photographylot

All quiet on the Eastern front.

2011-09-27T12:08:00.000-04:00

It's possible you may have noticed this blog has been pretty quiet of late. There are lots of reasons for that, most of which I won't bother boring you with.

However, one piece of news that will definitely have a bearing on the time I spend on this endeavour is the fact that as of tomorrow, I'll be leaving the U.S. where I have lived for the past 5 years to relocate to Singapore. Things for me will (hopefully) be pretty busy so I doubt this blog will get noisier anytime soon. It's a shame, as I've enjoyed trawling through the world of photography and spouting my opinions on things. But there are people who do that more frequently and much better than me. I may occasionally use this as a forum to post something I wish to say or share, and maybe one day I'll get round to writing those long rambling posts that I keep meaning to write, but probably not anytime soon. I hope you've enjoyed the blog and the archive is of course always there (until I delete it or we advance over to holographic computing and all Google's server's get junked). But for now, it stays. There may be something worth looking at in there, you never know!

Anyway, until the next post. Farewell.

Tom.

Fwd: Tonight's show moved indoors to the Walter Reade Theater

2011-09-20T15:38:00.001-04:00

Venue change - not on Highline anymore. Sad. But I'm still gonna go.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Rooftop Films <info@rooftopfilms.com>
Date: Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 2:26 PM
Subject: Tonight's show moved indoors to the Walter Reade Theater
To: deidreschoo@gmail.com

VENUE CHANGE FOR TONIGHT
IFP LAB SHOWCASE MOVES INDOORS TO THE WALTER READE

TOMORROW: THUNDERSOUL

INDEPENDENT FILM WEEK

TONIGHT - IFP INDEPENDENT FILM WEEK

IFP LABS SHOWCASE SCREENING - NO ADMISSION CHARGE

Venue: WALTER READE THEATER Tonight's show has been moved indoors to the Walter Reade Theater, 165 West 65th Street (between Amsterdam Avenue and Broadway), New York, NY 10023
Subway: 1, 2 to 66th Street, Lincoln Center
7:30 PM Doors Open
8:00 PM Screening followed by filmmaker Q&A and meet-and-greet

PLEASE NOTE: Tonight's show has been moved indoors to the Walter Reade Theater, 165 West 65th Street (between Amsterdam Avenue and Broadway), New York, NY 10023. The screening is still open to the public and there is no charge for admission. Admission will be first come, first served, and doors will open at 7:30.

Discover tomorrow's next great independent films today! Exclusive excerpts from the 21 projects participating in IFP's 2011 Documentary and Narrative Independent Filmmaker Labs.

The Labs are a year-long mentorship program supporting narrative and documentary directors throughout post production and the completion, marketing and distribution of their first feature film. The program has become the leading U.S. forum for industry to discover and support fresh talent on the independent scene just prior to their introduction to the marketplace. Previous Lab alumni have found success at festivals around the world including Sundance, Berlin, Toronto, Venice and SXSW. All projects presented in the Labs will be premiering at domestic and international film festivals over the next 18 months.

Submissions for 2012 Labs open in February. www.ifp.org/lab

The Lab Selections:
BOOSTER (Matt Ruskin)
THE BROOKLYN BROTHERS BEAT THE BEST (Ryan O'Nan)
DETROIT UNLEADED (Rola Nashef)
EXTRACTED (Nir Paniry | Nir Paniry)
FUTURE WEATHER (Jenny Deller)
THE LOST CHILDREN (Mark Harris)
NANCY, PLEASE (Andrew Semans)
OTELO BURNING (Sara Blecher)
PAVILION (Tim Sutton)
PERVERTIGO (Jaron Henrie-McCrea)
WELCOME TO PINE HILL (Keith Miller)
HERMAN'S HOUSE (Angad Bhalla)
HIGH TECH, LOW LIFE (Stephen Maing)
THE LIGHT IN HER EYES (Julia Meltzer)
NORTHERN LIGHT (Nicholas Bentgen)
OSCAR'S COMEBACK (Lisa Collins and Mark Schwartzburt)
SISTER (Brenda Davis)
SUN KISSED (Adi Lavy)
THE TWELVE O'CLOCK BOYZ (Lotfy Nathan)
US NAKED: THE ADVENTURES OF TRIXIE AND MONKEY (Kirsten D'Andrea Hollander)
WELCOME TO THE MACHINE (Avi Zev Weider)

IFP INDEPENDENT FILM WEEK

TOMORROW

THUNDER SOUL - NO ADMISSION CHARGE WITH RSVP

Venue: UNITED ARTISTS COURT STREET , Indoors at Court Street United Artists Theater, 106 Court Street (at Schermerhorn), Brooklyn, NY 11201
Subway: 2, 3, 4, 5 to Borough Hall or N, R to Court Street
7:30 PM Film Begins
RSVP HERE

A special advance screening of Roadside Attractions' upcoming documentary THUNDER SOUL. Houston's legendary Kashmere Stage Band reunites in this funky, soulful, award-winning film.

There is no admission charge with RSVP, so click HERE to register.

PLEASE NOTE: Seats are only available while supplies last. Please arrive early. Seating is first come, first served. The screening may be overbooked and seating is not guaranteed.

THUNDER SOUL (Mark Landsman | Texas/Los Angeles | 83 min.)
Presented by Jamie Foxx, Thunder Soul follows the extraordinary alumni from Houston's storied Kashmere High School Stage Band, who return home after 35 years to play a tribute concert for the 92-year-old Conrad "Prof" Johnson, their beloved band leader who broke the color barrier and transformed the school's struggling jazz band into a world-class funk powerhouse in the early 1970s.

RSVP

NOW

ON THE ROOFTOP BLOG

Have you taken a look at the Rooftop Blog lately? Filmmaker interviews, insider news, jobs, funding opportunities, updates about our Alumni, great independent film events around New York City, and more! Take a look...

ROOFTOP FILMS – LIVE AT IFP
For a happy fifth year, Rooftop is excited to once again partner with IFP to bring exciting outdoor events to Independent Film Week.

KAT CANDLER HEARTS IFP
Follow along as Rooftop Alum Kat Candler blogs her adventures at IFP's Independent Film Week.

SHOOTING PEOPLE'S ANIMATION TAKEOVER!
Animators! The incomperable Matt Groening will be judging Shooting People's Animation Takeover Month, THIS MONTH. Submit your film here.

WHAT'S THAT SOUND? ROOFTOP'S SUMMER PLAYLIST 2011
Turns out that you can get a lot more from a film festival than just a film. Get ready, because we've got some music for you too. Yes, you already know that we have live bands. But it's Dan's playlist that has been growing in notoriety as the opening act to most screenings this summer…

Click Here to be removed from this list

--
(323) 445 - 0780
www.deidreschoo.com

Abbas at the National Museum of Singapore

2011-08-23T23:16:00.000-04:00

The other day I visited the Abbas exhibition at the National Museum of Singapore, which runs through the 18th September. This is a fairly large show covers the 45 year span of the Iranian photographer's career. It includes his earliest photographs from various warzones and area of unrest in the late 1960's and early 1970's, of which this remarkable photograph from Northern Ireland forms a part. My wife, looking at this photo remarked how lucky Abbas was to get this shot. “Well, that's a big part of it,” I admitted, “being in the wrong place at the right time.”

A wall crumbles, after a presumed act of arson by the Irish Republican Army. Belfast, United Kingdom, 1972.

Peppered throughout the exhibition were a few audio slideshows taken from Magnum in Motion, the most successful of which was the piece on Muhammed Ali and George Foreman's Rumble in the Jungle boxing match.

The majority of the exhibit, however, is given over to his work from around the globe focusing on various different expressions of religious practices, which are shown here in great variety. In fact, I was impressed at how wide ranging the scenes depicted were given the incredibly broad overarching themes. Couple this with his newsworthy photographs from the Iranian revolution of the late 1970's (which are juxtaposed here with more his recent images from Iran), a behind the scenes look at western high fashion and some personal shots of his family and you get taken on a a surprisingly coherent and revealing journey.

Cricket in a Buddhist monastery, Dodanduwa, Sri Lanka, 2009.

I am familiar with some of Abbas' more famous shots, but aside from his work on the Muslim faith I had not realised he had explored religion so extensively. One thing that struck me was how personal it all felt. The different expressions of faith here all seemed connected to each other, to make sense, as if they are all different facets of the same thing (which of course they are).

I got the sense that Abbas photographs because he is curious, because he wants to learn and explore and in presenting the work together in this exhibit he is asking us to just look, be open minded and curious ourselves. After all, it is these traits that lead to our systems of belief in the first place. That much at least we have in common.

The Belfast Photography Festival

2011-08-03T22:32:00.000-04:00

The Belfast Photography Festival launches on the 4th August. Well worth a look if you're in the area, or happen to have the time to make it over to Ireland. I wish I could make it over myself. Maybe next year...

http://www.belfastphotofestival.com/

Amira Al-Sharif in Yemen

2011-08-01T11:10:00.000-04:00

Amira Al-Sharif, a Yemeni photographer whom it was my great pleasure to have as a student last year has sent me a few photographs and some words from the past week. She has just embarked on a project that will take her all around Yemen during this important time in the country's history. I confess I know very little of Yemen, but through my friendship with Amira I am learning. As a student she was extremely dedicated, intelligent, talented and polite. Now it is I who am the student, and she is teaching me.

"I started my first photography trip to Al-Hoedidah to Bait Al-Fageh, Al-Abasi village where they grew Arabian Jasmine and it has the largest market for exporting the Arabian Jasmine all around Yemen as well as to Sudia Arabia. The way to Al-Abasi village take about 7 hours, but it takes us 12 hours because of the heavy transportation and there were tracks accident that blocked the road, so we left the bus and we kept walking under the hot sun for two hours till we pass the place of the tracks accidents, but still the way is blocked as the accident was two days ago and we still waiting for four hours till the road get opened, roads in Yemen are not that organized and there is no rules for driving, luckily we get in one of the tracks to continue our trip. We left home by 6 A.M. to arrive to the village by 6 P.M. after long day of transferring from one car to another as gas is so expensive nowadays because of the revolution and expenses are so high.

Situation in Yemen getting worst and worst, poverty, sickness, pollution, people just angry, sad. Fighting all along on houses, streets, buses, and all over places between those who like the president or the other part who dislike him. Those people who is with the president their justifications that the time the president they were not feeling afraid as now because of feeling unsave and expecting war every moment and wasn’t able to sleep of being afraid.

All restrictions of preventing photography I decided to do my photography inside houses where I can be with people who trust me and I will not be forced to stop my career and will not put my self in danger, so I am more concern to document lives inside houses and will be outside the time it is safe and will keep recording every thing I see and hear.

Right now I will be working for my contract with the Ministry of Tourism to bring beautiful photos about Yemen, sadly the situation doesn’t show any tourism photos with all the latest changes and deteriorating economics, and I just realized how it is hard to search the beautiful view within all this new situation.

Sadly just the day before we arrived to the village my friend’s Mahmoud grandmother died, so I wake up in the morning by 3 o’clock to photograph women making bread to take it to the graveyard, and the way to the yard they are going to give every person they meet some bread and dates. There is the marching with the light in the girls hands. Then we arrived to the graveyard and I photographed them reading Wholy Quran and spreading some water in the graveyards by 5 A.M.

I stayed in the village for 4 days just to keep listening to NO NO every time I start shooting even if it is nothing, the situation it is only because there is no photography education. "

Sacrificing the population

2011-06-30T09:22:00.000-04:00

This photograph by John Kolesidis/Reuters of a Greek Protestor being detained by a policeman in riot gear adorned the front page of NY Times today. It may have been my slightly sleepy perception as I retrieved the paper from the driveway but the notion flashed through my mind that it was a severed head the policeman was holding. This in turn triggered thoughts of the way cultures such as the Aztecs performed human sacrifice to appease the gods in times of trouble. Well, I thought, it perhaps could be said that our politicians and powerful financial managers are today sacrificing the population in a time of trouble that they for the most part caused.

Nature Within Closing Reception - June 25th 2pm

2011-06-25T09:57:00.000-04:00

Nature Within @ Front Space

June 3 - July 1, 2011

Closing Reception: Saturday, June 25th, 2-5pm

Address: 555 Broadway, New York, NY (between Prince & Spring St.)

Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 11AM-6PM

www.naturewithinexhibit.com

www.iseny.org

Nature Within

Curated by Minny Lee

June 03, 2011 - July 01, 2011

Artists:Vicky Amian Azcoitia, Alejandra Ugarte Bedwell, Sieglinde Cassel, Tara Cronin, Christian Erroi, Rachel Gardam, Sarah Girner, Sheila Griffin, Becky Holladay, Daniel Kukla, Minny Lee, Ruben E. Reyes, Liz Sales, Erica Silberstein, Yasmine Soiffer, Brendon Stuart, Hiroshi Sumiyama, Alessandro Vecchi, Tom White, and Ann Woo

ISE Cultural Foundation is pleased to present "Nature Within" at Front Space, curated by Minny Lee.

Nature Within features the recent works of twenty photographers from diverse backgrounds comprising ten different countries. Their photographic genre ranges from documentary and photojournalism to conceptual and all have had their prior works featured in galleries throughout the world.

In a world and society faced with monumental environmental issues and crises, our concern for nature grows by the day. This concern and cognizance of the gravity of the problem are at odds with society's needs to keep up with our increasing population and big businesses' desire to increase the bottom line. Nature Within is an exhibition that attempts to rethink our relationship and existence within nature. The exhibition takes us to a personal space and place embedded within our experience with it.

Many of the photographs in the exhibition do not have an overt human presence. In the subject matter, however, there are trace elements of society. Some photographs were taken on a familiar American city street or Local Park, while others were taken in places as geographically distant as Bolivia, Israel and South Korea. Whether the photographers produced work locally or while traveling abroad, nature is omnipresent in the photographs, and the images unveil how we live within it and in respond to its power.

www.naturewithinexhibit.com

Capture and Release: The ICP 2010–2011 Full-Time Student Exhibition

2011-06-24T11:10:00.000-04:00

Tonight I'll be attending the exhibition opening of the full time students at the ICP. Having had the pleasure of teaching on the photojournalism course, I look forward to the celebration of the culmination of their studies. Well done guys. Now the really hard work starts...!

