Archives
volume 12 (10.2007-12.2007)
Observance
Can people communicate a prayer or a mantra through a photograph? More than 100 people from all continents and many religions prayed while they posed for long-exposure portraits by Nicola Dove.
Intimate Enemy
For his new book, Robert Lyons photographed murderers, accomplices and surviving victims from the Rwandan Genocide. The photos are presented without captions.
"In Between" Contest Winners
Lens Culture sponsored a contest in the Flickr community, with the open-ended theme of "in between". Our editors chose 35 of the best entries.
Darkness Visible
Photographer Nicholas Hughes gives us richly detailed, dark and moody images of nature, as seen by a modern urban-dweller in the UK.
Drift
German photographer Wolfgang Zurborn has a new photobook that captures the visual clutter of our man-made environments. The photos — all created in camera — are like wonderfully tricky and complex collages.
Helen Levitt:
Seven decades of street photography
A retrospective exhibition in Paris, and two recent books, confirm that Helen Levitt is one of the most important street photographers of the 20th century. Her range is remarkable: From iconic black-and-white images from the 30s and 40s, to pioneering color-saturated work that captures the theater of the streets in the 70s and 80s. And listen to an NPR audio interview with Levitt from 2002.
Preview: Paris Photo 2007
Lens Culture is delighted to be able to share 120 preview picks for the upcoming festival, Paris Photo 2007. The show promises to be an overabundance of visual stimulation and delight. Enjoy!
Recent Wet Plate Collodion Work
David Prifti makes wonderful photographs using very old techniques and materials. The results are rich with nuance and quirkiness, and evoke a sense of nostalgia even when the images are clearly of our time.
Archives
volume 11 (7.2007-9.2007)
North South
East West
British photographer Hannah Guy combines imagination, still images, animation, and platinum prints, to help us get to know some trees from 360 degrees.
Satellites
Jonas Bendiksen roamed around the "satellite" nations of the former USSR for several years, making stunning photographs and writing short eloquent articles about his findings. Here is a review of his fantastic book.
Tree:
A South Korean Perspective on Nature
A beautiful and intellectual meditation on trees, nature, environment and perception, by photographer Myoung Ho Lee.
Transfigurations
Thought-provoking and playful portraits that explore paintings as masks, and photos of photos of paintings and photos... by Richard Bram and Slyvia Willkens.
Holga-mania!
Holga Queen, Michelle Bates, got hooked on plastic cameras in 1991. Since then she's had international shows, she teaches workshops, and she's just published a new book: Plastic Cameras: Toying with Creativity. See some of her images and listen to her talk passionately about the utter joys of inexpensive cameras.
Motherland:
Russia today
A twelve month journey across the face of Russia in 2004-2005 delivers unexpectedly vibrant images and a compelling first person report. See some of the photographs, listen to an audio interview with the author/ photographer, Simon Roberts, and then buy the book.
Arles 2007 Preview Picks
64 photos as a preview of International Photography Festival in France. In addition to many exciting new discoveries, this year features extensive expositions of vintage and contemporary photography from India and China.
Buried:
New photos
and a book by Stephen Gill
Ever-relentless in his pursuit of joy with photography, Stephen Gill chose to collaborate with a physical place this time — not only photographing it, but also then burying his photographic prints in the same general location to see what the place would add (or subtract). The results are, well, earthy and conceptual, to say the least.
Extended Report from Chernobyl
A new book by photographer-reporter Pierpaolo Mittica is informative, impassioned and unforgettable. Here we have 20 images from Chernobyl: The Hidden Legacy, plus a book review.
Havana Sketches
Russian photographer Alexey Titarenko found his artistic voice at an early age in Saint Petersburg, where he grew up during the transition from Soviet rule to a more "Western" type of government and popular consumption. On recent visits to Cuba, he re-discovered the feelings he had in the waning days of the Soviet era.
Anders Petersen: Recent Photographs
Swedish photographer Anders Petersen was elected Photographer
of the Year at the Rencontres d'Arles in 2003. In 2007, he was one of
the four world finalists in the prestigious Deutsche Börse Photography
Prize. Now, in Lens Culture, he generously shares 20 new photos, and
talks about his work and life in an insightful and compelling 18 minute audio interview.
On Urban Walls and in your Face
Undercover photographer-activist JR uses public walls as his illegal galleries. His subjects are pseudo gang-members from the Paris suburbs, and make-believe terrorists in Palestine and israel. After being sued, arrested and hassled, he is now being celebrated by the media and exhibited by esteemed cultural organizations. Listen to our exclusive 16-minute audio interview to understand some of the ideas he is playing with. And enjoy 20 photos from his installations worldwide.
