Category Archives: Photography

Apple-icious News and a Contest to Celebrate It

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Steve and i book coverAfter sixty-five days in Apple’s “review process,” our ibook, Steve & i is finally available for purchase in the iTunes store.

We nearly gave up on Apple, but then remembered our reason for creating this book: to celebrate Steve Jobs and the friendship he and my husband, Jeffrey Aaronson, forged when they were both young and hungry, and to raise money for cancer research by contributing a portion of the sale of each book to prominent cancer institutes.

It’s hard not to chuckle though, wondering what the fine folks at Apple were doing with our book for the past sixty-five days. Keep in mind Steve & i is a little powerhouse 40 page book–including photographs and a video, and it took Amazon and Barnes & Noble less than a week to upload it onto their sites.

Just for fun…because I’m in such a good mood…I thought I’d hold a contest.

Leave a comment with your answer to: “What do you think Apple was doing with our book for the past 65 days?” and your name will automatically be entered into a random drawing for a $10 iTunes gift card. Humor is always appreciated!

Enter by Sunday, June 10th at midnight. The winner will be announced on Monday, June 11th.

In the meantime, we hope you’ll download a copy of the book for $2.99, and if you feel inspired by what you read, please leave a review. Your continued support and kindness is very much appreciated (and will also bring you a bucketload of good karma)!

Here’s the link to the iTunes store: Steve & i: One Photographer’s Improbable Journey with Steve Jobs

In the event you don’t have an iPad or idevice, here are other ways to purchase the book:
Amazon Kindle ebook
Barnes and Noble Nook ebook

Here’s to being inspired, re-living an unique piece of history, and seeing beyond the icon, Steve Jobs, to the complex and charismatic human being who not only “put a ding in the universe,” but did it in a way nobody else ever could.

Photo of Steve Jobs, 1984 inside Apple Computer headquarters, Cupertino, CA

Steve Jobs inside Apple Headquarters, 1984, just prior to the launch of the first Macintosh 128K computer. ©Jeffrey Aaronson

“An absolutely gorgeous, moving and important memoir. Steve Jobs was complicated, sweet, mad, inspirational beyond reason. Thank you for sharing this.”

                                        –Review by Doug Menuez

Remembering June 4th

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Today the Shanghai Stock Exchange fell 64.89 points. This may not seem like dramatic news to most people, but for anybody who remembers June 4, 1989 (6489), this brings chills.

June 4th is the day the Tiananmen Square Massacre took place 23 years ago in Beijing, China; when the Chinese government ordered the People’s Liberation Army to fire upon thousands of unarmed civilians who were peacefully demonstrating during the Democracy Movement.

Photo of the Democracy Movement in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, ChinaPhoto of Tiananmen Square crackdown, Beijing, China 1989

The Chinese Communist Party has never released a death toll from the crackdown, but estimates range from several hundred to several thousand by witnesses and human rights groups.

June 4th is an extremely sensitive topic in China, and is also one of the most censored. You won’t find mention of it anywhere in Chinese history books. In fact, most people born after 1989 don’t even know it happened.

You can imagine the nervousness of the Communist Party today when the stock exchange closed 64.89 points lower, reminding everyone once again of a date it has been trying to erase from history for the past 23 years. Even more spooky is that the Shanghai Composite Index opened at 2,346.98—as in “Let’s not forget 23 years ago, on 4 June,’89 (only the year’s digits are switched).

It made the Politiburo so paranoid, in fact, that it blocked microbloggers on China’s most popular version of Twitter, censoring anything related to June 4th. Messages containing words like stock exchange, 23, 6/4, remember, tanks, and never forget were blocked.

The Chinese have always been superstitious about numbers. Just flash back to the Beijing Olympics, held on 8/8/08 starting at 8:08 because the number 8 is considered lucky. Some say today’s symbolic ticker numbers were brought on by the Karmic gods. Others speculate the stock exchange was hacked by clever activists. Whatever the case, clearly it was meant for all the world to remember what happened in Tiananmen Square twenty-three years ago and to honor the innocent victims.

As you may remember, my husband, Jeffrey Aaronson, was in the middle of the Democracy Movement when it unfolded in Tiananmen Square. If you missed my post about it and are interested in reading it, you can click on the link below:

My Crash Course in Living Through the Lens

In honor or remembering Tiananmen, I’m also posting a small excerpt from my book in progress, The Art of an Improbable Life: My Twenty Years with an International Photojournalist.

Chapter Ten

Tiananmen’s Shadow
Beijing, China
2000-01

 

As Zhang Xianling cradles her son’s motorcycle helmet, remembering the last time she saw him alive, tears begin to pool in the corner of her eyes, betraying the iron fortitude she normally wears.

