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

• NPR’s The Picture Show publishes a five-part series called “The Visual South,” profiling five photographers from Oxford American magazine’s “100 Under 100” list of “the most talented and thrilling up-and-coming artists in the South.” Christopher Sims shoots Guantanamo Bay, Frank Hamrick shoots, develops, prints, and book-binds by hand, Tammy Mercure finds “wryly humorous scenes” in the Great Smokey Mountains, Brandon Thibodeaux wanders around documenting Mound Bayou. Stay tuned for the fifth.
• Time‘s LightBox sits down with Matthias Fiegl, “one of the original founders of the 20-year-old, pinhole- and fisheye-loving, Vienna-based company,” Lomography, to talk about their “prophecies of the analogue future,” countering much of the incessant Instagram talk over the last few weeks. In somewhat related news, Leica Camera announced the launch of the first-ever monochrome digital camera with a black-and-white sensor and no color filter. Hands-on previews from PDN and Digital Photography Review, commentary from The Online Photographer, The Travel Photographer, Steve Huff Photo, Luminous Landscape, and many more, probably.
• Photos from the 67th anniversary of Victory Day in Europe from Ukraine, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Belarus and more at Boston’s Big Picture, LA Times’ Framework, and WSJ’s Photo Journal. Jonathan Alpeyrie‘s exhibition World War II Veterans is currently on view at Anastasia Photo in New York (through May 31, 2012).
• LPV Magazine shares some thoughts on “Narrative and the Serialization of Photography Online,” on “plotting” your Tumblr, and what he thinks might have gone wrong with Magnum’s Postcards From America feed.
• In copyright news, David Hoffman writes extensively on the “unprecedented exploitation of photographs” in the digital age, David Walker explores the “Liability-Proof World of Pinterest” on PDN, and Tumblr lands a lawsuit from publisher Perfect 10 alleging infringement, according to Econsultancy.
• Major controversy this week over CNN’s edit of Stacy Kranitz series on Appalachia, “Regression to the Mean,” which was intended by the photographer to complicate and debunk common stereotypes of the region, Conscientious’ Joerg Colberg points out. Roger May, along with several hundred disgruntled commenters on the CNN page found that the edit–a set of 16 images which claimed to be the “everyday lives of people in Appalachia” and featured two of KKK-related content (culled from Kranitz series totaling 77 images, only 3 of which were KKK-related)–perpetuated and reinforced that visual myth. In response, photographer Kranitz is quoted as feeling shocked, ashamed, humiliated, stunned, and disgusted. Read about her thought on the matter in a interview conducted with The Revivalist.
• No reviews out just yet, but New Yorker’s PhotoBooth, Time’s LightBox, and La Lettre de la Photographie all profile Delpire & Co., a five-venue retrospective celebrating the career of visionary French publisher Robert Delpire all across New York, on view now at Aperture Gallery, The Gallery at Hermès/Fondation d’entreprise Hermès, Cultural Services of the French Embassy, La Maison Française of New York University, Howard Greenberg Gallery, and Pace/MacGill Gallery. Join the conversation on Instagram and Twitter with #Delpire.

© Christopher Anderson/Magnum Photos

Parsons Artist Talk with Christopher Anderson:
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
6:30 pm

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

FREE

Join Christopher Anderson at Aperture to kick off our ongoing Parsons Artist Talks series. Born in Canada and raised in Texas, Anderson is known for his emotionally driven photography, which he refers to as “experiential documentary. ” Winner of the Robert Capa Gold Medal Award,  Kodak Young Photographer of the Year Award and the Picture of the Year Award, and a member of Magnum Photos, Anderson’s photography will be featured in Aperture’s upcoming publication The New York Times Magazine Photographs.

© Joel Sternfeld, A Railroad Artifact, 30th St, May 2000
Section 2 of New York City’s High Line is now open and there’s an entrance on West 28th Street, just around the corner from Aperture Gallery and Bookstore on 27th St. Wednesday, June 8th was the first full day that the new section was open to the public with summer hours from 7:00 am to 11:00 pm.

