Mt. St. Helen’s blew it’s top on this day almost three decades ago, what wikipedia calls the deadliest and most economically destructive volcanic event in the history of the United States. The biggest earthquake was Alaska, ‘64.

I intentionally use a less than completely dramatic shot (actually of Mt. Adams from St. Helens) from Jasonaut, as we hiked around out there at one point a decade ago together, though I never summited that mountain as he later did. In the shot you can barely make out still stunted tree growth in the area. You’re hiking along, then come around a bend to see what was the blast area. All of the trees are cut off at the height they would have been at the time, giving the illusion it only happened years ago. Elsewhere in the area, there is the world’s longest lava tube, which is far enough away to not feel like the mountain per say. But lava was forced out of the ground at some point in the past and created a sort of smooth lateral hole, which is a natural trail through a cave, with other fissues and tubes leading off of it. You can climb into these fissures, squeeze yourself through an area that might open into a bigger space. At some point it might occur how close you are to an active volcano, and if the earth were mearly to belch, as it were, you would become human jelly without even a moment to realize it was happening. It adds a little something to the spelunk.
To tell more of the story of that ‘97 hike: we went with another individual (who shall remain nameless for the sake of posterity, let’s just say a less than experienced hiker). Back in nearby Portland, OR before the trip, this guy had ‘gone to the store’ to get supplies and strained our patience by being gone for a very LONG time while we waited. So we finally loaded ourselves into the truck, drove north into Washington and the area park, messed around in the lava tube, then off to hike/camp overnight on the mountain, a nice little walk but well below the snowline. Suddenly, just as we were about to make camp for the night, Other Guy announced that he didn’t have any food! It turned out his entire lengthy trip to the store was to get/obsess over picking out boots and he’d completely neglected the thought of what he would eat in the wilderness after a day of hiking. Luckily, the others were prepared and had extra to eat. What was he carrying in that little pack anyway? Moral of the story: never underestimate a novice.

So this guy Rikki Kasso is a photographer and artist, and is also working on a film, I believe called Somewhere in the Middle. Here is a trailer, wow. Another site affiliated is called Tokyo Undressed. Lots of links through the provided, WARNING: much sexy weirdness throughout.

I found this woman recently through Flickr. She’s a professional photographer who’s travelled all over the world, and the thing most likely to catch a hetero male (or bi female) eye about her work are lots of shots of sex workers. Lately she posts these along with headlines taken from current events, often with ironicly comedic results, and posts the entire article under the pic. But there are lots of other shots of all types of people from all over the world. From her own statements found on various sites:

A sex worker is a truth worker, if only Washington had the values of most hookers

I am promoting lookism, extending the power of wonderful sexual images and other photographs from around the world that I have shot-

I photograph the sex workers, prisioners, poverty, war and difficult marginal sitautions.
I will now merge these forgotten people with the headlines of the news, usually only shown with pictures of the powerful, or blonde news presenters!!!

The world is a chaotic flux of images upon which we impose a meaning. My photography aims to crush through the imposed meanings to get to the image itself.

From the image I find an infinate number of unconventional meanings-this is particularly why I like strippers and drag queens because I try and remove them from a sexual context and place them in a freespace where all kinds of meanings can arise for the viewers.

I studied photojournalism at The School of The Art Instiute of Chicago and than received a Masters there as well. I was a stringer for AP when I was twenty-four years old. I worked for the mayors office in Chicago and a press photographer for the Immigration Office in Chicago, and Telemundo channel 44 and for the Hilary Rodham Clinton foundation for children. I also won the Patagonia travel award but I didn’t go at the time. I have received several grants but they were never large enough to pay for my photography. I was invited to join Gamma and I received a post in South Asia. I could not take it as we had spent all of our money coming to live in Europe. I continued to shoot everything even though I was not linked to an agency and than Corbis/Sygma picked me up and I ended up leaving.

I love my early photos from my days in Central America in 1982 when I went and photographed prisons in Guatemala. I have travelled around the world capturing everything from sex workers to Russian prisons and riots in Serbia.

(I did a little typo editing in the text, might have missed some-ed.)

Here’s a link to a few photo-essays. Note: click where it says ‘photos’ to begin the text for the various countries represented.

Here are the links to her Flickr (warning:lots of boobs) and MySpace pages. Apparently she has a podcast as well, but I haven’t gotten that far yet…

Also thanx to the Doc for turning me on to Gail’s work!

I first found this through woostercollective.com, a great site for street art. There are links to several youtube clips from different angles. What is apparently seen is a giant puppet walking through the streets of Reykjavík, operated by large helicopters, a stunt pulled off by a jeans company I’m intentionaly not going to name.

But I quickly became intrested in how many commenters thought this episode was some sort of CGI fakery. Everything from the type of helicopter used not being available in Iceland, obvious saftey issues, to the names of the people posting on youtube sounding fake were used in the argument. So presented here are several angles linked from youtube (certainly you can find more if you want). And first, here’s a link to one of the debates you can find surrounding this stunt which went down only a few weeks ago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56jr2RZej18

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akHq3p5QlCk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UznxqvJJ80g

I’m scratching my head as much as you, but I’m not thinking CGI, or if so, the wrong people are working for Lucasfilm… Anyway, advertising is getting more intense, and while on the one hand I feel like a chump for ‘fueling the fire’, this sort of creativity and execution I feel is worth commenting on.
Also special shout out to Robot and her buddy who were recently visiting Iceland, but if they knew anything about this, I haven’t heard about it yet. I think it happened before they arrived and started enjoying the $8 beers-

This article got me thinking: first of all in a cynical way, because these guys happened to be working for Fox News at the time, how willing they might be to twist their statements for the sake of an agenda… And about the nature of ‘integrity’ in general.

“I’m really fine, healthy in good shape and so happy to be free,” Mr. Centanni told Fox News. He said the two had been forced at gunpoint to say that they were converting to Islam and had taken Muslim names. “I have the highest respect for Islam,” he said. “But it was something we felt we had to do because they had the guns, and we didn’t know what the hell was going on.”

OK: so all you have to do is make some statements that are untrue and pose for the camera reading from this book with a gun to your head and then you are free to go. I think many American’s would jump at this option, nevermind that it is deeply sacreligious - I think the general American and Fox News attitude would be ‘dooped those sand niggers, now on with my spending’. If the Islamic theology is truth, and I don’t think it is, you boys can expect a flaming sword straight up the bunghole as your introduction to the next realm.
And if you’re Christians, as far as your remaining time in this realm goes (and if that theology turns out to be true: in relation to the next realm), the confession clause can certainly be activated and you’ll most likely get a pass on the switch hitting.
But take it to another level, with other captors (and these guys certainly weren’t true Al Qaeda - this video would have been released and then some headless corpses found somewhere down the road), and it begs the ethical question: would you do anything to be released? Anything? Now this applies to other sick and deviant minds that enslave people for whatever psychotic reason. At a certain point there’s something to be said for the victims’ “death with integrity”.

Then I started thinking about why despots of the past may have employed certain tactics. For example in the inquisition: OK, so you’ve claimed Christ as the true messiah after these hours/days/weeks/months of torture - which is great for your soul, because we’ve decided to free it from the mortal coil anyway.
Or in the case of the Japanese rightwing manina that went on in the first half of the 20th century, which went straight back to the bushido code, when prisoners were treated as worse than dogshit, because they didn’t even accept the notion of ‘prisoner’ - it was understood a true warrior would end his own life before they allowed themselves to be captured.
Obviously, these same strict warrior ethics shouldn’t be applied to journalists. I’m just exploring what it is about this article that bugs me….