Five photographers reveal a complex and ambivalent portrait of a mysterious place in this collection of photography from Appalachia.
via Feature Shoot: https://www.featureshoot.com/2023/04/photography-from-appalachia-5-projects-explore-a-complex-place/
“I’m certainly aware of the stereotypes, clichés, and exploitation this area has been exposed to by many entities,” the photographer Rich-Joseph Facun once told us. “I want to be clear: I’m not here to define what Appalachia is or isn’t.” In this collection, we take a look back at some of the most powerful photography from Appalachia, created by five visual storytellers, each with a different perspective.
This week we are looking at the work of artists who submitted projects during our most recent call-for-entries. Today, Paloma Lounice and I discuss Ramona. Mexican and American photographer Paloma Lounice explores intimate themes in her work such as famil
via LENSCRATCH: http://lenscratch.com/2023/04/paloma-lounice-ramona/
Mexican and American photographer Paloma Lounice explores intimate themes in her work such as family heritage, identity, and memory as constructs. With a degree in Modern Languages and Intercultural Studies, most of her photographic training was through Centro Fotográfico Manuel Álvarez Bravo in Oaxaca, Mexico. Her project Ramona was selected for a solo exhibition at the same institution, and her work has been shown in various collective exhibitions and publications in Mexico and the United States.
There is something about night photography that makes unremarkable spaces a bit more remarkable. The inky skies have greater depth and the sense of emptiness create an emotional tableaux. The dreary streets that have seen better days, the grayness that s
via LENSCRATCH: http://lenscratch.com/2023/04/jim-hill/
Small Places was purposely shot at night. The darkness of the rural midwestern sky provides a backdrop which accentuates the isolation of small towns. At night, the lite up grain storage structures tower over the surrounding towns, providing a visual metaphor for the abundance of the region. The heart of the community in many small places is the local bar. In the evenings, the local taverns are often the only thing open, their lights serve as beacons in the darkness. The lights of a small town against a dark sky highlights the isolation of rural places while the darkness and shadows transform the mundane into the beautiful.
From Nottingham living rooms to New York dance floors, the British photographer has created records of subcultures that brim with life.
via Aperture: https://aperture.org/editorial/how-nick-waplington-made-indelible-photographs-of-club-kids-and-family-life/
From Nottingham living rooms to New York dance floors and Los Angeles’s surf scene, the British photographer has created records of subcultures that brim with life.
The photographer and multimedia artist speaks about his earliest images, adopting a hawk, and taking a wild road trip to the Mexico-US border.
via Aperture: https://aperture.org/editorial/miguel-calderon-journeys-into-the-soul-of-mexico/
The photographer and multimedia artist speaks about his earliest images, adopting a hawk, and taking a wild road trip to the Mexico-US border.
The theme of this year’s Rotterdam Photo, an annual photography festival, was “Freedom Redefined,” and I was lucky enough to exhibit 34 prints from my work on women with life sentences, both inside prison and after they’ve regained their freedom. This wee
via LENSCRATCH: http://lenscratch.com/2023/03/rotterdam-photo-isaiah-winters/
Isaiah Winter’s series, “This Land is Your Land,” is a comprehensive multimedia project exploring the history of the U.S. National Park system, challenging the viewer to “question their ideas of land, nostalgia and nationalism.”
Fifty years ago, Augusto Pinochet staged a violent coup in Chile. Evandro Teixeira went to the capital and captured startling images of soldiers, protesters, and the funeral procession of Pablo Neruda.
via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/the-photographer-who-saw-the-brutality-and-the-fragility-of-authoritarianism
Teixeira’s photos in Chile are the main subject of a retrospective at the Instituto Moreira Salles, in São Paulo, from March to July. They provide haunting depictions of the aftermath of a military coup, when quotidian life is assaulted by a new regime that has claimed for itself a right to extrajudicial violence. I recently met Teixeira at the institute’s offices in Rio de Janeiro, along with the organizers of the upcoming exhibition. Teixeira is burly, and spoke with a raspy drawl, partly a result of age and partly from a recent battle with covid. He described his Santiago trip with a mix of gravity and mischievousness that seemed typical of not only his personality but his style.
Documenting the lively adventures of her son and the family’s two beloved dogs, Wendy Stone reframes the bond between siblings through an animal lens
via LensCulture: https://www.lensculture.com/articles/wendy-stone-siblings
Documenting the lively adventures of her son and the family’s two beloved dogs, Wendy Stone reframes the bond between siblings through an animal lens.
“Borderlands, an American Journey” by Francesco Anselmi Along a border at the center of the political and journalistic debate, “Borderlands” aims to develop a narration capable of going…
via burn magazine: https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2023/03/borderlands-an-american-journey-by-francesco-anselmi/
Along a border at the center of the political and journalistic debate, “Borderlands” aims to develop a narration capable of going beyond the emergency perspective under which the US/Mexico border related issues are often presented and to vehicle the complexity of this 3600 kilometers long line that has been crossed by migrants and travelers for decades.
His photos, which he wrote were meant to “bring my viewers deep into what I am seeing,” reveal parts of the city some residents say they had forgotten.
Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/02/us/tyre-memphis-photos.html
“It brings a lot of peace and solace just to sit with the crew and talk about him and laugh,” he said. “It’s almost like he’s not even gone. It’s like he’s just not here today.”