At West 18th Street check out Joel Sternfeld’s A Railroad Artifact, 30th St, May 2000 the first work in Sternfeld’s project Landscape with Path, which documented the High Line before it was converted. This image, which celebrates the transformation of the High Line into an urban walkway, can be seen on a large 25-by-75 foot billboard. Sternfeld has invited two other artists, Robert Adams and Darren Almond, to pick up where he left off and create new work . Adams and Almond’s work will be exhibited on the same billboard in August and October respectively.

Another Joel Sternfeld project, Oxbow Archive, that meditates on seasonality in the age of climate change, was featured in Aperture magazine 192.

This Friday two new exhibitions open at Aperture Gallery and Bookstore:

Photo by Joan Colom

The Spanish National Photography Prize: Connections and Confrontations presented by Aperture in collaboration with the Spanish Ministry of Culture will debut for the first time in the United States at Aperture’s gallery. This exhibit brings together sixty-five works by fifteen Spanish photographers and winners of the Ministry of Culture’s National Photography Prize. The show seeks to collectively consider the evolution of Spain’s photographic and creative history.

Photo by Alexander Gronsky

Alexander Gronsky’s The Edge will also be on view. Gronsky is the 2009 Aperture Portfolio Prize winner, this will be his solo show debut in New York. The artist’s photographs of Moscow capture the ambiguity of idyllic-like spots which upon close examination are revealed to be nestled in the midst of urban metropolis. These spaces where city dwellers find solace in nature interact with, but do not seem connected to, their greater contexts.

The Spanish National Photography Prize: Connections and Confrontations
also on view:
The Edge, Photographs by Alexander Gronsky
Opening Reception: Friday, November 19, 2010, 6:00pm – 8:00pm
On View: Saturday, November 20, 2010 – Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Aperture Gallery
547 West 27th Street, 4th Floor
New York, New York

Photo by Paul Strand

Tonight September 16, 2010,  Aperture joins in celebrations to commemorate the bicentennial of Mexico’s Independence with opening receptions for both Paul Stand in Mexico and in collaboration with En Foco, Mexico + Afuera: Contemporary Mexican and Mexican-American Voices.

Aperture is proud to present Paul Strand in Mexico the exhibition, taking place in two parts, at the Aperture Gallery and at the Bronx Museum, and the accompanying publication, bringing together exquisitely printed infamous and unpublished images, documents, personal notes and film from this poignant period in the famed photographer’s life.

Paul Strand first visited Mexico in 1932 at the invitation of Carlos Chavez, the eminent Mexican composer and conductor. Strand’s sojourn in Mexico, was a time of great creative renewal for the artist-one of intense productivity, and the development of a method of working that would become the foundation of his subsequent endeavors: collective portraits of other lands.

Click here to be notified when the publication becomes available!

Paul Strand in Mexico
On View at Aperture Gallery September 9th – November 13th, 2010
Opening Reception Thursday, September 16th, 6:00 – 8:00pm

Also opening this evening is  En Foco: Mexico + Afuera: Contemporary Mexican and Mexican-American Voices which explores—via the work of photogrpahers Chuy Benitez, Dulce Pinzon, and Monica Ruzansky—how life and culture are enmeshed. Selections from En Foco’s Permanent Collection will also be on view encompassing work from the past four decades from Chicano, Mexican-American, and Mexican artists.

Aperture Gallery
547 West 27th St, 4th floor
New York, New York

Also on view at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, presented by Aperture
Paul Strand: The Mexican Portfolio
September 9th, 2010 – January 2nd, 2011

Bronx Museum of the Arts
1040 Grand Concourse
Bronx, New York

A Paul Strand in Mexico symposium will take place on October 15–16, 2010. There, James Krippner, author and co-curator of Paul Strand in Mexico, will bring together a distinguished group of international scholars and practitioners from Mexico, the U.K., and the U.S. to discuss Strand’s output during his sojourn in Mexico in the context of Latin-American modernism, revolutionary politics and film of the 1930s, Mexican-American identity, and other topics. Screenings of the newly restored versions of the classic Strand films Redes and Manhatta (1921), and a viewing of the José Clemente Orozco murals at the New School—the only public commission by a Mexican muralist remaining in New York City—will take place as part of the symposium events.

