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Culture Focus Photo September 16, 2011

Who Else Wanted to Do Away with the World Trade Center. (Updated to Include the Arabs – But it's not what You Think.)

There's a lot to tease out of this '62 Corbis file photo leading off a Spiegel "History of the Trade Center" slideshow, including the previous residents dispossessed from the neighborhood -- the Arabs.

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Campaign '12 Photo

TIME's Rick Perry "Near-Nomination" Cover

Assigning someone the likes of Platon to shoot a Perry cover is going to automatically lend a gravity you would otherwise give to someone "just that far away" from the GOP nomination.

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International Focus Photo September 15, 2011

Why the Photo of the Afghan Soldiers Behind the Tree Was in So Many Photo Galleries Tuesday

Well sure, it's a dramatic and totally kinetic shot, but it has a political twist as well.

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September 11th: It Wasn't About What Happened, But What Could Be Narrated

The tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001 recycled and recirculated an enormous number of images. Many of them were familiar, the meaning of the event seemingly fixed. But anniversaries are part of the process of fixing memory, and as they are repeated they can obscure the uncertainty that prevailed...

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President Obama Photo September 14, 2011

Jobs on the Line (his Included)

If the picture has turned up all over, I'm wondering what the message is.

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Campaign '12 Photo September 13, 2011

Michelangelo, Eat Your Heart Out!

Given the CNN Tea Party "Strange-Bedfellow" Debate, with "Corporations are People" Romney and Rick "States Rights, But Pro-Dream Act" Perry center stage, AND the cleverness of the Getty photo, I couldn't resist.

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Weapons Dealers Meet 7th Avenue

Besides the message that employment opportunities, when it comes to civil defense, have become more gender-neutral, I had a more "veiled" reaction to this robo-helmet.

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Campaign '12 Photo September 12, 2011

Wrenching Around With the Tea Party

Catering to the angriest (and most rejectionist) element of society, big media is driving the interests and the narrative of the Tea Party.

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Beyond Commemoration Sunday: Remembering to Forget

This is how the US should look: a gleaming city. It need not even be a “city on a hill.” Unfortunately, the photograph is not from Milwaukee or Buffalo or New Orleans or Portland or any other American city. Welcome to the Jinzhou New Area on the northern...

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Alan Chin on "the 9/11 Decade": Beyond Pushpins On A Calendar

"Though anniversaries may just be pushpins on a calendar, they are key markers of our individual and collective lives." Photographer Alan Chin on loss and change through the 9/11 decade, from New York to Afghanistan, Iraq to New Orleans, and back again.

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Militarism Focus Photo September 11, 2011

The "Most Different" News Photos from the 9/11 Commemoration – #1: "Salam"

How novel it was to discover this photo, and the ritual of Muslim prayer.

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9/11 Photo September 10, 2011

Our 9/11 Tenth Anniversary Portrait … Going the Other Way

Thankfully, friend and brilliant photographer, Mario Tama, sent me this a couple days ago, a photo unique out of the 9/11-remembrance constellation, if for one thing, by simply managing not to take itself too seriously.

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Culture Focus Photo September 9, 2011

Reconstructing 9/11 with Nina Berman — The Still-Shattering Beehive

The argument is that the free market proved the main catalyst for the destruction that day.

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President Obama Photo September 8, 2011

Obama's Jobs Address: Key Optics

If Obama gave a solid speech last night to a joint session of Congress, there were several moments that kept me from going all-Pollyanna.

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The President of the United States Requests Permission to Enter!

Given the country's political straights and what we've observed of Obama so far, however, I'm sure others would argue the photo captures a dramatically different quality.

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Campaign '12 Photo September 7, 2011

GOP Debate: I've Got Some Questions

Channeling Reagan, Huntsman, Romney edges "Climate Prez" Perry for nomination.

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Campaign '12 Photo

Did Bachmann Get Boring Overnight, or Did Mediatocracy Deem it So?

I find this an oh, so clever photo from Getty Images. At face value, it shows Bachmann boring the audience to death at Sunday’s candidate forum in South Carolina. Just beyond that surface, however, the photo is a wonderful commentary on how quickly the candidate has been X’d. If...

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Nina Berman Photo

Reconstructing 9/11 with Nina Berman: Windows on the World

What's impressively prescient is how much the juxtaposition captures the equally blunt, hysterical and binary thinking of the Bush Administration's reaction to the 9/11 attacks.

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