Maybe This Week, Maybe Next Week
03 December 2024
The Photos
The I5 corridor route San Francisco to Los Angeles, return
Service stop. Highway 198 and I5. Coalinga, California. Photo: Robert Gumpert 25 November 2024
After the election, Village Green. Los Angeles, California. Photo: Robert Gumpert 26 November 2024
Magazines at the checkout counter. Los Angeles, California. Photo: Robert Gumpert 29 November 2024
Oven thermometers. Los Angeles, California. Photo: Robert Gumpert 28 November 2024
Utility room. Village Green, Los Angeles, California. Photo: Robert Gumpert 29 November 2024
Private System. Service stop on I5 and Highway 198. Coalinga, California. Coalinga, California. Photo: Robert Gumpert 30 November 2024
Hotel room, 4:30 am. Highway 198 and I5. California. Photo: Robert Gumpert 01 December 2024
Tesla charging farm. I5 and Highway 198, at Harris Ranch. Photo: Robert Gumpert 01 December 2024
Mercey Springs Rd and I5. Los Banos, California Photo: Robert Gumpert 01 December 2024
Road side memorial, Mercey Springs Rd and I5. Los Banos, California Photo: Robert Gumpert 01 December 2024
The Reads
Podcast
A Small Voice
Right Eye Dominant
Season 4 Episode 6: Arturo Soto: Border Documents
Food:
The Food Chain: How did fast food become so successful? (podcast)
NY Times Sunday Magazine: Ozempic Could Crush the Junk Food Industry. But It Is Fighting Back. As revolutionary new weight-loss drugs turn consumers off ultraprocessed foods, the industry is on the hunt for new products.
Culture:
Photography:
Photo Booth:
South China Morning Post
A look at life in Hong Kong’s notorious subdivided flats | Eugene Lee
Lens Culture:
38 Award-Winning Black & White Photographers
BJP:
Society:
What Is To Be Done? Chronicling Our Future, as It Is Being Built. The contest to define America's future begins once more. Recording what people are trying to do, as they are trying to do it. | James Fallows
Aeon:
We need raw awe - In this tech-vexed age, our life on screens prevents us from experiencing the mysteries and transformative wonder of life | Kirk Schneider, edited by Pam Weintraub
The Guardian:
I have left Twitter/X but remain on Bluesky with the following handle: @ragumpert.bsky.social
“Division Street” – Order from Dewi Lewis: Orders: U.S.A – Britain - Canada
22 November 2024
The Photos
Ocean Beach and the Great Highway from Sutro Heights. San Francisco, California. Photo: Robert Gumpert 19 November 2024
Servers taking a cigarette break in an alley in Zurich, Switzerland. Photo: Robert Gumpert 16 September 2018
A foggy night at Land's End. San Francisco, California. Photo: Robert Gumpert 26 October 2024
Store in the Tanforan Mall in San Bruno, California. Photo: Robert Gumpert 15 October 2024
Remnants of a sweep of a homeless encampment on Division Street, in back of Best Buy. Photo: Robert Gumpert 29 September 2021
A card distriputed to 135 unhoused people who have experienced a sweep by ProPublica and reporterd here
The Reads
Culture:
The Guardian
‘Fandom has toxified the world’: Watchmen author Alan Moore on superheroes, Comicsgate and Trump - Alan Moore
EL PAÍS
From a Jesus Christ sensei to Muslim converts: Inside the strange new wave of ultra-Catholic cinema | JAIME LORITE
Photography:
The Guardian
‘It changed 20th-century art’: revisiting Robert Frank’s The Americans
Hyperallergic
Danny Lyon’s autobiography takes us on a long voyage from East to West and back again without smoothing over the potholes in the road - Julia Curl
Society:
The Guardian
Trump became a community of people, Dems will loose until they do the same. " ... and offers listeners companionship" Podcasts like Joe Rogan’s and Theo Von’s Their blend of off-the-cuff, Trump-leaning commentary blurs traditional lines between left and right | Sam Wolfson
EL PAÍS
The expert points out that algorithms play an ever-growing role in shaping our perception of reality. The difficulty in deciphering them places society at a significant disadvantage relative to major corporations | Jordi Pérez Colomé
Wired
Anyone Can Buy Data Tracking US Soldiers and Spies to Nuclear Vaults and Brothels in Germany | by Dhruv Mehrotra and Dell Cameron
The Athletic
Joel Embiid shoving incident a microcosm of our society’s loss of respect for one another | Jim Trotter
ProPublica
Swept Away, What people loose in sweeps of encampments - Ruth Talbot, Asia Fields, Nicole Santa Cruz and Maya Miller
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
NOV 21, 2024: Timothy Snyder explained that destroying a country requires undermining five key zones: “health, law, administration, defense, and intelligence.”
Thoughts
The ’70s Lens: Reimagining Documentary Photography - 12 Documentary Photographers Who Changed the Way We See the World Why have the photographers changed the way we see the world? What does that mean?
I can date my start as a documentary photographer to 1970 but it’s probably more accurate to use 1974 when I did my first project. So, I am of the time this article says documentary photography was transformed.
I thought of myself as in the tradition of a documentary photographer, from Mathew Brady, August Sander, Lewis Hine, Frank. I didn’t notice that the discipline was being transformed, evolving would have been what I thought.
There was much work being done “documenting” the world by people like Diane Arbus, William Eggleston, Bill Owens, Larry Flint, Nan Goldin, to name a few. But I didn’t then, and don’t now, fully understand why much of what they did was considered documentary photography. It seems to me many of these photographers were using the world to do some self exploration. Or, if not that, then to explore some idea around color and design. As is always the case, the passage of time has added a documentary quality to the work.
I knew a fellow awhile back, not a photographer but an academic teaching about photography. He was always surprised that his students didn’t understand the photos they were looking at.
I’ve been a photographer a long time now and it is true that photos I once dismissed, or didn’t understand, now are interesting to me. Bill Owens’ work on Suburbia is a case in point. I can’t say if my taste has evolved or the passage of time has lent interest that originally I did not have.
I can say that after reading this piece I suspect I don’t understand the most of the photos I’m looking at even now.
NOTE: I have left Twitter/X but remain on Bluesky with the following handle: @ragumpert.bsky.social
“Division Street” – Order from Dewi Lewis: Orders: U.S.A – Britain - Canada