Well, I am happy to report that my favorite rant subject is back in the news.  Artist Nickolay Lamm  used average, American teenage girl measurements from the Center for Disease Control to put together a realistically proportioned Barbie doll. 

It’s an easy topic and I was all set to get up on my high horse again, until I started reading the thoughtful comments from young women in response to this article in Teenspot.  One young woman commented that all this talk about averages made skinny girls like herself uncomfortable with their own bodies in that they were no longer considered normal.  Another said that you really can’t a doll for making girls not feel pretty enough.  It’s people being mean that’s the problem.

What I got from this is that there are some pretty thoughtful young people out there, and they’re not buying the easy target blame game.  And this means that there are a lot of good parents out there teaching proper good real life lessons.  It strikes me that there is an important truism about the power of image here, that their effect is visceral and knee jerk.  It’s a lot harder to think. So yes, we have a lot of work to do educating our children in human diversity, self image, and self respect.  It’s so easy to point fingers and much harder to effect real solutions.

Figure 1 – Percent population connected to the internet by major geographic region, data from Internet World Stats.

I’m afraid that I have boxed myself into a bit of a corner.  In my last two blogs I discussed the democratizing effects of the internet, focusing on book and photography publishing.  I have a couple of readers that are bound to challenge me with the question: “Exactly how democratic?”  So, while this blog is meant to be primarily about photography, I feel that I have to defend myself with some statistics about the internet.

An institution isn’t democratic unless there is substantial enfranchisement.  So if the internet is excluding vast numbers of people by either political or economic suppression it fails to be democratic.  So what about the internet?

Figure 2 – Internet usage growth between 2000 and 2012 by major geographical region. Data from Internet World Stats.

According to Internet World Stats there are currently (2012) 7,017,846,922 people in the world, of which 2,405,518,376 people or 34.3% are connected to the internet.  This has grown by 566.4% in the last twelve years.  This number, of course, does not tell the whole story.  So, in Figure 1, I show internet penetration of the population for the world’s major geographic regions and in Figure 2 the rate of growth for these regions  over the past twelve years.

I think that the story told by these statistics already indicates high penetration of the population and tremendous growth especially in regions that are lagging the major internet centers.  At a certain level access, indeed, represents enfranchisement and a democratizing effect – access to publish and access to download.  From the fundamental viewpoint of “knowledge is power,” this is a positive story.  The subtler and, perhaps profounder, questions of the quality of the information that people have access to, whether there is government or other censorship of free expression, and whether information is otherwise controlled or manipulated is a wholly different issue.  We have to at least have faith that access is an important first step.

Figure 1 – Arguably the ultimate limited edition publisher, a workroom in William Morris’ Kelmscot House, where such great works as the “Kelmscott Chaucer” were produced.. From the Wikimediacommons and in the public domain.

A couple of days ago, I went off on a bit of a tangent and discussed the pending demise of the mega bookstore.  In my opinion, this is an inevitable event for which we await only the march of time.  There are, in fact, a number of very interesting considerations that relate to the nature of the book and indeed of photography.

Historically, publishing is a scarcity-based industry.  Publishers decided how many copies of a book to publish, and once that run was sold out the future availability of the book became dependent on the publisher choosing to publish further editions and runs.  This fundamental economic fact limits who gets published, controls the choices that the reading public has, and controls the price of books.  Similarly for fine art photography, editions were limited first by the artist, but then by the galleries, and yet again by the publishers – pretty much the same publishers.  Scarcity was the controlling factor, with art and book critics serving as gatekeepers and accomplices.

Electronic publishing, for books, and electronic media, for images, changes the equation dramatically.  Books and images can be published and disseminated by demand.  Anyone can establish a website and sell their writings or artwork.  So the whole process becomes democratized.  Your ability to get your message out is limited only by the intrinsic value of your work and by your creativity in selling yourself.  Indeed, you need not even feel the need for wide dissemination.  You can either choose to worship web statistics (the cyber scorecard) or not.  You can publish for the love of sharing or for profit.

We are in this transitional “Brave New World.”  The traditional bounds of these industries are crumbling.  The means and way to success are becoming rapidly redefined and created anew.  You can either succumb kicking and screaming or you can embrace these changes, but they are coming nevertheless!

