EWA ZEBROWSKI: Another Place

Vedute di Venezia Project
Copyright (c) Ewa Zabrowski /All Rights Reserved

The Girl In The Landscape Project
Copyright (c) Ewa Zabrowski /All Rights Reserved

The Girl In The Landscape Project
Copyright (c) Ewa Zabrowski /All Rights Reserved

In the last few years writers like Robert Frost, Anne Michaels, Joseph Brodsky, and Mark Strand have influenced my way of looking and have brought me inspiration. Reading continually nurtures my artistic practice.

"EWA ZEBROWSKI's thoughtful photographs are like her elegant books - each one is a refined world within itself. Her work imparts in us a quiet and ineffable desire. We wish to be within the world she photographs."– Sam Abell

Books by Ewa Zebronski
Ewa Monika Zebrowski Website

ALINE SMITHSON: Unexpected

Copyright (c) Aline Smithson /All Rights Reserved

Copyright (c) Aline Smithson /All Rights Reserved

Copyright (c) Aline Smithson /All Rights Reserved

I look to tell stories that are familiar, yet unexpected. The poignancy of childhood, aging, relationships, family, and moments of introspection or contemplation continue to draw my interest.

After a career as a New York Fashion Editor, working along side the greats of fashion photography, including Horst, Mario Testino, Patrick Demarchelier, Arthur Elgort, and Bert Stern, ALINE SMITHSON discovered the family Rolleiflex and never looked back. She has exhibited widely including solo shows at the Griffin Museum of Photography, the Oswald Gallery, and Wallspace Gallery in Seattle. Aline has been Gallery Editor for Light Leaks Magazine and curated a number of exhibitions for galleries and on-line magazines. She was nominated for the Excellence in Teaching Award in 2008 and 2009 and the Santa Fe Prize for Photography in 2009 by the Santa Fe Center for Photography.

Smithson's series INSIDE/OUT explores the human experience–motherhood, puberty, childhood, work, aging, death, loss–by using masks to create a more universal image and explore what part of a person comes through the mask, what they can and care to project. Plates To Pixels Interview

Aline Smithson WEBSITE
Aline Smithson's Photography blog: LENSCRATCH

RACHEL PAPO: Serial No. 3817131

Serial No. 3817131 #85
Photograph (c) Rachel Papo/Courtesy of ClampArt, New York City

Serial No. 3817131 #7
Photograph (c) Rachel Papo/Courtesy of ClampArt, New York City

Two 2nd Class Boys (Vlad and Vadim), St. Petersburg, Russia, 2007 (#3)
Photograph (c) Rachel Papo/Courtesy of ClampArt, New York City

2nd Class Girls, St. Petersburg, Russia, 2007 (#6)
Photograph (c) Rachel Papo/Courtesy of ClampArt, New York City

Serial No. 3817131 represents my effort to come to terms with the experiences of being a soldier from the perspective of an adult. My service had been a period of utter loneliness, mixed with apathy and pensiveness, and at the time I was too young to understand it all.

RACHEL PAPO was born in Columbus, Ohio and raised in Israel. She began photographing as a teenager while attending a reknowned fine-arts high school in Haifa. At eighteen she served in the Israeli Air Force as a photographer which inspired her current project titled after her own service number–Serial No. 3817131. Her project Desperately Perfect was shot in the renowned Vaganova Ballet Academy in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Rachel was selected as a finalist in the running to be the 2009 Deeper Perspective Photographer of the Year, with Serial No. 3817131, as part of the 2009 International Photography Awards, and is nominated for a Lucie Award. The winner will be revealed at the Lucie Awards gala ceremony, at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, New York, on October 19, 2009. Serial No. 3817131 was also selected as a 2nd place winner in the 2009 International Photography Awards, in the People: Culture pro category. Images from Desperately Perfect were selected to appear in the 2009 American Photography 25 anniversary annual book. Rachel will be speaking Oct. 18th at the En Foco and Lucie Foundation ARTIST TALK. Represented by ClampArt Gallery. Rachel Papo Website. Serial No. 3817131 Website.

UPDATE 10/20/09

Congratulations to Rachel Papo on winning The Lucie's 2009 Deeper Perspective Photographer of the Year Award.

