What’s summer without eye candy?   In this case, you are looking at how a ferris wheel has been reflected in raindrops on a car windshield.  But you knew that, right?

One reason we enjoy tricks of the eye is that they reveal facets of the act of perception.  Reflection, distortion, figure/ground, form and content, symmetry and dispersion–these and other features of ordinary optics are all put on display in this seemingly mystifying image.  But that’s not the whole of it: what is really uncanny is how each of the droplets becomes a miniature vehicle of visual reproduction: almost like an eye, you might say.  Or a camera.  Or, if you think sci-fi, like spacecraft or alien creatures or some strange galactic dispersion: a little bang, perhaps, just big enough to spew the original form of the mandala across a few billion worlds.  A random hiccup in the cosmic field, but one that might seed some poor primate’s consciousness someday.  After all, the light that stopped inside the camera will also continue to travel far into space, chasing the I Love Lucy Show and everything else we’ve ever beamed out there.  And so an allegory of dispersion may not seem so far fetched after all.

Light bends when it passes from one medium to another.  That’s called refraction.  The term can serve as a metaphor for how images change as they pass from one medium to another, or one mind to another.  What this photo can teach us is that in a condition of constant dispersion, systematic distortion, and drastic changes of scale, images can still retain their essential form and other information as well.  As those are the conditions of modern media use, the news might be comforting.

So it is that this summer you might want to take the time to enjoy visual spectacles, tricks of light, and other signs of the strange universe unfolding right before our eyes.

Photograph by Clay Jackson/The Advocate Messenger, Danville, Kentucky.

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I hadn’t planned to do a series on how images of animals might redefine photographic humanism, but there must have been some reason this guy has been waiting on my desktop.

You might want to file him under Minotaur Sightings, which may become more common as the century progresses.  Time is already a bit out of joint here, as what might seem to be a summer image (albeit on a grey day), was actually taken at the annual New Year’s Day Polar Bear Swim in Vancouver, British Columbia.  And how often do you see a mythical beast, anyway?  This is a special moment, even before we try to make the connection between the New Year and boxing gloves.  (Maybe he’s still partying from Boxing Day the week before?)  In fact, it’s so special that he seems to be rising up out of the waves, and perhaps walking on water: Neptune to Nazareth, he’s got it covered.  “In this corner, the devil of the deep blue sea, the terror of the tundra, the buffest bad boy you ever want to meet: Mr. Mashup!”  He’s so strange and styled and ultimately ridiculous, he surely is one of us.

And gorgeous.  Did I mention that he is gorgeous?  That’s a fabulous body, so much so that I’m willing to overlook the technicality that his mask is a reindeer rather than a bull.  The classics will just have to give a little on that, which they surely would do to get a look at that torso.  And that may be part of the photo’s deeper intelligence: what begins as a comic act of artificial hybridity also includes one model of human perfection.

The mask enhances his physical beauty by isolating it, making it a thing in itself rather than the property of any one individual.  That may go further still, as one can imagine that the body beautiful would be easier to obtain if hybridization were to become available.  Braiding in the genes of a few other species would do the trick, and if you ended up with a little more deer than not in the head, well, we could get used to that.  As I said, such creatures might become a more common sight.

For the moment, however, he is one of a kind.  Surrounded by the little people in their coats and boats, he rightly is in the center of the picture.  As a center-margin design, they then articulate various features that are condensed in or complementary to his central presence.  And that gives the image another twist, for they also start to look like hunters, the boats circling their prey, waiting to move in with the harpoon for the kill.  No wonder he has his gloves up.

There may be no question who is the more evidently human (although I think there is), but there may be no doubt who is the more noble creature.  Which means, of course, that he is doomed.  But, wonders never ceasing, we can be sure that he will return.

Photograph by Ben Nelms/Reuters.  If you like the idea of finding mythical beasts in the modern world, I recommend a fine little novel, The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, by Steven Sherrill.

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Many people might think it’s mildly amusing.  Others might find it in bad taste.  A few might even say that the poor beasts should be allowed their privacy.  I think it’s a stunning photograph that exposes deep truths about human nature–truths that had been so forgotten that they now have to be rediscovered as if they were radical, forward-thinking innovations. But I’m getting ahead of the story.  And no story should get in the way of experiencing the shock that I experienced when first seeing this image. The shock of recognition that can only come from seeing humanity mirrored in another species.

I’m not talking about the sex.  This is not the 1850s (or the 1950s), and there is nothing to be gained by saying that, gasp, sex is an animal act.  (That’s why the image could only pass as a feeble joke.)  No, I’m talking about the skeleton and musculature revealed by the loose skin, and the crouch that could just as easily be seen at a starting line, and bumps, scars, and wrinkles that can be found on any body of a certain age, and the unhurried, familiar coordination of the two individuals, and the strange combination of uncertainty or even anxiety on that oversize head.  He is both not-us and just like us.

