© Kirk Crippens.

“Traveling ten thousand miles is better than reading ten thousand scrolls” is a Chinese proverb that speaks to the heart of Kirk Crippens’ recent portrait project. He was hungry for knowledge of China that he couldn’t get just by reading, so he traveled from his home in the East Bay area to the small city Chinese city of Lishui. With just two words of Mandarin (Ni hao, which means “hello”), he managed to meet hundreds of people who allowed him to photograph them and who took him into their homes and into their confidence. Crippens is one of three photographers (along with Maggie Preston and David Wolf) participating in the 2012 RayKo artists-in-residence program. A joint exhibition is currently on view at the RayKo Photo Center in San Francisco through December 14th, 2012.

© Alison Carey.

Alison Carey’s ambrotypes depict ancient marine environments from each of the seven periods in the Paleozoic era. Using clay, Carey handmade models of extinct underwater vertebrates and invertebrates to use in the dioramas she built for her series “Organic Remains of a Former World.” She then photographed each diorama and used a development process that dates back to the 1850s, giving them a blurry, outdated look and filling the pictures with contrasting light to create an underwater world never seen by humans.

Her work will be featured along with artists Tami Bone, Christopher Colville, Jeremy Dyer, German Herrera, Tomiko Jones, Chris McCaw, Robin Robinson and Curtis Wehrfritz in the exhibition “Not Kansas: Photographers Explore Their Own Worlds,” on view at Rayko Photo Center in San Francisco from July 19 to August 31, 2012. There will be an opening reception this Thursday, July 19 from 6pm to 9pm at the gallery.

© 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.