Archives
volume 20 (4.2009-5.2009)
Obama's People: interview with Nadav Kander
Working for "The New York Times", London-based photographer Nadav Kander was given unprecedented access to make portraits of 52 new incoming members of Obama's administration just weeks before they moved into the White House. Kander spoke with Lens Culture in an exclusive audio interview about this fun but daunting task.
Suburban Slovakia
This photo essay by Andrej Balco is an intimate view into the lives of people in old prefab apartment blocks in Slovakia.
Eleventh Finger
Paris-based artist Yuki Onodera combines quirky hand-cut paper masks with surreptitious photographs of strangers in city streets.
The Quiets
Visual haiku from Timo Kelaranta of the Helsinki School.
Hong Kong Reminiscence 1958
Japanese photographer Shigeichi Nagano just released a new book of photos taken 50 years ago. Marc Feustel writes a glowing review.
Spring-Summer 2008
Illegal street vendors in Tuscany are photographed hiding behind the counterfeit fashion items that the tourists love to buy at bargain prices. Photographs by Gianmaria Gava.
Recent Work by Ralph Gibson
An exhibition in Paris features nudes and other artful black-and-whites by American master Ralph Gibson.
Strangely Familiar
Photographs by Michal Chelbin. This book, published by Aperture in 2008, reveals a disquieting view of daily life for people in various small traveling performing groups.
Scarlett Coten: Still Alive
French photographer Scarlett Coten hasspent a couple years living and photographing throughout Egypt. Her series of diptychs reverberate with intimate life and luscious color. A personal poetic essay (in French, with an English translation) provides interesting insight into her experiences with these timeless cultures.
Guy Tillim:
Documentary in a New Context
South African photographer Guy Tillim creates lush, complex, interweaving photo essays that seem more like nonfiction novels than photojournalism. Listen to a great 18-minute audio interview with the photographer.
Malick Sidibé Interview
African Photographer Malick Sidibé chronicled the exuberant life of the young people in Sudan in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. We have some wonderful photos and a remarkable interview.
Salt Water Tears in Bangladesh
Wasif Munem was awarded a special prize by the Prix Pictet last year to document the struggles of people in Bangladesh who have lost practically all of their natural resources and ways of life as a result of short-sighted shrimp farming along the coastline. Text by Francis Hodgson.
Aki Lumi: Traceryscape
Monochrome photographs of everyday landscapes and urban scenes are superimposed with crisply detailed line drawings, colored ink, and magnified wings of flies. Photo-based artwork by Aki Lumi,text by Linn K.
Archives
volume 19 (1.2009-3.2009)
World Press
Photo Winners
2009
Discover the photos considered to be the best in worldwide photojournalism. Lens Culture features the winners in a high-resolution slideshow.
David LaChapelle Retrospective in Paris
American Pop Photo Artist David LaChapelle makes work that is usually over-the-top. This show highlights some of his best.
Transparent City
Architectural abstraction meets high-tech voyeurism in Michael Wolf's recent photographic study of downtown Chicago. Someone described this work as “Edward Hopper meets Blade Runner."
Love Me, Turkmenistan
Nicholas Righetti’s new photobook takes a serious/playful look at the ubiquitous shrines of propaganda (and other absurdities) erected throughout Turkmenistan to fuel the megalomania of the evil and demented President for Life, Saparmurat Niyazov.
Last Stop: Rockaway Park
A close-knit community of impoverished social outcasts live on an isolated peninsula at the far edge of New York City. Juliana Beasley has befriended many of these people, and has documented the squalor of their lives for the past four years.
Trans Siberian Flipbook
Jeff Vanderpool photographed literally thousands of landscapes and scenes that passed by during one train journey from Moscow to Beijing. Every image was shot from inside the train. Far from being a travelogue, this series explores the intersection of imagination and memory.
Dogs Can't Read
As a personal side-project, Daniel Milnor photographs dogs in the streets of many of the exotic cities where he is sent on assignment. He's created a series of self-published books of dogs (and graffiti) from Palermo, Tijuana, Paris and New York.
Heavy Light
This book, created to accompany the exhibit at ICP, provides a subjective and lively overview of contemporary Japanese lens-based art. The work of 13 artists is presented, along with personal and insightful interviews with each artist.
