Link: Maggie Steber’s 25-Year Quest to Photograph Haiti’s Beauty – NYTimes.com

To much of the outside world, the image of Haiti — when it pops up at all — is one of catastrophes, both natural and man-made. Violence, grinding poverty, flood, earthquakes all leave a lingering image of a benighted nation bereft of tender moments.

Maggie Steber thinks that’s nonsense — and she has the pictures to prove it.

Don’t be misled, they aren’t all tender quiet moments, the photos are…

1. a funeral
2. pilgrims
3. dancing
4. looting
5. a slum resident weeping
6. a presidential inauguration
7. a voodoo spirit of death ceremony
8. crying mourners at funeral
9. a schoolgirl
10. a dead man in an alcove
11. a country market
12. “when the man reached the shore, another policeman shot him in the head, and his body was thrown into the back of a truck.”
13. cart pullers resting
14. market day
15. homeless boys in voodoo temple
16. a boy
17. Haitians searching the rubble for valuables
18. residents of a state-run home for the aged, whose dormitory collapsed

Link: L E N S C R A T C H: Dr. Eran Gilat

Israeli photographer and Doctor, Eran Gilat, has combined his work as a scientist (Neurobiology and Imaging) with his love of photography in his series of still lifes, Life Science.

Link: Bronx Parkour: Jose The Amazing (a photo essay) – Boing Boing

Last year I was in a desolate part of Hunts Point, talking to a friend. A group of about ten teenagers came down the street, loud, filled with energy, and seemingly marauding (kicking over cones, jumping on and over stationary cars, etc). I have never had a problem in my twenty years in New York City, but that does not mean I don’t stay aware. As they passed, out of the corner of my eye I spotted Jose, do a back flip over a hydrant. Amazed, I yelled out to him. He and his friends, who were also warily eyeing me and my friend, thinking we were cops, were planning to run away, but his friend Henry had a sprained ankle, so they stood their ground.

Link: Timm Rautert’s Photographs of the Amish and Hutterites : The New Yorker

A recent book from Steidl brings Rautert’s black-and-white photographs of the Amish together with his vivid Kodachrome images of the Hutterites

Link: L E N S C R A T C H: Carl Corey

We are a country of entrepreneurs, self-starters, and determined individuals that make up the core of our American dream.  Long before the Fortune 500′s, there were mom and pop day-to-day desires to carve out a living, and a life on one’s own terms.  Carl Corey takes a look at those self-starters who have created family businesses in Wisconsin and have managed to stay afloat for 50 years or more.

Even though I am a photographer, I try to avoid being a voyeur. It has always been my ambition not only to look, but also take part in life, which can be quite frustrating, especially if you have a tight deadline. If I meet someone playing soccer in the street, I immediately feel like playing with them instead of just watching. I never found it interesting to look at someone from the other side of the street, or to be “invisible” as a photographer. I hope this is the reason why people never feel like a voyeur looking at my images– because you feel that you are taking part.

Link: Sète 2012 : Christopher Anderson | La Lettre de la Photographie

Christopher Anderson arrived in Sete during a Saint Louis celebration evening. He immediately mingled amongst the jousters, became one of them, became a “Knight of the Tintaine”

Link: Sète 2012 : Gilles Caron | La Lettre de la Photographie

Born in 1939 in Neuilly-sur-Seine (France), Gilles Caron died at the age of 30 in April, 1970 on the N 1 road connecting Phnom Pen to Saigon. Just like Robert Capa, he is a legend in journalism and in photography

Link: Harlan Crichton – In The Shadow of The Burning Dog | LPV Magazine

As a twenty-two year old male I am part of a wartime generation. A minority of my generation has chosen to participate in the war; most have remained stateside. As one who chose to stay I am interested in the people who left. They have experienced the brutality of war and I have not. In this body of work I have embedded myself in the aftermath of their homecoming

Link: An English Photographer Goes to California for Milk and Ping-Pong Balls – NYTimes.com

He put down the digital camera he had been using, picked up a 35-millimeter film camera, bought some black-and-white film, rented a darkroom and set about creating scenes to photograph as opposed to reacting to things or events as he had been doing in his documentary work. He threw a Ping-Pong ball throughout Los Angeles and spilled milk around San Francisco, taking pictures as he went. “I wanted this to be less sociological,” Robin Maddock said.

My new project is called Playground. The Netherlands have several training facilities where members of the Fire Brigade, the Police Force and the Ministry of Defense are trained and prepared for a wide range of possible scenarios. Within the boundaries of these grounds it’s all just practice or ‘play’. Outside of them however, things are a lot more serious. My aim was to capture these facilities and the people who are trained there.

“I felt that the depiction of the cops and protesters was mostly sensationalist and reductive,” said Mr. Arbuckle, 21. “It seemed like the only protesters who showed up in the news were the wild, trouble-making fringe elements, and the only cops who showed up in the news were the ones shouting and tackling protesters.”

Link: Rebecca Norris Webb: ‘My Dakota’ – LightBox

Looking again at the work now that My Dakota is finally a book, I realize that I was photographing this particularly dark time in my life in order to try to absorb it, to distill it, and, ultimately, to let it go. Not only did my first grief change me, but making My Dakota changed me as well, both as a human being and as a bookmaker.

Link: Martin Parr Tourism Inc | La Lettre de la Photographie

For 20 years, Reporters Without Borders has been fighting for freedom of the press. They regularly publish fundraising photo albums devoted to selected photographers, with sales profits going to financing their actions. Martin Parr’s work is being featured in the latest album to be released. If this choice could at first seem surprising, it is no less justified. Indeed, this Magnum photographer has a unique style. Tourists are his main subjects.

Link: Country Fair Photos Parade Jolly Brits, Tarts and Chintz | Raw File | Wired.com

Arnhel de Serra’s photos are like the British equivalent of a good New Yorker cartoon: quirky and insightful.

Link: Magnum 62 : 1970s – 1990s, the mutation | La Lettre de la Photographie

1970s and 1980s: The world of photojournalism and documentary photography is changing

Link: Magnum 62, : the young generation | La Lettre de la Photographie

In more recent decades, the photographers of the Magnum agency have been faced with many changes and challenges in the professional and technical sphere of photography. Magnum was founded on ideals of copyright but today, with the impact of digital imaging, popular understanding of an image’s value has changed

Link: New York – Tokyo-Ga : Invisible existences | La Lettre de la Photographie

The second chapter of the project Tokyo-Ga is entitled Invisible Existences. Whereas the first chapter preferred distance, this chapter prefers closeness and black-and-white. In solidarity with the recent events that have shaken Japan, the curator Naoko Ohta has conceived a large-scale photography project.

Link: New York – Tokyo-Ga : Ensemble c’est tout | La Lettre de la Photographie

In solidarity with the recent events that have shaken Japan, the curator Naoko Ohta has conceived a large-scale photography project. One hundred photographers roamed the streets of Tokyo to take the pulse of this bustling metropolis turned gathering place.

Link: 30y3 – spanish photography now » Óscar Monzón – Sweet Car

via: Conscientious