Eminem has already said that this video is based on his tumultuous relationship with his ex-wife Kim.  But against the backdrop of the abuse at the hands of Chris Brown, the chorus sung by Rihanna to the mini-movie of an abusive couple has many people wondering if it’s not just Eminem singing from experience.

Must be seen:

I photographed for Wikipedia the awesomely huge anti-Proposition 8 demonstration organized by Andy Towle and Michelangelo Signorile back in 2008.  One of my favorite photographs from the protest was this one.

Is gay the new black?  I was approached by Looking Glass Magazine to write an article about that and the  relationship between the ‘black community’ and the ‘gay community’.

I had a lot of complicated thoughts about the topic, and I tried to lay them out simply.  It’s a difficult onion to peel. Below is the press release for the ‘Gonzo Anthropology’ magazine’s summer Black Issue:

_______________________________________

New York (PRWEB) July 9, 2010 — Looking Glass Magazine, since 2007, the quarterly “Gonzo Anthropology” journal launches its Black Issue this summer along with new online features. The new issue provocatively features Blacks vs. Gays: What’s the Real Problem? on the cover. The article, by David Shankbone, takes an objective look into new research and asks what lies at the foundation of America’s “culture-wars.” Also included is an “anthropology of fashion” report detailing the history of the black dandy, an original comic book art and fiction from N. Steven Harris, and a featured exclusive interview with poet Amiri Baraka. (Veteran sound engineer Arya Sundar produced the video, which appears on the website.)

“It’s not an attempt at controversy, we are just doing what we always do,” said editor in chief Michael Merriam. “We are getting to the bottom of something in our culture.”

Merriam is no stranger to controversy. Last year, he crossed swords with HBO’s publicity department over an interview in which Bored to Death writer Jonathan Ames was tied to a chair and interrogated by dominatrix JoYin Shih as a feature for the magazine. HBO refused to allow Looking Glass to print photographs of the event.

Merriam denies that there was any real conflict. “They didn’t want us to use photos, so we didn’t, but we didn’t compromise the text at all. Ames had a great time, Yin had a great time, we ran a terrific interview. That’s all.”

Merriam created Looking Glass in 2007 as a pet-project as he worked on various magazines (he’s a former editor in chief of Time Out Istanbul). Looking Glass spiraled into its print and digital form in 2008 following a New Yorker Talk of the Town profile of Merriam’s work in digital publishing and the launch of a fashion magazine for the iPhone.

Looking Glass Magazine was initially conceived to contain twelve sections. “We wanted to laser in – find ultra-niche counter-cultural content,” says Merriam. Though the traditional model of print magazine publishing is rapidly changing, Merriam contends there are no plans to abandon the print edition. “On the contrary, we are always expanding it. Jay Kristopher Huddy creates an extraordinary visual experience out of it, and the magazine just keeps getting more intense every quarter,” he said. “We are completely devoted to print, and we believe it’s the best way to serve our readers.”

Online, at www.lookingglassmagazine.com, two new sections appear this month: a sports section and a science fiction section. The Playing Field is edited by ESPN’s Eno Sarris, who also writes for FanGraphis, Bloomberg Sports and RotoWorld. “The tagline for this blog is ‘the anthropology of sports,’ and it’s a good way to sum this thing up,” said Sarris about the new blog’s in-depth, brainy, and sophisticated perspective on athletic culture.

The science fiction section, a blog called The Observatory, features new fiction by Blair Kroeber and by award-winning author Nnedi Okorafor, as well as an exclusive interview with Samuel R. Delany. The magazine also will encourage writers to submit stories and pay them SFWA minimum or higher for original fiction.

Publisher Paul Nowak, who is also a video game designer, has his own take on Looking Glass and its journalistic mission. “We think of our readers as users and culture hackers.

Issues of LGM are like cultural strategy guides. It makes sense. Video games use context to heighten the sense of importance around certain objects–that’s what we do for our advertisers.”

