| Reflections on Persian Mirrors
On Jan. 27 the exhibit “Persian Visions: Contemporary Photography from Iran" opened at the Johnson Museum. This hallmark exhibit features 60 works by 20 of Iran's photographers and is one of the first major surveys of contemporary Iranian photography held in the United States. The exhibit begins with a brief overview of the history of photography in Iran, while discussing the country's tendency for propoganda in the 1980s during Iran's war with Iraq. Since that time more detail and attention have been given to aesthetics, though there is still no room for nudity, potentially controversial imagery or any art that questions the regime due to the Iranian government's utilization of censorship. In this exhibition, the things left unseen leave the greater sensual impact, and those obscured somehow manage to speak the loudest.
Kodak will eliminate 3,000 more jobs
NEW YORK - Eastman Kodak Co. is cutting 3,000 more jobs this year as the picture-taking pioneer wraps up its wrenching transformation into a digital-imaging company focused on consumer photography and commercial printing. By year-end, its work force will slip below 30,000, less than half what it was just three years ago. On top of 27,000 layoffs already targeted, Kodak said Thursday it is reducing its payroll even further to accommodate the $2.35 billion sale in January of its health-imaging unit and its costly foray this week into a high-margin inkjet-printer market dominated by Hewlett Packard Co. "The dream was that we would wake up in 2008 with the digital company that we want to have. We're still right on that track," Chief Executive Antonio Perez said at an annual meeting of Kodak analysts and institutional investors.
Photo studio now in business center
A 10-year-old photography business has opened a Rome studio in Coosa Valley Technical Colleges Business Expansion Center. Raine Photography opened for business in 1997 in the basement of John Raines house in Lindale and has now moved into the business center at 96 E. Callahan St. The business provides a variety of portrait services, as well as handling weddings, youth sports, special events and commercial photography. Raine describes his companys photography as a combination of photojournalistic technique and traditional portraiture. Our photojournalistic coverage will capture every moment with feeling, he said. The business can be reached by e-mail at john@rainephotography.com, on the Web at www.rainephotography.com or by phone at 706-409-3709.
Van Morrison and Rory Gallagher: Live at Montreux
For close to forty years the Montreaux Jazz Festival has set the standard for jazz as an all-inclusive art form. Two artists, purely coincidentally both Irish, have recently released DVDs containing concert performances at the famed fest, each of which, in its own way, illustrates how broad the definition of jazz can really be. Van Morrison titled one of his albums A Period of Transition, but that phrase might well apply to his entire career. Under the tutelage of impresario Bill Graham, The Belfast Cowboy had released the polished Wavelength in 1979, only to follow it with the modal mood piece Common One the very next year. This 1980 performance catches him at the nexus of those phases: his band, including the core of his Street Choir unitguitarist John Platania, keyboardist Jef Labes plus the individually distinctive hornmen Pee Wee Ellis and Mark Ishamis equally tight (and as absorbed in the music as their leader) whether on structured pieces like “Wild Night" or the looser likes of “Summertime in England." Morrison himself is not quite distant but definitely less enraptured by the evocative melody and lyrics of “Moondance," than the more open-ended “Haunts of Ancient Peace." Bereft of bonus features, this two-disc set nevertheless includes informative liner notes detailing the hasty preparations for the markedly different 1974 appearance included on the second disc in this set.
Ultra thin telephoto lens to revolutionise camera phones
Engineers in California have announced the development of a new lens that could drastically improve the quality of camera phone images. Researchers at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) created the ultra thin camera using origami to fold up the telephoto lens. They are hoping that the development will yield thin and lightweight high resolution cameras for use in mobile phones. The resulting imager is around seven times more powerful than a standard lens of the same depth meaning cameras can now be much thinner and more powerful at the same time. Joseph Ford, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the Jacobs School who leads the camera project, commented: .
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