In images made before the Russian invasion in 2022, three photographers preserve social memory—and witness a nation striving to define its sovereignty.
via Aperture: https://aperture.org/editorial/the-photographers-who-showed-the-whimsy-and-eros-of-ukraine-before-the-war/
Working in black and white with one camera, Chekmenev took the official passport-format headshots of weary visages against a portable white backdrop; while using a wide-angle camera with color film, he captured all that lay beyond in photographs that would eventually form the series Passport (1995). “I saw that the frame needed to be widened,” he told me recently. The photographs represent a people entrenched in an old Soviet system that cared little for, deceived, and effectively abandoned the individual. Depicting a generation trapped in time, the pictures teeter on the precipice of uncertainty.
For those of you who may remember the days when your elementary school teacher instructed you in the “Duck and Cover” air raid drill triggered by a lonely siren where you dove under your desk, covered your head with your arms and were instructed not to lo
via LENSCRATCH: http://lenscratch.com/2023/02/countdown/
Michna-Bales takes us on a visual tour of decrepit fallout shelters, some public and others private, with shelves still stocked with unopened cans of foodstuffs and “survival crackers” from the 1960’s.
“Why New Jersey? Because people make such a funny face when you mention New Jersey.”
via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/02/13/the-lost-new-jersey-photographs-of-henri-cartier-bresson
In 1975, the renowned photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson received an invitation to travel from Paris to America for what would become one of his final photographic projects. Choose any subject, anywhere, he was told. His choice? New Jersey. New Jersey? He seemed delighted by his own provocation. “Why New Jersey?” he said. “Because people make such a funny face when you mention New Jersey.”
As the publishing and awards director/senior editor at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, I first met Will Warasila when he was a graduate student in Duke’s MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts (MFA|EDA) program (he graduated in Ma
via LENSCRATCH: http://lenscratch.com/2023/02/will-warasila-quicker-than-coal-ash/
Quicker than Coal Ash his is not only a compelling series of imaginative and artful photographs but also a reflection of Will’s deep engagement in long-term fieldwork, relationship-building, and advocacy work in Walnut Cove. He continues to be connected to the people he met there. Additionally, he did research into the science around coal ash, environmental law, and governmental policy making and collected oral histories. He also contributed materials from the project to grassroots organizers and to the legal team representing community groups who sued Duke Energy to excavate six coal ash sites in North Carolina (and won).
I met Argus Paul Estabrook through a mutual friend in my last year of undergrad at Virginia Intermont College back in 1997 or 1998. We didn’t reconnect until the invention of social media when I became much more aware of his work. Back in 2021, I attended
via LENSCRATCH: http://lenscratch.com/2023/01/argus-paul-estabrook/
I’m a Korean American, lens-based artist working in South Korea and the USA. I use candid moments and chance encounters to share a personal journey that often explores the intersections of identity, race, and politics. Artistically, I consider myself a street photographer that sometimes takes the camera inside to tell private stories. -Argus Paul Estabrook
The idea of cruising is/was a national past time in small towns and big cities. I well remember the cool night air as a carload of girlfriends and I drove down Sunset Strip night after night in someone’s family station wagon, air thick with adolescent per
via LENSCRATCH: http://lenscratch.com/2023/01/rick-mccloskey-van-nuys-blvd-1972/
Los Angeles has always been about car culture and what better project to go back in time and experience those nights of freedom and friends, laughing and looking for love (or trouble) than Rick McCloskey’s series from 1972, Van Nuys Blvd. Filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson celebrated this world in his movie, Licorice Pizza. In the summer of 1972, Rick McCloskey went to Van Nuys Boulevard, near his parents’ home and for three months, every Wednesday and sometimes Friday and Saturday evenings photographed the action.
…it comes natural to me, as I try to get to know this country walking through the deserted alleys of Santa Monica, to notice these little clues, and to take pictures of them. I recently met Francesca Forquet while reviewing portfolios at the Palm Spring Photo Festival. It was like meeting an old friend who
via LENSCRATCH: http://lenscratch.com/2023/01/i-love-l-a-francesca-forquet-santa-monica/
I recently met Francesca Forquet while reviewing portfolios at the Palm Spring Photo Festival. It was like meeting an old friend who shared a similar sense of humor and joie de vivre, who happened to be Italian. I have always loved the small, absurd details of city life, not unlike what the brilliant television show, How to with John Wilson has done for New York.
“Communism(s): A Cold War Album” by Arthur Grace When I landed at West Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport just over 43 years ago, it marked the beginning of a 12-year exploration of life behind…
via burn magazine: https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2023/01/communisms-a-cold-war-album-by-arthur-grace/
When I landed at West Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport just over 43 years ago, it marked the beginning of a 12-year exploration of life behind the Iron Curtain. As a photojournalist for Western news outlets, I had unique access to both daily life and historic events across what was then known as the Soviet Bloc.
Los Angeles or La Puebla de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles (The City of our Lady the Queen of the Angels) was founded by the Spaniards in 1781 and passed into American possession in 1846. It was however of no great importance until the ninth decad
via LENSCRATCH: http://lenscratch.com/2023/01/i-love-l-a-aline-smithson-lost-la/
The work today represents the past and present of my life, places I knew as a child and places I have come to know as an adult, with some levity added in.