As long as North Korea is such a hot topic these days, here's a pretty nice photo-essay on the country from the May/June 2009 issue of Foreign Policy magazine.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Bill Owens
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Photographers Have to Make a Living Too, Part 3
Hawking cameras...
Now, what's curious about these two ads is that they appeared in the May, 2004, issue of Shutterbug. Mary Ellen Mark is endorsing competing brands of cameras, in the same issue of a magazine. Admittedly, they're as separated as you can get in a magazine: the Mamiya ad is on page 5, right before the contents page and the Hasselblad ad is on the back cover.
It's the magazine's responsibility to let the advertisers know of this conflict. So I suppose the thinking, on the magazines part, is that "oh, by the time the reader gets to the end of the mag, they'll have forgotten that the same photographer already endorsed a different camera." Unless one camera company owns the other, I don't see how you get away with that.
Anyone know anything about this? Does one of those companies own the other? I would think that when you're hired to endorse a product you sign a contract. And it would seem that one of the provisions would almost certainly be: you can't endorse a competitor of ours while under contract to us.
Just for the record, I'm not criticizing anyone for making money off of promoting a tool that they've probably used for years anyway and do in fact believe to be superior to the other tools out there. I'm just curious about these ads by MEMark in the same issue.
Sally Mann for Toyo view and Mamiya medium format cameras
(I'm afraid I don't know where this is from but it appeared in 1991.
It's big too: 11 x 16 inches.)
(I'm afraid I don't know where this is from but it appeared in 1991.
It's big too: 11 x 16 inches.)
Now, what's curious about these two ads is that they appeared in the May, 2004, issue of Shutterbug. Mary Ellen Mark is endorsing competing brands of cameras, in the same issue of a magazine. Admittedly, they're as separated as you can get in a magazine: the Mamiya ad is on page 5, right before the contents page and the Hasselblad ad is on the back cover.
It's the magazine's responsibility to let the advertisers know of this conflict. So I suppose the thinking, on the magazines part, is that "oh, by the time the reader gets to the end of the mag, they'll have forgotten that the same photographer already endorsed a different camera." Unless one camera company owns the other, I don't see how you get away with that.
Anyone know anything about this? Does one of those companies own the other? I would think that when you're hired to endorse a product you sign a contract. And it would seem that one of the provisions would almost certainly be: you can't endorse a competitor of ours while under contract to us.
Just for the record, I'm not criticizing anyone for making money off of promoting a tool that they've probably used for years anyway and do in fact believe to be superior to the other tools out there. I'm just curious about these ads by MEMark in the same issue.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Larry Fink in BusinessWeek
Edward Burtynsky
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Odds and Ends, Poster Invites
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Stephen Shore & Katy Grannan
The June/July, 2009, issue of Details contains a couple of interesting photographs. Stephen Shore shot a fashion spread and Katy Grannan produced the creepiest portrait I've seen in a long time. The mag also runs a Martin Parr photo about a half-page but I'm not reproducing it here. Shore and Grannan got their mug shot on the Contributors page.
The Shore piece is 8 pages, which actually feels short. Not that it's great shoot--it's good--but it feels like it's only getting started when you're on to the next article. (The shortness of the piece is probably a result of the mag overall being so thin.) It does have one of his Uncommon Places-type tabletop-after-dinner shots. Truth is, he shoots fashion fairly often for Elle and W these days. You can see some more of his commercial work here on the photo-rep Bill Charles' website. And while you're there, check out who else Charles represents. It's quite a long list of respected "art" photogs.
I've tried to run this Katy Grannan portrait as large as possible but you should really go to the magazine itself to see the image. It is chilling. Now, true, the guy is an assassin who has killed numerous people on behalf of Mexican drug lords but it verges on grotesque. (Grannan was one of the Another Girl, Another Planet artists and the photographer as author of Dream America and Model American.) (If you can't figure out what makes this so odd and you can't find an issue of Details, let me know and I'll spell it out.)
Everyone seems to be shooting commercial work these days. I suppose art doesn't pay nearly what one might think, given it's cache in our culture, and given that same cache, the fashion magazines have been drawing as many "art" photogs into the fold as possible. Besides, I'll bet it's fun to shoot fashion. Shore in fact, even shoots weddings. Academia must not pay very well either.
The Shore piece is 8 pages, which actually feels short. Not that it's great shoot--it's good--but it feels like it's only getting started when you're on to the next article. (The shortness of the piece is probably a result of the mag overall being so thin.) It does have one of his Uncommon Places-type tabletop-after-dinner shots. Truth is, he shoots fashion fairly often for Elle and W these days. You can see some more of his commercial work here on the photo-rep Bill Charles' website. And while you're there, check out who else Charles represents. It's quite a long list of respected "art" photogs.
I've tried to run this Katy Grannan portrait as large as possible but you should really go to the magazine itself to see the image. It is chilling. Now, true, the guy is an assassin who has killed numerous people on behalf of Mexican drug lords but it verges on grotesque. (Grannan was one of the Another Girl, Another Planet artists and the photographer as author of Dream America and Model American.) (If you can't figure out what makes this so odd and you can't find an issue of Details, let me know and I'll spell it out.)
Everyone seems to be shooting commercial work these days. I suppose art doesn't pay nearly what one might think, given it's cache in our culture, and given that same cache, the fashion magazines have been drawing as many "art" photogs into the fold as possible. Besides, I'll bet it's fun to shoot fashion. Shore in fact, even shoots weddings. Academia must not pay very well either.
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