All posts filed under: New York

Etem Erol, 1955-2016

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The last message I had from Etem hoca was just a few days before he passed away. I had a night layover in Istanbul on my way to Odessa for two months and I asked if he wanted to join some friends for dinner, so naturally I invited Etem, as I had not been back to the city I called home for two years in over a year. He wrote to say he regretted he could not make it that he was leaving early that same morning for Bulgaria with his brother. It was in Bulgaria, I came to learn just a few nights ago from a classmate and fellow student in his Elementary Turkish I class so many years ago, that he had a heart attack and died in his brother’s arms. He was so young, 60, and with so much life and so much still to give. I write this with tears streaming down my face and it’s been more than a day now since I heard this really excruciatingly painful news. It …

Columbia Journalism School Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma 2014 Ochberg Fellowship

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I have been named a 2014 Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma Ochberg Fellow along with some other pretty seriously accomplished journalists. It means, among other things, that I will be in New York for a week or so in January. It also means I will get advice and gain wisdom from some of the foremost experts on trauma as it impacts journalists. In the past, I attended two events co-sponsored by the Dart Center, a workshop on veterans at the Carter Center in Atlanta and a journalism and trauma workshop in Istanbul that I photographed as well. The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, along with the Rory Peck Trust, have proven to be the gold standard in resources for journalists covering traumatic issues. I am indebted to them and the work they do.

Everyday Projects at Photoville in Brooklyn Bridge Park, Dumbo, Brooklyn

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The Everyday Projects Presented by Instagram Featuring Contributing Photographers from @everydayafrica, @everydayasia, @everydayeasterneurope, @everydayegypt, @everydayiran, @everydayjamaica, @everydaylatinamerica, @everydaymiddleeast, and @everydayusa “The Everyday Projects began in post-war Ivory Coast in 2012 when photographer Peter DiCampo and writer Austin Merrill were visiting the country on a magazine assignment. The two had been based in West Africa for many years, and became frustrated by what they considered to be stereotypical media narratives about the region. To present a more representative narrative, they began focusing on moments that felt less extreme and more familiar to the people who lived there. They photographed everyday life with their mobile phones, eventually inviting other photographers on the continent to join them, using a shared Instagram account called @everydayafrica. “Since then, the Everyday concept has become a global phenomenon and 2014 saw photographers around the world adopting the name and launching their own Everyday feeds in their regions. “On Instagram, many of the photographers of The Everyday Projects have established themselves as pioneers, circumventing traditional distribution channels and connecting directly with their audiences, …

Two Great Exhibits in New York as the 10th Anniversary of the Invasion of Iraq Approaches

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Two great exhibits featuring work by two VII photographers, Franco Pagetti and Gary Knight, are opening in New York City next week. I will be in New York next week and hope to make it to both. Jamie Wellford, formerly of Newsweek, one of my favorite people and finest photo editors helped curate Pagetti’s show at the VII Gallery. Here are the details for both shows: Flashback, Iraq by Franco Pagetti March 12 – April 12, 2013 VII Gallery Brooklyn, NY Photographer Franco Pagetti arrived in Iraq three months before the American bombs fell on March 19, 2003. Photographing under the watchful eye of Saddam’s minders and secret police proved to be easier than what followed. Journalists would soon need the protection of armed men and a chase car and, by 2005, even that become prohibitive. Violence spiraled out of control with daily bombings and kidnapping threats. The only way to cover the story was to be surrounded by even more men with guns, that is, to be embedded with the American military. Amidst these …

Two Great Exhibits: “The Family,” by Jocelyn Bain Hogg at VII Gallery, New York + Peter Di Campo “Life Without Lights” at The Strand Gallery, London

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Two excellent exhibits, “The Family,” by Jocelyn Bain Hogg at the VII Gallery in New York and “Life Without Lights,” by Peter DiCampo at The Strand Gallery in London. Jocelyn Bain Hogg is represented by VII and Peter Di Campo is part of the VII Mentor program working with VII Member John Stanmeyer: The Family by Jocelyn Bain Hogg VII Gallery, Brooklyn, New York; February 2 – March 2, 2012. Jocelyn’s been at it again. Quick as a whippet, take no prisoners, access all villains. Seedy-glam, his beloved London at its etiolated best – nobody does it better. Or dresses sharper. But this time he shows another side of London’s gang world, and the irony is in the details. Time has passed, they’re a bit over-shadowed by more powerful international syndicates. Their movements are so closely scrutinized their social gatherings have to double as sotto voce business meetings. What are they whispering about? We will never know, and that’s the genius of this collection. -Seamus Murphy — Life Without Lights by Peter DiCampo The Strand …

The Year in Pictures 2011: Chicago, New York, New Jersey, Czech Republic, Azerbaijan and Turkey

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The Year in Pictures 2011 The annus horribilis of 2011 is coming to a close – a year that will go down as one of dramatic upheaval and revolution alongside 1789, 1848, 1917, 1989, and now, this year. In Egypt, young revolutionaries overthrew the government of Hosni Mubarak after 31 years of subservience to a one-party state bolstered by an omnipresent muhabarata, or secret service, further bolstered by an overreaching military, after Egyptians witnessed similar events in Tunisia lead to the removal of that country’s former leader Ben Ali. Consequently, the domino theory made a surprise return as events in Egypt triggered revolts elsewhere in Bahrain, Libya, Syria and Yemen. Of these, only Libya’s leader fell after rebels received aerial support from NATO war planes; Qaddafi was found hiding in a drainage canal near his hometown of Sirte (or Surt, depending on your news source and spelling) and subsequently dragged through the streets, sodomized with a knife and otherwise tormented before being shot in the head. In the Libyan conflict three photographers lost their lives, …

From the Archive: The United States of AmeriKitsch

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* “Kitsch is the inability to admit that shit exists.” – Milan Kundera Kitsch has the potential to unite all people, irrespective of culture, background, or elitist pretensions. Objects we acquire or accumulate have no meaning until we provide it. The uses for kitsch are infinite. Milan Kundera notes that kitsch is not just the “inability to admit that shit exists,” but also it is the natural aesthetic of all politicians. Last fall in a video interview for Fortnight Journal, I suggested that kitsch might just outlive us all – even the politicians. Yet most moments of pure kitsch happen far away from electoral politics, geopolitics, and the global spotlight. Kitsch injects sentimental into the otherwise mundane. Bob Dylan said “even the President of the United States must have to stand naked,” yet how naked can you be when your person has become part of a larger cult of presidential kitsch? Does kitsch protect? As I prepare to leave the USA for a Fulbright grant to Azerbaijan, I thought it was time to look back …

Postcards from the USA! Images from the Last Week in the USA!

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Last week, was a busy one. Rahm Emanuel was inaugurated mayor of Chicago and I graduated from Georgetown University’s Graduate School of Foreign Service. I drove 2,000 miles between here, there and several other places in between. From the corn fields in the plains of the Midwest, to the backyard patios of Brooklyn, to the gates of the highest office in the land. It all ends just before the rapture that was said to end the world but did not manage to. Some postcards from the last week: