ADL Takes Idiotic Stance (Again)

Today The New York Times is running this report on the stance taken by the Anti-Defamation League in opposition to plans for a "planned mosque and Islamic community center near ground zero" in NYC. And here is the blunt and entirely justified retort from the folks at The Economist. Abe Foxman and the ADL are becoming a caricature.

Conservatives with Guns and their Fantasies of Revolution

"When American men talk like this, they are usually giving voice to fantasy. Only in fantasy, after all, are governments overthrown by men trained to do nothing more than shoot long-distance targets in a controlled environment. Some of these men seek out unlikely battlefields, where they can be warriors of the future, warriors of the imagination or reluctant warriors in waiting who are passing their time on the Internet. The power of a gun to take a life is not so much a threat as a talisman connecting these fantasies to the real world."

In The New York Times you can find this article on the 'Appleseed Project' which is (despite the preposterous disavowals) a right wing project meant to prepare 'regular Americans' to take up guns in defense of liberty. I find the impulse to own guns pretty inscrutable, sort of like liking Lima Beans. As I've said here several times, I just don't get it. I also have said before that I find the conservative mind pretty much misguided. These folks are not just gun owners, they're paid up subscribers to the rigid, paranoid conservative style [1] [2] [3]. Combine that style with guns and things start to get worrying - even though the reporter from The Times has done his best to persuade us that it's all just magical thinking. Fantasies can be dangerous too.

Red Hair - Paris Fashion Week

Red Hair - Paris Fashion Week

Bracelets X2 - Paris Fashion Week

Bracelets X2 - Paris Fashion Week

Best Shots (124) ~ Rena Effendi

(151) Rena Effendi ~ "She was dying," Baku, Azerbaijan (29 July 2010).

Smile - Rue de Turenne - Paris

Some pictures I made disappear in limbo
and one day they just pop up. I don't know why
That's the way it is ...

Smile - Rue de Turenne - Paris

Some pictures I made disappear in limbo
and one day they just pop up. I don't know why
That's the way it is ...

Reading Around

"If words fall into disrepair, what will substitute? They are all we have." ~ Tony Judt

That is an ironic observation for someone like me who is committed to the importance of photographic images as tools of communication. You can find the NYRB essay where Judt issues it here. And, for two examples of smart women masterfully using words to probe and decipher our political predicaments, you can find essays by Rebecca Solnit on Louisiana post-Deepwater Horizon here at the London Review of Books, and by Suzie Linfield on genocide and the agony of 'reconciliation' here in Guernica.

Anthony Green Head Tattoo

Lead singer of the band Circa Survive, Anthony Green, has a newly revealed head tattoo of the Circa Survive "safe camp" symbol, located on the left side above his ear.

Gabriella - Rue Tiquetonne - Paris

Gabriella
"I am an Art Student
For me Fashion is dressing up each day and
make the place looks nice, rather than
wearing boring clothes. Today my look
is "Barbara Beehive in Paris" !
I love having good health and being able
to walk around. I hate having a bad head
day. My message to the world: enjoy each
day as if it was the last ..."



I am wearing a top by BLANC BLEU
Skirt by GIG SAW
Shoes by QUICK BROWN FOX
Bag by CRISTINA
Red ribbon of Barabara Behave

Gabriella - Rue Tiquetonne - Paris

Gabriella
"I am an Art Student
For me Fashion is dressing up each day and
make the place looks nice, rather than
wearing boring clothes. Today my look
is "Barbara Beehive in Paris" !
I love having good health and being able
to walk around. I hate having a bad head
day. My message to the world: enjoy each
day as if it was the last ..."



I am wearing a top by BLANC BLEU
Skirt by GIG SAW
Shoes by QUICK BROWN FOX
Bag by CRISTINA
Red ribbon of Barabara Behave

Changing Conventions in War Photography (2)

So, I thought perhaps I was being too hasty in talking about the emergence of a new convention in war photography, one that places a premium on the 'human interest' aspect of American troops. You know, shots of the military personnel being just guys. So I had a quick, admittedly unsystematic look. The top two images below made it into the pictures of the day at the Lens blog at The New York Times last week. The top one, though, I lifted from The Washington Post who had also published it. The rest were easy enough to find on-line. Note - three different agencies, a half dozen different photographers. And we end up with the soldier in tee shirt and shorts, again.

Life in a war zone can mean improvising, including for exercise,
as illustrated by a U.S. soldier from the 1st Squadron, 71st Cavalry
at a forward operating base in Kandahar Province in Afghanistan.
The number of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan is expected to
peak at 150,000 in coming weeks. July 19th, 2010
(Manpreet Romana/agence France-presse Via Getty Images).

