Looking through Old Files

Looking and re-thinking… searching for something else and found these photos. A few years ago I bought a digital projector and returned to my old method of working by projecting images – using the newspapers and their reference to history as a backdrop. Images interest me now that didn’t then….

©Lorie Novak - challenged

.©Lorie Novak - Long March

In my studio

Loire Novak : installation mock up in my studio

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

8 Days a Week

8days-LorieNovak
Sunday February 9 – Saturday February 15, 2014 – taking stock.

Saturday Feb 15, 2014

Some days I look at the front page of the NY Times, and I am struck by the pattern of the front page images. Today above the fold is a generic ice skater from the Winter Olympics and below the fold is a powerful image from Syria that has stayed in my mind since I saw it online yesterday.

Sunday, the Times celebrated the opening of the Olympics above the fold and the 50th anniversary of the Beatles on Ed Sullivan below.

Thursday and Friday weather moved the Olympics below the fold!

Shirley Temple and Sid Casear died this week and their former star selves smile at us from below the fold.

Only Monday did a hard news photo make it above the fold with an image from the escalating situation in Syria.

Monday above the fold

Sometimes you can learn a lot by just counting.

Sorting – Categorizing

In my studio

Beginning to make sense of the front page news photos. Almost 15 years in my studio.

Categorizing the front-page image above the fold:

Memorials, Celebrations, War, Aftermath, Crime, Daily Life, Holding/Taking Photos, Science, Grieving Women, Grieving Men, Men with Guns, Sports, Politicians, Protest, Weather, Natural Disaster, Man Made Disaster – categories keep presenting themselves.

Atrocity Images [Syria]

TIME and the TIMES

Time Inc Light Box

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.

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@ nytimes.com

Crisis in Syria 

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.

The Web in 1996

Marianne and I are writing about Collected Visions for Photoworks journal. To get my mind moving to answer her questions. I started researching what the web looked like in 1996 when Collected Visions launched.

GENERAL REFERENCES
Internet Society > Brief History of the Internet

Wikipedia > History of the Internet 

The Internet was commercialized in 1995 when NSFNET was decommissioned, removing the last restrictions on the use of the Internet to carry commercial traffic.

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Slate Magazine – Jurassic Web, Feb 2009

Media Bistro How Does the Internet of 1996 Compare to 2011? [INFOGRAPHIC]

From ekarj.com (?)  Written 7-10-06

The World Wide Web: Past, Present and Future by Tim Berners-Lee (written in 1996)

Voyager Co. that was the major player in the production of interactive CD-Roms disbanded in 1997! Case study

going back a step>

What the Internet looked like in 1995 Washington Post (with video form PBS Computer Chronicles

Smithsonian Blog from December 12,2012:Fun Places on the Internet (in 1995)