Reading: Viewing Journalism as a Work of Art

[pakodominguez]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/24/arts/ ... ref=design" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[David Kilpatrick]

Interesting. The artwork has just won a major award - Cartier Foundation or something similar - as the most iconic painting of 2008(9?) but by the standards of the Corbis/IndianChief business a few years ago, the artist should now be subject to a lawsuit for substantial copyright infringement damages. It looks as if Obama is somehow in the spirit of Creative Commons, Fair Usage rights etc and for the photographer to go down this route would be negative. Warhol, Lichtenstein, Hockney and many other artists have used third party photography and artwork as the basis for derivative art of considerable power.

The difference between the Che picture and this is that the photographer has been found rapidly, instead of waiting a lifetime to receive due reward for his work.

James Danziger is a member of a photographic dynasty of some clout in the UK, I did not know he had a New York gallery.

David

[Dusty]

It's all part of ObamaMania here in the ObamaNation. I expect that some day soon his supporters will rise up and declare him the new Messiah. It's even worse than the JFK cult of personality, which was much more in effect, actually, after he was killed.

My great grandkids will be still paying off all the debt he's bringing upon us, but maybe with the dollars collapse and the hyperinflation that ensues it won't really cost us that much.

Dusty

[David Kilpatrick]

The comments made about the 'Jesus factor' of gazing up into the sky are interesting. I have never really identified this aspect - relating the low viewpoint typically showing a dominant individual - with the viewpoint seen of a crucifix statue. For one, many Christ Crucified statues do not have the upward gaze, but a hung head. As with images of saints, the head angled down is as common as the head angled up - and even then, the angled up stance can be prayer, not looking into the great infinity.

However, if you look at modernist/constructivist photography in 1917-39 era - whether Russian communist, or the German/Italian/other fascist equivalents - the outward distant heroic gaze and the low camera viewpoint are vital. The moment you add action of any kind (salute, present arms, present agricultural implements etc) you get the typical hero of the revolution/Reich image. This was not really how the Che Guevara picture appeared; the Jesus factor in that was more defined by the direct gaze and the hair/beard thing. The later simplification of it was almost Turin-shroud like in graphic impact.

The Obama picture uses the idiom of early Soviet poster art, imitating a silkscreen separation with a number of inks (created by masking posterized master positive films). In fact, it was such a popular method for making fade-proof posters that the term 'posterized' for tone separated photos comes from those posters. It's very easy to do now. The artists has made one very substantial change, which is to Obama's left eye. In the photograph, this is almost obscured by shadow and is also more closed and smaller in scale. By drawing a new left eye into the poster art, giving it more relative emphasis than his right eye, the artist has altered the image enough to make it a derivative work and not a copy, in my view.

As for the still paying off debts, that would have been the case with or with the Government interventions worldwide. The debts are ours (our generation, the last one, and our kids), we won't be paying them off, and there is no-one else left to pay them off except successive generations. This has always happened, it's nothing new. Even the above-mentioned JC took a few swipes at the financial system (overturned tables) and defined the relative value of trying to live off savings versus productive enterprise (Talents). I have a book based on the account records of an 18th-century Scottish estate, which shows that ordinary folk were in debt for life - the agricultural worker owed his soul to the 'company store' even more than the exploited early immigrants to the USA.

The big difference is that in the past, where one part of society ran into debt over a lifetime (by occupation, class, location, even entire nations) there was usually another balancing part accruing wealth, which would eventually subsume the indebted or impoverished part. A good example recently would be East and West Germany. The economy-draining support the west had to put into the east is not much different from one half paying the debts run up by the other. After 20 years it may just begin to look balanced.

Now, it looks as if EVERY country and all regions/classes/occupations/whatever are in debt. Who now has the money to redeem this debt?

As you say, hyperinflation is an old solution to the problem. While calling a debt armistice/moratorium is socially inequitable (those who have borrowed to the hilt get a windfall by having their debts cancelled, but end up keeping their assets), hyperinflation can almost wipe out debts as efficiently as a moratorium.

You are left with assets, goods, property, land, tangibles as the only things proof against all this. Therefore, go out and buy Alpha 900 systems, big lenses, new cars and anything else you can afford!

David