Each day The Black Snapper presents a different photographer selected by one of the many guest curators, who switch places on a weekly basis. Visitors of the online magazine can expect to see a new series of some eight to twenty photos each day. The Black Snapper aims to create an online community that will inspire professionals and photography lovers worldwide and expose new talent. In addition, the online magazine emphatically supports the emancipation and promotion of photographers from Asia, Africa and South America.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

In case you are not aware of these two wonderful online magazines on contemporary photography … here they are:

• 1000 Words Photography Magazine, an online magazine dedicated to highlight the best of contemporary photography, edited by Tim Clark (see interview here), and the corresponding blog.
•  Fraction Magazine, “dedicated to photography in all of its various forms” and its corresponding blog.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

The Raw File is a digital multimedia show aimed to host stories that are not sponsored by commercially media. It is a way to give, to expand the forum, for causes that are deserving but don’t make the cut for the limitations of commercial publications.

Initially the content focuses on the continuation of Brenda’s work that was published in the book “Money Power Respect: Pictures of my Neighborhood” that can also be seen online at her website. They will be accepting contributions from interested photojournalists in the future (information to contribute).

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

“That’s one of the problems about taking pictures, some people think when they are taking pictures … the shouldn’t think, thinking is bad for taking pictures. Thinking is good for conceptualizing. Taking pictures has to do with seeing things, being surprised, being interested, it is not about thinking, it is about discovering.” – Eliott Erwitt at Pix Channel Interviews. 

From A Photo Editor I found the reference to Pix Channel. I don’t intend to repeat much here, but this site contains so many wonderful video interviews with so many important photographers that I though it is worthwhile to pass it along in case you don’t know about it.

The interviews are conducted by Randi Lynn Beach, a photographer who has spent the last 15 years working in editorial, non-profit, and corporate photography, with work published in many editorial publications. She is the person behind the interviews with the well-known photographers at Pix Channel.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Purpose

What a wonderful discovery. Paul Demare, shared with me the link to Purpose, a great online photo-magazine. Check out the most recent issue here, and you will understand why I am both glad to learn about it and surprised that I did not discovered it until now. Purpose is published/edited in France but with text both in French and English so that it covers a large audience of readers.

“The margin is what holds together the pages of a notebook.” Jean-Luc Godard gave this response when he was called a marginal artist. The most pioneering artistic movements are indeed found at the margin, where they guarantee the vitality of creation against the stagnation of the academy. The artist who holds himself apart from dominant trends shines light on other possible paths; he invites us to be part of the invention, deconstruction and reconstruction of the world.” – Purpose

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

© Masaru Goto

Andrew Gray has just started a new curated online gallery, named GlobalCompasion.com (or See the World) with the purpose to display portfolios of photographers whose work describe cultures around the world. The project looks very interesting and even when it has just started,  the high quality of the first portfolio and the purpose of the project make it a site to follow in the future.

So far there is only one photographer, photojournalist/humanitarian photographer Masaru Goto. The portfolio he displays at GlobalCompasion.com is entitled “NIHONJIN, BURAKUMIN: Portraits of Japan’s outcast people“.

The Burakumin are a nearly invisible (yet identifiable) group of Japanese people. They are the remnant of a caste system that formally passed away long ago. Their ancestors were the untouchables. Despite being racially and ethnically Japanese through and through, the Burakumin still face discrimination and struggle together under the weight of their shared history.

If you are interested in submitting a portfolio you will find the information here. I look forward to seeing GlobalCompasion grow and becoming another online display for excellent photographic work.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Moganshan Lu, Putuo District, Shanghai, 2004.

© Sze Tsung Leong

Sze Tsung Leong, is an American photographer located in New York City, but his origins trace to China. This is the land that has inspired his work in the excellent series “History Images” that covers “overviews” of cities, “demolitions” of buildings, “construction sites” where new buildings are being raised, the “buildings” themselves that constitute the core elements of cities, “streets” with details of elements that constructs life blood in the streets, “interiors” of demolished buildings and “figures” as the human elements that shine on the vast landscape of the city.

Photographed with a large-format view camera these images contain a puzzling amount of detail that serves well to portray the immense scale of the urban change that conceal the history of individual persons lost within the large magnitude of urban structures.

Xiangluying Fourth Lane, Chun Shu, Xuanwu District, Beijing, 2004.

© Sze Tsung Leong

No question that the images have exceptional aesthetics, but what I found most powerful in this series is the relationship of the different elements that constitute the urban landscape. The vast structures and rapidly changing cities in China serve well to the purpose of presenting the urban landscape as an evolving “organism” that both writes and erases our life and history in the urban environment. These images present both the dissolution of past and the hope of a brighter future in China.

