Profile : Nicola "Okin" Frioli

Nicola "Okin" Frioli is an italian photographer based in Mexico, following the latest Swin Flu Outbreak in Mexico he has worked on a concept on portraying Mexican people wearing a mask on the street, is a good compromise between concept and journalism which help to tell more about what happening in Mexico.
Nicola "Okin" Frioli will also exhibit at the next Photo España 2009

Profile : Julia Wesely

Austrian Photographer Julia Wesely has produced a project which manage to combine the sensitivity to the nature and fashion photography. Her new project is called "Nature in Fashion" , the project is a cooperation between 18 young fashion designer which designed a specific outfit which connect to a different natural environment.
Here a note from her on the project:
The body covered by natural forms and patterns, feelings full of protection under evolutionary colors and structures. Just as nature brings forth an almost endless variety of colors and forms, there are no limits placed on the creativity of the individual. The aim of the project has been to capture the beauty of nature in fashion designs and to preserve this in photos, conveying the fragility of our environment and the necessity of living in harmony with it. Additionally, the project has aimed to foster cross-border communication and an exchange of knowledge by building a network of creative designers across Europe.

Profile : Xing Danwen

I have been following the work of Xing Danwen , she has ranged from classic black and white photography with project such as " I am a woman" or "Born with cultural revolution" to a more concept photography supported by some digital touch in latest works like "Wallhouse" and the much acclaimed " Urban Fiction". I do like the photos done with Holga in a panoramic setting of the series "Scroll"
here a note from her biography:
Xing Danwen is one of the most active and acclaimed of China's contemporary artists. Originally trained as a painter at Xi'an Academy of Fine Art and Beijing's Central Academy of Fine Art, Xing Danwen turned to photography in the 1980s. In 1989, she photographed student democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square and went on to travel throughout China as a photojournalist documenting Tibetan villagers and coal miners. Throughout the 1990s, she chronicled the experimental performances of a new generation of artists living and working in Beijing's East Village in a series entitled "A Personal Diary of Chinese Avant-Garde Art in the 1990s" and became one of the earliest contemporary artists in China to explore the medium of photography as an art form. She received her M.F.A. degree in photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 2001. Since then, she has created critical and conceptual works that explore the increasing impact of China's ongoing transformation. Fiction, truth and illusion often play an important role in her works, especially in the recent series "Urban Fiction," which is included in the exhibition "Stairway to Heaven: From Chinese Streets to Monuments and Skyscrapers" at the H&R Block Artspace at the Kansas City Art Institute.

Profile : Asako Narahashi

Japanese Photographer Asako Narahashi has exhibited in many galleries, his project "Half awake and half asleep" turned out to be a successful project. A book has been printed out from it
Here a note from Yossi Milo Galleries which has shown the project last August 2008 :
Asako Narahashi's series half awake and half asleep in the water is a collection of C-Prints of various coastal sites in Japan. Since beginning the project in 2001, the artist has photographed over fifty locations with a Nikonos 35mm waterproof film camera. Narahashi floats chest deep in the ocean while facing back towards the shore, her camera held half-submerged in the water. By watching the waves without using the viewfinder, the artist times her pictures according to the swells of the ocean tide.
From this vantage point, waves washing against the lens of the camera create unexpected relationships between water, land and sky. With the water in the extreme foreground, the ocean dominates the view and distorts the customary perspectives of bridges, airplanes, buildings and mountains. The images are suspended in moments of uncertainty, leaving conflicting sensations of calm and growing apprehension unresolved.Asako Narahashi was born in 1959 in Tokyo, Japan. She began experimenting with photography in the mid-1980s. Work from this series is included in the current exhibition Heavy Light: Recent Photography and Video from Japan at the International Center of Photography, New York. Her photographs are held in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. Asako Narahashi currently lives and works in Tokyo.

Books : East by Anzenberger (Part 3)

Third post decicated to East Book edited and produced by Regina Anzenberger , this time I will introduce 5 essays from the book. The first one was my essay done on my project done in Chongqing which is technically to be the biggest city in the world. Again i want to remark the great work from Robert Haidinger in preparing the texts on each essay:


Chongqing : The Megacity on China's Horizon (by me......)

Endless suburbs, speckled with fallow land of concrete. And in the distance, at the hazy horizon, shimmers the diffuse verticality of power: groups of high-rises that could delude the viewer into thinking this is a city centre but is simply bigger than the other districts. The new skyline is radiant with indifference, and yet its shimmer hypnotises. No, megacities generally do not look democratic. The measure of urbanisation remains behind urban growth. And when such places create identification, they mostly do so indirectly in the form of barrack villages that can be wiped off the map if need be – like fly droppings on an urban-planning master plan. A megacity has grown up between the Yangtze and the Chia-ling rivers. Two and a half hours by plane from Shanghai, the city is already home to more than 35 million people – more than New Delhi and New York combined. The city is called Chongqing and is a new beginning and springboard at the same time. Chongqing is intended to adopt its share of the 150 million Chinese who are part of the economic giant’s biggest rural exodus in history. The urban conglomeration is already the most important bridgehead in opening up China’s West. Chongqing simply grows and grows, by half a million inhabitants per year, in an area the size of Austria, that cost 160 billion euros, and takes eight hours to cross by car. Whether such anonymous, semi-urban zones can offer real protection? Seeing the jacket worn over the head and the solitary silk umbrella in Mattioli’s pictures can make one imagine it: a feeling of security will remain a private matter for some time to come.

