Capturing Libya: Through a Hipstamatic Lens
To photojournalism purists, it was pure blasphemy: a prestigious prize, third place for photo of the year, granted to a New York Times photographer who’d used not a 35mm to document U.S. soldiers in Iraq, but simply, his iPhone — and an app called Hipstamatic. Immediately, traditionalists went berserk: “What we knew as photojournalism at its purest form is over,” one photojournalist lamented. Using Hipstamatic in a news report, another commentator proclaimed, was “cheating us all.”
And yet, to Ben Lowy, a conflict photographer who has made a career out of a certain brand of iPhonography — and will debut the first ever photojournalism-inspired Hipstamatic lens with his namesake later this year — the award was a well-needed wake-up call for photojournalism fundamentalists. Last February, Lowy set out to capture the uprising in Libya from his iPhone (alongside millions of protesters who’d document the Arab Spring on their mobile devices) in photos that would fuel reporting from the region in outlets around the globe. In October, Lowy’s Hipstamatic images of everyday life in wartime Kabul were published in the New York Times Magazine, prompting the magazine’s photo editor, Kathy Ryan, to defend their use on the paper’s 6th Floor blog. And since then, Lowy has published an iPhone photo a day — from dramatic images of war to mundane life in Brooklyn — on his Tumblr, captured under the title, iSee.
Posts tagged with “news”
BREAKING: Advice is received that the Congress resolved upon independence the 4th of July; and, it is said, have declared war against Great Britain in form.
The first mention of the US declaration of independence in the British press occurred six weeks after the fact in the August 10-13 edition of the London Chronicle.
And that mention was just the little blurb that you see above.
Via Todd Andrlik, a collector of American Revolution era newspapers:
The London Gazette also published an August 10 to 13, 1776, issue, but it lacked any mention of the Declaration. As the official court organ, and perhaps to avoid royal embarrassment, the Gazette also refrained from printing the entire text of the Declaration while other “Mother Country” newspapers jumped at it, including the London Chronicle (Aug 17 – first in Europe), Edinburgh Advertiser (Aug 20), Edinburgh Evening Courant (Aug 21), Belfast News-Letter (Aug 27), etc.
Once upon a time the world’s news moved real slow.
Image: A brief in the London Chronicle informs the public that the US colonies declared their independence. Via Rag Linen.
Romance
Aquel rubio de Albacete
vino, madre, y me miró.
¡No lo puedo mirar yo!
Aquel rubio de los trigos
hijo de la verde aurora,
alto, sólo y sin amigos
pisó mi calle a deshora.
La noche se tiñe y dora
de un delicado fulgor
¡No lo puedo mirar yo!
Aquel lindo de cintura
sentí galán sin…
sembró por mi noche obscura
su amarillo jazminero
tanto me quiere y le quiero
que mis ojos se llevó.
¡No lo puedo mirar yo!
Aquel joven de la Mancha
vino, madre, y me miró.
¡No lo puedo mirar yo!
Lorca’s last letter and poem emerge after over 70 years
A poem written on the back of a receipt from the Academia Orad in Madrid (1935) for Juan Ramírez de Lucas, now presumed to have been Federico Garcia Lorca’s lover at the time of his death. Ramírez de Lucas passed away in 2010, leaving a box to his sister which contained a diary and various letters, poems and handwritten fragments that revealed the extent of his relationship with the poet.
via El Pais
![Václav Havel playwright and politician, dead at 75.
Havel’s life in six stages:
the early student years under the Stalinist regime; the playwright and essayist of the Sixties; the defeat of the last great attempt at ‘socialism with a human face’ in the Prague Spring of 1968; the years of dissidence and arrest which culminated in Havel’s emergence as the leading spokesman for Charter 77; the Velvet Revolution; and finally the Presidency. Along the way, we get an abundance of ‘endearing foibles’, which far from tarnishing Havel’s heroic image, seem somehow to make his achievement all the more palpable. His parents were rich ‘cultural capitalists’, owners of the famous Barrandov cinema studios (‘bourgeois origins’). He has always had unreliable habits (a fondness for eau de toilette, sleeping late, listening to rock music) and is known for his promiscuity, notwithstanding the celebrated prison letters to his working-class wife Olga. (When he was released from jail in 1977, he spent his first weeks of freedom with a mistress.) In the Eighties, he was ruthless in establishing himself as Czechoslovakia’s most important dissident – when a potential rival emerged, doubtful rumours would start to circulate about the rival’s links with the secret police. As President he uses a child’s scooter to zoom along the corridors of the huge Presidential palace.
