The Chicago Blog

In the current edition of the American Interest, reviewer James Rosen delivers a positive assessment of Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites' recent book, No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy. Praising the book for its thorough treatment of nine case studies involving some of the most influential images of the twentieth century, Rosen writes:

[No Caption Needed] is a penetrating and provocative analysis of the way certain popular photographs, whether produced by professionals or amateurs, acquire the power to change public policy and with it the course of history.… The author's analytical achievement is enabled by an extraordinary feat of research and reporting. They have unearthed hidden facts, from both the backstory and the aftermath, surrounding each of their nine chosen photographs.…

[But] almost as compelling… are the stories of their subsequent appropriation. No Caption Needed details the uses and abuses of these nine iconic photographs by propagandists and peddlers of all kinds, with results that prove alternately haunting, playful, predictable, mercenary, dishonest and sometimes just plain twisted.…

Pick up a copy of the American Interest to read the rest of the review.
Also see the authors' No Caption Needed blog and read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Film and Media | History | Politics and Current Events | Reviews | Sociology
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John Louis Lucaites, author of No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy has posted an apropos commentary about the Earth Day themed cover image on today's Time Magazine to his No Caption Needed blog. Detailing a photoshopped version of Joe Rosenthal's iconic photograph of WWII troops on Iwo Jima's Mt. Suribachi raising a giant conifer in place of the flag, Lucaites makes the image an occasion to deliver some interesting commentary on the history of the original photograph's appropriation and the particularly fetishistic way that the Time Magazine editors have chosen to use it today. Lucaites writes:

By most accounts Joe Rosenthal's photograph of the flag-raising on Iwo Jima's Mt. Suribachi is the most reproduced photograph of all time—ever!…

Such reproductions have occurred not just in traditional print media, but on stamps (twice), commemorative plates, woodcuts, silk screens, coins, key chains, cigarette lighters, matchbook covers, beer steins, lunchboxes, hats, t-shirts, ties, calendars, comic books, credit cards, trading cards, post cards, and human skin, and in advertisements for everything from car insurance to condoms and strip joints.…

All of this is to say that on the face of things there is nothing particularly noteworthy about Time's appropriation of the image this week to frame and promote its "green" agenda in a special issue on the "War on Global Warming," … but my interest here is in mapping out how the particular appropriation of the original photograph coaches an attitude that seems to rely on tired and clichéd conceptions of American exceptionalism. Put simply, it is not just an appeal to be "green" (although it is that), but it also functions to translate the meaning of being "green" into a symbolic register that both defines environmentalism in terms of U.S. nationalism—"green is the new red, white, and blue"—and, more, makes something of an imperialistic fetish out of it.

Read the rest of Lucaites piece on the No Caption Needed blog, or read an excerpt from Lucaite's book.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Film and Media | History | Politics and Current Events
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According to the New York Times, yesterday evening marked a significant checkpoint in the War in Iraq when a roadside bomb exploded killing four more U.S. troops, bringing the total American death toll in Iraq to 4000. With no end in sight and casualties steadily rising, media outlets around the globe have used the 4,000th death as an opportunity to look back on the war and the many soldiers who have lost their lives there since 2003. But providing perhaps one of the most vivid and personal of these retrospectives, is NYT photojournalist and author Ashley Gilbertson's recent Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: A Photographer's Chronicle of the Iraq War. Documenting the conflict from the initial invasion, to Iraq's first national elections, Gilbertson's book tells candidly of his own experience photographing the war and of the lives of the soldiers fighting it.

To preview some of the images from the book navigate to the author's portfolio on the NYT website.

To hear more about the Gilbertson's experience in Iraq, you can navigate to the Press's special website for the book which features and exclusive half-hour interview with the author, or see this archived video from CSPAN's Book TV of Gilbertson's talk earlier this month at a Borders Books & Music in Vienna, Virginia.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Books for the News | History | Politics and Current Events
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Podularity.com, a literary blog based in the UK, is running an interesting podcast of an interview with author Martin Kemp on the topic of his recent book The Human Animal in Western Art and Science. Interviewer George Miller engages Kemp in a discussion of the links between humans and animals embedded in Western culture to explore the question; where is the line between animal and human? And, does the line even exist at all? Navigate to Podularity.com to listen.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | History and Philosophy of Science
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The April/May issue of Bookforum is running an early review of Erin Hogan's unconventional new travelogue, Spiral Jetta: A Road Trip through the Land Art of the American West. (The book will release in mid-April.) Noting the author's willingness to trek off the beaten path to experience first-hand the unique blending of landscape and sculpture in American land art reviewer Nico Israel writes:

Earth art, that consummately American movement that sprang up during the high-Vietnam War era, combined a steely-eyed commitment to the truth of materials and to the power of basic geometric forms with a desire to get off the grid or at the very least "expand the field" of sculpture. Sometimes called environmental or land art, or Earthworks, depending on its practitioner, it demanded of its actual, physical viewers—"fit, though few," as John Milton might have said—a pilgrim's willingness to go on the road to remote places in order to see the works and experience the landscapes that they reframed and illuminated.…

Enter self-described "recovering art historian" Erin Hogan, whose book Spiral Jetta records her retrospective responses to a highway journey in her Volkswagen, in which, over the course of about three weeks, she visited Spiral Jetty, Michael Heizer's Double Negative, Walter De Maria's Lightning Field, and Donald Judd's various Marfa projects.… Along the way, she offers compelling descriptions of the landscape of the American West, of the pilgrimage's contradictions—she is sharp when noting what expensive-eyeglass-wearing visitors to Sun Tunnels or Lightning Field must look like to the hardscrabble locals—and of getting lost (which seems an inevitable part of visiting Earth art).

