You don’t have to travel to Miami or New York to start collecting. This month, photography enthusiasts in Western Pennsylvania will have access to the PGH Photo Fair, the first annual art fair in Pittsburgh promoting the discussion of photography within the contemporary and fine art market, Saturday, April 21–Sunday, April 22, 2012.

Organized by photography collector Evan Mirapaul, the PGH Photo Fair will play host to selection of internationally known dealers, showcasing museum-quality prints and photo-based art spanning the history of the medium, from 20th Century vintage prints to contemporary photography and photographic book art. Visitors will have the unique opportunity to browse and learn about photography from some of the world’s most knowledgeable experts, while shopping works that range from affordable delights to unique rarities.

“I invited the highest quality dealers I knew,” Mirapaul says. “That was the primary criterion … I wanted to invite dealers that could bring a lot of knowledge and expertise to any conversation with a new audience, but without any high-art attitude.”

Aperture is among the six internationally known dealers that the PGH Photography fair will host throughout the weekend. Join us at the former YMCA building in East Liberty to browse and buy limited-edition prints from Graham Nash, Michelle DuBois, Alfred Steichen, Mark Lyon, 2011 portfolio prize winner Sarah Palmer, and Sophie T. Lvoff, among other notable photographers from the Aperture stable.

Aperture at PGH Photo Fair
Saturday, April 21–Sunday, April 22, 2012
Saturday, April 21: 12:00 – 6:00 pm
Sunday, April 22: 11:00 am– 5:00 pm

FREE

Former YMCA building in East Liberty
120 South Whitfield Street
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

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

• LensBlog explores why Rodrigo Abd‘s photograph of a young Syrian boy expressing grief over the death of his father landed on the front page of three of the most prominent national papers in the United States.

• Time magazine’s photo blog Lightbox celebrated it’s one year anniversary, revisiting their first post and the continuing saga of War is Personal by legendary photojournalist Eugene Richards, of the controversial 1994 Aperture monograph Cocaine True, Cocaine Blue.

• Conscientious, GalleristNY and LVP Magazine weigh in on Cindy Sherman’s retrospective at MOMA and on the “unanimity” among critics in New York reviewing it.

• One year after a devastating tsunami hit the coast of Japan on March 11, 2011, The New York Times does a “Side-by-Side look at Distruction and Renewal.” The Big Picture at Boston.com, Huffington Post, National Geographic, and The New Yorker ran similar posts, as did Time’s Lightbox, featuring a slideshow of photos by James Nachtwey, whose work is in The New York Times Magazine Photographs (Aperture 2011) edited by Kathy Ryan.

• NPR prompts the question: “You know Ansel, But Who is Robert Adams (And Why Should You Care)?” Bob Adams, of the recently reissued Aperture monographs The New West and Summer Nights, Walking, has a traveling retrospective The Place We Live now on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

• Sarah Palmer was just announced winner of the Aperture 2011 Portfolio Prize for her series As a Real House. Read her 2009 review of Eirik Johnson’s Sawdust Mountain, Robert Adam’s Summer Nights and Joel Meyerowitz’s Legacy, from when she was editor at Metropolis Magazine.

• Finally, Jonathan Blaustein‘s intensely personal column on APhotoEditor.com reviewing Donald Weber‘s beautifully put together photobook Interrogations is one of the best-written posts we’ve read all week. Interrogations will also be reviewed in the upcoming second issue of The Photobook Review.

Aperture is delighted to honor 2011 Portfolio Prize winner—Sarah Palmer—as well as four runners up: Thibault Brunet, Lisa Lindvay, Andrew McConnell, and Louie Palu. The work of these exceptional photographers has been chosen from nearly one thousand portfolio entries from around the world.

The 2011 Portfolio Prize site is now live, featuring five full slideshow galleries featuring the work of this year’s finalists, biographical notes, and elucidatory statements written by members of the judging panel—including Publisher, Lesley A. Martin, and Editor, Denise Wolff—casting an editorial eye on the work of each 2011 finalist.

We are also pleased to offer new limited-edition prints by winner Sarah Palmer, and finalist Andrew McConnell in our online shop.

Featured at top: The Bomb (Also) is a Flower by Sarah Palmer, $600, available here.

