Photo by James Jowers (American b. 1938) made in Tompkins Square Park in 1967.

The George Eastman House has put a number of photographs from its collections on Flickr.  The majority of images on Flickr are from individual collections that have donated photographs and copyrights to the museum.

Among the latest images available on Flickr is the work of James Jowers, a night porter who worked at St. Luke’s Hospital and explored New York City during the day.

James Jowers interest in photography began while serving in the United States Army where he was trained in darkroom procedures. In 1965 he became a student at the New School and studied under Lisette Model, who later became a close friend and mentor.

Jowers’ simple photographs of street-life in the City are more dimensional than snapshots and are reminiscent of the street photographs of Helen Levitt or Gary Winogrand.  The mid-to-late 1960s in New York, when Jower made most of his images, was a turbulent time filled with anti-war protests and counter-cultural movements.  The collection on Flickr doesn’t contain any of his images from public displays of the movement but there’s an underlying feeling in most of the work that indicates that there is a lot going on outside the frame.

The George Eastman House is a non-profit museum and educational institution dedicated to keeping the history of photography and motion pictures.  More information about the museum and its collection can be found on the organization’s website.

Photo by James Jowers (American b. 1938) titled Ave C.

Scott Rosenberg, writing on his blog Wordyard, doesn’t think newspapers are going to make the painful decissions necessary to survive.

If newspapers are really going to take the leap Andreessen proposes, they will have to do it while simultaneously restructuring their deals with their employees and mandating painful cuts that nobody wants to accept.

The newspaper industry is fast approaching the point where it must decide.  Is it going to make the tough choices…or will it die?

Photographer James Hill narrates a slideshow of farming photographs from Russia on the New York Times website.  The story, which has been repeated on every continent, is about a how modernization in the farm industry is affecting the workers and their way of life.

It’s an interesting show but the photographs aren’t unexpected.  Hill has some nice moments sprinkled through the story.  One example is a photograph of a young Russian woman wearing shorts and a t-shirt shopping among traditionally dressed, older, farm women, one of who eyes her wearily.

Hill’s photographic strength lies in his ability to put the broad landscape of agrarian Russia into visual order. This is an audio slideshow worth viewing.

The Institute for War and Peace Reporting has the following biographical information on Hill:

James studied history at Oxford University before going onto graduate studies in photojournalism at the London College of Printing. Shortly after graduation in 1991 he left for the Soviet Union.

Based from Kiev, Ukraine, until 1995, when he moved to Moscow to take up the position of European Contract Photographer of the New York Times, he covered political stories and ethnic conflicts across the former Soviet Union. Based for the last five years between Rome and Moscow he has continued to spend much of his time returning to Russia and the Caucasus. In 2001 he was nominated by the New York Times for a Pulitzer Prize in feature photography for his work covering the Chechen conflict.

Since moving to Rome in 1998 he has reported on a widening range of international political events and areas of conflict, including the war between Eritrea and Ethiopia, the conflict in Kosovo and the Middle East, and the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

His work from Afghanistan was given an Award of Excellence in News Photography in the Picture of the Year Awards. His web journal on the conflict in Afghanistan also received first prize in Multimedia from the same competition. He was a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for feature photography, and a runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize for news photography as well in 2002.

His work has appeared in almost every major international publication. He continues to photograph on assignment for magazines, as well working on contract for the New York Times.

More of James Hill’s photographs from the New York Times can be found here and here.

The Guardian newspaper’s Jason Burke writes in the Sunday Observer of a secret Afghanistan peace process with the Taliban being brokered by Saudi Arabia and supported by Britian.  Burke writes:

“The unprecedented negotiations involve a senior former member of the hardline Islamist movement travelling between Kabul, the bases of the Taliban senior leadership in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and European capitals. Britain has provided logistic and diplomatic support for the talks – despite official statements that negotiations can be held only with Taliban who are ready to renounce, or have renounced, violence.”

Given the level of success the Taliban have had in battling coalition forces this year, it is surprising that the hardline movement would voluntarily come to the negociating table.

- Scott

Today is the fifth anniversary of the bombing of the United Nations offices in Baghdad that killed the UN’s leading diplomat, Sergio Vieira de Mello, and 21 others. The bombing was a turning point in the international body’s work not only in Iraq, but worldwide.

Journalist Samantha Power has a well-written story in the OpEd section of the New York Times about how protection of aid agencies and non-governmental organizations has diminished as militants target aid workers.

read more | digg story

In the video below, diCorcia talks about his Polaroid photographs from his show titled, Thousand, on exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art until September 14th.

video used with permission

Related:

Spam on Flickr

“The decline of newspapers is not about the replacement of the antiquated technology of news print with the lightning speed of the Internet. It does not signal an inevitable and salutary change. It is not a form of progress. The decline of newspapers is about the rise of the corporate state, the loss of civic and public responsibility on the part of much of our entrepreneurial class and the intellectual poverty of our post-literate world, a world where information is conveyed primarily through rapidly moving images rather than print.”

• More stories and essays by Chris Hedges on Alternet
• Reaction to the essay from Jeff Jarvis at Buzzmachine
• Jay Rosen writes more about the changes in the journalism “tribe.”