74: Lucia Herrero

Editor’s note: This week we are adding images to the gallery from photographers discovered while at FotoFest in Houston.

Lucia Herrero
untitled, from the series "Tribes"
2009

Series Statement: "Tribes" is a social analysis, a raw portrait of occidental society. Groups of families and friends set themselves up by the sea, equipped to spend a day in the sun. All this, harmoniously juxtaposed, seems like a poem of customs that reveal with humour, colour and tenderness, the profundity of a whole society.

These photos of modern-day beach groups are inspired by the studio portraits of ancient tribes who proudly posed in traditional costumes next to their prized possessions. The sky and the sea become the painted backdrop of the studio and the sand seems as if it’s sprinkled on the studio floor. The lighting and the theatricality of the groups add an element of fantasy to the portraits of real people in their natural surroundings. That enlightens a banal situation and elevates it to a state of exception. I call this way of social photography “Antropologia Fantástica.”

The series talks about the human condition during a moment of peaceful holiday, their pride of being there, their honesty and vulnerability. The objectively limited surrounding offers a complete extract of the essential.

This portrait of the "Spanish Tragicomedy" is meant to have many different interpretations. On one hand it talks about the Western middle class, which is suffering from an identity crisis created by the current economic situation. These images make us wonder what changes and what remains afterwards. On the other hand, they challenge the beauty concept of today.

The photos were taken along the Spanish coast and people were asked to participate in situ.

73: Mariela Sancari

Editor’s note: This week we are adding images to the gallery from photographers discovered while at FotoFest in Houston.

Mariela Sancari
Two-Headed Horse
2011

Series Statement: After my father's suicide when we were 14 years-old, the lives of my twin sister and my mother, as well as my own, changed radically. Every aspect of our destiny as a middle class family was interrupted by his death.

We ran away on a trip, aimlessly, until arriving in Mexico...

The absence became presence among us and strengthened the bond between my sister and I that has led to a complex universe of meanings and roles, blurred memories and ideas that end up weaving an encrypted universe between fiction and reality.

This series of photographs are part of an ongoing project on this relationship with my sister. The trip (both real and metaphorical), the runaway, the clothing and the household objects we brought with us all create, frame and dress one being with two visions of reality, a being that imagines that they will find their dad around the corner.

I want to think about identity and memory and the many ways they are affected by time and space. Nature and the first home are a return to childhood and adolescence, when the loss of our father left us suspended in time.

Two views of one reality.


For information about submitting your work to the fototazo gallery project, click here.

International Site Profiles: Kantor Berita MES 56

In an opinion piece on the limitations of access to crowdfunding projects, we made an argument for taking the initiative to explore sites that promote photographers from countries and cultures less frequently seen.

We're following that post with a series of short profiles that will collectively provide a starting point for an exploration of international blogs, online magazines, and pages. We began by looking at Kilele, We Take Pictures Too, Arab Image Foundation, Greater Middle East Photo, Space Cadet, and Street Level Japan. Today we continue with Indonesia-based Kantor Berita MES 56.

Kantor Berita MES 56 is the online magazine of Ruang MES 56, a non-profit institution established in 2002 that emphasizes exploratory theoretical and practical approaches to contemporary photography in Indonesia. It aims to develop contemporary discourse in the country. In addition to running a blog, MES 56 is a multi-dimensional project that includes exhibitions, workshops, and presentations.

Kantor Berita MES 56 was born of a concern for showing how extensively and rapidly contemporary photography is evolving, especially in Indonesia. Articles are infrequent, but the archives stretch back to 2009. The site balances images with commentary in both English and Indonesian (which Google translator does a good job with).  Kantor Berita MES 56 publishes interviews, portfolios, exhibition reviews, and book reviews. The post Indonesian Wedding Photography Ritual is an example of the site at its best. Kantor Berita MES 56 has been updated as recently as October of last year.

MES 56 can be followed on Twitter and on Facebook.

72: Nina Mouritzen

Nina Mouritzen
The Noisettes, New York
2006

Statement: During my work for Mary Ellen Mark and Patrick Demarchelier, I was simultaneously laboring over my own projects that centered around downtown New York in the early '00s. Most of these characters were tomorrow's stars and since then I have continued to document many figures of the music scenes for publications such as Dazed & Confused, Spin, and Tokion. My photographs tend to have an intimate journalistic or almost diary-like atmosphere to them, and the line is blurred between commissioned work and personal projects.

This image is of a British band, The Noisettes, taken on a rooftop in the West Village of Manhattan...on a very gloomy morning.


For information about submitting your work to the fototazo gallery project, click here.

