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Highlight: AK47.tv -- New Online Art Photography Magazine

In these days it´s getting more and more difficult to maintain an overview what is happening in online photography (our Typelist of Photography Magazines has 65 entries, at least two dozens are still left to add) making it difficult to discover the highlights:

AK47.tv. An online art photography magazine. AK47 is published once a month. We showcase images from both fine arts and documentary photographers.

The Editor is -- besides Joerg Colberg of Conscientious there is now another german with a separate blog about photography-- Joerg Diekmann. AK47 is published in London and uses MovableType for online publishing. Check out the last two issues April 2004 and May 2004. AK47.tv is free of charge and online. "Saving paper". =:-)

AK47 has a RSS Feed which obviously "only" works for the current issue.

"The point wasn't to make a lot of money. The point was to change the world"

About Joi Ito, one of the first mobloggers in the world, leading the international and mobile operations of Technorati and through his venture capital company Neoteny Co. Ltd. one of the investors behind SixApart (MoveableType and Typepad), in "Japanese Internet star spreads blogging gospel":

He is "visiting 190 blogs regularly and averaging five hours a day reading and writing blogs"

"People thought we were crazy. [Creating Japan's first Web pages] we had great confidence because we saw that it was going to be giant one day," said Cyrus Shaoul, one of Ito's international-school buddies. "The point wasn't to make a lot of money. The point was to change the world."

Ito believes blogging will one day prove as influential as the printing press."Blogging will fundamentally change the (way) people interact with media and politics"

The importance of licensing to creators

As Oscar Wilde almost said: "A creator who would sell you his copyright would sell you anything." Photographers asked for a briefing, addressed to picture editors, on what licences mean. Freelance Organiser John Toner obliges in "The importance of licensing to creators".
Copyright and licensing it is a everlasting topic at conferences and seminars. Often you get bogged down in complex legal definitions. The National Union of Journalists/John Tonner has put a one-page digest of the subject on its website. Although picture library staff will also find it interesting, it is aimed at photographers to outline the most important points about a licence: time, territory and medium. Some readers starting their own business might be interested.
Londonfreelance.org organizes also a meeting for freelance photographers on Wednesday 16 June in the fifth-floor meeting room at Headland House. The topic will be licensing pictures.

[Photography of the Moment | without words]

[All Images © 2000-2004 Patrick Barberis - Olivier Corvisier for ordinarydays.com , www.ordinarydays.com]

Stunning and unselfish: RX Gallery in SF invents "Metaphotography" at Mobile Phone Photography Show (MPPS)

Update to this story:
"Moblogging Art Exhibitions MPPS and SENT: No more Hot Air Marketing Speeches this Time, please".

RX Gallery describes that the Mobile Phone Photography Show (MPPS) "allows participants from around the world to send photographs taken with their mobile phones. This participatory installation will capture and process thousands of mobile phone photographs sent in by participants from all over the world."

[©Mrs. Johnson]

After what has happened or will happen to the "OneWorld/OneDay Project" (1;2) of the C | summit Cameraphones 2004 ("A presentation about a proposed non-profit project is based on the goal of documenting the beauty and passion of all human life for one 24 hour period on Valentines Day of the year 2005 by 100,000 cameraphones, photographers and videographers throughout the world. The project will coordinate access to celebrities for student film makers and photographers. We believe that this would become the most valuable reference for anthropologists in five hundred years"), we predicted not fully unmalicious that these MPPS and SENT shows would somehow lead to something like this:

We´ll see. Our blasphemous answer to "This is, we admit, just a theory": this will end in an event with thousands, maybe millions cloned images of cloned John Smithes:

"Hi, I´m John Smith from Houston, TX. Here you can see my girlfriend kissing me."

"Hi, I´m John Smith from Wellington. Here you watch me kissing my girlfriend."

"Hi, I´m John Smith from Edinburgh. Here can you see my Ex-girlfriend kissing her new boyfriend."

"Hi, I´m John Smith from Vancouver. Here can you see the Ex-boyfriend of my Ex-girlfriend kissing my sister."

