Wednesday, January 15, 2003

Just Like His Poppy Maureen Dowd, in her usual witful manner discusses topics ranging from how "out of touch" the President is with most Americans to his bi-polar foreign policy.  She raises the point that I have struggled with and that is Bush's desire to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction ("WMD's").  Hmm - - inspectors are there and have not found any WMD's, versus North Korea who admits to having nuclear weapons capabilities.  Tell me, am I missing something?  Maybe Bush's mantra is more akin to school yard scuffles - - simply fight with those you can beat and negotiate with those who can hit back. Why aren't there more people questioning Bush's illogical approach to imperialism.  Really - do you think we would be preparing to stage a war with Iraq if the government actually believed Sadaam possessed WMD's?  For the sake of the numerous lives that could be lost if a war with Iraq were to take place, I hope this latest exercise has some greater purpose that I have not yet been enlightened of, or worse, have somehow failed to grasp. 12:53:21 PM     comment [] Images Every second, of every minute, of every of hour, of every day (minus sleep time) we are faced with a barrage of images. The images are typically snippets of advertisements, news segments, or snap shots of something that someone deems relevant or important. The images are designed to capture your attention in as few seconds as possible. The images are designed to convey a message - - put another way, they are supposed to invade our subconsciousness and cause us to think about something in a certain way. The faster these images are thrown in front of us the more informed we are supposed to be. Technological advances accelerate the process image distribution. Newer faster, more storage capacity, greater dpi, higher processing, more mega pixels, are all terms that we associate with technological advances. For instance, you never hear anyone plugging a "slower" internet connection. Today it's all about speed of image flow. Notwithstanding the break-neck pace at which "stuff" is thrown at us, there will always be a place for still photography. It's this type of art that causes people to STOP and look at something for more than a millisecond. Still photography gives a person an opportunity to wander across an image and study its finest details. (I digress and include an article on Raul Corrales, a photographer who photographed much of the Cuban Revolution. If you are interested in s-l-o-w-i-n-g down to view some of his images you can check out one of the many sites that contains some of his works). If you're wondering why I am ranting about this topic it's because I attended my first darkroom class last night at the New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts. Taking this darkroom class is only reinforcing my belief that film will never lose its place as an art form. (Sorry if I offend some of you digital-hype believers). Taking a darkroom class is yet another conscious attempt of mine to remove myself from the onslaught of technological advances.  (I am even relying on a fully manual medium format camera to fulfil this endeavor).  It's actually my attempt to toss technology to the side for a brief moment and appreciate the manual process of visualizing, shooting, and processing.  Now that is cool - - If you ask me, much cooler than mega pixels and additional hard drive space. 10:27:34 AM     comment []

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