Merce Cunningham: 65 Years, a dynamic multimedia app celebrating the unique legacy of the late choreographer, dancer, and artist, launches today. Based on the book Merce Cunningham: 50 Years (Aperture, 1997) by David Vaughan, which is often referred to as “the Cunningham bible,” this expanded digital edition for the iPad includes new essays, journal entires by the choreographer, video excerpts, photographs and interviews. Read more about Merce Cunningham and the app in the New York Times.

The app is available for purchase in the iTunes App Store.

›› Throw out your SLR? App-maker Hipstamatic announced its plans to launch the Hipstamatic Foundation for Photojournalism to educate and support ”the next generation of photographic storytellers using smartphones with Hipstamatic.” Photojournalist Brad Mangin posted “How I Made Instagram Images That Were Good Enough for Sports Illustrated,” an essay about how he got a portfolio of iPhone Instagrams published, and how you can too. Traditional photojournalists everywhere are groaning, but check out Benjamin Lowy’s blog featuring his reports from Libya via Instagram (supported in part by a Magnum Foundation Emergency Fund grant) and judge for yourself.

›› The Associated Press has announced that it will be using robotic cameras (in addition to its team of photographers) to photograph the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. These cameras, which have been mounted on ceilings and the bottom of pools, will provide an otherwise impossible perspective on the games. On the heels of the highly controversial Olympics Portraits that made the rounds on the web earlier this month, LightBox tells the story of The Best Magazine Assignment Ever, photographer’s Neil Leifer’s 1984 “Olympic Odyssey Around the World” during which he traveled to 13 different countries to create a collection of images that would appear in TIME’s preview of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.

›› The New York Times Lens Blog published a collection of color slides taken by groundbreaking American photographer, musician, writer and film director Gordon Parks in 1956, images from his “Segregation Series” that had been thought lost until they were found at the bottom of a box this spring. The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture opened Gordon Parks: 100 Moments, a retrospective focusing on the photographer’s work in Harlem and Washington D.C. in the 1940s. The International Center of Photography opened an exhibition of Parks’ photographs in May, and they’ll be on view until January 2013. Parks, who died in 2006, would have been 100 this year.

›› What does the future hold for photography publishing? The British Journal of Photography reported on the growing body of work being printed on newsprint, profiling publications by Jason Larkin, Guy Martin, Alec Soth, and Rob Hornstra, who are enthusiastic about the medium’s affordability and impermanence. Joerg Colberg discussed how serious photography might best use the internet as a means of dissemination.

›› The Guardian’s Geoff Dyer profiles StreetViewer photographer Michael Wolf, as well as Doug Rickard whose forthcoming monograph A New American Picture sparked lively debate on our Facebook page last week, some condemning his practice as lazy appropriation, and others praising its conceptual ingenuity. In discussing Rickard, Dyer links “this new way of working” to the candid photography traditions of Paul Strand, Robert Frank, and Walker Evans: “The shifting spirit of Robert Frank seems also to be lurking, as if the Google vehicle were an updated incarnation of the car in which he made his famous mid-50s road trip to produce his photographic series, The Americans.” In other virtual reality news, StreetView now includes images from the Antarctic huts of explorers Shackleton and Scott, providing yet more digital space for such artists to explore.

Over the course of photographing for what would become his 2010 monograph Invisible: Covert Operations and Classified Landscapes, Trevor Paglen spent years tracking the orbit of American military spacecraft and documenting their ghostly trails across the night sky. The resulting images (which also appeared in Aperture # 191) were as much about photography itself—exploring the power and the limits of photographic knowledge—as they were meditations on the relationship between humankind and the infinite. In a fascinating evolution of this work, Paglen is now behind The Last Pictures, a project that will attach a record of human photographic images onto a satellite that will be sent into orbit in September 2012. Paglen spent five years interviewing scientists, artists, anthropologists, and philosophers to decide what images should compose this photo-historical record, and then worked with materials scientists at MIT to inscribe the 100 images he chose onto an “ultra-archival” silicon disc (not unlike the Pioneer Plaques and the Voyager Golden Record) that will be attached to EchoStar XVI. This satellite will function as a regular television satellite for the next fifteen years before powering down, entering a “graveyard orbit,” and remaining for billions of years as a photographic relic of modern human civilization for future civilizations and lifeforms to discover. And perhaps it will even show up in one of Paglen’s future photographs.

Here on earth in the year 2012, you can catch Paglen’s lecture tour (beginning September in New York) featuring philosophers and scientists discussing the project. Later this year, Creative Time will publish a book of the images, accompanied by short texts by those who contributed to the project. For more on Paglen and his work, visit his website.

Dave Anderson has photographed in tough places—a surviving Ku Klux Klan bastion in Texas, New Orlean’s post-Katrina Ninth Ward—but his photographs are rarely gritty. His Aperture monograph One Block, which documents the rebuilding efforts of one block of Ninth Ward residents, focuses less on the neighborhood’s despair and more on its hopes for renewal. Anderson knew that to photograph amidst such hardship he would have to tread lightly: “I was super-cognizant of ‘photographers fatigue’–people were sick of photographers showing up night and day and making grand promises,” he mentioned in a Color magazine profile. That Anderson spent time living and forming relationships with the residents he photographed is evident in the work—the subjects appear at ease, comfortable sharing their struggle to rebuild with Anderson and his lens.

