Prof. Boerner's Explorations

Photographer’s will drool over these new ‘goodies’… This article, and the linked slideshow, will tantalize every photog’s desire for the latest and greatest cameras and other neat things that everyone’s camera bag, or camera backpack. Take a look and enjoy…

Gigantic PhotoPlus Slideshow – Gearlog 
Source: www.gearlog.com

Photographers and camera manufacturers from around the world are in New York City this week for the 2009 PDN PhotoPlus Conference and Expo at the Javits Center, which is open to the public from today through Saturday evening. As the largest photography trade show on the East Coast, the expo attracts everyone from the world’s top photojournalists to amateur photographers, who gather in Manhattan to mingle on the show floor and try out the latest and greatest photography equipment from global manufacturers and small businesses alike.

Click on the slideshow below for an inside look at the PhotoPlus Expo floor. We’ll continue to add photos throughout the show, so check back often. … [MORE]

by Gerald Boerner

“I was born in a tropical ecosystem. I’m not used to these plants.”
— Sebastião Salgado

“We are completing a sort of miracle in our region, so many things are coming back.”
— Sebastião Salgado

“…one of the world’s most celebrated documentary photographers and his…images…have cult status among photography lovers”
— The Hammer Museum Lectures

“Darwin spent 37 to 40 days there… I got to spend about three months there [Galápagos Islands], which was fabulous.”
— Jori Finkel, “Back to Nature, in Pictures and Action,” The New York Times, May 27, 2009

“It was the paradise where I was born but when we arrived, we found that what had been 60 percent rainforest is now just 0.3 percent rainforest.”
— Sebastião Salgado

“Sebastião Salgado discovered photography while working as an economist for the World Bank. He is now one of the world’s greatest photographers.”
— Guardian.co.uk, “Art and Design Web”

“I came here for special things, but my head is there, my body is there… I might be sleeping in a hotel room in Los Angeles, but in my mind I am always editing pictures.”
— Jori Finkel, “Back to Nature, in Pictures and Action,” The New York Times, May 27, 2009

“Famous for putting a human face on economic and political oppression in developing countries, Mr. Salgado is photographing the most pristine vestiges of nature he can find: pockets of the planet unspoiled by modern development.”
— Jori Finkel, “Back to Nature, in Pictures and Action,” The New York Times, May 27, 2009

“I’m 100 percent sure that alone my photographs would not do anything. But as part of a larger movement, I hope to make a difference,” he said. “It isn’t true that the planet is lost. We must work hard to preserve it.”
— Jori Finkel, “Back to Nature, in Pictures and Action,” The New York Times, May 27, 2009

Sebastião Salgado (born: 1944)

Sebastião Salgado is a Brazilian social documentary photographer and photojournalist. It’s not just that this celebrated Brazilian photojournalist has been sniffling since he arrived in the city, explaining: “I was born in a tropical ecosystem. I’m not used to these plants.” It’s also that he peppers his description of the city with words like strange and crazy, noting that he was mesmerized by the sight of the endless stream of automobile traffic as his plane made its descent.

After a somewhat itinerant childhood, Salgado initially trained as an economist, earning a master’s degree in economics from the University of São Paulo in Brazil. He began work as an economist for the International Coffee Organization, often traveling to Africa on missions for the World Bank, when he first started seriously taking photographs. He travelled often to Africa on missions affiliated with the World Bank. It was then that he first began taking his first photographs. On his return to London these images began to preoccupy him, and he abandoned his career as an economist. At the beginning of 1973 he and his wife returned to Paris so that he could begin his life as a photographer.

Salgado initially worked with the Paris based agency Gamma, but in 1979 he joined the international cooperative of photographers Magnum Photos. He left Magnum in 1994 and formed his own agency, Amazonas Images, in Paris to represent his work. He is particularly noted for his social documentary photography of workers in less developed nations. Longtime gallery director Hal Gould considers Salgado to be the most important photographer of the early century, and gave him his first show in the United States.

Works

Salgado slideshow on the
coffee workers in his
native country, Brazil.
[Click on image to start.]

Salgado works on long term, self-assigned projects many of which have been published as books: The Other Americas, Sahel, Workers, and Migrations. The latter two are mammoth collections with hundreds of images each from all around the world. His most famous pictures are of a gold mine in Brazil called Serra Pelada. He is presently working on a project called Genesis, photographing the landscape, flora and fauna of places on earth that have not been taken over by man.

