#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}Photos from Nepal, West Bank, Spain and Israel.
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Friday, September 28, 2012
Pictures of the Day: Nepal and Elsewhere
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Nestled in the Projects and Nourishing Souls
#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}St. Michael-St. Edward Church, seemingly shoehorned into the drab brick buildings of the Ingersoll public housing project in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, is shuttered and neglected.
But its rectory is a vibrant hive of young, mostly female missionaries who have taken vows - some for a year, some for a lifetime - of celibate dedication to the poor and downtrodden.
Heart's Home, a Catholic organization with centers in some of the poorest slums in the world, opened in the Bronx in 2003 but moved to Brook lyn in 2008 to serve the needy in local housing projects, nursing homes, shelters and streets. Its missionaries derive from the longstanding role of consecrated virgins committed to lives of mercy, prayer and apostolic work.
Currently, six female missionaries and two priests rise early to sing psalms in the small chapel and then divide up for silent prayer sessions after a group breakfast. Then they go out in pairs to comfort and serve the elderly, infirm, hopeless and homebound - offering assistance for a number of things including social service problems, bringing in communion and praying the rosary.
Many are invited to meals and special events at the home, where the den mother is Sister Regine, a sturdy, jolly woman in a brown robe and a white habit. She hails from the Alsace region of France and can cook some tasty regional dishes. On Tuesday, Natalia Fassano, a missionary from Argentina, was preparing lunch and discussing her upcoming final promises ceremony , to commit to a life of missionary work.
Laetitia Palluat-de-Besset, 35, has already done this, having left a budding business career in Paris at age 22 to join Heart's Home for “something more true in life.â€
By opening her heart to the needy, “I have discovered the mercy of God,†she said.
Marian West, 28, from Lancaster, Pa., is considering the lifetime commitment as she winds up a 14-month term in Brooklyn after two years in Manhattan working as a massage therapist and a dancer. “It was all about making the money to pay the rent, and stress, stress, stress,†she said.
“One day, I met a woman in the subway feeding the poor and she told me, ‘I've sold everything I had and now I'm free to love.' That stuck with me. I wanted the freedom to love.â€
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times Tori Pfeffer, 29, center, a volunteer missionary for Heart's Home, prayed with (from left) Mariana Rodriguez, 61, Delia Perez, 68, Virginia Medina, 65, and Delia Romero, 87, in Ms. Medina's apartment in the Ingersoll public housing project.Thursday, September 27, 2012
Readers Have a Stake in President Obama\'s Free-Speech Disconnect
President Obama's ode to free speech at the United Nations on Tuesday was welcome for those of us who put the First Amendment almost on par with our first-born children.
“In a diverse society, efforts to restrict speech can quickly become a tool to silence critics and oppress minorities,†Mr. Obama said, in the context of recent anti-American tumult in the Muslim world.
Speech, of course, is not just people shouting in a public square, not just a billboard, not just a violence-inducing film.
It's also a newspaper article, a book, a Web site. It's Keith Olbermann, it's Rush Limbaugh and it's everyone along the spectrum. The First Amendment protects these as well, and American journali sts are grateful that it does.
New York Times readers, whom I represent as public editor, should be, too. Free speech allows journalists to do their jobs - getting information to the public so that they can be informed citizens.
Mr. Obama's speech seems to be in keeping with all of that. The Washington Post called it “refreshingly clear.†The Times said it was “much needed.â€
But with all the praise Mr. Obama received for his protection of free speech on one of the world's largest stages, it's worth acknowledging that he has also authorized the federal government to engage in an unprecedented crackdown on journalists and whistle-blowers here in the United States, relentlessly pursuing and initiating new cases against journalists and their sources.
Consider the Times reporter James Risen - whose 2005 work with Eric Lichtblau on the federal government's use of warrantless wiretapping was perhaps the most important nat ional security journalism of the last decade. Mr. Risen has been under constant pressure from the Justice Department to reveal his confidential sources. Federal prosecutors say one of those sources is the former C.I.A. official Jeffery Sterling, whom they accuse of leaking secrets about American efforts to sabotage Iran's nuclear program to Mr. Risen for his 2006 book “State of War.†(Glenn Greenwald wrote powerfully about Mr. Obama and Mr. Risen last year in Salon.)
Just this month, according to the Web site Secrecy News, government lawyers continued their full-court press against Mr. Risen:
Government attorneys this week reiterated their argument that New York Times reporter James Risen “does not have a ‘reporter's privilege' to refuse to identify his source†in the prosecution of former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, who is accused of disclosing classified information to Risen. The attorneys cited a new ruling in another Circuit that rej ected a similar claim of privilege, and they urged the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals to affirm their position.
Mr. Risen and Mr. Sterling are not the only two who have been pursued. There have been others.Â
It's worth noting that Mr. Obama's prosecution of whistle-blowers is not an isolated instance of the disconnect between words and actions on free speech.
The Post reported on Wednesday on the controversy surrounding the recently released book “No Easy Day†and the levels to which its description of the killing of Osama bin Laden can be discussed in the Department of Defense. (Whistleblower.org offers a good take on a similar topic.)
And lastly, who can forget when the Air Force blocked its employees' access to The Times's Web site and those of more than 25 other news organizations that published diplomatic communications obtained by WikiLeaks.
Mr. Obama's notice to the world that “efforts to restrict speech can quickly b ecome a tool to silence critics and oppress minorities†should also be employed at home.
So, yes, I'm glad to hear Mr. Obama's words defending free speech. But in the context of First Amendment press rights â€" so important to readers - I'd like to see his administration's actions keep pace with his rhetoric.
Pictures of the Day: Chile and Elsewhere
#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}Photos from Chile, Syria, Nigeria and Israel.
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Gordon Parks: \'A Lasting Love\'
#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}What can you know about Gordon Parks by looking at his photos? He was a sophisticated photographer and one of the most eloquent voices for the poor and oppressed in the middle part of the 20th century. He was a lover of beauty, particularly in women, and he knew how to tell a good story (both in photographs, film and in a conversation between friends). You can easily discern these things by looking at his work. If you can find the images.
LessonsGordon Parks
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Gordon Parks was born 100 years ago this year (he died in 2006), and Steidl will offer a five-volume monograph of his career. On Lens, previous posts discuss Mr. Parks's work:
Though he was quite famous for being a filmmaker and the first African-American photographer for Life magazine, until this year, the 100th anniversary of his birth, most of his photographs, except for a few iconic images, were not widely known. That's changing this week as the publisher Gerhard Steidl's famed presses print “Gordon Parks: Collected Works,†a comprehensive five-volume collection of Mr. Parks's photographs.
Covering his career from the Farm Security Administration in the early 1940s to his later Life magazine photo essays, the collection reveals the depth of his talent an d his mastery of the photo essay form. There are more than 900 plates and more than 1,200 pages, including his brilliant fashion photographs and portraits as well as a full volume of the actual Life magazine spreads. More than a third of the images have never been published before.
The handsome boxed set will retail for $285 and includes essays by Henry Louis Gates Jr., Deborah Willis, Maurice Berger, Bobby Baker Burrows and the co-editors Paul Roth and Paul Kunhardt . It is being produced in partnership with The Gordon Parks Foundation. The foundation's mission is to preserve, protect and promote Mr. Parks's work and to help young artists through grants and scholarships.
Just as his fame as a magazine photographer was reaching its peak in the early 1970s, he stopped being mainly a photographer and became a filmmaker. Mr. Parks published five autobiographies, although there were few books that showed the depth and breadth of his work. Outside of the photo essay â €œFlavio,†of a young boy living in extreme poverty, and dying of tuberculosis in a slum outside Rio de Janeiro , mainly Mr. Parks's individual images are known. When he edited his work for exhibits or books he usually picked just a few of the best images from a few stories.
“I think people anecdotally know that Gordon Parks is a great photo essayist, but most people have never seen all of his picture essays,†said Mr. Roth, who is the senior curator of photography at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington. “And of course they were Life picture essays so they weren't always full edits, full actualizations, of the stories,†he said.
Mr. Parks often explored the effects of hatred, bigotry and poverty - subjects he knew firsthand from his childhood - as Mr. Gates writes in his essay.
Born on Nov. 30, 1912, in Fort Scott, Kan., Gordon Parks was the youngest of the 15 children of Andrew Jackson Parks, a tenant farmer, and Sarah Ross, a maid. He came into a world defined by grinding poverty and the pervasive racism of Jim Crow America - and like virtually all African-Americans at the time, his early years predicted only more of the same. Growing up, Parks witnessed the gruesome murders of childhood friends; the early passing of his brother Leroy; the rampant discrimination that pervaded Fort Scott (a place he called “the Mecca of bigotry†in his autobiography, “A Hungry Heartâ€); and worse.