International Site Profiles: Street Level Japan

In a recent opinion piece on the limitations of access to crowdfunding projects, we made an argument for taking the initiative to explore sites that promote photographers from countries and cultures less frequently seen. We're following that post with a series of short profiles that will collectively provide a starting point for an exploration of international blogs, online magazines, and pages. We began by looking at Kilele, We Take Pictures Too, Arab Image Foundation, Greater Middle East Photo, and Space Cadet. Today we take a snapshot look at Street Level Japan.

Street Level Japan is run by Dan Abbe. He writes in a recent post that his prime motivation for running the blog is the amount of work that remains trapped in Japan. Posts frequently cross-reference other links and sites making it a good entryway into the country's online photography world. His posts range widely - as a sample, recent entries cover a Japanese photo award, a show on emerging female Japanese photographers at an Indiana gallery, a look at the recently deceased Yasuhiro Ishimoto, and the question of a whether there is a bright "future" for Japanese photography. This diversity helps give a sense of the overall contemporary photographic landscape of the country.

On the left sidebar, towards the bottom, is a link to a very well laid out Google map of Tokyo photography sites, a screenshot of which is below. On the right sidebar are links for exploring more Japanese and Chinese sites as well as a handful of his favorites from other areas of the world.

Photographers on Photographers: Billy Monk by Colin Pantall

© Billy Monk, The Catacombs, 7 November 1967

A book that I can’t get enough of at the moment is Billy Monk by Billy Monk. It’s a simple book - a collection of nightclub photographs taken in Cape Town in the late 1960s, mostly from a seedy club called The Catacombs. The Catacombs was a place where the apartheid era Immorality Act didn’t apply, where illegal activities such as prostitution, cross-dressing, mixed race coupling and homosexuality were permitted, where a Filipino sailor and a white woman could happily drink, smoke and kiss in public. Billy Monk is a collection of pictures of this kind of activity, pictures where the narrative leaps out of the page. We see the people Billy Monk photographed and they take us into domestic dilemmas and suburban secrets, into lives and habits and peccadilloes that remain secret outside the confines of The Catacombs Club and Billy Monk’s pictures. These stories are given an edge by the racial politics of South Africa, by the politics of The Catacombs, a place where apartheid still applies in some forms at least (we see 'coloured' people there, but no 'blacks'). The stories are given a further edge by our own ignorance of exactly what is going on, exactly how the rules apply, exactly what goes on in the club, on the street, in the homes or on the ships of the people that we see. We know something is happening but we don't know exactly what; a situation that leaves us free to project our own prejudices or fantasies of the characters that Billy Monk has chosen to photograph.

And they are characters. In the picture I have chosen there are three characters. They are sitting at two tables, both made from plywood and covered in a kind of mosaic plastic. The picture's in black and white but if it were in colour, the plastic would be a chemical mix of reds, oranges and browns; cheap and nasty colours that can be easily wiped clean of cigarette ash and the brandy and coke that everybody seemed to drink at The Catacombs.

In the middle of the picture a woman stares straight at the camera. Her blue eyes are bright, she's performing for the camera, being elegant and refined, not smiling but doing her best to have an air of contentment about her. However, there is also a sadness in her eyes, a depth that takes one to a life of stoic suffering. She has a Latin look about her, but also perhaps a touch of Englishness, a dark northern beauty transported to the delights of white Cape Town life. And if you were white, it was a delight - unless you look too hard or think too much and then the delights wither and die and the ugly truth is revealed.

To her left is a man, a very English looking man. He's smartly dressed in a gold-buttoned blazer and pinstriped trousers and waistcoat. Does he always dress like this or has he been to a wedding? He’s not too happy about the camera being there but still he looks straight into the lens, the dead centre flash bouncing off his pupils. He looks hard, a touch of the street about him. Who is he and what is his relationship to the woman in the middle? He's sitting between the two tables so perhaps he's just chatting them up. The woman in the middle certainly seems to distance herself from him, and he doesn't seem entirely at ease in her company.

Then comes the mystery of the picture. The woman on the right. Or is it a man? Let’s call him or her a woman – that's who she is in The Catacombs and probably outside as well. She has a blonde beehive, the roots showing black, her eyes are heavily made up with mascara and eyeliner that matches the woman in the middle. She's leaning down, reaching under the table, so her face is obscured by a coke bottle, a bottle scratched and scraped from a million returns. What she's reaching for we don't know. It seems like she is stretched out, so it might be that she was lying down and is now getting up, or perhaps she's dropped her cigarettes or a lighter. It could be that her hand is on the leg of the woman in the middle, that she is caressing her thigh as Monk takes the picture. It could be that she works at the club. She seems to be sharing a drink with the woman in the middle, the same woman who has got a Rothmans from the man on the left. Cigarrettes and alcohol bringing people together.

