State of the Art

Fox News Alters Photos of Enemy Reporters

According to Media Matters, Fox News is getting even with its perceived enemies by altering their pictures to make them look rather monstrous, then airing the results.
     The website says the images were shown on Fox & Friends. The program’s host, Steve Doocy, was commenting on a recent article in the New York Times that said Fox News’s ratings were showing an “ominous” decline. Doocy called the story's writer, Jacques Steinberg, an “attack dog.” Also singled out was Times editor Steven Reddicliffe.
     During the commentary, the news channel showed photos of both men. The pictures (that's Steinberg above and Reddicliffe below) seem to have been altered from the original shots. Teeth were yellowed, noses made bigger, hairlines pushed back, dark circles added under the eyes—and not with a great deal of Photoshop craft, it seems to me.
     Don’t they have someone at Fox who could have done this with a little more skill?
      I happen to know Reddicliffe—he lives in the suburb I do, and I see him on my commuter train all the time. In real life, he doesn’t look like an opium eater at all. He’s a very nice guy.
     If you’ve seen Fox & Friends you know that Doocy is just a tool. The best-case scenario here is that Fox thought this was a clever joke. Clever? I don't think so. The only joke here is Fox News itself, the media home of Karl Rove. News organizations have no business messing with pictures.—David Schonauer

Where To Go and What To See

Despite the pre-Independence Day four-day week, several galleries are putting up interesting exhibitions this week. The Pace/MacGill Gallery in NYC is actually opening on July 4 with Larry Fink's holiday-appropriate images of the Democratic presidential campaigns. Robert Mann Gallery, also in NYC, is putting up an interesting show that explores the "formal repetitions and shared motifs of photographers working with commonplace genres such as portraiture and commercial still life during the first half of the 20th century." And at the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, Virginia, a show examines the historical landscapes of Peter Henry Emerson.

~Miki Johnson

(Photo: © Larry Fink, "Barack Obama, TX, 2008")

Follow the link below for details on these and many more photography events around the country.

This Strange Device Can’t Be a Good Thing

What you see here is the Image Fulgurator, a new, strange device that frankly scares me. It is the invention of a German man named—and you can’t make this stuff us—Julius von Bismark. The contraption is designed so that one person can project “stealth” images into another person’s photographs—images that can only be seen when the other person looks at his pictures. How can something like this be good? Why would anyone invent it?
    The heart of the Fulgurator (Von Bismark says it mean “Flash Thrower”) is an old manual Minolta SLR. A flashgun, mounted at the back, fires through the camera and through a transparency image on a roll of processed film inside. That image is then projected out through the lens and onto any surface.
    The flashgun is triggered when another photographer standing nearby takes a picture using flash. Like a slave unit, the Fulgurator senses that flash and fires its own flash, projecting an image the other photographer’s camera records. The image is projected so briefly, however, that the other photographer won’t see it.
     As this story points out, Fulgurator is simply a machine that allows a kind of analog hacking into other people’s pictures. Von Bismark seems to believe it might be used in viral marketing and advertising. Maybe I’m just cranky, but I think the whole idea of this is obnoxious. –David Schonauer

Who Killed the Gorillas of Virunga?

In the July/August issue of American Photo, we named Getty photographer Brett Stirton’s picture of a murdered silverback gorilla the “Photo of the Year.” Now there’s more to report about the image and its impact. In its July issue, National Geographic has an intriguing, absorbing feature tracing how Stirton and a writer returned to the scene of the crime, Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to find out who killed the gorillas. The answers the pair came up with are shocking and disturbing. It’s a must-read. The National Geographic TV channel will also air a documentary on about the story on July 1.

Click! Power to the People

Photograph © Tom Callan

Is the public the best critic? We know that curators, commentators, and other cultural taste-makers are often at odds with what the people want. (Just take a look at movie box-office sales numbers compared to, say, film reviews on rottentomatoes.com.) But what happens when the public gets to choose the visual work in a major museum exhibition?

That's the question posed and answered by Click! A Crowd-Curated Exhibition, which opens today at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. This grand photo show — of the people, by the people, and for the people — was created in three phases.

