hillbilly heroin honey

I came across this book titled hillbilly heroin honey by Hannah Modigh while visiting the bookstore at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm last month. I was drawn to the photographs and decided to make the purchase (published by a small Swedish imprint, I suspected that it might be hard to find outside of Sweden). The photographs were made in the town of St. Charles, Virginia - a poor white Appalachian coal mining town where, like much of the rural east, there is a high rate of Oxycontin addiction. The photographs are a very real window into a poor community that this young Swedish photographer was impressively able to penetrate and document with a respectful eye. There is an interview with the photographer here.

Chinese Sentiment

Advance copies are here! If you are in New York City this week stop by Daniel Cooney Fine Art Thursday night for the opening of Chinese Sentiment by Shen Wei. We have a limited supply of books that will be on sale at the opening.

Daniel Cooney Fine Art
511 West 25th Street, Suite 506
New York City, NY 10001
Opening Thursday April 14
6-8pm

Mark Morrisroe

There is a Mark Morrisroe reemergence at the moment with a new book and two NYC shows. Mark (Dirt) Morrisroe studied at the Museum School during the same era as Nan Golden, David Armstrong, and Philip-Lorca diCorcia. He was born to a drug addicted mother and became a hustler at the age of 15. Having been shot by a client at 17 he lived with a bullet lodged next to his spine for the rest of his very short life. He was boyfriends with Jack Pierson, and sometimes performed as a drag character of his own creation named Sweet Raspberry. He photographed with a Polaroid Land Camera and shot Super 8 Film. His self-portraits are both intimate and raw, revealing desires and sharing vulnerabilities. He also beautifully captured his friends and lovers, what emerges is a portrait of a young man who created his own family out of the scars of a dysfunctional upbringing. Morrisroe died in 1989 from complications of HIV. His work is being show at both Clamp Art and Artist's Space.

A New History of Photography

I've been intending to write a post about A New History of Photography: The World Outside and the Pictures In Our Heads, and its author Ken Schles for some time now. I was reminded to do so recently when I came across a videotaped lecture of Ken talking about his work at ICP. It is an incredible book that is both beautifully made (by White Press) and is a clever and thought provoking thesis on photography. Specifically, Schles' commentary on photography and how memory probes deep into the roots of a photographers' relationship to the medium. If you have not seen Ken's work and his books - you should!

Allison Davies in conversation with Lorie Novak at CCNY

Thursday, March 31 7PM
The Camera Club of New York
The Arts Building
336 West 37th Street, Suite 206
New York, NY 10018-4212

Philadelphia Photo Arts Center Book Fair

The Philadelphia Photo Arts Center will be hosting its second annual book fair on Saturday, April 2nd, 2011. Charles Lane Press and a number of other presses, publishers and artists will be in attendance selling books, prints and other ephemera.





















The Philadelphia Photo Arts Center
1400 N. American St.
Suite 103
Philadelphia, PA 19122
215-232-5678

Loving this email!

i love your 'touching strangers' photographs! while some of the people are stiff and uncomfortable with the exercise, others seem so warm toward the other people in the picture with them. fascinating!

the subject matter kind of reminds me of the way i used to love watching people relate to one another when i attended nascar races. for over a decade, i camped two weekends a year in the infield of atlanta motor speedway. like a great number of other attendees in the infield, i would sit up high on a camper top to get a better view of the race. from that height (ours was 7' 3") it's also easy to watch people milling about on the ground below. i was never a huge fan of the race itself (i admit it, i went for the social aspects. i'm a party girl. what can i say?!), and since during the races it's difficult to have a conversation even with someone right next to you, i did a lot of people-watching. it was completely impossible to hear what people in other camps were saying to one another, but i loved reading their body language and facial expressions. i think the fact that i couldn't hear them actually made it more enjoyable for me in a way. i always found it very heart-warming to watch *that* many people (thousands!) on such a small piece of real estate obviously having so much fun with each other, shaking hands, hugging, laughing, loving one another's company. and total strangers were instant friends if only for a few short days.

thank you for your work!

Underage by Ohm Phanphiroj

This work about underage male prostitution in Thailand by Ohm Phanphiroj was recently brought to my attention. It is an intense body of work and a window into what a harsh existence these young boys face. Strong Stuff. Have a look here.

Wisconsin on my mind

War Photography in Libya

Tyler Hicks, Moises Saman, and the crew over at the NY Times are doing some incredible work in Libya that is both sad and extremely powerful. Check out this slide show here. I wish things were going better for the opposition...

(c)Tyler Hicks/NY Times

Fotografins Hus (House of Photography)

If you happen to be in Stockholm the next few weeks please come check out my show at the House of Photography.
It is running from this Thursday, March 10 - April 23. The show is a selection of portraits from Figure and Ground, Bus Travelers, Fall River Boys, and 49 & 50.

Schoolhouse Editions

Check out new prints by Vincent Cianni, Elinor Carucci, and Benjamin Lowy in Charles Lane Press' print program Schoolhouse Editions.

