SionPhoto

Red Hot XXX Droid-on-Droid Action...

Here's a couple o' pics from a recent shoot for Scientific American magazine, for an article on David Levy, the author of 'Love and Sex with Robots'

The other plan was to have the robots in a church with confetti etc, but my requests were politely declined by various vicars.

I'm now waiting to see if Sci-Am will publish images of what can only be described as saucy cyborgs going at it like a steam hammer (but you know...tasteful).

Here's an image which probably won't get used:

            K9 - style...anybody got any jumpleads?

Of course if they don't run, its just be another scandalous reinforcement of the patriarchal-carbon-based-lifeform-phallic-gender-specific-hegemony which has kept mechanoids oppressed by 'The Man' throughout 'His-Story'.

When the revolution comes, I for one, will welcome our new robot overlords.

I Dont Take Sides. I take Pictures.

AP photographer Bilal Hussein finally had the opportunity to sit in front of a court yesterday, after being detained by U.S. forces in Iraq 19 months ago.

Although calling it a 'court' is obviously dignifying what looks like a legal farce and a complete mockery of due process.

The details of the hearing are going to be kept secret, the defence lawyers can view materials presented at the hearing, but not take any copies away with them, and Bilals lawyer, Paul Gardephe cannot speak to him without a US soldier and military interpreter being present in the room.

As Gardephe says:

"You cannot prepare a defendant for a criminal trial with the prosecutor in the room"

Even if the Central Criminal Court of Iraq (CCCI) releases Bilal Hussein, the U.S. retains the prerogative to continue to hold someone as a security detainee, even if the CCCI clears them.

Tony Blair, at the US Congress, 2003:

"Our ultimate weapon is not our guns but our beliefs ...any time, ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same. Freedom not tyranny. Democracy not dictatorship. The rule of law not the rule of the secret police."

Frock and Awe...

Regular 'blog readers will know we're a major fan of fashion demi-god/Davy Crockett-lookalike Steven Meisel here at Touhig Towers.

His recent spreads for Italian Vogue will either stand as beyond-cutting-edge critiques on the Worlds current madness, or a final indictment that the fashiorati are so far up themselves, that even a humanitarian catastrophe is just another excuse to get a bit o' bling on.

So fire up that Humvee, get the Kevlar pants on, and have a look at Meisel's lastest stonking multimedia assault.

You have to hand it to the bloke...he not only pushes the taste envelope, he drags it outside, kicks it in the knackers and steals its Gucci wallet, before setting it on fire.

Let the Train Take the Strain...

My friend and colleague Stuart Freedman will be giving a talk on his digital workflow using the Digital Railroad (DRR) platform, at the London Apple Store this evening at 6.00pm.

I'm a Photoshelter boy myself...both platforms have been shaping up to provide sales portals as well as providing off-site backup and workflow tools for photographers, with the DRR Marketplace portal and the recently launched Photoshelter Collection.

I've used both platforms, and have found Photoshelter to be a better option for me, but both are positive steps for photographers, and prove there can be viable ways of leveraging photographs on the Web, without simply seeing or presenting them as commoditised 'content'.

Kangaroo Caught...

Strewth! You'd think the time when a bloke would slap a sheila was long gone, but not in the Lucky Country it seems, where a cameraman filming protests against the APEC summit, caught Sydney cops dealing out some down-underhand smackdown action to Getty Images photographer Paula Bronstein.

If there's any justice, the miscreants should be transported to a penal colo...oops!

Too late...they're already there.

Delhi Telly Belly...

Seems like everybody's at it - reporters doing photos, photographers doing TV...

Time to call in the NUJ I reckon...

In another example of photographers work transferring to the screen, my good friend Stuart Freedman is surfing the muddy wave of media convergence in his cracking report on More 4 News*, about the growing water crisis in Delhi.

A really effective combination of video and his stills - plus you get to see the contaminated river which gave Stuart a stonking dose of giardia...

( * Click on the 'Watch The Report' icon on the More 4 News page)

28 Weeks Later...

OMG! I'm loving it, loving it, LOVING it, babes - like...it's so LiLo, it's so Amy Wino, it's so pomo, it's so emo, it's sooo....anorexically now, n' est pas?

Check out these latest gob-smackin' classics from the Austin Powers of the MySpace generation, Mr Steven Meisel, the Napoleon of Fashion who brought you Gitmo Fabulous.

I had no idea being fucked up was so cool. I've been necking antibiotics and morphine for weeks - so how come nobody from Versace has blinged up me leg and splattered it all over the fash-mags, eh?

I mean, you think a pierced nipple is cutting edge? A tattoo?

Lightweights.

You wanna try this - I call it 'Zombie Chic' and it's gonna be THE totally infectious look of the Summer...

Mwah Mwah! Mwaaaarrrggghhh!

Release Bilal Hussein.

Check out the soon to be publicly launched Free Bilal website and add your name to the petition.

Bilal Hussein is an Iraqi Associated Press photographer and Pulitzer Prize winner who's been held in Camp Cropper jail on the outskirts of Baghdad for over a year without charge.

The only explanation for his arrest seems to be that pictures he'd taken of insurgent activity made him persona-non-grata with the occupation authorities.

In journalistic terms, how Hussein covering the insurgency is markedly different from mainstream 'embedded' photographers in Iraq covering the activities of one belligerent party, and not covering the activities of the other, escapes me at present.

Bilal Hussein is an Iraqi national, so it makes perfect sense for him to cover the activities of his fellow countrymen engaged in a guerilla conflict in his own land.

Whether I, or anyone else considers the Iraqi or Afghan insurgencies 'the enemy' is irrelevant. The role of journalism in war is supposed to be trying to cover both sides, not throwing your toys out of the pram when somebody tells you something you don't like.

That can be left to bloggogandists, or regimes like North Korea who expect the press to 'defend the Homeland' against whatever Big Bad Wolf is currently convenient, and keep its trap shut about everything else.

If there's something dodgy afoot, of course the authorities can simply charge Bilal Hussein.

But they haven't. For over a year.

Hello? Habeas Corpus anyone?

Bilal Hussein is not alone of course. In the current course of this disastrous (and undeclared) War on Terror, we've upheld our finest democratic principles and set a noble example by so far throwing over 14,000 people into jail, without charge, indefinitely and in secret.

(Thanks to Tomas Munita and Victor Caivano for the Free Bilal link)

Crisis Management...

This story on the Digital Photo Pro website, featuring the work of Ed Kashi, lays out many arguments I've been trying to make on this blog from time to time, about where photojournalism is going, how it's getting there, and where it should be going.

John D. McHugh

Heard on the grapevine yesterday that my friend and colleague John D. McHugh was recently wounded by mortar shrapnel while working in Afghanistan.

Thankfully his injuries weren't life threatening and he's recovering in a hospital in Germany, apparently.

The Hackney Chapter of the International Association of Crocked Photographers sends good wishes and fraternal greetings to the Dublin Chapter...get well soon, John.