Saturday, July 26, 2008

Polaroids by Philip-Lorca diCorcia at LACMA

When Polaroid announced that it was getting out of the Polaroid business earlier this year, many photographers, including myself, felt a deep loss of a very unique medium whose practitioners included some of the most influential image makers of our time. Among them is Philip-Lorca diCorcia, an American art photographer who creates images that alternate between found moments and staged theater.

In the video below, diCorcia talks about his Polaroid photographs from his show titled, Thousand, on exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art until September 14th.


video used with permission

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Spam on Flickr

Chris Hedges on the dying newspaper industry

What do the tectonic shifts in newspaper journalism mean as publications struggle to make money amid economic downturns and loss of readers? Former New York Times correspondent and Harvard Divinity School graduate Chris Hedges thinks it is a collision of forces that will ultimately result in our decline much like ancient Rome. Here's an excerpt from his essay:

"The decline of newspapers is not about the replacement of the antiquated technology of news print with the lightning speed of the Internet. It does not signal an inevitable and salutary change. It is not a form of progress. The decline of newspapers is about the rise of the corporate state, the loss of civic and public responsibility on the part of much of our entrepreneurial class and the intellectual poverty of our post-literate world, a world where information is conveyed primarily through rapidly moving images rather than print."

Friday, July 04, 2008

Tampa Trib Re-organizes

The Tampa Tribune will merge its newsroom with WFLA amid a new round of layoff and re-focus toward the web, according the The Feed, a blog by Eric Deggans of the St. Petersburg Times.

The Trib layoffs made news headlines when newsroom intern Jessica DaSilva reported in her blog about a speech Tampa Tribune editor Janet Coats gave amid the most recent layoff announcement. In responding to questions from staff, Coats said the news industry is, "worth fighting for."

Jeff Jarvis has a perspective on the story at BuzzMachine.

The entire newspaper industry is trying to figure out how to re-shape itself amid a growing recession and rapidly declining readership. A number of people are writing about the industry. Here are some highlights:

- Nick Eaton, a sports multimedia producer at The Spokesman-Review, writes about a newsroom re-invention challenge.

- The blog PaperCuts is tracking layoff industry wide.

- Jay Rosen writes about the migration of the "Press Tribe" on his blog PressThink.

Pix Channel

PixChannel is a series of interviews with photographers such as Eddie Adams, Ruth Bernhard, Nick Ut, Arnold Newman and others that is run by photographer Randi Lynn Beach and graphic designer Doug Beach. The interviews are insightful, interesting and sometimes funny.

When asked what he thinks about while photographing, Magnum photographer Elliott Erwitt says, "lunch."