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

• “It is almost impossible for me to shoot a photo where someone is NOT taking a picture or posing for one,” writes Martin Parr on his blog in a post titled, “Too Much Photography.” Prime examples of this can be found in his series Tourism Inc. which is being published by Reporters Without Borders for the 20th anniversary of their “100 Photos for Press Freedom” collection, accompanied by an exhibition at Galerie Photo Fnac Forum des Halles in Paris, La Lettre de la Photographie reports. His photographs of Atlanta for the High Museum’s “Picturing the South” series are also featured in the upcoming summer issue of Aperture 207.
• In further commentary on CNN’s controversial edit of Stacy Kranitz’ series on Appalachia, Joerg Colberg writes, “If we wanted to know what a place looked like we would need an infinity of photographs, taken from all possible angles excluding nothing, seeing everything at the same time,” a notion he thinks antithetical to the practice of photography, but increasingly possible, not only as Parr points out through the proliferations of cameras, but with the help of the Google Street View car, profiled by the Times here. Check out art made with photos pulled from the Street View service by Aaron Hobson, Jon Rafman, and Michael Wolf of the monograph Transparent City (Aperture 2008). And stay tuned for the upcoming re-issue and expanded edition of A New American Picture by Doug Rickard coming from Aperture in fall 2012.
• Perpetual shooting brings us to the post on APhotoEditor asking, “Is It Time To Eliminate Stills From Your Shoot?” due to the ease and success with which quality still images may be pulled from video footage as a result of the recent proliferation of HDSLR cameras on the market. Now with no need to pick the decisive moment, soon no need to pick where to focus, who’ll need photographers? Have a look through SFMOMA’s page “Is Photography Over?” and read about the dialectical relationship of aesthetics and distribution/media on Fotomuseum Winterthur’s blog Still Searching.
• On a different note, watch this great video from Feature Shoot, “Inside the World’s Only Tintype Photography Studio,” a photo gallery and walk-in commercial tintype portrait studio. Owner/photographer Michael Shindler says, ”I think what people seem to be looking for now is a kind of photography where the process itself is going to impart its own flavor to the finished image, a little bit of uncertainty.”
• American Suburb X  shares Kelly Dennis’ 2005 essay, “Landscape and the West – Irony and Critique in New Topographic Photography,” which explores the work of Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Joe Deal, Art Sinsabaugh and more. After reading, check out new-New Topographic photography in Camps & Cabins at G. Gibson Gallery in Seattle, the third solo show by Eirik Johnson, author of the monograph Sawdust Mountain (Aperture 2009), on view through May 26, 2012.
• LENS blog profiles the opening of “Gordon Parks: 100 Years” at the International Center of Photography, celebrating the centennial of the legendary photographer’s birth with an exhibition of his work presented not inside the center, but in their windows, on view to the street. Parks was featured in an essay by David Campany on “Precedented Photography” in Aperture issue 206. His writing also appears in the requisite volume, Photography Speaks: 150 Photographers on Their Art.
• Fototazo posts Part II of their three-part interview with Oregon-based photographer Blake Andrews of the popular blog B. During this exchange, they invite him to create a competition for photographers to rank and sequence famous photographs, and predict the most popular sequence. The results of the contest will be published on Fototazo and Andrews’ blog. Part III of the interview will be published on Fototazo May 24, 2012.

Exhibition Photos by David Heald © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

The first comprehensive survey of work from the extremely brief but prolific career of American photographer Francesca Woodman (1958-1981) to be shown in North America is now on view at the Guggenheim Museum (through June 13, 2012).

More than thirty years after Woodman’s suicide at the age of 22–often one of the first things people recall about the artist–the exhibition offers an occasion for the “historical reconsideration of her work and its reception.”

Over 120 vintage photographs on view were culled from her estate of 800 prints and over 10,000 negatives, which is managed by her parents. They span her early experimental responses to class assignments completed while she was still enrolled at RISD in the mid-seventies, to the large-scale blueprint studies of her Temple project from 1980. The exhibition also includes six of her recently discovered and rarely seen short videos, as well as two of her artist books.

Her black-and-white images, dark, ethereal and moody, softened and blurred through the use of a long exposure time, are remarkably coherent explorations of herself, and sometimes other women, in very particular environments.

The Times‘ Ken Johnson calls it a “borderline kitschy style, a heady mix of Victorian Gothic, Surrealism and 19th-century spirit photography,” exploring the non-documentary realm of photography in a manner reminiscent of some of her contemporaries, including Cindy Sherman.

They were taken mostly with a medium format 6×6 camera and printed at 8×10″ or smaller, adding a timeless or antique quality, and necessitating a physically intimate viewing experience.

So “strong, particular, personal and tragic,” is her work, British art dealer Anthony d’Offay, who acquired 18 of her prints from the artist’s boyfriend, says in a video interview, “that you have to confront elements of yourself which perhaps sometimes you’ve avoided.”

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On Friday, May 18, 2012, the Guggenheim is hosting a symposium on “Art in the 1970s: Through the Lens of Francesca Woodman,” examining the relationship between the still and moving image in Woodman’s and other artists’ production during the 1970s, particularly as associated with Post-Minimalism, performance, and video, organized by Jennifer Blessing, Senior Curator, Photography.

Francesca Woodman is organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where the exhibition was on view earlier this year. You can find a video walkthrough of that show shot on January 2, 2012 on YouTube.

Read more about Woodman’s “deeply personal photographic revelations” in critic David Levi Strauss’ Between the Eyes: Essays on Photography and Politics (Aperture 2003).

View a slideshow of images from the exhibition at Guggenheim on The New York Times website, after which you can read Ken Johnson’s review of the show.

Exhibition on view:
March 13 – June 13, 2012

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Avenue
(at 89th Street)
New York, NY 10128-0173

Unknown, Untitled, n.d.; Collection SFMOMA, gift of Gordon Bennett

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art commemorates its 75th anniversary this year and, as part of the festivities, will host a symposium asking “is photography over?” on April 22 & 23.  Aperture-published writers on the panel include Aperture magazine contributing editor Vince Aletti and the author of the upcoming book Words Without Pictures, Charlotte Cotton. Artists on the panel include Trevor Paglen, featured in Aperture magazine 191, and Walead Beshty, featured in issue 192. You can read each participant’s answer to the question before the two-day summit where they will discuss the state of the medium.