http://davidfriend.net/ en Copyright 2010 Sat, 06 Mar 2010 09:09:43 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss be held under the auspices of military tribunals, not in criminal court. This is precisely the avenue that many people advocated – including yours truly -- when Attorney General Eric Holder, last November, laid out the administration’s original plan to hold criminal trials in Manhattan. Here was my take on November 21 of last year (“Guantanamo on the Hudson”), when the initial, ill-conceived announcement was made: “Some of the Guantanamo internees will be coming to New York for trial, chief among them, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. While many have lambasted the decision to allow the perpetrators back into this city - let alone a courthouse or prison a stone’s throw from Ground Zero - what I find most perplexing is the fallacy that justice will be served here. “How is it possible to convene a judicial proceeding in these circumstances and in this venue? How on earth can KSM and his compatriots get what would be considered ‘a fair trial’ within the jurisdiction of Manhattan? And where, in America, would they ever find a ‘jury of their peers’? While I found Guantanamo to be a pure travesty, one that ran counter to every notion of civil behavior in a time of war, I find the current scenario to be an invitation for a kangaroo court. “We are in a time of war. These are combatants, some of whom have already admitted war crimes. If there is a trial, the trial should be held before a military tribunal.” LITERARY ALERT. The latest Vanity Fair book comes out next week. It’s called The Great Hangover: 21 Tales of the New Recession, from the Pages of Vanity Fair. Now available at better bookstores everywhere. YENTABYTES AND SHIKSABYTES. For comic relief, check out my blog post from yesterday on VanityFair.com. AFGHAN E-MAIL. This e-mail comes from photographer Ed Grazda, who has been to Afghanistan 20 times as a working journalist and cultural observer: "i was just rereading [Jack Kerouac's] On the Road and came across this passage: 'When daybreak came we were zooming through New Jersey with the great cloud of Metropolitan New York rising before us in the snowy distance. Dean had a sweater around his ears to keep warm. He said we were a band of Arabs coming in to blow up New York......' "]]> http://davidfriend.net/2010/03/it_appears_that_the_trials.php http://davidfriend.net/2010/03/it_appears_that_the_trials.php Sat, 06 Mar 2010 09:09:43 -0500 Vanity Fair’s Presidential Profiles. Illustration by Mark Summers ]]> http://davidfriend.net/2010/02/presidential_profiles.php http://davidfriend.net/2010/02/presidential_profiles.php Sun, 14 Feb 2010 11:23:11 -0500 World Press Photo contest were announced in Amsterdam, with a wise, artful choice selected as World Press Photo of the Year: Italian photographer Pietro Masturzo’s image of an Iranian woman shouting from her apartment building rooftop in Tehran during last year’s pivotal anti-government protests. Pietro Masturzo/World Press Photo It was a pleasant surprise to see the number of Italian photographers who were honored this year (less remarkable: the overwhelming number of Dutch winners, given that the prize is judged and awarded in Holland). With increasing frequency, the contest judges appear to be migrating toward the more muted and at times pastel palette--some images even seem to have been taken under moonlight’s spell—a palette favored by photographers using medium-format digital cameras and often hailing from from places like Scandinavia, Holland, and Italy. Many of the images have something of a Vermeer-like veneer: a result of the overpowering resolution and texture allowed by new digital cameras, an example of the barriers that continue to fall between photojournalism and fine-art photography, and a reflection of the northern climes that have nurtured many of the image-makers. This painterly translucence is a quality discussed at length, it so happens, in Peggy Samuels’s remarkable and sublime new book, Deep Skin: Elizabeth Bishop and Visual Art (Cornell University Press), in which Samuels explores the influence of painters like Vermeer and Bishop's modernist contemporaries (such as Paul Klee and Alexander Calder) on Bishop’s poetry. Samuels, a renowned Milton scholar with a fondness for 17th century British literature and contemporary American poetry, might as well be describing many of this year’s World Press Photo winners when she describes Paul Claudel’s influential 1935 essay on the work of Vermeer and his peers: “For Claudel, the Dutch landscape itself, with its many bodies of water and its clarity and stillness, lent itself to an unusual and eerie thinness of boundary between reality and the reality reflected in mirrored, slivery surfaces. . . . According to Claudel, in Vermeer’s painting the eeriness or mysteriousness comes from the way that the watery, reflective environment, when precisely and realistically rendered, becomes the wavery, unstable, silvery, nacreous, and therefore mysterious or 'supernatural' surface in Vermeer’s painting. It is the place where solidity and uncertainty, reality and reflection, interpenetrate.” Oddly