Homeland

Somehow I missed, and just now discovered the series Homeland by Larry Sultan featured in his new book Katherine Avenue. This work is really incredible and it is a shame that Larry Sultan passed away still quite young and in the midst of this important body of work. Sultan hired Mexican and Central American day laborers looking for work to be actors in this series of landscapes made in Southern California. Straddling the line between documentary and fiction these images feel wholeheartedly sincere to me. Looking both inward to Sultan's own childhood and outward towards the pressing social issue of immigration Homeland is a rare example of successful "staged photography".

on photography

Karlheinz Weinberger

Two for the price of Free!
There are two exhibitions currently up of Swiss photographer Karlheinz Weinberger's biker portraits. If you do not know this work already, it's a pretty incredible document of a very creative and inspired group of Swiss youth strongly influenced by American culture in the late 1950's & 1960's. The exhibitions are showing at the Anna Kustera Gallery and the Swiss Institute here in NYC.

Sampling

of some of my new work from Indonesia...

Shooting Back

While recently traveling through Indonesia, I encountered on more than one occasion, people that were as interested in photographing me as I was them. This was rather new for me - and I found the interest in me from the Indonesian people rather curios and hard to explain. It also wasn't only me they were interested in photographing - Seth took on an even greater aura of "celebrity." If anyone has any thoughts or explanations I'd be interested in hearing them posted here...

Bringing it All Back Home

Book Signings for both Outerland and Fall River Boys this Thursday at New York University, Tisch School of the Arts - Photography & Imaging Dept.
721 Broadway, 8th Floor
6 PM - 8 PM
Room 844

Detroitism

Conscientious recently posted a link to a great article about "Ruin Porn". Published by Guernica Magazine and written by John Patrick Leary - check it out here.





















Photograph by Yves Marchan and Romain Meffre

Letter from China

letter from Seth Boyd - Publisher Charles Lane Press

Totally, totally weird here, as you predicted. The two guys, Ian and Fai, picked me up from the hotel in Hong Kong early this morning, and I was looking for some older dudes, but I think they're both younger than me! The ride into China was cool. We drove through Shenzhen and I got to experience firsthand what Peter Hessler wrote about in Country Driving. Nothing but factories, factories, factories for 50 miles, and attached to each factory are dormitories, dormitories, dormitories. All concrete; all gray.

At first I thought it was just extremely foggy, but the deeper we drove into China, the lower the visibility got. This is the worst pollution I have ever seen. All the articles and books we've read, all the 60 minutes and Frontline pieces we've watched are correct. The entire province is under a thick, heavy blanket of the nastiest, most foul smelling smog you'll ever see. And it's not just outside. It's in my hotel room, it's in the plant, it's in the conference room I'm sitting in right now, that
smoky, burning smell that we caught whiffs of in Indonesia.

Got settled into my hotel here, which is very Chinese. I mean tacky, Chinese with gold and brass and mismatched tiled surfaces
everywhere. A real hoot of a place. Right next to the hotel is one of those famous Chinese landfill type garbage heaps, so
that's a major draw right there. Trash everywhere, markets motorbikes, bicycles, chaotic traffic, but not as bad as Indonesia.

Got to the plant and was shown to my "Guest Room" which is more like a cell. There is terrible third world fluorescent lighting, no heat and it's freezing. I began to wonder when I was going to be allowed to see my lawyer. There is a couch and a large bookcase with other books, and there's a refrigerator. While I was arranging my things on the desk, they decided to bring in another refrigerator for me. And not just a little one. A regular-sized kitchen one. I do not know what they think I need to keep cold in this room that wouldn't get plenty cold if you just let it sitting out.

Then we went down to the press room to check the first form. It was my first glimpse of the plant. And to tell you the truth, if I hadn't had Sue's and Bob's stamp of approval on this place, I would have been worried. Everything is old and dirty. The equipment is like ancient. There are huge binding machines that do the cover stampings and they're like sets of giant jaws that open and close automatically. Every time they open, the guy quickly sticks his entire arm in the thing to position a new cover. And it just goes and goes like that. If the guy does not get his arm out before the jaws close, you bet your ass that arm will be flatter than paper in a second. I told Sue, "that does not look safe."

Looking around the place I thought this is not somewhere I'd even print a third grade spelling book let alone our beautiful Charles Lane Press books. But guess what? When I got to the press to look at the first form, it was stunning. It was a very close match to the proofs, except the form was better. The images are sharp and clean and smooth, the color is awesome and the images printed on this New-G paper are just luscious.

But anyway, we are in good hands here. Ian and Fai are totally professional. They are passionate about fine printing and they are very easy going, accessible and amenable to discussion and consultation. The press guys are great - they know their
shit - and the prints are looking absolutely beautiful, so we won't have compromised in any way on the quality. The dots in the press prints are smaller and sharper than the wet proofs they sent. So Shen's and Ian's books are looking as good as FRB and Outerland.