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Houston Cofield - Common Ground

Growing up in a family rooted five generations deep in photographic history I developed an appreciation for photography at an early age. Film photography was present throughout my life hanging on our walls and stacked between pages on our coffee tables. My grandfather and great-grandfather taught me to appreciate the art of making a photograph with a 4x5 camera through their published book of William Faulkner's portraits.

This history, fiction, literature and photography continue to surround my own artistic practice. Studying photographers such as William Christenberry, Sally Mann and growing up down the street from Eggleston served to reinforce my romanticized view of the South. The ability for photography to strengthen that perspective grounds my work. I'm obsessed with place, myth, folklore and romance. These characteristics are prevalent themes throughout my work and are qualities derived as a product of my upbringing in the American South.

Common Ground is an investigation into the land my grandfather and great-grandfather documented years ago at the heart of William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County to uncover the mystery and myth that surround this region. As I wander through the Lafayette county roads my eye is drawn to moments where literal and imagined histories are evoked. In documenting the land and its inhabitants I am not only attempting link myself with a photographic heritage, but cast my own layer of fiction to this place.

All images © Houston Cofield

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Fabrizio Albertini - Genius Loci Vol.1

Genius Loci Vol.1 is an autobiographic statement. It is a daily journey that was born as much from the will of maturing as a photographer as from the necessity of facing a long convalescence. Each snapshot is the destination of a travel at your fingertips, a trip that was almost always an Italian one, in which, with selective and precise criteria, I was looking for the presence of color, composition and light. Realized between the summers of 2012 and 2013, Genius Loci Vol.1 walks the spectator through a few recurring paths: Milan, the water, the vegetation, the animals, the non-place, the Virgin Mary. They are all pacific environments, reassuring in a certain way, and in which I’ve always searched for order of things.

The location choice was rather accidental. Often I just happened to find a space that I liked and I waited and waited, until something, just about anything, would appear and complete it. 

All images © Fabrizio Albertini

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Jordi Huisman - Outline

In the 1950's annd 60's an area that is now known as the province of Flevoland was reclaimed from the IJsselmeer. A large dyke surrounds this polder, which lies fives meters below water level. The dyke forms an elevated outline, protecting the land from flooding. This series portrays Flevoland and its essential outline. It shows how life, infrastructure and nature got implemented after this part of the former Zuiderzee was reclaimed and land was created. 

All images © Jordi Huisman

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Imago Tour - Sicily

Novella Oliana - excerpt from project "Il posto più lontano da casa è casa" (www.novellaoliana.com) — Riserva Naturale di Vendicari (SR)

Imago Tour — Sicily is a project searching and gathering pictures of in Sicily. It’s a display case for visions with the purpose to free Sicily from its “postcard” imaginary. Imago Tour - Sicily collects pictures of known and unknown photographers creating an heterogeneous mosaic. Analytical photographic projects on Sicilian landscape mix up with personal, vernacular pictures, slices of life, travel moments of foreigners visiting the island as well of those living in it.

The project launched on Facebook ( http://fbl.me/a1lk ) on February 24th 2013 and on its first anniversary a web platform will be online at www.imagotour.com with a thorough archive and new contents. Imago Tour is accepting submissions at info@imagotour.com

Licia Castoro - excerpt from project "Ho-Me" (www.liciacastoro.it)— Lentini (CT).

Mario Cresci - excerpt from exhibition "D'après Retablo" Gallery Photology - Milano (www.mariocresci.it)— Noto (SR)

Kristian Sahlberg - excerpt from 'Isole Eolie' (www.kristiansahlberg.se) —  Isole Eolie.

Fulvio Bortolozzo - excerpt from"Trapani intorno" (www.bortolozzo.net) — Trapani.

Simone Donati - excerpt from project "Valley Of Angels" (www.terraproject.net/en/photographers/simone-donati/valley-of-angels) —  South-Eastern Sicily

Francesco Di Martino - excerpt from project HABITAT (dean-tropizzato) |work in progress| (www.frameoff.it)— Avola (SR)

Sandro Scalia - excerpt from "Cities within the City, Le città di Palermo"— Palermo.

Domenico Cipollina - excerpt from "Paesaggio in Corso" (www.premioceleste.it/artista-ita/idu:25487/)— SS 640 Agrigento - Caltanissetta.

Federica Di Giovanni - (www.federicadigiovanni.com) — Ginostra

Francesco Millefiori - excerpt from project " L'Isola" ||Castel-looking, illegal, deserted house.||(www.francescomillefiori.info)— Agnone Bagni (SR).

