© Alec Soth. Falls 26, 2005.

The first major survey of Alec Soth’s career, including work from his series Niagra, Sleeping by the Mississippi and the Last Days of W, is on view now until January 2, 2011 at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. The exhibition includes a selection of rarely seen early black-and-white work as well as his newest series, Broken Manual, exploring individuals who seek to flee civilization for a life “off the grid.”

Working in the photographic tradition of road photography established by such figures as Walker Evans, Robert Frank, William Eggleston and Stephen Shore, Soth captures striking large-scale color images often using just an 8 x 10 field camera. From Here To There: Alec Soth’s America reveals through personal narrative Soth’s poignant view of changing America. Soth remains one of the most compelling voices in contemporary photography today.

The Walker Art Center has published a catalogue of the exhibition with more than 100 images and it includes essays by the show’s curator Siri Engberg, curator and art historian Britt Salvesen and critic Barry Schwabsky. The catalogue is included in PDN’s Most Notable Books of the Year.

(more…)

© Myriam Babin

The fate of this porcine beast was sealed at the Brown Café. It’s pigheadedness was documented by Myriam Babin as part of an ongoing personal project on New York City restaurant kitchens. More images from Babin’s series can be seen in the PDN Self-Promo Awards 2010 online gallery.

© Herb Ritts Foundation, Courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles. Above: Philip Seymour Hoffman 1, Los Angeles, 1999.

The late Herb Ritts, one of the most influential photographers of the Nineties by PDN readers, is being celebrated this fall with two retrospectives. “Herb Ritts: Twenty-Five Years,” an exhibition of his fashion photographs and portraits from the late Seventies until his death in 2002, is on view at Fahey/Klein Gallery in Los Angeles until December 4. Also, Rizzoli has just published his biography, Herb Ritts: The Golden Hour, edited by friend, colleague and Vogue art director Charles Churchward.
Warning: Some of the photos below contain nudity.

(more…)

© Ouka Leele. “Mi amiga Chuslan” Chus Lampreave haciendo de modelo para la joyería Ganodlfi, 2006.

Ouka Leele’s image is part of The Spanish National Photography Prize: Connections and Confrontations, a group exhibition exploring Spain’s photographic history and changing creative identity over the last sixty years. Displayed together for the first time in the United States, over sixty-five works by fifteen Spanish photographers—each a recipient of the Ministry of Culture’s esteemed Spanish National Photography Prize—illuminate the evolution of Spanish photographic art, captured through the lenses of some of the nation’s most respected artists. The exhibition opens November 19th, 2010 and runs through January 11, 2011 at Aperture Gallery in New York’s Chelsea art district.

Above:“My friend Chuslan” Chus Lampreave posing as a model for Ganodlfi jewelry.

All photos © Abelardo Morell. Above: Photographed with a tent camera on a rooftop capturing the view view of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Abelardo Morell’s camera obscura technique has taken him from photographing his own living room to interiors across the globe. “One of the satisfactions I get from making this imagery comes from my seeing the weird and yet natural marriage of the inside and outside”,  he says. In setting up a room to make this kind of photograph he covers all windows with plastic in order to achieve total darkness. Then he cuts one small hole in the materials that he uses to cover the windows. An inverted image of the view outside then floods onto the walls in the room. He focuses the large-format camera on the incoming image on the wall and exposes the film.
Morell recently designed a light proof tent that, via periscope type optics, makes it possible to project a view of the nearby landscape onto whatever ground is under the tent. Inside this darkened space he uses a view camera to record the effect. He says, “I think it is a rather wonderful sandwich of two outdoor realities coming together. This Tent-Camera now liberates me to use camera obscura techniques in a world of new places. I now have a portable room, so to speak.”

Currently Morell’s work is on view in the exhibition, Groundwork, at the Bonni Benrubi Gallery and another exhibition, The Universe Next Door, at the Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery.

(more…)