As always, Lens Culture is filled with a wonderful and eclectic mix of contemporary photography from around the globe. This issue features:

• A high-resolution slideshow of 340 preview picks from the upcoming Paris Photo art fair — with special emphasis this year on Central European photography.

• An exclusive first look at Vee Speers' new series, Immortal, which explores age-old human desires for youth, beauty, perfection, and longing to stop time.

• Frederic Lezmi's long photographic road trip from Vienna to Beirut in search of Where the West becomes the East.

• UK artist Julia Curtin's appropriation and re-use of Depression-era photos in her sculptural projects.

• Xavier Comas' book-length project on elevator culture in Tokyo's Shinjuku district.

• Natan Divr's multifaceted investigation of the consequences of Belief in Israel.

• Ivan Mikhaylov's annotated portraits of young, displaced Russians who each moved from the provinces to find a better life in the bustle of Moscow.

Plus many other great art and documentary projects — an adults-only community in Arizona ... bizarre architecture on the outskirts of Paris ... imaginary forests ... creative re-use of vast underground spaces ... lakeside recreation in the Czech Republic ... the last steam trains in China ... beach-comber scanner art from California ... 60 years of Dutch shooting galleries, and more.

Each week, our special section, VII The Magazine, presents fresh, insightful multimedia reports from photojournalists covering important stories all over the world.

This issue of Lens Culture is our largest edition in six years. Plus, every article, audio and video interview, slideshow, critical essay and book review from the previous 26 issues is still available in Lens Culture's online archives. It's a great source for inspiration.

On top of all this news, we're in the middle of our second annual global photo competition: Lens Culture International Exposure Awards 2010. Last year's submissions were stellar — and many of the winners found continued success around the world. This year, in addition to cash prizes and other awards, all winners and honorable mentions will be featured in Lens Culture — and 60 winning prints will be exhibited in Lens Culture traveling shows at galleries in Paris, New York and San Francisco.

Deadline for entries is September 18, 2010. Enter your photos today.

We hope you enjoy this new issue. Please let us know, and tell your friends!

This year there are more cash prizes, plus all our winners -- as well as all 25 Honorable Mentions -- will be part of a great traveling exhibition, shown at galleries in Paris, New York and San Francisco.

Don't miss this excellent opportunity to win global exposure for your photography. Enter today!

Great, short, 2-minute slideshow with audio commentary from VII photographer Seamus Murphy. He photographed in Afghanistan in 1994, and then revisited the exact same places and photographed again a few weeks ago. Some of his comments:

I returned to Afghanistan in June 2010 and photographed some of the places I had shot on previous trips. It was surprising how little had changed after so many years of violence and war. And after the billions of dollars that Afghanistan and the Afghans are told they should be grateful for. Theres not too much evidence of that in these recent photographs..

Afghans know the Americans will leave and they want the Americans to leave. But what they don’t know, is what will happen when the Americans finally leave?

All 29 of last year’s winners and honorable mentions have continued to achieve notable success with their photography careers. As of September 2010, they will have featured in more than 30 exhibitions worldwide, been published in over 50 different publications and received more than 20 additional awards. Many of the winners have also earned grants, won valuable commissions, and sold prints to both public and private collectors. Several earned gallery representation and places in mentoring and further study programs.

Here is a selection of the achievements of the 2009 winners of the Lens Culture International Exposure Awards:

Exhibited at the following venues:

24th Festival International de Mode et de la Photographie à Hyères, Hyères, France
Arbetets Museum, Norrkjøping, Sweden
Blue Sky Gallery, Portland, OR, USA
De Verdieping, Veldhoven, Netherlands
Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Flash Forward Festival 2010, Toronto, Canada
Fotografiens Hus, Oslo, Norway
FotoWeek DC 2010, Washington DC, USA
Galerie Pennings, Eindhoven, Netherlands
Galleri Gerner, Moss, Norway
Galleri Kontrast, Stockholm, Sweden
Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University, Milwaukee WI, USA
Kunsthalle, Charlottenburg, Denmark
Ministry for Spatial Planning VROM, The Hague, Netherlands
Montparnasse FNAC, Paris, France
Museum of Photographic Arts (MoPA), San Diego, CA, USA
Onward 2010, Project Basho, UK
Photo Center Northwest, Seattle, WA, USA
Photographer’s Gallery, London, UK
Photoplace Gallery, Vermont, USA
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA, USA
Schneider Gallery, Chicago, USA
Slow Exposures, Pike County, Georgia, USA
Southeast Museum of Photography, Daytona State College, Daytona Beach, Florida, USA
The Art of Photography Show 2010, San Diego, CA, USA
The Center for Photography, Woodstock, New York, NY, USA
The National Portrait Gallery London, UK
The Photographic Resource Center, Boston, MA, USA
University of Maine Museum of Art, Bangor, ME, USA
Woodmere Triennial, Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, PA, USA
World Press Photo – World tour 2010

Featured in these publications:

2010 World Press Photo annual
Adbusters, online
American Photography 25th Anniversary Annual, USA
BBC online, UK
Bite! Magazine, online
British Journal of Photography, UK
Das Fotomagazin, Germany
Dazed & Confused, UK
El Pais, El Domingo Magazine, Spain
Esquire, Russia
Femina magazine, India
FOTO8, UK
Global Post, online
Guardian Weekend, UK
Harper’s Magazine, USA
Hotshoe magazine, online
Internazionale, Italy
LENS (The New York Times online), USA
Marie Claire, India
MSNBC, online
Newsweek Japan
Nikon Pro Magazine
PBS: Frontline World, USA
PDFX12 by Yumi Goto, Japan
Purpose, online
Red, UK
Royal Photographic Society, UK
Russian Reporter, Russia
Saturday Telegraph magazine, UK
Seesaw, online
Seven (Sunday Telegraph supplement), UK
Spectrum (Sunday Times magazine), UK
Stella (Sunday Telegraph supplement), UK
STERN, Germany
Sueddeutshe Zeitung Magazin, Germany
Taylor Wessing Prize 2009 annual, UK
Telegraph, India
The Independent on Sunday Magazine, UK
The Sunday Times, UK
TIME.com, online
VQR (Virginia Quarterly Review), USA
VRIJ Magazine, Netherlands
WIG magazine, UK

Won these additional awards:

Art of photography 2009 and 2010: Winner
Black and White Spider awards, international: Nominee Award
Goa International Pinhole Photography Contest 2010
IPA awards, New York: Honorable Mention
Magenta foundation 2010: UK winner
PhotoLucida’s Critical Mass Top 50 Finalists, 2009
PDN Photo Annual: winner
PGB Photo Award 2010: Best Picture of the Year
PGB Photo Award 2010: 1st Prize, Picture Story of the Year
Picture of the year, Norway: 3rd prize Portrait
Prix de la Photographie Paris 2010: Honorable Mention
Silver Eye Center for Photography Fellowship 2009: Honorable Mention
The Photo Review 2009 Competition: 1st prize
The Independent Photographers’ Terry O’Neill Award: 3rd place
World Press Photo 2010: 1st Prize Stories, General News
World Press Photo 2010: 1st Prize Portraits, Singles

Lens Culture International Exposure Awards 2010 global photography competition is now open for submissions. Once again we have a stellar international jury, and this year we’re offering:

• new expanded categories
• more cash prizes, and
• international traveling exhibitions of all winning photographs.

The deadline for entries is September 18, 2010. Full details are at: lensculture.com/awards. Enter your best work today!

We are thrilled to announce that the Lens Culture International Exposure Awards 2010 are now open for photography submissions.

Lens Culture International Exposure Awards aim to discover, reward, and promote talented, new, emerging and established photographers from around the world.

We’re looking for exciting images from every continent, and from diverse points of view: documentary, fine art, photojournalism, street photography, nature, sports, fashion, poetic, personal, abstract and human.

An international jury of photography experts will review and judge every photo submitted.

This year, in addition to cash awards and other prizes, we're delighted to announce that all winning photographs will be featured in well-publicized International Exposure Awards exhibitions at galleries in Paris, New York and San Francisco in 2011. (Additional international gallery venues may be announced soon.) The winning photographs will also get prominent, exclusive photo features in Lens Culture, giving them access and broad exposure to an enthusiastic, influential worldwide audience.

Six photographers will win top honors (3 Portfolio Awards, and 3 Single Image Awards). Additionally, 25 photographers (from either category) will win Honorable Mention Awards.

Last year, we received over 6,000 images from photographers in 48 countries on six continents! Many of the 29 winners from 2009 continue to achieve great success with their careers — winning other awards (including two World Press Photo Awards), signing publishing contracts, getting editorial assignments, group and solo exhibitions, artists residencies, and having their work collected by institutions and private collectors around the world.

Deadline for submissions is September 18, 2010 at midnight Pacific Time.

Enter your photographs today! Full details here: www.lensculture.com/awards

This is really great, artful, classic photojournalism from 1997-1999. WARNING: CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGERY

This work was projected at the Rencontres photo festival in Arles, France, last week. For me, it was by far one of the most relevant presentations there, since it explored the many ways photography is being used today to communicate worldwide in near-realtime by people using mobile phone cameras and sharing their images via sites like Flickr and Twitter.

The video is also available with French-language narration at rue.89.com.

You can learn more about Paolo Woods at his website: www.paolowoods.com
He recently published a book about Iran, which has its own cool, informative website: marchesurmesyeux.fr

She's also made one of my favorite photobooks: One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana. (Unfortunately out of print).

Here is some text about Luster from the Catherine Edelman Gallery:

Murder is not generally a subject in which most artists find themselves immersed. But twelve years ago, Deborah Luster's mother was murdered, sparking a photographic project which led her to three different state penitentiaries in Louisiana, her home state, as a means of healing and understanding. Photographing inmates against a black backdrop or in the fields, Luster captures the individuals housed behind the barbed wire and prison cells in a project called "One Big Self". Cutting 5 x 4" aluminum and coating it with a liquid silver emulsion, Luster creates images which serve as reliquaries for these men and women whose cockiness, youth, bravado and shyness are imbedded in these pocket-sized contemporary tintypes. Through these images she asks us to "see beyond their crimes ... to suggest that our punitive models are as reflective of who we are as our reward system."

