Here's a preview of the William Greiner show, which opens tomorrow night. Greiner was a student of William Eggleston's, and works very much in the same vein. The images are carefully constructed large-format shots of New Orleans before the flood, between 1995 and 2005. Greiner lost his home as a result of Katrina, and now resides in Baton Rouge.

Light those rent checks on fire and go see some art! I smell a theme smoke.

Edgar Martins' forest fire work reminds me of the work Laura McPhee made in Idaho, called River of No Return. I'm liking this undercurrent of danger in landscapes that I've been seeing. It feels apropos, in light of our current struggles with the global warming and such.



Laura McPhee, Understory Flareups

I met up with Edgar Martins yesterday for some cappuccino and chamomile not hours after he'd arrived in New York in preparation for his talk tonight at Aperture. I didn't know what to expect; his new book Topologies is filled with quietly beautiful minimalist landscapes, with, at times, a slightly sinister undercurrent. The book culls work from many of Martins' series, so we see imagery that ranges from nighttime beaches, creeping forest fires, airport runways, bright highway barriers, and the forbidding terrain of Iceland.

I thought Martins might be similarly quiet and not divulge much about the work, but it was quite the opposite; we went page-by-page through the images, and it was really amazing to hear him speak about his intentions. Sometimes photographers are cagey and secretive about their work, but Martins clearly loves photography, and lives it, and it shows. Martins was born in Portugal, but grew up in Macao, China, which is not far from Hong Kong. He went to London for both his undergraduate and graduate degrees; his MA is from the Royal College of Arts. I asked Martins the obvious question about who his influences were, and he sort of grimaced; I got the sense that he's informed by many working artists, but not particularly consciously, with the exception of Bill Viola.

All of his work is created painstakingly, and over many years. He's interested in "non-place" spaces, and ambiguity, which is a theme I'm hearing a lot lately. I was most struck by his nighttime beachscapes, called The Accidental Theorist and his forest fire images, from The Rehearsal of Space. The Accidental Theorist work feels at first very controlled and austere-- at least, that was my impression, but it turns out to be more paradoxical; Martins took long exposures on this same Portuguese stretch of beach over a period of two years. The exposures range from three seconds to two hours, so in essence, he was really letting go of a lot of control. He often didn't know how an image would turn out.



Untitled, from the series The Accidental Theorist, 2005




Untitled, from the series The Rehearsal of Space, 2006

The forest fires, from The Rehearsal of Space are all shots of real fires in Portugal. Martins initially tried to live with a fire brigade, but after a week, he hadn't found himself at any fires. Instead, he was able to hook himself up with a morning report every day at 7am, and he'd drive himself to a fire. This was not easy work: he was seriously burned on several occasions and suffered from smoke inhalation. The fogging you see in the image above (the yellowed sky) was because the negative was so close to the heat. Martins later used this technique purposefully to burn in his Icelandic skies.


Untitled, from the series The Rehearsal of Space, 2006


Untitled, from the series The Rehearsal of Space, 2006

The images below are from the series Approaches, which resulted from an artistic commission which afforded Martins unlimited access to all the airports in Portugal (best.commission.ever)... In any case, Martins has always traveled a lot, and considers and airport a safe space, the ultimate "non-place space".


Untitled, from the series Approaches, 2006


Untitled, from the series Approaches, 2006



Hear Edgar speak more about his work, and have a book signed tonight at Aperture at 6:30pm.

Aperture Foundation
547 W. 27th St., Fl. 4
New York, NY 10001
(212) 946-7108


Edgar Martins is represented in the U.S. by Betty Cunningham Gallery and Paul Kopeiken Gallery.

I missed the Times Travel section over the weekend; I was all caught up in the Miley and flickr and young gay marriage coverage. But Slate has a nice piece today about the clever human positioning photographer Adriana Zehbrauskas pulled off with her coverage of the nude-only Hidden Beach Resort in Mexico. As Slate's Jack Shafer says:

You might want to pull your Times out of the recycling bin for examination as the Web reproduction doesn't really do the composition justice. The guy on the left reclining under the awning conveniently places his left foot just so to conceal the wedding vegetables.

These are pretty well-played too. Tricky Assignment.

I became acquainted with Tim Flach's work back when I did a tearsheet feature about the trend of kittens in advertising, and I've been thinking about his Equus project ever since. The series is expansive to say the least; Flach traveled to India, Utah, Iceland, Moscow and the UAE, among others, to explore the origins of the horse. As a photographer who focuses primarily on animal imagery, Flach is extremely interested in the anthropomorphic qualities of his subjects, and especially in the human reaction to the imagery. Much of the work he produces is ambiguous; the nape of a horse's neck could easily be mistaken for the rise of a mountain range.

The allure of horses is undeniable; I certainly spent some childhood years sleeping with a velvet hardhat next to my pillow. But I think these images are extraordinary in their scope and craftsmanship. Abrams Books will be publishing the Equus monograph in October; I'm gunning for a signed copy.


I spoke to Tim about the work:

How long did the Equus project take?
The majority of this work was realized in the last two years. 180 of the 190 images.

How did the project initially come about?
The publisher PQ Blackwell approached me initially, but it was actually that we'd spoken years before when the publisher was owned by a different company, and we'd discussed doing a project. They'd seen my other work and my awards. We discussed a suitable subject, and as you know from the work I've done, with bats and monkeys and pigs, I've always had an interest in the anthropomorphic link between man and animal and the horse was a subject that I thought would be accessible to a broad audience. And as you probably know, it is very difficult to make a monograph that reaches a broad audience and doing a book that's themed around a subject matter is much easier. And I thought that it was probably a good stage in my career to actually have an extended period working around the challenge of one subject; I have a tendency to be quite nomadic, which is to say I pick a subject for a few days and then I move on to another subject. Well, you don't penetrate much by doing that. In the case of the horse book, I would like to think that I looked at the very way that consciousness is linked to that species, and how was that determined, and how that stretches right back to paleolithic times.




How were you able to afford it?
The publisher gave me a nominal advance, which wouldn't really even cover the people helping with production. Essentially, I funded it by doing advertising in between. You have to be disciplined and strategic. I researched it and prioritized. For example, when I learned that there were Zonkeys and Zorses, I chased that idea, and found out where I could shoot them.


Tell me more about the Zonkey and the Zorse. I really love those images.
Oh yes, the crossbreeds. The reason I approached them is that they're animals that can't breed on. You know,  we cross breed a donkey and a horse to make a mule, and it can't breed on. But the donkey has a function-- basically it has low-mileage if you talk about food against how much work it does. So a mule is an efficient breed. We have it because we don't have to give it a lot of food, and it's sure-footed and it's strong. Well, a Zonkey and a Zorse, which are other crossbreeds, don't have any of those attributes. They're merely done because man can do it, and we fancy the exotic. And their mentality is totally schizophrenic; I mean, they're not stable, you can't ride them. The point is, they're bred because people can breed them, not because they have any logical function. I think it really brings in to question why man is doing these things.





