Archives
volume 18 (11.2008-12.2008)
Library of Dust
A beautiful new over-sized book from David Maisel documents the disquieting beauty of final remains in an old insane asylum.
Starless
Italian photographer Massimiliano Tomasso Rezza has created a poetic and cinematic series of photos that reflect an introspective world view tinged with curiosity and melancholy.
Hand to Mouth
To qualify for future membership in the European Union, Romania is banning some farming practices that will forever change the lives of communities living in the Carpathian Mountains. Photographer Tessa Bunney documents these centuries-old customs before they disappear.
Prix Pictet 2008: Sustainability
See work from all 18 finalists chosen for a major new global prize in photography.
Norwegian Light
Norwegian photographer Catherine Cameron captures beauty in some unlikely places around the world. An all-new solo show in Paris comes on the heels of successful exhibitions on four continents in 2008.
Attentional Landscapes
How much visual information do we really need to see a picture and understand it? How do photographs define our memories, and what would happen if the photos started to lose their details? Odette England explores these ideas and more in her new project.
UK Football Fans
Adam Rubin documents the hyper-real passion of football fans in the UK — from the stadiums and the pubs, to how they dress and decorate their homes.
Tokyo Stories
A new exhibition of 100 vintage photographs shows the changing faces of Tokyo, from the 1930s through the 1990s. Curator Marc Feustel provides insight and context as we view the work of three very different photographers.
Meta-Photographs
Greek photographer Panayotis Papadimitropoulos delivers a text and examples of his re-worked photographs, where the artistry comes after the prints are made.
Photo Book Review:
JH Engstrom
The images in this new book are all mostly veiled in what looks like carbon-exhaust smog. After the initial surprise, a coherent story starts to evolve.
Fragments: Modern Pinhole Snapshots
Using a crude pinhole camera with ultra-high-speed film, Guillaume Zuili has developed a new hybrid technique that yields wonderfully nostalgic images from contemporary scenes.
Richard Avedon:
Portraits of Power
Richard Avedon had access to practically everyone who held some kind of power from the 1950s through the beginning of the 21st century in America.This new book brings these portraits of power together for the first time.
Brighton Photo Biennial:
Images of War, War of Images
"The making and use of images can be a part of the conflict, as well as merely recording it." Curator Julian Stallabrass has pulled together a very intelligent show about photography and war. Read more about his ideas and discoveries in a great interview.
Warning: many of the images may be quite disturbing.
Paris Photo 2008: Preview
This year, the world's leading international photography fair has a special focus on the photography of Japan. And there's lots of other great work to see, too — 500 artists, from all continents, will have their photographs on display. Lens Culture offers an extensive sneak peak of 200 photos.
People's Parks in China
UK-based photographer Kurt Tong weaves together pictures from his childhood and photographs of deteriorating public parks in contemporary China to create a lyrical meditation on time and memory.
A Husband in Paris
Potential "husbands" for an attractive Eastern European girl were all asked to pose with her so she could see what kind of couple they would make. This funny and thought-provoking project by Serbian photographer Katarina Radovic is not as far-fetched as it might seem.
Archives
volume 17 (9.2008-10.2008)
Daily Pilgrims
Portuguese photographer Virgilio Ferreira creates ephemeral portraits of urban dwellers against the crisp backdrops of six modern Asian cities.
Don't look now
Desire, eroticism, and closed spaces of intimacy are explored in this series of self-portraits by Danish photographer Camilla Holmgren.
Polaroid Art:
pierced, bent, and scratched with writing
Korean artist Mimi Youn is pushing the Polaroid medium (literally) to find a new way of expression.
25 luxury designs for plastic water bottles
There are over 3,000 brands of bottled water worldwide. Frank Yamrus photographs 25 of them, stripped of their labels, as if they are jewels or trophies, symbols of status and vanity.
Markings
Details of quirky sidewalk designs from San Francisco's Sunset District are peculiar and poetic. Photographer Jim Vecchi makes them look like mid-century works of art.
The Invisible Age: Self-portraits of women between 50 and 65
A group show of 31 women who use photography to explore the way American society deals with the identity and image of women in this certain age bracket.
Out from Under
Favoring the distracting elements of digital snapshots, Ebbe Stub Wittrup's landscapes become hardly recognizable monochromatic surfaces.
Forty-eight States
Forty-eight vertical landscapes shot through the windows of railroad trains moving across the United States create a cool nostalgic look at the notion of a country as experienced by Candace Plummer Gaudiani.
Noorderlicht Photo festival preview:
Before and after Communism
A sweeping overview of photography from Eastern Europe — some old views, and lots of new discoveries.
Fictitious Filmstills
Twin sisters, Carine and Elisabeth Krecke, experiment with new techniques of drawing in combination with digital technologies to create a simulation of photography.
Wake
The large-format images of Adam Jeppesen inhabit a liminal space rich with atmosphere, obscuring as much as it reveals.
Being in Pictures
A life's work of photography, collage, feminism, and keen observations on the sexes, makes the new book by Joanne Leonard exceptional reading.
