Where to Go and What to See

One of my first photography exhibitions in New York was an Abelardo Morell opening at Bonni Benrubi a few years ago. I remember being amazed, and not only by the ingenious camera obscura photos of apartments' views reflected upside down on their own walls. Bonni Benrubi is a small uptown space and it was absolutely crammed with admirers. Hot and fidgety and loud, the crowd left little room to view the images...which was just fine since no one was even trying. I've since learned that this experience was exemplary of openings: both the breathtaking work and the widespread understanding that the opening is no time to actually appreciate it. Now I enjoy the openings for the people and return on a week day to enjoy the images.

I bring this up because this will be my last Where to Go and What to See for American Photo and Abelardo Morell once again has an opening at Bonni Benrubi, on Thursday. It feels very full-circle to me. Anyway, AP's new associate editor, Lindsay Sakraida, will be posting WtGaWtS starting next week, so you won't miss a show. As for me, details to come, but you haven't heard the last from me either.

~Miki Johnson

(Photo: Grand Canal Looking West Toward the Accademia Bridge in Palazzo Room Under Construction, 2007, © Abelardo Morell)

Follow the link below for details about this and many more photography events.

Where to Go and What to See

My easy pick for this week is the opening at the International Center of Photography of four exhibitions, on Susan Meiselas, Cornell Capa (who died this year), W. Eugene Smith, and American tintypes. ICP always puts up impressive shows, but especially tuned into photojournalism as I am since returning from Perpignan, I'm excited to see what they've found from these masters.

I'm also looking forward to seeing recent work from Dave Anderson, opening at ClampArt in NYC on Thursday. Anderson's first book, Rough Beauty, was one of our favorites, so I'm eager to see where he's gone from there.

And in Venice, California, a new environmentally minded gallery, G2, is putting up a retrospective of Robert Glenn Ketchum I wish I could see. The gallery "showcases nature photography by today’s most gifted artists, and partners with local and international conservation and educational organizations, donating all proceeds to environmental charities." A cool idea, and a perfect match for Ketchum, who has built his career on pushing for environmental protection with his images.

~Miki Johnson

(Photo: The effects of logging on Alaska's Tongass Rainforest, © Robert Glenn Ketchum)

Follow the link below for details on these and many more photography events around the country.

Contest Deadlines Approaching

It is once again the season to rush your best photographs in to the bevy of contests and grants that are calling for entries. I hope you'll forgive me for a little self-publication first.

American Photo's Images of the Year Competition closes on Wednesday, September 17. This year we have an entirely online entry process -- fast and easy :)

Advertising Photographers of America's National Photo Competition is accepting entries until September 21. Open to APA members and non-members, it promises "vigorous post-competition promotion."

A new competition hit the scene this year and it seems to have all the right ideas. The Visual Culture Awards are not a money-making venture (although there is a single $30 entry fee), and with about 20 categories the main idea is to create a showcase for good work and to genuinely support the photographic community.

The 6th Annual Smithsonian Magazine Photo Contest will accept entries in  five categories -- Natural World, Americana, Altered Images, Travel, and People -- until December 1. The judges' favorite incoming entries will even be featured in an online gallery on the magazine's website.

The annual Krappy Kamera International Juried Competition closes December 30. Probably the best named contest out there, the competition only accepts images made with lo-tech cameras with "crappy lenses," and it has the added benefit of being juried this year by our good friend, gallery owner Brian Paul Clamp.

Good luck!

Perpignan Finale: No party, but straight talk with Brent Stirton

Visa pour l'Image always wraps up with a big party Saturday night after the biggest projection of the week. This year's included visual surveys of the U.S. presidential campaigns, the Beijing Olympics, Kenya, and Iraq, plus 15 other projects and the presentation of the Canon female journalist award and the Visa d'Or News award -- or at least it was supposed to. When I got to our table at the Place de Republique at 8:30 the rain was light but steady and only got worse for the next half hour. Around 9 a message went up on the screen that the slideshow was canceled. Then one that the party would still go on at the Place. It is supposed to happen at the Couvent, the largest venue where most of the exhibitions take place, which has two floors and an uncovered interior patio. Soon calls were made and the buzz was that the party was still on at the Couvent. But on our way to Couvent around 11 we saw crowds walking back, saying the party was canceled but there was a little VIP party going on that no one could get into. Casey Kelbaugh (of Slideluck Potshow fame) and I decided we had to see it with our own eyes, and found a small mob hanging around the Couvent gates, looking annoyed. (Casey has great photos of this and most other important moments from the week up on his blog at the SLPS site. See above image, © Casey Kelbaugh) A few minutes later people started booing and calling to the guards, who rather ostentatiously stood around the Couvent with a German Shephard on a leash.

