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Jan Cook was purveying her photographic wares at the portfolio walk during PhotoLucida last month. I stopped in my tracks to explore her wild-looking prints and enjoyed a really fun few minutes chatting with Jan and her husband and son. Wonderful people. I had never heard of this chromoskedasic alternative process before - the prints were gorgeous. Here's the deal for any other ignorami:

"In this body of work I am using chromoskedasic painting to produce unique gelatin silver prints. The photographs are manipulated with chemistry during the black and white development process. This creates a range of subtle colors as well as a silvering out of the photographic paper. The process can be unpredictable and difficult to control as you canʼt see the effects of the chemistry until after the marks develop. It does not allow for the same kind of detail as traditional painting."

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"Manipulating photographs allows me to work with several elements that are interesting to me, making marks on paper, altering a photographic image and integrating another medium into the surface of the print. Visually, I am interested in pushing the boundary between where the photographic image begins and ends."

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All images © Jan Cook

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India-based Rohit Saha sent in these photographs taken after the recent, massive earthquake in Nepal along with his own stirring poem.

Donations to the Nepal effort will need to continue. I support Médecins Sans Frontières, and Kids of Kathmandu.

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I can't explain how it feels.
It's dark here.
I had no idea what an earthquake does to a place.

Thousands of bodies are being burnt, the sky is filled with smoke.The air smells of death, of an unimaginable devastation that has come upon Nepal.

Bhaktapur, the ancient Durbar square, one of the Unesco world heritage sites have been completely devastated.The smell of the place, the coldness with little mountains of rubbles. A broken comb, a pack of cards and a phone just popped out from the rubble.

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Just overheard from the brave rescue teams that a four month baby was found alive after 4 days. Hope.


I am staying beside the crematorium ground, near the Pashupati temple. Mass cremations are grim, any death is.
Millions of people have been left homeless, stranded without a roof. Relief camps have sheltered thousands of people, trying to live through the tough times, together. They have nothing but their family and many don't even have that.That fear is still there,but still they manage to laugh.

Sankhu, a small village uphill from Kathmandu is lost. Most of the houses in this picturesque hamlet are gone.

What remains?

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Family photographs on the wall and cupboards. Empty sofas and tarpaulin walls of relief camps. Sniffer dogs and international rescue teams try to bring out the dead from under the rubbles. They found a woman, dead in her courtyard, buried under her own house. I saw her face before they covered it, and wrapped her in a white plastic sheet. I could see her face. I won't ever forget.

Nepal is holding herself strong and beautiful.

Life is the most precious thing.
If you don't stay then nothing stays. What remains? - Rohit Saha, May 2015

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All images © Rohit Saha

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Watching New Yorker Susan A. Barnett build her series "Not In Your Face" into a fantastic collection over the last couple years has been a pleasure, and now her dedication to capturing T shirt messages has resulted in a really great book, from Dewi Lewis.

"With over 200 images of t-shirt 'messages', "T: A Typology of T-shirts" looks at those individuals who stand out in a crowd through their choice of the message on their back." Here are but a handful, from a request I made to Susan for more "sassy, edgy" messages. Susan's off to continue shooting abroad so stand by for some messages from other cultures.

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All images © Susan A. Barnett

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In 1971, Yousuf Karsh published a book of his portraits titled "Faces of Our Time" (University of Toronto Press). It included his iconic, intimate photographs of John F. Kennedy, Helen Keller, Albert Schweitzer, Ravi Shankar, Tennessee Williams, and many more. Anyone who is familiar with Karsh will know that the success of his portraits resulted from his respect for, and knowledge of, his subjects. When photographers have a good amount of time with their subject, so much more is revealed in the resulting portrait as a connection is made. When a photographer has to grab 2 minutes in a bland hotel room, they get nothing but a flat record of some face.

Steve Pyke is a brilliant man, wonderful photographer, still-young and -prolific veteran artist. His new book, "Faces of Our Time," will be filled with his own intimate and iconic portraits made over the last 35 years. From Quentin Crisp, to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, to Hugo Chavez, Pyke has made his own mark with the luminaries of the 20th century. 

Help get this book of photos and stories published through Unbound. You get the e-book for only £10!

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Hockey player Gordie Howe, 1952 by Yousuf Karsh

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently announced a new crossing over the Detroit River which will connect Windsor, Ontario to Detroit will be named the Gordie Howe International Bridge in honor of the 87-year-old Red Wings legend.

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I met Samantha Geballe at Photolucida last April and I was impressed with her ability to speak about her incredibly intimate photographs, at her young age. She has a wonderfully frank attitude, and both I and two of my fellow reviewers, who will be thrilled to see the work here, were knocked off our feet.


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© Bear Kirkpatrick

Our hero of the fantastical, Bear Kirkpatrick, has kindly rolled out a new set of eye-popping images in his Wall Portraits series, with a new solo exhibition of the prints opening next week at Daniel Cooney Fine Art in New York City.

"In his studio, Kirkpatrick applies feathers, dead bugs and other assorted materials on his subject's skin and hair as he listens to their stories. They reveal their experiences and he uses his imagination to see what lies below the surface. He imagines a history and another level of consciousness that might exist beyond our own."

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All images © Bear Kirkpatrick

It is barely 18 months since I first saw this project and it has been wonderful to watch it develop, and yes, now the be-all and end-all: a solo show in NYC. Props to Daniel Cooney for knowing great stuff when he sees it. Breasts or no breasts, right Bear?

Opens at Daniel Cooney Fine Art, 508 - 526 West 26th Street, #9C, NYC, and runs May 21 - July 17, 2015.

Check out Bear's feature in aCurator magazine from last year. 

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Fantastic series from Sultan Al Rubayq, from Saudi Arabia, who is graduating from the MFA in Photography program at the New York Film Academy this spring. I am thrilled to share his images from his thesis project.

"Tafeet" is a game of car-drifting that sort of looks like fun but is obviously highly dangerous. According to Sultan, although it is illegal "It is still rampant in the public roads in my country and that means it continues to create reasons for people to die in accidents, whether the drifters or just mere spectators. My sole purpose in showing this documentary is to be a medium of exposing the dangers and threats of this to innocent victims."

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All images © Sultan Al Rubayq

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Billie Jean King © Yousuf Karsh

While looking for the photograph Karsh took of Canadian PM William Lyon Mackenzie King, talking to John Buchan aka Lord Tweedsmuir, US President Roosevelt and his son, I discovered that Karsh had photographed Billie Jean King!

Every day with Karsh is a gift.

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Tweedsmuir, King, Roosevelt, and Roosevelt's son, Elliott, 1936 

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Berenice Abbott, 1989 by Yousuf Karsh

Berenice Abbott was one of my very first photo crushes. A story about her in today's New York Times promoted me to post Mr Karsh's late portrait of her. She is standing in front of one of her scientific images, "Van de Graaff Generator, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1958"

"Berenice Abbott spent two years at MIT creating photographs that memorably document the principles of physical science - mechanics, electromagnetism, and waves. She often developed innovative techniques for capturing scientific phenomena, including one for very detailed, close-in photography that she called Super Sight."

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