Mick Hartley

Sixties New York

Photographer Tod Papageorge's first efforts at colour photography, from 1966-67 on the streets of New York.

[Photos: Tod Papageorge]

From his book Dr. Blankman's New York.

Front of house

Kenwood, with tree:

A cultural exchange event in accordance with the agreement to deepen and strengthen long-held bilateral relations

Back in 2015, North Korea's famous Moranbong Band were scheduled to play in Beijing, but headed home in a fit of pique after it became clear that President Xi Jinping wasn't going to attend. This was just at the time when Kim Jong-un claimed his scientists had built and deployed a hydrogen bomb. Xi's snub was seen as a sign of disapproval.

How times have changed. This is as clear a signal as you could ask for that relations between China and North Korea are once again nice and cosy. N.Korean Art Troupe Performs for Beijing Elite:

A North Korean art troupe staged two performances at the National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing, China last weekend as part of celebrations marking the 70th anniversary of the two countries' diplomatic ties this year.

The troupe was led by Ri Su-yong, who holds the rank of vice chairman in the Workers Party Central Committee.

It was the first time in over three years that a North Korean troupe performed in Beijing and sent another signal that the sometimes fractious allies are now the best of friends again after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's fourth visit earlier this month.

Security was tight at the venue before Saturday's performance, with face recognition systems checking the IDs of some 2,000 pre-selected audience members who included political leaders, corporate guests and North Korean embassy staff. The performance was not open to the foreign media.

The official Xinhua news agency said the show "was a cultural exchange event in accordance with the agreement to deepen and strengthen long-held bilateral relations."

Chinese President Xi Jinping and First Lady Peng Liyuan met with the troupe before watching the performance on Sunday. 

Colour dance

Japanese photographer Sayuri Ichida teams up with Japanese ballet dancer Mayu, in New York:

[Photos © Sayuri Ichida]

Shoreditch snaps

Empty building with graffiti, on Paul Street:

Blue, on Fleur de Lis Street:

Looking down Blossom Street:

Holocaust news

It's Holocaust Memorial Day. And here's the news:

Five per cent of UK adults do not believe the Holocaust took place and one in 12 believes its scale has been exaggerated, a survey has found.

The poll of more than 2,000 people was carried out by Opinion Matters for the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust (HMDT).

Almost two-thirds of respondents could not say how many Jews were murdered or "grossly" under-estimated the number.

More at the Independent:

One in five said fewer than two million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, while 45 per cent said they did not know....

More than 100 antisemitic incidents are recorded in Britain every month, according to the Community Security Trust. The organisation, which monitors anti-Jewish hate crime, warned last year that bigots were becoming “more confident to express their views”.

The European Jewish Congress this week voiced alarm about the resurgence of antisemitism, urging political leaders to “prepare for the upcoming battle against extremism that is infecting our continent again”.

Model photography

Lisette Model, born Elise Amelie Felicie Stern in Vienna in 1901, studied with Arnold Schönberg before moving to Paris. She gave up music in 1933, and discovered photography through her sister Olga and her friend Rogi André, André Kertész's first wife. In 1938 she emigrated to New York, where she made her name as a photographer. 

From Wikipedia:

Primarily known for the frank humanism of her street photography, exact details of Model's life remain unclear. What is known is that she was well known and respected in photographic communities during her life. She taught at the New School for Social Research in New York from 1951 up until her death in 1983 with many notable students, the most famous of which was Diane Arbus.

I think "frank humanism" here means, basically, that she took pictures of the odd and the ugly. Like her pupil Diane Arbus in fact. With a touch of Weegee.

Her best-known work consists of photographs she made with a 35-millimeter camera of people on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice and on the streets of New York's Lower East Side.

Promenade des Anglais, Nice, c. 1934.

French gambler, Promenade des Anglais, Nice, 1934.

Coney Island c. 1939.

Little man, Lower East Side, New York City 1939–42.

Singer at the Cafe Metropole, New York, 1946.

