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Ray's talent was more than timing; he helped establish photography as an art

The secret of great comedy, runs the old saw, lies in the timing. The same goes for photography, where split seconds make all the difference. Which must make Man Ray, one of the greatest photographers ever, supremely lucky. His career began when the popular view was, in one of his own exhibition titles, "Photography is not art". Philadelphia-born Michael Emmanuel Radnitzky only gave up painting and turned into Man Ray in 1920s Paris. And the people who sat for him! The retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery (closing this Monday) lines up a who's who of European modernism: Joyce, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Satie (twinkling away like a kindly bank manager). By the end of the 20s, he was raking light over subjects such as Salvador Dali. After the war, Ray's portraits of Hollywood stars such as Ava Gardner defined the period. But his talent was now more than timing; he had helped establish photography as an art.

• Photography

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Canon has patented a color-sensitive multi-layered sensor design, showing the company is still pursuing the technology. Like Sigma's Foveon chips, the multi-layered design allows each of the sensor's pixels to capture color information without the need for colored filters. The patent, discovered by the Japanese Engineering Accomplishment blog, suggests a system to promote resonance within the sensor, in an attempt to make the lower layers of the sensor more sensitive. (from Egami blog)

If you've never had the chance to stand in the front row and shoot a live concert, Montreal-based photographer Pierre Bourgault has the next best thing. He attached a GoPro camera to the top of his Canon DSLR and recorded a seven-minute video of his shooting experience at a Dead to Me concert. He then overlaid the actual photos taken at the show, which you can view after the break.

Leica has placed a teaser on its Facebook page for a new 'Mini M' camera to be launched on June 11th, that apparently will slot into its range between the M rangefinder and the X2 fixed-lens compact. It's given no other details, but we think it could make sense for the company to produce a full-time live view version of the M Typ 240, using the same sensor but with the expensive rangefinder assembly removed. This would result in a 24MP full frame mirrorless camera that would be able to use almost any manual focus SLR or rangefinder lens ever made, without a field-of-view crop. 

A photographic highlight selected by the picture desk. Photographer Wayne F Miller, who produced some of the most enduring combat images from World War II and created an excellent series of images chronicling the lives of black Americans in Chicago, died yesterday at age 94. He became a member of Magnum Photos in 1958. He aspired to 'photograph mankind and explain man to man.'

Jim Powell

Dead space to the top left of the image draws our attention to the colourful detailing on the car, and the blur of the tyres provide an indication of movement

Fascinating archive images from the history of Britain's oldest modern dance company – catalogued and seen here for the first time

A review of Becky Frances' portfolio

Fujifilm has updated the firmware for its X-Pro1 and X-E1 mirrorless cameras, to improve the autofocus speed with the recently-launched XF 55-200mm F3.5-4.8 R LM OIS telephoto zoom lens. Versions 1.05 for the X-E1 and 2.04 for the X-Pro1 are available to download from the Fujifilm website. Click through for the links.

We just published the DxOMark Mobile Report for Samsung's new flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S4 on connect.dpreview.com. DxO's imaging experts have analyzed 14 aspects of mobile imaging including detailed image quality assessment, flash performance, autofocus reliability and more to calculate a final score. This report will be integrated into our full review once it is finished but for now click through to find out how the Samsung Galaxy S4's camera performed in the DxOMark lab tests.

We've just added three studio comparison pages to our previously-published preview of the Pentax MX-1. The MX-1 is Pentax's flagship compact camera, and something of a departure for the manufacturer, offering a fast F1.8-2.5 zoom lens, full manual control and a high-class, metal body, to compete with more established peers like Panasonic's LX7. Click through to go to the new pages in our preview, and see for yourself how the MX-1 compares to its rivals.  

