SMITHSONIAN PHOTOGRAPHY COLLECTION

Smithsonian Institution Archives Collections Storage

The Smithsonian Photography Initiative announced The Bigger Picture their new blog which presents an inside look into the Smithsonian’s photography collections. The blog is produced by the Photography Initiative in collaboration with guest contributors from throughout the Smithsonian.

"Photography and the Smithsonian were born within a decade of each other in the mid-19th century. The Smithsonian now has more than 13 million images in 700 collections throughout its 19 museums, nine research centers and the National Zoo. The Bigger Picture uses these collections and the Institution’s experts to stimulate an active conversation about the medium, its history and its meaning in people’s lives. The blog is intended to present multiple perspectives about the impact of photography and highlight the work of curators, photographers, historians and other Smithsonian staff members. It invites the general public to participate in the dialogue by commenting on Smithsonian posts."

The Bigger Picture is great for those of us who love to research vintage photos and a chance to meet the people behind the scene responsible for accumulating, editing and storing them for us.

The Bigger Picture: http://blog.photography.si.edu
SPI Photo Search: http://photography.si.edu/SearchImage.aspx

APRIL: Snakes

Charmers, 2003. Photograph (c) Tom Chambers / All Rights reserved

Snake Scare, 2009. Photograph (c) Emily Zoladz / All Rights reserved

PHOTOGRAPHS: Tom Chambers and Emily Zoladz

SHIHO FUKADA: Pulitzer Nomination

Photograph by Shiho Fukada for The New York Times

"Tibetan monks leaving morning prayer on Wednesday at Rongwo Monastery in Qinghai Province, China. The Tibetan New Year has come, but many Tibetans, angry over the events of the past year, are rejecting official efforts to drum up festivities." Shiho Fukada was detained for 20 hours after taking this photograph.

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SHIHO FUKADA, a native of Tokyo, now based in Beijing, China, has a degree in English literature from Tokyo's Sophia University and worked in fashion and advertising before becoming a photojournalist. Fukada's stark photograph of Tibetan monks was recently published on the front page of The New York Times. I thought it was a powerful choice for photo editor Michele McNally to select for the cover of the Times newspaper.

Shiho's work includes portraits of child labor in Bangladesh where poverty pushes an estimated 6 to 7 million children to work, comprising one-fifth of the country's labor force. She also spent months in the Bangladesh brothels photographing both the child prostitutes and women who were sex workers for 50 years .

Her website includes her award winning photographs of the grief stricken families taken after the 2008 earthquake that struck China's Sichuan Province. At least 9,000 children were crushed to death by the falling school buildings. This photographic series received The New York Times Grand Prize, Photo of The Year by Editor & Publisher Magazine in 2008. The China earthquake photographs, like most of her work, began as her own personal project, not an assignment. Her work has also received recognition from the New York Press Photographers Association, The National Press Photographers Association in Photojournalism award, the Best of Photojournalism award for her multimedia work, PDN Annual, Communication Arts and Unicef Photo of The Year.

In the U.S., Shiho has covered the Iowa caucus for New York Magazine, photographed male exotic dancers and the life of migrant farm workers. In between assignments on the road, she recently completed a photo essay about the demise of the biggest labor town in Japan which has become a dumping ground of old men since the Japanese economy, once 2nd largest in the world, is now deteriorating at its worst pace since the 1970's during this financial crisis.

Shiho has been nominated for The Pulitzer Prize by The New York Times.

http://www.shihofukada.com
The New York Times slides: A Day of Mourning in Tibet
The New York Times 5/29/2009

ADRIAN PANARO: Out My Back Door

Out My Back Door #5
Photograph (c) Adrian Panaro/All Rights Reserved

"My family and I were living in a loft three blocks south of the World Trade Center, at Trinity Place and Rector Street, and witnessed the first plane hitting the North tower from our six year old's school PS 234, at Greenwich and Chambers Streets. We weren't permitted to go home for about 6 weeks and when public policy dictated it was safe, our eyes and noses told us otherwise. We hoped things would improve, but in the end we decided to move out to New Mexico. "

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PHOTOGRAPHER ADRIAN PANARO now divides his time between New York and New Mexico. The destruction on 9/11 rendered his downtown residence/studio, like the rest of the neighborhood, uninhabitable and in 2002 he and his wife Tina moved their family to New Mexico.

