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Photo Essays on the Web, May 2014

Every month, I try to highlight some of the best, beautiful, mindful, and provocative photography from around the world, both from contemporary and historical perspectives. For example, the more I read about photography, the more I believe questions asked in the late 19th- to early 20th-century still have great relevance in the 21st-century.

1. Vivian Maier: American Street Photographer

Vivian Maier was a full-time nanny to a number of Chicago families. But unknown to them and many, Maier was an avid street photographer. As the primary story goes, her work was shelved and forgotten, until rediscovered by accident in a garage sale. The Slate’s Behold describes the latest documentary on this enigmatic person.

2. “The Place We Live”

With his photographs, American photographer Robert Adams highlighted the large expanse of the central plains in his home nation: the big skies, the big vistas, and our continuous, if not insidious, urban “creep” into these landscapes. Through his photographs, Adams asked questions about where we live, and what we do with where we live.

3. The Double Take

One of the emerging trends on Image Source for 2014 includes “The Double Take”. Does touching or interacting with a mobile or tablet screen make that transaction seem more “real”? A new language has clearly developed, where the combination of sliding finger gestures combined with timed taps on the screen produces a set of actions. Where else might we go? Do we go freely into a brave new world? Check out the article and the included video. The fifth video down reminds me a lot of Radiohead’s bleak futuristic landscapes, and frankly, the video gives me the creeps … but in a thoughtful way …

4. A Look Into the World of Arab Israelis

Jewish-Israeli photographer, Natan Dvir, wanted to understand what happens to Israelis, particularly Arab-Israelis, when they turn 18 years of age. I think Dvir’s photos show perceptiveness, intimacy, and eloquence about a segment of the population that’s not well understood by people within Israel, the Middle East, or around the world.

5. Three of VII: current state of photojournalism

On National Geographic’s PROOF, Janna Dotschkal interviewed three photographers from the agency VII (as in the Roman number ‘seven’) about their continuing desire, motivation, and inspiration with photography and photojournalism.

6. Do Dogs Copy Us, or is it the other way around?

What’s life without both the tragic and the humorous; what Shakespeare might have written had he lived in the 20th- and 21st century. With that, there’s a risk at including yet another “cute” photo-essay about pets or animals. But the following series by Sophie Gamand reveals something very interesting the photographer seems to have captured in fortunate moments. The expressions of the wet dogs seem to mirror our own and very human expressions.

This post appears on Fotoeins Fotopress at fotoeins.com

Photo Essays on the Web, April 2014

A third of the year that is 2014 has gone. How did that happen? How have we seen and photographed things thus far?

1. El Bulli: How To Make Perfect Food Every Single Time

A seven-volume book series, “elBulli 2005-2011”, has been published to highlight the famous Spanish “El Bulli” restaurant, how “perfect food” was constructed, and how “perfection” was reproduced for the dinner table night after night.

2. People and stories, by Nan Goldin

The first time I saw Nan Goldin’s photography was in Berlin; seeing a retrospective of her work blew a hole both in my brain and in my soul. Whatever you think of her work, the choices she’s made, and the inevitable changes over the years, I believe her themes and stories have remained: they’re about family, friends, and how close she gets to intimacy, truth, and honesty with her photography.

3. Palestinians Are Ordinary People

It’s easy to minimize, belittle, or demonify any group of people who are the “other”; we are all universally guilty of “binning” people into the “us vs. them”. It’s why I think the following photographic work, “The Rarely Seen Lives of Palestinians“, by Tanya Habjouqa is important to highlight the universality of the daily human experience, our needs and our desires.

4. Blending Images from Different Locations

Do images represent merely the moments in which they’re taken? Or can they mean more? Have they always meant more? What happens when individual images from opposite sides of the planet are blended, whose result is posted on Instagram? Does the meaning, if any, of the individual images change when merged? What does that have to say about the resulting blended images?

5. The Cypriots’ Turkey-Greece Divide

It’s been 40 years since Cyprus was separated into the Turkish north and the Greek south. Neil Hall’s photographs examine how moments within the UN Buffer Zone have been frozen in time, going back fully four decades.

6. In Memory of Anja Niedringhaus

Pulitzer-Prize winning photographer Anja Niedringhaus was killed in early April in Afghanistan. She was in country covering national presidential elections. She is best known for photography in war-zones, but she also covered major sporting events (e.g., The Summer Olympics). Several online venues showed her work in tribute to her courage, compassion, dedication; to her craft and work. I think these attributes clearly show up in her portraits and photographs.