Read the rest of the review on the Bookforum website.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Reviews
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In a review appearing in last Sunday's edition of the Toronto Star Christine Sisimondo begins:

In academia, generally, food writing is relegated to… 'the kind of thing you might find in a newspaper'—not in the hallowed halls of higher ed.… But of late, "that's been changing. Anthropology and environmental science departments are beginning to redefine the study of food, as not just about nutrition and shortages through the ages but as a serious cultural indicator.

Laszlo is a chemistry professor who is probably best known for his previous book, Salt: Grain of Life, and has now moved on to one of the next great essential staples, citrus.

Laszlo has a truly charming way of telling the story, weaving his personal biography into the tale of the migration of various fruits around the world.

He is careful, though (and tells us he is worried about overstepping his bounds), to never let the personal overshadow the story of lemons, limes, grapefruits, oranges and, of course, such exotics as ugli fruit, kumquats and yuzu.…

[And] while there's … plenty of great history in Laszlo's account, it's [also] interdisciplinary, adding to his personal tale and all that lore discussions on chemistry and three great chapters on the symbolic meanings of citrus and the image of these fruits in poetry and art.

Laszlo proves that citrus is a serious matter, worthy of real academic study.

Read the rest of the article on the Toronto Star website. Also read six citrus recipies from the book.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Biology | History | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 01:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Writing for this month's edition of Natural History magazine Laurence A. Marschall reviews two recent books in the history of science: Pierre Laszlo's exploration of the cultural and culinary phenomenon of citrus fruit in Citrus: A History, and Pascal Richet's historical account of the various ways humans have attempted to record the age of the earth in A Natural History of Time.

Marschall writes of Citrus:

Can one describe a work of nonfiction as being happy? Well, this one is. Pierre Laszlo, a retired chemistry professor turned science writer, has approached the lore of citrus fruit with the élan of a master chef (the man is French, after all), mixing history, economics, biology, and chemistry to produce a book that will bring a smile to readers of every taste. Until reading Citrus, in fact, I had not realized just how many tastes the title implied: lemon, lime, orange, and grapefruit, of course, but also citron, tangerine, kumquat, calamondin, and the self-descriptive Ugli, not to mention such variants as bergamot, mandarin, Valencia, ortanique, and Honey Murcott. Laszlo's literary method is to present them as characters in an unfolding story. He begins with the domestication of the citron in Persia and the early history of citrus horticulture, then moves to the establishment and growth of the citrus industry in Florida, California, and Brazil, and finally, after many diversions and digressions, arrives at a final section that explores the place of citrus in literature, art, religion, and the culture of cuisine.

And the praise continues for Richet's A Natural History of Time:

Looking at the sandy New England pond outside our summer house, I can readily imagine the glacial remnant that lay there some 12,000 years ago, melting in the warming rays of the Holocene sun. I know, too, that a few hundred million years ago, before continental drift split us apart, Europe and this bit of North American real estate were joined. And I'm well aware that 5 billion years ago, this sand and this water, indeed the Earth itself and everything on it, were part of an interstellar cloud that was condensing into our solar system. Deep time is just one of those things I take for granted.

But as geophysicist Pascal Richet demonstrates in this readable popular history of chronology, the geologic calendar implicit in today's view of nature was not shared by earlier generations. Written accounts from ancient civilizations depict prehistory as a foggy dreamtime. Most authors made little attempt to assign dates or durations other than “in the beginning.…”

Only the fine details of the Earth's timeline are matters of contention any more.… Yet precisely because the current well-grounded chronology seems so natural to most scientifically literate people, Richet's authoritative review of Earth's history is particularly welcome. Rather than fret about polls that show how many citizens still hold to the chronology of the Holy Book, he invites us to marvel at the efforts of science to read the book of nature itself.

Read both reviews on the Natural History magazine website. Also navigate to our special Citrus web page featuring six tasty citrus recipes.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Biology | Economics | History | Reviews
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Just in time for the opening of his exhibition at Melbourne's Obscura Gallery, the Australian paper The Age ran an article last Sunday on Ashley Gilbertson and his new book, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: A Photographer's Chronicle of the Iraq War. As the article notes, Gilbertson is himself an Australian native and got his first taste of professional journalism "documenting the lives of Kosovar refugees seeking temporary protection in Australia." The article continues:

The project sparked an interest in the plight of displaced people that led him to West Papua, Afghanistan and eventually Iraq, where he has spent a total of 18 months since 2002.

His early trips to the country were a hand-to-mouth existence, selling stories as he went, often depending on the goodwill of colleagues and strangers.

Towards the end of a trip in 2003 he picked up work for the New York Times. Since he returned from that trip, his work has been exclusively for the US newspaper.

His work while embedded with US marines during the 2004 Fallujah offensive made his name, earning him the prestigious Robert Capa Award for courageous photography from the US Overseas Press Club.

But his experiences have left scars. He watched as Lance Corporal William Miller, a soldier who was escorting him up the stairwell of a minaret, was shot dead by an insurgent. Running out of the mosque under insurgent fire, he wished to die. "I ran out into the street with the marines, hoping I would take a slug," he said.

Read more about Gilbertson's harrowing experiences in Iraq at The Age. Also check out the Obscura Gallery's web page for more information on his exhibition. Finally, see the Whiskey Tango Foxtrot website featuring a full half hour video interview with the author.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Books for the News | History | Politics and Current Events
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"The Art of Lee Miller" is a major retrospective of works by and about the artist curated by the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. The exhibition has now come stateside; it opened a week ago at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and will travel to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in July.

