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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.

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.

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.

“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.

This was a very interesting year for me, definitely the busiest since I moved to Belgrade, Serbia in February 2009, filled with lots of travel and some interesting assignments. Notably I had the chance to visit Africa for the first time, on assignment in South Sudan, and received the Burn Magazine Emerging Photographer Fund Grant for my ongoing project “Only Unity”.

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A woman in tears as her family and city workers rush to pack their belongings in to city trucks during the razing of the Belville camp in New Belgrade, in an area underneath the New Belgrade train station. April 2012.

Residents leaving the Belville camp in New Belgrade on the morning of its destruction by the Belgrade city government. Many residents were moved to container homes at the edge of the city. April 2012.

Walking through flooded cattle grazing land near the town of Maar, South Sudan in Jonglei State along the Bor-Panyagor road. September 2012.

Flying above the Nile River and beginning of the Sud on a flight from Juba to Bor, South Sudan. September 2012.

South Sudanese Police Service Captain John Arway in the offices of the Commissioner of East Twic County, Dan Akoi Jurkuch. September 2012.

A Nile River fishing camp in Terekeka, South Sudan. September 2012.

Along the Bor-Panyagor road in Jonglei State, South Sudan. September 2012.

SSPS patrolling along an impassible dirt road near the Jonglei canal, 9km from Panyagor town. September 2012.

Arriving in Juba, the capitol of South Sudan, on a flight from Bor. September 2012.

The River Wye near Symonds Yat in the Forest of Dean. England. January 2012.

A brass band plays for a floating riverboat party on the Sava River in Belgrade, Serbia. October 2012.

A rowdy crowd gathers outside of the incumbent Democratic Party offices in central Belgrade after opposition leader Tomislav Nikolic was declared the winner of the Serbian Presidential Election. May 20, 2012.

Boys playing with a toy gun and campaign balloons in the central square of Veliko Gradiste before President Boris Tadic arrived for a campaign event. April 2012.

Tomislav Nikolic, center, during a standing ovation at the Serbian Progressive Party congress in Belgrade. He was elected as the President of Serbia days later. May 2012.

Serbian President Boris Tadic sits for a moment along the Danube River in the Eastern Serbian town of Golubac following a campaign event. April 2012.

A slava (Orthodox saint's day) celebration organized by the far-right group "Obraz" at the Bogorodičina Crkva in Zemun. November 2012.

A boy fishing in the Danube river in Veliko Gradiste, Serbia. April 2012.

The construction of a new seawall in the town of Makarska, Croatia. December 2012.

Girls wait in their family's car as city workers pack their belongings in the Belville camp during the eviction by the Belgrade city government. April 2012.

Milan Andjelic herding sheep in the village of Cenici near Knin, Croatia. He and his mother are some of the few remaining Serbs in the area. December 2012.

Sveti Sava Cathedral in Belgrade, Serbia. February 2012.

The Kozara movie theater on Terazije street in Belgrade caught fire during renovations. May 2012.

Bulldozers razing the Belville camp in Belgrade in an area underneath the New Belgrade train station. The residents of the community had been relocated earlier in the day. April 2012.

I started the year in England, then was in Sarajevo for a story about the 20th anniversary of the start of the war there. My mother came to visit me in Belgrade in April, but our trip was interrupted by Presidential elections in Serbia, which I covered for the Wall Street Journal. That assignment led to one of the strangest days of my career, when I photographed both Serbian President Boris Tadic and former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani hours apart in the same TV studio (see the WSJ article about Giuliani in Belgrade).

Soon after I was documenting the destruction of the Belville Roma settlement. My friend Darko Stanimirović and I handed out disposable cameras to residents of the camp so that they could document the eviction themselves. We published a multimedia piece at Newsmotion.org with these community pictures alongside Stanimirović’s audio recordings, a text by Alan Chin and some of my pictures as “The Sound of Barking Dogs: The Eviction of the Roma from Belville”.

