All photos © Martin Roemers

There are now 7 billion people on earth, and according the United Nations Population Fund, one half of us live in cities. Martin Roemers has been photographing the world’s megacities, sprawling urban areas inhabited by millions, capturing their chaos, humanity and dynamism. “Metropolis,” Roemers’ first North American exhibition, opens February 29 at Anastasia Photo, a New York City gallery specializing in documentary photography and photojournalism. The show runs through April 1.

Above: Calcutta.

Cairo Traffic Square.

Mumbai Train Station.

Manila.

Jakarta.

"Luxembourg," 1923-1925. Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Abbott-Levy Collection. Partial gift of Shirley C. Burden.

The Museum of Modern Art’s exhibit on Eugène Atget is named after the sign that hung outside of the photographer’s studio door, which simply said “Documents pour artistes” (Documents for Artists). Atget photographed Paris over the course of his 30-year career with the artist in mind, often capturing detail-rich scenes like an abandoned park or rural courtyard that could serve as source material for painters and others. Taking care to avoid cliché sites such as the Eiffel Tower, Atget instead “focused on the fabric of the city,” including parks, street scenes, store displays and building facades. The rare times Atget did photograph his fellow Parisians, he focused his camera on those living on the fringes of society: street merchants, Gypsies and prostitutes.

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All Photos © Jan Staller.

On view through March 2nd “Heavy Duty Landscapes” an exhibit of Jan Staller’s  photographs at ISE Cultural Foundation in New York.

Staller, photographer for more than 30 years, is known for his surreal twilight views of urban and industrial landscapes. More recently he has been working by day and this exhibit features sixteen large format photographs.  At construction sites, recycling plants, and the sides of roads,  Staller manages to find beauty amidst the blight, and presents it with a colorful, graphic esthetic.

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All Photos © Corey Arnold.

Corey Arnold’s monograph Fish-Work: The Bering Sea, published by Nazraeli Press in association with Charles A. Hartman Fine Art, was recognized in the Photo Books category of last year’s Photo Annual. Corey Arnold worked as a crab fisherman in the Bering Sea waters off Alaska for seven years and lived to photograph the experience.

Still photos and videos submitted so far to the 2012 PDN Photo Annual include explorations of a wide range of personal, political, social and artistic issues.

The last chance to submit your personal work, photo book, advertising and editorial assignments, videos, Web sites and other recent work to the PDN Photo Annual is only days away. For information, visit the PDN Photo Annual gallery online very soon. We look forward to seeing what photographers have been exploring over the past year.

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Corey Arnold discusses his largest solo exhibition to date, Wolf Tide, at Richard Heller Gallery, and shares a slide show of his recent work.

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© Evgenia Arbugaeva. Above: Kolyada, 2011.
“The image is from the little town Tiksi on the Arctic coast of Russia.  Tanya and Pasha participate in Kolyada – a traditional Christmas Eve ritual when children dress up in costumes and walk house to house greeting people, singing and sifting grain that denotes best wishes, and receive candy and small change in return.”  – Evgenia Arbugaeva

Evgenia Arbugaeva is one of 50 photographers in the Critical Mass 2011 exhibition Contents: Love, Anxiety, Happiness & Everything Else at Photo Center NW. This exhibition, juried by Darius Himes, will also travel to Newspace Center for Photography in Portland, and RayKo Photo Center in San Francisco, furthering the mission of all four photography organizations to bring top emerging talent to the public.