BAGnewsNotes

Our Man In Grant Park: The 44th President Of The United States

We invite you to share your reactions to Alan Chin's images from Chicago last night. I'll be adding some thoughts (and also some background) within the next couple hours, and Alan will available to respond in the discussion thread.

Update 9:33 PST: Alan has posted at least one comment to give some flavor. I thought I'd just add a few notes from our conversation earlier.

First, the entire event last evening was surprising short. From start to finish, Alan said it didn't last more than two hours.

#2.) The people in the second shot are what Alan described as members of Obama's political base in Chicago. They are middle-class, mid-level political staffers for Mayor Daley. #3) This field worker exemplifies, more than anything, how thoroughly exhausted everyone was last night. Alan said he was virtually asleep standing up. In a post I did for TPM Café, I also mention how the t-shirt documents how Obama (having won in '96) started serving at the state level ten years before Sarah Palin did. #4) Personally, I can't believe I never heard "Obamanomenon" before I saw this shot. I like it. #5) This was early, before Grant Park really filled up. #7/8.) In my edit, I left out four more shots of people either hugging or crying. That's because they were a bit redundant, but also because it showed more young white people. Given his situation near the stage, Alan was mostly surrounded by young white field workers or VIP's, so his close ups didn't capture much demographic mix of Chicago residents. #13) That was the Mayor's move to light up the office building with the "U.S.A." #15) Alan said that the last shot was quite a moving moment. After Obama and his entourage left the stage, a throng of young workers ("foot soldiers of the inner circle") took to the stage, bound by exhaustion and amazement.

(image ©Alan Chin. November 4th, 2008. Chicago, IL)

Our Man In Grant Park: At The Turn

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In advance our Alan Chin slide show of last night's historic Obama victory, we start you off with this. The shot was taken at the Hilton at the party hosted by Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr.

For some reason, I can't look at this without thinking about surviving Bush; the profoundly different stamp Obama will have on the culture than what Rove designed for us; America pivoting into a post-Boomer era; and God Bless America.

(image ©Alan Chin. November 4th, 2008. Chicago, IL)

Our Man In Pennsylvania - Inside and Outside Two Rallies

Here's Alan Chin's finest, shot Tuesday at two different rallies, the McCain/Palin affair in Hershey and Palin's appearance in Shippensburg. (If you use the double-right arrow, you can page through at your own pace.)

Alan says that the "praying" gesture lasted at least ten minutes. (I was wondering if those were state of Alaska earrings?)

Regarding the McCain shot (#7), Chin says McCain is visibly cranky and impatient -- much worse than when he shot him in New Hampshire. Chin says it's hard to imagine why McCain putting himself through this -- especially having to pander to these obviously extreme right-wing crowds.

On shot #9, his remark was: "Could you imagine someone at an Obama rally holding up this kind of sign?"

Alan found it really disturbing (in #10 and 11 -- the signs on the cars) that people would go to that trouble.

The last shot, #12, reads "Ship Happens." The t-shirt was a gift from local university. I can't speak for the hockey stick. ...By the way, the designer duds are long gone.

I'm definitely curious about your thoughts -- and questions. Alan should be available today to participate in the thread. Overall though, these photos make me agree even more that McCain, as Chin remarked, has really "sold his soul to the devil."

(images © Alan Chin. Hershey/Shippensburg, PA, Oct. 28, 2008)

Our Man In Pennsylvania - At the Rally

Alan Chin has some really curious shots from the McCain/Palin rally in Hershey and also Palin's rally in Shippensburg. I'll let you start off with this one.

(image © Alan Chin. Hershey PA, HOct. 28, 2008)

Our Man In Pennsylvania

Many of you have written and forwarded snapshots from Obama rallies, making particular note of the energy, and in the case of the very large outdoor gatherings, the sense of joy and calm. I'm awed, but not an ounce surprised by the grand canyon-like gap between these personal reports and the experience of looking at similar images through the intensely-amped and all too controversy- or just poll-obsessed media sphere. It's like zen meets crystal meth.

It's because of the difference I'm glad to have this group of photos Alan Chin shot yesterday and last night in Pittsburgh.

I see someone who has brilliantly transcended the cheap tarring of the "celebrity" tag.

I see someone more ready for us than we are for him given how Bush's despotic rule has been mainlining cynicism directly into America's veins.

I see someone who is highly confident but not at all over-confident.

I someone who, in his expression, seems to reflect the steep challenge ahead far more than the electoral task at hand.