2010 - 2011 Full Time Student Exhibition

General Studies in Photography

Documentary Photography & Photohournalism

opening reception

Friday, June 24, 6 to 9pm

exhibition

June 25 - August 14, 2011

curated by

Alison Morley and Marina Berio

After a year of intense work, sweat and happiness, we are proud to invite you to our exhibition.

General Studies

Sofie Barfoed

Amanda Bauer

Ana Baumann

Catherine Moore Bettis

Sabrina Blaichman

Diederick Bulstra

Jared Buschang

Morena Buser

Ininaa Camp

Ana Jacinto Carranca

Christina Cuccurullo

Jessica Dean

Vanessa Deflache

Kristen Dorata

Isabel Figueroa

Eleonora Flammini

April Genet

Federico Grandicelli

León Grauer

Tyler Guthrie

Abby Harrison

Damien Hickel

Katie Hosmer

Yarimar Jiménez

DoYeon Kim

Daniel Krost

Daniel Lacin

Tom La Sala

Alexandra Lethbridge

Giuliana Mackler

Laura Macrini

Graciela Mazon

Flávia Palladino

Laís Pontes

Julie Quon

Vanessa Rojo de la Vega

Sarah Rossi

Justin F. Rouse

Alexandre Sanchez

Koki Sato

Yuki Shingai

Weng San Sit

Verena Smit

Lauren Swartzbaugh

Natalya Tolstukhina

Noit Zakay

Documentary and Photojournalism

Amira Al-Sharif

Giulia Bianchi

Millinee Chaisrihar

Fernanda Claro

Jackson Couse

Mason Dent

Jessica Earnshaw

Mike Fernandez

Ryan Field

Kirsty Griffin

Romina Hendlin

Mads Holm

Monica Kapoor

Orly Kaufman

Nicole Kenney

Marily Konstantinopoulou

Evi Lemberger

Guy Merin

Steven G. Mora

Alakananda Nag

Sofie Olsen

Asmita Parelkar

Brian Sunghun Park

Carolina Patlis

Allison Payne

Benjamin Petit

Pete Pin

Pepe Rubio Larrauri

Javier Sirvent

Shingo Urier

Sofia Verzbolovskis

The Contemporary Slavery Symposium at Ext Art NYC.

2011-06-03T11:10:00.004-04:00

If you're in NYC tonight, Friday 3rd of June, don't miss the opening reception of Nature Within from 5:30 to 7:30pm. After that, head down to Exit Art for the Contemporary Slavery Symposium, also opening tonight from 7:00pm.

The participating artists are:

Ian Berry
Anindya Chakraborty
Kay Chernush
Jodi Cobb
Ricardo Funari
John Hulme
Stefan Irvine
Bruce Jackson
Naser Khan
Jennifer MacFarlane
Tiana Markova-Gold
Robert Miller
Jesse Pesta
Antonio Rosa

The symposium itself is on June 11th. More info here. There is also a series of public events, check the website here for details.

Check it out.

Nature Within at the ISE Cultural Foundation, NYC

2011-06-03T10:59:00.003-04:00

Nature Within
Curated by Minny Lee

June 03, 2011 - July 01, 2011

Artists:
Vicky Amian Azcoitia, Alejandra Ugarte Bedwell, Sieglinde Cassel, Tara Cronin, Christian Erroi, Rachel Gardam, Sarah Girner, Sheila Griffin, Becky Holladay, Daniel Kukla, Minny Lee, Ruben E. Reyes, Liz Sales, Erica Silberstein, Yasmine Soiffer, Brendon Stuart, Hiroshi Sumiyama, Alessandro Vecchi, Tom White, and Ann Woo

Opening Reception: Friday, June 3, 5:30-7:30pm

ISE Cultural Foundation is pleased to present "Nature Within" at Front Space, curated by Minny Lee.

Nature Within features the recent works of twenty photographers from diverse backgrounds comprising ten different countries. Their photographic genre ranges from documentary and photojournalism to conceptual and all have had their prior works featured in galleries throughout the world.

In a world and society faced with monumental environmental issues and crises, our concern for nature grows by the day. This concern and cognizance of the gravity of the problem are at odds with society's needs to keep up with our increasing population and big businesses' desire to increase the bottom line. Nature Within is an exhibition that attempts to rethink our relationship and existence within nature. The exhibition takes us to a personal space and place embedded within our experience with it.

Many of the photographs in the exhibition do not have an overt human presence. In the subject matter, however, there are trace elements of society. Some photographs were taken on a familiar American city street or Local Park, while others were taken in places as geographically distant as Bolivia, Israel and South Korea. Whether the photographers produced work locally or while traveling abroad, nature is omnipresent in the photographs, and the images unveil how we live within it and in respond to its power.

www.naturewithinexhibit.com

The Refugee Hotel

2011-05-05T17:24:00.004-04:00

Congratulations to my good friend Gabriele on reaching the $6000 goal to finish his project on refugees in the U.S. alongside writer Juliet Linderman. I've followed this work since he started it almost 5 years ago. It's good stuff. There's still a few days left if you want to pledge some money and pre-order your copy of the book that will result. I'm hoping to sit down and have a chat with him about it for this blog, if we can ever both find the time at the same time, if you know what I mean...

Kiel Johnson's Cardboard Twin Lens Reflex Camera Time Lapse

2011-05-02T10:17:00.002-04:00

In case you need an antidote to the news, maybe this will inspire you to get creative.

Kiel Johnson's Cardboard Twin Lens Reflex Camera Time Lapse from Theo Jemison on Vimeo.

REVOLUCION(ES)

2011-04-28T09:53:00.004-04:00

Tonight in NYC is the opening of REVOLUCION(ES) - an exhibition of photographs from the Uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East put together by Cesuralab and MJR and held at the Instituto Cervantes. There are some fantastic photographers contributing. It runs till May 7th so if you're in the area please go check it out. I could go on at great length about what's going on in this part of the world, but I won't. For that you'll have to catch me down a pub after a couple of pints. Suffice it to say I am following closely from a distance. Respect to those reporting on the issue, and to those whose lives are directly engaged, stay safe and good luck.

The Real Heroes Are Sometimes Not Where You Think They Are

2011-04-24T22:35:00.002-04:00

TED Prize Winner JR & INSIDE OUT from TED Prize on Vimeo.

I didn't think newspapers were about imagination

2011-04-17T00:01:00.004-04:00

The other day I got sent a reminder from one of my employers about their ethical guidelines. Not me personally mind, but as a general blast to all their freelancers. Thinking about that, I sat down with the kids to watch a bit of TV.

Now I'm a big fan of the Wind In the Willows story, with it's straight moral compass, it's yearning for a simpler time and it's obvious love for the British class system. No, seriously, all that aside, I do love it. Watching the old TV episodes with my kids I came across one where Toad sets up his own newspaper, and I just had to share this little clip. This is one for all you journalists out there.

和 Photography Auction

2011-04-16T00:21:00.007-04:00

This Thursday, April 21st will see an auction event in NYC that I'm pleased to be a part of. The auction will raise funds for Architecture for Humanity's efforts in the rebuilding of Japanese communities affected by the Tsunami.

There was some talk during planning of donating the funds to something other than just the relief efforts in Japan, but eventually we settled on Japan and specifically Architecture For Humanity as the original suggestion came from New York based Japanese photographer Shiori Kawasaki and we wanted to do something that would directly benefit these communities in a unique way.

It is true that Japan is regarded as a rich country, and that there are many other desperate people in need of help, but for me it's not about this. This was about a friend of mine wanting to help her home country in the wake of a natural disaster, and enlisting her community to help her achieve that. It's about bringing together people and organisations to do some good. When you have lost your home, your livelihood, maybe even friends and family, it matters not to me what your situation was before. You need help. For me this is an opportunity to help rebuild and improve. That is why the choice of AFH as the target of the fundraising effort is fitting. Their work is not just about buildings, it is about making improvements to the quality of people's lives through better design. That is something I am happy to support.

So, enough of the preamble and justification - here is the information.

WA PROJECT PRESENTS:

A Photography Auction benefiting Architecture for Humanity
Japan Tsunami Relief
April 21, 2011 6-9pm
25CPW, 25 Central Park West, NYC
Advance tickets $20 - http://tiny.cc/waauction

Wa Project is pleased to announce a photographic exhibition and auction benefiting Architecture for Humanity’s rebuilding efforts following the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

The auction will be held at the 25CPW gallery in New York City on April 21 2011.

100% of the funds raised will be donated to Architecture for Humanity's work in rebuilding devastated communities in the affected area. Partnering with Nuru Project, 25CPW and Sombra Projects, with contributions from the Magnum Foundation and Friends Without Borders, this auction event has already gathered support from the Japanese and photographic communities in New York and beyond. The night will be a celebration with a display of photographic art, music from Koto player Yumi Kurosawa, American folk band Thomas Wesley Stern and Japanese cuisine from Blue Ribbon as well as Soba-ya and Robata-ya of the T.I.C. group with liquid refreshment from Sapporo and Ito En. In addition, all ticket holders will be entered into a raffle.

Architecture for Humanity is a non-profit design services firm founded in 1999 working to build a more sustainable future through the power of professional design. By channeling the resources of the global funding community to meaningful projects that make a difference locally, each year 10,000 people directly benefit from structures designed by Architecture for Humanity. Advocacy, training and outreach programs impact an additional 50,000 people annually. From conception to completion, all aspects of the design and construction process are carefully managed. Clients include community groups, aid organizations, housing developers, government agencies, corporate divisions, and foundations.

The donated auction prints follow the theme of 和 (Wa). This ancient name for Japan also describes a cultural concept which underpins much of Japanese society. It has no direct translation in English, though the closest term that could be applied would be the idea of 'Harmony'. We are pleased to feature prints from a diverse range of photographers who have interpreted this theme in a variety of ways and provided us with a unique collection.

Sombra Projects

2011-04-15T16:32:00.001-04:00

Last year Lucy Helton, Tiana Markova-Gold, and myself set up Sombra Projects as a platform for documentary photography and socially conscious art. This in itself was born out of numerous collaborative projects with our immediate community and was our attempt to create a formal organisation for these efforts. While we three are the current administrators, our inaugural exhibition at the New York Photo Festival involved the hard work of many people, and this is the spirit in which we aim to continue. Our goal is to facilitate projects that are not just showcases, but collaborations where the viewer, the subject and the photographer/artist/journalist are all part of a community and involved in the discussion. Recently we have started producing a series of projects updated monthly and available as pdf downloads from our website.

Our latest pdf is of Tiana’s recent work with The Fondation des Jeunes Haitiennes Optimistes in Haiti, a country she has a long standing relationship with both photographically and personally. The FJHO was founded in September 2009 by Jocelyne Firmin to help Haitian girls develop leadership skills, build self-esteem and reinforce their human dignity.

Direct link to the PDF download:

http://sombraprojects.com/wp-content/uploads/PDF/Sombra_Projects_002_jeunes_haitiennes.pdf

With an eye to the future, we are always keen to link up with people for possible collaborations – you can contact us at info@sombraprojects.com. You can also sign up to our mailing list – subscribe@sombraprojects.com – to receive updates and regular downloads of our featured projects.

Technology, and a defense of the printed newspaper.

2011-03-29T08:59:00.003-04:00

So you now have to pay to read the New York Times online. That is, if you read it a lot online. And you go to it directly, instead of following links to articles. Or something like that. I won't pretend I read the whole breakdown. But it seems inevitable and even reasonable to me, especially with the way it's set up, which I have heard described as more of a pay fence than a pay wall.

My wife and I subscribe to the paper edition, as we got an introductory deal which meant that daily home delivery worked out cheaper than buying the Sunday paper every week (which is what I was doing - plus I'd often buy it at least one other day to read on the train or something, cos I don't have an Ipad, and I hate squinting at a mobile phone screen). The price will go up when our 12 week offer runs out, but then we'll probably just juggle the subscription to a weekend delivery or something, which will still be cheaper than buying it on the news stand on Sunday and also give us unlimited digital access. If we didn't live within spitting distance of NYC then I wonder if we would still subscribe...

Anyway, this rambling explanation of my news consuming habits has a point. Yesterday I was reading the paper on the train. The business section to be exact. Now, I rarely check out the business news when I read the NY Times online, but in it's physical form, I at least flick though and scan every single page of every single section. And here's the thing, I discovered 3 articles in the business section relating to, in turn, long-form online journalism, social media & activism and online mapping, all of which I found interesting and all of which I would probably have missed had I been only using the website. Online, I often am looking for something specific, rather than browsing. Only if someone recommends an article to me, or if it's on the front page of the website, or linked to from an article I am reading, will I check it out. Never will I go through every new published article online. And this is habit, and my defense of the printed page. Now I fully expect the printed edition of newspapers to become less than daily not far into the future, but until then, I will continue to pick up the paper, and scan every page, and discover some gems I may have missed.

Oh, and those articles? Here, here, and here. Enjoy.

ER my Arse

2011-03-15T23:45:00.005-04:00

Many many years ago, when I had time to do this sort of thing, I used to sit in a caf in South East London, drinking endless cups of cheap tea and basically chatting with whoever was at the table in conversations that often made about as much sense as those engaged in by the characters at the mad hatter's tea party (which depending on your point of view is either a lot or none at all.)

On one of these afternoons (they were rarely mornings...), I was introduced to Karen. I cannot remember for the life of me the content of that afternoon's conversation, but I do remember it was wide ranging and enjoyable. Our paths crossed many times while I lived in London, we shared many close mutual friends and it was always a joy to see her and catch up. Karen is one of those rare artists whose conceptual approach is as practical as it is intellectual.

After the recent global news events it was an absolute joy to hear of her latest project. So, if you are, like me, currently reeling from what she calls 'the brutality of reality' then please check out the video below.

Stamp duty : ER my arse from del che on Vimeo.

