ANDREW PHELPS: Cross–Cultural

From the series "Not Niigata" 2009

Photograph (c) Andrew Phelps/All rights reserved

From the series "Not Niigata" 2009
Photograph (c) Andrew Phelps/All rights reserved

From the series "Not Niigata" 2009
Photograph (c) Andrew Phelps/All rights reserved

Austria, 2004
Photograph (c) Andrew Phelps/All rights reserved

From the series "Not Niigata" 2009
Photograph (c) Andrew Phelps/All rights reserved

When traveling in a foreign place, I tend to be fascinated with both the exotic and the mundane. The two are often one and the same, especially in a place where the gap between old and new is astronomical. In most modern societies, tradition, history, and religion have etched a deep set of rituals and codes which are being tested and expanded as cultural homogenization begins to question set systems and ideologies. My interests in Niigata, and Japan in general, lie within documenting this gap.

ANDREW PHELPS is an American photographer living in Austria. I discovered his work through his blog BUFFET. There's a great INTERVIEW with Andrew Phelps by Daniel Augschöll and Anya Jasbär in Ahorn Magazine here. Andrew Phelps WEBSITE

JASON FLORIO: Makasutu Mecca In The Forest

Makasutu, Gambia (c) Jason Florio/All rights reserved

Makasutu, Gambia (c) Jason Florio/All rights reserved

Makasutu, Gambia (c) Jason Florio/All rights reserved

I have been arrested by the Taliban...ridden into far-flung Afghan valleys in search of nomads with mujahideen as my security, dressed as a woman to cross a border, was at the foot of the Twin Towers as they collapsed, enjoyed the 'comforts' of a Cuban hospital, hunted bats in Surinam, chatted with Somali pirates over Coke and biscuits and danced like a fiend in Beirut nightclubs...among other things.

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JASON FLORIO was born in London and relocated to the USA in 1987. He moved to NYC to pursue photography after seeing Richard Avedon's In The American West exhibition. Jason's Makasutu: Mecca In The Forest Project

Jason Florio Website

DOUGLAS STOCKDALE: Insomnia

Insomnia Shanghai Heights (c) 2009 Douglas Stockdale/All rights reserved

Photograph (c) 2009 Douglas Stockdale/All rights reserved

Photograph (c) 2009 Douglas Stockdale/All rights reserved

An exploration of the feelings of detachment, disassociation, and loneliness that can occur when one leaves their family and home due to the need to travel alone. These feelings can be intensified when the travel also includes multiple time zones, different cultures and customs, changes in food and diet and other physical or emotional differences.

Insomnia: Hotel Noir Web Journal

The Photo Book Web Journal
Douglas Stockdale Website

TONY MENDOZA: Bob (2006- )

Photograph (c) Tony Mendoza/All rights reserved

Photograph (c) Tony Mendoza/All rights reserved

Photograph (c) Tony Mendoza/All rights reserved

TONY MENDOZA is a Cuban-American photographer. Born in Havana, he moved to Miami with his family in 1960, graduated from Yale with a Bachelor of Engineering, Harvard with a Master of Architecture, before becoming a full time photographer in 1973.

Mendoza has received three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, a Guggenheim Photography Fellowship as well as two Creative Writing fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council. His photographs have exhibited in major museums around the country. His most well known book Ernie is a photographic memoir centered around a cat he encountered when he moved in to an apartment in New York City. Mendoza is currently an instructor of photography at the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. Galleries.

Tony Mendoza Website

More Dog Park Photographs

JOSEF HOFLEHNER: Photographs

Ocean Pools, Taiwan, 2009 (c) Josef Hoflehner/All rights reserved

Santa Monica Pier, Ca, 2009 (c) Josef Hoflehner/All rights reserved

J O S E F H O F L E H N E R.C O M

JESSICA TODD HARPER: Interior Exposure

(12-time Olympic Medalist)
Dara Torres at home in Florida with her daughter

from Newsweek 2009 (c) Jessica Todd Harper/All rights reserved

Self Portrait with Christopher, Papa, and Ah-Choo, 2003
(c) Jessica Todd Harper/All rights reserved

Becky with Zephyr and Christopher, 2004
(c) Jessica Todd Harper/All rights reserved

(Untitled) 2009 (c) Jessica Todd Harper/All rights reserved

There are no guarantees that if you work hard enough, or are talented enough, that you will be successful, be able to support yourself, or importantly, make a meaningful contribution to others. But in the meantime, if you are an artist, the art just comes - whether you like it or not- because you can't stop it.

