Today’s photo of the day is oddly timely, given I chose the photo yesterday, mostly at random. As shown in the caption below, it is a photo by photographer Nick Ut, of 9-year-old Phan Thị Kim Phúc, also known as “napalm girl,” as she ran, terrified and in pain, following a napalm attack by a South…
Much is being written this week about the protest of a young, biracial athlete’s refusal to stand for the U.S. national anthem. For an old-timer like me, it is noteworthy only in that his protest echoes similar protests made nearly 50 years ago, not to mention my own protests in 1970, spurred on by Tommie…
On 1 September 1941, Reinhard Heydrich, one of the architects of the Jewish Holocaust, decreed that all Jews over six years of age in the Reich, Alsace, Bohemia-Moravia and the German–annexed territory of western Poland were to wear yellow Star of David badges on their outer clothing in public at all times. The word “Jew”…
On this day, 30 August back in 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson announced he was nominating the Honorable Thurgood Marshall to be the first black U.S. Supreme Court Justice. (Some will argue that he’s been the only one.) It wasn’t random–previously, LBJ had met with Marshall in 1965 to ask him to be his Solicitor…
African herders move along long-horned cattle, Sebastiao Salgado. Salgado is a photographer who does more than take breathtaking photos. He tries, and succeeds in having an impact from his photography. However, that isn’t why I’ve chosen this photo of the day. The reason is that it perfectly illustrates something my wife and I were discussing…
Yesterday, 22 August 2016, marked the 108th anniversary of famed French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson’s birth. Although many worship the man as the founder of street photographer (I am not one of them) and while others are less enamored, I must recognize the effect of his work in pushing for composition in street photographer. He…
“There is no story. It’s just a question of shapes and light,” Gruyaert once said. His photos are of vivid, perhap exaggerated colors, light, shapes. They are living still lifes, photos of human-centered shapes doing the mundane. They aren’t meant to tell a narrative; they are simply meant to be beautiful. “It’s purely intuition. There’s…
Sleeping Passengers, Greyhound Bus Terminal, New York City, 1947, Esther Bubley, American (1921 – 1998) Esther Bubley was an American documentary (street) photographer who specialized in photos of ordinary people, taken in an intimate, expressive manner. She spent much of her career in New York City and Washington, DC, and is, among other things,…
Young woman in a car, Vivian Maier, Chicago, Illinois, US, August 16, 1956
Marilyn Monroe, The Last Sitting, Bert Stern, 1962 Bert Stern was commissioned by Vogue Magazine to shoot a photo layout of actress Marilyn Monroe in late June 1962, some six weeks before her death. He shot Monroe over 3 daily sessions, and the work resulted in a book that sampled some of the 2500 images…
The Artists' Sanctum 