Well finally, in part due to the Occupy folks and the way they have moved the question, “is there no shame in the 1%”, Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL) has introduced an amendment that would ban corporate money in politics and end corporate personhood once and for all and we should all support him in actions on this.

You can read about the amendment at the above link to Think Progress. Read the amendment here.

(D-FL) Rep. Ted Deutch’s office can be found here. Send him a note of support and while you’re at it, copy the note to Nancy Pelosi, former Speaker of the House.

Robert Gumpert 18 November 2011

And so the photo editor arranged with the London Zoo a setup: for a reward, the caged monkeys snapped portraits of the humans watching them. The day’s take was edited and one image picked for the cover; it looked very much like what most of us photojournalists would have produced on a similar assignment.

Today’s digital cameras have brought new life to still photography. It seems everyone now is taking a photo with their camera. These cameras have given one and all the power to produce technically professional quality images even with their cell phones. Through social media, millions of images taken by millions of people in millions of places are shared. And share they do, as the big “photo agencies” and publications find an image that suits their needs from anyplace and any circumstance. These photo editors have adopted the monkey and typewriter model for image making, with millions of low cost and technically good images at their fingertips. Being able to cover the story with a camera as a journalist, and using exposure and focus to help tell that story, don’t seem that important anymore in a society that values form over content.

Why am I thinking of this now, after all it isn’t exactly new news? In the last few days a couple of news items have crossed my desktop reminding me of the story of monkeys, magazine covers, of replacement, quality and value.

A few days ago my friend, the archivist Lincoln Cushing referred me to the new Lytro camera. This is a true point and shoot camera: take the photo, upload it, and use a computer to focus anywhere in the frame, whenever you want, as many different times as you want. What a gift this is; not only does it mean that the photographer (as the reporter on the scene) no longer needs to think about where the important elements of a story are, but what the photographer thinks no longer matters. The person at the desk can decide for any reason that THE story is better told with a different focus point. Still, though, the image is at least taken by someone at the scene and selected by an editor at the publication.

As it happens, around the same time as the monkey cover came out, I was talking to the same photo editor about screen grabs from video. In those days screen grabs were really crap images; grainy, out of focus, unusable except in the most extreme cases. But the photo editor foresaw the day that all images for the paper would be screen grabs from “footage” shot either by scribblers using small video cameras (now phones), or by some sort of CCTV network. No need for cranky, temperamental photographers and agents who thought they should be paid for their expertise. The photo editor would just view the material and grab whatever fit best.

Then in a 24 October 2011 post John Nack wrote that “Adobe engineers & University of Washington researchers are collaborating on a method of automatically finding the best candid shots in a video clip.”

With screen grabs of Google Maps now art, and artists arguing that their screen grabs of the exact same Google Map frame are somehow different than another’s grab perhaps a new version of the monkey photographer’s cover can be done using the Adobe photo editing software. Will anyone notice the difference?

Robert Gumpert 26 October 2011

Pete is now traveling the US interviewing and recording photographers, activists and others involved in issues of photography and incarceration.

Pete is not only posting short edited interviews but full on audio. So far there are 5, including one with your’s truly.

17 October 2011 Robert Gumpert

Photo and copyright: Fernando Moleres

A photographer who has been trying is the Spaniard Fernando Moleres who is working with juvenile detainees in the prisons of Sierra Leone. He was recently interviewed in the British Journal of Photography and it should be read by anyone interested in issues of justice and the problems of working as a social documentary photographer in today’s world.

His work can also be seen at FREE MINOR AFRICA NGO.

For more information on juvenile justice in Africa and incarceration issues and photography link to Prison Photography.

Robert Gumpert 14 September 2011

In today’s New Times the opinion piece “What Happened to Obama” by Drew Westin

Detroit, Michigan 1992: Two Detroit residents head home in downtown Detroit, a few blocks from Woodward Avenue.

“There is no god like one’s stomach:
we must sacrifice to it everyday.”

From the Yorba poem “The Only God that Counts” in Lapham’s Quarterly 2011 Summer

For two weeks the airways and electronic highways have been burning up with chatter about debt limits, arguments about what a tax increase is or is not, and whether or not the United States will default on it’s loans, issue social security checks or loose it’s triple A credit rating.