A lengthy critical essay by Judith Thurman was in the January 21 New Yorker, while a nicely illustrated article was in the February 4 issue of Newsweek. Like Carolyn Burke's biography Lee Miller: A Life which we recently released in paperback, the articles deliver a fascinating look at the life and artistry of Miller. She dominated the world of high fashion in the late 1920s, modeling for magazines like Vogue and Vanity Fair, and then became a respected photographer herself, leaving an indelible mark on the worlds of fine art photography and photojournalism. Writing for the New Yorker, Thurman details the pivotal turn in Miller's career from art object to artist:

If one is to believe the story, Condé Nast noticed her crossing the street just in time to pull her from the path of an oncoming vehicle, and this fortuitous collision led to an interview with Edna Chase, Vogue's editor in chief.… She was soon posing for Steichen, Arnold Genthe, and Nickolas Muray, the leading photographers of the day.…

In 1929, with several lovers fighting for the honor of seeing her off, and café society sad to lose its star playgirl, Miller sailed for Europe with the ambition "to enter photography by the back end.…" She planned to do some modeling for George Hoyningen-Huene at Paris Vogue while she apprenticed with Man Ray, a leader of the avant-garde and master of many genres—painting, photography, sculpture, and graphic art.…

Under Man Ray's tutelage, Miller mastered the use of the Graflex camera, with glass plates, and then the Rolleiflex; studio lighting setups; cropping and retouching, improvisation with the viewfinder; and his techniques for developing.

The article goes on to detail Miller's extraordinary, but tumultuous life, and speaks in detail about her groundbreaking work as one of the first female war correspondents during WWII. A theme which the Newsweek article picks up as well:

After she moved [to] London in 1939, she began her most important photography. The cockeyed perspective she'd absorbed from the surrealists served her well in the arresting, absurdist images she captured during the Blitz: a crushed Remington typewriter; a male mannequin standing incongruously in a heap of curbside rubble.… She rode into Germany with the U.S. Army, starkly documenting the corpses and the ovens of Buchenwald and Dachau—and zooming in, almost poetically, on a dead SS guard floating in a canal. She also shot Hitler's apartment in Munich—then got in his tub for her first bath in weeks, a moment caught on film by [Life photographer Dave] Scherman. Her combat boots on the bathmat are still caked with the mud of Dachau from earlier in the day.

The most thorough exploration of Miller's life and career can be found in Burke's 400-plus page biography Lee Miller: A Life. We have an extended excerpt from the book, dealing with Miller's experiences covering the War in France—from the Allied invasion of Normandy to the German surrender.

A slide show is online at the New Yorker.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Biography | Books for the News
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The California Literary Review, an online magazine, is running a great selection of photographs from Ashley Gilbertson's recently published Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: A Photographer's Chronicle of the Iraq War. The photos are accompanied by a short essay by the author discussing how he wound up on assignment with the New York Times covering the battle of Falluja—one of the fiercest battles of the conflict:

In March 2004, four American contractors were ambushed in the center of Falluja, a city forty-three miles west of Baghdad. They were dragged from their cars, beaten, and their bodies burnt.… Back in Iraq, furious Marine generals who were supposedly in control of Falluja promised swift vengeance and on April 4 attacked the city with everything they had. Hundreds of Iraqis were killed in a week of intense urban combat.…

My rotation had finished and I was at the bureau packing to leave the country when a scramble ensued to get someone from the paper to cover the battle from the frontlines. Times higher-ups contacted generals and politicians, and eventually we were given two… slots, one of them mine. I repacked my bags, this time including body armor and equipment I needed to file my photos under battle conditions. A few hours Later I boarded an aircraft bound for the dusty Camp Falluja five miles east of the city.

You can find the rest of the article and the accompanying photos online at the California Literary Review website. Also see the website for the book featuring a fascinating video interview with the author discussing his experiences as a war photographer in Iraq.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Books for the News | History | Politics and Current Events
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James R. Akerman and Robert W. Karrow Jr.'s Maps: Finding Our Place in the World has been given quite a positive review in this month's issue of the British science and technology magazine, BBC Focus. Praising the book for its thoughtful exploration of maps and the many divergent purposes they have served throughout human history, reviewer Nick Smith writes:

If you though maps were merely aerial drawings of places that help us get from point A to B, you will be astonished by the depth and breadth of this book.

The editors have cleverly set out the book's structure in terms of what function maps perform, instead of ranging from continent to continent as with traditional atlases. There is macro-mapping throughout the ages and maps portraying land use, as well as those concerned with commerce, art, advertising, entertainment and national identity. There is plant distribution, cartographic analysis of the geology of the US and even the "distribution of the slave population of the Southern States.…" Fascinating stuff.

See a collection of unusual maps from the book.

Archived in Anthropology | Art and Architecture | History | History and Philosophy of Science | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 01:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last Thursday the Times Higher Education ran an enthusiastic review of Vanessa R. Schwartz's new book It's So French!: Hollywood, Paris, and the Making of Cosmopolitan Film Culture. In the review THE contributor and professor of film studies Ginette Vincendeau notes how the thesis of Schwartz's book makes a fascinating departure from conventional views about the relationship between the postwar French and American film industries. Vincendeau's review begins:

In this provocative and original book, the American cultural historian Vanessa Schwartz revisits the vexed question of Franco-American cinematic relations in the postwar period. Much has been written on the subject, but Schwartz has no time for clichés about French "protectionism" or American "imperialism". Instead, the central thesis of It's so French! Hollywood, Paris, and the Making of Cosmopolitan Film Culture is that the French and the Americans were much more receptive (even affectionate) towards each other than Cold War-inspired rhetoric has made out. Furthermore, France as represented in American and French films of the 1950s and 1960s was key to the development of "cosmopolitan film culture".