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Marina Caneve - 1km without limits

1km without limits / photography and urban planning in an urban re-modelage. 2012-2013, Villeneuve-la-Garenne, Île-de-France.

This sequence it’s part of a bigger project that works around photography’s and urban investigation’s territory.

In Ilê-de-France, in a historical period in which the debat on opening city’s limits toward the suburbs, concerning to the ideals of the Grand Pari(s), i’ve decided to focus my attention on a primary importance project: the re-modelage of the grand ensemble Caravelle in Villeneuve-la-Garenne (banlieue north of Paris). The Caravelle, a buildings’ complex long a linear kilometer, built during the trente glorieuses as a refuge, at the beginning of the XXI century has become an enclave réfractaire au reste de la ville. A kilometer without limits focuses on the remodelage of the Caravelle made by Atelier Castro, the reorganization of urban structures and, in a more general way, the des-enclavement. Everything grows up with a great respect for people and their conditions, without pity’s attitudes, but looking for an empathy’s degree able to return their dignity to the subjects.

All images © Marina Caneve

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Tanya Traboulsi - Home

This series explores the notions of home, roots and belonging, entwined with the confusion of growing up between two countries and multifaceted cultures. The images reflect upon facets of what could be representative of home, observing its affiliation to places, people and memory.

All images © Tanya Traboulsi

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Monique Atherton - Sometimes We Go Out

This body of work was made over a period of three years in and around Tacoma, Washington. It is the documentation of an ambiguous romantic relationship between myself and my partner. Using the mysterious and gloomy landscape of the Pacific Northwest I explore the unspoken tensions and desires that exist between two people as they try to maintain a stable existence in an unstable world. 

All images © Monique Atherton

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Robert Burley - Disappearance of Darkness

The photographic materials and systems I’ve used throughout my career are disappearing at an alarming rate. Over the last five years, companies such as Kodak, Agfa, and Polaroid have been pushed into an economic free-fall as the demand for their long-established products has evaporated. The end of the analogue era is evident in the recent closings and demolition of large-scale manufacturing facilities dedicated to the production of conventional photographic products.  During the past five years I have photographed numerous facilities in Canada, the United States, and Europe where blocks of silver were dissolved in nitric acid, mixed with the tissue of animals, and coated onto film and paper so the world could make pictures. The goal of my work is to explore the places where the alchemy of the photographic process was practised on a massive scale over the last century. The essential feature of these factories was, ironically, darkness: manufacturing took place in the absence of light—a characteristic that has defined the photographic process since it was first invented in 1839. The act of photographing is often associated with a desire to record something on the verge of change or disappearance. In this case, my subject is the medium itself.

All images © Robert Burley

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Adam Wiseman - Moving Portraits

A few days ago, Adam Wiseman, a very talented and clever photographer, sent us his video "Moving Portraits" here's what Patricia Mendoza former Director of the Centro de la Imagen of Mexico City wrote about it:

Moving Portraits is a series of approximately one minute filmed portraits that capture a moment of un-guarded introspection.

    Interested in how modern technology can change the vocabulary of traditional documentary photography, Wiseman uses a combination of documentary portraiture techniques and available technological advances in high quality video to take “filmed portraits” of his subjects. Paradoxically, in the interest of capturing an honest moment, Wiseman lets the subject believe that he or she is having their picture taken when in-fact they are being filmed. The portraits are then edited and only include sections from a one-minute period where the photographer leaves and the subject is alone. Once the filmed part is completed Wiseman tells the subject what he has done and proceeds to create a traditional portrait where subject and photographer collaborate.

The result is a series of subtle yet intense moments, the viewer is immediately engaged. Appealing to the voyeur in all of us we stare but also feel uncomfortable when we realize we are there, with the subject, within their intimate space.

“…these are not moments detained but moments contained… they go beyond the individuality implied by a portrait… what has been achieved is a paradox” 

As photographers we found this short film very intense, intriguing yet very frustrating. I have to admit I played with the space bar all the time trying to stop the images in the moment i felt right for a portrait, isn't what we all photographers do? Freezing the time? This reminded me on how photography compresses the time to be processed in our mind, in our own imagination, with our own time. That's why watching the subject moving, was a sort of torture for me, it didn't give time to my fantasy to make up things. Of course that's what Wiseman's provocation wanted to achieve…and it did very well! As Patricia Mendoza says, this "paradox" brakes our control and pushes us firmly to the ground frame by frame. On the other side it's very funny to watch what we photographers do actually see during a portrait session and this reminds me about how fictional, selective, fortuitous and limited a single photo portrait can be. Another great paradox I liked a lot, is how this video lingers on the imperfections behind a portrait, the subjects' preparations to appear as "natural" as possible, which we don't obviously see in a single "perfect" picture, this made me empathize a lot with them, as their human behaviors are shown. Wiseman showed us both conflicting sides of photography, its evocative power and its narrative limit.

