Feature Shoot spotlighted Mahesh Shantaram’s photos of “the colorful remains of over the top Indian weddings.” Excerpt: “I have been documenting wedding sets and little associated details at weddings because I find them to be fascinating metaphors of my country’s penchant for order and chaos; colour and noise; and the peculiar sense of taste and design or the lack thereof.”

Link: http://www.featureshoot.com/2011/09/mahesh-shantaram-photographs-the-colorful-remains-of-over-the-top-indian-weddings/

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La Lettre de la Photographie reviewed the book Proud Flesh, a collection of Sally Mann’s photographs of her husband, who suffers from muscular dystrophy. Excerpt: “Sally Mann has had her husband Larry pose for her for six years, documenting at the same time the evolution of his illness, a dystrophy brought about by the progressive weakening of the patient’s muscular cells until they die. In these elliptic compositions, each part of his body appears: a back and a hand, a seated bottom, puny thighs, a sex, an imperial torso, a dangling arm, a quiet face which evokes that of someone who has died. It seems that Sally Mann wanted to immortalize the charms of each of his members before the illness took them away.”

Link: http://lalettredelaphotographie.com/entries/4135/sally-mann-proud-flesh

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Conscientious showcased Andrew Emond’s photos of defunct industrial facilities in Canada and the U.S. The images, though of bleak subject matter, are quite beautiful.

Link: http://jmcolberg.com/weblog/2011/10/andrew_emond/

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Bryan Formhals of LPV Magazine, an online and print magazine featuring contemporary documentary and fine-art photography, posted my photo essay about my grandmother’s struggle with dementia. He noted that it’s a difficult subject, and he’s right: It is. Painful, too.

Link: http://lpvmagazine.com/2011/09/kristina-feliciano-claudina/#1

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Savannah Spirit, who writes the blog for the New York chapter of the ASMP, posted this terrific bit of advice from Dorothea Lange: “One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you’d be stricken blind.”

Link: http://sharpernewyork.blogspot.com/2011/10/one-should-really-use-camera-as-though.html

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Photo by Bieke Depoorter, as seen at Verve Photo.

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Verve Photo, which is devoted to documentary photography, highlighted the image by young Belgian photographer Bieke Depoorter, along with a story about it written by Depoorter. Here’s an excerpt:

“I took this picture during my second trip through Russia in the winter of 2008/2009. I met the woman a few days before, in the train, on my way to Vladivostok. We managed to meet again when I crossed her little village. As always, she didn’t speak English and I didn’t understand Russian but the moments with her were very quiet, intense and powerful.  I spend the night on her coach in her small old house. We watched pictures from the past and she invited me for a walk in her neighborhood. It was dark and freezing cold. We had to walk arm in arm because of the ice. She gave me one of her old bags to put my camera in, to protect me against thief’s.  In a little cold cafe that looked down over a frozen lake where some people where doing slipping tricks with their cars, we drank tea and walked back home.  Back in the warm house, she gave me a flowered pajama, watched the Russian The bold and the Beautiful and went to sleep.”

Link: http://vervephoto.wordpress.com/2011/07/08/bieke-depoorter/

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Le Lettre de la Photographie interviewed Kathy Ryan, director of photography for The New York Times Magazine, about “Photographs of the New York Times Magazine,” an exhibition that is debuting at Les Recontres d’Arles and that will be published as a book this fall.

Link: http://lalettredelaphotographie.com/entries/3243/kathy-ryan-thirty-years-of-new-york-times

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At Dodge & Burn, Qiana Mestrich wrote of purchasing Photography’s Other Histories. The book explores “the extraordinary diversity of nonwestern photography,” to borrow a phrase from the volume itself, and is a reminder that the Euro-American lens is not the only valid one through which to view the world.

Link: http://dodgeburn.blogspot.com/2011/07/my-wishlist-of-photography-books.html

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Longtime photo consultant/marketing guru Mary Virginia Swanson highlighted “Five important deadlines between July 13-17!,” including the Photobook Now self-publishing competition and Photolucida Critical Mass 2011.

Link: http://mvswanson.com/calendar-five-important-deadlines-between-july-13-17.html

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Photo consultants/bloggers Stella Kramer, Julie Grahame, and Allegra Wilde announced that they’re launching an online TV show called In the Loupe that is dedicated to photo news and opinions. The initial episodes were shot at Doug Menuez‘s Menuez Archive Projects headquarters in Chelsea, and the trio have posted a trailer—shot at the WIN-Initiative studio—so you can get a taste of what’s to come.

Link: http://intheloupetv.tumblr.com/

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Photo by Manjari Sharma, via The Photography Post.

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The Photography Post featured New York City–based photographer Manjari Sharma’s
“Darshan” project, in which Sharma is photographically re-creating images of nine Hindu gods and goddesses. Above is the first image, Maa Laxmi, the goddess of wealth, good fortune, and prosperity. Sharma is trying to raise funds to complete the project, and the post includes a short video in which she makes the case for contributing.

Link: http://thephotographypost.com/blogs/post/rachel/breaking-boundaries-manjari-sharmas-darshan-1954

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An image from Phaedra Call's "I Was Emily Dickinson," a photo project that includes quotes from her elderly subject.

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At Conscientious, Joerg Colberg rightly praised Phaedra Call’s series of portraits of an elderly woman, titled “I Was Emily Dickinson,” calling it “one of the most memorable photography projects I’ve seen in a while, shot and presented beautifully.”

Link: http://jmcolberg.com/weblog/2011/07/phaedra_call/

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Like a lot of people in the photo industry, I’m a big fan of Conscientious, Joerg Colberg’s insightful, well-written photo blog. Joerg, who regularly showcases exciting photography in a variety of genres, has just announced his Conscientious Portfolio Competition, and the deadline—August 31—is coming up fast.

The CPC, as he’s calling it, is focused on emerging photographers, by whom Joerg means “photographers not represented by a gallery will get preferential treatment over those that already are (but of course, the quality of the work also plays an important role).” The winner will be the subject of a featured interview at Conscientious. It’s a prize worth pursuing—Joerg gives good interview. For details on how to enter, go here.

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