©NASA/JPL-Caltech/Michael Benson/Kinetikon Pictures

By digging through the online image archives of various space probe missions, photographer and filmmaker, Michael Benson, has compiled his third collection of planetary landscape photography. The images–many of them close-ups of the surfaces of moons, asteroids and Mars–offer an awe-inspiring look at the desolate places that were once only imagined by science fiction writers and filmmakers. Benson photographs the black-and-white images through various filters to render the scenes in color, then he layers the images with a complicated compositing process. Going through the RAW images, he says, “is like being along for the ride. There’s a lot of panning for gold in the archives, which I really enjoy. And if you’re lucky you get something really unusual. You just sort of know it when you see it.” Shown above is a Cassini space probe image from January 18, 2005, showing the moon Mimas in transit across the northern hemisphere of Saturn. The images are among a collection published in Planetfall (Abrams) last October, and will be on view at the Hasted Kraeutler gallery in New York City today through March 9.  To learn more about Benson’s work, read the Q+A with him from the November 2012 issue of PDN. (more…)

All images © Henrik Knudsen, from the series, “North Country”

As temperatures drop and northern regions begin to freeze over, it can be difficult to find the inspiration to create. When photographer Henrik Knudsen found himself caught on the road in the middle of a winter storm in upstate New York, he began photographing the people in the cars around him and the whiteout environment he found himself in along a stretch of NY-28, from the Catskills to North Country. The resulting “North Country” series, “became a meditation on isolation and disorientation in the middle of a storm,” Knudsen says.

–Lindsay Comstock

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All images © Steven Laxton

Steven Laxton’s portrait series, “Circo El Salvador,” documents nomadic circus families of El Salvador who perform in rural and impoverished areas of Central America. This form of entertainment is an important escape for those who live in remote areas of the country where they face not only poverty, but also the highest homicide rate in the world. This photographic series placed in the “personal” category of the 2012 PDN Photo Annual  and was the winner of the $15,000 Arnold Newman Prize for New Directions in Photographic Portraiture.

The 2013 PDN Photo Annual is now open for entries through January 29. With your entry you can opt to have your portraiture considered for the 2013 Arnold Newman Prize. For more information and to enter the contest, visit: http://pdnphotoannual.com

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Beijing China, 1965. © Marc Riboud.

Throughout time, many Western photographers have been fascinated with photographing Eastern culture. French photographer Marc Riboud is no exception. The former Magnum photographer has been training his lens on cultures around the world during his travels throughout the past six decades. An exhibition of his work, which opened January 13 in Dubai, features 27 images from his travel portfolio taken between the western border of the “Far East,” Morocco, and the eastern border, China. The exhibition is on display at The Empty Quarter gallery through February 13.

– Lindsay Comstock

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©Edie Bresler

The $70 billion that Americans spend playing the lottery each year is more than they spend on movies, music and porn combined, says photographer Edie Bresler, whose ongoing project called “Lottery Economies” explores the trickle-down effects of all that lottery spending. Media coverage “typically highlights big winners and annual revenues generated for education and other essential services, but finding tangible effects in communities is elusive,” she says. “I focus on lottery stories not part of the usual hyperbole. A lot of these stories happen in small family-run convenience stores and marketplaces where lottery tickets are sold.” Stores that have sold winning tickets, such as Azores Discount Tobacco in Fall River, Massachusetts (above), are perceived by lottery players as “lucky.” Bresler says she photographs these stores “during the fleeting moments of twilight to evoke the tenuous seduction of hope and desire that accompanies the purchase of every ticket.” More work from “Lottery Economies” and related projects can be viewed on Bresler’s Web site and blog. (more…)