[…]
Rarely has one individual played so many different parts. The cocky young student in the early Fifties, member of a closed circle which holds passionate political discussions and somehow survives the worst years of the Stalinist terror. The Modernist playwright and critical essayist struggling to assert himself in the mild thaw of the late Fifties and Sixties. The first encounter with History – in the Prague Spring – which is also Havel’s first big disappointment. The long ordeal of the Seventies and most of the Eighties, when he is transformed from a critical playwright into a key political figure. The miracle of the Velvet Revolution, with Havel emerging as a skilful politician negotiating the transfer of power and ending up as President. Finally, there is Havel in the Nineties, the man who presided over the disintegration of Czechoslovakia and who is now the proponent of the full integration of the Czech Republic into Western economic and military structures. Havel himself has been shocked by the swiftness of the transformation – a TV camera famously caught his look of disbelief as he sat down to his first official dinner as President.
- Slavoj Žižek (here)](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lweghndGX01qz762fo1_500.jpg)
Václav Havel playwright and politician, dead at 75.
Havel’s life in six stages:
the early student years under the Stalinist regime; the playwright and essayist of the Sixties; the defeat of the last great attempt at ‘socialism with a human face’ in the Prague Spring of 1968; the years of dissidence and arrest which culminated in Havel’s emergence as the leading spokesman for Charter 77; the Velvet Revolution; and finally the Presidency. Along the way, we get an abundance of ‘endearing foibles’, which far from tarnishing Havel’s heroic image, seem somehow to make his achievement all the more palpable. His parents were rich ‘cultural capitalists’, owners of the famous Barrandov cinema studios (‘bourgeois origins’). He has always had unreliable habits (a fondness for eau de toilette, sleeping late, listening to rock music) and is known for his promiscuity, notwithstanding the celebrated prison letters to his working-class wife Olga. (When he was released from jail in 1977, he spent his first weeks of freedom with a mistress.) In the Eighties, he was ruthless in establishing himself as Czechoslovakia’s most important dissident – when a potential rival emerged, doubtful rumours would start to circulate about the rival’s links with the secret police. As President he uses a child’s scooter to zoom along the corridors of the huge Presidential palace.
[…]
Rarely has one individual played so many different parts. The cocky young student in the early Fifties, member of a closed circle which holds passionate political discussions and somehow survives the worst years of the Stalinist terror. The Modernist playwright and critical essayist struggling to assert himself in the mild thaw of the late Fifties and Sixties. The first encounter with History – in the Prague Spring – which is also Havel’s first big disappointment. The long ordeal of the Seventies and most of the Eighties, when he is transformed from a critical playwright into a key political figure. The miracle of the Velvet Revolution, with Havel emerging as a skilful politician negotiating the transfer of power and ending up as President. Finally, there is Havel in the Nineties, the man who presided over the disintegration of Czechoslovakia and who is now the proponent of the full integration of the Czech Republic into Western economic and military structures. Havel himself has been shocked by the swiftness of the transformation – a TV camera famously caught his look of disbelief as he sat down to his first official dinner as President.
- Slavoj Žižek (here)
via Wilson Ramos Kidnapping Highlights Baseball’s Dangerous Venezuela Pipeline - The Daily Beast
interesting - if not uncontroversial - article. Politics aside, I’m just glad you’re safe, kiddo.
via Silvio Berlusconi resigns as Italian prime minister – in pictures | World news | guardian.co.uk
ABOUT FUCKIN’ TIME YOU GUYS!
I was at a party in Frankfurt when I heard the news, and a boatload of Germans cheered and whooped and called a toast to the future.
Now, my fellow Italians, the ball’s in our corner: let’s take back our poor country.
