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Presidents Day Celebration

There is a good deal of confusion about Presidents Day. Some see it as a celebration of the lives of two of our greatest presidents, while others see it as a commercial holiday, a break in the winter season and the occasion for a salea-bration. We think it is an interesting occasion because it features a president for whom we have no photographs, though no dearth of images, and the first president to recognize the publicity value of the photograph, sitting for over 100 portraits and being photographed in many different contexts including, most prominently, at the war front. (The first president actually photographed was John Quincey Adams, but it was many years after he was in office.  The first president actually photographed while in office was James K. Polk.) The question is, what’s the difference?

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Gilbert Stuart, 1795

 

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Harper’s Weekly, Feb. 22, 1732

 

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Emanuel Leutze, 1851

 

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Currier and Ives, 1860

 

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Nicholas H. Shephard, Daguerotype, 1846

 

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Mathew Brady, Lincoln at Cooper Union, 1860

 

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Alexander Gardner, Lincoln with General McClellan at Antietam, October 3, 1862

 

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Alexander Gardner, Silver Gelatin Print, February 1865

 

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Alexander Gardner, Lincoln’s Second Inaugural, 1865

Images Courtesy of Library of Congress, Philadelphia Print Shop, Ltd., Abraham Lincoln Art Gallery

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Sight Gag: Iraq v. Vietnam – "Deja Vu All Over Again"

THEN

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NOW

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Photo Credit: Incredimazing, Friends of the Earth

Our primary goal with this blog is to talk about the ways in which photojournalism contributes to a vital democratic public culture. Much of the time that means we are focusing on what purport to be more or less serious matters. But as Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert often remind us, democracy needs irony, parody, and pure silliness as much as it needs serious contemplation. For our part, we will dedicate our Sunday posts to putting such moments on display in what we call “sight gags,” democracy’s nod to the ironic and/or the carnivalesque. Sometimes we will post pictures we’ve taken, or that have been contributed by others, or that we just happen to stumble across as we navigate our very visual public culture. Sometimes the images will be pure silliness, but sometimes they will point to ironies, poignant and otherwise. And we won’t just be limited to photography, as a robust democratic visual culture consists of much more. We typically will not comment beyond offering an identifying label, leaving the images to “speak” for themselves as much as possible. Of course we invite you to comment … and to send us images that you think capture the carnival of contemporary democratic public culture.

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Conference Call: Visible Memories Conference

The “Visible Memories” Conference will take place at Syracuse University, October 2-4, 2008. The conference will explore the intersections of visual culture and memory studies with particular focus on the ways in which memories are manifested and experienced in visible, material, or spatial form. Featured speakers  include Keynote Speaker Enesto Pujo, Cara Finnegan, Andrea Hammer, George Legrady, Julia Metzer, Phaedra Pezzullo, Gregory Sholette, David Thorne, and Patricia Zimmerman.The call for competitive panel sessions indicates a special interest in (but is not limited to) work on local sites of memory; memorials and archives; environmentalism and representations ofnature; regioal, national, or global tourism; photography or cinema; digital media; and art installations.Submission Guidelines: Submit a paper abstract electronically (500 word maximum). Include a separate cover page with paper title; author name and affiliation; and contact information. Submissions should be addressed to Dr. Anne T. Demo (atdemo@syr.edu). Deadline for abstract submission is May 1, 2008. Acceptance notification will be sent by June 1, 2008.For additional details contact Dr. Demo (above) or check the conference website.

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A Season for the Passions

As you no doubt know, today is St. Valentines Day. Most of us in the United States are first introduced to it in kindergarten or the 1st grade where we are encouraged to give valentines to all of our classmates. Eventually we learn that Valentines Day is something of a romantic holiday, to be shared mostly in private with that “someone special,” but even at that it retains its communal quality as an occasion for the expression of the passions by virtue of being marked as a public holiday. Like most such holidays it has become grossly commercialized and it is thus easy to be cynical about it (even as I mark on my calendar the need to buy a valentine for my beloved), but what we too easily forget is that Valentines Day occurs during the mid-winter season that includes an array of holidays and festivals—Mardi Gras, carnival, the Lunar New Year, etc.—all of which feature some version of a public and communal expression and release of emotion.

Public displays of emotion are often seen as undermining collective judgment and putting democratic polity in peril, and certainly emotional reactions can get out of hand (just like obsessive and blind adherence to rationality), but at NCN we believe that public emotion is nevertheless essential to a vital and vibrant democratic public culture and thus needs to be nurtured and cultivated. And so we celebrate the mid-winter season as a time for the communal expression of affect and emotion—a season for the passions—by bringing you pictures of the season that have been featured by the mainstream media who seem implicitly to recognize its importance both at home and abroad.