Figure 1 – The great French science fiction author Jules Verne. Image from the Wikimediacommons and in the public domain in the United States. Original photograph from from the the 1876–1883 “Men of Mark” series by the photographers Lock & Whitfield

A few days ago I blogged about images of the building of New York City’s new Second Avenue Subway and mused about American boyhood and big trucks.  So with all this fresh in my mind, how could I not react to a portfolio of photographs by Peter Gedei entitled “Journey to the Center of the Earth?”   These pictures are gorgeous and my reaction visceral: mostly palpitations, anxiety, panic, and finally spiritual.

The title, of course, conjures up images of Jules Verne‘s “Voyage au centre de la Terre.”  For my generation there is the 1959 movie “Journey to the Center of the Earth” with Pat Boone, Diane Baker, and the great James Mason as Sir Oliver S. Lindenbrook. “Here’s to the professor of geology…” And as a physicist, how can I resist one of the worst science fiction movies ever, “The Core,” (2003)  distinguishable that for once the physicist, Aaron Eckhart, gets the beautiful girl, Hilary Swank?  There is justice in the world after all!

Like the Second Avenue subway photographs, Gedei’s images share the problem of how to create a sense of wonderful vastness in a dark often cramped and wet place.  The answer is creative and spectacular lighting and using the human figure to create a sense of size perspective.  Note how in many of these pictures the human figures are small but brilliantly spotlighted.  Then there are the images of spelunkers making their way through tight passageways into a seeming endless abyss.  This conjures up the primitive mythic theme of the hero’s journey through magic tunnels, where great treasure is to be found guarded by terrible creatures and demons that, like fear, must be overcome.   The Bestazovca Cave is where the first Slovenian cave drawings were found.  This raises a profound sense of human connection, and is humbling when I think that primitive men entered these caves tens of thousands of years ago, with only torches to guide them, for the purpose of gaining spiritual enlightenment in the darkness.  It is only then that I truly appreciate the meaning of Pete Gedei’s journey and these images.

There has been a lot of discussion lately among optical physicists about cloaking devices.  That is the ability to become invisible.  This has decided military advantages; so you can understand why it is of interest.  And, of course, in Star Trek the Romulan‘s have just such a device, “the better to terrorize the universe with, my dear.”

Well physicist John Howell of the University of Rochester and his sons Benjamin and Isaac have built such devices with common around the house materials.  Be sure to click on the video link, not just the still image, and then watch John’s explanation, which is a second video link. While this is just a little off topic for this blog, it is optical, and it is very cool.  So I hope that you will indulge me.  And, if it does not serve to hide a Romulan War Bird, it does come with the advantage of enabling you to make your little brother disappear.

With all these bad things going on, I keep looking for a moment’s peace and quietude.  And I found it recently in a really beautiful large format (4″ x 5″) image by Alan McConnell entitled “Amish Harvest, 2012” that he posted on the Facebook “Large Format Photography” SIG.

This image is gorgeous and perfect in so many ways.  Look at the lines all trailing off in convergence into a murky fog.  The first corn tower is sharp, but then they get progressively less distinct.  The sense of infinity is everywhere.  Fog is a tough light to photograph.  McConnell does it masterfully. And the fog is not so much foreboding as mysterious.

That is what the picture holds for me – a profound sense of geometric static with an anticipation that something is about to happen.  What precisely?  I have concluded that I may be the only person in the world who thinks that M. Night Shyamalan‘s movie “The Village,” with all its wonderful mythological symbolism is a great movie.  And that’s what I’m expecting in “Amish Harvest, 2012”  – not that some evil creature will emerge from the fog, but rather that there will be enlightenment of the sort that only the blind can see.

Somewhere buried in a corrugated cardboard box in my closet is the red metal steam shovel that gave me so much delight as a child.  It was given to me by my grandparents, I think when I was about five.  Long gone now is the yellow Tonka dump truck which accompanied my steam shovel to the imaginary construction sites on the living room carpet.

Such artifacts of long gone youth are common to little boys, and I remain fascinated by big construction vehicles, that could, well, build the pyramids.  So today’s blog is for everyone who remains little at heart.  I found this marvelous photoessay by Metropolitan Transit Authority photographers Rehema Trimiew and Patrick Cashin of the construction of New York City’s Second Avenue subway.  It is difficult in a confined underground space to achieve the appropriate sense of hugeness and these images are masterful in achieving that.  And of course, a hundred years from now they will remain as a testament to what it took to build something that people take for granted.