Young Russian : The Post-Soviet Generation by Rafal Milach

No ermine in sight. But no pictures of the losers in the new system either: the people sleeping in the metro and the street children who today define the flip side of the Russian economic boom. And when these young Russians in their steel-blue worker’s overalls peer into the camera, they are certainly not uniformed working-class heroes. Rafal Milach preferred to avoid the commonplace extremes. The superrich and the desperately poor: those images of the country’s sharp contrasts would have been a too simplistic subject. Instead, Milach turns his lens to Russian society where its future is manifest: the generation of 30-somethings. These are Russians for whom the USSR perhaps provided their early upbringing but who have grown up under the dripping faucet of Western pop-culture. The sometimes strange backgrounds – the high-rise flats behind the military jet, the bare walls of a student dormitory – provide at second glance something that soon seems almost familiar in its unimportance. At some point Milach’s essay takes on a dynamism of its own. That is noticeable in the authenticity of his emotional nuances. The more time the photographer invested in his project, the sharper the focus became. Soon the locations of his first images – military academies, correctional facilities– were supplanted by pictures of young people, who often enough became friends. The increasingly close contact and intimacy, but also the variety of the individual characters, thus tell us more, and more exactly, about the mood of a Russian generation than thousands of images of the extremes.

The Legacy of the Curds by Fatih Pinar

Life between old songs and the soil. Resting in the shadow of villages that often only exist in the memories of the old. It would probably have been setting sights too low to try to depict the drama of fifteen million Kurds through the eyes of radical left-wing resistance groups such as the PKK. That should be clear from the range of violence alone. Three thousand Kurdish settlements have been wiped off the map in recent decades. The number of displaced persons is estimated at 378,000. Thus the depth of the loss is also great, along with the scale of the destruction to this people who have their own language, traditions and history. As a rule location is also an important part of cultural continuity. A people defines itself, when not by a country, then at least by a region. This formula is really the basis of survival and thus of the future for this group of Kurdish cattle breeders and farmers. The density, inevitability and immediacy of these bonds is clear in Fatih Pinar’s pictures, which he took over a period of six years. The people and their ancestral homeland seem to be of one piece. The colour of the soil and the skin of the faces, the traces of destruction and the aspect of the present blur into a single, homogenous subject. Even the Kurdish language, suppressed by the Turkish state, seems to have grown stronger. What these pictures exude is a silence with the same colour of clay as Anatolia’s dust.

Inside Georgia by Janis Pipars

Leonardo da Vinci never made it to Georgia. But the “Last Supper”, the prototype of every scene that depicts the communication between body and soul is found here nonetheless. Not once but dozens of times. Beneath the gnarled trees of this Caucasian land and in its dark and gloomy farmsteads. The plastic tablecloths of the postmodern age, which tell of the power of metamorphosis and of the new face of the old table, may underlie the related triptych, but not cover it up. Georgia: wine and soul – that could well be the title. And: Georgia, the country of the grand gesture, behind which an even grander generosity is hidden, and of covered tables of archaic power. Janis Pipars has repeatedly been reminded of Leonardo’s “Last Supper”. Not that he set out explicitly with that in mind. Rather one could rightly say: along the way it was Georgia itself, directly, sometimes in rubber boots, on the dance floor and, in any case, from person to person, from host to guest of honour, from the grey of the periphery straight into the heart. The keywords were always: an inspired landscape, spirituality. That is what flows from these pictures. With open pores, just as sensual fragrances take over a poorly illuminated room where a banquet is being spontaneously held. And never as strong as when Georgia’s spiritual depth is embracing the people where a break with tradition has apparently taken place long ago: amidst the armour-concrete-fragmented structural physicality of kolkhoz and suburb.

Not Natasha - The Sex Slave Trade in Moldova by Dana Popa

A chair seat that has broken away from the frame, telling a tale of falling off one’s chair onto a false floor. A face hiding behind a brunette wig, telling the story of people disappearing behind a tissue of lies. An arm showing the marks that a belt wielded in anger can leave behind. Still visible now, but even after they disappear they remain forever. A white bed sheet. If one thinks of a wedding, death may be the bridegroom. And a terse newspaper ad, circled in black. One suspects the circle will reveal itself to be a noose, or as a tunnel from which there is no escape. More likely the entrance to hell itself. These are subtle signs that appear next to the women or in rooms that they have long since left behind. Other girls will follow, and with them the same delicate fragility that provides the basic motif for this essay. Moldova, the poorhouse of Europe, is a hub for an industry that is just as illegal as it is profitable: the trade in sex slaves. The later stages of suffering are well known: prompt delivery to the meat market a bordello, rape, beatings, confiscation of passports, the pressure towards drug addiction. Often schizophrenia is the result, followed by AIDS. A vicious circle that the Romanian photographer Irina Dana Popa has analysed in all its subtlety. Her pictures are of a screaming silence, of women for whom only one pathway to flight remains: the ghastly realm of inner emigration.

Exhibition : William Eggleston in Paris

Essay of photos from William Eggleston in Paris done for the Cartier Fondation .
Here the presentation of the exhibition
For the last three years, American photographer William Eggleston has photographed the city of Paris as part of a commission for the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain. Taken throughout different seasons, these new images by one of the fathers of color photography portray the local and the cosmopolitan, the glamorous and the gritty, the everyday and the extraordinary.
This exhibition also provides an exceptional occasion to bring together William Eggleston’s distinctive pictures and his recent paintings, an unknown aspect of his work that has never before been presented to the public.