The first time I saw the picture, I thought the woman on the right was smiling for the camera, her eyes laughing, but now I'm not so sure. She seems to be biting her lips, her eyes have a sadness about them, a wistful remembrance of what might-have-been of what-might-yet-be. Or perhaps she's just tired and drunk.

These people all perform for the camera in their different ways but are visually disconnected from each other. But despite this disconnect we want to, or I want to, put them together, give them homes and relationships and families that tie them together in some way. But if I do that, the visual disconnect translates to those homes and families and relationships I have invented. The story becomes sad, little domestic tragedies that can only find solace in the brandy and coke and sordid couplings of The Catacombs Club.

Who are these people? Where do they live, who do they live with, who do they want to live with? What has happened to them, what are the stories of their lives? We can make up a story, be a South African John Cheever or Richard Yates for a few minutes and wallow in dysfunction but really we don’t know, we will never know. But with this picture, with all his pictures, Billy Monk posed the question. He gives us the raw ingredients that we can use to make stories for ourselves, stories that reveal our ignorance of domesticity, relationships, politics, culture, sexuality and race and how they apply in a particular environment in a country and time that are so very different to our own. He tells us what we do not know.

Colin Pantall is a photographer and writer based in Bath, England who also runs a blog. He contributed to our f100 series.

71: David Lykes Keenan

David Lykes Keenan
Car Wash, from the project "Fair Witness"
2009

Series Statement: "It is one thing to photograph people. It is another to make others care about them by revealing the core of their humanness-" - Paul Strand, photographer.

My photographs, at least the ones that I show to people, almost always include people. Pictures of most "things", even lovely landscapes or seascapes, I find overwhelmingly boring. Rarely are these pictures of anything that I haven't seen before.

People pictures, on the other hand, are never the same. Things will always be, but people come and go, smile and frown, laugh and cry, love and hate, live and die. Things collect dust (I know, I have plenty) but people are life.

I watch people living their lives, doing mundane things that they, more often then not, are consciously unaware of. If I am on my game and have my camera ready then that otherwise lost moment is captured.

By now tens of thousands of such moments fill my negative archives and hard disks along with the occasional pictures of "things" that caught the fancy of my shutter finger. A very select few escape the archive and appear on my website or become a candidate for some other public viewing.

These pictures of particular humor, irony, melancholy, of startling incongruity, of humanity came from within.


For information about submitting your work to the fototazo gallery project, click here.

International Site Profiles: Space Cadet

In an opinion piece posted recently on the limitations of access to crowdfunding projects, we made an argument for taking the initiative to explore sites that promote photographers from countries and cultures less frequently seen. We're following that post with a series of short profiles that will collectively provide a starting point for this exploration of international blogs, online magazines and pages. We began by looking at Kilele, We Take Pictures Too, Arab Image Foundation, and Greater Middle East Photo. Today we continue with Space Cadet.

Space Cadet, launched in 2011 to introduce new Japanese photography to the international community, is a straight-forward presentation of photographer portfolios and interviews. The site itself is in both English and Japanese, but unfortunately the interviews have not been translated. Portfolios are accompanied by a site link for each artist represented - click the "HP" button next to the photographer's name on their portfolio page - and serve as a way to further explore. It adds new work regularly.

Space Cadet can be found on Facebook.

International Site Profiles: Greater Middle East Photo

In an opinion piece posted last week on the limitations of access to crowdfunding projects, we made an argument for taking the initiative to explore sites that promote photographers from countries and cultures less frequently seen. We're following that post with a series of short profiles that will collectively provide a starting point for this exploration of international blogs, online magazines and pages. We began this week with suggesting a look at Kilele, We Take Pictures Too, and the Arab Image Foundation. Today we continue with Greater Middle East Photo.

Greater Middle East Photo (GMEP) is undergoing a site transformation and will be re-launching soon. In the meantime, there are archives that date to March 2010 on the site that collectively provide a look at photographers and images from or about the region. The anonymously run site lists galleries in the Middle East by country as well as more "sites of interest" to continue an exploration of the region's photography. Posts are a mix of informative investigations of historic photographers, looks at contemporary work, and commentary on news about the arts as well as the media of the region.

GMEP can be followed on Twitter here. They are looking for contributors.

70: Orhan Tsolak

Orhan Tsolak
untitled
Thessaloniki, Greece, 2008

Series Statement: This is part of as ongoing series on the Greek Crisis. I took this picture about a year before Greece hit the headlines, but for anyone living in Greece, the signs of what was to come were already there, and Greece was already going through an ethical crisis. For me the picture came represent the state we were in then in 2008 and that I believe we are still in.

For information about submitting your work to the fototazo gallery project, click here.