Deborah Luster's earlier body of work, Rosesucker Retablos, is based on Mexican religious votive paintings created as offerings of thanks for spiritual or medical miracles. Luster photographs people she connects with, creating her own "saints," transforming them into luscious magical portraits which are printed on aluminum, layered with paint. Poet C.D. Wright creates the text which accompanies the images. The final pieces radiate with an energy rarely seen in photography today.

This is a new kind of photojournalism: nearly wordless, slow, somber, meditative — haunting and troubling.

BP's Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is an unmitigated disaster, with the environmental and economic costs growing by the day. In this short film, Christopher Morris takes us on an emotional journey to Louisiana and shows us the irreparable damage to the complex fragility of the coastal and marine ecosystems, the costs of which are still being weighed.

Almost agonizingly slow, this video in black, white, and grey, is a reminder of the overwhelming loss and far-reaching impact of this disaster which continues to spread. Rescue attempts — and protection of what remains — is exhausting and discouraging. But what else can be done? People washing one bird at a time... All recorded less than two weeks ago.

In their series, Scenes of Life, the young Franco-German duo Lucie and Simon present moments we're all familiar with: a breakfast, a nap on the sofa, a swim in a pool. All of the mundane clutter of everyday life is there in abundant and clear detail. What gives the viewer a real jolt of delight, however, is that all of this is seen from directly overhead, looking straight down — a seemingly impossible perspective, especially for the photographs made inside rooms.

This series was awarded the HSBC Prize for Photography in 2010. See and read more in Lens Culture.

With the master class the organisers want to enhance the educational framework of the photography industry. There are relatively few substantial opportunities for photographers who have reached a professional level to develop themselves further. Northern Lights aims at those photographers who want to actively widen their approach of photography and develop critical skills for larger-scale projects. The program focuses on the art of photographing and editing work, with traditional photojournalism and social documentary photography as the basis.

Selected photographers will convene at the gallery space of Noorderlicht, in Groningen, The Netherlands, for the first time from 9 to 12 September, 2010. Successive meetings are scheduled in January and May, 2011. Participants will work on a themed project for a period of one year, in three sessions of four days each.

Each meeting will be attended by at least two professionals from the photography industry to instruct the photographers on photographic skills, but also on issues like marketing the work and finding a gallery. Top names from the industry will be working together with young talents to help them advance in their careers.

Among the masters are:

Magnum photographer Paolo Pellegrin
Financial Times photography critic Francis Hodgson
Former board member of World Press Photo Adriaan Monshouwer
DMB Media founder David Birkitt

More masters and guest lecturers are to be announced.

For more details, see noorderlicht.com. There are still a few open spots for serious photographers.

As we gear-up for the 41st annual photography festival in Arles, France, we're happy to present a preview of 40 images from the upcoming exhibitions. Eclectic and a mixed bag, for sure. But some gems that are just waiting to be discovered, as well. For the best viewing experience, check out Lens Culture's high resolution slide show.

For more information, check the festival website.

What could be more fun? Lots of photography lovers from all over the world descend on this charming small town, talking, laughing, enjoying photography, drinking pastis... See you there.

Volume 26 of Lens Culture is online now. As always, it's filled with a wonderful and eclectic mix of contemporary photography from around the globe.

Photographers whose work appears in this new issue include:

Pierre Torset, Charlie Ferguson, Tamas Paczai, Allen Ginsberg, Lennart Nilsson, Vee Speers, Andrzej Mitura, Tony Ray-Jones, Massimiliano Clausi, Judit M. Horvath and Gyorgy Stalter, Jim Vecchi, Matt Lutton, Carolle Benitah, Michael Christopher Brown, Margaret M. de Lange, Franco Pagetti, Lucie and Simon, Marcos Lopez, Antonio Martinez, Annie Leibovitz, and Joel-Peter Witkin.

Plus you can enjoy a high-resolution slideshow of 40 preview picks from the Rencontres d'Arles 2010 photo festival in France.

And there's a magazine inside the magazine, so to speak: VII The Magazine includes weekly updates of multimedia presentations and in-depth personal views of current events through the eyes of photojournalists.

This 26th issue is perhaps our largest edition in six years. Plus, every article, audio and video interview, slideshow, critical essay and book review from the previous 25 issues is still available in Lens Culture's online archives. There's lots of great stuff to discover!

Many of the new talents featured in this issue were discovered at portfolio reviews in Houston, Krakow, Budapest, Toronto, and Stockholm over the past four months, as well as through direct submissions from international photographers to Lens Culture. We're also featuring some of the work we discovered while judging the Anthropographia competition about human rights and photography.

And last, but not least, we're thrilled that photographers from 27 countries have already registered to participate in our first portfolio review event in Paris. Lens Culture FotoFest Paris 2010 will take place November 15-17, 2010. A stellar group of 40-plus photography experts from around the world will meet one-on-one with photographers over the three days of the event. If you'd like to take part, we encourage you to sign up soon, since places are limited.

Enjoy!