Luceo Images

2013 LUCEO Student Project Award Call for Entries

Luceo Images — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 10:57:26 +0000

LUCEO is proud to announce the 2013 call for entries for the LUCEO Student Project Award. This year’s recipient will receive up to $2,000 in cash and prizes to help fund a photographic project. The winner will also receive a one-year mentorship from LUCEO. Deadline for submission is May 15, 2013, 11:59 pm EST.

MAC-ON-CAMPUS will be contributing $1,000 in vouchers into the mix which brings the purse to $2,000.

This year the submission process is sponsored by Photoshelter. All submission guidelines can be found on the SPA site: http://spa.luceoimages.com

Judges to be announced.

Good luck!

- LUCEO

Vietnam Fashion

Kevin German — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 18:42:36 +0000

For the past few years I have been attending fashion shows in Vietnam. Other than the film and music industries, fashion seems to be rising to the top of popular culture here. The look is heavily influenced by the West, but it gives local designers the chance to stand out from time to time.

This collection of photographs began following my time as photography director and judge for the television show Vietnam’s Next Top Model. I watched in the background as the young female contestants began to realize their dreams as professional models. It’s nice to now see many of them showing off what they had learned on the catwalk garnering national attention.

2013 LUCEO Student Project Award Announced

Luceo Images — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 08:30:30 +0000

Alena Zhandarova – 2012 SPA Winner

We are excited to announce the 4th annual LUCEO Student Project Award. We have great things planned for the students entering this year so stay tuned to the LUCEO site and social media for all the up-to-date information!

In the meantime, have a look at our award guidelines and begin thinking about your submission. We will announce the judges, bonus awards and submission criteria soon!

Find out more information here: http://luceoimages.com/about/luceo-images-student-award/

Bearing Arms for 5280

Matt Slaby — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 11:27:20 +0000

In late September I was commissioned by 5280, a Denver magazine, to do a portrait series on a spectrum of local gun owners. The series was to be something simple: portraits paired with short quotations from each subject –a nonscientific bit of cultural anthropology. The piece was to expand a bit on some work I did in 2008 in the run-up to a landmark Supreme Court decision that, for the first time in U.S. history, declared that the 2nd Amendment protected an individual right to gun ownership. The debate had long-waged over whether it applied only to the military or if it also included ordinary folks. The court had somehow managed to remain quiet on that issue since the drafting of the Amendment.

At the time, the thing that I found interesting about that ruling had very little to do with my own politics on the issue of guns. The decision essentially set up some bottom-line parameters for the cultural landscape of guns and gun-ownership in the United States for the foreseeable future. Basically, it cemented their role in our social fabric.

Depending on what stats you subscribe to, one in every two or three households has at least one gun. 66% own more than one. There are 88.8 guns per 100 people in the U.S. Which means there are a lot of guns around us all the time. So who are all these gun owners? The simple answer is that there is no simple answer. The demographic is a lot broader than the monolith it is painted as for purposes of political expediency. Guns in high density places like New York City mean something different than guns in rural Kaycee, Wyoming. And people’s reasons for owning guns are just as diverse.

To put this package together, the magazine allowed me to work through my existing contacts to create a set of images that represented something a little broader than the tucked-in, middle-age, authoritarian we think of when we imagine gun owners. Included below are four women and five men who have guns for purposes ranging from self-defense to historical re-enactment.

The spread can be viewed online, here: http://www.5280.com/magazine/2012/11/bearing-arms?page=0,7

As is always in order at the close of working on something like this, I owe a debt of gratitude to all my subjects for their patience and openness and to 5280 magazine and its staff. Sarah Lavigne, Dave McKenna and Geoff Van Dyke –hats off!

John: ”I own guns for my own personal protection and for fun and enjoyment.”

Dawn: ”We do Wild West shows, and we compete in Cowboy Mounted Shooting Association events.”

John: ”These are replicas of 1860 Colt models that were used in the old West. They are single-action revolvers: Every time you want to shoot, you need to cock the hammer and pull the trigger.”

