#touchingstrangers and touchingstrangers.org

Share your own Touching Strangers photographs with the hashtag #TouchingStrangers on Instagram or Twitter, and contribute to the Touching Strangers exhibition in New York. Photographs should be of people you don't know and who don't know each other, before the photo is taken, who you ask to touch each other for the picture.

Through May 15, I will be picking my favorites to show alongside the exhibition. Visit the Touching Strangers Facebook page to see some of them.

Touching Strangers - Jacket

Pre-Sales are here!

A stranger in New Orleans

Below is a selection of images from a recent photographic workshop that I led down in New Orleans at the PhotoNOLA festival. We had a great group of students and two really productive days together. 

 Leroy by Joel Brouwer

Fred Husserl

Julie Lopez

Muffin Bernstein

Natasha Srour

Thom Bennett

David Armentor

From the archive

Electric Avenue…

Oregon, 2009

It's here! The Sixth Annual Secular Holiday Digital Advent Calendar

Happy December Everyone! Please enjoy my Sixth Annual Secular Holiday Digital Advent Calendar. It will be updated daily through December 24. You have to find the number that corresponds to the day of the month and click it for a special treat. Don't click ahead (you won't find anything there). Loads of fun and surprises in store! Come back everyday or on the 24th to see the entire calendar. Please feel free to share...

The Lightning Field - August 2013

Photo NOLA - Come on down!

PhotoNOLA is an annual festival of photography in New Orleans, coordinated by the New Orleans Photo Alliance. The 2013 festival will take place from December 12 – December 15, featuring artists Deborah Luster, Sally Gall, and myself. I will be giving a public lecture on Sunday December 15, at The Historic New Orleans Collection’s Williams Research Center at 11am. Additionally, I will also be conducting a two day workshop designed for photographers wishing to hone their portrait making skills.

The Large Format Portrait - July 2013

I just finished my 5th annual large format portrait class at ICP last month and I am quite proud of the work and growth of this years class. Here is a little peek at what these view camera virgins were able to accomplish in just two short weeks.

The Large Format Portrait July 2013

Magela Crosignani

Juan Carlos Muñoz-Nájar

William Chan

Larry Kellogg

Isabel Magowan

Shalmon Bernstein

Mirko Viola

Andrea Camuto

Touching Strangers on CBS

The New Street Types of New York

I have a few pieces in a group show at the Alice Austen house in Staten Island opening this Saturday. 

Alice Austen’s groundbreaking portfolio “Street Types of New York” from 1894, marks her as one of the earliest female street photographers who captured the changing face of the city’s working class just before the turn of the century. Today a new generation of photographers continues her legacy of documenting the ever-changing city. This exhibition includes work by: Alice Austen,Chris Arnade  , Alice Attie, Dmitry Gudkov, Peter Funch, Andy Jones, Wayne Lawrence,Erica McDonald, Greg Miller, Christina Paige, Susannah Ray, Richard Renaldi, Ruddy Roye, Geordie Wood, and AnRong Xu.

The New Street Types draws connections from early street portraiture like that of Alice Austen (1866-1952) to contemporary image-makers. The artists selected for the exhibition work in a similar style to Austen, often employing large format photography to create portraits of New York City’s diverse communities and subcultures – including the outer fringes of the expanding city like the Rockaways and Orchard Beach. Some of the artists conceptualize themes in portrait typologies and use social media to communicate online, while artists like Peter Funch take the traditional street portrait a step further, creating digital tableaus to capture life on the streets and see it anew. Photographer Ruddy Roye utilizes Instagram to create his images - sharing them in a spontaneous and wide-reaching way Austen could have never imagined.

Plagiarism?

Touching Strangers in the Sunday NY Times

Read the article here.

Touching Strangers to be published by the Aperture Foundation!

Dear Readers & Subscribers,

Support and Pre-Sales available today through August 5 on Kickstarter.  Aperture will also be printing a limited special edition of the book available for purchase only through the Kickstarter platform. The limited edition will truly be limited in the sense that once the Kickstarter campaign ends it will no longer be available.

This is one of the most important bodies of work that I have ever created, and I would love for this campaign to succeed. I would be extremely grateful if you could support this project at whatever level of funding you can comfortably manage, and to spread the word through any social media forums in which you participate.

My sincere gratitude,

Richard 

Bryan Schutmaat

Congratulations to Bryan Schutmaat on winning the Aperture portfolio prize. Bryan is a former student of mine and he has been deservedly recognized for his beautiful project Grays the Mountains Sends. Needless to say I'm proud and really psyched for Bryan.

Colombia, May 2013

Jon Rafman

My friend Mary brought this collection of incredible Google street view captures to my attention by artist Jon Rafman. His discoveries are often haunting, funny, and beautiful. Definitely worth checking out.

Commencement Speeches, for the Ages...

Inspired by graduation season some very inspiring speeches. 

Hipstamatic Photographs and Portraits now in the archive at Renaldi.com

Portraits

Hipstamatic

Adrian Ghenie

Pace’s first exhibition of the young Romanian artist Adrian Ghenie, is amazing. He is known for his meticulously-crafted, often brutal paintings that build upon the darker moments of European history.
The show is up until May 4th.

These two paintings especially blew me away...