Friday, April 20th, 2012

Aperture aggregates the best posts from this past week in the photography blogosphere.
- LightBox presents an essay written by Tim Hetherington, who was featured in Aperture issue 204, from the new book Photographs Not Taken, one year after the photographer’s death in Libya. The collection, compiled by Will Steacy (one of Aperture’s Green Cart Commissioned photographers), also features essays by Roger Ballen, Ed Kashi, Mary Ellen Mark, Alec Soth, Peter van Agtmael and more. Additionally, PDN features an 8 image retrospective by Hetherington, whose work is now on view at Yossi Milo Gallery in New York (through May 12, 2012).
- This week in commentary: LPV Magazine digests Instagram articles by Om Malik, the New Yorker’s Ian Crouch and New York Magazine’s Paul Ford, finds out, “Facebook Buys Instagram, Some Photographers Sad.” APhotoEditor reads Paul Melcher‘s poignant article on La Lettre de La Photographie alongside Marc Andreessen‘s WSJ piece “Software Will Eat The World,” and explores “how a company with 13 employees and no profits [Instagram] can replace a now bankrupt company [Kodak] that once employed over 120,000 people with annual sales of $10 billion as the ‘manufacturer’ of a device to bring photography to the masses.” In related news, NPPA opens a mobile phone photo contest, calling for entries through Sunday, April 22, 2012, while Magnum Photos has deployed another team to Rochester to document the once-vibrant home of Kodak as part of their Postcards From America series.
- Poynter investigates the controversy over the Pentagon delaying the LA Times from publishing photographs of US soldiers posing with the body parts of Afghan corpses, a story which has since elicited over 2000 comments on the Times’ website.
- Sophie Calle, featured in Aperture issues 191 and 142, talks to the Guardian about her best shot from the series Voir La Mer, in which she “took 15 people of all ages, from kids to one man in his 80s, to see [the sea] for the first time.” She photographed them from behind so as to not obstruct their initial encounter, and she captured the entire process, including their reactions, on video. Her current exhibition, Historias de Pared (at Museo de Arte Moderno Medellín through June 3, 2012) is reviewed on Fototazo.
- In honor of Albert Hoffman’s infamous Bicycle Day (April 19), LIFE Magazine shares a number of never-before-published dream-like photographs that were to accompany an original 1966 article titled, “New Experience That Bombards the Senses: LSD Art.”
- American Suburb X shares journal entries from William Gedney on “Kentucky, Sex and Diane Arbus,” alongside scans of the archival material culled from the Duke University Rare Books and Manuscript Library. Speaking of rare books, ICP Library profiles some of the innovative and experimental photobooks they found and photographed at the New York Antiquarian Book Fair last week.
- Time Magazine releases their annual list of “The 100 Most Influential People in the World,” alongside a portrait gallery of 24 of the honorees. Included this year is artist Christian Marclay, of the monumental video installation recently purchased by MoMA, The Clock, and the 2007 Aperture monograph Shuffle, which takes the form of a deck of cards. The Clock will be shown for free this summer from the middle of July to mid-August at Lincoln Center’s David Rubenstein Atrium. Stake out your places now!
Tags: albert hoffman, Alec Soth, american suburb x, aphotoeditor, bicycle day, Christian Marclay, Diane Arbus, duke university, Ed Kashi, fototazo, guardian, historias de pared, ian crouch, icp library, instagram, Kodak, la times, life magazine, lightbox, lpv magazine, lsd, marc andreessen, Mary Ellen Mark, MoMA, Museo de Arte Moderno Medellín, new york antiquarian book fair, New York Magazine, new yorker, nppa, om malik, paul ford, paul melcher, PDN, pentagon, Peter van Agtmael, Photographs not taken, poynter, Roger Ballen, sophia calle, the clock, Tim Hetherington, time 100, voir la mer, wall street journal, william gedney, Yossi Milo Gallery
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Friday, April 13th, 2012
Aperture aggregates the best posts from this past week in the photography blogosphere.
- Time’s Lightbox profiles ‘Act’: Meditations on the Disabled Body by Denis Darzacq, a two-year project of photographing “people who have had trouble finding a place in society from the beginning of their lives,” he says. The Paris-based photographer known for his high-energy images and dynamic subjects will be giving an artist talk at Aperture this Monday, April 16, 2012 at 6:30 pm, FREE.
- Kathy Ryan, editor of The New York Times Magazine Photographs, shares the fascinating backstory of a photograph of Mohammad Ali with his future wife Lonnie that ran in the Sunday Magazine, taken at “the moment Cassius and I met,” Lonnie wrote in an email to the photographer, Steve Schapiro.
- The New Yorker‘s photo department shares a collection of reader-submitted, “Hand-Picked Instagrams,” (as Wall Street Journal did last week, and more publications probably will in the future) alongside a thought-provoking essay by Ian Crouch, “Instagram’s Instant Nostalgia.” This, in the same week New York Times’ Bits Blog reports Facebook will buy Instagram for $1 billion.
- The British Journal of Photography reports on a controversial ad campaign for photographers’ rights launched by the French organization Union des Photographes Professionnels – Auteurs. In related news this week, the American Society of Media Photographers has filed a class action lawsuit against Google, PetaPixel reports, for “scanning, indexing, and storing copyright work without permission of the copyright holders” for their ambitions Google Books project.
- DIY gallerists take note: Phototuts+ shares “An Expert Guide to Matting and Framing a Photo,” which should be useful after you’ve watched their video lecture on Ansel Adams–delivered by Allan Ross who was Adams’ darkroom assistant for many years–and printed a bunch of restrained, expertly metered black-and-white landscape photographs of your own.
- American Suburb X shares a number of Nan Goldin readings this week, including an essay by Nan on actress and close friend Cookie Mueller who died of AIDS in 1989, as well as a fascinating in-depth paper by Mihaela Precup, “The Wound Which Speaks of Unremembered Time: Nan Goldin’s Cookie Portfolio and the Autobiographics of Mourning.” All great reads; our only quibble is: where did they come from? [UPDATE: ASX has appended the source of one of the pieces, created originally by Dirck Halstead at the once-pioneering web journal digitaljournalist.org]
- The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation announce their 2012 Fellowships in photography, PDN Pulse reports. Ten photographers, including Doug Dubois of the monograph All the Days and Nights, and John Gossage, whose exhibition The Pond and a Little Romance opens today in Chicago, join the ranks of past recipients Robert Frank, Diane Arbus, Robert Adams, Richard Mosse, Brian Ulrich, and Penelope Umbrico.
Tags: All the Days and Nights, allan ross, American Society of media photographers, Ansel Adams, bits blog, Brian Ulrich, british journal of photography, cookie mueller, denis darzacq, Diane Arbus, diy, Doug Dubois, google, google books, guggenheim fellowship, ian crouch, instagram, John Gossage, Kathy Ryan, lightbox, lonnie ali, mohammad ali, Nan Goldin, Penelope Umbrico, phototuts+, Richard Mosse, Robert Adams, Robert Frank, steve schapiro, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine Photographs, the new yorker, The Pond, time magazine, Union des Photographes Professionnels - Auteurs
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