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Phillips Collection exhibition links the box camera and painters
The first Kodak camera had a big influence on painting, as 'Snapshot:
Painters and Photography, Bonnard to Vuillard' details.
George Eastman introduced the first Kodak camera in 1888. It was a small wooden
box covered in Morocco leather with a roll of dry film inside. You no longer had
to be a professional carrying a tripod, heavy plates, a darkening cape and
liquid developer to take a photograph. Any amateur could hold the box
waist-high, aim at a subject like the family and press the button that released
the shutter that covered the lens. The box — later just the roll — could be sent
back to the company to develop the film. Kodak advertisements promised, "You
press the button, we do the rest." The Kodak, continually improved by Eastman's
American company, soon became a big seller. Among the enthusiasts were young
painters in Europe...
ART
LOS ANGELES TIMES
March 25, 2012
Why Egypt doesn't trust us
Private pro-democracy groups funded by the U.S. have a
troubling history.
Now that seven American pro-democracy workers have been allowed to post bail
and return to the United States, perhaps we can examine what the U.S. was up to
in Egypt using reason instead of patriotic emotion. The Egyptian furor over such
seemingly idealistic work may strike us as wild and idiotic, but in fact, the
Egyptians have a right to be suspicious. America's attempt to promote democracy
around the world through private organizations has unsavory beginnings and a
sometimes troubling history...
COMMENTARY
LOS ANGELES TIMES
March 7, 2012
Americans in
Egypt
For many years, I have felt that the American way of
democracy, with its federalism and checks & balances, could serve as a helpful
model for peoples trying to forge some way of democracy for themselves. This is
especially true in countries of the developing world that have to reconcile
competing and sometimes conflicting tribes and religions. The Americans on trial
in Cairo obviously agreed with me and were trying to impart some aspects of the
American way to Egyptians about to embark on the democratic adventure. It would
be a great travesty if the Americans were jailed for their efforts. Egypt would
deserve the condemnation that would surely spew forth from irate Americans if
their compatriots were punished so severely. Yet there is more to the case than
a clash between American idealism and Egyptian stupidity...
News
Commentary
February 29, 2012
Stanley Meisler
is the author of the biography
Kofi Annan: A Man of Peace in a World of War, the history
United
Nations : A History and the history
When The World Calls:
The Inside Story Of The Peace Corps
And Its First Fifty Years.
Meisler served as a
Los Angeles Times foreign and diplomatic
correspondent for thirty years, assigned to Nairobi, Mexico City, Madrid,
Toronto, Paris, Barcelona, the United Nations and Washington. He still
contributes articles to the Los Angeles Times Book Review, Sunday Opinion
and Art sections and writes a News Commentary
for his website,
www.stanleymeisler.com.
For many
years, Meisler has contributed articles to leading American magazines
including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Atlantic,
The Nation, the
Reader’s Digest, the Quarterly Journal of Military History, and the
Columbia Journalism Review. While most of these articles focus on foreign
affairs and political issues, Meisler has contributed more than thirty articles on
artists and art history to the Smithsonian
Magazine... |
(1709 - 1784)