In September I was in South Sudan reporting a story about the future of the Jonglei Canal and the issues of water rights for the youngest country on the planet. The project was commissioned by Austrian magazine 2012, an interesting one-year-only magazine published by Red Bull Media House. I have included a few images from the project here, but for now the only other pictures online are the tearsheets from ’2012′ which you can see on the clips section of mattlutton.com.

I also spent a total of four months in the United States, and was able to finally visit the area of the former Republic of Serbian Krajina in Croatia to document the remnants of Serbian life there. I was invited to be on the jury of the Organ Vida international photography festival in Zagreb, and was a speaker and juror at the “Foton” Makarska Photo Days Festival.

The biggest news of the year for me though was the Burn Magazine Emerging Photographer Fund Grant, which I received in June for my project “Only Unity”: Serbia In The Aftermath of Yugoslavia.

The response to the project has been very exciting, and I’m eager to finish the work this year. If you would like to know more, have a look at one of the interviews I did last year following the announcement: “Award-Winning Project Documents a Fractured Serbia” with Pete Brook at Wired’s Raw File blog, “Picture Story: Holding up a Mirror to Serbian Nationalism” in PDN Magazine (subscribers only unfortunately, see what it looked like in print here), and my chat with fellow EPF-finalist and friend Ian Willms on “BOREAL Spotlight: Matt Lutton, “Only Unity””.

You can have a look at my previous year-end posts on Dvafoto: 2009, 2010 and 2011. If you’d like more regular updates about my work, feel free to sign up for my occasional newsletter.

Thanks again everyone for continuing to follow Dvafoto and supporting all of the photographers we feature here. I wish you all a fun and successful 2013!

Yesterday James Estrin, co-Editor of the New York Times Lens Blog and Staff Photographer for the Times, announced that they are inaugurating the first New York Photography Portfolio Review, a two-day event in April 2013. It will bring together 160 photographers, in two one-day sessions, with more than 50 prominent reviewers, including a diverse selection of photo editors, agents, publishers, curators and buyers. The event will include private portfolio reviews, discussions and workshops.

They’ve also announced that the event will be free to attend for invited photographers, a step away from other major portfolio reviews in the US and Europe which can cost hundreds of dollars. The event, on April 13 and 14 at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism in New York City, is divided in two sessions: on Saturday the 100 invited photographers will all be 21 years or older, and on Sunday all 60 photographers will be aged 18-27. To attend you must submit a portfolio by February 13, and invited photographers will be informed by March 8, 2013.

This is such an interesting event that I wanted to pose a few questions to Estrin, and he agreed to fill us in.

The New York Times Lens Blog.

Dvafoto: Whose idea was this project, and how does it fit Lens’ and the NYT’s goals?

Estrin: I’ve always thought that the web, and social media were very powerful tools for communication, but significantly different than actual human interaction. Real Analogue interaction can have important and profound consequences.

I came up with the idea for the review with Lens co-editor David Gonzalez.

We have been lucky that our marching orders, from our boss [assistant managing editor for photography for the New York Times] Michele McNally, have always been to make the very best blog we could. Make the best editorial judgements that we could make, be willing to be smart, try to be principaled and don’t worry about traffic or business. So if this event can help the photo community, and create opportunities and discussion, then it fits into our mission. There are many ways to communicate.

Why did you choose to make the event free? This surely bucks the trend of most portfolio reviews and events for photographers these days.

It’s free because we wanted to create as many opportunities for photographers, regardless of background, to share their work.
There are fine portfolio reviews that charge- most of them non profit either by design or execution. I reviewed this year at Review Santa Fe and also at Lens Culture Fotofest in Paris and I think both were very was helpful for many photographers as well as for myself as an editor. At the same time I think we all have a responsibility to our fellow photographers, particularly the youngest new photographers amongst us.

Many people helped me when I was a young freelance photographer. I wouldn’t be here without them. I always remember how difficult it was to show my work in the pre-digital era, and how alone I often felt. There is an important tradition of experienced photographers helping newer ones.

Why the age categories? Will there be a different curriculum for each session?

