Category: Editor’s Choice

The Decade in Pictures – The New York Times

The Decade in Pictures

The New York Times pored over 10 years of images, of moments both fresh and faded, to tell the story of the past decade.

Link: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/world/decade-in-pictures.html

If you’re a 500px member who hasn’t logged in to the photo sharing and selling service for a while, you may be asked to agree to an updated Terms of Service document upon logging in. The latest agreement is causing an uproar (and a new wave of account deletions) among many photographers, but it doesn’t appear that anything has changed from a legal or rights standpoint.

December 19, 2019
Trump’s Napalm Girl: Consequences of a Drowned Migrant Father and Daughter – Reading The Pictures

Trump’s Napalm Girl: Consequences of a Drowned Migrant Father and Daughter – Reading The Pictures

The significance of the drowning photograph: America at a tipping point. What it says about Trump. When a photo like this should be seen.

via Reading The Pictures: https://www.readingthepictures.org/2019/06/migrant-father-daughter-drowning/

We cannot know in this moment, but I suspect that this photo of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his daughter, Valeria, will stand the test of time. Given the firestorm over immigrant detention and the moral freefall of this administration, I believe Americans will look back at this photo as a tipping point of the Trump presidency. I see the photo as a marker and container for the abrogation of the country’s values in this faux immigration crisis, much like the 1972 Napalm Girl photo memorialized US disillusionment and exhaustion over Vietnam, and hastened America’s final exit from the war.

June 27, 2019
A Photographer’s Loving Ode to Small-Town Texas | The New Yorker

A Photographer’s Loving Ode to Small-Town Texas

What interests Keith Carter more than the stories Texas tells about itself are the everyday figures—idle kids, blue-collar workers, animals both domesticated and less so—that contribute to the state’s mythology.

via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/a-photographers-loving-ode-to-small-town-texas

The five decades that Keith Carter has spent documenting small-town Texas more than make up for the fact that he was born in Wisconsin. His family moved to the town of Beaumont when he was just a few years old, in the early nineteen-fifties, and his single mother took up commercial portrait photography to support them. Mesmerized by the red-tinted darkroom printing he witnessed in their kitchens growing up, he turned to photography after graduating from Lamar University with a business degree. He has since built a prolific career making art of and for the place he’s from. “My home town,” Carter has said, “is the backdrop for a rich East Texas storytelling culture, an occasional mystifying spirituality, and abundant folklore,” qualities that manifest themselves in the rich, allegorical images he produces.

December 5, 2018
You can now watch the entire “Everybody Street” documentary film for free on YouTube and Amazon Prime Video – Leica Rumors

You can now watch the entire “Everybody Street” documentary film for free on YouTube and Amazon Prime Video – Leica Rumors

The full length “Everybody Street” documentary film is now available on YouTube (with ads). You can also stream it for free on Amazon Prime Video (or purchase the DVD from Amazon): EVERYBODY STREET, directed by Cheryl Dunn (“102 Minutes that Changed Ameri

via Leica Rumors: https://leicarumors.com/2018/11/19/you-can-now-watch-the-entire-everybody-street-documentary-film-for-free-on-youtube-and-amazon-prime-video.aspx/

The full length “Everybody Street” documentary film is now available on YouTube (with ads). You can also stream it for free on Amazon Prime Video (or purchase the DVD from Amazon):

November 20, 2018
The best photographs of 2017 – by the people who shot them | Media | The Guardian

The best photographs of 2017 – by the people who shot them

From Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, to the disaster at Grenfell Tower and a seahorse clinging to a cotton bud: photographers describe how they took some of the defining images of 2017. Selection by Sarah Gilbert

via the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/dec/28/the-best-photographs-of-2017-by-the-people-who-shot-them

From Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, to the disaster at Grenfell Tower and a seahorse clinging to a cotton bud: photographers describe how they took some of the defining images of 2017. Selection by Sarah Gilbert

December 28, 2017
David Hillard: Regarding Others | LENSCRATCH

David Hilliard: Regarding Others

Photographer David Hilliard has a new exhibition, David Hilliard: Regarding Others at the Schneider Gallery in Chicago that runs through December 30th, 2017. There’s something about David’s cinematic large format photographs that stand apart–it’s a speci

via LENSCRATCH: http://lenscratch.com/2017/11/david-hillard-regarding-others/

Photographer David Hilliard has a new exhibition, David Hilliard: Regarding Others at the Schneider Gallery in Chicago that runs through December 30th, 2017. There’s something about David’s cinematic large format photographs that stand apart–it’s a special quality of light, color, and clarity that comes from analog capture, but also a profound ability to connect photographs, shaping them into small novellas with nuance and heart. The Schneider Gallery states, In Regarding Others, selections from David Hilliard’s career aim to bridge themes of youth, beauty, rites of passage, longing and aging that often saturate his evocative compositions. Hilliard references intimate moments often drawn from his personal life while simultaneously and skillfully allowing the work to remain universally understood.

