Having Annie Leibovitz on the cover of the US edition of Newsweek...

[WCGreen]

is symptomatic for what is truly wrong about this country....

Just take a gander at this opening line from the Newsweek cover story...


Annie Leibovitz is tired and nursing a cold, and she' s just flown back to New York on the red-eye from Los Angeles, where she spent two days shooting Angelina Jolie for Vogue. Like so many of her photo sessions, there was nothing simple about it. "I talked with Angelina before the shoot," says Leibovitz, who's famous for her preparation. "She felt like she was coming back from having the baby and she felt very sexy and ready to go."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14964292/site/newsweek/


It's a reflection of what America wants, some would say, and others would say that it is a reflection of what the corporate masters say is good for our country...

But it truly is all about economics and the protecting and thus projecting of the largest export of the US economy, the entertainment business...

To glorify someone who is essentially a really really good Olin Mills mall photographer speaks volumes about our how our culture is perceived around the world...

We are, in essence, a culture that worships the ephemeral, the wisps of moments that can be captured in a picture. If that wisp happens to include a "celebrity", so much the better...

But the near deification of people such as Angelina is our fault..

We let this happen...

Sure, our corporate masters want us to embrace these wisps so we are distracted from the truth of life, but these same interests are not allowing the people of the US to examine and choose...

The argument that the images from Katrina is what prompted the outcry. Perhaps, but since we have become so tied to images to form our opinions, the truly important issues of the day are neglected because they can not get a hold of the issues with an image...

America, we hardly knew ye...

[Imagevision]

1. Annie Leibovitz, at best, an average Olin Mills photographer

[blm]

2. Cheer up, WC... here's an important photographer being awarded today.....

Six innovators win Heinz Awards

$250,000 prizes go to pioneers in public policy and technology

Snip...

Thomas, 46, was one of six people named Monday to receive a Heinz Award, an annual $250,000 prize given to people for making notable contributions to bettering the human condition (the category in which Thomas was honored); the arts and humanities; the environment; public policy; and technology, the economy and employment.

The Heinz Family Foundation of Pittsburgh has presented the awards since 1994 in memory of Sen. John Heinz III, heir to the Heinz food fortune who died in a 1991 plane crash. His widow, Teresa Heinz Kerry, now wife of Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., is chairwoman of the foundation.

Paul Anastas was named a Heinz winner in the environment category because of his pioneering work in “green chemistry,” which seeks to reduce chemical waste by using new, environmentally friendly compounds in everyday products and chemical processes.

Snip...

Here are the other recipients of this year’s Heinz Awards, with excerpts from their award citations:

Arts and humanities: New York-based photographer James Nachtwey. "A seven-time winner of the Magazine Photographer of the Year award, Mr. Nachtwey has covered wars and international strife all over the globe. His photographs conveyed the human drama of the IRA hunger strike in Northern Ireland in 1981 and have since chronicled in poignant fashion conflicts and social issues in El Salvador, Nicaragua, the West Bank and Gaza, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Rwanda and the war in Iraq, among many other locations. On September 11, 2001, he encountered destruction and chaos in his own backyard, emerging from a collapsed building to capture the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in lower Manhattan."

Public policy: Bruce Katz, founding director of the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution. "Recognizing that there was an enormous void in the public policy arena concerning America’s cities and their future, Mr. Katz went to the Brookings Institution in 1996 where he founded the Metropolitan Policy Program, formerly the Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy. The MPP has become the premier research institution in the United States on city and suburban issues and is working to improve the vitality and livability of these places in close partnership with elected officials, business and civic leaders, environmentalists, planners and urban experts."

Technology, the economy and employment: Leroy Hood, owner of 14 biomedical patents, including the DNA sequencer that laid the foundation for the Human Genome Project. "The groundbreaking work in Dr. Hood’s laboratory led to the onset of a new field called systems biology, which soon spawned an array of commercial applications. ... In 1992, Dr. Hood founded the first cross-disciplinary biology department, Molecular Biotechnology, at the University of Washington. Eight years later, he created a nonprofit research center, the Institute for Systems Biology, gathering experts in the sciences and engineering to work together to integrate new technologies with data acquisition."

