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

• The New York Times covers Mary Ellen Mark’s series Prom, first featured in Aperture issue 187, now a monograph by Getty Publications, and shares a trailer from Martin Bell’s accompanying documentary. The Sunday Review publishes an essay by Mark, “Prom Night,” and posts a slideshow of images from the series. LensBlog follows up with a Q&A with the photographer on shooting with one of five existing, finicky, but rewarding 20×24 Polaroid Land Cameras for this series and her earlier monograph Twins (Aperture 2005).
• In their weekly Modern Art Notes Podcast, ArtInfo‘s Tyler Green talks to Mitch Epstein, who he calls “one of America’s most prominent and most honored photographers,” about shifting focus from American Power to trees in New York City, now on view at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. in Chelsea. Epstein will be in conversation with Sondra Gilman and Celso Gonzalez-Falla of the Shared Vision collection at Aperture on Wednesday, April 11, 2012.
• “Is your phone’s camera the only camera you need?” asks the Wall Street Journal, profiling new apps and accessories that make that possible. They also share cell phone snapshots by professional photojournalists, and invite readers to do the same.
• “In an environment where seconds count, there are glorious triumphs and heartbreaking defeats,” writes Michael M. Grynbaum for LensBlog on staff photographer Richard Perry‘s hectic images from the New York City subway. Can’t help but think back to Bruce Davidson’s series from the 1980s and resulting monograph Subway (Aperture 2011), save for the striking dissimilarities between now vastly different transit systems.
• Simon Bray shares a few key points on Phototuts+ on “Why Returning To A Photographic Location Is Such A Good Idea,” whether it’s months, weeks, days, or hours apart. It’s something Richard Misrach did when he began a three year project photographing the same scene from his from porch at all hours of the day for the monograph Golden Gate, which is soon to be released by Aperture as a stunning 16×20″ oversized edition.
• Fototazo interviews Luca Desienna, Chief Editor of Gomma Magazine, on the occasion of the announcement of the eight winners of the call for entries for their exciting new publication of black and white photography MONO, Volume 1 (November 2012). Lightbox at Time shares a slideshow of images by the winners and explains briefly what entailed Gomma’s “search for the best  new black-and-white photographers.”
• The National Press Photographers Association launched a new blog, Ethics Matters, opening up the often circular discussion on how much image manipulation is too much, focusing specifically on new HDR technology which allows cameras to combine multiple frames into a single image, often for a more saturated color effect. This, as Aperture is in the process of acquiring a HDR camera for our own digital media reporting purposes. Stay tuned!

In the mid-70s, Mitch Epstein was exhibiting some of his earliest work, some of the images first to elevate color photography into the realm of fine art, joining the ranks of Stephen Shore and William Eggleston. Right around that time, Sondra Gilman, who, along with her husband Celso Gonzalez-Falla, has been repeated ranked among the top photo collectors in the world by ARTnews, purchased her first photograph.

She had “tripped over a [Eugène] Atget show” at MoMA, she tells New York Social Diary in an interview (accompanied by dozens of images of the collection at home in their Upper East Side townhouse), and “literally had an epiphany.” She ended up buying three $250 prints at a time when photographs “had no value.” Since then, the couple’s collection has grown to several hundred vintage prints, and their value, surely to no one’s surprise today, has grown astronomically.

On Wednesday, April 11, 2012 Aperture Foundation presents a conversation with Gilman and Gonzalez-Falla alongside Epstein, whose work features prominently in the Shared Vision collection (at Aperture through April 21, 2012). This ambitious exhibition, organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Jacksonville, curated by Ben Thompson and Paul Karabinis, brings together their most iconic images reflecting the diverse nature of an entire century of photography. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue published by MOCA and produced by Aperture, including historical context for each image and photographer as well as curatorial remarks.

