2point8

1. matt Apr 28 2008 / 8am

   I think “Street Cops” is a great book! Really captures a side of
   New York that was unseen to most. I bought Circus, Firehouse
   and Resurrection City as well. I was in awe of all the risks that
   she took back then, and was very sorry to learn of all the bad
   times she went through. She’s a quintessential New Yorker and
   I think lots of good things will happen for her soon…
2. Chuck May 02 2008 / 10am

   The Freedman article and video are in many ways the perfect foil for the Flickr piece, which has this implicit smugness about how low-brow it all is on Flickr, ignoring that almost all popular art has been low-brow. I don’t think Freedman’s descent had jack to do with the change in New York. What the Freedman piece hinted at is that when the gallery scene reached dominance in the late 70’s, early 80’s, there was, simultaneously, no room for documentary photography of the sort that she was producing and no place for someone not good at self-promotion. As much as I like a great deal of current gallery-oriented photography the truth is that the penchant for large format, setups and themes has everything to do with what the art scene and the university art program demands. A more honest article about Flickr (and photoblogs and news blogs and anything else on the web that uses photography and video) would point out the way that it is grabbing the baton away from the current establishment of galleries, art schools and museums and we really don’t know where we’ll come out at the other end. There’s certainly plenty of amazingly good photography lying in the festering garbage heap of Flickr, which is precisely what makes it so interesting. See also: the recording industry…
3. BryanF May 06 2008 / 6pm

   good stuff chuck!

   photography on the web needs editors and curators! same is true for all user generated content, which is a term i don’t like.

   everyone is sharing, sharing, sharing. but not many people are interested in editing and curating the sea of content we find ourselves in. i think there’s tremendous opportunities to do interesting things in this area…