Laurie and Debbie say: We keep having difficult years, and yet there are always important things to appreciate, be thankful for, and celebrate. Last year at this time, a national health care bill had passed in the house and was being debated in the Senate. Now (for all its limitations) we have the first national [...]

Laurie says: This is a photo from Women of Japan, of my friend Ikuko Hanashiro.  We became friends when I stayed with her when I was photographing women in Okinawa.  She’s at her loom in her studio.  She’s an artist and an activist especially on issues of Okinawan rights..  She has six cats, that I [...]

Debbie says: Today is the International Transgender Day of Remembrance. The official site lists 30 murders of transgendered people between November 20, 2009 and November 19, 2010. That number is certainly smaller than the real number. One trans friend of mine cites 179 murders this year, a number which is probably still a good deal [...]

Laurie and Debbie say: At My Modern Met, Eugene is blogging about this marvelous series of grandma-superhero photographs. A few years ago, French photographer Sacha Goldberger found his 91-year-old Hungarian grandmother Frederika feeling lonely and depressed. To cheer her up, he suggested that they shoot a series of outrageous photographs in unusual costumes, poses, and [...]

Lynne Murray says: On October 25, Maura Kelly, a blogger at the Marie Claire online magazin,e responded to her editor’s request to look at a positive little article on CNN.com about motion picture and television shows centering on fat characters. Kelly, who has a history of anorexia, found herself disgusted by the idea of fat [...]

Laurie says: I’ve always been particularly happy with the flow of light in this photo from Women En Large: Images of Fat Nudes. .. ..

Cross posted at Fukshot Marlene says: The TSA has implemented new screening procedures for airline passengers. Passengers who “opt-out” of full body scans are subject to an “enhanced patdown”. I have read accounts of these procedures that sent me in to a full-blown triggered tailspin this afternoon. I will not fly. My risk of violent [...]

After all these years of being a photographer, it still seems like an amazing process to me.  A somewhat miraculous transformation of the living world into an art in two dimensions. Alexis Madrigal blogged a while ago about Oliver Wendell Holmes‘ reaction to photography in daguerreotype and stereoscopic images.  My grandmother had a stereoscope (she [...]

Debbie says: This post is not safe for work. Here at Body Impolitic, where part of our core reason for the blog is to showcase Laurie’s nudes, we have thought a lot about the “NSFW” label on nude photographs. We generally use the label, for reasons I’ll get to at the end of the post. [...]

Laurie says: I’m back from my jewelry show and travel and still jet-lagging some.  I’ll be blogging again next week, but here is the Photo of the Week. I took this picture of my friend, the photographer Tee Corinne in my garden, a few years before she died.  It’s a good memory of her. …