© Jan Cook

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:

"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."

All images © Jan Cook

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.

All images © Rohit Saha

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.

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. 

© Samantha Geballe

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.

View the full screen magazine photo feature.

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."

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. 

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."

All images © Sultan Al Rubayq

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.

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

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"