Panaro began his professional career in New York City in the 1970's. After traveling extensively throughout Afghanistan, India and Nepal and attaining his undergraduate degree in Anthropology, he began working for Richard Avedon. During his 3 years with Avedon, he learned the fine points of studio lighting, participated in the preparation for and mounting of Richard Avedon's major retrospective Exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, while also serving for a time as studio manager. Panaro next worked with fashion photographer Bill King in Paris and New York.

When Adrian branched out on his own as a free-lance editorial and advertising photographer, his work was published in The New York Times, New York Magazine, Details Magazine, and various international publications. Those early portraits of artists, writers and musicians included everyone from photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, artist Andy Warhol, to the legendary rock and roller Chuck Berry.

Since moving to New Mexico, his work has expanded, and taken him into a much different direction. "Due to my being an expatriate and from the experience of 9/11, I found myself drawn back to the original impetus that led me into photography as a medium of self expression."

ADRIAN PANARO

May 1st through May 30, 2009
Group Exhibition:Walter Randel Gallery
287 10th Avenue, NY, NY.
http://www.wrgallery.com

Adrian Panaro: http://www.adrianpanarophotography.com
ArtInfo: Robert Mapplethorp, Silver Gelatin Print, 10 x 10 inches

HEARST 8 X 10 BIENNIAL EVENT

Photographs (c) Elizabeth Paul Avedon /All Rights Reserved.

Soma Watanabe, son of photographer Hiroshi Watanabe, explores the Alexey Brodovitch Galleries at the Hearst 8 X 10 Photographers Biennial Meet The Artists Event. More event photos can be viewed HERE. Congratulations to:

8 WINNERS
Brad Carlile Andy Freeberg Mark Kessell
Edith Maybin Louie Palu Benedikt Partenheimer
Nicholas Prior Hiroshi Watanabe

10 HONORABLE MENTIONS
Anoush Abrar & Aimee Hoving Christoph Bangert Rachael Dunville
Roger Eberhard Blake Fitch Jan-Claude Louis Will Steacy
Maura Sullivan David H. Wells David Zimmerman

http://www.hearst8x10.com

ROB HAGGART: A Photo Editor

Magazine Interview via aphotoeditor.com

In The American West, Book Design

Layouts on my Desk

If you haven't followed Rob Haggart's, A Photo Editor blog, you've been missing some of the most interesting and informative updates for professional photographers, photo editors and all other readers. Haggart, the former Director of Photography for Men's Journal and Outside Magazine, is a voice of sanity amid the current chaos on the state of magazine and book publishing today, ongoing copyright issues, industry news, and a good resource for creative professionals in general.

This week, "A Photo Editor" posted Richard Avedon's 1976 groundbreaking portrait series THE FAMILY, depicting the most powerful figures in the American political, military, media, and corporate elite at that time. Before the Annie Leibovitz Clinton Administration portraits in 1993's Vanity Fair, and before the recent NY Times portraits of Obama’s Cabinet, this series was commissioned by Jann Wenner for Rolling Stone Magazine.

THE FAMILY: http://www.aphotoeditor.com
All three series: http://petergrahamcom.blogspot.com

An Interview With Rob Haggart

APhotoEditor Interview
Rolling Stone Magazine

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

HIROSHI WATANABE

Coliseo Gallo de Oro 2. (c) Hiroshi Watanabe

"A current that underlies my work is the concept of preservation. I make every effort to be a faithful visual recorder of the world around me, a world in flux that, at very least in my mind, deserves preservation, and that I constantly seek to expand"

HIROSHI WATANABE is a California-based Japanese photographer. Born in Sapporo, Watanabe graduated from Nihon University in photography in 1975 and moved to Los Angeles, where he worked producing television commercials. He obtained an MBA from UCLA in 1993, but two years later his earlier interest in photography revived; from 2000 he has worked full time at photography.

Watanabe's first published book was I See Angels Every Day, monochrome portraits of the patients and other scenes within San Lázaro psychiatric hospital in Quito, Ecuador. This won the 2007 Photo City Sagamihara award for Japanese professional photographers. In 2007 Watanabe won a Critical Mass award from Photolucida that allowed publication of his monograph Findings.