First, photographers were asked to electronically submit photographs based on the theme of "Changing Faces of  Brooklyn," along with an artist's statement. This open call took place last March. Then the work was anonymously evaluated in an online forum — also open to the public, but with each visiting judge asked "a series of questions about his/her knowledge of art and perceived expertise," according to organizer Shelley Bernstein of the BMA. You can check out and comment on the judging results at the Click! website.

Is Supermodel Karolina Kurkova Too Fat?

Over the past couple of years I’ve been posting about the controversy over “Size-Zero” models—those wafer-thin mannequins who have caused much alarm in the media. The fashion industry made much noise about promoting a more healthy body image among models. But now there is a new controversy sweeping the Internet style pages. When supermodel Karoline Kurkova took to the catwalk for a recent Cia Maritima show in Brazil, she was ridiculed by fashionistas and the press for being too fat.
     I think the readers of this blog need to weigh in on this. (I’ve included front and back views of Kurkova in the show.) As photographers and photo enthusiasts, do you consider this body too fat?
     Ironically, it was in Brazil that the “Size-Zero” story started. In 2006 Brazilian model Ana Carolina Reston, 21, died of anorexia after eating a diet of apples and tomatoes for several months. Following her death, governments in Europe threatened to pass laws forbidding the use of too-thin models. –David Schonauer

'Soldiers' On Tour

Photographs © Ellen Susan

Last summer, when we published a Web feature about Ellen Susan's remarkable series of U.S. Soldier Portraits using the collodion wet-plate process, the project had not yet been widely seen. But now it has — to use a show-biz term — Gone Nationwide.

Exhibitions of Susan's images are making the rounds in various venues around the country. In Portland, Oregon, Susan's work will be shown alongside a Robert Rauschenberg exhibition from July 2 through August 2 at the Blue Sky Gallery. In Savannah, Georgia, where the portraits were made, a show runs from tomorrow through July 8 at the Jepson Center at the Telfair Museum. In Boston, the work is at the Photographic Resource Center through July 1. In San Francisco, it's part of a group show of collodion work July 18 through August 28 at the Rayko Photo Center. Meanwhile, PDN has featured the work in its June issue, on newsstands now, and the Savannah-based The South Magazine published it in June/July.

"Many people realize that there's some connection with past forms of photography," Susan says of the public reaction to the project. "Lots of people bring up the visual connection to the past, particularly to the military past, and their point of view about that connection, and I like it when that happens."

Where To Go and What To See

This week's openings are all about the group shows. The Sasha Wolf Gallery in NYC is putting up its first group show ever, curated by Wolf and Peter Kayafas and including work by Kayafas, Harry Callahan, William Eggleston, Lee Friedlander, and Katherine Wolkoff. In Our Dreams sounds like a fascinating survey of how photographers dialog with cultural and personal ideas of dreams.

The Brooklyn Museum is going way conceptual in its group photography show called Click! A general call was put out several months ago for photographs, professional and non, that illustrated the idea, "The Changing Face of Brooklyn." They were uploaded to an online storehouse and then the general populace was asked to log on and rate each image. Then the show was hung with sizes dictated by how much the public liked each image.

In Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Photography has put together an interesting show that is appropriate to the summer season: Beyond the Backyard. Another group show, the exhibition includes work from Dorothea Lange, Bill Owens, Larry Sultan, and Todd Deutsch that examines the American ideal of a peaceful domestic backyard and the ways that ideal succeeds and fails to be realized.

~Miki Johnson

(Photo: © Peter Kayafas, "Highpoint, North Carolina, 1993.")

Follow the link below for details about these and many more photography events around the country.

Media Watch: Paparazzi Beach Attacks, Woody Harrelson Sued for Breaking Camera, and Misleading “Lost Tribe” Images

We’ve spent a good part of a dark, muggy Monday scanning the global and interplanetary news media for photography news. And there is much to report:

When Surfers Attack:
A 29-year-old photographer trying to get a shot of actor Matthew McConaughey at a beach near Malibu, California was attacked by a group of young surfers on Saturday. The film clip of the incident is making the rounds. I’m still not sure whether the surfers were protecting McConaughy or just guarding their beach from encroachers. I don’t condone any attacks on photographers, though in this case I’m glad we were spared another picture of the shirtless actor.

