All photographs © Jenny J. Norris. Guards check passports at Parliament in Kiev for a Liquidators rally on March 16, 2011.

Photographer Jenny J. Norris‘s images of Chernobyl “Liquidators” and developmentally disabled children born in Chernobyl following the nuclear meltdown 25 years ago, are part of an exhibition and event series taking place at the Ukrainian Institute in New York City through April 26, 2011, in remembrance of the anniversary of the disaster. The importance of the Chernobyl anniversary has been magnified by the ongoing nuclear crisis at the Fukishima power plant in Japan, and the human cost of nuclear power takes center stage in Norris’ images of men and children whose lives are marked by the difficult legacy of Chernobyl.

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© Erika Diettes / Courtesy Charles Guice Contemporary

For more than two years, contemporary artist Erika Diettes traveled throughout the conflict-torn regions of Colombia collecting the stories, objects and clothing owned by some of the more than 30,000 victims of that country’s armed conflicts. She then photographed the objects in water, representing one of the ways in which people are forcibly disappeared—by disposing of their bodies in the Río Magdalena, Colombia’s principal river. The images are printed life-size on glass five feet in height for the exhibition. And a set of smaller maquettes, typically hung in installation at eye level, serve as reliquaries for the families so often deprived of place or body to mourn.

Represented by Charles Guice Contemporary, Diettes’ artwork has been featured in solo and group exhibitions throughout the Americas, and is included in numerous public and private collections. In 2010, she was named as one of Colombia’s leading thinkers by Semana Magazine. A recent exhibition of Río abajo in Medellín was featured on the front page of El Colombiano, Colombia’s second largest newspaper. Diettes latest body of work, Sudarios, opens May 17 at the Museo Iglesia de Santa Clara in Bogotá.

- Charles Guice Contemporary (more…)

All photos © Henry Wessel/ Pace MacGill Gallery.

Since the 1960s, Wessel has photographed vernacular scenes of the American West, particularly in California. Immediately drawn to the quality of light he encountered during a visit from New York to Los Angeles, Wessel moved cross-country to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1971. From stretches of dusty highway to modest California bungalows framed by telephone poles and palm trees, Wessel’s often spare and solitary images capture the idiosyncrasies and irony of American life with a wry objectivity. His photographs of parking lots, beach-goers, and shrubbery — all illuminated by the brilliance of Western light — find beauty and intrigue in the commonplace and document the social landscape in a manner that is casual yet formally compelling. An exhibition featuring 29 vintage photographs taken by Wessel from the late 1960s to the late 1980s opens tomorrow evening at the Pace MacGill gallery. The exhibition is on view until July 11, 2011.

-Pace MacGill Gallery

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All photos © Misha Friedman.

New York City based photographer Misha Friedman often visits the former Soviet Union countries to explore his own roots and to try and understand what exactly is a Russian or a Ukrainian or an Uzbek soul. His series Donbass Romanticism is inspired by German and French Romantic paintings of the 19th Century and it shows how nature and man have learned to live within the industrial complex in Eastern Ukraine. A portrait of miners enjoying some moonshine vodka after a long day underground has won this years POYi award. To see more of Misha’s work click here.

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All photos © Dirk Anschütz.

Upstream is a series of portraits of young people with cognitive and developmental disabilities.  It was produced in collaboration with Upstream Arts, a Minneapolis based non-profit, whose mission is to “enhance the lives of adults and youth with disabilities by fostering creative communication and social independence through the power of arts education.”  The idea of the project was to create straight on, unsentimental portraits that show the complex human beings behind the disabilities. The images were used in Upstream Arts’ annual report and each subject received a Magcloud magazine from the project. The exhibition, Upstream, closes tonight in conjunction with the Upstream Art Fundraiser.

Upstream Arts invited the art students and their families to be part of Anschütz’s shoot. He explains, “we set up a studio at a Community Center in St. Paul and our tightly scheduled models arrived throughout the afternoon.  Since I was shooting digitally, I was able to immediately show them the images on a monitor, which helped a lot with the collaboration.  The models had a wide range of disabilities and our interactions reflected that.  Quite a bit of the communication between the models and me happened non-verbally.  To be in a photo production like this was very unusual for virtually all of the sitters and there was quite a high energy on the set, but being in front of the camera was also exhausting for many of them and often we had to stop shooting after 10 minutes.  Overall  I felt very fortunate about the openness and sense of generosity with which these young people approached the shoot.”

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