His photographs are brought to life with great hip-hop. And it really is him according to our The Photography Post friends, who have an important run-down about this band and the collaboration. Must see, so cool.

Very cool.

Auto-Tune the News #2: pirates. drugs. gay marriage.

Auto-Tune the News #3 has just been released. While it’s not as good as #1 or #2 (above), it’s still worth a laugh. Best if you have an understanding, if not an appreciation, of the tropes of both contemporary pop music (especially Kanye West) and American television news and politics.

(I originally intended a mention of this to be part of a piece stewing on Creative Commons. “Auto-Tune the News” is the sort of creative reinterpretation that makes me understand and support the philosophy behind the Creative Commons movement. However, I don’t think CC will ever work for photography. It’s hard to imagine what a remixed photograph looks like…. That’ll have to wait a bit.)

I’m sure many people are already aware of the Very Short List website / service, though I was only introduced last week by a friend. (About VSL). There have been a couple of cool things that have come across but today there were two links that seemed worthy of seconding here.

First, the Free Music Archive.

Back when he was a crusading attorney general, Eliot Spitzer won a settlement against record companies and radio stations involved in pay-for-play arrangements. Fittingly enough, that money was used to set up the Free Music Archive.

Best is that all the files are licensed under Creative Commons which seems to me like it would be ripe for use in photo slideshows/podcasts/etc. So this seems like it will be a good resource for those of you doing this kind of work. Best, though, is that it is curated by the likes of Seattle’s legendary public radio station KEXP.

Second is a link to the trailer for a new documentary called Burma VJ: Reporting from a closed country.

Two and a half years ago, three Burmese journalists risked their lives to document the massive demonstrations breaking out against military misrule in their country. Anders Østergaard’s new documentary, Burma VJ (in limited release May 20), uses the raw video they shot to maximum effect.

The subject line of that email was “Meet the world’s bravest journalists”, and I don’t think it is a stretch to say this. I’ll be very interested in seeing the completed film. Amongst much powerful and eye opening video, there is even a segment of the shooting death of Japanese journalist Kenji Nagai which I hadn’t seen previously. Judging from the trailer*, this will be a very powerful film that respectfully and appropriately approaches the troublesome divide of ‘a story about journalists’ versus the story the journalists are trying (very hard) to disseminate.

*I reserve the right to change this opinion with the full film, of course. This trailer though stands in contrast to a couple of other trailers I’ve seen recently from relatively similar documentaries that, as I’ll mention again in an upcoming post, do not always follow this respectful tone toward the people in “the story” (that is, not the journalists but their ’subjects’).

Print media may be dying a slow death, but I’ve never known a time when magazines and newspapers ran huge edits of photography across multiple pages. Sure I’ve seen the odd spread or two, but those are outliers. My exposure to photography outside of the internet has generally been limited to edits of less than 5 images.

It’s hard to realize, but I think we’re in the middle of a golden age for visual culture. Never has more photography, of such high quality (and, of course, such low quality) been so readily available, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Newspapers and magazines are putting huge–often too huge–edits online, every photographer dead or alive has a portfolio website, blogs like this one or Conscientious or countless others sift through the cruft, and then there are the online magazines.

Visura Magazine, which I had not seen before, has just published their second issue. Where else will you see long pieces by Ed Kashi, Amy Stein, Shelby Lee Adams presented next to one another?

Visura does a lot right: pictures are big, but not too big; edits are long, but tight; diverse range of photographers and photography; great design (though flash and a page layout too wide for my screen are significant drawbacks). There seem to be a million of these online photography magazines popping up, and just as many have gone dormant over the past few years; hard to know which will survive, but it’s great to see a forest starting with so many saplings.

And speaking of the photographers above, be sure to check out “The True Meaning of Pictures: Shelby Lee Adams’ Appalachia”, a documentary exploring the controversy over the photographer’s pictures, Amy Stein’s fantastic series “Domesticated”, now a book, which in my mind is what the world looks like just before the birth of the world described in the Talking Heads’ “(Nothing but) Flowers” (lyrics):

Johnny Greenwood of (the greatest band in the world) Radiohead has published some ‘pinhole’ pictures from Mexico, where the band is currently touring, on the band’s blog ‘Dead Air Space’.