Contrary to the common view that pits French art cinema against commercial Hollywood films, Schwartz claims that from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s American representations of Frenchness successfully merged high art and popular culture, and French cinema meant more than highbrow auteur films. This she demonstrates via a set of major French cultural icons, from belle époque Paris to Brigitte Bardot.

The review concludes:

It's so French!, based on impressive scholarship and superbly illustrated, builds a solid case for France's role in the growth of "cosmopolitan film culture".

The book is a stimulating corrective to entrenched views of Franco-American cinematic relations as necessarily conflictual.

Read the rest of the review on the THE website.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Film and Media | History | Reviews
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Bradford Edwards, the artist whose astonishing collection of Vietnam-era Zippo lighters is featured in Vietnam Zippos: American Soldiers' Engravings and Stories (1965-1973), was interviewed yesterday on All Things Considered by NPR's senior Asian correspondent Michael Sullivan. In the interview, which took place on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City, Sullivan explored Edwards unique fascination with these relics of war:

Edwards insists he's not a "Vietnam Zippohead."

"I'm not a Zippo collector. I'm not somebody into the Zippo, per se," he says.…

"I'm not into it because, really, of the war or because of memorabilia or because of any real, I would say, direct historical aspect. I'm in it for the artistic sensibility and the direct emotional expression that you see via text or images," he says.

Edwards calls the Zippos left behind "pure art without ambition"—personal narratives that capture the mixed emotions of a confusing time and place.

Navigate to the NPR website to view photographs of Edwards and displays of Zippos, plus the archived audio and transcript of the interview.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Books for the News | History
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Jessica Riskin's Genesis Redux: Essays in the History and Philosophy of Artificial Life was recently given a great review by science fiction writer Greg Bear in Nature. Riskin's book collects seventeen essays from a conference of distinguished scholars in several fields who bring a historical perspective to this most contemporary of scientific topics. And as Bear notes in his review, the result is a particularly comprehensive treatment of the history of artificial life. Bear writes:

The strength of Genesis Redux lies in its scholarship and range of topics. Clockworks, mechanical toys and their influence on biological concepts are presented in fascinating detail. Joan Landes introduces us to the Hoffmanesque works of Jacques de Vaucanson's feminine flautist and (excreting) duck, and to the flayed, preserved and posed cadavers, the écorchés, of Jean-Honoré Fragonard: there is a dancing fetus and a very naked man staring in horror, jawbone in hand. Landes delivers a lively analysis of our reactions to the abject and uncanny, the frisson so beloved by fans of Dr Frankenstein.

The review continues:

Genesis Redux takes the time to shed light on areas I would not naturally consider, and thus enlightens and expands the topic. Its cautious perspective—the enthusiasms of the past considered in the sober light of history—provides a useful counterpoint to [other books on the subject].

See the rest of the article on the Nature website.

Archived in Art and Architecture | History | History and Philosophy of Science | Philosophy | Reviews
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Mark Jacob and Richard Cahan's new book Chicago under Glass: Early Photographs from the Chicago Daily News seems to have caught the attention of the local papers recently. Already this month the book has received three separate reviews in the Chicago Sun-Times, Time Out Chicago, and the Chicago Suburban News. As Tom Cruze notes in the Sun-Times, in Chicago under Glass Jacob and Cahan have amassed a collection of the best photographs from the archives from the now defunct Chicago Daily News to document one of the most tumultuous and fascinating periods in Chicago history:

Chicago history circa 1901-30, with its triumphs, disasters and celebrities, comes alive through the lenses of Daily News photographers in this expansive treatment by former Sun-Timesmen Mark Jacob and Richard Cahan. The images, some 250 culled from more than 57000 recently put online (the original glass negatives reside at the Chicago History Museum), are bundled into themes easily explored by browsing history buffs. Probably the most fascinating photos here show familiar areas of Chicago that have changed throughout the years. Construction shots of Buckingham fountain and the Field Museum make the familiar seem fascinatingly strange.

And from the Chicago Suburban News.

The 250 photographs they chose for their resulting volume depict a gritty burg evolving through cultural upheavals and technological advances. Some of the buildings and vistas look vaguely familiar today, but the fashions and hairstyles surely don't. "We haven't been exposed to that many pictures from this era," Cahan said. "This is kind of an unknown period—I know that sounds funny—but also really the beginning of the modern age because of the car.

You can check out the rest of the Chicago Suburban News article online but you'll have to pick up a copy of the Sun-Times or the latest Time-Out magazine for the others. Also be sure to check out the Chicago History Museum's online archive of images from the Chicago Daily News.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Chicago | History | Reviews
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The New York Times Book Review ran a piece about Sherry Buchanan's new book Vietnam Zippos: American Soldiers' Engravings and Stories in last Sunday's holiday books wrap up. Placing Buchanan's book on his list of new art and design books for the season, reviewer Steven Heller writes:

For grunts fighting the Vietnam War, statements of patriotism and protest found an outlet… on metal Zippo lighters. Vietnam Zippos, illustrated with objects from the collection of the artist Bradford Edwards, documents what the author, Sherry Buchanan, calls "amulets and talismans bringing the keeper invulnerability, good luck and protection against evil." Sadly, these personalized mementos also served as last testaments for many who were killed in action.

An extensive published record exists for documents and relics from the Vietnam War, yet this book, well designed and photographed by Misha Anikst, offers a rare personal dimension. The mottoes on these lighters, like "When I die I will go to heaven because I spent my time in hell," provide candid insight into what these soldiers thought of the war.

Read the rest of the review on the NYTBR website.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Books for the News | History
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Barry B. LePatner's Broken Buildings, Busted Budgets: How to Fix America's Trillion-Dollar Construction Industry is featured in today's Wall Street Journal business section. Reviewer James R. Hagerty uses LePatner's book to cite one possible benefit of the otherwise gloomy housing market crisis—weeding out the weaklings in the contracting businesses. Hagerty writes:

Every now and then, a major construction project is completed on time and on budget. Everyone is amazed.

