A Wandering Post About Blogging And Travel And Local Computer Repair Stores And Flowers And Freedom of The Press

A friend suggested that when we head south next week, that I just not blog for a month.  That was in the context of my looking for an alternative to taking my laptop with all the stuff that's on it.  We were talking about my visiting little locally owned computer/telephone repair shops that sell used equipment too.  I already posted about High Frequency where I bought my wife's phone and more recently my on upgrade from having to text using a phone keyboard and not being able to see the whole conversation.  Just the most recent text.  High Frequency has moved from Gamble and 15th (with a hard to get into parking lot) to 36th and Old Seward.  Much more convenient for me.  

But I also learned about Device Pitstop over at Arctic and 36th next to Jens.  Chris, in the picture, didn't have quite what I was looking for.  He had another option for a higher price, but then asked if I had any layovers on the trip.  

I mentioned LA and he was on the phone trying to find me cheaper options there.  

I'm really impressed with these smaller stores.  They all had much more personal service than the national chain stores.  I also visited Computer Renaissance on King and Dimond.  They didn't have any Apple products, and it seemed easier to stay with what I know.  Today I went to where I should have gone - the Mac Store.  This is the closest place and it's Mac.  But he didn't have anything either - though it's nice to know he's there for repairs and help and he's a registered Apple repair service.  That store used to be off Dimond between New and Old Seward on the north.  But he did tell me about an iPad for sale at Walmart.  But I don't want to shop at Walmart.  No problem, he said.  Best Buy will match competitors' prices.  

So I biked over today - such great biking weather.  Big thunderheads rising up from the mountains.  Thunder is pretty rare in Anchorage  

And now I have a new iPad for a decent price.  And I suspect when we get back, it will be what I use when I go out of the house and need my computer.  It weighs much less even with the keyboard/case I bought with it.  And Best Buy gave a discount on that too.  I hate buying new tech stuff and took my time.  Actually I hate buying new stuff.  We (people in general) have too much stuff. 

Tomorrow our house sitter comes over for lunch.  OK, the trip.  I'm excited, but I have mixed feelings.  I hate to leave Alaska in the summer and this week eating three meals a day out on the deck has been like a little paradise.  After 32 years, the old deck was starting to have some structural issues.  Moss had made the holes between the boards large enough in places for things to fall through.  Some of the steps were not rotting out.  So we had it rebuilt and with years of experience, we added a little more so that we could follow the sun.  That took a lot of time - we had a builder, but still there was some disruption.  Even though the builder put down plywood every night so we could use the deck the whole time.  

So the trip.  My daughter got us into this.  I'll leave it at that.  But she wanted to go to Argentina this summer to see the total solar eclipse in early July.  We were invited.  My granddaughter was involved, so we said yes. But we decided if we were going that far, we should stay a little longer and see more of the country.  So we'll only overlap a little bit with them.  But I've never been further south than Guatemala in the Western Hemisphere.  But I wanted to travel lighter and without all the data that's on my computer.  I was reading stories on line of people being robbed.  And even though I've taken my computer a lot of places, I decided it was time to think about this more.  Identity theft is a bigger issue these days.  So with a much cheaper model, without much personal info on it, there should be less risk.  And I can still keep you posted about what we see.  

I've been thinking about how to introduce the trip and so now I have.  Our front yard flowers have started their annual show.  

The phlox are my favorite (well at the moment).  There are several clumps like this of bright pink.  And the individual flowers are tiny, but beautiful.  Here's a 2008 post with closeups of the phlox and the forget-me-nots.

And earlier this spring, a moose chomped on the leaves of these lilies.  But apparently it wasn't tasty and the buds hadn't started pushing up yet.  Because there are lots of buds.  

OK, here's one more picture I don't know where else to put.  Saw it biking yesterday along 40th. They were on every 2nd or 3rd pole.  I have mixed feelings about Assange.  I don't think I'd like him as a person, but enough people I respect - like Daniel Ellsberg - feel prosecuting him is a serious attack on the First Amendment.  