The print edition can be purchased throughout the United States at the $4.99 price point, and will be available at San Diego Comic Con. Archives can be viewed at www.lookingglassmagazine.com

You know what bothers me about (otherwise beloved) social media and online personal branding?

The fact that in 99% of the cases they are intentionally stripped of all depth and external complexity (both depth and complexity being intrinsic qualities of a developed human intellect). Primitivism is then sugar-coated as razor-sharp focus.

I don’t like the fact that most targeted messages are just a little bit retarded, literally. It makes me understand with my skin – not just with my head- that the society we live in is covertly and dramatically stratified – the divider being not the social class but the ability to think and live in stereo.

To me, this is physical. And personal: I’ve had a very formal and thorough education back in the USSR; I was systematically, year after year, trained to think, analyze and file data.

When I read my Twitter feed, I have Miklouho-Maclay glasses on. I breathe anthropology.

I notice social media stars. The bright ones: unshakable quality, solid. But I also see a lot of loud&proud naked kings (and queens). The ones who I wouldn’t be hanging out with if I had the honesty of a fifth grader (why? boring). Ironically, their standing in the media is just as impressive, and their sycophants as diabetic. I shake my head.

…Sometimes I meet people on the internet who I genuinely like, even admire – smart, throbbing, bubbly people; – but the things they say on Twitter, God! I cannot in my good taste re-tweet their truisms for brownie points, I have standards (no, really).

…I go back to the time when I was a little kid, and shake my head (again). I am amused. There is a naked king in the room, with a wobbly member, -  and a huge parade, with trumpets and balloons. Did I miss the memo? Am I the only one who is paying attention, or does everybody see the said member and well, am I…naive?

Is it because I have an old fashioned multi-track mind? I think about mysteries of the Universe, masturbation, chocolate, love, heat, comparative anthropology and copulating squirrels all at the same time. In no particular order.

Aren’t you the same way?

But then, Twitter. Don’t get me wrong, I luv my Twitter. But even in 140 characters, it is possible to be a part of nature, no?

And another thing. Most things expressed on the internet are opinions (yes, this one, too). Personal preferences and sales pitches. Mix and match. And it’s fine. Even telephone psychics serve a purpose.

But that’s what they are – opinions. There are no dating experts. Its a myth. There are dating practitioners, trend setters and confusers. Some of them, on some days, have really enlightening things to say. But anybody offering universal truths is either stupid or a liar.

I know, I know – some people who I read regularly are definitely not stupid. They are brighter than Aurora Borealis. But do you seriously expect me to love pictures of ugly chicks just because they have breasts? (I am from Europe and EVERYBODY in Europe has breasts so I am not impressed). Or celebrate every tweet that has the words “sex”, “vagina”, or “social media” in it? Or tolerate the fecal streams of motivational quotes?

Lack of imagination annoys me. And so does slogan-talk, no matter the topic and no matter the intelligence of the narrator.

I suppose, that’s what I get for having ignored microblogging for so long. The cultural shock. May be I shouldn’t be looking for the truth on Twitter and just quietly do what matters to me – meeting Christian singles building my brand.

Probably, genius.

Can anyone else tell me why Elton John, one of the biggest and richest gays that is out there, would accept at any price to perform for the country’s biggest homophobes and demagogues at Rush Limbaugh’s fourth wedding?  The absurdity all around is incredible.  From Ken Layne at Wonkette

Beloved American comedian Rush Limbaugh met a lady while he was divorcing his third wife a few years back, and now that new lady is Limbaugh’s fourth wife. Exciting! But how do you make such a special once-every-couple-of-years event even more exciting? If you’re Rush Limbaugh, you pay One Million Dollars to a very famous singer and piano player who is also very famously homosexual and British and a gay-marriage supporter and AIDS activist — and that’s how, we guess, Sir Elton John wound up performing at Limbaugh’s latest wedding. But the sexiest men at the Miami occasion were the guests. Karl Rove, Fred Thompson, Sean Hannity, Rudy Giuliani, Clarence Thomas … it wouldn’t have been any more fantastic if God Himself decided to rain burning poison shit from the sky, forever.