In September and October 2007, Salgado displayed his photographs of coffee workers from India, Guatemala, Ethiopia and Brazil at the Brazilian Embassy in London. The aim of the project was to raise public awareness of the origins of the popular drink.

His Causes

From 1984 to the beginning of 1986 he worked, along with the humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders, on an 18-month project documenting the African famine. He published two books, Sahel, lÀhomme en d’eactutétresse (Sahel: Man in Distress) in France and Sahel el fin del camino (Sahel the End of the Road) in Spain. The two books and a number of photographic exhibitions were created specifically to support the efforts of Doctors Without Borders.

From 1986-92 Sebastião travelled to 23 countries to create a series of photographs on the end of the age of large-scale industrial manual labour. In 1993 he published the book Workers: an archeology of the industrial era in eight countries. More than 100,000 copies of the book were printed, and a large exhibition has been circulating throughout the world to more than 60 museums so far.

In 1993 Sebastião began another series of photographs, inspired by Workers, which would be called Migrations. This project would bring him to 43 countries, on every continent, to document the peoples who abandoned the countryside for the cities. As part of the project, for example, he photographed nine megalopolises which had experienced enormous increases in population during the last two decades due to various forms of migration. The books, Migrations, and Portraits of Children of the Migration, were also published in 8 countries with more than 220,000 copies in print. Eight sets of a large exhibition were simultaneously produced to be shown throughout the world. As well, more than 3,000 sets of 60 posters were created to be shown in union halls, churches, cultural centres, schools, etc. An educational program also was produced to accompany the exhibition in several countries. More than 3 million people are estimated to have seen this work.

During this time other books have also been published:

• An Uncertain Grace (1992);
• Workers: An Archeology of the Industrial Age (1993);
• Terra (1997);
• Migrations (2000);
• Children: Refugees and Migrants (2000);
• Sahel: The End of the Road (2004
• Africa (2007);
• Genesis (2009).

Almost all of these books, as well as most of the exhibitions, were conceived and created by Lélia Deluiz Wanick. Lélia and Sebastião also formed Amazonas Images in 1994, the year when Sebastião left Magnum Photos. Amazonas Images is a press agency which may be the smallest photographic agency in the world, representing only one photographer. Lélia and Sebastião also have worked together since 1991 on the restoration of a small part of the Atlantic Forest in Brazil to its natural state. In 1998 they succeeded in making this land a nature preserve and created Instituto Terra, which includes an educational centre for the environment. More than 500,000 trees have been planted, and the project is at the heart of a much larger community effort focusing on sustainable development in the Rio Doce valley.

Sebastião Salgado is also a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and an honorary member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences in the USA. He has received numerous prizes, including several Honorary Doctorates and many other accolades for his photographic work.

Background and biographical information is from Wikipedia articles on:

Sebastião Salgado that can be found at…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastiao_Salgado

Also, an article on Sebastião Salgado found in… 
Peter Stepan. (2008) 50 Photographers You Should Know. New York: Prestel.

Sebastião Salgado: TimesOnline… Taking the espresso train…
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article2386139.ece

Sebastião Salgado: Slideshow: Coffee Workers…
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article2387923.ece?slideshowPopup=true&articleId=2387923&sectionName=VisualArts

Sebastião Salgado:  Nature, Nurtured from the “Genesis” Exhibit (The New York Times)…
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/31/arts/design/31fink.html?_r=1

Sebastião Salgado:  Nature, Nurtured from the “Genesis” Exhibit Slideshow…
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/05/29/arts/salgado-slideshow_index.html

by Gerald Boerner

“…will be the means of strengthening the attachment which binds both the East and West to the Union”
— message received by Abraham Lincoln

“I announce to you that the telegraph to California has this day been completed. May it be a bond of perpetuity between the states of the Atlantic and those of the Pacific.”
— message from Horace W. Carpentier

“The wireless telegraph is not difficult to understand. The ordinary telegraph is like a very long cat. You pull the tail in New York, and it meows in Los Angeles. The wireless is the same, only without the cat.”
— Albert Einstein

“The telegraph line immediately made the Pony Express obsolete, which officially ceased operations two days later. The overland telegraph line was operated until 1869, when it was replaced by a multi-line telegraph that had been constructed alongside the route of the Transcontinental Railroad.”
— TripAtlas.com

“Proposals for the subsidy of a telegraph line to California were made in Congress throughout the 1850′s, but it was not until 1860 that the U.S. Post Office was authorized to spend $40,000 per year to build and maintain an overland line.”
— TripAtlas.com

The First Transcontinental Telegraph

The First Transcontinental Telegraph was a milestone in the formation of the United States of America. It served as the only method of near-instantaneous communication between the east and west coasts during the 1860s.

