Here's another find from Nordic Light. Tom Simonsen is a gallerist and photographer who came for a portfolio review with me. I love doing them, but I worry about the conflicting information photographers must sometimes receive. Bjørn Opsahl and I gave Tom similar reviews but Tom told me someone else told him to take this photograph of the dog out. It must be tricky to avoid taking the advice one agrees with, but Tom really took everything to heart. I'm happy to publish my two favourites from his portfolio.

On Tuesday May 15th 2012, the Aday.org initiative will invite the entire world to participate in the largest and most comprehensive photographic documentation of a single day in human history. Whether an amateur with a mobile phone camera or a professional photographer, Aday.org asks anyone - and everyone - in possession of one of the world's estimated one billion digital cameras to document their experiences of the day: uploading their images in order to create a visual archive of our lives today.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who sits on the Global Advisory Board for Aday.org (and will be contributing his own photographs on May 15th), comments: "Take this unique opportunity with me, and thousands of others around the world, to create a priceless collection of images, to boost understanding and enhance research and education." Fellow Global Advisory Board member, Sir Richard Branson comments: "This great project is about real people taking pictures of real life in real-time. Please get your camera and share your life on May 15."

Aday.org seeks participants of all ages, backgrounds, and from every corner of our planet: each contribution as relevant and significant as the next person's in creating this unprecedented snapshot of humanity. To help get the largest number of people involved, Aday.org has already recruited hundreds of global 'connectors' - leading lights from the worlds of photography (including 30 World Press Photo winners), journalism and academia - who will both take part on the day and spread the word as well as encourage participation among their own social networks, intranets, mailing lists, or fan-bases.

Tons of info over at Aday's website. Join in!

Image by Henrik Halvarsson for Aday.org

Unknown Soldier, 2011 © Marcin Owczarek

And now for something completely different. "My name is Marcin Owczarek and I am an artist who creates in the spirit of Surrealism."

Marcin Owczarek was born in Wroclaw, Poland in 1985 and studied photography there. He admires Dadaism as well as Surrealism. "I regard my critical collages as the prediction of human degradation. Man is imperfect. Man is a savage, greedy rebel of Nature. I stress the present process of dehumanization, mechanization and standardization of human race, false norms and illusional values that are given as the truth to society by religion, governments, laws, propaganda, the false mirror of the television..."

Focusing on the issues of mechanization and standardization, he tackles them in an antiutopian style, depicting the total capture of the spirit by the machine world. He reflects: "In the times of old Celtic celebrations there were enormous figures made of wood or cane, filled with living people and them burned. I have the impression that nowadays we have superseded these Celtic figures by concrete blocks of flats, dead peninsulas, where we undergo geometrical unification and from which we shout 'like martyrs being burnt alive while still giving songs of life from their stakes'. (Artaud)"

View the full screen magazine photo feature.

Visit Marcin on Facebook.

Robert Pledge's exhibition CONTACT/S, hosted most recently at Nordic Light, is monumental.

One would not expect anything less - the show, the layout, photographs from the building of the Berlin Wall to the falling of the Twin Towers, there's nothing to be done but really see, remember, hold photographers in awe and, if you're like me, let the tears run. Perhaps the one uplifting series was the gorilla who rescued a little boy who fell over the railings at the Chicago zoo showing us the humanity we can't see in most of the rest of the photographs. Even the first second of the new millennium, shot in Times Square, is full of Guiliani's disturbing mug.

And of course, the contact sheet is disappearing fast.

Leaving the show, I felt John Botte's interview deserved another airing.

John Botte: The 9/11 Photographs from In The Loupe on Vimeo.

Title: untitled. Artist: unknown. January 2010, Berlin. Photo © Koen van de Wouw

"Last Expo is an online exposition. It is a collection of photographs taken of orphaned art in its final resting place. It's a commemorative album of forgotten human imagination."



Title: untitled. Artist: unknown. March 2011, Amsterdam.

"I walked in the centre of Amsterdam, minding my own business, when I noticed a stray piece of artwork lying next to the trash. I thought maybe this was the first time that this painting had seen the light of day. I wanted to adopt it, but then I realized that this was a big moment for the painting - its debut".

'Cruel Story of Youth' © Jennifer Loeber

Counter Culture Summer Camp sounds wonderful; we uptight Brits didn't do this sort of thing... Jennifer Loeber enlightened me by sharing her project 'Cruel Story of Youth' and speaking from the heart.

"This series explores my personal reconciliation with the slowly fading memories that once had an indelible impact on my path to adulthood. I spent several weeks living with and documenting the emotional landscape of the current inhabitants of the counter culture summer camp I attended as a teenager as part alumnus, part outsider. Connecting with my subjects through a shared history afforded me the trust necessary to be able to watch events unfold without censorship. Drawing from my own self-discovery within this same space, I focused on conveying the spontaneity and supportive atmosphere that is the foundation and legacy of the camp."