Lorie Novak
ABOVE THE FOLD
16 years of NY Times Front Page Sections categorized by content of the photo above the fold. Arranged chronically and then photographed, images in stacks play as slideshows. Twelve categories playing here: Men with Guns, Dead Bodies, Memorials, 911, Grieving, Domestic Protest, International Protest, Celebrations, Weather, Rescue, Refugees and Immigrants, and Photos of Photos
Today I was looking through images that I had posted to this blog to add to Random Interference, and I came across the image above which I posted on February 29, 2012 . It was linked to an article in Buzzfeed, and that link is now dead. So I did some searching. A google ‘search by image’ came up with “best guess for this image: blue bra girl,” which I quickly realized refers to woman in the newspaper image who is being dragged. The image was taken December 17, 2011. US feminist me resents that this image and the women becomes know as the ‘blue bar girl’. I didn’t do follow up at the time so I did not realize until today the extent of the anger that the event (and image) caused. It became a symbol of outrage against abuse of power by the military. The following screen grab from my image searching sums it up.
Links to more information:
Egyptian women march against military rule – War in Context (with attention to the unseen)
The ‘Girl In The Blue Bra’ – NPR
‘Blue bra girl’ rallies Egypt’s women vs. oppression – CNN
The “Blue bra girl” comes back as a masked avenger – EastWestWestEast
It’s International Women’s Day – Will the Blue Bra Girl Be Forgotten? Between the Lines
Mass March by Cairo Women in Protest Over Abuse by Soldiers
From TIME Lightbox
Interesting story about this famous photograph and timely in that Tennessee is about to vote to reinstate the electric chair. Just voting on it is horrifying enough.
How the photo was taken: The New York Daily News knew that the prison was familiar with many journalists from their staff, so they hired someone from out of town, Tom Howard, a then-unknown local photographer from the Chicago Tribune. Knowing he would never be allowed in with a camera, Howard strapped a single-use camera to his right ankle and wired a trigger release up his pant leg. Remarkably, he was allowed in. From across the room, Howard pointed his toe at the chair and took but one photo as Snyder took her last breaths.
[Read more: The First Photograph of an Execution by Electric Chair – LightBox ]
… In my mind, this image is the one Andy Warhol used for his Electric Chair series, but no.
re-blogging this from the Lens Blog. Want to remember the post and her.
Parting Glance: Anja Niedringhaus
Anja Niedringhaus, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer for The Associated Press, was killed in Eastern Afghanistan today when an Afghan policeman approached her vehicle at a security checkpoint and opened fire with a Kalashnikov assault rifle. The German native was 48 years old.
> also article @ British Journal of Photography
> and collection of images @ The Atlantic
TIME and the TIMES
I was brought to Time’s Light Box by a post on Facebook about this piece: Witness to a Syrian Execution: “I Saw a Scene of Utter Cruelty”. An unnamed (for his safety) photojournalist documented public beheadings in Syria. The first photo is the ‘before’ moment. I have not hit the play button to see the rest. Reading the title and seeing the first image is enough and then reading the article and words by the photographer is more than enough. Why would someone want or need to look at more? Why is there a need to publish all of this?
“Because of the danger in reporting inside Syria, it was not possible to confirm the identity or political affiliation of the victim. Nor are we certain about the motivation of his killers. One eyewitness who lives in the area and was contacted by TIME a week after the beheadings said that the executioners were from ISIS, an Al-Qaeda franchise operating in Syria and Iraq.” Like the NY Times front page of the mass executions by rebels, here again horrific images are published without specific knowledge. The Times finds out its front page image is over a year old and the correction is buried, not front page news. I feel manipulated. I am troubled by this trend by the big NEWS organizations of getting the “shots”, being the first, etc. This has always been the case with photojournalism but the landscape is different now with social media and everything being filmed or photographed and then being circulated without the facts or without verifiable facts.
Looking at the NY Times image again, I see that we cannot identify those being shot (thankfully) but we can clearly see the shooters. Has this image been their death sentence? Because I haven’t looked at the rest of the Time images, I don’t know whether or not, we can see the faces of the executioners.