Chairman's Medal: Elma Holder, an advocate for the elderly and the founder of the National Citizens’ Coalition for Nursing Home Reform. Holder began her activism in the 1970s with Ralph Nader and Maggie Kuhn of the Gray Panthers. She retired in 2002 to care for her own elderly mother. "Ms. Holder helped grow NCCNHR into the nation’s pre-eminent advocacy group for the rights of nearly two million nursing home residents. Her 1977 book, 'Nursing Homes: A Citizens’ Action Guide – How to Organize, Plan and Achieve Nursing Home Reform in Your Community,' helped to kick start a national reform movement, and her Campaign for Quality Care, a coalition of over 50 national organizations, helped bring about a series of nationally legislated reforms, including those in the landmark Nursing Home Reform Law."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14999944 /

[TaleWgnDg]

3. Are you presently awakening to the pontification of

.
Are you presently awakening to the pontification of "celebrities" in America? That is, the fact that placing ordinary people on pedestals then labeling same as "celebrities" sells in America and abroad? Or are you personally affronted that one of America's best photographers (Annie Leibovitz) captures these so-called "celebrities" on film or digital format?

No matter.

However you attempt to cast it or disparage Annie Leibovitz, she remains one of America's first recognized female photographers to rise to the top in her field, over the heads of many males in the same field. She's female and she's gay. And, that, sir, in America would never happen merely a few years ago; instead, Leibovitz would have been shunned resulting e.g. in our loss of this (amongst many of Leibovitz's) prize winning photograph:


John Lennon and Yoko Ono, New York City, December 8, 1980.
Leibovitz's most famous portrait.
Hours after this photo was taken,
John Lennon was murdered outside of his apartment building in New York City.

Overall, Leibovitz's photographs capture beauty and personify people in all their essence, and in all its art form -- no matter whether the photograph is of "celebrities" or otherwise. This is the rationale of universities and colleges that offer Leibovitz' works as an example to many photography and art students.

.

[WCGreen]

4. I could care less if the photographer was male or female....

I am far beyond that...

Her whole career has centered around the expanding the cult of celebrity and no matter how you slice it, that is what she is...

Of course there is artistic expression in her portraits, but they are still just portraits of celebrities, the rich and the famous.....

[MichaelHarris]

5. Certainly

Annie Leibovitz is a great photographer and her cover photo on a magazine when more important things are going on is debatable. Sometimes we only look at what's in front of us when we label someone, "America's first recognized female photographers". Digging into the cobwebs of the past we see that this is not entirely true. America had a woman photographer long before Annie that documented the human condition better than any man of her time.

Margaret Bourke-White
1904-1971

" In 1936, Bourke-white toured the south with the writer Erskine Caldwell to supply the pictures for the book ‘You Have Seen Their Faces’. The book was a photo documentary of the poor, rural people of the south."
http://www.photo-seminars.com/Fame/MargaretWhite.htm

Ms. White photographed the very first ever Life magazine cover. It's time we celebrate American women, do a story on Annie but let's not forget those that paved the way. I hope that I can be half as good someday:


Michael Harris

[CaliforniaPeggy]

6. You are spot on, as usual........

The phrase bread and circuses comes to my mind......

We are indeed distracted from the truth.....and that's how the corporate masters want it.....

So they can continue to run things for their benefit, and not for ours...

We ignore your message to our considerable peril.

[NotGivingUp]

7. the rest of the world gets a cover with 'Losing in Afghanistan' and

we get this story...i would think that would be the topic of conversation.

[WCGreen]

8. It is.....

There were so many other threads looking just at the two covers, I thought a little bit of discusion on what AL means to the reasons why she was on the cover...