Calgary Stampede © Yousuf Karsh

Prince William and Duchess Catherine attended the annual Calgary Stampede this year. Mr Karsh took this photograph in 1953.

Stella Kramer, Julie Grahame, and Allegra Wilde are excited to announce IN THE LOUPE, a WebTV show that will premiere at the end of July. It's TV with the three of us, talking about everything photography.

IN THE LOUPE has information, attitude, interviews, reviews and real photo news. We're not shy about telling you what we think, and we'll have special guests talking about their work. Nothing is off-limits. Agree or disagree, but you won't be bored.

If you've got a project or a book coming out you'd like to promote, a show about to open, a Kickstarter or Emphas.is project you need to raise money for, or just have an idea or suggestions to make, let us know! If we think it's interesting, we'll put you on the air.

And of course, if you've seen some amazing work you think we should know about, tell us!

Should you want to sponsor or advertise with us, drop us a line.

We've got a Tumblr blog here and you can get a taste of what's to come by watching the trailer. IN THE LOUPE plans on being THE place for photography talk. Join us!

Priscilla, Jones Beach, 1969 © Joseph Szabo

Incoming news from Jackson Fine Art in Atlanta - they are thrilled to have Jospeh Szabo's 'Jones Beach' on exhibition this summer. As well they should be - just look at these!

"Joseph Szabo has been photographing his teen-age students for the past twenty-five years, and has perfectly captured the ambivalence of that time of life. As a high school teacher of photography, he takes seriously their pretentions, passions, and confusions, and he knows intimately how students put on, act up, behave, and misbehave. As Cornell Capa (said), 'Szabo's camera is sharp, incisive, and young, matching his subjects. One can use many adjectives: revealing, tender, raucous, sexy, showy... in Szabo's hands, the camera is magically there, the light is always available, the moment is perceived, seen, and caught.'"

The 'Jones Beach' book is available from the gallery.

Darren Nisbett and I share a common experience of the Chernobyl disaster, both British with strong memories of the events of April 1986 which, as Darren says, "got buried in the process of growing up, surfacing now and then through documentaries, movies and even video games." In 2010, he began his project.

"Walking around the ghost town of Pripyat, a city that once was the home to over 50,000 people, you can't help noticing the silence. Very few birds sing around this area and you are always aware of an invisible poison in the air, even if levels are safe enough that humans can spend prolonged amounts of time there without adverse health risks. There are areas where this radiation is still high though, certain metal objects and vehicles that were exposed during the accident, some buildings and, most noticeably, vast pools of moss which unlike the leaves on the trees, endure the cold winters and hot summers."

"My photography project spanned two trips to the exclusion zone, known as the 'zone of alienation'. The images are taken with a camera converted to capture in Infrared: a filter covers the sensor and blocks out the colour part of the spectrum. This creates higher contrast in the textures of the concrete and picks up the reflected chlorophyll in the plants making them almost glow; these combine to produce eerie images which show nature growing, surviving and reclaiming a city that the world's worst nuclear accident had rendered uninhabitable for humans."
 

At the School of Visual Arts' MFA in Photography, Video and Related Media 2011 Thesis exhibition I saw a few interesting photographs and installations, one of which, Carly Gaebe's 'The Pattern of Your Ways', where the artist created performances to reconnect with her Czech great-grandparents' routines, necessitated the eating of fresh Kolache (a Czech pastry). A couple of the photographs in Liz Arenberg's 'you see me', a series about her relationship with her sister, were simply beautiful. I thought Chris Sellas' project 'You. I.' was interesting - Chris mailed 2 copies of the same photograph to people from his past; he'd commented on one and the recipient should comment on the other.

Kimo Kim's project was really, really entertaining. "As a student in New York, South Korean fashion photographer Kimo Kim found that her normally gregarious personality was stifled by language and cultural differences. In response, she invented a fictional fashion show set in New York and Seoul, which she planned and executed online with her best friend at home, Sodam Yoon. The video culminates with the fashion show, in which Kim sheds her timid persona to become a runway model let loose on the streets of Manhattan." It's a little long, but worth a watch.

Dina Litovsky's project 'Untag This Photo' consists of her photographs of New York City nightlife: clubs, lounges, bars, and parties - both private and public. Now that there's a common tendency to see what you're doing through the lens of whatever recording device you have in-hand, Dina noticed 'people partying' shift to 'people photographing the partying', and a change in the behaviour of women in these contexts.

"This project explores how social behavior and self-representation of women have been influenced by new technologies, specifically digital cameras, iPhones and social networking sites", Dina says in a smart statement. "The desire to reveal has transformed into a willingness to expose."

The project has just been chosen by Whitney Johnson of the New Yorker to be part of PRC Exposure 2011 Exhibition, opening in July.

It doesn't get much more tantalizing than this: Phaidon releases a 50 x 35 cm limited edition book each with a C-type Lambda print, signed by Steve McCurry.

Most of us will be familiar with McCurry's 'Afghan Girl' from the 1985 cover of National Geographic, and the story of the follow-up years later when McCurry and the magazine eventually found her again. According to Wikipedia "(Sharbat Gula) vividly recalled being photographed - she had been photographed on only three occasions: in 1984 and during the search for her when a National Geographic producer took the identifying pictures that led to the reunion with Steve McCurry. She had never seen her famous portrait before it was shown to her in January 2003."

McCurry's career in photojournalism began during the Soviet war in Afghanistan when he disguised himself in native dress and sewed his film into his clothes, and he has continued to cover international conflicts. A regular contributor to Nat Geo, McCurry is of course also a member of Magnum.

'Steve McCurry: The Iconic Photographs' includes images from the streets of India, the temples of Angkor in Cambodia and the Buddhist monasteries of Tibet.

Thanks to Phaidon for the assets. All images © Steve McCurry

Boy at Ganesh Chaturthi festival, Mumbai, India, 1996