“While on a road trip through South Africa’s Karoo region in 2006, Daniel Naudé encountered a feral dog foaming at the mouth and wearing an intent gaze. This run-in motivated Naudé to begin his series of photographs on the Africanis, wild dogs thought to have migrated from Egypt and now inhabiting the South African countryside.”

›› More from Daniel Naudé

Aperture aggregates the best posts from this past week in the photography blogosphere.

›› Vice‘s Motherboard blog released the never-before-told story of the first photograph ever uploaded to the World Wide Web, which celebrates its 20th anniversary next Wednesday.  The image, which has been referred to as “a Photoshop disaster,” has been met with equal parts adoration and horror since its release. The story also appeared on Gallerist NY and ABC News’ Tech This Out, which digs a bit deeper into the naïve roots of the image.

›› PIX, a proposed “photography lifestyle magazine for women,” has drawn commentary from photo editors Stella Kramer and Jasmine DeFoore and Jezebel blogger Katie J.M. Baker for its fluffy content—stories like “Smudge-proof makeup tips for long days behind the camera”—directed towards young female photographers.

›› Two years ago, Scott Blake, the digital artist behind the “Chuck Close Filter” website, was confronted by Close himself for what the painter believed to be unfair use of his copyrighted artwork. Blake recently recounted his dormant dispute with Close in an online essay, raising questions about when art is derivative, when it is plagiaristic, and if it’s possible for it to ever be entirely original. Wired reported, bloggers weighed in.

›› Les Rencontres d’Arles was in full swing last week. As The Guardian reported, Christian Patterson’s Redheaded Peckerwood took home the festival’s author book award, the second year in a row that a Mack-published photobook has won the award—Taryn Simon’s A Living Man Declared Dead…was the 2011 winner. Jonathan Torgovnik won the €25,000 Discovery prize for Intended Consequences, and The Latin American Photobook was awarded the festival’s historical book prize. Additionally, Magnum celebrated its 65th anniversary at the festival, announced nominees Zoe Strauss, Jerome Sessini and Bieke Depoorter, and considered what the future holds for the organization.

›› Yoda reviewed photobooks a couple of weeks ago on Blake Andrews’ blog. We can’t believe we missed it. Work by Vivian Maier, Duane Michals, Rinko Kawauchi, Alec Soth and John Gossage, and The PhotoBook Review were amongst the titles critiqued by the Jedi Master. On the Gossage/Soth collaboration The Auckland Project: “Tack this poster to their dorm room I’m guessing few collectors shall. In protective cover will it remain. Hmm. Yeesss.”

›› The Rolling Stones celebrate their 50th anniversary this week and Magnum has reached into the archives, posting on their Facebook page a vintage Guy Le Querrec image of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards at a show in 1967. Over at The New Yorker, Photo Booth has launched an 11-image slideshow of photos from the band’s early years, including a birds-eye shot of fans mobbing the band’s vehicle after a press conference at the Hilton, NYC in 1965.

›› More in anniversary news…In celebration of  the 50th anniversary of Andy Warhol’s first solo exhibition, at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, The Metropolitan Museum of Art is planning Regarding Warhol: Fifty Artists, Fifty Years, which opens in September and will also feature works by photographers Cindy Sherman and Robert Mapplethorpe. Over at NokiaConnects Joel Willians recounts the 5 Strangest Habits of Andy Warhol, asking the age-old question, “Eccentricity and genius go hand in hand, right?”

2012 © Gregory Crewdson

Acclaimed American photographer Gregory Crewdson is best known for his richly staged, light-commanding, film still-like images. Juxtaposing the real with the surreal, the photographs are an epic production from start to finish.

Documentary storyteller Ben Shapiro began filming Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters in 2000. The film offers a supreme view of the creation of Crewdson’s images and an in-depth look at his artistic process. The film premiered at this year’s SXSW Film Festival and was also featured in the 2012 Independent Film Festival Boston.

Photographing for his project Beneath the Roses, the documentary follows the creation of Crewdson’s elaborate dreamscapes which are designed, constructed, and set-up with the help of a crew of 60 and the budget of an independent movie. Using light, color, and character to invoke astounding images, Crewdson draws inspiration from his personal life, growing up with a psychologist father, and his childhood allure for Diane Arbus.