 

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Lunar New Year, Chinatown, New York City

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Tet, Hanoi

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Mardi Gras, St. Charles St., New Orleans

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Carnival, Rio de Janeiro

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Carnival, Basel, Switzerland

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Congos y Diablo Carnival, Panama

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653rd Anniversary of the Birth of Bawa Lal Dyal, Amristar, Pakistan

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Up the Helly Aa Festival, Shetland Isles, Scotland

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Valentines Day, West Bank city of Jenin

Photo Credits: Chris McGrath/Getty Images, Chitose Suzuki/AP, Ted Jackson, Times-Picayune, Daldo Galderi/AP, Andreas Frossard/AP, Narinder Nanu/AFP/Getty Images, Arnulfo Franco/AP, Danny Lawson/AP, Saif Dahlah/AFP/Getty Images

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Unimaginable Results

The surge is working! Or so President Bush intimated in his recent State of the Union Address when he indicated that “the American and Iraqi surges have achieved results few of us could have imagined one year ago.” Imagined by the numbers, what this means is that American and allied military deaths are now down to just slightly above pre-surge levels, amounting to 2.47 deaths per day (a “mere” 901 deaths in the preceding twelve months). Of course, this number does not take into account the 16.6 injuries per day to military personnel or the incalculable psychic damage resulting in PTSD. But most of all, it doesn’t take into account the nearly 25,000 deaths to Iraqi civilians in the past year, a conservative estimate which more than doubles pre-surge numbers in this category. Such statistics are hard to find, as they are typically not featured in the mainstream press, but even at that they are abstractions that operate in the aggregate and make it hard to identify the real human and social costs and implications of such of policies as they are lived and experienced.

To understand the larger impact of the surge requires more than numbers. It also requires vision and imagination.

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Less than a week after President Bush lauded the “results” of the surge, Baghdad experienced its “Worst Attack … in Months” as two suicide bombers unleashed carnage in a popular pet market and bazaar. No Americans died or were injured, but 65 Iraqis were killed and at least twice that many were wounded, including many children and teenagers. The NYT depicted the attack in a slideshow that generally followed the realist conventions of documentary photography, focusing on the particular event with landscape portraits of the after effects of the explosions, as well as medium and close shots of injured individuals, family members mourning the deaths of relatives, and coffins housing the dead. However, the photograph above, appearing near the middle of the slide show, broke with these conventions in ways that invites a more capacious, allegorical understanding of the attacks and their implication for interpreting the otherwise unimaginable results of the year long surge.

What we see here is a young boy standing in the middle of the street. It could be anywhere, of course, lending universal appeal to the image, but the slide show locates us in Baghdad. Cast in a shadow and shot in a subtle but noticeable soft focus, it is hard to recognize the boy as an individual. Nor does his individuality seem to matter, for he is identified in the caption as a type, “a young boy,” and it is the assumption of his youthful innocence and potential for the future that seems to matter the most. While he occupies nearly half the frame of the image, and thus his presence looms large, it is not the boy to which our attention is drawn, at least not exclusively and except insofar as the caption notes that he is “examin[ing] dead doves at Ghazil market, which has been a regular bombing target.” No, it is the doves, laying prostate and framed in the foreground by a wide angle that casts them in sharp focus, that invites our most immediate and direct identification and consideration.

Just as the child is a symbol of innocence and hope for the future, so the dove is the symbol of peace and harmony. One would hope that the two would go hand in hand. But here they have been sundered, their separation from one another – and from the viewer – emphasized by the low angle, debris, and blood that marks their distance from one another. The significance of this is once again underscored by the caption which, goes on, “Ghazil market … has been a regular bombing target. It was struck a year ago in January, when 15 people died, but after months of increased American troop presence, it regained some of its vitality.” The tilt of the boy’s head (is he “examining the doves” or mourning a loss) suggests that the “return to vitality” was a false hope. The veil of innocence has been shattered (perhaps, once and for all), and with it the future is placed in question.

The photograph would thus seem to be an allegory for much more than this one explosion. And as such, perhaps it helps to make the results of the surge a bit more imaginable.

Photo Credit: Eros Hoagland/New York Times

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Dutch Cabinent Bans Burqas

According to the Chicago Tribune, the Dutch Cabinet has asked parliament to ban burqas from all schools. “‘I value being able to look somebody in the eye,'” Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said, referring to the fact that the robes cover a woman’s face. “‘I find it unpleasant.'” The PM may be referring to the Afghan chadiri, which, unlike many burqas, covers the eyes:

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I have to admit this habit spooks me too. It even was too much for libertarians, who banned one of their own from the US national convention. (She’s the one behind the veil in this photo.) At least the PM was honest enough to say that it bothered him, rather than pretend that he cared about lending support to a cultural practice that restricts women. After all, what’s more important?