enough, as photographers embrace the digital medium, bringing about the demise of the Silver Era in photography, their images seem to be all the more silvery and reflective, both literally and metaphorically. OTHER PHOTO NEWS WORTH NOTING … In the Times, Ellen Barry describes how prosecutors in Uzbekistan recently accused photogorapher Umida Akhmedova of slandering the Uzbeck people merely by producing images that showed “people with sour expressions or bowed heads, children in ragged clothing, old people begging for change.” Though Akhmedova avoided a three-year prison term when a judge gave her an eleventh-hour amnesty, she told the Times, “I can’t say my anxiety has subsided. I can’t say I’m suddenly O.K. . . . To tell you the truth, I feel insulted, that’s the main thing.” The Times also reported that many of the key works in the seminal photo collection of Edwin Land, the inventor of Polaroid film, are being put up for auction. In “Nude Awakening: The Dangerous Naked Machines,” The New Republic’s Jeffrey Rosen writes thoughtfully about civil liberty implications of new airport-security body-scanning devices. …And on VanityFair.com, I write about an exhibition of Herman Leonard’s incomparable jazz photographs at Manhattan's Jazz at Lincoln Center, which has now been extended through March. ]]> http://davidfriend.net/2010/02/eerily_vermeerian.php http://davidfriend.net/2010/02/eerily_vermeerian.php Sat, 13 Feb 2010 11:34:59 -0500 new aerial photographs of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, taken by NYPD Detective Greg Semendinger while perched in a would-be rescue helicopter that day. Det. Greg Semendinger/NYC Police Aviation Unit The images are chilling in their vivid, step-by-step detail, and in the eerily omniscient birds’-eye perspective from which they capture the enormity of the footprint of death and devastation. Yet they are not, in and of themselves, unique. The NYPD actually put out a book in 2002 called Above Hallowed Ground: A Photographic Record of September 11, 2001, with images by various police photographers, including Semendinger and Detective David Fitzpatrick, whose ordeal on that harrowing day is recounted on pages 51-52 of Watching the World Change. The significant point, however, is that we must continue to see these images, afresh and repeatedly - because our memories fade, our resolve wavers, our priorities shift. We forget just how abhorrent and monstrous these acts were. We forget how many lives were taken in the course of two ungodly hours. Moreover, there are so many young people who have come of age since 9/11 who have no literal sense of what the attacks looked like and how the assault and its aftermath tangibly relate to their lives in 2010. It is for the teens and 20-somethings, most of all, that we need to show these scenes yet again.]]> http://davidfriend.net/2010/02/new_photos_of_horror.php http://davidfriend.net/2010/02/new_photos_of_horror.php Fri, 12 Feb 2010 14:23:50 -0500 become his mediated persona. No longer able to appear in public, uncomfortable with video footage (which is typically filled with visual details that might divulge his whereabouts), he has now resorted to existing as a disembodied voice on occasionally dispensed audiotape. He is bin Laden as Golem, as spectral presence, as Voice From on High (or Low). Now comes a new recording, confirmed by intelligence analysts, warning of an imminent attack. Bin Laden's wording, as explained in this wire-service story by Agence France Press, echoes the religious phrases he has used in previous threatening messages that presaged attacks. Osama bin Laden, a man long thought to have spent his days in a cave, continues to have a sophisticated grasp of new media - and of 21st century scare tactics.]]> http://davidfriend.net/2010/01/the_disembodied_one.php http://davidfriend.net/2010/01/the_disembodied_one.php Mon, 25 Jan 2010 17:23:40 -0500 a piece in the Times this week, has been countering America’s “hearts-and-minds” campaign in Afghanistan and the Pakistan tribal areas by softening its hardline stance and reaching out in a comparatively more humane fashion. Call it a kindler, gentler Taliban. (This comes the same week that a senior Hamas official was said to have been seriously considering the recognition of the state of Israel and the abandonment of its charter, calling for Israel’s destruction. The report, from the Jerusalem Post, seems to have been, as Mark Twain might have called it, greatly exaggerated.) What, exactly, would a kinder, gentler Taliban be? Allowing still photography but not videography? Lopping off only one hand for armed robbery, instead of two? Lopping off only the top half of the ancient Bamiyan Buddhas?]]