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June 2008 
Couple in "The Americans" motorcycle photo identified As Robert Frank's The Americans turns 50, the Indianapolis Museum of Art is exhibiting the book's 83 photographs. The Indianapolis Star published an article (no longer available free on their website) about the exhibition accompanied by a photo from the book taken in Indianapolis of a young couple on a motorcycle. Friends and relatives of Telester Smiley, now 76, instantly recognized her and late husband Mack Smiley atop his prized Harley, and now, with a little confirmation work by the Star, the famous faces have names. The Star's article may not be freely available much longer, but The Online Photographer has a summary. (via MetaFilter, TheOnlinePhotographer)
Photographer Interviews on Pix Channel Photographer Randi Lynn Beach and graphic designer Doug Beach have created a great resource for folks wanting to get a little deeper into the minds of some of photography's legends. The site includes interviews with Eliott Erwitt, Arnold Newman and Jerry Uelsmann to name just a few. Pix Channel :: What Makes Photographers Click Excerpted from the Erwitt Interview:
Domestic Vacations
Julie Blackmon's new book "Domestic Vacations" is filled with conceptual images taken from her everyday life as a mother of three. Her work addresses the mundane elements of dinner, time out and play time and turns those moments into something otherworldly.
Allison Smith Interview Liz Kuball just posted a nice, little interview with one of my favorite photographers Allison V. Smith. I remember the first time I saw one of her photos -- it was a woman flying off of a mechanical bull, and all you see are her legs, the bull and the sky... with her body already out of the frame, and the colors so vibrant, the composition so unlike anything i was taught in j-school -- and how much it encouraged me to keep seeing things differently.
Allison's blog Superficial Snapshots has been a huge source of inspiration, and motivation to think outside of the box that most newspaper photographers put themselves in (myself include, from time-to-time). Her style is loose, colorful, quiet and composed. In her very first blog post, Allison shares how the name of her blog came about: When I was 19, I had the guts to show my portrait portfolio to the great Arnold Newman. He flashed the page of slides up to the light and muttered "superficial snapshots." So thus the name. I intend to post outtakes, images with no home and new and improved images on this blog. How can you not love that attitude, and the motivation it gave her to keep shooting for herself.
Euguen Smith Grant This year the deadline to apply for a 2008 W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography is July 15. The Smith Grant is presented annually to a photographer whose past work and proposed project, as judged by a panel of experts, follows the tradition of W. Eugene Smith's compassionate dedication exhibited during his 45-year career as a photographic essayist.
Gorillas in the Mist
NPR's Fresh Air has a fantastic interview with Getty Reportage photographer, and World Press award winner, Brent Stirton, whom chronicled the Virunga gorilla murders in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
True Grit Peter Yang spent 3 weeks photographing cowboys in his native Texas for Texas Monthly.
Abell on Richard Prince Sam Abell has an interesting and calm take on his work unexpectedly showing up in the Guggenheim via another artist.
The Portfolio of...
The Portfolio of...
The Portfolio of...
Hungry Here's an example of an amazing multimedia piece by Maisie Crow of Patuxent Publishing (for a few more months... 'till she joins the ranks of great OU grad students). You can read the story here. To sum it up, it's the story of a father and son and their battle against a debilitating disorder. Thirteen-year old Max suffers from a rare genetic disorder called Prader-Willi Syndrome that makes him feel he as if is starving all the time. Max says of Lon, a single dad, “He’s the one who mostly takes care of me.” And what makes it great is that it's not multimedia for multimedia's sake. It's not some shoddily constructed, repetitive SoundSlides that was hastily done "for the web." The thing that sets it apart is that not only are the pictures incredible for their depth and quality of moments, but the sound and video actually add to the story telling. I was lucky enough to work along side Maisie at a workshop last year, and I can vouch first hand for her dedication to her subjects and her commitment to quality, in both the images and the story-telling.
PSO PSA Portraits of phone sex operators.
Pre-Photoshop Image Making Photographer Sam Haskins, well known for doing in-camera montage, briefly describes how composite photos were made in the time before Photoshop. Its a single exposure with the model viewed through optical glass at 45 degrees and the fabric positioned to the side. At the time there was zero retouching after the event. Now of course I have the luxury of scanning the transparency to clean and refine the image in Photoshop - God bless its digital socks.
Ready? Stream. Create. Getty Images has launched a cool new side project called Moodstream. The philosophy is that any mood can take you places. They bill it as a "powerful brainstorming tool designed to help take you in inspiring, unexpected directions." And you can tweak it to fit your mood, altering your perception and provoking thought through images, audio and video footage. It's a pretty interesting concept, and while I'm not entirely sure what Getty's getting out of it (but I'm sure there's money to be made somewhere)... regardless, I like it. Right now I'm somewhere in between happy and sad... more calm than lively... always serious....slightly nostalgic... and warm.
