'America's Heroes'

This is 'Shirley' who commemorates America's military veterans -- which

her jacket proclaims are 'America's Heroes'. Your ratings and critiques

are invited and most welcome. If you rate harshly or very critically,

please submit a helpful and constructive comment; please share your

superior photographic knowledge to help improve my photography.

Thanks! Enjoy! John

Fine street capture! The green colour of the wall is superb contrast background for a woman in a "patriot" jacket. Her look suggests that she could handle .44 magnum without problem...

Worrying ! John, I know something about America's heroes of the last years, but have good reasons for wishing you a happy new year 2009.

The early raters at about 4 were very disappointing, as I really love this capture -- the green background was wonderful.

 

This was a mobile phone store geared to those who don't want a two-year contract and nationwide coverage or a credit check, so it draws the less well off (and me of course, as I travel, and don't want a mobile phone sitting idle while I pay $100 a month for services I don't need when abroad -- payment is monthly -- when you choose to pay, or they just cut you off that month, but your coverage area is very limited. No long-term contracts which almost are obligatory in America, unlike countries, like Ukraine where one buys SIM cards and adds ''minutes' one buys from vendors as one uses up the units.

 

One thing such companies do is cater to the 'common man' and as a 'street photographer' one of the things I try to do is frequent the places where the 'common man' congregates, works, plays, etc. How else are you going to capture him/her/it/them and theirs?

 

I do the majority of my captures in my day-to-day peregrinations -- I simply do my thing (with cameras), and opportunities seem to present themselves. I just am well-equipped to capture them, as here. This woman, 'Shirley' I think is her name, was more than cooperative. She was very nice, and not aggressive at all. No Glocks, Smith & Wessons or Uzis for her, at least that I could tell, and she may have been disabled.

 

This was somewhat posed -- I wanted a photo of the back of her jacket, which was interesting, but not interesting enough, so i asked her to turn my way. I wanted to show what sort of woman wore such a jacket, and took several photos to show her face -- a difficult task -- she's got a large neck and turning her head was a bit of a chore which she could not completely accomplish -- but that's what makes 'street' so interesting and challenging.

 

Remember my motto: Try to keep all the interesting stuff in the frame and all the uninteresting stuff out, and that's my whole photo philosophy/practice in a few words. To make 'interesting' is one of my main goals, though I will do more mystical stuff and call it 'fine art' and it seems to garner attention from those drawn to such things -- and I happen to like it very much to, for I like photos that do not answer all the questions and leave one guessing a little bit sometimes.

 

I'm very glad you like this -- I thought the green wall/door, really 'made' or at least greatly helped the photo -- early raters thought it stunk. Frankly, it surprised me considerably.

 

Live and learn.

 

Posting can be a challenge sometimes.

 

I beg to differ however, with the low raters. Maybe they just were off-put because she is very large and not so pretty. (she had a pretty personality and was very nice.) Raters sometimes vote for how pretty a subject is rather than how good a job the photographer did -- and that's a fact. Certainly the photos of beautiful women or sexual photos get an extraordinary number of clicks. (A less than mediocre photo of mine of a man looking down a bra of a mannequin, now has overtaken one of my veery best, iconic photographs, as my 'most-viewed' recently, and it's getting 500 to 1,000 view a day, though for years almost nobody looked at it, as it's pretty old. Now, in an older folder, buried deep, it is having a Renaissance -- can you imagine. It got a 4 for aesthetics and is fuzzy because of camera movemen -- vibration reduction inadvertently was switched off (Peek-a-Boob, way down in my portfolio)

 

I like a pure color photo occasionally, and this, my dear friend, is indeed what I'd classify as primarily a 'color photo' as its strength lies in its colors - just desaturate it and watch its 'impact' disappear - it still will have interest, but that will be greatly decreased.

 

Thanks for stopping by again. I enjoy your observations so much.

 

Happy New Year to you (and yours)!

 

(and I haven't looked to see if, or what, you're rated -- i almost never do, before I reply -- keeps my replies honest and aboveboard.)

 

John (Crosley)

Worrying . . . about what? What is it you know?

 

We now know the atrocities committed against detainees - prisoners of war -- torture really which is against everything America stands for-- was not just the idea of seven 'reserve' soldiers who were imprisoned, but the orders for torture came from the top -- at least from Dick Cheney who has recently admitted to approving waterboarding, and to hell with those who were waterboarded, even if the Allied forces in Europe and victors against Japan did hang prisoners of war for War Crimes for doing just such things.

 

Cheney makes his own laws, but I'd hate to see him on an airline that gets forced down by weather or mechanics and lands someplace like Spain after his term is up. I think they arrested Augusto Pinochet for 'war crimes' or 'crime against humanity' for his atrocities - The Hague would be a good place for Cheney.