> http://davidfriend.net/2010/01/a_kinder_gentler_taliban.php http://davidfriend.net/2010/01/a_kinder_gentler_taliban.php Sat, 23 Jan 2010 11:44:21 -0500 On the eve of Apple’s January 27 press conference – at which the company will roll out its long-awaited e-reading device – a reliable Silicon Valley source has leaked a pilfered list of ad campaigns that Apple executives have soundly rejected over the past year. The document, excerpted below, details names and slogans that never quite made the grade. Apple Tablet. (Take Two…and Call Tech-Support in the Morning.) Apple Tableau. (The Apple Tablet, Turned Horizontally.) Apple Shaft. (You Read It, We Profit.) Apple Monolith. (Thus Sprach Steve.) Apple Trapezoid. (Makes All the Others Look Square.) Apple Slab. (Reading -- As American as Apple Pie.) Apple Slate. (Fred Flintstone’s Boss Swears By It.) Apple Sliver. (Your Slice of Wisdom.) Apple Headstone. (Read In Peace.) Apple Plaque. (Read, Brush, Rinse.) Apple Pane. (We Don’t Do Windows.) Apple Hype. (Transfixing Tech and Media Writers Since 1976.)]]> http://davidfriend.net/2010/01/apple_tablet_rejected_ads.php http://davidfriend.net/2010/01/apple_tablet_rejected_ads.php Sat, 23 Jan 2010 11:41:20 -0500 It was distressing, to say the least, to read yesterday's comments from Thomas Kean, co-chair of the original 9/11 Commission, as he criticized the jury-rigged system that he had helped to create. “It’s totally frustrating,” Kean told the Times.> “It’s almost like the words being used [now] to describe what went wrong are exactly the same [as were used in 2001].” What I found most unconscionable, as did Kean, was the fact that months ago the well-respected Nigerian financier-father of the bomber had warned American diplomats that his extremist son had gone off the rails and had become a serious threat to U.S. national security. Said Kean: “Think of what it took for the father, one of the most respected bankers in Nigeria, to walk into the American Embassy and turn in his own son. The father’s a hero. His visit by itself should have been enough to set off all kinds of alarms.” The answer is not new commissions and showcase firings. The answer is to give meaningful incentives to bureaucrats (and to their bosses and their overseers in the executive and legislative branches) to increase the probability that they actually communicate with one another. It's sad to say, but even in a time of war, petty bureaucrats only seem to operate in their own self-interest.]]> http://davidfriend.net/2010/01/undiebomber_fallout.php http://davidfriend.net/2010/01/undiebomber_fallout.php Fri, 01 Jan 2010 16:08:31 -0500 The Digital Journalist, is in need of operating funds. For the first time, they are soliciting donations. I encourage loyalists to consider lending a hand to the site, where I have been a contributor for years. Here is a message from TDJ's founding editor Dirck Halstead, with instructions for pledges: "The Digital Journalist has been online producing our monthly magazine, about visual journalism, for 12 years. During that time we have presented the memorable work of some of the greatest photojournalists in the world, while offering opportunities for publication to many new photographers. Our columns and reviews have taken a 360-degree look at the industry, and predicted much of the upheaval that has taken place as the media around us have been buffeted by the shifting winds of technology, and now, a crippling economic downturn. "So we are asking you, our loyal readers, numbering more than 10,000, to help us raise these funds. Effective immediately, we have set up a PayPal link on The Digital Journalist and urgently ask for your pledges so that we can continue the work which will help us all. We have never solicited paid subscriptions, but these dire times call for dire measures." Here's to a brighter New Year...]]> http://davidfriend.net/2009/12/a_plea_from_the_digital_journa.php http://davidfriend.net/2009/12/a_plea_from_the_digital_journa.php Thu, 31 Dec 2009 14:39:55 -0500 Publishers Weekly, was given her own children-and-young adult imprint at Penguin-Putnam, Nancy Paulsen Books. NANCY PAULSEN, THE NEW HEAD OF NANCY PAULSEN BOOKS Also...a fond farewell to Milorad Pavic, the boundary-breaking Serbian novelist (author of the enchantingly mystifying Dictionary of the Kazhars), who passed away this week at age 80. And one final tip for last-minute holiday shoppers. This season's ideal gift book, recently published by Rodale, is a volume I worked on this past year with Vanity Fair's Graydon Carter and Robert Risko, along with esteemed colleagues David Harris, Martha Hurley, Feifei Sun, and Jon Kelly: Vanity Fair's Proust Questionnaire. ]]> http://davidfriend.net/2009/12/seasons_greetings.php http://davidfriend.net/2009/12/seasons_greetings.php Sun, 20 Dec 2009 10:31:35 -0500 Watching the World Change on his blog, which has been picked up on several other blogs. Durrer writes: "This is absolutely singular journalism (well-told, detailed, and with a keen sense for narrative flow). . . . [a] great book....He is a good writer, a tireless journalist, and, very probably, a workaholic - the research alone that went into this book is immense and impressive.” By all means, check out the full posting, HERE. And this, from Louis Masur, the renowned historian and scholar of photography, American history, baseball, and Bruce Springsteen (no joke!), who is teaching Watching the World Change this semester at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut: “I taught your book last night and it was the best discussion yet. A student started by asking if it was too soon for us to be 'studying' the images of 9/11. This led us on a path to discuss the