Perpignan Saturday: David Douglas Duncan, Brenda Ann Kenneally, and a heated photoj debate

Saturday, the last official day of professional week at Visa pour l'Image, started out with a press conference by David Douglas Duncan, the grandfather of modern conflict photography. At 92 years old, Duncan dodders a bit, with a rough combination for a press conference: achingly slow speech with an unrelenting memory for every minutiae. Those who sat it out, though, were rewarded with moments of inspiring passion. While remembering a young soldier sitting in the unimaginable cold of one Christmas in Korea, Duncan had to stop as tears welled up in his eyes. "I'm getting choked up, and it happened 50 years ago. Can you imagine?" he said, going on to reveal the source of the story's pathos. Asked what he wanted for Christmas, the soldier replied simply, "Give me tomorrow." Obviously Duncan's award-winning images from the conflict came from a place of extreme sympathy. "I don’t understand how doctors can go home at night and see this kind of tragedy and not be shattered as I am now," he said. Duncan also railed against censorship by "the creeps in Washington," which he called "criminal," and recognized that most of the work he'd done in Korea would simply be impossible in today's conflict zones. "I’d like to go to Iraq or Afghanistan and be told I can’t photographed something," he said, with a touch of mischievousness and anger. "Who says? I’d say, you’re talking to the oldest guy in the business you bastard, so shoot me." In his eyes it was unconscionable not to recognize the ultimate price paid by soldiers by publicizing images of their struggles and death. "To hell with it," he grumbled finally as he abruptly left the stage -- only to be pinned into a corner by a mob of admirers, all with flashes blazing. It was strange to see Duncan in a blaze of flash light, his arms raised, half in a celebrity's, "Yes, thank you" embrace and half in an eye-protecting squint, but I can't say I don't understand the admiration. (The image above, by Duncan, was one I mentioned from his exhibition as one of the best -- and most unsettling.)

Photoshelter Collection Comes to a Close

We received sad news a bit ago that the Photoshelter Collection is shutting down, effective October 10. Started only a year ago, the Collection's big idea was to use technology to make a user-friendly upload system that would allow photographers who don't exclusively shoot stock to get into the stock game. I was impressed by their new ideas and enthusiasm, as were many photographers and editors, obviously. But as CEO Allen Murabayashi explained in a characteristically honest post to the Photoshelter blog, the odds were stacked way too high against them. They underestimated the extreme complexity of licensing images, as well as the complete hegemony that Getty exercises. And despite hearing from image buyers that they were desperately looking for better, original images, as we heard at the Photoshelter Shoot The Day! symposium a few months ago, those buyers rarely actually purchased Photoshelter images. Allen's blog post has drawn many frowny emoticons and, unsurprisingly, several indignant comments from photographers who feel they wasted their time uploading to the Collection and are disappointed to see it close after only a year. I have to say I'm surprised to see the Collection fold so quickly, but if it wasn't making enough money, in an economy like this especially, I understand the decision to cut their loses. The FAQ page here has more answers for photographers affected by this decision.
~Miki Johnson

Perpignan Friday: Getty awards, parties, and an emotional anniversary slide show

After the inspiring but heart-wrenching conflict-photographers symposium Friday morning, Getty presented slideshows of its five grantees for editorial photography this year. I have mentioned the most recent three before -- David Gillanders, Lynsey Addario, and Eugene Richards -- and I was already pretty familiar with their work. The two earlier grantees I wasn't familiar with, but very impressed by. Ian Martin's biography reads like many photojournalists: after early awards for his work, he started a wedding photography business to actually support himself and his family. The project that won the Getty grant, on South Africa's poor white communities, marks his re-entry to the photojournalism world. Although Richards' film and photography series War Is Personal was the one that really brought tears to my eyes, Lorena Ros's portraits of adults who were sexually abused as children certainly softened me up (see above). The simple portraits are paired with images of the spaces where the abuse took place or spaces that triggered those memories, and both will eventually be joined by archival images of the victims at the time of the abuse as well as audio interviews about their experiences. Jean-Jacques seemed unimpressed, complaining that we lack information about who the abusers were or what these people have gone through -- but to me this is precisely why the project is so powerful. It's not the abusers we should focus on, as the news media too often has, but the victims whose lives have been irrevocably scarred by the abuse. It's also important just to see these people and recognize that they look just like anyone else -- considering that one in four girls and one in seven boys are sexually abused before they reach the age of 17, they undoubtedly look just like someone you know.

