Artist’s statement:

In my work this romantic ideal of union with the natural world conflicts with our contemporary impact on the environment. These pieces are in part responses to environmental stressors including climate change, toxic pollution, and gm crops. They also borrow from myth, art history, figures of speech and other cultural touchstones. In some pieces aspects of the human figure stand-in for ourselves and act out sometimes harrowing, sometimes humorous transformations which illustrate our current relationship with the natural world. In others, animals take on anthropomorphic qualities when they are given safety equipment to attempt to protect them from man-made environmental threats. In each case the union between man and nature is shown to be one of friction and discomfort with the disturbing implication that we too are vulnerable to being victimized by our destructive practices. (read on)

First spotted via Who Killed Bambi.

Wikimedia Commons: “Destruction of Leviathan”, 1865 engraving by Gustave Doré.

I first found this photo over at Washington’s Blog. The post where it appears makes a (short) argument about the ban of media coverage apparently imposed by BP and US officials and the alleged suspension of the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution it represents. At the very end of the post, the author seems to put forward a legal argument supporting the publication of such pictures as the one shown above:

In addition, use of such images is also protected under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Specifically, reproduction is protected under the “Mai Lai/Zapruder line of cases”, since:

(1) The images are of historical significance;

(2) They show facts which cannot be conveyed effectively in any other manner, and

(3) Therefore the Constitution trumps copyright law. (more)

Now, what exactly are those “Mai Lai/Zapruder line of cases” ? It’s not a law, but a “line of cases” and it could plausibly be used to challenge the ban of some media access to the site of the catastrophe (see The New York Times: “BP and Officials Block Some Coverage of Golf Oil Spill”). More thoughts about this over at Aphelis.

The New York Times: “In transit, Kyrgystan to Afghanistan, April 5: Soldiers in full gear on a C-17 military transport from the Transit Center at Manas to the Mazar-i-Sharif Airfield” by Damon Winter [click for full scale]

In “A Year at War,” The New York Times will trace the steps of the men and women of the First Battalion, 87th Infantry of the 10th Mountain Division during their yearlong deployment in northern Afghanistan. Damon Winter, the winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography, followed the battalion in late March and early April as it made its way from Fort Drum, N.Y., to Kunduz Province. Over the weekend, as the first installments of the series were published, he spoke about the project with James Estrin. Their conversation has been edited and condensed.