Press Review
David Schonauer
The Weekly World Tour
The Shock, Part 1. ”How do you express the shock of an earthquake in a still image? Itsuo Inouye of the Associated Press Tokyo bureau photographed two of his fellow journalists taking shelter under a table as the world shook.” Photo by Itsuo Inouye/AP, “Big Picture”, Boston Globe
The Shock, Part 2. ”Two office workers watch smoke rise over Tokyo after the earthquake. The image turns us into spectators, too.” Photo from Xinhua/Gamma/Rappho/Getty Images, “Lens”, New York Times
The Wave. ”Few photographs of the actual tsunami wave effectively captured its size and power. This image did just that by showing what was happening in the Heigawa estuary in Iwate Prefecture as the tsunami wave was approaching. You immediately understand the danger.” Photo from Reuters/Mainichi Shimbun, “In Focus”, The Atlantic
Devastation in Perspective, Part 1. ”More than any other medium, photographs excelled at conveying the vastness of the devastation following the tsunami. This aerial shot shows vehicles hurled together in Hitachinaka City.” Photo from AFP/Getty Images, “Big Picture”, Boston Globe
Devastation in Perspective, Part 2. ”Cargo containers became modernist sculpture, or a child’s set of building blocks.” Photo by Itsuo Inouye/Reuters, ”In Focus”, The Atlantic
Devastation in Perspective, Part 3. ”The human toll is given perspective by this image, which shows rescue workers carrying an earthquake victim in Miyako.” Photo from Kyodo/AP, ”Big Picture”, Boston Globe
Radiation, Part 1. ”This image of workers at the Fukushima Daini nuclear power plant is almost formal in composition. It suggests the invisible danger still looming.” Photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters, Washington Post
Radiation, Part 2. ”Workers in protective gear check for signs of radiation. This image puts a face on what is at stake—a child’s face.” Photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters, ”Big Picture”, Boston Globe
Radiation, Part 3. ”Here, a mother talks to her daughter, who has been isolation while being checked for signs of radiation in the Fukushima area. The image expresses a variety of fears.” Photo by Yuriko Nakao/Reuters, Washington Post
Alpen Amour. ”European common frogs living in the frozen Alps of France don’t have long summers in which to enjoy leisurely romance. When the snows melt, the work begins. Cyril Ruoso shot the photos for this story, in which we learn that the mating act itself can last for two days or more.” Photo by Cyril Ruoso, National Geographic, March 2011
Love American Style. ”Noted photographers Cook and Jenshel show how New Yorkers deal with the summer mating season as part of an essay on the city’s High Line park, which was built on an abandoned elevated railway on Manhattan’s West Side.” Photo by Diane Cook and Len Jenshel, National Geographic, April 2011
Rihanna in Vogue. ”If you promise the world’s most beautiful bodies, you’d better start delivering right on the cover. A big success for both Rihanna and Vogue.” Photo by Annie Leibovitz, Vogue, April 2011
The Mind, In Color. ”This image was taken from a new book called Portraits of the Mind: Visualizing the Brain from Antiquity to the 21st Century, in which scientist Carl Schoonover describes a new computer-modeling technique allowing researchers to create 3-D images of the smallest components of the human brain—in this image, the brain’s neocortex.” Photo by Thomas Deerinck and Mark Ellisman, Scientific American, March 2011
The Shock, Part 1. ”How do you express the shock of an earthquake in a still image? Itsuo Inouye of the Associated Press Tokyo bureau photographed two of his fellow journalists taking shelter under a table as the world shook.” Photo by Itsuo Inouye/AP, “Big Picture”, Boston Globe
David Schonauer’s press review evidently begins with Japan. How can the shock of an earthquake, followed by a tsunami, and then a nuclear threat be shown in images? Itsuo Inouye photographed two journalists taking refuge under a table during the earthquake. After the tsunami, his photographs of cargo containers published in the Boston Globe resemble a contemporary sculpture. But it’s the result of the tsunami. The New York Times chose a photograph from Xinhua/Gamma/Rapho/Getty Images. The Atlantic publishes one of the rare images that shows us the incredible devastating force of the tsunami wave in the estuary of Heigawa. The last horror that the people of Japan are living through is the threat of a nucleur meltdown. Kim Kyung-Hoon for the Washington Post followed workers at the Fukushima plant and the teams responsible for measuring the levels of radiation.
The second part of David Schonauer’s press review is at the complete opposite spectrum as it involves romance. National Geographic shows us everything from the mating rituals of frogs in the French Alps (Cyril Ruoso), to the summer romances of young New York couples (Diane Cook and Len Jenshel). Could this be a way of annoucing the arrival of spring?
The press review concludes with the voluptuous Rihanna, photographed by Annie Leibovitz, for Vogue and another image just as stunning of the human brain by Thomas Deerinck and Mark Ellisman (Scientific American).
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