Click on the picture and see the other five pictures. While I think they’re all pretty damn swell at everything the do, at least they’re human enough to be plagued by fingerprints on negatives too … see the last picture. You should really subscribe to their rss feed … in addition to news and music recommendations (fascinating to see what these guys listen to .. look for the ‘office charts’) every so often they post pictures and they’re almost universally interesting .. both as pictures and a glimpse into their lives and vision. Such as this one from last October in Japan…

I’ve previously written about their pictures and blog here but it bears repeating. Go see the photo behind that link too..

S novom godom, dorogie druzia….

I was feeling in the mood for some holiday music and found some of my favorite Russian songs on youtube. They’re from the Soviet-era farce “Ironiya Sudby, ili S Legkim Parom” (literally, “The Irony of Fate, or Here’s to Your Easy Steam” but maybe better as “The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath”). The movie’s as ubiquitous and beloved in Russia as “A Charlie Brown Christmas” (Youtube 1, 2, 3) is in the US, though the movie focuses on the New Year holiday rather than Christmas.

The songs and movie are funny, poignant, whimsical, and just a bit subversive. The captions in the video are okay, but not great. Here’s a better translation of the first song, “Esli u vas netu teti,” which starts out “If you have no home/It won’t be set on fire.”

The main plot, an irreverent love story, is made possible only because Soviet development is so undramatic and ordinary as to render St. Petersburg and Moscow identical and interchangeable. A Muscovite man stumbles home drunk, not realizing he’d traveled from Moscow to St. Petersburg. He walks down what he thinks is his street, enters “his” apartment building, uses his key to open “his” apartment which has only slightly different layout furnishings, and is awoken from his stupor when the apartment’s female owner comes out to investigate the noise. Romantic comedy ensues. Here’s a small New York Times review and the IMDB entry. Watch out for the 2007 remake/sequel of the movie; I haven’t seen it but have heard it’s not very good. There’s a reason the original is played and replayed each year…

Yea, so this is a few days late and I’m sure you’ve all seen it, but there was a terrific interview with Chris Buck over on A Photo Editor last week. In parts One and Two. I’ll save the hyperbole: go read it. It is very good.

I had certainly heard his name and seen some photos, but I needed to go look through Mr. Buck’s website to really get up to speed. And that’s where I found this photo, and oh what a gem.

Utter jealousy .. Buck photographed one of my favorite people in music, the lead singer and mastermind behind the band Neutral Milk Hotel. (here is a Youtube of Jeff singing his haunting song ‘Oh Comely’). Buck made a great image from this, a big hat tip to him. Thanks too for the nice read at APE.

PS – I’m back from some travels and stuck in some ugly weather in Seattle, so hopefully I’ll be back up to full blogging speed soon. If for nothing else than to entertain me. I’ll have some words and pictures from my trek to sunny Southern Florida to visit my grandfather soon too.

Via their handy podcast feed, I found this morning the pdf for the latest issue of FADER, which includes a picture of mine.

Back in September I made a day-trip up to Vancouver, WA to meet two ladies who form the band Fan Death. From the piece: “With Fan Death, black and white hooks are colored by coquettish strut and orchestral strings full of melancholy glitter, finding the point where new wave noir births literary disco.” Yea, so interesting people I got to meet! (Their name comes from a crazy Korean myth too.. read the article). Thanks again to Marta and Dandelion who, besides being good sports with the pictures, showed me around a bit of their neighborhood in Vancouver and introduced me to a really nifty gelato place.

I’m pretty happy with this result, always nice to have a big picture published and great to be working with the Fader again (will have another clip next month too..). Maybe later I can post some of the outtakes (images I like better, I’ll admit). Be sure to check out this issue, lots of interesting pieces and pictures. I especially like Jason Nocito’s story on Kanye West. Lastly, a reminder that we had a short little interview with FADER Photo Coordinator John Francis Peters last week, check that out too.

