- Friday, November 7, 2014 11:17 AM
Stark photos of California’s devastating drought
California is in the midst of its worst drought in more than a century. More than half the state is in “exceptional drought,” the driest conditions possible, according to the United States Drought Monitor. And after three straight years of little rainfall and predictions of a drier than usual winter, there’s no sign of relief.
The pain of the drought has been felt sharpest in California’s Central Valley, long described as the nation’s breadbasket because it provides more than 50 percent of the country’s food supply. Water reservoirs are empty, and wells have run dry. Residents in some tiny towns have no running water at all. Many have likened it to a modern day Dust Bowl, and photographer Matt Black has been documenting it all, producing stark images that are eerily reminiscent of the work produced by actual Dust Bowl photographers, including Dorothea Lange and Arthur Rothstein.
But it’s more than just a photography project. It’s personal. Black, who grew up in Visalia, Calif., the agricultural heart of the Central Valley, has been documenting the land of his childhood slowly waste away, starved of the water that farmers desperately need to keep their crops and livelihoods alive. He’s been focused not just on the land but on the people—the farmers and the workers, both—who are struggling to survive.
His photos of California’s devastating drought, part of an ongoing series called “The Dry Land,” will go on exhibit at 7:30pm on Nov. 11 at The Half King in New York, where Black will also show “California: Paradise Burning,” a short film he produced with photographer Ed Kashi. The exhibit runs until Dec. 13. (Yahoo News)
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(Photography by Matt Black)
- Thursday, October 30, 2014 11:01 AMWhat right do governments, corporations, and individuals have to collect and retain information on your daily communications? What tools — both today and in the past — have been used to monitor your activities? What are the immediate and far-‐reaching effects?
As governments and corporations around the world expand their efforts to track the communications and activities of millions of people, this not only threatens our right to privacy, but also opens the door for information to be collected and used in ways that are repressive, discriminatory, and chill freedom of speech and expression.
It is in this context of massive information gathering that Watching You, Watching Me—the 22nd installment of the Open Society Foundations’ Moving Walls exhibition—explores how photography can be both an instrument of surveillance and a tool to expose and challenge its negative impact. In tackling the inherent difficulty of visualizing something that is meant to be both omnipresent and covert—seemingly everywhere and nowhere at the same time—the artists in this exhibition employ a dynamic range of approaches.
Moving Walls 22 can be seen at Open Society Foundations – New York from November 4, 2014 – May 8, 2015.(Photograph by Tomas van Houtryve/VII)For more news images … follow us on Tumblr! - Thursday, October 16, 2014 11:15 AM'Life in War' –– 2014 FotoEvidence Book Award winner launches in New York City
'Life in War' (FotoEvidence Press) by Iranian photographer Majid Saeedi is probably the only book about Afghanistan that doesn’t show images of war. For ten years his camera photographed daily life in the context of war. Speaking the language, Majid embedded with the Afghan people rather than with an alien army. His photographs reveal the humanity of a people living through decades of war.
'Life in War' is a fruit of the 2014 FotoEvidence Book Award. The annual FotoEvidence Book Award recognizes a documentary photographer whose project demonstrates courage and commitment in addressing a violation of human rights, a significant injustice or an assault on human dignity.
Ed Kashi writes in the introduction to the book:
“ His sensitive eye, artistic vision, journalist’s skills and intimate access combine to create this illuminating portrait of a country we in the west only see through the eyes of military intervention, the deaths of our soldiers, the failure of our policies and the abject vision of this country’s people, culture and way of life”.
The book is available at FotoEvidence bookstore.
Life in War by Majid Saeedi book launch and exhibit - October 16th, 6-8.30 p.m. at the Bronx Documentary Center.
For more news images … follow us on Tumblr! - Tuesday, October 14, 2014 11:42 AM'Living On A Dollar A Day' wins IPA's best documentary book for 2014
One in six people in the world live at or below the poverty threshold of one dollar a day. At a time of great social and economic disruption in the world, people on the brink of survival can be easily pushed over the edge, or just as easily pulled back to safety. The people who generously shared their stories in Living On A Dollar A Day inspire us to change lives for the better.
Living On A Dollar A Day, (Text by Thomas A. Nazario, Photographs by Renée C. Byer and Foreword by the 14th Dalai Lama), is a passionate call to action, presenting 348 pages filled with over 200 color photographs, profiles, explanatory charts and graphics that deliver an unprecedented and thought-provoking examination of global poverty, and how it impacts the poor and the rest of the world community. Most striking, the book offers innovative ways to transform lives through individual action large or small. Grassroots organizations are profiled as potential models and at the end of each chapter A Way To Help lists nonprofit organizations that focus on problems such as child labor and lack of access to healthcare, among other issues. We are shown how change is possible.
… read more and see more images from the book.
Byer was recently named the 1st place recipient for her photographic work in Living On A Dollar A Day for The 2014 International Photography Award for Best Documentary Book.
And for more news images … follow us on Tumblr! - Friday, October 10, 2014 10:38 AM
In the abortion wars, a new ground zero
On this Friday, as with every Friday lately, the police officer was the first to arrive. Just before 9 a.m. he parked his black-and-white cruiser in front of the ornate doorway at 443 Congress Street here in Portland, Maine, then planted his 6-foot-6 frame by the front door.Next, the clinic volunteers appeared. On this particular morning there were three, all wearing neon pink vests with photocopied sheets of paper taped to the front that said, “Planned Parenthood of Northern New England GREETER.” They walked back and forth along the cobbled brick sidewalk, on the lookout for patients who might like company entering the building.A few minutes later, the protesters came — putting coins in the parking meters, pulling their anti-abortion placards from their cars, finding their places for the morning. Most went across the street; a few stood on the corner of Congress and Elm.But one small cluster chose a spot directly across from the clinic door…
Photographer Alexandra Daley-Clark gives us a look at a typical Friday outside of Planned Parenthood in Portland, Maine.