The age categories are because I wanted to make sure that we did the utmost we could for up and coming photographers.
All photographers 21 and older can go on Saturday and I think the opportunities will be great. But on Sunday you have to be 18 -27 and there will be many workshops as well as reviews. By the way a very accomplished 21 -27 year old photographer could apply and get in for both days.

Ultimately, we just wanted to do some good, have fun, and help our colleagues in any way that we can. So we asked what would be a meaningful thing to do.

My colleagues from the New York Times, National Geographic, Time, Aperture, Abrams books, PDN, and many museums, magazines, galleries and blogs have generously agreed to share their time. We are adding new reviewers daily.

Thanks to James Estrin for answering some of our questions and for organizing this fantastic opportunity for photographers.

The deadline for submitting your portfolio is February 13, 2013 on the entry page. Good luck to everyone applying!

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Melinda Gibson - Firecracker

Bella West - Firecracker

Dana Popa - Firecracker

Polly Braden - Firecracker

“Despite many fantastic women working with photographic media, the industry continues to be dominated by male counterparts. Firecracker assists the promotion of women photographers by showcasing their work in a series of monthly online gallery features.” -Firecracker

Firecracker is an interesting project started by Fiona Rogers, who works in Magnum’s London offices, focused on supporting women photographers from Europe. A new photographer is featured each month, running the gamut from photojournalism and documentary to art photography, and photos are always interesting. Here are a few of the featured photographers that really caught my eye: Tessa Bunney, Dana Popa, Sophie Gerrard, Jane Hilton, and the current featured photographer Melinda Gibson.

Firecracker also runs a grant for a female photographer to complete a documentary photographic project. The 2012 application period has just ended, and a winner will be announced soon.

“…photographic representations of Asia, in the hands of European photographers and shaped by Western media, has contributed to producing a catalogue of stereotypes that simplifies and even suppresses the full diversity of visual sensibilities that Asian photography is capable of expressing.

As a consequence, Asian photographers lack a platform that not only profiles their work on their own terms, but also suggests its profound link with native visual idioms. This is preceisely the gap that Punctum hopes to fill.” -Punctum, Editorial Statement

Issue 2 of Punctum magazine, an Asia-focused photography magazine, has just been published, and it’s beautiful. There’s a real variety in both topics and photographic approaches. Based in India and Spain, the magazine publishes work produced by Asian photographers and writers about Asia. The magazine is produced by editor, and OjodePez founder, Frank Kalero, executive editor Lola Mac Dougall, literary editor Rajni George, and graphic designer Inca Roy. Issue 1 is also available via issuu, and according to the media kit, print editions can be found in “large international cities of Asia, Europe and America,” primarily in specialized bookshops, museums, galleries, photography schools, and the mailboxes of art critics.

(via Newsweek’s Picture Department)

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Screenshot of PDN Pix, Summer 2012

Screenshot of PDN Pix, Summer 2012

Screenshot of PDN Pix, Summer 2012

• “Smudge-proof makeup tips for long days behind the camera”
• “Seasonal Flats: these flats will keep your feet covered, comfortable and cute while you’re on photo shoots”
• “Step-by-Step: create these beautiful lanterns for your studio”
• “Beauty Dish: New Jersey-based wedding photographer dishes about her camera-ready style”
• “Luminous Lenses: Shoot in style with these designer lens protection wraps”
• “Hanging Tough: These camera straps are stylish yet tough just like you”

-Headlines from PDN’s new women’s magazine, Pix

Photo District News have launched a new photography-focused digital magazine for women called Pix, a few screenshots from which are presented above. It’s a doozy. Jezebel is on the case: Finally, Lady Photojournalists Get Their Own Photo Ladymag Full of Lady Stereotypes. You can read through the whole first issue here, and the next issue will be available via iTunes in December 2012.

In more serious women-in-photography news, two women have been nominated to Magnum (Zoe Strauss and Bieke Depoorter, alongside Jerome Sessini), Isadora Kosofsky has won the 2012 Inge Morath Award, and as Matt wrote previously, the Alexia Foundation has started a $25,000 Women’s Initiative grant.