
Graphic novels
The preceding are all ongoing strips. Here are four completed, self-contained graphic novels.
"Rice Boy" by Evan Dahm is surreal, both in story and artwork. I loved it. You might hate it. A particular taste is required.
"Bite Me" by Dylan Meconis mashes up the French Revolution and vampires. How could you go wrong?
"Anders Loves Maria" by Rene Engström. Sweet, sad, poignant, and I found the art engaging, especially as the artist developed her chops.
"Afterstrife" by Ali Graham. You're a twentysomething slacker (anyone notice a pattern?) who dies an untimely accidental death and winds up in hell. You discover you're still expected to work an 8-to-5 job and earn your keep. Noooooooooo....
Finally...
"Girl Genius" by Kaja and Phil Folio. This one of the famous success stories of web publishing and one of the very few cases of an artist figuring out how to make money by giving it away for free.
It's the archetypal steampunk comic, a full-page ongoing story published three times a week. Lovely line work, utterly gorgeous coloring. Very funny but complicated, so you pretty much have to start at the beginning. Agatha Heterodyne lives in a crypto-Victorian world where mad scientists are the powers to be reckoned with. Called madboys and madgirls by their enemies and sparks by their friends (not inherently a safer relationship to be in) they scheme and jockey for position and power. There are forces in nature humans were not meant to tamper with; that never stopped a spark. Be afraid, be very afraid, and laugh a lot.
And finally, don't forget Phil's completed series, "Buck Godot: Zap Gun For Hire." Read the first short story; if you don't like it, you won't like the rest. If you do?
Well, I told you I was going to waste your time, didn't I?
If it's Wednesday, it's Ctein.
Send this post to a friend
Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon
Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.
Heidi Romano, Trust Dissolves, from Fraction Magazine issue 25
Fraction Magazine issue 25 (April, 2011) has just been published. It features portfolios by Heidi Romano (Melbourne, Australia), Jesse Burke (Rumford, Rhode Island, USA), Marija Kovach (Novi Sad, Serbia), Nikita Pirogov (St. Petersburg, Russia), and Irina Rozovsky (Boston and New York City, USA), as well as a brief review of the AIPAD Show written by Colin Edgington (Phillipsburg, New Jersey, USA).
Fraction Magazine is an online publication edited by David Bram.
Nikita Pirogov, Natasha, from Fraction Magazine issue 25
Mike
Send this post to a friend
Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon
Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.
Featured Comment by John Sartin: "I love Fraction! TOP and Fraction are vital reads for me. I keep up with them on Facebook. Always very interesting and thought provoking."
Featured Comment by Richard Skoonberg: "I think Fraction is great and wonderful venue for photographers. I have been following for a while. David Bram not only publishes a wonderful magazine, he is doing a fantastic job promoting photography as art across the country."
