The Online Photographer and Peter Turnley published this week a two-part story on the life and career of master printer to the stars Voja Mitrovic. A Yugoslav immigrant to France, Mitrovic began working at the famous Picto lab in Paris and became essentially the personal printer to such greats as Henri Cartier-Bresson and Josef Koudelka. The piece in part one and part two provides a terrific backstory to Mitrovic’s own life and his role in printing some of the most famous photographs of the last century.

He indicated to me that the three most important things involved in being a great printer are patience, developing a good dialogue and communication with the photographer he is printing for, and knowing how to read a negative. It is most important to know the photographer, to know what he or she wants, and to be able to read the image—like photographers, some people see things, and others don’t! Great printing involves knowing how to choose the right paper, having technical skills, and a strong artistic and aesthetic sense. He feels that it has helped him very much to have been himself a photographer, in order to understand the goal of a photograph.

A complicated mix of politics, media and the freedom of both are colliding again in Venezuela after a national court ruled that “for the next four weeks, no newspaper, magazine or weekly of the country can publish images that are violent, bloody, grotesque, whether about crime or not”. This comes as national legislative elections are to be held in the next month and from reaction to the country’s largest newspaper El Nacional publishing an image of an over-filled morgue on its front page last week. After the ruling on Tuesday the paper published blank images with the word “censored” across their front page in protest.

The Guardian reports that “crime regularly tops Venezuelans’ list of concerns. In the absence of complete official figures, which are no longer published, watchdog groups estimate 16,000 people are murdered every year.” Today’s El Nacional led with the question “do you feel that the national feeling of insecurity is to be mostly blamed on the information transmitted by the media?” and they reported that 88% said “no”, their rebuke to the Government’s assertion that “media opponents were using gutter press tactics to sensationalise crime, sell newspapers and damage the country’s socialist revolution”.

I’m sure this all needs to be considered in the complications of local politics, but it is interesting to me that there is a newspaper publishing such shocking images (in whatever context, especially considering the image seems to have been taken last December) and is taking a bold response to censorship. It also amazes me that the censorship could be so ham-fisted, with claims to protect the “psychic and moral integrity of children and adolescents” yet only be in temporary effect until the elections. We’ll see what comes.

Update (8/20): CNN is reporting “Venezuelan judge says newspapers can print violent pictures”: “A judge has lifted an order banning Venezuelan media from printing violent photographs, an official said on state-owned VTV.” Seems like international pressure from press advocates contributed. (via @foodforyoureyes)

Theatre of War from Richard Mosse on Vimeo.

We’ve posted a few times about Richard Mosse’s work, most recently about his Pink Soldiers and earlier about a related project to this video, “Breach”. It is great to see how is vision and passion for “classical history paintings” translates into a solemn and measured video piece.

Found via A Photo Student’s tremendous post full of wonderful photographer-related videos. It’ll take me to get through all of that good stuff, and I’ll probably be finding other gems to post here too. (just check out the Winogrand interview!)

I’m back in the US and one of my favorite things about the return home is reading long magazine articles. I just found a stash of recent New Yorkers at a thrift store at 25 cents a pop, and I’m in heaven. Others online have been collecting and sharing some of their favorite long reads. Here are a few good resources:

• Longform.org
• The Longreads twitter feed
• NYU’s list of the Top 100 Works of Journalism in the United States in the 20th Century (and this short list of entries on the list available for free online)
• Conor Friedersdorf’s lists of The Best of Journalism from 2009 and 2008.
• JournoCurator’s twitter feed
• Kevin Kelly’s list of The Best Magazine Articles Ever
• Esquire’s own list of its 7 Greatest Stories the magazine has published

Unfortunately, these lists are all pretty limited to American journalism. But armed with those lists, you should have several years worth of reading material. Reading on a screen is never fun, though, and you could probably go broke on the printer ink alone. Nothing beats the printed page, but there are a few tools (Readability, Instapaper, Read It Later) that will make electronic reading less of a pain.

I just got word from previous dvafoto interviewee Molly Landreth that her project with Amelia Tovey, “Embodiment: A Portrait of Queer Life in America” has been funded to 130% through the website kickstarter.com. Their project page is still online where you can learn much more about the project, the funding model offered by kickstarter and a great video about their work. In total, they had 355 backers and raised $12,568 to fund the next stages of their work. Be sure to go back and read our interview if you haven’t already.
Congratulations, I cannot wait to see what is produced and how the final web presentation comes together.

Andrew McConnell’s The Last Colony intrigues me. About the politics and injustices of colonization in Western Sahara, the essay covers a topic that would traditionally be the purview of a black and white documentary approach, but addresses it with highly-produced portraiture that you’d expect to see in the pages of a business magazine. The dissonance between subject and style is arresting and a breath of fresh air.

(thanks to Daniel Etter for cluing us in to the work)

“It’s quiet. I keep wondering if I’ll hear the shots. After a long while the media witnesses are brought to our room, with more guards. It is done, he is dead. I didn’t hear anything.” -Trent Nelson

Trent Nelson, whose blog The Click is a must read, just posted a multi-part series about his experiences covering the execution by firing squad of Ronnie Lee Gardner. This execution has been in the news recently, also, because the Utah state Attorney General announced the execution by twitter.

• Covering the Execution of Ronnie Lee Gardner, Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• (can’t find part 4)
• Part 5
• Part 6

BagNews picked up with some brief analysis of one of Trent’s photos, as well.

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.

Restrepo, Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger’s documentary about one American platoon fighting in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley, has been picked up for distribution and will be shown in theaters starting in summer 2010. The movie’s website has information on screenings, and the trailer is available to watch online.

“My working outfit is very casual: jeans, a shirt, documentary photographer shoes and a jacket. When we meet in these godforsaken places, we all look alike with our Timberlands, our scarves and jackets with lots of pockets. I guess there is such a thing as a documentary photographer look.” -Paolo Pellegrin talking with Nowness

There’s a strange and small interview with Paolo Pellegrin at Nowness to accompany a small selection of pictures from his upcoming Magnum Fashion magazine “Storm.” If you’re reading this here, no doubt you already know Pellegrin’s work, but on the off chance that you don’t, go get educated at the Magnum site with Pellegrin’s portfolio.