Little Austria
Residents of quaint summer cottages in Austria agreed to be photographed in their tidy gardens by Italian photographer Gianmaria Gava. What's unique about them is that they are clustered together in a tiny patch of urban oasis in downtown Vienna — a walled-in, fairytale community surrounded by concrete offices and industrial buildings.
Looking at the U.S. 1957-1986
A retrospective of the documentary photography of Fred Baldwin and Wendy Watriss touches on important historic events that still vibrate with relevance today.
Beijing to
St. Petersburg
Dee O'Connell captured moments of surreal dislocation as she traveled on the Trans Siberian Railway in the dead of winter. She savored her trip across seven time zones by taking "lo-fi" photos with her point-and-shoot camera.
Visual Haiku
The small poetic photographs of Masao Yamamoto seem to come from another era, filled with lost memories and nostalgia. In a great interview, the photographer talks about his work and passions.
Roger Ballen Interview,
and Recent Photographs
Beautiful, surreal and disturbing, the artwork of Roger Ballen has attracted vocal criticism — positive and negative — since the early 1990s. In an exclusive audio interview for Lens Culture, Ballen talks at length about his photography. Listen to the interview while looking at 25 recent photographs.
Look Me in the Eyes:
Russian Photographic Portraits
An eclectic exhibition at the Russian Tea Room Gallery in Paris pulls together photographic portraits made by two generations of Russian photographers.
Twentysix Abandoned Gasoline Stations
French photographer Eric Tabuchi has created a modern day reprise of Ed Ruscha's ground-breaking artist's book from 1963. Forty-five years later, Tabuchi documents an assortment of odd iconic structures that are now lifeless ruins.
Diane Ducruet: Family Games
In a brilliant new photobook, French photographer Diane Ducruet has come up with a thought-provoking series of staged portraits that play with the ideas of family dynamics, identity, control, influence, postures of power, and more.
Hiroh Kikai: Asakusa Portraits
No doubt, this the best photobook to be published in 2008. After working in near obscurity for 30 years, Hiroh Kikai has emerged as a modern-day master portrait maker, patiently documenting eccentric people who pass through an old neighborhood in Tokyo that used to be the city's entertainment district. He's in the same league with Diane Arbus and August Sander. Read the book review, plus a great interview with Kikai by Marc Feustel.
Fault Line Turkey
Turkey is experiencing massive, rapid migration from rural communities into brand-new expanses of impersonal housing on the borders of larger cities. George Georgiou has been documenting this change for four-and-a-half years. Here we show work from two ongoing projects.Archives
volume 18 (11.2008-12.2008)
Library of Dust
A beautiful new over-sized book from David Maisel documents the disquieting beauty of final remains in an old insane asylum.
Starless
Italian photographer Massimiliano Tomasso Rezza has created a poetic and cinematic series of photos that reflect an introspective world view tinged with curiosity and melancholy.
Hand to Mouth
To qualify for future membership in the European Union, Romania is banning some farming practices that will forever change the lives of communities living in the Carpathian Mountains. Photographer Tessa Bunney documents these centuries-old customs before they disappear.
Prix Pictet 2008: Sustainability
See work from all 18 finalists chosen for a major new global prize in photography.
Norwegian Light
Norwegian photographer Catherine Cameron captures beauty in some unlikely places around the world. An all-new solo show in Paris comes on the heels of successful exhibitions on four continents in 2008.
Attentional Landscapes
How much visual information do we really need to see a picture and understand it? How do photographs define our memories, and what would happen if the photos started to lose their details? Odette England explores these ideas and more in her new project.
UK Football Fans
Adam Rubin documents the hyper-real passion of football fans in the UK — from the stadiums and the pubs, to how they dress and decorate their homes.
Tokyo Stories
A new exhibition of 100 vintage photographs shows the changing faces of Tokyo, from the 1930s through the 1990s. Curator Marc Feustel provides insight and context as we view the work of three very different photographers.
Meta-Photographs
Greek photographer Panayotis Papadimitropoulos delivers a text and examples of his re-worked photographs, where the artistry comes after the prints are made.
Photo Book Review:
JH Engstrom
The images in this new book are all mostly veiled in what looks like carbon-exhaust smog. After the initial surprise, a coherent story starts to evolve.
Fragments: Modern Pinhole Snapshots
Using a crude pinhole camera with ultra-high-speed film, Guillaume Zuili has developed a new hybrid technique that yields wonderfully nostalgic images from contemporary scenes.