What was is favorite image from the project?
I don't know, I have images which I think were rewarding which I didn't expect; I mean, I quite like the blind eye, for example. I feel very pleased with the one that we call "Chestnut Window", which is this horse against a window where it kind of looks like a fake window, but it's actually a real landscape. We lit it to be quite ambiguous. It looks like it's been retouched. The embryos I think do some interesting things, and the horse that was shot going down the track at thirty miles an hour, frozen, where you can see the veins and everything. Or the one where I put on a scuba kit and shot the horse under water. It looks evocative of a Rothko painting. There are certain images where it's less about the interesting photography; sometimes there's something almost teddy bear-like about the horses.














Why did you choose to shoot embryos?
The embryos, the reason the embryos are there-- it's not all about having images for the aesthetic, I mean, they are aesthetic, but for some people they're not easy to look at. But the thing about them-- one of them is circular, it looks like a round planet. Well, that's a live embryo; it was moved from one horse from another so they could save the valuable horse (whose genes it carries) so it could carry on playing polo or showing. They want to breed with the best horse, but don't want to get held up with a pregnancy. I shot this in embryonic fluid. This reason I photographed it isn't just because it looks like a planet and a beginning, and at thirty days look like  baby (and all mammals at this stage tend to look similar), but I'm interested in how it is one thing but also looks like something else. I'm very interested in this idea of ambiguity. The neck of a horse can look like a mountain, but it still looks like a horse.













Why do you think horses are so evocative for people?
We initially hunted the horse, and it was our main food source in Europe; early man painted and drew the horse first. Their consciousness was surrounded by the horse before we even domesticated it. If you think of that, it's so rooted in our consciousness, which is one reason why this was a subject to be taken. But also, if you think of most of the photographers who do horse pictures do treat it with a lot of sentiment. And I think the danger of that of course is that it only offers light and not dark, like a bag of sweets. When the foal is sort of running through its buttercup field and there's some dialogue in the book talking about how it's a "lovely day and it's running to its mummy" or something, I think it at some point sort of clocks people out.



 


I love the closeup image of the horse's eye.  It's very dark, except for the lashes....
I found that one rather curious, because that was done for one of the members of the Abu Dhabi royal family. It was one of their horses. And His Highness keeps showing this picture, which is on his wall, to his guests who come in. And out there, they keep saying it looks like a jellyfish. And he finds it amusing to ask people what they think and they usually say "jellyfish". I think that must be a cultural thing. No one over here thinks it looks like a jellyfish.






More after the jump!

A rather momentous shift has taken place over at New York Magazine-- the Look Book, the weekly photo and interview documenting New York street fashion, has an additional photographer. Jake Chessum had been the man behind the helm since 2004, in collaboration with writer Amy Larocca. The Look Book had become so popular that it actually became a Look Book Book last September, so this is a prized photo gig, indeed. I was therefore quite excited to see Glenn Glasser's name under the quirky fashionista's image a few weeks ago, and delighted to see it again today. Here are the images, and a quicky Q & A with Glenn to find out how he dug his way into this well-suited empire.


Jared Madere, Artist
"Lately I've been working on clothing that I view as sculpture."



Sheena Humphrey, Developmental Aide
"I've been single a whole year now, and I love it. I have a beautiful 3-year-old son and that's my man."


RH: Dude, i see you're in it to win it again this week! So tell me for the record: How did you land this gig? 

GG: Really, I have no idea how I landed the gig, but it makes me feel as if I'm walking on sunshine. I met Jody Quon a few years ago while assisting Platon and sent her promos and updated portfolios. Taking pictures of strangers on the street against a seamless has always been a long term project of mine, and the transition into an assignment was natural. I pounded a lot of pavement and wrote a bushel of thank you notes. And having Platon and his Nutopia Forum as my advocates was a sincere honor and help too.

RH:  Did you have a tryout? How does the shoot process work? Film or digital?

GG: I always will feel as if i'm trying out-- with every client and every shoot, like it's my last-- it drives me and keeps me from feeling "safe". we basically pick a street corner or location, set up shop with a seamless and approach passersby. And after doing 30-50 portraits in a day, they all tend to blur in my mind until the film is developed and returned and the nervousness has subsided from my stomach and the excitement and editing and interview process begins. I'm so happy that all of my clients prefer film these days and that New York Magazine gives me the freedom and support that they do.



Thanks, Glenn.

I'm not sure if backstage retouching is your thing, but there's some amusement to be had on Christophe Huet's site, despite some irritating flash features. Paris-based Huet has worked on some large campaigns, including this one for Nissan, as well as Motorola, Citroen, Playstation, Nike and Snickers. He also had a hand in the the French Aids Awareness ads which caused such a stir. Worth a look.

Since I've been thinking about adolescent female imagery all day, I was considering putting together a gallery of some the photographers who are working in this guise right now, but my list was way too long and I felt overwhelmed. I settled on showing some of British photographer Julia Fullerton-Batten's work, which feels like a cross-breed between Sally Mann and Jeff Wall. Well, maybe more Wall; it's quite constructed, but still has traces of feeling, especially in the portraits with one girl in the frame. A little Lauren Greenfield, and Alessandra Sanguinetti (The Adventures of Guile and Belinda and the Engimatic Meaning of their Dreams is possibly my favorite photo project, ever) seem to be seeping in, too. Hello, name-dropper! In any case, Fullerton-Batten recently did a book of teenage work, entitled Teenage Stories. All of the work below is from her personal work; she's clearly continually interested in the adolescent trope.

Thanks for the inspiration, Miley.

All this Miley uproar has me thinking about young flesh in other contexts. I started a list last week in my head of the art I would buy if I were flush, and Sally Mann was at the top of it. I fell in love with her Immediate Family work years ago, and it still does it for me. Anyone have an extra copy of that book lying around? Below is the diptych entitled Jessie at 12.

Does the female form make you uncomfortable, Mr. Lebowski?

 


Slideluck Potshow is on a tear. From a recent press release:

"If we proceed as planned there will be Slideluck Potshows in a total of 55 cities, 23 of which are in North America. We will be launching in 39 new cities, 15 of which are in North America. We are expecting to then produce about 100 shows in 2008."

Holy crap, they're bigger than Celine!

If you don't know what Slideluck Potshow is, here's the lowdown. Photographer Casey Kelbaugh (pictured above, doing his thing with co-director and producer Alys Kenny) gathered his friends in his Seattle backyard in 2000, for an informal showing of artwork and sharing of food, and the idea took off. SLPS became a non-profit organization, and events were planned all over the country. It's grown exponentially from there-- the most recent event in NYC attracted more than 1500 participants. This is the basic format:

"The evening begins with dining on the home-cooked dishes of participants, while drinking and mingling in a relaxed and spirited atmosphere. Following the potluck, the lights are dimmed, the crowd is hushed, and a spectacular slideshow becomes the sole focus. The slideshows, many of which are cutting-edge multimedia presentations, are accompanied by music, commentary, and other surprises. Presenters range from the very accomplished to those who have never shown work publicly before. Regardless of status within the community, each slideshow is limited to five minutes and the crowd receives each presentation with equal amounts of enthusiasm."