Copyright by artist, clockwise from top-left: Sarah Palmer, Louie Palu, Lisa Lindvay, Andrew McConnell, Thibault Brunet

Thanks to all the photographers who took part in our annual Aperture Portfolio Prize contest this past year. Judges have gone through the submissions and after much deliberation, we’re pleased to announce the five finalists:

Lisa Lindvay

Andrew McConnell

Sarah Palmer

Louie Palu

Thibault Brunet

For almost a decade now, our contest has helped to identify trends in contemporary photography and bring the work of innovative and emerging artists to a wider audience.  This year, first prize is $3000 and an exhibition at Aperture Foundation.

Check back with us in the coming weeks as we get ready to announce the winner via email newsletter and our website and showcase their work. Don’t forget to check out the winning images from years past here. And remember, it’s never too early to start thinking about submitting for next year’s prize.

Pinacate by Sarah Palmer

The Center for Photography at Woodstock’s 2010 Photography Now exhibit Either/And, curated by Aperture’s Lesley A. Martin, is currently on view. Culling from submissions of artist’s work, the exhibit considers “What defines contemporary practice?” in two parts.

The first part of the exhibit entitled The New Skew opened this weekend and highlights conceptual works that challenge photographic traditions by artists Erica Allen, Gabriel Garcia Roman, Matthew Gamber, Sarah Palmer, Jordan Tate, Rachel Bee Porter, Charles Shotwell, Amy Stevens, Sam Falls and Laura Wulf.

Part two of the exhibit, which opens July 26th, is entitled The New Docugraphics and brings together artist’s Cynthia Bittenfield, Jennifer Wilkey, Brook Reynolds, Natan Dvir, Eric White, Heather O’Brien, Thomas Gardiner, Tony Chirinos, Mike Mergen, whom explore personal and timely issues and events within a documentary framework.

On view during both shows will be a digital slideshow of images from their counterparts.

Photography Now: Either/And

The New Skew
June 12 – July 18
The New Docugraphics
July 26 – August 29
Opening reception Saturday, July 24th from 5:00-7:00 pm

The Center for Photography at Woodstock
59 Tinker Street
Woodstock, New York
845-679-9957

Curator and co-founder of Humble Arts Foundation, Jon Feinstein recently gave Aperture’s interns a special tour of the exhibition 31 Women in Art Photography presented by Humble Arts and Affirmation Arts. Humble Arts Foundation is an organization devoted to emerging artists of all ages and backgrounds that are making interesting and innovative work. 31 Women in Art Photography, which was recently on view at Affirmation Arts until April 10th, was Humble Arts Foundation’s second annual exhibition of women’s work and in part addresses disparities between the number of women in the field of photography compared to the number of women photographers given opportunities to exhibit.

Feinstein co-curated the show with curator and editor of Aperture’s Words Without Pictures, Charlotte Cotton. The show features work by women photographers at different stages in their careers including Aperture published photographer Robin Schwartz as well as Sarah Palmer, Emily Shur, Ann Woo and more.

Click here to find out more about Aperture’s Work Scholar Program

Click here to view Charlotte Cotton’s Words Without Pictures

Click here to view Robin Shwartz’s Amelia’s World

Copyright Eric Ogden

Award-winning photographer Eric Ogden‘s first solo show opens this Thursday, March 18th at Hous Projects Gallery in New York. Entitled  A Half Remembered Season, this cinematic series of images is inspired by childhood perceptions of wonderment and mystery and is infused with a literary romanticism of American small towns.

Ogden describes his photographs as being “populated with characters that seem haunted by the weight of the past, images that evoke the strangeness of the everyday, and the mystery of objects and landscapes that seem to hold their secrets and allude to stories never quite explained.”

Eric Ogden: A Half Remembered Season
Opening reception: Thursday, March 18, 6:00 pm – 10:00 pm
Exhibition on view: March 18-May 8, 2010

Hous Projects
31 Howard Street, Floor 2
New York, New York

copyright Sarah Palmer

The Wild Project will present a solo show of photographs by Sarah Palmer from her series As a Real House curated by Kate Greenberg and Hilary Shaffner. Palmer’s disparate series of images explores themes of “remembrance, identity and invention,” juxtaposing photographs of small scale installation with snapshots of the stumbled upon instance.

As A Real House
Photographs by Sarah Palmer

Opening reception: Thursday, March 18, 6:00-8:00 pm
Exhibition on view: March 18-May 15, 2010

The Wild Project 195 East 3rd Street, between A and B                                                                                                                                            New York, New York