BAGnewsNotes

Partying Like It's 2005

(See the full George here.  The full Sam is here)

If you've been following The BAG, you know how fond I am of The Economist covers.

If you consider George Bush and America as synonymous (as I know Bush certainly does), these two recent issues illustrate the profound split between the right wing, born-again impression of man and state in contrast to actual behavior.

In the popular allusion, he/we are tall and strong; fit in body and mind; always diligently on-duty and down to business; and yet, passive innocents in the face of a divinely authored, largely ungovernable and somehow consistently calamitous natural world.

Where Credit Is Due

(images: C. J. Gunther, Gregory Heisler, Christopher Morris, Patrick Hertzog, Gianni Giansanti, Art Streiber, William Mercer McCleod, David Burnett, Jonas Karlsson, Luke Frazza, Stephen Jaffe, Tim Fadek (8), Manuel Balce Ceneta (3), Hyunsoo Leo Kim, Joshua Roberts, Hadi Mizban (6), Ali Jerikji, Ali Jasim, Alan Chin (50), Ali al-Saadi, Bassim Daham, Michael Elins, Karim Sahib (3), Samir Mizban, Patrick Baz, Ali Yussef, Namir Noor-Eldeen (2), Mohammed Zaatari, Miles Kennedy, Mohammed Hato, Jim Young (2), Peter Jones, John S. Stadelman, Bernard Pearson (2), Chris Gardner, Jason Reed (11), Jack Delano (2), Jonathan Ernst (2), Paul J. Richards, Clayton James Cubitt (2), Christy Bowe, Charles Dharapak, Doug Mills (4), Israel Hadari, Tony Gentile, Uriel Sinai, Frederick Florin, Sandy Huffaker, Yuri Gripas (3), Paul Morse (2), J. Scott Applewhite (2), Jorge Silva (2), Johan Spanner, Mehdi Taamallah (3), Franck Prevel, Remy de la Mauviniere, Eric Draper (8), James Wilt, Chris Hondro, Jason E. Becksted, Tomas Munita, Dennis Cook, Tim Sloan, Alex Wong, Larry Downing (12), Mannie Garcia (8), Behrouz Mehri, Lawrence Jackson, Justin Sullivan, David Bohrer, Kevin Lamarque (5), Scott Nelson, Ron Edmonds, Kent Eanes, Ben Curtis, Slahaldeen Rasheed, Mushtaq Mohamad, Rebecca Cook, Mohanned Faisal, Karim Kadim (3), Tauseef Mustafa, Khalid Mohammed, Jim Watson (5), Susan Walsh (11), Christoph Bangert (6), Mark Saltz (3), Lori Waselchuk, Marc S. Kaufman, Allen Fredrickson, Faleh Kheiber, Qassem Zein, Atef Hassan (2), Alla Al-Marjani, Rahat Dar, Melina Mara, Shelley Eades, Benjamin Lowy, David J. Phillip, Osman Orsal, Amr Nabil (2), Raymundo Ruiz, Phil Coale, James Nielsen (2), Pat Sullivan, Ron Heflin, Pablo Martinez (3), Evan Vucci, Lannis Walters, J. Pat Carter, Stephen Crowley (3), Thaler Al Sudani, Brian Snyder (2), Mike Segar, Rick Wilking (2), Alexei Panov, Vincent Laforet (2), Robert Sullivan, Dave Einsel, Krisanne Johnson (5), Nicole Bengiveno (2), James Nielson, Chang W. Lee (2), Leah Hogsten, David Grunfeld, Marko Georgiev, Khampha Bouaphanh, Tyler Hicks, Mladen Antonov, Rob Carr, Mike Blake, Haraz N. Ghanbari, Martha Raddatz, M. Scott Mahaskey, Matt Rourke, Eric Gay (2), Bill Feig, Stan Honda, LM Otero (2), James Estrin, Carlos Barri, Jonathan C. Knauth, Stephanie Sinclair, Deutsche Welle, Dimitar Dilkoff, Kai Pfaffenbach, Ahmad al-Rubaye, Nir Kafri, Thomas Coex, Suhaib Salem, Ahmed Jadallah, Mandel Ngan, Deborah Mathews, David Lee, Keith Bedford, Walter Daran, Carol T. Powers, Joe Raedle, Vahid Salemi (3), Carol T. Powers (2), Toshiyuki Aizawa, Robert Sullivan, Richard Drew, Chip Somodevilla, Russell Boyce, Lefteris Pitarakis, Stephen Hird, Faisal Mahmood, R. Strauss, Taryn Simon (2), Adrian Dennis, Ruben Sprich, Jane Mingay, Claus Fisker, Alexander Chadwick, Charlie Bibby, Karel Prinsloo, Gerald Herbert (2), Shannon Stapleton, Stephen Chernin, Gregory Bull, David Hume Kennerly, Atta Kenare, Gerard Cerles, Douglas Graham, John Gress, Alecsey Boldeskul, Jay. L. Clendenin (3), Pablo Martinez Monsivais (2), Morteza Nikoubazl, Khaled El-Fiqi, Aladin Abdel Naby, Andres Serrano (3), Brendan Smialowski (2), Thomas Wirth, Lee Jae-Won, Shaun Heasley, Lee Jin-man, Kim Kyung-Hoon)

If tomorrow, I was suddenly notified that my blogging days were over, there would be a number of things I would always be proud of.  One of the most important is that, over this past year, I encouraged or influenced several prominent blogs and websites to adopt a policy of crediting photos.  (Yeah, you're next Drudge!)