Video and images © Adam Wiseman

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IPG project - In Search of the Crying Lady

In Search of the Crying Lady is a poetic and dark tale about a search for a tradition that never gets found.

The Crying Lady refers to the term Plačky who were professional mourners in Slovakia. Plačky used to be an essential part of the Slovak death ritual and were hired by the family of the deceased. The tradition was believed to still exist in certain areas of the country. Despite the encouragement that IPG received from ethnographers and people they spoke to along the way, the Plačky were never found. The journey had therefore turned into a search for the tradition that disappeared before anyone that IPG encountered had realized. In Search of the Crying Lady is essentially a collection of moments that crossed IPG’s path along their road to failure.

IPG is an experimental collaborative project of photographers Yoshi and Tamara Kametani. Yoshi and Tamara established IPG in 2010 and are currently based in New Jersey, USA. In Search of The Crying Lady is their first self-published book.

The book can be purchased directly at ipgproject.com For more information contact IPG at ipg@ipgproject.com

All images © IPG project

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Youngsuk Suh - Wildfires

The Wildfire series was initially started by my need to revisit and reevaluate some of the subjects explored in my earlier "Instant Traveler" project. The common thread running through the two projects is my perception of nature as a highly engineered and civilized institution. Through the images in the "Instant Traveler" series I intended to contemplate on the failure of the familiar nature-culture dichotomy. The human struggle to tame the 'untamable' has historically been rendered as a heroic victory of our civilization and brought us the concept of management in our relationship with natural environments. What used to be wilderness became remote memories petrified in national parks, the primary subject of the “Instant Traveler” series.

Wildfire and fire management are another aspect of the same interest. Despite the media saturated rendering of wildfire as a destructive force and firefighters as heroic individuals protecting our civilization, the modern firefighting has become a highly complex web of activities involving numerous government and private organizations. My interest, however, is in the position of individuals, often found in the fringe of this colossal system of 'nature-management'. No matter how marginalized it seems, the desire of the individual subject is the primary focus of the new series.

It is the 'anxious desire' that drives us to nature, in which the desire to be 'in nature' is continuously prolonged of its fulfillment. Individual encounter of nature is often accompanied by illusoriness that perpetually defers the concrete experience. The smoke in many of the photographs mediates this very anxiety. It is the shapeless nature that we encounter in the thick smoke of our own anxiety. I am attracted and feared simultaneously by this airborne beauty. The luminous tones and colors of the photographs are used ironically. Modeled after the 19th century American painters such as Bierstadt and Gifford, the picturesque sunset is enhanced by the haze of the smoke from a nearby fire. Like honeybees that are numbed by smoke before harvesting of honey, fire burns through the history of the representation of nature and tranquilize our senses. The romantic tradition also tells me that nature is as much an invention of the modernity as history.

The mundaneness that I depict in many images in this series also denotes a characteristic aspect of the modern fire management and disaster management at large. It is the result of a sophisticated social engineering that is aimed at total control of public psyche, which is achieved by careful control of the visibility of any disastrous events. Individuals are often 'protected' from the direct contact and left with mediated images seen on TV and newspapers. One's own sense of threat is replaced by the color-coded ratings determined by the authority. Once this process is established, the wildfires are no longer a threat in a real sense. The thick smoke seems to transform the real event into a remote memory.

All images © Youngsuk Suh

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Tom Griggs - Medallo

In 2010 I immigrated to Medellín, Colombia, my wife’s hometown. The photographs that form this project weave a personal and lyrical vision of the city together from the people, experiences, and spaces that have defined my life and experience here. The images come from backyard family asados and hospital vigils. They include portraits of students made during a break in class or in their barrios. Made from a point of intimacy created through an expanded interaction with the city, the project also retains a sense of my inescapable position as cultural outsider, seen, for example, in the long-view landscape photographs of the city that reflect a feeling of my relative distance and isolation here.

In addition to being a personal exploration of the city based in the experience of immigration to "Medallo" – as it is affectionately known locally – this project also substantively augments the shallow range of media and artistic images of present-day Medellín. While a register of the city’s complex dynamics is not part of the project agenda - and may not be possible - the photographs consciously move beyond the exhausted, one-dimensional narratives typically tying Medellín to its notorious violent history and Catholicism. It re-images a metropolis allowing it to be better seen for what it is, not what it was, at an important moment in the city’s history as this complex, diverse city recently named the most innovative in the world rapidly reconnects with the international community.