Epstein, who won the Prix Pictet in 2011, the Berlin Prize in Arts and Letters in 2008, and the Kraszna-Krausz Photography Book Award in 2004, also appears in the New York Times Magazine Photographs, edited by Kathy Ryan, and Aperture issue 168. A former student of Garry Winogrand at Cooper Union in the early ’70s, his work has since landed in the collections of the MoMA, the Whitney, the Getty Museum, SFMOMA, and Tate Modern in London. While his projects often start as independent explorations or excursions, he has a strong inclination to “engage with issues beyond self-reflexive ones,” he tells BOMB in a lengthy interview about how some of his latest projects including American Power, progressed from an editorial assignment, to a print series, to a book.

Watch a great video shot at Tate Modern of Epstein discussing his latest series and exploring what makes a strong photograph. Check out photos from our the walkthrough of the Shared Vision exhibition with Marcelle Polednik, Director of MOCA Jacksonville and the collectors, and the VIP walkthrough during last weekend’s AIPAD Photography Show. And find images of the installation as well as an index of the work on view at DLK Collection.

Shared Vision: A Conversation with Sondra Gilman, Celso Gonzalez-Falla, and Mitch Epstein
Wednesday, April 11, 2012 at 6:30 pm
FREE

Aperture Gallery and Bookstore
547 West 27th Street, 4th Floor
New York, New York
(212) 505-5555

Grande Hotel, Beira, Mozambique, 2008. © Guy Tillim

Appropriated Landscapes

Exhibition on view:
June 16th, 2011–May 13th, 2012

The Walther Collection:
Reichenauerstrasse 21
89233 Neu-Ulm / Burlafingen
Germany
+49 731 1769 143

The Walther Collection’s Appropriated Landscapes is a group exhibition focusing on contemporary landscape photography. The exhibit explores a wide range of issues—including war, colonization, and ideology—and their effects on the Southern African landscape. Appropriated Landscapes attempts to expand the definition of  “landscape” beyond geographical or physical space, by looking at it as a mental and social construct that influences individual and cultural identity. The exhibit features fourteen artists, including three photographers who have been previously published in Aperture: Mitch Epstein, Mikhael Subotzky, and Guy Tillim were featured in issues 168, 188, and 193, respectively.

Photo by Mitch Epstein,  Amos Coal Power Plant, Raymond, West Virginia 2004, Courtesy the artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co., N.Y.

Reframing the American Landscape PEOPLE PLACES POWER, an exhibition opening January 14th at Davidson College in North Carolina, surveys recent photography by artists Dru Donovan, Mitch Epstein, Gail Albert Halaban, David Hilliard, Lisa Kereszi, Ryan McGinley, Andrew Moore, Alex Prager, Richard Renaldi, Victoria Sambunaris, and David Taylor among others. The exhibition considers American energy production and consumption from a number of angles including the social, political, personal and economic dynamics that play into this nationally pertinent issue. The exhibition kicks off with an artist talk with renowned photographer Mitch Epstein and author Susan Bell on their ongoing internet and public art project whatisamericanpower.com on Thursday, January 13th.

PEOPLE PLACES POWER
On view January 14th – February 25th, 2011

VAN EVERY/SMITH GALLERIES
Belk Visual Arts Center Davidson College 315 North Main Street
Davidson, North Carolina

Photo by Martin Parr

Aperture Foundation’s Annual Benefit & Auction is next week! Photographer William Christenberry will be honored and there will be silent and live auctions. Over 60 amazing photographs will be available at the auctions, including work from Christenberry,  Mitch Epstein, Pamela Hanson, Richard Misrach, Gabriel Orozco, Martin Parr, Stephen Shore, Paul Strand, Dan Winters, Carrie Mae Weems, Garry Winogrand, and more. See all the auction items here.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2008
Pier 60, Chelsea Piers
New York, New York

6:30–8:00 p.m. Cocktails and Silent Auction
8:00–10:00 p.m. Dinner, Live Auction, and Award Ceremony

All proceeds benefit Aperture Foundation’s publications, exhibitions, and public programs at Aperture Gallery and at other venues worldwide.

A few tickets are still available. Email mgrasso@aperture.org for availability.