Massimo Cristaldi is a second-career photographer (he trained to be a geologist) whose work is often mysterious and eery, exploring man's, and time's, influence on nature. In this emotional project he explores the desolation of the beaches that are the destination of so many hopeful immigrants.

"In 'Touch Ground' I photographed beaches, harbors, cliffs: places where, in recent years, migrants went ashore (or just attempted to arrive) from North Africa. It's an exploration project on a firm ground, a coveted place, object of hopes, tragedies, happiness, disillusion, and sometimes, death. Places that at night appeared full of meanings and in which I perceived absences that have influenced me, as indeed as a whole a migration of epic proportions has done. It is then, once again, a work on the borders, in this case between sea, land and men. Seascapes, and yet "places of the present", places of contemporary history, theaters of tragic events for some, simply "sea" for all of us.

"Living in Sicily, I could not but be impressed by the size of the migration phenomenon and I got in touch with some immigrants who arrived in 2002, and who are now living among us. I wondered how the 'ground' is for those who see it after weeks at sea, those more fortunate than the others. Anthony told me, in an uncertain Italian, "Sea, sea, sea, fear, fear, fear." Then, finally, a light, a landing. A possible salvation but only for those who are really lucky." Massimo Cristaldi.

View the full screen magazine photo feature.

Wonderful news: a book of John Cyr's fabulous "Developer Trays" is out now from Powerhouse Books. 

Go full screen for this second feature from the series, and let your imagination develop your favourite images from each photographer.

View the magazine photo feature.

Read more about the project in our previous feature.

NY locals: there is a book launch and talk on Tuesday, March 18th, 2014, at the Powerhouse Arena, in DUMBO.

"This is what fracking looks like from the surface. The pipes leading into the well head are connected to the trucks in the background. These trucks force water mixed with proppant - sand and tiny ceramic balls that keep the cracks propped open (hence the name) so that oil can flow towards the well pipe - and chemicals down into the well at 10,000 PSI." - John Mireles

The Bakken formation is a rock unit from the Late Devonian to Early Mississippian age occupying about 200,000 square miles of the subsurface of the Williston Basin, underlying parts of Montana, North Dakota, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Oil was first discovered within the Bakken in 1951, but past efforts to produce it have faced technical difficulties. Hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling technologies have caused a boom in Bakken production since 2000 and the area has emerged in recent years as one of the most important sources of oil in the United States. 

Oil production has now outstripped the capacity of the pipelines to ship the oil out. It was Bakken crude oil carried by train that caught fire in the Lac-Megantic derailment in Quebec last year.

In John Mireles' series he combines portraits, landscapes and documentary imagery to tell us about this oil boom in North Dakota.

View the full-screen magazine photo feature.

Carnival ride, Pontotoc, Mississippi © Betty Press

A decade ago, after many years of living in Africa, photojournalist Betty Press moved to Mississippi. Around 2011, still struggling to feel truly at home, "and being a liberal in politics and religion, I decided the best way to deal with this unease was to explore the state, mostly rural and agricultural, through a series of road trips."

"I started by visiting small communities listed in Mississippi Atlas & Gazetteer, with unusual names like Love, Darling, Expose, Dogtown, Midnight. Often there was very little going on and sometimes it was hard to find the place. When I did, I would look for people out and about. Southern hospitality and politeness are still important and I was welcomed, even as an outsider. Other times I would visit local festivals celebrating music and culture like the Juke Joint Festival and Redneck Festival."

Betty Press is best known for her photographs taken in Africa. We previously published some from the delightful collection "I Am Because We Are - African Wisdom in Image and Proverb." 

In 2008, Irina Popova was on assignment looking for a story about 'feelings.' "I met Pasha and Lilya the day after getting the assignment for the project. You could say that I got lucky. Last year I shot a similar couple that kept their child in the basement."

This controversial photostory has now been published as a book by the Dostoevsky Photography Society. Since I don't have my copy as of writing, here's the blurb from the preface.