 

So, what do you know?

 

Many of us Americans are ashamed of what our country has stooped to doing under the guise of being 'strong against terrorism' when in fact most of it was to suppress dissent at home and to strengthen the Bush Administration, which regards the US Constitution as a 'piece of paper' and not some exalted document - as I do.

 

So, tell me what you know, however you feel is the best way. Secret prisons, rendition, torture, are not what America is about.

 

Even McCain as well as Obama when both ran for the presidency agreed on that point -- so did the American people, and Obama seems to be a man of character and at least great ability to lead -- coupled with enormous charisma.

 

He may make JFK look like an amateur. (which indeed he may have been -- he was not so well prepared for the presidency as how to garner it, whereas Obama knew exactly HOW to garner the presidency and seems to have a firm game plan in place already, AND know how to keep his cool.)

 

After eight awful years, in which I ended up leaving America most of the time, and eventually could not defend its leaders' actions to detractors after I learned the truth of the lies, I am proud that our government appears to be self-righting, after committing so many wrongs -- that's its great strength, after all.

 

Some people will gain solace from wearing a flag on their backs. I try to portray America and Americans positively when I travel abroad -- and to add to America's considerable prestige when I do so. Literally vast numbers of the world's citizens would LOVE to live in America, for all the faults so many would so readily point out. Still, they would live here, because so often it's better than what they leave behind.

 

And for many, America welcomes them -- they often turn out to be its best citizens, or their children and grandchildren.

 

Nearly all of us fall into that category of descendants of immigrants, for that matter, though some would now shut the door behind them.

 

Anders, you are a photographer of form and line -- I broaden my horizons and like to include people precisely because they are difficult to 'nail' in a photo -- they're moving targets and their 'look' may depend on their mood and how one encounters them.

 

I love your photos -- they are very skillful, and am always pleased when you take the time to have a look at mine.

 

John (Crosley)

John I don't know much more than what you just recorded, but I know it from abroad which makes some of the event and decisions taken the last years by the US democratic government even more striking and worrying. For us the US is what the US does abroad especially and Americans as individuals disappear in the noise. I also know that the normal democratic safeguard, which is a critical press, failed miserably and still seems to fail looking at the US press coverage of recent events in the Middle East.

Much of this could change with the new government but in the eyes of many here in Europe, observers are skeptical of how much old mistakes will be corrected with a new team that seems to be selected to govern from the US political centre (fairly far-right in European terms!) and in order not to loose the right - endangering disappointing the left of American politics, which was Obama's original electoral basis. For me the test will be first of all the Middle East (where Obama has chosen not to pronounce himself despite the fact that he has indeed pronounced himself on other matters recently - financial crisis, Mumbai°) and secondly the urgently needed for regulation of the financial sector.

 

You ask a question, so I try to answer, but after all we are here to share our photos. This photo can surely be interpreted from many angles but seen from my perspective I see a deformed American flag and a ironical grin transmitting bad connotations of continuationn and not change.

Tell me what you see, John, that informs me that 'm totally mistaken. It has happened before!

This woman, in her her display of the flag, even now, appears to be part of Bush's right-wing base -- those who vote on the basis of 'guns, God and gays' rather than issues that go to their economic heart, but I may be wrong. I seldom am, however, in such matters. But right now, her thinking is contrary to the majority of Americans -- look to sweeping change under Obama and the Democratic majority in both houses.

 

Look again at what I wrote in one year - any sooner will be too soon, I think, to make a judgment, and this ship of state has been steered in the wrong direction for eight years by Bush/Cheney and it takes a long time to turn something as large in a different direction. If anybody can do it, it is Obama, in my view.

 

Americans have repudiated Bush/Cheney -- and even McCain repudiated much or most of what they stood for -- even if he did back the war in Iraq. He also was trounced convincingly at the polls and so were the Republicans who now are in disarray.

 

Let's wait and see, OK?

 

The wonder of the American system is not so much that it cannot sometimes go wrong - it has done that periodically, but that the foundation and its governing structure is so well thought out that it is somehow self-righting, and when it goes 'wrong' it almost always corrects itself -- possibly it's greatest strength.

 

Wait and watch.

 

I hope you'll be pleasantly surprised. I'm hopeful. (and this woman is no aggressive, gun-toting 'Annie Oakley' herself either, I think. Rather, she's on the edge of society -- overweight, I think she's disabled, and she needs a 'cause' -- which she has clearly attached herself to.

 

For some, it's easier that way, but even right-leaning Americans have been re-aligning lately, as Bush/Cheney lies have been revealed and now are aligning themselves more center and leftward.

 

We'll see the result - and Obama is one of the first.

 

Best to you this New Year my friend.

 

John (Crosley)

I did not know that the star pattern is this way. Her expression is good. The green cannot be the true color. Even the flag is green.