Mr. Parks returned to Fort Scott for Life in 1949 to photograph what happened to eight people he went to school with (Slides 7 to 11). In this autobiographical photo essay, you not only see the segregated town where Mr Parks grew up, but also how his life might have been different if he hadn't left Fort Scott, at 14, after his mother died.
“Gordon Parks: Collected Works†also has an extended edit of his first photo essay for Life, which was published under the headline “Harlem Gang Leader: Red Jackson's Life Is One of Fear, Frustration and Violence.†Mr. Parks spent months with Mr. Jackson and produced a remarkably in-depth piece that Ms. Willis - an author, curator and chairman of the photography department at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University - wrote about in Volume 2:
It was about street bravado, and death among members of the Midtowner gang in Harlem. The opening image draws the readers' attention to the words on the page. Parks' photograph is a two-page spread, in black-and-white, of a gritty skyline of Harlem at dusk. The panoramic view includes rooftops, chapels, high-rise buildings, and brownstones [above]. A portrait of the sixteen-year-old gang leader and Golden Gloves boxer, Red Jackson, is inserted on the page [Slide 13]; he is framed looking intently away from the camera and through a broken windowpane at the street below. A cigarette hangs between his lips, and his interior fear is palpable with the close framing. Here, Parks shows the remarkably handsome Red in a reflective mood; in the other photographs in the series, he appears daring and in control. Bewilderment is intimated through the high contrast of light and shadow. The emotionally charged photographs show the stark realities of death and the possibility of dying, but also respect, love, strength, and honor. Paradoxically, they embody the beauty of a close-knit group of young men, some with hope, others looking for brotherhood.
There are also beautiful portraits, extraordinary fashion photos and joyous images of life in Europe by someone who, clearly, really enjoyed life. Despite his focus on societal wrongs, Mr. Parks was an optimist and a humanist.
In an essay republished in the boxed set, Gordon Roger Alexander Buchanan Parks wrote: “The pictures that have most persistently confronted my camera have been those of crime, racism and poverty. I was cut through by the jagged edges of all three. Yet I remain aware of imagery that lends itself to serenity and beauty, and here my camera has searched for nature's evanescent splendors.â€
The five-volume set by Steidl brings Mr. Parks's images to the fore, where we can revel in their immediacy and beauty. It allows us to see beyond his fame as the first black photographer for Life and the first black director to make a Hollywood-backed film, and helps clarify Mr. Parks's legacy as a photographer and as a person. Mr. Kunhardt, co-editor and executive director of the foundation, described him in his foreword in Volume 1: “Parks' genius, I think, was based on the respect and trust he brought to his subjects. He lived with many of the people he photographed - sometimes in the harshest conditions. ‘I have to live with a family,' he said, ‘so they accept me as a person, as a big brother, or uncle - so that they have confidence in me and I have love for them. And it is a lasting love.' â€
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Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Pictures of the Day: Greece and Elsewhere
#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}Photos from Greece, Syria, India and Senegal.
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Immigration Reporter Julia Preston\'s Views on \'Illegal Immigrant\'
Earlier this week, I opened up the question of whether the term “illegal immigrant†is disparaging or simply accurate. The response has been robust, and I'm paying attention to all of it â€" in e-mails, on Twitter, in comments on my blog posts and in conversations.
As one step along the way, I chatted with The Times's immigration reporter Julia Preston this morning. Because she is such an important voice in this discussion, I want to present what she had to say as a separate post. Ms. Preston â€" who speaks Spanish, Portuguese and French - is a former correspondent in Mexico who has also covered the federal courts.
It's worth noting that Ms. Preston had a story in Wednesday's paper that us es the term in its lead paragraph. It's also worth noting that she is not satisfied with the paper's current stance on this issue and believes it should be more flexible.
I want to restate that, as public editor, I don't make policy, but I'm hoping to be able to take an informed stand fairly soon.
Here is the gist of my interview with her this morning:
“I think we need a little more flexibility,†Ms. Preston said. “But we should use the term at times â€" it is accurate. It is a violation of law for a foreign-born person to be present without legal status.â€
In many cases, she noted, that is a civil violation â€" for example, if a person has overstayed his or her visa. However, she said, “If you cross the border without inspection, that's a crime â€" a federal misdemeanor.â€
She said, “We don't make the assertion that they are criminals,†but “a shorthand way to describe them is illegal immigrants.â€
Ms. Preston called the current situation “a very dynamic debate that is putting a pressure on our language.â€
“We are told we are tarring people as criminals. I don't think that's true. The majority of readers don't go to that inference. If they do, they may already have a preconceived idea. The critics of the term are among the most active readers in drawing that inference.â€
Ms. Preston, who has covered immigration for six years, tries to answer “every reasonable reader e-mail. I have an ongoing dialogue, and I think I understand how people are reacting.â€
In short, her feeling comes down to this: “We could use more flexibility. Whether or not the terms is accurate, there is a growing group of readers who are put off by it.â€
In addition, she said, the political dialogue is changing and offers some additional options.
In the work context, a worker can accurately be called “unauthorized,†a term many prefer. “It can be us eful,†she said.
“In many cases, people are calling themselves undocumented and prefer that term, and in some cases, they are right,†she said. She noted that there was a new federal program suspending deportation for those who were brought to the United States as youngsters under the age of 15.
“These young people are saying: ‘I'm not illegal. I'm undocumented.' †So the term “has a new currency.â€
The Times stylebook â€" the newspaper's arbiter of language â€" “is quite stern on the term undocumented,†Ms. Preston said. “It says it is a euphemism and should be avoided.†Here is the language in the stylebook:
illegal immigrant is the preferred term, rather than the sinister-sounding illegal alien. Do not use the euphemism undocumented.
Ms. Preston disagrees with the ruling on the term “undocumented.†It should not be so strictly avoided. But, she said, neither should “illegal immigrant†be banned. “It's accurate and it considers the broad terms of the debate. We shouldn't be banning an accurate term.â€
Ms. Preston is well aware that “there's a constituency now advocating for the language to change.â€
This is new, she said. “They have been ‘the other.' They haven't had a voice.â€
“I'm acutely aware of this issue, and my purpose is to tell stories in a way that everyone can hear them.â€
Losing Fear and Learning to See
#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}SANTIAGO, Chile - The motor boat cut through choppy waters before reaching Isla de Asia, off Peru's coast. We arrived half-drenched and shivering to a stunning scene: Quechua-speaking laborers with pickaxes trying to collect hardened guano, the bird dung so coveted in the 19th century as a fertilizer that nations waged wars over the islands where it is found.
I lasted an afternoon on Isla de Asia on that assignment in 2008, nauseated by the guano dust in the air and the smell of ammonia emanating from the deposits. Tomás Munita, the Chilean photographer with whom I was traveling, decided to stay longer, stretching his trip over several days.
The photographs Mr. Munita took at the time, and on return trips to those islands, are haunting. Barefoot workmen lug sacks of dung on their shoulders, as if little had changed in the century and a half since guano was the target of imperialist designs. Seabirds swirl overhead. Sunlight meekly penetrates the sky's hazy veil, capturing a horizon reminiscent of a nocturnal J.M.W. Turner oil painting.
I have followed Mr. Munita's work over the years from Latin America and places much farther afield - Afghanistan's battlefields, Pakistan's circuses and tall mountains in the Himalayas. From each location, Mr. Munita, who freelances for The New York Times and other news organizations, finds new ways of documenting human existence.
Grounded in the daily grind of journalism, Mr. Munita, 36, studied photography in Santiago, Chil e's capital, and worked for a local newspaper before taking a job with The Associated Press in Panama. The news agency, he said, was a great school. “It taught me to be fast and sharp, to look for synthesis in my images,†Mr. Munita said.
Panama's backwater atmosphere might have driven some photographers crazy. But the lackadaisical feel of the Central American country was an opportunity, Mr. Munita said. “Spending time in Panama was great, because there was no news to cover,†he said. “So I had to find my own stories and take my time on them.â€
Finding his own stories meant more than exploring Panama's canal, rain forests and islands. After traveling on assignment for The A.P. around Central America, and then Afghanistan, he took a sabbatical year in Asia, spending four months photographing Changpa nomads (below) who live in the high plateaus of northern India.
The punishing, high-altitude region may look barren to outsiders, but its vast areas are home to animals like the Tibetan gazelle and the kiang, or wild ass. The Changpa herd goats and yak in brightly colored valleys full of orange earth and yellow grasses. Mr. Munita captured these scenes in 2003, before the nomads' traditional way of life began to disappear.
Living for months among nomads was a departure for someone who grew up in Santiago, one of Latin America's most conservative cities. Mr. Munita said he got some of his taste for adventure from his grandfather, Julio Philippi, a scholar, diplomat and writer on demonologÃa, or the study of demons, who served as Chile's minister of foreign affairs in the 1960s, and regaled his grandchildren with tales of horseback expeditions into the wilds of Chile.
