December 21, 2004
Picture of the Week
Onelook.com defines photojournalism as "journalism that presents a story primarily through the use of pictures." In pictorial periodicals like Life and Look, photojournalists brought to a more genteel America images of worlds that the general population would never otherwise see. It is in this spirit that directorcommentary seeks a return to the golden age of photojournalism. Because a picture is worth a million words.
Since we're on the subject, we'd also like to present, in recognition of excellence in the field of photojournalism, the directorcommentary 2004 Award For Excellence in the Field of photojournalism is awarded to Dennis McCarthy, aka "Brutilus", aka "Psycho Boy", aka "The Jolly Green Giant" for his comprehensive coverage of the persons and environs of Otakon 2004 in Baltimore, MD on his website.
Otakon, according to www.otakon.com, is "the convention of the otaku generation: by fans, for fans ... the biggest and best celebration of Japanese animation, manga, J-pop, and east Asian culture in the world. For the seventh year in a row, we'll be taking over a sizable chunk of Baltimore's Inner Harbor for a 3-day festival celebrating the pop culture that's brought us everything from Astroboy to Yu-Gi-Oh, from the Seven Samurai to Spirited Away."
Google and I set out to find real-life pictures of Ian McConville and Matt Boyd, creators of Mac Hall, and was posthaste taken to the images directory of Dennis McCarthy's website, where I indeed found real-life pictures of Boyd and McConville, and 130 consistenly mindblowing photos of some of the more ingenius spurts of imagination I've seen in a long time.
I know what some of you are thinking, but I want to stress I'm not being sarcastic or kidding around. Full disclosure: I'm no stranger to conventions. I've been to Star Trek cons and Furry cons, Sci-Fi cons and ComicCons. Enough to know the real thing when I see it. And none that I've been to, that I recall, were documented as well as Dennis McCarthy at Otakon 2004.This is a genuine subculture and a rich story.
Taken as a whole, this is an fun chronicle of a niche event in the USA's (more or less) youth culture that would make little sense to someone without context. But context here grows and deepens with each passing photo. Sure, many of the images are funny and campy. Some made me laugh a lot, but even the funny ones are a part of larger story. There's drama as well, some would argue some tragedies. There is no shortage of boldfaced fandom, geekiness, happy people, sad people, sexiness, imagination, and even genius. Many cry out for subjective captions.
These pix have entered a place in my permenant collection. And this one is my new desktop wallpaper:
Since we're on the subject, we'd also like to present, in recognition of excellence in the field of photojournalism, the directorcommentary 2004 Award For Excellence in the Field of photojournalism is awarded to Dennis McCarthy, aka "Brutilus", aka "Psycho Boy", aka "The Jolly Green Giant" for his comprehensive coverage of the persons and environs of Otakon 2004 in Baltimore, MD on his website.
Otakon, according to www.otakon.com, is "the convention of the otaku generation: by fans, for fans ... the biggest and best celebration of Japanese animation, manga, J-pop, and east Asian culture in the world. For the seventh year in a row, we'll be taking over a sizable chunk of Baltimore's Inner Harbor for a 3-day festival celebrating the pop culture that's brought us everything from Astroboy to Yu-Gi-Oh, from the Seven Samurai to Spirited Away."
Google and I set out to find real-life pictures of Ian McConville and Matt Boyd, creators of Mac Hall, and was posthaste taken to the images directory of Dennis McCarthy's website, where I indeed found real-life pictures of Boyd and McConville, and 130 consistenly mindblowing photos of some of the more ingenius spurts of imagination I've seen in a long time.
I know what some of you are thinking, but I want to stress I'm not being sarcastic or kidding around. Full disclosure: I'm no stranger to conventions. I've been to Star Trek cons and Furry cons, Sci-Fi cons and ComicCons. Enough to know the real thing when I see it. And none that I've been to, that I recall, were documented as well as Dennis McCarthy at Otakon 2004.This is a genuine subculture and a rich story.
Taken as a whole, this is an fun chronicle of a niche event in the USA's (more or less) youth culture that would make little sense to someone without context. But context here grows and deepens with each passing photo. Sure, many of the images are funny and campy. Some made me laugh a lot, but even the funny ones are a part of larger story. There's drama as well, some would argue some tragedies. There is no shortage of boldfaced fandom, geekiness, happy people, sad people, sexiness, imagination, and even genius. Many cry out for subjective captions.
These pix have entered a place in my permenant collection. And this one is my new desktop wallpaper:
Downloading the pictures one-by-one can be a pain (especially as the captions seem offset through Firefox), so if you're technically inclined, you can schlorp them all in one shot from the images directory.
