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By the end of the twentieth century, you and your classmates were reading about the disposition of this or that photographer’s life’s work. Some did it well, some did it badly, and some didn’t do it at all — so the stuff got tossed out, or damaged, or dispersed, or simply vanished into thin air. […]
What I find hard to bear about Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger’s Afghan War film “Restrepo” is the utter pointlessness of what these young men were asked to do (and did), the squandering of their time and in some cases their very lives, the traumatic situation into which the military thrust them and whose psychic consequences they will bear for the rest of their days. They need make no apologies for their behavior, individually or collectively. But what has been done to them, and what they were asked to do, I consider unforgivable. […]
Based on the precedent that Sotheby’s and Trustee themselves set in withdrawing selected contested works from the auction, it would seem that all those with work in the collection have standing that would enable them to challenge the disposition of the remaining collection, if that disposition takes the form of a sale. It wouldn’t surprise me if more of the photographers in the collection decided to make their voices heard on this issue as placement of the rest of the collection moves to the front burner. […]
I think it is incumbent on the Polaroid Corporation to answer some increasingly urgent questions. To wit: How does the Polaroid Corporation account for the discrepancy between the repeated estimate of 22,000-24,000 prints in the collection, given out by the Polaroid Corporation as recently as summer 2009, and the official inventory of 16,000 presented to the Minnesota court in spring 2009? Can the Polaroid Corporation verify its actual acquisition and legal ownership of all the works it claims as its outright property in the Polaroid Collection, above and beyond authorization from the courts to sell them? […]
I don’t know if something’s rotten in the state of Denmark, but something’s definitely off in the state of Minnesota. Evidence accumulates that Polaroid has known all along that it never owned most of the work in its collection outright, yet the contents of that collection now move toward the auction block with the approval of the Minnesota Bankruptcy Court. . . . […]
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SPJ Research Award 2014
Thought for the Day Ignorance is a condition; dumbness is a commitment.
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Tim Hetherington, 1970-2011: A Farewell (1)
What I find hard to bear about Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger’s Afghan War film “Restrepo” is the utter pointlessness of what these young men were asked to do (and did), the squandering of their time and in some cases their very lives, the traumatic situation into which the military thrust them and whose psychic consequences they will bear for the rest of their days. They need make no apologies for their behavior, individually or collectively. But what has been done to them, and what they were asked to do, I consider unforgivable. […]