Jens Olof Lasthein – Cows at War

You may be familiar with Jens Olof Lasthein‘s work after he won the 2010 Oskar Barnack Award for his pictures from Abkhazia. I was looking through his portfolio yesterday and fell in love with Lasthein’s series “Cows At War”. It’s a flash site, so there’s no way to link directly. Click on “Works”, then “Cows At War.”

The series shows cows and a few dogs and horses in the middle of war-torn Abkhazia. It’s an unexpected and humorous reminder that the ordinary persists throughout even the most difficult circumstances. There may be bullets flying and bombs exploding, but a cow will just keep chewing its cud through it all. In the same vein, you might recall Todd Heisler‘s What Has Four Legs and Follows Me?

Spend time with the rest of Lasthein’s work. It’s deep and humanistic in a refreshing way. I particularly like White Sea Black Sea, which is available as a book (on Amazon now for $500+).

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Junicci Hayakawa

Hideki Masuda

Daisuke Matsumoto

Arata Kato

Yasuhito Hatajima

Nice to Meet You volume 1

A few weeks ago Ryo Futamura of Japan’s Einstein Studio wrote in about their latest publication, Nice to Meet You. The mission of the organization, through publications and contests such as this, as Futamura told me, is to find and show the world young and talented photographers in Japan.

Nice to Meet You is a small magazine highlighting winners of the Japan Photo Award (previously known as the Einstein Photo Award). As you can see above, the work selected is a bit of a grab bag, but much of it is intriguing. I’m particularly interested in the images because they look so much different from what I think of as “Japanese Photography” (which is mostly just Daido Moriyama‘s harrowing work). Futamura said that many of these photographers have had difficulty getting their work out to audiences outside of Japan, and even within the country, the market for this type of work is quite small.

While it will be hard to get a copy of Nice to Meet You unless you’re in Japan, you can see work from all of the artists on the publication’s site. Here are a few that grabbed my eye: Daisuke Matsumoto, Hideki Masuda, Junicci Hayakawa, Arata Kato, Yasuhito Hatajima, Yuya Kaai.

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Lauren DiCioccio - sewnnews

Lauren DiCioccio - 365 Days of Print

Lauren DiCioccio - National Geographics

In our first year at dvafoto, I wrote about Kim Rugg, an artist who rearranges the letters on newspaper front pages in alphabetical order. In another imaginative approach to the object of print journalism, Lauren DiCoccio has taken to embroidering snippets of newspapers and magazines (among her many other projects) and the results create a beautiful preservation of the periodical publication. In sewnnews, DiCoccio covers sections of the New York Times in muslin and embroiders sections of the cover photos and headlines. In 365 Days of Print, she isolates small segments of the page and renders the text in thread. In National Geographics, she creates thread and fabric idealizations of issues of the yellow-bordered magazine. Throughout these projects, threads dangle and the embroidery seems almost unfinished.

The LPV Show podcast

You can always count on Bryan Formhals and La Pura Vida Magazine to find and share interesting photography. I, frankly, don’t know how he keeps up with it all. Now, LPV has started a podcast featuring interviews with photographers, and it’s definitely worth a listen. The conversations so far are free-flowing and informal, delving into photographers’ processes, motivations, and lives. The photographers featured so far run the gamut in style and subject matter, but they’re always interesting.

There have been 8 episodes so far: Ross Mantle, Gabriela Herman, Yoshi & Tamara Kametani, Manjari Sharma, Justin Vogel, Mikael Kennedy, Natan Dvir, and Tom Starkweather

Find episodes of the podcast here or subscribe to the LPV Show through iTunes.

Also, be sure to check out the recently-published issue 6 of the printed LPV Magazine. Previous issues can be seen here.

Daniel Shea – Fader – Chicago Fire

Fader magazine has just published new work by Daniel Shea focusing on the effects of gun violence on Chicago’s youth. It’s a beautiful and sensitive approach to a difficult topic.

The essay, Chicago Fire, grew out of previous work Shea did for the magazine and is the centerpiece for Fader’s photo issue this year. As photo editor Geordie Wood explains on his tumblr, the work was shot over 4 weeks and aims to show what life is like for youth in Chicago’s South Side. The magazine will devote 16 pages to the photos in print, and more photos will be published on Fader’s website this week. There’s also an interview with longtime Chicago crime reporter Alex Kotlowitz about violence in the city over the past 20 years.