And finally someone might (utmost conjunctive mood available) say:

Hi, I´m with the XYZ Gallery; it is a Wine&Sake Bar/Lounge. You know, we got all these bills and payrolls, now that we are the Best Art Gallery in SF and around. You know, MPPS is nice: you bring in the pix, we add some meaning to it, somehow hazy, blurred, fuzzy and bit of buzz around...we got someone to write about it...finally somehow it´s art...everyone´s happy. ("You don´t have to be a genius. You don´t have to be superhuman. You don´t even have to be a techie. Just have an idea." Po Bronson, The Nudist on the Late Shift)

Jeanne Carstensen (SF Gate) finally has visited the Mobile Phone Photography Show at RX Gallery in SF ("Cellph Portrait, Mobile Phone Photography Show at RX Gallery") and has done an excellent job to metawrite about metaphotography. If the MMPS is only one tenth as interesting as the cascade of words at SF Gate, The Mobile Phone Photo Show on the other side of the Oakland Bridge is definetely worth a visit: on view through June 18, 132 Eddy Street @ Mason (hey, and remember, Typepad will be down later today, so no need to sit in front of your blank mac display tonight). Jeanne Carstensen writes:

[...]in short, casual visual jottings from inside the quiteness of daily life.
[...]Another thing that stands out is the insubstantiality of the images, the sense of impermanence.
[...]the thrill of zapping a photo to a friend in Brooklyn as you stand on a street corner in London. Who knows if you'll ever look at that photo again?
[...]Susan Sontag pointed out...this endless flow of personal imagery...means photographs have become "less objects to be saved than messages to be disseminated, circulated."
[...]The final photograph -- will it even be saved on a hard disk or printed out? -- is not necessarily imagined as a permanent, possibly incriminating object.
[...]As the number of images grows -- they're up to about 1,500 [350 participants from 50 countries] -- a patchwork of an estimated 10,000 photographs will eventually cover most of the wall, creating what co-curators Kurt Bigenho and Greg Crowley call a global "metaphotograph."
[...]But the low-res aesthetic of camera-phone photography also has a homey appeal, reminiscent of the slightly soft or unfocused look of early Polaroid cameras or the plastic Holga, loved by art students everywhere for the effects of its light leaks and imprecise, watery lens.
[...]Two of the hottest issues surrounding camera-phone use, however, are not explored deeply in this show.

And for these issues and the truly remarkable last two sentences with "love" and "affair"-- read the article.

[via Alan Reiter, where we finally had to learn that his suggestions to Xeni Jardin regarding the SENT project never found an answer. Let´s see what the future brings.]
[Update May 31: see also "Camera Phone Mural"]

Under Reconstruction

Sorry for the outfit of the page for the moment (some typelists are missing etc.), due to technical difficulties this website is undergoing a major reconstruction.

Typepad down+++Gone Fishing+++Will meet Mark Getty

+++TypePad shuts down its services in the early morning of Saturday, May 29, 2004, at 12:00am Pacific time+++Company spokesman says the VC has decided to cut financing for SixApart startup+++6A can´t pay bills for data center any longer+++MT and Typepad to merge with Blogware+++One VC said: "We´ll make a trade sell and get the hell out of here"+++"All our bucks are gone fishing"+++Anil new Director for Corporate Communications at Pizza Hut+++One common onion (the one in the front) immediately responded: "We onions as the superb community for premier pizzas refuse to cooperate -- to expensive"+++What do we do now?+++Our America includes Accordion Guy+++Should we switch to Blogware?+++Great statistical features+++Let´s enter The New Chicken and Waffle Place+++So we go whale watching Sa-Su+++Will talk to Rumsi and NSA during lunch to recover the moblog pix from Iraq+++Will ask Mark Getty and Jonathan Klein during dinner if they agree that we as photographers start to market our Photographer`s Choice without them+++Biggest secret in the Stock Photo Industry ever+++Back on monday+++

[Image ©2003 Jennifer Hawks]

Robert Capa: New Photos Discovered

If you get a chance to buy a copy of Saturday's Times: the supplement has some newly found Robert Capa (Magnum) photos of the second World War -- in colour!
The Times: "They were superior in every way to what I have seen before", said Richard Whelan, Capa's biographer who had thought his best work was in black and white.

