Alec Soth’s Little Brown Mushroom has released the first book in what the group says will be “a series of photographic storybooks for grown-ups” inspired by the Little Golden Books of old (my favorite was The Color Kittens!). The first in the series is “Bedknobs & Broomsticks” by Trent Parke. Only 1000 are available. I’ve already ordered my copy; I’m not letting this one get away like Dream/Life, 3 used available at Amazon starting at $849.99.

I suppose it was bound to happen. I just got this email from World Press Photo:

Dear Participant of the 2010 World Press Photo Contest,

Thank you for your submission to this year’s contest, which had a record number of 101,960 images submitted by 5,847 photographers. Due to increasing costs, World Press Photo will no longer be able to distribute free copies of the annual yearbook to all photographers who participated in the contest.

However, we would like to offer you the opportunity to buy one yearbook with a 50 percent discount through our website. You can purchase the book for 12 euros in our online bookstore.

Given the number of people who submit only mainly for the free book, maybe next year there will be fewer submissions .. and they can get back to sending them out? Wishful thinking. Thanks again for all the free books in the past WPP.

The NYTimes Lens blog just posted a piece including the words and images of Velibor Božović, who I’ve had the pleasure of meeting in Sarajevo. In the interview Božović said some things that have really echoed with some earlier thoughts of mine: is it possible for a photographer to photograph as someone else? In other words, to photograph in character? Actors can assume new personalities and do things (on set a least) that they would never say or do in their personal life. Does this, can this, should this apply to photography?

“[Hemon and I] spent hours talking about what these guys would do and about Rora — what would he really photograph,” Mr. Božović said. Through their conversations, Mr. Božović would discover that Rora possessed aesthetic tastes and instincts that drastically differed from his own.

This did not always sit well with him. One photograph he took still leaves him feeling uneasy. At a sidewalk café in Lviv, Ukraine, he sneaked a shot of a woman’s bare legs from underneath a coffee table.

“I simply would never do that,” he said. “But Rora would do that kind of thing.”

This is a proper book club post because Božović’s comments are referring to the book that he made with his friend, the writer Aleksandar Hemon called The Lazarus Project. In it there are two characters traveling through Eastern Europe (Bosnia, Moldova, Ukraine) in search of certain historical events and this is exactly what the author and his photographer friend, Božović and Hemon, did in real life. This curious parallelism is found often in Hemon’s books, which I count amongst my favorites of recent years, especially his first: The Question of Bruno. This mixing of first person narrative, of fiction and real experience, even to the point of having a character named Hemun that fits biographical features of the real Hemon, work incredibly well at playing the tensile strings of fragile immigrant identities. But what about doing this with photographs and blurring the line of who is the photographer? Does the biography of a photographer matter? Does it matter if they exist at all in a non-fiction world?

Interesting ideas for me.

Be sure to look at Božović’s work, especially the whole Lazarus Project set on his website and the Stone Sleepers project which we’ve previously written about on dva. Word is that he is traveling to Russia at the moment, I hope for some nice new secret project. Can’t wait to see it when he’s back.

A friend of mine just sent me a link to a story in the UK’s Independent about Mark Twain’s autobiography which is finally being released in its entirety one hundred years after the author’s death, in accordance with his wishes. The article broaches many questions about what scholars and the public will learn and reconsider about Twain and to that end why he desired a hundred year period before publication. I thought this quote was pretty badass, they don’t make them like they used to. Then again, he didn’t come out and say this publicly in his time either. What truths of our era will finally be said only after our deaths?

Another potential motivation for leaving the book to be posthumously published concerns Twain’s legacy as a Great American. Michael Shelden, who this year published Man in White, an account of Twain’s final years, says that some of his privately held views could have hurt his public image.

“He had doubts about God, and in the autobiography, he questions the imperial mission of the US in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. He’s also critical of [Theodore] Roosevelt, and takes the view that patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrel. Twain also disliked sending Christian missionaries to Africa. He said they had enough business to be getting on with at home: with lynching going on in the South, he thought they should try to convert the heathens down there.”

The Aftermath Project is working on publishing it’s next book, War is Only Half the Story, vol. 3, and the organization needs your help. Each print run costs about USD$20,000. Now, you can buy a print (warning: pdf link) to help fund the publication of the next volume. Prints are available from Ami Vitale, Davide Monteleone, Rodrigo Abd, Saiful Huq Omi, Donald Weber, Asim Rafiqui, Louie Palu, Andrea Bruce, and Sara Terry. The prints aren’t cheap, starting at $400, but they’re beautiful and help support the funding of future long-form journalism. The book is an interesting project, as well. The new volume will feature the work of the 2009 Aftermath project winners and finalists. Sarah Terry, director/founder of Aftermath, describes the book in more detail:

Our annual book is a central part of the Aftermath Project’s mission to help educate the public about the true cost of war and the real price of peace. It is distributed free to a broad audience, including every US senator; journalism and peacebuilding programs; and museum curators around the world. It is also available on our website, www.theaftermathproject.org.

(via Donald Weber)

I’m a sucker for vintage photography, and the Albert Kahn Collection is no exception. From the website:

In 1909 the millionaire French banker and philanthropist Albert Kahn embarked on an ambitious project to create a colour photographic record of, and for, the peoples of the world…. Kahn used his vast fortune to send a group of intrepid photographers to more than fifty countries around the world, often at crucial junctures in their history, when age-old cultures were on the brink of being changed for ever by war and the march of twentieth-century globalisation.

This project resulted in some 72,000 autochromes, most of which have never been published. The BBC has produced a 9-part series on the collection, as well:

(via Kottke.org)

Inside Magazine has just launched, and it looks great. Sponsored by SlovakAid and Magna: Children at Risk, the project brings together photography, essays, comics, and other coverage to address a single topic with each issue. The first issue covers poverty with incredible depth. Subscription is, incredibly, free, though you must cover the cost of shipping.

(via Peter Hoffman)

As far as Benton is concerned, she has stumbled upon an artist who deserves to be in the canon of great 20th-century social-documentary photography, on par with Henri Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange.

The New York Times Magazine a week or so ago published a very interesting story about the reassessment of photographer Roman Vishniac. He published a number of widely circulated books about Eastern European Jews in the years following World War II, lauded for capturing “a vanished world” of pre-Holocaust Jewish life. But work done by a young curator at Harvard and the International Center of Photography is broadening appreciation and important questions about Vishniac and his work.

There are a number of interesting points that are treated in a pretty lively manner, for example the role of heavy editing (sequencing, cropping, releasing only a few images) and heavy-handed captions in skewing perceptions of a documentary piece. This fits in to other reassessments of 20th century documentary and “concerned photographers”. Does the likely manipulation of scenes and commentary take away from the work or is it justified by the message?

Vishniac is an interesting character, as well known for his photomicroscopy as these images of 1930s-era Europe, which underscores the mystery and questions about his photography and self-constructed legends. Well worth a read.

“A Photo Student” James Pomerantz sits down with perennial Dvafoto favorite and inspiration Jason Eskenazi. Probably the best overview of his career and life I have come across outside of conversations with the man himself. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Thanks Jason and James for putting this out there!

Copies of his book Wonderland are still for sale direct from Eskenazi. Must have.

Have a look at the “trailer” for Stanley Greene’s new book Black Passport, a deeply personal journal of life and a career in conflict. Or perhaps it is, as compiled by Teun van der Heijden, a biography.

(click here to see original on youtube)

I had a chance to meet the man and see his book in Paris in November, it is a fascinating document from a dedicated photographer deserving time and respect.

(h/t Nathalie Belayche)