The Hajj, the fifth pillar of Islam and one of the largest religious pilgrimages in the world, is currently taking place in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Starting last Friday and continuing through Wednesday, some 3 million Muslims from around the globe are participating in several rituals, including the Tawaf — the circumambulation of the Kaaba, the enormous cube-shaped building in the center of the Masjid al-Haram mosque. The pilgrims are are also taking part in the Sa’i, traveling back and forth between the mountains of Al-Safa and Al-Marwah, and Ramy al-Jamarat, in which they throw pebbles at three walls in the city of Mina to show their defiance of the Devil. (via The Hajj and Eid al-Adha 2011 - Alan Taylor - In Focus - The Atlantic)
The protesters shun formal leaders and hierarchies – and I also don’t see why they should be criticised for this at a time when conventional leaders and hierarchies have been so conspicuously useless. Here are some recent scenes in establishment politics. Silvio Berlusconi displays his incomparable charms by describing Angela Merkel as “culona ichiavabile” (“an unfuckable lard arse”). Rick Perry, contender to become Republican candidate for the great office of president of the United States, questions where Barack Obama was born five months after the White House released his long-form birth certificate, and excuses himself by saying: “It’s fun to poke at him.” A punch-up breaks out on the floor of the Italian parliament between one right-wing member of the government and an even more right-wing member. Nicolas Sarkozy tells David Cameron to “shut up” because he is “sick” of him. David Cameron elevates the tone at prime minister’s questions by shouting: “Complete mug!” at Ed Miliband.
Protesters or leaders? I know who looks the more grown-up.
![Ah, it goes, is lost - Cy Twombly (1928-2011)
[W]hen you recite the art-historical contexts and the nuggets of suggestive biography, Twombly remains an enigma. In the army in the 1950s he worked on cryptography, later saying he was too “vague” to be much good at it. Perhaps that is a warning against becoming too analytical and exegetical about his work. Twombly’s paintings are florid, romantic and ornately overstated; they are baroque, decadent concoctions; they are the paintings Edgar Allan Poe’s Roderick Usher might have done; they are sensuous flowers of the south; they are seriously unedifying, poisonous vintages. They are letters to history from the heart of a corrupt empire.
*](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lnvnhauazc1qz762fo1_500.jpg)
Ah, it goes, is lost - Cy Twombly (1928-2011)
[W]hen you recite the art-historical contexts and the nuggets of suggestive biography, Twombly remains an enigma. In the army in the 1950s he worked on cryptography, later saying he was too “vague” to be much good at it. Perhaps that is a warning against becoming too analytical and exegetical about his work. Twombly’s paintings are florid, romantic and ornately overstated; they are baroque, decadent concoctions; they are the paintings Edgar Allan Poe’s Roderick Usher might have done; they are sensuous flowers of the south; they are seriously unedifying, poisonous vintages. They are letters to history from the heart of a corrupt empire.
*
(via Photo Gallery: Italians Turn Their Backs on Berlusconi - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International)
There is an apocalyptic mood within the government camp. Last week, Sicilian member of parliament Gianfranco Micciché left Berlusconi’s PdL party with around a dozen deputies in tow. He now wants to set up his own party with a greater focus on southern Italy. For the moment, however, he will continue to side with Berlusconi in votes in Rome. Meanwhile, all the surveys show that Berlusconi is losing support across the board. Even in his own center-right camp, only 13 percent consider him to be a suitable prime minister, the Italian newspaper La Repubblica reported on the weekend. He is suddenly in fourth place on the list, behind three politicians from his own ranks. Economy and Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti is in first place, with 23 percent support. Berlusconi no longer trusts Tremonti for that reason. Sometimes, albeit very rarely, Berlusconi appears to have moments of self-doubt. via
Pardon my French, but about fucking time.
BA | MA | PhD
Italian, Londoner.
Ex theatre director.
Lecturer in film, literature, and cultural studies.
Beginner in the film industry.
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[bai'ra:-nik] 1. Characteristic of, or after the manner of Byron or his poetry. 2. quasi-n. pl. [after Philippics.] Declamatory utterances or invectives in the style of Byron. 3. Byronic hero: prominent literary character type of the Romantic period, whose characteristics include: extraordinary intelligence and perception; high level of education and intellectual prowess; arrogance; cunning and manipulation; emotional conflictedness; moodiness; self-criticism and introspection; self-destructive behaviour; aesthetic sophistication; dark mysterious beauty; powers of attraction; seductiveness and sexual perversion; world-weariness; distaste for social institutions and norms; disrespect of social ranks; being an outcast, an outlaw, or an exile.
You don't have to call me Doctor.
I worship at the Church of Springsteen.
I'm a card-carrying ophidiophobe.
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