One can see how earlier lions were transposed into the half-human figures created for gargoyles and bestiaries.  Those visual artifacts were capturing something that was sensed when the keeping, breeding, killing, and butchering of animals was a much more visceral part of everyday life.  Something all but forgotten in a world where kids think food comes from the store, and adults think that human beings are only incidentally animals, a species still encumbered with mortal bodies but otherwise not defined by them.

This photograph was taken at night, but the black and white print has additional resonance.  It seems to me that there’s been more black and white work showing up in the slide shows lately, so perhaps there are some things that can’t be said as well in color.  Black and white carries the tone of documentary truth, but that isn’t needed here; instead, I think the photo channels the emotional orientation of an earlier photographic humanism.  Not least, the humanism of The Family of Man, which reopened recently as a permanent display in Luxembourg.  But that humanism has become dated, for it relied on a strong distinction between humans and other species.  By contrast, I think the image above is one example of how humanism can be reconstituted as a mode of trans-species identification.

Obviously, “humanism” no longer is the right word, but let’s keep it for a moment as a placeholder.  (For the record, there are other terms emerging that do some, but not all, of the work that is needed: see, for example, trans-species psychology.)  The point is to see what is held in common across species–that skeleton, for example–and consider just how deep a connection it represents in evolutionary history, social affinity, and much more, and then to consider the implications for understanding human beings and their relationships to each other and the rest of the planet.

So, once again, it’s not about the sex.  The common bond that we see between the two animals mating is a metaphor for something larger–and closer to the bone.

Photograph by Michael Nichols, from the National Geographic photo essay on The Short Happy Life of a Serengeti Lion.

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China, the US, and many other countries are examples of how the 21st century is thus far a story of urbanization.  Population and production shifts from rural to urban areas have characterized modernization for centuries, but now these processes have truly gone global while the cumulative effects also are becoming increasingly evident.  For the most part, those effects are positive.  So it is that one can speak of progressive modernization, while proposals to move people in the other direction seem increasingly antique.

But that doesn’t mean that people aren’t moving, or that all urbanization is progressive.

The caption reports that we are looking at an aerial view of the Za’atari refugee camp near the Jordanian city of Mafraq, some five miles from the border with Syria.  Some urbanists might already be crying “foul,” for a refugee camp isn’t a city.  Except that it is.  Even provisional cities are cities, and camps are provisional cities, right down to the street plan and organization of basic services.  In fact, the tableau above might be interchangeable with illustrations of ancient cities or frontier cities or perhaps Chicago in the early days, although the relatively geometric layout is a dead giveaway that we are looking at modern design.  All that is missing to be a city proper is permanency, and–as those living in the Occupied Territories can attest–camps can have a way of becoming permanent.

But now I’ve gone too far.  Much still is missing.  Way too much, as we can see by comparison with this photograph of Tokyo.

I could have taken any one of thousands of magnificent cityscapes.  Fortunately, they are a dime a dozen.  The modern world has many very successful cities, and many affluent spectators who can take pictures by day and night throughout the year.  These two images happened to be in the slide shows recently, and together they do reveal something that is only implicit in each alone.

If the one image is a celebration of modern abundance and the technologies that sustain it, that is meaningful because of how it is the culmination of a narrative of progressive ascent from the state of nature and relentless scarcity evident in a desert.  If the other image is more than a portrait of masses of people being warehoused in a desert, it is because the evident organization and infusion of resources through those channels implies a potential escape from scarcity and inertia.

In an ideal world, camps would be disbanded and cities would thrive.  Instead, some cities (like Aleppo) are being razed, and camps are growing.  More generally, here as in many other sectors of global transformation, we seem to see a tale of two cities.  Some win, others lose.  Some thrive, others are pushed closer to catastrophe.  Some cities continue to become larger, more productive, more rewarding, more alive.  Other cities are being founded on very different principles–one can’t even say principles of development.  These are human warehouses, holding pens, open air prisons–by now there may be many different versions of the same disaster.

Of course, the camp is not the primary cause of its problems, even of its existence, but neither is the great city entirely the architect of its good fortune.  Za’atari and Tokyo are each symptoms of different conditions, but they also are both symptoms of the same condition.  Two cities, but one modern world.  Continued urbanization may be the unstoppable, but it remains to be seen whether many of the cities to come will look more like a metropolis or a camp.

Photographs by Mandel Ngan/AFP and Yoshiki Nakamura/National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest.

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I think it’s safe to say that it’s a slow news summer in the US.  Ironically, Europe and the Middle East are up to their ears in trouble: floods, riots, civil war in Syria, a coup d’etat in Egypt, . . . . but that doesn’t exactly qualify as news in the US press.  The unrest is so pervasive elsewhere, however, that you can have a choice of themes as you browse through the slide shows.  Water canon shots were big this week, for example.  Tear gas, and the ingenious ways to deal with it, remains a staple.  What caught my eye, however, was the way that the Guy Fawkes mask has become an international symbol.

