A photo gallery documenting the daily life of Palestinian prisoners inside Israeli jails was held in Gaza. Titled "Spirits not Photos" the gallery was inaugurated by Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haneya. A large number of people attended the opening of the gallery, which pays tribute to Palestinian prisoners. The photo gallery was organized by former Palestinian prisoners who spent most of their lives inside Israeli jails. A prisoner swap deal between Hamas and Israel in 2011 led to the release of over one thousand Palestinian prisoners in exchange for an Israeli soldier Gilaad Schalit.
A long time ago in New York City, Steve Addis stood on a corner holding his 1-year-old daughter in his arms; his wife snapped a photo. The image has inspired an annual father-daughter ritual, where Addis and his daughter pose for the same picture, on the same corner, each year. Addis shares 15 treasured photographs from the series, and explores why this small, repeated ritual means so much.
The Pennsylvania Transportation Department estimates that approximately 9 percent of registered voters do not have state-issued photo IDs. Under that state's voter ID law, those 758,000 voters will not be able to cast their ballot, come November. Ray Suarez reports on the implications of this law for the 2012 elections.
A year ago, one photograph was everywhere: an image of Osama bin Laden, killed in a raid by US forces. But, in reality, the image was fake.
That image did not come from a camera; it came fresh from a computer. But how can we tell the difference?
At Agence France Press - AFP - in Paris, one man has developed software to help distinguish untouched photographs from their technologically doctored cousins. For a press agency, knowing the difference is vital.
The software is called Tungstène. It was designed in 2009 in response to requests from the French army and the press. It does not handle classic analogue photographs but, given a digital image, it knows exactly what's what. A fake Iranian missile, too many funeral mourners in North Korea... Tungstène reveals every trick in the book.
It works using up to 20 filters and a giant calculator. The date the photo was originally taken and the camera used to take it are also revealed.
An optical filter, for example, shows up the diffusion of the light.
In one example, an expert deliberately added a third aeroplane to a photograph. It is a manipulation that the programme recognises immediately.
Roger Cozien, the man who wrote the programme, said: "We see the traces of turbulence behind the first two planes very clearly. We see very clearly the hot gas behind the planes and also their shape conforms to their makes. But in contrast, behind this third plane, we see there is nothing. That means that, physically, that object isn't inserted into the environment. When we look closer, we realise that the third plane is the same as the one at the bottom, but copied and pasted here."
Having passed all the tests, the programe is now being exported, because it is also useful for the police. A few weeks ago, its inventor was invited to Switzerland by police there. Detectives were anxious to present real, untouched photos to the courts.
Swiss police spokesperson Jean-Christophe Sauterel said: "We rely increasingly on images in our work, in particular images which come from security cameras, from our own services and also those we find on social networks, where we find that some people don't hesitate to film themselves committing crimes and then put the images online."
In a world which is swimming in images, it's a big market. Tungstène has only just begun.
Monday, March 4, 2013 