I'm glad she is on America's side. However, I doubt she can handle that 44 magnum for very long without disabeling her hand. With that look, I think America should send her to Gaza with her Magnum :-) She'd be a "American Hero". Good photo John in these war times with or without the green.

 

 

There are wars that are supposedly pre-emptive (the Bush doctrine in fomenting war from his first Cabinet meeting planning war against Iraq, then selling it as a 'War Against Terrorism' after 9/11, when there was no or little connection between Iraq and the terrorism of 9/11.

 

It was just what Bush wanted, supposedly in retaliation to complete his father's refusal to march on Baghdad in Gulf War I and to retaliate against Saddam's failed assassination plot against the elder Bush later. The Administration marketed that war as they would 'corn flakes' or 'soap' to make it 'saleable' to the American people, and told many lies in the process.'

 

Then there are wars of necessity.

 

The debate about the legitimacy of the Israeli homeland's legality is long settled in international law -- and if it was questionable at the first, after the attacks following founding, the right of conquest gave it international legal standing to its original territory and the conquest territories.

 

The Israelis generally are a very moral and morally aware people, with exceptions, and almost alone among nations are not imperialist (also with exceptions).

 

The Arab Nations have refused to take in the Palestinian refugees, integrate them into their culture, and only some have even recognized the right of Israel legally to exist.

 

Egypt didn't recognize that right, invaded Israel, got its military blown to smithereens, then eventually recognized the right of Israel to exist. Anwar Sadat got assassinated -- a chilling reminder to those who would make peace with Israel.

 

If my neighbor threw rocks continually through my front window, what would I do if there were no police to stop him?

 

If I asked him nicely over a long time, please to stop, negotiated with him, and finally realized that he believed he owned my land and he was throwing the rocks through my window to get me to move and to show his anger that I lived there and never would stop, I'd have to get something to protect myself.

 

I note the PLO (or its successor organization) is keeping rather quiet and uninvolved in this whole Gaza affair -- it's good for them to stay uninvolved, even though it involves 'their people' and involves tactics that once were theirs.

 

I think Israel had made up its mind to be at once humanitarian (to provide aid to victims), while surgically eliminating Hamas, and I think that is for the good of the Palestinian people, since Hamas is backed and funded by Iran, which is unalterably opposed to the existence of Israel and proposes to destroy it as a matter of 'state policy'-- and to hell with the people, hide rockets in their houses, and schools, knowing civilians will get blown up when the rockets are fired. That's Hamas policy. Civilians be damned. They're martyrs.

 

I have walked in Dachau, three times, while in Munich, once in the silence of predawn new fallen snow, and reflected on what it must have been (and be like) to be a Jew, and to have so many people, as an article of faith, simply hate me, because of my religious/ethnic status.

 

How horrible and how intolerable in so-called modern times.

 

I see no reason why Israel should just not eliminate the leadership of Hamas entirely.

 

Lobbing rockets on a regular basis into a neighbor country is not exactly a good basis on which to be a good neighbor -- and there are no police around to stop the aggression.

 

The UN is powerless because it is dominated by those who 'hate' Israel, even if many are not sure why.

 

I remember (as I recounted earlier in these pages) an intercity jitney bus trip on New Year's Even about three years ago, through Ukraine.

 

The drivers of my bus knew the drivers of the bus coming the opposite direction knew me and like me.

 

They telephoned ahead, and on a small mountain top in the snow in the middle of winter, the stopped the jitney bus on its long journey without telling anyone why.

 

Fifteen minutes later, along came the second bus in the opposite direction, and the driver team got out and slapped my back, peed on the tires, and there was general camaraderie. They were happy and celebrating.

 

They proclaimed that they liked -- even loved the whole world

 

'Except the Yids'

 

'Why', I asked' 'Not the 'yids'"?

 

'Are you a Yid?' was the response.

 

'No, I'm not, but what have they done, anyway that makes you hate them?

 

'I don't know,but I hate them anyway.'

 

Anti-Semitism is rampant and often illogical -- a holdout and even a vestigial remnant from the Middle Ages -- something that is left over from when Jews refused to integrate into the rest of society and thus were seen to be 'alien' - and of course were held out by Pope Urban, also to be Christ Killers, and during the Crusades, if anyone going to the Crusades happened to kill a Jew, he was granted a plenary indulgence (get out of purgatory free),for that act.

 

Such is history.

 

If I were a Jew, I would be planning on getting rid of Hamas too.

 

I'd use something stronger than a Smith and Wesson.

 

And I am NOT anti-Arab.

 

I do not necessarily agree that Israel should have been founded as a Jewish state where it is right now --- against the rights of others who occupied the land (granted Jews lived there too, based primarily on some theory of religious 'right of return'.

