Photo by WU Jialin, Yibin, Sichuan Province, 1989
The world’s most comprehensive collection and overview of photography from China is currently on display in a mammoth city-wide exhibition in Houston, Texas, as part of FotoFest 2008. This is a tremendously ambitious and successful presentation of the important roles that photography has played in the dramatic flux that has defined and re-defined China over the past 74 years.
Check it out here.
any minute now, William Albert Allard will walk through my door….i have not asked him, but i will put him on the spot with any of you who happen to be “on” right now….he will probably be here for a couple of hours or so…since his name comes up quite a bit here, most recently on the previous post, i thought you might enjoy having a word with him…so ask the boy a question or two…i will try to keep him here as long as possible…..
Check it out here.
Thank you, inventors of the Sigma DP1.
My photo opportunities have now expanded without being tied to my ridiculously large collection of Yashica T4’s , Contax T2’s and Leica Minilux (plural) and the increasing expense of shooting film. Just deciding which one to use kills me every time.
Check it out here.
John Moore of Getty Images was picked as the NPPA 2008 Best Of Photojournalism competition’s Photojournalist of the Year (Larger Markets) today at the end of the final round of judging in this year’s contest at The Poynter Institute for Media Studies.
Check it out here.
Spotted in the New York Times Magazine
Pablo Zuleta Zahr was born in Chile in 1978.
He lives and works in Berlin Somewhere in a subway under neutral lighting Pablo Zuleta Zahr has set up his video camera in front of a monochrome wall and held out for ten hours. In such places, one can’t distinguish between day and night and it’s only through the frequency of passers- by that one can decipher whether it’s bedtime or rush hour. But the video that forms here is in no way the product that we get to see. What he gathered in two ten-hour sessions in Santiago de Chile serves solely as material. Everyone that passes the camera is separated out later. Filed away, the passers-by await a new ordering in the panorama, sorted by clothing criteria. In doing so, no one is forgotten, no one is manipulated, no one appears twice.
Check it out here.
Matt Stuart photographs the unscripted drama of the London streets. Entirely spontaneous, his pictures are made possible by a combination of instinct, cunning and happy coincidence, revealing the beauty and significance of the everyday – what the rest of us see but don’t notice, moments that vanish faster than the blink of an eye.
For his efforts, Stuart has picked up a little collection of pink stop-and-search slips, souvenirs of practising a century-old art form in a city increasingly paranoid and authoritarian. After 11 years, Stuart is something of an old hand. Using the street photographer’s traditional tool of choice – the discreet and near silent Leica camera – he knows how to make himself invisible, make an image and move on. He rarely runs into trouble; when he does, he knows his rights.
Check it out here.
In between battles, fighters spoke about politics and war. There was no sign of dread, or grief, or fear. Death was a matter of honor, a shortcut to some divine place.
As the two sides exchanged fire, Thahabi’s mother, Um Falah, clutched a Koran and began to recite a prayer to Imam Ali, Shiite Islam’s most revered saint. Her eldest son, Abu Hassan, a Mahdi Army commander, was fighting this day.
“May Ali be with you,” said Um Falah, who wore a black abaya and round eyeglasses. “I pray that all the bullets will not affect you.”
Check it out here.
Thanks M
Half the history of Converse is about basketball, and the rest is about something far more complicated, about the ways a plain sneaker is consistently adored by anticonsumer consumers. A Converse on a teenager now is about remaining authentic and cool, while selling out in every possible way. It is perhaps the neatest trick in footwear history, and who would have thought it, when Marquis Mills Converse first started making simple, rubber-soled work shoes at a factory outside Boston in 1908?
Check it out here.
You have heard by now that Polaroid film is dying. Rightfully, no, but inevitably, yes, and we have few words to appropriately state our reaction (of the few we have, the following do share company: appalled, mystified, f*cking pissed).
Of course, while we are all justified in experiencing some emotion over this unnecessary loss, there are those among us who have even more right to mourn (see also: picket, riot, send death threats, etc.). One of them is Grant Hamilton, an Iowa City-based professional photographer who cites a 1975 Polariod SX-70 as his camera of choice – and who will, come next year, be to find a new medium.