International Site Profiles: Arab Image Foundation

In an opinion piece posted last week on the limitations of access to crowdfunding projects, we made an argument for taking the initiative to explore sites that promote photographers from countries and cultures less frequently seen. We're following that post with a series of short profiles that will collectively provide a starting point for this exploration of international blogs, online magazines and pages. We began this week with suggesting a look at Kilele and at We Take Pictures Too. Today we follow with the Arab Image Foundation.

The Arab Image Foundation website is a digital image database featuring 10,000 of the 300,000 images in the collection of the non-profit AIF, which are physically cold-stored at their purpose-built facility in Beirut. Images date from the mid-nineteenth century through today. The AIF was created in 1997 to collect, preserve and study photographs from the Middle East, North Africa, and the Arab diaspora and forms part of MEPPI, an initiative by five institutions towards the preservation and awareness of photographic collections in the broader Middle East.

The AIF’s approach to assembling a collection differs from that of more traditional institutions by being led primarily by the critical and creative work of artists. They initiate projects in collaboration with galleries, museums, and cultural institutions that result in the creation of exhibitions, publications, artistic projects and scholarly research that explore and seek to expand the AIF's collection. By seeking the engagement of artists and scholars, the result is a dynamic collection that "does not merely illustrate the history of photography in the region, but rather situates a wealth of different photographic practices in a complex field of social, economic, political and cultural factors."

The AIF's mission and digital image database have similarities with those of Medellín's Biblioteca Pública Piloto, featured on fototazo in January.

International Site Profiles: We Take Pictures Too

In an opinion piece posted last week on the limitations of access to crowdfunding projects, we made an argument for taking the initiative to explore sites that promote photographers from countries and cultures less frequently seen. We're following that post with a series of short profiles that will collectively provide a starting point for this exploration of international blogs, online magazines and pages. We began on Tuesday with suggesting a look at Kilele. Today we're following with We Take Pictures Too.

Like Kilele, We Take Pictures Too is a Tumblr page. Created in January 2011, it focuses on images made by contemporary Indonesian photographers. It was last updated in December - we hope the page will continue to grow. In the meantime, the site's archive hosts around 150 images with site links provided for each photographer. An "Ask Me Anything" page allows readers a way to send questions.

On the "Links & Blogrolls" page on the personal site of Kurniadi Widodo, the creator of We Take Pictures Too, there is a list of many additional photographer sites and blogs to explore. Kurniadi Widodo can be followed on Twitter here.

69: Jennifer Loeber

Jennifer Loeber
Camp Photo Day, from the series "Cruel Story of Youth"
2008

Series Statement: This series explores my personal reconciliation with the slowly fading memories that once had an indelible impact on my path to adulthood. I spent several weeks living with and documenting the emotional landscape of the current inhabitants of the counter-culture summer camp I attended as a teenager as part alumnus, part outsider. Connecting with my subjects through a shared history afforded me the trust necessary to be able to watch events unfold without censorship. Drawing from my own self-discovery within this same space, I focused on conveying the spontaneity and supportive atmosphere that is the foundation and legacy of the camp.

International Site Profiles: Kilele

In an opinion piece posted last week on the limitations of access to crowdfunding projects, we made an argument for taking the initiative to explore sites that promote photographers from countries and cultures less frequently seen. We're following that post with a series of short profiles that will collectively provide a starting point for this exploration of international blogs, online magazines and pages.

We start the series today by suggesting a look at Kilele, a Tumblr page featuring images and click-through links to the sites of contemporary photographers from across Africa in addition to photographers from other continents who photograph in Africa.  Each country is represented in some way. Started in September 2010, Kilele is a personal project that reflects the preferences of its creator - emerging photographers as well as an affinity for landscapes, although it includes occasional historic images and pictures from across the spectrum of photographic genres. Archives are hash-tagged by country, type (i.e. architecture, portrait, etc.) and technique. An "Ask Me Anything" page allows readers a way to send questions.

Kilele can be followed on Twitter.

68: Nur Moo

Nur Moo
Edipo Re_*, from the series "Le due madri"
2012

Series Statement: During the beginning of 2012, I started a study of Hamlet by Shakespeare in a psychoanalytic way, a different mode to try to understand the deep relations inside the poem. I focused on the mother, Gertrude, and the relation between Hamlet and Ophelia. The concept of "bad mother" inspired me and I made a series of pictures of my daughter Asya.

For information about submitting your work to the fototazo gallery project, click here.

Opinion: Make New Friends! Addressing the Problem of Access to New Sources of Arts Funding

Crowdfunding sites such as Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, RocketHub and their offspring have taken advantage of the web’s reach to create a platform for collecting small-scale donations to fund personal and community arts projects. This offers a welcome alternative to the main sources in the recent past: credit cards and loans handed over from dubious, “I’ll-do-this-because-I-love-you”, handwringing family members.

