I just got an email from Alyse Emdur, an artist in the Los Angeles area who’s started this project. I don’t know her but she wants to get the word out and I’ve never heard of anything quite like it. Here’s the description:
While teaching, I witnessed the presence of army recruiters in our educational environment. I am initiating a nation wide participatory project, Photograph a Recruiter and am inviting high school students to contribute. The project invites high school students to photograph the military recruiters in their schools! Through the act of looking back at recruiters, students are encouraged to engage in critical discussion about war and recruitment.
The ongoing growing collection of photographs, taken by high school students, will be uploaded on the website www.photographarecruiter.com. Select images will also be printed for exhibit in a traveling Photograph A Recruiter art show. For more information, or to submit image(s), write to, photographarecruiter@gmail.com
Shawn Rocco, the “Cellphone guy,” in the NYTimes:
Shawn Rocco, 37, is a professional photographer. He shoots a Motorola E815. Yes, that’s a cellphone. Not when he’s actually on assignment for The News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C., where he has worked full time since 2002, but in those situations when he doesn’t mind ceding some control to a medium that is idiosyncratic — to say the least — in exchange for the happy prize of serendipity; the image that doesn’t quite emerge as he planned and is therefore all that more meaningful.
Shawn’s blog is at “cellular obscura” and has funny commentary along with the photos. In the article he compares cell phones to Polaroids: “Wih Polaroid, it wasn’t a crapshoot, but you left a lot of things in the hands of the chemistry.” As a former Polaroid user myself, I love that. I’m currently using a six year old camera I had formerly given up for dead and it still takes some stunning pictures (I love this spring’s Atsion series).