Publication : Lapsus Magazine

A new magazine on photography now available online: Lapsus , nice simple graphic , good choice of contemporary photography. In the second Edition the magazine look inside the interesting Scandinavian photography.
Here the note from the presentation
Lapsus Magazine is a quarterly publication of contemporary photography. Each issue has an inherent but not explicit thematic unit. In Lapsus Magazine, the participant photographers, with different experiences and art views, provide their individual interpretation of this artistic discipline.

Profile :Anna Olsson

I like the different portrait series from Swedish Photographer Anna Olsson, here more on her work

Books : Degree Zero - Yokohama by Takuma Nakahira

Interesting book on Yokohama by Takuma Nakahira : Degree Zero. The book has been release upon the retrospective at the Yokohama Museum of Art in 2003.
Here some words from Takuma Nakahira:
"I believe that photography is neither creation nor memory, but documents. The act of shooting a photograph is not something abstract. It is always concrete. No manipulation to make simple things complicated through conceptualization. Only the real I encountered through the medium of the camera is here in my photographs."

Profile : Gohar Dashti

Presenting another Iranian female photographer Gohar Dashti after my earlier post on Shadi Gadhirian . Even if both photographers working in different style have a common eye to report the post-war generation showing the fragile world seen from the woman's angle. Here a note of his work which I liked a lot:
Iranian photographer Gohar Dashti was born in 1980 after the Islamic Revolution. Her photographs reflect a post-war generation couple in Iran who are symbolic of the times. Because the Revolution never resolved issues of social poverty and the ensuing war with Iraq derailed their social prospects, this was a time of isolation and unprecedented despair. Dashti’s generation has inherited the legacy of war and continues to be entangled in the memories and related realities. Her photographs represent this heritage of violence and how it permeates all aspects of contemporary society by depicting a couple in a fictionalized battlefield as they interact with the everyday—for instance, watching television, surfing on the Internet, or celebrating a wedding. While her couple does not visibly express emotion, the pair nevertheless has a sense of perseverance, determination and survival. Dashti creates moments that capture the irony and ongoing duality of life and war without precluding the possibility of hope.

Books : East by Anzenberger (Part 2)

I am posting the second part of posts dedicated to the book "East" by the Anzenberger Agency. Here the presentation of other four essays printed in the book.


Longing for Maramures by Davin Ellicson

Is this what it is, the better life? Just because the people here still wear traditional dress and lie down in pastures among the woolly sheep ? Or are we only the victims of a romantic image? That should be for each of us to decide, but things are not that easy. Because it is difficult to talk about a region like Maramures and about a kind of everyday life that remains familiar to us only from old stories. Of course: the bread here tastes like bread, and the instruments have not lost their wild musical soul – that’s clear enough. As is the fact that the old women linger after the village festival is over, and that the traditional lifestyle always has its light and dark sides. But all we can usually do is surmise. Because you have to have lived in Maramures to gain a better understanding of Rumania’s most traditional region. And that is exactly what Davin Ellicson did. Here he lived and worked on the northern edge of the country. With a pitchfork and plough, but also, and especially, with a camera in his hand. He probably didn’t have a lot of time to stage idyllic scenes. The hay-sleds and horse-drawn carts, the lambskin boots and party guests, after all, represent themselves. But what one cannot yet see is the fatal erosion of a new economic reality: the influx of money, foreign investors, and an EU style of agriculture will radically change centuries of traditions within a very short time. The rich heritage of Maramures will then be reduced to note on the margins, added as an afterthought to the pitiless annals of the globalised world.

Ark of Albania by Bevis Fusha

A lek is a hundred qindarks; a fox flees through the snow; a path is a thousand steps. A horse can finally run free, perhaps anywhere it wants. There is something puzzling about the pictures of the young Albanian photographer Bevis Fusha. Something is distantly reminiscent of the flickering and poetic shaking that are part of the silent-film era, and the puzzle and its solution always seem to hang in an undecided balance. Fusha maintains this balance when he views his country from the inside, like the suggestion of a trace disappearing in the contre-jour as it heads into the distance. This lack of definition, which perhaps leads to nameless mountains but never to familiar places, may be there for a variety of reasons. Perhaps because the government kept its people in step during decades of Stalinist isolation. Probably also because the traces that Fusha follows with his camera are frequently older and more archaic than much that is found elsewhere in the Balkans. Blurred images also simply fit this corner of Europe. For Albania is a strange land. Countless karstified mountains. A people whose origin is lost in myth. A language that is a distant cousin of Europe’s established linguistic families. And a country name, Shqipëria, that means northing more or less than “eagle”. Gazing through Fusha’s peepholes into Albania’s present, one would hardly suspect that eight European capitals are hardly an hour away from Tirana by air.