All images © Tom Griggs

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Douglas Ljungkvist - Middletown USA

In 2007 I started a personal photography project, Middletown USA, which is still ongoing.  During research I learned there are 16 US states that all have a town named Middletown.  Pennsylvania actually has four in four different counties.  

Having grown up in Sweden I’ve always been fascinated with how, why, and where American’s live outside of New York and other major cities.  I was also interested to experience how different or similar the Middletown’s would be, feel, and look.  

I think it’s safe to say that the Middletown’s are not often destinations or vacation spots.  They are usually, as the name “Middle-Town” indicates, a spot on the map between two large places going back to the stage coach days.  Thanks to the interstate road system it’s not that likely one would ever visit a Middletown, unless you live, work, go to school, or have family there.  Geographically, Middletown is mostly a Northeast and Midwestern occurrence.  Kentucky and Virginia in the South and California in the West are the only exceptions.  

The Middletown’s vary, visually and in many other ways; from the upscale Middletown Rhode Island with its beautiful beaches and surf scene located next to Newport, to the hard hit industrial Middletown Ohio where unemployment is high and main street stores are boarded up.  They also vary incredibly in size; from the smallest of 199 inhabitants in Missouri to the largest, in New Jersey, with 66,000+ inhabitants.  

This is not documentary project about the decline of post industrial or small town USA.  Rather it’s a personal search for vernacular beauty outside my urban comfort zone.  I search through housing subdivisions, main streets, office parks, recreational areas, industrial sites, and more, for scenes that appeal to me, viscerally.  Form is at least as important as content, as with all my work.  Though I’ve added some portraits to the project the place itself is more important to me, than the people that live there now.  I enjoy my role as the outsider looking in.             

I have completed my first round of visits and photographed all 16 Middletown’s.  My goal is to re-visit each Middletown during two or three extended road trips over the next couple of years, eventually resulting in a book.  

All images © Douglas Ljungkvist

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Bryan Schutmaat - Grays the Mountain Sands

"I wonder what my father saw in his most secret sight of the righ life. It's my guess he wanted to live out his life surrounded by friends and children and fertile fields of his own designing. I think he wanted to die believing he had been in on the creation of a good sweer place.

Those old pilgrims believed stories in which the West was a promise, a far away place where decent people could escape the wreckage of the old world and start over. Come to me, the dream whispers, and you can have one more chance." William Kittredge, Heaven on Earth

All images © Bryan Schutmaat

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Antone Dolezal - Ghost Town

Traveling through the High Plains of Oklahoma instills an immediate sense of loneliness. The very nature of this landscape cannot hide the abandoned homes and dying communities that have long plagued this part of the country. Flea markets are in abundance, offering a clear sign of the future for towns located in what is geographically referred to as No Man’s Land.

Ravaged during the Dust Bowl, the panhandle of Oklahoma was the epicenter of one of the worst natural disasters in American history. With great pride, the affected communities bounced back, becoming stronger and rebuilding sustainable farmland. But as the generations have passed, the reasons to stay have become fewer, causing many of these towns to once again find a communion with the dust.

The photographs in this series explore the myth of No Man’s Land. A land that during certain years was an unsustainable environment -- spurring the violent uprooting of whole families and small towns -- while in other years has produced record crop yields. It is a place that holds the heavy weight of history and tall tales. Legendary cowboys and outlaws have roamed through the High Plains of Oklahoma – the ghosts of the past becoming more intriguing than the realities of the present. And while the old tales and rough exterior may tell one side of the story, another can be found in the rare glimpse of ephemeral beauty that exists in this complicated land.

All images © Antone Dolezal

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Jesse Chehak - Fool's Gold (Vol. I)

A promise of possibility has become myth in a vast expanse of land rich with natural resources and existential opportunity.  The landscape speaks to the dissatisfaction of the rugged and strong-willed.  Progress almost always requires staking new claims.  Our extractions have realized big dreams and produced ineffable nightmares, as failure outweighs success here.  This is a scarred and brutal landscape so often veiled by a resplendent golden light.  

"Once caught by the golden lure you become a prospector for life, condemned, doomed, exalted— The search for what? They could not have said; neither can Is— anything as pretext. And how could they hope to find this treasure which has no name and has never been seen? Hard to say—and yet, when they found it, they could not fail to recognize it."' 

Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness (New York: Ballatine Books/Random House, 1968), 89. 

All images @ Jesse Chehak

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Shaw & Shaw - Sunday Morning

This series of images shot in Spain, Austria Germany and the England are a lament on the stillness of a Sunday morning and the tranquility of a day waiting to happen. 

All images © Shaw & Shaw