pictures to prove it™

The New York Times photoblog Lens has a interesting video of Tony Cenicola, “the master of The Times’s basement photo studio” showing how he made this illustration for the Wealth & Personal Finance section of the paper. pretty cool. you can see it here.

© Kurt Weston

Time.com has this great photo essay featuring the work of blind photographers exhibiting their work at the California Museum of Photography. the exhibit called Sight Unseen includes work by; Kurt Weston, Ralph Baker, Evgen Bavcar, Henry Butler, Pete Eckert, Bruce Hall, Annie Hesse, Rosita McKenzie, Gerardo Nigenda, Michael Richard, Alice Wingwall and others.

A glimpse at my roomie Ami’s exhibit done in partnership with The Nature Conservancy. (from the photoshelter blog.)

© 2008 Tim Hetherington

i just stumbled across this post of Tim Hetherington’s World Press Acceptance Speech on Gary Knight’s site dispatches. it just struck me in a way i can’t seem to verbalize, but i wanted to make sure people go back and read it. it’s simple, honest and good.

—

A lot of people have asked what this image means to me. It’s a question that I’ve tended to sidestep because it touches on some fairly personal issues. But I thought perhaps I could try and answer it tonight.

For many people, this photograph represents the larger political idea of war. It’s said that the man portrayed shows the exhaustion of a nation. Some people see it as propaganda for the war, others as an indictment of the war. But it doesn’t need to be either.

For me, this image isn’t about a nation, or an idea. It’s about a young man stuck on the side of a mountain in Afghanistan. His world has become the four dirt walls he dug by hand. A quarter of his platoon has been killed or wounded, and he knows that he may never see his wife again… (continued on dispatches)

08:04 am CDT May 12, 2009
(K2Climb.net) Central Asia Institute’s founder Greg Mortenson shot over the following news Sunday:

“Teru Kuwayama, the NYC photographer who has helped Central Asia Institute (CAI) for several years, was in a near fatal accident on the road from Peshawar to Islamabad last Saturday evening,” Greg Mortenson reported. (story continued here)

and a much better more thorough story in PDN here.

and American Photo here.

The 2nd International Day for Sharing Life Stories will take place on May 16th, 2009. This day is an opportunity to celebrate and promote life stories, as a way to encourage critical thinking, cultural democratization and social transformation. The International Day is organized by The Museum of the Person International Network (Brazil, Portugal, USA and Canada) and the Center for Digital Storytelling (USA, Canada, Denmark, Czech Republic, Ireland and Portugal)

The chosen theme for this years’ Day is Journey for Justice – Migration and Refugees… (continued here)

This week’s featured images from American Youth - Images by Redux Pictures

The fine photogs at Redux pooled their talents together to create a 240-page book called American Youth. It “examines the newest generation of 18 to 24-year-olds in detail, observing young couples and Mormon missionaries, debutante balls and drunken tailgate stupors, war widows and B-boys, street kids and lobstermen. How are they different, and how are they exactly the same as the generations that came before?”

they also have a blog with photographer commentary, outtakes from the shoots and Q and A’s with the shooters. tons of talent was involved in the making of this book; great photographers like Greg Ruffing, Danny Wilcox Frazier, Q Sakamaki, David Butow and Erika Larsen worked with editors Bill Black (Reader’s Digest), Karen Frank (Conde Nast Portfolio), Jeanne Graves (BestLife), Armin Harris (Fortune), Nadja Masri (GEO), Brenda Milis (Men’s Health), and Allyson Torrisi (Popular Mechanics).

i wish more agencies were creating these sorts of projects. i almost always love how they combined talents work together to turn out great work.