Over the years I have developed several ongoing photographic projects in various parts of Burkina Faso. The Bereba Portraits and Friday Night portfolios are all shot in and around the village of Bereba in the southwest. The photographs of the Kiosks and the Tabtenga Quarry are taken on the central plateau near Ouagadougou, the capital.

I spend the fall teaching digital photography to American college students in a study abroad program through the University. My students stay in Ouagadougou, the country's capital, for the first weeks of instruction and then I take them to live in remote villages without electricity or running water where they photograph, experience traditional village life and do internships in rural libraries. The students study French & French Literature, developmental economics, environmental studies and digital photography. One of their main projects is to work with someone in their village and create two photo books which explore some aspect of village life. The students write texts in simple French for beginning readers. We publish the books in small quantities and take them back to the libraries."

View the full screen magazine photo feature.

© David Pace

"By making a connection between one's inner life and the greater world, art transforms not only what we see but who we are. At the heart of this process is empathy."

David Wolf's series 'Nurturing Time - Life in a Backyard Garden' called to mind two of my favourite books, Michael Pollan's 'The Botany of Desire' and 'Second Nature', both about our relationship to and influence on the natural world.

"I unexpectedly became a gardener when I moved into my current home, allowing me to connect with Nature in an altogether different and deeply rewarding way. In the series, 'Nurturing Time', the intimacy of a backyard garden serves as a metaphor for the greater natural world, exploring how we shape and control Nature even as we nurture it. 

Our presence in Nature is depicted in arrangements I've made from plant and flower cuttings taken from my garden. I photograph the plants in isolation as types--often altering them by drying, tying or otherwise reconfiguring their appearance--and in arranged combinations that speak to associations, or suggest contradictions, presented by the assembled elements against a chosen background. A simple cardboard box acts as both neutral container and conceptual envelope to display the arrangements.

Beyond typology, 'Nurturing Time' offers us the richness of the garden and illuminates our connection to it. The assembled flower boxes resonate with a range of emotion, reflecting our own experience of the cycle of life that embraces vitality and decay, abundance and loss. Memory, Time's shadow, is present here, too, as events and lives are evoked and memorialized by these images." - David Wolf.

View the full screen magazine photo feature.

Wolf's photographs have been exhibited nationally at such venues as the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the Griffin Museum of Photography, and the Photographic Center Northwest.  He exhibited his current series, Nurturing Time, Life in a Backyard Garden, at the Lishui International Photography Festival in Lishui, China.

Welcome to Aoife O'Donnell's minuscule yet magnificent world. aCurator is fascinated by these photomicrographs.

"Art and science are moving towards each other, enabling both disciplines to discover common issues and methods. Once-clear divisions are no longer reliably separate, prompting this project to represent the potential for an increasing overlap of interests. While the outcome of studies in art and science often differs, the creative imaginative processes are similar.

Micro Portraits falls under what has been deemed the genre sci-art which seeks to locate connections between the arts and science through borrowed methods and collaborations. It is the result of an interdisciplinary collaboration between the photographer and Fergus Ryan, professor of biology at the Dublin Institute of Technology. The project is concerned with alternative imaging techniques used in laboratories and the element of non-human intervention in creating imagery. The photographer is using microscopes to record images of cells, tissue, DNA and various other effluvia from her family and herself.

Removed from their usual context of the laboratory, these new genetic portraits seek to interrupt the traditional notion of the family portrait in photography prompting the viewer to consider the transformations and changes occurring inside the body on a cellular level,and questions when the alternative portrait produced by scientific imaging moves from the generic to the personal. The photographer provides a privileged opportunity for the viewer to get up close and personal with elements of the body which may previously have eluded recognition."

View the full screen magazine photo feature.

Aoife O'Donnell is an Irish visual artist based in New York City, who specializes in photomicrography. O'Donnell completed a B.A. in photography at the Dublin Institute of Technology and has previously studied at Columbia College Chicago during 2008. Upon graduating she was awarded the Dublin Institute of Technology Medal for exceptional performance. Having exhibited her current body of work entitled Micro Portraits at the Gallery of Photography, she was selected to exhibit at the Photo Ireland Festival and at RUA RED's summer exhibition 2010. Her work has also been exhibited at Filmbase, The Joinery, The Back Loft, The Homeless Gallery and The Complex. It has been reviewed in the Irish Arts Review autumn edition 2010. O'Donnell has contributed to various companies including Merc London, Red Stripe UK and Starchild Chicago. She currently divides her time working at Griffin Editions, The International Center of Photography and Rick Wester Fine Art. Micro Portraits will be exhibited at Raandesk Gallery, New York City in October 2011.

Hair Follicle, 100x © Aoife O'Donnell

Contemplating landscapes is oft the practice of San Francisco-based photographer David Gardner. Follow him as he discovers fascinating and varied examples of humans, over centuries, making a point, whatever that point may be, in this series 'Marking Our Place in the World'.

"As humans we must communicate - it is what we do best. We seem hardwired from birth to do this via a complicated system using signs and symbols. But removed from our normal settings and tools, how do we compensate? What does it look like when we turn our communication skills loose on the landscape around us; why are we compelled to 'leave our mark' upon landscape, whether or not others understand its meaning or semiology?

In my photographic investigation of these ideas, the marks themselves are more relevant to me than the particular landscape they inhabit. I am interested in how our interventions impact the landscape, both natural and urban, in ways that are permanent as well as changed by time and nature. I explore themes of history, language and communication, while observing the dynamic of personal and group expression as it plays out on the landscape. We imagine mythical figures in the stars; we see the Virgin Mary in the knots of a tree; we are both compelled to make marks as well as to decipher their meanings. By looking at how we have marked the landscape through time, we can gain insight into our personal and collective history. To decline such a study is to leave to others the control of the world of meanings in which we inhabit." - David Gardner.

View the magazine full screen photo feature.

Chinese poem carved into the barrack wall at the immigration station/detention center at Angel Island:

Detained in this wooden house for several tens of days,
It is all because of the Mexican exclusion law which implicates me,
It's a pity heroes have no way of exercising their prowess.
I can only await the word so that I can snap Zu's whip.
From now on, I am departing far from this building.

All of my fellow villagers are rejoicing with me.
Don't say that everything within is Western styled.
Even if it is built of jade, it has turned into a cage.

Images © David Gardner

"Here you have my heart" he said, and he took me away.

Brandan Gomez is a photographer based in Santiago de Compostela; his transcendent photographs are rooted in the spirituality of his location which is a medieval pilgrimage route dating back to the 9th century. He is interested in "religions, the sacred, superstitions, and how that can be translated into images."

"It all began in a very small coast village in the North of Portugal called Costa Nova. This place has such a special light because it has the Atlantic Ocean on the west and a water channel on the east, this land is like a needle that penetrates the sea, there is always some mist floating in the air, water acts like a mirror, light reflects in every object and somehow blinds you enough to see what has never happened."

View the full screen magazine photo feature

The sacred © Brandan Gomez