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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.

Stranded - a magazine by those disrupted by Eyjafjallajokul

I think we’ll be seeing more and more one-off print publications d’arte, and I like that prospect. McSweeney’s had a brilliant hit with their 300-page newspaper the San Francisco Panorama. The latest such endeavor: an 88-page magazine/souvenir collaboration by about 50 people stranded by the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano. The content comes from an open call posted April 20 for “designers, writers, photographers, illustrators, art directors and anyone else who is stranded by the ash cloud, and would like something to do.” It looks beautiful, and it’s on sale now.

VII Magazine

The photo agency/collective VII has unveiled a new online project dubbed VII Magazine. There’s a bit of content up already, including an interview with Jessica Dimmock, a presentation of Marcus Bleasdale’s fashion work for New York magazine, Ron Haviv’s recent coverage of the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake, a look inside Christopher Morris’ book My America (previously interviewed here at dvafoto), John Stanmeyer’s coverage of fires in the Amazon, and more.

Lovebryan.com - Image by Sara Lafleur

I can’t believe I haven’t linked to lovebryan.com yet. The brainchild of Bryan Derballa, the site aggregates the work of 8 member photographers and an oscillating contingent of less-frequent contributors. The work presented is all over the place, but mostly it’s raw and creative and unexpected and fun. You might find a mushroom-filled trip to a lake, chickens and naked babies, a trip on a cruise ship, the scene behind the scenes of what looks like a horror music video, a visual-psycho-analysis of one’s kid sister, road trips, or nostalgia for the summer you wish you had last year. It’s hard not to get lost in there for hours.

David Alan Harvey's magazine Burn launches with an essay by Anton Kusters.

David Alan Harvey‘s latest venture, Burn Magazine, launched today, and it’s beautiful. His old blog, Road Trips, will be moved over to the Dialogue section of Burn. Can’t wait to see how this develops, but there’s a strong community of passionate photographers/designers/etc. and a vision for something good. There will be an open submissions process, with a variety of outlets for photography on Burn (Work in progress, finished essays, single pictures…). Funding is always a headache, but it’s being addressed. As we saw with Harvey’s Emerging Photographer Fund, which will continue through Burn, Harvey has a knack for making things happen.

One of my favorite magazines of the year, the New York Times Sunday Magazine’s annual Year in Ideas issue, is out this Sunday. The web version is already up, and I can’t wait to work my way through it. Spray on condoms, a vending machine for crows, mini-cattle, moonvertising, and eating kangaroos to help the environment make the cut.

Just stumbled upon the new issue of Gary Knight (et.al.)’s newish magazine rethink-dispatches titled Beyond Iraq. In a nice twist for us here at ДваФото (dvafoto .. meaning ‘two pictures’ in Russian) the brilliant and enlightening main photo essay for this issue was done by Russian Noor photographer Yuri Kozyrev and is titled, in Cyrillic script, Ирак. (that is, for you english speakers, Iraq).

I’ve yet to see a physical copy of the magazine (cannot wait to .. saving my pennies for a subscription) but the content online is first-rate and innovative. If you haven’t spent any time there, start digging in to the smart essays, editorials, multimedia pieces and of course the photo essays. Their first issue, Beyond America, featured a great essay titled “In God’s Country” by Antonin Kratochvil.

Further, I must implore you to look Christopher Morris’ multimedia piece that showed up on rethink-dispatches a week or two ago: “The Dear Leader”. Scathing and timely, investigating further (I assume you know his book My America) the (cult of) personality and insulation of US President George W. Bush. Fascinating cross over for a photographer in to documentary film making. It also generated some interesting discussion over at lightstalkers.

Still frame from Morris' The Dear Leader