Barry LePatner, a New York lawyer specializing in construction cases, thinks this exception should become the rule. Broken Buildings, Busted Budgets outlines his proposals for making that possible.

Mr. LePatner's swift kick to the construction industry comes when it is already down. Commercial construction is slowing, and house building is in a severe slump, partly caused by a glut of new homes erected by overly optimistic builders even before the subprime crisis made it harder to find qualified buyers. The downturn will apply the wrecking ball to many of the weaker construction companies. But that won't be enough, according to Mr. LePatner. He argues that the industry will become efficient only when its customers become savvier and more demanding.

His solutions involve, among other things, hiring experts who can monitor builders and who have financial incentives to prevent needless overruns. Tougher contracts should enforce fixed costs or, at least, severely limit the scope for escalation. And thorough background checks—looking for lawsuits, public complaints and financial troubles—may lower the chance of hiring dodgy engineers and construction teams.

Such steps would force out of business weak firms that can't deliver on their promises. The survivors, Mr. LePatner thinks, would be larger firms that are less reliant on subcontractors and are better able to train employees and invest in technology.

To find out more see the WSJ article (available for seven days free to non-subscribers) or navigate to www.brokenbuildings.com.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Economics | Law | Politics and Current Events | Reviews
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Two articles on Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites's No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy ran this month, both of which cite the book for its controversial look at some of the most influential images of the last century, and how such images have radically changed the political and social landscape of America. An article in the November 29 London Review of Books (only available to subscribers) begins with a critique of "one of the most reproduced photographs in American history"—Joe Rosenthal's image of U.S. troops struggling to raise an American flag on top of Mount Suribachi on the island of Iwo Jima. The LRB's David Simpson writes:

The Pulitzer-prize winning photo of the Suribachi Summit… was actually of a second flag-raising, staged with a larger flag after the fighting had died down. Literally speaking it was not so much a struggle against military odds as a struggle against gravity. This was known at the time, and was a sufficiently sensitive issue for both Time and Life to refrain from publishing it until it had become so ubiquitous as to be beyond complex questioning. That happened very fast. The photo became more or less instantly a leitmotif of American popular culture and a key item in the manufacture of consent by politicians and advertisers alike.…

Debates about the authenticity of photographs, especially war photographs, have been commonplace since at least the American Civil War. In No Caption Needed Robert Hariman and John Lucaites are less concerned with these debates than the ways in which iconic images have been used to propose and renegotiate various kinds of 'democratic citizenship' and 'civic identity.' Here original truths matter less than accumulated traditions or assumptions.… For these authors the Iwo Jima flag works because it is aesthetically compelling, … because it converts military into civic action, and because it effaces the personalities of the soldiers in the service of a common and anonymous effort. …

The review continues:

The authors think we have a 'need' for these iconic images, and often suggest that democracy is better for them. But it is a fine line (if there is a line) between the vigorous, deliberative debate conducted by empowered citizens… and the consumption of patriotic propaganda.

A feature in the Chronicle of Higher Education also focused on the author's take on the powerful yet complicated impact of iconic images on American culture. You can read the Chronicle piece online at their website, read an excerpt from the book, or navigate over to the authors' blog where they frequently post provocative critiques of notable images in contemporary photojournalism.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Film and Media | History | Politics and Current Events | Reviews | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 08:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Pierre Laszlo's new book Citrus: A History has been featured in several articles this month, one in the November 22 issue of Nature and another in the November 25 issue of the UK's Sunday Times. Both articles praise Laszlo's book for its comprehensive historical account of the propagation of citrus fruits around the globe and both note that one of the most important reasons for its popularity is its medicinal value—an especially pertinent fact to keep in mind during these long winter months. From the Sunday Times:

[In Citrus] Laszlo, a retired French chemist, takes us on a journey from the orangeries of Versailles, via the limes of the Royal Navy to the citriculture of modern Florida. It was only in the 1920s, he tells us, that orange juice became "an integral part of the American breakfast", after the great flu epidemic of 1918-19. Laszlo shows that the citrus fruit "is a treasure trove of chemicals that are highly useful to humankind"—which also happens to taste wonderful.

And on a similar note from Nature magazine:

Citrus provides a colorful background of the literature, poetry and art associated with citrus fruits, as well as their pharmaceutical effects. Apparently, an ingredient of grapefruit juice deactivates an enzyme in the small intestine that destroys some medications before they can enter the bloodstream. Alternatively, the citrus component boosts the activity of certain drugs, such as sildenafil (better known as Viagra) and inhibitors of HIV-1 proteases.

You can read the rest of both articles online, or navigate to our special Citrus website where you can find out more about the book as well as download six tasty—not to mention healthy—citrus recipes.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Biology | Economics | History | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ashley Gilbertson, author of Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: A Photographer's Chronicle of the Iraq War recently joined fellow photographer Nina Berman on WNYC's Leonard Lopate Show to discuss their recent projects documenting the lives of American soldiers in Iraq and how they manage to cope with their experiences after they come home. As Lopate reveals in his interview, both books offer a candid look into the horrors of modern warfare soldiers are forced to endure and the toll it takes on them both physically and emotionally. Navigate to the WNYC website to listen to archived audio from the show as well as view two photo galleries featuring a small sampling of each photographer's work.

Gilbertson was also recently interviewed by Sandip Roy for NPR's UpFront radio to discuss Gilbertson's personal experiences as a photographer in Iraq. You can find a transcription as well as archived audio of their conversation online at the UpFront website.