 

This may sound greatly confused to a person who it is suggested by posts is Israeli and Jewish,(yourself, Asher Lev), but it is posited honestly. I was raised with so-called Christian values, but Christ is not in my life.

 

Perhaps I'm going to hell as a consequence.

 

Many fundamentalist Christians believe so.

 

I do not, and even in the part of the Protestant Church I was brought up in, the Book of Revelations which describes Judgment Day, was not even in the Bible, if I recall correctly, and hell was never talked about from the pulpit -- or even Satan.

 

We talked about good and evil, right and wrong, but not about 'evil Satan.'

 

I often tweak my very religious acquaintances.

 

I suggest to them, that I know exactly once a week where I can find from hundreds to thousands of sinners all gathered together - all of them guaranteed to be genuine sinners -- not a righteous one in the bunch as they walk into their gathering -- all tainted by their multitudinous sins.

 

I am greeted with incredulity by the very self-righteous religious -- How can I guarantee that, and who are these immoral people?

 

'I suppose that you meet with them every Sunday, if you go to church, as you suggest', I tell them. 'For in Christianity, for fundamentalists, every Christian is a sinner, until he seeks and is given forgiveness, which is why he/she prays and 'accepts Jesus' and must do so on a regular basis because those sins just keep happening.

 

One of my ancestors, I have been told, probably was Jewish, and my last wife, Masha, also had a a Jewish ancestor but it was not touted in the Soviet Union, as that was semi-dangerous as the Russians invented the world 'pogrom'.

 

Where I grew up, I didn't' even know that some of my best friends were Jewish -- it wasn't something we cared about. I once swam against the great Mark Spitz, only to learn last year that he was Jewish (he trounced me).

 

I went to Columbia College -- during Jewish Holidays, if classes were held, the seat were a third to a half empty. A great number of classmates and friends were Jewish -- many demonstrably so. The man who did my laundry had on his inner left arm the tattoos of the concentration camp from which he was liberated. A wonderful girlfriend's parents hid out in a German attic throughout the entirety of World War II, placed there by a sympathizer in a great, never told story of World War II.

 

The blacks in America gradually are being freed -- and they are in part responsible for their own repression with their 'thug' culture. But they were repressed far beyond the Civil war by the White People's Jim Crow laws and black enslavement under guise of criminal laws and punishment that went on until World War II -- 1942, until FDR put a stop to that.

 

Yes, a form of black slavery went on until 1942 and the bombing of Pearl Harbor and just beyond -- a little known fact to whites and only recently well documented -- it was disguised as 'criminal punishment' but the so-called 'crimes' usually did not exist; they were trumped up and the black prisoners 'sold to big firms for forced labor'.

 

Jews are beleaguered, and with 1 billion Muslims throughout the world, many blaming 'Jews' and Israel for every ill, and the Islamic world being afraid to say anything self-critical, it is the extremists who will have their say -- until they are eventually stopped.

 

It is a Hobson's choice for the Israelis, and Jews, and I admire the way they act with restraint in this matter with Gaza.

 

Hamas must go, and it is now the proper time.

 

Even if we must send Shirley, perhaps with an Uzi.

 

The problem is we don't know whom she'd aim at.

 

John (Crosley)

John, thanks for your explanations. I can promised you that I will, like millions others, wait and see, but time is not on the side of the US. Much change is dangerously urgent.

Bush/Cheney are gone by the end of the month.

 

Obama never favored the Iraq war. He was an opponent from the start.

 

It was sold to the US by lies and innuendo, as a justification for something that Bush and his neocons just wanted -- 'Boots on the Ground' in the MIddle East.

 

Obama does not want that, and the large majority of Americans do not either.

He's committed to stopping the American involvement in the war and promptly.

 

Halliburton is bankrupt, if I understand correctly.

 

America seems to be a self-righting ship of state.

 

For which its founders can be justifiably proud.

 

And I will no longer have to cringe when foreigners ask me to justify its foreign policy, while at the same time admiring America and Americans -- a task I have deferred for the past several years, not being willing to lie.

 

Europeans had it correct all along, in my view.

 

For a while I mistakenly believed the lies fed us -- we Americans are not completely used to being lied to repeatedly by our government, but we can be powerfully angry when it is found out, as most have learned by now.

 

Best to you, Anders, and hang in there, ok?

 

 

John (Crosley)

Thanks John, I agree with you apart from the reference to the "self-righting ship". New thinking is needed and this is where we will see whether the new administration is up to the challenges; The Middle East strategy has failed and the new-liberal ideology of free market forced has had it's days counted just like other dead ideologies of the 20th century. My optimism for the future concerning the US is mainly based on the seemly increasing levels of willingness to listen to other world powers (China, Russia, the EU, UN, the South Americans...) when defining future policy options. No country can solve the present problems alone whether is concerns peace and security, economy or environmental questions.