Just to be fair here, I googled "why Assange should be prosecuted."  The first two pages were all about why he should NOT be.  Or at best, stories about Assange.  The closest I got to what I was searching for was:  The debate over what Julian Assange's arrest means for freedom of the press, explained.


I can't help feeling that this is more about the anger against leaks in general.  Under Obama it was embarrassing to have so much diplomatic gossip go public and as I've pointed out in earlier posts, no one has identified anyone who died because of the leaks.  But they argue that he endangered many lives.  Under Trump, anything Trump doesn't like published, he'd censor if he could.

The 10 Steps Of Impeachment

Impeachment isn't something that either happens or doesn't.  It's a series of deliberate steps.  Robert Reich explains them simply and clearly in this short video.

With impeachment on everyone's mind right now, here is the 10-step process for impeaching the President of the United States. It could come in handy very soon. pic.twitter.com/BxNFIY1bfx

— Robert Reich (@RBReich) April 24, 2019

Six Four - Tiananmen 30th Anniversary

Tiananmen May 1990

June 4, 1989 is just called by the date in Chinese.  Like 9/11.  It's 六四  liù sì.  It's the date the Chinese army cracked down on the Tiananmen Square (and much more of Beijing) protests.

Here's a new article by the then LATimes Beijing bureau chief.

I watched the 1989 Tiananmen uprising. China has never been the same

"From the windows of a deserted coffee shop at the Beijing Hotel, a few hundred yards east of Tiananmen, I could look toward the square and see several hundred soldiers forming lines across the capital’s broad main street. In front of the hotel was an angry and brave crowd of a couple thousand Beijing residents. These protesters were furious at the army for shooting its way into the city center, tanks and armored personnel carriers smashing obstacles, soldiers spraying bullets at crowds blocking its advance. Now I watched as the soldiers periodically fired into this crowd.
For me, what the Chinese call simply “June 4” — a date that fundamentally shaped today’s China — had begun the previous evening.
I was the Los Angeles Times Beijing bureau chief then, and had overseen the newspaper’s coverage of the pro-democracy protests since they began in mid-April. The Times’ team had been taking turns staking out the square, and my shift was to begin at midnight. Before leaving home late on June 3, I learned that the army had begun smashing its way through crowds several miles west of Tiananmen."

You can compare Steven Holley's account with others on the scene at the time in this post I did three years ago about the meaning of the term 'iconic photo' that examines the context of the Tank Man photo, which Holley discusses in this article.   Holley's account seems pretty consistent with what I found out doing that post.

I'd note that I arrived in Hong Kong for a year's sabbatical about one month after Tiananmen and was able to talk to several people who had been in Beijing at the time.  I didn't get to Tiananmen until May 1990 when I took a group of Hong Kong students for a study tour.  We had to go in May because people were worried that something might happen on the first anniversary.

Here's a very different recent China story I found the other day and put into a draft post until I could find some related posts.

China reassigns 60,000 soldiers to plant trees in bid to fight pollution

"China has reportedly reassigned over 60,000 soldiers to plant trees in a bid to combat pollution by increasing the country's forest coverage.
A large regiment from the People's Liberation Army, along with some of the nation's armed police force, have been withdrawn from their posts on the northern border to work on non-military tasks inland.
The majority will be dispatched to Hebei province, which encircles Beijing, according to the Asia Times which originally reported the story. The area is known to be a major culprit for producing the notorious smog which blankets the capital city."

Terns, Geese, And American Widgeons As I Experiment With the Focus On My Camera At Potter Marsh

Bird pictures -especially birds that aren't very close - have been iffy for the years I've had my Canon EOS Rebel T3i.  With my old film Pentax I could just twist the focus until I got what I needed, but these digital cameras are much more complicated.  Manual focus is not intuitive.  It's worse than that.  And the auto focus simply does not know what precisely I want to focus on when a bird is surrounded by leaves in front and behind.

I gave up on my manual a while back, finding I could usually get clearer instructions via Google and YouTube.  Today I printed out some internet pages on how to manually focus my camera, including some from an online manual, to take to Potter Marsh.  I really wasn't expecting to see the Falcated Duck that was reported still here as of May 30 (and I was right), but I figured it would be a good chance to maybe get closer to learning how to manual focus.  And if you hang out an hour or more there, things happen.