Dawn: ”But, over everything else, guns to me mean protection.”

John: ”One night, I was lying in bed with Dawn, and I thought I heard our son, Justin, who was three at the time, fall out of bed. Then I heard the noise again, and I realized he didn’t fall out of bed twice. I grabbed my weapon and looked to our back door and saw a young man putting his shoulders into the door to break it down. I drew my weapon on him and got as close as I could safely and ordered him to the ground. He went to his knees and put his hands behind his head and I kept my distance. The whole time Dawn was on the phone with 911. We held him there till the police came and arrested him.”

Dawn: “We live in suburbia, and you don’t expect that to happen at your back door. Out of all the places I would have thought I would have actually had to draw a weapon, I would have never thought that it would be in my home in Suburbia, Colorado.”

-John and Dawn Brunetti, horse trainers.

“I represent a group of students called Students for Concealed Carry that sued the University of Colorado to overturn the university’s ban on licensed concealed carry on campus. That case started in 2008 and finally finished at the Colorado Supreme Court in March 2012, which overturned CU’s ban. Licensed concealed carry is now recognized as a legally protected right at the University of Colorado as it’s been for the past decade at Colorado State University. Guns represent a choice, and that’s why I represent the students in the CU case. Guns are about the choice to fight back if your life is threatened. I think that is a corollary of individualism: You own your life and you have the right to defend it and the right to defend the people that you love. With the gun ban, CU was saying to students, “You are no longer individuals when you step onto this campus. You don’t have the right to defend yourself anymore.” And I think that’s wrong. When you take away gun rights, you take away a little bit of that individuality, a little bit of that independence.” -Jim Manley, attorney.

Manley recently successfully argued before the Colorado Supreme Court to compel the Regents of the University of Colorado to rescind their ban on the concealed carry of firearms on their campuses; it was Manley’s first case after completing law school at the same university that he sued.

“I don’t think everybody should own a gun. I’ve got a number of friends who are afraid of guns, and you do what you can to get them out of that mindset. They’re ignorant about it. They’re not stupid; they just don’t know. They’ve never been in a position to handle a gun. They’ve never been out to shoot a gun. I’d own a gun even if I wasn’t in the military, but about 75 percent of the military brethren who I hang out with don’t own guns, and don’t want to own guns. That’s their prerogative. They still like to go out and shoot; they just don’t want guns in the house. A lot of that comes from having kids, because most of them are married with children. And I understand. If you don’t like it, don’t buy it.” -Army SSG Amadeus Weeks, 8th Civil Support Team (WMD)

Weeks’ assault rifles are semi-autmatic and comply with requirements for legal ownership. He views guns as an extension of his personal responsibility to his country and his family and keeps them to protect against what he playfully describes as “zombies” –anything that would threaten his safety or the sovereignty of his country.

“Guns are not in the forefront of my life. I have them, I’m comfortable with them. Guns allow me the choice of defending myself. I’m not always going to have someone around who will be able to protect me, and I have to do that myself. I was working at the Anschutz Medical Campus when the Colorado Supreme Court decision came down, and the first day it was legal to carry a gun, I drove on campus and I got out of my car with my weapon in my pocket. It was liberating. No one knows if I have it or not. My friends and family never ask. I may or may not have it, but people should just assume that I do.” -Martha Altman

Altman recently sucessfully sued the Regents of the University of Colorado to compel them to rescind their rules banning the concealed carry of firearms on their campuses.

“This is a Thompson/Center .50 caliber traditional muzzle-loader. It’s a gun my dad built from a kit. You load the gun from the muzzle, which was the traditional way of shooting before there were auto-loading mechanisms or even breechloaders. You’d have to pour your powder down the barrel and stuff a ball down the muzzle of the gun to be able to shoot it. It is the essence of shooting to me. You don’t just open a box of cartridges and stuff them into a magazine and shoot. You have to load the gun with every single component to shoot every time. I don’t know how old it is, honestly. I know that I really, really enjoy shooting it. It’s a grand old time.” -Luke Sloan, emergency services equipment vendor.