Finally, don't miss the UCP's own Whiskey Tango Foxtrot website where you can read more about Gilbertson's book, place an order, and view our own video interview with Gilbertson.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | History | Politics and Current Events
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When Ashley Gilbertson arrived in Iraq at the beginning of the U.S. invasion he was only twenty five years old and had no affiliation with any newspaper. Nevertheless, he was among the first photojournalists to cover the conflict for American audiences. Soon picked up as a freelance photographer for the New York Times, Gilbertson has since established himself as one of the most adept chroniclers of the conflict in the middle east.

Yesterday, the New York Times ran a special piece in the Arts and Leisure featuring a selection of Gilbertson's photographs of the war, all of which can be found in his new book, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: A Photographer’s Chronicle of the Iraq War. Dexter Filkins prefaces Gilbertson's photos in the NYT saying:

Ashley Gilbertson, a freelance photographer for the New York Times, has followed the war in Iraq from its beginning through its most singular moments. In his new book… Gilbertson has compiled the best of those images, freezing the war's most intense and dramatic moments… The heart of the book, graphically and emotionally, is the battle of Falluja in November 2004, when 6,000 marines and soldiers went into what was then a contested jihadi stronghold. Those photos capture street-to-street fighting in all its manic ferocity.

But the most moving of these images are not of fighting and violence but of the moments in between: a group of soldiers sunning themselves during a pause in the battle, a child hurling himself down a slide at a Baghdad playground, an Iraqi man and son standing frozen before an American soldier. Moments like these remind us just how human the experience of war really is.

Check out the photographs from the New York Times piece on their website, then navigate to our web site for the book to view a fascinating interview with the photographer and hear him speak about his personal experiences photographing war.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Books for the News | History | Politics and Current Events
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Maps are universal forms of communication, easily understood and appreciated regardless of culture or language. This truly magisterial book introduces readers to the widest range of maps ever considered in one volume. A companion to the most ambitious exhibition on the history of maps ever mounted in North America, Maps will challenge readers to stretch conventional thought about what constitutes a map and how many different ways we can understand graphically the environment in which we live. Collectors, historians, mapmakers and users, and anyone who has ever "gotten lost" in the lines and symbols of a map will find much to love and learn from in this book.

Read the press release. Also see a special website for the book.

Archived in Anthropology | Art and Architecture | Cartography and Geography | History | Press Releases | Religion
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Sherry Buchanan's new book Vietnam Zippos: American Soldiers' Engravings and Stories has been receiving attention from some very different sources recently. This month both Playboy magazine and a magazine called The Armchair General are running reviews of the book. Yet despite the two magazine's obvious disparities, both seem to agree that Vietnam Zippos offers a unique medium of expression for the often marginalized voices of the American GI's that served in Vietnam. From Playboy magazine:

For American soldiers in Vietnam, the Zippo lighter was an essential talisman; its chrome casing was also a convenient canvas on which fighters expressed their anger and frustration. In Vietnam Zippos, edited by Sherry Buchanan, these unique artifacts tell the story of a war gone sour. Lyndon Johnson's observation that "ultimate victory will depend upon the hearts and minds of the people" inspired the gleeful savagery of "Give me your hearts and minds or I will wreck your f—ing huts."… Later, as enthusiasm for the war ebbed, lighters feature such deep thoughts as "When the power of love is as strong as the love of power, then there will be peace."

Also be sure to check out the Armchair General article online here.

Archived in Art and Architecture | History | Reviews
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Marcia Lausen's new book Design for Democracy: Ballot + Election Design was recently featured in two articles this week. A review posted today on Newsweek's website and another yesterday on the Fast Company blog both focus on Lausen's book as an attempt to ensure that 2007 is not a repeat of the irregularities created by the poorly designed ballots used in Florida in 2000. Causing mass confusion and sparking the infamous recount, as Newsweek's Rolf Ebeling notes, there is no better example to demonstrate the importance of well designed election materials. Ebeling writes:

Graphic designers encounter a fair amount of eye-rolling—some of it deserved—when they champion the necessity of their work outside their professional choir. Passionately defending color palettes, rattling off obscure rules of proper typography—these things often come off as superficial and fussy to the unconverted.… But, but, but … intelligent application of type, line and color does provide a service beyond visual appeal. It can clarify complexity. And I can prove it.

Look no further than the new book Design for Democracy: Ballot + Election Design, by Marcia Lausen, an elegant examination of how to improve the utility of our nation's varied—and, in some cases, shockingly bad—voter materials. In reaction to the problems brought to national attention in the 2000 elections—when Americans learned all about the troubles with "butterfly ballots" and "hanging chads"—a group of designers led by Lausen (a professor of graphic design at the University of Illinois at Chicago) developed a comprehensive visual system for everything from voter registration pamphlets to instructions for setting up ballot-counting tables. The emphasis here is on a system: their work was not intended to set a national standard but to act as a guideline adaptable to the unique requirements of state and local elections. Working with election officials, they have, since 2000, already put some of their ideas to work in Illinois and Oregon elections.

Read the rest of the Newsweek article on their website. The Fast Company article is also online here.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Books for the News | Politics and Current Events
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With his book tour now in full swing Ashley Gilbertson, author of Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: A Photographer's Chronicle of the Iraq War has been making so many appearances lately we can barely keep track of him. From prime time TV interviews, to high school classrooms, here's our attempt to catch up with Gilbertson's most recent events:

Last Tuesday Gilbertson was interviewed on Philadelphia NPR affiliate WHYY's Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane. Archived audio from the show is available on the WHYY website in real-audio format .

Wednesday saw Gilbertson appearing in Boston for a slightly surreal interview on local FOX TV morning news. They've also put the video online at their website.