SLPS has become a forum for exposing artists, curators, reps and editors to new work. It's also included some well-known folks. A recent documentary about the organization featured work by Jill Greenberg, Edward Burtynsky, Ursula Gullow, Will Anderson, Cara Phillips, Saviero Truglia, Dawn Roscoe, J.G. Zimmerman, Martin Waugh, Sarah Small, and Michael  Muller.

So the exciting news is that SLPS has launched an online network. A network of sorts had already formed around participants, but this is a more formal, centralized way to harness the hungry, artistic masses. A liitle bit Facebook, a little bit Slideluck, this site allows users to interact online, upload images, and BLOG. Here's what it looks like, check it out.

I'm hearing a lot about the United Arab Emirates in the news lately. And it's not just about the Disney/Vegasfication of Dubai; now Abu Dhabi is getting into the mix, with a new English language newspaper with a largely western staff.

The National launched last Thursday. The role of the paper as stated by Editor-in-Chief Martin Newland is to "reflect society, help that society evolve and, perhaps most importantly, promote the bedrock traditions and virtues that must be preserved even in times of change, and that is why we have called our paper The National."

The paper will cover news, business, sports, culture and features, and will have a staff of about 200. The paper is meant to give Abu Dhabi a national voice. It will be interesting to see what that voice turns out to be; it is owned by an investment fund controlled by the Abu Dhabi government. Many of the paper's staff were hired away from top tier papers in London, New York and Toronto, including photo editor Brian Kerrigan from Canada's The Globe and Mail, review editor Jon Shainin from the New Yorker, Bill Spindle from the Wall Street Journal, and deputy editor Hassan Fattah from the New York Times.

I checked out the website, and was interested to see a photo essay by ICP alum Lauren Lancaster about important role falconry plays in Emirati culture. Lancaster is a full-time staff photographer for the paper.


Some pictures from the essay:

Yesterday's tilt shift piece dug up a trove of tilt shift imagery; here are some from Contact Press founder David Burnett on the campaign trail, made with his '40s-era Speed Graphic.



Hillary Clinton, Minnesota, 2008



John Kerry, Wisconsin, 2004



The more things change, the more they stay the same, eh?


thanks, jba.

Alrighty, for all of you who have been procrastinating, now is the time to get those hot pictures together and email 'em over. I'm going to wait until Monday morning to close this contest, so you have no excuse!

This is like Where's Waldo, the high society version. I just found Laura Bennett, of Project Runway fame, in a Gail Albert Halaban photograph. What's that I hear? Oh, it's a cultural collision!



photo by Gail Albert Halaban


photo by Gail Albert Halaban

But we're having some technical difficulties over here today with the Movable Type, and whatnot. So I apologize for any turbulence.

Please block the rain with a handy dandy Wifi Umbrella. You can use it to take pictures and see them streamed back at you via flickr. It's the future, so go find some androids and electric sheep to photograph.

I've was an early fan of tilt shift photography, the method of tilting the focal plane on a view camera to cause distortion, or of using a tilt shift lens on a manual camera. I originally saw this technique used by Olivo Barbieri for his aerial waterfalls project. And then there was the stunningly cool Vincent Laforet imagery in Play Magazine, which I've mentioned before. I loved the miniaturized-feel of the landscapes. Lots of this kind of imagery popped up; Ben Thomas made a whole site out of it, called Cityshrinker, and Toni Hafkenscheid starting using the technique within a square format.

Then tilt shift hit flickr; first with tilt shift pools, and then with fake tilt shift pools (there are several pools for each)...

Boing Boing helped us out by pointing us to a Photoshop tutorial for making fakes. Tilt shift was officially mainstream. BUT, today was the first time I've seen tilt shift used in advertising. Specifically in Spain and Germany, in ads for Mazda and Toys 'R' Us, respectively. And now I think my tilt shift buzz is officially wearing off. These images feel boring and old, already. Our love is dead, tilt shift, and advertising killed it. I can't even tell if the ads are fake tilt shift, or real. Although that helicopter in Cologne looks weird. Can you tell?



photo by Olivo Barbieri


photo by Vincent Laforet


photo by Ben Thomas



photo by Toni Hafkenscheid


photo by Toni Hafkenscheid




Mazda 2/ GPS:

Advertising Agency: JWT Spain
Creative Directors: Javier Valero, Napi Rivera
Art director: Pol Úbeda
Photographer: Fergus Stothart

photo by Ashley Macknica


Mary Amor stopped by the offices yesterday, and was a total delight. Amor is currently a junior at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA. She showed us her book, which has some beautiful portraits (and curtains).

Here are Mary's applicable stats, list-like:

Age: 23

Camera/ lens of choice: Mamiya RZ/ 65mm

Past and Future Employers: Mary Ellen Mark, Bruce Weber, Sal Owen

Contemporary Influences: Jessica Williams, Ye Rin Mok, Jason Nocito, Tim Steer

Images!:

The New York Times has a fascinating article, and lots of imagery online, about the collaboration between David L. Bassett, and William Gruber, an anatomist and photographer, respectively. In the 1960's these two worked together to create an exhaustive trove of medical imagery, using cadavers preserved with formaldehyde and injected with colored ink. Gruber was originally a pipe organ maker from Germany, and became wealthy with his invention of the View-Master.

Ok, so here's where this gets really cool: Because Gruber was so interested in stereoscopic imagery, he made all the images with paired Kodachrome slides, so that they could be viewed with the view-master to appear 3 dimensional. The eventual 25 volumes the two created together and published in 1962, entitled "Stereoscopic Atlas of Human Anatomy", was groundbreaking but soon went out of publication. Now these images are going to be available online; Stanford University School of Medicine, and eHuman, a Silicon Vallery company, are both putting the images online. eHuman will charge a fee to look at the images; you can see the head and neck collection (the only one available so far) for just 8 bucks a month!

These images are quite amazing, and reminiscent of the Bodies Exhibition. It's amazing they're taken in the 60's, and even more amazing that it's the View-Master inventor who made them. Ehuman's CEO says that eventually we'll even be able to see the images in stereo online, by using those video game 3d glasses.

Here are some of the images from the Times slideshow:

David Hobby, AKA The Strobist, got some love outside of our geektastic photo blogosphere today, with a profile in USA Today. Hobby has been making flash photography accessible to *literally millions of folks on his instructive blog, which he started while a staff photographer at the Baltimore Sun. David's an incredibly sweet guy; it's fun to see him get a close up.



Heady, indeed. Photographers are taking the world by storm.

We got a few reminders about the Sigma DP-1 in the comments section of yesterday's lunchtime dilemma, so we took to the streets to do a little research. And by "streets", we mean "IM". Even the hype on this camera has a PR machine, so we've been a little wary of checking it out. Luckily, Clayton Cubitt has given us a full review, complete with images. And they're not of flowers or macro shots of bumblebees, or other inane things,  thank god.












The Bad:

Autofocus is too slow, and useless in low light. Should have used IR-focus instead of optical.

Lag-time between shots is too slow, even with instant review off.

Auto flash control is horrid.

Manual exposure system is clunky, no live preview of exposure changes.

Lens is slightly too wide, and f4.0 is too slow for low-light work, especially if ISO 800 is the top film speed. With a sensor this size they should have at least brought film speed up to 3200. And with no zoom, this lens should be f2.8.

