Obit of the Day: Photographer Wayne F. Miller
Wayne MIller was going to be a banker. But as with so many of his generation, World War II intervened. Mr. Miller was recruited by fashion photographer Edward Steichen to be part of an elite naval photography unit. During the war, Mr. Miller would document all facets of military life. He was also one of the first photographers on the ground after the bombing at Hiroshima (bottom center).
Mr. Miller returned home to Chicago at the end of the war. Having documented death and destruction for four years, Mr. Miller had decided to try and use his camera to heal. He spent three years on Chicago’s predominately black South Side documenting day-to-day life. His hope was to bring whites and blacks together. It became his seminal work, Chicago’s South Side.
The rest of Mr. Miller’s career covered broad areas. Whether it was as a member of the famed Magnum Photo cooperative or curating “The Family of Man” (which featured the photo, above, of Mr. Miller’s father delivering his grandson, David), Mr. Miller was attempting to capture ”’universal truths,’ and it was his hope that if he could use his camera to reveal those truths, we might achieve a greater understanding of ourselves and each other.”
Wayne Miller died on May 22, 2013 at the age of 94.
Sources: Chicago Sun-Times and MagnumPhotos.com
Images:
Top left: Younger Siblings of Detroit Gang Members, Detroit, Michigan, 1947 Copyright of Wayne Miller and courtesy of www.liquidnight.tumblr.com
Top right: Undated photo from World War II. Copyright Wayne Miller and courtesy of www.faciepopuli.com (a tumblr)
Top center: Birth of Wayne Miller’s son David, delivered by David’s grandfather. Copyright Wayne Miller and courtesy of smithsonianmag.com Note: Carl Sagan included a copy of this photo on the “golden record” that was placed on Voyager I and II as a message for other cultures. The spacecraft were launched in 1977 and left the solar system in the 2010s.
Bottom center: Chicago South Side, 1947 Copyright of Wayne Miller and courtesy of thenewyorker.com. Note: When Langston Hughes was writing a newspaper column he would refer to a character he called “Simple.” When he saw this photo taken by Mr. Miller he said “That’s Simple.” Source
Bottom left: Chicago’s South Side, 1946-1948 Copyright of Wayne Miller and courtesy fo www.higherpictures.com
Bottom right: Hiroshima, Japan (Japanese soldier and Atomic bomb destruction), 1945 Copyright of Wayne Miller and courtesyof www.hartmanfineart.net
For more incredible images check out Obit of the Day’s Photography page
Completion date: August, 2012
Location: St-Petersburg, Russia,”Taiga” space.
Technique: silkscreen, neon lettering.“How long is now” - the question unanswered in the form of graffiti on the wall of the legendary Berlin squat Tacheles, which became a symbol of independent Berlin of the ’90s. But how to get an answer to this question and go further to the understanding of ongoing existence? The main line of my exhibition was an artistic answer to that is to stop focusing on the moment of “now” and approve its permanent presence. Hope and romantic urge ,contained in the actual approval of the “now is right now”, - is a confident voice of a generation that can be witnessed in the “Taiga”,the liveliest self-initiated, non-institutional open cultural project space of St. Petersburg. After the exhibition ended, the site-specific neon installation “Now is just right now”, like a lighthouse that indicates new horizons, remained in the backyard of “Taiga” space contributing to the formation of a new self-identity of St. Petersburg art scene in a global context.
Dorothea Lange
Tractored Out (Power farming displaces tenants from the land in the western dry cotton area), Childress County, Texas Panhandle, 1938
gelatin silver print, 9 15/16 in. x 13 inches (25.24 cm x 33.02 cm)
The immediate reaction of German POWs upon watching uncensored footage of the concentration camps shot by the US Signal Corps.
People often forget that most of the German troops had no idea about what was going on, they weren’t all fanatic Nazis bent on genocide, they were just regular soldiers who answered the call when their country went to war.
^ This
THANK YOU SO MUCH OMG
wow
im speechless
NO NO NO NO
FUCK THIS SHIT
THE GERMAN CITIZENS KNEW
THEY KNEW
The ghettos happened in cities, the apartheid laws happened under their noses, Jews were rounded up under their noses THEY FUCKING KNEW
Death camps and concentration camps were built WITHIN CITY LIMITS. Auschwitz, for example, is well within the city, and people take fucking strolls under its walls. I was fucking THERE, don’t even. The Polish knew, the Germans knew, it was LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE not to know. It’s even in the historical record, it’s even in fucking civilian diaries, THEY KNEW.
I AM SO FUCKING SICK OF THIS REVISIONIST BULLSHIT.
^This.
Sorry not sorry, German apologists, but what you’re seeing in this photo isn’t shock, it’s guilt. Richly deserved, completely merited GUILT. So take your, “Aw, those innocent little German soldiers, poor babies,” revisionist shit and shove it back up your collective ass.
As per Arendt, “just following orders” = the banality of evil.
Not only did German soldiers and citizens know about the Holocaust, many desired it. No free passes. Never.
^ This. x1000
How to Build a Device that Improves Our Neural Abilities | MIT Technology Review
Enhancing the flow of information through the brain could be crucial to making neuroprosthetics practical.
Upcoming United States actions:
May 18th: ‘Operation Green Jobs’ March from Philadelphia to Washington, DC organized by the Poor People’s Economic and Human Rights Campaign.
May 18th to 23rd: the Home Defenders League Week of Action against the banks and foreclosures in Washington, DC.
May 18th to 20th: there is a weekend of protests against the closure of schools in Chicago.
May 22nd: Stop the Frack Attack People’s Forum in Washington, DC.
May 25th: Protests against Monsanto everywhere
May 25th to June 3rd: March from Philadelphia to Harrisburg against prison spending.
June 1st: Get on the Bus For Bradley Court Martial Trial with buses leaving from Baltimore, MD, Washington DC, New York City and Willimantic, CT.
June 14th to 16th: Trade Justice Action Camp in Bellingham, WA by the Backbone Campaign
June 24th to 29th: is the beginning of “ Fearless Summer” that starts “ an epic summer of actions.”
Reblog with your own additions to the list.
