Archives
volume 35 (12.2012-2.2013)
My Star Wars Family
Annalisa Brambilla documents the story of a family dealing daily with autism as it takes them on a journey of constant struggle and discovery.
Barber Shop: Grand Prize Multimedia
Elena Bulygina has created a short, quiet meditation about self-body-image in the age of PhotoShop.
From Above and Below, new photobook by Sharon Harper
Sharon Harper deliberately challenges the objective, scientific reality of photography in this delightful book of her chance-inspired artistic visions of the heavens. She combines long time exposures with multiple exposures, and moves the vantage point of the camera in between, and often waits for hours, days, weeks or months to layer another exposure onto the same piece of 4 x 5 film.
Hyper Photo Collage
Jim Kazanjian cobbles together bits and pieces of photos that he finds online, and creates new imaginary places.
Roland, Age 19, Alias: Lady Gaga
UK photographer Michelle Sank makes portraits that are rich in visual, sociological and psychological nuances.
Deutsche Börse Finalists
Four photographers are finalists for the lucrative £30,000 annual European photography prize. We offer links to the websites of each finalist, as well as comments from the jury. This photo © Chris Killip.
Snapshots from China: 1966 Cultural Revolution
Snapshots from China: 1966 Cultural RevolutionRecently discovered color snapshots by Solange Brand from Peking in 1966 at the start of Mao’s Cultural Revolution — a casual view into a world often known only by black-and-white Western journalism or official Chinese color propaganda.
Photo Modernism,
circa 1850
Photo Modernism, circa 1850
Gustave Le Gray (1820-1884) was the most important photographer of the Second Empire in France. He initiated a new way of seeing, and his students went on to pioneer styles of photography that seem startlingly modern 160 years later.
Amanda Zackem Multimedia
Amanda Zackem MultimediaThis short commercial documentary about an innovative bicycle designer won 3rd prize in our Multimedia category.
Andrea Stultiens
This low-tech photo studio in Uganda allows portrait sitters to look like world travellers.Andrea Stultiens
I Used to be You:
Grand Prize Portfolio Winner
Kyoko Hamada, a young photographer, has created a series of self-portraits as she might appear when she is an older woman.
Swallows of Syria
Women and children refugees from civil war in Syria photographed and interviewed by Matilde Gattoni. These former middle class women now live stark, lonely, nearly hopeless lives in Lebanon.
36 Winners Announced:
Photography & Multimedia
In a record-breaking fourth year for the annual Lens Culture International Exposure Awards, the judges have just announced nine top winners and 27 honorable mention awards for photography and multimedia that was submitted from artists in 52 countries. Enjoy!
Chris McCaw: Sunburn
Brilliantly calculated long exposures of the sun, made with paper negatives in a custom-made large format camera, force the sun to physically burn a trace of its arc into each photograph by American photographer Chris McCaw. His new book is our favorite photobook of 2012.
Photo Journalisms: Multimedia by Ed Kashi
Photojournalist Ed Kashi has struggled to balance his personal family life with his life on the road, where he has made hundreds of award-winning photographs — and witnessed wars, famines, natural disasters, civil uprisings and more. This short multimedia presentation presents an overview of his recent book, Photo Journalisms.
In and Out of Fashion: Viviane Sassen
Award-winning Dutch artist and fashion photographer, Viviane Sassen, is featured in a major mid-career retrsopective at Huis Marseille in Amsterdam. Her quirky, personal take on photography has injected new energy and a sense of everyday celebration into the field.
Being Together, via Webcam
Far-flung families can now enjoy virtual get-togethers via webcams. Photographer John Clang creates family portraits using Skype projections of virtual family gatherings.
Sony World Photography Awards 2013 Finalists
Forty-five photographers were selected as shortlist finalists from more than 122,000 entries for the Sony Awards this year. Two will win cash prizes. Lens Culture features a high-resolution slideshow of all finalists. This photo © Anurag Kumar.
Archives
volume 34 (10.2012-11.2012)
Hand-Painted Mask Portraits
w/ iPhone
w/ iPhone
Fine-art photographer Vee Speers got silly with some friends and made a great series of impromptu portraits with her collection of vintage masks and her iPhone.
Preview: Paris
Mois de la Photo
Mois de la Photo
145 images serve up an appetizing preview of this biennial citywide celebration of photography. This image © Sarah Moon.
Photo Fringe Festival in Paris
More than 90 emerging photographers will have exhibitions throughout Paris during November. Here’s a preview.
I Belong Jarrow
Chris Harrison’s new photo book explores his industrial hometown in Britain, seen through the eyes of an expatriate.