Lens cap is gay, and no thread for a UV filter is dumb.

RAW software is atrocious. Almost unusable.


The Good:

It's almost as small as my Yashica T4, and looks clunky and cheap enough to not draw attention to itself.

AEL separate from AFL is great to have on a snappy cam.

Files look great.

Being able to shoot movies and audio is nice.

Digital, so much more convenient than film. Duh. With the file size finally approaching film on a snappy cam, this one fact alone outweighs the otherwise sub-par design and performance issues, compared to my previous film snapper.


Verdict:

Seriously flawed, but important milestone. Probably too niche and expensive for what it does for most users, but for those of us who need its combination of file size and bokeh, the only game in town.

Hopefully a real camera manufacturer will pick up on this and make a better version soon. In the meantime, I can make snaps again without the excruciating pain of scanning. And that alone justifies its existence.

There's an interesting (Earth Day worthy!) visual story today over at SKAGGS, a design and branding firm based in New York and San Francisco. They've just finished up a campaign for TOTO's High Efficiency toilets, and recall their planning and thought process on their blog.

An excerpt:

It took almost 2 months of planning, 1 trip from El Paso to Dallas and back, 1,000 five-gallon water bottles, 3 trucks, 2 tractors, 1 buggy and a whole lot of man (and woman) power to show that TOTO's High Efficiency toilets are all about saving water--lots of water. It's proven that TOTO's HETs can save up to 24,655 gallons of water, in just 1 year. A fantastic amount, but just how much is that visually? That was the first question we asked ourselves and one that drove the concept behind the photoshoot.



We needed a large expanse, preferably one with a mountainous backdrop. The Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah are flooded every year, unbeknown to us. The next best thing?...The Salt Flat just outside the Guadalupe Mountain National Park. The national park described the location as "An alligator sat on a sand castle," due to the contrast of the mountain backdrop on the Salt Flat. We knew then that this would be the perfect location to shoot our 1,000 water bottles.

The photographer on this campaign was Tait Simpson, and I gave him a shout to ask how it all went down. This was the largest campaign Tait has worked on to date; there were 10-15 people on set for the three day shoot. They shot images for three prints ads and a number of pick up shots for the trade brochures. The ads, which have not come out yet, will most likely run in architecture and interior design trade magazine, because, you know, the average consumer isn't buying a high efficiency toilet (yet).

SKAGGS has a great behind-the-scenes flickr stream of the whole shoot. Here are some samples.


Set-up in the desert (the bottles had to be repeatedly polished, as they kept getting sandblasted). Simpson shot with a Hassie H2 and a P45 PhaseOne Digital back. He wanted the images to be large enough for the eventual trade show signage that will be made.


Night Shot

I had a little breakdown a few weeks ago when I realized I needed to work on my photography book collection. I've since received quite a few boxes from Amazon, and am doing much better. I am currently enthralled with Jonas Bendiksen's book Satellites. Some of these images really have to be seen to be believed; the images from Spaceship Crash Zones (where detritus from the Soviet Space Program goes to die) in isolated villages north of Kazakhstan are just incredible.

Is there a spaceship recycling program?

OK, my creative family members are coming out of the woodwork and getting involved in the Hot Photo Assistant Contest. I couldn't avoid this little dose of nepotism, because these pictures are hilarious and educational. The first two shots are twenty years old, and are Pre-Photoshop. So Uncle Wynn (who is now the CEO and Creative Director of BrandLogic) had to get in the mire with those pigs, for real.

See further details below, in his words. And remember, the deadline for all submissions is THURSDAY!



I was the client but also kinda assisted on these George Kamper shoots. Both are from IBM shoots from about 20 years ago. Baltimore was about computers tracking stolen cars and they arrested me after the shoot;  pigs was about computers used in running farms. (Cover photo had pigs all surrounding and looking up at computer--see pig-coaxing honey on stand which was later retouched out)  ...


We spent a day with two cops in the projects in Baltimore. It was quite a day! The one cop said he was quitting because he came within an inch from shooting a little kid who jumped out of a hallway in an abandoned building he had chased a suspect into, and he couldn't take it any more...he was still shaking!

NPR has a nice interview online with Corey Arnold about his work as a photographer and fisherman in the Bering Sea, which is interesting, as his amusing human animal imagery just popped up on my radar last week. Arnold has a BFA from the Academy of Art College in San Francisco, but had previously begun a career as an Alaskan crab fisherman. He was able to marry these interests when he received a grant from the American-Scandinavian Foundation in 2005 to document fisherman in Northern Norway. This became a long-term project; Arnold has spent months and months fishing and shooting. A lot of Arnold's work is esoteric and conceptual, and he's done a really nice job showing the gritty realities of fishing culture as well as presenting some humorous, stylized renderings. Gotta love a horse head on a boat. With a cat.

I try to avoid to much repetition with showcasing photographers, since there are so many great talents and so little blog time. But I can't resist showing these Jessica Dimmock behind-the-scenes Gossip Girl pictures from this week's New York Magazine. Also this serves as a public service announcement, as the new season of Gossip Girl starts tonight. I refuse to be shamed for liking this show, so don't even try. Three of these pictures were taken with a digital SLR, and one was taken with a film SLR. Can you tell the difference?

Shane Lavalette and Karly Wildenhaus have rounded up a nice group of folks for Remain in Light, a contemporary print publication of twenty images. They received over 500 applicants, which is really spectacular and represents the enthusiasm that's building in the emerging photography community, especially online.

These images by Estelle Hanania really caught my eye. They have a Hannah Whitaker quality, I think. Very Magical Realism-y.




The selected photographers:

Andreas Weinand
Anne Lass
Coley Brown
Debora Mittelstaedt
Ed Panar
Estelle Hanania
Gustav Almestål
Hiroyo Kaneko
Kamden Vencill
Mark McKnight
Michel Campeau
Nicolai Howalt & Trine Søndergaard
Nicola Kast
Nicholas Haggard
Shawn Records
Raimond Wouda
Richard Barnes
Thobias Fäldt
Whitney Hubbs
Yann Orhan

I am intrigued by Xing Danwen's ongoing project "Urban Fiction", which was started in 2004. Danwen graduated from SVA's MFA program in 2001, but her work is new to me. She's interested in cultural narratives and the friction created by globalization and the proliferation of new urban constructions. For this project she's photographed actual architectural maquettes of buildings that are being created in China, and has then inserted herself within them, as different "characters".  They feel a little Rear Window, a little Casebere. And a lot dollhouse. All the following quotes (in italics) are from Danwen's artist statement.

I've been reading a whole lot of excited posts on design and advertising blogs this week about the new Sony ad "Foam City". This is the latest in a string of iconic ads that Sony has created with the London Agency Fallon. And this time the advertisement is photography-related; namely, to promote the Alpha 350, CybershotW175, and HD Handycam. You may remember some of the other ads; there was the Sony Bravia "Balls"(my personal favorite), Sony Paint, and Sony Play-doh.

