WE’RE HEADING FOR THE DESERT
FIfteen Songs for August (A Mix)

001. Noah and the Whale — Love of an Orchestra
002. The Arcade Fire — Ready to Start
003. The Black Keys — Sinister Kid
004. Local Natives — Shape Shifter
005. Paloalto — Sleeping Citizens
006. The Low Anthem — To Ohio
007. The National — England
008. Pete Yorn — Crystal Village
009. The Perishers — Sway
010. Mumford & Sons — Awake My Soul 
011. New Frontiers — This Is My Home
012. Travis — Colder 
013. The Arcade Fire — City With No Children
014. Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros — Home
015. Grace Potter and the Nocturnals — Goodbye Kiss 

If you like a song, please purchase the entire album and support these artists.

I think that when you arrive in a place, you need to sniff the air. You need to take your finger, stick it up and see where the wind is blowing. You need to be able to communicate with people. You should know a language. But even if you don’t know a language, you should at least be decent enough to understand what you are about to photograph, instead of just going, “Pow, pow, pow.” Because when you do that, then you are a vulture, and then you are what a lot of N.G.O.’s call us: “Merchants of misery.”

But if you take the time and really get an understanding of what the story is about, you will come away with an experience. It won’t be just for some World Press Award. It will be: “I understand what these people are going through, and I think we should do something about it.”

Because I think — at the end of the day — we have to be diplomats. I don’t like the word “photojournalism.” It’s been bastardized. I am comfortable with the idea of being a photographer, just being a photographer. I don’t want to be an artist; I want to be a photographer. That’s what I do. And a photographer is someone who looks at the world and tries to make some sense of it for themselves, and for everyone else. And that’s what I want to do.

When I do a story, I go there and I try to understand what is going on. I’ll try to research it before going. I become passionate. It gets under my skin and I get a little bit obsessed. I have a problem with just dashing off to a place because there is violence and death and destruction and we think it’s going to help our career. There is a whole young group of photographers who work with that mindset, and the problem with that is that they give all of us a bad name.

— Stanley Greene, in an interview on The New York Times Lens Blog

An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.

— Darcel Turner