Luke’s father, a mountain man-looking Vietnam veteran who was as kind-hearted as he was rambunctious, taught me how to shoot when I was in the Boy Scouts as a teenager.

“I’ve been interested in the gun industry and gun culture all my life, but the opportunity to go on television with guns was an opportunity for my family and me to put guns forward in a positive light. Far more lives are saved by the use of firearms than have ever been taken by somebody who used a firearm inappropriately. I think the root of the fear is a lack of knowledge. If people knew more about guns, then they wouldn’t be afraid. Some people are actually afraid that a gun will just go off and kill them. And that fear is just as reasonable as being afraid one of your cars is going to start up and run you over when you walk into your garage. It’s not possible. I can load up this Winchester lever-action rifle, set it down on the counter, and if nobody ever touched it, no one would have ever been hurt. Guns are a positive thing for America. This country needs to get back to its roots. We started out with guns; we’re gonna end with guns.” -Rich Wyatt, owner of Gunsmoke Guns

Rich is the star of American Guns, a reality show featuring Rich, his family, and the gun shop the run in suburban Wheatridge, Colorado.

“I’m a Civil War and Indian Wars re-enactor and have been doing that for about the past 13 years all throughout the United States. My interest in guns started pretty much at the beginning of my re-enactment career. We use blanks on our horses, but I eventually graduated to live ammunition. I was mostly interested in the historical aspects of guns. But I realized I wanted to become accurate and see if I could hit anything using live ammo, because you have no idea shooting blanks. So I purchased some modern pistols, and we’d go to shooting courses, either outdoor or indoor, and it was fun. It was something I found other ladies enjoyed. We’d go shooting and then go and get a manicure and then maybe a latte. It’s something that really can be a part of your life.” -Jill Czarnowski, Indian Wars era Civil War re-enactor.

Re-enactors are notoriously strict in their efforts to recreate an authentic historical presentation. Czarnowski was one of the first women re-enactors allowed to dress the role of a Calvary soldier. For Czarnowski, guns represent a significant piece of American history and are a tool for sharing that story with others.

“I have guns for hunting, for sport. If I knew that somebody in my family was in danger, I know that I could handle a gun. We have some handguns, and we’ve shot them on a range, and I could protect myself or my family, I suppose. But for me its pretty much the sport: the shotgun for the birds and the rifles for the big game. We have young grandchildren, but I’d like to teach them to hunt when they get older. I’d want them to know that if you want to do this, it’s not a game. It can be dangerous, so you have to do it correctly and everyone needs to go through the classes. I’d teach them how to handle the meat, how to be ethical. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. There are a lot of kids who don’t even know where a steak at the grocery store actually came from.” -Kathi Streeter

Streeter, 61, has been a hunter since meeting her husband when she was 35. She describes her guns as a utility of that pursuit. Kathi is one of a handful of hunters each year who was drawn to shoot a bighorn sheep. The hunt happened shortly after she had completed intensive chemotherapy to treat her breast cancer and took six days. Sheep are notoriously difficult animials to hunt because they live in inaccessible regions high up in the mountains. Kathi describes her sheep as “a miracle.”

Latino Electorate for the Financial Times

Matt Slaby — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 15:53:46 +0000

The last couple months have been a pleasant blur of travel and work. And more travel. I’m finally finding a few spare moments to recap some of the assignment and personal work that has carried me over the summer. This work comes from an assignment from the Financial Times focussing on the latino electorate in Colorado.

With a growth of 3.5 percent of eligible latino voters since the 2008 elections, Colorado’s shifting demographic may prove to be the key to the 2012 elections. A strong turnout among a demographic that polls heavily for Obama is regarded as significant by democratic strategists; the challenge lies in ensuring that turnout. Less than half of eligible hispanic voters are registered to vote and even fewer show up at the polls on election day. The Obama Campaign and non-profit organizations like Mi Familia Vota have organized neighborhood canvases in states such as Colorado and Arizona to help register and mobilize eligible voters for the upcoming election.

