Fresh Visions

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It is an exciting time to engage with photography. On the one hand – as we are continually reminded – the digital world is now saturated with images. Yet a photograph is arguably more potent than ever, thanks to rapidly developing camera technologies and the ..

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The Origins of the Word “Gaslighting”: Scenes from the 1944 Film

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The First Air Raid Happened When Austria Dropped Bombs on Venice from Pilotless Hot-Air Balloons (1849)

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We surround the phrase “ahead of its time” with a mystical aura. But just because an idea shows up earlier than we expect does not mean it was ever a good idea for human progress. Take, for example, the idea to rain incendiary devices on the heads of civilian populations in wartime. Recent iterations of this technology — unmanned drones surgically bombing weddings and funerals — may be an improvement over Hiroshima or napalm-happy helicopter pilots like Apocalypse Now’s Bill Kilgore. But drones have not, thereby, rendered the nuclear option or trigger-happy death from above obsolete, or made mass civilian casualties less tragic and unnecessary, comparisons of raw numbers aside. Drone bombing is one of those ideas that showed up ahead of its time — at the very first use of aerial bombing of any kind. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) were launched in the service of a military operation 30 years before Edison harnessed electricity for home use. In 1849, remote piloting was hardly po...
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