This week in photography

Still recovering from a densely packed week, but never too tired to bring you a smattering of photography news that you can use...

It was inevitable that Sports Illustrated would give Michael Phelps the Mark Spitz treatment. Thank god porn star mustaches are no longer in fashion.

Several folks have asked me what I thought of this week's PBS program, "Documenting the Face of America," on the FSA project. It was only an hour long, so there's only so much you can do. I thought it did a good job of focusing on the project as a whole rather than the "great art" of individual photographers. I liked that it used the marvelous textual archives in addition to the visual one. And it snagged some good interviews, both the scholar/experts (F. Jack Hurley, Sally Stein, Beverly Brannon of the Library of Congress) and folks who were there (including the great "get" of Gordon Parks before he passed away). There were a few factual errors and they didn't give enough attention to the work of Russell Lee, who made a huge percentage of the photographs in the file. But these are small things; I'm going to use it in my visual politics class next spring in a short unit on the FSA. 

Looking for ongoing, insightful, critical coverage of the visual spectacle that is the Democratic National Convention? BAGnewsNotes has it all this coming week, including extended team coverage from some people The BAG calls "visual academics" - hey, wait, that's me!

Comments

[Michelle]

I second your opinion on the Michael Phelps photo.