Car Poolers
Alejandro Cartagena offers up a God’s-eye view of laborers in Mexico who must commute far distances to find work in the rich suburbs.
Flight Attendants
Flight AttendantsBrian Finke spent two years of his life, flying around the world, photographing uniformed flight attendants — documenting stylistic distinctions among airline “brands” as they attempt to simultaneously convey authority, safety, adventure, and the allure of travel.
Nue York
Nue YorkErica Simone wondered what it would feel like to be naked in the big city. So she embarked on a project of self-portraits in some unlikely public places.
Gomorrah Girl
Gomorrah GirlValerio Spada’s award-winning photobook about a murder in Naples, Italy is a visual rumination about adolescence, choices and chances in a land of Camorrah (the name of the Mafia in Naples).
Guardians
Guardians“In the art museums of Russia, women sit in the galleries and guard the collections,” writes photographer Andy Freeberg. “When you look at the paintings and sculptures, the presence of the women becomes an inherent part of viewing the artwork itself.”
Anthropocene
Composited from thousands of aerial views from internet satellite images, David Thomas Smith’s artwork refers both to ancient Persian rug patterns and the complex structures that make up the centers of global capitalism.
VII: The Magazine
Exclusive multimedia reports from inside the world of photo-journalism. Often disturbing, always insightful. Updated with fresh content weekly. Shown: detail from a photo-essay, “The Rat Tribe” by Sim Chi Yi, about young Chinese workers who live in windowless underground rooms so they can take part in otherwise lively city life.
Boikos in Ukraine
Life in a small Boiko village in the Ukrainian Carpathian Mountains is the focus of this poetic, dream-like photo revery by Jan Brykczynski.
Preview: Unseen Amsterdam
Preview: Unseen AmsterdamA preview of some great new photography that debuts in an all-new photo fair in Amsterdam. Hip and cool.
Jeff Cowen: Video Interview
For 25 years, Berlin-based artist-photographer Jeff Cowen has worked exclusively with black-and-white film to produce stunning mural-size photographic works. Combining painting, drawing, sculpture, hand-toning and photography, he makes unique art objects that resonate with fine art collectors.
Unfortunately, it was paradise
Lars Håberg attempts to capture the constant heavy “psychology of occupation” by documenting the daily life of Palestinians who live in the West Bank.
Video: Jacob Aue Sobol
“Arrivals & Departures”
Magnum photographer Jacob Aue Sobol made a trek from Moscow to Ulan Bator to Beijing in 28 days, often making more than 1,000 photographs each day for 28 days straight. In this short video, he talks with Lens Culture founder Jim Casper about his adventures, and shares more than 30 of his top picks from that trip.
Preview: Paris Photo 2012
Lens Culture is pleased to present a high-resolution slideshow preview of 276 photographs that will be featured at this year’s Paris Photo fair. It’s a vibrant and eclectic mix that represents a truly global snapshot of the photographic art market right now.
Strangers in the Light
Catherine Balet explores the dominance of media screens in contemporary life, and her images also refer to the narcissistic self-awareness expressed on social networks and the current approach to quick, light mobile photography that affects our visual culture.
Embodiment:
A Portrait of Queer Life in America
Molly Landreth is archiving a rapidly changing community and the lives of people who offer brave new visions of what it means to be queer in America today.
Intended Consequences:
Rwandan Children Born of Rape
Jonathan Torgovnik’s series of environmental portraits made in Rwanda of women that were brutally raped during the Rwandan genocide and the children they bore from those brutal encounters. Intensely sad personal interviews accompany the portraits.
Anna & Eve
Using folk tales as inspiration, Viktoria Sorochinski creates staged photos of a very young real-life mother and her daughter, as they grow up together.
Grandmothers’ Best Cooking —
from around the world!
Gabriele Galimberti travels the world in search of adventure, good stories, interesting people and ... great local food. He’s an Italian who loves to cook and eat, so it’s no surprise that one of his “side projects” is a unique series of diptychs: Grandmothers from around the world, sharing their most popular recipes. One of the more exotic dishes (above): Caterpillar in tomato sauce, from Malawi.
Archives
volume 33 (5.2012-9.2012)
Chino Otsuka: Photo Album
Chino Otsuka: Photo AlbumEvolving interpretations of memory, identity, and mental time-travel infuse the richly varied self portraits of Chino Otsuka.
Photomonth Krakow
Photomonth KrakowOne of the summer’s best photo festivals touches on a wide range of approaches to using the medium to create art, posing questions, and bringing together diverse communities. This image © Sergey Bratkov, #3, from the Armygirls series.
You Look At Me Like An Emergency
Cig Harvey’s super-saturated staged color photographs sometimes test the limits of conceptual whimsy, while her hand-written texts alter between insight and syrupy solipsism.
