Posts Tagged humanitarianism

Lartigue: The Human Is The Tool

Picture-13For More Photos by JHL: http://photography-now.net/jacques_henry_lartigue/portfolio1.html

In a time when camera phones -and videos- are ubiquitous and that, in many cases, people using them are the only sources of images and information (Iran), the work of Jacques Henri Lartigue is even more relevant than it was in the early 20th Century.

Lartigue, the boy, wasn’t a photographer: he was a kid with a camera. No big deal. Like people with camera phones now.

Look at the images!

Joyous, exuberant, beautiful in composition and moment of capture, they stand as a good document of the times and an excellent expression from that young boy who, obviously, exalted at the possibilities of his life in general and the possibilities of photography in paticular.

So, keep those camera phones snapping (if you have the “snap” sound enabled) and keep posting them on MySpace and Twitter and Flickr and Facebook and keep some of the big hitters (NY Times, etc.) telephone numbers in the other end of that phone, because, once again, we’re reminded, it ain’t the tool, it’s the eye and heart and mind.

Yours (if you use it).

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Vote

BruceDavidson_

“Vote,” Selma Voting Rights March, 1965

©Bruce Davidson

Sometimes we forget that the “Big Work,” the work that one becomes known for making isn’t all there is.

Bruce Davidson went south, from Chicago, on  instinct.

The world was shaking and he felt the vibe.

The time was now: Civil Rights.

Real change.

Without assignment or specific destination he “nailed it,” and was able to work on the edges of the news, tell the story from a personal and deeply intimate viewpoint.

This image, for me, is one his best. Beautiful composition. Beatiful moment. Beautiful storyline. Iconic and packed with all the elements that make it a novel unto itself,  if this was the only photography that existed from the era it was shot in, it would, I think, be enough to tell the story of the struggle.

One word and one image: sometimes it’s enough: Vote.

For More on Bruce Davidson: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Davidson_(photographer)

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Go Fly A Kite

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© Trent Parke / Magnum Photos

GO TO: http://todayspictures.slate.com/20090610

Magnum Photographers Fly The Kite

It can’t all be angst and drum!

Every once in awhile a good shooter has got to have some fun, or, at least, see others having fun.

That’s worth a document, right?

People still having fun?

Concept!

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Azerbaijan: Displacement Ex-Soviet Style

Rena Effendi

©Rena Effendi

GO TO: http://www.fiftycrows.org/index.php#s=0&p=0&a=2&mi=2&pt=1&pi=10000&at=1

Displacement. A world wide problem. When the Grid comes you got to move no matter that there is no good place to go to from the bad place you have become accustomed to. It looks the same in Azerbaijan, Mexico DF, Lomas del Poleo, Chicago…wherever.

Rena Effendi takes us into the rarely seen inner Azerbajian, to the mahalla neighborhood in the capitol city of Baku.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Victor Sera: Uprooted

Victor Sera

©Victor Sera

GO TO: http://www.fiftycrows.org/index.php#mi=2&pt=1&pi=10000&s=1&a=7&p=0&at=3

This is a photo essay on the lives of the undocumented as they navigate between their homes and their country chosen for work.

In some ways the “landscape,” of this document has changed since it was photographed in the 1990′s. The immigration interdiction efforts by the United States has reduced the number of migrants and, more recently, the lack of jobs in the U.S. due to the faltering economy has reduced it even further. The personal plight for migrants in the U.S. has changed for the worse, making any return to the mother country impossible due to the danger of the return journey.

This document, however, is still quite valid. The existential delemna of home and heart weighed against stomach and uprootedness is ongoing, worldwide and, as this work shows, problematic.

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Braziliano Documentary Photographer

Luiz Maximiano

SEE: http://www.luizmaximiano.com

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Los Ninos de Las Calles/Mexico

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GO HERE: http://truthwithacamera.org/mexico_slideshow.mov

Editor’s Note: This is from Truth With A Camera, the incredible workshops supported by the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA). Never a better example of what Still Documentary Photography is and can do.

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Jonathan Torgovnik, Rawanda, Documentary Photography

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GO HERE: http://mediastorm.org/0024.htm

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Avedon And The American West (Sort of…)

This is one way to approach Documentary. Severely remove all elements of the subject except the subject itself.

Notice that without a background the photographer absolutely controls the statement.

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