Read the complete Interview with Jessica Todd Harper and Michael Werner on Two Way Lens. View Jessica Todd Harper website

JEFFRIS ELLIOTT: In His Own Words

Islamic Woman Ascending Stairs

Photograph (c) Jeffris Elliott/All rights reserved

Two Hawks. Photograph (c) Jeffris Elliott/All rights reserved

I am a painter and draftsman as well as a photographer. It is impossible for me to separate my photographic work from my traditional art. Such greats as Henri Rousseau, Marc Chagall and Joan Miro as well as Minor White and Wynn Bullock have all had deep influences on how I see the world.

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I was first introduced to the work of JEFFRIS ELLIOTT a few years back when he submitted his series Mother and Portraits From Mexico to Photo-Eye Gallery Photographers Showcase, then juried by Rixon Reed, Melanie McWhorter and myself. I had the pleasure of meeting Jeffris and viewing his impressive work from the Middle East at the 2009 Portfolio Viewing at CCA/Center For Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe, NM.

In Elliott's own words: Minor White introduced me to the conscious link between a spiritual life and the photographic image. I worked as Minors apprentice, helping with his darkroom, arrieses, viewing sessions and classes at M.I.T. We also traveled through Nova Scotia photographing and camping. I was in the beginning of my artistic life and Minor was nearing the end of his. He introduced me to the work of his spiritual teacher Gurdjieff, which later led me to living and practicing ZaZen.

Elliott was one of 100 photographers invited to participate in Review Santa Fe 2009. Website: www.jeffriselliott.com

KIDS WITH CAMERAS: Calcutta

Bengali Moon. Photograph © Kochi, 10 / Kids With Cameras

Babai. Photograph © Kochi, 10 / Kids With Cameras

Photograph © Avijit / Avijit's Postcard Collection

We believe that photography is an effective tool in igniting children's imagination and building self-esteem. We believe in the power of art to transform lives, for both the artist and the viewer.

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BORN INTO BROTHELS, a film by Photographer Zana Briski and Co-Director Ross Kauffman, won the 77th annual Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. A tribute to the resiliency of childhood and the restorative power of art, Born into Brothels is a portrait of several unforgettable children who lived in the red light district of Calcutta, where their mothers worked as prostitutes.

Zana Briski, a New York-based photographer, founded Kids With Cameras in 2002, teaching photography to children in Calcutta's red-light district. She gave each of the children a camera and taught them the basics of photography and camera mechanics. Kids With Cameras has since expanded workshops to include Haiti, Jerusalem and Cairo.

The photographs taken by the children are available for purchase in the Kids' Gallery, and also as a signed Limited-Edition Portfolio. 100% of proceeds from sales of the children's prints and book, go directly to support their education and well-being. Archival prints on Somerset paper: 17 x 22 inches, $175 - 36 x 48 inches, $500.

There are also updates on the children on the Kids With Cameras website. One of those children, Avijit, was 11 when he began photographing in the brothels district he lived. "An innately talented artist, he's won many competitions for his paintings. Charismatic and restlessly creative, his images were among the most compelling of the workshop. Avijit was invited by the World Press Photo Foundation in Amsterdam to be part of their Children's Jury in 2002. In 2005, he received a four year high school scholarship to attend an incredible school in America." Avijit has now been accepted to the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. To help fund his education expenses, he's selected nine of his photographs taken and combined them into a collection of nine 4 x 6 postcards. You can help Avijit realize his educational goals by purchasing this Postcard Collection. $30. plus shipping and handling.

Purchase Avijit's Postcard Collection here
Kids With Camera's

RAYMOND MEEKS: Middle Air

From Raymond Meeks Artist Book Middle Air
Photograph (c) Raymond Meeks

From Raymond Meeks Artist Book Middle Air
Photograph (c) Raymond Meeks

Raymond Meeks Artist Book Middle Air

Memory is an undeniable force behind making art, the drive not to forget, documenting the events of our lives over and over again, longing to fill the void of what's missing.

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MIDDLE AIR is photographer Raymond Meeks sixteen page artist book that traces the routine cutting of a sparse section of lawn in the backyard of his home in rural Montana. The eleven photographs were printed in the order they were exposed from one roll of 120 mm film. Each book contains "elements" (drawings, markings, etc) unique to the moments prior to their preparation for shipping. Two silver gelatin prints (7.5 x 7.5") hand printed by Meeks and processed to archival standards, accompany the book. The pages are "french fold" and hand sewn by book artist Rory Sparks, in an edition of 40 books and prints.