Much of Mr. Munita's most intriguing work involves spending time far from Chile. In Afghanistan, he has documented daily life in a country ravaged by war. One of Mr. Munita's books, “Kabul: Exiting the Shadows,†explores the wounded Afghan ca pital. Another book, “Lost Harvest,†documents the destruction of the Loa River in Chile's Atacama Desert, one of the driest places on Earth. By now, it is hard to keep track of all the prizes he has received for his photographs.
Tomás and I are friends, and we have worked together throughout Latin America, but I am still astonished by his quiet, self-effacing style. While we were on assignment this month in Chile, he was surprised to learn through e-mail that he had received the coveted Visa d'Or daily press award for his recent photographs from Syria. When I asked him why he had not attended the festival in Perpignan, France, where the award was announced - it is a prestigious networking event for photographers - he said he shuddered at the thought of promoting his work in such a crowded place.
Given the places where Mr. Munita travels, it is not surprising that the subject matter of his photographs is often heavy. But appreciation of the absurd also emerg es in some of his pictures, especially those related to different countries' armed forces, and the seemingly nonsensical missions to which they are sometimes devoted.
Consider the Navy of Bolivia, a country without a sea. How else to explain the hapless expression of Vice Adm. José Alba Arnez, commander of the Bolivian Navy, captured by Mr. Munita in the admiral's office in La Paz, a city which is 11,942 feet above sea level?
Then there is the photograph of the camouflaged instructor leading Dutch marines in a jungle warfare training course in the interior of Suriname. His face is hidden by a tree, obstructing the marines' view of him. I was along for that assignment in Suriname, writing about the training course in the former Dutch colony, and I still chuckle when recalling it. The Dutch were so concerned about offending people that they sponsored a “V.I.P. day†in which ambassadors - and a few journalists - were invited to the course to fire M-16 assault r ifles at targets in the jungle.
Mr. Munita, who now lives with his wife and three children near Santiago, in the Comunidad Ecológica de Peñalolén, an eclectic community of about 200 homes made largely from recycled materials, has his own ideas about what photography can achieve.
“For me, photography is an additional language,†he said. “Different from words, it can immediately touch on an emotional aspect of what is being treated. Images, beyond being proof of truth, can help us understand our reality in a direct way.â€
Mr. Munita said that his most formative experience as a photographer came years ago, during his first personal project in PotosÃ, the Bolivian city that grew as large as London by the 17th century, thanks to its remarkable lode of silver. Once among the world's richest cities, Potosà still relies on mining, but gloom now characterizes the place.
About 15,000 miners, including hundreds of children, still toil in the Potosà mines which once enriched the Spanish empire. They battle silicosis, a disabling lung disease caused by inhaling dust deep in mine shafts, like one photographed by Mr. Munita (below) in which the light at the end of the tunnel seems to be as elusive as the chances of striking it rich in such a place.
“Potosà is where I learned, during several trips over the course of months, to follow my instinct,†he said. “It was where I lost my fear and learned how to see for the first time.â€
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Pictures of the Day: Bulgaria and Elsewhere
#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}Photos from Bulgaria, Afghanistan, Syria and Bolivia.
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A Young Immigrant Struggles for a College Education
#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}For graduating high school seniors, the months that stretch out between the end of spring and those first signs of fall can be magical - senior prom, graduation, soaking up summer then cramming in the last bits of time with childhood friends.
For one teenager from Queens, that joy was clouded by growing anxiety as he attempted to save enough money to pay for his first semester of college.
I followed Frisly Soberanis, an illegal immigrant from Guatemala, through his final weeks of high school and the run-up to wha t he hoped would be his first semester at Brooklyn College.
“Education leads to opportunities, it leads to some type of security,†Mr. Soberanis said.
“I don't want to end up in the same cycle as my family is right now. We're great but it's tough not having security about next week because you don't know if you're going to get a job next week or if you're going to get paid for the job you just finished because maybe they're just gonna be like ‘I'm not gonna pay you.'â€
More than four million illegal immigrants under the age of 25 are thought to be living in the United States according to 2009 census figures, yet statistics indicate that only around 65,000 graduate from high school each year.
The reason for the huge disparity between population and attrition rates comes down to opportunity. There are many obstacles for those who aspire to higher education, and in the schools that do accept illegal immigrants, students do not have access to fed eral financial aid. Without the opportunity to hold down steady, legal jobs, young illegal immigrants often do not make it to college at all. (Classes began at Brooklyn College on Aug. 27, but Mr. Soberanis's future is by no means clear.)
Mr. Soberanis was brought to this country at the age of 7. Because he overstayed his tourist visa, he cannot hope to become a citizen without first returning to Guatemala for a period of up to 10 years, then applying for a visa to return.
At that point there is no guarantee that the United States would welcome him back.
Mimi Schiffman is a photographer and videographer based in North Carolina. She is also a Magnum fellow. Follow her on Twitter @mimischiffman.
Fragments of Fukushima
#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}The first time the Tokyo-based photographer Kosuke Okahara visited a town near the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan, he grabbed his dosimeter, a device used to measure radiation levels, and looked at his watch to see how much time he could spend at the location.
“I was very scared because of radiation,†he said. “After four to five months, I became calm, and I went back to the beginning of why I was taking pictures.â€
That was August 2011, five months after an earthquake and t sunami ravaged Japan and set off the world's worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl.
Since then, Mr. Okahara has traveled to Fukushima Prefecture almost every month. On Sept. 6, at the Visa pour l'Image photojournalism festival in France, Getty Images awarded him $20,000 to support his investigation of the fallout from the nuclear accident, and of those who suffered most.
“I'm collecting fragments,†Mr. Okahara said of his work, which includes both photos and audio.
Eighteen months have passed since more than 80,000 residents near the Daiichi plant were forced to flee, and Mr. Okahara's photos reveal the incredible loss of life, and livelihood, in the surrounding area. Around Fukushima, homes have been abandoned and left vulnerable to thieves, railway stations and stores once crowded with tourists are now deserted, and animal carcasses still remain in various states of decay.
“There was a life before, right before the accident,†he said. “I wa s surprised by the sudden death of the town.â€
According to Mr. Okahara, the young police officers on rotation have sealed off a 16-mile exclusion zone around the nuclear plant and impose $1,000 fines on trespassers. But Mr. Okahara has been able to photograph the area in the zone from as close as four miles, mostly entering with an animal rescue agency.
“If you go into the no-go zone, the first surprising thing is there's no sound - it's quiet,†he said.
But just outside the exclusion zone, emerging from the eerie fog of silence, Mr. Okahara encountered resilient people who stayed behind, bound to their land by deep emotional ties, who hope normalcy will return one day. Of the two million people who lived in the region, only about 22 percent have returned as of July.
Families who spoke to Mr. Okahara in Fukushima were concerned about radiation levels and fear another disaster there, but they are also grateful to still have jobs at the mangled an d volatile Daiichi plant, which still employs some 2,500 workers.
One family of farmers, Mr. Okahara recalled, was afraid that their dairy products were contaminated. He told a story about a teacher he met, who had sent his daughter and wife to live in Tokyo because he feared for their well-being. Mr. Okahara encountered a recurring dilemma, as residents vacillated between a fear of radiation and carrying on with their lives.
“They live under stress all the time,†he said.
In Fukushima, however, Mr. Okahara said people seemed to be getting tired of living cautiously, despite concerns of radiation in the air and in the nation's food. Over time, he's seen fewer people wear face masks, some generally demonstrating an attitude of complacency toward radiation detection - acts Mr. Okahara likened to suicide.
“Desperation for normalcy has made people more careless,†he said. “They are living in a state of emergency.â€
Monday, September 24, 2012
Pictures of the Day: Syria and Elsewhere
#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}Photos from Syria, Sri Lanka, Philippines and Nepal.
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Ethan Bronner Discusses the \'Core Issue\' About Voting
When I wrote recently about the problem of “false balance†in news stories, I quoted the national legal affairs correspondent Ethan Bronner, whose Sept. 9 story was criticized by some readers.
Those readers believed - and I agree - that his story should have included a clear statement that there is virtually no evidence of in-person voter fraud.
But in quoting one of Mr. Bronner's statements, I got his words right but misrepresented what he was getting at. He later told me so, and I asked him if he'd like to provide that clarification to readers.