This assignment was a treat in the sense that the most accessible and relevant subjects were literally right out my front door. I live in Barnum, a neighborhood in west Denver that is, roughly, 75% latino. The assignment essentially allowed for me to work through contacts and neighbors who I (for the most part) have a working history with. Those circumstances are a little more usual in the world of daily newspapers but, for me, it’s not always that way. Subjects included Mi Familia Vota, a nonpartisan voter mobilization organization based in my neighborhood, my city councilman Paul Lopez (I’ve known Paul since his pre-political days working as a community organizer), and reportage gathered by wandering out the front door of my house.

Take a peek at the full package, written by Anna Fifield, here: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/db53710a-18bd-11e2-80af-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2AMdGVl3k

Los Mismos Ladrones

Matt Slaby — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 23:01:02 +0000

On October 7th of 2012, after a successful bid to eliminate term limits, Hugo Chavez was re-elected to his fourth term as president of Venezuela. Chavez first entered the political spotlight following an unsuccessful coup attempt in 1992. After being released from prison he was elected to office under a banner of sweeping, populist self-styled socialist reform.

Since taking office, murder and kidnappings have increased dramatically leading some Venezuelans to liken the situation to an undeclared war. Kidnappings are a significant industry in Caracas where the dividing lines between the haves and have-nots are as clear as the streets dividing the modern city from the slums which surround it. Chavez’ public response has largely been to downplay the statistics claiming that they are grossly exaggerated; currently, Venezuela is the most violent country in South America with an average of 53 murders a day.

Chavez’ latest term will expire in 2020.

Slaby to Visit Venezuela During October Elections

Luceo Images — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 12:10:49 +0000

Matt Slaby will be traveling to Venezuela from October 1-14th. His trip will include an exhibition, lecture, and a workshop taught for Proyecto Trocadero. The workshop will focus on helping photographers think creatively about making personal work during events where image is tightly managed; the workshop will coincide with Venezuelan elections.

LUCEO partners with PhotoShelter & ImageBrief for Luminance Conference

Daryl Peveto — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 05:56:31 +0000

LUCEO has partnered with Photoshelter and Imagebrief to exhibit and curate work for the 2012 Luminance conference at the BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center, September 12-13. Luminance brings speakers from Facebook, Google, Blurb, Lytro, 20×200 and more for a two-day, TED-like conversation on the intersection of technology and photography. LUCEO’s exhibition incorporates social media and other technologies to display photographs that encourage viewer engagement and participation.

Rural Cell Coverage for Time

Matt Slaby — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 14:15:07 +0000

A few weeks ago I was forced, at gunpoint, to go to Hot Springs, Montana for Time magazine. I resisted but, eventually, in the interest of self-preservation, I had to give in. Going to small, beautiful towns to make pictures of people and places that are not only familiar, but important to me is just one of the risks that we face as photographers. For anyone seriously considering this as a career, just let this anecdote stand as a lesson: careful, or you just might end up loving what you do for a living.

The assignment was essentially a people-and-places gig focussing on a small town that had managed to avoid the cell tower revolution that spread through most of the continental United States over the last two decades. In Hot Springs it’s pretty damn hard to find a good cell signal. The town is situated in a crook of a valley on the western side of the state that essentially blocks major snowstorms in the winter and shadows surrounding cellular service year-round. The magazine needed portraits of some of the key proponents and opponents of the cell tower that will likely grace the nearby ridgeline sometime in the near future along with a snaps from the tiny community built around a series of hot springs pools that draw a small number of loyal tourists each year.

The hitch? The assignment had to be shot in its entirety on my cell phone.

For me, limitation is the genesis of creativity. Montana, summertime, and nothing but my cellphone? Absolutely.