Sammy's, Bowery, New York, 1945.

Bowery, 1942.

Valeska Gert, New York, 1947.

The Camera is Cruel, a book on Model together with Diane Arbus and Nan Goldin, is just out.

"Let us produce and supply various kinds of consumer goods that are favoured by the people in the sector of light industry!"

From North Korea's official Rodong Sinmun news, we learn that new posters have been produced "to inspire the people to carry through the tasks set forth by Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un in his historic New Year Address".

Posters "Let us open a new road of advance for socialist construction under the uplifted banner of self-reliance!" and "Let all of us turn out in implementing the tasks set forth in the New Year Address!" call on all the Party members and other working people to work hard in the indefatigable spirit on the principle of self-reliance by adhering to the Party's new strategic line and bring about a revolutionary upswing on all fronts of socialist construction.

Another poster "Talented personnel, science and technology are our major strategic resources and weapons in socialist construction!" reflects the Party's policy of prioritizing science and technology and revolutionary policy for education.

Posters "Let us give impetus to hitting the targets of the five-year strategy for national economic development!" and "Let us achieve a greater development in establishing the Juche orientation in the metallurgical and chemical industries!" call on all the sectors and units to successfully carry out the targets of this year's struggle by effecting a great revolutionary upsurge.

Posters "Let us conduct a campaign for increased production on the agricultural front, the major point of attack!", "Let us open a new path for developing the fishing industry!" and "Let us produce and supply various kinds of consumer goods that are favoured by the people in the sector of light industry!" reflect the Party's intention to improve the people's standard of living radically.

A poster "Let the young people become pioneers of new technology, creators of new culture and pathfinders for a great leap forward!" calls on the young people to glorify the honor of vanguard and shock brigade on all fronts of socialist construction.

Keen collectors will no doubt be desperate to acquire the full set.

No mention, I see, of manure collection. That was, as I reported, a major rallying cry following the Supreme Leader's New Year Address. It would have made an interesting poster. "Let us advance the cause of socialist agriculture under the uplifted banner of self-reliance by collecting as much of the people's shit as possible!"

You can read the full (and stupendously dull) New Year Address here.

A blackout of rational thinking

Baffled by what's going on in Paris, with the Gilets Jaunes? Claire Berlinski takes apart the contradictions and absurdities:

The Gilets Jaunes’ complaints are incoherent because they do not, truly, have a complaint that the government could possibly solve. They are consumed by resentment and the sense that other people are having a better time than they are. Getting together once a week to be a cheerful mob is an end in itself. They love their Saturday get-togethers. They are like play-dates.

The colère makes much more sense if we assume that the issue is psychological, not economic. But that doesn’t mean this can go on. They are having this fun at the expense of the rest of France, and the rest of Europe, as well.[...]

If the mass of the Gilets Jaunes have no firm ideas, politically or economically, nor an allegiance to a political party, France’s political radicals certainly do. The Gilets Jaunes are fertile minds and very useful idiots. The shared goals of France’s far Left and far Right are to end the European Union, realign France with Russia, and destroy NATO. Under normal circumstances, American headlines would read, “Backed by Vladimir Putin, France’s far Right and far Left have joined forces violently to destroy the French Republic.” That is not an exaggeration, but such matters no longer seem to rank as news in the United States. Americans would traditionally consider a threat to France contrary to our ideals and interests, but we are distracted these days. [...]

The Gilets Jaunes are not behaving this way because they want to talk things over. Nor are they behaving this way because they have legitimate grievances. The French peasants are not starving and crying out for bread. Macron is not Marie Antoinette. This is not about the fuel tax, and it’s not about the cost of living either. No one knows what’s really causing this. It is hard for rational people to find reasons for irrational behavior. Obviously, however, whatever the reasons are, it is not what the perpetrators say it is.

There is, however, one obvious possibility. The Gilets Jaunes are behaving this way because they like it. The more violence they see, participate in, and hear about, the more excited they become at the prospect of it. When they see video clips of thugs attacking and overpowering the police, it does not make them think, “My God, that is terrible, where did our movement go wrong?” No “last men” here.