These pics today are better than my last couple of attempts, but some of these birds were relatively close.  The flying pictures came out better than others have.  The one thing I suspect that helped was that I figured out how to pic the spot (in the view finder) the camera uses to focus.  You'll find much more precisely photos all over the internet, and I'm working on that.  But I don't have a 400x lens, and that perfect sharpness isn't necessarily the goal either.

The Terns

Arctic Terns are amazing birds.  The fly from one pole to the other each year.  They're sleek and their black heads and orange beaks and feet contrast sharply with the rest of their white feathers.  And they can hover in one spot - like a hummingbird - before diving to catch a fish.

Geese

American Widgeon

Go-Nuts, Do-Nuts At the Anchorage Downtown Weekend Market

A friend invited me several weeks ago to come to the weekend market to see his do-nut stand.  I finally made it today.

Do-nuts are not a temptation and haven't been for years.  Some foods I'm able to put on my mental do-not-eat list because of their negative nutritional value.  But I'm not an absolutist.  I did have a hot malasada in Maui last year - as a nostalgia snack.  And today I bought a "baker's dozen"  - there were a lot more than twelve of the little guys.  They were good.  But look at all that fat they're swimming in.

But the machine that carries them from dough ball to do-nut, is made in Minnesota.

I also met Jessica who was trying to take short videos of the do-nuts being flipped over for her instagram site.  She must have more than one because the link on the card she gave me gets you pictures of dogs of Alaska.  (Good pics, btw.)

Then I wandered around looking at what else is there.  Since the market is walking distance from the downtown hotels, it's always full of tourists from around the world, though there were a lot of empty spaces.   There are some Alaskan artists and craftspeople as well as imported kitsch.

And prices all around seem a bit steep.  But my 'normal' range was set long ago and is resistant to inflation.  $23 for a styrofoam box of deep fried battered halibut seems wrong.  But I'm guessing no one gets rich selling stuff at the market.

Well, let me check how much halibut costs in actual restaurants where they serve you on a plate and at a table.

Humpy's has something close: 

Alehouse Halibut and Chips  18.99
Alaskan halibut, dipped in humpy’s famous ale batter, and flash fried to perfection. Served with our zesty alehouse made tartar sauce.

But do you get as much halibut?  There's a lot in that white box.

Simon and Seafort  (dinner) has a much fancier halibut dish for a lot more:

Crab & Macadamia Nut Stuffed Halibut* Mashed Yukon potatoes, seasonal vegetables 39

F Street Station has something similar for quite a bit less, but we don't know how much halibut:

Beer Battered Alaskan Halibut Or Shrimp $15.50
chunks of alaskan halibut or shrimp, deep fried with a beer batter crust to a light golden brown, served with tarter sauce, lemon and fries

I'm also wondering how many people can tell the difference between halibut and cod when it's deep fried like this.

This was a booth from the Chugach Mountain Quilters Guild.

There was a lot more at the market, but that's all I've got for you.  Hope your weekend is going well.

To Impeach Or Not To Impeach - Look At Some Of The Basic Questions

Yesterday I replaced this post with a video of then Rep. Lindsey Graham urging the Senate to convict Bill Clinton and explaining the broad array of wrongdoings covered by impeachment.
So let me go back to what I was originally working on.

I've been trying to identify the arguments for and against impeachment.


1.  Has he committed impeachable offenses?     

It seems to me that the Mueller Report offers us enough instances of obstruction of justice that it's clear that there are impeachable offenses.  Committing criminal acts is a much higher standard than is required for impeachment anyway.  If you listen to the Graham tape, lies, perjury, obstructing justice are all fair game.  Clinton had sexual harassment charges and then fighting those charges, which Graham called obstruction of justice.  Trump has various women he's paid to sign NDA's.  He's got unsavory money ties to Russians through Deutsche Bank and directly.  There's all the tales Michael Cohen told.  There's emolument clause issues based on foreign governments patronizing Trump properties.  The list goes on and on.