Much of the fallout surrounding Flickr's massive updates this Monday continues to center around the legacy 'Pro' accounts and a contentious statement from Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer: 'There’s no such thing as Flickr Pro today because [...] there’s really no such thing as professional photographers anymore.' She apologized today for her 'misstatement', and it appears that existing Flickr Pro account holders will still be able to take advantage of unlimited storage. Read all about it at connect.dpreview.com.

Animated flipbooks have been around for nearly 145 years. With just a little thumb action, these books allowed you to view a few seconds worth of animation. Now, a new concept camera known as the Gifty allows you to record video and print a flipbook instantly. The only problem: you can't buy one yet. 

If you've ever wondered who to thank (or blame) for those 8-bit animated graphics that remain prelevant even on today's high-bandwidth Internet, Steve Wilhite is your man. He was honored for that achievement at this year's Webby Awards and took the opportunity to once again remind us how 'GIF' should be pronounced. (via New York Times)

With a a newly remastered version of Wings Over America being released next week, we bring you this gallery of candid shots from Paul McCartney's jaunt round the United States in summer 1976

From the Italian Alps to the Grand Canyon, no terrain is too grueling or too treacherous for these intrepid runners, as shown in these stunning photographs by David Clifford

Jonny Weeks

A photographic highlight selected by the picture desk. On this day in 1897, the Blackwall Tunnel was officially opened and, at 6,200 feet, it was the longest underwater tunnel in the world. Engineered by Alexander Binnie, it was built to provide a road link under the Thames between Greenwich and Poplar

Jim Powell

This picture of ordinary people surviving catastrophe calls out as a warning of strange, terrible things happening to planet Earth

What makes a particular photograph "iconic"? That word is already being used of this picture of a family group stumbling away from the wreckage of Briarwood elementary school after the Oklahoma tornado struck it.

The Greek word ikon means in the first instance any picture; but it also means the religious images venerated by Orthodox Christianity. So an iconic photograph is presumably one that inspires awe and carries a quasi-religious quality of importance, beauty, emotion, history. The Marxist thinker Walter Benjamin said that in the photographic age, works of art lose their "aura" or magic. But the prevalent use of the word "iconic" recognises that some photographs are after all magical.

Since this photograph hit the world press on Tuesday, reporters have traced the people in it. They have appeared on television and told their story. Ledonna Cobb is a teacher at the school whose ruins fill the background of the picture, and she risked her life to shield children as the school was torn apart. All the children at this school survived and her heroism helped. As she and her husband left the devasted scene – the moment of the picture – with two children, one theirs, the other one of Ledonna's pupils, Steve Cobb nursed and cuddled their daughter, Jordan, as he has explained, to try and be a good father and make her feel safe.

So that's the story behind this picture. But the reason it is iconic is that it also tells other stories. You do not need to know the names of the family or their terrible adventure in the tornado to find it deeply arresting and moving. Coming across it in a newspaper I found that I stopped and pondered. It took me out of the workaday world painted by the words around it. Perhaps the reason a news photograph becomes iconic is that it swamps the rational, detailed, yet often ephemeral reality of journalism with something more universal, passionate and human – the grandeur of a sudden tragic insight into what the human condition really is.

This picture, if you don't know the context, looks like the end of the world. Martians might have wiped out half of humanity, or the Gulf stream gone into overdrive (perhaps it has …). No Hollywood blockbuster has ever created such a convincing image of survivors in an apocalyptic meltdown of ordinary life – because this is real. These people really have just endured the end of a world.

In the background children who have narrowly escaped death in the school we see in ruins hang about waiting for their own parents. They almost look like they might be about to start playing, or laughing about it all. Because they are children. But really they need comfort, like Jordan Cobb in her father's arms.

Is this picture iconic in the end because it shows what appears to be the American suburban nuclear family surviving catastrophe, with gender roles reinforced and nature defeated by family values? No. It is iconic because the people in it are so ordinary and appealing and we are driven to imagine what we might do in the same extremes. It calls out as a warning, another one, about the strange things happening to planet Earth. Like survivors on the road out of Pompeii, the people in this picture have just seen a force that makes human effort pitiable, and this knowledge is in their eyes.

