What others talk about

Remarkable Coincidences. As always a great story about recent photojournalism: "More Photojournalism: Asian Transitions, Gangs of Different Eras, and L.A. Night Life."

Mike Mosall asks: "Is Blogging an art form? Are we photographers or are we artists portraying our daily vision of society through computer software, pixkles, memory cards, and Photoshop? Are we modern day Garry Winogrand’s?"
Andrew Hall responds: "Neither a blog nor a photoblog is inherently a work of art any more than an urinal is a work of art. But that did not stop Marcel Duchamp making of an urinal one of the most influential works of art in the twentieth century."

"Dan Rather nowhere in sight…". Clay Shirky: "Moblogging from the front and the new Reformation": "Jaques Barzun, author of the marvelous history of modernity From Dawn to Decadence (1500 - present), makes the point that the Catholic Church as a pan-European political force was done in by the Protestant Reformation, itself fueled by the printing press. Once the Church lost the ability to control the direct perception of scripture, thanks to the printing of (relatively) cheap bibles in languages other than Latin, their loss of political hegemony followed."

He continues: "New tools for spreading of the word are powerful, of course — witness the weblog explosion in all its complexity. But the spread of images is a different kind of thing, not least because images pass across linguistic borders like a lava flow. Now that production and distribution of images are in the hands of the laity, it’s a safe bet that we are entering a world of “That will kill this.” We just don’t know what parts of society “this” refers to yet."

Reader Marc Hedlund responded: "Isn’t it interesting that the first court-martial from the case, against Jeremy C. Sivits, charges him not with abusing prisoners but instead with photographing the abuse?"[Link]

BoingBoing concludes: "Cameraphones are today's Gutenberg press".

Worldchanging adds: "The Participatory Panopticon vs. The Pentagon": "Anyone, anywhere, with a digital camera and a network connection has enormous power, perhaps enough to alter the course of a war or the policies of the most powerful nation on Earth."