Richard Avedon:
Portraits of Power
Richard Avedon had access to practically everyone who held some kind of power from the 1950s through the beginning of the 21st century in America.This new book brings these portraits of power together for the first time.
Brighton Photo Biennial:
Images of War, War of Images
"The making and use of images can be a part of the conflict, as well as merely recording it." Curator Julian Stallabrass has pulled together a very intelligent show about photography and war. Read more about his ideas and discoveries in a great interview. Warning: many of the images may be quite disturbing.
Paris Photo 2008: Preview
This year, the world's leading international photography fair has a special focus on the photography of Japan. And there's lots of other great work to see, too — 500 artists, from all continents, will have their photographs on display. Lens Culture offers an extensive sneak peak of 200 photos.
People's Parks in China
UK-based photographer Kurt Tong weaves together pictures from his childhood and photographs of deteriorating public parks in contemporary China to create a lyrical meditation on time and memory.
A Husband in Paris
Potential "husbands" for an attractive Eastern European girl were all asked to pose with her so she could see what kind of couple they would make. This funny and thought-provoking project by Serbian photographer Katarina Radovic is not as far-fetched as it might seem.Archives
volume 17 (9.2008-10.2008)
Daily Pilgrims
Portuguese photographer Virgilio Ferreira creates ephemeral portraits of urban dwellers against the crisp backdrops of six modern Asian cities.
Don't look now
Desire, eroticism, and closed spaces of intimacy are explored in this series of self-portraits by Danish photographer Camilla Holmgren.
Polaroid Art:
pierced, bent, and scratched with writing
Korean artist Mimi Youn is pushing the Polaroid medium (literally) to find a new way of expression.
25 luxury designs for plastic water bottles
There are over 3,000 brands of bottled water worldwide. Frank Yamrus photographs 25 of them, stripped of their labels, as if they are jewels or trophies, symbols of status and vanity.
Markings
Details of quirky sidewalk designs from San Francisco's Sunset District are peculiar and poetic. Photographer Jim Vecchi makes them look like mid-century works of art.
The Invisible Age: Self-portraits of women between 50 and 65
A group show of 31 women who use photography to explore the way American society deals with the identity and image of women in this certain age bracket.
Out from Under
Favoring the distracting elements of digital snapshots, Ebbe Stub Wittrup's landscapes become hardly recognizable monochromatic surfaces.
Forty-eight States
Forty-eight vertical landscapes shot through the windows of railroad trains moving across the United States create a cool nostalgic look at the notion of a country as experienced by Candace Plummer Gaudiani.
Noorderlicht Photo festival preview:
Before and after Communism
A sweeping overview of photography from Eastern Europe — some old views, and lots of new discoveries.
Fictitious Filmstills
Twin sisters, Carine and Elisabeth Krecke, experiment with new techniques of drawing in combination with digital technologies to create a simulation of photography.
Wake
The large-format images of Adam Jeppesen inhabit a liminal space rich with atmosphere, obscuring as much as it reveals.
Being in Pictures
A life's work of photography, collage, feminism, and keen observations on the sexes, makes the new book by Joanne Leonard exceptional reading.
Photo murals that float
in space and time
American artist-photographer Jeff Cowen opens a one-man show in Barcelona that is richly diverse and stunningly honest and alive.
Joachim Schmid:
Celebrating
photographic garbage
Berlin-based critic and conceptual artist Joachim Schmid collects and re-uses photographs that other people throw away. Appropriating these discarded, ripped, and mundane photographs, he creates artwork that is alluring, intriguing, and captivating. He speaks about his passion for visual trash, in a great, exclusive audio interview.
Natural red hair
A young photographer from the Netherlands, Hanne van der Woude, combines her love of verdant Dutch landscapes with an almost obsessive fascination with natural red hair. The photos vibrate with hyper-real intensity.
Desperately perfect
In a photo-essay from the renowned Vaganova Ballet Academy in St. Petersburg, Russia, Rachel Papo documents how, from the age of ten until eighteen, twelve hours a day, six days a week, young ballet students live lives of fierce competition.
48 hours and Urban Rooms
Austrian photographer Yenny Huber compresses city "landscapes" into dense overlapping images, all layered in-camera with film.
Beyond the visible
New York-based photographer Melissa Fleming uses two distinct techniques to capture nature’s more subtle and interesting beauty that is often beyond the visible.Archives
volume 16 (7.2008-8.2008)
Battered
Some young people in the suburbs of Finland like to go out, get drunk, and fight. Harri Palviranta documents these scenes like a modern-day Weegee.
