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’ blogs keep getting better and better. Everyone knows Lens, but perhaps At War isn’t as well known. Formed out of the now defunct Baghdad Bureau blog, At War is “a reported blog from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and other areas of conflict in the post-9/11 era.” There’s always something interesting to read or see, from the above seized pictures from Pakistan’s restive Waziristan to Franco Pagetti’s grandmother’s gnocchi recipe as served to Ashley Gilbertson for a birthday to a translator’s perspective on speaking with a would-be suicide bomber to downtime on patrol with Afghan and American soldiers.

A number of photographers currently contribute or have contributed to the blog (that list isn’t up to date), and the archives are worth a look: Peter Van Agtmael, Tyler Hicks, Christoph Bangert, Michael Kamber, Johann Spanner, Ashley Gilbertson, and Joao Silva

The GlobalPost, a leading purveyor of internet-focused international journalism, has just published the multimedia package “Life, death, and the Taliban.” Featuring the photography of dvafoto favorite Seamus Murphy, the pieces mixes written reporting, video, and still photojournalism in a remarkably comprehensive analysis of the contemporary Taliban. There’s almost too much here to take in, but it’s all worthwhile. While you’re at it, check out Murphy’s “A Darkness Visible,” a website devoted to some of his early coverage of the Taliban.

(via Fresh Air interview with GlobalPost executive editor Charles Sennott)

A lot of photojournalists hope their photos can make a difference. Informing the public is one avenue, having powerful people who make decisions see the photos is another. Andrew Craft’s great photo, of a military family saying goodbye as the husband and father ships off for deployment, will be doing the latter. He talks a little about it here and his paper mentions the event here.

The city of Fayetteville, North Carolina, decided to give Craft’s photo, taken as a staff photographer for the the Fayetteville Observer, to Michelle Obama on her recent visit to the city. Receiving the photo, a stark portrayal of the domestic toll of the war in Iraq, Michelle Obama said, “Thank you…this picture is just moving. It says so much, and it is going up in my office tomorrow.” Video of the speech at C-Span.

Found via lightstalkers, Bruce Haley’s excellent Tao of War Photography is 60+ nuggets of wisdom from a career spent in the trenches. Worth a laugh, worth a tear, worth a read. Among the treasures:
”

• 10. It is said that sudden fright causes people to soil themselves… I have noticed that sustained fright causes increased flatulence: fear-farting… I have also seen Afghan mujahideen run out into a heavy rain of incoming artillery rather than shelter in a small crevice with two fear-farting Western journalists……
• 18. If you don’t understand the entire concept of indirect fire, do not go to a war zone… If you only remember one thing from this article, let this be it…….
• 23. You know you’re in trouble when the new head of your once-reputable agency sends out a form letter asking his photographers to shoot “quirky Americana” stories…..
• 30. You will see the exact same wretched mongrel dog in every third world country you visit… after a while you will come to believe that it has a passport and is following you from country to country……
• 31. Huge, menacing rats like to perch upon sleeping photographers’ faces at 3 a.m in seedy hotels in warring portions of the former Soviet Union…..”

more here

And while we’re talking about Bruce Haley, he had a conversation with Joerg at Conscientious a while back. It’s a great discussion of, among other things, the purpose and effectiveness of conflict photography, public reaction to conflict photography, personal philosophy, how he approaches stories, and what venues are most appropriate for which images. Lots of wisdom there.

With the next interview in our ongoing series we’re talking to photographer Donald Weber who is based in Eastern Europe and is with the VII Network. You should quickly see why he and I have connected, given our overlapping interests with a certain part of the world. Many of the questions I asked, frankly, were bent to my own personal interest in what it means to move halfway around the world to photograph stories you’re personally passionate about. I’m sure some of you can relate. But more importantly to most of you, he is producing interesting and important work much on his own terms and is rising his profile, and has had an interesting life so far. And has interesting things to say about what he is doing.

Amongst many accomplishments Weber has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Lange-Taylor Prize and a World Press Photo award. He was a 2006 winner of the Photolucida Critical Mass review which just published his book Bastard Eden, Our Chernobyl (which I previously mentioned here). Before becoming a photographer, he worked as an architect with the world-renowned Rem Koolhaas in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. For his full biography have a look at the about page on his website.

