Most media outlets posted a ‘best of 2015’ photo selection that seemed very predictable–lots of people in distress, no one trying to make change or help others. Here’s my own take, based on the chapters in How To See The World. As with the book itself, it unfolds from single image analysis to comparative and activist…
I think he’ll be to Rome As is the osprey to the fish, who takes it By sovereignty of nature. Coriolanus, Act 4, Scene 5 I went running today (December 12, 2015) in New York in 65° climate-changed weather. An osprey flew out of a tree as I labored past, crossing a hundred yards with…
On August 28, 2015, a boat filled with Palestinian and Syrian refugees sank off the coast of Libya. As many as 150 were drowned. On August 29, Syrian artist Khaled Barakeh posted an album of seven photographs to Facebook, entitled Multicultural Graveyard. Six photographs showed drowned children and youths from the shipwreck, while one depicted…
Idly scrolling on Saturday morning, August 29, avoiding work, I come across them. Flinching, I share. Try to write a comment but nothing sounds right. Everyone says: ‘No. Words.’ Which does not mean that they have nothing to say, it’s just what you say online when things like this happen. Against that, the now-standard academic…
One year ago, on August 9 2014, then-police officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Wilson estimated during the grand jury hearings that the entire incident lasted “less than a minute” from start to finish. From that minute has grown a movement, reinforced on a seemingly daily basis by new violence….
I have a post up on The Conversation called How Ferguson and #BlackLivesMatter Taught Us Not To Look Away, which applies the ideas of How to See The World to the year of protest following the death of Michael Brown. Check it out by following the link.
I grew up in a London of brick houses and council estates, still pocked with bomb craters. It was anything but a utopia, don’t get me wrong, but there was always a sense of possibility. That city has been erased by the Great Gentrification, gleaming and greedy. Sublimely indifferent to history and those it excludes,…
A month ago today, Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby indicted six cops for various crimes connected with the killing of Freddie Gray, rejecting their excuse that he had a switchblade. The question remains: why did Freddie Gray die? Because he made eye contact with a police officer. If that seems absurd, it is because…
The world is changing. Can you see it yet? Since 2008, there has been a dramatic explosion of visual imagery. At the same time, the world has changed in four key ways–and that’s not counting the financial crisis. The two patterns are closely related. We take pictures to understand the change that has happened. And…