Lens Culture Blog being updated by Firmdot.com

Now that we are attracting more than a million unique visitors to www.lensculture.com per year, we've been upgrading our technical infrastructure to improve speed, bandwidth, security and visitor experience. One important part of our overall re-vamp: The folks at Firmdot.com have promised to deliver the full technical potential of our blog by upgrading us to the latest version of Movable Type blogging software.

Portland's Blue Sky Gallery is getting a new home!

Since 1975, Portland’s great non-profit Blue Sky Gallery has produced 583 solo shows by 500 artists, 46 group shows, 140 photo posters, hundreds of books, exhibition catalogues… and lots of good will throughout photography communities worldwide. After 32 years of renting, they’re finally taking the plunge and buying and building a truly great, big, new permanent gallery space. If you have a little cash to contribute, you know it will be going to a great organization. Check out the details on their web site: Blue Sky Gallery.

Local color from Bosnian refugee camps, not a pretty picture

From Blood+Honey, Grab Potog refugee camp, Bosnia, 2004, photographs by Nathalie Mohadjer.

German photographer Nathalie Mohadjer delivers an insightful photo-essay on the plight of some of the 2.2 million refugees still living in crowded run-down refugee camps in Bosnia — more than 10 years after the end of the war. The photos are loaded with the grit of real life, and her text (in English and German) provides a concise background and overview of the situation.

50 more Buddha images...

For the 1,000 Buddha Project in Lens Culture, Kyisoe sent this photo of a Buddha surrounded by bamboo scaffolding in Monywa Township, Myanmar. Approximate height is 350 feet (33 stories).

We’ve just added lots more images submitted from readers around the world to our Buddha Project. Check them out. You may be amazed at the diversity. “Say is that a real tattoo of a Buddha talking on a telephone?”

Removing the dead from photos

Brazilian artist Ludmila Steckelberg has created a body of work that explores the interesecting ideas of memory and loss; passing time and death; and the reliance on photography, and family albums, to help us remember and reconstruct one's personal past. Her work, titled "The Absence of Colors" is simple in concept yet powerfully moving when you see the results.