Karen will be opposite the Houses of Parliament, between 1-4pm on the 22nd & 29th March for a series of happenings and she's exhibiting at the Bird's Nest, 32 Deptford Church Street, SE8 4RZ until Sunday 3rd April. That's a pub, by the way...

Crowdsourcing

2011-03-07T09:36:00.003-05:00

Funding photojournalism though crowdsourcing - which is the new term for soliciting donations - is all very well and good and I fully support those looking to fund their work through sites such as Emphas.is and Kickstarter, and you can be sure I'll be looking to fund some of my own projects this way (at least in part) as it's no joke working with no budget and doing things on spec, especially the long form in-depth stuff many of us really want and need to do.

There are issues that have been raised in relation to accountability and integrity when basically asking the public to fund a journalists work, and there is the issue of the mainstream media seeing crowd funding as a way to avoid using their own budgets, but these problems - though important - are ones that already exist with the current/previous financial model. Corporations want to buy products, not pitches. It is a rare thing to get a cheque up front. Integrity and accountability should always be scrutinised, no matter where the money is coming from, and in some cases, especially because of where the money is coming from.

One thing that troubles me though is the audience. Where will the work be shown, and to what purpose? Does crowdfunding only stoke the fire that turns photojournalism in on itself so that we end up with a situation where work is being funded by the photojournalism community, produced by the photojournalism community and distributed amongst the photojournalism community with little regard to those outside of this little world? An analogy might be a church congregation, with the plate being passed around during a service and a pastor preaching to the choir.

Of course, we should support our colleagues and our community - the congregation in the church of journalism let's call it - but those who we really need to reach are the ones who currently spend their money on the gossip rags, the producers of entertainment and celebrity tittle tattle who call it news and the advertisers who want us to buy their products without question or even thought. If crowdfunding can bring us together, make us stronger both in terms of community and finances so that we may take on the producers of dross and distraction then I am all for it, but if I can get my project funded, only to have it displayed as thankyou prints in the homes of my backers and at a photojournalism festival, then I am doing no more good than if I had put the whole thing on my credit card myself.

Let's use these tools to spread the word and look for sources of income beyond our peers, not to turn inward and bleed ourselves dry while no one notices.

The Lyttelton Earthquake

2011-03-03T15:06:00.003-05:00

The other week, an earthquake struck New Zealand. While much of the media focused on the town of Christchurch, the actual epicenter was the town of Lyttleton. I have a couple of close friends who live in the town. They had bought a run down property and were in the process of renovating it themselves. While there was some loss of life, luckily they and their young daughter are unhurt. Their house, while intact, is threatened with destruction by unstable land and they are currently being told to stay away. I've never visited the town but I lived with these wonderful people for years in London. The town of Lyttleton sounds like a wonderful place to live and the residents are asking for help to allow them to rebuild their town and community. If you are so inclined, read more below and please help them out.

By the way, click on the photo above to discover a novel way to raise funds for the relief effort...

Love Lyttelton

On 22nd February a violent 6.3 magnitude earthquake brought widespread
destruction across Christchurch. Lyttelton was the epicentre of this
devastation. Hundreds of homes, historic buildings, and virtually all
businesses lie in ruin. Many have lost their livelihoods and still
more are displaced, disorientated, or left grieving for the loss of a
family member, friend or colleague. As the ground continues to rumble
we focus on the now, on each other, taking small steps into an
uncertain future.

As each day dawns the realisation of what we have lost sinks in a
little more, but as each day dawns we also stand a little taller,
together, and realise that the inspiration and strength of this
community is not in its bricks and mortar but in its people, their
passion and compassion, their energy and spirit and that has not been
broken. Together we dare to look to the future.

Before 22nd February Lyttelton was an exciting vibrant little town,
taking bold steps towards sustainability, exploring new ways to create
and nurture community. Lyttelton had created an invaluable community
radio, highly successful farmers market, thriving volunteer network
and time bank, community garden, grow local co-operative, information
centre and supportive local business network to mention but a few
initiatives. All these are in jeopardy as a result of last week’s
earthquake.

Already, only days after tragedy there is talk amongst this resilient
community about not just rebuilding what we have lost but of using it
as a chance to create something new. Already minds are whirring,
imaginations sparked and hearts focused on creating a sustainable,
bright, better place, a Lyttelton of and for the future.

If you feel moved to be part of this creation, if you are able to help
us regenerate in a clean, green, sustainable, community focused way,
then please follow this link and donate to Lyttelton today.

http://www.lyttelton.net.nz/earthquake/make-a-donation

You can also find us on facebook... search for Love Lyttelton and like
the page.

Project Lyttelton is a registered charitable trust that has been
working in and for the community for many years. Project Lyttelton
will engage the whole of the community in how best any funds are
invested.

The 68th POYI Award

2011-03-01T12:55:00.003-05:00

There is so much good work on display in the winners galleries of the Pictures of the Year International Awards that I can't choose a single one to put up here as a teaser. Quite simply, I advise you to turn off your phone, brew a pot of coffee or two and sit down in front of your computer. If anyone asks you what you're doing just tell them "Shhh, I'm learning something."

My only complaint is that there is some repetition in the stories and that there are a lot of stories from North America, but that is a minor quibble, especially when you have so many harrowing tales of gun violence (for example) told so well. Makes you think doesn't it...

Check it out. All of it.

http://www.poyi.org/index.php#schedule

The Last Days Of the Arctic - Ragnar Axelsson.

2011-02-22T08:40:00.004-05:00

For some, we are actually, literally, living in the last days. The ice is melting. Some people actually depend on this environment in a direct way, rather than seeing it as some abstract 'somewhere else'. By the time the problems of the disappearing ice caps reach the rest of us, it will be too late. Way too late.

Check this out. These photographs may well become an important historical document of a time lost before you know it.

LAST DAYS OF THE ARCTIC, photographs by "RAX" Ragnar Axelsson, documents the vanishing Inuit hunting culture in Greenland and Baffin Island, Canada, caused by global warming, environmental, and cultural changes.

Post-production by Brooks Walker-Borealis Works.

My broken world; Francesca Cao & Michela Palermo

2011-02-19T08:20:00.007-05:00

I recently mentioned an exhibition in Italy which included work Francesca Cao and Michela Palermo. Francesca has kindly provided me with an english translation of the accompanying text and a few images featured in the exhibition taken by herself and Michela. Good stuff. check it out.

My broken world
An emotional panorama of Irpinia thirty years after the earthquake
By Francesca Cao and Michela Palermo
curated by Irene Alison

It was 7.34 p.m. of November 23, 1980, when the earth shook for 90 seconds in Irpinia, Basilicata and Alto Sele districts of Campania Region in Italy. Seismic waves snuffed out the life of some three thousand human beings, tore down the houses of 280 thousand people, changed the geography of the land, and created in the aftermath expectations that were swiftly deluded.

My Broken World is a novel told through images of a shuttered world. About a land that was shaken by deep quakes and chasms that haven’t been bridged. Of the suspended lives of those who have been trapped in a deaf-dumb world. It is the disassembled world of Michela Palermo, photographer, aged 30, who was born in Bagnoli Irpino in the year of the earthquake, and came back to striken zones to document the change. It is the collapsed world of Ernestina, 66 years old, upon whom Francesca Cao stuck her lens, testifying the suspended life of a woman who has been living in an asbestos temporary house since 1985, caught in an eternal waiting for a house that was promised but never came. With two different registers, one dreamier and more evocative, the other more descriptive, the two photographers are telling the same story: Michela Palermo portrays the places where the earthquake tore down everything, the scratched territory and the strange fruits of reconstruction, all the while documenting her personal world, the hurting disenchantment of one who comes from a place where injustice doesn’t disconcert or makes one indignant any more. Francesca Cao records the life of Ernestina giving voice to a fight for dignity that united many people of this grieving land.

My broken world
An emotional panorama of Irpinia thirty years after the earthquake
By Francesca Cao and Michela Palermo
February 11/ March 5, 2011
OpenMind Gallery, Milan (Italy)

Monday 15:30 - 19:00; Tuesday-Saturday 10:00 - 13:00 / 15:30 - 19:00

Here And There

2011-02-17T11:24:00.002-05:00

Yasutaka Kojima, a talented photographer and friend has work on display in New York at the hpgrp gallery for the next month. The opening reception is tonight, if you are in the area.

Here's the info from the gallery website:

here and there
by three japanese contemporary photographers

February 17 – March 12, 2011
Opening Reception: February 17 2011, 6:00 – 8:00 PM

Photography is a device that absorbs the various appearances of the world as light in a dark box of camera and then restores it to the world again. The trace of the light from the actual world is enclosed in the dark box. They are transformed by the artist's intentions and represented to us as another realities. The images of the altered world inevitably project the past that is similar to an old memory. Thus the photography doesn't have a sense of "Now" that the viewers can share in the duration of the work itself like movie does.

In Motohiro Takeda's 'River' series, the images are continuingly emerging and submerging from the surface of the prints as if they are a fading memory. The photographs of the lost one and the empty house suggest the time of a family life that runs over the generations from long time ago.

Yasutaka Kojima's 'Tokyo' is a documentation of the city in the period of time where our identity and subjectivity has been lost in the urban environment. The city has lost traditional meaning of the perspective structure and collapsed and expanded itself beyond men's intention.

In 'Figure', Yu Kanbayashi photographed the imprints of the cut marks on the ice skate link. The way he perceives the very surface of the subject displays a trace of time that is always passing seamlessly towards evanescence.

Although these three works seem to be very different in terms of the subject matters and the creative processes, each photographer explores the horizon of the medium and its possibility to express their visions of the world that is reconstructed in their own artistic contexts. These photographs in this exhibition manifest the new gaze towards the world, the photographs that are foreseers of the memories that we have not yet seen.

RIVER
Motohiro TAKEDA

"River" is a photographic series taken at my grandparent's family house on the countryside, in Japan, which has been produced as a personal funeral for my late grandfather who past away three years ago. The images are recollection of my own childhood at the house. They have been printed very dark to allude to the way our memory works. When we try to recall something, we try to examine and investigate the fog of our unconsciousness and consciousness. The darkness of my prints is to represent the deep chaos of our minds, the place where our memories are preserved. I had given the work title "River", because in Japan the river is a metaphor for the split between life and death, and also the flow of time, which never stops and runs beyond our life.

Motohiro Takeda
Moving to New York City when he was twenty-one years old, Motohiro Takeda received a BFA on photography from Parsons the New School for Design in 2008. Motohiro was awarded the Tierney Fellowship Grant in 2008, and his work has been exhibited in various venues in New York, including the New York Photo Festival in Brooklyn. He was a selected photographer for Photo España Descubrimientos PHE 2010 and his work is currently a part of the exhibition traveling throughout Spain. He is one of the four recipients of the darkroom residency program in Camera Club New York in 2011

TOKYO
Yasutaka KOJIMA

have been recording cityscape of Tokyo since 2008. The city gives me a sense of evanescence. All the cities are formed by man's lust and the depth of it decides the size of the cities. Every single thing existing in the cities is consisted by man intentionally. The cities transforms themselves every moment like the nature does. I see the future of the cities in the boundary of cities and the nature. I want to record it by photography before it disappears.

Yasutaka Kojima
A New York based Photographer born in Tokyo, Japan. Has been awarded the Japanese Government's fellowship for artists. His works are permanent collection to Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Art, Japan. He was selected for one of the Juna 21 photographers by Nikon in Japan. Exhibited in New York and Tokyo.

FIGURE
Yu KANBAYASHI

This photograph symbolizes the landscape of time through ice itself and scratches on the ice.
What is time? Can we see time? We conceptualize time both subjectively and objectively. My work is an attempt to capture time as represented both in the ice and scratches on its surface. Ice includes time, because water freezes with time.
At the same time, Ice skate rink is like photography – frozen in frames. Photographs show both the present and the past. Scratches on ice also do. We always see the past as the present, the present as the past. We are in-between time.
In this work, the ice themselves and the scratches on ice embody our concept of time. The image presented is landscape of time.

Yu Kanbayashi
Yu Kanbayasshi received a BFA of ART from Tama Art University (Tokyo,Japan) in 2002. His works were selected and exhibited as fine works by Canon New Cosmos of Photography 2003 (Canon & Tokyo Photo Museum ,Japan), by TPCC PRIZE 2003 (Tokyo Photo Culture Center,Japan), and by Tokyo Wander Wall 2009 (Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo,Japan).
Yu worked for Tama Art University as a Research Associate from 2007 to 2010. He curated the exhibitions [Photo of our TIME] 2009 and [126 Polaroid] 2010, and he also edited books of those exhibitions.
October 2010, he moved to New York City as an awarded artist of the Japanese Government's fellowship.

The World Press Photo Awards and Ed Kashi's The Leaves Keep Falling

2011-02-16T10:28:00.007-05:00

With all the fuss the winner of this year's World Press Photo has caused (well, to be fair, it is the use of that photo alongside a controversial headline by Time magazine that is the problem) it is often difficult to remember that the competition often rewards some other worthy work.

One such winner for me this year was Ed Kashi with his photo of 9 year old Nguyen Thi Ly who suffers from Agent Orange disabilities in Da Nang, Vietnam.

Ed Kashi, USA, VII Photo Agency.
Nguyen Thi Ly, 9, suffers from Agent Orange disabilities, Da Nang, Vietnam

If you head over to VII's website, you can view The Leaves Keep Falling - a video piece on the same story - which I watched the other day on a commute and had me tearing up to hear the simple tale of normal people having to cope with the barbaric effects of chemical warfare perpetrated long before they were born.

The agent orange story is not a new one, with Philip Jones Griffiths famously making it part of his lifelong commitment to reporting in Vietnam but as the generations affected in Vietnam prove, it is a story that will not go away. As I have said to colleagues and students alike, just because a story has been told once, doesn't mean it can't be told again.

With the debates surrounding the current war in Afghanistan, and the sensational winner of this year's world press competition, we would do well to take a step back and remember the long term affects of our actions and to think carefully about the consequences of what we do.

I believe this is incredibly important. I wanted to work as a documentarian and a journalist precisely because I had my eyes opened to a wider world through the work of others and I wished not only to explore more for myself, but to share that, and share it responsibly. I am a long way from being where I want to be in regards to this, but I'm in it for the long haul, not for this season's awards.