These sites have undeniably changed the dynamic of the arts in many ways for the better, funding valuable projects that have had a positive impact in the collection and dissemination of knowledge or the creation of new artistic work that otherwise may not have happened. Among the photography community likely to read this, initiatives such as Pete Brook’s “‘Prison Photography’ on the Road” and Jennifer Schwartz’s “Crusade for Collecting” were widely and successfully backed, each raising over $10,000 to support their worthy projects.

While acknowledging the strength of crowdsourced arts fundraising, this new economy for the arts has limits of access that reflect and perhaps even reinforce the imbalance of the economics of the arts worldwide. While anyone can register a project on some of these sites - IndieGoGo and RocketHub, for example, accept international campaigns - there are clear limits on who is likely to use the system successfully.

To illustrate, let’s say I would like to fund a photography project on the problems of illegal mining in Colombia on Kickstarter. Drawing on connections made through my photography education and online community, I am probably able to get a few well-known photographers to contribute prints for giveaways. I call friends from my university involved in the business world to help me think through marketing, budget and the project model. I put out the word via Facebook and Twitter and friends graciously repost my project on high-visibility blogs and sites. My friend has the editing equipment and editing programs to make a top quality video on the project. Friends and family have the resources to contribute. Project likely funded.

Now let’s say a young professional photographer from a public university arts program in Medellín would like to fund a photography project on the problems of illegal mining in Colombia. Without real and social media world connections to well-known photographers, this photographer will not be able to offer the same tempting giveaways. English makes navigating setting up the project difficult and most likely a little awkward. They are without the online photography world connections to request the promotion of their project on a blog or site. Their family recently had their water cut and pays paramilitaries protection money each week, as do their neighbors and family friends. They won’t be contributing. Project? Little chance whatsoever. No matter how strong their work, how passionate the vision, how outstanding the project, they lack the tools to participate.

The successful pitch in the new economy of the arts relies on social networking, real world social connections, friends and family with money to contribute, strong giveaways to reward donors that also rely on connections, a bit of English, and a dash of tech savvy and personal marketing skills. Of the nine suggestions Pete Brook makes in his article "The Etiquette of Crowdfunding: A Recipient's View" to help someone launch a successful fundraising campaign, at least the first six are fairly impossible for the majority of international artists from outside the US and Europe to take advantage of: get advice from people in the know, offer strong incentives for giving, use your existing networks, promote hard while the project is live via your networks, involve your community, and a "blooming good video" (English, equipment).

So the question becomes: to what degree do crowdfunding platforms reinforce the existing dynamics of art world resources? And to what degree do these sites, which require tapping into an online world of social media savvy people with connections and the money to contribute, limit funding to projects from a very specific sector of the world arts community? And an uncomfortable question: to what degree is this sector also the most likely to have access to funding their projects outside the crowdsourcing model, including the traditional methods of awkward family conversations resulting in support, credit card debt eventually paid off through access to decent-paying employment, and small grants and loans?

The inability for much of the world art community to tap into the strength and opportunity of the new model of arts fundraising is deeply problematic: the arts, photography in particular, inform our thoughts and decision-making by giving us images from artists across classes and across nations that make us aware of realties beyond our own. Without images, we have less specific knowledge, and therefore take less consideration of these spaces and people in our worldview and decision-making. Secondly, and beyond the scope of this post, artists generate money for a community (as documented in Richard Florida’s The Creative Class, for example) through renovating sectors of cities and by adding their creative talents to local economics. Therefore by leaving the world’s artists out of new funding sources, we also affect the health and the developmental ability of the cities and countries these artists come from.

Sadly, this also reinforces other economic factors that militate against the success of international artists and the arts in the developing world. Imagine importation costs raise your equipment prices 35%. And now imagine you make 1/3 the money per hour for the same work you do. Enough said.

This is certainly not a call to avoid funding projects on Kickstarter. It’s an attempt to point out an issue in the new arts funding model and a call to amplify and expand the opportunities for artists not likely to succeed in this model. As a creative and progressive community of photographers, we can work to extend the strengths of crowdfunding. The new arts economy requires, more than anything, social connections. Of the six tips Brook gives that most artists based outside the US and Europe cannot use, you can argue all six would be able to be taken advantage of with better connections.

An easy first step for all of us to take is to take the initiative to form the social connections that are crucial for the new economics. Search out sites that promote photographers from countries and cultures less frequently seen - Greater Middle East Photo, We Take Pictures Too, Invisible Photographer Asia, and Kilele for example. Connect with the artists you discover there. Be proactive in communications with them to create a stronger, more cross-cultural online photography world - establishing these connections will begin to bridge the divide that is leaving the majority of our fellow photographers unable to use the powerful tools of the new economics.