2.  What is an impeachable offense?

From Article 2, Section IV, we get the terms:  "Treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors."  Again, listen too Graham.  Trump's got lots of acts that fit into the definition he gave of high crimes at the Clinton impeachment.

Some Impeachment Facts

A.  Impeachment is just an indictment for a president.  In non-presidential situations when there appears o be enough evidence to indicate a person has committed a crime, he's indicted.  Then it goes to trial.  In this case there is plenty of evidence.  But impeachment is the process of looking at the evidence and deciding to indict.  Setting up an impeachment process doesn't mean he will be impeached, just that the evidence will be examined.  And the House will have the power to get all the relevant evidence, things the administration is refusing to share.

B.  Then if the House decides to impeach, it goes to the Senate for the trial.

I'd note that there have been three presidential impeachments in American history - Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton.  Johnson and Clinton were acquitted and Nixon resigned before he could be convicted.  So, no president has ever been successfully tried for impeachment.

If there is a lot of evidence of impeachable acts, it's up to the House to investigate and make the President accountable.  It's true that prosecutors also weigh in the likelihood of conviction.  They don't want to lose a case because there isn't enough evidence.  But an impeachable president does more damage than most un-indicted but likely guilty criminals.

3.  Is impeachment politically feasible?

This seems to be the key question Democrats are debating, at least as the media portray things.  So let's look at it closely

A.  That could mean, if the House impeaches him, would the Senate convict?  If Trump and whoever else can keep the Senate Republicans under control like they have so far, the answer would be 'no.'  But if the American public were exposed to hearings that discussed the Mueller findings in detail, not to mention other issues, there's no telling how popular opinion would go.  So far, relatively few people have read to Report.  I confess to having read only some parts of it.  But I did read carefully most of  Seth Abramson's Proof of Collusion which spells out much of what's in the Report.  (A followup book, Proof of Conspiracy comes out soon.

Click Here For The Mueller Report.

The Report is 182 pages plus  Appendix A - Letter of Appointment of Special Counsel (1page) Appendix B - Glossary (14 pages)  Appendix C - Written Questions to be answered by President Trump (12 pages) and Responses from President Trump (12 pages) (total 23 pages)  Appendix D - SPECIAL COUNSEL'S OFFICE TRANSFERRED, REFERRED, AND COMPLETED CASES (6 pages)   There's a total of 226 pages, some blank, some redacted, some just lists.   If you read just ten pages a day,  you could read the whole report by June 23.

B.  Would losing the impeachment battle in the Senate weaken the Democrats before the 2020 election?   Depends on what the American people hear and see of the impeachment hearings and the Senate trial.  And unless Netflix makes a Mueller Report series, without an impeachment, most Americans will never know exactly what's in the Report and how damning it is.  (See Box above with link to report and ten page a day suggestion.)

C.  Will the Democrats be blasted for wasting time on impeachment instead of passing legislation?  The Republicans will accuse them of not passing any legislation no matter what they do.  Very little substantive legislation has been passed in the last few sessions of Congress anyway.  This isn't a reason not to impeach.

D.  Is it too early to start an impeachment because there isn't enough evidence?  Well, part of what you do at an impeachment is gather evidence.  Impeachment won't be quick not matter when it starts.  One could argue that starting now would mean that Congress will be ready with the evidence they need in a timely manner.  If they wait until Nancy Pelosi determines the time is right, then

E.  If the Russians, Iranians, North Koreans, Israelis and others interfere with the election in 2020, impeachment (unless successful) won't matter anyway unless the Democrats are able to fight such interference.  If they don't impeach, they won't have near as much evidence of election tampering than if they impeach and subpoena the evidence.

F.  Balancing doing what's right with doing what's expedient.  Sometimes we make ethical compromises because of the practical consequences.  It's a basic philosophical dilemma.  One could argue that it's a hard decision to make.

There is plenty of evidence that the president has committed impeachable acts. It's Congress' duty to keep the president accountable.  So in a politically neutral world, impeaching the president is the moral and correct thing to do.

But should the Democrats do that if it would guarantee they would lose the next election?  If we could know that for sure, I'd say probably not.

