Practical Archivist

hugewiener:

There was a party on May 3rd at the University of Southern California with the majority of attendees being African-American and Hispanic USC students. The party was registered with the school, and there was another party directly across the street being attended by mostly Caucasian/White students. Both parties had similar noise levels according to dozens of accounts from both sides (source).

Two cops arrived to the party with the minorities and told them to lower their noise level; the party’s host told the attendees to go inside the house and they resumed the party in there with lower volume. A few minutes later the cops came back and students began leaving, and the cops arrested the host. More and more cops began to arrive and soon a helicopter came. All of this was while the students were filing out and more and more cops entered the home; furthermore, the white party continued across the street and some officers even went there to tell them to stay inside and safe. A white student told reporters that “basically they didn’t stop our party at all. They had no problem with us.” (source).

As the minority students saw all the cops and attempted to leave, some were tased, and some were slammed to the ground and arrested. Many resisted on the grounds that they had no idea why they were being arrested seeing as they were leaving peacefully and were over the drinking age (the party required ID). Even more cops arrived (source)(video).

Later that night at about 4:30am, a resident at the house where the white party was thrown was awoken by thudding. He rose to see two LAPD officers trying to speak to his roommate. They ordered him to wake up everybody in the (co-ed) house and as they did so they stumbled into two female residents shirtless and asleep, and one of the officers simply stared. (source)

The reason that they were in that house was to gather statements about how LAPD acted correctly against the minority students but the students at the white party’s house gave factual statements that did not incriminate the minority students how the officers wanted. They have complained about their home being entered without a warrant in the middle of the night but have yet to hear back.

On Tuesday USC will have an open forum in regards to the racial profiling that happened (at the party and in the past) at the school but that is not enough; this has to be more than a local issue and should be made known nationally. USC has issues with racial profiling and it is time that it stops. Anyone can help by signing this petition and making it big. (Photograph source)

(via wilwheaton)

:::SWOOOOOON:::

thingsorganizedneatly:

SUBMISSION: This is an old typewriter I had the pleasure to dismantle today :) hope you like it!

Flags and Helpers

In which John talks about the bombing at the Boston Marathon while he drives to the dentist.

<3 this.

(via fishingboatproceeds)

The story behind John Tlumack’s riveting photograph of Boston officers leaping into action moments after the first bomb went off…

via edgmont:

Okay, this is super meta — but also interesting for photojournalism geeks like myself.

In the seconds after the tragic Boston Marathon bombing this morning, Globe photographer John Tlumacki snapped this harrowing and widely-circulated image of 78-year-old runner Bill Iffrig on the ground, three policeman springing into action around him.

But check out the AP image above. It was taken from the bridge above the finish line just seconds before the Globe photo.  If you look carefully, you can actually see Tlumaki in a yellow vest, camera poised, about to take the now-famous photo.

Also, be sure to read this interview with Tlumaki about his experience on the ground today.

Mannequin Artist Lester Gabba Dining in Supper Club with not-really-alive Cynthia.. Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt.

mrchrislay:

SUPER excited for this Cactus Club show, and hot DAMN that’s one of the coolest posters I’ve ever had my name associated with.

Boy howdy!

mdhsphotographs:

Help MdHS solve this photo mystery. We want to know what is happening in this photograph:

Detective room, Police Department
ca. 1910
Hughes Company 
8x10 inch glass negative
Hughes Company Collection
Maryland Historical Society
Z9.584.PP8

I found this photograph in the Hughes Collection about a year ago. This is definitely the most disturbing photograph I’ve seen at MdHS. Being completely nonplussed, I started asking around about it - historians, journalists, etc. but no one had a definite answer but provided great speculations and observations. MdHS Library Blog “underbelly”, created a post to help solve the mystery (“Masked Mystery” by Joe Tropea). 

Here are the facts: 

• There are no other photos in the collection that relate to this one (that we know of).
• There are 15 masked individuals and three unmasked individuals.
• The masks are folded in the middle around the nose and have a pattern around the edges, similar to a napkin.
• The African American man on the platform seems calm (for someone in a mysterious situation), is wearing a visible wedding ring, and has a pin on his coat.
• There is a newspaper on the table with a note across is which I thought said “Lot 001” but it’s difficult to tell. 
• This is definitely ca. 1900-1920 as the original format is glass negative and this is definitely after the invention of electricity.
• Just because the photo was labeled “detective room” does not mean that this is absolute truth. Often times people will write a description several years after the photo made it’s way to MdHS. It may not have been The Hughes Company who wrote this description.
• The Hughes Company was a commercial photography company in Baltimore from the late 1800s until the 1970s. They mostly photographed construction, buildings, events, professionals, etc. in the Baltimore area.
• This is too early in Baltimore history to be the first African American police officer. The first African American to join the police department was Violet Hill Whyte in 1937.

