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!

New Year, 2010, © Jowhara AlSaud

Kicking off the 2012 art season, check out highlights on view throughout New York! See below for some of our favorite Aperture artists and galleries.

New Photographers at Dazinger Gallery, January 12–February 25, introducing five emerging photographers unlinked to one another through content but brought together for their first time exhibiting in New York City. Featured photographer Tereza Vlčkovà from Aperture’s groundbreaking book, reGeneration 2: tomorrow’s photographers today.

Silverstein Annual at Bruce Silverstein Gallery, January 14–February 25, offers exposure to ten up-and-coming photographers who have been chosen by ten prominent curators, including Nelli Palomaki, reGeneration 2 artist. View her limited edition prints available through Aperture.

Penetration at Foley Gallery, January 12–March 3, recreates the photographic image with five artists who interrupt the common photographic process. Portfolio Prize 2008 Runner-Up Jowhara AlSaud’s portraits of faceless figures, inspired by censorship, are personal photographs made into drawings etched on the surface of a negative, view her limited edition prints here. Pushing the capabilities of photographic paper itself, Marco Breuer scratches and scrapes the light-sensitive paper making conceptual, abstract imagery. See Breuer’s limited edition book by Aperture Early Recordings and Untitled 2007 and the highly acclaimed compilation The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography, he was also featured in Aperture magazine issue 172.

Joel Sternfeld: First Pictures at Luhring Augustine, January 6–February 4, displays a selection of Joel Sternfeld’s earliest photographs, taken between 1971 and 1980, documenting his travels across America through vibrant colors twined with wit and satire.

Visions: Tim Hetherington at Bronx Documentary Center, through January 22, is the inaugural exhibit featuring photography and multimedia work produced by photojournalist Tim Hetherington who was killed in April of 2011 as he covered Libya’s revolution.

First Look at Yossi Milo Gallery, January 26–February 18, is the inaugural exhibition at the new gallery space located at 245 Tenth Avenue. The photographers included all had their first solo New York City exhibition presented by the Yossi Milo Gallery. These artists include Robert Bergman, Mohamed Bourouissa, Pieter Hugo, Simen Johan, Sze Tsung Leong, Loretta Lux, Yuki Onodera, Muzi Quawson, Mark Ruwedel, Alessandra Sanguinetti, Lise Sarfati, Alec Soth, Kohei Yoshiyuki and Liu Zheng. A celebration will be held in honor of these photographers on February 16 from 6:00–8:00 pm.

Installation shot of Sleeping Soliders by Tim Hetherington. Image taken with SONY a33 DLSR Camera and Lens, generously donated by Sony USA

In remembrance of Tim Hetherington, photographer, reporter, and filmmaker, Aperture is honored to present his Sleeping Soldiers video installation and his Diary video, from Wednesday, May 25 through Thursday, June 23.

Tim Hetherington was killed in Misurata, Libya, on April 20, 2011, during an attack by pro-Qaddafi forces on the rebel-held town. His funeral took place in London on May 13 and in New York, May 24.

Sleeping Soldiers (5 minutes, 2009) is an immersive video essay, shot at the same time as the film Restrepo, featuring soldiers of a U.S. Airborne Infantry platoon based in the Korengal Valley of Eastern Afghanistan, in combat, and asleep. The original three-screen installation was first shown in New York in 2009 at the New York Photo Festival, in an exhibition curated by Jon Levy.

Diary (19 minutes, 2010) is a highly personal and experimental film that expresses the subjective experience of Hetherington’s working life, and was made as an attempt to find himself after ten years of reporting. It’s a kaleidoscope of images that link our Western reality to the seemingly distant worlds we see in the media.

Both videos were shot and directed by Tim Hetherington, with editing and sound design by Magali Charrier.

Hetherington’s family and friends have suggested that donations in his memory be made to the three charities that Tim felt most strongly about: Human Rights Watch, the independent organization dedicated to defending and protecting human rights, for which he worked regularly; Committee to Protect Journalists; and Milton Margai School for the Blind in Sierra Leone, where Hetherington photographed and worked with students, who had been intentionally blinded by the Revolutionary United Force. Donations to these charities will be accepted at Aperture during the screening of his videos.

Tim Hetherington was born in Liverpool, UK, in 1970. He studied literature at Oxford University and later returned to college to study photojournalism. He lived in New York and was a contributing photographer for Vanity Fair magazine. He was known for creating diverse forms of visual communication and his work has ranged from multiscreen installations, to fly-poster exhibitions, to handheld device downloads. Known for his long-term documentary work, Hetherington lived and worked in West Africa for eight years and reported on social and political issues worldwide.

As a filmmaker, he worked as both a cameraman and director/producer. He was a cameraman on Liberia: An Uncivil War (2004) and The Devil Came on Horseback (2007), and his directorial debut, Restrepo (codirected with Sebastian Junger), was awarded the Grand Jury Prize at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and shortlisted for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, in 2011.

He authored and published two books of photographs: Long Story Bit by Bit: Liberia Retold (Umbrage Editions, 2009), and Infidel (Chris Boot, 2010).

He was the recipient of numerous awards, including a Fellowship from the National Endowment for Science, Technology, and the Arts (2000–2004), a Hasselblad Foundation grant (2002), four World Press Photo prizes, including the World Press Photo of the Year 2007, the Rory Peck Award for Features (2008), and an Alfred I. duPont award (2009).

All of us who knew and worked with Tim Hetherington are gutted by the news about his loss. I found him the most talented, charismatic, original, exciting photojournalist of his generation. He was smart, articulate, and so open-hearted. As well as his contribution to the thousands of lives he touched, he was in the process of changing the possibilities of photojournalism—or “transjournalism” as he enthusiastically described what he aspired to do, not very long ago—his particular mix of video, photography, sound, and commentary, working through mainstream media, in art contexts and through social networks. He had just got to that age where he knew exactly what he was here to do and how to do it, and was just beginning the period of what would have been the great work of his life. This is a terrible loss. Our hearts at Aperture go out to his family and those closest to him.

—Chris Boot, Executive Director, Aperture Foundation

The Alice Austen House Museum in Staten Island invites you to celebrate issue #17 of OjodePez with an exhibition titled Interlude. Both the show and magazine feature portfolios from photographers Tim Hetherington, Indre Serpytyte, Elizabeth Heyert, Victor Cobo, Ilkka Uimonen, JH Engström, Jason Nocito, and Lauren Fleishman. The magazine is guest edited by Jamie Wellford and Paul Moakley and is now for sale in newsstands and bookstores.

Click here to view JH Engström in issue #190 of Aperture Magazine.

Click here to buy a limited-edition print from JH Engström through Aperture.

Click here to buy the limited-edition portfolio from JH through Aperture.

Click here to purchase your copy of Loads, part of the Tiny Vices series with photographs by Jason Nocito.

Interlude
Friday, July 31, 2009 6:00—10:00 pm
Alice Austen House Museum
2 Hylan Boulevard
Staten Island, New York
(718) 816-4506