The Guardian has an interesting, if brief, backstory on a photographer’s heir trying to enforce copyright on the ubiquitous iconic image of Che Guevara seen on t-shirts, posters, and messenger bags the world over (above).

“For decades the Argentinian-born Guevara’s adopted spiritual home of Cuba did not recognise copyright. It was only following the collapse of the former Soviet Union that Cuba joined the World Trade Organisation and legalised copyright.” -Row rages over iconic image of Che Guevara in the Guardian

It’s now been 50 years since Cuban photographer Alberto Díaz “Korda” Gutiérrez, who died in 2001, made the image. Now Diaz’s daughter has been going after advertising companies in an attempt to recoup license fees for widespread usage of the image.

I always love knowing the stories surrounding iconic images…

(via Politics, Theory, and Photography)

Photographing history is difficult. Photographing absence is even harder. When I first read Aaron Vincent Elkaim’s artist statement for his “Jewish Morocco” essay, I doubted a photo essay was the right approach to the subject. His approach is quite intriguing, combining moody set pieces of streets devoid of the stereotypical Moroccan hustle and bustle with straightforward images of documents/photos/worship areas left behind after cultural exodus, and I think it’s the beginning of a great story. Aaron says the project is inspired by his desire to discover his roots. From the statement:

This photographic project is an exploration of Jewish Morocco’s ghosts, artifacts, places and remaing lives. It is a study of the void that remains after this cultural exodus, a look at what has been left behind in the wak of Zionism as well as a retrospective of a time and place where Jews and Arabs lived peacefully as neighbours and as Moroccans.”

There’s been a significant Jewish community in Morocco for the past 2800 years, with as many as 300,000 in the 1940s. Now, fewer than 3,000 remain. Definitely an interesting subject, and a difficult one to photograph. Worth a look.

And just a reminder, if you’ve got a project you’re working on or recently completed, drop us a line here at dvafoto.

I don’t remember where I found these or know much about them, other than that they’re really interesting: World War I Color Photo Archive.

Anyone know more? Are they published anywhere? Would be a great book if printed well (they’re pretty bad scans online).

It also makes me think of the fourth series of Blackadder.

The New York Times Lens Blog has just published a heretofore unknown picture of the Tank Man from the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre. AP reporter Terril Jones had been covering the demonstrations and snapped a picture of the famous confrontation between an unknown man and a line of tanks. The Lens blog has more details. I am quite surprised Jones had shown the picture only to friends previously.

Lens also interviewed 4 photographers who each got the iconic shot: Charlie Cole, Stuart Franklin, Jeff Widener, and Arthur Tsang Hin Wah. This is not to be missed; great behind-the-scenes stories about the shooting conditions and the difficulty of getting the pictures out (involving toilets and poorly-dressed hippies!). Youtube has video of the confrontation and the PBS Frontline documentary Tank Man explores contemporary Chinese perspectives on the famous photo.

James Fallows reports about his experience in Tiananmen Square the night before the 20th Anniversary this week and his wife’s the day of and Shanghaiist has video of plainclothes police interrupting international news reports with, of all things, umbrellas.

Meanwhile, BagNewsNotes has a dispatch from Alan Chin in Beijing on the Anniversary, ChinaBeat has a ton of contemporary and historical reporting on the 1989 events, and there’s plenty more. DanWei’s must-read China news is another great place for a variety of reporting and remembrance; I can’t link to search results, so you’ll just have to type in the words yourself. And here’s a couple of stories about information about 1989 slipping past China’s censors in the past couple of years. Magnum’s also got a small but interesting edit of a number of photographers’ pictures from Tiananmen.

Meanwhile, further south, it’s been a couple of days just like all others.

A year ago, word spread of the International Center of Photography’s receipt of three weather cardboard boxes, the so-called “Mexican Suitcase,” filled with heretofore unseen negatives by Robert Capa, David “Chim” Seymour, and Gerda Taro. Magnum’s been hard at work digitizing the pictures, and the New York Times has a first glimpse of the pictures, mostly from the Spanish Civil War. While new Robert Capa pictures may be what draws the headlines, the real goldmine here is Seymour’s lost negatives, especially in how they frame the whole of the three’s previously known work from the time.

I saw this Friday on the (duly praised) Foreign Policy Passport Blog, who wins with another photo-related post. I haven’t seen anyone else mention it so I’ll ‘bump’ it along. “Orthodox paper photoshops women out of Israeli cabinet”.

Quoting the FP piece, “The Israeli ultra-Orthodox newspaper Yated Neeman reached new levels of Stalin-esque photoshop audacity by doctoring photos of Israel’s new government to remove female ministers Limor Livnat and Sofa Landver and replacing them with male ministers.”

