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Bulqiza is a town in eastern Albania and is one of the richest areas in chrome in the Balkans. On July 4th its chrome miners downed their tools to protest for better working conditions, a wage increase, and changes to the administration of the mine for the sake of its future.

The miners started their protest in Bulqiza but after 16 days of general strikes and protests they went to the capital, Tirana, where they camped in a park nearby and went each day for five days to protest in front of Prime Minister Sali Berisha's office. With no hearings by the government forthcoming they decided to return to Bulqiza, and a group of 15 miners went 1400 meters underground to begin a hunger strike.

On October 8th, after three months of strike and long negotiations, the miners went back to work having agreed a deal with the management which included a wage increase. Just twelve days later, 1600m underground a massive explosion took place and one miner died and two out of seven wounded were fighting for their lives.

After the incident, the Union for Inspection and Rescue of Mines closed the mine until the company fulfills the security requirements for the 'galleries.' With the mine closed and the owners having not paid the workers during the months of the strike, the lives of the miners have become more and more difficult. They are forced to risk their lives working in other, sometimes abandoned, mines. As a result of working in unsafe conditions another deadly accident took place on November 11th in the chrome mining area in Bulqiza, bringing the total to 15 deaths in the last three years. Prosecutors are still investigating.

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© Ole Elfenkämper

Thanks to Ole for the photographs and text for this feature

© Harry Gould Harvey VI

Also worth a look: HGHIV and his partner run The Amerikants, a project that "has been created to showcase the artwork of people who are involved in the hardcore/punk/metal scenes around the world. The ideas and art that will create this site are all based around the DIY ideal, and it is an opportunity to expose work with peers having similar interests."

© Leslie Jean-Bart

Another interesting find at a portfolio review, Leslie Jean-Bart was sent to me by a fellow Brit so I could see his tea-stain photos, which I really enjoyed.

I was also drawn to his colorful, abstract series. For this ongoing summer project Leslie spends hours at Coney Island, studying the sea, the sand, the boardwalk, the people, their interactions. His goal is "to get back to 'seeing', to a kind of pure photography not driven so much by narrative or issues, but by light, by color, shape and form. I am completely at the mercy of the elements since the sand and tide move at times faster than a mosquito flying by one's ears in the summer."

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Samples from the 'tea stain' series

Bir Nabala, Palestine, West Bank, 2010

Quiet work betrays a bold personality: when complaining on Facebook about a photographer who didn't follow up on my offer of publication, Berlin-based Benedikt Partenheimer cheerily suggested I publish his work instead. After a look through the different series on his website, making an exception to my "no horses" rule, I was most taken by 'Expiration' for its cool, calm look at the West Bank city of Bir Nabala, once a commercial center but now sealed off from Jerusalem by the Wall.

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© Benedikt Partenheimer

Head of Medusa, after Rubens

Look carefully and discover the world of Chadwick Gray & Laura Spector.

These two artists have been working with museums for many years, gaining access to storage facilities, working with the curators to find paintings (mostly 19th century female portraiture), documenting them, and Laura Spector subsequently recreating them on Chadwick Gray's body. The painting process takes between 6 and 18 hours, is then photographed and printed up to the size of the original art work, sometimes a large mural.

Employing the illusion of multistable perception the final photograph often keeps your eye wandering around and around the frame.

"The recreated paintings of these historic portraits recapture the subjects in their own moment in history. The resulting photographs reveal a unification of art combining antiquity, history and technology in a contemporary context."

Most museums seem to not want people viewing their hidden treasures. Then there's examples such as New York's Metropolitan Museum who claim they don't have a storage facility. Now, as Chadwick says, somewhat ironically they themselves have a body of work that hasn't been seen by the public. So the two award-winning artists are putting together an exhibition which will be shown initially at the Pratt MWP Arts Institute in Utica, NY and it is for this they are looking for crowd-funding to produce and frame the works. Information is available over at Kickstarter. Incidentally, Chadwick & Spector are offering one of my favorite rewards: for a pledge at a certain level, wine and cheese via Skype!

There's a TEDx lecture that's fun to watch, which includes a time-lapse video of a 15 hour painting, compressed to 45 seconds.

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I have known Janette Beckman since the early 90s when I had the pleasure of being invited for a good rummage in her basement to unearth her colour trannies from the 1980s, which were then duped for resale at my agency. Over the years I've been amazed by the number of times I've said "JB shot that??" as I read the credits on an album cover or picked up an old copy of the Face. 

For her second aCurator feature, Janette wanted us to focus on Style. She generously scanned a selection from her negative archives, some frames of which have never been published before.

After much harassment by those who know what gems she's sitting on, Janette finally caved in and became a blogger this year. Visit "Archive of Attitude" for a peek at her shots from the past three decades which she posts alongside her current work.

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"I might even show you my photograph album. You might even see a face in it which might remind you of your own, of what you once were. You might see faces of others, in shadow, or cheeks of others, turning, or jaws, or backs of necks, or eyes, dark under hats, which remind you of others, whom you once knew, whom you thought long dead, but from whom you will still receive a sidelong glance, if you can face the good ghost. Allow the love of the good ghost. They possess all that emotion... trapped. Bow to it. It will assuredly never release them, but who knows... what relief... it may give to them... who knows how they may quicken... in their chains, in their glass jars. You think it cruel... to quicken them, when they are fixed, imprisoned? No...no. Deeply, deeply, they wish to respond to your touch, to your look, and when you smile, their joy... is unbounded. And so I say to you, tender the dead, as you yourself would be tendered, now, in what you would describe as your life." Harold Pinter from 'No Man's Land' requested by Pinter to be spoken at his funeral. Via Steve Pyke

Los Muertos, Mummies of Guanajuato, opens at Art Jail, 50 Eldridge Street, NYC on September 23rd, 2011, with a reception on Thursday 22nd - hope to see you there.

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Read the story behind the photographs on Joerg Colberg's Conscientious.

© Steve Pyke