VANESSA SOMERS VREELAND: Mosaics

Vanessa Somers Vreeland Mosaic

Vanessa Somers Vreeland: An Illustrated Talk on Mosaics Through the Ages
John Cabot University–Via della Lungara 233–00165 Rome
October 15, 2009– 19.00. RSVP 066819121

VANESSA SOMERS VREELAND trained with professor Odoardo Anselmi, art director of the Vatican Mosaic Studio in Rome and taught at Corning Museum of Glass, Penland School of Crafts, and the Columbia Museum of Art. She has had gallery shows in Paris, Rome, London, Brussels and North Africa. Vreeland's artistic path to mosaics began with painting on canvas, then on glass. She independently developed a fused glass mosaic technique and also works in marble and cold glass in traditional Roman style.

Vanessa edited My Colorful Life, an autobiography of her remarkable aunt, British Portraitist Juliet Pannett. Pannett had her own seat in the House of Commons, from which she sketched Britain's political milestones - including the debates on the Profumo affair in 1963 and Winston Churchill's last appearance in 1964. When Juliet died in 2005, she left a legacy of commissioned portraiture throughout Britain including 22 portraits in the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Vanessa Somers Vreeland Mosaics, Marrakech, Morocco 2009

A film by Director Fabienne Strouve
Play Video Here
_____________________________

FREDERICK VREELAND, former U.S. Ambassador and U.S. Senior Diplomat to Rome and wife Vanessa's Key To Rome: A Guide Book reflects the Eternal City's layers of cultural history, from ruins of antiquity and Christian Rome to the splendor of the Renaissance and the Baroque. "Their book guides travelers through layers of time, exploring major sites and revealing insider secrets. Written in a brisk, anecdotal style, this beautifully illustrated handbook is packed with photographs, historical drawings, sidebars, foldout maps, and floor plans. The guidebook's site descriptions are framed by historical timelines and punctuated by special "must-see" highlights. A comprehensive reference section at the back details day trips of interest, a guide to Italian food, specialty shops, "Rome by Night," and "Rome for Kids," as well as transportation, hotel and restaurant suggestions."

100 EYES MAGAZINE: Gade, Haiti

From 100 Eyes Magazine: Gade, Haiti
Photograph (c) Rex Curry/All rights reserved

From 100 Eyes Magazine: Gade, Haiti
Photograph (c) Rex Curry/All rights reserved

From 100 Eyes Magazine: Gade, Haiti
Photograph (c) Alice Smeets/All rights reserved

New Issue 100 Eyes Magazine: Gade, Haiti
100 Eyes Photography Workshops

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

FLASH-FLOOD: Issue One

Flash-Flood Issue One

Flash-Flood Issue One Contributor's: Jonathan Blaustein, Jesse Chehak, David Ondrik, Jennifer Schlesinger and Melanie McWhorter. Flash-Flood is a new media collective that investigates and promotes the intersection of photography and culture in the state of New Mexico. Flash-Flood

EN FOCO: Artist Talk October 18

Patagonia Cowboy Series, En Foco First Place Award
Photograph (c) Mustafah Abdulaziz/All rights reserved

Patagonia Cowboy Series, En Foco First Place Award
Photograph (c) Mustafah Abdulaziz/All rights reserved

Patagonia Cowboy Series

Photograph (c) Mustafah Abdulaziz/All rights reserved

EN FOCO AND THE LUCIE FOUNDATION ARTIST TALK
October 18, 2009 from 5:30-7:30 PM
Splashlight Studio, 75 Varick Street, NYC 10013

Artist Talk includes: MUSTAFAH ABDULAZIZ - Winner of En Foco's People/Places/Things Photography Competition, featured in an upcoming Nueva Luz Photographic Journal. SUE FLOOD - Finalist for the International Photography Awards (IPA) "International Photographer of the Year". IPA is a sister effort of the Lucie Foundation. RANIA MATAR - Published in Nueva Luz volume 13#3 this past Spring, she is also celebrating the publication of her monograph, "Ordinary Lives". RACHEL PAPO - Finalist for the International Photography Awards (IPA) "Deeper Perspective Photographer of the Year". RSVP: jointtalk@luciefoundation.org

Ross Sea Adventure Series
Photograph (c) Sue Flood/All rights reserved

Serial No. 3817131 Series
Photograph (c) Rachel Papo/All rights reserved

The Forgotten People Series
Photograph (c) Rania Matar/All rights reserved

En Foco is a non-profit organization that uses the photographic arts as a vehicle to address cultural and social inequities. It provides professional recognition, publication, honoraria and assistance to photographers of diverse cultures as they grow into different stages of their careers. En Foco nurtures and supports contemporary fine art and documentary photographers of diverse cultures, primarily U.S. residents of Latino, African and Asian heritage, and Native Peoples of the Americas and the Pacific. En Foco produces the Nueva Luz Photographic Journal, Print Collectors Program.