Hiroshi Watanabe is One of 8 winners in the current Hearst 8 X 10 Photography Biennial.
8 X 10 Exhibition : April 1-Sept. 2009 The Alexey Brodovitch and Hearst Gallery, Hearst Tower Galleries, 300 West 57th Street, NY, NY www.hearst8x10.com

Hiroshi Watanabe's photograph Vietnam War Memorial, Washington DC is included in George Eastman House Exhibition Seeing Ourselves through 2010. Podcast by George Eastman House: “SEEING OURSELVES”

Hiroshi Watanabe's Upcoming Exhibitions

June 18 –September 05, 2009 “Hot Fun in the Summertime” (Group Show)Bonni Benrubi Gallery 41 E. 57th Street 13th Floor, New York, NY 10022

July 1 – December 31, 2009 “Ideology in Paradise” Friends' Center, Angkor Hospital for Children, Siem Reap, Cambodia. Angkor Hospital for Children sponsored by Friends Without A Border is a Pediatric Hospital providing free treatment and care to the children in the Siem Reap area. Please donate to the Angkor Hospital for Children.

September 5 – October 28, 2009 "American Leitmotiv" (b&w photographs of the US) AD-Galerie, route de la Gare,1, 1272 Genolier, VD, Switzerland

Web: www.hiroshiwatanabe.com

TOD PAPAGEORGE: Deutsche Börse Photography Prize

Photograph (c) Tod Papageorge/Courtesy Pace/MacGill, New York

TOD PAPAGEORGE is one of four artists nominated for this year's Deutsche Borse Photography Prize. Originally an English Literature major at the University of New Hampshire, and, since 1979, Yale's Director of Graduate Studies in Photography, he is the recipient of two Guggenheim Fellowships, two NEA Visual Artists Fellowships, author of important essays and many articles on photography, and a photographer whose work has been collected in major collections all over the world, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Art Institute of Chicago.

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Tod Papageorge's photographs are up for the prestigious 2009 Deutsche Borse Photography Prize now being exhibited at The Photographers Gallery, London. This exhibition runs through April 11, 2009. The Photographers Gallery, 16-18 Ramillies St, London W1F 7LW.

Interview by Richard B. Woodward BOMB MAGAZINE

Interview by Christine Smallwood: THE NATION
Insight BLOG
Steidl Book Passing Through Eden

Tod Papageorge at PACE/MACGILL

Sent from Tod Papageorge: A ROBERT FRANK INTERVIEW

Deutsche Borse Prize: THE GUARDIAN VIDEO CLIP

WILLIAM CLIFT: Photographs + Books

Charis, Bandelier, N.M., 1974
Photograph Copyright (c) William Clift

"Intuition precedes everything. When I look back at my first photographs taken around 12 years old, I'm surprised certain things are there so early in one's life. You have no idea where the hell it comes from."

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WILLIAM CLIFT is recognized for his exquisite New Mexico landscapes, of Mont Saint-Michel, France, for documentation of our nation’s courthouses, the New York State Capitol in Albany, and the Hudson River Valley. Past publications include Certain Places (1987), A Hudson Landscape (1993) and A Particular World (2008). He grew up on Boston's Beacon Hill and now lives with his family in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

As early as 10 years old, Clift was already working in his own darkroom from images he'd taken with his Brownie camera. He saved his money summer after summer caddying until he'd saved enough to purchase a Poloroid camera in 1956. As film was expensive, he was very careful to take only a very few images. Not taking quantities of pictures has seemingly become a habit that's lasted throughout his career.

At 12, he photographed the luminous image Barbara's Table, Boston, Mass., 1956 (the frontispiece of his book Certain Places) with his Poloroid. At 15, he took his first photography workshop with Paul Caponigro. He became the youngest member of the Association of Heliographers (named after the 1929 sun-imagery process) founded by Walter Chappell, along with Caponigro, Marie Cosindas, and a few other established photographers.

WILLIAM CLIFT's latest book, A Particular World, may be one of the most exceptional photography books of this decade. An assembly of 25 color photographs by William Clift taken with a Poloroid Spectra camera of his family and home.

A PARTICULAR WORLD, 1987-2007
Designed by Eleanor Caponigro. Pearmain Press, 2008
Available at Photo-Eye Books
William Clift Website