New Photo Blog from the New York Times

The New York Times has launched its new photography showcase on its website. It's calls Lens,and it features portfolios and behind-the-scenes videos from a host of the newspaper's photographers. As regular readers of State of the Art will have noticed by now, I'm a big fan of the photography from the Times, so I'm pretty happy to see this new blog. You really have to check out Stephen Crowley's video piece on Oval Office photo ops. It's a sobering looks at how political photojournalism is manufactured. Hurray for Lens.--David Schonauer

Hugh Van Es, Who Covered Fall of Saigon, Dies at Age 67

Photographer Hugh Van Es, who covered the war in Vietnam and made an indelible image of the fall of Saigon in 1975, died Friday morning in Hong Kong. He was 67.
   Van Es covered the war for both the Associated Press and United Press International. Among his best known images was a shot of a wounded soldier  taken during the battle of Hamburger Hill.
   But he will be remembered primarily for him photo of Vietnamese civilians clamoring up a ladder to board an American helicopter as North Vietnamese troops closed in on Saigon on April 29, 1975. While many civilians stormed the U.S. embassy to escape, others chose to climb a ladder on an apartment building that housed CIA and other officials. Standing on the roof of the UPI building in Saigon, a few blocks away, Van Es recorded the desperate moment. The image became a metaphor for the ignoble end of the American experience in Vietnam.--David Schonauer

Photographer Linsey Addario Injured in Pakistan

Linsey Addario, whose pictures have appeared regularly in the New York Times in recent years, was injured in a car wreck in Pakistan on Saturday. According to Times Assistant Managing Editor Michelle McNally, Addario was returning to Islamabad after visiting efugee camps.
     Addario suffered a broken collar bone "and some pretty nasty scratches and bruises," says McNally. Sadly, the driver of the car, Raza Khan, was killed. Khan was a veteran driver for western journalists; Time magazine has called him a "world-classdriver/fixer." The Times is establishing a fund for Khan's family, including his six children. (Melissa Bellinelli of the newspaper's picture desk is handling all contributions, which are not tax deductible. Checks can be made payable to The New York Times, noting Raza Khan's name in the memo field.)
     A  Newsweek photographer, Teru Kuwayama, was also injured in the crash.
     Addario is now in Islamabad with her fiance, a Reuters correspondent also based in that city, and Times correspondent Dexter Filkins.
    McNally forwarded this email from Addario:
   "Before anything, I want to thank everyone at the Times for all your help and support this week. You are all wonderful and I am so grateful to have you as an extended family.
   "I am still in the hospital, making a bit of progress. I was able to walk around in circles today  - a leap from yesterday's five steps. I imagine I'll look pretty funny as a bride in the next six weeks, but hey, it's character building." (Above is an image from Addario's website, taken in the Darfur region of Sudan in 2004.)--David Schonauer

A Few Wise Words About Photojournalism

Last week, American Photo contributing editor Eliane Laffont received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Griffin Museum in Boston. Eliane and her husband, Jean Pierre Laffont created both the Gamma and Sygma photo agencies, which changed the business of photojournalism and made the medium immensely more important. Along the way, they helped create the careers of a number of now-famous photographers. In the photo above, you see Laffont being congratulated by Jean-Francois Leroy, the driving force behind the Visa pour L'Image photojournalism festival in France, and Kathy Ryan, the photography editor of the New York Times Magazine. (By the way, the museum also gave a Focus Award for Writing to AP Executive Editor Russell Hart, so we felt very well represented.)
     Accepting her award, Laffont spoke passionately about the important role photojournalism plays in our society. I thought readers of this blog would like to hear her words. What follows is a transcript of her speech.

Will Amazon Save Newspapers and Magazines?