This one seems the least exciting of the three, but people have been twittering nonetheless. And there's word that there's a follow-up ad set to launch on the 21st. Jeremy over at Shape and Colour has been keeping me updated, and maybe sums up Foam City best:

"Despite the fact that I'm a little underwhelmed, it's still better than almost any other advertising you'll see. My reaction to this is a lot like watching "Eyes Wide Shut" - bad Kubrick is still better than almost anything else. Being a little less of a genius is still more genius than most of us."

See the ad below, and below that, a making-of. What do you think?

Sometimes contact sheets can provide an unexpected narrative of their own. David Black found some of his old contacts and posted them on his blog. I couldn't help but pull this one.

Jessica Dimmock has been a whirling dervish since graduating from the Photojournalism program at ICP in 2005. A project she embarked upon while still in school, The Ninth Floor became a three-year intense documentation of the lives of 20 to 30 heroin addicts who lived in a run-down apartment in a well-appointed building in a fancy Manhattan neighborhood. The images were picked up in several magazines, Dimmock received high accolades and grants, and now she is member of VII's network. Also, she's had a book published. And tonight she makes her fine art world debut with an exhibition of the images at Foley Gallery (we spoke to Michael Foley about this and more yesterday). In any case, Jessica's rise has been fast and well-deserved. Here are some images from the project:




Jessica Dimmock, Charlie Counting Money, 2004


Jessica Dimmock, Untitled, 2004


Jessica Dimmock, Jessie, 2004


Jessica Dimmock, Untitled, 2005


Jessica Dimmock, Rachel in the Summer, 2006


I recently dragged Jessica to some beers, where we tried out the ancient polaroid technique:




I asked Jessica just a few questions about the progression of the project, and how she feels about her gallery debut:


How did you first conceive of the 9th floor project, and how long did it take to complete? How have your relationships with the members of the house progressed?

I didn't really set out to do the ninth floor project - it all happened very organically.  I was originally brought to the apartment by someone i was photographing who had approached me on the street. Once in the space of the apartment they were living in I felt very compelled to keep returning. The project from beginning to end spans a three year period of time. By the end of that first year I had become very close with certain individuals, and they are the ones that I ultimately ended up following for the remainder of the project.


Did you openly try to publicize the work; How did it become so widely published?

After about 8 months, when i graduated from ICP (2005) I approached New York Magazine with the work and they picked it up.  The New York Times Magazine online also ran some photographs before that as part of a student photography competition.  As I continued to work on the project I was fortunate to get several grants and awards; most notably the Inge Morath Award from Magnum and the F award from Forma and Fabrica in Italy.  This helped a great deal in supporting the work and the F award ultimately led to the publication of the book and two exhibitions in European museums.



How do you feel about showing your work in the gallery context? Is it more or less rewarding than a book or multimedia presentation? Do you feel that you are reaching a different segment of the population?

I am excited to be able to show this work in the context of a gallery because I am interested in people being in a physical space surrounded by the images. It potentially has the relentless quality that I ultimately thought was important for this work. In the book, I really try to not give the viewer too much of a break. Although there are three 'chapters' I do not offer breaks from section to section. I think exhibiting the work in a physical space can provide that same sense of being trapped and all-consumed. And yes, I think that the audience is different and am excited about that. I always enjoy seeing work of photojournalists or documentary photographers in galleries.

Sometimes it's easy to forget how large and diverse the photography industry is. I think these shots are kind of genius. They remind me of Larry Sultan's project The Valley.

And neither will these folks.


photo by Greg Miller



photo by Tina Chiappetta-Miller



Michael P. Berman

Elijah Gowin

Builder Levy

Fredrik Marsh

Greg Miller

Ardine Nelson

David J. Taylor



Huzzah!

Michael Foley is the director of Foley Gallery in Chelsea, and is also outrageously nice and generous with his time. This is a rare thing in the fine art world, which can be a seemingly impossible fortress to penetrate. Foley clearly has a good eye and a good nose for the market; he consistently shows emerging artists who then become both well-regarded and successful. Be sure to check out the new Jessica Dimmock and Chuck Scarborough show which opens at the gallery tomorrow night. Below, a little q&a.



How did you originally choose to become a dealer? I know you worked for years at Yancey Richardson- how did you first enter the business?

I first considered working in a gallery in 1989 when I was a struggling artist working at a coffee bar in San Francisco. The staff at Fraenkel Gallery would come in often for their late afternoon coffee run and I would visit their gallery from time to time. On one visit to the gallery, Frish Brandt handed me a job description and asked if I would consider applying for the job of Preparator (the person that does the installations and shipping). Without too much hesitation I went ahead with the interview and landed the job, which I stayed in for the next six years while pursuing my own photography.

Over the course of the next several years, I continued my personal work while making the move to New York to work for Howard Greenberg and Yancey Richardson. It was with Yancey that I first really started selling work and representing her artist's interests. I also began teaching at ICP and then SVA and later Parsons. I realized how much I like working with artists and helping with their career.

But after four years with Yancey, I needed to decide what to do next. Working for another gallery was not an option that interested me. I really had worked with and learned from the best. It was time to either strike out on my own or go back to actively making my own work again. I applied for an SBA loan and felt that if I was approved, a "Foley Gallery" was meant to be. I got the loan and opened the gallery in the fall of 2004.



Jessica Dimmock is now represented by Foley Gallery. Jessica is a documentary photographer, shooting stories as part of VII's network. What is the fine art market for work of this nature?

Up until recently, photography seemed to be segregated from the rest of the art world...having its own fairs, panels and conferences. Within that, there were further divisions between fashion, journalism, so called "fine art" and on and on. Now those divisions have receded and you have contexts changing all the time. What I look for and what I think most dealers of contemporary photography will look for is a cohesive vision in a body of work regardless of the category that it inhabits within photography. I have a feeling Jessica's work will be very well received in the gallery. The imagery is arresting and engaging and that's what I think people look for.


Jessica Dimmock, from The Ninth Floor, 2005



Thomas Allen's work seems to be everywhere lately. What's it like to feel like you're playing an active role in the development of an artist?

The success of Thomas Allen has continued to inspire me to do more for my artists. It is the most rewarding part of my job to see an artist's career blossom and take off. In Tom's case, it has propelled him in directions that neither one of us could have anticipated. When I opened this gallery, I made the commitment to actively work on the careers of the artists that I represent. Sometimes it takes a while to see the results, but having patience and a vision really comes in handy and when the successes come, it's worth the wait.



Thomas Allen, Horse Play, 2006


Thomas Allen, Fury, 2006


The fine art world has a long and storied history of being impenetrable, intimidating and exclusive. What's your advice for someone who wants to become a dealer?

This is certainly true for an artist trying to gain entry. If you want to become a dealer, I would suggest working for several galleries before you embark on your own. One obvious obstacle for setting out on your own is the initial capital. But even if you have the money, you need a little time to learn the business and for the business to get to know you.

I worked for 14 years in this business before I went out on my own...now, you don't have to wait that long, but there is not one experience along the way that hasn't come in handy. From dealing with artists and clients to getting to know the collectors and curators and allowing them to get to know you. It's a strange business here in Chelsea, so many similar businesses in the same area of town. It's exciting and competitive. The more people you know coming into it the better.


I love Kent Rogowski's work, but I have to say, the bears unleash a torrent of bear-empathy! I feel rather sad for them. I like the bear with the oxygen mask best, I think. Do you have a favorite?

