© Marcus Smith

Chicago-based photographer Marcus Smith was in New York City this week for three days of intense portfolio reviews. As a lover of basketball, Smith made sure to find some time to check out famous courts in Harlem and snapped this photo (not with an iPhone). Sometimes these things just happen.

Fun facts about Smith…he owns 48 pairs of gym shoes, all in their original boxes, loves basketball and, though they lost in the second round of the playoffs this year, the Bulls. Check out his documentary project on the Simeon High School boys team in Chicago’s South Side here.

Blizz writing lyrics. Roanoke, Virginia. 2011.  All Images © Jared Soares

Photographer Jared Soares moved to Roanoke, Virginia in 2006 for a summer internship at the local newspaper. That turned into a full time gig that lasted a few years. During that time Soares got to know the community and surrounding areas very well. While working at the paper he wanted to work on a personal project about local hip hop artists. Even though Soares was a legit hip hop fan, it took a while for the local artists to open up to him. He took it slow, spending about four years on the project now called Small Town Hip Hop. “I think Small Town Hip Hop is at a good resting point,” Soares says, “but I still keep in touch with a lot of the guys that I photographed.” One of the main artists Soares worked with was Poe Mack. Check him out here.

Small Town Hip Hop will be exhibited as a part of “New Works #16: En Foco’s Photography Fellowship Award.” “New Works #16 also includes work by Mercedes Dorame, Yijun (Pixy) Liao, Daniel Ballesteros and Rodrigo Valenzuela. The exhibition opens this evening, June 6, at the opening reception from 5-9pm at Longwood Art Gallery @ Hostos Community College in the Bronx. The exhibition runs through August 30.

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Goats waiting in their pen for evening milking.  All Images © Christopher LaMarca.

Photographer and first-time filmmaker Christopher LaMarca and filmmaker Katrina Taylor spent the past two years filming an experiential film called “Boone.”   The film documents the journey of three young farmers in Southern Oregon. There are no interviews with farmers or agricultural experts. The goal is the experience; dealing with the realities of a season of farming and the physical and emotional demands. LaMarca and Taylor are currently in post-production. (more…)

Beijing, China, 1964, © René Burri/Magnum Photos, from the book Impossible Reminiscences (Phaidon, 2013). “In Tiananmen Square, in front of the Forbidden City, there were mass demonstrations against the Americans in Vietnam.”

Born in Switzerland in 1933, René Burri first picked up a Leica during his military service. Through and introduction from Werner Bischof, Burri joined Magnum Photos in 1959 and went on to publish reportage in Life, Look, Stern and Paris Match among countless other publications. One of the remarkable things about Burri’s career, was that from the mid-1950s he worked with both black and white and color. Often, Hans-Michael Koetzle writes in his essay that accompanies Burri’s new book, Impossible Reminiscences, released this week by Phaidon, photographers are great at one or the other, or move on from black and white to color and seldom look back professionally. “[Burri] did the one without abandoning the other,” Koetzle writes. “….Burri has consistently pursued two goals, photographed in black and white and color, as a journalist and as an artist, which—precisely reckoned—would mean that he has lived four lives in photography.”

Impossible Reminiscences features more than 170 of Burri’s lesser-known color images, drawn and edited by Burri from his archive over the course of eight years, and accompanied by his personal reminiscences.
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All Images © Mustafah Abdulaziz

World Water Day has been observed on March 22 since 1993. Mustafeh Abdulaziz‘s “Water Is Gold” is a long-term project on the global issue of water. Abdulaziz’s first trip was to Sierra Leone where he documented one of its worst outbreaks of cholera.

Above: Freetown, Sierra Leone. Momoh, 33, collects plastic bottles from the polluted beach of Kroo Bay, a poor slum settlement of 5,500 people, November 2012.
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