The New York Times Friday May 1, 2026
When the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran started two months ago, online accounts linked to Tehran tried building sympathy with defiant and emotional appeals. They had little impact. Then, notes The New York Times, Iran shifted tactics: It began circulating short animated videos that scorched President Trump and others with biting satire. Trump has appeared as a hapless Lego figure, as Woody from Pixar’s Toy Story, and as a shag-haired pop star of the 1980s era of MTV. The videos now garner millions of views online, demonstrating the resonance of a new style of propaganda — or “slopaganda” — intended to undermine support for the United States. Read the full Story >>
Amateur Photographer Friday May 1, 2026
Last year, Mexican visual artist Citlali Fabian was thinking about giving up photography. This year she won the $25,000 Sony World Photographer of the Year for her project “Bilha, Stories of my Sisters.” Working in collaboration with activists and artists from indigenous communities in the Oaxaca state, Fabián created a body work that documents the faces of the women working and advocating for change in their communities. To tell their stories, Fabian infuses her film photography with digital illustrations, notes Amateur Photographer. Read the full Story >>
PetaPixel Friday May 1, 2026
Adobe has introduced a major expansion of its AI-powered creative ecosystem, integrating the Adobe for creativity connector for Anthropic’s Claude alongside a public beta of Firefly AI Assistant. Rather than working inside individual apps, users can now describe creative goals in Claude or Firefly, with Adobe’s systems automatically coordinating tools across Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Lightroom, InDesign, Express, and Firefly. The updates mark a broader push toward agentic workflows, in which creative tools are orchestrated via natural-language prompts across multiple applications, notes PetaPixel. Read the full Story >>
By
David Schonauer Friday May 1, 2026
Acclaimed Magnum photographer Raghu Rai, widely regarded as one of the foremost chroniclers of independent India, died on April 26, at age 83. A construction engineer by training, Rai was born in a
village in what is now Pakistan's Punjab province before the 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent. He went on to become an iconic photographer documenting the complex social and political life … Read the full Story >>
