Happy New Year

See other years here.

Metropolis

Metropolis, Illinois   December 28, 2008

Stephanie Syjuco

Check out Filippino American Artist Stephanie Syjuco. I think she makes really interesting work.

Merry Christmas

Max on the Solstice - December 21, 2008

Venice...

under water. December 1, 2008







Photos: Andrea Pattaro/Agence France-Presse/ Getty Images

The autobiography project

I just began going through my old contact sheets dating all the way back to 1985. I am planning on putting together a body of work from my early photographs as a teenager until the present day that reflects my experience not only with photography but life in general. I plan on including images of friends, partners, family, self-portraiture, and a mish-mash of other work to create a cohesive autobiography of my life until now - which will I be several years in the making, as this undertaking will take a very long time. There are shots that completely escaped me from 1985 and it proves that going back through your old negatives can be very constructive.

Mailing List

Last week I posted about our new publishing company Charles Lane Press and our inaugural publication Fall River Boys.
We are hoping to build up an email list of people interested in information about the release date of the book and some events surrounding it. Fall River Boys will be in an edition of 1200 - a small print run, and likely to go fast. Please take a moment to sign up here.

The Fall River Mailboy says "Join the Mailing List!"

Tom, Fall River 2004

Blindness

I recently finished reading Blindness by Jose Saramago and cannot recommend it enough. It is a gripping novel about what happens to a society where just about everyone becomes blind. The metaphors Saramago draws abound, and the analogies to the the many horrors enacted by mankind are very disturbing. It is a page turner and despite the grimness of my description here there is of course hope to be found within this beautiful book.

December's 19th Century Photograph

Walt Whitman by George C. Cox 1887

Jake Stangel

Jake Stangel created a new site to connect young emerging photographers titled Too Much Chocolate It is a really cool forum to share info and see a rotating gallery that is curated by the previous exhibited photographer - which I think is a great idea. Possibly even more interesting is Jake's work. He was my intern this past spring and Jake was very eager and enthusiastic about photography and shooting large format. Since Jake graduated from NYU he has moved out to the left coast and has been building his portfolio. He has grown tremendously as a photographer in the short year that we have known each other. I can't wait to see what he is going to do in the years ahead.

Fall River Boys

I am proud to announce the forthcoming release of my second monograph, Fall River Boys. This book is the culmination of over 8 years of photographing primarily young men and cityscapes in the town of Fall River, Massachusetts. Last winter, my partner Seth & I decided to start our own publishing company, Charles Lane Press, and to launch it with Fall River Boys. That decision - coupled with determination and our passion for the photo book - has brought forth this beautifully produced monograph. We have named our company Charles Lane Press after the tiny cobblestone street we live on in Greenwich Village.

Fall River Boys is what I consider to be a complete vision. All of our decisions have been made with quality in mind, and we feel that we have not compromised in any way with this book. It is the mission of Charles Lane Press to maintain the highest levels of quality - from the papers we select, and the craftsmanship of the German printers we work with, to the quality of our bindings and design.

Fall RIver Boys will be released in February of 2009 in an edition of 1200. It is comprised of 89 black and white tritone plates printed at a very fine 300 linescreen, and includes an essay by Pulitzer Prize winning author Michael Cunningham. The book will be available for purchase only through the Charles Lane Press website and at select bookstores in the United States and Europe. Please join our mailing list here to be notified of the book's availability and events surrounding it's release .

'Bare' at Michael Mazzeo Gallery

I'm proud to be in a group show titled Bare opening this Thursday curated by my friend Jörg Colberg at the Michael Mazzeo Gallery.
It is sure to be a beautiful show and I am excited as it is the first time I will be showing work with my friends Amy Elkins and Shen Wei.

Slumdog Millionaire

I saw the new Danny Boyle film Slumdog Millionaire today. I know there is a lot of press out there about it but I just wanted to encourage people to go and see it. It is a fantastic film - exhilarating, colorful, compelling, sad, and beautifully shot. The music was pretty great too...

Muxe of Mexico

The NY Times had a fascinating photo essay today about the Muxe of Mexico. The Muxe are transgendered people and are generally from communities around the town of Juchitán in the southern state of Oaxaca. There is a high degree of social acceptance in these primarily indigenous Zapotec communities - something rather unusual for a fairly conservative country like Mexico. You can read more about them and see the slideshow here.

Beth-Sua



Mistica



Ninel and Sebastian
all photos by Katie Orlinsky for The New York Times

Miami December 5, 2008

Irina and children, 2008

Russian Old Believer family living in Nikolaevsk, Alaska.

From the series 49 & 50 and the forthcoming book titled American Character: A Photographic Journey.

World AIDS Day

Today we reflect on all of the people that are infected with HIV, to educate people about this disease, to inspire through the courageous leadership of others, and to honor those that have died in this horrible pandemic. I myself have been HIV+ for over twelve years now. I am what I once considered others to be a long term survivor. To deal with some of my fears and anxieties about this disease I embarked on a project a few years ago to make portraits of people living with HIV/AIDS for ten years or more called Long Term Survivors. These are just a handful of faces that have been affected by a disease that has affected millions and millions of lives but it is my intent that in these photos the viewer will see hope and promise for healthier and longer lives for all those affected by HIV.



David, Queens, NY


This second series is a project I worked on in 1998-1999 called Housing is Healthcare. It was a public health campaign to raise awareness about the important link between having housing and being able to tend to the stress of being HIV+. There being thousands of homeless people with HIV the notion that treatment needs to be paired with the stability of housing is something that needed reinforcing from a public health perspective. This project took me around the country and into shelters and temporary housing situations that were truly eye opening. The intention was not to make portraiture but to photograph the environments that these people created and how they made these shelter spaces feel like home. I feel that I came away from this project with a very strong body of work and a greater sense of the architecture of poverty and disease.



Chris, Boyd Hotel; San Francisco, CA.

Arno Fischer

Another great find while I was in Hamburg is the work of German photographer Arno Fischer. Fischer was born in 1927 and spent a large chunk of that time in East Berlin in the former DDR. The particular body of work that I want to highlight of his is from his recent book titled Der Garten. This is a beautifully produced book of Fischer's polaroids from his private garden at his farmhouse in the country. The images are grouped into triptychs and coated with a varnish that makes the images have the actual look and feel of a polaroid.
It is an absolutely stunning book and was published by Hatje Cantz in 2007.

Vanessa Winship

On my recent trip to Germany while in Hamburg I was browsing at a wonderful photography bookshop at the Haus der Photographie and came across a little book called Sweet Nothings. It is published by Foto8 and is a collection of images of portraits of "Rural Schoolgirls from the Borderlands of Eastern Anatolia." These engaging images are all taken from the same distance by photographer Vanessa Winship. It is a very special book. Winship's images describe so much - amongst these forty-five images the varied expressions capture warmth, shyness, alienation, friendship, bashfulness, and confidence. Winship said in an except taken from Lens Culture "The girls were a mix of emotions about this event, this small moment of theatre in front of them. They were excited, curious and a little nervous all at the same time. Many things touched me during the making of these images. I was touched by the gravity in their demeanour at the moment in front of the camera, their fragility, their simplicity, their grace, their closeness to one another, but most of all I was struck by their complete lack of posturing." In addition I have just spent the last half an hour on the website of Vanessa Winship and I was literally blown away by her other work from the Black Sea and the Balkans. Outstanding!

Happy Thanksgiving!

This month's 19th Century Photograph

Today I premiere a new monthly feature on my blog. Yay!

Roger Fenton
from the Roger Fenton Crimean War photograph collection...
1855 Captain Thomas Dames Longworth..

Pictures from Germany