I used to live above a hardware store & spent many hours just looking out the window watching people…

Of course, I’m a giant perv

Dad and I would find old people and take advantage of their slow reactions and poor eyesight to take pictures of them.

In 1932, Albert Einstein, already world famous for his work in physics and mathematics, wrote a letter to another distinguished thinker, Sigmund Freud.  Einstein was deeply troubled by the memory of World War I, which had ended only fourteen years before.  Ten million men had died on the battlefields of Europe, for reasons that no one could logically explain.  Like many others who had lived through that war, Einstein was horrified by the thought that human life could be destroyed on such a massive scale and worried that there might be another war.  He considered that Freud, the world’s leading psychologist, might throw light on the question ‘Why do men make war?’

“Dear Professor Freud,” he wrote.  “Is there any way of delivering mankind from the menace of war?”  Einstein spoke of “that small but determined group, active in every nation, composed of individuals who …  regard warfare, the manufacture and sale of arms, simply as an occasion to advance their personal interests and enlarge their personal authority.”  And then he asked, “How is it possible for this small clique to bend the will of the majority, who stand to lose and suffer by a state of war, to the service of their ambitions?”

Einstein volunteered an answer, “Because man has within him a lust for hatred and destruction.”  And then he put his final question to Freud, “Is it possible to control a man’s mental evolution so as to make him proof against the psychoses of hate and destructiveness?”

Freud responded, “You surmise that man has in him an active instinct for hatred and destruction, amenable to such stimulations.  I entirely agree with you …. The most casual glance at world-history will show an unending series of conflicts between one community and another.”  Freud pointed to two fundamental instincts in human beings: the erotic, or love, instinct and its opposite, the destructive instinct.  But the only hope he could hold for the erotic triumphing over the destructive was in the cultural development of the human race, including “a strengthening of the intellect, which tends to master our instinctive life.”

But what is Freud’s evidence for the existence of such an instinct?  There is something curious in his argument.  He offers no proof from the field of his expertise, psychology.  His evidence is in “the most casual glance at world-history.”

- Howard Zinn – Declarations of Independence

Wondering what has changed? Read about it here.

There is a process of natural (or, rather unnatural) selection, in which certain orthodox ideas are encouraged, financed, and pushed forward by the most powerful mechanisms of our culture. These ideas are preferred because they are safe; they don’t threaten established wealth or power.

For instance:

• “Be realistic; this is the way things are; there’s no point thinking about how things should be.”
• “People who teach or write or report the news should be objective; they should not try to advance their own opinions.”
• “There are unjust wars, but also just wars.”
• “If you disobey the law, even for a good cause, you should accept your punishment.”
• “If you work hard enough, you’ll make a good living.  If you are poor, you have only yourself to blame.”
• “Freedom of speech is desirable, but not when it threatens national security.”
• “Racial equality is desirable, but we’ve gone far enough in that direction.”
• “Our Constitution is our greatest guarantee of liberty and justice.”
• “The United States must intervene from time to time in various parts of the world with military power to stop communism and promote democracy.”
• “If you want to get things changed, the only way is to go through the proper channels.”
• “We need nuclear weapons to prevent war.”
• “There is much injustice in the world but there is nothing that ordinary people, without wealth or power, can do about it.”

- Howard Zinn – Declarations of Independence

Wondering what has changed? Read about it here.

Would you order a sign from someone in this van?

As the grandson of one of the best sign-painters this city has ever seen, I would hope not….

Gulick’s van in Wichita…  The best part is the soda-bottle turn signals.

/ Contact
Feel free to Email me here.

/ About Lucas?
Being raised in small-town Kansas, I never had the chance to experience much of the world around me, outside of wheat fields and dirt roads. By the time I got through college, I began to become antsy and felt compelled to begin traveling the world as much as possible. Unfortunately, with a degree in Biology and student loans in tow, this proved difficult. Eventually I was lucky enough (depending on your point of view) to land a job that afforded me some extra spending money and put me on the road often. During the next few years, I lived/worked in various places around the world such as Beijing, Chile, Mexico, and Peru and it did nothing but fuel the fire of my desire to travel. Up until that point, I didn’t even own a camera, outside of an old Sony point-and-shoot that couldn’t focus, but at some point I accidentally took a good picture and my life was changed.