And some of the comments:

• It’s one thing to be gay. It’s another thing to be a gay whore. What the Hell was Elton John doing serenading the most obnoxious bigoted swine in America?!!  Dolmance   says at 8:27 am, June 7th, 2010

• All whores, not just Elton: how could anyone kiss that guy’s ass unless they were getting paid? charlesdegoal says at 8:38 am, June 7th, 2010

• Jesus. That guest list. Too bad the oil slick couldn’t have washed up on shore and mired them all in icky, flammable goo.  Elton John is a whoooorah.  freakishlystrong says at 8:43 am, June 7th, 2010

Elton John: whore.  Enjoy the million!  Not only are you known as an asshole, you’re also now known as a whore.  Goodbye yellow brick road, indeed.

The audience he played for: hypocritical demagogues.

Rush’s audience on the radio: idiots who don’t see that many of these people just feed your prejudice, without really believing what you believe.  See, they are demagogues who are sane, ranting to insane people who give them money for those rants, who then turn around and give that money to gays.

The world is rightfully pissed off at British Petroleum, but what does the world expect when we rely upon a disgusting energy source that we have to buy from countries that dislike the cultures that the filthy sludge engenders?

Greenpeace–haha, yeah, they’re still around–has a great campaign to rebrand the oil giant that swims in money while we swim in carbons.  The problem with the campaign is not its brilliance, but that it’s not Creative Commons.

I more and more have trouble understanding the “All Rights Reserved” mentality in situations like this.  Why launch an effort to re-brand a company with copyright protected submissions that are meant to go viral?  What’s the point?

Regardless, here are my favorites:

Go find yours on Flickr and blog it, damn the copyright.

This is a story about mean bosses, journalistic fluff pieces and how everyone is sick of re-hashings of re-rehashings by lazy reporters.

Who ever would have thought that the retirement of one Mimi Gurbst–a powerful ABC News producer in her day who you’ve never heard of–to pursue life as a high school counselor would have produced so much anger?

But people are pissed that this Gurbst woman ever existed in the first place.

There is even delicious anger at the lazy journalists who don’t investigate but just shift readers from one website to the next with the instruction You decide!

Here, you had a bunch of websites sending readers to the New York Observer story comments instead of checking out the story for themselves (by perhaps asking journalist friends at ABC what was the deal with Mimi?  At least Hamilton Nolan at Gawker did that).

There is anger at Gurbst; and anger at how the mainstream media–and ABC News in particular–conducts its internal business.  For according to a bunch of anonymous comments, Mimi was in the upper echelon of Worst Bosses.

The difference between this and other rumor stories is that the comments gave very detailed, unflattering descriptions of the politics of the ABC Newsroom under Mimi’s watch.  They didn’t read like run-of-the-mill trolls and haters.

This is how it went down: On May 11, Felix Gillette wrote a fluff piece about Gurbst’s retirement to help out all the children of the world. The story doesn’t go into how good of a job she did, but just a bunch of sycophantic mumblings about stuff she did that had nothing to do with producing news:

“This is a bittersweet time for us with Mimi leaving,” Jon Banner the executive producer of World News told us on Tuesday afternoon. “But we’re so excited for her. It’s incredibly fitting that what she’s going to do—and what she finds so much joy in—is something she’s been doing for so many years right here at ABC.”

“She has spent immense amounts of time and patience counseling all of us, helping us through lots of difficult times, and giving us advice on what to do,” he added. “I can only imagine how lucky every child will be who someday walks into her office for advice.”

Instead of being met with “koo…koo…how maahvelous!” comments the story was met with vitriol about how terrible she was to work with over the decades.