I post on burqas from time to time because of how they raise important questions about the relationship between liberalism and norms of transparency. The PM’s comment may seem idiosyncratic but carries a set of common assumptions about how civil interaction presumes some openness to others’ scrutiny, how social trust depends on being able to assess character, how the eyes are sources of information about a person, and how good judgment includes aesthetic reactions. These notions can each be debated at length, but that is not where I’m going today. Instead, let me suggest an alternative headline for this post:

Dutch Cabinet Bans Sunglasses

The problem is that the reason given by the PM for banning burqas applies equally well to a widely accepted practice of veiling in the West. I am referring to wearing sunglasses when in public, like this:

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The caption read, “New York Giants wide receiver Plaxico Burress listens to a question during media day for Super Bowl XLII.” Wide receivers probably don’t have eye problems, so I’ll bet this was a matter of choice, just as it was for Antonio Pierce:

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So it’s not a black or white thing, either. It can get bright outside in Phoenix, but the first photo has clouds in the background and the same slide show had photos of other players not wearing shades. No, these dudes chose to cover their eyes and the reason probably had a lot more to do with “media day” than the weather. They are withholding visual access to their eyes, an act of resistance within a liberal social order. And it would not be news that wearing sunglasses makes people uncomfortable; indeed, that is one reason to do it.

Now this may not mean much to the Dutch cabinet. Some might say that the comparison doesn’t hold since the players haven’t really attended school, but that’s beside the point. The question is, why can pro athletes, rock stars, movie people, and anyone who wants to imitate them cover their eyes in public, while women who have little choice to do otherwise are punished for it?

Photographs: unknown; Julie Jacobson/Associated Press; Harry How/Getty Images.

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Mourners in the Snow

The last week’s online slide shows have been full of energetic images from the primary campaigns, striking images from Mardi Gras and the Brazilian Carnival, heartrending images of violence from around the world, and all too familiar images of ordinary people digging out from the latest snowstorm. None of these touched me quite like this one:

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You are looking at a procession of mourners from a village in Kashmir. They are carrying the body of a man killed by an avalanche. Heavy snows have killed a number of villagers and driven hundreds from their homes. These are Muslim mourners living in that portion of Kashmir controlled by India, but the political geography seems irrelevant. The snow is no respecter of prejudices, while the thick white cover seems to nullify all boundaries.

The snow also is slowly burying the houses while making walking very difficult. The mourners are strung along the one narrow path the winds through the barren scene. Wrapped up against the cold, they seem to share a deep separateness as if each were lost in thought. The one bulge in the line comes in the middle, where you can see that several mourners are carrying the dark coffin. The yellow buildings in the background promise the warmth and comforts of village life, but death sets the tone for this winter day.

The poignancy of the image may come also from its resemblance to another winter’s scene:

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This is a copy of Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s painting, “Hunters in the Snow.” Completed in 1565, this masterpiece also features a somber procession of villagers within a drear winter landscape. The contrast between the vitality of the village and those in the procession is stronger than in the photograph, but tired hunters and their slow-moving dogs evoke a shared fatality where all species have to struggle against the inertia of nature to survive. They are lucky: even if the hunt was in vain, the are returning to a village that is doing well. Their little band will be warmed and fed as it is absorbed back into the community to rest and revive for another day.

There are other differences as well, but the two images share a vision of how the human community exists precariously within nature’s cold, impersonal, relentless mortality. The continuity of painting and photograph suggests something else as well. If the photo seems to look backwards, as if the Kashmiri villagers were still walking through a premodern tableau, the painting reminds us that the passage of time offers no escape from the human condition. In fact, one can image the photograph as a scene from a century to come, when humans regularly walk slowly through barren landscapes to bury their dead.

But that is getting ahead of the story. It’s been a hard winter for many people this year, and Christians are in the season of Lent, a dark, cold time defined by failure and loss. I find it fitting that a profoundly Lenten image is one of Muslim mourners, and strangely reassuring that an image of winter is one not of vexing inconvenience but rather of stillness and community.

Photograph by Farooq Khan/European Pressphoto Agency.

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Sight Gag: A Late Modern Epic

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Note: Click here to read eitherThe Idyossey or its companion piece,The Bushiad.

Our primary goal with this blog is to talk about the ways in which photojournalism contributes to a vital democratic public culture. Much of the time that means we are focusing on what purport to be more or less serious matters. But as Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert often remind us, democracy needs irony, parody, and pure silliness as much as it needs serious contemplation. For our part, we will dedicate our Sunday posts to putting such moments on display in what we call “sight gags,” democracy’s nod to the ironic and/or the carnivalesque. Sometimes we will post pictures we’ve taken, or that have been contributed by others, or that we just happen to stumble across as we navigate our very visual public culture. Sometimes the images will be pure silliness, but sometimes they will point to ironies, poignant and otherwise. And we won’t just be limited to photography, as a robust democratic visual culture consists of much more. We typically will not comment beyond offering an identifying label, leaving the images to “speak” for themselves as much as possible. Of course we invite you to comment … and to send us images that you think capture the carnival of contemporary democratic public culture.