Here it is:
Margaret,
In your column about false balance, you quote me (accurately) as saying of in-person voter fraud that while there is no evidence that it exists, it is “not the core issue.†Some readers said it sure seemed like the core issue to them. But as I had said to you originally, while both sides have been fighting about voter ID, a much bigger issue is the failure of both parties to address the country's appallingly low voter registration. Some 51 million voting age Americans, about a quarter of the voting age population, are not registered to vote. We lack a national voter roll which every other advanced (and many not so advanced) country has. Instead we have 13,000 such rolls which vary in accuracy and ease. When voters move, which they do often in this country, they must register anew. While it is certainly true, as I made clear in my front-page story from Pennsylvania in July, that voter ID requirements will disproportionately affect the poor and minority groups who vote more for Democrats than Republicans, the percentage of REGISTERED v oters who lack the needed ID appears low. One survey from 2008 show that 90 percent of whites who are registered to vote have the needed ID and 85 percent of blacks who are registered to vote do as well. When advocates say that 750,000 people in Pennsylvania lack the Department of Transportation-approved ID there, what goes unsaid is that perhaps 650,000 to 700,000 of them are not even registered to vote so the ID question at polling stations is moot.
I wrote a story about this that appeared on July 31st and quoted Robert Pastor of the Center for Democracy and Election Management at American University saying it this way: “The proponents of voter ID are adamant that it is essential to stop electoral fraud even though there is hardly any evidence of voter impersonation, and the opponents are sure that it will lead to voter suppression even though they haven't been able - until Pennsylvania - to point to a single instance where a voter could not vote because of a lack of ID,†he said. “I did a survey of Indiana, Maryland, and Mississippi and found only about 1.2 percent of registered voters did not have photo IDs. The problem remains registration - not IDs - in reducing voting participation. To quote Jorge Luis Borges on the Falklands war, ‘It's a fight between two bald men over a comb.'â€
Even if he slightly overstates his case (there are other scholars who say he does), his point seems to me very significant and it was the point I was trying to make in my conversation with you.
Ethan
Is \'Illegal Immigrant\' the Right Description?
For Debate
Readers debate a Times journalistic decision.
Jose Antonio Vargas is a man on a mission. The journalist turned immigration activist wants news organizations to stop using the term “illegal immigrants,†which he finds disparaging and inaccurate. He's particularly focusing on The Times and The Associated Press to change their policies.
Vargas has approached me about it by e-mail, and I've said I would be happy to hear him out. I should note that, as public editor, I don't make Times policy on such things. However, I could, at some point, take a stand.
At this point, I don't know enough.
I do know what Vargas - who revealed that he is an ‘undocumented immigrant' in a Times Magazine piece last year - told the Online News Organization in a speech there last Friday.
And I talked about it Monday morning with Philip B. Corbett, the associate managing editor for standards at The Times. “We do think about this, and we talk about it all the time,†he said.
Asked about the matter by Poynter.org's Mallary Tenore on Monday, he responded as follows:
Obviously we know this is a sensitive area, one that we continue to struggle with. As my colleague Julia Preston, who covers immigration, has suggested, we're trying hard to be neutral on an issue where there isn't much neutral ground.
For one thing, we don't reduce our coverage of this complicated issue to a single label. Julia and other Times reporters try to be detailed, descriptive and as accurate as possible in writing about immigrants in a whole range of different situations.
But in referring in general terms to the issue of people living in the United States without legal papers, we do think the phrases “illegal immigrants†and “illegal immigration†are accurate, factual and as neutral as we can manage under the circumstances. It is, in fact, illegal to enter, live or work in this country without valid documents. Some people worry that we are labeling immigrants as “criminals†- but we're not. “Illegal†is not a synonym for “criminal.†(One can even park “illegally,†though it's not a criminal offense.)
Proposed alternatives like “undocumented†seem really to be euphemisms - as though this were just a bureaucratic mix-up that can easily be remedied. Often those phrases seem deliberately chosen to try to soften or minimize the significance of the lack of legal status. We avoid those euphemisms just as we avoid phrases that tend to cast a more pejorative light on imm igrants. For example, we steer clear of the shorthand “illegals†and also the word “aliens,†both of which we think have needlessly negative connotations.
So, in keeping with my promise to make this blog a continuing conversation about journalism and journalistic practices, I'll put the question out there for discussion.
In the meantime, I also hope to talk with Julia Preston. Here are her comments last week in an ABC/Univision story:
http://abcnews.go.com/ABC_Univision/News/jose-antonio-vargas-drop-illegal-immigrant-challenges-nyt/story?id=17291550#.UGB5S1Jy890
What do you think? You can respond in comments to this blog, e-mail me at public@nytimes.com or reply on Twitter, where my handle is @sulliview.
I'll aggregate the discussion and comment more substantively soon.
An Autobiography Told With Others\' Photos
#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}Howard Greenberg is known for the erudite exhibits at his gallery, Howard Greenberg Gallery, and his role in shaping both the market for photography and the photographic canon. For the first time, photographs from his personal collection are being exhibited, at the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland, through June 2013, and the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation in Paris, opening Jan. 15. He spoke with James Estrin last week. The interview has been edited.
How did your collection start?
I never set out to be a collector of photographs because, well, number one, I didn't have much money. And number two, I was a dealer, and it's hard to be a dealer and a collector.
Why is that?
Well, you know, if you're a dealer there's a certain obligation to sell good photographs to your clients and it could be a conflicting situation if people are dealing and collecting. So at the beginning I didn't really think I could do it. But I'm a collector by nature. It's in my blood to hang on to things that I love.
The first photograph that I bought that signified that I could collect photographs was a picture that I had on consignment in the late 1980s, by Karl Struss (below). I tried to sell it for many months and was very enthusiastic but nobody bought it, and one day I had some extra money from another sale and I said, “Well, if nobody else wants it, I'll take it.†And for me that's when I became a collector.
It's actually reminiscent of [Eugène] Atget. It's a wonderful photograph and Karl Struss is someone I've always liked, because I think he was one of the very first modern thinkers coming out of pictorial photography. But what really got to me was the quality of this print. He used a process where he would coat the paper many times with platinum. And it gives a very unusual and beautiful effect. I fell in love with that print quality
Over the years it hasn't been a priority to be a collector. It's just been here and there and at moments when all the stars aligned up.
I have access. So many wonderful photographs have come my way over the years and I've been fortunate. And it hasn't really affected the quality of what I have been selling in the gallery. So I've gotten comfortable with the idea.
How has 20 years of digital photography changed what you do - because digital photography really defines the market for analog photography, no?
That's an interesting question. I'm not sure about that. I find that these days most people seem to want to collect contemporary work, which is often some form of digital photography. It doesn't matter that there was nondigital analog photography.
People just accept it as the way contemporary photographers work. Digital photography can usually be inexpensively reproduced in a perfect manner, so younger photographers have come to realize that the contemporary art market demands limited editions. I also have people who come to the gallery because they like what I show of the history of photography. And then they'll buy more traditional kinds of silver prints.
I assumed that because of the prices of the great historic photographs that digital photography just wasn't collectible in the same kind of way.
Well in the beginning it wasn't. There was quite a reaction against selling a digitally printed photograph, but it's changed. I mean, it's still on people's minds but most photography galleries are selling more or le ss contemporary photographs printed digitally.
I'm a little bit different, although I'm doing the 21st century too. We now represent guys like Ed Burtynsky and more recently Joel Meyerowitz, and even though they started out using traditional color materials, they, like all the other photographers, have figured out how to work with digital materials and make it work for what they do. The whole world and the whole market has come around to that.
Where do you see photography going in the next 20 years?
Where is it going? Well, you know, part of the change since digital came around is it has become a much more conceptual medium. It's now imaging, not photographing. A lot of what's out there is really not about craft and vision, it's more about the idea of the photographer.
There are many more different kinds of pictures with different ideas being made because the technology allows for it.
There's a lot of photographers who are working in subject mat ter like traditional documentary photographers. Usually it's exotic subject matter and these days it's usually in color and often large. And it is more or less traditional photography from the photographer's point of view, and I think that will continue.
In the last five years, there's this explosion of what I call vernacular photography - we see many, many more photographs every day. What does this mean for the “fine†photograph?
It's a much, much tougher job for galleries and museum curators to figure out what's the real deal. What is of real quality and worthy of a public audience and what isn't? It's much tougher today because of the proliferation of images.
It's just there's more of it. There are probably two thousand galleries that show photography now internationally. And probably 150 museums that show photography internationally. It's a whole new ballgame.
It's interesting how you judge what's important. There's just so many more images an d so many more trends.
Even though I'm showing more contemporary work - at least on the surface it's more contemporary work - larger format and color, I've only worked with people who for me are classic traditional photographers. Because that's what I understand, that's what I can relate to. And it's that kind of work that I best judge for myself.
Looking at your collection seems to give a peek inside your own photographic aesthetic.
A lot of what the collection is about are ideas and thoughts and feelings that were formed a long time ago. It doesn't reflect necessarily my thinking right now or even some of my interests right now. It's my own personal history of photography, as well as my appreciation of what's gone on before now.