Volga World by Christine De Grancy

A single word is enough to bring even the most hardhearted Russian to tears: that word is Volga, and the “Mother Volga” of Russian folklore brings everyone to their knees. More than a river, it is a legend. The Volga is Russia, homeland, fate – and the Russian soul. And as everyone knows, that soul is as deep as the Volga’s waters and sometimes equally impenetrable. Mother Volga unites all her children; the good and the bad, the straight-laced daughters of Yaroslavl, who gaze into eternity from their reopened convents; the Tatar women of Kazan, who know that beauty is a gift that should be packaged as ornately as a birthday cake. Lean back in your chair and put your Gogol away: the stories they tell about the Volga and that are reflected here and now in the waves can be taken with the proverbial pinch of salt. Apparently immune from the changes of a tumultuous time – almost like actors in the slow splashing of an aquatic opera – these inexhaustible characters appear on the banks of the river, and all of them are authentic Volga children. That is evident in the atmosphere that Christine de Grancy has captured in her pictures. The river’s waves are always part of the picture, and despite their apparent gentleness there is always a touch of something unpredictable and potentially violent. Because beneath the surface of these pictures there is always a glimpse of surprising change, a harsh word, a deep emotion.

Belarus Portfolio by Andrei Liankevich

Is the story over or are we still in the middle of it somewhere? Is it the country itself? Is it Belarus that makes reality and fiction seem to be layered like transparencies? The pictures of Andrei Liankevich seem to suggest that at least. For example, when a lonely Communist marches across a foggy square. Or when a soldier poses in a comfortable armchair among his trophies: the naked antlers on the wall and the no-less trophy-like twin sons held tenderly and creepily on his lap – Nestor and Pollux? Remus and Romulus? Cain and Abel? If they are supposed to stand for a dually new beginning, this might take place once again within that historical cliché that has helped give Belarus its sense of unreality. History has certainly provided plenty of signs. No other region in Europe suffered as much during the Second World War as Belarus: the bourgeois intelligentsia were practically wiped out, the number of war victims was the highest relative to the total population, and the infrastructure was destroyed. Later the country was the remotely controlled ally of the old Communist powers, and the same clique is still in power today. And yet the very fact that Liankevich can depict the somnambulistic conditions of his country the way he does is proof that there is a young generation of Belarusians whose creativity is in the service of change. Fantastic elements of an unattainable dreamland and a caricatural focus on pseudo-Soviet deco-propaganda à la Lukashenko provide a backdrop against which innovation has been going on for a long time.

Exhibition : Roger Ballen at Aura Gallery in Shanghai

I am glad such great work is exhibited in China , Roger Ballen at Aura Gallery in Shanghai presenting his latest work and is worth to vist. Perhaps one of the best photo exhibition of 2009 (some good ones still to come tough....)

Profile : Wang Qingsong

Wang Qingsong has sold three prints to the Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles establishing the highest price record for Chinese Fine Art photography. The prints were sold at 100,000 dollars each. Wang Qingsong has worked in different topics such as "China Mansion" , "Beggar", and "Dupont & Dupont" , I personally like the photos from project Follow me which I am using to illustrate this post.
Here a statement from the Photographer:
As economic development takes top priority in China's national policies, the country has changed, and its people have changed even more. Everyone appears full of aspiration and seems satisfied with the achievements of reform and rapid development, which are expressed in the Chinese slogan, "One change a year, one big change in three years, and one unidentifiable transformation in five years." Capitalism has "modernized" our formerly agricultural country. In the last two decades, the economic reform has witnessed significant achievements-for example, being selected to host the 2008 Summer Olympic Games and China's entry into the World Trade Organization, both of which bring it into much closer contact with other countries. This rich contemporary China provides me with a huge resource for artistic inspiration. To sing highly of this new, sweeter-than-honey life of glory, I use theatrical techniques and let the camera narrate true and understandable contemporary stories.

Exhibition : See Italy and Die, Palais D'Orsais

Interesting exhibition at the Musee d'Orsay in Paris which is presenting Painting and Photographs of Italy done in the 19th Century. The exhibition will introduce some important Daguerreotype from that period which have a very historical impact.
Here the note from the Musee D'Orsay:
The "Grand Tour" did not disappear at the end of the French Age of Enlightenment, nor with the emergence of aesthetic models other than those from Italy. Its popularity with artists and ordinary tourists was such that, even after 1850, there was a considerable boom, promoted by advances in communications and in photography.
The nostalgia inextricably linked with the land of Virgil, and the attraction of its still remaining sights encouraged many more images to be produced. The exhibition sets these out around a number of recurrent themes and fantasies which circulated from one medium to another: archaeological and ancient remains, major cultural sites of Europe and the resilience of the ancient world amongst the present day population. It is Italy of our heart's desire, that no-one ever really leaves.

Profile : Paolo Patrizi

I would like to post and talk about Paolo Patrizi , Italian photographer based in Tokyo. He has done a project on Illegal immigration in Italy focussing on the many women who sell sex on the road by photographing the shelters or the sites where they operate. I like the concept used to show the issue on prostitution .
Here the link to the photo essay on the Saatchi Online Blog and a note by Paolo Patrizi :
The phenomenon of foreign women, who line the roadsides of Italy, has become a notorious fact of Italian life. They work in sub-human conditions; they are sent out at large without any hope of regularizing their legal status and can be easily inserted in criminal circles.
Most migrant women, including those who end up in the sex industry, have made a clear decision to leave home and take their chances overseas. They are headstrong and ambitious women who migrate in order to escape conflict, persecution, environmental degradation, natural disasters and other situations that affect their habitat and livelihood. One concern is that the anti-trafficking crusade is restricting international freedom of movement. What presents itself as a campaign to protect migrants from harm is actually making their efforts to flee home, to find work, to make the most of their lives in often difficult and unforgiving circumstances, that much harder. Migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry. There aren’t any romantic notions about sex work being particularly exotic. For the existence of forced migration or that, constrained by stringent border controls, many migrants are indeed pushed to take illegal routes across the world.