Woody Sued
In other paparazzi news, Woody Harrelson is being sued by a photographer who says the actor assaulted him and broke his video camera two years ago. The photographer, Josh Levine, filed the $2.5 million suit on Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court. He says Harrelson choked him, broke his camera, and ordered his bodyguards to attack him. Being a paparazzo can be dangerous.

“Lost” Tribe Wasn’t Really Lost
It isn’t pictures that lie. It’s the people who make them who lie. Remember those incredible photos released a few weeks ago that showed an theretofore undiscovered tribe in the Amazon rainforest? Taken from an airplane along the Brazilian/Peruvian border, the images showed shocked warriors launching arrows at the plane. Now the man behind the photos, Carlos Meirelles, has admitted that the tribe’s existence has been known about since 1910. The pictures, nonetheless, are amazing. Go here for details.—David Schonauer

Alternative Processes Call For Entries

It's that time of the year again. That special time where digital prints, c-prints, and silver prints are not eligible for one special contest, run by Soho photo in New York. So if you work in a process ending in "type" or with a name like a turn-of-the-century cure-all ointment, this is your time to shine. See details below from the press release.

"Soho Photo Gallery of New York City is pleased to announce its Fourth Annual Alternative Processes Competition.  Forms of alternative process prints include (but are not limited to): Cyanotype, Van Dyke Brown, Tintype, Bromoil, Platinum, Palladium, and Polaroid© image transfer. Digital prints, c-prints and silver prints are not eligible. Please send questions concerning eligible forms to Margery Franklin: mbfranklin@earthlink.net.

Donnie Hoyle Returns; Photoshop Fun Again!

I came to Photoshop late. I also came late to the web series called "You Suck at Photoshop." These short videos are tutorials on layering, cloning, and all those other things I hate about photography now. But they are surely the funniest tutorials ever created. Your instructor is one Donnie Hoyle, uber-nerd with a bad attitude, a wandering wife, and  an expertise in Photoshop which, in his eyes at least, makes him quite a bit better than you, or me. The series was the creation of two men, Matt Bledsoe and Troy Hitch, who produced 10 original episodes. The last ended with Donnie being taken away by a SWAT team. Bledsoe and Troy thought the series was finished, but fans clamored for more, so now it is being reported that Donnie will be back to teach all of us more of that special Photoshop magic. I should now also point out that not only did I come to Photoshop late, but I also suck at it and prefer not spending what little time is left to me creating lame special effects. As you'll see in the clip below, Donnie makes the whole experience worthwhile.--David Schonauer

A World Without Spy Cameras? Buy Now

According to this report, now is the time to buy a Minox TLS, best remembered as the spy camera that recorded thousands of secret documents. The subminature film cameras are no longer essential gear for undercover agents--no need to smuggle film from behind the Iron Curtain when both film and the Iron Curtain are essentially no longer with us. The only market for the camera now are collectors. The German camera manufacturer is wrapping up production of the camera all together and has halved the price of remaining units from L899 to L399.
    The Minox was first introduced in 1937. The first model was made in Latvia and designed by Walter Zapp. (Yes, that's Zapp. You can't make something like that up.) The camera produces 8x11mm exposures, and it comes with a little chain so you can measure out the correct distance for its  fixed lens.
    After years of watching James Bond movies and absorbing enough 007 trivia to officially make me a nerd, I think I can state uncategorically that the British superspy used the Minox in only one film--"On Her Majesty's Secret Service." In that wonderful movie--really flawed but really great--Bond, played by George Lazenby, uses the camera to snap pictures of the beautiful inhabitants of Blofeld's mountaintop lair, Piz Gloria. You thought I was kidding about being a nerd. I'm not. May the Minox rest in peace.--David Schonauer