• Oklahoma City tornado
• United States
• Natural disasters and extreme weather
• Oklahoma
• Tornadoes
• US weather
• Photography

Jonathan Jones
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Important questions about privacy and class have come from an artist's photos of unwitting New Yorkers in their apartments

Ask five people who have been in New York City for more than a decade what makes someone a "real" New Yorker and you'll get five different answers: if you're born here; seven years in the city; 10 years; when you're no longer fazed by celebrity sightings; when a bagel guy knows how you like your coffee and uses the perfect amount of cream cheese. My opinion? You become a real New Yorker around the third time you cry on the subway.

A city like New York blurs the line between public and private like almost nowhere else in the world. Our abodes are often so small, and our time outside of them so large, that much of what would be alarming on the streets of Peoria, Illinois is unremarkable here. I once saw a man defecate in a public park, and I didn't blink. If you live here long enough, you adjust and do things that in an earlier life you'd never consider, like slam your hand on the hood of a cab that almost hit you, body-check a slow-moving tourist, or stroll naked through your apartment – even though you know half a dozen units across the street can see into your windows.

Because we do so much in public, there are particular lines of privacy that simply aren't crossed. When someone is bawling their eyes out on the train, you look away. When you're in line for a morning bagel, you rarely start an extended chat with the person in front of you. And when you look across the way and see your neighbor walking around in her robe, you don't take a photo.

Except that's exactly what artist Arne Svenson did: He photographed his neighbors going about their apartments. Everything he photographed was visible from his own home, where he looked into the floor-to-ceiling windows of a luxury building across the street. No one in the photos is easily identifiable. And they're undeniably compelling, fascinating images.

But some of Svenson's neighbors are put off, feeling their privacy has been invaded. I'm not sure they're wrong.

"I don't feel it's a violation in a legal sense, but in a New York, personal sense there was a line crossed," Michelle Sylvester, a resident, told the AP.

"I think there's an understanding that when you live here with glass windows, there will be straying eyes but it feels different with someone who has a camera."

Though we may literally live stacked on top of one and other, making privacy an illusion, that facade of privacy keeps us sane. It's one thing to accept the fact that your neighbor might catch a glimpse of you getting ready for work; it's another to live understanding that you may be covertly photographed, and your image sold for thousands of dollars out of a Chelsea gallery.

And yet that is a truth about living in New York: you may be covertly photographed, and your image may be sold for thousands of dollars out of a gallery. That is also the power of Svenson's art: it challenges the artificial lines we draw around the public and the private, especially in a place where true privacy is a luxury. It also shines a light on the fact that for the many in this city who live in luxury, part of the appeal is in its display.

The very homes Svenson photographs offer only a transparent line between private abode and public display – they're showcase homes, with walls made of glass that are meant to let the casual observer see in as much as they allow the residents to see out. Their windows are frames for their interior; residents know people can see in, and furniture and art are positioned accordingly. The home is itself a piece of art, designed and owned by the person living in it. When Svenson shifts that ownership – complete with human being inside – to be his art, it's uncomfortable for the person who was previously creator of the space. Now they're just an object in a frame, like the chair they carefully selected for display.

That his photos depict the rich inside glass homes – designed to be envied – is partially why, I suspect, it's easier to see Svenson's photos as art rather than violations. That he used a telephoto lens makes the photographs more offensive, but he wasn't peering into anything that the residents were trying to hide – as noted, part of the appeal of the real estate he photographed is its exhibition architecture.

If Svenson had photographed into the small windows of a building of lower-income residents, the photographs would appear more exploitative and voyeuristic than transgressive. At the same time, there's something discomforting about saying that a private citizen should have fewer windows and higher walls, or be more guarded with their actions at home, if they don't want to be the subject of a stranger's art. That's a tall order no matter where you live.