RUSS MARTIN: Nature Category

Shaggy White Dahlia
Photograph (c) Russ Martin/All rights reserved

The Hosta Project
Photograph (c) Russ Martin/All rights reserved

Wilted Hostas
Photograph (c) Russ Martin/All rights reserved

RUSS MARTIN won first place in the International Photography Award (The Lucies) in the Nature: Flowers category for his Hosta Flowers series. The Hosta Project 2006-2009 won the PX3 PRIX DE LA PHOTOGRAPHIE PARIS in the Nature category. View the Hosta Project Book. Martin is represented by Contemporary Works. Russ Martin Website

KIYOHARU ICHINO: Land of Red Waves

Wood-fired Ceramic Bowl
Contemporary Tanba Pottery by Kiyoharu Ichino

Wood-fired Ceramic Vase, Two Views
Contemporary Tanba Pottery by Kiyoharu Ichino

Wood-fired Ceramic Bowl
Contemporary Tanba Pottery by Kiyoharu Ichino

"Nestled in a beautiful valley along the Shitodani River among towering mountains northwest of Kyoto is the picturesque village Tachikui, the historic center of Tanba pottery. The rich ferrous soil in this area has supported generations of farmers and artisans since the early Kamakura period (1180-1230). The oldest existing noborigama (climbing kiln) in Japan is here. This serene locale is home of some of the most beautiful ceramics that have influenced aesthetic development in Japan and the western world. Tanba, Tan meaning red and Ba meaning waves, or Land of Red Waves, got its name from a red rice grown in ancient time which turned the fields into seas of red.

Because of its relative isolation, Tanba is less influenced by outside commercial trends than some other more accessible pottery towns in Japan. Old Tanba pottery had a restrained dignified appearance, exuding quiet confidence that reflected its proud heritage. This unique quality is evident in the works of contemporary Tanba ceramist Kiyoharu Ichino above.

KIYOHARU ICHINO was born in 1957 in Tachikui into a family of traditional pottery-makers. He learned all aspects of Tanba pottery since childhood. His works have been selected repeatedly by the prestigious juried Japan Crafts Association. Traditional Tanba pottery is fired unglazed at very high temperature in large wood-fueled kilns. Ichino uses both an anagama (hole kiln) and a noborigama (climbing kiln), burning almost a thousand bundles of wood over several days to bring out the unique personalities of Tanba clay, which is renowned for its rich texture and deep purplish brown colors. Many of his pieces show silvery fire-marks left by the wood fire. To show the unique clay texture, he often includes seemingly unfinished edges in his designs, exposing the rough clay body. Despite the high level of sophistication and innovation, Ichino's works maintain a strong connection with the ancient Tanba pottery tradition." (from Touching Stone Gallery)

Also View Yoshitaka Hasu Masterworks
Touching Stone Gallery, Santa Fe, NM

TRAER SCOTT: Natural History Reflections

Hyenas, American Museum of Natural History , NY
Copyright (c) Traer Scott /All Rights Reserved

Leopards, American Museum of Natural History , NY
Copyright (c) Traer Scott /All Rights Reserved

Ostrich 2, American Museum of Natural History , NY
Copyright (c) Traer Scott /All Rights Reserved

Hunting Dogs 2, American Museum of Natural History , NY
Copyright (c) Traer Scott /All Rights Reserved

When I was nine, my mother would take me to the Natural History Museum in Raleigh (where she was a volunteer curator) all day, everyday in the summers. I spent very long, lonely weeks communing with the museum's animals, both living and dead, as well as operating the manual elevator for employees and rummaging through the collection of ancient periodicals and books housed in a private library. I have since harbored an immense affection for all things old and musty and mysterious, particularly preserved animals whose half dead/half alive presence is both fascinating and unnerving.

