Alan Chin Blacksburg, VA coverage at www.bagnewsnotes.com

[alan chin]

Some of my photographs of the student reaction to the Blacksburg, VA massacre are up at:

http://www.bagnewsnotes.com

http://bagnewsnotes.typepad.com/bagnews/2007/04/photographer_al.html#comments

(This is Michael Shaw's excellent photo blog site, in which he comments on photos that he finds in the news, and his readers often start intelligent, contentious commentary.)

[mitspooner]

alan like always your photo's stand out from the rest I have seen. I look at your stuff (first katrina and now this) and I get the feeling of a true capture and nothing set up or looking for biggest saddest eyes. You are what I strive to be in a photographer. Thank you!

[Wayne]

Some powerful pictures there Alan, the first and the second to last standing out to me after an initial look - thoughtful writing too. Thanks for the link, looks like a very interesting site.

[cenelson]

Thanks for sharing these, Alan.

[Wayne]

I'm curious to know if the square HP5 shot of Hilary (Mar 02) was shot with your Rolleiflex? If so, you must have stood out from the pack!

http://bagnewsnotes.typepad.com/bagnews/images/ChinNewHamp2.jpg

[r-brian]

Alan

I will say that the photos are very good reportage pictures.  Being a photographer in a situation like this is not easy.

But you characterized Virginia Tech wrong.  It is an university in rural Virginia, not a rural university.  Forty years ago it was not the heart of the confederacy.  Thirty seven years ago when I was a VT freshmen, the student body was made up of very urban students:  DC area, Richmond, Tidewater area, New York and everywhere else in the world.  I'm sure it's even more so today.  Also, the students are the cream of their graduating class.  Virginia Tech, even though it is a state university, is one of the best schools in the country, much in demand for admission.  37 years ago I did not see racism, I saw country boys interacting with long hairs.  That was, and is Virginia Tech.

Thank you for the civil coverage you provided.

Brian

[alan chin]

Brian,

Thank you for setting the record straight on Virginia Tech. Obviously I was not there 40 years ago. I did not mean any offense. Everything I saw there, and I hope I conveyed this, is that it is a very pleasant campus in a beautiful setting, rural Virginia, normally about as far away from horrible violence as you can imagine.

Wayne,

Yes, that's the Rolleiflex in New Hampshire...

thanks,

alan

[connealy]

You did some nice work in a very difficult situation -- one on which many of us don't even want to focus our thoughts.

The web site is well put together too, and offers some real insight into the business and practice of photojournalism.  Unfortunately, sites which offer the opportunity for comment and discussion on photojournalism and documentary work seem invariably to promote titanic ego clashes. The potential insights become obscured by a rush of judgmental pronoucements about perceived quality and even the integrity of the photographer based on the flimsiest of pretexts.  I'm not sure in light of the evidence that there is any practical way to present facts and opinion together on the subject in such an interactive environment.  Maybe the message is that people shouldn't think about getting into the business - or even a discussion of it - unless they have a Kevlar self image.

[wjgibson]

excellent work, glad I came across your post here.

[Raid Amin]

You have done a great job, Alan.
I  studied at VT until 1987, and this university and the town of Blacksburg has a very special place in my heart. It is, as Brain said, one of the best universities in the USA. In 1981, it was labeled as a "white university" by some African Americans, but I did not detect any racism there. I hope that VT's image and quality of students will not be damaged by this horrible massacre.

The area surrounding Balcksburg is "very rural", and I recall some students being extremely shocked after being invited to attend a get-together by locals outsdie Blacksburg.They saw wet tee shirt contests and people doing "strange things" there. The student make-up is very urban, as many students are engineering students at VT.

Blacksburg was the first town in the USA to have all its residents linked by the internet. It was the first State university to mandate all its engineering freshmen to buy a pc. This is a great educational instutution. I tutored the VT football team statistics for one semester. This is another issue ....