If it were up to me, out of all the World Press category winners, I would have awarded Ed's work the top prize in this year's competition. Not only for his incredible photography, but for the context in which it resides.

2011-02-16T09:58:00.004-05:00

I headed over to Fred Ritchin's After Photography blog for the first time in a while and as always I enjoyed reading his concise and eloquent posts about photography and media.

Here's an example from his 'End of Year Thoughts' for 2010:

3. Photography of news continues to evolve into a photography better done by amateurs than professionals, given that there are many more amateurs with cameras walking around at all times. The stylized imagery by professionals repeating the stereotypical news cliches is not helpful as a way of promoting understanding. The province of the professional in a journalistic context is very much the long-term essay, and many are working both in the old-fashioned and very necessary role of witness and others are trying to re-invent it to add complexity, nuance, and engage the reader in different ways. What is needed more than ever are thoughtful editors/curators who can help make sense of the visual overload.

I agree - more than ever we photographers need those thoughtful editors and curators...

ONWARD ’11 at Project Basho In Philadelphia

2011-02-12T10:29:00.005-05:00

If you're in or around Philadelphia Saturday afternoon (today - sorry for the late notice!) then check out the opening reception of ONWARD '11. I happen to know two of the exhibiting photographers personally so if you do drop down say hello to Lucy Helton and Adrienne Grunwald and wish them luck as two of the exhibitors will today be selected for "a two-person exhibition at Project Basho, a sponsored invitation from Ricoh’s photo gallery, RING CUBE, to attend the opening of the ONWARD exhibition in Tokyo in May, cameras from Ricoh, as well as other prizes from ONWARD sponsors."

Good luck ladies.

Photograph by Lucy Helton from the project "Where I was conceived".

Photograph by Adrienne Grunwald form the project "Parc Chateau".

A 'hopeless pandemic' in photography

2011-02-12T10:15:00.003-05:00

I won't reproduce them here, as the whole article is worth reading to get to this point, but the last three paragraphs of this interview with Albert Chong over on Dodge & Burn are provocative and in the most part true. Since I attended art school in the nineties I have been horrified by the amount of bad art that is lauded and hailed as the product of some kind of untouchable indisputable genius. Critics and artists alike who don't understand the philosophy they're peddling and arbiters of taste who are more interested in art as an investment than as a cultural contribution.

By the way, the appreciation of art being largely a subjective matter, I reserve the right to decide for myself what constitutes bad art. And I read my art theory so I know what I'm taking about. So there.

Chicks with Guns

2011-02-10T10:27:00.004-05:00

Anyone remember that clip in Jackie Brown where Samuel L is watching Chicks with Guns and talking about AK's - you know, when you 'absolutely positively got to kill every last...."

Well. You know how it goes

Excellent stuff from Tarantino.

Anyway, meet 'Frida'.

War Porn?

(Thanks @benlowry..)

By the way. I love my Tek 9....

My broken world – Francesca Cao & Michela Palermo

2011-02-09T12:00:00.004-05:00

This photography exhibit in Milan, Italy includes work by Francesca Cao alongside Michela Palermo. If you are in the area, please check it out. They are both talented photographers.

Galleria OpenMind– Via Dante, 12 – 20121 Milano (Italy)
www.openmindgallery.it – info@openmindgallery.it
La mostra è aperta dall’11 febbraio al 5 marzo 2011
Lunedi 15:30 – 19:00; da Martedi a Sabato 10:00 – 13:00 / 15:30 – 19:00
Ingresso libero

Dalia Khamissy: Lebanon's missing

2011-01-25T09:41:00.006-05:00

I finally got round to watching this almost a week after Ben of Duckrabbit sent out an email to let us know it was up and live on the BBC website. I haven't yet listened to the accompanying, longer radio documentary but I am about to. Kudos to the BBC for letting us download this as a podcast (which they do for so many of their wonderful programs).

It is fantastic stuff. The audio interviews drive the narrative and inform us of the events. The balance of stills and video is well thought out and there's some great synchronicity and juxtaposition between the audio and visual. A couple of quibbles: I do always prefer subtitles to voice over translation (though this doesn't work too well on the radio!) and DJ shadow's little interlude feels out of place. But that's me being picky. Overall - and this is the most important thing - what I see and hear informs me and educates me about a situation I previously had no knowledge of, gives me an insight into the thoughts and feelings of those involved, gives me pause and forces me to contemplate the lives of those who I have just been offered a glimpse of, makes me examine my own thoughts and feelings about my own life and situation and takes me to a place a long way from the quiet and peaceful room I am now in, so much so that my mind actually jarred when I looked up from the computer to see it still silently snowing outside my window.

That's powerful reporting.

As Ben states: "Few know about the Missing in Lebanon, which is why I think it's an important story to be heard. Not because the broadcast will change anything dramatically but because memory is resistance against the same atrocities being repeated."

Unfortunately Ben also hits here on a troublesome point for the journalist - will telling this story change anything for the better? I am sure that the men and boys who went missing 30 years ago are no longer alive. This much is made clear. What can be done then? Well, the key here in this instance is the second sentence from the above quote "...memory is resistance against the same atrocities being repeated."

I couldn't have put it more succinctly myself.

Great stuff from Dalia Khamissy and thanks to Benjamin Chesterton and the BBC for bringing it to us in this form.

The Lost Photos of the New York Blizzard

2011-01-23T08:43:00.009-05:00

I am gutted I missed the great 2010 New York Blizzard. Even if it did mean a cancelled flight for me and a few extra days in London with good friends and a wonderful experience to see the inner truth of rude, surly unhelpful Virgin Atlantic staff (but that's another story). Anyway. Someone was about to have fun in the snow, though they promptly lost a roll of film, which was found (hurrah!). The finder - Todd Bieber - has put together this charming video with the hope of returning the film to it's owner.

And yes, Todd, Holidays are what we call Vacations in Europe..

A sensible analysis

2011-01-13T09:40:00.004-05:00

While I descended into the valley of rants and expletives about the fact that a man can buy a gun really only useful for murder - game hunters tend to use rifles, not full clips - that he can wander up to a public political figure, shoot them in the head and then proceed to scatter bullets into a crowd, that the right wing ultra conservatives (let's call them fascists, why not eh?) plead their rhetorical invective and support of gun carrying has nothing to do with it at all; Jim Johnson took a much more sensible and measured approach which is well worth a read if you want to clarify your thoughts into a sensible argument against the idea that certain political and social environments do not and cannot have any bearing on an individuals actions.

Read it here.

You have the right to bear arms..

2011-01-11T10:04:00.004-05:00

Here's a quiet, considered and thoughtful video piece on the Arizona shootings from Dan Chung.

Now on to my less than considered, caffeine fueled rant. Apologies in advance for the profanity.

Guns, guns, guns. When will you people learn? If you let people buy guns, they will use them on each other. Sure, loads of people buy guns and only ever shoot them at paper targets. But all it takes is for one person to point it at another person (or people) and squeeze the trigger and people get killed. You go off to shoot a politician a nine year old girl gets killed for fucks sake. What the fuck is wrong with you?

Now, this may all seem rather obvious but it seems that for some people it just isn't. What the fuck do you need a gun for? Why the fuck do you need to turn your home into an armory? What are you afraid of? Terrorists? Thieves? Crackheads? The King of England? Socialist left wing pinko commies? Your own shadow?

Stop taking your kids to the shop, buying weapons and calling them 'toys'. Fuck your second amendment 'right'. It's bullshit.

Oh yeah, and while I'm at, Fuck all you gun loving right wing fascist murdering bastards. I don't care if you've never held a gun in your life, you war mongering violence loving hate inducing pricks. We may all have blood on our hands but you're up to your elbows in it.

Fuck it.

I'm off to laugh darkly at this.

Teenager's Photography from Haiti.

2011-01-07T12:37:00.003-05:00

What's the best advice you can give a photographer, writer, journalist, film maker, general creative person? I don't know, but high up there is being passionate about what you're doing, getting involved with the things closet to your heart. Living in it, being part of it. Dispense with the myth of objectivity, stop pretending you're invisible and get involved.

Anyway, we are always rolling out the 'giving a voice to the voiceless' axiom, and what better way to do that than to let people tell their own stories. So kudos to everyone out there doing just that, like Natasha Fillion who has run a workshop in Haiti giving teenagers cameras. This has of course resulted in some of the best photography I have seen coming out of that country in the past year.

Now about that whole rebuilding the country thing....

The great NY Blizzard of 2010

2010-12-31T10:54:00.006-05:00

So this little storm stranded me in London this week as East Coast airports closed (no big deal, stayed with good close friends, got in a trip to the Natural History Museum with the kids and a couple more pints in a proper pub with my extra couple of days! Highly enjoyable, which is more than can be said for the conversations with the rude Virgin staff at Heathrow...)

Anyway. Here's a Wall Street Journal report on the flak Mayor Bloomberg is getting (photographed here by a friend, former student and general all round West Coast dude Phillip Montgomery) along with an upsetting account of a newborn baby's death and a video of a 'Day After Tomorrow' style snow covered New York by Dustin Drankoski.

Vivian Maier - For the love of photography

2010-12-31T10:46:00.004-05:00

And I thought I had a task on my hands with 10 years of unscanned negatives from the U.K. and a box full of New York street photography from the past 4 years to deal with....

This woman had a lifetime of photography that it seems no-one ever saw until now.

More here.. http://vivianmaierphotography.com/. The stuff looks great. Check it out.

Off the grid

2010-12-25T06:40:00.005-05:00

I listened to a BBC program earlier this year about solar powered lamps in off grid areas. Sounds like a top idea to me. Here's a video and great set of photos by Ed Ou and an article by Elisabeth Rosenthal on the same story in the NY Times.

Ed Ou/The New York Times

Thanks to this solar panel, Sara Ruto no longer takes a three-hour taxi ride to a town with electricity to recharge her cellphone. More Photos »

Errol Morris on Anosognosia

2010-12-21T21:13:00.003-05:00

Can rubbing lemon juice on your face make you invisible to cameras? Erm, well, no, but your mind can.

Read how here. Make sure you go all the way through the 5 parts....

Basetrack

2010-12-21T11:55:00.004-05:00

"For a previous generation of photographers, their job was to simply record the events of the world, and then hand those pictures over to their publications, their agencies. Those pictures would be shown to the world and some unspecified third party would take action and do the rest.

I don’t believe that anymore. I don’t think it’s enough to make photographs."

Some interesting thoughts on the Lens Blog from Teru Kuwayama on how the Basetrack project came about and what it hopes to achieve. I certainly agree with the idea that there is a great wealth of opportunities for journalists to connect and share with their audience and the people they're reporting on.

Oh and then there's that hipstamatic iphone app again....

Last minutes with Oden

2010-12-20T19:25:00.004-05:00

"The older I get, the more sensitive I get. And thank god."

Amen to that.

Anytime your ego gets the jump on you and you start to feel a bit self centered, it's not difficult to get a little perspective on your life. You just need to pay attention to what other people are going through. Whether you know them or not.

Via Ciara on Duckrabbit.

Yvon's Paris - Exhibition and Book signings in NYC

2010-12-16T09:30:00.005-05:00

Landes, France

If you are in NYC over the next few days you have a couple of chances to see some great vintage photographs, and pick up a signed copy of Robert Stevens book on Yvon's Paris.

Tonight - December 16th. 6-8pm Higher Pictures, 764 Madison, between 65th and 66th street, 3rd floor. Both Robert and Yvon's daughter will be there.

Also this Saturday 18th December, a book signing in Brooklyn at the Invisible Dog Arts Center, 51 Bergen Street from 4-7pm.

Riding the Dog

2010-12-14T11:00:00.004-05:00

Who doesn't love a road trip? There are a million little phrases and witticisms out there about the joys of travelling. I happen to personally like the one that says "The less time it takes you to get somewhere, the less point there is in going."

Anyway, a photographer and friend of mine Brendon Stuart has just embarked on one of his greyhound bus road trips across the U.S. He is keeping a blog of the trip with photographs and stories, which is worth both a look and a read.

check it out.

http://brendonstuart.wordpress.com/

Anarchy in the UK?

2010-12-10T21:57:00.006-05:00

Not quite yet.. But getting there it seems.

Anyway, the papers went with the money shot of two Royals on their way to the west end, probably because it is supposed to illustrate the class divide and conjure up notions of revolution and the proletariat rising up against the aristocracy. Or something. However, I like this one much better.

This is a great shot by Andrew Testa for the New York Times. Loaded with dynamism, symbolism and all kinds of other isms and nowhere near as blunt as Matt Dunham's shot - which I think is a great breaking news photo by the way and I understand completely why editors jumped on it!

From what I can tell from my current viewpoint on the other side of the pond, it seems like people in England are very unhappy. And it's not just the students. I wonder how long before the public spending cuts result in the police marching side by side with the students. Now that would be something.

Let's hope something positive comes of all this.

Tim Parkin

2010-12-07T17:49:00.002-05:00

What do I love about the internet (other than it's amazing ability to waste my time and the fact I can stream BBC and London pirate radio while sitting in a New Jersey suburb)?

Well, I love the fact that I can be looking for one thing and find something else even better. In this case I was looking for some info on a piece of camera equipment and came across the website of Tim Parkin, who takes sublime photos of fantastic landscapes, and is a Yorkshireman to boot. Bloody brilliant.

Check it out.

http://www.timparkin.co.uk

After the Quake - Andre Lambertson, Lisa Armstrong and Kwame Dawes in Haiti

2010-12-07T14:30:00.006-05:00

"...if you cannot connect with the humanity in the people you cover, it becomes too easy to sensationalize, to focus on the brokenness and despair that supposedly make for better stories."

So says Lisa Armstrong

I tend to agree.

Earlier this summer I had the good fortune to share an lunch break with Andre Lambertson, who was my first seminar instructor when I was a student and has been working with Lisa Armstrong recently. I hadn't seen him for a while and it was great to catch up. In the time it talks to eat a sandwich the conversation covered movies, music, media, photography and video and the pros and cons of both, working as a freelancer, being human, consumer society, living in New York and a bit about the weather.

