where do the lost memories go?

Two French students were awarded the annual Grand Prix du Photoreportage Etudiant last week to honor a photographic story that presented images documenting the precarious lives of students today and the things they must do in order to survive and succeed.

The only catch is that the entire story was a fake.

And during the award ceremony, the two "winners"--Guillaume Chauvin and Remi Huberr, art students at the Ecole Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs of Strasbourg--instead of claiming their trophy and prize money, stood on stage and revealed their hoax. The images were not photojournalism but staged images featuring many of their peers. I'd have love to been a fly on the wall in that auditorium. Ouch.

From Horses Think blog:

The winners claimed that the idea was hatched a year ago when they looked at all the work students were competing with for the 2008 prize. They realized that the “world view of this work was limited and seemed more like vacation photographs as opposed to photojournalism. The photographs depicted small children with big wet eyes in order to illustrate the misery abroad.” Speaking to Le Figaro, Guillaume Chauvin confided that they “wanted to enter the contest in order to show the codes used too often in photojournalism and to prove that something real could be translated into something staged.”

Is this genius? Is this mocking an industry that can't tell true plight from a staged...[click the 'continue reading' link below]
--
set of pictures? What have they done?

I think what they've done is not to make brilliant photojournalism, but to make brilliant art. There was certainly a significant price to be paid for that art, or perhaps many prices: the reputation of the award, the reputation of the judges, even their own reputations perhaps--and only time will tell--but they've surely made some brilliant statements about the nature of such imagery, called into question the cliched nature of the traditional canons recognizing that work, and made us all pause, even if just for a moment, to consider what photojournalism really is. By blending genres (PJ + perhaps advertising photography?) and creating staged images that were stunning enough to win a Grand Prize (hard work in it's own right), I'd argue that they've achieved their end goal. And they've done so in an incredibly creative way. Subversive and meta.

It sure worked on me. I dunno about you, but if I hired artists for a living, I'd want those guys' brains and talents on my team. Of course they might stab you in the back in the name of art, but they're clearly good at finding a point and making it clearly.

Genius or just plain disrespectful in an arena that has no room for shenanigans?

[If you read French, follow this link to view the story as told by Le Figaro and as the "win" appeared in Paris Match.]
[All this via Horses Think, via Conscientious. Thanks guys.]

(photos from the first leg of our junk raft adventure)

Selections from traveling on the Adriatic toward Venice:

- Constant problems with the Coast Guard every step of the way. Apparently it's standard operating procedure here to halt any vessel you don't recognize, boldface lie to them about what papers/clearance they need, drag your feet making copies of all their paperwork, including passports (even though your buddies 10 km away just did the same thing the day before), and then finally (hours later) smile and say everything is fine, have a nice day.
- Being stopped by a closed drawbridge right after leaving Marano. The next day being grounded just past the bridge by high winds.
- Patience and negotiation skills are the key to anything in Italy, it seems.
- Exploring an abandoned farm with tons of air-born cotton-fluff.
- Paying a visit to Gulliverlandia.
- Doubling Franny on the handlebars with a giant stuffed caterpillar on the back, riding down pitch-black country roads with no brakes.
- Bone fish stew = equal parts bone to stew.
- Scary mutant ice cream man.
- Ben Wolf joining us, and Callie being so excited she ran and jumped on him - splitting her chin open on his face. . . requiring stitches.
- Little kids bringing us a six-pack of beer in Caorle.
- Sleeping on the roof of an abandoned school on the beach.
- A lot more abandoned buildings.
- Little old ladies fixing our sewing machine.
- Having a bike break down while on a grocery run. When they return to fix it, they find someone had gone through the groceries and stolen just some of them.
- Dark Dark Dark comes for a visit and performs for us on the rafts at night.
- Having a moment that is actually TOO utopian.
- Traveling on the sea in large swells = a few crew get seasick.
- The Coast Guard stopping us out on the sea and ordering us to stay there while they took out Italian-speaking crew member back to headquarters to explain everything. They take so long that the sea goes from calm to large swells, so much so that when we do say screw it and head in, we have a very hard time navigating in the waves. Thanks for looking out for boater's safety, Coast Guard.
- The Bora lands while we are in the small canal town of Torre di Fine ("The Final Tower"). It is dramatic and powerful, with sweeping clouds and rain clusters. I was out in a field hiking to an abandoned farm house, and was having trouble keeping my tripod and camera from getting blown over.
- More abandoned buildings.
- Children in Torre di Fine bringing us rum, making it the third time kids have brought us booze.
- Someone brought us a kite as a gift. While flying it next to the rafts it gets hit by a car, and then a bus. All while about twenty school kids are watching while singing to us with their teachers. The kite flyer promptly jumped into a tent to hide when the car stopped.
- The restaurant Luigi in Torre di Fine randomly bringing us a giant pan of "Frutta di Mar" (fruit of the sea) pasta, with mini-lobsters, calamari and mussels. All they asked was that we return the pan.
- A night of music by Harrison is followed by kidnapping a bartender to go on a late-night cruise on Old Hickory to an abandoned farm house, which ends with two crew members heading to the hospital.
- Cereal with no milk = not so bad if it's good cereal.
- Some minor issues develop when a language barrier results in mixing up antibiotic cream with psoriasis cream.
- Heading out into the sea at dawn one morning, only to be warned frantically by some fishermen to go back because a Bora was coming. Sure enough, before we could even retrace our short path the seas had doubled in size and the rafts were taking a lot of water across their decks. Maria was even towed in to help her get out of it faster.
- The next time we tried to head out, our rafts had collected a massive amount of flotsam underneath them. While dragging it all out, one of the gems we found under there was a dead hedgehog (which was promptly gutted and salted for future transformation into a nail pouch).
- The Cabinet of Curiosities had officially become the cabinet of dead things.