Serious vitriol.  As of this post, there are 173 comments that all closely match these that I pulled off the first page (please keep in mind these comments fall under “Someone on the Internet said…”):

• “She was an extremely destructive force at ABC News. For years she did nothing but protect her turf, play people off one another (including anchors) and trade on her alleged personal friendship with Bob Iger. Strategy or the actual product held very little importance for her.”
• “Dear Felix Gillette, I was enormously disappointed to see your piece on ABC News and in particular Mimi Gurbst. Perhaps surprisingly, my frustration stems not from the dire situation at ABC (massive layoffs, terrible morale, ambiguous future of the news division) but from the declining standards in news reporting–namely yours. Your article displays such a disregard for even the most basic tenets of fact checking and journalism. Simply, I am stunned.”
• “I can only surmise that Felix Gillette is either hoping for a job at ABC or his significant other already has a job with ABCNews. Obviously, Felix has no idea of how horrible person Mimi Gurbst is. Did she get her power at ABC News from her early relationship with Bob Murphy by helping to keep his sexual orientation (before he came out of the closet) or maybe she was blackmailing him?  Whatever. It’s 20 years too late and countless decent people’s careers ruined, not to mention the advancement of many incompetent sycophants.”

Those are just three of the 173 comments (as of writing) that appeared in Felix Gillette’s fake story (seriously Felix, who cares what some random named Mimi Gurbst does with her life? Answer: her former employees!)

Then the pile-on happens where all the other “This is Supposed to Be How We Earn Our Livings” news websites wrote a bunch of stories that said, “This happened – go check it out!”

Here’s a “People Seem to Hate Mimi Gurbst” blog roll:

• For Departing ABC News Exec, Where the Story Ends, Commentary Begins – Mediabistro
• Mimi Gurbst: Career Counselor or Cruella Deville? – Mediabistro
• Inside the Sausage Factory: A Retirement at ABC News Brings Out the Long Knives – Big Journalism
• Who Hates Mimi Gurbst? – Gawker
• When Online Commenters Attack – WebNewser
• Mean Girls Media :: The Mimi Gurbst Social Media Backlash – Rhizomicon

Readers hungry for the red meat of whether this Gurbst lady was Queen Bitch weren’t having any of the Something happened – check it out! BS.  Just ask Michael Hogan at Vanity Fair, who upon writing “I have no way of verifying the claims made” received these comments:

• “What a cop out. Either you are in this business or you are not. Do the work or shut up. It’s that simple. Aggregate, aggregate. Report???”
• “Unbelievable. No, I, someone outside New York, in a completely different profession have no way to verify them. That’s why I read the news. Verifying and researching stories, isn’t that your job? Maybe next time a patient asks me to examine a concern, I’ll just shrug and tell them I have no way to verify their claims, point them to webMD and go about my day.”
• “Wow. I’m no journalist, but I came to this site to read a second source on this matter – as I usually do when I’m trying to discern the truth. There is no report here. Strange and useless redirect.”
• “Make some call! My word, you have one of the best “inside a news division” stories in a decade and you are sending your readers to a different webpage! That is insane. Report the story and keep it here, what is wrong with you?”
• “Unbelievable. ‘…I have no way of verifying the claims made’? It’s called reporting.”

LOL – stupid commenters, don’t you know that the era of “reporting” and “journalism” is dead, and now all that is left are blogs like this one that just re-hash and re-tell what some other nobody just hashed and told, with our own worthless two-cents thrown in?

Or is it possible that the American public is fed up with our crappy journalists who think they are hot stuff, even though the rest of us think they generally suck at their jobs?

Your only other alternative is a Mimi Gurbst newsroom, apparently.

People are angry that things aren’t working the way we all thought they were supposed to be working.  If the descriptions of the Gurbst ABC Newsroom in the Observer’s story comments are accurate, it’s no longer shocking.  It’s just depressing, the state of American journalism.

I make no money from my Creative Commons photography, but the payoffs come in ways that aren’t financial.  One is that with every person I photograph, I’m in a situation where I have the opportunity to say something to that person.

I almost never take advantage of this.  It’s somewhat unprofessional: these people are there to have their pictures taken, and I’m there to take them.  Neither of us is there to discuss whatever.  Idle chatter does not go down well with photographers because it hamstrings our ability to shoot photographs.

