Pictures of the Day: Greece and Elsewhere

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Photos from Greece, Syria, Tunisia and Iraq.

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The Times Was Right to Report - at Last - on a Secret Drone Base

The media and national-security worlds, internationally, are abuzz over an important story on the front page of Wednesday’s New York Times that describes a drone strike in Yemen last August. The article reveals a great deal about the secret drone program, the architect of which is John Brennan, who has been nominated to head the Central Intelligence Agency.

One of its revelations is the location of a drone base in Saudi Arabia. The Times and other news organizations, including The Washington Post, had withheld the location of that base at the request of the C.I.A., but The Times decided to reveal it now because, according to the managing editor Dean Baquet, it was at the heart of thi particular article and because examining Mr. Brennan’s role demanded it.

“It was central to the story because the architect of the base and drone program is nominated to head the C.I.A.,” Mr. Baquet told me on Wednesday. In past stories, he said, the location of the base “was a footnote.”

The government’s rationale for asking that the location be withheld was this: Revealing it might jeopardize the existence of the base.  “The Saudis might shut it down because the citizenry would be very upset,” he said.

Mr. Baquet added, “We have to balance that concern with reporting the news.”  The need to tell this particular story accurately trumped the government’s concerns.

Mr. Baquet said he had a conversation with a C.I.A. official about a month ago and, at that time, agreed to continue withholding the location. More recently, though, one of the reporters working on the story told the government that The Times would reveal the loca! tion and said officials should contact Mr. Baquet if they wanted to discuss it further.

“They didn’t call this time,” Mr. Baquet said. He said it is The Times’s practice to “give a heads up.”

But, he emphasized: “We don’t ask for permission. We tell them what we’re going to do.”

Some readers of The Times expressed dismay at the revelation. One reader, Brian Leary, wrote to me on Wednesday:

I am outraged that The Times is apparently disclosing a military secret like the location of the drone base.

I actually support the premise of the story, and it is something that needs to be told. But the location itself was superfluous to the story line, and is potentially a threat to our national security. I’m very disappointed. The Times chose to be so cavalier about such an important thing, with no tangible benefit to the actual story itself. What interest was served by this disclosure

I respect Mr. Leary’s point of view, which I knowsome other readers also share. But I feel quite differently. Given the government’s undue secrecy about the drone program, which it has never officially acknowledged the existence of, and that program’s great significance to America’s foreign policy, its national security, and its influence on the tumultuous Middle East, The Times ought to be reporting as much and as aggressively as possible on it.

The Times reacted quickly to NBC’s obtaining of a “white paper” that describes the legal rationale for the claim that President Obama has the power to order the killing of American citizens who are thought to be part of Al Qaeda. Scott Shane and Charlie Savage, Washington reporters for The Times, wrote a strong analytical story, rightly crediting NBC, and editors and reporters moved quickly to complete and publish the front-page story, with its Yemen dateline. That story,! Mr. Baqu! et said, has been in the works for several weeks.

I’ll be writing more about this, including how The Times is trying in court to obtain an important, classified memo on the killing of an American, Anwar al-Awlaki, in a drone strike. His teenage son, also an American citizen, was also killed by a drone. The lack of due process and government accountability in those deaths is worthy of the attention The Times is giving it - and more - in articles from Washington, in reporters on the ground in the region of the strikes, and in court.

If it was ever appropriate to withhold the information, that time was over. The drone program needs as much sunlight as possible. This is another crucial step in the right direction.

What Is Real

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Rocio Aranda was combing through the archives at El Museo del Barrio when she found an arresting image of a blurry waterfront skyline. Peeking through the vignette oval was a girl’s shoe and dainty white ankle sock.

“That was a fantastic photo,” Ms. Arana said. “That’s the only human element in it. That’s all you see, her wearing Mary Janes and white socks. The absence and presence of her tells you a lot about the shot.”

That image (Slide 1) â€" by a photographer known only as L. Morales â€" is among some 80 images in “superreal: alternative realities in photography and video,” which opens today at El Museo in East Harlem. Culled mostly from its permanent collection, it is El Museo’s first major photography show in years. It comes under the watch of Margarita Aguilar, who took over the helm of the museum in 2011, bringing with her a considerable background in photography.

The works on display â€" from artists like Adál Maldonado, Andres Serrano and Tania Bruguera â€" range from documentary scenes of musicians, parades, and cityscapes to surreal tableaux like those by Las Hermanas Iglesias. The sisters had their mother knit “nude suits,” which they embellished with scars and tattoos, then photographed themselves wearing them while cavorting in the wilds of Tasmania.