Credit: Victor LittleBear

 0 Comments

Kern Conference on Visual Communication

The schedule for the 4th Biennial Kern Conference on Visual Communication: Rhetorics and Technology is now online. The Conference takes place at the University of Rochester, April 10-14, 2008. If you’ve never been to one of these conferences and can get there you should attend. This year features a keynote address by Professor Thomas Benson, Penn State University; a master panel on the past, present, and future of Visual Rhetoric featuring Lester Olson-University of Pittsburgh, Carolyn Handa-University of Alabama, Charles Hill and Marguerite Helmers-University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, and Kevin DeLuca-University of Georgia; and a screening of Ron Osgood’s My Vietnam Your Iraq.

Perhaps the highlight for readers of NCN will be the panel on “Blogging Visual Politics” chaired by Cara Finnegan and featuring Michael Shaw from BAGnewsNotes, Jim Johnson from (Notes on) Politics, Theory & Photography, and your favorite bloggers from nocaptionneeded.com.

And of course you can round out the weekend with a visit to the George Eastman House and International Museum of Film and Photography.

For more information see the Conference website.

 1 Comment

My Vote, My Valentine

The Super Tuesday elections were reported yesterday with stories and graphics and victory celebration photos, and for once the hype may have been matched by the results and the good vibe. Perhaps the turnout will help the media move on from their theme of the week, which was fretting about the “arcane” primary process–as if monarchy would be more rational or bureaucracy more transparent. In any case, we all can take a breath, plug the answering machines back in, and get back to our less than super-sized routines. As one last look back, however, I’d like to put up a couple of images from the slide shows at the major papers that were part of yesterday’s coverage.The slides depict the considerable variety and common shabbiness of the places where America votes. Schools, churches, laundromats, garages, you name it–we haven’t moved up much from the days when Americans voted in taverns. Any one of the slides would do, but this one caught my eye for several reasons:

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By cropping the photo to feature people from the waist down, the trope of metonymy is put in play. John and I write about this focus on “boots and hands” from time to time because, first, such images are everywhere despite their individual peculiarity, and, second, they push forward a particular idea of the body politic. This image is a case in point: voters are known by their anonymity but assumed to have walked the walk and taken a stand on behalf of the polity. They are inherently fragmentary and so needing to be aggregated, but also inevitably plural and otherwise part of a society in which their are many walks of life. (If you don’t like cliches, even when used to make a point, this is not your day.)

The photograph elaborates this conception of democracy. By cutting out the markers of personality, we are left with a social scene and social types. The scene is totally functional: voting machine with wheels and handles for being moved in and out of storage, bare floor, warning pylons for when the floor is being washed, folding chairs and tables in the background. This is never going to be a personal, intimate place but rather a place where people congregate to do something in common. The clothes of the two figures take it a step further: jeans, dark coats, boots or worn shoes, these are the clothes of the mythical common man. She is a bit more stylish, he compensates for that. Their clothes are unconsciously coordinated with each other, as is her bag with the cloth on the voting booth. The only really garish color is the weird aquamarine of the machine, as if it were something for a party, which it is.

This last suggestion that democracy is somehow both routine and festive is taken a step further in the second photo.

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Again we have a functional scene–the wood floor and brick wall of a recreational center–and a social type–the elderly. There also is the visual irony, which contrasts the seriousness of voting with the frivolous decor of a holiday, and the bent postures of old age with the frizzy excessiveness of young love. The visual grammar places the elderly in the space of the real, with the decorations in the place of the ideal. Their complete lack of attention to the decorations makes it seem that whatever cupid symbolizes, its completely irrelevant to the preoccupations of old age.

There is a third contrast as well. I doubt that those in the picture are oblivious to either romance or decorative arts, but they are paying attention to their ballots. Thus, the photograph depicts not only youth and age but also romantic love and love of country. The photograph’s ironies are superficial but pose an interesting question: Can one have two loves? This is a fundamental question in a liberal-democratic society, where we regularly experience the tension between the right to a private life and the value of government by the people. The answer to the question is a choice. You can see the two loves as existing only side by side and ironically so, or you can see them as different but ultimately compatible. And on that question, the polls are always open.

Photograph by Nathaniel Brooks and Monica Almeida for The New York Times. The first was taken at Saint John the Evangelist church in Barrytown, New York, and the second at the Belvedere Park Recreation Center in East Lost Angeles, California.

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