The movie trailer, screenings, and more information can be found here.

Crewdson has appeared in Aperture issue 190 and The New York Times Photographs (Aperture, 2011). Crewdson was also featured in an Aperture web exclusive.

If  you are a Photobook Review Blog subscriber, you’ve already gotten word that The PhotoBook Review 002 is now available on Zinio for $1.99. This time, the PBR team has reformatted the design for better reading via the iPad and on-line. Is this treatment is a better reading experience for you? Let the team know @PhotoBookReview

If you’re still firmly a believer in the printed object and don’t want to miss out on future issues,  they are still on hand at the Aperture gallery (or check the Aperture display at Kowasa Book Store, Barcelona) … and don’t forget that subscribers to Aperture magazine will receive PBR along with their November and May issues! Subscribe now in preparation for PBR 003 — special guest editor to be announced soon!

Can’t wait? Neither can we.

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 Latin American Photobook, edited by Horacio Fernández and published by Aperture, has been awarded the historical book award at the Rencontres d’Arles photography festival. The volume, a blend of bibliography, facsimile, and encyclopedia, offers a critical study of the most important photography books to come out of Latin America, from the 1920s to today. Along with Aperture’s The Dutch Photobook: A Thematic Selection from 1945 Onwards and Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and ’70s, The Latin American Photobook is part of a growing body of scholarship on the photobook and its place in photographic history.

Jonathan Torgovnik won the Rencontres d’Arles Discovery prize for Intended Consequences—his portraits of women and their children who were born of rape in the Rwandan genocide—which was published by Aperture in 2009. Watch an excerpt of a panel discussion with Torgovnik, and read an interview with the photographer on FLYP. Intended Consequences and limited-edition prints of Torgovnik’s work are available for up to 35% off as part of Aperture’s summer sale, until midnight EST, August 10, 2012.

Check out The Guardian for more coverage of the Rencontres d’Arles festival prizes.

Now through August 10, take advantage of up to 35% off books and up to 20% off limited edition prints during Aperture’s Sixtieth Anniversary Summer Sale. Sale ends midnight EST, August 10, 2012, so get to shopping!

• APhotoEditor and Conscientious Extended do round-ups of the many arguments and comments ignited by an NPR intern’s blog post about never paying for music and David Lowery‘s response to the post, looping in MediaStorm’s recent pay-per-story model announcement and its reception to explore what these kinds of attitudes could mean for the creative fields in general.
• The highly anticipated, so-called “Google Glasses” were demoed at the I/O conference this week, PetaPixel reports. These camera-equiped goggles, which are set to ship sometime next year, could one day allow point-of-view shooting and instant sharing online. The relatively discreet $1500 device has the potential to bring about the most radical change to street photography since the development of the 35mm film camera.
• Magnum photographer David Alan Harvey blogs about packing up and heading off to Les Rencontres d’Arles, ”arguably one of the most important international photography assemblages,” where he’ll be doing free portfolio reviews along with the rest of the staff of Burn Magazine. Additionally at Arles, sixty exhibitions by photographers including Sam Falls, Regine Petersen, and Jonathan Torgovnik, author of the monograph Intended Consequences, are on view through September 23.
• Boston‘s The Big Picture shares photos from LGBT pride events taken around the world, some of which were met with violence and intimidation. The New Yorker‘s Photobooth shares a selection of black-and-white images from the 70s and 80s, “Forty-Three Years After Stonewall,” when a riot at a popular Manhattan gay bar in response to a routine police raid ignited the LGBT rights movement.
• Feature Shoot shares a terrific hour-long streaming documentary on Magnum Photo founder Henri Cartier-Bresson, “Just Plain Love,” which features backstories from many famous photographs, directed by Raphaël O’Byrne in 2001.
• Photoshop, the Game, otherwise known as LevelUp for Photoshop, which offers the opportunity for users of the software to improve their skills, learn new features, and win prizes, is free online until July 15, 2012, reports John Nack. Maybe by then, you too can be as good as Kelli Connell, whose exhibition Double Life is on view through this Saturday, June 30.