Important issues to be sure, but perhaps a bit remote for those trying to deal with the following:

28 September 2011, Pew Research announced it’s latest findings on household wealth: “The median wealth of white households is now 20 times that of black households and 18 times that of Hispanic households” based on data from 2009. And the overall income gap between the have and have not also hit a record level.

In September of 2010, Huffpost Business reported on a US Census finding: those making less than half of the “poverty line”, $10,977 for a family of four, hit record highs.

On 26 September 2011, an article in the New York Times reported that 14 million workers who have been unemployed for more than 6 months not only cannot find a job; they can’t even get a job interview.

Seems so long ago now but according to the same Huffpost Business article, during 90’s there were so many jobs that even “ex-convicts had relatively little trouble finding work.” Today we lock up more people than any other country in the world, no matter if measured by numerical totals or percentage of population.

It is important to remember the Yorba poem’s closing words I quoted:

“There is no god like one’s stomach:
we must sacrifice to it everyday.”

People got to eat. They have to feed themselves and their families and a society that destroys people’s hope for even the basics of life is a society in a shit hole of trouble.

Robert Gumpert 28 July 2011

From the New York Times Sunday Review section in a piece written by David J Linden, professor of neuroscience at John Hopkins University School of Medicine

“The risk-taking, novelty-seeking and obsessive personality traits often found in addicts can be harnessed to make them very effective in the workplace. For many leaders, it’s not the case that they succeed in spite of their addiction; rather, the same brain wiring and chemistry that make them addicts also confer on them behavioral traits that serve them well.”

]]> http://robertgumpert.com/2011/07/do-we-need-a-change-in-attitude-and-approach/feed/ 0 http://robertgumpert.com/2011/07/panos-at-25/ http://robertgumpert.com/2011/07/panos-at-25/#comments Tue, 12 Jul 2011 21:09:06 +0000 admin http://robertgumpert.com/?p=794 Panos Pictures has turned 25, the same age as my son. If you have an ANY interest in the world around you: history, current events, or culture, take a moment and have a look at “Conversations in Photography: 25 years of Panos Pictures”.

It has been a difficult time for photojournalism and the vast majority of photographers who slave away at this profession. Often the cost is a heavy one: little money, little recognition, lost families, physical and emotional damage, but a truly bright spot has been agencies like Panos and others: NB, Redux, Noor, Vll, Magnum.

If you have any interest in photojournalism/documentary photography and what it has been, what it is today and what it can be tomorrow, then this film is a must. A needed bright spot.

Robert Gumpert

A disclaimer: some of the interviews in the film were done at HOST Gallery while my show was up, I am not a member of Panos.

]]> http://robertgumpert.com/2011/07/panos-at-25/feed/ 0 http://robertgumpert.com/2011/05/matt-black/ http://robertgumpert.com/2011/05/matt-black/#comments Thu, 26 May 2011 15:37:02 +0000 admin http://robertgumpert.com/?p=775
From “People of the Clouds” Copyright Matt Black.

In the days when it was routine to see large prints there were some that seemed to speak or sing. I mean this literally. It didn’t happen often and when it did I was compelled to touch the print, to move my hand over it’s surface as if the print was a doorway to another place. If this was rare when prints were common, it is even rarer now.

Yesterday I got an email from Matt Black. Matt is one of only a few photographers today whose work I want to touch, even when viewed on the monitor.

Matt is beginning the next segment of his “People of the Clouds” project. He is working with Orion Magazine and Daylight Multimedia on a Kickstarter campaign to fund the work.

Please have a look and give a few bucks – Matt’s work is something special.

Robert Gumpert 26 May 2011

]]> http://robertgumpert.com/2011/05/matt-black/feed/ 0 http://robertgumpert.com/2011/05/%e2%80%9cyou-know-what-this-photo-is-showing-don%e2%80%99t-you%e2%80%9d/ http://robertgumpert.com/2011/05/%e2%80%9cyou-know-what-this-photo-is-showing-don%e2%80%99t-you%e2%80%9d/#comments Fri, 20 May 2011 16:03:47 +0000 admin http://robertgumpert.com/?p=770 This morning the feed from Bag News brought a very interesting piece on how different groups see the meaning in a photo differently.

20 May 2011 Robert Gumpert

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