Photo murals that float
in space and time
American artist-photographer Jeff Cowen opens a one-man show in Barcelona that is richly diverse and stunningly honest and alive.
Joachim Schmid:
Celebrating photographic garbage
Berlin-based critic and conceptual artist Joachim Schmid collects and re-uses photographs that other people throw away. Appropriating these discarded, ripped, and mundane photographs, he creates artwork that is alluring, intriguing, and captivating. He speaks about his passion for visual trash, in a great, exclusive audio interview.
Natural red hair
A young photographer from the Netherlands, Hanne van der Woude, combines her love of verdant Dutch landscapes with an almost obsessive fascination with natural red hair. The photos vibrate with hyper-real intensity.
Desperately perfect
In a photo-essay from the renowned Vaganova Ballet Academy in St. Petersburg, Russia, Rachel Papo documents how, from the age of ten until eighteen, twelve hours a day, six days a week, young ballet students live lives of fierce competition.
48 hours and Urban Rooms
Austrian photographer Yenny Huber compresses city "landscapes" into dense overlapping images, all layered in-camera with film.
Beyond the visible
New York-based photographer Melissa Fleming uses two distinct techniques to capture nature’s more subtle and interesting beauty that is often beyond the visible.
Archives
volume 16 (7.2008-8.2008)
Battered
Some young people in the suburbs of Finland like to go out, get drunk, and fight. Harri Palviranta documents these scenes like a modern-day Weegee.
Waves and visual haiku from Japan
NAMI is a series of photos of waves around the shores of Sado Island in Japan. The photographer, a young Buddhist monk named Syoin Kajii, watches the water patiently, waiting for a moment of surprise.
Hamburg Sud
A small, poetic series of photographs all made on the same day in Hamburg.
Net Works
First she made art with Nylon stockings. Now Elaine Duigenan is back with a quirky series of digital photograms made from vintage hairnets.
Mobile Phone Fortune Telling
Psychic/photographer Beth Lilly puts both talents to work one day per month, when she uses the camera on her mobile phone to predict the fortunes of strangers who call in from all over the world.
Deliver Me
Laura Noel takes a look at smokers who have recently become outcasts in health-conscious politically-correct societies.
Urban Tree Portraits
City trees in Buenos Aires show their individual character and awkward charm in this series of portraits by Emma Livingston.
Photo Espana 2008: a preview
For a couple months every summer, the City of Madrid hosts one of the best photo festivals in the world. Here is a peak at what you can discover there in 2008.
Look 3 Festival of the Photograph
For the second year in a row, this new festival in Charlottesville, Virginia, is hosting on-stage interviews with some of today's best photographers. This year's line-up includes Mary Ellen Mark, James Nachtwey, and Joel-Peter Witkin.
Oblivion:
Los Angeles from the Air
David Maisel creates highly detailed aerial photographs of the densely packed sprawl of Los Angeles. Is it any wonder that it looks alien and uninviting?
Serial No. 3817131
At an age when social, sexual, and educational explorations are at their highest point, the life of an eighteen-year-old Israeli girl is interrupted to serve in an army involved in daily conflict and war. Rachel Papo was inducted into the Israeli Army when she turned 18. Fifteen years later, armed only with her camera, she decided to go back to see if it was as bad as she remembered.
Hyper
The hypermarkets of France sometimes look like consumerism on steroids. Photographer Denis Darzacq takes it one step further with his series of "shoppers" flying and floating through the aisles like superheros or astronauts. And yes, they are real photographs, no tricks.
81 Preview Photos:
2008 Festival in Arles
Take a sneak peak of the eclectic mix of photography that will be shown at Les Rencontres d'Arles Photographie this summer, starting July 8 through September 14. Be sure to check out Lens Culture's high resolution slide show.
The Last Days of Higley
The American Southwest is slowly succumbing to the inevitable sprawl of suburban developments. Former resident Andrew Phelps documents the demise of a small rural town as it is bull-dozed into another massive, generic bedroom community.
Archives
volume 15 (5.2008-6.2008)
Soldier
Who are the men and women who volunteer to fight in America's wars, and what do they look like after their first tours of duty?
Photographer Suzanne Opton provides some uncomfortably intimate portraits, and tells her story about this controversial work in an exclusive audio interview with Lens Culture.
Russian springtime playgrounds
As winter's snows thaw, Trevor Traynor captures the faded colors of Moscow's playgrounds.
Drifting Away: remembering the disappeared from Colombia
Colombian artist Erika Diettes has created a light-filled photo-based memorial installation to honor and remember the thousands of her countrymen who are missing or dead.
The shapes of formal gardens
Photographer Beth Dow aims for pictures that have "a meditative quality to reflect the spiritual urges that inspired the earliest gardens some six thousand years ago." Her platinum prints make them feel even more wonderfully unreal and magical.
Bejewelled Carcasses
Patricia Pastore zooms in on the beauty of dead bugs, with bright lights and highly selective focus. The results shimmer with minimalist elegance.
Night Park
Dogs and people cavort like dancers in the dark when photographer Susan Bein experiments with hand-held late-night long exposures.