Go to the MdHS Library blog to read more educated guesses. 

(via avdisco)

timelightbox:

As a photographer, I have exquisitely bad timing: In nearly 23 years of marriage, my wife points out, I have only taken about 10 pictures of her with her eyes open. Instagram helps make my images look better, but it can’t fix bad timing.

In my job, I get to hang out with some of the best photographers in the world, and over the years, shooters like Yuri Kozyrev and Franco Pagetti have patiently explained to be what makes a good picture — composition, lighting, the whole nine yards. I’ve also looked over the shoulders of TIME’s photo editors, the best in the business, and learned a few things.

But photography is a mystical art, and for all my knowledge, I could never take a great picture.

Until now.

The image you see here, taken in Cairo last week, is the best picture I have taken. It may be the best picture I will ever take. If you will indulge a little arrogance, it is perfectly composed, perfectly lit, and perfectly captures a moment of high drama.

It was a fluke.

It happened as TIME Managing Editor Rick Stengel, photo editor Patrick Witty, Cairo correspondent Ashraf Khalil and I were making our way to Tahrir Square. We’d heard that the protests against President Mohamed Morsi’s recent emergency decree were growing, and there was a sense of something big about to happen. As we turned into one of the entrances to the square, we stopped to watch a street battle between young men (some mere boys) and the Egyptian riot police. This was taking place some 200 yards from us, so we felt relatively safe. I pulled out my iPhone, and started taking some shots.

Suddenly, things changed. The young men turned away from the police and started running up the street, directly toward us. It took me a moment to realize why: the police had started to fire tear-gas canisters into the crowd.  Ashraf and I have been gassed enough times over the years to know what to do next: get the heck out of there. Patrick was a few yards away, out of the firing line.

I grabbed Rick and pushed. Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw the smoke trail of a canister coming in our direction. I told Rick to close his eyes, and kept shoving him through a panicking crowd. There was no strategic thinking going on, we just needed to get out.

We did, but not before we’d taken a blast of the gas in our faces. All things considered, it wasn’t the most noxious gas I’d encountered: Ashraf agreed it was a mild dose. (The really nasty stuff can burn skin.) By the time we got to the square, the effects of the gas were already clearing.

It wasn’t until much later that I looked at the pictures I’d taken, and realized that I had somehow captured the moment the gas canister landed at our feet. I have no recollection of taking that picture, but there it was, perfectly framed and lit. Instagram helped sharpen it up. Rick and Patrick liked it, and the photo editors back in NYC decided to run it in the magazine.

So there it is: the best picture I’ve ever taken, published in TIME Magazine, no less. And it’s a total, utter fluke.

— Bobby Ghosh, Editor-at-Large

(Follow Bobby on Instagram @ghoshworld)

huffpostcomedy:

Bill Murray on Gilda Radner:

“Gilda got married and went away. None of us saw her anymore. There was one good thing: Laraine had a party one night, a great party at her house. And I ended up being the disk jockey. She just had forty-fives, and not that many, so you really had to work the music end of it. There was a collection of like the funniest people in the world at this party. Somehow Sam Kinison sticks in my brain. The whole Monty Python group was there, most of us from the show, a lot of other funny people, and Gilda. Gilda showed up and she’d already had cancer and gone into remission and then had it again, I guess. Anyway she was slim. We hadn’t seen her in a long time. And she started doing, “I’ve got to go,” and she was just going to leave, and I was like, “Going to leave?” It felt like she was going to really leave forever.

So we started carrying her around, in a way that we could only do with her. We carried her up and down the stairs, around the house, repeatedly, for a long time, until I was exhausted. Then Danny did it for a while. Then I did it again. We just kept carrying her; we did it in teams. We kept carrying her around, but like upside down, every which way—over your shoulder and under your arm, carrying her like luggage. And that went on for more than an hour—maybe an hour and a half—just carrying her around and saying, “She’s leaving! This could be it! Now come on, this could be the last time we see her. Gilda’s leaving, and remember that she was very sick—hello?”

We worked all aspects of it, but it started with just, “She’s leaving, I don’t know if you’ve said good-bye to her.” And we said good-bye to the same people ten, twenty times, you know. 

And because these people were really funny, every person we’d drag her up to would just do like five minutes on her, with Gilda upside down in this sort of tortured position, which she absolutely loved. She was laughing so hard we could have lost her right then and there.

It was just one of the best parties I’ve ever been to in my life. I’ll always remember it. It was the last time I saw her.”

- from Live from New York: an Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live

[via oldloves]

explore-blog:

Excellent graphic explainer of the fiscal cliff from Newsbound