Here we go with another mass of links, but there is too much good stuff out there this week following the Obama victory on Tuesday night. I’ll split this into a couple or three posts I think.

It has been incredible week here in Seattle .. dancing in the streets and wellwishes from the world over (I’ve heard from friends as far as Kosovo, Finland and the UK who are all jumping for joy themselves). Even Thom Yorke, the leader of Radiohead, got in to the spirit and released a free song in celebration. Please feel free to send us your tips and links, or even your own work, and we’ll consider posting it here for the rest to see.

We can start with Magnum | InSight America’s Election Night post with some interesting deadline work by Magnum photographers van Agtmael, Anderson, Vink, Dworzak and Reed. David Alan Harvey chimed in on his blog, bez pictures unfortunately, with “Obamatime…”

We can’t miss Alan Chin’s contribution over at BAGNewsnotes (which I was happy to see got a shout-out on APhotoEditor’s blog in Rob’s own campaign wrapup). Be sure to read the comments. And start following BAGNews right now if you aren’t familiar with it; there will be lots of great insights in the coming days (it has already started) about the election-night pictures.

Here is a cool little slideshow (sideshow?) at Time by photographers Christopher Morris and Danny Wilcox Frazier at John McCain’s Campaign Farewell in Phoenix, Arizona.

From some international photographers: Swedish/Polish photographer Chris Maluszynski, a favorite from the Moment Agency, offers his take from the election in Chicago. And Bruno Stevens from Brussels will soon be posting more from his Land of the Free: America 2008 work. Cross your fingers it will get up, and stay up, on those Digital Railroad servers.

Watching the day-after coverage on the major American networks last night I saw reports and interviews with two Obama-centric photographers. Time photographer Callie Shell, who is popping up everywhere these days (see this popular feature at Digital Journalist) was on Anderson Cooper’s CNN show (can’t for the life of me find it online) and NBC nightly news (click in to their player and search for ‘Obama’s incredible journey in pictures’). Also notable is that Tufankjian is releasing a book titled Yes We Can of her nearly two-year Obama project through PowerHouse Books.

The SLOG pointed me in the direction of Philly photographer Zoe Strauss (I guess M. Scott’s mention of her to me didn’t stick) and her new book “America”. I haven’t seen too much yet but it looks good. Philadelphia Weekly also published a cover story and selection of the work this week, and that seems like a great place to start reading about Strauss and the pictures.

Perennial favorite Chip Litherland posts some pictures from his extra-long election day assignments on his Sportsshooter page.

On the Newspaper front: Andrew Sullivan has the final tally of newspaper endorsements. A little out of date, but the New York Times has Campaign Trail photo galleries from a bunch of its photographers. And the cherries on top: PDN writes about the great day for print journalism with record sell-outs of newspapers and the Newseum’s roundup of the world’s newspapers announcing Obama’s election (including this radical horizontal cover by the Hartford Courant, spotted by M. Scott). Truly a worldwide moment.

More soon….

I’ve been trying to put something more substantive together today but I’m just a little too under the gun with my Aftermath Project proposal being due soon and an out of town assignment this weekend for the Fader … so here is a quick roundup of things I’ve been reading and been interested in the last few days, all of which probably deserve a larger post themselves. As a side note: I have GOT to cut down on my RSS intake … you’ll see from the mess of sources I’m giving you today… (Pictures are from my trip to Wenatchee earlier this month)

First, some great great music for you to put on while chewing through all the tribulations of the week. The Elephant Six Collective, which produced such great bands as Neutral Milk Hotel and Olivia Tremor Control, and now well-known groups The Apples in Stereo and Of Montreal, is out doing a ‘Holiday Surprise Tour’ around the country. One of the big surprises is that the elusive Jeff Mangum, leader of Neutral Milk Hotel, has shown up and played with his friends. Go here for a full two and a half hour concert: Elephant Six Orchestra on All Songs Considered. (All Songs Considered is rad, if you don’t know it, and they have a great podcast feed). Also, a youtube clip of “Glue” by The Gerbils (!!) performed at SUNY Purchase.

In a great roundup of all the craziness going on around the industry (magazines closing, scaling back, people losing jobs) Whats the Jackanory! tells us to keep our chins up. I’ll try man, I’ll try.

