All photos © Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen/Courtesy L. Parker Stephenson Photographs

Born in Finland, Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen moved in 1969 to the district of Byker in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. For the next seven years, she photographed her neighbors in the working-class district with sensitivity and affection. For her first solo show in a commercial gallery, L. Parker Stephenson Photographs in New York City is exhibiting Konttinen’s classic photos of Byker.  In 2003 and 2008, Kontinnen returned to Byker and photographed its new population in color.

Konttinen co-founded Amber, the collective of photographers and filmmakers dedicated to giving voice to marginalized communities in the north of England, which opened Side Gallery in Newcastle in 1977. In 2011, UNESCO recognized Konttinen’s photographs and the Amber Collective’s films as being of “outstanding national value and importance to the United Kingdom,” and five books of Konttinen’s work have been published, yet her work remains little known in the U.S.

She is speaking at the International Center of Photography in New York on February 13, as part of the museum’s Photographers Lecture Series. The exhibition at L. Parker Stephenson opens February 15 and runs through May 11.
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© Christian Marclay, “Silence (The Electric Chair)”

Throughout photography’s history, photographers have strived to document a new perspective on the world around them. But an exhibition on view at the Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco explores what gallery owner Jeffrey Fraenkel calls “a parallel history in which photographers and other artists have attempted to describe by photographic means that which is not so readily seen: thought, time, ghosts, god, dreams.” “The Unphotographable,” on view through March 23, features roughly 50 works by photographers from every era and genre who use a variety of techniques to depict the unseen, the hidden or the merely imagined. They include pioneers like Alfred Stieglitz, Clarence John Laughlin, Diane Arbus and Man Ray, contemporary photographers such as Adam Fuss, Idris Khan, Chris McCaw, Jay DeFeo, Wolfgang Tillmans and Paul Graham, and some photographers who worked anonymously. Their images range from the abstract to the spooky. (more…)

Photo © Sam Kaplan
Still-life photographer Sam Kaplan is known for creating striking designs from humble, disposable objects. For his latest direct-mail promo, which he mailed out over the holidays, Kaplan used party blowers. “I wanted to do something graphic and precise but somehow celebratory as well,” says the photographer, who is represented by Candace Gelman.

PDN wishes all our readers a very happy, peaceful 2013.

All photos © Joseph E. B. Elliott.

Many photographers have documented the monumental steel mills of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (one of more than a dozen US cities named for the holy site on the minds of Christians this day). They include Walker Evans, who photographed the city in the 1930s for the Farm Security Administration. Joseph E.B. Elliott, who specializes in photographing historic industrial and architectural sites, took more than 1,000 images of the mills from 1989 to 1996, when Bethlehem Steel closed down. His new book of photographs, The Steel, will be published in February by Columbia College Chicago Press. “I certainly feel that I followed the footsteps of Walker Evans,” says Elliott, who shot black-and-white film using a Horseman monorail and an old Linhof Techinika. “I tried to maintain Evans’ dispassionate stance and clarity, but occasionally slipped into a more romantic response to the overwhelming scale and beauty of the place.”

A professor of art at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, Elliott has been published in Smithsonian, Wired,  Metropolis and other publications, and his photos are in the collection of the Library of Congress. “In that sense, they reside near Evans’ great FSA work,” he says.

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All photos © Maciek Jasik/Courtesy of Daniel Cooney Fine Art

The large-scale figures in Maciek Jasik‘s series “Bypassing the Rational” were originally inspired by Post-Impressionist painting, and the images take viewers into an endless sea of color. The fine-art and editorial portrait says that with this series, “I am knowingly retreating from the details which draw and entice us, and which allow us to judge.” Jasik’s first solo show, scheduled to open November 1 at Daniel Cooney Fine Art in the Chelsea section of Manhattan, was put “on hold” as a result of the flooding and power outage to the building and the neighborhood during Hurricane Sandy.

Gallery owner Daniel Cooney reports that the show is up, and when the building can reopen, the exhibition will be extended after its originally scheduled closing date of December 22.

Like many gallery owners in lower Manhattan, Daniel Cooney continues to be in touch with collectors and artists. His online auction also continues: www.danielcooneyfineart.com/online_auctions.html

Above: “Sica, 2012″
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