Be sure to check out Shea’s portfolio and tumblr.

iWitness – Boston bombings tweets

It’s always tough following breaking news as rumors start to fly. Yesterday in Boston was no exception. One particular tool jumped out at me as I was following the news: Adaptive Path’s iWitness twitter search. The service, which only works on webkit browsers such as Chrome or Safari, allows to view tweets from specific geography and time. To wit, here are all geo-tagged tweets from Boylston Street bombing locations sent between 2:45pm and 3:15pm. It’s a fascinating look at news unfolding in real time by the people who were there. (found via Metafilter)

A few more links on the subject of the bombings:

• Reddit users have once again provided a comprehensive and continually updated feed of developments in the story, starting before major news outlets had published anything. Threads 1, 2, 3, 4. Boston.com also has a very good feed of news as it unfolds.
• The Atlantic and Time Lightbox were quick to post images from the scene. Lightbox features an interview with Globe photographer John Tlumacki, whose images I believe will come to define the event. The Atlantic features a particularly gruesome image (#8, you’ve been warned), which when I first saw it was uncensored but not has blurred the face of the victim. That’s a very interesting move, and I think it dehumanizes the news. I am surprised that they blurred the face and hope that this is not a trend. The Boston Globe has a particularly moving front page image today, and I think the emotional impact rests partly on being able to see who was involved in this terrible tragedy.
• In image #8 linked above, a man in a cowboy hat is holding the victim’s vein closed with his hand. He can be seen other news videos and photos rushing to help. His name is Carlos Arredondo, an immigrant from Costa Rica whose life had been upended after losing one son in Iraq. Mother Jones has some information about him, and here is a video of him, visibly shaking, describing the events soon after they happened.
• The situation is still unfolding, and much of the area around Copley Square remains closed off to the public. Some young Boston journalists, connected to Tufts I believe, have created BostonSituation.org as a no-nonsense gathering of information for those affected. Built on Google Drive, it’s a brilliant way to use web tools to spread vital information when other methods of communication might be down.
• The website is getting hammered, but if you can get through, BagNewsNotes has been looking at specific images from the coverage. On That Iconic Photo from the Boston Marathon Bombings and War and Terror: What Shocks Me Most About the Bloody Marathon Bombing Pictures (GRAPHIC)

Postcards from Google Earth

We’ve written about Google Street View-based projects before. Rather than look for serendipitous street photography, Clement Valla‘s project Postcards from Google Earth looks for errors in the algorithm and finds images where roads, bridges, and buildings bend and melt around the landscape in a surreal way. While the website doesn’t have much information, an article at Rhizome explains the process and thoughts behind the project.

Daylight Digital

Non-profit photography publisher Daylight has started an iPad magazine called Daylight Digital. Published twice a month at $2.99 a month, Daylight Digital focuses on individual artists.  The first issue, which is available for free, features new work on Florida by Alec Soth. Here’s a direct link to iTunes to get the magazine.

And while we’re on the subject, the Daylight Photo Awards deadline is May 1.

Black angus beef graze in open pastures on a ranch outside of Ledger, Montana, USA. – photo by M. Scott Brauer

We’ve written before about the so-called “Ag-Gag” bills that make illegal unauthorized video and photography of agricultural operations in various states. Today, the New York Times has an update on the increasing number of these types of laws throughout the United States: Videos show cruelty on farm, and taping becomes the crime. The NYT’s reporting connects bills across the country to a business advocacy group called the American Legislative Exchange Council. The organization creates model legislation for state legislatures to adopt such as The Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act, which would prohibit video and still photography of livestock farms and puts violators on a “terrorist registry.”

Though no laws including a terrorist registry provision have yet been passed, Iowa, Utah and Missouri have passed laws that make it illegal to document operations on farms and agricultural operations without authorization. Indiana and Tennessee will soon vote on similar laws, and California, Pennsylvania, and other states are debating similar measures. The Indiana law would require prospective employees to disclose ties to animal rights groups during the hiring process. Animal rights groups say that these laws make it impossible to document animal cruelty on farms and ranches. Opponents of bills have managed to stall or stop Ag-Gag bills in New Mexico, New Hampshire, and Wyoming.

“instead of trying to pick apart the meaning and motivation behind photographs, these articles will try to find out how photographers are actually surviving in 2013. I want to talk concretely about the challenges facing photographers, and the conditions that affect their work, both in the personal and professional sense of the word.” -Dan Abbe, Why How You Living?, American Photo

We’ve been on the subject of business in photography recently. American Photo has embarked on a fascinating series profiling photographers around the world and how they cobble together a living. Called “How You Living?” the series takes a candid look at what photographers do to get by. Here’s a short explanation about the motivation behind the series. The crux of the interviews, though, is something not often talked about in photography circles: how do you make a living? The short answer is that there are very few people who make their living entirely from taking pictures.

Only a couple of the photographers make some or a substantial part of their income by using a camera. Others fit in photography alongside full-time jobs, freelance design work, teaching, or whatever else it might take. For those of us making a go of freelance photography, this might not be news, but it’s refreshing to hear photographers speak openly about how they make things work. For those of you just starting out, know that you’ll probably need to supplement your photography with other work (or less interesting types of photography) for some time. I know I certainly did.

There are five articles in the series so far: Ed Panar, Peter Dixie, Mark King, Sean Marc Lee, and Jin Zhu.