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!

Looking for a Valentine’s day gift for your sweetie?  Why not the beautiful limited edition photograph by Bruce Davidson from his 1980 series Subway, reissued last fall. Untitled, (couple on platform) depicts a public display of personal affection in stunning Kodachrome color–one of his rare forays outside of black and white film.

In this video clip for Aperture, Davidson explains that for the longest time he “found that mostly color is gratuitous, because we have it.”  When he began the project, for about half the time he was shooting in black and white. At one point, he says, “something came over me,” and he loaded that legendary, now-discontinued color film.

To capture the cultural fabric of New York City at that particular time, he needed the extremes of color. “The people in the subway,” he says, “their flesh juxtaposed against the graffiti, the penetrating effect of the strobe light itself, and even the hollow darkness of the tunnels, inspired an aesthetic that goes unnoticed by passengers who are trapped underground, hiding behind masks, and closed off from each other.”

Buy the print here for your sweetheart!

© Bruce Davidson/Aperture Foundation

Accompanying the re-release of Bruce Davidson‘s classic book Subway, NPR’s WNYC has organized a project that will make your commute a little more interesting. The Brian Lehrer Show is asking listeners to submit their most iconic subway shots to feature online and on-air, and to be seen by legendary photography Bruce Davidson. So whether you take the Tube or the T, be sure to send in your interpretations of the teeming, vibrant, transportation systems that criss-cross our urban environments.

You can submit your subway photographs here. You can also see a gallery of submissions here.

Deadline for submission is 11:59pm on Sunday, October 16th.

Need some inspiration? Check out the new edition of Bruce Davidson’s Subway. Or head over to Aperture Gallery & Bookstore to see Bruce Davidson: Subway, an exhibition of the striking color photographs. Aperture will also be hosting a very special Artist Talk & Book Signing with Bruce Davidson later this month.

Exhibition on view:
Monday, October 3–Saturday, October 29, 2011
10:00 am – 6:00 pm

Opening Reception:
Thursday, October 13, 2011
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Artist Talk & Book Signing:
Wednesday, September 26, 2011
8:30 pm

Aperture Bookstore & Gallery
547 West 27th Street, 4th floor
New York, New York 10001
Monday – Saturday, 10 am – 6 pm

© Magnum/Bruce Davidson

In 1986, Aperture first published Bruce Davidson‘s Subway—a ground-breaking series that has garnered critical acclaim both as a document of a unique moment in the cultural fabric of New York City as well as for its phenomenal use of extremes of color and shadow set against flash-lit skin. In Davidson’s own words, “the people in the subway, their flesh juxtaposed against the graffiti, the penetrating effect of the strobe light itself, and even the hollow darkness of the tunnels, inspired an aesthetic that goes unnoticed by passengers who are trapped underground, hiding behind masks, and closed off from each other.”

Accompanying the third edition of this classic of photographic literature, Aperture Gallery will present Subway, an exhibition of the iconic color images that move the viewer through a landscape at times menacing, at other times lyrical, soulful, and satiric. The images include the full panoply of New Yorkers—from weary straphangers and languorous ladies in summer dresses to stalking predators and the homeless.

There will also be a Talk and Book Signing event at Strand Books on Monday, September 26, 2011. Buying a copy of the new edition of Subway, or a $10 Strand gift card will get you into the event. Although tickets are sold out online, more tickets will be sold at the door the night of the signing.

Bruce Davidson (born in Oak Park, Illinois, 1933) is considered one of America’s most influential documentary photographers. He began taking photographs when he was ten, and studied at the Rochester Institute of Technology and the Yale University School of Design. In 1958 he became a member of Magnum Photos, and in 1962, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship to document the civil rights movement. After a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1963, followed by a National Endowment for the Arts grant in 1967, Davidson spent two years photographing in East Harlem, resulting in East 100th Street. In 1980, after living in New York City for twenty-three years, Davidson began his startling color essay of urban life in Subway. Davidson received a second National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1980, and an Open Society Institute Individual Fellowship in 1998. His work has been shown at the International Center of Photography, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Museum de Tokyo, Paris; Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; Museum Rattu, Arles, France; Burden Gallery (Aperture), New York; Parco Gallery, Tokyo; and New-York Historical Society.

Exhibition on view:
Tuesday, October 4, 2011–Saturday, October 29, 2011

Opening reception:
Thursday, October 13, 2011, 6:00 pm

Artist Talk:
Wednesday, October 26, 2011, 6:30 pm

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