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Luca Santese/Cesuralab - Milano, Italy, 2010. - Slave during an S&M session.

Andy Rocchelli/Cesuralab - Berlin, 2010, 1st of May

Gabriele Micalizzi/Cesuralab/LuzPhotos - Thayland.Bangkok.21/4/2010.Sala Daeng metro Bts station.Yellow skirt occupation side. During Yellow shirt demostration. They start to throw bottle and pushing for clash.

Alessandro Sala/Cesuralab - South Africa, 2010

Arianna Arcara/Cesuralab - USA.Detroit.August 2009. Known as the world´s automotive center Detroit was once the home of 1.85 million people in the 1950´s.Now more than the 50% of the popultaion is gone, leaving the city populated by abandoned buildings.

Gabriele Stabile/Cesuralab - Newark, New Jersey, December 2009: A young Buthanese refugee in his room at the refugee hotel.

We’ve been a fan of Cesura Lab for some time, and of collective founder and artistic director Alex Majoli for as long as both Matt and I have known his work. When Daria Birang wrote in to us about some upcoming workshops hosted by Cesura Lab, I thought it’d be a great opportunity to talk to the group about their philosophy and operations. The answers we got back during the interview were a bit enigmatic at times, but illuminating as to how a group of photographers might operate in the new media environment mixing editorial, gallery, commercial, and any other means of getting photography out to audiences. The questions and answers (formatted as received) are below:

Dvafoto: What is Cesura Lab?

Cesura: Cesuralab is a photographer’s collective

What does the name mean?

It means something like “cut off lab”, which comes from the name of the little village, Cesura, where the studio in alex majoli’s house started years ago, and since we are in the middle of the country side in Italy, cut off from civilization, we kept the name.

Why have the photographers come together?

what we can do together we can’t do alone. we are putting our forces together so everyone gains.

What is Cesura Lab as a whole?

it really is a studio, a playground in which we come and work, edit, talk, come up with projects and talk some more. we smoke a lot of cigarettes too.

What is it’s mission?

We think that photography has perfectly represented a world in the past but that world has changed completely. Most of contemporary photography seems to apply the dictates of that photography trying talk about contemporary reality with a language that doesn’t belong to it anymore. What we aim to do and what we might consider our mission is trying to not adapt the world to old photography, but to adapt photography to the new world.

Is Cesura an arts organization?

no, we are an independent group of photographers trying to stay out of the system, we want to make a difference, on our own, without a funder with a big voice.

A journalism organization?

we don’t like to put ourselves in one particular category, we all do different photography and we try to encourage each other’s differences.

An education organization?

no, but we use our resources, space and contacts for photography workshops and masterclasses.

Do these distinctions matter to the group?

not at all.
Read on »

Black Archives

I knew something would arise out of Grazia Neri’s bankruptcy. There were simply too many pictures from too many talented photographers from too long a time period for the pictures to just disappear. Now, fourteen photographers have come together to form Black Archives. “All fields will be covered: from Art to Politics, from Celebrities to Travel, from News to Fashion to Sport, as well as a vast collection of historical pictures.” The founding photographers are: Fabio Massimo Aceto, Graziano Arici, Giovanbattista Brambilla, Gerald Bruneau, Basso Cannarsa, Remo Casilli, Leonardo Cendamo, Titti Fabi, Fulvia Farassino, Francesco Garufi, Grazia Ippolito, Daniele La Malfa, Marcello Mencarini and Roberto Ponti.

(via BJP)

Pete Brook has been on a roll with great posts at his blog Prison Photography lately, and I wanted to point out one in particular: “It was like being in front of a mirror” features very interesting photos and words by Melania Comoretto.

(c) Melania Comoretto

I wanted to investigate and understand how women could express their femininity and take care of their body in a situation of extreme marginalization.

The starting idea was to reflect the mental and psychological labyrinths and internal prisons that prevent human beings from living their lives freely. I asked myself, “What could be the extreme expression of this idea?” The answer; Prison.

You are well worth the time to bookmark Brooks’ site, it has absolutely one of my new favorite blogs. And if you’re up on this whole twitter thing, follow Pete Brook for the loads of interesting links that he often posts.