The facts underlying the assignment were interesting, too, in as far as they overlapped with a piece of research I completed a couple years ago for LUCEO’s Few and Far Between project in which the FCC ties its definition of “rural” to the availability of certain mobile and broadband technologies. Just like everything else, the nation’s urban centers tend to get first dibs and the wave slowly collapses over the rest of the country until everyone is up to speed. All things considered, though, I can’t say that I was too bothered by my time off the grid. Actually, I wasn’t bothered at all.

I hope you enjoy the pictures as much as I enjoyed making them.

LUCEO, ImageBrief & Photoshelter at Luminance 2012

Luceo Images — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 20:56:29 +0000

LUCEO, ImageBrief and PhotoShelter have partnered to launch a photo competition for Luminance 2012, an event focused on the future of photography taking place in New York from September 12-13. Winning submissions will be displayed as part of a curated exhibition during the event – and will receive $1,200! Let’s see what you’ve got:

Luminance is defined as the intensity of light emitted from a surface per unit area in a given direction. Sound complicated? It doesn’t have to be. We believe in the power of photography to help explain complicated things. In the spirit of simplification through photography and the theme of the event, we’ve chosen three equations for you to answer with an image:

(CLICK ANY IMAGE AND ENTER NOW)

Brief 1

Brief 2

Brief 3

JOIN LUCEO AT LUMINANCE. REGISTER NOW

Alena Zhandarova – 2012 SPA Recipient

Luceo Images — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 16:15:24 +0000

Run Forest

Every morning I make a choice to wake up. And take the responsibility for the first step, aware that I create my own history every moment. Turning right I’ll never know what was behind the left turn. What I might learn, from what I have refused, what did I purchase. Every human being Is the labyrinth of opportunities. You just need to hear and trust yourself without any regrets, looking curiously beyond the horizon.

How to save your own knowledge? How to recover and get acquainted with your natural being? How not to surrender the temptations and grow up yourself as a burgeon?

Since ancient times it was believed that the answer is in the man himself. He already knows everything. It remains just to recover himself and take his own sacral knowledge to give something back to the world.

I would like to investigate the instruments of self-healing and nurture of yourself trough the various traditions, cultures and flows. I believe that it is something, which integrates all of them. I want to discover the truth by means of visual exploring of: – the art of internal silence – non-assessment perception – connection with your roots (family, Tradition) – interaction with nature as a source of cognition – addressing to the higher force (belief, intention, pray)

I see my work as the ready-made instrument for resolve your own vital missions and work to recover your unique inner liberty. The project should be made with 6 by 7 format and let in portraits, landscapes and still-lives in a very light and natural way with some kind of experiments with space around. I want to make it much more spontaneous and airily than my previous project. The main characters of my story will be human and nature (in a wide insight). I chose Russia and Spain as the main places, where my story will be born. For that purpose I ask for the financial support to explore the intimate processes of the universe throughout the external world.

Ian Bates – 2012 SPA Finalist

Luceo Images — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 16:12:41 +0000

The New Americans

Growing up means change. It means independence. It means making something for yourself. Coming of age. But, what if growing up meant an unsure future, unemployment or facing a country with immense amounts of political, economical and social distortion. The generation I am growing up with is facing an enormous amount of change that is requiring us to fend for ourselves and work twice as harder to receive half as much. These changes in the United States economy have greatly effected America’s youth, forcing many to find new ways to make a living. Student loans have become a regular affair and college graduation means paying off tens of thousands of dollars in loan money. Student loan debt has out done credit card debt and auto loans at $870 billion and is expected to continue climbing. Unemployment rates continue to fluctuate in our current economic status and jobs are dwindling. As many young adults begin to reach out into the world, many face the struggles they were left with by the generation before them.

