February 2010 Archives

Here's another success story that came out the Lens Culture International Exposure Awards 2009.

Photographer Jessica Hines won an honorable mention in our global photography competition -- and thus an opportunity to publish a photobook at Blurb.com. She took this as inspiration and teamed up with Elizabeth Avedon (the designer of many of Richard Avedon's stunningly beautiful photography books, and his daughter-in-law) to publish this blockbuster of a book. It's a remarkable photobook that conveys an important political message as well as the compelling story of a personal tragedy that confronts some difficult, universal truths. Brilliant combination of great photography, thoughtful text, and excellent book design. Highly recommended!

Here is the publisher's introduction to the book:

With her photo essay, My Brother’s War, Jessica Hines attempts to gain a better understanding of what happened to her brother, Gary, when he was a soldier in the American war in Viet Nam. Drafted, he served two years and returned home a victim of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Ten years later, he took his own life. Hines photographs the letters that he wrote and, with diligence, managed to locate and speak with some of his wartime friends. More recently, Hines traveled to Viet Nam to retrace her brother’s “footsteps”. The research and resulting photography has revealed much about the nature of veterans’ experiences in Viet Nam and the nature of suffering that ensues when a family loses a loved one to war.

Selected as a "Staff Pick" at Blurb: You can view the entire book online.

After you look at Jessica's book, also take a look at the the complete book of winning photographs from Lens Culture International Exposure Awards.

The jury of the World Press Photo Competition announced the winners today.

Pietro Masturzo, a photographer from Italy, was awarded World Press Photo of the Year 2009, for his photograph of women shouting on a rooftop in protest to the presidential election results in Tehran, Iran, on the 24th of June.

You can see a larger version of this photograph — along with 20 other winning photographs — in Lens Culture's high-resolution slideshow of the winners. You can also read the juror's comments about this photo, and about the competition in general. Overall, the winning selections are remarkable photographs covering a diverse range of news topics.

It was especially pleasing for us to see that two of the top winners of the Lens Culture International Exposure Awards 2009 were selected as top winners for World Press Photo Awards, too: Marco Vernaschi and Laura Pannack.

Congratulations to all the winners!

(Update: This gift has been claimed already by a generous supporter/collector. Thanks! But of course, your support will be appreciated still if you can donate any amount, large or small.)

Here is a second chance for you to help Lens Culture -- and get a great gift in exchange!

The very next financial supporter who contributes $250 or more to Lens Culture will receive a signed copy of British photographer Simon Roberts' excellent book, Motherland, along with a signed, limited edition print from that series made in Russia in 2005. The print is 11" x 14", from a limited edition of 50, signed verso. This is a £175 value, and about to be sold out completely.

You can contribute by paying for a one-time voluntary subscription to Lens Culture via Google Checkout. All proceeds go toward the production costs and educational programs of Lens Culture.

For the month of January, we registered over 245,000 unique visits to our site, and the AVERAGE visitor to Lens Culture stayed longer than 11 minutes!

In addition to our archives of 6 years of photography articles, portfolios, critical essays and book reviews, it looks like people are really enjoying our ever-expanding audio-video interview section where you can hear (and see) photographer's talking about their own work.

When you have some spare time, dig in to our archives and you are sure to find at least a few interesting and inspiring discoveries from the wide world of contemporary photography.

We're busy preparing our next new issue, which will include discoveries from the Anthropographia Awards for Human Rights Photography and Multimedia (I was honored to be on the jury this year), as well as work from photographers around the world who have submitted their work directly to Lens Culture for our review. And in the next two months, I will be reviewing portfolios in person in Budapest, San Francisco, and Houston FotoFest -- so it looks like we'll have lots of new material to present soon!

Cheers.