Exhibition : Anaïs Martane , Portraits of China

A new photo exhibition will open in Shanghai at the Ifa Gallery in 621 changde road, a series of portraits by French Photographer Anaïs Martane which explore the different faces of Chinese Society .
Statement from the Ifa Gallery about the exhibition :
‘Portraits of China’ is a reflection on the pluralities of China; of the men and women who make what China is today: a country of many faces.
A seller of kebabs, a young factory worker in Guangdong, a psychoanalyst in Chengdu, a farmer from Ningxia or a rock star… the lens of Anaïs Martane’s Mamiya captures them subtly and sensitively, telling each of their unique stories.
Accompanied by journalist Diane Droin-Michaud, the young photographer travelled widely across China during 2007 recording these faces - smiling, sad, pensive and with mixed expressions. Each of the portraits is captured in its own daily environment, whether personal or professional. The text of Diane Droin-Michaud echoes each of the images, allowing viewers not only to discover more about China but also to slip for an instant into the dreams or observations of each protagonist.
Thoughtful and precise, her work pays tribute to the various characters revealed in this exhibition.
Ifa Gallery in 621 changde road , Vernissage: 18 April 2009, 3pm-8pm

Books : East by Anzenberger (Part 1)

The Vienna based Anzenberger Agency will celebrate 20 years of Activity in May 2009 and with the occasion the second volume "West" will be presented . The first volume "East" which represent a photo-essay from 17 photographers was published last year. Is rare to see a photo agency representing photographers by publishing books and portfolios , Regina Anzenberger has been always active in promoting young talents with a special eye on the so called "Former East Countries".
I will introduction the book East in different posts,
Here the statement of the book edited by Regina Maria Anzenberger:
“The agency remains – is perhaps now more than ever – a place for photojournalists with the ambition to witness the world and produce exciting photo-essays that are visually interesting and journalistically relevant. A meeting place for photographers from both East and West. A family, not a factory, dedicated to photography and quality. A place for people with passion. A virtual home for photography in the midst of Europe, the beautiful city of Vienna.” Regina Maria Anzenberger, Vienna, April 2008 Publisher: Moser Verlag München Text: German and English 288 pages
size: 24,5 x 29,4 cm

Here the first four photo essays of the book , all texts written by photographer and journalist Robert Haidinger :

Life in a block of Flats by Andrej Balco


Dolphins are leaping across the wall, their leaps frozen against the blue background of the wallpaper. Then there is the reference to Alcatraz, but the floors of the cells are covered with industrial oriental carpeting. People, like furniture, sit between furniture, but there is also a touch of glamour in the chipboard ambience, not to mention the varied longings in the interior of the housing blocks. No, the inhabitants of these Slovakian prefabricated buildings probably do not behave as uniformly as might be suggested by the exterior of the omnipresent high-rises filling the suburban landscape. Built with the intention of providing affordable housing for everyone, the industrial structures of these buildings quickly became synonymous with a highly anonymous lifestyle, devoid of any individuality. This the point of departure in this photo essay by the Slovak photographer Andrej Balco. Who are the people in these prefab buildings? Is there a prevailing type, perhaps even a prefab person? These unavoidable questions are a natural response to something as stereotypical as these buildings, providing a starting point from which Balco undertakes his photographic exploration of these boxes full of everyday Slovakian life. What he brings to light creates a sharp and varied contrast to the serial façades: dreariness has been replaced by individuals, who have rescued their palms, baroque fantasies and eroticism by bringing them into their apartment block. A bit of heaven on a flat roof, a hint of countryside in the garage, if only as a pig in the boot of a car.


Macedonia Dreaming by Ivan Blazhev

A box is turned into half a knight’s helmet, but between the face and cardboard is an echo of the war; the game with bow an arrow seems anything but harmless, and more confrontations are waiting. Today the word Macedonia evokes the country’s recent past: folklore poses headlessly against a bare wall. Will a soapbox race ever lead beyond the courtyard? This is highly doubtful as well. The year 1991 marked a new beginning for the people of Macedonia. They opposed the horror of war, corruption and ethnic tension with a special human quality of their own: hope. The desires that implies are often compressed into a seemingly somnambulistic situation, which the filmmaker and Macedonian photographer Ivan Blazhev approaches from the inside out in his photographic “road movie”. For two years he worked on the project “Macedonia Dreaming”, documenting the idea of dreams as a bridge between what the people of Macedonia people desire and what does not exist. Geographic or even political classifications play a secondary role here – they are the last aspects Blazhev wants in this portrait of his homeland. The country rather transformed itself on a extra-territorial plane, which is revealed in “Macedonia Dreaming” as its real strength: namely the sum of the personal microcosms, some bizarre, some poetic, that he traces here.

