Untitled, Arkhangelsk, Russia, 2004
© Ingar Krauss
A kind reader referred me to a lovely series of black and white photographs of children by German photographer Ingar Krauss. Looking up his work, I discovered a great feature on Lens Culture. Or see more images here.
Natasha [from "AIDS in Odessa"]
© Andrea Diefenbach
A friend referred me to some quite beautiful and moving photography by German photographer Andrea Diefenbach – a series of photographs entitled AIDS in Odessa. As the project is described on Andrea’s website,
Odessa is known as “pearl at the black sea.” It is the port in the south of the Ukraine – one of the countries, which has been hit heavily by the fall of the Soviet Union. One of many symptoms of the collapse is the AIDS epidemic. Since a short time the Ukraine holds the sad European record for new cases of infection, and is among those nations in which AIDS is currently spreading most quickly. The first case of HIV infection was reported in 1987. The frequency of new infections began to rise rapidly in the mid-1990s and has shown no sign of abating since then. The disease initially spread through intravenous drug users and sex workers in the southern parts of the country.
Balloons on AIDS Memorial Day [from "AIDS in Odessa"]
© Andrea Diefenbach
Today HIV/AIDS appears in the whole population and in all of Ukraines regions. According to estimates, some 416,000 people, 17 percent of all Ukrainians aged fifteen to forty-nine, are either HIV-positive or suffering from full-blown AIDS in 2005. Due to the seven-to ten-year incubation period, more and more people are dying of AIDS as the years pass. Odessa, the port city through which the HIV virus is presumed to have been introduced to the countries of the Soviet Union, is now one of the more heavily impacted cities. Estimates by the World Health Organization (WHO) indicate that as many as 160,000 individuals infected with HIV live in the city of one million.
Natasha [from "AIDS in Odessa"]
© Andrea Diefenbach
Hatje Cantz recently published a monograph for this body of work with a forward by Boris Mikhailov, which can be found here. See more work by Andrea, including more images from AIDS in Odessa, on her website.
Jeffrey Ladd, author of 5B4, got in touch to inform me of a new publishing company he has started called Errata Editions. Working with publisher Valerie Sonnenthal and editorial director Ed Grazda, Jeffrey is giving creative direction to the project. Errata’s first releases, four books from a series called Books on Books, help get “the content of rare and out of print photobooks into the hands of new generations of photographers,” as Jeffrey wrote to me in the e-mail. Those titles are “currently ‘on press’ in China,” according to his blog post, which offers further explanation of the project:
The Books on Books series is an on-going publishing project dedicated to making rare and out-of-print photography books accessible once again to photobook enthusiasts. Each in this series presents the entire content, page for page, of an original master bookwork which, up until now, has been too rare or prohibitively expensive for most of us to experience. These are not facsimiles but complete studies of those original masterpieces. Through a mix of classic and contemporary titles, this series will span the breadth of practice as it has appeared on the printed page and allows further study into the creation and meanings of these great works of art.
The current titles include:
Photographe de Paris by Eugene Atget
American Photographs by Walker Evans
Fait by Sophie Ristelhueber
In Flagrante by Chris Killip
This looks to be a very promising project. I’m curious to hear what readers think of the idea. But, in any event, I’m looking forward to seeing what else Jeffrey and the team do with Errata.
Find out more and view sample pages from the current titles on the website.
(Untitled) Scotland, United Kingdom, 2007
© Shane Lavalette
I just took a bit of time to update my website with some new (old) work, a series of photographs from Scotland. It’s a very rough edit, but feel free to take a look.
I often receive e-mails from high school students asking my opinion on art schools, which to choose and why. After writing plenty of responses with in-depth explanations, I’ve now decided to just refer everyone to this video:
Thanks, Leslie.
Thanks to Laurel, I found the fantastic portfolio of Dutch photographer Annick Ligtermoet. Here are some images from her enigmatic series, De Verontrustende Wereld (which, I believe, translates to The Alarming World):
Droomdood [from "De Verontrustende Wereld"]
© Annick Ligtermoet
Verdediging [from "De Verontrustende Wereld"]
© Annick Ligtermoet
Onze Vrouw [from "De Verontrustende Wereld"]
© Annick Ligtermoet
Stenenkamer [from "De Verontrustende Wereld"]
© Annick Ligtermoet
Find more of her work here.
Untitled [from "Thin on the Ground"]
© Gregory Halpern
Take a look at Gregory Halpern‘s work, starting with Thin on the Ground.
[thanks Whitney]
Untitled [from "Other Orchards"]
© Ahndraya Parlato
Interesting semi-performative work by Ahndraya Parlato from here projects Inscape and Other Orchards.
Blurb‘s Photography Book Now contest winners were just announced and I’m happy to report that a few of my own picks made the list:
Grand Prize
In the Garden by Beth Dow
Top Category Winners
Reading by Talia Chetrit
The Bridge Project by Jonathan Smith
1st Runner Up
Something is Happening by John Lehr
Singular Beauty by Cara Phillips
2nd Runner Up
Roadworks… by Michael Corridore
Iraq | Perspectives by Benjamin Lowy
Johnstown by Ed Panar
Fine out more, including the Honorable Mentions and People’s Choice (when it is announced on the 19th), right here. Congrats to everyone.
Organized by Roxana Marcoci, Curator of the Department of Photography, MoMA’s New Photography 2008 exhibition brings together the work of German photographer Josephine Meckseper and South African photographer Mikhael Subotzky. From the website:
Each artist’s works exemplify recent developments in art: the reinvention of documentary photography to picture the diverse conditions of everyday life in South Africa in Subotzky’s case, and the expanding of the medium of photography into a series of artistic operations that expose the thin line between advertising, politics and fashion in Meckseper’s case. Both artists’ endeavors attest to photography’s potential to construct, document, and engage with meaning in the world today.
If you’re in New York, the show is worth stopping in to see. But if you can’t make it, see the above video and the online gallery.
