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

• “Imagine a place where a thousand of your best photo friends and heroes have taken over an artsy southern town,” says Andrew Owen, managing director of this weekend’s Look3 Festival in Charlottesville, VA, “and over three days you take in a dozen gallery exhibits, eat at outdoor cafes between talks by legendary photographers, see new work from photographers working all over the world, and return home exhausted and inspired.” That’s where we’ll be for the next few days, in part presenting a special exhibition, the Aperture at Sixty Library, which will showcase highlights from Aperture’s many years of publishing. La Lettre de La Photographie profiles exhibitions at the festival by Hank Willis Thomas, Alex Webb, Bruce Gilden, Stanley Greene, and many more. NYTimes‘ LENS blog takes a closer look at Thomas’ work, LA Times‘ Framework interviews Mitch Dobrowner, whose work is also featured at Look3, and Time‘s LightBox speaks with guest curators Vincent Musi and David Griffin.
• More in festival coverage, Flak Photo offers four free days of live streaming lectures and panel discussions from the Flash Forward Festival, emerging photographers from Canada, the US and the UK, in Boston, MA at Fairmont Battery Wharf, June 7 – 10, 2012, presented in part by the Magenta Foundation. Download the festival catalogue here, and check out the full calendar of events.
• Meanwhile in Europe, PhotoEspana has gotten underway. Of particular interest: Image Anxiety, curated by Chinese independent curator Huang Du, and of course, the annual Photobooks of the Year exhibition. In other international festival and fair news, the word is out that Paris Photo will launch a Los Angeles edition in April, 2013 at the Paramount Studios, as reported by the LA Times and the British Journal of Photography.
• NPR’s Claire O’Neill heads on a trip to the New York Times’ “Lively Morgue,” their basement newspaper archive which contains five-to-six million photographic prints and contact sheets, overseen by Jeff Roth, mined and disseminated on the Times’ brilliant Tumblr site by photo editor Darcy Eveleigh and others.
• “Sometimes it takes me two hours to get down a street, because there are so many things to photograph and people to meet,” writes Magnum photographer Jacob Aue Sobol in his latest entry from Beijing for Leica Camera Blog’s fascinating Arrivals and Departures series, unfolding live. Follow Sobol’s journey along the Trans Siberian Railway, “from the Russian forests to the Mongolian desert and finally through the mountains to Beijing,” shooting black-and-white every step–quite literally–along the way with the Leica’s new digital monochrome-only camera. Episode five, offers up a stunning gallery of images–dynamic, saturated street photos that remind us of work by Eikoh Hosoe from Barakei.

• Another historical archive of photographs has emerged in New York at the New York Public Library. A “visual encyclopedia” of 41,000 prints by Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange and others have recently been found, many digitized and now made available to the public on a special NYPL site. Originally compiled and organized  in the 30s and 40s by Roy Stryker, founder of the Farm Securities Administration’s photography project, many of the prints were in a public lending library until the 50s. ”Incredibly,” writes James Estrin for NY Times’ LENS blog, “anyone with a library card could check out an original print of a Dorothea Lange image and put it on their wall for a while. It’s easy to imagine that some were never returned.”
• Find images of the once-in-a-lifetime Venus in Transit event which happens every 105 years or so, from LA Times‘ Framework, Boston‘s Big Picture, WSJ‘s Photo Journal, Conscientious, and The Atlantic‘s In Focus. Marvin Heiferman, author of the new book Photography Changes Everything (Aperture 2012), shared this great link on his twitter feed, “a history of photographers who’ve already tracked the Transit of Venus.”

