The exhibition “Dress Codes”at ICP New York showed some interesting photographs, among them a tableau of Yto Barrada called “The belt”  from the series “The smugglers”.

It shows a elderly marrocan woman who smuggles frequently fabrics from Spain to Marroco, hiding the smuggled items under her blue djellaba.  The tableau shows how she looks with and without the smuggled stuff, revealing layer by layer what the djellaba protects. A longer text on this and other exhibited works of “Dress Codes” can be seen here (check also Richard Learoyd with his room sized camera obscura, Lorna Simpson with her photo booth portraits or Hank Willies Thomas series “Unbranded”).

There is noch such thing as  bad photograph..For his new proejct, fellow student Joscha Bruckert needs your shitty photographs. Send him some!

http://joschabruckert.de/nosuchthing/

..at least I haven’t seen this new one yet. Not quite sure how much I like the new stuff, but I admire him for the great output he had over the years, for his literally fantastic productions and also the other projects he did, like the RIZE film (I unfortunately only saw some parts of it on youtube) or the stage design he did for Elton John (can be found under projects>stage).

The website shows hundreds of pictures and it’s fun to see all the complete editorial shoots he did for Italian Vogue, I-D etc.

I actually came back to his website after I found I really weird editoral David LaChapelle produced for Vogue Hommes, obviously Found Footage photographs from the 70s / 80s with some models/things photoshopped.Very entertaining.

© All photographs David LaChapelle Studio

Adam Bryce (via www.slamxhype.com ) wrote about this work:

“Vogue Homme have just published a series of photographs gathered together by David Lachapelle titled ”The Americans”. Re-opening old family albums from the holiday 4th July, Lachapelle has co ordinated a full volume of images that contain the patriotic pride of the American family which border on debauchery. An aesthetic that differs radically from david Lachapelle’s usual photos that are hyper-stylized, but they still prove to be provocative and disturbing.”

I did a post earlier on Winogrand (here) and everytime I see new videos of him working I am amazed again. He did many great pictures (and some of you might now that I’m hard to please with photo journalism / reportage style – but maybe he was just a documentary photographer?) though maybe even more his attitude, the way he works, the way his passion for photography dominated his life impresses (and shocks!) me most. He did what he had to do, and though it’s not easy to live a life like that it was probably the only way for him.

You find a transcription from both videos via this post at 2point8 blog.

Here are some quotes:

“I don’t lay myself down on the couch to figure out why I’m a photographer and not this or that. Whatever it is, I can’t seem to do enough of it. It’s a pleasure.”

“I think that there isn’t a photograph in the world that has any narrative ability. Any of ‘em. They do not tell stories – they show you what something looks like.”

“The nature of the photographic process – it is about failure. Most everything I do doesn’t quite make it. The failures can be intelligent.”

Related to the first Winogrand videos, see also this one of Joel Meyerowitz, with german comment only.

In a personal project, Berlin/Vienna based portrait/travel/editorial photographer Peter Rigaud takes a portrait of somebody and then asks that person to name another person Rigaud should photograph, what he does afterwards, and so on and so on. The subjects are also asked to write some lines about why Rigaud should photograph the next person, what is so special about them. On his website, you can see some of these texts, unfortunately very small and hard to read – would like to see this project as a book or magazine!

You find these photographs when you click on Projects>Project 1, but also check out the other stuff, some of his work is quite good I think.

When reading various blogs today I again saw good work  of 2 us-american photographers, Susana Raab and Amy Stein (they both also have blogs). On Susana Raab’s website, there is a lot to see, my favourite is the “Consumed” series from which you see one photograph above.

Amy Stein also has various different projects online, I especially like “Stranded” and “Halloween in Harlem” from which the following pictures are.

I think one reason why it  makes sense to show both photographers in this post is because they both have an interest in us-american topics like Fast Food (Raab) or Halloween / weapons (Stein).

I mostly like “Life is a series of small moments I”

elizabethfleming.com

Dan Winters has been one of my favourite photographers for some time now. I always considered him to be a master photographer, but I was surprised that he’s still quite young – only 38 I guess. What I like very much about Dan Winters is that he found a very special way how he uses light and how he shows his subjects. When I see a picture of him a can tell immediately that it must be his, and that is a quality and uniqueness you don’t find too often. He says:

“As photographers, we are hired for our opinions to a certain extent. It will be a visual take, a very subjective interpretation,” says Winters. “I really think the strongest ally (above any technique) any photographer can have is the ability to really look at something and formulate an opinion about it. My goal is to have enough freedom with my clients to know that I am using my judgment in the best way I can, and that they know I’m working hard for them.”

His subjects, he says, have compared sitting for him to ”going to the dentist. But in a good way. Not having root canal. Maybe just having X rays done.”

And there is another thing that is really special about Dan Winters: it seems that he does extremely tight edits, which means that he only sends 1 (!) picture to the magazine after a shoot. This is consistency!

When doing some research for this post I also came across of a lot of illustrations he also does, not only photographic illustrations but also hand-drawings. He’s really talented whith transforming strories and complex circumstances into interesting and sometimes even funny illustrations. Must be a big pleasure for an art director to work with him.

That last one is from a cool story for WIRED.

Now, Mr. Winters has a new book out called “Periodical Photographs” that shows is assignement work.

One of my favourite spreads:

Over at WTJ you find a flip-through through the book… I guess for people interested in book design and great portraits, this book will be a must have.

More articles on the book here and here.

PDN call him a legend and have a nice online presentation with interview here.

A last cite:

“I get up every day and that’s what I do, make photographs, whether I’m being paid to or not. I love it, love it, love it.”

More Links:

@ ppmag

http://www.aphotoeditor.com/2007/10/08/oh-god-not-dan-winters-again/

http://jankesnergallery.com/jkgartists/winters-dan.html

http://www.lamag.com/article.aspx?id=16884

ALL PHOTOGRAPHS IN THIS POST  COPYRIGHT DAN WINTERS.

Ryan Mc Ginley is probably known by many of you, but I just wanted to post him here as I really like his work a lot and I’m curious what he’s gonna do the next years. Here a installtions shot of his show ” I know where the summer goes”.

www.ryanmcginley.com

or on wikipedia

His agent has many more pictures online: here.

One of my favourite german portrait photographers is Andreas Muehe. He recently shot german chancellor Angela Merkel for Spiegel magazine and though he is only 30 he has shot a wide range of interesting people, including politicians, actors etc, but also some advertising. In my opinion, he has found his very own,unique style and makes great pictures with very special light and colours. He doesn’t copy other photographers and their light, but found at a quiet yoiung age his own way of portrait photography (not only). Unfortunately, he took his website down some time ago, there are only few polaroids to see.

www.andreasmuehe.com

More on  camerwork’s website.