A U.S. soldier watches an Afghan movie on TV while relaxing at
Combat Outpost Nolen, an outlying base for the 2nd Brigade of the
101st Airborne Division, in the volatile Arghandab Valley, in Kandahar,
Afghanistan, Wednesday, July 21, 2010. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd).

A United States Marine from Bravo Company of the 1st
Battalion of the 2nd Marines eats watermelon as he rests
following a gunbattle as part of an operation to clear the
area of insurgents near Musa Qaleh, in northern Helmand
Province, southern Afghanistan, Friday, July 23, 2010.
(AP Photo/Kevin Frayer).

U.S Army First Lieutenant Sean Snook from Concord,
Massachusetts, and Alpha Company, 4th Brigade combat
team,1-508, 82nd parachute infantry regiment tees off
at FOB Bullard in Zabul province, southern Afghanistan,
February 12, 2010. (REUTERS/Baz Ratner ).

A U.S. Marine throws a football at Delaram base in
Nimroz province, southern Afghanistan January 24,
2010. (REUTERS/Marko Djurica) January 24, 2010

Spc. James Lollis, right, who was on his way to the gym, and an unidentified
soldier from the 2nd Battalion 12th Infantry take cover as incoming fire
hits inside Command Outpost Michigan at the Pech River Valley
in Kunar Province, Afghanistan, Saturday, Dec. 19, 2009.
(AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills).

There are, of course, many, many pictures of American troops, mostly in full combat gear, on patrol - sometimes they are engaged in firefights, sometimes they are menacing Afghans of various descriptions, sometimes they are talking to groups of kids or even kicking a soccer ball with them. These images are familiar enough. So the sorts of images I've lifted here are not exactly crowding out those more 'standard' images. However, with the exception of the occasional photograph of marines mourning the death of a colleague, images of death and destruction - the actual consequences of war for Afghans and the U.S. military - are exceedingly rare. In fact, other than the image of Joshua Bernard that generated so much controversy last fall, I don't recall seeing any. That may not be intended by the photographers who are covering the war, but it surely is politically convenient.

New Book: Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?"

Labor lawyer, activist, and (sadly unsuccessful) Congressional candidate, and all around smart guy Thomas Geoghegan has written a new book* in which he basically seeks to convince Americans that everything they think they know about European Social Democracies is mistaken. The point seems to be that we ought not to prefer the social democratic polities for this or that high-minded moral reason but because, in the first instance at least, we'd all generally be better off ourselves. You can find an brief excerpt/essay that serves as something of an advert for the book here at In These Times.
__________
* Thomas Geohegan. 2010. Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? New Press.

How Not to Argue Against the Boycott of Israel

A Jewish settler (right) and a Palestinian demonstrator shout at
each other during a protest against an illegal outpost near the
Israeli settlement of Kharsina in the West Bank city of Hebron
on May 22, 2009. (HAZEM BADER/AFP/Getty Images)

In the most recent Newsweek you can find this diatribe by Jacob Weisberg against the ongoing cultural and academic boycott of Israel. At times Weisberg describes the thinking behind the boycott as merely "wrong" and "unacceptable," but he also rises to the bait, using terms like "repellent" to describe the campaign, accusing those advocating the boycott of "bad faith." He claims that the campaign is "not only intrinsically vile but actively counterproductive." And, eventually, he comes around to asserting that "this kind of existential challenge is hard to disassociate from anti-Semitism." As far as I can tell Weisberg barely makes the effort.

I do not support the boycott for reasons I have laid down here repeatedly. Having said that, Weisberg's screed is more or less wholly incoherent. Here are some problems with the case he presents:

(1) Weisberg categorizes Israel among "democratic societies, where other means of peaceful protest exist," contrasting it explicitly with "authoritarian societies" such as Cuba or the former East Germany or "China or Syria or Zimbabwe—or other genuinely illegitimate regimes that systematically violate human rights." Where has Mr. Weisberg been? He seems to have missed the past decade or so of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians. That policy can be fruitfully summarized as one that systematically violates their human rights. Those in the west - including many Jews - support the boycott precisely because they see Israel as adopting authoritarian policies. And I would remind Weisberg that that is not simply the view from abroad - there are Israelis (e,g., Neve Gordon, David Shulman) who make the very same case. Does Weisberg have something like a response to such criticisms? Moreover, did he raise his voice - even in private - when American donors threatened to withhold financial support from Ben Gurion University where Neve Gordon teaches because of his outspoken criticisms of the regime and its policies? I suspect not.