Purchase MIDDLE AIR
About Raymond Meeks

DANNY LYON: The Bikeriders

Photograph © Danny Lyon/ Twin Palms Publishers

Photograph © Danny Lyon/ Twin Palms Publishers

Photograph © Danny Lyon/ Twin Palms Publishers

The Fourth of July weekend brings out the Harley's. A great reminder of Danny Lyon's incredible documentary photographs The Bikeriders.

EMILY SHUR: Portraits and Projects

Picnic Table, Queenstown, New Zealand
Photograph © Emily Shur/ All rights reserved
(click images to enlarge)

Victoria’s Peak, Hong Kong
Photograph © Emily Shur/ All rights reserved

Imperial Palace Gardens with Wall, Tokyo
Photograph © Emily Shur/ All rights reserved

Michael Cera
Photograph © Emily Shur/ All rights reserved

Elijah Wood
Photograph © Emily Shur/ All rights reserved

Adrian Grenier
Photograph © Emily Shur/ All rights reserved

Sunset, Biloxi, Mississippi
Photograph © Emily Shur/ All rights reserved

(click images to enlarge)

EMILY SHUR was born in New York City, at New York Hospital, to an auditorium full of nursing students. She majored in Photography at New York University Tisch School of the Arts and graduated in 1998 with academic honors along with the Artist Award for Creative Excellence.

Emily's photographs have been published in The New York Times Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, Vanity Fair, Esquire, GQ, Interview, Wired, and Elle Magazine to name a few. She's completed ad campaigns for MTV Networks, America Online, Yahoo, along with Sierra Mist and others. She's lectured about her work at New York University, School of Visual Arts in New York City, The Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, and Loyola Marymount University.

Shur's work has also been featured in Communication Arts (2005) and included in American Photography 22, 24, and 25 (2006, 2008, and 2009). She was a 2005 winner in The Art Director’s Club Young Guns global competition. In 2008, she received an honorable mention in the Photography.Book.Now competition and was honored to have an image in the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Emily was one of 100 photographers invited to participate in Review Santa Fe 2009. Preview Shur's new book The Woods here.

EmilyShur.com

RATO DRATSANG FOUNDATION: Exhibition

Ven. Nicholas Vreeland with his photograph of Fakirappa with his Bulls
Photo (c) Elizabeth Avedon

Young Rato Monk Memorizing
Photograph (c) Nicholas Vreland/All rights reserved

New York City Exhibition: Left to right: Musa Train Klebnikov, author Ptolemy Tompkins, restaurateur David Zinsser, art dealer Sandro Manzo, former US Ambassador Frederick Vreeland, designer Madeline Weinrib, and poet Rene Ricard. Photograph © William Avedon/All rights reserved

(Click to enlarge images) Opening Night Photos here

Nicholas Vreeland with Barneys New York VP Julie Gilhart; in background from left to right: Jimmy Chan, Ptolemy Tompkins with Darren Smith, Won-Hee and Iris Yu, a direct descendant of the past King of Korea. Photograph © William Avedon/All rights reserved

Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing, and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth can make them come back again. We cannot develop and print a memory. Henri Cartier-Bresson

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NICHOLAS VREELAND'S (BIO) exhibition of photographs taken in India over the 24 years he's been a monk were shown in designer Aurora Lopez Mehia's Talavera Studio this past week in N.Y.C.. This exhibition was organized by the many friends of Vreeland who formed the "Photos For Rato" group to raise funds for the reconstruction of Rato Dratsang, one of Tibet's most prestigious monasteries. The exhibition organizers were art curator Nessia Pope and Priscilla Rattazzi Whittle. Co-hosts Vogue Magazine Fashion Director Tonne Goodman and New York Magazine Design Editor and author Wendy Goodman lent their "elegance and perfection" over seeing the hanging of the show. Anthony Spina and Darren Smith of The Tibet Center, where Vreeland teaches, organized the evenings purchases.

The exhibition consists of twenty photographs selected by Robert Delpire (first publisher of Robert Frank's The Americans in 1958 and the first director of the Centre National de la Photographie in Paris). Each image is part of a limited edition of 25, masterfully printed by Laurent Girard, one of today's best known photographic printers. Girard works with notables such as Bruce Weber, Peter Beard, Susan Meiselas, and Annie Leibovitz, along with many others. The exquisite framing work was donated by framer Pamela Morgan and her assistants, Joe and Jason, donated hours of their own time towards this event.