Anderson produces videos as well as photographs—he is the man behind Oxford American’s SoLost web series, a video exploration of “the side roads, backrooms, cellars and psyche of the modern South,” which so far features 29 four-to-seven minute mini-documentaries on subjects ranging from a couple constructing a medieval castle in Arkansas, to Alabama menswear designer Billy Reid, to photographer William Eggleston. SoLost is a one-man operation, which accounts for the easy rapport between Anderson’s camera and his subjects, and why these videos feel like privileged glimpses into the richness and diversity of life in the American South.

Anderson will give a lecture about his image-making projects at The Center for Photography at Woodstock, this Friday, July 13 at 8pm. If you’re in the area, it will be worth checking out.

›› Watch a video of Anderson speaking about One Block with Aperture, and head to the Aperture store if you’re interested in purchasing a copy.

The photographic process is often credited in part with displacing representation from painting, pushing it over the course of the first half of the last century further into the domain of abstraction. The camera was commonly thought to capture and document a supposed objective reality in a way the human hand never could. However, photography itself has also been variously employed for nonrepresentational abstraction since its inception.

From the very first photograms to Aaron Siskind‘s ab-ex alluding macrophotography, to Penelope Umbrico‘s digitally-manipulated found images of “Suns From Flickr,” The Edge of Vision: Abstractions in Contemporary Photography (on view at Schneider Museum of Art in Oregon through June 16, 2012) examines the history of nonrepresentational photographic image-making and its role in contemporary art.

In a two part video interview, independent writer and critic Lyle Rexer, who curated the exhibition and authored the 2009 Aperture-published book by the same title, says he was drawn to artists that “were making pictures that moved away from from an easily identifiable subject, or that complicated the picture or the response that we normal have to pictures, in what is essentially thought of as a denotative medium.”

The traveling exhibition, which has been on view in a number of places around the world, each time in a slightly different iteration, features work by a diverse group of contemporary artists including Bill Armstrong, Carel Balth, Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, Ellen Carey, Roland Fischer, Michael Flomen, Manuel Geerinck, Edward Mapplethorpe, Penelope Umbrico, Silvio Wolf, and more listed here. For Rexer, he says, bringing this group together and seeing what they have in common is meant to address the following question:

What is it about photography now that makes it possible for us to have artists that  on the one hand do very documentary work, and other artists at the same time, sometimes the same artists, who are also doing work that would qualify as abstract?

For more information on the work on view, be sure to check out the Edge of Vision Video Interview Series, conducted during the installation at Aperture Gallery in 2009, on vimeo:

• Penelope Umbrico persents her work “For Sale/TV’s From Craigslist,” and explains why she considers herself a documentary photographer, “a traveler through media.”
• Ellen Carey discusses her large-scale work “Pulls with Lifts and Drops,” film pulled through the rollers of a Polaroid large-format camera, and her color photogram, “PushPins,” exploring how each challenges the viewer to rethink the medium.
• Barbara Kasten explains her work based on physical constructions that play with light and are created only for the purpose of being photographed. By this approach, the photograph itself becomes the object and is removed from being representative or documentary.
• Silvio Wolf presents his work which combines straight photography and the unexposed ends of film rolls as negatives exposed to light. The end results are mesmerizing and meditative colorful images about light and absence of light.
• Bill Armstrong puts in context his “Mandala #450″ piece, explains why he uses blurring as a process and explores his “painterly approach to photography.”
• Charles Lindsay speaks about how he started working with his unique carbon emulsion process, his inspirations and the combination of his photographic, video and sound works.
• Seth Lambert contextualizes his work in the show “Nothing on the Bed of an Epson Expression 10000XL” within his Failures series of grids mapping out anything from beard hair, mirror pieces to nothing with a blank scan.
• Carel Balth explains the process behind his works “Moving IV” and “Madrid V,” and how his appropriation of images through a digital format functions as a new medium.
• Jack Sal speaks about his piece “Sale/Sala (Salt/Room)” while you watch him installing it.
• Manuel Geerinck, who started his career as a painter, speaks about his unique process combining his drawings that he then photographs in motion.

Also, watch a panel discussion on Abstraction in Photography from 2009 at the Hammer Museum at UCLA, moderated by Rexer, and read a review of the exhibition when it was on view at Lewis & Clark College in Portland earlier this year, from the Oregonian.

Exhibition on view:
Thursday, May 10 – Saturday, June 16, 2012

$5 Suggested Donation

Schneider Museum of Art
1250 Siskiyou Blvd
Ashland, Oregon
(541) 552-6245

2011 © Simon Norfolk

The Crawford Art Gallery presents Photographs from the War in Afghanistan by John Burke and Simon Norfolk. Burke was the first photographer to make pictures in Afghanistan while accompanying British forces in the late 1880’s. Fast forward to present day, Norfolk’s work follows the footsteps of Burke. His images are a contemporary response to Burke’s war scenes, presented alongside one another, modern parallels and similar vantage points included.

