October 29, 2005

• Jesus. I guess the main criteria for winning this award is that the photograph has to be really frickin' hard to look at. The only photo in the whole batch that didn't have to do with violence, death, or grief was the color one of the tank commander. Whew. Thanks, dt118--incredible stuff.
• Oh, there's also the photo of the football player about to kick the ball. Or is it a HUMAN HEAD?
• yes, dt118, an amazing and moving array of images, thanks for the link!
• I once stole this one. It was attached with Velcro to the xhibition wall and was dangling because the Velcro had loosened. And I really liked that picture. Long time ago, when I was a student in the Netherlands. I'm not proud of it, but now I confessed it, so absolution will be mine.
• The ones I remember best are those from Viet Nam - especially the monk who set himself on fire and the children fleeing after being hit by napalm. Those are etched into my brain. But the awards seem to go mostly to pictures of relatives, especially mothers, mourning people killed in the conflicts over that span of time (what became in my view, generic pictures of people mourning... I'm not saying that those are unimportant, but the "best" from a news photo standpoint?) I'm surprised there aren't more like the Allende picture, moments before he was killed, or even the woman and child who jumped out of the Boston building fire. Those seem to have a lot more dramatic tension than all the grieving mothers.
• WOW.
• Right now a bunch of frat-boys are having a Halloween party behind my apartment, and my son is sleeping in his bed. None of us have been touched by tragedy the way so many of the people in these photos have. Instead of yelling at the frat-boys to keep it down like I normally might, I think I'll just go to sleep.
• The 1980 photo is stunning.
• The 1990 photo reminds me of a Renaissance painting.