The Girl from Szymanow by Jan Brykczynski

The high wall at the far end of the park – it might have been erected by Franz Kafka. A boundary that is more perceptible than visible and hidden in the soft fog: intangible and hyperreal at the same time. Like the severity that seems to surround the girls’ smiles like a hard case. The girls, the boarding-school and the wall against the temptation of the world. Brykczyński did not exactly make it easy on himself. That is revealed at every glance. The distance between the viewer and the motif is difficult to comprehend. And the place is as alien and rigid as an insect preserved in amber. These pictures have something unapproachable about them, even in those moments when an effort is made to wring a tiny bit of exuberance from the rigorous life of a boarding-school. The sleigh ride across the virgin snow; the dancers in uniform: these small freedoms are frozen here into minor escape attempts that are doomed from the beginning to fail. Education lasts four years at this Catholic girls’ boarding-school in Szymanow, an island to the south of Warsaw and really located somewhere between anachronism and timelessness. Education here used to be restricted to daughters from “better families”, but now the school is open to all strata of society. The rules, however, have remained the same. Clothing, schedule, etiquette: a long list of regulations leaves little space for individuality. That can be seen in the details, among them the wrinkles on bed sheets that seem to be resisting attempts to smooth them. And certainly the flowing white robes of the nuns with their charges kneeling beside them.

The Ferries of Istanbul by Sinan Cakmak

Crossing a bridge would be another possibility, and not a bad one at that: they also connect Europe and Asia. And they also have their place to place in Istanbul life, especially given the amphibious environment of this city. The peninsula and the water licking the shore of its salt, dirt and history, and three bodies of water at its disposal. There’s hardly another city in the world that thrives as successfully between low and high tide as this lovely metropolis on the Golden Horn. Thus it is more likely the traffic and the risk of being caught in a jam, especially on one of the bottlenecked bridges, that persuades many of the people of Istanbul to take the only real alternative plying its way from shore to shore: the popular ferry service. From the moment they cast off from a harbour mole, the real destination is neither Galata nor Karaköy: it’s a quiet moment spent watching the wake receding in the distance. Finally. Waiting or weeping on the waves of the waterway. And perhaps just as important: the chance for a tender embrace where the world is at its loveliest: in the no-man’s land between two continents. It’s no wonder that the announced threat to take the old ferries out of service and replace them with new ones sparked a wave of angry protests and had to be withdrawn. Sinan Cakmak lives in Istanbul, and the motifs of his photos capture the commuters’ trips, their moments of freedom and the range of their emotions as the ferryboats rock and roll across the water. One might say: the music of travelling from the city to the city.

Festival : Month of Photography - Los Angeles

Sound a bit of everything in the 2009 Month of Photography Festival in Los Angeles, there are interesting exhibition and some historical photography like for Paul Outerbridge with his Command Performance and Edward Steichen with "Early Years" retrospective. Indeed interesting the work of John Delaney ( Golden Eagle Hunters of Mongolia ) and Mark Edward Harris with his work on North Korea.
Here a note from the official web site :
In April 2009, the inaugural Month of Photography Los Angeles (MOPLA) will showcase the enormous photography community, inclusive of commercial, fine art and photojournalism. As the second largest photography community in the United States, Los Angeles will provide a distinctive backdrop to the celebration of the photographic image.
MOPLA was established and exists to advance the celebration of Photography, through a variety of events and programs designed to inspire and invigorate the photography professional, enthusiast, emerging professional and collector.
MOPLA's two-fold mission is to advance dynamic programming designed to engage and stimulate the photography community, as well as to present a comprehensive resource of exhibitions and events in April 2009.

Exhibition : Paolo Woods "Chinese in Africa"

Exhibition of Project "Chinese in Africa" of Italian photographer Paolo Woods at the Centre national de l’audiovisuel in Paris, The Exhibition is part of collective together with Pieter Hugo, Mikhael Subotzky . The three photographer have worked in different projects focusing three different aspects of the African Continent.
Here a note from the Project from Paolo Woods:
Only five years ago Africa was considered the planet’s proverbial wasteland: a dark continent full of dictators, genocide, war and epidemics. Back then no one could have predicted that Africa would become the hotly courted mistress of a new development wave.
China’s hunger for raw materials has changed everything. To fuel its daunting rate of growth China needs fresh sources of oil, metals, wood and fish and is willing to invest heavily to ensure supply. While her pawns advance through Africa, China is opening up new markets for cheap goods and recruiting a potential 50 friends to vote along Chinese lines at the United Nations.

Books : Self Portraits by Tseng Kwong Chi

Well I am keeping posting books which ideally I would like to have , hopefully to find them in Italy or in Europe.(no much chance tough in Shanghai.... ), This time is about photographer Tseng Kwong Chi with his book of self portraits.
Here the publisher's Description:
This handsome volume features 100 works from Tseng Kwong Chi's pioneering series of large-scale black-and-white self-portraits, produced from 1979 to 1989, many of which have never been published. The son of exiled Chinese nationalists, Kwong Chi was part of a 1980s New York circle that included Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf and Cindy Sherman. His ironic portraits of himself posed in a Mao suit-with a visitor badge reading SLUTFORART,' in front of American tourist destinations-found their way to Communist China through Western magazines smuggled into the country in the 1980s, greatly influencing China's avant-garde. Ann Magnuson, a ubiquitous downtown performer in the 80s, mused, 'Just who is this visitor from that forbidden land, who is both tasting the fruits of American freedom and slyly satirizing our home of the brave?
Paul Kasmin Gallery, 2009. 128 pp., 100 black & white illustrations, 10¾x10¾".