Iraqian Frontline: Images from Moblogging Soldiers V

[Update to these stories: 1; 2]

It has been a very disappointing experience to revisit the websites of the moblogging US soldiers from Iraq at Yafro 18 days after our first visit. Some sites seem to be down permanently. Appallingly the best and strongest pictures (not in terms of bestiality) were taken off the websites and what is left is mainly a nightmare of triviality. Some other new sites present mainly gossip. Our hero TheTiredDirtySoldier is still online, but his site is not listed anymore in the Yafro directory Yafros on the Frontline (WHY?) and -- being a very talented amateur in writing and shooting -- he or they or whoever removed his expressive pictures... .
Initially we wanted (Link) to collect other images before their removal... but what we had been too late. If we would have only linked in our earlier posts to the various sites at Yafro these links would now point to nowhere. However, as said before, we downloaded and stored them. The remaining pictures mainly have a very superficial character. Obviously someone wants us to see only these images and that´s why we won´t post them here.

Sadly enough (see also this story), at least one image (see below) from a soldier at Yafro seems to be stolen by this guy who obviously tries to make money with the images -- "exclusively" -- as he writes on his website. Obviously this guy (who has mainly holiday photography on his site) has never been in Iraq. If ever one of the soldiers or their relatives should read this -- talk to your lawyer to send him a nice letter. Copyright infringement -- ever heard of? And the next guy is waiting: "I saw some of your photos of Iraq at alt.binaries.pictures.military. I would be willing to host some of you photos on my site. Just e-mail me webmaster@falconbrigade.com. I have 1000 megs to loan and 50gb of bandwidth per month). So in the end the images might go back to where they belong -- the army. The image below is this image from the soldier LowControl at Yafro (Ooopppps!!) and is also listed here (upper left image). Theprecipice.org explains it would only mirror the images of that guy who wants to earn money with them.

[Update July 10, 2004: It turned out that finally some/most of the images presented by one or more moblogging soldier at Yafro as an image taken by himself/themselves, were probably stolen; very often from professional photojournalists. Explanation here. We tried to assign a proper copyright to all photos of doubtful origin. Origin of the image above: David Leeson/Dallas Morning News.]

Iraqian Frontline: Images from Moblogging Soldiers IV

[Update July 11, 2004: It turned out that finally some/most of the images presented by one or more moblogging soldier at Yafro as an image taken by himself/themselves, were probably stolen; very often from professional photojournalists. Explanation here and here. We tried to assign a proper copyright to all photos of doubtful origin.]

Update to these stories ("Iraqian Frontline: Images from Moblogging Soldiers III" and "Iraqian Frontline: Images from Moblogging Soldiers II") :

First off, five of the images presented here ("Iraqian Frontline: Images from Moblogging Soldiers II") are not online anymore. These images from fun11b.yafro.com and tiredandirtysoldier.yafro.com have been removed or censored in the past 18 days. Just look at the images and the text and you´ll understand why (click on an image to enlarge it; the text under each image is highlighted as a link and points to the original link at yafro.com -- now pointing to nowhere):

"In rememberance of 3 soldiers that died in our battalion. They were great soldiers , and will never be forgotten !"

"some camel that didn't want to move for us"

"we had 5 soldiers killed on wensday this is not a picture of it i am not going to post a picture of it untill i have edited it they were rideing in a m-113 that is the track vechial in the picture that is right in front of the camera the insurgents used 400 pounds of c-4 and when it went off it blew that armored m 113 into nothing 5 were killed instantly and one was criticley wounded the blast crater was 10 feet deep and 20 ft wide the good thing is that the guys who were killed never knew that they had been hit it was so quick i hope it is like that for me"

"Fallujah cemetery of the Americans." is what the sign says"

"this was taken at camp anaconda in baghdad i was swimming in saddams pool it was taken last summer yes i peed in it"

Who had removed the pictures? The two soldiers themselves?


The third image presented above was originally followed by another image. This one:

"they dont seem to learn that even when they have the element of surprise it still wont turn out in their favor"

This last image is still online. Without the context of the first image it is getting a complete new and inverse significance.

All five removed pictures have a special symbolic content and they come along without bestiality or shocking scenery. Personally we do not think that the two soldiers have removed their images themselves. They might fight in different locations in Iraq and don´t know each other. Clearly this seems to be a sign of active and centralized censorship.


The 15 pictures initially presented here ("WHO DELIVERS THE ICONIC WAR IMAGES - PROS OR AMATEURS?") are all still online.


TheTiredDirtySoldier is still online, but not listed anymore at Frontline Yafros.

[Update July 10, 2004: It turned out that finally some/most of the images presented by one or more moblogging soldier at Yafro as an image taken by himself/themselves, were probably stolen; very often from professional photojournalists. Explanation here. We tried to assign a proper copyright to all photos of doubtful origin.]