The evenings eclectic mix of guests included Oscar, Emmy, Tony and Golden Globe winner Marvin Hamlisch and his wife Terre Blair, the Princess's Pema and Yangchen Namgyal of Sikkim, photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, Count Nuno Brandolini d'Adda and his cousin Venturina Gelardin, artist/poet Rene Ricard and art dealer Vito Schnabel, Brazilian painter Sylvia Martins, Barneys New York VP Julie Gilhart, interior designer Susan Forristal and photographers Ellen Forbes Burnie and Adam Bartos. Vreeland's father, former U.S. Ambassador Frederick Vreeland, flew in from Rome and was joined by his grandson The Paris Review's Assistant Editor Reed Vreeland and Nicholas' step brother author Ptolemy Tompkins. Painter Alida Morgan oversaw a gorgeous group of young ladies, including niece Rachael Morgan Peters, Daria Isham and Clelia Peters. Gallery owner Spencer Throckmorton, art dealer Sandro Manzo, painter/designer Madeline Weinrib, Yogi and Yogini power couple Nancy Grabois Arann and Tony Leroy and many others viewed the extraordinary work and socialized with the distinguished crowd. This exhibition travels to the Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris for it's May 25th exhibit.

Purchase Photographs for Rato
Wall Street Journal
About Nicholas Vreeland
Karnataka, India Photos

JOSEF HOFLEHNER: Jet Airliner

Jet Airliner #04
Air France Airbus A340-300
Superlow Arrival from Paris-Charles de Gaulle
Photograph (c) Josef Hoflehner/All rights reserved

Jet Airliner #01
American Airlines Boeing 737-800
Arriving from Miami, Fl
Photograph (c) Josef Hoflehner/All rights reserved

http://www.josefhoflehner.com

DEBBIE FLEMING CAFFERY: The Spirit & The Flesh

 Photograph (c) Debbie Fleming Caffery/All rights reserved

Photograph (c) Debbie Fleming Caffery/All rights reserved

The Spirit and The Flesh 
Photographs by Debbie Fleming Caffery

"Caffery wields a painterly use of light and dark in her depiction of the pain and turmoil that surrounds these women. She neither judges, nor makes a statement about them."

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DEBBIE FLEMING CAFFERY grew up along the Bayou Teche in southwest Louisiana. After graduating from the San Francisco Art Institute with a degree in Fine Art and an emphasis in Photography, she returned to Louisiana to document the sugarcane industry, the community, and her three children. In Mexico, Caffery was initially drawn to photographing the spiritual and religious traditions of the rural villages, which reminded her of the sugar cane communities she had grown up in.

For several years during the mid-1990s, Debbie Fleming Caffery spent time photographing in a small village in northeastern Mexico, living on the grounds of the local Catholic church, and using a tortilla shack as her studio. In Mexico, the church is the center of village life, and she became accustomed to the flow of life surrounding it, replete with celebrations of religious feasts and the mysteries and secrets of community life.

"Her photographic interest sharpened when she discovered a cantina that housed a brothel. The environment of the smoke-filled tortilla hut and the unpredictable happenings at the cantina became a central focus of her work. Of this period she has said, “I felt incredibly comfortable in a culture rich in celebrations of religious feasts, with strong, independent, highly emotional people, much like the people I grew up with in southwest Louisiana. Symbols of heaven and hell were dominant, both in the church environment as well as the cantina. The brothel brought new elements into my work: secrets, sensual needs, desire, and often unexpected love.” (Publisher Radius Books)

"The Spirit and The Flesh, published by Radius Books, balances the themes of grace and redemption, sin and forgiveness that Caffery encountered in Mexico and that held her in their sway. Her black-and-white photographs are themselves rich in contrast and unabashedly sensuous, deftly documenting the turbulent emotional landscape. Her wholehearted visual acuity suffuses the work, and represents an engagement with both the subject matter as well as a range of human emotion rarely seen in contemporary work."