“The bullet entered Wang Nan’s head above his left eye,” Zhang begins as she looks up at Jeffrey, “and exited behind his ear, penetrating the motorcycle helmet he was wearing.”

Jeffrey winces, then feels his stomach tighten as if he’s just been kicked in the gut. Though he’s witnessed much agony in the world as a photojournalist, he’s never hardened to it.

“Nan was a junior in high school,” Zhang continues. “He had gone out to take pictures the night of June 3rd. He was passionate about photography and wanted to capture history.”

Then she stops and closes her eyes. After inhaling a sonorous breath of calm and courage, she continues, “The instant his flash went off, a soldier aimed his gun and shot him through the head.”

The sorrow draped across Zhang Xianling’s face reinforces why Jeffrey has risked so much to be here: This mother’s story deserves to be told. And so do all the others.

Eleven years earlier Jeffrey had been in Tiananmen Square photographing China’s Democracy Movement, capturing the exuberance of students and workers peacefully demonstrating, hoping to bring change to their country. He documented a million people marching with banners and flags, protesters carrying anti-corruption placards and hunger strikers facing off with a government they believed was no longer listening to their demands for a more open society.

Jeffrey had spent an entire month in Beijing that hot spring of 1989, but it wasn’t until now that he was finally able to reveal what had happened on the night of June 3rd, and into the pre-dawn hours of June 4th, when the Chinese government ordered the People’s Liberation Army to quash the Democracy Movement with resounding force. Hundreds, if not thousands, of unarmed Chinese civilians were killed by the PLA as soldiers randomly shot into the crowd fleeing Tiananmen Square and the surrounding areas.

This act, which quickly became known as the June 4th Massacre, or the Tiananmen Massacre, is something the Chinese government has tried to cover up ever since, and something the victim’s families have struggled with as they seek justice and accountability.

Jeffrey hopes his photo project will bring the June 4th Massacre to light again, to show the world what really happened. His story won’t involve graphic images of bodies mowed down by the PLA, but instead, iconic portraits of family members of the victims, and those casualties of the movement who survived, but whose lives have been shattered. Their testimony about the massacre will also accompany the photographs he is creating . . .

more…

Here’s to remembering June 4th and never forgetting those who have been silenced.

A Tasty 10-Step Recipe for Creative Success

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Ingredients

1 Open Mind
1/2 cup Inspiration
3/4 cup Talent
1 cup Originality
1 cup Authenticity
2 cups Motivation
2 3/4 cups Passion
4 cups Belief
4 cups Commitment
6 cups Perseverance
8 cups Grit
1 lb. Courage

Step One: Preheat imagination by clearing mind of clutter and doubt. Do this with an activity of your choice—run, meditate, take a long shower, relax with a glass of wine…

Step Two: Gather all ingredients, pour into large mixing bowl and stir with abandon. Get messy. Let it fly. Embrace the process, and never think about the cleanup.

Step Three: Season to taste using the textures of your soul. If your creation is bland, add a pinch of spice, a pound of raw emotion and one additional cup of grit. Blend vigorously until flavor is sublime.

Step Four: Knead it and work it, work it, work it.

Step Five: Set aside and let your ideas rise. During this important time, make an effort to engage in other activities, further stirring your creative juices: read, listen to music, go for a hike, surround yourself with art or other creative people.

If necessary repeat steps four and five.

Step Six: Once you are satisfied with the overall flavor and consistency, shape into the form of your choice—one that most expresses your passion and personality.

Step Seven: Bake in creative oven until done. Only you will know at what temperature and how long this will take. During this step, be sure to check it occasionally, but trust your instincts and refrain from continually opening and closing the oven door; that only lets out the heat, and often makes a masterpiece fall. Rather, relax and allow it to reach its natural golden state.

Step Eight: Remove from oven, and set aside to cool.

Step Nine: Once cool, embellish. This is your chance to add your final pinches of panache and swirls of sweetness. Make sure you have sprinkled it sufficiently with the yearnings of your heart, and topped it with the magic of your imagination.

Step Ten: Enjoy and celebrate your creative masterpiece, and most importantly, be sure to SHARE IT.

*Note: This recipe works best when creating purely to impress yourself. If others appreciate it too, then that’s just icing on the cake.

©Becky Green Aaronson   The Art of an Improbable Life   2012

The Answer to Name that Photographer is…

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DOROTHEA LANGE

She has been called America’s greatest documentary photographer.

