William Vragovic - Steve Coddington and his family need your help

This is the story of one man, fighting alone against a giant insurance company, to get necessary rehabilitative care for his young wife, Marian. Please help us, Steve’s friends, save his family. None of us can give him all he needs, but a lot of us can give a teeny bit. Together, we can help.”

Seven days after asking for donations for vital medical care for his wife, St. Petersburg Times photojournalist Stephen Coddington has raised nearly US$8,000, but he still needs help. On April 1, 2008, Stephen’s wife Marian suffered a brain aneurysm. What followed was 6 months of intensive hospital care, care at one of the best rehabilitation centers in the US, and then what has become a year-long struggle against the CIGNA health insurance company. Steve has become his wife’s sole caregiver, the insurance company having denied crucial in-home nursing care and other necessary treatment; they have decided that Marian hasn’t made sufficient progress in her recovery to justify further expenditure. This is a travesty. Now, Steve is asking for help from his community and the larger worldwide community of photographers in his family’s hour of need, all trying to care for his two children and retain his newspaper job. Help Save Steve’s Family.

Each morning, Steve has to gamble – rushing the children to school, barreling through the grocery store for the day’s supplies and bolting home, praying all the while that nothing has happened to Marian in his absence. He is trying to keep his family together and happy and to meet everyone’s needs, but he’s drowning.

In addition to donations, print and book auctions (signed copy of Sam Abell’s The Life of a Photograph) are being held as a benefit for the family. Any size donation is appreciated, either via the paypal link at Save Steve’s Family or by writing a check to “Marian Coddington Trust” and sending it to:

Suntrust Bank
Attention Special Handling VA-RIC-9292
P.O. Box 27572
Richmond, VA 23261

Also, in another tale of the American health care system destroying lives, British fashion photographer Corinne Day is seriously ill and in need of urgent and expensive care in Arizona. Her agency has organized a benefit sale of a well-known picture of Day’s of Kate Moss.

(via APAD and Stellazine)

M. Scott Brauer - Inside an artist's painting studio in Shanghai, China.

Thanks to 2point8 I found ArtsVote2008, which aims to collect information about Barack Obama’s and John McCain’s various statements about the arts, funding for the arts, and arts education.  While McCain has yet to issue an official campaign statement about the arts, Obama’s is pretty wide-ranging (PDF).  The candidate’s main positions have been summarized in another document (PDF) which I have included below:

http://www.artsactionfund.org/ - Arts Vote 2008 - Summary of US Presdential candidates' positions on the arts.

In a pitifully small statement released by the McCain campaign, the candidate states his position, worth including here in full:

John McCain believes that arts education can play a vital role fostering creativity and expression. He is a strong believer in empowering local school districts to establish priorities based on the needs of local schools and school districts. Schools receiving federal funds for education must be held accountable for providing a quality education in basic subjects critical to ensuring students are prepared to compete and succeed in the global economy. Where these local priorities allow, he believes investing in arts education can play a role in nurturing the creativity of expression so vital to the health of our cultural life and providing a means of creative expression for young people.”

That sounds fine, but it’s 4 relatively meaningless sentences. Lip service. John McCain opposes the existence of the National Endowment for the Arts. The Salt Lake Tribune has great analysis of the two candidate’s positions.

Obama’s arts policy proposal, on the other hand, was called “the most comprehensive platform on the arts” by Arts Action Fund CEO and president Robert Lynch. It provides for the creation of an Artists Corps (which reminds me of the Farm Security Administration, which begat modern photojournalism), national initiatives for funding and recognizing arts achievement, and widespread arts education based on research in Chicago’s failing schools. More than that, freelancers reading this will be interested to note Obama’s recognition of the impossibility of obtaining health insurance as an independent artist outside of traditional employment, noting that his health care policy would make it easier for artists to afford federal health insurance. And our international audience will be happy to learn that Obama’s platform includes explicit provision for cultural artistic exchange, both through funding American artists’ travel and exhibition internationally and through the streamlining of visa processes in order to make the USA an attractive place for international artists to come and create and exhibit their work.