But there's no way of knowing for sure that impeachment would cost the election.  In a situation of uncertainty, then the only right and moral decision is to do the right thing - impeach.   I would argue that, as happened with Nixon, the public airing of all of Trump's wrong doings would help push a comfortable majority over the edge into agreeing that impeachment was the right thing.  Not impeaching would convince the cynical non-voters that they were right to not vote.

G.  Whatever the Democrats do, they have to work hard to make sure that the elections aren't lost because of foreign and domestic propaganda, voter suppression and tampering:

• They expose and prevent and counteract foreign propaganda on social media and elsewhere, as well as far right attacks (like the Swift-Boat attacks on John Kerry.)
• They expose and prevent voter suppression, vote tampering, and hacking of voting machines.  And when these things occur, they are all over them gathering proof and refusing to concede until it is clear the vote was clean.

Lindsey Graham On Grounds For Impeachment (1999)

I started this post over a month ago, thinking I could at least identify some of the key ways people are discussing impeachment.

 Given Meuller's comments today implying that Department of Justice policies prevent DOJ from prosecuting a sitting president, it seems a good time to finish this post.

 While I was outlining the basic points in this debate on both sides, I came across this clip from C-Span of Rep. Lindsey Graham acting as the impeachment trial manager, making the argument for Bill Clinton's impeachment to the US Senate.  It's worth posting without too many comments.  I've also written some transcripts of part of it [see below the video], but it's definitely worth listening to him explain what an impeachable offense is.

[I couldn't find the embed button for this clip on C-Span. I thought I'd gotten around that, but it seems all that was embedded was the image. But if you click on it, it will take to you the original video.]

Lindsey Graham Calling for Clinton's Impeachment

Back 1999 Lindsey Graham calls for justice, upholding high standards of the office, getting to the bottom of things and defending women's dignity

Here's a reasonably close transcript of particularly relevant parts of his speech, but the whole thing is worth listening to give Graham's current defense of Trump against impeachment.

[He begins with how his parents owned a 'beer joint' where blacks had to buy drinks and had to leave because they weren't allowed to drink them in the restaurant - "that's how it was then, but it isn't now."
How women used to not be able to sue over sexual harassment, but can now.
How when a president obstructs justice, lies, etc.  it's up to Congress to keep him accountable.]

We all assumed [Clinton] would play fail.  What if he had not shown up? What if he had refused to answer any court order?  What if he had said “I’m not going to play, that’s it.”?  I’m [not] going to listen to you judicial branch? 

You know the remedy we have for that, when presidential conduct gets out of bounds, do you know where that remedy lies?  It lies with us, the United States Congress

When a president gets out of bounds and doesn’t do what he should do, constitutionally . . . it’s up to us to put it back in bounds or declare it illegal.  

How do we regulate presidential misconduct? . . . through the laws and powers of impeachment. . .   

When he chose to lie, when he chose to manipulate the evidence, the witnesses against him, and get his friends to go to bat for him, he vetoed that decision.  It’s worse than if he hadn’t shown up at all.   .  .

What’s a high crime?  How about if an important person hurts somebody of low means.  It’s not very scholarly, but I think it’s the truth.  I think that’s what they meant by ‘high crimes.’ It doesn’t have to be crime.  It’s just when you start using your office and you’re acting in a way that hurts people, you committed a high crime.  

When you decide  that a course of conduct meets the high crime standard under our constitution for the president, what are we doing   what are we doing to the presidency?

[There’s discussion here where Graham acknowledges that lying about intimate personal actions is something that is hard not to do, that he himself might do it.  That the Senate shouldn’t ignore basic human failings.  But that Clinton lied again to the Grand Jury even when warned it could cost him the presidency.  The burden then that would be put on future presidents is not to lie under oath against a plain citizen.  Then he says what would be expected of other presidents.]

Don’t cheat in a lawsuit by manipulating the testimony of others.  Don’t send public officials and friends to tell your lies before a federal grand jury to avoid your legal responsibilities.  Don’t put your legal and political interests ahead of the rule of law and common decency.  If you find these are high crimes, that is the burden you’re placing on the next office holders.  If they can’t meet that burden, this country has a serious problem.   I don’t want my country to be the country of great equivocators and compartmentalizers for the next century.