role of photographs in our lives, how the images of 9/11 provided not only 'evidence' but also for some solace, how it is that we can look without feeling voyeuristic or complicit, which led us to making connections to a book about lynching photographs that we read earlier this semester. “A lot of time was spent on the photo of Mike Kehoe, and on 'Falling Man,' and the controversy over the publication of Hoepker’s photograph. And also on how we think in terms of photographs (that amazing comment by [Tom] Brokaw about Sebastio Salgado), about just what a digital revolution means, and about the outrage of workers on the site about you and Harry Benson being there taking photos. “We move next week to Art Spiegelman's In the Presence of No Towers and then we end with Phil Gourevitch's Standard Operating Procedure and Errol Morris’ film. It’s been a great semester and, on behalf of our seminar, thank you again for writing such a passionate, engaging, caring, eye-opening book.”]]> http://davidfriend.net/2009/11/praise_from_brazil_and_hartfor.php http://davidfriend.net/2009/11/praise_from_brazil_and_hartfor.php Sat, 21 Nov 2009 20:26:12 -0500 photo essay by Ian Fischer of the Denver Post. Now here’s a promising exploitation of the interactive potential of the medium, elegantly designed.]]> http://davidfriend.net/2009/11/one_soldiers_story.php http://davidfriend.net/2009/11/one_soldiers_story.php Sat, 21 Nov 2009 20:07:34 -0500 Some of the Guantanamo internees will be coming to New York for trial, chief among them, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. While many have lambasted the decision to allow the perpetrators back into this city - let alone a courthouse or prison a stone’s throw from Ground Zero - what I find most perplexing is the fallacy that justice will be served here. How is it possible to convene a judicial proceeding in these circumstances and in this venue? How on earth can KSM and his compatriots get what would be considered “a fair trial” within the jurisdiction of Manhattan? And where, in America, would they ever find a “jury of their peers”? While I found Guantanamo to be a pure travesty, one that ran counter to every notion of civil behavior in a time of war, I find the current scenario to be an invitation for a kangaroo court. We are in a time of war. These are combatants, some of whom have already admitted war crimes. If there is a trial, the trial should be held before a military tribunal. http://davidfriend.net/2009/11/guatanamo_on_the_hudson.php http://davidfriend.net/2009/11/guatanamo_on_the_hudson.php Sat, 21 Nov 2009 19:47:58 -0500 DOWD ON DOVER. Maureen Dowd offers a keen observation in today’s Times. She points out that some Republicans have criticized Barack Obama for allowing photographers to catch him during a somber visit to Dover Air Force Base, where he met the arriving coffins of 18 American soldiers recently killed in battle; Dowd notes that the ever present Liz Cheney even went so far as to say, on Fox News radio, “I think that what President Bush used to do is do it without the cameras.” Uh, not so fast. As Dowd remarks (and as I mention in Watching the World Change), Bush never once attended a funeral for an Afghan or Iraq War G.I., never once visited Dover – and, during his tenure, forbid all press photography of arriving coffins. In Dowd’s view, Bush, through the photo-ban, was “trying to airbrush the evidence that the wars he started were not the cakewalks he had promised.” GAINES AGAINST THE GRAIN. And check out this blogpost by Jim Gaines, the only man to edit People, Life, and Time (now engaged as editor-in-chief at the visually daring online magazine, Flyp). He argues that photojournalism didn’t necessarily go the way of its compatriots roll film and silver halide. Instead, he finds a surprising silver lining for photojournalists amid the thunderheads of the digital revolution. ]]> http://davidfriend.net/2009/11/the_right_clips_of_dover.php http://davidfriend.net/2009/11/the_right_clips_of_dover.php Sun, 01 Nov 2009 20:12:32 -0500 EU-GENE! The 2009 W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography was given out on Wednesday to Chinese photographer Lu Guang. The multi-media feature on the increasingly captivating “Lens” section on the website of The New York Times certainly merits a long browse. (c) Lu Guang c/o W. Eugene Smith Grant 2009 IR-VING! The giants continue to fall. Longtime picture editor and aesthete Greg Pond, on the Society of Publication Design’s website, has written a charming homage to the recently departed Irving Penn. “Mister Penn,” he observers. “You never heard anyone ever say 'Irving.' Names such as: Dick, Annie, Herb, Mario, Steven, Mary-Ellen, Bruce, and Helmut bounce off the walls at Condé Nast. But everyone called him Mister Penn.” …And in other news, just when you thought it couldn’t get any stranger, the artist/fair-use-advocate/pilferer Shepard Fairey admits that he lied about which photograph he plagiarized when creating his Obama HOPE poster. Fairey tales can come true... It could happen to you... ]]> http://davidfriend.net/2009/10/lu_gene_and_irving.php http://davidfriend.net/2009/10/lu_gene_and_irving.php Sat, 17 Oct 2009 19:30:15 -0500