Fast forward a few years and I’ve turned into the ‘guy with the camera all the time’ and now, I’m ‘the guy with the camera and photography website.’

I currently live in Kansas City, MO where I use my computer nerd day job to save money to fund photography trips around the world.

/ Notes on captions (2010 posts)

Looking back on 2009, I realized that I logged more hours of travel time than at any other point of my life.  For the most part, I embrace travel as an opportunity to savagely read books, taking advantage of times when the phone and the computer are just not ‘there’.  This year, I logged nearly 400 books (and watched nearly 10 movies).  One of the books was Howard Zinn’s Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology.

It was amazing (still is amazing, in fact).  Unfortunately, like most books of this nature, they were basically packed to the gills with information, to the point that someone with a feeble and simple mind such as mine could barely keep track of all the stuff going on.

After discussing American Ideology with several of my friends, I realized that many of the conversations were basically limited to something along the lines of “I can’t remember any exact quotes, but the book was amazing, to the point of frustration.”

Well, that’s not good, is it?

It’s when this idea began to form in my head.  It centers on a these points:

1. Some information is too important to ignore.
2. Someone has already done the leg-work on compiling facts and putting them together into one or two places.
3. Some information is too vast to put into a single place and expect people to remember t (mortals like myself).
4. It’s not that people are stupid (I suppose), but it’s that in this day of ‘quick headlines’ and ‘short blogger notes’, people have short attention spans and if information is presented in small doses over a period of time, they will actually remember more of that information than if asked to, gasp, read an entire book.
5. I still like to take pictures, but writing captions making fun of people, while fun, may not be the best use of my time.

So here’s what I’ve come up with.

Over the past month or so, I’ve been going through American Ideology with a pencil and highlighter and breaking it apart in a way that captures the essence of the book, with the facts and ideas, but putting it together into small doses, which I will present to ‘the interwebs’ on a daily basis, in conjunction with my pictures.

I should note, that if you’re attempting to tie the subject of the picture to the subject of the Zinn-blurb, you will probably get dizzy, as I am not attempting to do so.  I should also note, that this site is in no way affiliated with Howard Zinn or HarperCollins publishing.

I should also add this editor’s note in regards to plagiarism.  This site is not designed to make any money.  I have taken down my Etsy page (that was because no one wanted to buy my stuff, but that’s beside the point).  The purpose of this book is to educate and display my pictures.  I will quote all sources as necessary.  So please don’t sue me (HarperCollins, Dr. Zinn, people in out of focus pictures).

Below is a copy of a letter sent to HarperCollins, which I have yet to receive a response to.

Permissions Department, 22nd floor
HarperCollins Publishers
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022

Attn: Permissions Guidelines

Dear Sirs,

I am writing in regards to obtaining permission to use quoted material from one of your published books, Howard Zinn’s Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology (ISBN-13 978-0060921088).

I’ve recently begun compiling quotes and subsets of chapters from this amazing book for inclusion in an educational, not-for-profit photoblog featuring my photography and quotes from the above book.

My idea is to quote parts of this book as captions to my photographs in an attempt to educate and spread information about the topics covered in this book.  I will quote the author, title and publisher in the blog posting or the blog ‘tag lines.’

An average post will be between 100-300 words with posts happening once daily.

I reviewed your permissions guidelines (http://www.harpercollins.com/footer/permissions.aspx), and could find no mention to using quotes or portions of a book for non-paper-publishing purposes (aka – web/blogging etc), and I’m not familiar with your particular companies stance on this subject (not the official legal ramifications of these situations), however I wanted to aquire permission from you out of respect for the author and his works (and out of respect for not-getting-sued).

Please let me know of this possibility.
Sincerely
Lucas Hutmacher
www.lucashutmacher.com
xxxx xxxxxxxxx St.
Kansas City, MO 64109
xxx-xxx-xxxx
lucas@lucashutmacher.com

I guess we’ll see how it works.  I’m excited to try something like this & feel good about it.

/ Gear
Nikon D300 DX 12.3MP
Nikon 50mm f/1.4D AF
Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6
Leica DLUX 4 10.1MP

/ Print/Usage
If you’re interested in purchasing a print or have any other inquiries including licensing photos or hiring me for a photo shoot, check out the print/usage page for more info.

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