Besides, what to say when one has perhaps 20 seconds for an interaction?

When I photographed David Bowie, my all-time favorite musician and someone whose work impacted my life a good deal, I said nothing to him.

“I really love your music” wouldn’t have cut it in the moments we had, and who knows if his reaction to such a cliche would have hurt my own cherished, personal “David Bowie”.

But with Elizabeth Warren it was different.

Amongst the 100 Most Influential People in the World, she was the only person to whom I had something to say because I love Elizabeth Warren.

I love the person I see in the media; I love that she does so much good; I love the voice and tone that she uses to say the things that she does; and I love how gently matter-of-fact she is about it all.

I went to law school, but I also love that I would only need a high school education to understand the arguments that she makes on behalf of mainstream Americans (and against the shenanigans of Wall Street).

If you ever have said to yourself, “You know, I really should bone up on what needs to be done to fix the whole Wall Street mess” then Google Elizabeth Warren and look for her television appearances.  She’s speaking for you, she’s speaking for me, and even though they may not know it yet, she is speaking for Wall Street.

Our financial sector, the entire global economy, only functions with trust and faith; damage it, and nobody trusts that the things you sell may be okay to buy.

Think Chinese toothpaste and toys; American financial products are in danger of the same reputation if we don’t clean up how they are made.

So what did I say to Elizabeth Warren when I had the opportunity?  “Elizabeth!  Thank you!  You do such good work!  Thank you!“  And then I took the portrait that you see above.

Learn why I love her–and why you should too–by watching this clip from the May 3rd Stephen Colbert (whom I photographed in 2007, but to whom I also said nothing):

Click here to see my Time 100 Creative Commons portraits at Flickr.

Follow Shankbone updates on Twitter.

Okay, the title of this post is a little hyperbolic, but some of these people are incredibly influential; they were, after all, on the red carpet for the 2010 Time 100.

Ashton Kutcher is one of my favorite celebrities.  I’m not one of his Twitter followers, and I don’t rush to see what new thing he does (I just can’t keep up); but every time I hear about him or see his work, I like it.  How can you not like someone who Sean “Diddy” Combs said this about on his Time 100 profile:

Most of us want to make as much money as we can, but Ashton, 32, is out to make the world a better place. He is smart — smart enough to leave Punk’d when he could still be making money at it. He has to have a heart in what he does. What he and Demi do with Twitter is a good example. Most people use it to promote themselves, but he uses Twitter to connect, to strike up conversations, to send positive messages to the millions of people who read his words. This guy will show us the future. And it’s gonna be a blast.

Here are some other couples portraits of those who were on the red carpet.  All of these images are licensed Creative Commons 3.0:

No, Seth Meyers and Andy Samberg aren’t a “couple”, but they are both comedic powerhouses and I wanted to put this photo in some post.  Samberg was a 2010 Time 100 contender.

The famous Palins, Todd and Sarah.

Karls Paul-Noel and “guest” (wife?) – I couldn’t find any other photograph of the two where she was identified.  Paul-Noel was a Time 100.  Rudy Guiliani wrote this about him: “Karls Paul-Noel, 53, is that kind of firefighter, and his compassion outranks even his bravery….  Less than 24 hours after the quake, Paul-Noel’s team was searching pancaked schools and houses, digging among smashed desks, cinder blocks and the bodies of the dead to find signs of life. His team found 11 survivors in Port-au-Prince, including four children.”

Leslie Mann and Judd Apatow.  Mann is an actress who has appeared in many of her her husband Apatow’s films.  Apatow was a 2008 Time 100 and a contender for the 2010 list.

Lisa Oz and Dr. Mehmet Oz.  Dr. Oz, called “America’s Doctor”, was a contender for the 2010 Time 100.

Artist Jeff Koons and his wife Justine.  Koons wrote Steve Jobs’s 2010 Time 100 profile.

