viz.

Duncan with the Sheikh of Huzayel in 1946. Photo by Welles Stabler (via Harry Ransom Center)

In 1996, former Life Magazine photographer David Douglas Duncan donated his archive to the Harry Ransom Center, the premier humanities research center located at The University of Texas at Austin. viz. is proud to be partnering with the Ransom Center this year, and we're extra excited about the Ransom Center's web exhibitions, which include fabulous shots from Duncan's time in the Middle East.

Recently LIFE magazine released previously unreleased photos of Martin Luther King, Jr. from the day of his assassination. I'm not sure how that works, since LIFE is a now defunct publication, but it may have something to do with their parent company, who surely still exists in some form or another.

It's interesting to think how much the photos of that day that were previously released inform our memory of it (and I use the word "memory" very loosely, since that was well before I was born).

*I haven't posted an image here simply because LIFE, or whoever their parent company is, is probably the kind of company that would sue our poor asses, even though the use would clearly be under the provisions of fair use. I'm wary, especially after the RIAA came after one of our instructors a couple years ago when I student used a clip from a song in a student project that ended up online, which was hosted on the instructor's website. I feel my paranoia is well founded.