What takes me aback are how graphic the news photos are (#8 especially) as compared to the almost total visual censorship of American war casualties over the past twelve years.

After the battle over Julie...

Mr. Flake and Mr. McCain ... say they simply bowed to the facts on the ground: their constituents would never accept a full-scale immigration bill until they first believed the border was secure. Now, they explain,...

They emerged this week as the most vivid representatives of Obama's new liberal America, as emblematic of the times and what ails us as Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson were America's "terror era" canaries in the coal mine.

In a media...

In the foreground of the photo, in a setting that is quintessentially New York, we witness a man in a hole so deep, he cannot climb out of it while just beyond him, diagonally to his left, he faces the immediate threat...

After greeting and thanking a handful of volunteers from St. Michael's Catholic Church in Canfield, Ohio -- who said they typically visit the St. Vincent DePaul Society every Saturday and serve food from 10 to 11:30 a.m. -- Ryan, his...

I posted this on the BagNews Facebook page last Thursday not knowing how much the discussion and disturbance surrounding it would grow. As not just an analyst of visual politics but having done my doctoral dissertation on the psychological properties...

I have to say, it takes some doing to actually turn the cover of a national news magazine, and a supposedly mainstream on at that, into its own, one-pass version of the Muhammed hate video.

It's one thing to pose a wailing, two-fisted...

On top of running a fundraising lottery for dinners with the President (I'm sure you've been getting Michelle and Barack's emails), the White House has been prominently using the ensuing sit downs for photo-ops. The latest event took place a few...

It didn't have the same drama as the '08 shot. That photo of Obama in a downpour wearing a black rain slicker invited comparison to Neo from "The Matrix." (It also won the NYT's Damon Winter first place...

This photo of Romney in Retail Land wouldn't be all that noteworthy except that Mitt has shown little interest in playing down his wealth.  Now, I'm not saying I'd know where the barcode is either. (This shot is from a food bank in...

(Note: I originally posted this on BagNewsNotes back in November, probably too early in the election cycle for this kind of...

I really appreciate Digby's post on what could have been a historic day Wednesday. Her point of focus was Lyndon Johnson and how he threw himself, body and soul, not just behind civil rights but behind the Civil...

When Mrs. Obama rocks the Gap dress or the J.Crew pants, she's obviously not just a.) wearing what she's comfortable in or b.) trying to show us she's on the same page as the average American woman. She's also completely tapped into our...

Do photos heal?

For pure spectacle, it's hard to top the imagery of the Space Shuttle gliding through the skies of San Francisco, Washington and New York, creating powerful juxtapositions with America's most cherished and symbolic landscapes, monuments and landmarks. I imagine...

Anna Brown is dying.

Last September, Anna Brown, a 29-year-old homeless black woman, went to three hospital emergency rooms complaining of pain in her legs. At the last one, St. Mary's, she refused to leave without getting...

All this "Derrick Bell equals Jeremiah Wright," suppressed video, "Obama the closet radical" talk might have heightened the fear-mongering back...

It's been widely noted that two men kissing is a lot more freighted than two women, which is why some people complained when I posted the dock-side photo of Petty Officer 2nd Class Marissa Gaeta kissing Petty Officer 3rd Class Citlalic Snell...

The GOP race has become so weak, so interminable and so flush with cash in order to smear-and-repeat, whomever ends up dragging himself across that finish line will likely do so with an image encased in a sarcophagus of mud.

If job 1 right now is delegates,...

If we want to take visual politics and the integrity of imagery seriously, what Chrysler and its corporate Madison Avenue agency did in its Halftime in America ad can be best (and more easily) understood as anti-union rather than pro-Democratic party or pro-Obama.