Guardian Photography

My favorite political TV shows is Yes, Minister (Westwing was too idealistic and I never grew to like it) and in one episode, bumbling Jim Hacker offers this piquant judgement about Britain’s newspapers:

The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by people who actually do run the country; the Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country; the Financial Times is read by people who own the country; The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country; and The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.*

To which his aide adds, “The Sun readers don’t care who runs the country, as long as she’s got big tits.” Indeed. I personally do not subscribe to any of these papers (when I am in London, I just get the Metro for free) rather confining myself to their online versions. The Guardian has a good photography blog and section, and regularly produces nice supplements. This weekend, I heard they had a two-part series (The Guardian/Observer supplement) on History of Europe in Pictures. It is too late for me to get hold of paper copies (if you got it, lucky you) but an abridged version is online.

I missed their previous great nine-part series on 100 years of great press photographs too. It was in November 2009 and I was in Moscow. (Again, an abridged version online). In addition to great photos, the supplement included interviews with one of the last surviving witnesses of the 1937 Hindeburg disaster, photojournalist Ron Haviv on his harrowing ordeal photographing the Balkan war, BBC reporter Kate Adie’s eyewitness account on the Tiananmen Square ‘tank man’, a scientific analysis of Jacques Henri Lartigue’s famous photo, and the story behind the most controversial picture of 9/11.

(*In France, I guess it would be: Le Figaro is read by people who think they run the country; La Croix is read by people who think they ought to run the country; Le Monde is read by people who actually do run the country; Paris-Match is read by the wives of the people who run the country; L’Equipe is read by people who think the country is not being run; Les Echos is read by people who think the country ought to be run by a company; and l’Humanité is read by people who think it is.)