Search results for ""Author Fred Ritchin""

Twenty years ago, before the era of digital cameras, cell phones, Photoshop, and the World Wide Web, Fred Ritchin presciently outlined many of the ways in which the digital age would transform society. His groundbreaking book, In Our Own Image, the first to address “the coming revolution in photography,” asked pointed and sometimes chilling questions that are increasingly relevant today, including whether democracy can survive the erosion of media accelerated by facile use of digital means. By the time a second edition was published in 1999, many of Ritchin’s predictions had come true: computer embellishment of imagery had become a staple in the media and, given the widespread use of graphic so!ware, had significantly diminished photography’s special role as a credible witness: Newsday had published the first “future” news photograph of two feuding ice skaters as they would meet the next day, and on its cover, Time magazine darkened and blurred an image of the celebrity O. J. Simpson in order to li! “a common police mug shot to the level of art, with no sacrifice to truth.” Aperture is pleased to reissue this seminal text, which has continued to shape the debate about digital imaging since its initial publication. This twentiethanniversary edition features a preface by the author that contextualizes the book for a contemporary audience.

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One of our most influential commentators on photography investigates the future of visual media as the digital revolution transforms images, changing the way we conceptualize the world. From photos of news events taken on cell phones to the widespread use of image surveillance, digital media has fundamentally altered the way we receive visual information. Simultaneously, the increased manipulation of photographs has made photography suspect as reliable documentation, raising questions about its role in recounting personal and public histories. In a world beset by critical problems and ambiguous boundaries, Ritchin argues that it is time to begin energetically exploring possibilities created by technological innovations, and to use them to better understand our rapidly changing world.

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After Photography examines the myriad ways in which the digital revolution has fundamentally altered the way we receive visual information, from photos of news events taken by ordinary people on cell phones to the widespread use of image surveillance. In a world beset by critical problems and ambiguous boundaries, Fred Ritchin argues that it is time to begin energetically exploring the possibilities created by digital innovations and to use them to better understand our rapidly changing world. Ritchin—one of our most influential commentators on photography—investigates the future of visual media as the digital revolution transforms images into a hypertextual medium, fundamentally changing the way we conceptualize the world. Simultaneously, the increased manipulation of photographs makes photography suspect as reliable documentation, raising questions about its role in recounting personal and public histories. In the tradition of John Berger and Susan Sontag, Ritchin analyzes photography's failings and reveals untapped potentials for the medium.

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In 1984 Sebastiao Salgado began what would be a fifteen-month project of photographing the drought-stricken Sahel region of Africa in the countries of Chad, Ethiopia, Mali, and Sudan, where approximately one million people died from extreme malnutrition and related causes. Working with the humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders, Salgado documented the enormous suffering and the great dignity of the refugees. This early work became a template for his future photographic projects about other afflicted people around the world. Since then, Salgado has again and again sought to give visual voice to those millions of human beings who, because of military conflict, poverty, famine, overpopulation, pestilence, environmental degradation, and other forms of catastrophe, teeter on the edge of survival. Beautifully produced, with thoughtful supporting narratives by Orville Schell, Fred Ritchin, and Eduardo Galeano, this first U.S. edition brings some of Salgado's earliest and most important work to an American audience for the first time. Twenty years after the photographs were taken, "Sahel: The End of the Road" is still painfully relevant. Born in Brazil in 1944, Sebastiao Salgado studied economics in Sao Paulo and Paris and worked in Brazil and England. While traveling as an economist to Africa, he began photographing the people he encountered. Working entirely in a black-and-white format, Salgado highlights the larger meaning of what is happening to his subjects with an imagery that testifies to the fundamental dignity of all humanity while simultaneously protesting its violation by war, poverty, and other injustices. 'The planet remains divided,' Salgado explains. 'The first world in a crisis of excess, the third world in a crisis of need.' This disparity between the haves and the have-nots is the subtext of almost all of Salgado's work.

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The first complete illustrated bibliography of 1,000 iconic photobooks created by members of the renowned photo agency This fascinating in-depth survey brings Magnum's history alive through the genre of the photobook – an essential vehicle for photographers to share their work. Its pages include unpublished behind-the-scenes material, together with ephemera from the photographers' archives about the making of their books. With an introduction by Fred Ritchin and texts by Carole Naggar, this book explores the evolution of the photobook, as well as the important role that Magnum has played in the history of documentary photography.

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N. O. K. -Next Of Kin, examines the ways in which American families memorialize their relatives killed in military conflict. The photographs, spanning 2014-2017, focus on the personal altars and private displays of mementos and objects dedicated to lost soldiers. This response from families must be part of the public discourse on war and its aftermath. N. O. K. Includes two volumes, one featuring photographs and one containing testimonials and essays from Gold Star Families. Inbal Abergil is an internationally exhibited visual artist and an Assistant professor of Photography at Pace University. Fred Ritchin is Dean of the International Center of Photography (ICP) School. In 2017 he received the John Long Ethics Award from the National Press Photographers Association. Carol Becker is a writer and the Dean of Faculty and Professor of the Arts at Columbia University School of the Arts. Maurice Emerson Decaul is a former Marine, is a poet, essayist, and playwright, whose writing has been featured in the New York Times, The Daily Beast, Sierra Magazine, Epiphany and others. Stephen Mayes is the Executive Director of the Tim Hetherington Trust and former VII Photo CEO.

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Central American nations have recently had the highest per capita homicide rates in the world—surpassing the per capita death toll even in war-torn countries like Iraq and Afghanistan—and gang violence has been the dominant explanation for this tragic state of affairs. But why has gang activity become endemic in the region? Photojournalist Donna De Cesare began covering Central America during the civil wars of the 1980s, focusing especially on the disrupted lives of children and youths, and continued her photography project in Central American refugee communities in the United States in the 1990s and postwar Central America in the 2000s. She documents a history of repression, violence, and trauma, in which gangs are as much a symptom as a cause of trauma, trapped as they are by social neglect.With profound empathy for a reality that is too easily defined and dismissed as repugnant, Unsettled/Desasosiego takes us on a visual journey into the lives of children deeply affected by civil war and gang violence. De Cesare’s photographs and bilingual personal narrative trace the evolution and expansion of the notorious 18th Street and Mara Salvatrucha gangs from the barrios of Los Angeles to the shanties of Central America. They show how decades of war and violence—as well as the illegal drug trade—have created a culture that allows gangs to flourish. At the same time, her photographs portray the humanity of gang members and their families, encouraging us to understand the lives of youths at the margins and to take responsibility for the consequences of political and social actions that have ruptured Central American society for generations.

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