Everybody is praising Obama's cabinet, even the Republicans and perhaps he is ending the period of 'us' vs. 'them' - we'll see.

 

The era of 'new liberal' politics, never was. It was the era or 'neoconservatism' or 'me first' and 'US first' and US dominance first to 'proclaim the US's rightful place in the forefront of nations' [paraphrased, from a document known as Project for a New American Century - look at it in the Internet] (referred to in my comments elsewhere, a year or so ago.

 

Look at it, if you can find it now (it was on the Internet for years; the neoconservatives were proud of it -- it was the blueprint for the entire Bush/Cheney presidency and he adhered to a plan that had been kicking around Washngton for at least 12 years prior, from guys named Perl,Wolfowitz, Cheney, and others (Condaleeza Rice signed it, I recall)

 

Among other things,it says (hypothetically) that in order for their plan to succeed it would take something on the order of a 'Second Pearl Harbor' Yes, that's right, and nobody has ever denied its authenticity - interesting words in view of what happened subsequently as the document was written before Bush ran for president.

 

One goal of this document PNAC, as it's known, and as Bush/Cheney sought to implement it, was to get 'boots on the ground' in the Middle East and Bush held a grudge (Saddam had tried to assassinate his father) plus he felt that a 'wartime president gets written up in glory . . . . . (sad, sad, sad.)

 

Overthrow of Saddam was discussed forcefully at Bush's very first cabinet meeting according to (I think I recall) Lawrence Summers, Treasury Secretary, though Bush has denied that, (whom do you trust). In actuality, it appears Bush/Cheney were just looking for an excuse to invade Ira1q, knowing their ragtag army could be easily defeated and thinking erroneously the US would be greeted as victors and the US would 'democratize' Iraq even though Cheny had once written that Iraq if invaded would devolve into tribal factionalism.

 

Live and learn.

 

Poor Shirley here, probably doesn't know all that.

 

She does probably know that any soldier who gets hit by an improvised explosive device, and lives to tell about it (if he can speak at all because of brain injury), does so because of modern body armour,but may not have limbs or even full use of his brain and may have post traumatic stress disorder. Bush/Cheney even cleared sending troops back into battle heavily loaded with antidepressants and antipsychotic drugs, I have learned - a little known fact.

 

If someone applied for disability for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, they often were drummed out of the service and thus deprived of veteran's benefits for live,and their problems based on a 'personality disorder' that preceded killing, seeing killing,getting shot at and blown up.

 

Bush would have made a great insurance claim agent.

 

His company's employees would have called him 'Lucky' -- that's what many insurance companies call their most devious claims adjusters who get people to give up valuable claims for almost nothing -- 'Lucky - but they're not 'Lucky' at all,but just devious and usually very skillful liars -- full of false innuendo.

 

I take photos of people/sometimes telling photos. In another life I dealt with other,intimate parts of people's lives and learned much about human nature from other perspectives -- and that has helped my photography, I think, because I often know what people will do often before they do it, based on prior or brief observation of them.

 

(handy skill ;~))

 

Best wishes again.

 

John (Crosley)

Thanks John I appreciate very much your writings above. they help to understand you as a photographer and the way people in the US have lived these difficult years. But maybe your writings also explain why my reading of the photo of "Shirley" (I thought it was a man!) made me react by a noisy "WORRYING !". I interpreted the photo as a rejection of change and a mockery of people like me, and you as I understand, that hope for a better future for the American people.

Anders, I don't necessarily take 'polemical' photos -- or even photos that stand for 'my point of view'. Please resist any temptation to attach the viewpoint you may attach to any photo to my personal ideas or ideology (if I even have one).

 

I may take photos that stand for a multitude of points of viewpoints -- just so they 'mean something' (some of them), when I take them.

 

I, myself, may not know their 'meaning' when seen by others, but recognize that they are rife with symbolism, so I take them, only to analyze them later.

 

The American flag is a powerful symbol, and on the broad back of a woman like Shirley here, can be taken by some to 'mean' something.

 

Shirley does not look like a PhD, but she surely was a very, very nice and accommodating woman, and frankly I personally surely do back American veterans, many or most of whom had no idea what they were getting into when they signed up for combat, or were simply suited for little else. They are not the Rumsfields and other policymakers of this Gulf War II, and do not condemn others to die as a matter of policy -- for them it's kill or be killed, and it's reflexive and many of them simply are killed or injured for a lifetime - simply disabled for life.

 

So, if I see a potential polemical photo, rife with symbols, I take it, and leave analysis for later. I have no personal polemic in mind.

 

That is for you -- and sometimes for me -- if it happens to coincide with some personal point of view, but I don't confine my photography to my 'personal points of view' -- that would foreclose too many photo opportunities.

