pete mcgovern

"...in the early 1900s, child labor was still extremely common in the United States." article here I remember being overwhelmed by this photograph when I first came across it over three decades ago, and nothing's changed looking at it now.  Hind showed what photography was capable of.  It became his tool of choice in a campaign for social change.  In those split seconds of exposure time while gathering evidence needed in the fight for reform there was simultaneously a more personal kind of acknowledgment. The lasting importance of Hine's photographs comes not from his choice to make visible those human beings whose place at the very lowest rung of society meant they were almost invisible, but from his astonishing connection with people, as individuals. Photographer and photographed are long gone, and yet the image remains,  a record of a gaze shared, a moment that still holds the power to carefully unfold us all.

Lee Jeffries, accountant, amateur photographer and awareness-raiser (and fund-raiser) from Bolton, Lancs. Interview here . Surprisingly even on photography websites he is slaughtered by other photographers for these pictures.  Their reflex criticism seems a direct throwback to the sort of ethical grandstanding that became prominant in the1970s.  Originally posited by academics from traditional fine art and upper middle class social backgrounds whose sensibilities made them innately mistrustful of what they considered a shabby and inconsequential medium. One that was in fact just too much of the people, for the people and by the people . It didn't have the cultural stature of  painting. It was practiced by tradespeople, or faceless technicians and artisans, amateurs, photojournalists, pornographers and, perhaps worst of all, the great seething mass of the public itself recording key moments in their own lives.  But there is a long history of photography working for ...

National Geographic slideshow link : 'Crows Nest' by Yosuke Kashiwakura. 'The crows that live in Tokyo use clothes hangers to make nests. In such a large city, there are few trees, so the natural materials that crows need to make their nests are scarce. As a result, the crows occasionally take hangers from the people who live in apartments nearby, and carefully assemble them into nests. 

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