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How the US Govt Accidentally Created the Golden Age of American Photography

My overview of American government goes generally like this: (1) Something happens. (2) The government passes some laws in response to it, adds on a few pork projects, and raises taxes to pay for the laws and the pork. (3) The laws (or pork) cause an entirely new problem. (4) Repeat.

The usual outcome of this cycle is that every year we have more laws and higher taxes. But every so often, some accidental side effect occurs and something awesomely good happens. So it was during the alphabet-soup days of New Deal government during the Great Depression. The accidental side effect was the Golden Age of American Photography. How it happened is rather interesting.

10 Photographers You Should Ignore

Editor's note: This is a piece by photographers Bryan Formhals and Blake Andrews on how famous photographers' styles are copied over and over again. Please do not read or comment if you take things too seriously.

The other day while reading the Internet I came across “The 10 Most Harmful Novels for Aspiring Writers.” I wondered whether there could be a list for photographers as well. I thought about it and then sent my list to Blake Andrews to see if he wanted to contribute and have some fun with it. Here's what we came up with.

The Impermanence of Digital Photographs

It seems like everyone has access to some kind of camera these days, but will the digital images captured survive long enough to become part of the historical record of our time for future generations?

Local News Piece Paints Boston Street Photographers as Perverts

Boston news station WBZ-TV stirred up some controversy recently after airing a piece titled "Downtown Crossing ‘Street Photographers’ Crossing The Line?". Apparently a viewer sent in some video showing a group of six or seven older men who regularly visit a particular crosswalk to photograph pedestrians on the street, saying that they see the men "aggressively hunting down and photographing women and children nearly every day". The station then decided to air a piece and publish a story from this perspective, questioning the intentions of the photographers and quoting other pedestrians on the sidewalk disturbed by their behavior.

I Am Sitting in a Room, YouTube Style

"I Am Sitting in a Room" is one of the best known works of experimental music composer Alvin Lucier. In the piece, he records himself speaking, plays it back while re-recording it, and repeated until the words become unintelligible and simply "the pure resonant harmonies and tones of the room itself".