 

I just 'take 'em as I see 'em', then leave for others to judge.

 

I am more interested in 'the photo' than anything else, and I want to take 'interesting photos' that will engage my audience.

 

In that matter, at least with you, then this photo appears to have been successful, right?

 

For that I am glad. It means my 'eye' has achieved its goal.

 

That is an epitome of my photography for me. To have another look and be moved by my photography to respond to it -- even if you mistakenly believed this to be an expression of my own viewpoint.

 

Cartier-Bresson had an assignment to 'photograph the United States' and he did so with a quite talented writer. He went on a 12,000 mile auto tour of the US from New York City through New England to the Deep South, to Texas and the Far West.

 

The spires of New York CIty was portrayed from the broken piers -- appearing almost burned out -- of Hoboken, New Jersey, for a contrast.

 

The Fourth of July was portrayed by a haggard old woman with a US flag draped around her neck, pointing in some unknown direction.

 

In Kentucky or another deep South State, crosses were shown against a hillside and I think junked cars.

 

In Mississippi (I recall), a redneck was photographed out of a car window (and Cartier-Bresson recalls being told, 'let's get outta here before we get beat up' -- he sensed the South was a place of great potential violence.

 

In the desert southwest he photographed a jalopy (abandoned car, perhaps from the Okies going to California), the plume of steam from a passing locomotive hauling its train, and the distant desert mountains and sky.

 

It wasn't the photographs of America that the people who hired him wanted to see, but it was classic Cartier-Bresson, a Socialist and Communist sympathizer, even though he was a son of one of France's 200 richest families.

 

DId he take them to make a polemic -- I think not. He took them because he 'saw' them. And they were in his mind as interesting contrasts or just interesting photographs.

 

He was ahead of his times. He lived in Harlem for some time, when white men did not do such things and kept company with America's black intellectuals . . . again before they were well known.

 

I really don't think his photos were polemical at all, but merely reflected his desire to get 'interesting' photographs that were in keeping with his desire for photos with 'interest' and 'good geometry' (composition, as we know it).

 

I don't have near his talents, but i am motivated by similar interests.

 

That's why when I first saw his work, I said to myself 'He's done it all' and mostly put down my cameras for a very long time.

 

John (Crosley)

Funny, but I think I could say that I took up photography again after some years of lying low because of Cartier-Bresson, mainly due to his compositions. I made a serious effort of analysing his photos in order to identify the various types of composition he repeatably used in view of writing a book (that has nt been finished!) and I began seeing the World around me in his "eyes". Don't worry I have no ambition of being a new Cartier-Bresson, but my renewed inspiration came mainly from him.

 

Back to subject of our exchange. I don't see how you on the one hand can acknowledge that Cartier-Bresson had a very specific approach to shooting photos of your country, which you (rightly) link to his political affinities, but on the other hand you insist that your own photos are anemic and a-political. I personally don't believe that any serious photographer can shoot photos without somehow illustrating his inner self and the way he looks at the world and fellow beings. It is all linked and photography is not happening in a vacuum. In my eyes one of the reasons why I like your photos and your approach to photography is exactly because you are an engaged photographer that takes photography seriously and not as a leisure game.

 

This does not mean that I find straight forward political messages in a photo like "America's heroes". Your title, the deformed, flag, the grin, provoke such connotations to the scene for at least me as a viewer. That's why the photo is of such quality. It speaks. It provokes reflection - and discussions like this one.

 

By the way the tragedy of war crimes and the like is of course that they destroy the life of people. Not "people" in general terms as categories, but real people like our friend on your photo or the thousands of dead and wounded soldiers and their families. To shoot photos of such effects of flawed policies in your country is a grand task that I admire deeply. I'm not for photos that shout, but admire photos like this one which with low voice whispers strong WORRYING messages. Such interpretation of your photos are of course mine and purely subjective. I don't try to impose on you any other understanding of what you do, than the one you express so fully and well.

I was a young photographer, just joining the Associated Press, and an old 'China Hand', a newsman named Jimmy White, suggested that an old acquaintance with whom he had worked with in China, a man named Henri Cartier-Bresson was having his work shown at San Francisco's De Young Museum.

 

I went and it was a gigantic exhibition with hundreds of Cartier-Bresson's fabulous works, spanning four decades right to 1969. I had just returned from Viet Nam, where I had left my ship (I worked my way over there as a merchant mariner) and wandered through I Corps (the Da Nang area, with a camera, attempting to freelance, and indeed seeing a little of war's grimness.

 

And, even when I was still attached to my ship, each night -- since we were loaded with 16,000 (English) tons of bombs, mortars and similar explosives in our holds and piled two and three stories high as 'deck cargo -- so high we barely could see out from the wheelhouse several stories up to steer the ship (which I did, among other things) that it was truly frightening.