Accompanying the exhibition is a short film by Simon Norfolk, which discusses John Burke’s photography and both of their relationships with Afghanistan.

Simon Norfolk has appeared in Aperture issue 188 and is featured in The New York Times Magazine Photographs (Aperture 2011).

Photographs from the War in Afghanistan by John Burke and Simon Norfolk
April 20–June 30, 2012

Crawford Art Gallery
Emmet Place
Cork City, Ireland
+353 (0)21 480 5042

———

›› Buy The New York Times Magazine Photographs ($52.50, available here)
›› Order Aperture 188 ($14.80, available here)

Susie Smoking 1998/2011, © Nick Knight

Exhibition on view through June 2, 2012.

Christophe Guye Galerie
Dufourstrassse 31
8008 Zurich, Switzerland
+41 44 252 01 11

Photographers such as Nick Knight, David LaChapelle, and Terry Richardson all straddle the fence between commercialism and fine art. The practice of fashion photography is highlighted with international stars at the Christophe Guye Galerie, where a group of artists known as the Icons of Tomorrow, embraces their subject matter using compelling conceptual ideas and provocative, colorful approaches.

The allure behind this type of photography is investigated by these nine renowned photographers that have shaped the genre, to see where it falls between art and commerce.

Featured artists: Miles Aldridge, Kate Bellm, Guy Bourdin, Ina Jang, Nick Knight, David LaChapelle, Walter Pfeiffer, Terry Richardson, and Albert Watson.

Nick Knight appeared in Aperture issue 197.

Untitled Film Still #14, 1978 © Cindy Sherman

Exhibition on view:
Present–June 11, 2012

The Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St
New York City, NY
(212) 708-9400

Cindy Sherman, a traveling exhibition of one of the most important contemporary artists, is being presented in New York City, San Francisco, Minneapolis, and Dallas.

Cindy Sherman has built an international reputation, photographing herself in a variety of semblances and personas. Her subject matter is topical, humorous, and confrontational. She holds a mirror up to contemporary society, referencing visual culture: movies, magazines, television, the internet, and art history.

The exhibition features 150 photographs from public and private collections, some over-sized and site-specific and others never-before-seen. One of the highlights is her black-and-white body of work, Untitled Film Stills, where the artist became the stereotypical female featured in 1950s and 1960s Hollywood and film noir. An illustrated catalog accompanies the show along with a series of films that were of great artistic influence to Sherman.

The next stops for Cindy Sherman will be The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (July 14–October 7, 2012), Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (November 10, 2012–February 17, 2013), and The Dallas Museum of Art (March 17, 2013–June 9, 2013).

Sherman is featured in Aperture issues 200 and 169. Her photographs can also be seen in The New York Times Magazine Photographs.

The Kraszna-Krausz Foundation has revealed the 2012 Shortlists for the Best Photography Book Award and the Best Moving Image Book Award of 2012.

Founded by the prolific Hungarian publisher and founder of Focal Press, Andor Kraszna-Krausz, the foundation has, since 1985, identified and celebrated works that make a significant contribution to photographic and moving image scholarship, history, research, criticism, science and conservation. The complete shortlists for the 2012 awards are live, among which you’ll find nods to the exquisite Blind by French conceptual artist Sophie Calle (Aperture 191, 142).

An exhibition of the most highly recommended books from each award, curated by the judging panels, will also be on display at Somerset House for the duration of the World Photography Festival and Exhibition from 27 April to 20 May 2012. On view in this juried exhibition will be the Verna Posever Curtis edited Photographic Memory: The Album in the Age of Photography (Aperture 2011), a comprehensive, insightful illustrated history of the handmade photo album format—a form of presentation that would become an art form in itself.

—

The 2012 Kraszna-Krausz Foundation Book Award winners will be announced during the Sony World Photography Awards at the London Hilton, Park Lane, London, on Thursday 26 April.

For more information, visit the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation website.

Purchase Photographic Memory: The Album in the Age of Photography ($60, available here).

Room of the Ninja Turtles, 2003, © Roger Ballen

Exhibition on view:
March 22–May 11, 2012

North-West University Gallery
Potchefstroom Campus
548 West 28 St
018 299 4341

Playpen by Roger Ballen is a compilation of over thirty years of documentation of children, the environments they inhabit, their toys, and drawings. These images, a new body of work, Asylum, and an installation constructed specifically for the gallery will be exhibited at North-West University. Ballen’s Playpen explores photography as an art form as it takes on painterly yet sculptural roles and interacts with the viewers own childhood memories and adolescent dreams.

Children’s faces hidden by masks and crude wall drawings eerily linger throughout the black and white images by the South African photographer.

Ballen is featured in Aperture issues 201 and 173. His work also appears in The New York Times Magazine Photographs (Aperture, 2011).