The photographs in History Images are of histories, in the form of cities in China, either being destroyed or created at this juncture in time. They are of past histories, in the form of traditional buildings and neighborhoods, urban fabrics, and natural landscapes, in the process of being erased. They are of the absence of histories, in the form of construction sites, built upon an erasure of the past so complete that one would never know a past had ever existed. And they are of the anticipation of future histories, yet to unfold, in the form of newly built cities – [from History Images by Sze Tsung Leong]

Xi’erqi III, Haidian District, Beijing, 2002.

© Sze Tsung Leong

A very interesting interview with Sze Tsung Leong was published online over at Guernica Magazine. If you get to visit his website, don’t miss the other projects, “Cities” and “Horizons” are both quite impressive.

Tiananmen Square, Beijing, 2002.

© Sze Tsung Leong

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

I will be attending the fair, probably only Saturday 12th. If you will be attending and would like to meet, please let me know by e-mail.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

© TED

From TED, one of the most incredible technologies I have seen in a long time: Seadragon. It will certainly change the way we interact with digital visual information and will have large impact in the use of photography. The video talk by the author of this software, Blaise Aguera y Arcas -now at Microsoft- is here. If you are using a windows computer you may try Photosynth online with demos of spacial environments using this code.

Blaise Aguera y Arcas created Seadragon (acquired by Microsoft in 2006), the visualization technology that gives Photosynth its amazingly smooth digital rendering and zoom capabilities. Photosynth itself is a vastly powerful piece of software capable of taking a wide variety of images, analyzing them for similarities, and grafting them together into an interactive three-dimensional space. This seamless patchwork of images can be viewed via multiple angles and magnifications, allowing us to look around corners or “fly” in for a (much) closer look. Simply put, it could utterly transform the way we experience digital images.- from TED

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

The second issue of AlmanacMagazine.com has been posted. You will find interesting work and audio recordings. More to come in a monthly basis.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

© Mike Brodle

Sorry for the hiatus in posting … went for vacation to Mexico and had a great time.

Back in town, I leave you with the work of an incredible artist, Mike Brodle (“The Polaroid Kid“). He is also the master mind of PLRDS.COM. An interview to know more about Mike can be found at the Fecalface site.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

by Allen Frame

It is captivating to see images that reveal the extraordinary out of ordinary subjects. When the “extraordinary” is everyday’s life, it becomes increasingly challenging to cross the fine line between an ordinary snapshot and an extraordinary image. This is why I admire the photographers who have the ability to do art out everyday’s life.

So I was glad to receive a note from Andy Adams informing that his fantastic site, Flak Photo , will be displaying a series titled “Regarding Intimacy”. The series explores “the dynamics between families, couples, friends, neighbors and the environment to investigate relationships in traditional intimate interactions”.

Flak Photo will display one image each day from May 1st to May 11th. The series are exhibited through May12th at Hunter College in New York City.

The participating photographers include extraordinary artists that are truly worth to explore beyond the single image that will be part of this series. Here you have the names and links to their work. If you got the time, it is really worth to spare a visit to their online galleries.

Allen Frame, Dona Schwartz, Carrie Mae Weems, John Milisenda, Bob Shamis, Larry Sultan, Keisha Scarville, Todd Deutsch and Oz Lubling.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

by Renee C. Byer of the Sacramento Bee

Two years ago, Cyndie French learned that her son, Derek was diagnosed with cancer, a disease that over 1 million people are diagnosed with every year. Despite the painful journey, Derek and Cyndie open their lives for a year to share their story, as cancer slowly steals his youth from him.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize Feature Photography 2007. The story also won the Picture of the Year (POY) World Understanding award. An emotional journey of a mother and a son whose life is being cut short by cancer. It is a hard story that raises questions on how best to dedicate resources in cancer research to perhaps provide more support to the immediacy of the economical and emotional burden of families dealing with serious health situations.

Stories like this are often lost in the crowded media, but these are the stories that speak about us, these are the stories that are experienced by you and me, in real life. This is not about others.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

by lets_explore, as seen in polaroid.net

Who cares about megapixels, sharp lenses and in focus pictures? If you don’t and you love defocused images, unsharp pictures, unrealistic colors, but like “character” and uniqueness you will love polarpoid.net. Get lost in the world of Polaroid images, look at all kinds of Polaroid film types, a broad range of photographic subjects and imagine. And if you get inspired, learn about the tools of the trade (select the country and then click “Creative” on the top menu).

Bookmark It

Hide Sites