He told me about the work he had been doing on HIV and AIDS in Haiti and also the work he has been doing on a marching band in New Orleans.

In mid November, there was a great feature on the Haiti work on the NY Times Lens Blog. If you haven't already, I would check it out.

There is also more on the project on the Pulitzer Center website.

Andre has incredible integrity in the way he relates to people and it shows in his work.

Don't miss.

Places (Exhibition)

2010-12-01T13:50:00.003-05:00

Check out this exhibition:

Featuring works by Sooyeun Ahn, Minny Lee, and Unhee Park

December 1-14, 2010
Opening Reception: Wednesday, December 1, 6-8 PM

...Chelsea West Gallery
547 West 27th Street #307, NY, NY (bet 10th & 11th Ave)
www.chelseawestgallery.com | 212.242.4251

About the exhibition:

Places showcases photography and video works by three Korea-born artists who reside and work in the New York area: Sooyeun Ahn, Minny Lee and Unhee Park. Despite their common heritage, all three photographers have divergent photographic visions and syntax, creating their own places in photography.

A photographer’s place is created by his or her history and memory; a work is a journey through the past and present interspersing reality and the surreal. Then the viewer, according to his or her own background, reinterprets the photographer’s place. This possibility of different interpretations widens the notion of the place and raises questions about the photographer’s work. The exhibition, Places,invites viewers to enter into each artist’s place and experience their own.

Sooyeun Ahn worked as a writer for 10 years before studying photography at The Tokyo Polytechnic University and the International Center of Photography (ICP). Slow Walker is her ongoing project of photographing city streets at night. Rather than documenting in a more traditional form and content of narrative storytelling, Ahn focuses on variations of possibilities and changes that could happen from photographing subjects through a very subjective vision.

Born and raised in South Korea, Minny Lee has been living in the USA since 1992. Lee studied and worked in the fields of fashion and art history before getting into photography. Her ongoing project Encounters began in late 2008. Lee is interested in personalities and characters of elements in nature and her interaction to the subjects. In Elsewhere, Lee seeks to capture and create an ideal realm within our reality. In her photography, time and space are crucial as well as feelings of intimacy that are translated into photography with her poetic vision.

Unhee Park studied Glass Art and Art Therapy before studying photography at ICP. In 2009, Park started her long-term project on museums. Virtual Memory consists of still photographs and audio interviews of museum visitors describing a surrealism painting at the museum. With her video work Visitor, Park has been interviewing museum visitors both in public and private spaces. After an initial interview in front of the museum, Park traces down museum visitors to their hometowns and interviews them with more personal questions. The project has taken Park to several American cities, becoming a cultural and social commentary of our time that everyone can relate to. Through her project, Park explores how people portray their identities to the outside world, weaving through both truth and fiction.

It's all in the mind

2010-11-29T22:28:00.003-05:00

The Middle East Journals of Tom Hurndall - online panel talk

2010-11-25T22:18:00.002-05:00

This seems like a worthwhile endeavour...

PRESS RELEASE
PANEL TALK TO LAUNCH FUNDRAISING CAMPAIGN
FRIDAY 26TH NOVEMBER 2010

16.00-17.00 GMT (17h Central Europe, 11h East Coast US)

Trolley are launching a crowdfunding campaign for our book ‘The Only House Left Standing - the Middle East Journals of Tom Hurndall.’ Tom Hurndall, a young British photojournalist and peace worker, was shot in the head in Gaza in April 2003 whilst carrying Palestinian children to safety. He died nine months later in a London hospital. The book will contain Tom’s photographs in the weeks running up to his shooting, as well as his personal writing from his diaries and poems, and contains a preface by Robert Fisk.

The eight week campaign will launch on Friday 26th November, the day before Tom’s birthday, with a panel talk commencing at 16.00 GMT. The panel includes:

• Tom’s parents Anthony and Jocelyn Hurndall
• John Sweeney - BBC Panorama journalist who did 2003 documentary ‘When Killing is Easy’ and Independent article Silenced Witnesses
• Rowan Joffe and Simon Block - Director and Screenwriter of Channel 4 BAFTA-nominated film documentary The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall
• Mohammed Qeshta - who was with Tom when we was shot and worked for the International Solidarity Movement
• Gigi Giannuzzi - publisher and founder of Trolley Books It will be an hour long panel discussion of people who know Tom’s story and will be filmed and streamed live online to launch the fundraising campaign. The aim of this talk will be to engage the audience with Tom’s work and the concept of the book, whilst encouraging people to donate money towards it.

We are inviting participants to watch the online panel talk live, on your computer, ipad or iphone, simply by registering with your email in advance http://tomhurndalltrolleybooks.eventbrite.com/. We will then send you information on how to join us online live for the talk. The platform for the crowdfunding campaign will be Indiegogo, who support creative projects looking for much-needed financial support, especially those with a documentary basis. An edited version of the talk will afterwards be uploaded to our Indiegogo page online. Indiegogo is a pledge-for-reward social platform where supporters of our project will be able to pledge anything from £5 upwards. For example a pledge of £25 effectively pre-orders a copy of the book and supporters will be the first to receive it when it is printed.

The launch event on the 26th November will present our crowdfunding campaign live and explain further what the book is about, why it is important and how people can become involved to make it happen.

For more information please contact Hannah Watson, hannah@trolleybooks.com +44(0)207729 6591.

Shooting from the hip(ster)

2010-11-23T01:27:00.005-05:00

Ok, I have a question. If I post processed my raw files from my SLR to look like Damon Winter's iphone photos would I breaking the (rather malleable) ethical guidelines for photojournalists on retouching? Does using the automated post processing of the hipstamatic app violate those same guidelines?

I find this very interesting. The front page of the New York Times presents heavily stylised automatically retouched photographs in a news context. The comments on the Lens blog range from applause on the intimacy of the imagery and the way it gives an insight into the daily lives of the soldiers all the way to: 'Great pictures. I need to get that iPhone app.'

I've always said that I have no problem with stylised photography, but there has to be a reason for it. When I was working in post production there was a road safety advert that mimicked the look of video on a camera phone. This was a few years ago so the quality of camera phone video was pretty poor. Prior to shooting, the producers wrangled over the concept trying to work out how they would post process the footage to make it so low res when the director said 'Well, why don't we just shoot it on a phone?' Or at least that was the story I heard. Whatever, the results were pretty effective. Watch it here.

When I teach Photoshop and digital post processing I tell students that if someone looks at their image and notices the style before the content, they have failed. If the first thing someone says is 'wow, look at those photoshop skills' then they have failed.

The style should reflect and lead you to the content of the image, not obscure it. In my opinion, some of Damon Winter's iphone photos fall into one category, while some fall into the other. From what I understand, Damon Winter is photographing with his iphone while also using a 'regular' camera. Of course, it would be a shame to not show great photography simply because it is done using a particular process or effect. Holgas, odd lenses, strange film processing techniques and digital darkroom effects have been used and abused many many times in journalism. I for one am a big fan of high speed, high contrast, grainy black and white film. The high ISO lets me shoot quickly, aesthetically I love the look and no one would argue that it would be unethical of me to load my camera with Fujifilm Neopan 1600...would they?

So here is my question again - ethically, can I hipstamaticise the raw files from my SLR? Or not?

Scribblers

2010-11-14T07:41:00.004-05:00

Here's a quote from a recent article I just read (thanks Jason.):

"(Note to budding journalism students: never let the photographer decide where you’re going on assignment.)"

Really? I know a fair few photographers - myself included - who would throw that straight back at you Mr Steve Tuttle of Newsweek.

Especially as the photographer's diversion afforded you the core of the article you then wrote, which incidentally tells us more about yourself than the people you met.

Dear Writers; It's attitudes like that which will cause a photographer to refer to you with the derogatory term 'scribblers'.

Check out Antonio Bolfo's 'snaps' here.

The "National Iconography of Riot"

2010-11-12T11:47:00.011-05:00

The recent student protests in the U.K. over education fees seem to have kicked off a debate that I think has been bubbling for a while, at least since the elections earlier this year and the absolute farce of a government that resulted. As the protests turned violent, with a small group of students and their supporters breaking into the Conservative party headquarters opinion became divided, with some people praising the 'direct action' and others condemning it. The interesting thing for me is that while I expected condemnation from the government and the official Union spokespeople, there were murmers of support from within the education industry, specifically Goldsmiths College's University and College Union. Now I am all for peaceful protest, but as we saw in 2003 when thousands and thousands marched through the center of London (and other cities) to protest the invasion of Iraq, peaceful protest doesn't always get the government's attention. Are we seeing a return to the energy and activism that Britain saw in the Thatcher years and that carried over into such things as the Poll Tax riots and the Reclaim the Streets movement?

Britain has a long history of mass protest, of mobs and grassroots activism, indeed, of violence and revolution. We may not have the defining moments that the French, the Russians or the Americans have (check your English Civil War history and the restoration of the Monarchy for a typically English approach to rebellion), but there has always been a sense that the everyday person has a right to protest the government and make their opinion felt in a very public way.

It will be very interesting to see if these student protests become a catalyst for the public expression of dissatisfaction with the Tory led coalition government. In particular, I wonder if the Liberal Democrat members of Parliament will join these protests from their benches in the House of Commons.

Of course, the protests were not all violent and were in fact mostly peaceful, but what the media has picked up on is the sensational side of the story. This is the photo that seems to have been most widely used to illustrate the day.

Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

On the Guardian website I read an interesting - if pompously worded - article examining this particular image. If you can get past the language, Johnathan Jones makes some pertinent observations on why this image was used, and how it fits into the cultural context.

I'll be in the U.K. in December and am looking forward to some armchair revolutionary discussions in the Pub with my non student tax paying friends on how things are. I'm a bit old and a bit past my 'building occupation' days. Besides, it'll be cold and I'll have the kids with me and as a final excuse; my wife would kill me if I got arrested. So I think the limit of my protest will be a grumble to the landlord about the price of a pint. I definitely won't be doing anything as stupid as throwing fire extinguishers into large crowds off of tall buildings..

This is more my revolutionary pace these days..

Photograph: Richard Jones

PROUD TO SERVE by Jo Ann Santangelo

2010-11-11T11:35:00.006-05:00

This being Veteran's Day in the U.S. (and Armistice day in the U.K.) I thought it only relevant to post something related to the military.

Photographer Jo Ann Santangelo has produced a series of portraits and some multimedia on the Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual and Transgender American military who served in silence or were discharged under the current Don't Ask, Don't Tell law. This is a situation that, personally I find ridiculous. It is institutionalised discrimination and should stop. Regardless of what I think of the Military in general (I'm no big fan of war, let's put it that way) if someone wants to do this job, their sexuality should have no bearing on their ability to do it.

Air Force Coin of Airman First Class Kelsey Snipes, US Air Force Feb 17 2009-Nov 5, 2009. She was discharged after her roommate reported her for homosexual activities. Kelsey was an Aerospace Medical Services Apprentice (Medic) Stationed at Sheppard AFB Wichita Falls, TX

The work is on show in New York at the LGBT Center, 208 W.13th Street (7th/8th Ave). There will be an opening reception and a moderated panel today, November 11th from 5:30-9:00pm.

There is also a self published book of the project for sale on her website.

Check it out.

A Lincoln Photograph

2010-11-06T09:01:00.001-04:00

"A Capitol Police officer saw us shooting frame after frame of the same nondescript spot and came over to ask, rather menacingly, what we were up to. (Um, sorry – just taking exterior photos of the most famous public building in America. Clearly we must be terrorists.)"

A little slice of photo history here.

JR wins the TED prize

2010-10-20T17:36:00.004-04:00

I just opened the paper today and read about the photographer JR, whose work I wrote about here back in 2008. I think the way he distributes his work and the way he works with the communites he is photographing is an inspiration and I hope that methods such as these become the norm, rather than the exception. As I write this I am sitting in a gallery with white walls and spotlit photographs and fine though that is, the interaction with the public who come and see the work, either deliberately or in passing, is not as loose and free as it is on the street.

I'm a big fan of street situated and public art, especially when it is rooted in a desire to connect and share. JR's work may seem like a gimmick, but exploring it I think he has some good intentions and seeing it makes me wonder and think, which is always a good sign in my book.

For those of you who are looking at the $100 000 JR received - a lot of which will hopefully be used by him in a worthwhile way - and thinking, (like me) "Damn, how can I get my hands on money like that for the things I want to do?" maybe you should stop scanning award submission guidelines and concentrate on producing some innovative and well thought out methods of working instead. As JR states to the NY Times:

“I’m kind of stunned,” he said of the prize. “I’ve never applied for an award in my life and didn’t know that somebody had nominated me for this.”

Nature Within

2010-10-12T14:47:00.002-04:00

Some shameless self promotion:

I am pleased to announce I will be included in the NATURE WITHIN exhibition curated by Minny Lee at the 25CPW gallery.

Please join us for the opening reception on Friday, October the 15^thfrom 6-9pm.

The exhibition runs from October the 14^th to the 28^th 2010.

www.naturewithinexhibit.com

www.25cpw.org

The gallery is located at 25 Central Park West. New York City.

Exhibition hours are 12-8pm Tuesday-Sunday.

Exhibition: Annabelle Dalby & Lucy Steggals Chapter One—Origins And Approaches

2010-10-08T11:18:00.004-04:00

My incredibly talented friend and all round wonderful person Annabelle Dalby has a show with Lucy Steggals in London this month. A lot of her work deals with found objects, archives and re-presentation. I'm very upset I'm not in London to check this out. It's all clever art photography stuff and she does it very very well. Press release is as follows....

Annabelle Dalby & Lucy Steggals
Chapter One—Origins And Approaches
Saturday 9th October 2010
17.00—21.00

Join The 12 Gallery to celebrate our first exhibition with artists Annabelle Dalby & Lucy Steggals.

This collaborative show at The 12 Gallery explores and questions existing modes of collecting & archiving.

These perpetual editing decisions are an intrinsic part of life and are very telling, exposing our desire to modulate our reality to project a preferred version.

