Winter Stories #6, 2007 © Paolo Ventura/Courtesy of Hasted Hunt Kraeutler, NYC

Paolo Ventura‘s Winter Stories are narratives set in a small fictional Tuscan village in the early 1950′s; an imagined place full of dream-like memories. A reception for the artist will be on Wednesday, December 9th, 6–8pm. Winter Stories will be on view December 10, 2009–January 23, 2010, at Hasted Hunt Kraeutler, 537 West 24th Street, New York City. The exhibit is in conjunction with the release of a new monograph Winter Stories, published by Aperture.

© Ben Fink

This photo, taken in Claryville, N.Y., is part of a series by Ben Fink titled Shadow Realms. View more at www.benfinkphoto.com. Fink is represented by Hennessy Represents.

© Billy Weeks

Boys play baseball in a cow pasture in San Gregorio, Nicaragua. Major League Baseball teams scout villages in Nicaragua and other Latin countries to find young players. See more images of Central America by photographer Billy Weeks on his web site.

© James Walker

This image, from James Walker’s series of pictures of his dogs, was honored earlier this year in the Animal category of the PDN Faces contest. See more winners in the PDN Faces gallery.

Hey animal photographers: PDN is now accepting entries in the Best Friends Photo Contest. Every entry includes a $2 donation to an animal welfare charity: Your choice of the Best Friends Animal Society, Kids Saving the Rainforest, or the ASPCA. The deadline to enter is December 22. This contest is sponsored by Kodak and the PDN Photoplus International Conference + Expo.

Self-Portrait, Pre-Mastectomy, November 2005. All photos © Kerry Mansfield

San Francisco-based photographer Kerry Mansfield was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005, and photographed this series of self-portraits during her treatment. In her statement about the project, she writes:

As a photographer, I’ve spent most of my career looking deeply into the spaces we inhabit. The idea of Home – what it meant and how it felt, preoccupied my thinking. Almost all my pictures were of the spaces we live in or the things we live with. But at the age of 31, a diagnosis of breast cancer forced me to redefine my ideas of home.

Needless to say it came as quite a shock. I had exercised and eaten correctly, and like many of my age, I felt indestructible, never thinking the most basic of dwellings could be lost. Faced with the nihilistic process of radical chemotherapy and surgery, my ideas of “where” I exist turned inward. As the doctors, with their knives and chemistry broke down the physical structure in which I lived, the relationship between the cellular self and the metaphysical self became glaringly clear. My body may not be me, but without it, I am something else entirely. I knew that my long held image of myself would be shattered. What would emerge would be a mystery.

It was in that spirit of unknown endings, that I picked up my camera to self document the catharsis of my own cancer treatment. No one was there when these pictures were made, just my dissolving ideas of self and a camera. And what began as a story that could have ended in many ways, this chapter, like my treatment, has now run its course. While I can’t say everything is fine now, I will say, “These are the images of my Home – as it was then”, and with a little luck, there will be no more to come.

Several images from the series follow, and more are viewable on Mansfield’s web site.
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