I am thrilled to publish a selection of work from master photographer Michael Kenna, in conjunction with his retrospective at Chris Beetles Fine Photographs in London, showing from November 14th, 2012 to January 2nd, 2013. This is Kenna's first exhibition in London in seven years.
"I prefer suggestion over description. The world is pretty chaotic, seemingly always speeding up and getting louder and more visually dense. I am interested in finding and/or creating calm shelters from the storm, places where quiet and solitude is encouraged and inner contemplation possible. I think we could all use a break from time to time..." Michael Kenna, via Chris Beetles.
Michael was one of my fellow jurors for the Grand Prix de la Découverte recently and I was over-joyed to find this fellow British ex-pat (he lives in Seattle) warm, funny, and snappy.
I was interested to see some of Kenna's commercial work. Take a look.
Michael is also showing 'Asian Landscapes' at Galerie Troncin-Denis in Nancy, France, from November 15th, 2012 to January 5th, 2013.
The exhibition runs through December 14, 2012, and is being held in connection with PhotoNOLA 2012, the Crescent City's annual festival of photography.
A photographic workshop with Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb, presented by Nordic Light and Studio A7, Norway.
"Please join us for this week-long photography workshop in the Caribbean's grandest city, Havana - a place that seems caught out of time. Mysterious, colorful, complicated, this ambiguous city defies easy definitions - at once alluring yet confounding, vibrant yet vulnerable, engaging yet unsettling. What better way to piece together your impressions of this city of contradictions that with a camera?
The workshop will be led by the creative team, Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb, who have made some 12 trips to Cuba, which culminated in their book and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, exhibition: "Violet Isle: A Duet of Photographs from Cuba." Together they will help you discover your own unique vision of this remarkable city filled with music, light, and home to one of the most vibrant cultures in the Caribbean."
The photographer on the top of Matanga Hill (India)
I do like geeky photographers, and a nice algorithm, and I'm fascinated by Fran Simó's project. "How would a robot imagine a human face? 'I dreamed about a human being' is like spying into a robot's brain."
"I dreamed about a human being" is part of a project exploring the use of artificial intelligence as applied to photography by using online open source code and data. The project already has a database of 56 million images. We have freely accessible amazing tools and databases of gigantic images, but have not yet fully understood what we can do with them or what it means that they are there.
"This series of images is the result of statistical calculations on 257 faces detected by an algorithm that has been taught to recognize portraits of a specific aesthetic quality. The search was conducted over 5 million images with Creative Commons licenses posted on Flickr. 'Mean' (image below) is the average of these 257 photographs, comprising 17 babies, 106 men, 79 women, 18 girls, 23 boys and 14 errors." Read the rest of Fran's piece about photography and artificial intelligence over on his blog.
Mean
Standard deviation
Variance
Asymmetry
Range
Minimum
"Another way of viewing these accumulated images is by seeing them pass by at full speed and blurring your vision a little. You can see the same 'average effect' by watching the following video, which has 2,582 images moving at a rate of 25 images per second." Thanks Fran!
"The Photo Art Fair is a five-day exhibition of some 2,000 carefully curated, collectable works from up to 200 international photographers.
As a brand new show, Photo Art Fair is designed to allow visitors with the unique opportunity to purchase affordable and collectable photographs direct from both undiscovered and also well-known artists without having to go through a gallery.
The inaugural event will be held in London within an area of 8,000m2 at the Sorting Office on New Oxford St, London WC1, 2nd - 6th May 2013 and is a celebration of art photography through the ages and across all genres from classic prints to previously unseen contemporary photography.
The Photo Art Fair will extend a totally democratic experience to both existing and prospective collectors of photography in a stimulating, informal and highly original environment." Read more on the Photo Art Fair website.
Deadline is December 31st. If your work is selected, you'll pay a fee, which goes to (their) "philanthropic partner the Positive View Foundation who have been doing great work through photography to help those disadvantaged."
Visiting Tamara Staples' website you'll find light, bright, juicy photographs: luscious foods and candied lips and graphic stacks of jewels. These pretty chicken portraits are weighty by comparison and we find a photographer dedicated to enlightening us on the strange world of breeding fancy poultry.
"At this time in our history, the movement back to the small family farm across the US is strong. Whether this move is due to economics or a renewed understanding of our relationship to the earth, it cannot be denied. Backyard chickens coops have become so popular there are magazines and hundreds of books devoted to this very topic."
"Meanwhile, at poultry shows all over the world, known as The Fancy, chickens of all shapes, colors and sizes await their judgment. There is an existing framework, a culture really, that aims to perfect these birds by breeding them based on a book entitled, The Standard of Perfection. These birds are something to behold, and few outside of The Fancy even know of their existence. Each breeder has spent years creating a work of art, where genetics is key. And each bird IS a work of art; from the amount of toes on each foot to the width of the wingspan, from the precise color to the exact weight. Judges carefully inspect every detail. But there is also something else: Personality. Chickens can be haughty, angry, affectionate, shy, charming, sedate, or even funny. In this project, not only do I introduce these regal birds, bred to a standard that most will never match, but I also attempting to capture the individuality of each bird. Just like people, chickens are unique. Take a look into the eyes of these birds and judge for yourselves." Tamara Staples.
"Borrowed Time is an exploration into the moment the point of no return has been reached and subsequent freedom that follows. Using the visual of mid-flight plane failures was my attempt to show the moment that horror, relief, freedom, and graphic beauty all meet at once."
One of my most popular features this year is Mikkel Aaland's 'County Fair,' so fans will be pleased to see he was interviewed on Letterman back in 1982. Today, he's offering a limited edition portfolio from the series. But Mikkel is a man of many talents, including publishing multiple titles, and he has a new eBook for photographers, currently available for free.
Spiel: "Using real world examples, best-selling author and photographer Mikkel Aaland explains the entire process of making a fixed format, photo-centric ebook for the iPad®. Aaland shows you how to use Adobe® InDesign® and the Blurb plug-in to make a cover, add images, format text, and add video and sound."
I've followed Julie Dermansky since I first saw her coverage of the Occupy movement. She reported recently from protests over the Keystone Pipeline.
"Back home, all is not well on the Gulf. The Coast Guard and BP acknowledged the oil above the site of the Macando well is BP oil. "Drill baby drill" still seems to be the predominate way here. Final approval for the Keystone XL pipeline, though delayed until after the election, seems like a foregone conclusion since construction of the southern portion has been fast-tracked. Too bad no one knows how to clean up a tar sands spill. So much about the Keystone XL pipeline doesn't seem right to me yet both political parties are ultimately for it."
Ed's note: It is just after Hurricane Sandy swept through the New York area,
reminding us that our political representatives mostly still have their
fingers in their ears, singing la-la-la when it comes to any
consideration of climate change.
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