After the development of efficient telegraph systems in the 1830s, their use saw almost explosive growth in the 1840s. Samuel Morse’s first experimental line between Washington D.C. and Baltimore was demonstrated on May 24, 1844. By 1850 there were lines covering most of the eastern states, and a separate network of lines were soon to be constructed in the booming economy of California.

California was also admitted to the United States in 1850, the first state not contiguous with the eastern government. Major efforts ensued to integrate California with the other states, including sea and overland mail and passenger service. Proposals for the subsidy of a telegraph line to California were made in Congress throughout the 1850′s, but it was not until 1860 that the U.S. Post Office was authorized to spend $40,000 per year to build and maintain an overland line. The year before, the California State Legislature had authorized a similar subsidy of $6000 per year.

Construction

The federal contract authorized through the Pacific Telegraph Act of 1860 was awarded to Hiram Sibley, the president of the Western Union Company. He then formed a consortium between Western Union and the telegraph companies in California: to share the efforts of constructing the overland telegraph, to split up the federal and state subsidies, and to share any profits from operation of the line. The newly consolidated Overland Telegraph Company of California would build the line eastward from Carson City (the eastern terminus of their lines), using the newly developed central route though Nevada and Utah. At the same time, the Pacific Telegraph Company of Nebraska was formed by Sibley. It would construct a line westward from Omaha, essentially using the eastern portion of the Oregon Trail. The lines would meet at a station in Salt Lake City.

Materials for the line were collected in late 1860, and construction proceeded during the summer and fall of 1861. Major problems in provisioning the construction teams were overcome, and there was a constant shortage of sources of telegraph poles on the plains of the Midwest and the deserts of the Great Basin. The line from Omaha reached Salt Lake City on October 18, 1861, and the line from Carson City was completed on October 24.

Impact

The telegraph line immediately made the Pony Express obsolete, which officially ceased operations two days later. The overland telegraph line was operated until 1869, when it was replaced by a multi-line telegraph that had been constructed alongside the route of the Transcontinental Railroad.

Milestones in the Transcontinental Telegraph

Built during 1861 by the Western Union Telegraph Co. and its associates, the Transcontinental Telegraph, which connected St. Joseph, Missouri and Sacramento, California, reached Fort Laramie from the east on August 5, 1861. The first high-speed link between the East and West coasts, the line operated until May 1869 when the transcontinental railroad was completed and the telegraph lines were moved to follow its route.

When construction began in the summer of 1861, the path was filled with obstacles. The Civil War made heavy demands on labor and supplies. In one case, the political tensions led to the destruction and subsequent rerouting of the line. Nature presented roadblocks, too. The Great Plains certainly weren’t a fruitful source of timber for telephone poles; workers had to cross the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada. But there were strong incentives, primarily financial, to complete the line, too. The prospect of spending a bone-chilling winter in the wilderness spurred completion as well.

Edward Creighton, a Western Union general agent, organized two teams of builders, one to work on the line from the West , the other from the East. On October 18, 1861, the workers of the one subcontractor, Pacific Telegraph Co. reached Salt lake City , completing the eastern section of the line. The western section, shorter but covering more difficult terrain, was finished by the Overland Telegraph Co., another subcontractor, on October 24.

That evening, the first messages were sent to President Abraham Lincoln. The message from Horace W. Carpentier, president of the Overland Telegraph Co., read: “I announce to you that the telegraph to California has this day been completed. May it be a bond of perpetuity between the states of the Atlantic and those of the Pacific.”

Other Events on this Day

• In 1781…
  In Philadelphia, Congress hears a report of the American victory at Yorktown and processes to a nearby church to give thanks.
• In 1836…
  Alonzo Phillips of Springfield, Massachusetts, receives a patent for safety matches.
• In 1861…
  The first transcontinental telegraph message is sent from San Francisco to President Lincoln in Washington, D.C.
• In 1901…
  A 63-year-old schoolteacher named Anna Edson Taylor becomes the first daredevil to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.
• In 1940…
  The 40-hour workweek goes into effect under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.

Dates and events based on:

William J. Bennett and John Cribb, (2008) The American Patriot’s Almanac Daily Readings on America. (Kindle Edition)

Background information is from Wikipedia articles on:

The First Transcontinental Telegraph that can be found at…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Transcontinental_Telegraph