David Lauren (Ralph Lauren’s son) and Lauren Bush (Neil Bush’s daughter, and the niece of GWB).  They have been together for about five years.

Click here to see my Time 100 Creative Commons portraits at Flickr.

Follow Shankbone updates on Twitter.

I love taking photos like the one above.  It’s Lea Michele, who is on a show that I don’t watch called Glee.  I photograph such celebrities all the time, but Lea is special and I didn’t even know it.  She was one one of the Time 100 most influential people.  Olivia Newton-John wrote this about her in the magazine:

Professional reporter that I am, I forgot to ask her how it feels to know that, as Rachel Berry on the hit TV show Glee, she is inspiring young people to get involved in musical programs in schools and encouraging communities to fund them — in short, how it feels to be a role model….  It must be so exciting to be Lea. To be in a wonderfully entertaining musical, playing a character whom millions of people around the world adore and whom young girls emulate — tell me about it!

I find it inspiring that random shows that I don’t even watch rekindle interest and love for things like drama and music programs in schools, and Lea was obviously a brilliant choice of casting.  Kudos to you, Lea!

Here are more portraits of the Time 100, as well as celebrity supporters who were at the gala.  All images licensed Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution – share them!

Click on the names to learn more about the people at Wikipedia.

Demi Moore, who attended the show with her Time 100 husband, Ashton Kutcher (whose portrait is on this post).  Yes, she looks this incredible in person.

J. J. Abrams, film and television producer, screenwriter, director, actor, composer.  He is known as the creator or co-creator of the television series Felicity, Alias, Lost, and Fringe, and as a director of the films Mission: Impossible III and the 2009 feature Star Trek. He is also known as the creator of the film Cloverfield.  Although not a 2010 Time 100, he is 2006 alumnus of the list (see what Tom Cruise said about him there).

Liya Kebede (who I photographed in 2008), model and 2010 Time 100.  Wrote Tom Ford in the magazine: “I have had the good fortune of coming to know Liya well over the past decade, and I am happy to say that my first impression of her was accurate. I was therefore not surprised when I heard that she had been appointed the World Health Organization’s Goodwill Ambassador for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health in 2005. Or that she had founded the Liya Kebede Foundation with a similar mission. This year, in recognition of her work in this field, the World Economic Forum named her a Young Global Leader.  In today’s world, celebrity advocates are not rare. What is rare is to encounter one whose devotion and drive come from a genuine desire to better our world. Liya’s work comes from a place of sincerity, and her beauty is much more than skin-deep.”

Nick Cannon, actor, comedian and rapper, and Mariah Carey’s husband.  He is not a Time 100, but he wrote Simon Cowell’s profile for the magazine (Cowell wasn’t at the gala).

Lorne Michaels, the brilliant long-time Caudillo of Saturday Night Live.  I photographed Lorne in 2008, and he is someone you instantly like when you are around him.  He just gives off good energy.

Gayle King is editor-at-large for O, The Oprah Magazine and is the best friend of Oprah Winfrey. She has previously worked as a television news anchor and talk show host. King was also instrumental in the planning and creation of the Legends Weekend.

Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and 2009 Time 100 Most Influential Person.

Click here to see my Time 100 Creative Commons portraits at Flickr.

Follow Shankbone updates on Twitter.

The Time 100 red carpet posed some interesting challenges.  It was crowded, and with people who are changing the world but whose faces you may have never seen, it can be difficult to spot the subject you need.

You have some random woman milling about in front of you who you assume is just Nick Cannon’s publicist, but who you later learn was the woman who saved 5,000 Chinese peasants from a collapsed mine and then turned them all into millionaires with a clever business model that only required a cell phone and fifty cents to get started. Is that Vivienne Tam’s date, or is it David Chang?