Natural History is a series of abstract in-camera constructions of visitors viewing the legendary dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. The taxidermied animals in these dioramas were collected (and killed) by "naturalists" primarily at the beginning of the 20th century. Many of these long dead specimens now represent endangered or extinct species. I feel that the unintentional juxtaposition and interaction between the viewers and the animals creates highly allegorical narratives of our troubled co-existence with nature.

Scott won a 2010 Rhode Island State Council for the Arts Photography Grant on the merit of this Natural History series. More American Museum of Natural History Reflections: Gallery

Traer Scott Website

MICHAEL BÜHLER-ROSE: Constructing The Exotic

Kumari, Alachua, FL. 2006
Copyright (c) Michael Bühler-Rose /All Rights Reserved

The Conversation, Alachua, FL. 2006
Copyright (c) Michael Bühler-Rose /All Rights Reserved

Afternoon in Alachua, Alachua, FL. 2007
Copyright (c) Michael Bühler-Rose /All Rights Reserved

Michael Bühler-Rose, received a Fulbright Fellowship to India and obtained his BFA (2005) from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Tufts University. At present, he is a Graduate Alumni Fellow at the University of Florida (MFA, 2008), critic and Assistant Professor, Department of Photography, at the Rhode Island School of Design. He's an accomplished photographer who has been collected, exhibited, and published internationally. He received a Humble Arts Foundation Grant for Emerging Photographers to support this project.

October 2-November 24, 2009
Michael Bühler-Rose | Constructing the Exotic
Crisp-Ellert Art Museum, St. Augustine

Michael Bühler-Rose Website
Whitewall Magazine: Construction of the Exotic

MOVING WALLS 16: OSI Exhibit

Zalmaï's The Human Cost of the War On Terror in Afghanistan

Chinafrica photographs of Paolo Woods in Moving Walls 16 exhibit

Chinafrica photographs of Paolo Woods

MOVING WALLS 16 includes the work of six photographers - Benjamin Lowy Iraq/Perspectives, Eugene Richards War Is Personal, Stefano De Luigi Liberia's Child Soldiers: Recovering Innocence, Tomas van Houtryve Nepal: A "People's War" Topples the God King, Paolo Woods Chinafrica and Zalmaï Promises and Lies:The Human Cost of the War On Terror in Afghanistan - who cover a range of social justice and human rights issues of significance to the Open Society Institute. These photographs were selected by a 16 person committee that included Susan Meiselas and Stuart Alexander as curator's of the exhibition. September 30, 2009-May 21, 2010. Open Society Institute, 400 West 59th St, NYC. This exhibition will travel to Washington, D.C. in the future. On-line Exhibition.

PELLE CASS: Selected People

Frog Pond, Boston Common
Copyright (c) Pelle Cass /All Rights Reserved

Celeste's Friends
Copyright (c) Pelle Cass /All Rights Reserved

Football, Cypress Field, Brookline, MA
Copyright (c) Pelle Cass /All Rights Reserved

Each of the pictures in the series Selected People is a composite of around a hundred or more exposures of unposed people taken over periods that range from five minutes to several days. With the camera on a tripod, I take dozens of pictures. Back in the studio with Photoshop, I leave in exactly the figures I choose, always in the precise position of the original scene. I organize the figures in my scenes by the color of their clothing, by mood, age, attractiveness, gesture, position, race, or even just by oddness. The result is both the product of imagination and a document of fact.

Pelle Cass was awarded a Yaddo residency for 2010 to work on his Selected People Project. Cass was named a 2009 Critical Mass Top 50 photographer by Photolucida, Portland, OR. Pelle Cass Website

TOD PAPAGEORGE: Digital In Rome

Largo Carlo Goldoni

Copyright (c) Tod Papageorge /All Rights Reserved

At The Trevi Fountain
Copyright (c) Tod Papageorge /All Rights Reserved

In The Pantheon
Copyright (c) Tod Papageorge /All Rights Reserved

Tod Papageorge and friend
Photograph: Deborah Flomenhaft

Tod Papageorge is the Walker Evans Professor of Photography and Director of Graduate Studies in Photography at the Yale School of Art. This summer he spent six weeks in Rome as the American Academy in Rome Photographer in Residence using a digital camera, a Leica M8.2, for the first time. The American Academy of Rome's website has posted a recent Interview with Tod Papageorge by AAR Mellon Professor Corey Brennan. Read the entire Interview here. More Rome Project Photographs here

More Tod Papageorge links and video clips