Scenes from Aziz Ansari’s adventure in Tokyo with David Chang and and James Murphy.  All Images © Ture Lillegraven.

In late 2011, photographer Ture Lillegraven traveled to Tokyo with captains of their industries – comedian Aziz Ansari, chef David Chang, musician/producer James Murphy and GQ writer Brett Martin. Avid Twitter-user Ansari posted that he and his pals should go to Tokyo with the caveat that someone else should pay for it. GQ answered, and obliged. The photographic result was a smattering of energetic, fun and colorful Lillegraven images. It’s safe to say they had a good time. Lillegraven compiled outtakes from the Tokyo shoot in a promo book he sent out earlier this year, simply called “TURE: Three Photographic Projects from Ture Lillegraven” that included this adventure, Bon Iver frontman Justin Vernon photographed in rural Wisconsin and the band Milo Greene shot in Big Sur, California.

Aziz Ansari is currently on tour. Check him out tonight at the Palace Theatre in Albany, NY.

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All Images © Glen Luchford / Dashwood Books

Damaged Negatives,  the new book by fashion photographer Glen Luchford, makes something beautiful out of what sounds like a disaster for any photographer: Several of Luchford’s negatives, including images of Kate Moss and other models, were damaged by water.

“I put the images in storage for two weeks, which turned into two months. The entire storage unit flooded and the owner didn’t tell anyone, so by the time I arrived, the images were just mostly gone or in a state of high deterioration.” But Luchford, who has shot for Italian Vogue, The Face, Prada, Saint Laurent among other clients, was intrigued by the way water subverted his images.  Beautiful faces are obscured by oxidation; couture clothing appears burned. Luchford has said in interviews that he isn’t sure why he treated the negatives so carelessly in the first place, but once they were transformed, he wanted to exhume record them.

Damaged Negatives is published by Dashwood Books, the independent bookstore and publisher, in a limited edition of 1,000 copies.

 ”Lady Gaga – Head, You & I,” 2011. Pigment print. © Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin

From a portrait of Lady Gaga’s male alter-ego, to a digitally composited three-headed nude woman, to flower still lifes, to unusual celebrity portraits, the photography duo Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin have locked in on a unique niche in the image-making industry, gracefully straddling the commercial and fine-art worlds. If their eye-popping and often awe-inspiring imagery is not intended to turn heads, maybe we’ve misunderstood their work. The team, who has been at it for 25 years–both on set as a collaborative photography team, and off, as a romantic partnership–has been dreaming up vivid and imaginative photographic narratives that have garnered them a dream client list, from the world’s top fashion houses to editorials in high-profile magazines to major museum and gallery exhibitions.

An exhibition of their work, hung in groupings of three to juxtapose their diverse subject matter, is on view at Gagosian Gallery in Paris through March 9. To read an in-depth profile of the photographers and view an online photo gallery from the April 2012 printed issue of PDN magazine, visit this link.

– Lindsay Comstock

Editor’s note: Some of the images that follow contain nudity.

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© Damon Winter. Above: March 6. Charlotte, NC. Joe Biden speaks to the crowd on the third day of the Democratic National Convention at the Charlotte Convention Center/Time Warner Cable Arena.

The exhibit “Politics in Play” presents three very distinct styles of campaign photography by Damon Winter, Lauren Fleishman, & Ricardo Cases. Looked at side by side, their three approaches can serve as vibrant shorthand for some of the messages, stances, and moods of this election. With his dramatic capturing of shadows and light, Damon conveys the staged aspects of the process. At the other end of the spectrum, Ricardo’s pictures, strobed and super-bright, play on an idealized—even neutralized—vision of America, replete with blue skies, perfect white teeth, and success within reach. And Lauren’s photos, shot in black and white, lend a classic, timeless feel to their unscripted moments. Expectations are in check for November 6th; perhaps, latent in this rich imagery, are portents for that day’s results. – courtesy Anna Van Lenten

Damon Winteris a staff photographer for The New York Times. Lauren Fleishman is a freelance photographer. She followed the 2012 Romney campaign for Time magazine. Ricardo Cases is a freelance photographer who covered the Republican primary in Florida for Time.

“Politics in Play” will be on view at The Half King in New York City. Join the opening night discussion with Paul Moakley (deputy photo editor at Time) & Cornelius Schmid (picture editor at The New York Times) on  Tuesday, November 13, 2012 at 7:30pm.

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© David LaChapelle.

Photographer David LaChapelle will be presenting a keynote, “Artist or Artless?” at PDN’s Photo Plus Expo on Friday Oct. 26 at the Javits Center. “In his series Earth Laughs in Flowers, “LaChapelle conveys the obsessions and compulsions of his own time. On the compositional level, things are not arranged neatly in front of us, in order to enable us to decipher them. There is much overlapping, and photography has been extended to include the technique of collage.  LaChapelle is always concerned with the “that-has-been” of photography. Despite all subsequent editing, his presentations must have existed, even if only for a brief instant.” – Kristin Schrader.
LaChapelle’s exhibit “Still Life” opens at the Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York on November 27 and runs through January 19, 2013. His exhibit “Burning Beauty” at Fotografiska Museet, Stockholm is on view from November 30, 2012 through March 3, 2013.