All images ©Frank Hallam Day

Frank Hallam Day‘s artistic interests revolve around the themes of culture and history, and humanity’s footprint on the natural world. For months he traveled around Florida, photographing recreational vehicles lodged in jungle settings at night. He used hand-held lights and a tripod; the RV occupants never knew he was there. The resulting images, he explains in an artist’s statement, suggest alienation from dark, ominous nature. “[The RVs] crouch like steel insects in the woods, shining, hard carapaces protecting a soft interior. They brand themselves with labels asserting a desired yet ironically thwarted relationship with nature:  Escaper, Conquest, Sunset Trail, Wilderness, Cougar, Falcon…Nothing is more American than an RV, but these pictures suggest other impulses underlying the sheen of the American dream:  flight, concealment, isolation, bewilderment and withdrawal.” Kehrer Verlag has published the work in Hallam’s new book Nocturnal, which will be available March 19. (more…)

All images © Alejandro Cartagena

Alejandro Cartagena’s “Car Poolers” exhibition at Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles opened this weekend. The exhibition runs through April 6th.  Visit Kopeikin Gallery or Alejandro Cartagena‘s website for more information.
Cartagena’s “Car Pooler’s placed into the Personal Work category for the 2012 PDN Photo Annual. The 2013 PDN Photo Annual FINAL deadline is today! Visit http://pdnphotoannual.com.
(more…)

All photos © Emiliano Granado.

Commercial and editorial photographer Emiliano Granado had been shooting several fun, family-focused travel assignments for Budget Travel. When he and a writer were brainstorming ideas for the next assignment, Granado suggested a cruise. He had never been on one, but was interested in it as a photographic experiment. Granado says, “From the beginning, I knew I would photograph this cruise two ways—for the magazine, and for myself,  turning it into a personal project. After 5 days on the boat and 60 or 70 rolls of 220, I was on the shuttle bus from the boat to the terminal and the first thing out of my mouth was, ‘Thank God that’s over.’” Granado blogged about the lessons he learned from photographing this story.

(more…)

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Late 1980′s # 5-5

After moving to the south side of Williamsburg, Brooklyn in 1988, James Cathcart became interested in observing, documenting and working with the process of ‘car stripping’. In the height of the crack cocaine epidemic, Williamsburg was a convenient neighborhood for the dismantling of stolen cars and the resale of used car parts. His observation of car stripping and disposal in Williamsburg continued through the mid nineties — when the neighborhood began changing rapidly.

Boneyards opens June 1st at Causey Contemporary Gallery in Williamsburg. The show runs until July 15th.
(more…)

All Photos © Jaime Permuth

“Yonkeros,’ a Spanglish derivative of ‘junk,’ is a term for the people and businesses that strip wrecked cars and sell them for parts or scrap metal. Jaime Permuth’s recent body of work Yonkeros, shot over the course of one year, examines the landscape of the junkyards in the Willets Point section of Queens, New York. “In fair weather, this is strenuous, backbreaking work; when the frost sets in it becomes downright monumental”, Permuth says, noting that most of the mechanics grew up in tropical climates of Latin American.

For Permuth, Yonkeros became a lyrical exploration of first world consumerism, waste, and obsolescence as they intersect with third world ingenuity and survivalist strategies in this no-man’s-land of Queens. Now, the days of the Yonkeros are numbered. The City of New York has cleared the last hurdles to redevelop the area for commercial and residential use, and Mayor Mayor Bloomberg himself recently broke ground for the project. “What will become of these 250 businesses, the men who make their livelihoods there and the working-class families who depend on them for the affordable and fast service they provide?  No answers are forthcoming yet,” Permuth says.  “Willets Point is destined to become another urban legend, one which future generations of our glossy metropolis will have a hard time accepting was ever true.” Permuth’s work is on view in an exhibition at Pregones Gallery in the Bronx, through April 28th.

Yonkeros will be published as a book by La Fabrica Editorial in Madrid and distributed worldwide.  Permuth is a Guatemalan photographer based in New York City.  He teaches in the Master of Professional Studies in Digital Photography program at the School of Visual Arts.

(more…)