The privacy issues raised by these photographs are perhaps easier to assess than in other circumstances, since Svenson's art is just that – art. But these photos raise the question of how we might react if the photography weren't for artistic expression (and artistic profit) but for personal gratification, or for more crass, commercial ends. There's a line between what Svenson has done and the paparazzi selling celebrity photos to tabloids, for instance, or predators to porn websites.

While a photo of a woman bent over wearing a robe is art in Svenson's renderings, add a few more inches of skin and it could easily be erotica or pornography in another's. Is the violation worse if the image is intended to sexually titillate? Is it better if the photos never see the light of day but are used for personal enjoyment by a peeping tom? Or is the violation in the photo-taking itself?

New technologies and residential patterns continue to shift our privacy norms, and our laws with them. As a general rule, we don't find it particularly odious to photograph people in public – take the iconic V-J Day kiss in Times Square photo. But taking a photo up a woman's skirt, even if she's wearing that skirt in a public place, typically elicits rightful condemnation. We draw a line around spaces where we feel there's a reasonable expectation of privacy – whether inside our homes or the private parts of our bodies.

Svenson's art challenges that distinction, and it does so in a city where the public/private divide is already incredibly blurry. It's uncomfortable art. It relies on methods that many people believe should be illegal. It puts pressure on our assumptions about privacy, our biases about class, and the lives that invite peering versus those we simply peer into.

It's very good art.

• Privacy
• Art
• United States
• New York
• Photography

Jill Filipovic
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'The girls are both eight. You can tell at once that the men are their husbands, not their fathers'

I have been to many countries to document the issue of child brides: India, Nepal, Afghanistan, Ethiopia. But it was important to cover Yemen because it is so prevalent there – in fact, it is considered normal. Some people in their communities, however, want it to stop, and this project was only able to happen because of them.

This shot shows two child brides in rural Yemen with their husbands. Tahani, the girl in pink, is eight; her husband Majed is 27. Ghada, in green, is also eight, while her husband Saltan is 33. Every day around the world, around 39,000 girls – children like Tahani and Ghada – get married.

Tahani got married when she was six and was a wife in the full sense of the word. She had not reached puberty so hadn't had kids yet, but this was expected as soon as she was able to. Ghada is the sister of Tahani's husband, Majed. She was still living with her family, though, and attending school, since her father felt she was too young to live with her husband.

I met them twice in 2010, when I was in the country for National Geographic. The first time they were without their husbands: they were just little girls, sweet and forthcoming, excited I was there and wanting to hang out. I decided to shoot two couples to show that this huge age disparity wasn't a one-off. Both of the men are in the Yemeni military and were working, so I had to wait for them to return.

When I finally met them, it was noon and the light was really bad. I scoped out the location, then waited until it got very overcast. I moved them around a little and took 50 frames in 15 minutes. They were all amenable. I didn't tell either girl what expression to have. I don't think they had any idea that the rest of the world would see their marriages as wrong – but somehow I felt they knew that I was there out of concern.

The image works because the girls opened up to me: Tahani, especially, has a look in her eyes. They are communicating to us in a different way than their husbands, who clearly feel no shame. Looking at it, you know at once that the men are their husbands and not their fathers.

My visit started a campaign: we got a local doctor and midwives to come and discuss health issues for girls – that if they get pregnant too young, their bodies and their children may have problems. They may even die. The community agreed to stop the next wedding.

CV

Born: 1973, Miami.

Studied: Journalism with photography at the University of Florida.

Influences: Eugene Richards: his work has an intimacy and brilliance that is beyond compare.

High point: Being part of the Too Young to Wed campaign, which policymakers around the world are responding to.

Low point: The colleagues I've lost over the years in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

Top tip: Be versatile. Listen to your heart about what you respond to and make projects that matter to you.

• Stephanie Sinclair's work is at tooyoungtowed.org

• Photography
• Child protection
• Children
• Yemen
• Middle East and North Africa

Sarah Phillips
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