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

• Life shares a slideshow of black-and-white, mid-century images, “Orange Crush: In Praise of the Golden Gate Bridge,” to celebrate the  iconic bridge’s 75-year anniversary this Sunday, May 27, 2012. Coming soon: Aperture commemorates with a beautiful, oversized reissue of Richard Misrach’s monograph Golden Gate, in which the photographer shot the bridge in large format from his front porch at all times of the day for three years.
• New Yorker‘s PhotoBooth and Time’s LightBox both share selections from the recently released 870,000-image archive of historical New York City photographs by the department of records. Both feature work by Eugene de Salignac of the Aperture monograph New York Rises (2007). A limited edition print of “Brooklyn Bridge, showing painters on suspenders, October 7, 1914” is featured on the cover of the monograph and in Time’s selection.
• More on Gordon Parks this week, who was featured in David Campany’s essay in Aperture issue 206 and currently has a retrospective at the International Center of Photography, celebrating the centennial of his birth. PDN shares a 10-image gallery of his work, while La Lettre de la Photographie publishes a 1993 interview with Parks conducted by John Leongard, on what it was like photographing Black Muslims for Life magazine in the 60s.
• Fototazo posts a lengthy recap of their group book discussion of Walker Evans‘ American Photographs with Flak Photo’s Andy Adams, focusing on essays from Gerry Badger’s The Pleasure of Good Photographs. The discussion, which is hosted on Facebook, continued Monday with the essay ”A Certain Sensibility: John Gossage, the Photographer as Auteur.” Stay tuned for a discussion of the essay ”Without Author or Art: The ‘Quiet’ Photograph” on Monday, June 4, 2012.
• Rebecca Norris Webb, who spoke at Aperture gallery on Friday, March 23, 2012 during a co-lecture with Alex Webb, writes on the process of putting together her monograph My Dakota, launched on May 24, 2012 at the International Center of Photography, for Time’s LightBox. Work from the book will be exhibited at the Dahl Arts Center in Rapid City, South Dakota, June 1 – October 13, 2012.
• Photoshelter Blog interviews a multitude of industry professionals and posts “7 Myths About Portfolio Reviews Debunked,” which could be similarly useful to emerging photographers as their May 10 piece “Photography Through the Eyes of Art Directors,” featuring work from Alex Prager.
• Appropriately timed, American Photo Magazine posts their annual list of Top 10 Photographers who shoot weddings, which is where most our staff here seems to have taken off for the long weekend. A companion piece at PopPhoto takes a closer look at these photographers’ gear and process.

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

• Find May Day photos from around the world at Boston’s The Big Picture Show, New York Times‘ LensBlog, and LA Times‘ Framework. Time‘s LightBox also offers “Resources for Photographers Covering Protests,” a bit of a distillation of what the ACLU has up on their website. In addition this week, the National Press Photographers Association and other press groups “call on Justice Department to protect right to record,” pointing out that more than 70 people have been arrested documenting Occupy protests since last September.
• The New Yorker‘s PhotoBooth shares brilliant photos from the eight night performance run of electronic music and Krautrock pioneers Kraftwerk at MoMA last week– those shows that sold out in a blink of an eye, crashing ticket servers. The featured photos were taken not by concert photographers, but audience members with their cell phones who shared on Instagram, Facebook and Flickr, including one by their pop music critic Sasha Frere-Jones, who wrote for the magazine this week on the band’s legacy.
• Daidō Moriyama, who is interviewed by Ivan Vartanian in Aperture issue 203, was awarded the Lifetime Achievement award during ICP’s Infinity Award 2012 ceremony this past Wednesday, La Lettre De La Photographie reports, posting a gallery of his images. Be sure to check out the Daidō Moriyama pop-up library, on display at the ICP Library until May 23, 2012, and watch videos from Moriyama’s 2011 PRINTING SHOW–TKY at Aperture, a recreation of his 1974 ad hoc photobook-making performance of the same title. Moriyama also has his first solo museum exhibition, Fracture: Daido Moriyama, on view at LACMA through July 31, 2012, LA Times‘ Framework reports.
• Ben Lowy, the “Hipstamatic Journalist,” an ardent defender of cell phone photography according to a New York Times profile and Q&A on LensBlog, also won an Infinity Award this week for his work in photojournalism. Soon, the Times reports, Hipstamatic will release a Ben Lowy Lens filter. This week, software developer jag.gr also released the 645 Pro camera app for the iPhone, Rob Galbraith reports, which appeals to advanced photographers and can capture TIFF images, features real-time shutter speed and aperture readouts, a live histogram, a choice of spot or multi-zone metering, as well as focus, exposure, and white balance lock. PhotoShelter Blog shares a lengthy post on “Why Instagram is Terrible for Photographers, and Why You Should Use It,” while APhotoEditor explores some of the many licensing issues with the social media sites through which these images are shared.
• Read about the long strange saga of student photojournalist Andy Duann’s ‘bear falling out of a tree‘ photo which was went viral last week according to Poytner, eventually being picked up by the Associated Press (we first noticed it on WSJ‘s Photo Journal).  Duann had been considering legal action against his school, the University of Colorado, for distributing the photo without compensating him, until they acknowledged that he retained the copyright and announced they would no longer demand copyright from their students in the future.
• MediaStorm share two videos this week that live up to their column titled, “Worth Watching.” First, watch Ian Ruhter’s SILVER & LIGHT clip about his–literally–truck-sized traveling camera. Then watch Jeff Harris’ sometimes-heart-wrenching video on his project collecting 4,748 daily self-portraits–and counting. MediaStorm also draws our attention to Aday, “a unique photographic event,” scheduled for May 15, 2012, in which countless people from all different backgrounds use any camera they can get access to and submit photos to create a massive historical document–”A Day in the World,” which will be published as a book in October 2012. Sign up today.
• Andy Adam’s Flak Photo is teaming up with Tom Griggs’ fototazo next week to host an online community conversation focused on essays from Gerry Badger’s recently published The Pleasures of Good Photographs (Aperture 2010). We’re looking forward to Monday, May 7, 2012, which is when the discussion kicks off with the essay, “Literate, Authoritative, Transcendent: Walker Evans’s American Photographs.”

