Citroen © Jean-Baptiste Courtier

We have to keep smiling somehow and photographers like Jean-Baptiste Courtier give a big helping hand!

Machine à laver.  All images © Jean-Baptiste Courtier

#icedHoffee Photo of the Hoff © David Harry Stewart

Oh Happy Monday! A welcome opportunity to publish a photo of David Hasselhoff and this hysterical news item.

David Harry Stewart from the Casey stable made a photo of David Hasselhoff holding an iced coffee for Cumberland Farms. After it was sent into stores as a cut-out to highlight their yummy iced coffee, patrons started stealing David's Hoff and posing with him on Twitter. 550 have been stolen with only 20 left. The story went viral and here we are, 2012, with Hoff still making headlines.

Here's what David had to say about David.

"Working with David Hasselhoff is a blast. Super fun, super professional, and able to turn on The Hoff character on command. He closes his eyes, pauses for a moment, then Hasselhoff the man turns into meta-Hoff the character. It's amazing to watch. I would ask for more of a smile, or a surprised look, and he would just start riffing on it through his Hoff character. In between takes we would chat about surfing or Baywatch, and then when it was time to shoot, out of the skin of this really quite regular guy came the HOFF.  Such a comedian at his own expense. Love him.

The Hoff-Cumberland Farms campaign is like nothing else I have ever done. In an age where people are worried about internet copyright theft, here we have people loving these images so much, they're actually stealing them out from stores. I love it! To go into a Cumberland Farms and run out with a stolen ad shows, real dedication. Never in all the ad campaigns I have done has there been anything like this. I'm so happy that people will be able to enjoy The Hoff in the privacy of their living rooms for years to come. It is enormously flattering."

There's a long piece in the Guardian this weekend 'If we have to go with the Hoff to pay the rent, let's go with the Hoff' and below is my personal favourite Hoff moment.

Thanks to Alex Geana and the Casey crew for submitting this. You guys made my day.

© Marika Dee

Marika Dee submitted her latest personal project. I myself have learned something...  "In recent years, several thousands of people, many belonging to the Roma, Ashkali or Egyptian (RAE) community, have been forcibly returned to Kosovo by western European countries. Germany is one of the countries expelling RAE families that have been living there for a long time, often 15 years or more. The deportations take place in the framework of a "readmission agreement" that Germany concluded with Kosovo, the latter being under political pressure to accept. The deportations were heavily criticized by several NGO's, the Council of Europe and UNICEF.  Most of the children were not only brought up in Germany but were born there as well. In Kosovo the families fall into a marginal existence and the children feel uprooted. In the coming years an estimated 12,000 people will be returned by Germany, half of them children.

Over the course of last year I traveled several times to Kosovo to document the precarious daily life of a few of these families."

"E5 is a postcode district within the Borough of Hackney, East London. Chatsworth Road used to have the biggest street market in East London. After the 1970s recession the market started shrinking, with the last four stalls closing down in the mid 1990s. From then on the reputation of the area was associated with derelict buildings, street gangs and squats."

"From the late 1990s young artists and students began to move to East London, including E5, triggering the gentrification of the area. There are now coffee shops, a delicatessen, a cręperie, bars and other new businesses."

"During 2011 a Traders and Residents Association formed to bring a voice to the local community, and to re-introduce the Chatsworth Road street market. I saw a place not yet as standardized as other street markets in East London which attract high prices and tourists. Instead, it was an area with a strong community spirit, independent shops and a vibrant local economy. So I began to hang around with my camera and talk to people and discovered a colourful place with interesting characters, traditional shop fronts and stories that made me return over and over again, for the next seven months."

"This year the London 2012 Olympics will be happening only 15 minutes walk away, and the impact on this traditional East London neighbourhood can only be speculated."

Darth does chores © Julie Schuchard

Not much to add here really. Young photographer Julie Schuchard, whom I met recently at the end of a panel discussion at Adorama, "...just drove across the country to launch a new portrait series called 'Darth Across America.'"

He can kill you with a single thought.

Dorothy Tyler (High jump) © Katherine Green

This year, London will host the Olympics for the first time since 1948. (Good luck with that. I'm grateful they are not being held here in NYC.) For the past 6 years, photographer Katherine Green has been meeting and documenting the 1948 British Olympic Team.

Katherine Green is a social documentary photographer, from East London, who studied postgraduate photography at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design. Katherine's work often focuses on documenting communities through photography and oral history, exploring what community and a sense of belonging means to different people. Her work aims to highlight and celebrate members of the community who may otherwise go unseen.

Katherine says of this work: "At the same time as drawing parallels between 1948 and the 2012 Olympic Games, I do hope these portraits and oral histories go some way to demonstrate the knowledge and experience of a valuable generation of people who are often overlooked in our society. It has been a great privilege to spend time in the company of such interesting and modest people."