This photo is from Salvador, and the one below is form Istanbul.  (You can locate hundreds of examples from around the world with a few key words at Google Image, but these are more recent than many.)  I love the pepper spray shot, as it perfectly captures one function of a mask.  The cop is spraying as if at the protestor’s face, except that the guy actually has his backside to him.  By putting the mask on the back of his head, he simultaneously deceives and mocks, protecting himself and exposing the authority’s abuse of power.  Of course, the cop may know better, but the fact that he shoots anyway perfectly replicates both the mask’s function and his own excessive use of force.  Instead of being a mere prop, but mask seems to write the play.

This more pensive image also has the mask off the face.  The woman in Taksim Square has pushed it atop her head so that she can use her phone during the demonstration.  Illumined by her phone, she is a small island of repose amidst the raised arms and flags of the crowd.  Once again, however, the mask works just as well where it is.  Whatever her private message, she continues to play her public role.  The mask now works almost as a hat or crown as well, but even more as a disembodied face, smiling Cheshire Cat-like through the fray.  And that is what a mask is, of course: a face without a body, ready to be adopted by anyone who is willing to become two personalities instead of one.  Or you can think of that face reposing on her body, as she becomes a willing platform for something at once more ethereal and larger than herself.  A single person and a continuously replicating image are easily conjoined, so much so that she can push it up like a pair of sunglasses while it can continue nonetheless to imply havoc.

The Guy Fawkes mask now has a history that includes the V for Vendetta comic book and film, the hacker group Anonymous, and more as well.  It has been banned in Bahrain, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Canada.   (Yes, Canada; maybe it’s that civility thing they’ve got going.)  Given that smile, it shouldn’t be without irony, and it’s not: the mask, a best seller at Amazon.com, makes money on every sale for Warner Brothers.  (Yes, Warner Brothers–not your typical revolutionary anarchist movement.)  Given its complexity, ubiquity, wide distribution, and visual salience, perhaps it might become a sort of measuring stick: something photographers can focus on to capture at once what is both uniform and yet locally distinctive about this demonstration or that protest.

In any case, you don’t have to wait until November 5 to celebrate Guy Fawkes day.  Around much of the globe, it’s now a regular occurrence.  After all, around much of the globe, people are upset about the bad behavior of their elites.  But that’s over there.

In the US, the big story at the moment–other than the All Star Game, of course–is that the Senate voted to keep the current filibuster rule–and this is supposedly a breakthrough, a push back against the political paralysis that has resulted from–you guessed it–overuse of the filibuster.  This is not a good play.  At the very least, someone ought to show up properly attired.

Photographs by Jorge Silva/Reuters and Stoyen Nenov/Reuters.

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Several weeks ago the U.S. Senate managed to overcome all odds and agree on a bill to address the so-called “immigration problem.”  To accomplish this they had to agree not only to hire an additional 20,000 border police but to build 700 miles of fence along the U.S.-Mexico border.  That would be 700 miles in addition to the approximately 350 miles of fence that begin at the shore’s edge in Tijuana (see above) and extend to the east.  Of course, the U.S.-Mexico border is approximately 1,950 miles long, so you can see the problem; then again, when we add 20,000 more border police to the approximately 21,000 we already have we will be able to station one officer every 1,000 feet along the border—a human fence, as it were— so maybe things will work out (although, as far as I know, no one has addressed the question of how far west into the Pacific Ocean we will be able to station border guards).

Of course all of this assumes that walls and fences work to keep things out (or is it to keep things in?, it’s always hard to know which way the structure works).  And therein lies the rub, for whether they are designed to contain or exclude, it is pretty clear that they also exist to be breached.  They might make it hard to get from side A to side B (or visa versa) but their very presence marks the desire to do so.  And more, however high and sturdy a wall or fence might be, it always has to answer to the test of time, crumbling and falling apart, leaving holes large and small that encourage and enable their breach.  I was reminded of this recently by a photograph that shows a man sneaking through the Old City Wall in Jerusalem.

 

The wall is pretty substantial, and yet what the photograph emphasizes is its inevitable fallibility.  But there is more. According to the caption the man is Muslim.  Whether he is sneaking in or sneaking out is not all that clear, but the irony is pronounced: the wall itself was built in the 16^th Century by a Muslim Sultan with the intent of protecting the interests of the Ottoman Empire, i.e., keeping non-Muslims out.  Of course, today, and so many years later, the wall serves a diametrically opposed set of interests.

And so, to return to the photograph of the fence that separates the US-Mexico Border, one has to wonder how successful it will be in containing and excluding whatever it is that it is supposed to contain or exclude.  Or even how successful it can be given all of the constraints it must weather?  And for how long?  And most importantly, perhaps, whose interests might it serve, both now and in the future?  Artificial borders like fences and walls, it seems, know no permanent masters other than time and that should give us pause when we commit ourselves to building them, for what today serves to fence out may one day serve to imprison.

Photo Credit:  James Reyes; Abir Sultan/EPA.  The title for the post is from Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall.”

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