Dalby & Steggals are appropriating objects and images from their own collections to create an alterior archive. Using their individual approaches; Dalby sensitively re-presents existing photographs to highlight that which we may have missed; Steggals appropriates and maniplulates imagery to weave alternative fictions. By combining the two they have made a series of works that resonate with compelling narratives for lives both real and imagined.

We warmly welcome you with cocktails and our house chanteuse Colette.

The exhibition runs until 29th October, viewing by appointment only.

RSVP
Elin Clements
elin@the12gallery.com
Tel 07868 731127

Rachel Weschke
rachel@the12gallery.com
Tel 07976 272704

www.the12gallery.com

Business online.

2010-10-05T13:29:00.003-04:00

Here's a list of links you might find useful if you are running a photography business in the online world. Which you probably are. I wish I was better at it myself, which is why I'm posting it here, to remind myself to check out all the links and figure out how better to make money doing what I love so I can continue doing what I love!

http://share.xmarks.com/folder/bookmarks/mI8XAH8Lof

Oh and as another reminder; if you want to continue doing what you love (like taking photographs) then you should probably switch off the computer and go and do it (like pick up a camera). Which is what I'll be doing shortly...

The Ipad finally has a use!

2010-09-28T00:49:00.001-04:00

Ok. I take it back, you can use an ipad to create content...

http://itchyi.squarespace.com/thelatest/2010/9/18/ipad-it-finally-has-a-use.html

Brion Gysin

2010-09-27T23:20:00.005-04:00

I could chatter on at great length about Brion Gysin, whose work I first encountered in my teenage years when I read the beat writers and in particular William Burroughs, who I was happy to discover utilised his warped talents in a variety of different media. Gysin was a profound influence on Burroughs creatively and personally. Actually, it turns out that Gysin was a profound influence on many people much more famous than himself, as it seems most people find out about him through their exploration of the work of others.

Anyway, earlier this summer I visited the New Museum exhibition of his work (which ends this week) and it prompted me to re-read Terry Wilson's book of 30 year old interviews conducted with Gysin entitled Here To Go. The title itself references Gysin's answer to the question "What are we here for?"

The answer is of course, "We are Here To Go."

There is a passage in this book that has always stuck with me since I first read it. I had to order a new copy as my original one was lent out and disappeared a long time ago. Having just finished the re-read I thought I'd share the passage in question. Still one of my favourites in the book.

TERRY WILSON - I see here an article about "Copier Art" in which you are quoted. What's that all about?

BRION GYSIN - About nothing at all. Even less than the "Emperor's New Clothes"... which have been hanging on the museum clotheslines for too long. All that shit was replaced by so-called Conceptual Art, which I call Deceptual Art. There is, literally, nothing to it but some cancerous growth out of the Me generation of Americans who were "Spocked" by the ideas of that dumb permissive addle-headed doctor Spock. As Warhol said, anybody can now be a genius for nearly five minutes and a superstar for 15 minutes of public exposure by the media. It will last a little longer if there's a mass product to sell. The trouble with Deceptual Art was that there was a very thin product and even that so ephemeral that no collector in his right mind would want to "invest" in it. All this technological rubbish that has been spewing up from video to polaroid to newly-dubbed "Electroworks" does sell the electronic equipment involved to an over-affluent society of idle housewives who need an "outlet" in programmed "creativity", a way of burning up the bread of the starving Third World and the Fourth and the Fifth on an electric toaster. All this decorative garbage they turn out is what they can pick and choose from as they rollerskate through the air-conditioned supermarket of the arts. It's like painting with numbers and it should stop at the kindergarten. It's not that these things make creation too easy - they have nothing to do with creativity. This is the ugly flab on a fatcat society that burns up everybody else's calories of psychic energy and leaves the whole world impoverished, not enriched.

TERRY WILSON - You have not only practiced photography and incorporated it into your paintings but written and published in french a long text about photography... That means you take it seriously-

BRION GYSIN - Of course I take it seriously. With photography began the whole insane proliferation of images. Previous the the 19th century, most people saw at most one image a week at church or once a year on a pilgrimage. Now images flow past us and through us by the multiple millions, daily. What does that mean and what has it done to us: none of us is quite sure, even now. we have seen revered objects and even whole countries fade under the assault of picture postcards and tourist cameras. in our day, things which had endured from all time have been burnt down, absorbed, obliterated as sure as the beaches of Bali have been overrun by hippies on motorbikes who pass out on speedballs in temples they burn down with an abandoned roach before they catch their cheap charter back home. Get it while it lasts. Use it all up.

And so it goes on.

The guy was clearly off his rocker, but goddamn it if he wasn't right about so many things so I'll have to put him in that raving genius category. He should be on the reading list of every creative arts college course but then if he was the students would probably realise how much of a sham the whole creative arts industry really is.

As he says, "This is the ugly flab on a fatcat society that burns up everybody else's calories of psychic energy and leaves the whole world impoverished, not enriched."

I urge you all to check out some Gysin. I can certainly guess what he would of made of the state of things today.

Strait Is The Gate

2010-09-24T23:33:00.003-04:00

This Friday afternoon I dropped by my friend's studio to borrow some time on their scanner. While I scanned a few frames and drank a beer over a quick chat, frantic activity buzzed around this rather atmospheric studio space on the corner of Grand Street & Bowery in Lower Manhattan in preparation for a showcase exhibition featuring some incredibly talented people. The temperature was almost 90 degrees and humid. Wonder what it will be like tomorrow when the space is filled with bodies...

Curator's statement is as follows:

featuring:
Emile Hyperion Dubuisson
Wayne Liu
Pax Paulele
Gabriele Stabile
Louise Ingalls Sturges

Hidden in the flamboyant colors of Chinatown there’s a green stairs that leads to a green gate which finally conduct to a green, very narrow, hallway at the end of which two magnificent windows open up on a very unexpected scenario.

blinks to the famous novel by Andre Gide where a secret event was perceived by the back of a narrow door. This is the mood where the idea originated as well as running through a previous experience held in Rome in the nineties (Studio 14 was an open space where international artists, especially urban and street artists, used to meet and perform their works in complete freedom).

A studio space, in the heart of the Bowery, has become the sophisticated playground for artists and friends to meet up and mix images.

Five artists, mainly photographers, used the space to change perspective on their work. The results of their long term projects and researches was here overturned, upset, reviewed and discussed. The usual set of photographic display (frame, white wall, right light) was here abandoned in honor of the images themselves. Beyond the power of their singular content, images were here used as pencils, colors, paint, frames. Disconnected from their structural logic they broke in a new passionate melody.

Pax, Emile Dubuisson, Louise Sturges, Gabriele Stabile, former students of ICP in New York, and Wayne Liu, by now brilliant artists and photographers committed to their personal career, let the people share for once the studio mood where everything, or almost, is allowed.

Curator: Valentina Casacchia (text)

Exhibition openings

2010-09-16T09:41:00.002-04:00

Lots of Openings tonight in New York. It is the new season after all. I doubt I'll make it to any but here's one that looks interesting and they're raising some money for charity too.

http://www.silhouetteexhibition.com/

It's not dead, but who cares?

2010-09-15T08:36:00.003-04:00

Ok. So can we all agree that photojournalism is not dead - As I've said before, if it's anything it's a movie zombie that just won't die!). So, what do we do with this undead creature. The defense for photojournalism seems to revolve around photographers who are working, creating new business strategies and ways of funding their work and paying the bills (many of these methods are not new, by the way - it's just that more people are utilising them).

The real question to me is Who is looking at this stuff?

I didn't go to Perpignon, or Arles, or any of the other photo festivals this year (except one, in New York, which is on my doorstep) but perhaps someone who did go can tell me how many non-photographers were there.

When you go to a music festival, is the entire crowd full of musicians?

I guess that may be a poor analogy, as music is often seen as entertainment and a lot of good visual journalism is shall we say, less than entertaining. In fact it is often the opposite of that. But seriously, is the average person that concerned about what journalists are reporting on? I really think that - I mean I hope that - there is more concern out there than it would sometimes seem. I'd like to think that those people who I see reading the celebrity gossip and articles on how best to pluck your eyebrows or sculpt your abs into a six pack also read in depth reports on the latest political and economic situation. I'd like to think they volunteer for a charity, talk to their neighbours, expand their knowledge of the world via photography, film, the written word, art, culture and - whenever possible - direct experience.

The truth is however, that a lot of them probably only care about how many distractions they can cram on their tablets or they are too busy reading articles on what Katie Perry is up to.

Seeing as I have occasionally had to do a google search to find out who I'm being sent to photograph, I probably should pay more attention to pop culture, like who's number 1 in the pop charts and how to get my abs nice and firm, but in this day and age, where pretty much everything I do has a knock on effect with results that ripple across the globe, I should really care about things that are a bit more important. And I'm trying to avoid sounding pompous and self important here, but the stuff in my house has been manufactured in god knows how many different countries, I have no idea what the living conditions are of the people who grew, harvested, packed, and shipped the food in my fridge. The electricity I consume as I write this probably comes from the huge coal fired power plant a few miles away and we (should) all know how much damage that is doing.

My point is that although photojournalism is not dead, what does it matter if the only audience for it is other photojournalists? If we regard our work as important, shouldn't we make sure that the audience is as wide as possible? I know there are plenty of photojournalists out there trying to do just that, trying to get their work seen by people who are not photographers, people who can use the information contained in the photographs, people who care about what is being depicted, people who are just simply curious minds. If the profession is to shake off the rumours of it's demise - which are often perpetrated by photojournalism professionals themselves - then it needs to show that it is relevant to our society. If we care about who or what we are photographing, if we think that it is worth sharing then it is part of our job to get that work seen. It doesn't even have to be sensationalist, big issue stuff. Sometimes the simplest story can speak volumes and have a reach beyond it's own confines, but it needs to fight against and hold it's own in the culture of celebrity, entertainment and distraction.

Now I'm not saying we shouldn't had fun. I like to be entertained. Who doesn't? but I also like to be informed.

So if the photojournalism zombie finally keels over, twitches and lays still, it'll be because we let it. And no-one else will even notice it's gone.

The Dark Side of the Lens

2010-09-07T16:37:00.004-04:00

This is inspiring. Breathe it in.

TOMORROW // TODAY // YESTERDAY

2010-08-31T21:26:00.003-04:00

If you are in NYC on September 1st, head down to PANDA and check out this exhibition opening.

16 year old Liliana Servin, from Mexico City, mother of two.

Photo by Tiffany L Clark.

The press release is as follows:

PANDA is proud to present

TOMORROW // TODAY // YESTERDAY

a group show featuring emerging photojournalists
...
RYAN BROOKS
TIFFANY CLARK
MAISIE CROW
ALVARO CORZO
EMILY ANNE EPSTEIN
AGATON STROM
AMIRAN WHITE

Each photojournalist has extensively photographed an individual, capturing the events and emotions of one person's life.

Curated by Emily Anne Epstein, people will walk around the gallery and be transported into different worlds- the world of a NYC graffiti artist, a child mother in Mexico, a burlesque dancer in Brooklyn, a Reverend of the Church of Life After Shopping and more.

This is a rare opportunity to experience in-depth photojournalism on gallery walls.

Please join us for our opening reception at PANDA at 139 Chrystie Street from 6-9 on Wednesday, September 1st.

Drinks and complimentary hors d'oeuvres will be served.

The show will be up until our closing party, Saturday, September 18th.

(BD to Grand, JMZ to Bowery, FM to 2nd Ave, 6 to Spring)

A concrete visual warning.

2010-08-19T22:56:00.004-04:00

I saw this via duckrabbit. Thanks Ciara.

Seriously. If we don't stop burning coal and oil we're in the shit. The planet will be fine. In a million or two years it'll be happily running it's cycles as we never existed to fuck them up. That'll be because we will all have drowned in floods or rising oceans, or killed each other in wars over drinking water, or died during storms, or in an ice age brought on by our activities. Or all of the above.

The planet will be fine though.

There is no ground zero mosque.

2010-08-19T10:39:00.001-04:00

Put this in your pipe and smoke it.

Climate & Energy

2010-08-19T08:44:00.002-04:00

I recently photographed an extremely, ridiculously expensive newly built private property. While being shown around the builder and developer were keen to point out the state of the art features they had integrated into the building. I have to admit it was quite amazing. I asked about the energy efficiency of the place and was proudly told that the property needed commercial level power, in other words, it guzzled electricity. "So did you put in solar power or anything like that so that the building can generate it's own electricity?".

Resounding silence.

"It has it's own backup generator." Came the eventual reply.

In this day and age, in a country and a state that will actually give you money to help you install renewable energy technology, and with materials at your disposal to make a building as energy efficient as possible, that someone would build such a monster of a property without any of these features beggers belief. They'd rather budget for a basketball court in the basement. In contrast, earlier this year I photographed a guy who (unrelated to the article I was illustrating) had built his own house using energy efficient principles and he had nothing but good things to say about the amount and quality of power he got from his geothermal system.

But then, I am not actually surprised at the indifference of most people. Energy companies build huge solar arrays out in the desert, wind farms miles offshore and try and generate huge amounts of power that is then transferred miles and miles through a huge and inefficient grid. They then turn around and say, look, this technology is just not good enough. And people nod their head and say yes, you're right, we don't have the space for huge huge solar arrays and aren't those windmills ugly. This is the wrong way to think about energy generation and is a left over from the attitudes that built the huge fossil fuel burning facilities that generate the majority of our power today. What we need is localised, smaller facilities.

When I talk to people about how we can all live pretty much off the grid, generating much of our own power on site supplemented by small, local power stations powered by wind, solar and geothermal with facilities to generate power using fossil fuels as a a last resort and backup which would provide a consistent stable source of clean energy I am met with the most part by complete indifference. People who complain about their energy bills are reluctant to invest a lump sum to install solar or geothermal power. Some don't even properly insulate their houses properly.

Why the rant? Well, I get angry easily these days. On Sunday I was reading the paper and on the front page of the NY Times I see three pictures; one from Pakistan showing the devastating floods that have affected around 20 million people. I'll put that in bold shall I - 20 MILLION). The second picture was of the Russian wildfires and the third from Chicago, where June storms battered the city.