Barbie Zelizer writes about ‘About to Die’ Images. From an interview in Slate: “We’re squeamish because news pictures of the dead and dying are of real people and real events. If a news image works, it penetrates, lingers, forces our attention to the events involving death that it depicts. If a news image works, it doesn’t disappear when we cast aside the newspaper, dim the TV or turn off the Internet. That may be more intrusion than most people are willing to allow.”
These images from Syria haunt me. But are they really news images? What is the news? The rebels are bad too? Many Syrians are barbaric? That the war is horrific? Many questions, no easy answers.
———
@ nytimes.com
I also have been following Watching Syria’s War at the Times but interestingly, I had trouble finding this section – no link from the Crisis in Syria section. If that front page photo of the mass execution had been in these sections, the politics would have been much different since it would be in the context of the difficulty of reporting in Syria and not being able to always know what is going on.
insightful piece from Bag News. As the author notes, it stopped me in my tracks. I was disturbed not just by the content but by the apparent political nature of the Times publishing it and its questionable origin.
Will this Random, Dated Snuff Video Prevent the Attack on Syria? — BagNews.
…[the photo] was from a post at GlobalResearch.com, originally posted at SyrianNews.cc, titled “Will this Photo prevent the Attack on Syria?” If sympathetic to the Syrian government, the post posits the question whether (this) one image could actually prevent the United States from going to war. Citing how of the iconic Eddie Adam photo of a suspected member of the Vietcong being shot in the head crystallized domestic anti-war sentiment, the author applies the same question to the image splashed across five columns of The New York Times… more
And the NY Times correction: An article on Thursday about the brutal and ruthless tactics adopted by some rebel groups in Syria misstated the date of a video that showed a band of rebels executing seven captured Syrian soldiers. The video, which was smuggled out of Syria by a former rebel, was made in the spring of 2012, not April 2013. (link)
Powerful story and images – posting so I remember it.
Ron Haviv’s Bosnian War Images As Evidence in War Trials – NYTimes.com.
“The photographs really didn’t have any of the effect that I had hoped they would,” said Mr. Haviv, who was put on a death list by Arkan. “I was hoping to prevent the war. And of course, there was no reaction. The war started, 100,000 to 200,000 people were killed on all sides and several million more became refugees – which led to the war in Kosovo.”
While the images did not stop the Bosnian ethnic cleansing, his photos have had another life: as evidence used by investigators and prosecutors
I just finished posting to my Community Collaborations blog about this fantastic piece in the Lens Blog: Gordon Parks’s Harlem Family Revisited by John Edwin Mason and Jesse Newman.
The photo essay appeared in the March 8, 1968 issue of LIFE which is online in its entirety via Google books. In reading the lens blog article and viewing the slide show I did not have a memory of seeing this essay even though I was reading LIFE magazine religiously at that time. Seeing it now, I think how could my family not have talked about this? As has happened many times before, I am struck at how sheltered I was growing up. But then I looked at the essay in the LIFE issue online and seeing it as I saw it in 1968, I remembered it! Black inner city poverty (and so much else) was so foreign to my world in suburban LA that LIFE was how I learned about the world beyond me. And I learned it through pictures. I cannot help but think that my weekly journeys with LIFE led to many of the life choices I made.
Interesting articles about the 2013 World Press Photo Contest winners – very similar to questions I had upon seeing the winning image above.
Photojournalism And Post-Processing: Should Contest Images Be The Actual Published Picture? | NPPA.
DURHAM, NC February 20, 2013 – In the days following the announcement of the World Press Photo of the Year theres been quite a discussion going on in cyberspace about post-processing of news images, and how far is too far given the ethics of reportage and todays digital photography.
Another article on Peta Pixel:Why Do Photo Contest Winners Look Like Movie Posters?
Took a screen grap of the side by side comparison in case it gets taken down
The Story Behind the Iconic Photograph from the Sandy Hook Tragedy
Interesting and touching account from the photograph. Don’t know why it struck me as I read this, who brilliantly decided to call flash cards for cameras – “memory cards?” Flash memory dates back to mid 1980s but can’t find citation for who came up with name.