- Tom Griggs

Interview: Andrea Modica

© Andrea Modica

Andrea Modica has been exhibited across the country and is in many collections, such as The Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. An MFA graduate of Yale University, she is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship among other prestigious awards. Andrea's work has been featured in many magazines, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and American Photo. Her five books, including "Minor League" and "Treadwell", have met with critical acclaim. In addition to teaching at the International Center for Photography, the Woodstock Photography Workshops and the Maine Media Workshops, she currently is a professor of photography at Drexel University in Philadelphia.

This interview focuses on Modica's latest body of work, Best Friends, in which she made portraits of best friends at high schools in Connecticut, Philadelphia and Modena, Italy. She previously answered a few questions for Zoom magazine about the work.

This work will premeire at Philadelphia's Gallery 339, opening May 11th and running through July 24th.

© Andrea Modica

fototazo: You mentioned in the Zoom interview that this project came out of making portraits of high school students in Connecticut and finding that frequently the subjects had their best friend hanging around as you made the images – but how were you invited to this high school to take portraits originally?

Andrea Modica: A high school teacher, who was taking a one-week portrait class with me at the Maine Media Workshops, invited me to do a brief residency where he worked, the Loomis Chaffee School, in Windsor, Connecticut. When I returned to my home in Philadelphia, I found three high schools that allowed me to visit with my 8x10 camera and make portraits.

f: Unlike the portraiture in your other projects, you chose to work with a blank wall background for most of the images in this project and to remove most of the spatial context from the images. Talk about this decision.

AM: Actually, the structure of these photographs is not very different from that of my much earlier series and book "Minor League". The reason in this case is largely due to the fact that I had very little time with each pair, since they were essentially cutting classes to be photographed, so I kept things very simple. But, in fact, I like the way the subjects sometimes push against the edges of the frame, enhancing the power struggle or some other dynamic between the friends.

© Andrea Modica

f: The images range from almost allegoric, such as the girl with her head to the chest of her friend, to something between sensual and sinister as in the image of the boy in a striped shirt in the background staring at his friend in the foreground who faces the camera, to the somewhat comic, for example the skinny, shorter girl and her tall best friend. To what degree did you work with the dynamics that you sensed between the subjects and to what degree did you invent the dynamics or narratives to serve the making of a strong photograph?

AM: The beautiful thing about this project is that the students chose each other. The "casting" was done and the drama began long before I ever showed up. I find the best portraits are made when I listen carefully and watch closely. Inevitably I fall in love with something that presents itself, and hopefully I step up to the plate with the skills I've honed over the years of working with the view camera. Working with the big camera often requires a collaboration between the photographer and the subject - one that is slow, and at best, encourages things to unfold.

© Andrea Modica

f: You photograph with an 8x10 and make platinum / palladium prints that by their nature have something of an atemporal sensibility. The subjects, on the other hand - through clothes, shared headphones and gestures - seem of this moment. I would be interested in hearing about how you feel time functions in these images.

AM: Tough one. What do you think? I might be more interested in knowing what the viewer thinks about this.

© Andrea Modica

f: Judith Joy Ross said about her school portraits, "I don't want the picture to explain school in some documentary sense. [I] want it be an emotional journey. I want the viewer to reconnect with what it is to be a kid." Your school portraits perhaps push for a third thing that's neither about the schools or the observer reconnecting with childhood. They seem to explore the nature of friendships, who we chose to have close to us and how we connect with others, both in the high school subjects themselves as well as in a more generalized sense through them as subjects. Would you agree? Did doing the project Best Friends change your understanding of the theme of friendship or how to work with this theme through photography?

AM: Yes, okay. Yes, I'm often surprised by how the world presents itself in front of the camera. I think these pictures are generally very optimistic, and this isn’t something I was particularly expecting or searching for.

© Andrea Modica

f: You have made portraits over your entire career. How would you say you have evolved and grown as a portrait artist over time?

AM: I’m not sure I'm the person to answer this question, as it pertains to the work. I'm more interested in how photographing people has challenged me personally, and enhanced my life, providing me with gift after gift of great intimacy, both with people I know well and with strangers.

© Andrea Modica

f: What portrait photographers do you go back to regularly for ideas and inspiration – and who are some newer discoveries you’re enjoying at the moment?

AM: Julia Margeret Cameron, Bellocq, Man Ray and Sander will always be among my heroes, as well as many, many of my contemporaries, including Lois Conner and Greg Miller - too many to list, though only yesterday I was very moved by Paul Graham's current show in NY, as well as Alec Soth's new show. Perhaps my greatest pleasure in looking at other people's work these days comes from returning to academia after some years, as a professor in Drexel University’s Photography Program. There is something truly inspiring about watching a young person get excited about seeing the world through a camera for the first time.

f: Lastly, who was your best friend in high school?

AM: Rosemarie Loconsolo Rizzo, who remains a close pal and confidante.

