• Yiftach Belsky, Ikonostasis:voyeuristic transparencies over illuminated shadow boxes
  
• Jessica Bruah, No Lake This Summer: example of taking a pretty esoteric subject, the Wisconsin Dells region, and blowing it out with close observation
• Harlan Erskine, Imaginary Wars: childhood neighborhood battlegrounds, strangely absent of nostalgia
• Barbara Kalina, Entered On 10/8/2007: Displaced In Place: personal curation of the Great Recession, levered on the photographer’s home foreclosure
  
• Lissa Rivera, Incantations of a Doll Collector: weird combination of 21st century niche with a 19th century stage craft
  
• Craig Stokle, Bearing Darkness: exploring the nighttime landscape with the help of car headlights.

MFA Photography, Video & Related Media Thesis Exhibition
Through June 27 at School of Visual Arts Gallery
601 West 26 Street, 15th floor
New York, NY
(212) 592-2145

When people ask me what they need to do to understand the world of fine art photography, I tell them: go to galleries, preview auctions, and read the photography criticism in The New York Times.

Unfortunately, my current location limits gallery-going, but Gefter’s essays are always good.

Thomas Allen, Beachcomber, 2009, edition of 250

There’ll be live music and a raffle for a Matthew Pillsbury print as well.

Thursday, June 18, 8:00-11:00 p.m
at Aperture Foundation Gallery
547 West 27th Street, 4th Floor (between 10th & 11th Ave)
New York, NY

I received an all-too-brief email last week from hassla books, announcing “First, jay comes”, photographs by Takashi Homma. Based on Google search, Homma seems to be mostly known for pictures of Tokyo and this is a departure from that vein. Hassla offers only two images from the work on its site, usually too brief to make any judgment, but this line made me think this might bring something different to a project about hunting:

The deer hunter shoots its prey and immediately opens the deer with a cleaver. Jays fly down first to consume the remains of the deer.

It’s only $12, so worth a look.

Web-denizens have been inundated by examples of this technique, which mimics macro photography of railroad models. The Times‘ general audience is perhaps not so familiar, so the editors have helpfully included a guarantee of reality:

“All photographs for this article were taken from a helicopter.”

The tilt shift technique deliberately makes an unrealistic image. Coupled with this article, it underlines the message that French presidents consider Paris a sort of personal toy box, constantly adding and rearranging through their terms in office. I’m wondering what discussion at the Times resulted in adding that little innocuous line that drags the images back towards straight documentation.

The NY Times blog “Lens” has a great post about “The Tank Man”, four different photographs of the anonymous protester standing in front of Chinese tanks sent to quash the protests in Tiananmen Square twenty years ago. Four photographers positioned in a high rise hotel took similar, but different photos of that brave man. If you ever question the efficacy of government censorship, know that few Chinese are familiar with these photos. Many young Chinese deny the government massacre of protesters even happened. Today, the Chinese government’s “Great Firewall” is blocking access to major Internet sites in an attempt to erase memorial of these events.

UPDATE: Photographer Terril Jones has come forward with an altogether different, street-level picture of The Tank Man taken just moments before the long-range shots referred to above. This picture has never before been published. Why? It more powerfully describes the scene, the terror and the bravery of that lone protester and yet Jones kept it private, only showing it to friends.

NYPD Operations Order explaining how to deal with street photographers, or, er, not deal with them. Posted on Craphound.

(via Joy Garnett)