Those who were inclined to that reaction, or revulsion, have already left the scene. They had it when the Arc de Triomphe was desecrated during the third week of protests. Peace requires a Leviathan. But they have since seen that the Leviathan doesn’t have enough cops.

Destroying France will not meet anyone’s needs, of course. But the simplest logical calculations do not seem obvious to those afflicted with this unnamable problem. We’re living in a strange era where the obvious, even the axiomatic principles of civilization, are no longer obvious. Reason no longer counts. This worries me.

If you had asked me three years ago who would lead a violent uprising against the French Republic, I would have said, “The same people who attacked Charlie Hebdo. Obviously.” But the Islamists are, so far, sitting this one out. They’re not gone, although many did leave to join ISIS, and few are ever coming back. But more likely, they are waiting. After all, as Napoléon reminds us: Never interfere with an enemy in the process of destroying himself.

A complete misreading of the facts

What a surprise. Labour Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry says nothing about the war crimes of Russia and Iran in Syria, but castigates Israel for defending itself. From the Jerusalem Post:

Writing to Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary, on Wednesday, Ms Thornberry said: “I am sure that you have been gravely alarmed by the latest escalation in the multi-faceted conflict in Syria.

“These exchanges have been accompanied by unacceptable rhetoric from both parties, with Iranian air force commander Aziz Nasirzadeh saying his pilots were ready to 'confront the Zionist regime and eliminate it from the earth', and Israeli Intelligence Minister Israel Katz saying: 'The policy has changed. This is an open confrontation with Iran'.”

“The escalation also comes amid reports that your US counterpart, Mike Pompeo, has told the Netanyahu government in Israel that the US will have no objection if the Israeli air force conducts air strikes inside the sovereign state of Iraq against what it alleges are Iranian backed Shiite militias transporting missiles into Syria.

“These are all hugely dangerous developments, which – coupled with the general policy of aggression towards Iran being pursued by the Trump Administration – increase the risk of a drift by Israel and the US towards war with Iran.”

Ms Thornberry’s letter went on to call for a number of “immediate issues to be addressed”, almost all of which are aimed at Israel rather than Iran, including urging the suspension of arms sales to Israel and cancelling joint exercises between the Israeli air force and the RAF planned for later this year because “it would seem utterly inappropriate for the RAF to be helping to train pilots who would then be using those lessons in a war of aggression against Iran, or in breach of Iraq’s sovereignty.”

Jennifer Gerber, director of Labour Friends of Israel, said: "It is frankly beyond belief that, having barely uttered a word about the brutal war crimes and mass killing of civilians carried out by Russia and Iran on behalf of the Assad regime, the Labour leadership has chosen to cast Israel as the villain in Syria.

"Once again, Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party is showing its hostility to the world’s only Jewish state, its appeasement of Vladimir Putin and its failure to recognise the danger posed by the Iranian theocracy. This would be absurd were it not so appalling.”

Joan Ryan, parliamentary chair of LFI, responded to Ms Thornberry’s letter by calling it “nothing short of a complete misreading of the facts.

“The leadership of Iran has consistently made clear its desire to destroy Israel,” Ms Ryan, the MP for Enfield North, pointed out.

“The comments you refer to by Brigadier General Aziz Nasirzadeh are simply the latest in a series of bellicose threats by Tehran dating back to the Islamic revolution in 1979. As the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei stated last June: ‘Our stance against Israel is the same stance we have always taken. Israel is a malignant cancerous tumour in the West Asian region that has to be removed and eradicated: it is possible and it will happen.’

“The current tensions between Israel and Iran in Syria stem from these threats and the desire of Tehran to turn them into a reality.

 “Thus, with the connivance of Russia – on whom, I note, you once again fail to place any responsibility for the death and destruction it has wrought in Syria – Iran has worked in recent years to use Syria as a base from which to attack Israel.”....