Those BEARS have sparked a lot of chatter on blogs and I have even seen a YouTube video of a kid playing "surgeon" on his younger sister's cherished bear. It's amazing how sensitive this issue is with some people. All in good fun for the most part, but the response had been fantastic. There is one little BEAR that looks like a purple Easter egg. I quite like that one. No arms, no feet, just a cuddly little body and a little bob of a head.


Kent Rogowski, Bear 14, 2003



Kent Rogowski, Bear 17, 2003



Whose art is on your walls at home?

I have several pieces of art from the artists I show, some have been gifts and others I have bought. When I was making art in San Francisco, there was a lot of trading going on in our community, so I have a lot of art made by my friends, which really means the most to me.

Some really beautiful work this year. Some of the same names as usual, some new. Here's a selection. Today I like a horizontal, bland palate. Dreamy.

I don't know how I missed British photographer Rankin's Eyescapes, but I'm glad to have found them.

From an interview with Rankin in The Guardian, in 2005:

What is your greatest fear?

That I may become blind. That would ruin pretty much everything.

Here's a brand-spanking-new layout from the May Issue of Runner's World Magazine. I picked it up on the newsstand yesterday, which was an exciting event since I had asked Timothy Archibald to document his day on the shoot several weeks ago. Archibald has been busy lately; he's recently shot features for Skittles (TBWA Chiat Day), Monster.com (BBDO), ESPN, Outside, and Men's Health. He's also working on a new personal project, documenting his sons' daily lives, called Echolilia : Weird Pictures Of My Kid, much of which you can find on his blog.

I think what's particularly interesting about this shoot is that Archibald chose to go ahead with a composite shot, when he had very little experience with that kind of work. Rob Haggart over at APE recently talked about knowing when it's a good idea to turn down a job, and I was wondering if this could have been one of those times. Tim says: "now is a time when I'm willing to take chances in my career. I knew I had the right connections; I know I had someone who could find me the right person to work with on the compositing. It makes me kind of the director of the shoot, not just the photographer". .

Below is a timeline of a day at the Archibald ranch, self-reported by the always gracious and cooperative man himself. Also, there are visual aides.


Take it away, TA:


5:45am: Wake up when my two sons and wife wake up, and make them a breakfast of ham, soy yogurt, peanut butter breakfast bar, Vitamin C, Multi Vitamin, and Fish Oil Capsules, and eat the same myself. We are big on the concept of nutrition in a pill form.

8:00am: Arrive at Sintak Studio in San Francisco to begin work on a series of photo-illustrations for a feature in Runner's World. After a frustrating week of trying to figure out how to depict a runner and a human sized shoe box, we convinced the magazine that we knew how to shoot the pieces and composite the end result. Today we have Suzy Poling as first assistant, Micah Bishop on wardrobe, Tamara on Hair and Make Up (both from my favorite agency, Artist Untied), and the key to this project-- Erik Pawassar of Jelly Square doing the compositing and post production on set as we shoot.

In reality, I have never worked that way and it easily could be a disaster. I am bluffing my way through. The initial planning conversation went like this:

Runner's World: Timothy, we think this is a great idea, but we've never seen you work this way before...is there anything on your site that you shot with compositing?

TA: Well, no there isn't.

RW: Can you guarantee us, 100% that this approach will work?

TA: A guarantee? Like a money-back guarantee?


8:30am:  Eat bagels, drink coffee, say hello to everyone as they arrive and tell them what's going on today, as Suzy sets up the two sets, one for the shoe box and one for the talent. We have cast two talents for this shoot, just in case one seems better than the other, or one is not appropriate. Anything like that can happen and we want it to go smoothly. Alta, the female model, is still in high school and needs to leave early for a test. WTF??? Why did we cast her if she can't be there for the whole shoot?

9:15am: The crew is here, the talent is here, the sets are up, but the Jelly Square guy is not here. Ahh...that's what I get for relying on this guy to pull off the shoot. He probably got hit by a car and is in the hospital, leaving me to get caught in my web of lies and stuck with my own bad Photoshop work.



9:45am: Erik the Jelly Square guy arrives.


10:15am: Erik and I converse about the approach. He spells out to me the pieces that he will need to put this image together. First, we shoot the shoebox, then we shoot the backdrop, then the table with the shoebox, then the table without the shoebox, then we move the light to get the reflection on the table just where we want it in the end. He's got a surgical precision to his requests which is emotionless and calm. We all just obey him and the set starts coming together on his computer. We then shoot the talent.

11:30am: Food from The Sloe Club, in Soma. Suzy orders for everyone. I think it gets delivered.


12:30pm: We are eating and shooting and juggling it all. Kathryn Schiff of Tidepool Reps comes by to deliver a portfolio to me. She returns later in the afternoon to pick it up, a potential client has requested it. She stops by again. The clock is ticking on Alta, who needs to leave at 2:00pm. I just don't know how we are going to get her done.


1:30 pm: We have 30 minutes left with Alta. She is adorable, she delivers a lot of authentic giddiness to the role, and is mature beyond her 17 years... but time with her is frantic.

1:55pm: Just finishing Alta and Erik interrupts: "Timothy. None of the work we did this morning has enough depth of field. It looks wrong when it is comped up. You'll need to reshoot it all again."


2:00pm: Say goodbye to Alta. Reset the shots from this morning with Riley and do them again. F22.

4:00pm: Erik starts comping things up and it's looking believable, beautiful and really, really commercial. Is this what my work has become? A big post production manufactured product? It's kind of seductive, everything is so perfected and the color is tasty, but utterly devoid of humanity. I used to always pride myself on the humanity in my photographs, but lately I'm getting a kick out of these big stylist heavy productions, with all the production bombs going off. Hate to say it, but I kind of love it.


I forward a jpeg to my wife.

5:00pm: Suzy packs the gear and organizes it all for the week. Erik and I go over the details of the post production with his rep Kate Chase, of Kate Chase Presents. They both mock the fact that I use a PC laptop, and are visibly frustrated by all the complications it seems to cause.


The Final Shot:

Arrive home: See note from my son on my computer, pencil on pink post it:

I Like To Make Dollars With Quarters

9:15 pm: Lie in bed with my wife, catch up on the day. I ask her if she has seen the shot I sent her that we worked on today:

TA: Did you get a chance to see that shot?

CS: Oh, that was what you did today? It was kind of the sellout of all sellouts. It kind of looked like a Nike ad or something. It didn't even really look like a photograph....

Burt Glinn passed away last week, and today Slate has a lovely slideshow of some of his work. Glinn was one of the first Americans to join Magnum, and shot an incredibly diverse body of work during his lifetime, from conflicts in Cuba, to Liz Taylor on set, to the Seattle Tubing Society. And the occasional self-portrait. Check it out.

photo by Stefan Ruiz

I've always found Stefan Ruiz's imagery (especially the landscapes) really beautiful, and tonight he's speaking at Aperture about his book, People:

As part of the ongoing lecture series hosted by Aperture and presented by the department of photography, Parsons The New School for Design, Stefan Ruiz will discuss the work from his recently published monograph, People (Chris Boot, 2006), which gathers striking portraits of Mexican soap stars, Cuban mental asylum residents, Texan cowgirls, and Rwandan refugees. Ruiz's subjects reveal themselves and their vulnerability through his raw and edgy vision. While serving as Creative Director for COLORS magazine from 2002 to 2004, Ruiz also taught art at San Quentin State Prison. His work has been exhibited at the Havana Biennale, 2003; PhotoEspaña, Madrid, 2003; and an exhibition of the Televisa Studios series is now traveling around Europe.