Join us as we A) Take a moment of silence for a great thing lost; and B) Chat with an artist who is approaching some serious changes.
Check it out here.
Travel represents one of the most popular content submission areas for the PhotoShelter Collection, and as such, we are becoming increasingly more selective about the types of images that we accept. The following guidelines are prescriptive for travel photography, although some concepts will extend into the general realm of stock photography.
Check it out here.
Photo by erik lunsford
These days, what’s driving me batty isn’t so much whether I win a contest or not (presently I’m ho-hum on the matter), it’s the day-to-day photography that I’m nitpicking to death while trying to grow my work and make it closer to perfect than the usual rift-raft. Take for example this feature I photographed earlier.
Check it out here.
Digital photography destroys memory, he believes, with its ability to erase. Art school is another problem, teaching students to be blind. Editors are worse—they poke the artist’s eyes out. Photography: one minute it’s not art at all. Then perhaps it is. And then again it is not. That’s Robert Frank.
“There are too many images,” he said. “Too many cameras now. We’re all being watched. It gets sillier and sillier. As if all action is meaningful. Nothing is really all that special. It’s just life. If all moments are recorded, then nothing is beautiful and maybe photography isn’t an art anymore. Maybe it never was.”
Check it out here.
National Press Photographers Association president Tony Overman today filed another written complaint with Major League Baseball’s commissioner Allan H. (Bud) Selig over MLB’s revised terms and conditions for credentials for the 2008 season, and addressed the issue of whether MLB intends to integrate into their credential agreement some of the National Football League’s credential rules that apply to audio, video, and photos.
Check it out here.
Sacha Baron Cohen, who is in Kansas shooting his film Bruno, which centers around his gay Austrian news reporter character, has been terrorizing various locations around the state, including Wichita’s Mid-Continent Airport:
“Officials there are reviewing its media policies after the so-called German documentary film crew made a scene inside the main terminal on Friday. ‘We were lied to,’ says Assistant Airport Director Brad Christopher. ‘We were duped.’ Authorities say the film crew was not who they said they were. Last month, the group contacted Wichita airport officials about shooting part of their documentary on American culture at Mid-Continent. They arrived Friday and were shown around. Airport employees say they seemed professional. That is, until the cameras came on and the clothes came off. Witnesses say it almost looked like pornography. In the middle of the terminal, the film crew began stripping down. They were escorted out of the airport by police, and told to leave. Wichita Police, along with the Attorney General, are investigating the prank. Airport officials say it wasn’t necessarily illegal, but it was unethical and highly inappropriate for a public location where security is paramount.”
Check it out here.
IN the heavy, noiseless air of desert country, an Aboriginal community is out hunting when the sound of a camera shutter cuts the air like a bullet from a gun. Heads turn, questions are asked and the — usually white — photographer is suddenly centre stage in an inquisition.
The curtain of suspicion can hang heavily in such cases between image-taker and subject, prompting a turned away head or a shielding hand. It can provoke unease on the part of a person viewing the image that it has been captured opportunistically, even sneakily.
The absence of such telltale defences and doubts is what strikes one immediately about Conversations with the Mob, photojournalist Megan Lewis’s 240-page collection of photographs and conversations with the Martu people of northwest Western Australia. The 100 large-format pictures have not emerged from a fly-in, fly-out form of photography but from a mutually trusting relationship that took time to build
Check it out here.
The Aperture changes keep on coming: Apple today has released Aperture 2.1 for Mac, an update that incorporates various bug fixes and feature tweaks. But the centrepiece of this version – the seventh Aperture-related software release from Apple in a little over six weeks – is the rollout of image editing plug-ins to Apple’s pro photo management and RAW conversion application. While Apple has included an example plug-in of its own, the roster of outside developers already working on plug-ins is the real story: among early plug-in creators are Nik, with Viveza, and PictureCode, with Noise Ninja.
Here’s a first look at Aperture 2.1.
Check it out here.
Judges at NPPA’s 2008 Best Of Photojournalism competition at The Poynter Institute today picked winners in the categories International News Picture Story, Enterprise Picture Story (Smaller and Larger Markets), Best Published Picture Story (Smaller and Larger Markets), and in the new category Investigative Issue Picture Story.
Check it out here.
