One of many happy moments in 2009 for photography lovers was the launch of a new blog, Little Brown Mushroom, that includes essays, videos and photographs from Alec Soth and some of his collaborators. It's always a joy to get Alec's intelligent, heartfelt take on photography and new ways to use it and disseminate it. In a recent post, he interviews Monica Haller about the book she just published called Riley's Story, which includes photos and text from a guy who served as a nurse in Abu Ghraib prison and took lots of digital pictures while he was there.

Here is the cover, and below is the informal video interview made by Alec.

From the Library: Riley and His Story from Little Brown Mushroom on Vimeo.

The book looks great, and important, and especially timely. You can download a generous PDF excerpt (114 pages!) here, which apparently covers about 1/4 of the whole book. You can get more info about the book here.