The World Full of Images

The 2014 Sony World Photography Awards Short list was recently announced. The unique vision of so many individual creative photographers rewards the viewer with an incredible window on our complex world.  According to the World Photography Organization, (WPO) the judges found within the submissions many stories that force the viewer to find something surprising within the everyday.  Winners of this year’s Awards will be revealed at the 2014 Sony World Photography Awards Gala Ceremony on 30 April in London. If you can’t afford the airfare to London, you can see some of the entries at the WPO website. Take a look and be inspired. You can view another gallery of the shortlist here thanks to the Washington Post.

Spitting in the Wind

Sometimes when teaching my class I have my doubts. Am I the only one that thinks this  material is important? I’ll mention books in class that none of my students have heard of, then the next day find them on a list of important books that the Library of Congress has put together. When I first asked my class about Twitter, no one had heard of it. Now Twitter has half a billion users, including many of the students I teach. For years I have been showing the films of George Melies in class, then Martin Scorsese creates the movie “Hugo” and wins five Oscars.  I’ve been showing the photographs of Lewis Hines in my class for several years now. I came across this item from CBS. It made my hair stand on end.

The Washington Post’s Carol Guzy won her fourth Pulitzer Prize. She is the first journalist to do so. Here is the link from The New York Times - BREAKING NEWS PHOTOGRAPHY: Carol Guzy, Nikki Kahn and Ricky Carioti of The Washington Post
"For their up-close portrait of grief and desperation after a catastrophic earthquake struck Haiti."
To see her photos click - Haiti's Profound Sorrow

Bob McMillan

RIP Kodakchrome. After 75 years, its goodbye analogue, and on to a brave new digital world. Kodak gave the last roll of Kodachrome it ever produced to Steve McCurry. You may know his work through his cover shot of an Afghan girl for National Geographic. You can see what he decided was worth shooting at his blog.

The End of an Era – 1935 to 2010 « Steve McCurry's Blog

The Great Depression Ends (75 years too late)

In class we looked at Depression era photographs by Dorthea Lange and Walker Evans. These photographs helped document the migration of farmers from Oklahoma to California in search of a better life. Now the trend is reversing on a somewhat smaller scale, as California migrants to Oklahoma increase. http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2010-10-12-oklahoma12_CV_N.htm Happy days are here again!

"Dog Bites Man" is News, Why Photography Matters

 Photographer Charles Moore passed away on March 11, 2010. He is noted for his photographic work documenting the Civil Rights Movement in the United States in the late 1950’s and 1960’s. Many readers may not recognize the name of Charles Moore, but his photographs found a nationwide audience in Life Magazine, and are credited in helping hasten the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It is hard to imagine now in our multichannel media wonderland what an impact an 11 page photo essay in Life Magazine could have in the United States. With circulation topping 13 million, it is estimated that half the adult population, including the political leaders of the country read Life Magazine. According to noted historian Arthur Schlesinger, “The photographs of Bull Connor's police dogs lunging at the marchers in Birmingham did as much as anything to transform the national mood and make legislation not just necessary, . . . but possible."


Charles Moore was born and raised in the south, and was a U.S. Marine Corps veteran. While photographing the Civil Rights Movement, he was both beaten and arrested by supporters of segregation. Moore’s photographic style included the use of wide angle lenses that required him to get closer to the action than many of the other photographers. According to a March 2005 interview in The Montgomery Advertiser, Moore recalled some of the events of the “Bloody Sunday” riots in Birmingham during 1965. After witnessing a policeman club a black woman with a wooden baton Moore recalled “that was a moment that really made me angry that someone would club a woman…made me angry that people could treat other people like that. It was emotional. I thought it was important to photograph those police with dogs attacking people.”

Many of the landmarks of the civil rights movement were covered by Moore while under contract to the Black Star Publishing, Inc. In 1989 Moore received the first Kodak Crystal Eagle Award For Impact In Photojournalism. From the arrest of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Alabama in 1958 and James Meredith’s admission to the University of Mississippi in 1962, to protests in Birmingham, Alabama and marches in Selma his photographic images form a road map of the Civil Rights Movement.