What I’m asking you is just his job description.  We’re asking him to be the chief law enforcement officer of the land.  

[More talk about how Clinton defied a 9-0 Supreme Court decision saying that he had to stand trial even while president.  Then he goes on to talk about the impeachment of Judge Harry Claiborne.  That used the same standards as for president - treason, bribery, high crimes and misdemeanors.  He was removed for “filing a false income tax return under penalties of perjury.”  Judge claimed cheating on taxes was related to his job as a judge.  But Senate said it was.]

“You [the Senate] took a broader view and I’m certainly glad you did.  Because this is not a country of high officials who are technicians.  This is a country based on character, this is a country based on having to set a standard that others will follow willingly.  

[He goes on to quote other lawmakers’ words about the scope of impeachment.   Then he talks about the impeachment of Judge Nixon who perjured himself before a grand jury. Then Judge Hastings convicted and removed from office by the Senate.  Acquitted before he got here.  Conspirator was convicted, but he was acquitted.  And was impeached despite the acquittal.  

Impeachment is not about punishment.  Impeachment is about cleansing the office.  Impeachment is about restoring honor and integrity to the office.  

[Discussion of Clinton case.  It will be hard, because while the evidence is clear, the president is popular.  Setting aside an elected president is a difficult decision.  To undo that election is a tough decision.]

Here's a Grenville, South Carolina newspaper article offering Graham's reasoning for supporting Trump now when he was for Clinton's impeachment.   I'd note that there is simply so many more incidents of misconduct, of lying, of obstruction of justice, in the office of president and leading up to the presidency compared to Clinton, that his argument that 'this is different' is absurd.  Yes, it is different.  It's 100 times worse.  

Garden Calder

Our bleeding hearts are blooming nicely now.

They made me think of the Calder we saw at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art last February.

Cartographic Literacy - And The Bible On Abortion

A couple of links that might be of interest.  Both are examples, in their own way, of how people's understanding is influenced by how facts are presented.  

1. In one case it's about representations of the earth and the construct of poverty.  
2. In the other case it's about representations of a book - The Bible - and what it says about abortion.  

1.  Kenneth Field's So You Want To Make A Map? at Medium walks us through making a map, step by step.  The example map shows the world

Despite maps being one of the oldest media of communication, he tells us that people aren't that literate in reading them.

But cartography isn’t innate in our ability to communicate graphically. There’s a language, a syntax, and a grammar. It takes a little knowledge and some practice to know what works and how to make a map work well to mediate the message to the reader. In this article, I’m going to go through some of the choices you’re presented with in designing a thematic map (a map of a theme of data) and how they can help or hinder how people interpret it. It’s worth remembering that most people have no idea about how to understand the way in which the map and the choices made in making it affect their perception of it. You design the map to avoid as many of these potential pitfalls as possible by being a smarter mapmaker.

He walks us through a series of maps, each showing different ways to illustrate different ways to visually get points across better, explaining the changes step by step.


These are just two screenshots of different ways to indicate poverty levels.

And one more map just to whet your appetite for the others.

2.  The Bible Tells Us When A Fetus Becomes A Living Being

It begins:

"Many people think that a human being is created at the time of conception but this belief is not supported by the bible. The fact that a living sperm penetrates a living ovum resulting in the formation of a living fetus does not mean that the fetus is a living human being. According to the bible, a fetus is not a living person with a soul until after drawing its first breath."

It then goes on to cited a number of passages in the bible that show that today's far right religious proclamations of abortion as murder are contradicted by a close reading of the bible.  Examples such as:

"In Exodus 21:22 it states that if a man causes a woman to have a miscarriage, he shall be fined; however, if the woman dies then he will be put to death. It should be apparent from this that the aborted fetus is not considered a living human being since the resulting punishment for the abortion is nothing more than a fine;   it is not classified by the bible as a capital offense."

Luigi Toscano's Holocaust Portraits And Nathan Jurgenson's The Social Photo

The San Francisco Civic Center Plaza had about 80 of the giant portraits.  Each had a little sign (if you look closely, you can see it on the right in the middle.)