"This fascinating book tells the story of Irina Popova's stay with a family of drug-users in St. Petersburg, Russia. The photostory - focusing on a small child living in shocking family circumstances - has provoked an explosion of criticism on the Internet, directed towards the parents as well as at the photographer. The book reveals the documentary evidence during the development of the story, including the previously unpublished photos from the archives of the photographer herself and the characters, the web pages of blogs with comments, the private letters and the diaries. It attempts to analyze the consequences of the photographer's actions and the degree of responsibility of the photographer. The multivocal storytelling in the book forms the screenplay for a real-life drama. This is the first time this frequently discussed topic of the supposed responsibility of documentary photographers has been analyzed so consistently and comprehensively in book form. This book is therefore more than simply a documentary photo book depicting the deplorable situation of a drug-addict family - it is an essential document dealing with the question all documentary photographers may be confronted with at some time in their careers: can I continue working or should I stop and try to help solve the problem I am witness to?"

View the full screen photography magazine photo feature.

Disappear with us into the odd, enchanted world of Bear Kirkpatrick. 

Bear Kirkpatrick and I bonded, over his portfolio at the PhotoNOLA reviews last December, and thereafter. This is my favourite of his series and the images have grown and grown on me the more I examine them. Playing around in the studio, the photographer found that covering a model's usually visually dominant hair, he could create a wild yet ethereal image. 

I'm really pleased to present these portraits in full screen. Prints, they look gorgeous, but I'm particularly loving these back-lit in the mag.

Bear is a poetic, astute and highly amusing sort of chap. In the past, he has gone to great lengths to create his multifaceted imagery; the Wall Portraits were more of a happy accident (and remind me of Yousuf Karsh's story of pulling down the curtains to make his gorgeous portrait of Betty Low.) 

Aged 5 Bear was diagnosed as deaf; his hearing was repaired, and he says "I have been transfixed, fascinated, and frightened ever since by things that reveal their power to change shape or that contain multiples within." 

I can't really say it anywhere near better than Brian Kubarycz writing on the photographer's website:

"This madness to hazard contact with the wild is constantly acted out in the art of Bear Kirkpatrick. His project is to experience and question what it means not merely to bide time in the worldly state, but far more actively and intimately, to have and to hold an only world, unto death, but in the expectation of new living creatures of awful energies. Kirkpatrick's art, from its first conception to the full arrival of its finished form, explores the ongoing adventure of creation one must take up and sustain in order to inhabit a world of one's own, the sole world worth inhabiting."

View the full screen magazine photography feature.

© Estate of Leonard Freed - Magnum Photos (Brigitte Freed)

This Is the Day: The March on Washington, was published by Getty Publications to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the march which took place August 27, 1963. Magnum photographer Leonard Freed traveled to Washington that day and photographed the event that culminated in Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech.

'Black in White America,' an exhibition of Freed's work, is on now through February 22nd, 2014, at the Leica Gallery in Soho, New York.

View the full screen magazine photo feature.

View the full screen magazine feature.

Rituparna Banerjee is a photographer based in New Delhi. Here is her story about the approximately 1,200 residents of what is essentially a two-square-mile slum at the Yamuna Bazaar in Delhi.

"A walk into these very spaces reveals a grim reality. Vials of familiar anti-allergic medication, syringes and needles lie littered about in the dirt; huddles of small groups of men, women and children with their backs to you; their decaying bodies and reddened eyes, are a clear giveaway. We approached one of them. "I have been using drugs since I was 12...it's been over 14 years now, my wife left me. I continue to live like this", says Siddharth. When asked how he can afford it, he narrates with interest how begging and picking pockets are popular sources of income. "Each packet of crack costs me about four hundred rupees ($7), it keeps me high for about two hours; I take it 2-3 times a day. I can't live without this," he adds. Siddharth is one of the hordes of homeless people in Yamuna Bazaar whose life, income and expenditure revolve around the intoxicating chemicals he consumes every day.    

Half the addicts encountered are children. Their days are spent in the nearby railway area of the Wazirabad cargo depot. Moreover, their addiction continues well into adulthood, as testified by Siddharth. The children often turn to violence in desperation to get their hands on chemicals to cause intoxication. Chintan, a minor barely thirteen, shows the slash marks of a razor blade on his friend's chest. They are both from Darbhanga in Bihar. Holding a the tube of rubber solution used by cobblers and packers as glue, a 10 year old says, "I inhale this all day," with most of his face concealed beneath a cloth towel doused in the substance.

 

Substance abuse has been reported in many instances to reach uncontrollable proportions, and these images essay the condition of occupants of the Yamuna Bazaar area. Their peculiar situation makes them unqualified for any government benefits and the societal life applicable to other underprivileged city occupants. With the authorities having a blasé attitude towards a huge responsibility, the addicts occupy a crack in society and governance and continue to waste away as prisoners to their own addiction."