I might be the last photographer to have started following Jörg Colberg on his great blog Conscientious, but I’ve been enjoying it recently. He is making a thought-provoking push for us to reexamine the visual language of photojournalism. And is giving examples here. (Plus today, What is photojournalism anyways?, a brilliant question). I’m very conflicted, and this deserves a lot of thought and consideration and many of its own blog posts. Not least of which is I love the work as it is, it means a lot to me, and that Majoli picture he points to is from a project/book (Leros) that is very important to me and what I know as great work.
You should chime in yourself with some of the discussions going on: Lightstalkers has a thread titled ‘Well someone had to say it sooner or later’ and Alec Soth baits us with “Does photojournalism make you verklempt?” on the Magnum Blog.

On Drinking With A Dead Man John Loomis gives us a nice rundown of where he sources his mailers and portfolio materials in another nice behind-the-scenes business post.

Digital Railroad continues its superheated implosion with news coming from all over the place… I recommend reading the top of Lightstalkers message board for all of the latest. Frankly, whatever I post right now will be old news by time you read it.. this is a fast-moving story. (Newest I have is that web-portfolio house Livebooks, who does my website for example, is also getting in on the fallout and offering deals to switch over from DRR (reports PDN)).

Part of my insanity over my rss-load is coming from my new subscription to insanely productive blogger Andrew Sullivan’s The Daily Dish at The Atlantic. That link is to an angry post that he did about Palin’s medical records; he also provided me with this gem of a link to a blogging 80something woman. Called ‘What was I thinking when I called Sarah Palin a Bitch’. Sullivan came recommended to me by editor of Slate.com David Plotz, through their Gabfest.

I’ve been pretty disappointed with most of the work coming out of Magnum|Insight over the past week, I must admit, but there are some interesting things. Particularly Alessandra Sanguinetti’s work from Los Angeles and, more for the story than pictures, Mikhail Subotzky’s Between Rome and New York.

On the other hand, this is a must see: photographer Alan Chin at McCain/Palin Rally over at BAGNewsnotes. This is a smart photographer, on a very smart blog. (I wrote about him earlier, here).

In other pictures, you really really must also check out Vanessa Winship and her work from the Balkans and Black Sea. More info to come, but we hope to interview Winship soon here on DVA….

Related, take a look at this trove of great videos of lectures/projections over at Lumix Festival for Young Photojournalism in Hanover, Germany. I found it searching for Vanessa Winship, but it also includes (maybe not all in English) presentations by Thomas Höpker, Steve McCurry, Antonin Kratochvil, Thomas Dworzak (can’t wait to find the time to watch this one especially), Heidi und Hans-Jürgen Koch and Kai Wiedenhöfer.

Got some more bad news the other day: the National Geographic Society has suspended all grants for the rest of the year, “in efforts to cope with the current economic situation.” I have been in the running for a Young Explorers Grant for my as-yet-publicly-announced Russia project. Maybe in the Spring.. bummer.

I’ve known Jehad Nga’s work for awhile now, and saw some of his pictures at his exhibition at Bonni Benrubi (and direct link), with Paolo Pellegrin, early this summer. But I was alerted to a new story he has done about Somali Pirates called “Pirates, Inc”. (note: unfortunately it is impossible to link directly to his stories on his site, so click on ‘From Here on In-Galleries’ and choose the title of the story). Terrific work, on a story that I’ve been thinking about a little bit. Best of luck to him too at the World Press Photo Joop Swart Masterclass going on soon in Amsterdam. You can see his essay for that on his site too, My Shadow, My Opponent, about boxers in the Kibera slum of Nairobi. Such great color…

Last, in breaking music news, Zach Condon, better known for his group Beirut, will be releasing new music soon, including some surprises (electronic music??). Read this interview over at Pitchfork.

If you’d like more pictures from me, have a look over at the updated ‘Recent Work’ section of my website — www.mattlutton.com.

Endnote: as you can probably see I ended up taking some hours to put this post together … what started as a cop out of an actual post became my procrastination tool. Damn.