In case you missed it, we released this gorgeous edition by 2009 First Edition Hot Shot Mike Sinclair on 20x200 earlier this week. It is the first edition from this season's Hot Shots and there's more to come—keep your eyes out! If you'd like to be automatically emailed whenever we release a new edition, sign up for Jen's newsletter.

Mike's statement is a genial narrative of the summer holiday in the heart of the midwest.

This Fourth of July celebration took place on the lawn of the Truman Presidential Library in Independence, Missouri.

July nights are slow to get dark enough to set off fireworks and I remember this evening included some speeches, introductions of prominent citizens and a band concert that included a few numbers with a children's choir. I think the Declaration of Independence was read aloud. The lawn was full of people--some picnicking, some just there for the fireworks. A group of Civil War enactors had set up camp at the far edge of the lawn.

Towards dusk, a few vendors started moving through the crowd selling multi-colored plastic circles, like mini hula-hoops, that when activated, glowed in the dark. They were irresistible to kids bored with waiting so long for the main event and each vendor had a trail of children following him. Soon the lawn was spotted with the glowing necklaces.

At dark, the fireworks began. The haze in the picture is a combination of Missouri's humid summer weather, fireworks, and smoke from Civil War-era cannons fired while Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture played.

BBQ-ing, camping, watching the fireworks, listening to music + dancing, whatever you're doing, have a great weekend!

VII Photo Agency, founded by seven photo-journalists in 2002, has added four new photographers to their prestigious roster. Lynsey Addario, Ziyah Gafić, and Seamus Murphy will join the VII network and Adam Ferguson will join the Mentor Program under the guidance of Christopher Morris.

Conceived of in 2001, the photographers of VII are bonded by their mission to document they document social, political, and environmental conflict -- both in war-torn areas and in zones of peace. They document the individuals and places affected by major and minor conflicts all over the world.

Addario, Gafić, Murphy, and Ferguson are all courageous photographers who have traveled the world on a mission of capturing instances of devastation and places and people of transition for many years. Instanbul-based Addario is a self-taught photographer who has spent the last 10 years in Afghanistan, Darfur, and exploring horrific, but necessary stories like the images of her series, Rape in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Sarajevo-born Gafić has also focused on places of transition, including war-torn Bosnia, Rwanda, and Chechnya. Murphy's images -- many in a deeply emotive grainy black and white -- focus on Somalia, Nigeria, and war-torn Afghanistan, offering a scarily intimate perspective of violence, poverty, and a crumbled environment. Lastly, Ferguson has visited the depths of Mumbai slums and the valleys of Afghanistan where US forces have been training for the last several years. All of these photographers have risked their lives for the edification of viewers all over the world.

We congratulate Addario, Gafić, Murphy and Ferguson their addition to VII and look forward to the amazing photo-documentation we are sure they will continue to produce.

Jacob Pritchard photographs girls in bed. That is: girls with cats, girls with ipods, girls with their boyfriends, girls asleep and girls with books. In this new project, Pictures in Bed, he shoots aerial portraits of twenty-somethings snuggling, making out, drinking tea, reading, and twisted between their sheets and blankets. The lighting is bright and even and the frame extends so that the bed's surroundings form an even frame around the mattress.

Like a honed-in version of The Selby, where photographer Todd Selby photographs the creative and fashionable in their homes, Pritchard's project attempts to create an image of their person with this slice of their personal space. The images form a set of snapshots that suggest our beds, their order and disorder, and how we occupy them are another form of self-portrait. In Pritchard's project, we would love him branch out to a far more diverse demographic whose bodies are less posed in the motions of sleep. Theories on sleep -- the meaning of postures, how many hours we need, what it means to dream -- are abound, but what does it mean to be in bed and not be asleep? We're curious to see where Pritchard goes with this project, and who and how he finds people in bed.

If you're a photographer and you want a book, and what photographer doesn't want a book (?), Blurb's Photography.Book.Now competition is for you. The grand prize is worth $25,000. The competition kicked off last year and was won by Jen Bekman Gallery's very own Beth Dow*.

Photography.Book.Now juror (and HHS! panelist), Darius Himes, helpfully outlined the ins and outs of the competition's new categories on his blog. This year's contest is all about showcasing a really brilliant book concept, so pay attention to these hints!

You can read more from Darius in this Q&A over on the Dodge & Burn blog.

And as Darius notes at the end of his post, to learn even more about photography + art book publishing, pick up The Photobook: A History, Volumes 1 & 2 by Martin Parr and Gerry Badger (Phaidon) or a copy of the newly released WordsWithoutPictures.org, conceived and edited by Charlotte Cotton at LACMA, to which he contributed an essay, about, you guessed it, photo books. Darius, a perennial fountain of knowledge for photographers has also managed to co-author a book with Mary Virginia Swanson, to be published in 2010.

The Photography.Book.Now. deadline is July 16th @ 12 p.m. PDT so you've got some time to read and review all of this essential info, get your photos together and enter!

* Beth Dow's photograph featured here is from her series, In the Garden, and can be found at 20x200.

Ka-Man Tse was crowned a Hot Shot in Winter 2007, and has since been completing her MFA in photography at Yale. Ka-Man is currently in a group exhibition, We Belong Together, up now at Capricious Space, which celebrates the young star graduates who we'll surely be seeing much more of in the coming years. Ka-Man is joined by Elaine Stocki, David LaSpina, Colin Smith, Catharine Maloney, Justin Leonard, and Dru Donovan.

The show runs through July 5th.

We Belong Together
Capricious Space | 103 Broadway | Brooklyn, NY