I'm afraid the title of the post promises a lot more than I can deliver.  But the title can at least point to what I'm thinking about as I write this post.   I've got too many backed up, unfinished posts.  These portraits made me think about the nature of portraits and how they're displayed (in addition to the content of the portraits.)  Jurgenson's book is also playing with my understanding of photos in general, and how digital photography and social media change human relationships with photographic images.  Here are the  two catalysts:

1.  Lest We Forget by Luigi Toscano - and installation we saw recently in San Francisco's Civic Center Plaza.

Click to enlarge and focus better

And 2.  The Social Photo:  On Photography And Social Media,  a very new book by Nathan Jurgenson that investigates the the meaning of photography in the digital age and how we need to rethink our mental frameworks of photography to understand what's happening.


The notion of portraits has changed over the years.  From the Tate Museum:

"Portraiture is a very old art form going back at least to ancient Egypt, where it flourished from about 5,000 years ago. Before the invention of photography, a painted, sculpted, or drawn portrait was the only way to record the appearance of someone. 

But portraits have always been more than just a record. They have been used to show the power, importance, virtue, beauty, wealth, taste, learning or other qualities of the sitter. Portraits have almost always been flattering, and painters who refused to flatter, such as William Hogarth, tended to find their work rejected. A notable exception was Francisco Goya in his apparently bluntly truthful portraits of the Spanish royal family."

Photography changed things dramatically.  And cameras on phones changes things even more.  From Nathan Jurgenson. The Social Photo: On Photography and Social Media (Kindle Locations 139-143). Verso.

"Photography is a technology of instability . It stages a play of the real and the simulated, the apparent and the contrived, the creative and the mechanical. And photography is itself always in flux, from plates to film, paper to pixels, to more people carrying more cameras more of the time. These changes affect who makes images, where, why, how often, and for whom. There has been a recent and massive shift in who sees any photograph, and the audience for images that social media promises alters what a photograph is and what it means."

Basically, Jurgenson is arguing that the age of digital photography along with social media presents us with a world of photos that the academic world of photography has essentially ignored because they still use the 'art model' of photography to consider photos.  Snapshots don't matter in their eye.

"This is a perspective rooted in art history, one that deals with galleries, museums, and professional work and is tangential to all but a tiny fraction of images made today. The vast majority of photos perform functions distinct from those of documentation or art. The quick selfie reaction, the instantly posted snapshot of nice sunlight on your block, the photo of a burger sent to a friend: these kinds of images are of central importance to photography as it occurs today, but they are not as well conceptualized or understood. These everyday images taken to be shared are examples of what I am calling social photography. Other names include “snapshot photography,” “personal photography,” “domestic photography,” “vernacular photography,” “networked images,” “banal imaging,” or, as Fred Ritchin differentiates in Bending the Frame, an “image” as opposed to a photograph.  All these terms are meant to distinguish social images— the overwhelming bulk of photographs being made today— from those weightier images made with that traditional understanding of photography as something more informational, formally artistic, and professional."   Nathan Jurgenson. The Social Photo: On Photography and Social Media (Kindle Locations 147-156). Verso. 

Her plaque identifies her as

Rachel Goldfarb

(Dokszyce/Poland 1930)

Nazi Armys occupied hometown/

moved to ghetto with the family

Jewish population numbered close to 3000/

Were not sent to concentration camps

but murdered by Nazis/

Less than a dozen survivors/

Only Rachel and her mother survived 

from extended family

1942 went into hiding with family

Brother discovered and killed

Survived with her mother with Russia underground

(partisans)

Liberated by Soviets/Experienced widespread and

overt antisemitism in Poland

Left for Italy

1947 migrated to United States

Lest We Forget - Washington 01-21-2018

OLEKSANDR SKLIANSKI

(KIEV/UKRAINE 1937)

"THANKS TO 

YEVGENIA BOBOVIK AND VIKTOR BOBOVIK

AS WELL AS THEIR DAUGHTER YELENA

MY BROTHER AND I WERE SAVED

FROM BEING SHOT DEAD IN BABI YAR.