The Stalin reference is a little out there but this is a pretty strange thing to see. Editing current events rather than whitewashing history? Is this a new development? Really, how will this work?

You probably haven’t seen the picture above, of a young girl named Su Mingjuan in rural Anhui Province, China, but it’s one of the most well-known pictures in the world. The girl has been nicknamed “Little Big Eyes” Here’s the story of the photo’s creation, use, and follow-up about the girl in the picture. There are obvious similarities to Steve McCurry’s iconic photo of an Afghan girl, though this picture’s fame results from it becoming the face of an education charity in China.

Su Mingjuan became the image ambassador for Project Hope. The Chinese Youth Development Foundation used “Big Eyes” as the promotional icon. Based upon an incomplete tally, as of 1994, this photograph was used more than 100 million times in newspapers, posters and other materials and that probably made it the most printed photograph in history. It is ranked number one in the survey of “most memorable photographs in the first 50 years of the nation.” Project Hope has collected 2 billion yuan [ed. about US$300 million) in contributions. A survey of the donors showed that half of them were not familiar with Project Hope and its work, but there were few who didn’t know “Big Eyes” and many of them donated money on account of that image. Some critics have said that this photograph has left an indelible imprint on the history of human education, culture and photography.”

From Zona Europa’s history of Little Big Eyes.

Marking the 30th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution, iranian.com has published a large gallery of scans from a book of color pictures from the time by a photographer identified as Hatami. My visual knowledge of the time is limited to Persepolis and the excellent, unparalleled Telex Iran. Abbas was there, too. But seeing these pictures in color, much like some of the old FSA color pictures or WWII in color, changes my view of history a bit. There are some real gems in the collection, for certain. (via MeFi)

I had an hour or two spare this morning before another shoot and decided to check out the annual commemoration of the start of the Nanjing Massacre at the huge and breathtaking Nanjing Massacre Memorial Museum. Not nearly as big a news event this year as last (a small edit of my previous photos), the event today was well-attended and somber.

Today was the 71st anniversary of the beginning of the Rape of Nanking (or the Nanjing Massacre), in which Japanese troops took over the then-capital and went on a 6 week rampage. Japan and China present different histories of the time. Tensions run high on the day and there’s a strong anti-Japanese sentiment in China. I’ve read some reports saying that anti-Japanese sentiment, especially among the youth, has been stronger recently than say 5, 10, or 20 years ago. The Chinese government has been trying to quell public displays of the sentiment and not fan the flames too much themselves; everybody wants peace and everybody wants the valuable economic ties between the two countries. I believe Japan hasn’t apologized for the deaths–the Chinese claim 300,000 dead many of whom were women and children–and China keeps trotting out more evidence and emotionally charged reminders of the event (the Nanjing Massacre Museum itself is pretty over the top in displaying how brutal the Japanese troops were); just this week the Chinese government unveiled another 800 pieces of what it calls evidence of war crimes committed by the Japanese troops. A few months ago it was a Japanese diplomat saying that the Massacre Museum lays the blame and hate on too thickly, officially asking the government to tone down the museum.

You’ve probably read the news on APE or PDNPulse or elsewhere…Life magazine’s vast photography archive is making its way online with the help of Google. I posted about Life’s digital foray before, but that page remains the same. PDN’s behind-the-scenes article suggests that Life has more up it’s sleeve planned for the Life.com domain. Only 20 percent of the archive is online at the moment, and the remaining 8 million or so mostly-unpublished pictures will be made available in the coming months, according to Google’s blog.

The PDN article, too, delves into some the financial questions behind the site. Time Inc., who are the owners of the Life empire, and Getty hope the portal will drive traffic to the soon to be released Life magazine site and also offer print sales to the general public through print-on-demand service Qoop.com. Hard to say how all of the contracts over the years will affect the final form of the collection, and one wonders whether photographers or their estates are receiving proceeds from the venture (if any proceeds are due). Commenters on APhotoEditor.com’s thread about the endeavor have been wondering whether more business-savvy photographers in the 80s and 90s, who likely didn’t sign work for hire agreements, will be in the collection or not. Interestingly, PDN’s article suggests that the Life archive will not go after bloggers’ and other personal use of the photos.

I’ve also seen comments online wondering why the collection wasn’t incorporated into the vast Flickr Commons (home to the Library of Congress’ huge archive, among others’) project or at least use Flickr’s engine for community annotation and tagging. Presumably, a great deal of the Life archive remains under copyright and, as such, wouldn’t fit into the Flickr Commons model.

Wish I had more time to sift through the Life archive, but in the meantime, here’s W. Eugene Smith’s Country Doctor and Spanish Village essays, a strange photo of a bowling alley and archery range, covered wagons used in World War I, Salvador Dali, a running surfer, and a dual cigarette holder for lovers.