Aperture Gallery
547 West 27th Street, 4th floor
New York, New York
(212) 505-5555
6:25pm

Our photo editors go through thousands of image submissions a day. Sometimes one is so awesome that makes the rounds immediately. Such an image is Steve the Chicken.

Gregory Crewdson. Better with age? Or worse?


Early Work (1986-1988) All works Untitled.









Recent Work (2003-2007) All works Untitled.

Submissions for our contest continue to roll in at an even clip. And let me tell you; you all are killing it! Voting is going to be tight indeed.

I was glad to see photographers getting into the action over the weekend, and nominating their prized assistants. Here are a few:

Tearsheet this week is going editorial. Specifically, we're doing New York Magazine and Alex Tehrani. A-list all the way. I couldn't resist, because when I opened the magazine yesterday I was really excited to see a piece in the Local section that Mr. Tehrani had shot.

Excited for three main reasons:

1. I've been a Tehrani fan for ages.
2. He shot a similar scenario for New York Mag a few months back that I thought was spectacularly successful.
3. That bar is like three blocks from my house and I like the ginger cocktail.

Here are the images, with an excerpt of the text that ran with the story. You can see all the text here.

Whoa. (IMHO)







*my desk mate aleks is concerned not with the sexihood of these ads, but with the fact that they misrepresent the current relationship-status of both blair and serena. plus, chuck's nose looks weird.

it's friday.

I don't know what it is about floating figures (or things) in images, but I just can't get enough of them. This is on Flak today:


photo by Debbie Tea


It reminds me of some of the images from Dangerous Ground, the anti-landmine site which was nominated for a Webby earlier this week. These prints will be auctioned off, and the money will go towards landmine clearance.

Standouts:


photo by Ben Stockley



photo by Steve Harries


photo by Julia Fullerton-Batten



photo by Roy Mehta



photo by Nick Dolding



photo by Neil Stewart



Dangerous Ground is still accepting submissions by email.

PA: Joel Barhamand/ Photographer: Andrew Hetherington


Okey doke. So this morning we revealed our plans to take over the world, one hot photo assistant at a time. We also mentioned that the contest winner would receive a prize. And what prize is that? Ready for the reveal, my swans?

drumroll please....

The prize is 4 amazing seats to either a NY Yankees or SF Giants game. Like, seats that are not really affordable in real life. These are seats that are already bought and paid for, season-ticket style.


If you live in the Midwest and win, we'll figure something else out. It won't be Denny's.


In any case, I thought I'd share with you some of our early submissions. The competition is already STIFF. It's hard to beat a chimp. But let's see some ladies!!




PA: Bogdan Tiflinsky/ Photographer: Morten Smidt


PA: Micah Matson / Photographer: Embry Rucker



PA: Josh Elliot and Chris Calvert/ Photographer: Andy Batt



PA: Blake Sinclair/ Photographer: KT Auleta



check out the original post after the jump.

Since we all like stewardesses, rather, Flight Attendants around here (pillows? peanuts, what?) we're excited about Brian Finke's book party tonight. Finke has always been a crowd pleaser, and we're with the crowd. powerHouse books has recently teamed up with Mansion and they're throwing what promises to be a very classy affair:

Mansion New York
530 West 28th Street
between 10th and 11th Avenues
10PM

RSVP!

There's Veuve Clicquot in this picture, which is a good sign. And it's interesting that this coincides with the American Airlines debacle. I hope those flight attendants have made their way to the VIP lounge.

Wayne Martin Belger is pretty crafty with camera construction. These don't seem to create great imagery, but they're pretty interesting perplexing nonetheless.

The Juergen Teller Marc Jacobs ads hit the the Times today, in an article written by Cathy Horyn, no less. The article, When Is a Fashion Ad Not a Fashion Ad  is a must read, and not just for the Victoria Beckham quotes. A snippet:

Dennis Freedman, the creative director of W, which has published Mr. Teller's editorial work for years, contends that the ads are comparable to those Mr. Lauren did with Mr. Weber. "Ralph created a perfect world for his customer to live in," Mr. Freedman said. "Marc has created a world around himself, and everything he does has a kind of mystique. It's very aspirational to anyone who wants to feel they get it."

Taking almost the same line, the art dealer Barbara Gladstone, who is a friend of both the artist and the designer, said, "The ads are really for people who get it, and I think Marc and Juergen happily dispense with those who don't."

So here's my question to you, dear reader: do YOU "get it"?

photo by Andrew Hetherington


OK, photo assistants. Here's your time to shine. We know the life you lead is not an easy one. You lift things all day, you hustle for gigs, you sometimes take the fall when your employer fails. And yet, you keep doing it. Why? For the love of the game! It's admirable.

So we want to honor you. Also, we know you have big biceps from the gear you lug, and we want to see them.

Here's the deal:

1. Tell us your name.
2. Send in a photo or photos of yourself. They can be on set, or not. On set is funnier.
3. Include a list of the photographer(s) you assist.

OR:

If you are a photographer, nominate your assistant. Send in a picture behind his or her back. You don't even need to be a photographer. Anyone can nominate an awesome photo assistant.

easy.

Here is an excellent example for you, provided by assistant extraordinaire Joel Barhamand. He sets a high standard, so make sure pull out your good polaroids, or he'll have you beat.


1. Joel Barhamand

2.

photo by Rafael Fuchs



photo by Rafael Fuchs

*that baseball shot above is also an excellent example.

3. Joel regularly assists:

Andrew Hetherington
Eric Ogden
Tina Tyrell
Mark Heithoff
Troy House
Michelle Pedone
Shay Peretz
Blossom Berkofsky
David Tsay
Elena Dorfman
Kevin O'Brien
Marili Forastieri
Rafael Fuchs


Okey doke, my friends. You have TWO weeks to complete this assignment. By then we will have figured out a poll function and the the reader-voting can begin. Submit all your images to me, by April 24th.


ALSO, and this is very important: Lady photo assistants are very much encouraged to apply. You know who you are, and you know you are hot. Do it.


Oh yeah! The winner will get a very big prize.

photo by M. Scott Brauer

One of the photographers whose work I've been introduced to through PhotoShelter is M. Scott Brauer. I've repeatedly pulled his imagery to illustrate blog posts, not by searching through his page specifically, but by subject; his images just catch my eye every time. They're quiet, and often quite odd. Each one seems like a separate, secret narrative; I really love them. Brauer works as a photojournalist in Nanjing, China. Here is his personal site.

I was pleasantly surprised to hear from Brauer this morning about my Antonin Kratochvil interview; it turns out he used to assist him. They worked together in 2005 and 2006, and traveled to Haiti before the elections. Brauer also helped Kratochvil out with scanning and archiving.