Landmasses and Railways
Completely wordless, Bertrand Fleuret’s photobook reads like a dream narrative, subject to an endless variety of interpretations.
7 Rooms
Over an extended period, Rafal Milach portrays seven members of a generation caught between the mentality of the old Soviet regime and the Russia of the Putin era.
Between Flesh and Film
Less a photobook than an academic thesis, this book explores the highly charged creative period experienced by Francesca Woodman while she lived in Italy.
Les Amies de Place Blanche
Originally published in 1983, this newly-reprinted (and expanded) book focuses on the transsexual community living around the Place Blanche district of Paris in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The book established Christer Strömholm’s reputation as one of the leading photographers of the twentieth century.
Iranian Photography
An excellent overview of 40 contemporary photographers in Iran. Text in French.
A self-published conceptual partial-erasure of Robert Frank’s seminal photobook draws attention to minute details in each photo, and has created some controversy throughout the photographic community.
Elegies of Manumission
Max de Esteban’s elegant new book combines high-minded philosophical reveries with beautiful portraits of intriguing characters.
A Visit with Magritte
This book celebrates Duane Michals’ 1965 visit and photographic collaboration with the great Belgian painter of inverse worlds and bizarre hybrid forms.
Smokey Mountain Cambodia
600 children and 2000 adults work around the clock at Smokey Mountain, Phnom Penh’s municipal rubbish dump, seeking and sorting recyclables to sell. Nigel Dickinson’s disturbing and haunting images tell a story that words could never convey.
The Color of Hay: The Peasants of Maramures
Kathleen Laraia McLaughlin documents the last days of centuries-old traditions in Northern Transylvania.
Robert Adams' Prairie
Robert Adams’ photographs offer an unsentimental view of the American wilderness in an exquisite and expanded reprint of this book originally published in 1978.
Posed, Unposed: C Photo, Vol. 3
The volume Posed/Unposed outlines the field of tension between the entirely spontaneous and unposed on one hand, and the striving for a perfect pose on the other, depicting a variety of approaches from photojournalism or amateur snapshots to advertising, portraiture and fashion photography.
Örjan Henriksson
Henriksson’s quiet, formal compositions are near-perfect meditations on shape, light, shadow and texture.
Kodak Girl
A wonderful compilation of early advertisements and some great vintage photographs that helped to launch the age of the snapshot.
Power: 12 finalists, 115 images from Prix Pictet 2012
Lens Culture just published a high-resolution slide show of 115 images presenting portfolios of the 12 finalists for the prestigious Prix Pictet. The broad theme this year is Power. This photo © by finalist Daniel Beltrá. Oil Spill #1.
Living Legend: Poland's Jerzy Lewczynski
A wonderful retrospective of the wildly creative and experimental work of Jerzy Lewczynski (born 1924), introduces this relatively unknown photographer to the international art scene.
Preview: Arles Photo Festival 2012
Lens Culture has produced a high-resolution slideshow preview of more than 60 images being displayed at Les Rencontres d'Arles 2012 photography festival this summer. This photo © Vincent Fournier - Baf Room 65, Building 25E, Ergol Suit #01, Guiana Space Center, Kourou, 2007.
Chongqing: City of Ambition
Swiss-born photographer, Ferit Kuyas, became fascinated with the life and landscapes on the ever-changing fringes of one of the largest cities in world. He presents a compelling introduction to his view on China’s explosive growth.
In the Car with R
Part road-trip, part hilarious narrative diary, this unique photobook presents two distinct points-of-view as the Polish photographer, Rafal Milach, and his local guide, Huldar Breidfjörd, continually start and stop on a manic 1450 km 10-day drive around Iceland.
Interrogations
In this terrifyingly real photobook, Canadian photojournalist Donald Weber takes us inside police interrogation rooms in Ukraine.
In the Shadow of Things
Photographer Léonie Hampton explores the ups and downs of her mother's obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) through a collaborative family project that combines intimate photos and extended transcripts of recorded family conversations and arguments. A hybrid photobook that is insightful, amusing, disturbing, and quite memorable.
The Family
Jocelyn Bain Hogg’s latest book, The Family, takes us very close into the lives of London’s seedier gangs and organized criminals.
Redheaded Peckerwood
Blurring the lines between investigative reporting, fictional dramatic re-enactment and vivid imagination, Christian Patterson weaves together a photo story of real-life teenagers who violently murdered ten people during a three-day killing spree.
Burke + Norfolk
Already an award-winning photographer of contemporary Afghanistan, Simon Norfolk returned this time to follow the footsteps of a relatively unknown Irish war photographer, John Burke, who had documented the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878-1880). This immensely engaging book presents the works of both photographers, as well as compelling essays that offer context to this subtle and complex work.