November 25, 2017
Stephen Crowley: a Visual Historian in Real Time – The New York Times

Stephen Crowley: a Visual Historian in Real Time

Stephen Crowley, who has retired after 25 years of photographing Washington and politics, on working for The Times, the changes he’s seen in the country, and on what’s next.

via Lens Blog: https://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2017/08/09/stephen-crowley-a-visual-historian-in-real-time/?module=BlogPost-Title&version=Blog%20Main&contentCollection=Multimedia&action=Click&pgtype=Blogs&region=Body

After 25 years as a photographer for The New York Times based in Washington, D.C., Stephen Crowley has retired. His incisive and revealing photographs pierced the public veneer of Washington politics, bringing the viewer into the back rooms of power.

August 9, 2017
A Photographer’s View of a Battle to Destroy ISIS – The New Yorker

A Photographer’s View of a Battle to Destroy ISIS

When the men died, I wanted to find them in a picture, as if seeing them right away would keep their memory from fading away.

via The New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/a-photographers-view-of-a-battle-to-destroy-isis?mbid=rss

This fall, I spent six weeks with the writer Luke Mogelson, following an élite Iraqi police unit called the Mosul swat team as its members fought to take back their city from the forces of the Islamic State. The story, which Luke wrote and I photographed, was called “The Avengers of Mosul”—the men were seeking vengeance not just for the threat to their country as a whole but also for the murders of family members by isis. Nearly every fighter had suffered this kind of loss, and many of them had family still living in peril in Mosul. The men welcomed us on their campaign, and shared with us their provisions, their blankets and mats, their seats in the trucks, and their stories.

February 10, 2017
Mark Peterson: Political Theater | LENSCRATCH

Mark Peterson: Political Theatre

Every presidential campaign has a particular feel and color: the red, white, and blue days of JFK that ended in a sad pink boucle, the brilliant reds of Nancy Reagan, the rainbow spectrum of the Obamas. But this election is perfectly captured in black and

via LENSCRATCH: http://lenscratch.com/2016/11/mark-peterson/

Every presidential campaign has a particular feel and color: the red, white, and blue days of JFK that ended in a sad pink boucle, the brilliant reds of Nancy Regan, the rainbow spectrum of the Obamas. But this election is perfectly captured in black and white by photographer Mark Peterson, stripping the last two years down to its bare bones, showing the warts and weirdness of democracy gone awry. The result of “the most polarized and bizarre presidential race in American history” is a new monograph, Political Theater, published by Steidl.

November 16, 2016
Juxtapoz Magazine – Jeff Brouws: Typologies, Projects & Portfolios

Juxtapoz Magazine – Jeff Brouws: Typologies, Projects & Portfolios

Jeff Brouws: Typologies, Projects & Portfolios, is currently on display at Robert Mann Gallery in New York. Practicing what he terms “visual anthr…

Link: http://www.juxtapoz.com/news/photography/jeff-brouws-typologies-projects-portfolios/

Practicing what he terms “visual anthropology” Brouws, over the past twenty-five years, has persistently pursued a body of work that closely examines the evolving American cultural landscape

November 9, 2016
The PJ Circle Jerk – Vantage – Medium

The PJ Circle Jerk

The PJ Circle Jerk is not a punk band or a new dance craze. It’s what happens when a group of people decide to join forces in order to…

via Medium: https://medium.com/vantage/the-pj-circle-jerk-701ac9883621#.qe7tgpsnn

There’s no need for a new and improved photojournalism. It’s the Great White shark of visual communication. It doesn’t need to evolve, because when it’s done right there’s nothing that can compete with it. That’s why photographers working in other disciplines relentlessly try to associate their work with photojournalism.

November 3, 2016
Fractured Lands: How the Arab World Came Apart – The New York Times

Fractured Lands: How the Arab World Came Apart

The story of more than a decade of war, terror and revolution in the Middle East, seen through the eyes of six people whose lives were changed forever.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/08/11/magazine/isis-middle-east-arab-spring-fractured-lands.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

Scott Anderson’s story gives the reader a visceral sense of how it all unfolded, through the eyes of six characters in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan. Accompanying Anderson’s text are 10 portfolios by the photographer Paolo Pellegrin, drawn from his extensive travels across the region over the last 14 years, as well as a landmark virtual-reality experience that embeds the viewer with the Iraqi fighting forces during the battle to retake Falluja.