It's autobiographical.
I see it that way. If someone comes to see the show at the museum, they won't think of it as autobiographical. They'll see all these different photographs and they're really wonderful and they'll say, “Oh these are great photographs,†but it is very much part of my life, absolutely.
Tell me a little bit about how, about your life before you started your gallery. How did you get there? What got you into photography?
I'll give you the quickest version I can. Born in Brooklyn. Went to college to be a clinical psychologist. Never thought really much about photography. Then there was a series of events right after college.
From the first roll of film I put through I camera, I was completely smitten with photography and decided all I wanted to do was make photographs. And that's what I did for the next several years. I got more obsessed, more involved with it and then I moved up to Woodstock and I discovered the history of photography and I started this nonprofit, the Center for Photography in 1977, which is still alive and well.
I kind of morphed out of being a photographer into being a gallerist. I opened my own gallery in Woodstock, and then Manhattan, because I realized this is what I want to do with the rest of my life and I wanted to make a living. I really wasn't independently wealthy in any way shape or form so I began to sell photographs.
Can you explain the difference there? I'm curious about the “what I wanted to do with the rest of my life†part of it. What is the source of pleasure?
Well the pleasure is the involvement. It becomes one and the same. When I go to the gallery every day, I never look at my watch. I'm happy to be here. I'm surrounded by wonderful photographs, which is what I always wanted. Yes indeed I sell them but it's a creative process having a gallery. And a challenging business. I enjoy all of it. It's all in the service of photography. That's how I see it. It's what I fell in love with, and that's where I find my source of enthusiasm.
What's the purpose of being a gallerist?
What's the purpose of it? I discovered early on when I started the Center for Pho tography that I really enjoyed working with photographs and that I liked putting them into that context of an exhibition. It also got me involved with photographers and great photography.
It satisfies me creatively to have a gallery, to do what you do in a gallery. Do I like every aspect of it? Well, sometimes selling is not the most pleasurable. I have to give up pictures. And I have to be a salesman. However, I've been a part of building both museums and private collections, that's enormously satisfying.
And my job of selling photographs is kind of an intermediary between the act of discovering photography for myself and passing the pictures on to others. And I really enjoy that.
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Friday, September 21, 2012
Pictures of the Day: Pakistan and Elsewhere
#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}Photos from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kashmir and England.
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A Look at the Reaction to The Time\'s Quote-Approval Policy Using Storify
The public editor uses Storify to collect the reaction to The Times's new quote approval policy.
On Identifying a Rape Victim, Naming a Prophet, and Nate Silver\'s Role
Readers have written to me about a number of issues in the past week. Here's a roundup of some of their questions and complaints, and my answers and comments.
Why was a rape victim's blog mentioned and quoted from in a story on a rape in Central Park, allowing readers to identify the woman?
The reporter Wendy Ruderman, who is The Times's police bureau chief, recounted what happened last Friday night when a story on the Web site for about two hours contained a brief quote from the victim's blog that could lead readers to identify her by name. That form of the story also appeared in an early print edition on Saturday.
Ms. Ruderman said she felt it was important to write this third-day story to provide important context about the victim, a regular visitor to Central Park, and how she used her blog as a “wall of shame†to embarrass people who were misusing the park.
Although reporters and editors were careful about using a brief quotation from the unnamed blog â€" even taking the precaution of typing the words into a search engine to see if it could lead readers to the blog - they apparently were not careful enough. My assistant performed the same search and was able to find the blog in question.
As soon as a reader e-mailed The Times, saying that the quotation could lead to her blog, thus identifying her, it was removed and that section of the story was paraphrased online and for later print editions, Ms. Ruderman said.
I e-mailed the woman who was raped, asking for an interview. She said she was unable to talk now because of the criminal case against the suspect, but she clearly held no grudges against Ms. Ruderman, referring to her as “a gem.â€
“Over all, the Internet is a huge challenge - I have struggled with it a lot,†Ms. Ruderman said. The lesson, she said, is that “on a story like this, we should take extra care. We need to be very careful on all stories, but we also feel the pressure to be immediate.â€
Ms. Ruderman is right. The initial use of a quote from the blog was wrong. but the quick response to the complaint was appropriate; and the lessons learned are crucial ones. The issues regarding privacy and the Internet are getting more complicated for journalists every day.
Why does The Times refer to Muhammad as the Prophet Muhammad, but not refer to Jesus Christ in the same way?
Philip B. Corbett, the associate managing editor for standards, provides this reasonable answer: “We try as much as possible to respect the terms and language used by religious groups. Muslims routinely refer to Muhammad as “the Prophet Muhammad,†but I'm not aware of any Christian denominations that use ‘the Prophet Jesus.'â€
Why is the statistical whiz Nate Silver, of the FiveThirtyEight blog on The Times's Web site, not included as a regular part of The Times's political coverage?
Some readers point out that his perspective would be useful in stories based on public opinion polls. Mr. Silver called the 2008 presidential election with near perfection. For many weeks now, he has been giving President Obama approximately a 75 percent chance of winning the election, at a time when various public opinion polls have been calling the race “neck and neck.â€
I asked the executive editor Jill Abramson about this. She said she views Mr. Silver's work as a separate entity, somewhat analogous to that of a columnist. The Times would not, under normal circumstances, use quotations from, for example, David Brooks's column in its coverage. “It's already in the paper,†she said.
Mr. Silver, too, prefers the arm's-length distance. “It leaves me free to question the dominant narrative,†he told me this week.
Mr. Silver's work, although mostly online, is occasionally used in bylined stories in print in the news pages of The Times. It will also appear this weekend in the Sunday Magazine.
I understand the separation but I'd like to see Mr. Silver's work included more regularly for the benefit of print readers.
Thursday, September 20, 2012
A Fighter With a Camera in Apartheid-Era South Africa
#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}Peter Magubane has always lived by simple words, adopted from a former editor: “If you want a picture, you get that picture, under all circumstances.â€
Mr. Magubane faced difficult circumstances when he started taking photos professionally. In the mid-1950s, he was a young, black man who had recently started working for Drum magazine in Johannesburg.
When he went to the South African town of Zeerust in 1956 to photograph thousands of women marching against the pass laws, members of the pre ss had been banned. And so to get his pictures, he did the next logical thing - went to the nearest café, bought a loaf of bread and scooped out the middle.
“I put my Leica camera inside there and made holes so that I'm able to take pictures,†he said. “I pretended to be eating. At the same time, I'm clicking, taking pictures.â€
Mr. Magubane, 80, told the story matter-of-factly this week, punctuating his tale with the words: “Those are the things that I learned.â€
He was in New York for the opening of “Rise and Fall of Apartheid: Photography and the Bureaucracy of Everyday Life,†a comprehensive exhibition curated by Okwui Enwezor and Rory Bester that opened last week at the International Center of Photography. (A New York Times review of the exhibition by Holland Carter and a slide show appeared on Friday in the Arts section.)
Last weekend, The Times Magazine featured photos from the show that had originally been published in Drum, whe re Mr. Magubane worked as a driver before he was promoted to the dark room, and then to the field.
Twenty-three of his photographs are featured in the show, including iconic moments from the Soweto uprising and the Sharpeville massacre, when 69 black South Africans were killed by police.
But nothing in the exhibition surprised Mr. Magubane. “I was born in apartheid and worked through apartheid, so South Africa is mine,†he said. “It's history.â€
Mr. Magubane's own history includes being shot at by police. He was banned from photography for five years. He spent six months in prison and separately, nearly 600 days in solitary confinement.
“Sitting in a cell on your own for 586 days, you know, you see the sun rise,†he said. “You see the sun set. You see a bird sit on the window. When you look at the bird, it flies away and you say, ‘I wish I was the bird.'â€
But he was always compelled to keep shooting. “I wanted to use my camera so that I could show the world what is happening in my country,†he said. “If the world gives assistance, they will give assistance because they have seen photographically what is happening.â€
Mr. Magubane was there in 1976 when the Soweto riots began. He was taking pictures, running backward, he said, when a group of young men approached him demanding that he stop taking photos.
“I said, ‘Struggle without documentation is not struggle. I'm not asking for myself only; I'm asking for anybody that has a camera documenting this struggle. You must let them work.'â€
And they listened.
He was there, too, when Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990. “That was the happiest moment,†he recalled. For a time, Mr. Magubane worked as Mr. Mandela's photographer.
Mr. Magubane continued shooting after Mr. Mandela came into power. The struggle, he said, was far from over, as complex tribal and territorial conflicts continued to create dan gerous situations. Police brutality was rampant.
As a result, Mr. Magubane's only photograph of violence between township residents and hostel-dwelling workers was shot from a great distance, on the top of a Volkswagen, using a 500-millimeter lens.
