The Marks of Man

Eighth of May 2011

Does Her Face Foretell Her Fate? By WILLIAM MEYERS Nothing holds our attention like a human face. So necessary is it for us to "read" faces that our brains evolved two separate neural systems specialized to help—one to recognize whose face it is, and the other to interpret its expression. It is therefore not surprising that when Stephen Pinson, the New York Public Library's curator of photography, set about organizing "Recollection," an exhibition up through Jan. 2 celebrating the 30th anniversary of the library's photography collection, he picked 95 portraits. Among them is Walker Evans's "Lucille Burroughs, Daughter of a Cotton Sharecropper. Hale County, Alabama" (1936). NYPL Photography Collection Walker Evans was assigned to document the effects of the Depression down South when he captured this photograph.Lucille was 10 years old when Evans took her picture. He was down South because he was being...

Christchurch under the mist Having done all the allocated jobs for today, I slipped out for a walk in the Port Hills. The place was packed with walkers and cyclists. Haraki or Flax, and the Southern Alps. I stopped at Kennedy's Bush and watched the sun go down behind the Alps. I even felt a low rumble of an after shock, but by now I had already checked were the nearest bolder was and its chance of being dislodged. So I relaxed till the next one. The Canterbury Plains and the Alps I can't help, but be reminded of Dartmoor, where I grew up, when I walk in these hills. View to the Southern Alps

Waipawa hall At last I have started on post production of the new book, "Community halls in small town New Zealand". It was a lot work photographing all these halls with John O'Malley. We had to split New Zealand as the project was so big, I got the North Island and John got the south. A bit inconvieniant for me as we both live in the South Island. Papatawa hall We even found halls that weren't on the list, like Papatawa hall. This was a series of road trips that came to approximately 8000 kilometers of driving. The members of Pohangina hall New Zealand Halls are a defining part of our culture and still thrive despite the major changes that have happened to New Zealand in the last 60 years. Young and old still gather in these halls the meet have fun and keep the community going. Old and young in Pohangina hall

by Phil Coomes http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-13208423 John G Morris is a name that will probably mean little to most of you reading this, yet to news photographers and picture editors it's a name that most will recognise and hold in esteem. Morris' was the editor of photographer Robert Capa on D-Day and went on to help shape the look of the post-war picture magazine. He was also the first executive editor of Magnum Photos and worked at The Washington Post and The New York Times before moving to Paris in 1983 where he worked as correspondent and editor for National Geographic. Throughout his career he has built up a collection of original prints that are now being sold at auction on today, 30 April, in Paris . The pictures are both personal gifts from the artists as well as creative working prints from his visual diary. The prints being auctioned include pictures by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa...

Joan Fontcuberta http://www.lensculture.com/audio.html Discusses image-making, the role of photography, media, reality – and propaganda. Excerpt: I am a Spaniard. I was born in 1955, and this means that for the first 20 years of my life I was suffering under dictatorship in my country: lack of information, propaganda, censorship. So this probably created a sense of fighting against the rules – of distrusting the official media. To be skeptical regarding how the authority, the power, was distributing messages and information. I think that my work is a sort of rebellion against repression, against this lack of freedom, against this lack of democracy, against this authority. I’m anti-authoritarian in my work. I try with my work to discuss the concept of truth, the concept of credibility – which is inherent in photographic messages. The heart [of my work], the quintessential, remains the questioning of photographic truth. Be careful, be ...