Your Turn: The Unforgettable People I've Shot And Been Shot With

This morning, I realized that I had a.) been exposed to this ad numerous times in recent days, and b.) somehow successfully managed to keep it out of my consciousness.

That changed, however, when I saw this full page ad on the back of Wednesday's NYT special section: 2005 THE YEAR IN PICTURES.  (Curiously, the feature ran in the print edition only.)

Pro-War Picture Of The Year

If you're not familiar with Michael Yon, he is an independent pro-war photographer embedded in Iraq.  He has been invited to testify to Congress by Rick Santorum, and his images have been used as presentation material by Senator Asa Hutchinson.  On returning to Iraq this past October, he was denied embed status on his own, so he became nominally affiliated with The Weekly Standard.

Mr. Yon's self-published biography tells the story of a young man who received special forces training, and then was tried and acquitted for murdering a bar patron right after becoming a Green Beret.  His website, consisting of regular "dispatches" from Iraq, has become quite popular with the conservative blogosphere.

Mr. Yon's work is relevant right now because his photograph, shown above, is one of 10 finalists in TIME's year end run off for most popular "Viewer's Pick."  (On the voting page, you can see the 10 finalists that received the highest vote totals from viewers over the past year as "best photo of the week.")

In an ideal world, one would be able to examine news image in a deeper context, pairing each picture with a comprehensive explanation of how, where, and why it was taken.  Thanks to Mr. Yon's reporting, this photo is accompanied with some backstory.  Here are his comments:

Persons of the Year: The Dark Side

The image TIME used to lead its "Persons of the Year" story has a lot going on.

Let's start with that globe.  Unless there is some geophysical format I don't know about, the vocabulary of this map is disturbing.  Africa, Europe and the Middle East are shown in black with a yellow border that only distinguishing overall land mass.  TIME had a clear opportunity to contradict the ignorant tendency to consider Africa in monolithic terms.  Instead, the image serves to reinforce a singular, homogeneous stereotype.

The "black Middle East" and "black Europe" also offer some weird associations.  One reference it pulls for involves migration or immigration.  One inference is that the dark masses, having filled up Africa, are filling up Europe as well.  This is a disturbing signifier in light of racial fear engendered in Europe as a result of the recent rioting in France, as well as bombings in London and Spain.  The fact that the Middle East, Africa and Europe are all the same dark color discourages one from distinguishing between shades/races/ethnicities of people, or where they come from.

The scale of the world is also curious.

A Big Your Turn: More "People That Mattered"

Because it's not easy keeping up the pace I do, I have come to rely on a truly incredible community of readers to send me material, lend breadth and insight to the images I offer, and essentially take over the analysis on various "Your Turn" posts as I've caught some down time here and there.

As I am heading out of town early tomorrow for a four day rest, I thought I would float a "Your Turn" opportunity on a larger scale.  As previously mentioned, I've been interested in the ritual of commemorating top political players at year end.  In my absence, I am leaving you three posts, each with images derived from TIME's 2005 "People Who Mattered" series.  For those of you who like more data rather than less, I am also providing links to the TIME pages so you can absorb the captions.  Otherwise, I leave you these images for interpretation in the best BAG tradition.

Before I attend to the suitcase, however, I wanted to thank all of you so much for the support and encouragement you have provided over the past year.  It has been something of a leap of faith dedicating this blog to a discipline that has little precedent and is still forging its methodological way.  For those of you who have been here day in and day out, looking and looking again, I think we've learned quite a bit, become better at this thing we're doing, gotten to recognize some interesting voices -- and, overall, had a great time.

Best wishes for the holidays.  I'll be back Tuesday or Wednesday.

Image 1:  Popes Then (link) And Now (link)

Image 2:  Jobs (link) Vs. The Google Guys (link)

Image 3:  Reid and McCain Brave The Wilds -- link

Your Turn: Reid and McCain Brave The Wilds

(image: CHRISTOPHER MORRIS / VII FOR TIME.  December 18, 2005. People Who Mattered. Time.com.)

Your Turn: Popes Then And Now

(image 1: PATRICK HERTZOG / AFP / GETTY  December 18, 2005. People Who Mattered. Time.com. image 2: GIANNI GIANSANTI / POLARIS.  December 18, 2005. People Who Mattered. Time.com.)

Your Turn: Jobs Vs. The Google Boys

(image 1: ART STREIBER FOR TIME.  December 18, 2005. People Who Mattered. Time.com. (image 2: WILLIAM MERCER MCLEOD FOR TIME.  December 18, 2005. People Who Mattered. Time.com.)

Plame Noir

(Click on Joe for slightly larger version.  Photo: David Burnett/Contact.)

As the year winds down and real news begins to quickly evaporate, this is when we are graced with commemorative MSM features dedicated to "People of the Year," "People Who Stood Out," "People Who Made a Difference," "People Who Are Gonna Be Huge" "People Who Long Dropped Out Of Sight And Finally Passed Away," People Who.... well, you get the idea.

(I think the holidays have put me in an irreverent mood.)

Over the next week and a half (with a few days off in there somewhere), I will be surveying some of the more visually compelling examples from these features.  (If you have nominees, certainly email me.)  Getting an early jump, a BnN reader, Henry, called out this photo from the latest TIME retrospective focusing on "People Who Mattered."

At this point, I really don't know what to make of the staginess of the Wilson/Plames.