“When they come into the township, you would see no dog, no kid,†he said. “You would see no human being in the street. Houses would be closed with curtains.â€
A grandfather today, Mr. Magubane lives in Johannesburg, where he was born. He has seven honorary degrees and 17 books. At 80 - “still very young,†he said - he continues to take photos.
The man who describes himself as a fighter with a camera is striving to show a side of South Africa rarely seen in his earlier work: its beauty. “I'm tired of dealing with dead people,†he said. “I now deal with sunsets.â€
He added: “They're so beautiful. You see so many; it's like meeting beautiful women.â€
Yet he's prepared to keep fighting. “If things tend to be different from what I think they should be,†he said, “I pick up my camera and go back and I show the world what is going on now.â€
“Rise and Fall of Apartheid: Photography and the Bureaucracy of Everyday Life†runs through Jan. 6 at the International Center of Photography. James Estrin spoke with Mr. Magubane there and Kerri MacDonald spoke with him over the phone.
Pictures of the Day: Afghanistan and More
#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}Photos from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Bangladesh.
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In New Policy, The Times Forbids After-the-Fact \'Quote Approval\'
The New York Times is drawing “a clear line†against the practice of news sources being allowed to approve quotations in stories after the fact.
The practice, known as quote approval, “puts so much control over the content of journalism in the wrong place,†the executive editor Jill Abramson told me in an interview. “We need a tighter policy.â€
Times editors have been working on the policy for months, she noted - ever since a July story by Jeremy Peters revealed the practice as a widespread one that included many reporters.
A memorandum on Thursday says that “demands for after-the-fact quote approval by sources and their press aides have gone too far.â€
“The practic e risks giving readers a mistaken impression that we are ceding too much control over a story to our sources,†it says. “In its most extreme form, it invites meddling by press aides and others that goes far beyond the traditional negotiations between reporter and source over the terms of an interview.â€
It includes this firm directive: “So starting now, we want to draw a clear line on this. Citing Times policy, reporters should say no if a source demands, as a condition of an interview, that quotes be submitted afterward to the source or a press aide to review, approve or edit.â€
Ms. Abramson said that she never wants to put obstacles to news-gathering in front of reporters but that “anodyne or generic quotes that are scrubbed or changed don't add anything†to stories.
If the practice were allowed to continue, she said, “you will only see more control and manipulation†by news sources in the future. In making thi s move, The Times joins news organizations like The National Journal and Reuters in opposing quote approval; Reuters stopped short of an outright ban.
Ms. Abramson, who has many years of Washington reporting and editing in her own background, including a stint as Washington bureau chief, said she understands that “we'll lose interviews†because of the new policy.
Interviews without quote approval “will be seen as too risky†by news sources, she said. “The practice is so ingrained.â€
She said there could be exceptions to the rule if there were critical information that would otherwise be denied to the reader, and if the exception were discussed with a senior editor in advance.
Believing that such a directive might be coming - and responding to a Monday column by David Carr and my blog calling for a clear policy - a number of reporters have been in touch with me this week to express their points of view.
One who provided thoughtful comm entary was the White House correspondent Peter Baker. He wrote:
As much as I hate the practice, it grew out of a laudable desire on the part of newspapers to stop using so many blind quotes in White House stories. As I recall, it was during the late Clinton era and editors pushed us to go back to sources who spoke on background and get permission to use their names with specific quotes we were planning to use anyway but anonymously. Sources generally found that being on the record was not so worrisome (or career-threatening) once they knew what we actually wanted to use and they often agreed. As a result, stories that traditionally were filled with anonymous quotes began having more named sources. This was a benefit to our readers. Over time, sources began to take advantage of this and institutionalize it to the point that they came up with this name for it, quote approval. It's grown way too common and has become an objectionable means of control by too ma ny people who should frankly just talk on the record, especially paid spokesmen. But it's also a practice with tangible benefits for our readers and we should consider the trade-offs before making any hard-and-fast rules.
The memo recognizes that distinction:
We understand that talking to sources on background â€" not for attribution â€" is often valuable to reporting, and unavoidable. Negotiation over the terms of using quotations, whenever feasible, should be done as part of the same interview - with an “on the record†coda, or with an agreement at the end of the conversation to put some parts on the record. In some cases, a reporter or editor may decide later, after a background interview has taken place, that we want to push for additional on-the-record quotes. In that situation, where the initiative is ours, this is acceptable. Again, quotes should not be submitted to press aides for approval or edited after the fact.
Ms. Abramson put it succinctly: When possible, “it should be part of the same transaction.†She also said she realizes and sympathizes with the concerns of reporters who don't want to lose one of their ways of getting information to readers.
As the memo states:
We know our reporters face ever-growing obstacles in Washington, on Wall Street and elsewhere. We want to strengthen their hand in pushing back against the quote-approval process, which all of us dislike. Being able to cite a clear Times policy should aid their efforts and insulate them from some of the pressure they face.
In the end, Ms. Abramson said, it is a control issue. “The journalist shouldn't be a supplicant,†she added.
The policy strikes me as both sensible and necessary.
Revisiting a Lunch at Perilous Heights
#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}It is a defining image of New York City's history, one that captured the essence of an era, even if it was, in part, a staged scene. On a warm autumn day in 1932, 11 workmen sat perched on a steel girder at Rockefeller Center, smoking, eating sandwiches and reading the newspaper some 800 feet up in the air. Nearby, a camera's shutter clicked: think men in overalls and flat caps, and boots dangling above the rooftops of Midtown Manhattan. The moment captured in black and white was both heroic and mundane. It was a triumph for the city in the throes of economic crisis and has become one of the most famous images in the world.
Today is the 80th anniversary of that photograph, and judging by the bumper crop of framed prints that hang in restaurant washrooms in New York alone, the image remains as popular as ever. Since it was published in The New York Herald Tribune, the photograph has been enlarged to fit a poster, shrunk to note card-size and colored in shades of red and blue. (The black-and-white print is available in The New York Times online store.) Stranger mutations exist too: there is a pickup that drives through the city with a sculptural recreation of the photo rising from its bed, and a picture of someone's Lego reconstruction circulates on the Internet.
“The image has averaged about 100 sales a month over the last 10 years,†said Ken Johnston, director of historical photography for Corbis Images, the stock agency that owns the photograph. “This is extremely high.â€
Oddly enough, for such a legendary photograph from such a celebrated city, we don't know very much about it. We know that it was taken on the 69th floor of the RCA Building (later renamed the GE Building), as construction of the towering Art Deco skyscraper was nearing completion. Beyond that, little is certain. Although the photograph was originally dated Sept. 29, recent discoveries suggest that it was actually taken nine days earlier.
The identities of the men seated on the steel crossbeam are also a mystery. Over the years, countless people have staked claims, Johnston said, but few have had any merit. “So many people say, ‘That was my uncle,' †he said. “But no one has ever said anything definitive about who these guys are.â€
There has been considerable debate about the author of the photograph too. Eight decades ago, “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper,†as the image is commonly referred to, was published anonymously. Many thought it was the work of the renowned photographer Lewis Hines, but that wasn't true. In recent years, it has been attributed to a photographer named Charles C. Ebbets. But according to Johnston, Ebbets was one of several photographers atop the RCA Building that day, and he can't be sure who shot which pictures.
There were other images taken in the sky at Rockefeller Center, few of which bear a photographer's name. One picture, of workmen napping precariously on the crossbeam (Slide 5), was shot the same day. Another, of two men lighting their cigarettes in front of the Empire State Building's pinnacle, (Slide 2) was taken several months later.
“It's very common in old news archives that images are not credited,†Johnston said. “Photographers were thought of as the guys who ran the machine. The camera was considered a documentary tool, not a paintbrush.â€
The photograph's original glass-plate negative - the kind used in cameras before plastic film - is pa rt of the Bettmann Archive, a collection of 11 million historical images owned by Corbis. It is stored in a refrigerated cave in western Pennsylvania, encased in cool limestone bedrock to prevent it from rotting and decaying. Despite efforts to preserve the delicate artifact, the negative has seen better days. Years ago, a bite-size chunk went missing from its upper left-hand corner. Then it was dropped, and the glass splintered into five pieces.
As with many iconic photographs, attempts are under way to piece together the origins of “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper,†the latest of which is a documentary film called “Men at Lunch,†which debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival.
But today, on the photograph's anniversary, it is easy enough to put aside questions about what we don't know and appreciate the image for what it is: a fixed part of the story that New York City tells about itself, about industrialization and immigration, resilience and ambitio n, hard work and high hopes. Eighty years ago today, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover were competing for the United States presidency. The Great Depression was in full swing, Europe was struggling to recover from World War I and Adolf Hitler was leading the Nazis to power in Germany. With all that going on, what's better than a sandwich and a smoke, high above the throng?