Where To Go and What To See

So I missed the big opening week for galleries while I was at Visa  pour l'Image. I'm bummed, but luckily this week is just as packed. With SO many openings and events going on, I can't begin to tell you about all (or most) of them (especially with jet lag still sticking it to me). Needless to say, when we're looking at shows from Avedon, Christenberry, Walker Evans, Michael Thompson, David LaChapelle, and Garry Winogrand, we're looking at a BIG week for photography. Find your favorites, and have a good time.

~Miki Johnson

(Photo: © David LaChapelle)

Perpignan Thursday: Horst Faas, Munem Wasif, Stephanie Sinclair

Despite being confined to a wheelchair since a spinal blood clot in 2005, I think Horst Faas at 75 has more energy than most of the photographers in Perpignan. A gregarious character, he had the audience rolling with stories about importing cushy toilet paper to Soviet Block countries and comments about having written his upcoming retrospective in bed with a female colleague (his paralysis keeps him “flat on his back”). He also talked touchingly about his mother, who supported his photography despite his father's disapproval, and who made his retrospective possible by keeping every photograph and clipping he sent her (which he only found after her death). (Image above by Faas)

Read This Now: Perpignan Friday Conference on Conflict Photography

I'm going to come back and tell you all about Thursday very soon, but first I have to put up some comments from the press conference this morning with Stanley Greene, Yuri Kozyrev, Lucas Menget, and Patrick Robert -- the conflict journalist's speak. These photographers have all made incredible images in the most difficult places imaginable (Menget is a TV reporter), but Stanley stood out, as he often does, as the one most able and insistent to express very personal realities about the life of a conflict photographer and the respect that is often lacking but that the profession absolutely deserves. The audience broke out in raucous applause after almost every one of his comments...and I could barely keep my eyes free enough from tears to see what I was typing. Patrick also provided a fascinating counterpoint to Stanley's extremely personal involvement in his stories. I apologize for how long the text is (even without the questions, which are largely self-evident), but I absolutely believe that every one of these words needs desperately to be read by everyone even remotely involved in any kind of photography. (I also have to note that Lucas and Patrick's comments were being translated, so those are not direct quotations. Also, all the comments are as close to direct quotation as I could get but I undoubtedly missed little things.)
~Miki Johnson

Patrick
I try not to have a personal involvement [with my stories]. Even with your bloodthirsty rebels there's empathy you feel with them. I think it's important to accompany them, just not to become one of them. I'm not an activist, I don't want to take a stand, I go somewhere, I try to be clear about what's going on, and then I step back.

Stanley
I went to Iraq, we saw it as a road trip, we had no idea what we were going to see, we weren't embedded, but in that car I found the whole situation in Iraq was unraveling. I wanted to cover the insurgent's view, so we went to some individuals with the insurgency, and they proposed for us to come to Fallujah. It was the day the rockets were fired into cars by Blackwater personnel. We arrived on the day [they were hung on the bridge]. My driver, who was an insurgent, said, You should photograph this. There were people standing in a circle, with these bodies [that had been burned and drug around and hung up], I'm an American, and I know I have to photograph this. That particular day I not only photographed these bodies, I also photographed Muqtada al-Sadr's suicide force marching up to the Green Zone. Everything that day was a life-and-death situation. I got on the sat phone, and I said, I photographed these bodies, I said, I've got to get a way to get these photos to Nouvel Ops [Le Nouvel Observateur]. And the person on the phone basically said, fuck Nouvel Obs, we're going to sell it to Newsweek. I said no way, Nouvel Obs sent me here. What I got upset about was that nobody asked how I was feeling. Nothing. That night, in my hotel room, I fell down on my knees and cried. I hadn't done that since I was a kid. That day I lost something and I haven't been able to get it back. There are consequences to this stuff. You carry this stuff with you a very long time.