August 11, 2016
Guest Post 23: Robert Dannin on Steve McCurry « Photocritic International

Guest Post 23: Robert Dannin on Steve McCurry

Pressing McCurry for explanations when one already knows the reasons he used Photoshop — to create a more saleable, viewable image — evades more serious issues about who controls photography, and when and how to liberate it.

via “Who controls photography…..and how to liberate it” – duckrabbit

June 13, 2016
Stephen Crowley: Time Spent: Florida 1972-1984 | LENSCRATCH

Stephen Crowley: Time Spent: Florida 1972-1984

I discovered Stephen Crowley’s terrific exploration of Florida in the 1970’s and 80’s when jurying Photolucida’s Critical Mass Competition. Stephen’s project, Time Spent: Florida 1972-1984 went on to be selected as one of the Top 50 portfolios of 2015. At

via LENSCRATCH: http://lenscratch.com/2016/06/stephen-crowley-time-spent-florida/

I discovered Stephen Crowley’s terrific exploration of Florida in the 1970’s and 80’s when jurying Photolucida’s Critical Mass Competition. Stephen’s project, Time Spent: Florida 1972-1984 went on to be selected as one of the Top 50 portfolios of 2015. At the young age of 20, Stephen had already identified himself as a street photographer and had a rare ability to capture moments that, now seen 40 years later, were insightful, telling, and iconic. His work allows us to consider a period in history that comes after the shape-shifting era of change in the 1960’s and early 1970’s and realize that Florida was slower to evolve and that the stark contrast between the classes was ever present.

June 10, 2016
L’ouvrage du World Press Photo 2016 – The Eye of Photography

L’ouvrage du World Press Photo 2016

Chaque année, l’un des plus attendus et plus importants Prix de Photographie de Presse publie son livre, le “World Press Photo Yearbook”. Cette année, l’ouvrage fait peau neuve, il est plus petit et comporte plus de pages tout en laissant une place importante à l’image ! Le livre est publié dans 6 langues, ce sont donc 6 éditeurs européens (Schilt Publishing, Thames & Hudson, Till Schaap Edition, 24 ORE Cultura et Blume) qui participent à la création de ce nouvel opus 2016. Les photographies des lauréats du World Press sont actuellement exposées à Amsterdam au De Nieuwe Kerk jusqu’au 10 juillet prochain.

May 9, 2016
The Fall of Flint — The Development Set — Medium

The Fall of Flint

“You know what my biggest fear is? That people are going to forget about us.”

via Medium: https://medium.com/the-development-set/the-fall-of-flint-2847187266a5#.bq2ooj110

Photographer Matt Black has profiled over 100 cities across 39 states for his project The Geography of Poverty. He recently went to Flint, Michigan, for The Development Set

April 22, 2016
Aji Susanto Anom – Recollecting Dreams « burn magazine

Aji Susanto Anom – Recollecting Dreams

Aji Susanto Anom Recollecting Dreams “Not all who wanders are lost” J.R.R Tolkien Question about home, dream and everything between, photography is my emotional escape, I use it as something to exp…

via burn magazine: http://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2016/01/aji-susanto-anom-recollecting-dreams/

Question about home, dream and everything between, photography is my emotional escape, I use it as something to express what I feel in my boring life.

January 18, 2016
Michael S. Williamson: Color My World — zPhotoJournal

Michael S. Williamson: Color My World

I will say this; I do think there’s a teeny bit of a shortage of good ideas to be honest with you. Robert Gilka, then the Chief of Photography for National Geographic once said, “We’re up to our armpits in great photographers, but up to our ankles in good ideas.”

So the only advice I would give is, “You’re talented, you’re smart, you’re dreamers, you’ve taken this on…so go poke around in some darker corners that haven’t had some light on them yet.”

December 2, 2015
David Burnett: Marathon Man — zPhotoJournal

David Burnett: Marathon Man

To be a photographer in this age, you have to really WANT to do it. Don’t do it just because you can’t think of anything else to do. Go to workshops, and perhaps more important, use your library and even the web to find work which inspires you. One of the things which I find so disconcerting is that very few young photographers today can tell you who the photojournalists of note were in the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s. I fear there is a certain kind of self-validation which shooting/seeing immediately engenders

October 7, 2015
Magnum Photos Blog

Elliott Erwitt. Retrospective

Elliott Erwitt has been taking pictures since the late forties. This exhibition is a unique and comprehensive survey of his work. Erwitt’s unmistakeable, often witty, style gives us a snapshot of the strange and the mundane over a period of more than half a century, through the lens of one of the era’s finest image-makers.

September 23, 2015