Photo of Dorothea Lange in 1938 with 4x5 camera

Photo of Dorothea Lange

This photo of Dorothea Lange was taken by Rondal Partridge, son of Imogen Cunningham. She is holding a Graflex 4×5 single lens reflex camera, which takes sheet film.

After being educated in photography at Columbia University in New York City, Lange moved to San Francisco and opened a successful portrait studio.

She married, had two sons, then once the Great Depression hit, she turned her lens from the studio to the streets. Her images of unemployed and homeless people captured the attention of many and led her to work for the Farm Security Administration.

In 1935 she divorced her first husband and married her second, Paul Taylor, a professor of Economics at UC Berkeley. Both were passionate about social and political issues and worked together documenting rural poverty and the exploitation of sharecroppers and migrant workers.

Dorothea Lange's photo of a Migrant motherLange’s best known photograph titled, “Migrant Mother, 1936″ captures this thirty-two year old mother whom she described as “desperate and hungry.” She recounted her conversation in a 1960 magazine article: “…She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean-to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it.”

In 1941 Lange won a Guggenheim Fellowship for excellence in photography, but when Pearl Harbor was attacked she gave up this prestigious award to photograph the forced relocation of Japanese Americans to internment camps like Manzanar. Her powerful photographs were so clearly critical of the government’s policy that the Army impounded them.

Dorothea Lange's photo of Japanese Internment

Dorothea Lange photo of a Japanese internment camp

Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of the Japanese American Internment– a book with about 100 never before published photos from her 800 picture archive, is available on Amazon, as are many other classics with her images.

Dorothea Lange Impounded Book CoverDorothea Lange_Heart Mind Book CoverDorothea Lange A Visual Life Book Cover

Check out some of Dorothea Lange’s work if you can, and see the raw emotion she captures in the human condition. There’s a reason she has been described as American’s best documentary photographer.

Name That Photographer

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Name That Photographer GraphicSee if you can Name that Photographer from the following five clues:

1) She was born in Hoboken, New Jersey in 1895 to second-generation German immigrants.

2) She contracted polio when she was 7 years old, which left her with a permanent limp. She once said of her altered gait: “It formed me, guided me, instructed me, helped me and humiliated me. I’ve never gotten over it, and I am aware of the force and power of it.”

3) She lived most of her life in Berkeley, California.

4) She was very shy, yet independent and always interested in people.

5) She is best known for her documentary work of the Great Depression and Japanese internment camps like Manzanar, and she co-founded Aperture magazine.

Leave your guess in the comment box and check back tomorrow to see if you are correct.

Thursday’s Picture of the Week: Los Angeles Riots

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Photo of the Los Angeles Riots in 1992

Behind the Scenes: It’s late April 1992 and all hell is breaking loose in South Central Los Angeles. Four LAPD officers—three white and one Hispanic—have just been acquitted of brutally beating black motorist, Rodney King, and the verdict has ignited a firestorm of rage in the black community. After years of police brutality, racial injustice, and economic disparity, hundreds are rioting in the streets.

Jeffrey watches this fiery scene unfold on television, his stomach churning, especially when he sees an innocent white truck driver, Reginald Denny, pulled from his truck and maliciously beaten when he’s stopped at an intersection; then later hears of another man, Fidel Lopez, a Guatemalan construction worker, who’s robbed, beaten and maimed—his ear nearly sliced off and his genitals and torso painted black.

Growing up in the Los Angeles area, Jeffrey is disturbed to see this unfolding in his own backyard. The brutality seems more like something he’d witness in a lesser-developed country; one without a democratic or judicial system in place.

When the riots intensify the following day, with thousands now protesting, looting and setting buildings on fire, Jeffrey gets on a plane and heads to Los Angeles. After covering human rights issues and cultural conflicts around the world, he feels compelled to turn his lens on what is happening in his own country.

Landing at LAX, he gets a rental car (with the extra insurance, this time), then drives into the miasma. It’s like a war zone. Four thousand National Guard troops are patrolling the streets, many in Humvees, all with rifles.The smell of smoke and ash assault Jeffrey’s nostrils as he steps out of the car near the intersection where Reginald Denny was beaten.

The muscles in Jeffrey’s neck ache with tension. Even though every kind of law enforcement officer has been brought in from around California to stand guard and try to gain control of the situation, he knows that unlike most other countries where only the military owns guns, anybody is able to own and use a gun in our country. Sniper shootings have been rampant.

In the mix, the Korean American community has been hit hard with looting and has taken up arms trying to defend its livelihood. Gun battles have broken out across Koreatown.