Yesterday, however, Gilbertson took some time out to speak with a group of high school students from Millis, MA. The interview was recorded for the Millis Middle/High School's Studio 103, a student-run production facility for a local access TV channel, and should appear on their blog soon as well.

An interview and multimedia slide show with a sampling of the photo's from Gilbertson's book was also featured last Thursday on the online news magazine Alternet.

And tonight Gilbertson will be seen on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 in a rebroadcast of Cooper's show on the battle for Falluja, called "The Anvil of God"—Gilbertson was recently awarded the Robert Capa Gold Medal from the Overseas Press Club for his coverage of the U.S. invasion of Falluja.

Finally, Gilbertson's talk and signing at the Washington DC area Borders was recently filmed by CSPAN-2's Book TV—who will broadcast it this Sunday night at 7:00 pm eastern time, 6:00 pm central.

But despite all these interviews with major media moguls, his recent interview with Press senior editor Alan Thomas of course offers by far the most interesting examination of Gilbertson's work. You can see footage from the interview online at the press's special website for the book.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Books for the News | History | Politics and Current Events
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This week's Chicago Reader is running a front page story on Mark Jacob and Richard Cahan's new book Chicago under Glass: Early Photographs from the Chicago Daily News. The book is the result of years spent digging through the Chicago History Museum's archives to collect over 250 images from the Chicago Daily News—one of the major newspapers circulating in the Chicago area in the first three decades of the twentieth century, and one of the first newspapers to feature black and white photography. As Michael Miner notes in his Chicago Reader review, their time and effort has resulted in a fascinating photo journey into the city's history:

The Daily News went under in 1978, long before it could have created its own online archive. So the writing in this famously literary paper is largely lost, but the photography survives, and now an anonymous photographer's strange, wonderful picture of a group of blind children stroking a circus elephant deservedly finds a spotlight as the cover of Chicago Under Glass. It's a fitting introduction to the book, expressing the idea of reaching out to touch something most alive in the imagination.

The Reader article also points to the Chicago History Museum's online archive of thousands more photographs from the early days of the Chicago Daily News. Click on the link to check them out.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Books for the News | Chicago | History
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In an article appearing in the "Burning Questions" column in today's edition of Newsday Erica Marcus cites Pierre Laszlo's new book Citrus: A History to help her answer one reader's burning question about the origins of orange juice. From Newsday:

I can't drink cold orange juice first thing in the morning, but I am curious as to when and where this practice began. I don't think it's European. —Rhoda Greenberg, Islip

Drinking orange juice at breakfast is indeed a peculiarly American custom, one whose story recalls those quintessentially American values: marketing and technological innovation.

In his just-published book, Citrus: A History, retired chemistry professor Pierre Laszlo recounts the providential hook-up of the California Fruit Growers Exchange (an organization that was later to become Sunkist) with advertising copywriter Albert D. Lasker.

In the early years of the 20th century, oranges were consumed principally as fresh, whole fruit. In 1916, when California growers were stuck with an overabundance of oranges, Lasker came up with the slogan: "Drink an orange." This, according to Laszlo, was the moment at which juice consumption began to outstrip fruit consumption.

Read the rest of the article on the Newsday website. Also, see our special Citrus site that includes six tasty citrus recipes from Laszlo's book.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Biology | Books for the News | Economics | History
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So long, Chicago,“ read the headline when the Daily News ran its last edition on March 4, 1978. Winner of thirteen Pulitzers, the Chicago Daily News launched the careers of Carl Sandburg, Ben Hecht, and Mike Royko, just to name a few. It was also one of the first dailies to incorporate eye-catching illustrations, and soon thereafter, black-and-white photography.

Chicago under Glass: Early Photographs from the Chicago Daily News is the breathtaking collection of photographs from those early years, 1901 to 1930. During those three decades, Chicago and America witnessed the invention of the airplane, the repeal of prohibition, and the Great War. Photographers at the Daily News covered these scenes, and then went beyond, capturing news as it broke in front of them.

Read the press release.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Chicago | History | Press Releases
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Alex Chadwick interviewed Ashley Gilbertson a few days ago for the NPR radio program Day to Day. The interview is not only about Iraq and the photographs that Gilbertson took there, but also about the ways that events in Iraq changed him, aged him, matured him—especially when he "crossed the line" in Falluja.

The NPR site also has a brief gallery of Gilbertson's Iraq photos. More photos are available in a feature that recently ran in the New Statesman. Gilbertson's own website offers plenty of photos, too.

But what better way to experience these dramatic images than in person? An exhibit of his Iraq photographs opened two weeks ago in New York. For more Gilbertson events see our author events page.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: A Photographer's Chronicle of the Iraq War not only includes over two hundred photographs, but also is a searing memoir of a photographer's experiences documenting the military, political, and human dimensions of the conflict in Iraq.

For an extended conversation about all these issues, see our video interview with Gilbertson online at our Whiskey Tango Foxtrot website.

Update: Monday, Nov. 5: Julia Keller reviewed Whiskey Tango Foxtrot in the Chicago Tribune yesterday.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Books for the News | Politics and Current Events
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Tomorrow, November 2, as part of the three month long Festival of Maps, the Field Museum will open the exhibit, Maps: Finding Our Place in the World. On display will be some of the most fascinating cartographic artifacts ever shown. And just in time for opening day, the Press has released a companion volume of the same name edited by exhibit curators James R. Akerman and Robert W. Karrow, Jr. Like the exhibit, the book surveys a huge range of cartographic sources to explore the many ways that maps have changed our lives and helped us understand the environment in which we live. From a review in Discover magazine:

From religious pilgrimages and vacation road trips to depictions of the ocean floor and the magical landscapes of J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle Earth, maps chart both physical and imaginary worlds. As geographer Denis Cosgrove explains, "world' is a social concept … a flexible term, stretching from physical environment to the world of ideas, microbes, of sin. Arguably, all these worlds can be mapped." And they are in this compelling and very readable companion volume to the current exhibition at the Field Museum in Chicago.

