The profits are in advertising that informs, entertains, or creates a spectacle—because that’s what sends a signal. Targeting is a dead end. Maybe “Do Not Track” will save online advertising from itself.
The daily and stubborn reality for everybody building businesses on the strength of Web advertising is that the value of digital ads decreases every quarter, a consequence of their simultaneous ineffectiveness and efficiency. The nature of people’s behavior on the Web and of how they interact with advertising, as well as the character of those ads themselves and their inability to command real attention, has meant a marked decline in advertising’s impact.
Few, if any, African governments have been comfortable with notions of partition or secession, fearful of similar separatist pressures in their own countries in a continent where colonial-era frontiers often ignore traditional affiliations.
Afternoon walk - scene 1 #instagram #iphonography
Americana Lens, Alfred Infrared Film, No Flash, Taken with Hipstamatic
Royal Raindrops Crape Myrtle in Bloom
Matty ALN Lens, BlacKeys B+W Film, No Flash, Taken with HipstamaticThe African Development Bank (AfDB) says Africa’s middle class had risen to 313 million people in 2010, 34% of the continent’s population – compared with 111 million (26%) in 1980, 151 million (27%) in 1990 and 196 million (27%) in 2000.
Rhinoceros © Mario Moreno
About Langston Hughes
An example of the type of criticism of which Hughes was writing is Estace Gay’s comments on Fine Clothes to the Jew. “It does not matter to me whether every poem in the book is true to life,” Gay wrote. “Why should it be paraded before the American public by a Negro author as being typical or representative of the Negro? Bad enough to have white authors holding up our imperfections to public gaze. Our aim ought to be [to] present to the general public, already misinformed both by well meaning and malicious writers, our higher aims and aspirations, and our better selves.” Commenting on reviewers like Gay, Hughes wrote: “I sympathized deeply with those critics and those intellectuals, and I saw clearly the need for some of the kinds of books they wanted. But I did not see how they could expect every Negro author to write such books. Certainly, I personally knew very few people anywhere who were wholly beautiful and wholly good. Besides I felt that the masses of our people had as much in their lives to put into books as did those more fortunate ones who had been born with some means and the ability to work up to a master’s degree at a Northern college. Anyway, I didn’t know the upper class Negroes well enough to write much about them. I knew only the people I had grown up with, and they weren’t people whose shoes were always shined, who had been to Harvard, or who had heard of Bach. But they seemed to me good people, too.”
The criticism of Langston Hughes work seems similar to the current argument about how Africa is portrayed in the western media. Should we strive to “present to the general public, already misinformed both by well meaning and malicious writers, our higher aims and aspirations, and our better selves” in an attempt to change the perceptions about the continent and its people? Or as Langston Hughes argued, present the raw unvarnished truth as it is.
The question of whether, say, India or Nigeria are “better off” because of British imperialism contains an inherent contradiction: before colonialism there were no states called India or Nigeria. But to prove the horrors of imperial rule—or to dispute the historians who recommend that the United States self-consciously adopt Britain’s former “burden”—one has only to examine the catastrophic choices of British colonialists that continue to influence events today.
more.
Photo by Malian photographer Hamidou Maiga
The square-lipped or white rhinoceros has always been a favorite photographic subject of mine. Their skin is rough and has beautiful texture which can make for beautiful black and white images. Despite weighing anything between 3500 and 5000 pounds they are typically quite placid and if familiar with the presence of a landrover or game viewing vehicle will pay you very little notice. Males and females look very similar to each other and it can sometimes be quite a challenge to tell the sexes apart. The males tend to be larger and have shorter thicker horns. This is a fairly large female. I have tried to create a contemplative but powerful portrait of this beautiful animal. I chose to go with black and white to enhance the interesting texture in its skin and photographed from a low angle to empower her.
Winter issue 2010. Fela Kuti by Anton Corbijn.
A Woman’s Work by airpanther on Flickr.
Portrait of a Sauk family. Photograph by Frank Rinehart, January 1899.
Source: Library of Congress
(via itzigani)
“Moroccan Jews” by documentary photographer Aarom Elkaim
Aaron Elkaim is a documentary photographer based in Toronto. He studied Film and Cultural anthropology before deciding to pursue photography. With four other Canadian photographers, he founded the Boreal Collective.
His photo-essay “Exodus,” which won second prize in the 2010 Viewbook Photostory documentary competition, explores the remains of the Jewish communities in Morocco. He documents personal and familial narratives, archival and architectural remains of Jewish communities in modern-day Morocco.
The accompanying notes mention that the Jewish community was founded over two thousand years ago, prospered for centuries, and grew to occupy a proud place within Moroccan national identity.
via dynamicafrica:
