“I photograph what I do not wish to paint and I paint what I cannot photograph.”
Man Ray
Photography and Man Ray
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Tag Archives: photography
First Photos of the Demilitarised Zone in North Korea
If pictures from North Korea could not have been uploaded in real time to internet, as argued in my previous post, images featuring the Demilitarised Zone into the border city of Kaesong could not been taken at all for a very long while. Mobile phones, long camera lenses and, generally, shooting photos without permission was forbidden in the area. At departure, officials hold the right to check the visitors’ photos and delete the objectionable ones.
The long-standing rule is now history. Here are some of the very first photos of the Demilitarised Zone courtesy of Damien Spry, Australian academic and media consultant, along with his testimonial:
An amazing visit to the demilitarized zone dividing the Koreas. The UN doing an important and difficult job. The UN personnel were very welcoming and impressive.The first is at the customs point for entry into North Korea. (There is a shared industrial complex just over the border so goods are transported across.) It’s a list of what you can take (travel docs) and what you can’t (just about everything else).Next is a signpost marking the armistice line. It’s been there 60 years.Next is a conference room where meetings between north and south happen. I’m standing in North Korea; so is that highly trained, completely immobile soldier. The door to his right is locked. The other side of it are the North Korean army.
Next is the actual bridge of no return.
The last picture is me in front of the blue conference rooms. Behind them, the big building is the North Korean complex. We are standing in front of Freedom House, built for family reunions between those separated by the war and sadly used only once.
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Ontario Birds in Winter
Photo by Tony Fischer Photography
No free use of Twitter photos!
Remember our little talk on media using Instagram content without any proper credits? All safely stored here.
Good news! A judge ruled that news agencies cannot freely use, publish or distribute Twitter photos without the specific permission of the photographers who took them. (I know! It;s not Instagram, but one step at a time!)
This is the latest development of a 2010 case when mass media (from Agence France Press to the Washington Post) published the image of a woman trapped beneath rubble after an earthquake in Tahiti, captured by photographer Daniel Morel.
Not only that did not have Morel’s permission to do that (and they didn’t pay him a ha’ penny, as a matter of fact), but once he sent out cease and desist letters, the AFP argued that there was no copyright infringement and launched a lawsuit against him for “antagonistic assertion of rights.” That’s a little bit too much, AFP!
Enough with all of that! District Judge Alison Nathan of Manhattan has issued a ruling that the use of Twitter photos without permission constitutes copyright infringement, and the case will go in court!
Eyes wide open on that! It is a firs, it will set up a precendent and it will have major implications for photographers worldwide!
Australian Photography Competions
Each month, Australian Photography is featuring a competion. As themes vary significantly – from ‘weather’ and ‘street’ to ‘decay’, just to name only a few – it will be practically impossibile not to find something on your fancy. All you need is an Aussie post address and the willingness to be judged by your fellows!
The photo challenge of this month is the colour ‘blue’, but hurry up, cause today it’s the last day. I’ve just jumped in with two entries – looking forward to some useful critiques!
Portrait of a Lady
Australia Day 2013 Fireworks Photography
Oz media photographers didn’t quite keep their lenses wide shut for Australia Day fireworks, but there are out there some amazing photographers who never take a break. Among them:
‘Burning Man’
Waiting for the fireworks, Fremantle, Perth, WA
Photo by Padmacara
Melbourne, VIC
Photo by catch_simon
Sydney, Darling Harbour
Photo by tco1961
Sydney, Darling Harbour
Photo by Greg J Farmer
Perth, WA
Photo by Ph!ltographer
Perth, WA
Photo by PhotoRetrospective
“Conversations with Kafka” (fragment)
“In the spring of 1921, two automatic photographic machines, recently invented abroad, were installed in Prague, which reproduced six or ten or more exposures of the same person on a single print.
When I took such a series of photographs to Kafka I said light-heartedly: “For a couple of krone one can have oneself photographed from every angle. The apparatus is a mechanical Know-Thyself.”
“You mean to say, the Mistake-Thyself,” said Kafka, with a faint smile.
I protested: “What do you mean? The camera cannot lie!”
“Who told you that?” Kafka leaned his head toward his shoulder. “Photography concentrates one’s eye on the superficial. For that reason it obscures the hidden life which glimmers through the outlines of things like a play of light and shade. One can’t catch that even with the sharpest lens. One has to grope for it by feeling… This automatic camera doesn’t multiply men’s eye but only gives a fantastically simplified fly eye’s view.”
Gustave Janouch, “Conversations with Kafka”
Jill Peters and the last sworn virgins of Albania
The saga of burrnesha or virgjinesha (Albanian sworn virgin) was so captivating for photographer Jill Peters that he travelled to the mountain villages of northern Albania to document it. He immortalised it in a series of incredible portraits that stand out as extrordinary anthropological, historical and philosophical testimonials.
About 6th centuries old, the tradition of burrnesha is now fading away, with very few new virgins sworn in and much less authentic stories.
Taking an irrevocable oath in front of twelve elders to remain forever virgins, women could become men, live as men, and be treated as men. In the northern parts of Albania and Kosovo, dominated by the patrilineal and patrilocal Kanun law from the 15th century to the 20th century, becoming a man was a woman’s unique chance of being treated as a human being, and not as property, and be given all the ensuing rights.
Sworn virgins could dress as men, take men’s names, carry a gun, wear a watch, smoke, drink, do male work, vote in elections, buy land, be the head of a household, inherit her family’s wealth, sign with men, talk with men.
Their deaths were counted as full lives in blood feuds, not as half-ones, as the deaths of the other females.
It was a choice of the proud ones, or an advice coming from the mothers. It was their ticket to liberty, and it is the liberty that counts for the strenght, the serenity and the happiness of these women. The assumed destiny. The ultimate identity. And Peters’ portraits capture nothing less than this:
Hajdar by Jill Peters
Marksta App – it watermarks your iPhone photos
You don’t want your Instagram pics flying around on the internet, and get shared on social networks without any credits? Watermark them!
Get Marksta App, developed by photographer John D. McHugh, especially for fellow photographers using iPhone cameras, interested in protecting the commercial value of their work, but also their moral rights.
Marksta gets quite creative, allowing users to choose from a variety of borders, fonts, sizes and colours.
More on Marksta in the British Journal of Photography.
5 years of Flickr Commons
In 5 years, Flickr Commons grew from 1500 pics to more than 250.000. Celebrating the event on 16 January, Flickr Commons launched four galleries of favourites proposed by Commons member institutions, all curated by the Library of Congress, their initial partner in this endeavour: First Gallery, Second Gallery, Third Gallery and Fourth Gallery.
More beautiful pics and passionate discusions at the Flickr Commons Group.
One of my big, big fav is “A possum and a movie camera 1943” by the Australian War Memorial Collection, featured in the Second Gallery:
photolicioux 