 

The risk of Viet Cong 'frogmen' attaching an explosive 'limpet mine' to our hull and sending our ship to smithereens was a very real threat, so each night we hauled anchor, and steamed out of the harbor and spent the night doing figure eights up and down the coast at a very slow speed.

 

From our vantage, and often as a readily available marijuana cigarette was being passed around (I am allergic however), it was interesting (even beautiful in very grim and tragic way) to see war from just a mile or so off the coast from the South China Sea, or even steaming out at dusk or back into the harbor at dawn.

 

From there it was a wondrous sight, as the view from the wide enough harbor mouth and over the other land features which guard the harbor allowed us a very good view of the war at night.

 

Consider this:

 

1. Periodically, and sometimes almost continuously in this Post Tet period, and after the more northern city of Hue had been overrun, security was no longer taken for granted anywhere. Outside the city, in their fear and search for security, soldiers and marines were constantly sending up mortars loaded with flares -- each crimson burning flare was suspended from a small parachute which it illuminated and as well it left a long, illuminated trail of magnesium smoke in the extremely humid night sky, all very high up, and with weak night winds, and the tracing of the magnesium smoke, the flares were not always descending in a straight line, but were seen sometimes to move sideways, this way or that, and the winds also carried the smoke one way or the other, all very lazily, and the ground beneath was brightly lighted. There often were from one to a dozen or more such flares in the sky, sometimes over one area, or over a fast landscape, in various ways, often without pattern. It was interesting on one level, just to guess where the next flare would pop up and to watch it, and wonder what was going on down on the ground -- was there a firefight, a frightened soldier, a perimeter that had been breached or just someone who needed assurance -- or maybe someone wanted to frighten away possible intruders by letting them know they could be seen.

 

Those are questions we posed but were never answered.

 

Some nights -- almost all nights - and at times we could not predict -- even some nights almost all night-- there were the flashes of high explosives -- usually from bombs, and sometimes, I am sure from some offshore naval artillery that was so far away we could not see it lobbing its shells onshore. Other of those flashes -- sudden brilliant flashes that reflected off the humid, almost fetid clouds in the still summer night sky -- were from more local artillery, or even tank and mortar fire, though tanks were not so common in Viet Nam, as the landscape was not ideal tank terrain.

 

And each giant explosion was silent.

 

Just a huge flash, showing as a circle of intense light reflecting off the lower edge of the tall cumulus clouds which constantly were overhead, threatening summer rain, and the brightness of the reflections diminished almost equally in all directions if the cloud cover was uniform, and if was not,then there would be holes in the otherwise uniform circle of light left by each explosion.

 

Sometimes there would be a single huge explosion and other times there would be several and from time to time it would be nearly continual -- one never knew.

 

Then, north of Da Nang, there were two different hill or mountainsides (if you're from the East of the US, they're mountains and from the West, they're hills).

 

Stationed toward the hills on the oceanside was machine guns -- probably 50 caliber.

 

Now, bullets make no light at all, and that makes shooting a machine gun very, very difficult, especially at night.

 

So, that problem is fixed by adding what are called tracer bullets every set number of rounds -- 25 or 200 or 500.

 

So, when the machine gunner shot from his fortification from his mountainside to the opposing mountainside, his hundreds of piercing 50 caliber or larger machine gun bullets, they were silent to us, and also invisible, except for the staccato light of the (Phosphorus?) tracer bullets, and the tracer bullets were so frequently it was like they were water from a hose -- one could see the stream of bullets by watching the very bright tracer bullets and wonder 'is anybody getting killed' or are they just shooting bullets to shoot bullets . . . as so frequently happens in war, especially with US troops. Counts of ammunition fired by US troops in Viet Nam and later Gulf War I and Gulf War II show a phenomenal amount of ammunition used, compared to the number of casualties -- frightened soldiers fire at everything.

 

Soldiers are often just kids and very scared kids (most of them, actually all of them, and they take it out with their weapons and by acting 'macho' around their buddies and often talking 'macho').

 

Inside they're often bowls of jelly, trying to hold themselves together in the awfulness of war . . . .

 

It was nothing to see a Vietnamese soldier with his group of rag tag soldiers get off a helicopter, his bare hand and a small gauze pad over the stump of where his right arm had been, just less than an hour before.

 

He was 'walking wounded' expected to walk to the Marine Hospital in Da Nang to get his treatment.

 

A soldier walks by, and shows a crease in his scalp where a bullet has penetrated his helmet, from the front an exiting the rear, creasing the soldier's scalp.

 

He came an inch (maybe less) from certain death, and lived to walk away with a bandaid.

 

War's like that.

 

You are too close when you're in war to know really what it's all about except to take in what you can and reflect on it later.