I was able to ask Brauer a few questions:

How long did you work with Antonin? Can you tell me more about what it was like, and where you were in that stage of your career?

The first time I met him was outside a hotel in Haiti; I'd been interning at VII in the old New York office and his assistant fell through. The VII assignment person Marion, now at Newsweek, asked me if I was free and I said sure. I helped out with the edit down there, toned all the files, transmitted the to Time, bought a broken mirror off the street for a portrait, whatever came up; shot alongside him too, which is where I really learned about his process.  Back in NYC I ended up spending a bit of time at his apartment going through tons of his old negatives rescanning a bunch of his portraits for a reissue of Incognito called Persona (published in Czech Republic in 2006, I think) and a bunch of other stuff. I found out he's a pretty good cook; I had a few meals with his family and other photographers. Generally I had a blast, but I needed to learn how to shoot and left New York a couple months after starting the assisting to work at a midwestern newspaper. Sucks, too, because literally the day before my plane out of the city, a Magnum guy who I'd met at Antonin's called me to ask if i could do some assisting for him. I was bummed that I had to say no.

How did you get started in photography?

When I started at VII in fall 2005, I'd really only been shooting for half a year or so. I kinda jumped in head first and tried to learn a little about the industry. My only experience was half a year at the student newspaper at my university in Seattle (where I studied Russian
and philosophy) and a couple of months interning at Black Star scanning a bunch of negatives before they got sent off to some university collection. I got to work with their civil rights archive a bunch, and even got to scan a couple W. Eugene Smith shots. Getting into the assisting thing just sort of fell into my lap, but I guess that's how it often does. I haven't been in touch with Antonin or any of the other photographers I met at that time, though I do talk to Haviv a little now and again.


Are you shooting entirely your own now? How are you making a living?

I've got to say that I'm barely scraping by. I've been living in China since August and likely for a while longer, but let's just say the assignment bat phone isn't ringing off the hook. I'm just like the hundreds and thousands of other photographers trying to get some editors to look at my work and return my emails and phone calls, and I'm really pretty bad at the self-promo game. I do a little web design work to get some cash and have started doing some corporate work for the foreign businesses around here. But mostly I'm lucky that the cost of living is next to nothing here.


Below, some M. Scott Brauer imagery. These were all shot in China.


A young boy plays with a toy gun on the beach in Sanya, China.

The 12th annual Webby Award nominees were announced yesterday. The Webbys are a pretty big deal; they're presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a "550-member body of leading Web experts, business figures, luminaries, visionaries and creative celebrities." It's pretty sweet to win one of these, but excellent just to be nominated (really)! Here are some of the lightweights who have won in the past:

Amazon.com, eBay, Yahoo!, iTunes, Google, FedEx, BBC News, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, NPR, Salon Magazine, Evite, Meetup, Wikipedia, Flickr, ESPN, Comedy Central, PBS, and The Onion.


This is the nomination field for this year's BEST USE OF PHOTOGRAPHY category:

   
National Geographic Magazine- Your Shot
PENTAX Photo Gallery
Peroni Calendario
Dangerous Ground Project
Nick Cobbing Photography
  

Speaking of promotion:




Remember: "Rockin' the boat's a drag. You gotta sink the boat!" 

Thanks, Scott

photo by Clay Enos

Since it's kind of photojournalism day here on the blog, and since one of the winning Pulitzer photographs this year happened to be from Myanmar, I thought I'd post a short Q&A session I was lucky enough to have with Antonin Kratochvil. Kratochvil, if he's new to you, is a Czech-born American photojournalist. He is also founding member of the VII Photo Agency. His career is rather epic at this point; when not in Mongolia or Iraq, he's working on issues between the ACLU and the Department of Homeland Security, or bringing his unique style to Ray Ban or Harley Davidson. He's also won many of these awards. And he's a nice fellow, to boot. Below, Kratochvil answers some questions about his photographic journey.


Do you find it distracting to balance jobs that run the gamut of the
industry- photographing Mongolian children for the Museum of Natural
History, shooting a campaign for Ray Ban, going on assignment for
Fortune, or working on a book project? Does the commercial work ever
inspire the personal work, or only vice versa?

To be honest, I don't do much of the commercial work.  But, sometimes I miss a juicy editorial job because I am booked on a commercial job.  You have to commit.  So, I don't, really.  I enjoy different challenges.  Because 70% of my work is editorial, I only get hired for jobs that are within my main thrust, humanity in crisis.  I get hired for a kind of conflict, or social photography.






How has the use of embedded photojournalists changed the images we see
coming from Iraq? Is there any truly objective imagery coming out of the
region now? And how do you think the embedding has changed war photography?

Uh, that's a very long answer.  You know by being a western photojournalist in Iraq it's very hard to cover it, and give a voice to the opposition. To give a complete picture of the war in Iraq, it's become difficult, because the opposition hasn't been given a voice.  And in the beginning of the war, which I covered, I was independent.  I was unilateral, so I got the other side of the conflict, where the embedded got the view of the moving of the forces.  There were two sets of embedded photojournalists; one with Saddam and the other with the invading forces.  A third set was unilateral, meaning independent, and it was a very small percentage. So basically, even though the unilateral journalists existed in Iraq during the invasion, the Pentagon considered these people illegal and they were subject to arrest and deportation.   I was a unilateral photojournalist in that conflict. I didn't want to be embedded, because I was concerned that my opinion would be obscured, by associating too closely with the soldiers.  I think definitely being embedded can cloud your vision and judgment. On the other hand it gave photojournalists unprecedented access and it was up to their objectivity.

Antonin Kratochvil, from Iraq Documentary - January, 2006

Antonin Kratochvil, from Iraq Documentary - January, 2006

The movement and abstraction that your work is famous for is something
that's becoming increasingly rare with the rise of digital imagery and
the tack-sharp images many editors crave. How do you preserve this look
and feel when you do shoot digitally? Have you felt pressure to change
your style?

 No I haven't, because it's actually possible to achieve the same results with digital capture. You achieve the same result, but you have to master the new media.  It takes time.

Your Myanmar prison image from 2003 is seared in my brain. Did the
actual photo meet your expectation/conception of when you shot it? Are you ever surprised at your images when you see them?

 This particular image was a big surprise to me.  I mean, I felt it, because that's how I photograph, I feel.  People asked me how I made this picture, I don't know how I made it, but I felt it.  A lot of my pictures are off the cuff, made through my subconscious.

 

Tell me about your involvement with Project Red. Bono has become a real
international symbol for justice; what has he been like to work with?

Um, Bono, let's see. Working with Bono, is working with a man who stands for the same things as I do.  That's it.

photo by Antonin Kratochvil

I hear you are a big fan of the restaurant Republic. I like the salmon broth noodles. What's your favorite dish?
'Kay my favorite dish is hot beef soup, and fried tofu as an appetizer. My son likes the mint noodles, and my wife likes the duck noodles.

Yum!

Rob Haggart of APE has put together a pretty staggering slideshow of images here, in an attempt to connect photographers and buyers.

There's tons of great imagery (lots of PS photogs represented too), here are some of my favorites at first glance.