May 2009 Archives

Photographer Laura Domela, who often works in fashion photography, found a new project when she visited her brother Jason in a small gold-mining town in Alaska. Domela was delighted to encounter his large extended group of fun friends living there in Girdwood: roughnecks, eccentrics, pioneers, rugged individualists and a few misfits.

So she set up an impromptu studio in the back of a bar, and created a remarkable series of portraits she calls “Everyone My Brother Knows in Girdwood, Alaska”. The characters seem like they could have stepped right out of a TV sit-com. The photos are almost hyper-real, and the captions are personal and often hilarious.

Check out a sampling of 25 portraits in the high-resolution slideshow in Lens Culture.

I first met Laura and saw this series during the portfolio reviews at Photolucida in Portland, Oregon last month. This big contemporary photography event is one of the best places in the world for curators and publishers and art directors to meet great new talents in the world of contemporary photography. Check back here in the following weeks to discover some more great photography from the great Northwest.

I am so delighted that my good friend and remarkable photographer, Oyvind Hjelmen, will be in Paris for the opening of his solo show:

ELSEWHERE

Wednesday May 13th
starting at 6. pm

Chambre avec Vues
3 rue Jules Vallès
75011 PARIS

Exhibition period: May 13th - June 27 2009

Please come by and say hello if you are in town!

The song is mediocre at best, but the idea behind the music video is brilliant.

Joel Gräfnings, a photographer and teacher from Finland, told me about this rock band that found a unique way to plug their music virally by using many of the 13 million CCTV cameras in the UK to film their music video, which was then assembled and uploaded to YouTube.

The Future of Media blog writes about this “surveillance-generated content":

The band set up their music equipment, from microphones to drum kit, in eighty different locations, including busses and what appear to be taxi cabs, and then requested all of the footage using the Data Protection Act, an English statute similar to the U.S.’s Freedom of Information Act that mandates any individual should have access to all information collected about them.

It will be great to see what other clever applications of this work-around can produce. Maybe a full length mystery movie?

I had the privilege of attending the World Press Photo Award ceremonies in Amsterdam this past weekend. It was really a remarkable event -- with each of the winning photographers presenting their work directly to an audience of the other winners and colleagues from the international photography and media communities.

Stephen Mayes, who has served as World Press Photo Jury Secretary for the past six years, gave a keynote lecture during which he shared his personal observations, reflections and concerns about "how the media processes images" as well as his insights on the grueling but efficient behind-the-scenes workings at this most important award in photojournalism.

You can listen to Stephen Mayes' entire 49-minute presentation, including an introduction and closing remarks by Michiel Munneke, Managing Director of the World Press Photo Foundation, in this audio recording at Lens Culture.

You can also see all of the winning images at worldpressphoto.org, and view a high-resolution slideshow of many of this year's winning images here in Lens Culture, as well.