It’s do-it-yourself day here. I put my library show prints into too large of frames (18×24″), so I spent a little time tonight reprinting, cutting new mats, and getting the frames ready.
As with every DIY project, you have to weigh the money you (might) save doing it yourself against the cost of materials and […]

continue reading.....

Do you live somewhere other than the United States? Did you at one point? Does your country have declared or undeclared nuclear weapons? Perhaps it exploded them in 1998? Perhaps it’s working on a nuclear fuel cycle but not to make bombs (or maybe it does want to try a little […]

continue reading.....

I don’t usually post comments here that I posted on other people’s blogs, but here’s one on Henri Cartier-Bresson at Chapati Mystery.
It seems right to include a bit about travel photography and India and truthfulness. I personally found it difficult to photograph in India partly because I didn’t want to misrepresent it and because […]

continue reading.....

A while back I mentioned that the music for David Sutherland’s The Farmer’s Wife was the mournful soundtrack that came to mind when I thought of Iowa. The most recent Sutherland film, Country Boys, was a bit disappointing, but the earlier’s splendor remains undiminished.
After listening to Neko Case quite a lot over the last […]

continue reading.....

On my local news broadcast tonight, I heard a pair of disturbing statistics:

Last week, Team 5 uncovered the case of Nelson Rodriguez, a mentally ill prisoner who took his own life while in Walpole State Prison.
NewsCenter 5’s Janet Wu reported that Rodriguez was among many mentally ill inmates behind bars in Massachusetts, a fact that […]

continue reading.....

As seen at The Clutter Museum.
Instructions: Go to your music player of choice and put it on shuffle. Say the following questions aloud, and press play. Use the song title as the answer to the question. NO CHEATING.
How does the world see you?
“The Flowers of Bermuda” (Stan Rogers)
Will I have a happy life?
“The Engine Driver” […]

continue reading.....

When Tocqueville toured America in the early national period, he visited several prisons:
To sum up the whole on this point, it must be acknowledged that the penitentiary system in America is severe. While society in the United States gives the example of the most extended liberty, the prisons of the same country offer the spectacle […]

continue reading.....

I knew that the Commonwealth project was going to be big, but I only started to get an inkling in January, 2005, when Leslie and I were walking along the levee outside Nicolaus, California.
“Everyone is going to want to buy your book.” For a photography monograph to have more than a hundred plates is […]

continue reading.....

The Newton Camera Club’s annual library print show is coming next month. The size of the club has grown rather a lot over the last few years, and we weren’t sure that we would have enough for two prints from every member. We had reasonable success curating the West Newton Cinema show, so […]

continue reading.....

“Red states.” “Fly-over states.” “Jesusland.” Christopher Hitchens took a “Red State Odyssey” for Vanity Fair. David Brooks took a tour all over exurbia for the Atlantic Monthly.
We make a big deal about how the country is divided, and usually we do it with rude rhetoric that shows how little distance we’ve […]

continue reading.....

Our train ride from Jodhpur became increasingly sandier the farther west we went toward Jaisalmer. Somewhere past Osiyan, the scrubby brush along the tracks ends, and the sand takes over completely. By the time we got to Pokaran (or Pokhran) the train shimmied and yawed along tracks warped by the 120-degree heat as […]

continue reading.....

The worst thing that could happen to radio station managers in my former hometown in the middle of Wyoming was to wake up to the inevitable. For executives with abyssmal ratings, declining ad revenues, and a bored and unenthusiastic listenership, there was only one thing to do: go country. Sure there were already […]

continue reading.....