Exhibition : Narelle Autio " The summer of Us"

Interesting work from Narelle Autio now showing at Stills Gallery in Sydney, her work has always reflected her exploration of the magical outdoor life in Australia using a distinctive reportage style, this time she has develop a project using a concept which i really enjoyed.
here a note from the work:
A recurring theme for Narelle Autio is the exploration of the human figure in relation to water. Her most recent series of works, The place in between 2007 continue to demonstrate a refined visual language, isolating single subjects and capturing them at the instant they plunge into the abyss. Her subjects remain suspended, frozen in time at the point of immersion, as we bear witness to the eternal moment of them relinquishing control to that which encompasses them. The disturbed water swallows up parts of the bodies, so that heads, legs, and torso are missing, replaced with clouds of white bubbles, creating a surreal affect that moves toward abstraction.
This body of work was selected for exhibition in Wonderful World 2007 (held at the Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art, SA). A group show of contemporary Australian artists working around issues of human interaction with the natural world. A full series of Autio's work was subsequently acquired by the institution becoming part of the permanent collection. Autio's significant contribution to Australian contemporary art continues to be recognized with her inclusion in shows such as Human, Hous Projects, New York, 2007 and Light Sensitive: Contemporary Australian Photography, National Gallery of Victoria.

Books : Photography After Frank

The new book Photography After Frank explore the advent of modern photography soon after Robert Frank's famous work The Americans. The essay and text are written by Philip Gefter.
Publisher's Description
In Photography After Frank, former New York Times writer and picture editor Philip Gefter narrates the tale of contemporary photography, beginning at the pivotal moment when Robert Frank commenced his seminal works of the 1950s. Along the way, he connects the dots of photography's evolution into what it is today, forging links between its episodes to reveal unsuspected leaps. Gefter takes Frank's The Americans as a decisive challenge to photographic objectivity, with its grainy, off-hand-seeming spontaneity and its documentation of life beyond the picket fence. Thus viewed, The Americans provides Gefter with a bridge to the phenomenon of the staged document' and Postmodernism's further challenge to image fidelity. Other areas of discussion include photojournalism, the recent diversity of portraiture styles, the influence of private and corporate collections on curatorial decisions and how the market shapes art making. Throughout Photography After Frank, Gefter deftly demonstrates Frank's legacy in the work of dozens of important individual artists who followed in his wake, from Lee Friedlander and Nan Goldin to Stephen Shore and Ryan McGinley. The book includes texts written exclusively for this publication as well as essays drawn from Gefter's critical writings, reviews and even obituaries. Photography After Frank offers a page-turning approach to a subject that will appeal to students and art world aficionados alike.
Essays by Philip Gefter.
Aperture, 2009. 224 pp., 30 color and 45 black & white illustrations, 6x8½".

Profile : Weng Peijun (Weng Feng)

Weng Peijun (or Weng Feng ), he has developed a linear photography focusing on the concept of assisting or the inevitable witnessing of the big Change in which China was greatly involved in the past 15 years. There are different work available on his web site and he has exhibited widely in China and in the world. I am still attached to one of a girl on a wall looking at the skyline from the series On the Wall (2001-2002)

Profile : Letizia Battaglia

Letizia Battaglia has reported for entire life from a difficult city as Palermo, her images are one the few which witness the power and the crimes of Mafia in the 70th, she has engaged a political carrier with the Green Party . I hope many italians could be like her, not only for her photographs but for her thinking and awareness. There is a famous photo from her, perhaps the most famous photos of mafia, about women crying reflected from the blood of the victim. I wanted initially post this image to present this profile but I discover a beautiful portrait of Rosaria Schifano , the widow of an agent who died while escorting the anti-mafia Judge Giovanni Falcone. Rosaria became famous for a passionate appeal during the funeral, her face represent the beautiful SIcily who wants to say no to Mafia and the portrait from Letizia Battaglia is powerfull.
here some more note from Letizia Battaglia:
Letizia Battaglia was born in Palermo, Sicily. Married at 16, she took up photojournalism after her divorce in 1971, while raising three daughters. She picked up a camera when she found that she could better sell her articles if they were accompanied by photographs and slowly discovered a burning passion for photography. In 1974, after a period in Milan during which she met her long-time partner Franco Zecchin, she returned to Sicily to work work for the left-wing L’Ora newspaper in Palermo until it was forced to close in 1990.
Battaglia took some 600,000 images as she covered the territory for the paper. Over the years she documented the ferocious internal war of the Mafia, and its assault on civil society. Battaglia sometimes found herself at the scene of four or five different murders in a single day. Battaglia and Zecchin produced many of the iconic images that have come to represent Sicily and the Mafia throughout the world. She photographed the dead so often that she was like a roving morgue. "Suddenly," she once said, "I had an archive of blood."
Battaglia also became involved in women's and environmental issues. For several years she stopped taking pictures and officially entered the world of politics. From 1985 to 1997 she held a seat on the Palermo city council for the Green Party. She was instrumental in saving and reviving the historic center of Palermo. For a time she ran a publishing house, Edizioni della Battaglia, and co-founded a monthly journal for women, Mezzocielo. She is deeply involved in working for the rights of women and, most recently, prisoners.
In 1993, when prosecutors in Palermo indicted Giulio Andreotti, who had been prime minister of Italy seven times, the police searched Battaglia's archives and found two 1979 photographs of Andreotti with an important Mafioso, Nino Salvo, he had denied knowing. Aside from the accounts of turncoats, these pictures were the only physical evidence of this powerful politician's connections to the Sicilian Mafia. Battaglia herself had forgotten having taken the photograph. Its potential significance was apparent only 15 years after it was taken.
In 1985 she received the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography. In 1999 she received the Photography Lifetime Achievement of the Mother Jones International Fund for Documentary Photography.] In 2007 she received the Erich Salomon-Preis, a 'lifetime achievement' award of the Deutschen Gesellschaft für Photographie (DGPh) and the most prestigious prize in Germany.
Battaglia has a cameo appearance in the 2008 Wim Wenders film Palermo Shooting as a photographer.

