Categorie News of Public Life Blog

There's a new website in town! For Better Understanding is a mix of a blog combined with a photographic portfolio showing some of my stuff that does not appear on Public Life. Take a look!

It took us some weeks and the decisions did not come easy sometimes, but we have now come to a result. The following photographers were nominated by a majority to join Public Life: Ying Tang from Shanghai (China), Marja Skotheim Folde from Granada (Spain) and Orville Robertson from New York (USA). Also the photographer Robert M Johnson from Worcester, Massachusetts (USA) was directly nominated after the relaunch of the Public Life website.

Ying Tang, born and grown up in Shanghai (China), studied at the New York Institute of Photography and at the School of Photography at the City College of San Francisco. His works were published in the San Francisco Chronicle, the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune.
Website of Ying: www.yingphotography.com

Marja Skotheim Folde currently lives in Granada (Spain). She studied photography and graphic print in Barcelona and currently studies architecture and urbanism at the University of Granada. Recently she gave an exhibition of her work Ciudad-Presente (The city told in split seconds).
Photographs of Marja: Flickr album

Orville Robertson, born in Jamaica, today living in Queens, New York, has been a street photographer for over 25 years. His photographs were shown in numerous exhibitions, and are featured in many big museums as well as private and collaborative collections. He is editor of the photography magazine Fotophile, founded in 1993, and was awarded a photography scholarship by the New York Foundation for the Arts in 2002.
Website of Orville: www.newyorkstreetphotography.com

Robert M Johnson was born in Youngstown, Ohio (USA), and later went to Worcester, Massachusetts (USA), where he still lives today. One could say that Johnson is a street photographer of the old school. His photographs were shown and published in numerous exhibitions and magazines.
Website of Robert: www.fullframeimages.com

At this point we would also like to thank all non-nominated applicants, who made the effort to submit their work to us.

Metropolitan Police campaign
The Western world finds itself in a constantly alerting sensitisation towards terrorism. Since September 11th 2001 the governments of the threatened countries endeavour to protect themselves from the acute threat of radical Islamist by means of legislation and preventive alertness of this topic. It is certainly debatable, whether those means of alertness and sensitisation do not rather run the risk of turning into panic mongering, creating a situation of general suspicion.

At the moment it seems extensively to take this direction. The London Metropolitan Police launched a poster campaign, which points out that, in order to plan their actions, terrorists take pictures and notes on security. Where this points to, quickly becomes clear, and thus straightaway a storm of indignation broke out amongst amateur, professional and famous street photographers. Without further ado, this poster campaign seems to cast general suspicion on photographing in public, and with it, on the photographer, who - for better or for worse - might just as well be a scout for terrorist attacks. Meanwhile in London clashes occur between photographers and police, who prohibit taking pictures in certain places with reference to explicit laws, and demand that photos which were made, to be erased under supervision. This procedure however is practised to a much greater extend. Many photographers regard this as a curtailment of their freedom to take pictures in public, and thus an online petition against this procedure was initiated.

For more articles and information:
Online petitions
Times Online
Current Video - You can't picture this
BBC
Amateur photographer
Urban75
Wired blog

A portfolio of public-life member Juan Buhler was published in Black & White Photography Magazine (issue #68, January 2007). Congratulations, Juan!

Go check out this magazine, people! You can read some more about it in a blog post on The Online Photographer.