What is your background, in interests and academics? Where do you come from?
Well, Canadian, from Toronto, downtown, which may have influenced my outlook. Taking the subway at 12 years old to school everyday definitely gives an impression on a youngster, glad I was able to see what I did. Anyway, my academic background is not so academic, I studied at an alternative high school that offered an intensive arts education, from the age of 16 until graduation in grade 13, I studied art all day everyday. We had four hours of life drawing two days a week – that would be nudes, thus lots of people were jealous of us, plus an 8 hour day of art history and then we would major and minor in two artistic practices. I wanted to be artist, not really sure what that was or how I would do it, but initially that was my goal. I then went on to study at art college, the Ontario College of Art & Design, where I majored in – I forget the complex phrasing of the subject, something like Art and the Environment. Basically, making massive intrusions into the public landscape. Great! But I totally wasted my time, as far as I’m concerned, education is wasted on the young! It was a conflict in my youth of what I wanted to do, how I wanted to do it. I loved the idea of creating something, anything, I didn’t care how as long as I could. Then I had this interest in photography, and in particular photojournalism, which went against all the grains of an artistic education that I was brought up on.
So it was an interesting education, for almost 10 years I was schooled in very sophisticated forms of visual education that certainly influences me to this day. The practicalities may have changed, but the essence of being visual are always the same. Line, shape, form, colour, mood, tone, conceptual processes, etc., are all linked at the very core, and I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to have had an education that grounded these roots into my young head.

Tell me about your time with architecture.
Well architecture came about rather haphazardly. in order to understand my time within that field, you have to understand first how I ended up there; it’s a rather convoluted process but one that is inherent as to my position today.

Back to my high schooling. As I stated before, I had an interest in both art and photojournalism. My passion, in my final year, was won out with photojournalism. It was in November of that year before graduation where in Canada we make our applications to post secondary institutions. I wanted to apply to two – Rochester Institute of Technology for PJ, and a smaller college just outside of Toronto for a basic three year photography course. I asked my photography (and I quote verbatim the following conversation):

Me: Robert, which school do you think I should apply to? RIT or Sheridan?
Robert (the teacher): What? Why would you apply to either? You suck as a photographer!

Thus, I literally brought my cameras home and put them in a drawer, not to be touched for about 10 years. It was then I decided to find a different path. I replaced photography with ceramics; my mother was not so pleased. Anyway, while studying at OCAD, I developed an interest in architecture, planning and landscape design and was captured by the writings and designs of the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. So, I set my sights on working for him. When I graduated in 1996, I headed overseas to Rotterdam where his practice was based, and promptly got a job, precisely because I was not a trained architect. I worked there for about three years. It was a great experience, but certainly soul crushing. I found architecture to be a rather drab profession and nearly impossible to do anything of interest, save for the exception of Rem Koolhaas and a few others. But I learned about ideas, how to think in a conceptual manner and to find ways to bring those ideas into fruition. It also taught me on more practical levels things about budgeting and planning and just being professional; things I think we take for granted that all go into the realities of being a working photographer.

Anyway, it was not a highlight of my life but I think a necessary step.

What brought you to photography? Was there a specific event that made you say “I am going to be a photographer”?
Yes, very specific event! My whole life has these cascading elements that when all put together certainly illuminate what I’m doing and why I’m doing it. I was born in 1973, thus when the events of the late 80’s and early 90’s came around, I was at the ripe age to start taking notice. For me, these were the most historical and important times of my generation. The collapse of communism, the events in Tiananmen Square, the first Iraq War. These were all events that were shaped and played out in magazines and television. I was a teenager and just discovering more than my backyard, it was an awakening physically, mentally, socially, everything, for me. I remember clearly watching hundreds of thousands of Eastern European refugees fleeing their countries for elsewhere, the Wall collapsing, the Ceaucescu’s being executed, Boris Yeltsin on top of a tank. All these events were seared into my mind, and those events shaped what I wanted to do with my life. I had always been aware of news images, but never before did I connect that somebody actually went out there and made those pictures until I was older. It was a massive lightbulb that went off and I wanted to be a part of it.

Anyway, that was event number one. The second event was my diversion to architecture for awhile; I listened to closely what my high school teacher had to say; never again! Anyway, it was while I was living in Europe that I remembered what photography was all about. I wanted to remember living in Europe, so I bought a camera – it was great! I couldn’t put it down, all I did was take photos. Crappy, but they were photos. It was then that I said okay – I’m going to be a photographer – but how was a much more difficult question. It wasn’t until March of 2000, a few days before I was to leave on a year long trip to ride my motorcycle across Africa (something I had previously done in 1998) where the jump was finally made. I had just quit my job as an architect, not really knowing what to do. I was taking the bike out for one last tune up spin when I got hit by a car. I just remember sliding across the hood of some old Chevy, sliding on my back seeing my crumpled bike and thinking, okay, now’s the time to be a photographer. So I never did the bike trip to Africa; I “became” a photographer. That summer I got an internship at the Toronto Sun, a tabloid.

