BAGnewsNotes

Look 3

As a program note, this evening I'm heading to Charlottesville to attend the popular photo festival Look3.

In the meantime, I'm leaving you in the good hands of Cara Finnegan (1, 2) who will be spelling me Thursday through Sunday. Cara is a professor of Communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with an expertise in visual rhetoric, communication history and photography. She's also the accomplished moderator of the BAGnewsSALON, and what I like about her, besides a sharp eye, of course, is her great sense of humor and that she never sounds too wonky.

I'm excited to bring a different voice to BNN and I hope you'll have fun.

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Where Goes The Burger?

Note: If you're looking for the Biden and Obama "Your Turn" from the burger joint I posted about an hour ago, one second look, it felt way "too edgy" to me. It's been a long week, one in which I've somehow been drawn to edgier material, starting off with Condi's Stanford encounter on Monday. My first instinct was that the burger shot was a nice, light Fri. pm departure, but then, the "Mantis in Lace" poster, with the girl holding the dagger over Biden's head ... especially after the Edwards post ... that, following the "mainlining" post, was just too much. In any case, all this presents a nice opportunity to encourage you to help feed The BAG with your links and takes. You can send to openbag AT bagnews DOT com. Thanks and best!

BAGnewsSALON: Obama: The First 100 Days

This edition of the BAGnewsSalon examined nine Obama Administration images leading up to the 100-day mark. We hoped to consider various factors, including how the White House frames issues via pictures; what the images say about the character and capacities of Obama and his team; and whether the images evidence a new tone and attitude in the country now.

Discussants participating included professors Loret Steinberg (R.I.T.) and Nathan Stormer (U. of Maine); historian Michael Steinberg; photographer Brian Ulrich; Daryl Lang (PDN); David Schonauer (American Photo); host Michael Shaw; and moderator Cara Finnegan (U. of Illinois).

The BAGnewsSALON is an on-line, real-time examination of news and political images between invited guests andBNNreaders and visitors.

Program Notes

Here's the link to my "Pictures of the Week" segment at the top of the "No Days Off" BlogTalk radio program (based on this set of images).  Also, please join us Sunday for the BAGnewsSALON examining Obama's first 100 Days.

"Resolving" Shaw, Chin And The BAGnewsNotes Mission

I want to thank the people at Live Books and their new "Resolve" blog for dedicating an extensive amount of space, time, thought and editing resource to examining our "journalism" here at BAGnewsNotes, and in particular, my collaboration with photographer Alan Chin.

Resolve was specifically interested in understanding how BAGnewsNotes -- as an independent, progressive and still-evolving enterprise -- is pioneering a new editorial and business model for the publication of photojournalism and the analysis of media and visual politics.

Over nine interview-style posts, the series traces my collaboration with Alan from the time we first met almost four years ago (when a person many of the readership couldn't quite believe was Alan Chin -- then embedded in Iraq with The New York Times -- suddenly joined in a contentious BAG discussion of one of his images published by The Times the day before) through our work together covering Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath; Virginia Tech; the '08 presidential primaries; our wall-to-wall, DNC-accredited coverage of the Democratic Convention in Denver; and more.

Immersed in a medium which affords little time to step back, let alone, an opportunity to study the long view, I find the series incredibly valuable. What it helps me appreciate (beyond a selection of Alan's wonderful images) is how, as old media struggles, we have been engaged in a thoughtful, dramatically educational, unfolding experiment to create an innovative, independent and, ultimately, we hope, economically-viable form of political media out of this, our laboratory.

(The images book-ended here, by the way, and also featured in the second post in the Resolve series, illustrate "the larger picture" Alan and I try to get at. The view above is the what most media consumers saw of Rudy Giuliani's photo-op at the Segway plant during last year's New Hampshire primary. The image below is the simultaneous reaction of the temporarily-inconvenienced Segway workers demonstrating their reaction to the show.)

>> Check out the Resolve series: "Photo assignments from bloggers: new model or same old problems?" We're interested, of course, in your feedback.

>> Also, check out, bookmark and follow the Live Books Resolve photojournalism blog here.

(Images © Alan Chin. New Hampshire. January 5, 2007)

"Like Cattle Down A Chute"

Here's the link to my Pictures of the Week segment on Florida Progressive Radio's No Days Off. I discussed four photos, Obama shaking hands with the London policeman at 10 Downing Street; the remains of the soldier returning to Dover; and both the Nina Berman and Mario Tama images of last weekend's Wall Street protest. One thing I'm trying to do with the segment, besides getting more comfortable doing radio, is to cite as many of your comments as I can. The title of this post, by the way, is from a comment I mentioned by reader JayDenver in reaction to Nina's powerful Wall Street image.

Looking Since the Storm: BAGnewsSALON With Mario Tama - Tonight at 8 EST

Since Hurricane Katrina, Getty photographer Mario Tama has produced compelling documentary images of life in New Orleans. Three-and-a-half years after the storm, we invite you to this BAGnewsSalon where we will discuss how Mario's images look to us, one president and a major financial crisis later.

In addition to Mario Tama, discussants include professors Loret Steinberg, RIT and Nathan Stormer, U. of Maine ; lawyer and historian Michael Steinberg; photojournalists Alan Chin, Tim Fadek, Aric Mayer and Yana Paskova; photographer/publisher Michael Itkoff (Daylight Magazine); BNN publisher Michael Shaw; and BAGnewsSalon producer Ida Benedetto. The discussion will be moderated by Cara Finnegan (University of Illinois).

 We will be accepting moderated questions and comments from the readership in the last half-hour.

(Note: Images are viewable in larger size by clicking on thumbnails below or clicking slideshow "full screen" icon. Slideshow also offers caption option.) 

Pictures Of The Week

If you'd like to hear my "Pictures of the Week" segment on BlogTalk radio with Susan Smith and Alison Morano, catch it streaming here. I'd be interested in your feedback. And a special thanks to the collective intelligence you bring to BNN each week, with a particular hat tip to those readers whose commentary I inferentially or directly cite.

BNN On The Radio

For the past few weeks, I've been doing a weekly segment on "No Days Off," a BlogTalkRadio program hosted Friday afternoons by Susan Smith and Alison Morano of the Florida Progressive Coalition.

We do a 10 minute segment at the top of the show called "Pictures of the Week."  I discuss the week's more notable photos posted on The BAG, at times working in and crediting takes from the readership. This week, I'll probably be talking about the Obama photo posted on Wednesday, the Michael Steele image, as well as the Stewart - Cramer interview. The show comes on at 4 pm EST/1 pm PST. If you'd like to listen in, here's the link.

Also, I recently did a half-hour podcast with Vipul Vyas of Skewz.com. The conversation ranges from the origins of BNN to how the Bush administration and the conservative right artfully managed and manipulated visuals for their own ends. You can catch that here.