Jeffrey’s intention is to examine the social, cultural, and economic reasons contributing to this explosive situation. When he comes across firefighters putting out the remaining embers of a torched building and an officer guarding them from snipers, he knows he has created a symbolic photograph of this complicated moment in time–especially with the sentiment scrawled in red across the wall.

This photograph was created with a Nikon F4 camera, a Nikor 24mm lens and Fuji Velvia film. It was published in Newsweek, then later as the cover of Architectural Landscape magazine in an issue dedicated to urban renewal.

Where were you when the Los Angeles riots broke out twenty years ago ? Do you remember? And do you remember what your thoughts were at the time?

Steve & i eBook Website Launched

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While my blog was being transferred over from WordPress to my own site this past week, I took the opportunity to create a new website for our eBook, Steve & i. The URL is: www.steveandi.com (click on it to view it).

Steve and i website screen capture

I’d be thrilled if you’d take a peek at the site and give me your two cents by dropping it into the comment box below. Constructive criticism is welcome (even if it’s nitpicky) because as Steve Jobs once said, “None of us are as creative as all of us.”

To my published author friends: besides badgering your friends and family until they can’t stand you anymore, what are some of the best ways you’ve reached your readers? If you have any tidbits you wouldn’t mind sharing, I’d love to hear them!

Thanks for all your support everyone!  Learning the ropes has been quite an adventure! The book is off to a great start…and that’s all because of you.

 

The Answer…

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20

To Yesterday’s “Where in the World Are You?” Photo Contest is:

MICRONESIA

This was a tough one! Thanks to all of you who participated in the contest. I loved all your guesses, and I especially loved having so many first-time commenters (is that a word?) leave their two cents.

Unlike Bali, Tahiti or Thailand, Micronesia is not a common travel destination, so I can see why nobody got the correct answer.

The official name for Micronesia is The Federated States of Micronesia. It consists of four island states: Yap, Chuuk (Truk), Pohnpei (Ponape), and Kosrae–all in the Caroline Islands (I know, islands within islands are a bit confusing). Take a peek at the map below to get your bearings, and just know that Micronesia is located about 3,200 miles west-southwest of Hawaii, above the equator in the Pacific Ocean.

Map of Micronesia

Jeffrey was photographing a travel story here many years ago for Continental Airlines and captured the fisherman in yesterday’s photograph as he cast his net at sunrise on the island of Kosrae.

When I reviewed Eric Weiner’s book, The Geography of Bliss last November, I asked Jeffrey to rank some the happiest places he’s worked in the world, He described Micronesia as being the 4th Happiest Place. If you’d like to know why and see a few more photographs, you can click on my previous post: The Geography of Bliss (once you click on it, scroll half way down to get to Micronesia).

 Fisherman in Kosrae, Micronsia
Photo of Truk Micronesia

The most significant change to Micronesia since Jeffrey worked there in the late 80s is the impact global warming has had on the island chain. Micronesia, as well as many others in the South Pacific, are alarmed by the rise in ocean levels, which threaten low-lying islands with flooding and, eventually, submergence.

Now that has a way of putting our environmental issues into perspective!

Hope for Burma: Aung San Suu Kyi on the Road to Democracy

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For the first time in more than two decades, Burmese people have something to celebrate, and because of that, so do we.

According to an article in Sunday’s edition of The New York Times, Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s democracy leader and Nobel Peace laureate, has unofficially won a seat in Burma’s Parliament (click on the link above to read the entire article).

The utter joy and disbelief expressed by the people in this photograph below says everything.

Screen capture NYT Aung San Suu Kyi

Even though she will be joining a government that is still overwhelmingly controlled by the military-backed ruling party, it is a powerful symbolic step in the right direction.

Time Magazine with photo of Aung San Suu Kyi

Many of you may remember that Jeffrey photographed Aung San Suu Kyi in 1989 when she was first placed under house arrest during a brutal military crackdown.

If you missed my posts describing those heart-racing moments, you can click on the two links below to read about it and see what life is life in Burma (now called Myanmar).

Beyond Rangoon Part I

Beyond Rangoon Part II

During the past twenty-three years Aung San Suu Kyi has spent the majority of her life under house arrest, and when she pulled off a stunning political victory in 1990 (even though she was was under detention and forbidden to campaign), the elections were promptly overturned by Burmese generals.

After so much time and so much suffering, it’s exciting to think that things may finally be moving in a positive direction for the Burmese people and Aung San Suu Kyi, who has sacrificed everything for her country. Let’s hope this first step is one of many to come, which will lead Burma in a brave new direction.

“The secret of happiness is freedom. The secret of freedom is courage.”–Thucydides