 

It's like trying to describe an elephant when you're blindfolded and you're holding it's big toe with your gloved hand -- an impossible task.

 

Nobody told me until long afterward -- a very, very long time afterward that the Gulf of Tonkin 'incident' that allegedly was 'cause' to start the Viet Nam war was literally fiction, and now has been admitted to be that by the United States government.

 

The United States started its presence as a combatant in the Viet Nam War and put all those names on the Viet Nam War Memorial and all those who were wounded, over a fiction -- something that never occurred. It had little good reason to go into the war in any case, but the White House under Johnson, had decided on the 'domino theory' which meant that if Viet Nam fell, so would the rest of Southeast Asia -- Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Singapore, and then threaten India and Pakistan. The 'free world' then feared Communism so very much then . . . . and Communist theory was that Communist triumph was 'inevitable' which meant they would just push and push and push and push, and those in the 'free world' just assumed that meant that they would until the end of time and if not stopped by the forces of Democracy, Communism and totalitarianism would win.

 

The thinking was flawed, but that was a commonly accepted interpretation then.

 

No one then knew that Communism literally could collapse of its own failings.

 

What a great thought, but it also took a lot of propaganda and an entire 'Cold War' to help it along.

 

It looks easy in retrospect, as though Communism's failure was inevitable, but perhaps it was not at all. Maybe the forces of freedom really did win the Cold War, however ill advised the US adventure into Viet Nam was.

 

(My Viet Nam work unfortunately was destroyed due to failure of an insurance company to honor its contract with me, causing much early work to be destroyed.)

 

As to 'point of view', Crosley's point of view, Cartier-Bresson's point of view and how it all fits together.

 

When I saw Cartier-Bresson's point of view, say, on America, I saw one of my own.

 

Although I was a prospective capitalist, and dreamed of being a giant of industry, I also was a skeptic, and the Cartier-Bresson photos touched the skeptic in me.

 

Look to my early B&W photos and see if you can sense some of the kinship that I felt with Cartier-Bresson. Look at my first photo from my first roll of film -- the three man on the ferry boat, one man sleeping, and see if in the composition there is some kinship, and in the subject matter also. I think it was pretty good for a first roll ever.

 

Later, look at the photo of the black man, a can of beer at his side, and the words on the wall high above him ''Jesus Cares'. Does he? I think Cartier-Bresson might have found a way to capture that scene too, though not straight on, as that was not his way.

 

And look at the photo of the white woman striding by with a scarf on her head past a row of steps on some important NYC building, while at the other end of those steps a black woman sits, indolent and obviously fatigued, for a study in contrasts.

 

It also has composition, and agai

John you are not only a very good photographer you are also a writer. I hope you find the courage to write down all these extraordinary memories and to illustrate them with your photos. It would be a great book for many to learn from.

Anders

The photos are lost -- victims of an insurance company's greed and uncaring - their refusal to pay just claims.

 

So, no book can be illustrated by me.

 

I am a writer with millions of words in print before I turned 25, and none formally since age 27.

 

But of course, one never loses the talent, as you have noticed, but just not an extraordinary writer, unfortunately.

 

But I do have powers of storytelling, both in words and in photos, and they do differ in approach, somewhat and it is difficult to set out to write and tell stories at once - one cannot ask a telling question, write it down and be hunting for the perfect capture at the same time.

 

It's usually one or the other if one is to do one's best work - I concentrate on my photography.

 

It's not a matter of courage, but of a market,I think.

 

One has to have readers, and more and more, Americans do not read.

 

Bookstores are going out of busienss, in part because used books are being recycled by Internet sales and brokers who sell the used books for pennies and compete with new sales, forcing new dealers increasingly out of business.

 

That's the new paradigm.

 

The Internet giveth (as we have here on PN) ,and it taketh away.

 

We all have to adapt.

 

Best wishes.

 

John (Crosley)

John I did not ask you to become rich, but just to write your story down and get it "published" on the book market or on the internet (we are still some that read!) for the benefit for us all and not least for you.

American

By the comment 'American' do you mean 'prototypically 'American', as though she represents your view of Americans -- which would amount to a 'stereotype' which as I suppose you are Jewish, I suppose you might find somewhat offensive, or if you did mean it as that, somewhat hypocritical . . . .

 

Or just one of a unique class of inidividuals only found in America along with some of the world's smartest and most well-accomplished individuals -- winners of Pulitzer and Nobel Prizes, as well as other who do not wear their political views on their sleeves and are not obese (and Shirley here is a first-class very nice woman).

 

It's hard to decipher a one-word comment.

 

John (Crosley)

My comment is not important. It was a response to something you wrote somewhere above...am I Israeli or American...don't know where I read it. Actually I am more than American. I am a TEXAN !