THEY BECAME OUR COMPANIONS

ON THE ROAD TO PEACE."

LEST WE FORGET - KIEV/UKRAINE 26-02015

SUSAN CERNYAK SPATZ

(VIENNA/AUSTRIA 1922)

MAY 1942 ORDERED TO

THE GHETTO THERESIENSTADT

WITH THE MOTHER

JANUARY 1943 DEPORTATION TO

THE CONCENTRATION 

CAMP AUSCHWITZ-BERKENAU

JANUARY 1045

DEATH MARCH TO THE CONSTRATION 

CAMP RAVENSBRÜCK

SPRING 1945 LIBERATED

BY THE RED ARMY

LEST WE FORGET -  HEIDELBERG 18.09.2014

These descriptions are just the briefest references to a period of their lives lived in  horror and only the present locations and dates of the photos and the visual images themselves hint at the lives since the end of the war.  Though they never escaped the horrors that stayed with them the rest of their lives.

My stepmother could be one of these portraits.  She, like Susan Cernyak Spatz, was born in 1922 in the Austro-Hungarian empire (in Bratislava) and also was sent to Theresianstadt.  She eventually lived her life out in Southern California.  In 2014 she could have posed for one of these photos, but she passed away in 2018.  So maybe these portraits resonate with me more.  Here she is in 2015 on her 93rd birthday.  She didn't have a professional photographer (not sure how he got those little spots in everyone's eyeballs), nor was she allowed to put on some make-up and jewelry.  Not sure she would approve of this photo here.  But it's one more face for the record.    Who knows, she may have known Susan Cernyak Spatz at Theresienstadt.



Luigi Toscano's exhibit seems to recognize that people's relationship with photography is different now.  From LEST WE FORGET statement in San Francisco (the LEST WE FORGET photo above.)

"Instead of exhibiting them in a museum or a gallery, Luigi Toscano always presents the large-scale portraits in public places, such as parks, public squares or on facades, so they are accessible to everyone.  In this way, LEST WE FORGET reaches thousands of people regardless of age, origin, language or education.  Small information panels, a picture book, and a documentary movie complete the installation."

SF City Hall in background.

Nathan Jurgenson wouldn't count these as 'Social Photos":

"My interest here is with a type of photography made ubiquitous by networked, digital sharing, though many of its characteristics can be found in different degrees in pre-social media photography, especially amateur snapshots (Polaroid sharing in particular). For my purposes here, what fundamentally makes a photo a social photo is the degree to which its existence as a stand-alone media object is subordinate."  Nathan Jurgenson. The Social Photo: On Photography and Social Media (Kindle Locations 158-160). Verso. 

These aren't the instant photos taken on someone's phone and then immediately texted to someone as part of a conversation.  Clearly Luigi Toscano thought carefully about each portrait and how to package them and where to display them so that they would be seen and attended to by many people.  Looking at these giant face images in person, faces almost as large as the viewer, has a big impact.  The holocaust survivors are almost gone.  I suspect many, if not most in the installation, have pass away already.

 But there is no shortage of victims today, people being killed and maimed and terrorized by American made weapons as well as those made in Europe and Russia and Israel.  They are not that different from the Jews and other victims of Nazi Germany, just in the manner of their suffering.  But the Jews of Europe were easy to ignore while they were being slaughtered, just as the people of Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and the refugees from terror in Africa and Central America are easy to ignore today.

As I get to the end here, I realize that this mashup of Luigi Toscano's photos and Nathan Jurgenson's book may be a little forced.  And I may post more on Jurgenson's book later.  But here's a bit more:

"Photography theory’s long marginalization of amateur snapshots has left a shortfall of reference points for making sense of social photos today. The dichotomies of “amateur vs. professional” and “digital vs. analog” matter less for the social photo than the relations between power, identity, and reality. The fixation on professional and artistic photos comes with conceptual baggage rooted in other fields, much of which should slide to the margins when discussing social photography. The center of conceptual gravity for describing how people communicate with images today."  Nathan Jurgenson. The Social Photo: On Photography and Social Media (Kindle Locations 167-171). Verso. 

LEST WE FORGET website.
Jurgenson's book website.