What I particularly see -- although the white-corporate media hasn't been all that interested -- is an intense pride welling up in so many African-Americans, young and old.

(images © Alan Chin. Pittsburgh, PA. Oct. 27, 2008)

news photos, Obama, Obama campaign break, Obama election, photography, photojournalism, politics

The Latest From Alan Chin: Allentown, PA.

In spending part of the election's final days capturing the atmosphere, Alan passed on this single photo of a campaign volunteer.

Maybe it's the mood from the rain, or because it's Sunday and I have the time, but I just keep spending more time with this shot. (If you click, you can see it even larger.) A few things I like are the little ball on top of the antennae, and the way it lines up with the person behind the truck, and then the distant smokestack.

I like the way this man's jacket and pants hang like they do, and I like the way he holds the sign. It seems to reflect Team Obama's calmly methodical nature as it approaches the end game -- especially in territory where conventional wisdom tends to question Obama's appeal.

(image: © Alan Chin. October 2008. Allentown, PA.)

"I Feel Strongly About This Particular Point Because Of A Picture I Saw In A Magazine"

This is the image that crystallized, in Colin Powell's mind, how the GOP has completely gone off the tracks in polarizing this country. 

Think what you will of Powell himself, his reference to this photograph as a statement of inclusion and as a rebuttal to the hate being spread by his friend John McCain and Sarah Palin serves as just one more endorsement for America's return to sanity (as well as the power of visual politics). 

PDN has backstory.

Powell MTP interview: video + transcript (photo comments, p.2)

(h/t: Niel)

(image: Platon.  New Yorker Magazine.  September 29, 2008)

On Debate Night, Alan Chin Checks In From Texas

(image: ©Alan Chin, October 15, 2008)

Art For Obama: Authenticity And Purity Of Race And Patriotism

I wanted to direct you to an online auction for the benefit of the Obama campaign.

Titled Art For Obama, fifty of the country's most prominent artists and photographers have donated their work for this cause. The auction will run from October 3, 5pm EST through October 10th, 5pm EST. All proceeds from the auction will go to MoveOn.org which is supporting the Obama campaign.

BNN offers you a look at two of the works up for bid. The first is by Wendy Ewald, titled "White Self, 1997" from the series Black Self/White Self.  Ms. Weald is  known for her photographic collaboration with children on issues of race, class and identity.

The second is by BAGnewsNotes contributor Nina Berman, titled “Little Patriots,” 2003, from her new book "Homeland," due out next month. (Full disclosure: I wrote the introduction.)  Nina has been working on the "Homeland" series since 9/11.  The images address issues of militarism and security in contemporary America.  If you've been a regular here, you'll probably remember our discussion of Nina's shot from the Atlantic City air show, as well as three rather troubling images from New York's Fleet Week.  If you click to Nina's thread here at BNN, the (currently) third through the sixth post down offer those images from her Homeland series.

It’s interesting to consider these photos while watching the candidates grapple with the construction of winning identities to suit the demographic of the moment and the constant questioning of authenticity and purity on issues of race (is Obama white enough or black enough?) and patriotism (who loves American more?). As always, I'm interested in your reactions.

Take a look at the images and participate in the Art for Obama auction here.

(image 1: Wendy Ewald, 1997. image 2: Nina Berman. July 4, Ridge-field Park, New Jersey, 2003)

Wall Street Nightmare

Looking at these photos through the lens of the current financial convulsions, they read much differently, I'm sure, than when they were shot in 2003.  Right now, however, BagNewsNotes contributer Nina Berman's photos anthropomorphize, and give nightmarish expression to my worst fears of a Wall Street disaster.

In the first shot, as if a sequel to "The Night Of The Living Dead," it feels like these financial monsters -- their intelligence derived from overly complex, computer-driven programs -- have gone completely haywire and now roam the concrete canyons in a lobotomized state.

Although the figure in the second shot is moving left-to-right, I can't help but read it as a skyscraper-like zombie, moving right-to-left in an autistic gate, the American flag forming a head (or a hood, like the kind forced over the heads of prisoners in Iraq).

Modern society, if we wish to call it that, lives with fears of all kinds of potentially devastating, man-made forces, be they biological, chemical or nuclear.  Akin to the YK2 panic, however, the degree to which our financial system -- and the assets of most Americans -- are thoroughly susceptible to insatiable power players and their automated instruments, Wall Street, too, has its own very real nightmare scenarios.

... We'll have a less supernatural take on some of Nina's Wall Street images later in the week.

(images © Nina Berman, New York, 2003)