Vorkuta, Russia: Vorkuta, regional centre of one of the largest concentrations of Gulag camps in the USSR. Founded by prisoners, the region is populated by descendants of former zeks and prison authorities.
What were your early interests as a photographer? Influences?
I don’t really know, for me it was such a long battle to finally start taking pictures that influences and interests were a secondary thought! But, as a teenager, photojournalism was a very powerful force in me. I remember Kenneth Jarecke’s burned Iraqi soldier from the first Iraq War, Chris Morris’ Panama photos, Don McCullin – it was important because what they were photographing was important – and that was important to me! So I’d say my interests were in the realm that photography could act as a document; the total opposite of my art education. to me art had become superfluous, something dilettantes dabbled in; it had lost it’s meaning. Photography was the opposite. As I grew, my more literal influences was the photographer Raymond Depardon, still is. To me he has managed to encapsulate perfectly what a photographer is and should be. Bridge influences and ideas from all facets and present them in his own manner. That is something I strive to do, to take what I see but also to take what I feel and make my own story of it.

My interests are always morphing; there was a time when I thought Chris Morris could do no wrong (still do). But my art training definitely influenced me in the way I see; not what I see, but how I interpret that. I used to really enjoy the old masters and specifically religious paintings of the 15 – 17 centuries. So much blood, red, white, gold, colour, pain; totally terrified me.
Read on »

As is being widely reported today, a credentialed journalist threw two shoes at outgoing US president George W. Bush during a press conference in Iraq yesterday. BagNewsNotes has the usual interesting analysis, with a nod toward previous shoes hurled at politicians in Iraq. The New York Times has another video of the incident from an angle different from the animated gif above. As one commenter on metafilter notes, Bush’s reaction is that of a man who has clearly had things thrown at him before.

The symbolism of shoes being thrown may be lost on western viewers, though the meaning is being widely reported. The above video, from Iraq in 2003, shows a man defiling a banner of Saddam Hussein with his shoes. I remember photos and video of kids attacking the fallen statue of Hussein in Baghdad in 2003, also, but can’t find those images. Getty has a typical picture of men attacking a statue with their shoes.

I’m particularly struck by the photo chosen by the New York Times to lead their coverage. The photo by Saul Loeb of the AFP, shows Bush, blurry and indistinct, while Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki remains standing with arms outstretched. Here we have an Iraqi, standing tall and staying the course, protecting the American.

After reading Safe Area Gorazde last week, my mind has absently been thinking about Bosnia, which holds a special place in my heart. While researching something else (another post coming soon..) I came across this Josef Koudelka picture from Mostar, which is a city in western Herzegovina that was the site of some of the worst street to street fighting of the Bosnian wars. Notable too because it featured all three of the major ethnic groups, Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims), Croats (Bosnian Catholics) and Serbs (Bosnian Orthodox). It was also the site of one of the worst symbolic moments of the war, when a Croatian tank commander (who ironically was a theater director, I’ve been told) directed his cannon at the Stari Most bridge, which spans the mythical Neretva river in the center of the Turkish quarter. It destroyed a cultural landmark and point of pride for all Bosnians that was built in 16th Century.

Due to the symbolic significance of this bridge, and its new status as an UNESCO World Heritage site, it was amongst the first historic structures rebuilt following the war, at an estimated cost of 12million Euros. Koudelka returned in 2005 and took this picture:

I was in Mostar for a week in 2007. It is an amazing place, and that bridge is an amazing sight. It is known for the Mostari, who perform for tourists by leaping from the 20m tall span into the swift, shallow and disturbingly cold river. And a youtube video of their jumps at the annual Mostari festival. People die every year doing this, I’ll add…

Just got a look at this great work by Platon for the New Yorker. The usual style, for the portraits, but I’d never really seen his documentary style beyond a few so-so examples on his website. These pictures, though, capture the malaise, exuberance, uncertainty, confidence, and all the other emotions wrapped up in America’s involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. The kid in the uniform struck me as overly cutesy and sentimental at first, but the accompanying text discovers the significance of the shot: Sergeant John McKay, a marine whose uncle and grandfather were marines, and whose three-year-old son posed in uniform at the wedding of a cousin, also a marine, said, “He’s just waiting till he’s eighteen.” He went on, “I’m scared for him, but if he wants to do it I’ll support him.” There’s some audio from Platon about the project, too. If you haven’t already, check out Platon talking about his shoot with Putin over at the World Press site. Click on 2008 and then the thumbnail of Putin.

(via APADnews)