Waves and visual haiku from Japan
NAMI is a series of photos of waves around the shores of Sado Island in Japan. The photographer, a young Buddhist monk named Syoin Kajii, watches the water patiently, waiting for a moment of surprise.
Hamburg Sud
A small, poetic series of photographs all made on the same day in Hamburg.
Net Works
First she made art with Nylon stockings. Now Elaine Duigenan is back with a quirky series of digital photograms made from vintage hairnets.
Mobile Phone Fortune Telling
Psychic/photographer Beth Lilly puts both talents to work one day per month, when she uses the camera on her mobile phone to predict the fortunes of strangers who call in from all over the world.
Deliver Me
Laura Noel takes a look at smokers who have recently become outcasts in health-conscious politically-correct societies.
Urban Tree Portraits
City trees in Buenos Aires show their individual character and awkward charm in this series of portraits by Emma Livingston.
Photo Espana 2008: a preview
For a couple months every summer, the City of Madrid hosts one of the best photo festivals in the world. Here is a peak at what you can discover there in 2008.
Look 3 Festival of the Photograph
For the second year in a row, this new festival in Charlottesville, Virginia, is hosting on-stage interviews with some of today's best photographers. This year's line-up includes Mary Ellen Mark, James Nachtwey, and Joel-Peter Witkin.
Oblivion:
Los Angeles from the Air
David Maisel creates highly detailed aerial photographs of the densely packed sprawl of Los Angeles. Is it any wonder that it looks alien and uninviting?
Serial No. 3817131
At an age when social, sexual, and educational explorations are at their highest point, the life of an eighteen-year-old Israeli girl is interrupted to serve in an army involved in daily conflict and war. Rachel Papo was inducted into the Israeli Army when she turned 18. Fifteen years later, armed only with her camera, she decided to go back to see if it was as bad as she remembered.
Hyper
The hypermarkets of France sometimes look like consumerism on steroids. Photographer Denis Darzacq takes it one step further with his series of "shoppers" flying and floating through the aisles like superheros or astronauts. And yes, they are real photographs, no tricks.
81 Preview Photos:
2008 Festival in Arles
Take a sneak peak of the eclectic mix of photography that will be shown at Les Rencontres d'Arles Photographie this summer, starting July 8 through September 14. Be sure to check out Lens Culture's high resolution slide show.
The Last Days of Higley
The American Southwest is slowly succumbing to the inevitable sprawl of suburban developments. Former resident Andrew Phelps documents the demise of a small rural town as it is bull-dozed into another massive, generic bedroom community.Archives
volume 15 (5.2008-6.2008)
Soldier
Who are the men and women who volunteer to fight in America's wars, and what do they look like after their first tours of duty?
Photographer Suzanne Opton provides some uncomfortably intimate portraits, and tells her story about this controversial work in an exclusive audio interview with Lens Culture.
Russian springtime playgrounds
As winter's snows thaw, Trevor Traynor captures the faded colors of Moscow's playgrounds.
Drifting Away: remembering the disappeared from Colombia
Colombian artist Erika Diettes has created a light-filled photo-based memorial installation to honor and remember the thousands of her countrymen who are missing or dead.
The shapes of formal gardens
Photographer Beth Dow aims for pictures that have "a meditative quality to reflect the spiritual urges that inspired the earliest gardens some six thousand years ago." Her platinum prints make them feel even more wonderfully unreal and magical.
Bejewelled Carcasses
Patricia Pastore zooms in on the beauty of dead bugs, with bright lights and highly selective focus. The results shimmer with minimalist elegance.
Night Park
Dogs and people cavort like dancers in the dark when photographer Susan Bein experiments with hand-held late-night long exposures.
Flowers
Colorblind photographer Tony Mendoza decided that after 30 years of black-and-white it was time to tackle color photography. These flowers look like none you have probably seen in your garden.
American Suburb
Douglas Rickhard chronicles the twilight-zone empty feeling of 60s and 70s era suburban housing developments in the United States.
Written in the Past
Joachim Froese presents us with zen-like meditations and dream-like imagery in his series of triptychs.
County Fair Winners
Dan Nelken takes a long loving look at the competitions at county fairs in America, and gives us a gift of early 21st century rural Americana, circa 1998 - 2007.