(2) I think the boycott will be counterproductive in ways that Mr. Weisberg suggests; it may well simply reinforce a bunker mentality among Israelis. That said, Weisberg claims that "cultural sanctions on their own are more inconvenience than lethal weapon." How then, does the boycott rise to the level of an "existential threat" - how, that is, does it constitute "a weapon designed not to bring peace but to undermine the country" - and so provide evidence of "antisemitism"? Among the reasons I think that public argument is the most useful reply to the Israeli repression of the Palestinians is that it treats the Jewish population just like everyone else. It thereby subverts kneejerk complaints of antisemitism. Mr. Weisberg is an advertisement for that approach. Here is my challenge to him: stop hiding behind charges of antisemitism and provide a coherent argument to justify the systematic, ongoing mistreatment of the Palestinian population, including not just official repression by security forces, but the ongoing harassment by Jewish "settlers" in Palestinian territories. Those are the issues that give rise to the boycott campaign. You do not so much as mention them in your essay.

(3) Israel is indeed. as Weisberg insists, "a refuge for Jews persecuted everywhere else." In part that is why those who many of those who support the boycott are so disappointed in the Israeli treatment of Palestinians. The policies of the regime and the actions of many (not all) Israelis run counter to the putative ideals of the nation itself. That is the problem here. This is not simply about posturing celebrities. It is about real politics. Weisberg mocks the "sort of sheeplike, liberal opinion [that] once reflexively favored Israel." He is right to do so but perhaps not for his reasons. No country aspiring to be democratic - here we can include both Israel and the U.S. - should rest content with unthinking support. Weisberg insists that the "case against a cultural boycott of Israel is based on consistency, proportionality, and history." He overlooks the policies that lead advocates of the boycott to see their campaign as wholly consistent and proportionate. And he neglects to see that it is precisely the history that Israel is meant to embody that make its repression of Palestinian populations appear especially damning.

Sunbeam - Rue St-Martin - Paris

Sunbeam - Rue St-Martin - Paris

Alice - Rue Tiquetonne - Paris

Alice
"I am a Flamenco Dancer.
For me Fashion is 1 hour to prepare, so I am 1 hour
late ! Today, my look is Rock a little.
I love to dance. I hate oysters and coriander.
My message to the world: travel to open your mind".

I wear a T-Shirt "The Cure"
a vintage skirt
shoes by HOWS
belt I don't know
Bag from a creator of Australia

Alice - Rue Tiquetonne - Paris

Alice
"I am a Flamenco Dancer.
For me Fashion is 1 hour to prepare, so I am 1 hour
late ! Today, my look is Rock a little.
I love to dance. I hate oysters and coriander.
My message to the world: travel to open your mind".

I wear a T-Shirt "The Cure"
a vintage skirt
shoes by HOWS
belt I don't know
Bag from a creator of Australia

Changing Conventions in War Photography & the Disaster in Afghanistan

U.S. Army soldiers of the 1-320th Alpha Battery, 2nd Brigade of
the 101st Airborne Division, look towards insurgent positions
during a firefight at COP Nolen, in the volatile Arghandab Valley,
Kandahar, Afghanistan, Saturday, July 24, 2010.
(Photograph © AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

Over the course of the afternoon I had an interesting and helpful exchange of comments on this earlier post. My interlocutor, photographer Tim Hetherington, has taken exception to the post, interpreting my comments as questioning his integrity. I certainly did not intend the post in any such way and indeed stated as much at the outset. I apologize to Tim if I created that impression.

Having said all that, I thought it might help to depersonalize the disagreement. Let's not talk about Tim's work. My concerns are two. The first is directly political in the pedestrian sense; it centers on whether whether our troops in Afghanistan are serving our national interest. I stand by my judgment that they are not. They are there enacting a misguided policy. We can argue the question, but I am pretty confident about where the preponderance of evidence will fall.

My second concern has more to do with the politics of photography. Here is the nub of the issue: why is it acceptable to depict our military adventures in Afghanistan with images like the one I discuss here, whereas images like the one I discuss here generate an uproar? My concern is that we are witnessing not just the sort of censorship (and accompanying official rationalizations)* of images of war that prevents the media from showing even flag draped coffins being unloaded at military bases, but also the emergence of a parallel convention wherein we will get sanitized views of war dressed up in tee-shirts and boxers as though the soldiers just happened to be camped out there and came under attack totally by surprise. That is what I meant by visual euphemism.

As if on cue, I just found the image above festooned across the top of the home page at Huffington Post accompanying a story on the publication of classified records of the Afghanistan debacle (here and here too). Given the information that was released today, the confidence I noted above is growing.
__________
* For examples of censorship see, e.g. [1] [2] [3] ...