Paul Strand in Mexico is coproduced by Aperture Foundation and Televisa Foundation. Paul Strand in Mexico is made possible by the National Council for Culture and the Arts (CONACULTA), Mexico; National Endowment for the Arts as part of American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius; Tinker Foundation; Mexican Cultural Institute of New York; and The John B. Hurford ’60 Humanities Center at Haverford College.

Photo by Jun Ahn

This is the last week to see States of Flux a group show of works by Parsons Photography BFA and MFA programs on view at the Aperture Gallery. The show contends with the changing nature of the medium of photography and featured works ask such questions as How does the contemporary photographer contend with the forces of rapid technological change and how do these forces affect the ways in which photographers picture the globalized world?

Be sure you don’t miss this exhibition’s look into the future of photography and while you are in the Aperture Gallery be sure to check in to Aperture Foundation: Bookstore and Gallery on Foursquare with your cell phone for special offers and prizes!

States of Flux

On view through Thursday, August 12th

Aperture Gallery and Bookstore
547 West 27th Street, 4th Floor
Between 10th and 11th Avenues
New York, New York

Four months after an earthquake devastated Haiti’s capitol Port au Prince, Haiti remains in great need of aide and support. Wednesday, June 16th, HeART for Haiti, a coalition of humanitarians and art lovers, will host an auction and benefit for Haiti to take place at Aperture’s gallery. Renowned photographers and artists including Ture Lillegraven, Danny Clinch, Stephen Wilkes, Peter Hapak, Martin Schoeller, Phil Toledano and Pamela Hanson, to name a few, have donated signed prints to the cause. The auction will end online Thursday, June 17th, following Wednesday’s one night reception. All profits will benefit Doctors Without Borders earthquake relief efforts.

Click here for more information about bidding

HeART for Haiti Benefit and Auction
Wednesday, June 16th, 2010 6:00 – 10:00 PM
$20 Suggested donation

Aperture Gallery
547 West 27th Street 4th floor
New York, NY

Recently photographer Eirik Johnson gave an interview about his exhibition Sawdust Mountain currently on view at Aperture Gallery. The previously posted first part of the interview in which Johnson talked about key images in the exhibit is viewable here. Now, in the second segment of Johnson’s interview, learn more about Johnson’s moving portraits which explore relationships between subject and environment. Johnson shares the stories behind several of his encounters with inhabitants of the Northwest of all ages, touching on how these communities have adjusted to the decline of the region’s bedrock industries. Speaking about his portraits of the younger generation, Johnson raises questions about the uncertain future of these communities.

Click here to purchase Eirik Johnson’s monograph Sawdust Mountain

View Sawdust Mountain portfolio and Freshly Felled Trees limited-edition print

Now available for download, Aperture Gallery offers a FREE audio tour podcast of our current exhibitions The Transparent City and Private Views, given by the artists themselves. Listen as Michael Wolf explains his process and anecdotes from his work in Chicago creating The Transparent City and Barbara Crane speaks about her experiences at Chicago festivals where she took her polaroids for Private Views. Both are available by clicking the above image.

View new videos from the weekly series of artist’s interviews with Barbara Kasten and Carel Balth included in the exhibition now on view at Aperture Gallery, The Edge of Vision: Abstraction in Contemporary Photography.

In the first video-clip, Barbara Kasten presents her work Studio Construct 17 as 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. Kasten expands that while subject matter is inherent to photography, her images are unidentifiable and exist as records of light that explore spatial and formal ambiguity. This distance results in a more indirect connection between the viewer and the work.

In the second video-clip, artist 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. Originally recorded as digital video taken by Balth, he carefully selected screen-grabs that are later printed on canvas called Piezographs. He explains that this approach creates a new vantage that confronts reality though light, space, time, and movement into a culmination of images. Balth likes the idea that people may not completely understand his work at first, and recommends The Edge of Vision by curator Lyle Rexer for further insight to his aesthetic.

Click here to view The Edge of Vision limited-edition portfolio.

Click here to view related microsite including previously posted videos with Lyle Rexer part 1 & part 2, Bill Armstrong, Seth Lambert, Charles Lindsay, Jack Sal, Penelope Umbrico, Silvio Wolf.