Such is the mix of people on the Time 100 red carpet.  Below are portraits of some of the most influential people in the world, all licensed Creative Commons Attribution:

Tim Westergren, engineer.  “If Pandora, the service that allows users to create their own Internet radio stations, is the little music search engine that could, then founder Tim Westergren, 44, is its quixotic engineer. A former rock and jazz musician, Westergren had a big idea in 1999: the Music Genome Project, a typology for categorizing any piece of music according to nearly 2,000 traits identified by Pandora’s experts. As a user, you start with, say, a Brian Eno song, then receive a stream of ‘genetically’ related music — Four Tet, Harold Budd and other artists you’ll probably like.” – Kurt Andersen

Deborah Gist, educator.  “When Deborah Gist became commissioner of Rhode Island schools in 2009, she pledged to make every decision in the best interests of children — something we’ve heard before and rarely seen happen. Then she started doing it.

At first, no one outside Rhode Island noticed. Gist, 43, announced that staffing decisions would be based on teacher qualifications, not seniority. She also launched a new evaluation system in which teachers get annual reviews — an idea practiced in only 15 other states. When she learned that Rhode Island’s teacher-training programs had one of the lowest test-score requirements for entrance, she found out which state set the bar the highest — then raised Rhode Island’s one point above it.” — Amanda Ripley

Chief Master Seargent Tony Travis.  “When chief master sergeant Antonio ‘Tony’ Travis arrived at the Port-au-Prince airport shortly after January’s earthquake, there was only one usable runway, the air-traffic-control tower was structurally unsafe, and 42 aircraft were grounded in a space designed for 12….In only 28 minutes, Chief Travis set up a makeshift air-traffic-control operation located midfield. Working from a card table, often standing on chairs, he and his team deftly took control of the arrivals and departures. Under his leadership, planes were able to take off and land every five minutes, bringing in 4 million lb. of supplies. For Haitians unable to get to the capital, his team surveyed and controlled four remote drop zones, providing 150,000 bottles of water and 75,000 packaged meals to people who had no other means of survival.”  – Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger

David Chang, chef.  “When Chang, 32, opened Momofuku in New York in 2004, he reinvented the casual restaurant and changed the game. Turning his back on the high-end kitchens in which he had been working, he started off with a bare-bones place his peers could afford. At first he offered a few simple dishes — pork buns so soft they practically swallowed themselves and memorable ramen made with organic ingredients — but Chang soon began pushing the boundaries, combining a passion for Asian food with his classic European training and serving the kind of challenging dishes once relegated to expensive establishments. He trusted his customers — who trusted him.” –Ruth Reichl

Kathleen Merrigan, Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.  “She wants a community garden in every neighborhood, doesn’t she? She does. Supports farmers’ markets and local food? Check. She practically wrote the book on organic. (Actually, she did. See the 1990 Organic Foods Production Act.) And though her charge as Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture is to represent all factions — whatever decision she’s making, as one Washington insider told me, she ‘walks between raindrops’ — you think, She’s one of us.

“Then you learn that she supports conventional farmers, refuses to vilify biotech and relishes above all else a good steak. ‘I displease pleasingly,’ she’ll say, and you respect her all the more.

“If you’ve ever wondered who in government shoulders the complexities of moving an agenda forward in a fractured time and pushes on without getting soaked, here is your answer.” – Dan Barber

P. Namperumalsamy, surgeon.  “In less time than it takes to read this magazine, a simple surgery can give a blind person her eyesight back.

“A miracle? Absolutely. But Dr. Perumalsamy Namperumalsamy, 70, and his army of cataract fixers at India’s Aravind Eye Care Hospitals make it look easy. The surgery has been around for decades, but the chairman of Aravind — which was founded in 1976 with the goal of bringing assembly-line efficiency to health care — figured out how to replace cataracts safely and quickly: 3.6 million surgeries to date, a new one every 15 minutes.

“Equally brilliant is the business model: the 30% of patients who can afford to pay subsidize free or low-cost care for the 70% who are poor.” – Brian Mullaney

And though she was not a Time 100 person, here is designer Vivienne Tam, looking fantastic arriving for the dinner and gala to celebrate the people above:

Click here to see my Time 100 Creative Commons portraits at Flickr.

Follow Shankbone updates on Twitter.