December 2, 2006

Yesterday marked a milestone. It was five years ago, on December 1, 2001 -- as American and coalition troops were fighting in Afghanistan -- that photographer Harry Benson hovered over the Arabian Sea to take a group portrait of the crew of the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt. For Benson's shot, taken on assignment for Vanity Fair, the crew brandished a banner which they believed to be the famous flag that had been raised by three firemen at Ground Zero.

PHOTO (c) COPYRIGHT HARRY BENSON

No such luck. As my book points out -- and as Editor & Publisher observed yesterday in a tantalizing online feature -- the flag, in fact, was a different flag entirely. (Please read the E&P link and the last chapter of Watching the World Change.)

Meanwhile, a blogger named Adam, based in Minnesota, continues to write, in "real time," about his reactions to reading Watching the World Change. It's not all favorable, I must say. Admittedly, it can be bracing to get into the mind of one's reader as he/she reads.

Speaking of books with visual appeal, if there are fans of photography on your holiday gift list, I would recommend perusing the following new titles:

-- the smart and sumptuous Georgia O'Keefe & John Loengard: Paintings and Photographs, which seems to have been not only masterfully designed and printed but actually curated by photo-sage Loengard and publishing mandarin Lothar Schirmer

--the new Annie Leibovitz tome (which is a companion to her exhibition, now up at the Brooklyn Museum of Art), A Photographer's Life, which weaves intimate images of her private life with her photo-icons of key figures in our culture

-- the sepia-toned 1920s peek-a-boo mystique that shimmers from Jazz Age Beauties: The Lost Collection of Ziegfeld Photographer Alfred Cheney Johnston (showcasing the haunting work Johnston -- a photographer for the vintage Vanity Fair, whose relative obscurity will hopefully be remedied by this volume from Robert Hudovernik)

--My America, by acclaimed photojournalist and Time's presidential chronicler Christopher Morris, which looks at the curious stasis and Potemkin artifice surrounding George W. Bush and the White House press corps as they navigate a Red State dystopia

-- Thin by Lauren Greenfield, published in concert with Greenfield's riveting H.B.O. documentary on anorexia

-- Idols + Believers, the ultimate party-photo smorgasbord, by Jocelyn Bain Hogg

-- and the incomparable Elvis at 21: New York to Memphis, lovingly organized by Chris Murray (the John Szarkowski-meets-P.T. Barnum of rock photography), containing classic and previoulsy unpublished photographs by Al Wertheimer, the godfather of candid Elvis imagery.

For photojournalists-in-the-making I'd suggest Dirck Halstead's Moments In Time: Photos and Stories from One of America's Top Photojournalists. (I'm currently working my way through Alicia Shepard's double-biography, Woodward and Bernstein: Life in the Shadow of Watergate as well as Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. Both authors have synthesized details from myriad sources to come up with truly compelling narratives.)