Opening reception:
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
6:00–8:00 pm

Exhibition on view:
Friday, March 2, 2012–Saturday, April 21, 2012

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

Sondra Gilman and Celso Gonzalez-Falla, two individuals that Art News ranks among the top ten photo collectors in the world, have amassed hundreds of the most iconic images reflecting the diverse nature of the past century of photography. Aperture Foundation pleased to announce the opening of Shared Vision: The Sondra Gilman and Celso Gonzalez-Falla Collection of Photography, featuring over two hundred of those photographs that form one of the world’s best private collections. An exhibition organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Jacksonville, a cultural resource of the University of North Florida, curated by Ben Thompson, MOCA’s curator, and Paul Karabinis, assistant professor of photography at UNF.

Gilman and Gonzalez-Falla’s collaboration hinges on a few underlying principles— mainly, to acquire works of major importance by leading photographers of their generation, and to focus on vintage prints. Although each of the collectors brings a different point of view to the photography—Gonzalez-Falla analyzes color and form, while Gilman responds to images on a more visceral level—these distinct approaches merge into a single, shared vision and emanate from the same goal: to collect photographs that move and inspire them.

Prominet photographers in the collection include Ansel Adams, Eugène Atget, Margaret Bourke-White,Walker Evans, Loretta Lux, Sally Mann, Richard Misrach, Doug and Mike Starn, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Alfred Stieglitz.

The exhibition, organized by MOCA, a cultural resource of the University of North Florida, curated by Ben Thompson, MOCA’s curator, and Paul Karabinis, assistant professor of photography at UNF, is supported by Sondra Gilman and Celso Gonzalez-Falla, The Haskell Company, Marilyn and Charles Gilman III, and Joan and Preston Haskell. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog published by MOCA and produced by Aperture Foundation. This catalog features selected photographs from the exhibition, with historical context about each image and the photographer, curatorial remarks from Ben Thompson and Paul Karabinis, and an exclusive interview with the collectors.

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A sheet from Photographic Memory and one from Alex Webb’s The Suffering of Light on press in Hong Kong.

Photo by Alex Webb

A test of the cover for Photographic Memory before the images have been applied.

With our spring titles starting to print, it is a busy time for Aperture. Both Photographic Memory, which explores the role of the photo album in the history of photography, and Alex Webb’s newest monograph, The Suffering of Light, a survey of thirty years of his career, are on press together at the same printer. Alex and his wife, Rebecca Norris Webb, sent me a snapshot from Hong Kong of two press sheets, one from each book, stacked together at the plant. Read about their experience on press with Alex’s book.

Though printing marks the start of the book’s life in the world, it is often a bittersweet moment for me, as an editor, because it signals the end of the bookmaking process, which is the most fun and rewarding part of my job. I like to think that when a book has been a pleasure to create, this shows in the final product. At least I hope this is the case for Photographic Memory, which I’ve been working on for two years in collaboration with the Library of Congress and author Verna Curtis, a curator of photography there. It’s been an amazing experience. I’ve had the opportunity to spend time with handmade albums by some of photography’s most important figures—like F. Holland Day, Edward Sherriff Curtis, and Walker Evans—and to gain new insight through Verna’s expertise. So, in turn, will those who read the book! A few of my favorites include an album by Leni Riefenstahl of the 1936 Olympics that culminates in a spectacular diving sequence; an album that Jim Goldberg made in a registry book from the rundown California hotel where he shot portraits of the inhabitants; an extraordinary family album by Danny Lyon; and an album containing beautiful, almost haunting mug-shots from a Philippine Prison in 1916.

I was thrilled to receive a test of the cover in the office, struck by how handsome it looked even without the tip-on photos in place and also by how different it became as a real thing, as opposed to the printouts and PDFs I had grown accustomed to poring over. Watching the book make this transition from files to object is magical, not unlike photography itself.
—Denise Wolff

Mug-shots from the 1916 Bureau of Prisons Album

Alex Webb was featured in Aperture Magazine 181 and Aperture Foundation published his book Istanbul: City of a Hundred Names.

Click here to purchase Aperture Magazine 181

Click here to purchase Alex Webb’s Istanbul: City of a Hundred Names