MP3:

• Luminescent Orchestrii - Amaritsi

A band's place in myspace.

DEMOCRACY from δῆμος (dêmos), "people" and κράτος (krátos), "rule, strength"  / Greek

Invloves the government ruling and making laws for the "greater good" of all people, they may abolish personal rights in doing so.

Democracy is government by and for the people. They may or may not be republics–that is, government limited by constitution or charter.

The tricky part of "democracy" is defining "the people" and then deciding what counts as "by the people" and what counts as "for the people." In a sense, that could be considered the content of democratic practice.

Democracies always self-destruct when the non-productive majority realizes that it can vote itself handouts from the productive minority by electing the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury. To maintain their power, these candidates must adopt an ever-increasing tax and spend policy to satisfy the ever-increasing desires of the majority. As taxes increase, incentive to produce decreases, causing many of the once productive to drop out and join the non-productive. When there are no longer enough producers to fund the legitimate functions of government and the socialist programs, the democracy will collapse, always to be followed by a Dictatorship.

"A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men." Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

 

 

• A government of the masses.
• Authority derived through mass meeting or any other form of "direct" expression.
• Results in mobocracy.
• Attitude toward property is communistic–negating property rights.
• Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate, whether is be based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences.
• Results in demogogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy.

 

 

REPUBLIC derived from the Latin phrase res publica which can be translated as "public thing".

A Republic is representative government ruled by law (the Constitution). A democracy is direct government ruled by the majority (mob rule). A Republic recognizes the inalienable rights of individuals while democracies are only concerned with group wants or needs (the public good).

:

• Authority is derived through the election by the people of public officials best fitted to represent them.
• Attitude toward law is the administration of justice in accord with fixed principles and established evidence, with a strict regard to consequences.
• A greater number of citizens and extent of territory may be brought within its compass.
• Avoids the dangerous extreme of either tyranny or mobocracy.
• Results in statesmanship, liberty, reason, justice, contentment, and progress.
• Is the "standard form" of government throughout the world.

 

 

United States: The Constitution directly states that the citizens ("We the people") are the foundation of government, and that the government is chosen though democratic elections. Thus, it is a democratic republic.

United Kingdom: is a democracy but not a republic; the government is chosen democratically, but ultimate authority comes from the monarch, not the people.

Canada is not a republic and is a democracy.

China: is a republic but not a democracy. Government authority is stated to be based on the will of the people, but there are no democratic elections.

North Korea is a republic but not a democracy.

Saudi Arabia is neither a republic nor a democracy

 

1. From bondage to spiritual faith;

2. From spiritual faith to great courage;

3. From courage to liberty;

4. From liberty to abundance;

5. From abundance to complacency;

6. From complacency to apathy;

7. From apathy to dependence;

8. From dependence back into bondage .”