This week; Tennessee floods as the Mississippi River rises to historic levels; airlifting the wounded in Afghanistan; saving the Pope; Anish Kapoor’s monumental sculpture; rebuilding in Haiti; the colorful retort to Uganda’s protests.
We’re used to protest movements that come in colors—the yellow of people power in the Philippines, Ukraine’s orange, the green of Iran’s brutalized democrats. We’re less accustomed to seeing protests quashed with color.
Curated by photo editor Elisabeth Biondi and photojournalist Enrico Bossan, the five-day event aims to highlight the changing state of documentary photography.
The Catherine Ferguson Academy, part urban farm, part college prep, has horses grazing along the former running track, hay growing in empty lots and an apple orchard with hens running through it, all in the heart of burned-out Detroit. In a city that has a graduation rate of 62%, the academy, part of the Detroit Public Schools system, grants diplomas to 95% of their students—all pregnant teens or young mothers—and every one of them has a college acceptance letter in her back pocket.
Last night, Peter van Agtmael was awarded the prestigious Infinity Award for Young Photographer of the Year by the International Center of Photography. Kira Pollack, Director of Photography at TIME, reflects on the importance of his work as an editor firmly committed to his vision.
Magnum Photographers Alec Soth, Jim Goldberg, Susan Meiselas, Paolo Pellegrin, Mikhael Subotsky, and writer Ginger Strand are a bunch of friends going on a homespun adventure; a two week road trip.
Dutch photographer Viviane Sassen works along the thin line separating art and commerce. She is dually known for her innovative fashion work in French Vogue, Purple, and POP and for her surrealist African portraiture.
This evening the International Center of Photography in New York City will honor Elliot Erwitt with a lifetime achivement award. In an interview with LightBox he says, "I think great pictures start great conversations. It’s the stuff of life, just talking with the people that are around."
Like many New York City based photographers Peter van Agtmael rushed over to the World Trade Center Site on the eve of the killing of Osama Bin Laden to see how people would react to the news. After making some work in the crowd overtaken with the media and young revelers he decided to head home to sleep, confused by the reactions of the crowd, and waiting to see what the morning would bring.
When President Obama announced last Wednesday that he would not release images of the dead Osama Bin Laden, this decision seemed anomalous. When a “Most Wanted” fugitive at this level of notoriety is captured or killed, it has become customary to release photographs of the deceased as evidence, and these images often have tremendous propaganda value. David Levi Strauss takes a brief historical look at the effects of these images.