Caffery’s work has been included in solo exhibitions at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Photography, and the Gitterman Gallery, New York. Debbie has received numerous awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship (2005) for the work in this book; the first Lou Stoumen Prize (1996), and the Louisiana Governor’s Art Award (1990). Her work is included in the permanent collections of museums, including the Smithsonian Institution, Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the New Orleans Museum of Art. Debbie Fleming Caffery’s other monographs include: Carry Me Home (Smithsonian, 1990), The Shadows (Twin Palms Press, 2002) and Polly (Twin Palms Press, 2004). Caffery’s fourth major monograph, The Spirit & The Flesh (Radius Books, 2009), spans her entire body of work in Mexico and includes an essay by Carrie Springer, Senior Curatorial Assistant at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Congratulations to Debbie on her New Yorker review for her exhibition at Gitterman Gallery in "Goings On About Town" by Vince Aletti.

RAYMOND MEEKS: Photolucida Seminar

Untitled. Photograph (c) Raymond Meeks

"We moved to Portland from our lovely rural life in Montana this past September. The timing seemed right for all of us. There's nothing poetic in this. It's still not home, that takes time, but a really great, caring community. "

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RAYMOND MEEKS photographs are masterful. His accomplished printing techniques have evolved over the years while working in platinum and silver metals, wet plate collodion and hand-applied surface preparation for digital printmaking. He's now come full circle and returned to printing primarily on silver gelatin from sheet and roll films.

Meeks recent work has been exploring a constantly shifting landscape, where dormant fields of reposed soil serve a restorative promise, a certain catharsis from our pasts and a metaphor to the synchronistic relationship between the health of the land and the condition of its inhabitants. He has incorporated some of these images into his latest edition of hand crafted original Artist Books as well as a new Nazraeli Press 'one picture book' titled Doctrine of an Axe which will be released in May, 2009.

Likeness of Reality, is six pages of original inkjet prints on uncoated paper, in an edition of 15, signed and numbered. All design, printing and binding is completed by Meeks. The book is wrapped in a thin waxed vellum. The book contains one of two inkjet prints. They are Meeks own technique of printing carbon inkjet prints on transparency film that he's specially conditioned to accept ink and backed with enamel. I've seen this print technique in the past and they are really beautiful and unique. As of now, one of the two prints that is included with this book is a choice, but as one print or the other sells out, this will not be a personal selection.

VIEW "Likeness of Reality" and print choices ($460.00)

TIME / PLACE: A SEMINAR WITH RAYMOND MEEKS

RAYMOND MEEKS workshop, in conjunction with Photolucida, is a special opportunity to explore the intuitive process with fine-art photographer Raymond Meeks. Meeks' attention to the intimate details of life and home, as well as poetry and the use of metaphor in his imagery will be the starting point for discussion, feedback, and response. This workshop is ideal for students wishing to cultivate a more emotional and organic response to the world through their image-making. Raymond Meeks Seminar Monday, April 27th 10am-4pm $175 Portland, OR Ph: # 503-963-1935

Raymond Meeks Website
An INTERVIEW with Darius Himes

SONAM ZOKSANG: Tibet

 Boy from Kham, Tibet

  Photograph (c) Sonam Zoksang /All Rights Reserved

His Holiness the Dalai Lama and President Barack Obama
Photograph (c) Sonam Zoksang /All Rights Reserved

Monks waiting for His Holiness The Dalai Lama, Sera Monastery
Photograph (c) Sonam Zoksang /All Rights Reserved

SONAM ZOKSANG was born in Kyirong, Tibet in 1960 after the Chinese invasion of Tibet. His parents escaped to India when Zoksang was one month old. He grew up in refugee schools, got a degree in Buddhist Dialectics, and taught himself photography. In 1985 Zoksang moved to the US, where he now runs Vision of Tibet. Active in the Tibetan Community as an advocate for human rights and political change, he is on the Board of Directors of the US Tibet Committee and has been president of the Tibetan Association of New York and New Jersey.

Sonam Zoksang’s mission is to tell the story of his homeland through photography. He does this by documenting Tibetans and Tibetan life, both in and out of Tibet. Whenever possible, he travels to Tibet to document the conditions in his Chinese-occupied homeland. He often takes pictures of Tibetan refugee communities in India, as well as in the US and other countries. Zoksang’s slide presentations at schools and cultural and community centers are always well-attended; he seeks out these opportunities as he feels education is particularly important. His photos have been widely published in books, magazines, and newspapers, and are widely exhibited, one major show having been in a US Congressional building in Washington DC. That exhibition was forced to close after less than one week due to political pressure.

 

Sonam has an enormous archive of photographs he's taken over decades of travels with H.H. The Dalai Lama, as well as very elegant landscapes of Tibet and India. I keep the Boy From Kham (center) with his hopeful face posted on my wall at all times.

Sonam Zoksang PhotoGallery