This project, The New Americans, will focus on documenting young people’s journey in growing up in this new and ever-changing environment. The project will provide a understanding for other generations of the struggles many of us will face as we grow up and try to make something of ourselves. I will be documenting young people throughout the United States with different economical, demographical and geographical positions. This will allow outsiders to see that this is a national problem, but will also allow them to see the cultural differences and how they deal with the issues brought before them. I am currently documenting young adults growing up in rural southeast Ohio, a place where jobs a few and far between and poverty is rampant. I will continue the project over the summer in southern Virginia documenting young people in urban and rural areas. My hope is that this project will create an understanding for the generation that I am growing up with and provide a historical context for the generations after mine.

The LUCEO Student Project Award funding would provide me with the capability to further my reach for this project. It would allow me to travel further and spend more time with subjects. The funds would be split between mileage during travel for shoots as well as being able to spend more time in far away places. A mentorship from a member of LUCEO would allow me to have a support system for the project because of their members extensive knowledge in documentary photography.

Marianne Bjornmyr – 2012 SPA Finalist

Luceo Images — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 16:10:43 +0000

Working Title: An Archive of No Evidence: Discarded Stories

“Instead of just recording reality, photographs have become the norm for the way things appear to us, thereby changing the very idea of reality, and of realism.” – Susan Sontag

Jared Hamilton – 2012 SPA Finalist

Luceo Images — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 16:07:38 +0000

Finding Oasis

The stresses of life build up on our souls. Work, sex, isolation, alienation, whatever the source there are places we can go to escape. Finding Oasis is about the strain of living in modern society and escaping into nature. The therapeutic powers of nature and connecting with nature are crucial to finding peace in one’s self.

“A variety of studies over many years have shown faster recovery from stress in response to nature stimuli than built settings,” said Dr. John Davis of Narpopa University. “These findings include a range of settings from nearby nature to wilderness.”

In early 2011 after returning to Kentucky from my second internship I was looking for a project that I could truly explore my personal style that was shunned by the newspaper I worked for. I noticed that when in nature people seemed to be able to connect with each other and themselves on a higher level than they can in the city and decided that would be an interesting topic to explore visually.

The project started out as Reconnecting. It was about how technology has isolated us and that we could escape by becoming better connected with nature while becoming better connected to each other. As I worked on the project it became much more than that. It became Finding Oasis.
In Finding Oasis I am exploring a lot of different ideas. The main theme I am trying to achieve is showing the thought processes that would lead to wanting a minimalistic, communal lifestyle. So far I have been focusing on immersion in nature as escapism. This summer I plan to start The National Rainbow Gathering. I have made some contacts within the family already.

I am going to photograph in big cities to offer a more balanced view. I also plan to photograph transients, communes and organic sustainable farms. Since I am showing how people use nature as a form of escapism it is important to get the photographs of people who have escaped the rat race altogether.

Many of the people that I plan on photographing over the course of this year either can’t deal with the stresses of society or just prefer a more simple life. Either way they have escaped the cycle that my project has documented so far.

As a transition from the view of society that I have photographed so far to the more, organic lifestyles that I plan to photograph, I am going to have a section that asks what we would do if society collapses. Who would be better off if the world as we know it ended, the simple farmers or suburban/urban people that depend on the capitalist system to survive? For this section of the project I plan to photograph abandoned and desolate places that people have already left behind.

I have my work cut out for me in order for Finding Oasis to become the project that I want it to be. There will be a lot of traveling involved and this grant would greatly help me to afford the costs of obtaining the pictures I need to make this work.

Leonard Pongo – 2012 SPA Finalist

Luceo Images — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 16:05:13 +0000

The necessary Evil

The necessary evil is a work on churches of the awakening in Congo DR. These independent churches have known a steady growth since the 1990 in Congo DR and are usually lead by self proclaimed pastors who claim to have received god’s powers and heard his will. They organize schemes that lead followers to give money to a cause that is supposed to protect from evil, heal the sick, and carry out miracles on a daily basis. They have taken the social role of a broken system and exploit a country’s failure to the benefit of a few greedy individuals.

This work allows for an understanding of the churches, the relationship between believer and pastors and the power they have. It shows the core of a society in deep trouble where religion plays a structural role and where power is often abused.