The headline below was "In Weather Chaos, a Case for Global Warming."

This looked promising. However, the article that followed put forward a rather feeble case that said yes, the world is getting warmer, and yes this will mean more climate chaos, more extremes of heat, drought, storm, fire, flood and snow. Yes a warmer world does mean we will still get cold days in winter. But it also tiptoed around the fact that this is our fault, with much made of the 'probably, possibly' and the 'can't scientifically, positively say for sure'.

So. When my kids turn to me in twenty years time and ask why we didn't do anything about our lifestyle, why did people spend millions drilling for oil and cleaving the tops off mountains instead of restructuring our outdated energy system. When cities are regularly blacked out, it costs $1000 to fill your car with petrol and there are a billion refugees every year thanks to storms and fires, when Bangladesh is made practically uninhabitable, when Katrina is no longer referred to as a 'once in a lifetime' storm, when LA is evacuated because of the threat of fire and Greenland sheds iceburgs four times the size of Manhattan every year, I will have to turn to them and say, "Sorry kids, people just didn't give a shit."

Ryan Lobo

2010-08-18T08:22:00.002-04:00

This is a fascinating presentation by photographer Ryan Lobo.

I was particularly struck by his attitude toward the people he photographs. He seems very open and willing to let them dictate the stories he is telling, rather than going in there with a predetermined notion of what the story will be and therefore imposing a prejudice.

Check it out.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

2010-08-17T10:00:00.005-04:00

I just bought a new computer. There are Five in our house now. My office has four which consits of one desktop (actually my wife's, but it has been commandeered) and three laptops. One of those laptops is the first computer I bought, back in 2003. I didn't need one before that it seems. Anyway, this first computer is important. By today's standards it is slow, with a tiny hard drive and an outdated operating system. But it works. And I still use it. I record and edit audio on it. It's hooked up to my stereo equipment permanently and before stealing my wife's desktop I had my scanner running through it too. I don't want to get rid of it precisely because it still works and it gets used.

Besides, it eases my conscience to keep it running as I know E-waste is a big problem. The waste we produce is a big issue for me, for many reasons, and is one of the things about my lifestyle that really bothers me on a daily basis.

Obsolete technology often gets dumped. Some of it ends up far from where it was used. This past Sunday the NY Times published a few photos from a series by Pieter Hugo form a dump in Ghana where some of the residents of a slum named Agbogbloshie break apart these abandoned machines to access the mineral components. In the process, they cause a huge amount of pollution, hazardous to themselves and the environment.

Pieter Hugo:
Agbogbloshie Market, Accra, Ghana 2009

Edward Burtynsky documented a similar activity in China, where rural villagers sifted through mounds of electronic waste. One village featured in the series so polluted it's own water source that it now has to import it's water from elsewhere.

Edward Burtynsky:
Ewaste Sorting, Zeguo, Zhejiang Province, 2004

I used to think that when you sent something to be recycled that is was processed through a gleaming technologically efficient plant, with minimal harm to the workers or the environment. The truth is far from that. We as consumers have a a huge responsibility. We buy more than we need. We buy things that are produced at great human and environmental cost and then we dump all that stuff somewhere out of sight and don't give a damn about what happens to it. For years I've thought about exploring recycling in the west. I used to work in a big company in London. We produced a huge amount of waste. For a while I had some management responsibilities for one of the company's departments. I remember calling Westminster council to try and arrange some recycling and was told, bluntly, that Westminster did not recycle. They did not have the facilities and I would have to arrange it through a private company.

In New York, I know a lot of Manhattan's waste gets dumped in the Bronx, where some of it is recycled. There are a lot of health problems in the South Bronx directly related to this.

In New Jersey, where I live, there are miles and miles of artificial hills I was told are full of landfill. I can only imagine what is lying in wait under that topsoil.

Even when we think we are disposing of something responsibly the truth is that often what we think happens is far from the reality.

I remember a wonderful story a colleague once told me. He was living in a flat above a pub. Every night after the pub closed the employees dutifully (and noisily) separated the brown, green and clear glass from the aluminum cans and deposited them (noisily) into the correct bins at the rear of the pub for recycling. in the middle of the night, the rubbish collectors arrived and (very noisily) dumped all the bins into one huge bin on the truck.

My colleague considered telling the pub employees not to bother with their ritual as for one, the bottles and cans were probably going to a landfill anyway and secondly, he would sleep better without all that noise.

Our world is one of over production and over consumption, of quick obsolescence and inconsiderate disposal. I am guilty of perpetrating that for sure. Hugo and Burtynsky show us some of the consequences of our actions. That is why, even though a new computer just arrived in my office, the first one I bought is staying. As long as it works that is. After that, it will be my responsibility to dispose of it properly. Burning it in Ghana or having it pollute a Chinese village's water source does not sound like a very attractive option.

RIP Herman Leonard

2010-08-15T16:44:00.003-04:00

You will be missed.

Lest We Forget..

2010-08-14T23:41:00.001-04:00

"America has been meddling in Afghan affairs for decades, with no positive results to date"

Anne Holmes talks sense.

Read it here.

Favourite Album Covers #5

2010-08-10T12:48:00.003-04:00

Because I'm listening to it now. And because the liner notes say, "Prestige art director Don Schlitten, whose photograph adorns this album cover, risked death from those he blinded with his flashbulbs while attempting to get the shot."

All together now: "Those cats are heavy, man."

The death of photojournalism (again).

2010-08-08T22:26:00.003-04:00

It seems like photojournalism is like one of those celluloid zombies - you can keep on blasting away but the brainless lumbering hulk just refuses to accept it's dead.

Here's yet another article on the subject from Neil Burgess that's doing the rounds.

Actually, I happen to agree with him on one particular point - most of what is called photojournalism these days is just photographers illustrating articles. I certainly do plenty of that myself. The journalism industry seems to be writer driven. I think that's one thing that could change as video becomes more and more prominent on the web.

But visual journalism is not dead, it's just underfunded and oversubscribed. In fact, it was always underfunded, but the pot isn't getting any bigger and there's a big crowd round the rim.

It seems like a lot of conversations I have these days are about getting paid. Thankfully, I don't think photojournalism - or visual journalism - is dead. I just think it's a tough job to earn a living at. But then if you want an easy job that's well paid, you should go work in a bank.

And who in their right mind would want to do that?

Opposition to mosques

2010-08-08T19:47:00.004-04:00

I'm no big fan of organised religion. However, to oppose a mosque (or Islamic cultural center in the case of downtown Manhattan) on the grounds that Islam equates with terrorism not only shows a complete ignorance of the real teachings of the Qu'ran (a charge I would also level - but for different reasons - at oh, say, The Taliban for example) but also shows a complete ignorance of how the history of other religions have used (do use) houses of worship to raise funds and popular support for violence.

In any case. This ridiculousness is going on all over the place and reading an article about it today I found the following oxymoronic (is that even a word?) sentence.

"Feeding the resistance is a growing cottage industry of authors and bloggers — some of them former Muslims — who are invited to speak at rallies, sell their books and testify in churches. Their message is that Islam is inherently violent and incompatible with America."

Sorry, but I thought that America was completely compatible with inherent violence. I mean, not a day goes by in America without someone shooting someone else, or themselves, or a bunch of people. This is the country where Christianity and gun ownership often go side by side . It is a country which is at war all the time, both overtly or covertly (or both). I was under the impression that violence is a cherished American institution.

Considering the amount of intolerant, narrow minded people out there, I would have thought fundamentalist 'Islamic' hardliners would be welcome as kindred spirits. They should all meet up over tea and biscuits and discuss how much they hate people who don't think like them.

The Ipad is great, no wait, it's shit, no wait...

2010-08-03T08:08:00.004-04:00

Dear computer people. sort it out. I want a powerful, mobile portable device with a high capacity battery (solar cells for on the run charging please) that I can use to run full spec editing software like Lightroom and transmit photos. And as a machine I want to get 'under the hood' and I want it to be customisable. Is that too much to ask?

Netbooks, small, light, long battery life. Great. Really small screen. My wife has one and I steal it often, but with a 9 inch screen it's hard to use if things get complicated. Macbook Pro. light, slim, powerful. Except it's got that closed computing Apple thing going on. And it's expensive because it looks pretty.

Tablet computer... Now we're talking. The Ipad? Erm. No. As Dennis Walker of Camera Bits explains here, when explaining the problems with producing a version of Photo Mechanic for the Ipad - problems which by the way result almost entirely from Apple's own restrictions on what will work with their operating system. "From what we can surmise, the iPad is meant for the consumption of media, not the production of media content."

However, I think we might get there. Eventually. The Ipad is great for viewing content and with it's size, interface and portability it is fantastic for some things a normal computer might do. Like this for example.

So until the advent of holographic computing what we need is an open source version of the Ipad. Like a big android phone.

I guess we will see it eventually (tablet pc's are nothing new and I recently read about one that sounded interesting but I can't find the link, or remember where I read it or anything else useful about it.)

However, we will have to wait for the market to catch up with the technology. You know how the economics of these companies go - R&D is usually way ahead of what we can buy in the stores. Incidentally, with things like computers, why do we need to mass produce them and fill warehouses full of them? Surely the technology available in the stores is held up because companies have to offload their existing stock. Every computer should be built to order. Many are, so why not just extend that option. Maybe because that would require a rethink of the way the economy is run, which would not be a bad thing. Just think - no oversupply, efficiently run factories producing only what was required, shared technology, the latest developments available to anyone who requested it, peace on earth and goodwill to all mankind...

Agnes Dherbey: Red Shirts protest in Bangkok

2010-08-01T22:47:00.004-04:00

This is a quite incredible set of photographs taken in the midst of violence in Bangkok earlier this year. A friend of my wife lives in the center of the city and she told me that many residents go into a self imposed house arrest when the violence flares for fear of getting caught in the crossfire. I don't blame them.

Watch the slideshow here, though you'll want to turn off the autoplay - which is way too fast - and go slowly through the essay one picture at a time.

Aisha and TIME

2010-07-30T23:36:00.006-04:00

Aisha, Photograph by Jodi Bieber / INSTITUTE for TIME

There is no doubt that this is a powerful picture. An obviously beautiful young woman whose physical disfigurement as a result of a brutal and violent act mirrors perfectly the psychological abuse the woman - Aisha - must have suffered. It is a portrait that alludes to so many issues about the oppression of women in Afghanistan, the horrific nature of an abuse of male power both personal and societal and the ability of someone to go through such an ordeal and still be able to present themselves to the world with strength and dignity. Fantastic to see this on the cover of such a prominent magazine. Then you read the copy pasted next to Aisha's face. And suddenly this is about something else entirely. Suddenly this is a thinly veiled - no, actually rather blatant - call to arms in support of a sustained military engagement in Afghanistan.

As a photographer, when you put your work into the hands of editors you have to trust that they have the same intentions as you. I have seen my interpretation of my own photographs change before my eyes when juxtaposed with words I did not write. It is remarkable how often an article or a caption can completely alter the context and reading of a photograph and underscores the importance of a working relationship where respect and trust and paramount.

It is a shame that there is not more collaboration in the industry between all the people who put an article together. I always thought that the writer, photographer, editor and designer should all be working together while the truth is that often the pieces are assembled without the input of the producers. A good editor is so important. I think this is the reason why many people are embracing the ideas of self publishing and distribution today, so they can have editorial control. Once your work is out there then it can be appropriated and used to further a multitude of agendas and it is near impossible to stop that, but it is also important that in the initial presentation it is put forward in the correct context. That way, you are not backtracking and having to say “No, what I meant was …” You will have the context and be able to point to it directly as an anchor.

My initial reaction to the caption on the cover was that it turned the photograph into a propaganda tool to support the war, rather than what I think was Jodi Bieber's original intention with this image, which was to show that this woman is still beautiful despite having her face mutilated, and to draw attention to the barbaric acts of violence perpetrated against Aisha and other women in Afghanistan. I believe that that is most likely what Aisha also thought as she posed for the photograph. She may also support the U.S. led invasion of Afghanistan. I do not know.

What I do know is that the idea that the war is justified and it’s continuation will prevent this from happening is a matter for debate, and is not a fact, as TIME’s cover copy would imply. It turns the personal story of this woman into an archetypal illustration. That they focused on Aisha and not any of the other women photographed in the essay, which shows women in many different situations in Afghan society, many of whom are – for want of a better word – empowered, shows how far from the original intention of the photographic essay the editorial spin on the cover goes.

Robina Mukimyar Jalalai
In 2004, Jalalai was Afghanistan's first female representative at the Olympics. She is now running for Parliament.
Photograph by Jodi Bieber / INSTITUTE for TIME

It is very obvious that this essay is about women in Afghanistan and not about why the war should be sustained. It is fine – and important – to state your opinion, but it should be clearly stated that this is an editorial opinion and not fact. In this instance, you might as well replace the TIME logo with one for the U.S. Military. With that one phrase on the cover, TIME have shown themselves to be propagandists and not reporters.

Ooh la la

2010-07-27T09:50:00.002-04:00

One day I will ponce around France, eating bread and cheese, drinking wine and discussing existentialism while wearing a black polo neck and waiting for the tour to pass by so I can photograph it with a 4x5. Till then....

Anthony Charteau, winner of the polkadot King of the Mountains jersey. Photograph by Tom Jenkins

Laura Pannack - Best In Show

2010-07-25T21:10:00.002-04:00

Shay’ by photographer Laura Pannack

Congratulations to Laura Pannack who scoops the 'Best In Show' award at this year's FOTO8 summer show with this rather fine portrait. A special mention has to go to my talented friend Kathryn Obermaier whose work is also in the exhibit. If you can't make it to London to see the show the whole thing is online here.

Bodies In Question

2010-07-22T08:55:00.004-04:00

The stand out show for me in this year's New York Photo Festival was the 'Bodies In Question' Pavilion curated by Fred Ritchin.

This exhibit was full of fascinating, important and arresting work and this comes as no surprise as Fred is one of the most articulate and critical thinkers on photography and the ways we both make and use imagery.

