October 2010 Archives

JR, the super-talented buddha-like photographer from France, has been using photography and creating huge (often clandestine) outdoor spaces to display the photographs. He is the youngest person to be awarded the TED prize. Here's a trailer for a movie he's made about his work.

You can also listen to him talk about his work in an audio interview with Lens Culture from 2007.

This guy is so smart and talented and compassionate. He has co-opted the medium of commercial billboard advertising to promote socially relevant concerns around the world. Some of his installations on the rooftops of slums in Kenya can be viewed by Google Earth.

There is lots of artistic buzz in Paris at the moment. During the month of November 2010, Paris comes alive with four major photography events — including more than 150 individual exhibitions, lectures, slide shows and more. We've got links to PDFs and websites to help you plan your itinerary:

The citywide Paris Month of Photography, featuring more than 50 special photography exhibitions, lectures and projections.

The Paris Month of Photography OFF festival, will feature an additional 100+ photography shows and events.

Paris Photo, the world's largest (and arguably best) fair and marketplace for international contemporary photography, takes place November 18-21. This year, there is a special emphasis on photography for central and eastern Europe, which will be fantastic. See our high-resolution slideshow preview of more than 340 photographs that will be on display at Paris Photo this year.

Lens Culture FotoFest Paris 2010, (November 15-17), the first large-scale formal portfolio review conference in Paris, which will bring together more than 120 international photographers (from 32 countries) and 40 photography experts for 3 days of intense meetings, networking and inspiration.

Although FotoFest Paris is completely sold out, approximately 100 participating photographers will be showing (and selling) their photographs during a 2-hour Open Portfolio Night on Tuesday 16 November, from 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm. This event is open to the public — and free! So, photography lovers and art collectors who want to discover and meet new photographers are invited to attend.

Location: Spéos Paris Institute of Photography, 8 rue Jules Valles, 75011 Paris. Nearest metro: Charonne.

Hope to see you here in Paris in November!

Highly recommended. Don't miss this!

In this compelling, passionate video interview with VII The Magazine, award-winning photographer Ed Kashi talks about his years covering the explosive situation in the Niger Delta. This story has everything: Big oil companies, a corrupt political situation, great wealth and extreme poverty, war and the 50th Anniversary of Nigeria's Independence. His photographs are powerful, sad and beautiful all at the same time. Kashi also has some proposals that provide some hope for the future of the people of Nigeria.

Ed Kashi has dedicated his photographic career to documenting the social and political issues that define our times. Since graduating with a degree in photojournalism from Syracuse University in 1979, he has photographed in over 60 countries. His images and essays have appeared in National Geographic, The New York Times Magazine, Time, Fortune, Geo, Newsweek, and various other domestic and international publications.

Congratulations to all of the winners of Lens Culture International Exposure Awards 2010.

See the high-resolution slide show, plus links to each winner's website, here in Lens Culture. Lots of really great work to discover — dig in and enjoy!

The Amazon Rainforest located in the Mato Grosso region of Brazil is ablaze like never before. The surge in burning can be attributed to the extreme rise in commodity prices. As demand for more food grain is needed, farmers are pushed to dramatically increase soybean and corn production, removing massive tracks of pristine forest in their wake.

Watch this brief multimedia slideshow in VII The Magazine, a partnership with Lens Culture.

We’re thrilled to announce the winners of the 2010 Lens Culture International Exposure Awards. For the judges, the process of looking critically at almost 6,500 photographs submitted by photographers from 47 countries was at once daunting and exhilarating.

The range of work is remarkable. It varies richly in subject matter, genre, and styles of technological and artistic approaches. Perhaps what was most pleasantly surprising about reviewing all of these photographs, for me, was the chance to discover so many multifaceted and unusual ways that people are using photography to tell an important story, or to explore an emotion, take a wild flight of imagination, dig a bit deeper into a psychological puzzle, capture a moment or an age or a culture, or to play with an idea.

All of the jurors were eager to see what “bubbled to the top” through the democratic judging process. Indeed, it is an eclectic mix, and a pleasure to discover the kinds of things that captivated each of us. We hope you will enjoy the winning portfolios and single photographs as they are revealed over the next weeks here in Lens Culture. Starting in early 2011, these award-winning works will comprise group exhibitions at galleries in Paris, San Francisco and New York.

The top award winners for 2010 are:

Portfolio Category

Grand Prize: Jessica Hines
2nd Prize: Carolle Benitah
3rd Prize: Louisa Marie Summer

Single Image Category

Grand Prize: Martine Fougeron
2nd Prize: Albertina d’Urso
3rd Prize: Anne Berry

Honorable Mention Awards (in alphabetical order):

Susan Bank
David Carol
Ellie Davies
Frank Day
Bruno De Cock
Margaret de Lange
Dan Dubowitz
Joachim Froese
Julia Fullerton-Batten
Kevin Greenblat
Daisuke Ito
Mary Shannon Johnstone
David Lazar
Sebastian Liste
Adam Magyar
Rania Matar
Justin Maxon
Bill McCullough
Marcia Michael
David Rochkind
Julian Roeder
Evzen Sobek
Miki Soejima
Ian Teh
Jan von Holleben

Congratulations to all of these winners, and our sincere gratitude to everyone who shared their work with us in this year’s competition.

You can view work from each of these winners online as a high-resolution slideshow in Lens Culture.

VII, The Magazine, in partnership with Lens Culture, released a rare glimpse inside contemporary North Korea, with this colorful slideshow. The soundtrack is a trippy heroic anthem called, "The Unforgettable Top Of Mount Osung" and is recorded by The Korean People's Army Merited Chorus.

Here is what editor Scott Thode says by way of introduction to this piece:

"North and South Korea held their first military talks in two years this week and North Korea released a photograph of the heir apparent to Kim Jong-il, his son, Kim Jong-un. VII The magazine decided to take a look at the North Korea which has systematically isolated itself from the world and applied communist thinking to the utmost extreme. The Kim regime has vanquished any traces of capitalism, foreign imperialism, and the enemies--real and imagined--of the radical left. Even as communism collapsed elsewhere and over a million people died of starvation in the 1990s, the government did not waver from its course. The result is a paranoid militarized society, an astounding cult of personality, and the formal absence of any individualism.

"Today, as ever, much of what is said about North Korea is based more on speculation than first hand reporting. Posing as an investor looking to open a chocolate factory, Tomas van Houtryve managed to slip into North Korea twice. He faced hours of interrogation, was threatened by appartchiks, and at one point was almost exposed as a journalist. The bold tactics gave him access to factories, hospitals and government offices, some of which had never before been seen by a Western photographer."