When C. emailed me about Lens, the new photography blog at the New York Times, I worried that in all the end-of-the-semester hubub I was woefully out of the blogospheric loop. How had I missed this? Then I realized it's brand-new. So, thanks to C. of course, I'm not actually out of the loop after all. Phew! It is so hard to keep up.
I encourage you to check it out. Unlike most blogs, it's actually designed to emphasize the visual, with features like full-screen available on each post. Today's post gives additional background on what Barbie Zelizer would call an "about-to-die" photograph of Pfc. Richard Dewater in Afghanistan. Dewater was photographed by NYT photographer Tyler Hicks just moments before he was killed by a bomb blast. The heartbreaking photo was published last month as part of an outstanding series on Afghanistan; it (and other Hicks photographs from that day) are featured in this slideshow.
From what I can tell so far, the posts combine "picture of the day" features with more substantive behind-the-scenes pieces like the Hicks photos. Happily, it looks like they'll also be digging into the archives, judging from this post on how Iowans dealt with foreclosures in 1933.
Finally, this one-minute video from a White House pool photographer is perhaps the clearest definition of a "photo op" you can get. I'll be showing this to students in my visual politics class next fall.
(A link to Lens is now to your right, along with a hodgepodge of other things I'm lookin' at).
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