People Are Nature Too: Photographing the Whole Wildlife Story
#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}Steve Winter loves being a wildlife photographer, but he dislikes the term.
“I'm telling a story like a photojournalist, I just happen to photograph the natural world,†he said. “But we're put in a separate category.â€
As far as he's concerned, despite the fact that most of his pictures are of or about big cats, he's as much a photojournalist in the conventional sense as anyone else.
Mr. Winter, 56, has been photographing wild animals for more than 20 years, mainly for National Geogra phic. But unlike many wildlife photographers, who “don't do people,†Mr. Winter said he tried to tell the full story of tigers and other large cats. That includes showing the constant tension between humans and their wild surroundings, and the often-gruesome situations that result on both sides.
The tiger population worldwide has declined by more than 90 percent in the last century, to about 3,500 tigers, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. The reasons range from hunters killing tigers to sell their bones for medicinal purposes, to the destruction of natural habitat by human settlements.
Mr. Winter said another reason for the continued destruction of tigers and their habitat was that most people still think everything is fine. He said it was his job to pull back the veil of the idyllic natural world that is presented in nature shows and in travel advertisements.
But with so few tigers left in the world, Mr. Winter's focu s on human-tiger conflict isn't only a moral choice, it's also a practical one.
“I'm going to Sumatra knowing that I'm never, ever going to see a Sumatran tiger,†he said.
Instead, Mr. Winter does what any journalist would do with an elusive subject: he reports around it. In Mr. Winter's case, that can mean traveling for 12 hours by car to take one picture of a man who killed a tiger, or spending weeks gaining the trust of wildlife park guides before they let him photograph the area.
One of the only ways Mr. Winter gets to photograph tigers in the wild is by setting up cameras with infrared beams that snap a picture every time a tiger (or any other animal) walks by.
The camera trap images often end up being some of Mr. Winter's most well liked, but he said he wanted to make sure to get people beyond the pretty pictures.
“All these beautiful places that people think exist in the world are just managed parks,†he said. “The most successf ul pictures I take are the ones that you don't want to look at.â€
Now, as the media director for Panthera, a big cat preservation nonprofit organization, Mr. Winter said he had become an activist as much as a photographer.
Mr. Winter takes his photos on lecture circuits and lets Panthera use his images to help spread the word about problems facing tigers and other big cats.
“You don't want it to just die in the pages of National Geographic,†he said.
It's hard work that requires a delicate balance of drawing people in with beautiful photos, but then showing them something more, in hopes that they feel compelled to take action.
Mr. Winter said his job was further complicated by working in an age where his audience is continually bombarded with photos of cute animals on the Internet. A tiger carcass is no match for a cute cub, lounging around and seeming happy.
“Nobody wants all this negativity, so it's our job to find a different way to tell the story,†he said. “I'm not saying I'm successful. I'm just trying to do it differently than anybody else has ever done it.â€
Steve Winter is the media director for Panthera, a cat conservation group, which you can follow on Twitter, @PantheraCats. Mr. Winter frequently photographs for National Geographic, and in 2012 and 2011 he won the Global Vision Award from Pictures of the Year International.
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Pictures of the Day: India and Elsewhere
#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}Photos from India, Syria, Pakistan and England.
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Malcolm X as Visual Strategist
#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}Robert L. Flora's black-and-white portrait of Malcolm X, the national spokesman for the Nation of Islam, stands as one of the great meta-images about photography - an astute commentary on our insatiable hunger for pictures. Taken in Los Angeles in May 1963, the photo depicts the civil rights leader and his associates as they await the verdict of an all-white jury deliberating the fate of 14 Black Muslims accused of assaulting police officers. The pictorial magazines and tabloid newspapers they voraciously read t o pass the time nearly crowd out the image.
If Flora's photograph speaks to the country's obsession with visual media, it tells another, interconnected story about Malcolm's passionate engagement with photography. The men in the picture are focused on articles about the Nation of Islam. The Life magazine story that engrosses Malcolm, for example, was typical of the derisive coverage of the Black Muslims in the mainstream press: “The White Devil's Day Is Almost Over: Black Muslim's Cry Grows Louder,†screams its headline.
EssayRace Stories
A continuing exploration of the relationship of race to photographic portrayals of race by the professor and curator Maurice Berger.
Malcolm X was one of the most medi a-savvy black leaders of the period. By the time of his assassination in 1965, he was also one of the most photographed (and televised, appearing on hundreds of local and national interview programs). Handsome, charismatic and articulate, he provided the mainstream news media with a continuing and histrionic story that would enrapture its readers: a burgeoning black community calling for self-determination, racial separatism and independence to be achieved by “any means necessary,†including violent insurrection.
In turn, the news media afforded him a national platform for espousing a radical worldview, one that rejected the nonviolent practices and integrationist goals of the mainstream civil rights movement. (Shortly before his death, Malcolm's view of the latter grew more conciliatory.)
For more positive reporting, Malcolm X could depend only on the Nation of Islam's weekly newspaper, Muhammad Speaks, and, to a lesser extent, the Negro press. The mainstrea m news media, stoked by his fierce, sometimes inflammatory rhetoric and its own anxieties around race, afforded little more than negative and sensationalistic coverage, much like the Life article featured in Flora's photograph. If conventional news outlets typically portrayed the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as the “angel of light,†as the sociologist Algernon Austin wrote, Malcolm had become their villainous “angel of darkness.â€
While Malcolm viewed the “white press†as more or less a lost cause - its coverage remained largely negative until the day he died - he nevertheless engaged it and, at times, outsmarted it. The public's trust of and faith in visual media, and its dominant role in shaping public opinion, made it a powerful outlet for reaching his target audience: African-Americans disillusioned with the mainstream civil rights movement.
Many blacks at the time rejected the Nation of Islam's religious orientation, fundamentalism, political e xtremism and cultural insularity. But many were also skeptical of the mainstream movement; a 1963 poll by Newsweek reported that more than a third of African-Americans were “resigned to the possibility that they may have to fight their way to freedom.†It was the purpose of Malcolm's media campaign to motivate these people. And it was the photograph that served as one of his most effective motivators.
A keen steward of the Nation of Islam's visual representation, Malcolm X often carried a camera, his way of “collecting evidence,†as Gordon Parks once observed. He relied on photographs to provide the visual proof of Black Muslim productivity and equanimity that sensationalistic headlines and verbal reporting often negated. When photojournalists visited the community, he tried to steer them toward the kinds of affirmative images - shots of contented family life, children at play and school, and thriving businesses and institutions - that might subtly ameliorate t he negative texts that he knew would inevitably accompany them.
In her book “Flashback: The 1950s†(Alfred A. Knopf, 1978), the photographer Eve Arnold writes of Malcolm's passion for getting the picture right. From 1959 through 1960, Arnold, on assignment for Life, shot hundreds of images for a photo essay about Malcolm and the Nation of Islam. While she won Malcolm's trust, he continually inserted himself into her process, guiding her through Black Muslim enclaves in Chicago, New York and Washington and even, at one point, walking out 10 women in traditional Black Muslim attire and posing them for a photo shoot. Arnold, a wily negotiator, acquiesced. “Malcolm set up the shots and I clicked the camera. It was hilarious,†she wrote of his zeal.
Well before the rise of photo ops and People magazine, he endeavored, with considerable sophistication, to prepare himself - and the community he led - f or the penetrating, and often unforgiving, eye of the news media.
But when Arnold attempted to photograph Malcolm framing a photo with his hands, “to catch him in the act,†as she put it, he demurred. It was the wholesomeness of the community, and not his role as image maker, that he hoped Arnold's photographs would reveal. (Life pulled the photo essay as it was going to press. Some of the photographs were published in Esquire the following year.)
If Malcolm was a talented visual strategist behind the camera, he was nothing less than a prodigy in front of it. Well before the rise of photo ops and People magazine, he endeavored, with considerable sophistication, to prepare himself - and the community he led - for the penetrating, and often unforgiving, eye of the news media. He crafted every aspect of his camera persona, from the cool self-confidence he exuded in still images to the urbane speaking style and command of ideas that were the hallmarks of his television appearances.
In “The Autobiography of Malcolm X,†he recounted the ways he altered his outward appearance, from clothing to hairstyle, to transform himself from Nebraska country kid and small-town Michigan teenager to Boston “home boy,†and finally to national political and religious figure. Taking charge of his image helped Malcolm to define himself before the news media could define him. It also afforded him the opportunity, by the example he set, to reverse stereotypes and change minds.
In the end, it is the precision and sophistication of Malcolm's self-presentation that reads most vividly in Flora's photograph: the fashionable, well-tailored clothes, the chic eyeglasses, the relaxed yet formal posture, and the refined hand gesture, details meant to convey both composure and authority.
