John Edwin Mason: Documentary, Motorsports, Photo History

Convergences, 8: Mathew Brady, Yannis Behrakis, & the Scarred Black Body

This photograph will shock you, but it's not likely to surprise you. It's both disturbing and disturbingly familiar. Images of black bodies in distress are depressingly common elements of our increasingly global visual culture. Maimed, diseased, emaciated, incarcerated -- you and I see them every day. Often we pass them... Read more →

Funky Friday & Convergences 7, Together Again for the First Time: Margaret Bourke-White, Marion Post Wolcott & Louis Jordan

Funky Fridays make me happy. It's a chance to show off music (and other funky stuff) that puts a glide in my stride and a dip in my hip. (By the way, if you're here for the tunes, skip all my talking and scroll down to the videos.) Convergences make... Read more →

Convergences, 6: Margaret Bourke-White & David Goldblatt Photograph Some Afrikaners

Margaret Bourke-White was already a Life magazine legend when she photographed some Afrikaner men on horseback. Despite her fame and her accomplishments, she was out of her depth. While technically accomplished, the photo is politically naive. Twelve years later, when the great South African photographer David Goldblatt made a similar... Read more →

Convergences, 5: Weegee the Famous & the Daily News

New Yorkers are talking about murder. Pictures of murder, that is. For the last week, there's been a tremendous buzz around the opening of Weegee: Murder is My Business, an exhibition dedicated to the crime photos of "one of the most relentlessly inventive figures in American photography (to quote New... Read more →

Convergences, 4: Constance Stuart Larrabee, the Ratiep, and Me

In 1942 or '43, Constance Stuart Larrabee photographed a Muslim man with a sword. No, this has nothing to do with tired old cliches about militant Islam. Instead, the man was preparing to participate in what Muslims in Cape Town, South Africa, called the ratiep. Also known as the khalifah... Read more →

Convergences, 3: South Africa's Poor Whites & the Color of Poverty

I've been thinking about two remarkably similar photos, one made by Contance Stuart Larrabee, in 1947 or '48, and the other by Finbarr O'Reilly, in 2010. (Scroll down to see them.) They've got me wondering: What is the color of poverty? Ask Americans, and they'll probably tell you that poverty... Read more →

Convergences, 2: Finbarr O'Reilly, Constance Stuart Larrabee, & South Africa's Poor Whites

Africa's exotic species -- giraffes, rhinoceros, mountain gorillas -- have always fascinated outsiders. And none has been more exotic and unexpected, more scandalous and titillating than South Africa's poor whites. After all, wasn't apartheid -- South Africa's particularly vicious system of white supremacy and black subjugation -- supposed to ensure... Read more →