If you missed it first time round, you can catch it again as it is on display in New York at the Tisch School of Arts Gulf + Western Gallery & 8th Floor Gallery which is located at 721 Broadway. The opening reception is Thursday 22nd (tonight).

I know that there has been some talk of this exhibit travelling so hopefully it will make it's way out of New York at some point. If you own an exhibition space and want to put on a fantastic show, call Fred today...

Another one.

2010-07-21T14:28:00.003-04:00

We just don't learn do we.

Workers attempt to rescue a firefighter from drowning in the oil slick during the oil spill clean-up operations at Dalian's Port on July 20, 2010. (REUTERS/Jiang He/Greenpeace) #

BP and the great photoshop Scandal

2010-07-19T23:31:00.005-04:00

It's a strange fact of digital photography that most files benefit from some - or a lot - of retouching. A bit of contrast here, a touch of sharpening there, colour balance and saturation....

This morning I got pulled up on some retouching I had done and was told to tone it down a little. In fairness, looking at the photos there was perhaps a little too much sharpness and contrast on a couple of the shots, but it wasn't anything extreme - not even as bad as some I have seen in the very same publication, and in my defence I did work them very quickly, and it was hot to the point of distraction that day, which was long and busy. Still. It's good advice and another anecdote to tell students. Ease off on the adobe programs people. Lightroom and Photoshop have some pretty powerful tools, doesn't mean that using them is going to make your pictures any better. On the contrary it seems.

In fact we all know that photos can be poor truth tellers and they only tell part of the story at best. Now when people start getting out the digital scissors and really start cutting, pasting and altering, removing and adding we get into some serious lying with photos.

Take this one for example:

which was removed and replaced from BP's website with this. look carefully:

Terms of use: These images are the copyright of BP p.l.c. and are made available in good faith. You may reproduce the images on the understanding that (i) any reproduction of these images will include the following acknowledgement adjacent to the image(s) used - '© BP p.l.c.' and (ii) these images will not be used in connection with any purpose that is prejudicial to BP, its officers or employees or any other third party. The images may not be sold on.

I reproduced the full terms and conditions, which include a 'no prejudice' use restriction. Well, I'm not sure if that's supposed to prevent criticism, but I do like the 'good faith' bit, which makes me laugh because you need a healthy dose of good (blind) faith to believe what you see in this picture. It apparently shows the BP 'Hive' (whatever that is supposed to be) in July 2010. According to this, it may in fact be a photo from 2001 that has been retouched so the monitors show footage of the recent gulf oil well travesty. Now it seems BP are finally getting a grip on this problem, but given that journalists and photographers have been harassed and bullied, they could at least provide us with some proper PR shots as a consolation prize instead of some poorly photoshopped bullshit. I'd rather be lied to well than lied to badly and if you look at the hi res version of the photo here, you will see it is a pretty bad lie they are handing out. Though now I do feel much better about that ticking off I got this morning.

In any case. Well done BP for stopping that oil geyser you caused. Now let's hope that cap actually holds, that the U.S. government demands a full review of all the capped and tapped oil wells scattered throughout the gulf, that we just call it quits on the whole drilling holes into the planet and sucking out prehistoric old gunk regardless of the consequences thing and seriously start investing in clean, safe, renewable and sustainable energy technology. Oh, and about those Nigerian oil wells...

From a Gulf Oyster, a Domino Effect

2010-07-18T11:29:00.005-04:00

Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

Luis Gomez, 24, a deckhand on the Miss Allison, pulled in the harvest from an oyster bed in Bayou Grand Caillou, La., for culling. More Photos »

This article is a good piece of journalism from writer Dan Barry and photographer Nicole Bengiveno on the knock on affects of the Gulf Oil disaster on several interrelated businesses. Well worth a read.

In the same day's paper, the Mayor of Galvaston, Texas was quoted as saying “O.K., so tar balls have washed up, and I think we’d all agree, it’s not a disaster, it’s a nuisance,". Granted, he was talking about the shores of his own town, and not the Gulf in general, but still, a nuisance? The chipmunk who ate my chili plant is a nuisance. An environmental catastrophe with severe economic repercussions is something a little more.

Oiver Pin-Fat: In-Land, Out-Cast

2010-07-18T10:30:00.004-04:00

Digital is so neat, so clean, so sharp, so discrete. Computers are so dull. I remember when I was at art school I would make a real mess in the darkroom playing around with printing techniques, chemicals and all sorts. I even set fire to some chemical soaked paper in there once - not recommended, seriously - and got an amazing effect I was unable to replicate again. (partly for fear of causing a raging inferno). Somehow working on the computer seems so much more clinical.

Anyway, I was glad to see this essay of Oliver Pin-Fat's that utilises many analog effects, what are often referred to as 'happy accidents' though in this case Pin-Fat admits that he deliberately vandalises his film, something that would have the white glove brigade fainting in shock I'm sure.

photo by Oliver Pin-Fat

The end result is a great series of perceptual pictures that reminded me of the photographic work of Sigmar Polke, who I've just discovered died June 10th this year. RIP Sigmar.

Final (addendum)

2010-07-12T22:33:00.003-04:00

I had to add this picture to the series of World Cup posts - for two reasons. I only posted one of the losers yesterday and thought the winners deserved a moment. Secondly, this was taken by South African photographer Siphiwe Sibeko and I thought that seeing as this was the first world cup held on the African continent, it would be right and proper. Make sure you check out the work on Siphiwe's website.

REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko
Spain's Andres Iniesta lifts the World Cup trophy after their final match victory over Netherlands at Soccer City stadium in Johannesburg July 11, 2010.

Final

2010-07-12T12:39:00.003-04:00

Photograph: Frank Augstein/AP

To lose the world cup. Gutting. Well done Spain, the goal by Andrés Iniesta was fantastic.

The Black Tide - Chris Morris

2010-07-10T01:08:00.005-04:00

I really wanted to like this. It's an important subject, this whole Gulf Oil 'spill' (it's not a spill ok, my kids spill their drink and it gets cleaned up in ten seconds - this is a...mmmm...what's the word....irresponsible fuckup of immense proportions that reveals the vicious consequences of our continued rape of the planet's resources.)

Anyway, it's an important subject. And let me point out that I admire Christopher Morris a great deal and he is an incredibly inspiring, talented and astute photographer. I have the book of his My America Series and it's one of the best things I have ever seen, plus he's a charming chap too.

But this piece doesn't really work for me. When the audio started I actually rolled my eyes and thought "Not another emotive plinky plonk bit of ambient piano." Honestly. Enough with the slow piano noodling please. Is it added to Final Cut exports by default or something? Don't get me wrong; I love the piano. There's one in our house (which I don't know how to play). Thelonious Monk gets me every time. But it's done to death on documentary pieces. It's like black and white - it's so cliche.

Oh wait. This piece is in black and white too. Oops. Don't get me wrong, I love black and white. I shoot black and white film all the time. I have boxes of the stuff. So I'm as guilty of this as the next man but sometimes it can feel a bit like saying "Hey this is serious, and just so you know it's serious, I'm going to shoot it in B&W, because that's how serious it is." It can feel a bit like a self conscious choice, where as a viewer you find yourself asking the question "why exactly is this in black & white." In these vibrant colour hi-def digital days its almost become a gimmick, you know, like tilt shift.

Ah. This whole piece looks like it was shot with a tilt shift. OK. Don't get me wrong, I use tilt shift too. I love swinging the lens on my 4x5, I just try not to do it too much. Sometimes things can get a bit tired if you labour the point.

Um...Is that 9 minutes long, and in slow motion? I have to confess I started skipping at 3 1/2 minutes, when the piano started to grate, I'd got bored of the tilt shift and it became clear that the concerned looking guy who was having his portrait shot wasn't going to open his mouth and speak a few words.

So. Chop half the footage out. Give me a few words from the guys in the video (just one or two perfectly formed sentences would do it) get rid of that damn piano and ease up on the tilt shift and you'd have a stunningly shot little documentary piece. Because there are moments of genius here and there are several points in particular where all the elements - the B&W, the slow motion, the selective focus - all come together in absolute harmony. That shot of the Pelicans is incredible. They look petrified with fear and confusion. That moment works wonderfully and I find it is much better at eliciting an emotional response than the still I have reproduced above. It shows the power the moving image can sometimes have over the static Also, the woman's reaction around 3 minutes - a mix of concern, exhaustion and frustration - speaks volumes.

Here's the thing. I know that sometimes it can be best to let the atmosphere wash over the viewer and to tell the story in a way that searches for rather forces a response. Something that asks you what you think rather than tells you how to react. I can see it in places here. This is perhaps what troubles me. In places it is so good that when it's not, it feels like a huge disappointment.

Ultimately though, I'm looking at this video as a piece of journalism. And in it, these people look poised; as if they have something really important to say.

Maybe it's just me, but after 10 minutes, I'm not quite sure what that something is.

Blood Sweat and Gears

2010-07-08T16:31:00.003-04:00

Ok so that's a bad title. It's awfulness is inspired by this gallery of photographs on the Guardian website that show some of the crashes from this year's Tour De France. (I'm not totally obsessed with football see.)

Photograph: Eric Gaillard/Reuters

Despite the bloodied limbs and broken collarbones, it was actually this picture that made me wince the most.

Ouch.

Jessica Hilltout

2010-07-08T15:39:00.005-04:00

Why do I love football so much? I don't know. I think it's simply because it's a hell of a lot of fun to play. Essentially I think that's it. Opening the paper today I find myself looking at photographs taken by Jessica Hilltout which remind me of that sense of fun. Now before we get on the 'white foreigner tours Africa with a camera photographing poor black people doing poor black people stuff' bandwagon of dismissiveness, let's just admit that there are a certain amount of poor people in Africa, and they can't afford footballs, let alone cameras to photograph themselves and be done with it. Yes I know she seems to have the money to wander around at will, yes I know her daddy payed for her book. So what? At least the photos are good and just think: there are some daddies out there who buy their daughters facelifts, flash cars and boobjobs.

Now then. Put simply, this is a fine series of photographs. Great portraits of (mostly young) people playing football on improvised pitches and with homemade balls. It's the balls that really steal the show here. Some of these are pretty elaborate labour intensive creations. If you've ever made a ball out of whatever you can find lying around (I have - and it was a bit crap) then you'll know what I mean!

“Nelito’s Ball, Nhambonda, Mozambique,”

So, I know it's not the same; my parents could afford to buy me a real football and some (on sale) decent boots for example, but these pictures remind me of when I was a kid and we would set up a pitch wherever using coats, bags, traffic cones, stones, whatever as goal posts and if we didn't have a ball, we'd use a can or some other kickable object. It's all we needed and we were entertained for hours. That's one thing this middle class white guy from Yorkshire has in common with a poor black kid in an African village. And that indeed makes it a game worth loving.

For Rent

2010-07-07T00:04:00.004-04:00

So you're an aspiring photographer who sees yourself as the heir to the legacy of the late great Eugene Smith. You want to live in the self proclaimed photography capital of the world and take the industry by storm. Well, you're in luck: available for rent by the aptly named 'Magnum Real Estate' is space in no other than the very same building Mr Smith occupied in the mid 20th century, conveniently located on 6th Avenue in midtown Manhattan and known in music and photo folklore as 'The Jazz Loft'.

Do you believe in signs?

And no, I'm not the real estate agent. I just pass by this building at least once a week..

Robben Island and the Makana Football Association

2010-07-06T16:17:00.005-04:00

Ok, for those of you who care not one jot about football, I apologise for all the world cup related posts. However, it's not all about overpaid athletes competing for a shiny bauble. Sometimes sports can play a central role in improving all the other, arguably more important aspects of life. I've been working on and off on a project about one such situation, but more on that if and when I get it to a presentable state. In the meantime, check out this article in The New York Times.

A soccer game taking place on prison grounds in 1969. The Makana Football Association operated from 1969 to 1981.

Credit: Patrick Barth for The New York Times

I first learned about the Makana Football Association in this BBC radio show (which you can listen to here).

It is a fascinating story on how the future leaders of South Africa kept themselves together during their imprisonment under apartheid. A must read/listen, whether you like football or not.

World Cup Quarter Finals

2010-07-06T15:43:00.007-04:00

What an entertaining weekend of football. I couldn't concentrate on work as Brazil lost their cool and then the match to the Netherlands.

Robinho arguing with the Netherlands' Mark van Bommel.

Credit: Paulo Whitaker/Reuters

I then went on a shoot and missed most of the Ghana/Uruguay game, but managed to catch the last 20 minutes of full time that then turned into a fantastic fight to the finish that Ghana deserved to win but couldn't quite grasp (unlike Uruguay's Suárez who managed to grab victory firmly with both hands).

Credit: Ivan Sekretarev/Associated Press

Big thanks to Shiori for joining me at the bar for that one and also to the drunk Americans who spilled their beer on me and then bent my ear with their opinions about 'soccer' for a while. Bought me a drink so I'll forgive them. Besides, football, noisy bar, spilled beer...I almost felt like I was back in the UK..

The real question however, is who can beat Germany..

Not offside Argentinians for sure.

Tevez, Higuain and Messi were all offside by a good yard or two when Mascherano played the ball through. Photograph: Pierre-Philippe Marcou/AFP/Getty Images

Maybe the overeager Spanish?

Xabi Alonso slots a penalty to the keeper's right and into the net, but Spain's celebrations are cut short as his penalty has to be taken again because some of the Spanish players had encroached the penalty area

Photograph: Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images

Or will it be the determined Dutch, currently putting a lackluster Uruguay out of the cup?

Dylan Martinez/Reuters

And you thought your iphone was pretty good.

2010-06-30T16:44:00.003-04:00

It's not, by the way. Yes, even with that polaroid app for the pictures.

My (non-photographer) friends are always giving me grief over the gear I carry around, always pulling out their phones and telling me that their cameras fit in their pocket and can make phone calls too. The comeback has always been that their cameraphones are pretty crappy quality. Now it seems there is a high spec pocket camera with a phone built in, so I might have to bite my tongue, though I don't know how good it is as a phone or a camera yet..

Check it out here.