Watch live streaming video from lesrencontresdarles at livestream.com.

This summer, catch exhibitions by Sam Falls, Regine Petersen, and Jonathan Torgovnik at Recontres d’ Arles (on view through September 23, 2012).  Now in it’s 43rd year, Arles, one of the world’s largest photography festivals, is hosting 60 exhibitions, favoring mostly unpublished work, presented by its founders, teachers and photographers as well as curators who have emerged from their influential school at 20 heritage sites in the South of France.

Sam Falls, who’s work was profiled in Aperture #205, is exhibiting a series of images “investigating the medium’s potential as an art form,” he writes, “but [that] also continue exploring photography’s capacity for representation and challenging its veracity.” The exhibition, which is curated by Philip S. Block, showcases photographs that Falls has manipulated with Photoshop, then hand-painted as well. “The question this raises,” Falls states, “beyond specific medium’s ability to represent an object or idea, is the question of perception itself and how we relate today to photography and painting.”

Regine Petersen, one of the photographers featured in Aperture’s Regenerations 2: Tomorrow’s Photographers Today, is exhibiting a series of photographs about meteorites, what she calls “thought images,”  that mark her so-called map from the location of the falls and finds, to the personal lives of eye witnesses and descendants. ”Rather than a reconstruction of the events,” she writes, Finding a Falling Star, presented by Olivier Richon, ”is a collection of traces, an investigation into the workings of time, memory and history and an attempt to create a link between the ordinary and the sublime.” Petersen’s limited edition print Ladybug, 2006, a work from an earlier series, is considered typical of her style of “thought image.”

Jonathan Torgovnik‘s Intended Consequences, which is a series of environmental portraits made in Rwanda of women that were brutally raped during the Rwandan genocide and the children they bore from those encounters, was published as a monograph by Aperture in 2009 alongside a DVD produced by MediaStorm of interviews with the subjects. The exhibition at Rencontres d’Arles, presented by Tadashi Ono, is intended to spread these stories to a wider public, in hopes, Torgovnik writes, that “people will be inspired to act and work toward ensuring that similar acts of violence never happen again, and that those families can have a brighter future.”

Rencontres d’ Arles
Festival runs:
July 2 – September 23, 2012

Contact
34 rue du docteur Fanton
13200 Arles
33 (0) 4 90 96 76 06

Gypsies is without a doubt one of the most important works of photography of the 20th century.

Last Thursday, Fondazione FORMA per la fotografia opened the much-anticipated “Gypsies by Josef Koudelka”, a world premier exhibition of the work of Josef Koudelka based on his seminal 20th century monograph, Gypsies, the artist’s 9-year photographic survey of the gypsy communities of Eastern Europe. The exhibition revisits the artist’s original intention for the work, based on the original sequencing and maquette prepared in 1968 by Koudelka and graphic designer Milan Kopriva. Koudelka intended to publish the work in Prague, but was forced to flee Czechoslovakia, landing eventually in Paris and leaving the book long unpublished. In 1975, Robert Delpire, Aperture, and Koudelka collaborated to publish Gitans, la fin du voyage (Gypsies, in the English-language edition), a selection of sixty photographs taken in various Roma settlements around East Slovakia. Robert Delpire is currently the subject of  a multi-venue career retrospective exhibition in New York City.

FORMA‘s exhibition of this work calls upon Aperture’s expanded edition, featuring 109 photographs of Roma society taken between 1962 and 1971. Printed under close supervision of the artist, expressly for Forma, the images on view recount the everyday life of gypsy communities in the sixties in Bohemia, Moravia, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, and occasionally France and Spain.

This exhibit is presented in collaboration with Magnum Photos.

Gypsies by Josef Koudelka
On view through September 16, 2012

Fondazione Forma per la Fotografia
Milan, Italy
39 02.5811.8067

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›› Buy Gypsies by Josef Koudelka (Aperture 2011) for 30% off
›› From the 2011 archive, TIME Lightbox reviews Josef Koudelka’s Gypsies, Revisited