Before and After Death
A stunning series of portraits of people — shortly before and just after they die — is touring Europe now, and tackling one of the biggest remaining taboos in Western societies. Photos by Walter Schels, text by Beate Lakotta.
Surfers: modern/primitives
Using a century-old photo technique, photographer Joni Sternbach creates portraits of modern-day surfers.
When men call women names
Bird, bitch, fox... UK photographer Rachel Graves created a menagerie of characters based on the derogatory terms that women hear on the street every day. These self-portrait diptychs are disarmingly simple, seductive and thought-provoking.Archives
volume 14 (3.2008-4.2008)
Here and gone:
21st century
anonymous portraits
Anonymous urban dwellers are photographed in the artificial light of public spaces. Photos by Russian photographer Alexei Vassiliev.
Book Review:
The Roma Journeys
One of the best photo books of 2008. Photographer Joakim Eskildsen has created a stunningly rich portrait of contemporary Roma Gypsy life as it is played out in seven different countries.
What remains in an empty home?
Norwegian Oyvind Hjelmen photographs an old family home as it is being emptied after several generations have come and gone.
World Press Photo Winners
Here are some of the very best photos taken in the world of photojournalism during 2007.
Deutsche Borse Prize Finalists
More than 40 images from the four finalists in one of Europe's most prestigious photography contests that comes with a £30,000 cash prize.
Book Review:
The Mother of
All Journeys
Photographer Dinu Li re-traces the steps of his mother's life travels from China to Hong Kong to England. This family history is told through a deft mixture of old family photos, oral history, and new photos of the places that were significant in her past, but shown as they are today.
Gender, Politics, and Images of Power
Deborah Oparallo juxtaposes 18th century power portraits of male leaders with internet images of women in fetish costumes.
Silent Nests
Vicki Topaz documents 14th to 18th century pigeon houses in France — disappearing symbols of aristocratic status.
Photography in China: 1934-2008
The world's most comprehensive collection and overview of photography from China is premiering in a mammoth city-wide exhibition in Houston, Texas, as part of FotoFest 2008. Lens Culture is thrilled to present 60 photographs from the exhibition — many never seen before outside of China.
Patti Smith Polaroids
A major solo exhibition of Patti Smith's visual art opened in Paris on March 28. The show includes lots of Polaroid photos taken by Smith over the course of her forty-year career as a rock 'n roll punk poet visionary.
Army Cooks
Did you ever think about the men who have to feed hungry armies out on battlefields? What do they do when basic food and ingredients are hard to find? How can they inspire their men on to victory? Photographer Martin Kollar delivers an eye-opening photo-essay from Eastern Europe. Text by Peter Kerekes.
Saul Leiter: Retrospective
A European retrospective, and a new book, celebrate the black-and-white and color street photography of American Saul Leiter from the 1950s-60s. Archives
volume 13 (1.2008-2.2008)
Grit of Life
Raw, direct, tender, harsh, sad, and beautiful. A portfolio of all new work by young Swedish photographer Marcus Erixson.
Painted Rituals
Aboriginal traditional dances photographed by Argentinean photographer Lorena Vaschetti. Text by Finn Thrane.
Eyes of an Island:
Japanese Photography 1945-2007
In-depth critical essay on the evolution of Japanese photography since WWII. Written by Marc Feustel, and illustrated with a diverse range of images and photographic styles.
Workers
Eastern European men from all social classes migrate long distances to harvest the crops in Germany. Ingar Krauss captures individual portraits after a long day of manual labor.
We're All the Same!
Dutch photographer Hans Eijkelboom just published a 3-volume sociological photo report proving that, at least visually, life in New York, Paris, and Shanghai is nearly identical.
No Love Lost
Photographer Michael Grieve takes us into seedy swingers' joints, back-stage at strip clubs, and in between takes on porn film sets in the UK in this revealing and not-so-sexy photo essay.
Bosnia: Blood + Honey
The war in Bosnia-Herzegovina from 1992 until 1995 took a great toll on human life and infrastructure. Today, there are still an estimated 2.2 million refugees living in crowded refugee camps. Nathalie Mohadjer gives us a look inside one camp, and writes a concise overview of the current situation.
The Absence of All Colors
Brazilian artist Ludmila Steckelberg doctored the photos in her collective family albums by removing the images of her relatives who died, leaving black silhouettes where the dead had once been alive.
Misrach: On the Beach
Richard Misrach takes us high in the air over dream-like tropical settings in his latest book.
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