Amazon has now officially announced the launch of its Kindle DX, a larger and more expensive version of its Kindle 2 e-reader. It is big enough, says the company, to display text books, but there is also much anticipation that new larger-size devices like this will be delivery systems for newspapers and magazines. It doesn't look to me like the new Kindle will be up to that particular task--it seems more geared to the text-book market.
    That seems logical--e-readers like this could cut the very high price of college test books, and college students are comfortable with technology like this. But if publishers can't make a profit on these books--and college texts can be gold mines--they will probably be cool to the whole thing.)
    Other devices are on the way, and they will cater more to newspaper and magazine formats and production quality. What would it take to get you to buy one? Size? Portability? Price? The image quality will certainly have to improve to make the experience of seeing pictures worthwhile.--David Schonauer

Headline of the Day

"Pfewww...." And I slept right through it, when I could have been waiting to see if the world was about to explode on FOX NEWS.
    Actually, this post really doesn't have much to do with photography, unless you're a photographer working for the Boston Globe, or a Globe reader who admires the financially-troubled newspaper's photography.
    In any case, as the headline (from Huffington Post) makes clear, unions and the Globe's owner (the New York Times) have come to a cost-cutting agreement to keep the publication going...for a while.--David Schonauer

How We View Obama

Last night I participated in a symposium of sorts on one of my favorite blogs, Bag News Notes. The topic was how the Obama presidency has been presented in pictures over the course of its first 100 days. Michael Shaw, who writes the blog, had picked out a number of interest images made since January 20, some of which I knew and other that were new to me. One of those was the image here, which shows the new president greeting general at the Pentagon on January 28. (The photo is credited to Getty Images.) It's always tempting to apply amateur Freudian analysis toimages like this, but I was amazed at the body language here. The president, dominant male, has his finger outstretched...(hmmm)...while the generals guard their privates. You can read the transcript of the discussion here. And speaking of pictures of the president, what do you think of Nadav Kander's photo of the cover of yesterday's New York Times Magazine (below)?-David Schonauer

GQ, National Geo, and New Yorker Win National Magazine Awards for Photography

Award season continued last night, as the American Society of Magazine Editors announced the winners of the 2009 National Magazine Awards.

PHOTO PORTFOLIO (honors creative photography and photo illustration)
Winner: The New Yorker, for "Service," a series of portraits of American soldiers by Platon (above).
Finalists: Bon Appétit (for "A Heritage Feast" by by Tim Morris; GQ  for "Whot It Takes," by Jeff Riedel; Gourmet for "Out of Sight" by Romulo Yanes; and W for "Come on Down to Nawlins" by Bruce Weber; styled by Karl Temper, April.

PHOTOGRAPHY (recognizes excellence in magazine photography over three full issues)
Winner:  GQ  Jim Nelson, editor-in-chief; Fred Woodward, design director; Jim Moore, creative director; Anton Ioukhnovets, art director; Dora Somosi, director of photography, for August, November, December issues.
Finalists: Bon Appetit; National Geographic; T The New York Times Style Magazine;  and W.

PHOTOJOURNALISM (recognizes photographic documentation of an event or subject in real-time)
Winner: National Geographic, for "Who Murdered the Virunga Gorillas" by Brent Stirton (photo below)
Finalists: Harper’s Magazine  for "Life and Death" by Lynsey Addario;  The New York Times Magazine for "A Cutting Tradtion"  Stephanie Sinclair; The New York Times Magazine for "The Children of God" by Stephanie Sinclair; Time for "The Forgotten Plague" by James Nachtwey
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Eyes of History Contest Winners Named

The White House News Photographers Association has released the names of the winners of its 2009 Eyes of History photo contest. Washington Post photographer Andrea Bruce was named the Photographer of the Year, and Charles Ommanney of Getty Images/Newsweek won the Best Political Photo award.
      This is the fourth time Bruce, who learned of her win while on assignment in Iraq, has won the Photographer of the Year award. Her previous awards came in 2003, 2005, and 2006.
      Ommanney's award came for his photo of President-Elect Barack Obama inside the Capital, moments before he walked onto the viewing stand to be sworn in as Commander in Chief (above). Contrast that image with another winning photo made by Ommanney that day showing President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney and their wives waiting for the arrival of the Obamas at the White House (below). What can we learn from these two pictures? (For a complete list of the winners, go here.)--David Schonauer

Conde Nast Shuts Down Portfolio Mag

Magazine publisher Conde Nast is closing another magazine. Go here for details. The latest title to go is Portfolio, the luxe business magazine that unfortunately came of age during our a bruising business slowdown. Portfolio published some very good photography, and it's a loss for the photo community. Some reports said that Conde invested $100 million on Portfolio since its April 2007 launch. The company also shuttered Domino magazine in January.--David Schonauer