Thursday 24 September 2009

The NEW New York Times Photoblog: LENS


Lens is the photojournalism blog of The New York Times, presenting the finest and most interesting visual and multimedia reporting — photographs, videos and slide shows. A showcase for Times photographers, it also seeks to highlight the best work of other newspapers, magazines and news and picture agencies; in print, in books, in galleries, in museums and on the Web. And this blog is still an infant! It just started on May 15, 2009! Lens blog points readers in the direction of important books, galleries and museum exhibitions. And it draws on The Times’s own pictorial archive, numbering in the millions of images and going back to the early 20th century. In time, the NY Times hopes it will also become the center of a community of readers who are not just interested in photojournalism — in the broadest sense of visually chronicling the world around us — but actively involved in some way or other, whether professionally or informally. You can expect them to ask you for your photos on some topical subject or theme. Longtime readers of The Times may be mildly amused by the idea of a Times photo blog, since it is still possible to recall days, as recently as the 1970s, when there was not a single photograph anywhere on Page 1. But the truth is that photojournalism has been in the Gray Lady’s blood for 95 years. The Mid-Week Pictorial, a rotogravure magazine, was established in 1914 specially to provide ample photographic coverage of the war in Europe that would soon turn into World War I. Lens is a healthy way to start your morning. (over coffee of course)

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