Reading Shortlist 11.27.11

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.

Andy Adams (Moderator) with Molly Landreth, Amy Stein, and Phillip Toledano, Light Work, "Photo 2.0 – Online Photographic Thinking / SPE Conference at Light Work"

Darius D. Himes and Mary Virginia Swanson, New York Public Library Series, "Publish Your Photography Book"

C.B. Liddell, Fujiland, "Interview: Nobuyoshi Araki"

Kate Namestnik, Online Conference on Networks and Communities, "Photography 2.0: How Web 2.0 has changed photographic behaviours and practices"

Sean O'Hagan, The Guardian, "Viewer or voyeur? The morality of reportage photography" [as a warning, this article has a very graphic lead image]

Scot Sothern with Colin Pantall, Gomma Magazine, "Colin Pantall interviews Scot Sothern for Gomma"

Wayne Ford, Posterous, "Black Passport: the autobiographical work of photojournalist Stanley Greene"

8.16.11 Reading Shortlist

The Reading Shortlist is an occasional post with a listing of recommended readings from other sites.

Gerry Badger, American Suburb X, "Garry Winogrand: I Don't Give a Rap About Gasoline Stations - The Winogrand Problem" (1988)

Rachel Been, Slideluck Potshow, "Interview with Elinor Carucci"

Paul Graham, "The Unreasonable Apple"

Lauren Henkin, "Casual Consumption"

Darius Himes, "What Is a Document and What Is a Style?"

Randy Kennedy, New York Times, "When Life Gets in the Way of Art"

Pedro Meyer, ZoneZero, "Are Too Many People Taking Photographs?"

Amy Stein, "A Few Questions for Steven Ahlgren"

f100: Steven Ahlgren, Jo Ann Walters, Hin Chua, Daniel Traub

© Steven Ahlgren. Commercial Bank, Dultuh, MN.

fototazo has asked a group of 50 curators, gallery owners, blog writers, photographers, academics and others actively engaged in photography to pick two photographers that deserve (more) recognition - the underknown, the under-respected as well as not-appreciated-enough favorites. A little more information on the project is available in the first post in the series here.

We began the series with responses from Nicholas Nixon, Matt Johnston, Blake Andrews, John Edwin Mason, Aline Smithson, Colin Pantall, Michael Werner, Liza Fetissova, Laurence Salzmann, Bryan Formhals, Richard Mosse and Shane Lavalette.

Today we continue with responses from Amy Stein and Amani Willett. 

Respondent: Amy Stein is a photographer, teacher and curator based in New York City. Her work explores our evolving isolation from community, culture and the environment. She has been exhibited nationally and internationally and her work is featured in many private and public collections. In 2006, she was a winner of the Saatchi Gallery/Guardian Prize for her Domesticated series. In 2007, she was named one of the top fifteen emerging photographers in the world by American Photo magazine and she won the Critical Mass Book Award. Her first book, Domesticated, was released in 2008. It won the best book award at the 2008 New York Photo Festival.

Selections: Steven Ahlgren and Jo Ann Walters. Amy Stein interviews Steven Ahlgren on her blog here and Jo Ann Walters here. 

© Jo Ann Walters

Respondent: Amani Willett was featured in the book Street Photography Now and is a member of the iN-PUBLiC collective of street photographers. His photographs have also been included in the books ReGeneration: Telling Stories From Our Twenties and Dawn of the 21st Century: The Millennium Photo Project. He has exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston among many other places. He was interviewed in January 2011 on fototazo here.

Selections: Hin Chua and Daniel Traub

Hin Chua
Too often, photographic projects suffer from either a lack of concept or uninteresting images.  Hin Chua's pictures get both parts right in equal measure.  In his project "After the Fall," Hin spent three years exploring environments in transition - a journey which took him through the outskirts of 40 cities - the result of which is a stunning body of photographs which examine the areas where man meets nature.

© Hin Chua. From the series "After the Fall"

Daniel Traub

© Daniel Traub

Emerging Mexican Street Photographers V: Alfredo Moreno

This is the fifth in a series of posts exploring the work of five emerging Mexican street photographers. The series includes work from Nayeli Cruz Bonilla, Fermín Guzmán Martínez, Jair Cabrera Torres, Irving Cabrera Torres and Alfredo Moreno. Mark Powell and Tom Griggs have curated and edited this project. All five photographers began their careers as students of Mark's in El Faro de Oriente in Iztapalapa, Mexico City.

This posts features the work of Alfredo Moreno. His work can be further explored on Flickr under the name "paskualito" here.

In 2005 he was part of the first generation in Mark Powell's digital photography workshops in FARO de Oriente where he studied until 2008. In 2008, based on his street work “Estar Guars” he was selected to be part of the workshop “Anatomy of Creativity” with Erik Ravelo (editor of the magazine Colors, Italy) and Andrés Reimondes (Fabrica, Italia). He was subsequently part of a group exhibition of the same name as the workshop at the Museo de la Ciudad de México. He was given a grant in July 2009 by Toxico Cultura Contemporánea to be part of a workshop offered by Amy Stein called "The Photographers Book." As part of this grant, Moreno was selected by Stein to publish his first book Unbroken City. He has worked for the agency Latitudespress, the magazine Quehacer Político, IQ Magazine, the Government of Mexico City and he currently works for the magazine Reforma.

Of Interest 4.15: "What Makes a Great Portrait?" on Conscientious

The 12 on Portraiture series is half-way through. The next group of photographers responding to the question will start with Anastasia Cazabon, Jen Davis, Shen Wei and Stella Johnson.

The midpoint seems like a perfect opportunity to recommend reading an article on Joerg Colberg's Conscientious from 2008 entitled "What makes a great portrait?" Colberg's article is both an expansion of and complement to the discussion generated by the photographers who have responded to the question here on fototazo. The combination of readings will hopefully further the collaborative effort of getting to an understanding of the topic, as Colberg writes as the goal of his article in its introduction.

Colberg sent an email to a large number of photographers, as well as curators, gallerists, bloggers and others involved in the photography world and then published their responses as a collective article. Responders include Doug DuBois, Colin Pantall, Amy Stein, Brian Ulrich and Dylan Vitone among many others.