From the Untitled Fox River series

I’m down in New Orleans this week with some other great artists, photographers, creators etc. processing the work that people have created and curated for the 2010 American Diversity Project. For me personally this is pretty much the first time I tried to form a body of work that was more conceptual and process based in nature. New work from the others is still being uploaded throughout the week. See it here.

Recently made a day trip down to Indianapolis to photograph Phyllis Sellars, a grad of IU in Bloomington for a story on the value of a college education. The story chronicled the divergent paths that she and a high school friend took after they finished up at West Side High in Gary, Indiana. My images didn’t make it in time for the online edition but showed up in the print edition. Here’s the story, and a few outtakes. The shoot had to be outside, and it was pouring rain while I was driving down, with the Bears down to the Cowboys. Fortunately points were scored and the sun came out at about the same time and the day ended on a high note.

A couple months ago Victoria, a photo editor at City Magazine in NY asked me to make some portraits of Australian born/Chicago living artist Via Tania. I love these types of shoots and Tania was great to photograph. I even got to shoot mostly film which is a luxury for assignment work. The music feature that this was a part of just recently ran in their fall fashion issue. It’s not always that the editor’s favorite shot is my favorite shot so that was an added bonus here. Oh…but the best part was that I hadn’t heard of Via Tania, so I was able to discover a new local artist who makes some really good work. I recommend you take a listen. Soon after the shoot she was off to Finland to work on a new project up there, so I’m looking forward to what that yields as well.

Thanks, Mr. Hiller.

Martin Bandzak, John Vink of Magnum photos and others  have work in a new magazine called Inside Magazine financially supported by Slovakaid and other parties. It looks like it’s free for a hard copy as well (you pay shipping) but it’s 432 pages and hardcover. It looks interesting and each issue explores a topic in depth, meant to be kept and explored further down the road, not tossed in the bin. The first topic covered is, yes, the photojournalists’ favorite topic of poverty. But that is not and never will be (until it is eradicated) over covered.

Browsing the shelves of a book store last night I found a new publication called Respect. Magazine.

It’s a photography centric hip-hop publication featuring lots of great portfolios of people who have photographed hip-hop for years and isn’t juiced with ads. Not sure if it’ll be around for the long haul but it looks good and I’m already looking forward to issue #2 of this quarterly publication. Wouldn’t mind a few photos of some of the lesser known folks like Tajai and the Souls of Mischief who are currently filling my speakers but we can wait for future issues to see what they come up with. I’m guessing 2-pac on the cover is a good sales move. This is the type of magazine that just wouldn’t work on your iPad, iPhone, or iBook. It looks great printed and wouldn’t be as good in any other medium.

Chad Stevens, a professor at UNC and a classmate/instructor friend of my from when I was at grad school in Athens has recently put out a piece with Yale and Mediastorm that studies the effects of mountaintop removal, which is a really important issue to me. Also, fellow Chicago photog Daniel Shea has some images from his Removing Mountains project. Please check it out.

NPR’s Picture Show Blog is a good place to see good work. Just when I think I’m completely sick of looking at photography I see a project that revitalizes and excites me. Today that project was Gigi Cigali‘s Absence of Water. Great project that tells a story just as well as any traditional newspaper picture story. I checked out Cigali’s website after seeing his work on NPR, but I think in this case NPR did a good job at curating as his showcased project is definitely my favorite of his portfolios. If you go to his website he’s also got some pretty interesting information about each pool he photographed.

Recently I posted over on the APAD blog a little article quoting some editors over at SELF magazine speaking about the photoshop retouch work that goes on for their magazine covers, or specifically, their latest cover with Kelly Clarkson. Former classmate Andrea Morales pointed it out to me via facebook.

Ironically, I subscribe to mostly text-heavy and literature centric magazines so I don’t come across these issues too often. I guess I am reminded why. I know that magazine covers are photoshopped, but the article here made me livid pissed. I know that some people seem to live in a reality that us normal folks don’t occupy (some of them Wall Street folks for example, who think $100 is nothing), but here is another bright and shining example.

If you want to know how some magazine editors think, have a gander, and then don’t feel so bad the next time you look at a magazine and feel frustrated by how abnormal and beautiful everything looks.

Fashion ads are one thing, editorial is another. I’m a photographer. I also happened to teach photoshop for a year. I love photoshop and what it can do. But using it to portray reality in a way that is not realistic is downright irresponsible. That, we should be used to though. If you are an educated media consumer you know that a lot of covers are airbrushed, and it might make you mad with good reason. Read all about what the editor says to justify the decisions though. She had her marathon picture photoshopped. Are we that vain that we need to look back at constructed and false representations of truly good moments in our lives? I hope to hell not. Maybe if we could be more comfortable in our own skin we would start buying magazines that portrayed reality realistically…

I’m a dreamer I know.

$7 ….?? So agrees Sotomayor. This court ruling, in which Sotomayor had connections to the defendant (never disclosed) says effectively that a photojournalist’s original work that were lost by Corbis were worth $7 a piece. They lost a lot of images, so he walked away with a $100,000+ settlement, but this is nothing in terms of getting Corbis to respect the work they are holding. Lose original work and pay a few relative “pennies”. Now, I know there are photographers out there who do nothing but shout about how undervalued the industry is, and many of them are more concerned with money than with making good work, but this reference could be a scary reference for future suits. As for me, and as for most other photographers out there, I think we should just keep doing what we love and fight for respect for it, but not more than we need.