Boy meets Girl - Vendôme - Paris

Boy meets Girl - Vendôme - Paris

Tight Leather - Paris Fashion Week

Tight Leather - Paris Fashion Week

Linnea - Rue Tiquetonne - Paris

Linnea
"I am studying French.
For me Fashion is a way to express my creativity,
It depends in wich mood I am.
Today, my look is like tired-relaxed, a little
hang-over. I love to meet new people and experiment
news things. I dislike narrow-mind people that don't enjoy
life. My message to the world: Style is to know what you
are and what you want, and don't give a fuck about the rest !"



I wear vintage jeans shorts
White Top by H&M
Bohemian chic Boots by ?
Bag by CHANEL
Sunnies by RAYBAN
Perfume: "Angel" by T.MUGLER

Linnea - Rue Tiquetonne - Paris

Linnea
"I am studying French.
For me Fashion is a way to express my creativity,
It depends in wich mood I am.
Today, my look is like tired-relaxed, a little
hang-over. I love to meet new people and experiment
news things. I dislike narrow-mind people that don't enjoy
life. My message to the world: Style is to know what you
are and what you want, and don't give a fuck about the rest !"



I wear vintage jeans shorts
White Top by H&M
Bohemian chic Boots by ?
Bag by CHANEL
Sunnies by RAYBAN
Perfume: "Angel" by T.MUGLER

Best Shots (123) ~ Jason Bell

(150) Jason Bell ~ Stephen Fry (21 July 2010).

Lady Gaga Hip Tattoo

Wondering about Lady Gaga's lower back and hip tattoo?

Lady Gaga has a large tattoo which contains a total of six roses and a lot of vines, the tattoo design starts on her lower back and reaches around her left hip and then goes up her left side.

The tattoo was drawn by famous tattoo artist Kat Von D.

More on Euphemisms and Photographers Embedded With NGOs

Attack plan, Chad-Sudan Border, 2008. Photograph © Stanley Greene.

Yesterday, the Lens blog at The New York Times ran this interview with photojournalist Stanley Greene. Here is an excerpt in which Greene confirms my own sense that a photographer working for this or that humanitarian outfit means she is "embedded" in just the same sense - producing the same sorts of predicaments - as if she were embedded with the military or some corporation.

Q. But do you think that somebody, a young person, could look at your book — there are a lot of beautiful women and a lot of death in your book — and get the wrong idea? Or feel like this is some romantic view of what my life will be like if I follow Stanley Greene?

A. No, I try to deflate that image. When you realize that you have been with these women and you have left them and broken their hearts — and look, let’s be real here. I don’t own an apartment. I don’t own a house. I don’t own a car. I don’t have any stocks and bonds. All I own are my cameras. That’s it. And some cowboy boots.

If you want to be a success financially, please don’t follow this path.

A lot of the stories I did, I financed. I am not a good business person. I didn’t know how to negotiate with a magazine. I just simply said, “Please give me this story, and give me the go-ahead to go do it.” Or in some cases, “If I do it, and I get the pictures and I send it to you, send me money.” And that is the generation I come out of.

I live from hand to mouth. I am one of the founders of Noor. There are three agencies today: there is Magnum, there is Noor and there is VII. I have a lot of respect for VII, but I really think we are the second agency, and we did it in three years. When you say you are a founder and owner of Noor, people expect you to be rich, but we’re not. Because we are really committed to doing what we are doing and we have made sacrifices to make that happen.

And we are going to continue to make sacrifices to allow that to happen. In the end, it isn’t about money. You want to have enough money so that you can go and eat a nice meal, and you can take your family on a fairly reasonable vacation. But then you have another level, where you don’t even think about that — where you just think about the next story. How do we get the money to go do the next story?

Q. Right. But partially because of this, photographers are doing workshops and are doing N.G.O. work. They are finding different ways. They are not out trying to do fresh photo essays that they can sell to magazines. They are putting their energies into other things to make money.

A. I’m glad you brought up N.G.O.’s, because that has become a real game. Like we work for these N.G.O.’s, right? It’s advertising, so that they can raise money and they can continue to do the good that they do. We get all upset if a photographer shoots for Shell or BP. But when we think in terms of photographing for certain nonprofit organizations who have a lot of money, and we become their spokesperson, we start to lose our objectivity.

Q. Right, but what should our role be as photojournalists working for them?

A. We have to be objective; we have to accept that. For example, when I worked for Human Rights Watch, they would take my pictures and sell them to raise money. What I always admired about Corinne Dufka is that she was a great photographer. And she quit and has literally become an investigator for Human Rights Watch. I think we have to be investigators.