© Andrea Modica

© Andrea Modica

67: Arianna Sanesi

Arianna Sanesi
untitled, from the series "Urban Resistance"
A Coruna, Spain, January 2011

Series Statement: This image is from an ongoing project about the humanization of urban architecture: small and old buildings resisting bigger ones seem to me a perfect metaphor of the struggle to survive that fragile people must carry on every day. It is also a way of registering time passing and of thinking over the meaning of social evolution.

Of Interest 3.5.12: Your Rights as a Photographer

After seeing another string of Tweets and Facebook status updates about harassment while making street images, we decided to publish links to resources that definitively state the facts on your right to photograph.

Know Your Rights: Photographers, published on the ACLU website, is a good place to start for photographers working in the United States. Two other articles on their site cover especially difficult situations:  You Have Every Right to Photograph That Cop and You Have Every Right to Snap That Photo which covers photographing federal buildings.

Two individuals in particular have written online about the legal rights of the photographer. Attorney Bert P. Krages II wrote "The Photographer's Right" and his same-named "The Photographer's Right" is a PDF document that can be printed and carried while photographing. He is also the author of a book entitled Legal Handbook for Photographers: The Rights and Liabilities of Making Images.

Writer Andrew Kantor released a PDF document to educate photographers on their rights, "Legal Rights of Photographers." He has also written two articles for USA Today that address the rights of the photographer, "New digital camera? Know how, where you can use it" and a follow-up article "Misinformation about your photography rights continues to spread."

The blog Boy With Grenade is dedicated to "preserving the rights of photographers and educating the public on those rights." These two articles on the site summarize Kantor's work and include information about photographing in airports and photographing children, as well as asking the question of whether L.B. Jeffries was violating the law photographing his neighbors in Hitchcock's Rear Window (he was).

Photojojo published an article entitled "Photography and the Law: Know Your Rights" which includes a "Ten Commandments of Photography Rights."

Miami-based photographer Carlos Miller's site Photography is Not a Crime [sic] documents the violations of his rights as a photographer as well as those of others.

Blake Andrews sells a Photography Is Not a Crime bumper sticker that your car needs.

For other countries, you can start with these links and explore from there: Canada, United Kingdom, and Australia. Kurt Nimmo's article Your Right to Photograph talks about the difference between rights in the US and the more draconian laws in the UK.

While I work on finding a definitive answer to rights in Colombia, this link starts a conversation about derechos de autor.

66: Sarah Moore

Sarah Moore
Spring, from the series "Expanse"
2008

Series statement: “If space is the field for memory, and if memory is the basis of our narrative self-invention, then we must live in some seam between inside and outside, some corridor between the place we make and the place that makes us.” - Richard Powers

Throughout the years I have become increasingly interested in my home of South Dakota and how the people and place shaped me and continue to influence me. Even though I appreciate many aspects of the Midwest and still long for its landscape, it represents the pinnacle of loneliness in my life.

My photography is a depiction of this loneliness. The landscapes of the Midwest are beautiful but empty, simple but overwhelming. My relationship to my home is based on love, but also thwarted by distance. Since moving from South Dakota, I continue to find solace but also conflict in the land around me. I now see many moments in my life as a way to document or construct a personal narrative of isolation, both representative of my past and indicative of my present.

Expanses can be comforting but also stifling. Distances can fuel love but also misunderstanding. The vast space of the land is something I can't quite embrace, break free from, or understand, but it provides infinite inspiration for me.

For information about submitting your work to the fototazo gallery project, click here.

Reading Shortlist 3.2.12

The Reading Shortlist is an occasional post with a listing of recommended readings and links. A recommendation does not necessarily suggest an agreement with the contents of the post. For previous shortlists, please visit the site links page.

Andrea Frazzetta, The New York Times Magazine, "Nollywood's Walk of Fame" Frazzetta's images accompany an article written by Andrew Rice for the magazine about the $500 million-a-year "Nollywood" film industry of Nigeria.

James Dodd, Flickr, "A parting note" Dodd explains his reasons for leaving Flickr and in doing so gives an insight into the current state of what was once a central hub for photography community and sharing. He also touches on the question of sharing your work online for free.

Robert Frank, LIFE (May 21, 1951), "Speaking of Pictures" After checking out this early photo essay by a 26-year-old Frank in Paris of....chairs, I'm prepared to say The Americans is better.

Sam Grobart, The New York Times, A Review of the Lytro Camera Grobart examines the first Lytro which allows you to focus the image on your computer in post-production. Includes a link to an example image that you can experiment with.

Impossible Colors, Wikipedia A fascinating thought: that under special artificial laboratory conditions it is possible to see colors ordinarily impossible. Hat tip to T. F. Tolhurst.