To find out more about the book, see this special website where you can view a sampling of images organized by theme from just of few of the many fascinating maps in the book.

And if you're planning a day out tomorrow to go see some of these maps in person, you can check out the Field Museum's exhibition highlights online at their website which includes ticket sales, a list of special events, and a primer on what you can expect too see if you go.

In addition to the exhibit at the Field Museum many other Chicago institutions including the Newberry Library and the Chicago History Museum are participating in the Festival of Maps over its three month time span, making it one of the most ambitious celebrations of maps ever. For those looking for a more comprehensive rundown of the entire Festival, navigate to the Chicago Tribune's festival website which includes a guide to the Festival's various venues, video presentations by the Tribune's Patrick Reardon, and even a special blog with reviews and commentary on the Festival's many exhibits. The Tribune also links to the Festival's official website where you can find an indispensable map (of course) of the Festival of Maps and other online features.

Archived in Anthropology | Art and Architecture | Author Events | Cartography and Geography | History
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The media bombards us with images from Iraq on a daily basis, but as the New Yorker's George Packer notes in his blog Interesting Times, "Iraq has not been a photographer's war." The iconic images of the war have come from amateurs (Abu Ghraib, videos of beheadings) that have "turned documentary photography into a leering form of humiliation and a potent weapon in the information campaign that is the core strategy of contemporary insurgencies, based on the terrifying principle of can-you-top-this."

In Ashley Gilbertson's Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: A Photographer's Chronicle of the Iraq War, Packer finds photographs that have not been drained of humanity.

An Australian freelancer in his twenties, [Ashley Gilbertson] went to northern Iraq before the war and has been going back ever since, mostly on contract for the Times. His new book, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, just published by the University of Chicago, collects Gilbertson's four years of work from Iraq, with an introduction by his Times colleague Dexter Filkins, and a colloquial, self-revealing text beautifully written by the photographer himself. The pictures chart the descent of Iraq from the initial post-invasion euphoria into the extreme violence of the battles for Karbala, Samarra, and Falluja. They also show a young photojournalist, who "wasn't interested in covering combat," learning his craft, proving his mettle, forcing himself into situations that nearly destroy him morally as well as physically, and finally discovering, amid the inferno of Falluja in November, 2004, the strange tenderness that characterizes the very greatest war photography. Gilbertson's pictures from the battle of Falluja perform the opposite function of the war pornography that Abu Ghraib and Zarqawi gave the world: they give back to their subjects the humanity that the war is taking away.

See a special website for the book featuring a video interview with the author. Gilbertson has also recently been interviewed on CNN and on CBS News.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Books for the News | Politics and Current Events
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Now available in paperback— Arguably the most influential document in the history of American urban planning, Daniel Burnham's 1909 Plan of Chicago, coauthored by Edward Bennett and produced in collaboration with the Commercial Club of Chicago, proposed many of the city's most distinctive features. Carl Smith's fascinating history reveals the Plan's central role in shaping the ways people envision the cityscape and urban life itself and points out ways the Plan continues to influence debates, even a century after its publication, about how to create a vibrant and habitable urban environment.

Read the press release.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Cartography and Geography | Chicago | History | Press Releases
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Sherry Buchanan's Vietnam Zippos: American Soldiers' Engravings and Stories received some prime time publicity Saturday on CBS's Evening News. Buchanan's book showcases a collection of Vietnam era Zippo lighters to tell the fascinating story of how the humble Zippo became a talisman and companion for American GIs during their tours of duty. CBS correspondent John Blackstone asks Vietnam vet Hap Desimone "if it seems strange to see the lighters depicted as art:"

"No," he says. "It doesn't seem strange at all."

In Vietnam, every soldier, it seemed, had a Zippo.

"I carried one," Desimone says. "I had it engraved."

With the engravings Zippos became the one place soldiers could express themselves.

"A lot of these sentiments I heard before, 'We're the unwilling led by the unqualified doing the unnecessary for the ungrateful'," he says. "It rings a bell.…"

The piece continues quoting artist Bradford Edwards whose collection is featured in Vietnam Zippos:

"You had people who were discontent people who wanted to express heartfelt emotions," he says. "And here was a small canvas."

"They look like a collection of tombstones," Edwards says. "And they may be the last thing some of these guys had to say."

While some of the soldiers may never have made it home, now their Zippos are here illuminating the past.

Video of Blackstone's piece is online at the CBS website.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Books for the News | History
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Last week we mentioned that Barry B. LePatner, author of Broken Buildings, Busted Budgets: How to Fix America's Trillion-Dollar Construction Industry was going to be featured on Chris Gondek's business management podcast, The Invisible Hand. Well, while the podcast officially airs on Mr. Gondek's site this Saturday, he was kind enough to give us a link to the full audio from his talk with LePatner a couple of days in advance.

Listen to The Invisible Hand Podcast Episode 61 (mp3) as LePatner and Gondek engage in a fascinating discussion about how America's fractured construction industry is costing the nation billions of dollars, and what LePatner suggests can be done to fix it.

Also check out LePatner's special website for the book with excerpts and other resources.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Economics | Law
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Citrus: A History, the latest from chemist and author Pierre Laszlo, is a fascinating historical study of the culinary and cultural phenomenon of the citrus. Writing for the UK's Financial Times, Ian Irvine's recent review delivers a succinct and enthusiastic summary of Laszlo's new work:

Pierre Laszlo's short but brilliant book ranges over citrus's eventful history and describes i