“I started with the idea of the photograph and the way it was conceived and created as being an image of what supposedly took place,” said Ms. Aranda, the show’s curator. “Now we know everything that is there comes from the artist’s side and postproduction. But what is real in the photograph, what led to the altered reality and the reality invented in photography and video”

Some of the images in the show, although taken with a documentarian’s eye, provide a sly comment on where and when they were taken. John Albok, who ownd a dry cleaners in East Harlem, took pictures of the neighborhood, and a series of pictures from the 1963 Puerto Rican Day Parade are part of El Museo’s collection. In one (Slide 6), a float had parade queens dwarfed by a gigantic Singer sewing machine â€" the kind most likely used in the factories where their mothers worked to feed their families.

“It’s important to the history of the neighborhood, and these photos capture a moment of celebrating Puerto Rican pride,” Ms. Aranda said. “At the same time, it’s surreal because of this outsized Singer sewing machine and the queens.”

A more contemporary artist went back to some basic roots for his photographs. Alex Guerrero (Slide 9) has been making his own pinhole cameras out of peanut tins and Ikea containers, which he has used to photograph Washington Heights.

“Pinhole photography has been important for him,” Ms. Aranda said. “It’s craft in the digital age.”

For her, the show is also about attention span! s in the ! digital age. She said that although 42 artists are in the show, some with multiple pieces, she went for a spare-looking installation, lest people be overwhelmed or distracted.

“It’s important to take a little time and look at a photo,” she said. “This one with the little’s girl’s foot is such an amazing image. If there are a lot of things on the wall, it gets complicated. We’re hoping to get people to look a little bit longer at the photo and think about how it was created.”

Follow @elmuseo, @dgbxny and @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Lens is also on Facebook.

What Is Real

In order to view this feature, you must download the latest version of flash player here.

#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}

Rocio Aranda was combing through the archives at El Museo del Barrio when she found an arresting image of a blurry waterfront skyline. Peeking through the vignette oval was a girl’s shoe and dainty white ankle sock.

“That was a fantastic photo,” Ms. Arana said. “That’s the only human element in it. That’s all you see, her wearing Mary Janes and white socks. The absence and presence of her tells you a lot about the shot.”

That image (Slide 1) â€" by a photographer known only as L. Morales â€" is among some 80 images in “superreal: alternative realities in photography and video,” which opens today at El Museo in East Harlem. Culled mostly from its permanent collection, it is El Museo’s first major photography show in years. It comes under the watch of Margarita Aguilar, who took over the helm of the museum in 2011, bringing with her a considerable background in photography.

The works on display â€" from artists like Adál Maldonado, Andres Serrano and Tania Bruguera â€" range from documentary scenes of musicians, parades, and cityscapes to surreal tableaux like those by Las Hermanas Iglesias. The sisters had their mother knit “nude suits,” which they embellished with scars and tattoos, then photographed themselves wearing them while cavorting in the wilds of Tasmania.

“I started with the idea of the photograph and the way it was conceived and created as being an image of what supposedly took place,” said Ms. Aranda, the show’s curator. “Now we know everything that is there comes from the artist’s side and postproduction. But what is real in the photograph, what led to the altered reality and the reality invented in photography and video”

Some of the images in the show, although taken with a documentarian’s eye, provide a sly comment on where and when they were taken. John Albok, who ownd a dry cleaners in East Harlem, took pictures of the neighborhood, and a series of pictures from the 1963 Puerto Rican Day Parade are part of El Museo’s collection. In one (Slide 6), a float had parade queens dwarfed by a gigantic Singer sewing machine â€" the kind most likely used in the factories where their mothers worked to feed their families.

“It’s important to the history of the neighborhood, and these photos capture a moment of celebrating Puerto Rican pride,” Ms. Aranda said. “At the same time, it’s surreal because of this outsized Singer sewing machine and the queens.”

A more contemporary artist went back to some basic roots for his photographs. Alex Guerrero (Slide 9) has been making his own pinhole cameras out of peanut tins and Ikea containers, which he has used to photograph Washington Heights.

“Pinhole photography has been important for him,” Ms. Aranda said. “It’s craft in the digital age.”

For her, the show is also about attention span! s in the ! digital age. She said that although 42 artists are in the show, some with multiple pieces, she went for a spare-looking installation, lest people be overwhelmed or distracted.

“It’s important to take a little time and look at a photo,” she said. “This one with the little’s girl’s foot is such an amazing image. If there are a lot of things on the wall, it gets complicated. We’re hoping to get people to look a little bit longer at the photo and think about how it was created.”

Follow @elmuseo, @dgbxny and @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Lens is also on Facebook.