Liverly Morgue In case you missed it, The New York Times launched a new blog on Tumblr featuring images from their photo "morgue" of millions of pictures. The reverse sides of the images are provided and are frequently as interesting as the images themselves.

Sebastiao Salgado, Looking Back At You This link is to part one of a six-part documentary on YouTube about the Brazilian photographer Salgado. Includes lengthy interviews, video of his working process from his cameras to his prints, and footage of him working in the field.

Alec Soth, Minneapolis StarTribune, A photographer's-eye view of Martin Parr Soth calls Parr the "Jay-Z of documentary photography." Includes a link to a second article with a video about Parr's visit to Minnesota to photograph ice this past January.

Larry Towell, CNN, Faces of the Taliban Magnum photographer Larry Towell hired an Afghan journalist in order to enter Taliban camps to make these photographs that give a face the insurgency group.

Pieter Wisse, 500 Photographers Blog, Shut down your computer and go live! Wisse eloquently gives us the reminder we all periodically need to hear. Thanks Pieter.

Profile: LUCEO Images

LUCEO Images is a six-member photography cooperative comprised of David Walter Banks, Kendrick Brinson, Matt Eich, Kevin German, Daryl Peveto and Matt Slaby. We spoke with Eich about the group.

fototazo: What is the backstory on how LUCEO formed? And where does the name come from?

Matt Eich: We formed in 2007 as a collective, knowing early on in our careers that the changing landscape of photography would no longer support the lone-wolf photographer and the kind of long-form projects that we hoped to pursue. In 2009 we formed as a business, operating as an LLC under the cooperative model. The last five years we have been putting an organizational structure in place that allows us to effectively collaborate and make the best use of our resources. The name is Latin and means "to shine through," "become light" or "become visible."

f: What are the particular strengths of LUCEO as compared with other collectives?

ME: At this juncture, we don't spend much time comparing ourselves to other collectives because we operate as a cooperative. With few exceptions, our organizational structure and business model is 180 degrees different than existing collectives. Collectives are popular because they offer a way for people to combine resources and market their work together, but it is seldom that the groups go beyond this into actual collaboration or establishing a business model behind the marketing efforts.

For us, each member has individual roles within the organization, allowing for a level of specialization. We meet via Skype weekly and in-person bi-annually to discuss our business. In addition to our own photography projects we work on group projects, group exhibitions and group publications that emphasize the brand over any individual. We feel a deep sense of gratitude to those who have supported us in our formative years and try to pay this forward by offering the Student Project Award and monthly donations to creative projects via Flattr and quarterly contributions to crowdfund platforms like Emphas.is and Kickstarter. These are just a few ways that we differ from most collectives on the surface, before getting into the guts of the organization.

f: What trends have you observed about photography collectives over time as far as their growth, decline, or changes?

ME: The most common thing we see in collectives is that there seems to be a glass ceiling that is hard to get past. A group forms, draws some eyes to their work and they get into the routine of feeding the social media beast, but eventually it just sort of peters out. A lot of groups seem to suffer from a lack of organization and leadership or direction. It is no different than being in a rock band, most groups don't get past playing local gigs because of conflicting visions and oversized egos. Without membership requirements photographers end up taking work from anyone who calls, even larger agencies that are technically competing with the collective, which dilutes the brand.

f: What have you found to be the advantages of being in a cooperative as a photographer?

ME: There are a number of advantages, the most obvious of which is pooling resources. In tough economic times it serves each of us well to be able to do a lot with a little and as a group we are able to stretch a dollar and any press we might receive. A win for an individual in the group is a win for all of us. Instead of only learning the treacherous business world by trial and error, I am able to compare notes with my colleagues on rates, contracts and basic business practices to make sure that we are all on the same page. It all boils down to support on a number of levels - our industry is evolving too rapidly to be able to manage all of the necessary tasks as an individual unless you are independently wealthy and contract these tasks out.

f: How has working in such close proximity affected your personal work?

ME: Working intimately with a group of photographers has impacted my personal work on a number of levels. Developing my business has allowed me greater creative freedom to pursue the personal work that I care about. Having colleagues that are always willing to help edit work or to discuss some of the more challenging moral and ethical quandaries that we encounter along the way is invaluable. The members of this group have become some of my closest friends - each time I make the 16 hour drive to Mississippi for a personal project I stay with David Walter Banks and Kendrick Brinson in Atlanta. This keeps my travel expenses low, it keeps me sane and it keeps them in the loop about the work I'm creating, so they can kick my ass into gear if my head isn't in the right space.

f: What are the next steps for LUCEO?

ME: We plan to continue developing the direction that we have started moving towards in 2011. That is more collaborative, less ego, and trying to implement ideas that are difficult if not impossible for an individual artist to realize. This year is a turning point for us as an organization and I am excited to see how these various projects evolve in the course of the coming months.