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Guest curator Brian Clamp's preview of Burke's exhibition at ClampArt.

The intertidal zone is the ground that is exposed to air at low tide and is under water at high tide. It is an intermediated place where opposites commingle and coexist. Jesse Burke's series 'Intertidal' addresses the ambivalent domain between the heroic ideal of masculinity and the true reality of being male. Through the juxtaposition of photographs, Burke constructs an autobiographical investigation of the incongruousness of the fragility of masculinity.

Burke writes "I photograph my life and the lives of the men in my social and family circles in an attempt to understand from where our ideas of masculinity originate. I am most drawn to the moments that are representative of vulnerability or emasculation; where there is a presence of a rupture or wound inflicted in some way, whether it be physical, emotional, or metaphorical. I employ concepts such as male bonding and peer influence, masculine rites and rituals, homosocial desire, physical exertion, and our connection to one another as well as the landscape that we interact within to expose these instances."

Burke sets his subjects against the backdrop of his native New England, both embracing and critiquing his own absorption and assimilation of the masculine ideal and his ultimate construction of self.

Jesse Burke is an instructor at the Rhode Island School of Design where he received his MFA in photography in 2005. His work has been exhibited in such cities as New York, Tokyo, Milan, Stockholm, Madrid, Miami, and Los Angeles. The exhibition at ClampArt is complemented by the artist's monograph of the same title from Decode (Seattle, Washington, 2008) with an essay by critic Nate Lippens.

Opening this month, 'Paris Insolite', or 'unusual' Paris, features the work of Meredith Mullins, an internationally exhibited American photographer currently living in the City of Light. If you're fortunate enough to be there, go see 'Le Tango' and more at Greenlane Gallery, Rue des Deux Ponts. On view May 25th to June 6th, 2010.

'Le Tango' © Meredith Mullins

We've had a bit of stick about aCurator Magazine being a Flash website. I'm really happy that anyone would be that upset they can't view the mag on their iPad! Without getting into a game of comment tennis, I'm writing this entry to point my readers to Adobe's latest statement on Flash and creative freedom.

"At Adobe, we believe that the open flow of creativity, ideas, and information should be limited only by the imagination. Innovation thrives when people are free to choose the technologies that enable them to openly express themselves and access information where and when they want. Everyone loses when technological barriers impede the exchange of ideas."

At the New York Photo Festival yesterday I was looking forward to a panel discussion on the future of story telling. 4 photographers nominally had 5 minutes to show their work and talk about the future. Elizabeth Biondi moderated. Only, it started late, was disorganized; Biondi hardly got to say a word; we watched videos by Lauren Greenfield and Gillian Laub which were wonderful but made me wonder whether everyone thought video had just been invented; Jeff Jacobson subjected us to stills of a road trip that we thought would relate to Obama's election but didn't seem to, with someone reading a poem over the slideshow; and Rob Hornstra made it clear he didn't like either video or audio. Conclusion? Stills, and maybe video, and maybe audio, or maybe text, are the future of story telling.

What I was excited to learn about was Rob Hornstra's and Arnold van Bruggen's The Sochi Project. These Dutch photographers are looking for private donors to help them travel to Sochi twice a year through 2014 to document the run-up to the Olympic Games.

"In 2014, the Olympic Games will take place in Sochi, Russia. Never before have the Olympic Games been held in a region that contrasts more strongly with the glamour of the Games than Sochi. Just 20 kilometres away is the conflict zone Abkhazia. To the east the Caucasus Mountains stretch into obscure and impoverished breakaway republics such as Cherkessia, North Ossetia and Chechnya. On the coast old Soviet sanatoria stand shoulder to shoulder with the most expensive hotels and clubs of the Russian Riviera. Between now and 2014 the area around Sochi will change beyond recognition. The Sochi Project will be a dynamic mix of documentary photography, film and reportage about a world in flux; a world full of different realities within a small but extraordinary geographic area."

© Rob Hornstra, The Sochi Project

"Rock for MS is the major fundraising event for MSFriends, conceived under the leadership of VisionWorks Foundation president Amelia Davis, and inspired by Jim Marshall.Most of the attendees are young trendsetters with a passion for music with the secondary audience being in Jim Marshall's large network of celebrities and professionals in the music and photography industry."

Amelia is looking for donations of photographs of (very famous) musicians with their cars. If you'd like to donate a print, please leave a comment with your name and the musician you have and I'll forward it.

Read more.

Miles Davis and his Ferrari © Baron Wolman

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John Angerson lives and works in London. His photographs illustrate several books including 'St. George's Crypt. Entertaining Angels' about a homeless centre in Leeds, and the fascinating 'Love Power Sacrifice' about Britain's Jesus Army, an evangelical religious sect. I recommend 'Sustain' on John's website, a beautiful project on dying and displaced fishing communities.

Sleeping Rough: Living on the streets of Britain.

"The latest local government homelessness statistics suggest approximately 80,000 households in England are homeless. With this in mind, photographer John Angerson spent a year engaging with a group of society that is often considered problematic for image-makers.  The most common depiction of this marginalized group is imagery of people with weather beaten faces living in extreme conditions. Rather than depict the despair of being homeless Angerson wanted to convey a feeling of what it is like to live on the streets and it was this concept that gave him the impetus to create landscape images at night.

After conducting interviews with the service users of hostels and homeless charities Angerson began to build up a selection of locations across England known for being destinations for overnight sleeping. By using only the artificial light found at night he was forced to make exposures of up to 90 minutes for each photograph. This more oblique approach of documenting the dimly lit stairwells of shopping malls, or strange corners of tourist areas that would normally be packed with day trippers, invites the viewer into another world, evoking a sense of how it might feel to sleep rough."

Neville Street, Leeds © John Angerson

Long-time colleague, industry consultant and renowned photo editor Stella Kramer, interviewed me about aCurator magazine for her blog.

There are still a few spots open in Peter Turnley's upcoming New York Street Photography Workshop from May 30th-June 5th. This will be the third time it has been held. New York City in late spring and early summer is an amazing venue for street photography and a great place to create a photo essay/portfolio during this one week workshop. The daily workshop sessions are held at Peter Turnley's apartment in Harlem, which also serves as a wonderful backdrop for this experience. The workshop embraces a "decisive moment" spirit of appreciating the reality of daily life in an urban setting. Turnley works with students to help them become comfortable with a sense of purpose in photographing people, and creating a photo story/essay.

More information about the workshop description and registration can be found here.

You can see images by students from the two previous workshops here.

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Ingvar Kenne is a man with a keen eye and a sense of humor - the opener for his website might have you in stitches. He is a prolific photographer with an abundance of cool projects to enjoy. Born in Sweden and dividing his time between New York and Sydney, Australia, Kenne has been regularly exhibited worldwide since he graduated in 1991. He has published 2 monographs, shot campaigns for Toyota, IBM, Sony and Microsoft, and produces breath-taking travel photography and portraits.

We decided to publish Karaoke, an ongoing project spanning several Asian countries.

"Karaoke bars and clubs are casual entertainment up front, and, sometimes, facades for brothels, drug dens and massage parlors with a happy ending out back. They play an important social role and are relevant to the positive makeup of the neighbourhood, but they also become places of despair, loneliness and injustice. These images try to move within the space where the two opposite emotions meet."

Kenne is repped in the US by Vernon Jolly.

Menlian, China © Ingvar Kenne

Thanks go to Mike Stimpson for raising a smile by including Karsh's Winston Chuchill in his Classics in Lego™ homage to the great photographs of our time.

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