Alter Ego: Avatars and their creators
Photographer Robbie Cooper traveled the world to meet the "real-world" people behind their own cyber characters from online games and communities like Second Life and World of Warcraft. The result is a book of wonderfully eclectic dual-portraits, plus illuminating and intriguing interviews with these gamers from all walks of life.
The Birthday Party by Vee Speers
Paris-based photographer Vee Speers unveils a new series of children's portraits from a make-believe costume party where the kids come dressed as creatures of their own imaginations.
Body as Dream
Italian photographer Marco Ambrosi teamed up with American calligrapher Monica Dengo to create a meditative series that explores written language and human identity.
Photographic notes from a madhouse
Surreal, haunting, evocative, unforgettable. 38 visions by lauren e. simonutti. Plus a compelling text by the artist.
Audio Archives
Anders Petersen: a warm and candid interview, with insights into his personal apporach to photography18 minutes
Simon Roberts talks about his year-long photographic trek through the outlying towns of the former Soviet Union
24 minutes
Undercover photographer JR talks about his stealth activities to turn public places into illegal ephemeral galleries of social confrontation and dialogue
16 minutes
Richard Bram on playing with image planes, and the conversations between paintings and photographs
7 minutes
Marco Ambrosi on his series Body as Dream, exploring identity through written language and visual images
5 minutes
Archives
volume 10 (3.2007-6.2007)
The Chain
Magnum photographer Chien-Chi Chang photographed pairs of some 700 psychiatric inmates who are chained together and forced to tend one million chickens on a large farm in Taiwan.
Photo-London: Contemporary Only!
In its 37th year, this international photography fair took on a fresh new look, showing only photographs taken since 1970. Here are 30 picks.
Portraits in Landscapes from 21st Century America
American photographer Richard Renaldi traveled his country coast to coast, and captured the faces and places he encountered with his 8 x 10 view camera.
"Personals"
Serbian photographer Katarina Radovic explores the desire to seduce — with fictional self-portraits posted in online dating services and sites like MySpace.
Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2007
Walid Raad /The Atlas Group (b. 1967, Lebanon), is the winner of the £30,000 prize for his significant contribution to the medium of photography in Europe. Here we have examples of the winning work, as well as work by the three other finalists.
Copia
American photographer Brian Ulrich takes a long, unsmiling look at how merchandise is presented for sale in Big Box retail outlets and Thrift stores.
Digital Self-Portraits
One of our most popular blog entries: 8 years of life compressed into 3 minutes, with sound!
Calm Before the Storm
Serbian photographer Sinisa Vlajkovic documented everyday life in Lebanon for 18 months during 2003-2005, a period of relative peace and tranquility. Here are his photos and his personal report.
The "Ultimate" list of Japanese Photobooks
Photo historian Ferdinand Brueggemann tries his hand at expanding the list of "must have" Japanese photobooks.
Self-portraits along the route of an ancient pilgrimage
French photographer Marie Docher walked alone in the summer heat along the 1200 km trail from Auvergne, France to Santiago, Spain. She did not know what she was searching for. But every time she got thirsty, she held out her camera first and took a self-portrait before she took some water.
The Photobook: A History, Volume 2
Documentary photographer and professor Ken Light reviews this book with a mixture of delight and disappointment.
Snapshots from a portfolio review
A brief introductory report from the
19th Annual International Photography Meeting in Thessaloniki, Greece.
Upside down, inside-out — and
now in
color!
New photographs by Abelardo Morell
Cuban-born photographer Abelardo Morell had already taken the art world by storm with his black-and-white series of "rooms as camera obscura" imagery. But recently, he put color film in his 8 x 10 view camera, and the results are even more dizzying. In an exclusive audio interview, you can hear Morell talk about the alchemy of optics, this new phase in his work, and more.
Made in Italy: an angry, philosophical lament about the current state of life in Italy
Five award-winning Italian photographers, and four Italian philosopher-sociologist writers teamed up to create a hard-edged assessment of current life in Italy. It's not what mainstream media or glossy tourist guides would show you.
Expectations of Adolescence
American photographer Blake Fitch has documented the growing-up of two young women in upper-class New England, USA, over ten years.
Life in Death:
Photography from Finland
Death is the name of a small village in Finland. Swedish photographer Eva Persson thought that was funny. So she visited Death and its inhabitants over the course of a year to discover and document the people and daily life there. The result — a great photo book, and insights into contemporary rural Finnish culture.
World Press Photo 2006
See all the winning photographs here, as well as archives of all the winners in two previous years.
Audio Archives
Abelardo Morell talks about his mural-size camera obscura works10 minutes