Bring Me My Slideshows!

You know I love a good slideshow, especially from Annie! So I thought I'd share the ones that warm the cockles of my heart so far! Enjoy:

"These are the civilian front lines of “We the People,” photographed by Annie Leibovitz."

(Take note: McHottie - JON FAVREAU, Obama Speech Writer)




New York Times: Obama's People


Photographer Nadav Kander shot 52 portraits of Obama's top advisors.

(whoops screen capture grabbed McHottie again, lookie there...)

Powerful Portraiture

What timing for a show like the Corcoran’s exhibition of Richard Avedon’s Portraits of Power. As the country sits poised watching the presidential face off for the white house, this collection brings together not just the names and faces of the Washington political scene but players from all layers of the century’s power struggles.

 

Acclaimed as one of the America’s pre-eminent editorial portraitist and fashion photographer’s, we literally walk through the past 50 years of history starting with a pixilated grey shot of a glaze eyed Oppenheimer, perfectly appropriate for the genius behind the splitting of particles.

Though most shots are black and white on white background shot with an 8 x 10 lens, there are a few color images, like that of Barack Obama from the 2004 Democratic convention. At that point, still just the junior senator from Illinois, we are drawn particularly close to him. (Camera technique used to pull his head closer in focus than his body)

While former Sec. of State Kessinger was being photographed, he asked Avedon to “be kind,” clearly referring to the power the photographer had over his image. Interesting that it came from one of the most powerful men in the country.

Toward the middle of the exhibit stood a huge picture titled, Napalm victim #2. Completely disfigured and obviously blind, she stands next to an 11x14 head shot of a decorated Vietnam war hero shamelessly cheesing just four days after her portrait was taken.

With the power of his images not simply resting in the titles of his sitters, its no wonder one of his greatest followers is Annie Leibowitz. 

A Picture is worth.....

While Grant was visiting I insisted we stop into see the new photograph exhibit at the Corcoran. Magnum Photos and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria teamed up to document artistically the effect of free antiretroviral treatment in third world countries. The Fund was set up to not only address those afflicted by the disease who couldn't afford treatment, but also to slow if not stop the spread of the disease all together.

We arrived at the Access to Life exhibit expecting to wonder through at our leisure but the Media Relations Manager had set up a walk-through with Jonas Bendiksen, a Norwegian photographer with Magnum who chronicled Haiti, and Bill Horrigan, the curator of the exhibit.

The exhibit is actually a conglomerate of 8 separate photographer's work and each were given artistic liberty with how they wanted to showcases it throughout the somewhat narrow gallery.

"The real challenge was fitting everything in," Horrigan told us.

The photographers made two trips both lasting two weeks and separated with three months. Jonas decided to timeline four patients by bookending Polaroids the patients took of themselves with the intimate shots he was able to snap while in Haiti.

Upon closer inspection, some of the Polaroids included handwritten updates to supplement the photos. "Bien, mal" and so forth.

One observation Bendiksen offered was the patients here tended to have a higher survivor rate than those in the US. This was in part due to the drugs being free, but also because the village health professionals were more regimented about administering the drugs regularly.

In fact two of Bendiksen's patients recovered. But not all cases were optimistic. A majority of the exhibitions' subjects chronicled the diseases' powerful effect.

When asked how Jonas was able to cope with the subject matter, he said, "it's hard, you don't stop being human when you pick up a camera."

But he also says, " I love working on stories that get left behind in the race for the daily headlines - journalistic orphans. Often, the most worthwhile and convincing images tend to lurk within the hidden, oblique stories that fly just below the radar."