Read the story by Lisa Belkin/Yahoo News - Monday, October 6, 2014 7:44 AMDemocratic Congressman Joe Garcia, 51, is a lawyer, energy-policy expert, and representative for the 26th district, which stretches from southwestern Miami down to Key West. He is an incumbent of just one term — not long enough to be viewed as an institutional breadwinner for the area, but in this unfriendly electoral climate, just long enough to seem like part of the problem in the far-off mess of Washington, D.C. His challenger, Carlos Curbelo, is a 34-year-old Miami-Dade School Board member and Republican consultant who portrays himself as a fresh alternative.
Photographer Charles Ommanney spent a few days with the candidates. Click the link above for a look.
(Read more from this story by Reid Cherlin for Yahoo News)
For more news images … follow us on Tumblr! - Thursday, October 2, 2014 10:57 AM
Clay County, Kentucky: What the coal industry left behind
While the collapse of the coal industry has upended lives throughout eastern Kentucky, it’s been particularly painful here in Clay County, which, according to the New York Times, “just might be the hardest place to live in the United States,” on account of its high unemployment, meager household incomes, and short life expectancies. It’s one of the poorest counties in the nation.
Although tiny Clay County, population 21,000, was never a coal-mining mecca like nearby Harlan or Pike Counties, the industry long served as its economic backbone, employing an average of more than 1,500 mine workers annually from 1975 to 1990. But by 2013 — thanks to competition from cleaner-burning natural gas and tighter federal regulations — there was an average of only 56 mine workers still employed in the area. Today, this proud community in the Appalachian foothills is mired in poverty, low education and drugs.
“There’s nothing here,” says Chad Thompson, the head of a local substance abuse program. “Coal was it, man.”
(Photographs by Chris Usher for Yahoo News)
See RELATED STORY by Luke Mullins for Yahoo News
For more news images … follow us on Tumblr! - Friday, September 26, 2014 9:23 AM
From Russia Above: the Most Amazing Aerial Shots Ever
Since 2003, photographer Serguei Fomine has been shooting Russia’s most attractive natural, historical, and architectural objects from different aircrafts. This passion project has taken him to over 30 regions of Russia and had its share of dangers, including one incident in a balloon that landed in a swamp “with a great acceleration,” says Fomine. By a miracle, his lenses survived. Fomine says his work never loses its allure: “It doesn’t matter what I managed to photograph on that day — a strict geometric pattern of the St. Peter and St. Paul Fortress, goose flock spilled over the Ob river, or the lake in the crater of the volcano in Kamchatka — while landing on the ground I catch myself on the same thought: “How beautiful the flight was!”
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- Friday, September 19, 2014 11:11 AM
Photography from all over the world, in pop-up form
The Photoville festival celebrates the art of photography, from Pulitzer Prize winners to amateurs
He was the face of the horrific Boston Marathon bombings before the world even knew his name.
Jeff Bauman, bloodied and singed, his legs blown off by the first of two bombs detonated near the finish line of the 2013 race, was photographed as he was frantically wheeled away from the scene moments after the explosions. The Associated Press image, so graphic some news outlets chose to crop it, became one of the most famous photographs of the attacks, which killed three people and injured hundreds more.
Bauman, who was 27 at the time, had just been a bystander, there to cheer on his girlfriend as she ran the race when the bombs went off. It was a story that encapsulated the tragedy visited upon all the victims that day. But in many ways, it was the next beat in the tale that was the most compelling: How could someone so viciously and publicly attacked, left with the kind of grievous injuries more normally seen on battlefields, find his way back to a normal life?
Three weeks after the bombings, Josh Haner, a photojournalist with the New York Times, arrived at Bauman’s hospital in Boston to document the first steps of that journey. He quickly won the trust of Bauman, who allowed him to photograph some of the most intimate and painful moments of his path to recovery—from his physical therapy to his moments alone, lying in a hospital bed trying to grasp the enormity of what had happened to him.(Photograph by Josh Haner/The New York Times)For more news images … follow us on Tumblr! - Thursday, September 18, 2014 8:09 AM
'Saul Leiter: Early Black and White' photo exhibit opens in New York City
When Saul Leiter died last November at the age of 89, he was largely unknown outside the art world—and even within, he had been overlooked until relatively recently. And that was fine by him.
A prolific photographer who spent six decades roaming and documenting the streets of New York City, Leiter was a reclusive figure who took pictures simply because he loved it—not because he sought recognition or accolades. “Fame,” Leiter told a photography blog in 2009, “is of no use.”“A lot of artists are consumed by their legacies and what will happen, but he wasn’t,” recalled Margit Erb, Leiter’s longtime assistant and one of the few allowed into his private world. “To him, creating was like breathing. It was something he needed to do everyday.”And Leiter did, walking the city with a camera right up until the day he died, always in search of the beauty of the everyday. Along the way, he amassed a massive collection of work, hundreds of thousands of photos of New York dating back to the 1940s that mostly sat in boxes around his apartment in Manhattan’s East Village—most of them unseen by anyone except for him.
Photos of the day - November 12, 2014.
By Unknown | 14:30
