This is a project that I’m really excited to be a part of. I remember in 2007 when I was just dreaming about being a freelance photographer I once emailed Kevin Miyazaki out of the blue just to ask him about his work because I was so drawn to it. He responded graciously. Since then I’ve been following his work and even spoke to his class at MIAD via Skype recently. In 2009 he started a website that lets photographers sell prints with the sole intent of making money for a charity or non-profit of their choice. After 50 editions have been put up for sale and over $28,000 total raised there is now a book out. It was designed by the talented Heidi Romano working out of Australia.

Yesterday the project also got a mention over on Time Magazine’s photography blog LightBox.

So far this Collect.Give has allowed me to donate $760 to Bryan House and I have one print left that, if sold, would bump it up to a solid $800. After spending so much time photographing at Bryan House I had hoped to raise money for it and this effort allowed me to do so while reaching a new audience.

The book is a beautiful thing (I’ve seen the proofs) and it features photographs by: Jane Fulton Alt, Malu Alvarez, Jonathan Blaustein, Mark Brautigam, Jesse Burke, Barbara Ciurej & Lindsay Lochman, Katrina d’Autremont, Amy Eckert, Matt Eich, Jon Feinstein, Sarina Finkelstein, Elizabeth Fleming, Max. S. Gerber, Meggan Gould, Andrew Hetherington, Geoffrey Hiller, Peter Hoffman, Jon Horvath, Ben Huff, Dave Jordano, Stella Kalaw, Melissa Kaseman, Liz Kuball, Shane Lavalette, David Leventi, John Loomis, S. Billie Mandle, Kerry Mansfield, Mark Menjivar, Kevin J. Miyazaki, Annie Marie Musselman, Colleen Plumb, Susana Raab, Shawn Records, Ellen Rennard, Dalton Rooney, Jonathan Saunders, Manjari Sharma, Daniel Shea, Kelly Shimoda, Emily Shur, Allison V. Smith, Aline Smithson, Brea Souders, Sarah Sudhoff, Jake Stangel, Lacey Terrell, Sonja Thomsen, Susan Worsham and David Wright.

Essays by: Crista Dix, Darius Himes, Lisa Hostetler, Rachel Hulin, Miki Johnson, Larissa Leclair, Wally Mason, George Slade, Amy Stein and Alison Zavos.

128 pages

Softcover, perfect bound

Costs a meager $22

To Benefit The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals

Heidi’s Pledge 100% of publication profits: $2.05 per book, after a discounted production cost from MagCloud

Buy it here

I’ve probably said it before, but the weather, and the place I am in bears a strong influence on my moods and thoughts. Spring is coming and this has me feeling inspired again. While this winter came and went most of my work was limited to experimental/conceptual work, assignment work and painting. I didn’t do a whole lot of straight photography for myself but now I’m starting to shoot more again.  The reason I’m shooting again has more to do with the feeling of spring than anything else.  There isn’t a lot of work that captures that sensibility I want very effectively but there is a little bit that does, the first of which is Sam Abell’s Seeing Gardens.

When I die I hope I can leave something like this behind for my loved ones.

I suppose every photographer has those books that they keep going back to, the ones that are a sort of revelation every time one looks at them. I have a few of those books and although this list grows over time, this book is one of the first ones.

I guess it might have to do with the fact that I feel like I am an optimist at heart that I come back to work that inquires about the beauty, the humanity and the softness in the world rather than the inhumanity, drama and hardness that is so easily accessible when looking at a lot of foreign and even domestic reportage work.

If Thoreau were with us today I can’t help but think that he would appreciate this book.  And maybe that’s one reason I love this book so much. There are visual snippets of Walden throughout, some in places that Thoreau would have possibly least expected, like in the Moscow hotel room or the a city bus.

I don’t know if this book is really my favorite book of photography…actually, it probably isn’t. That always changes and sometimes I will become entranced in much more volatile and jarring work, and for awhile I wasn’t even looking at photography books at all. But I don’t know of any other books that have personally affected me more. Alec Soth’s Dog Days Bogota and Gus Powell’s Company of Strangers are also well worn counterparts on the shelf, and may come the closest. I also recently purchased a used copy of Joel Meyerowitz’s Wildflowers which also has some gems in it. But I can’t get into the old black and white photo books by the greats of the past. Strangely, even Robert Frank’s Americans doesn’t stick with me like Seeing Gardens does, and I know that the Americans has had much more impact on a greater audience. There aren’t many books that have had much more impact on me though.

I picked up my hardcover copy in very good condition for $1.99 used from BN.com (prices have since risen to $4.37) and because a Columbus, Ohio library threw this away.  I can’t help but wonder what the taxpayers in that city are missing out on.