Unseen Iraq Washington Post photojournalist Andrea Bruce is doing a photo column on Unseen Iraq during her travels there. She's highlighting the lesser-told stories of people like Shehad , a teenage girl, who has left the mosque only twice since her family sought refuge in Fallujah two years ago and two inseparable cousins and best friends in Baghdad who never walk alone and always come home before dark. Seeing the everyday faces and stories is such a nice contrast to the horrors of war we're used to seeing out of Iraq. It gives me hope.
A Moving Piece of Storytelling One of the few stories I've seen in years that has brought me to tears. Summerville High Remembers Fallen Coach Louis Mulkey, brought to you by the folks at ESPN. Louis Mulkey, Summerville High basketball coach and full-time firefighter, was one of the "Charleston Nine" who died in a furniture store fire on June 18, 2007, the summer before his team's senior season. Five years earlier, Mulkey predicted the team would win a state title. The video, stills, audio and interviews tell a moving story that is worth the near 15 minute length.
In the Eye of the Burma Cyclone James Whitlow Delano gives a first-person account of being In the Eye of the Burma Cyclone. You can see his pictures here. As a post -script, Delano says that he may not be able to return to Burma after his pictures are seen because it poses some tough questions about the true nature of a government that already had a reputation for brutality. And adds, that if that is the price for reporting the neglect shown there -- so be it. Three days of driving rain had already begun to ruin the dry season rice harvest, leaving the crop under water, before I returned to Yangon from Bago on the day the cyclone struck.
Soul of Athens v2.0
A great way to spend a Sunday afternoon is browsing through this year's Soul of Athens project. This time, the stories all follow a thread that weaves a theme in and out of the country's fabric: the pursuit of wellness. The Soul of Athens illuminates this search through four holistic areas -- mind, body, spirit, and place. Athenians are celebrated for their unique devotion to the pursuits of achievement and self-fulfillment, making them the perfect subjects for framing the exploration of the mind. But you'll also find a colorful spectrum of physical well-being in Athens County -- and that its dwellers possess hearts filled with faith or centered by strength. Finally, the strong sense of place, community and home is constant for many here as well. Their paths are different, and their destinations are different, but their purpose is shared.
The Big Picture The Boston Globe just launched a fantastic website called The Big Picture and it's making noise outside of photography circles. The site feature large-size pictures on a single topic (photo essays, basically), and it's amazing that it seems so novel given the inherent flexibility of online presentation. Alan Taylor, the project's creator, wrote a little about his reasons behind making the site on his personal blog: The sizes of the photographs are deliberately large - taking advantage of the majority of web users who have screens capable of displaying 1024x768 or larger. The long-held tradition of keeping images online tiny and lightweight is commendable still - when designing a general purpose site. But one dedicated to quality imagery should take full advantage of the medium, and I hope I've struck a good balance with The Big Picture. So far, it's been mentioned on several influential general-interest blogs like Kottke.org, Waxy.org, and MetaFilter, where the poster wrote: "It's kind of surprising how rare it is to see a really big photo on newspaper sites these days and this blog makes the simple concept work."
Mona Reeder and The Bottom Line Mona Reeder, a photographer with the Dallas Morning News, has won a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for domestic photography for her photo essay "The Bottom Line." Through pictures, Reeder explored Texas' poor rankings in a number of categories ranging from the poorest counties in the U.S. to environmental protection. Earlier this year, the project won the Community Service Photojournalism Award from the American Society of Newspaper Editors. It also was a Pulitzer finalist. Kenny Irby interviewed Reeder about the project for "Best Newspaper Writing 2008-2009." In this excerpt, Reeder discusses the value of in-depth photo essays and how she developed this one.
The Portfolio of...
The Portfolio of...
A Treasure Trove of Weegee The NY Times reports that a trove of letters and photos from Weegee has been found in a trunk bought at a yard sale in Kentucky. "We're just lucky that it all survived," said Martin Krause, the museum’s curator of prints, drawings and photographs. "The woman who found them thought maybe these were just old family snapshots or something -- though how you could mistake a Weegee for a family photograph, I don’t know." [via Gallery Hopper
The Funeral Train Relived If you haven't seen it, take a look at the New York Times' slideshow, The Fallen, where Magnum photographer Paul Fusco talks about the photographs he made in 1968 aboard the train carrying Bobby Kennedy's coffin from New York City to Washington. There's also a great gallery of the images and a write up of an upcoming gallery exhibition of Fusco's work.
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