Q. So you’re saying that when we are working for N.G.O.’s, we may try and please the people we are working for instead of acting as true journalists?

A. A magazine editor who hires me better understand that I am going to try and show you the truth. Some of my photos were just too hard to look at. But the truth of the matter was the picture of dead Americans in Falluja was going to run against an advertisement and the advertising people said: “No, no, no. Dead American bodies? Uh oh. No, no, no. Burnt lines? No, not like that.” And in the end, Time magazine ran it in Pictures of the Year, you know? It was made for Newsweek, but it ran in Time.

Q. Because it was causing a problem with the editors? Or advertisers?

A. Yeah, but I shot the picture. I certainly didn’t say: “Would the advertisers be upset if I show dead Americans — burnt, being beaten and tossed down the street? And then hung under a bridge and cut down?”

Q. Do we need to see images like that as Americans? There have been almost no images of dead Americans published.

A. We need to see it because it’s reality. We go to the movies, and we look at violence splashed across the screen like spaghetti sauce. If we can’t stomach watching our men and women being killed in these situations, then we shouldn’t send them there to be killed in such gruesome ways. We can’t have it both ways.

You want to sit there comfortably with your newspaper and blueberry muffin, and you don’t want to see pictures that are going to upset your morning. That is the job of a journalist, to upset your morning. The problem with newspapers and magazines folding is that the investigative journalism is going to disappear. And these criminals doing these nasty and dirty things in the world are going to get away with it.

It seems, as well, that Greene grasps quite clearly the usefulness of photography in efforts to help make visible events and things that many would prefer remain out of sight and to hold perpetrators to account. Some might find much of his work stereotypical 'war photography' and consider him an anachronism of sorts. If the alternative is euphemism I know where my sympathies lie.

Karlie Kloss au naturel - Paris FW

Karlie Kloss au naturel - Paris FW

Foot Tattoos Words

Here we have a picture gallery of some beautiful foot tattoo word saying, which have hints of inspirational wisdom and meaningful text, which is perfect for both men and women.

Positive inspiration tattoo idea.

Think happy thoughts reminder artwork.

Beautiful saying tattoo idea on foot.

Double word designs on each foot.

War Photography as Visual Euphemism?

On a pretty regular basis I receive emails announcing exhibition openings, new books, and so forth. Sometimes I post about the event or appearance, sometimes I don't. Today I received the following from HOST Gallery (London):

"HOST gallery is pleased to announce the exhibition and book launch of Tim Hetherington’s Infidel. 20 September - 15 October 2010. More information below:

Infidel is an intimate portrait of a close band of warriors – a small battalion of US soldiers, posted to an outpost in the remote and dangerous Korengal Valley in North Eastern Afghanistan. Shot over the course of a year, Hetherington’s photographs prove surprisingly tender – arguably the strongest among them a series of the men asleep. This is a body of work as much about camaraderie, love and male vulnerability as it is about the horrors of war. The book’s title ‘Infidel’ is taken from a tattoo the men adopted as a mark of their comradeship. Hetherington’s photographs are sharp, moving and full of humour; they stand as a tribute to a group of men risking their lives in the interest of their own nation, and a provocative contribution the documentation of war in our time.

Please see attached press release and for more information please contact Harry on harry@foto8.com 0207 253 2770."

Let's be clear, Tim Hetherington is a very good photographer. He is no doubt a decent, sincere fellow as well. And the men he has photographed for this project are indeed risking their lives in the name of a national policy. I am not calling into question their motivations - and here I mean both the photographer and the soldiers - for doing what they are doing. I am asking about the consequences of the policy in which they (and we) all are caught up.

Having said those things, it is a considerable stretch - indeed, a stretch that I think cannot be sustained - to claim that these men are "risking their lives in the interest of their own nation." The war in Afghanistan is an ongoing disaster, in large measure because the Bush administration wasted resources and attention in Iraq. But, having inherited a mess, Obama is now prosecuting what is, despite his vigorous denial, a "war of choice." The current administration is asking these young men to risk their lives in the name of a policy that is demonstrably wrongheaded and, in all likelihood, doomed to failure. Neither the fraternity of the soldiers nor Tim Hetherington's images of it do anything to alter that basic reality.

So here is my question: If we can decry the way politicians and the print media consistently trade in (verbal) euphemisms (as I have done here repeatedly) isn't it possible to see the 'human interest' approach to war photography as a form of visual euphemism?

Uliana Sergienko - Paris Fashion Week

she is a russian socialite and photographer

Uliana Sergienko - Paris Fashion Week

she is a russian socialite and photographer