Flowers
Colorblind photographer Tony Mendoza decided that after 30 years of black-and-white it was time to tackle color photography. These flowers look like none you have probably seen in your garden.
American Suburb
Douglas Rickhard chronicles the twilight-zone empty feeling of 60s and 70s era suburban housing developments in the United States.
Written in the Past
Joachim Froese presents us with zen-like meditations and dream-like imagery in his series of triptychs.
County Fair Winners
Dan Nelken takes a long loving look at the competitions at county fairs in America, and gives us a gift of early 21st century rural Americana, circa 1998 - 2007.
Before and After Death
A stunning series of portraits of people — shortly before and just after they die — is touring Europe now, and tackling one of the biggest remaining taboos in Western societies. Photos by Walter Schels, text by Beate Lakotta.
Surfers: modern/primitives
Using a century-old photo technique, photographer Joni Sternbach creates portraits of modern-day surfers.
When men call women names
Bird, bitch, fox... UK photographer Rachel Graves created a menagerie of characters based on the derogatory terms that women hear on the street every day. These self-portrait diptychs are disarmingly simple, seductive and thought-provoking.
Archives
volume 14 (3.2008-4.2008)
Here and gone:
21st century
anonymous portraits
Anonymous urban dwellers are photographed in the artificial light of public spaces. Photos by Russian photographer Alexei Vassiliev.
Book Review:
The Roma Journeys
One of the best photo books of 2008. Photographer Joakim Eskildsen has created a stunningly rich portrait of contemporary Roma Gypsy life as it is played out in seven different countries.
What remains in an empty home?
Norwegian Oyvind Hjelmen photographs an old family home as it is being emptied after several generations have come and gone.
World Press Photo Winners
Here are some of the very best photos taken in the world of photojournalism during 2007.
Deutsche Borse Prize Finalists
More than 40 images from the four finalists in one of Europe's most prestigious photography contests that comes with a £30,000 cash prize.
Book Review:
The Mother of
All Journeys
Photographer Dinu Li re-traces the steps of his mother's life travels from China to Hong Kong to England. This family history is told through a deft mixture of old family photos, oral history, and new photos of the places that were significant in her past, but shown as they are today.
Gender, Politics, and Images of Power
Deborah Oparallo juxtaposes 18th century power portraits of male leaders with internet images of women in fetish costumes.
Silent Nests
Vicki Topaz documents 14th to 18th century pigeon houses in France — disappearing symbols of aristocratic status.
Photography in China: 1934-2008
The world's most comprehensive collection and overview of photography from China is premiering in a mammoth city-wide exhibition in Houston, Texas, as part of FotoFest 2008. Lens Culture is thrilled to present 60 photographs from the exhibition — many never seen before outside of China.
Patti Smith Polaroids
A major solo exhibition of Patti Smith's visual art opened in Paris on March 28. The show includes lots of Polaroid photos taken by Smith over the course of her forty-year career as a rock 'n roll punk poet visionary.
Army Cooks
Did you ever think about the men who have to feed hungry armies out on battlefields? What do they do when basic food and ingredients are hard to find? How can they inspire their men on to victory? Photographer Martin Kollar delivers an eye-opening photo-essay from Eastern Europe. Text by Peter Kerekes.
Saul Leiter: Retrospective
A European retrospective, and a new book, celebrate the black-and-white and color street photography of American Saul Leiter from the 1950s-60s. Archives
volume 13 (1.2008-2.2008)
Grit of Life
Raw, direct, tender, harsh, sad, and beautiful. A portfolio of all new work by young Swedish photographer Marcus Erixson.
Painted Rituals
Aboriginal traditional dances photographed by Argentinean photographer Lorena Vaschetti. Text by Finn Thrane.
Eyes of an Island:
Japanese Photography 1945-2007
In-depth critical essay on the evolution of Japanese photography since WWII. Written by Marc Feustel, and illustrated with a diverse range of images and photographic styles.
Workers
Eastern European men from all social classes migrate long distances to harvest the crops in Germany. Ingar Krauss captures individual portraits after a long day of manual labor.
We're All the Same!
Dutch photographer Hans Eijkelboom just published a 3-volume sociological photo report proving that, at least visually, life in New York, Paris, and Shanghai is nearly identical.
No Love Lost
Photographer Michael Grieve takes us into seedy swingers' joints, back-stage at strip clubs, and in between takes on porn film sets in the UK in this revealing and not-so-sexy photo essay.
Bosnia: Blood + Honey
The war in Bosnia-Herzegovina from 1992 until 1995 took a great toll on human life and infrastructure. Today, there are still an estimated 2.2 million refugees living in crowded refugee camps. Nathalie Mohadjer gives us a look inside one camp, and writes a concise overview of the current situation.
The Absence of All Colors
Brazilian artist Ludmila Steckelberg doctored the photos in her collective family albums by removing the images of her relatives who died, leaving black silhouettes where the dead had once been alive.
Misrach: On the Beach
Richard Misrach takes us high in the air over dream-like tropical settings in his latest book.