Going off of the theme in Seeing Gardens, I have found other related, and wonderful pictures in other books, but I might not have noticed these other, wonderful pictures if it weren’t for Mr. Abell.

San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico 1971: Copyright Joel Meyerowitz. From the book Wildflowers

Our Secret: Copyright Gus Powell from the book Company of Strangers

Image Courtesy of Jim Korpi

I’ve been out of school for a bit now but one of my classmates when I was there was photographer Jim Korpi. His new website has a plethora of new work and it’s really, really wonderful stuff. Jim and I worked together in the summer of 2008 (well, at least congruently, with him in New England and myself driving all over Middle America), completing a fellowship for the non-profit NNFP, documenting people and land. He has continued to document the American landscape with inquiry regarding our relationship with, and impact on it. Please look at his blog as well. He is as thoughtful and disciplined a writer as he is a photographer. Some people’s work just makes you want to make your own work better, and heck, makes you want to be a better person.

Ok, the name leaves something to be desired, but my friend Peter McCollough recently pointed out a great source for seeing street photography. There’s some pretty amazing work from random public places the world over in the Flickr group called Hardcore Street Photography. As with most Flickr…there’s some garbage to wade through but this group’s pool is definitely worth a look. Stuff like this is more inspiring and interesting than so much of the professional work out there. It’s just more honest, curious, raw, whatever.

Here’s just one of the many frames I liked looking through a few hundred of the thousands of photos there. This is from Flickr user Model337 (Lee Gumienny) shot in Portland, Oregon.

Every once in awhile you come across some work that just makes you reevaluate things. Saul Leiter’s book of street photography (titled Early Color) from the mid 20th century was one such book this year that has really stuck with me. He gives a beautiful, unique and impressionistic view of life in New York and Paris, which, yea for street photography I know is not breaking any new ground, but his pictures aren’t like anyone elses. Most importantly – to me – is that they’re not aggressive. I love street photography and I love practicing it but people who use aggressive methods and consequently come up with aggressive and confrontational imagery doesn’t really interest me. Saul had a stable career as a fashion and commercial photographer, but the stuff in his book shows he’s not bound by anything but his own whims. This book has been one of the photographic motivators (others not being photographic in nature) for me to get out and make pictures in Chicago more, and I keep coming back to it. Unfortunately, it’s tough to find many of his pictures on the ole’ www, so a trip to library (if they even have it…) or bn/amazon.com might be in order.

TED has a lot of interesting speakers, and a good collection of photographer speeches. DVAfoto pointed me out to Aaron Huey’s recent TED talk about the Lakotah tribe in the Black Hills. It is a gripping and poignant history lesson with powerful images to boot…once that have danced around in my head since Harper’s Magazine ran a portfolio of them months ago. I’ll be honest, this is an upsetting video that will make you question how much of a hero Lincoln was, and our government’s attitude in building this nation amongst other things. Upsetting pieces of information are good, but these days it can get overwhelming. I woke up to the news that yet another Illinois politician was lying on his resume (was I surprised, no…but maybe my idiotic optimism gets the better of me after going two days without hearing of a politician’s abuse of the public’s trust…which, wait…I don’t think the public trusts politicians so nevermind.) That combined with the BP oil spill, and their efforts to quell media coverage, their use of toxic chemicals to try and hide the problem under the ocean surface…and this is just Sunday morning’s news. Tomorrow will be a brand new day and give us many reasons to question the direction this country is going.

I hope you get some sunshine. I hope you watch this video first though, so if anything it helps you question just what we stand for and how good it really may, or may not be. I don’t mean to sound negative or condescending, or to say go do something about this, because I would be a hypocrite. What frustrates me most in my world is simply the lack of awareness and consideration, as well as the desire to learn the truth about these sorts of issues. It’s one thing to feel helpless about such issues but it’s another to not know and not try to know or worse to not even care.

Bryan Derballa of Brooklyn has an interview up about his Lovebryan.com site, which is a sort of journal/photography site hybrid thing. Anyways, Johnny Simon over at the Photoletariat just posted an interview with him that’s a nice quick read, and is also a reminder for me to say please go check out the work of Bryan and his cohorts like Mike Belleme (image below) at Lovebryan.com to witness shenanigans, stories and the ups and downs of life from people who are all good friends but in different places. Bryan’s gotta be one of the nicest photographers I’ve met and is continuously pushing his work.

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.

Buddy of mine Jason Andrew with whom I used to intern at James Nachtwey’s studio at a few years ago recently got 2nd place in the Fujifilm Distinction Awards with the below image from his work in Abkhazia. The winner was Ikuru Kuwajima, who’s work in the Ukraine and surrounding regions has also been some of my favorite photojournalism from recent years. Congrats both of you guys, awesome work and great to see it recognized.

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.