Parisii
Trying to see daily life in Paris beyond the cliché views as we typically think of it, Spanish-born photographer Marcel Pedragosa has created a series that captures modern urbanity in dark, intimate, anonymous moments of blurred contemporary existence.Archives
volume 32 (1.2012-4.2012)
Ernst Haas: Color Correction
Ernst Haas: Color CorrectionThe early master of color photography was never celebrated for his personal, experimental work — until now.
Boundaries of Portraiture
Boundaries of PortraitureA new group exhibition in Boston explores the limits and peripheries of photo-based portraits. The image shown here is by Holly Lynton.
Cruel and Unusual
A thought-provoking, narrative-rich series of photographs from inside prison walls explores those punishments which may, or may not, offend society’s “evolving sense of decency”. This image is by Lloyd Degrane.
Berenice Abbott
A comprehensive exhibition covering the life of this legendary American photographer reveals a delightful array of interests and subject matter, well beyond her most familiar images.
When You Were Dying
In this series of work, Rana Javadi starts with old photographs from a famous Iranian photography studio, and then layers them with vintage fabrics, dying flowers and tarnished mirrors — creating a nostalgic tribute to a bygone era of easy living in Iran.
White Shadow
Slovakian photographer Tono Stano has been artfully distorting positive and negative space in photos of nude models — and the results are wonderful, delightful, surreal, and hard to deconstruct.
Poor Politicians
Frederic Lezmi used his iPhone camera to photograph a series of 28 vandalized political posters he discovered while walking the streets of Kosovo.
Friedlander Self Portraits 1958-2011
This wonderfully delightful book contains more than five decades of quirky self-portraits made by the American master Lee Friedlander.
Homework
Sean Lee, a young photographer based in Singapore, collaborates with his family members to make healing art and silly fun.
Casa de Mujeres
Rachel Mozman directed her mother to play the roles of three women in one fictional Latin American home. These photographs can be read as portraits — like a nested doll — and read as images that reveal the conflict of vanity, race and class that live within one woman.
Apashka
An old woman leads a cult-like community in the practice of Sufi rituals on a holy mountain in the far reaches of Kazakhstan. Photo-essay by Pavel Prokopchik.
Archive of Modern Conflict
The inaugural issue of AMC² journal brings together odd groups of work that illuminate lost corners of our cultural life. Photography is, as ever, the keystone of the collection.
The Three Graces
A wonderful compilation of anonymous found photos, each featuring three different women posing for unknown photographers. A wild, loving look at “snapshots of 20th century women”.
Another Family
Russian photographer Irina Popova created a firestorm of outrage when she displayed her documentary series about two young drug addicts and their baby living in squalor in a squat in St. Petersburg.
DANCE
Japanese fine art photographer Seiji Shibuya has just published a masterwork of poetic visual imagery.
Promising Waters
Photographer Mila Teshaieva is documenting the not-yet-abandoned old ways of living, compared to the rapid, unprecedented change occuring in 3 new oil-rich nation-states bordering the Caspian Sea.
Ai Weiwei: Interlacing
Ai Weiwei uses photography and video as he incessantly documents and critiques the everyday urban and social realities in China (and elsewhere), and broadcasts it worldwide over blogs and Twitter. A major exhibition in Paris reveals the range of his prolific, provocative creativity. Above: Ai Weiwei with rock star Zuoxiao Zuzhou in the elevator when taken in custody by the police.
World Press Photo Winners
Awards for the best photojournalism from 2011 were just announced by World Press Photo. Samuel Aranda’s compelling photograph from Yemen (above) was declared the Photo of the Year. Read more about this and other winning images from around the globe, and view them here in Lens Culture’s high-resolution slideshow.
Here are the Young Men (Marked)
How do the faces of soldiers change — before, during, and then after, war? Claire Felicie created enigmatic triptych portraits of Dutch marines before, during and after they were deployed to Uruzgan, Afghanistan in 2009-2010.
Disquiet Days / Jours intranquilles
This brilliant photobook is an intimate diary-like exploration of personal and cultural identity, compiled by French-born Bruno Boudjelal, who travels to Algiers to discover his father’s homeland and to meet his extended family for the first time.
Fukushima "No Go" Zone
Following up on his ground-breaking coverage of the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Pierpaolo Mittica shows us what remains of the homes, farms and neighborhoods around the Fukushima power plant in Japan.
Landscape Boundaries
Dutch photographer Ineke Key uses a panorama camera to capture the odd juxtapositions of land use in the ever-changing Netherlands.