January 21 - January 28, 2022
THE WEEKLY ROUNDUP
Great Photography Stories
Never-before-seen Photos Of NYC’s Coney Island In 1940
I loved looking through Untapped New York’s big assortment of photographs of Coney Island that were made in 1940 in preparation for large-scale demolition and renovation work following some major fires in 1939.
“The Demolition Series consists of 223 images that were taken by the NYC Parks Department Photo Unit on January 6 and 7, 1940. According to Rebekah Burgess, Photo Archivist with NYC Parks, the images survey the damage from two consecutive fires in 1939 that damaged or destroyed much of Steeplechase, the surrounding boardwalk, and a number of bathhouses, concessions, and amusements.”
Why the US photographed its own WWII concentration camps
Dorothea Lange’s photos of WWII concentration camps for Japanese-Americans were hidden away for decades after she documented the forcible relocations and interments. VOX has an interesting article and video about Lange’s photographs and their second life in the 1970s and 80s helping Japanese American survivors fight for reparations for this crime.
“US President Franklin D. Roosevelt passed Executive Order 9066 in February 1942 — two months after Japan’s bombing of the US Navy base at Pearl Harbor. It empowered the US army to designate strategic “military areas” from which any and all people deemed a threat could be forcibly removed. This began a process of placing 120,000 Japanese Americans in concentration camps during World War II.”
Are You Sure You Know What a Photograph Is?
Wired Magazine has a thought provoking feature on the implications of AI, new imaging technologies, and computational image construction for traditional photography:
Like a chef experimenting with different combinations of ingredients to see which version works, the AI develops a picture through experimental trials that extrapolate from different aspects of the existing images. Paglen says that this new development in vision is “more significant than the invention of photography.” While the black hole photograph extended our vision to something that exists but we cannot see, the AI-generated photos expand our vision to possibilities and imagination because it is “photographing” things that do not exist in our physical world.
New Photo Podcast Drop
Large format fine art photographer Greg Miller just launched a new photography podcast called Photo Phonica. Each episode will pair audio with a single photograph. From the introduction:
“Welcome to PhotoPhonica! A podcast that explores the sound behind photographs. I would call myself a people photographer and a visual storyteller. For awhile now, I have been thinking about telling stories in a new way by creating audio around a single photograph. Making pictures is so much about putting a frame around the world and excluding everything else. I believe, this is where photography gets its power. From what’s included within the frame but also whats excluded.”
Listen to the first episode here, and you can also subscribe to the podcast on the usual platforms.
EQUITY AND ETHICS IN PHOTOGRAPHY
Unfiltered interview with Shaun Connell
Enjoyed this Unfiltered Photography interview with UK-based documentary photographer Shaun Connell who founded TheBlkGaze, an online space dedicated to the celebration of Black perspectives in photography:
“I grew up in the era of Don McCullin. We’d have the Sunday Times in the house, I’d read the kids’ section, then skim through the magazine and see these horrific pictures of suffering. I distinctly remember the famine in Biafra and looking at those images and thinking, they don’t represent me. They may look like me but they don’t represent me.
“This is as a child – I didn’t have any affinity with photography at that point – but it was just a sense that if I took pictures of me or my experience, you’d see something completely different. That to me was the critical thing.”
Read full interview here. (Shaun’s also a great follow on Twitter, that’s how I came to know him and his work.)
OPPORTUNITIES / CALLS FOR ENTRY
NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship
It’s not too late to apply for NYFA’s $7,000.00 cash grant to New York artists and photographers. The deadline is Wednesday, January 26 at 5pm EST. For more info and to apply for the grant, click here.
NYC Photo Community Newsletter
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Photo at top of Weekly Roundup: All The News © James Prochnik