No matter Flora's motivation for taking the picture, his subject, much as always, succeeded in getting his message across. And thr ough the myriad ideas he communicated through photographs, Malcolm X transformed the Nation of Islam - increasing its membership by tens of thousands and allowing its leaders to influence African-American public opinion for decades to come.
Maurice Berger is research professor and chief curator at the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and consulting curator at the Jewish Museum in New York. He recently curated “For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights†at the International Center of Photography. He is the author of 11 books, including a memoir, “White Lies: Race and the Myths of Whiteness.†He contributed text, along with Henry Louis Gates Jr., Deborah Willis and others, to “Gordon Parks: Collected Works,†coming out this fall from Steidl.
Follow him - @MauriceBerger - and @nytimesphoto on Twitter.
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Pictures of the Day: Israel and Elsewhere
#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}Photos from Israel, Pakistan, India and Syria.
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Why Should Readers Buy the Sunday Paper if They Can Read It on the Web First?
From time to time on this blog, I'll publish a provocative question from a reader and ask someone from The Times's newsroom to respond.
In this case, the question is from a young physician from Pittsburgh, Dr. Ravi Bhatia. The answer is from John M. Geddes, a managing editor.
I am an avid reader of your print newspaper and enthusiastically follow the newspaper industry. This is somewhat rare for my demographic (I am in my 20s). I understand that the print industry is going through difficult times and ultimately, it looks as if there will be a permanent shift from print to digital media. My question for you is: When you post articles on your Web site (like: “Sick on the Road? Try the Grocery Store“) four or five days in advance of printing it in the paper, aren't you further taking away any incentive for readers to purchase/subscribe to the print product? Obviously, for breaking news, there is no sense in waiting for the next day to print the article and then post it to the Web site. However, for an article like the one mentioned above, I think it is appropriate to first publish it in the paper, particularly the Sunday paper where readers expect to read new, original material. Perhaps a note in the corner of the site, where Sunday Review is currently placed, should give the topics in the Sunday issue rather than links to the actual articles until publication. I am curious to hear your thoughts and would love to continue this conversation.
Dear Dr. Bhatia,
The discussion about when to publish digitally has gone on in our news organization since we started our efforts on the Web 16 years ago. As time has gone on, we've a dopted a more nuanced approach than our original reflex to publish digitally only after our paper was printed.
What we try to do is to balance the needs, and note the differences, between two sets of subscribers â€" print and digital. (And let's remember such a distinction is a bit muddied since more than half of our print subscribers visit us daily on at least one of our digital platforms.)
A vast majority of our stories are published digitally in the 24-hour span around when we begin rolling our printing presses. In any given week, probably about 15 percent of our articles are digitally published earlier than that.
The tempo of when we publish these stories is dictated by our desire to hit a number of different notes with our digital readers. And as in picking up a paper, each individual has his or her own rhythm about when and how often they come to us in the course of day.
But when subscribers do visit us, we want to present them with new choic es. Sometimes that means surfacing different feature stories on the home page or in the top news sections of our apps, ahead of publication to our print readers. Some of our digital readers may choose to dive into a story immediately; others may choose to save a story for a later read or place a mental bookmark to read the story when it comes in print form.
Another element that plays into our timing is our potential digital audience, which varies through the week. There is less traffic on our Web site on the weekends than on weekdays, so that plays into some of our choices for early publication.
And lastly, we also try to gain impact. When we time stories to appear in tandem in both the newspaper and on digital devices we hope to give our subscribers, whether print or digital, confidence that they're reading something that will only be in The New York Times. It is about keeping an exclusive exclusive.
Don't go away with the impression that this is a p recisely followed formula or locked in stone, because it isn't. The habits of how people consume news, on which platforms, at what times and at what pace are not fixed in time. And this evolution spiral accelerates with new digital devices, new software, new social networks and even new circulation routes.
Digital devices and the printed page present different experiences in how information is consumed. The printed paper is physically linear and that linearity of sections and pages fuels the readers' navigation. Digital devices present information in a more multidimensional form giving readers more choices in how to navigate, to dive deeper or jump forward. The reader has more freedom.
What we have to do is improve those digital choices for our subscribers. Perhaps, as you note, give them clearer information about when a story is to be or was published in print, let subscribers save stories across all platforms stories to read later, or be able to signal if they've seen a story already. We're working on all that.
As to whether we're accelerating the move away from print because of the small sample of stories we publish early, we don't think so. We think we're striking the right balance, for now, for both digital and print subscribers.
Many agree. We surveyed a sample of our Sunday newspaper subscribers recently about what they thought. Most felt picking some stories for early digital publication didn't make a difference in their reading experience. Of the remainder, nearly three times as many said it improved their reading experience in print as felt it detracted from it.
It is a new world for all of us.
Thanks for being a subscriber.
John M. Geddes
Visions of a Blind Photographer
#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}Sometimes when she's taking pictures, Sonia Soberats forgets she cannot see.
Until 1986, Ms. Soberats was like many single immigrant mothers - living in Queens, working two jobs and watching her two children grow into flourishing adults. Life began to crumble, though, when ovarian cancer was diagnosed for her only daughter. Two years later, the family received more bad news: her only son had Hodgkin's disease. He died in 1991, and three years later, so did Ms. Soberats's daughter.
In between t hose deaths, Ms. Soberats, who had a history of glaucoma, lost her eyesight. First the right eye went dark, then about six months later, the left.
“That biblical story about the seven good years and the seven bad years? That happened to me,†Ms. Soberats, 77, said in an interview at her home in Jackson Heights.  “I think their sickness helped me cope with my blindness. Because I wasn't thinking about that. I was thinking about them. How much they were suffering, how much they were going through.â€
It is this mix of pain and perseverance that Ms. Soberats weaves throughout her photographs. Her subjects are often friends or family, and she frequently captures or recreates life-altering events: pregnancies, marriages, death. Her work is often joyous, but it can be haunting, even schizophrenic. She plays with light and texture and draws on her Latin roots, taking the viewer on a journey to places as magical as the the fictional town of Macondo or as surreal a s a Salvador Dalà painting.
In 2001, Ms. Soberats began taking photography classes in Manhattan, joining a long line of handicapped individuals - including other blind people - who have used photography as a means of both therapy and expression. Unlike blind artists like Kurt Weston, however, Ms. Soberats had never been a photographer before losing her sight.
Ms. Soberats does not rely on capturing a decisive moment. Instead, her technique, called light painting, involves careful planning and imagination.
Her images may be conceived during a walk through Union Square or at a party with friends, when the scent of flowers or the sound of Mexican men singing boleros provoke a flurried catalog of imagery, waiting to be captured.
Back in the studio, she works in complete darkness, always with the help of a seeing assistant. She arranges her models, using her hands to feel every aspect of the image, instructing her assistant where to place the edges of the frame.
“I feel your face, your hair, then I'll ask you: ‘Are you light-colored? Or dark? Is your hair blonde or brown or black?' †she said. “So with asking and touching, then I'll get an idea of what I have to work with.â€
Ms. Soberats then asks her assistant to open the shutter, and using various light sources, including flashlights and Christmas lights, she darts about the frame like Tinkerbell, illuminating details within the image. The shutter remains open anywhere from two minutes to an hour.
“You go into the picture and you forget what is around you and that you're blind,†she said. “Our mind is vast. You can go over and over everything and obtain all the information you need.â€
Ms. Soberats will work like this for hours, crawling on the ground, moving about the room. “I have a stenosis in my spine,†she said. “Last Thursday I had epidural shots in both my sides. I've been through a lot of pain taking pictures.â€
S he added: “When I get home I just have to go to bed and rest. But I forget my pain while I'm taking the pictures.â€
During a 90-minute shoot, she may take just three or four frames.
For seeing individuals, it may seem bizarre that Ms. Soberats dedicates so much time to an art she cannot fully appreciate. Why not a more tactile pursuit, like sculpting? But Ms. Soberats said she savored her work through the eyes of others.
“The more difficult the photo, the more interesting and the more rewarding when you complete it and it's good,†she said. “To be able to realize and obtain something that at the end everybody praises, it's very satisfactory.â€
In February, Ms. Soberats traveled to Caracas, Venezuela, for her first solo exhibition, “Visión Intransferible,†at the Centro de Arte La Estancia. She has also traveled the world with the Seeing With Photography Collective, a group of visually impaired photographers based in New York, and she ha s given workshops in light painting to both seeing and blind individuals. She is the focus of the forthcoming documentary “El Laberinto de lo Posible,†a film by the Venezuelan director Wanadi Siso that explores the lives of blind individuals who have overcome great challenges.
“It surprised me that the human mind can do whatever it wants if we work toward it,†Ms. Soberats said.
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