Conversation : Bevis Fusha

I am posting another conversation which I had with Bevis Fusha recently. Bevis Fusha is one of the most interesting photographer of so called " New Europe", coming from Albania Bevis has witnessed and reported the slow and complicate change of his country. He has focus his work in different social aspect also experimenting concept topics. He also represented by Regina Anzenberger Agency. Again as for Max Sher I do like to speak about photographers who can develop and see something different in the countries they are born, something that is for many photographers quite challenging.
Here the conversation with Bevis:
DM: You are perhaps one of the few who could translate the last historical
period of your country into photographs although you were born in a
photographer's family what were the most difficult thing to face when you
start to take photos?
BF:I grew up in the dark room of our small apartment in the center of Tirana.
I spent my childhood in the corner of the room, under the pale red light
impatiently waiting for my father to finish his work so I could leave and
play outside with my bike. My interest in photography started in the
adolescent years. Actually, during those year, photographing people
seemed boring and very ordinary for me, something that anyone in the world
could do. Our house was always filled with ORWO films, Kodak slides, 35
mm cameras, medium format, large format, photo papers, dryers, solvents
and everything else that was in the function of the image. My father,
Besim Fusha, was one of the best and most valued photographer of his time
and I would like to add that he was one of the most intelligent who had
the ability to unintentionally serve the communist regime this way
providing for his family by using a 50 mm objective and a Practica ML.
During that time I found my self looking at images more, and looking means
a lot, more than technically viewing the camera. What I can say is that
aroun 1995 I started using Canon F1 camera and I found no difficulties
getting used to it, meaning technically. It was part of the family.
Taking the camera in my hands, professionally, was natural and happened
very quickly.

DM: I believe you have a good numbers of projects done, my favorites are
"A slow motion death" and "Isolation" although I do like your "color" approach in some other projects.
What make you "think" in black and white and in "color"?
BF:Photography is a multi dimentional and flexible generator of my life. My
educational relationship has been connected to the camera. It has taken
many years for me to create a powerful visual language. The camera itself
has become an expressive tool these last 10 years, to present events that
are connected to the society I live in and are of genuin interest of mine.
In my begginings I used color film because I felt that with black and
white I had already created a close relationship to the point that it had
become personal and familiar. Coloristic memory was very important as a
shortcut of humanistic association.

DM: How you see photojournalism these days?
BF:In a way it is interesting. I believe that the colective interests of the
photographers have been transformed in an uncontrolled organic process.
Personal and individual interests are those that attempt to keep
photojournalism unaffected. There will be advancements in the technical
distribution of information in a world thatis getting smaller and there
will be attempts to break away from regulations set by the predecessors.
There won't be any avanguard changes unless the old system can be
infiltrated. The difficulty is in the fact that all media is influenced,
it is very obvious. Almost all publishers, authors, amateur or
professional have an agenda, a mission. There are no more people who do
something with naivety. It seems that naivety has been burried in
primitive centuries. Any agenda, is either spiritual, religious,
political or corporation, or a complicated combination of these elements.
The worst scenario is when it is all the above, where photography many
times willingly or unwillingly becomes a manipulated searvant. I think
that a triumphant formula for the future would be a sensitive subject
presentation with a perfect esthetic-visual storytelling. Photography has
always been a good way to allow the viewer to interpret the inside of what
he/she sees. Each person takes what they want from an image and in
successful cases, all of us take away what we should. The goal will be
achieved by hyperbolizing the core.

DM: I would like if you speak more about Albania and how mean to work
there and what is going on.
BF:My photography is not specifically connected with the geography of places,

even though my major contribution is in Albania, the place of my origin
and where I currently live. I have been and still am an outside vision of
reality, a wanderer. In each journey photography flows as an element of
my presentation. My id is untouchable. It remains with me and exist as a
result of my logic. In journeys photography holds a second place. First
of all there is my facing of the world, and then what I learn, which feeds
my photography. Distances and spaces fill me with fear, photography helps
me familiarize myself with what I learn and leave behind. Such
photographic observation comes instinctively to me. It is traces of my
childhood that come back in more mature steps, as the years go by. In the
beginning, when I entered the media market, I was looking for my fame and
name, but nowadays, my motives are different. I am a spectator, a
messenger, a murderer of the moment that tries to give life to eternity. I
feel that my duty as a messenger is to continue forward and be as
invisible and unimportant as possible. Motivation, determination,
patience, curiosity and the truth are some elements that keep you attached
to the photographic image. The photography that I capture is often
anti-television in its structure, in an attempt to oppose the enormous
indoctrination that TV is feeding our lives, by transmitting to us news
and images that have a superficial meaning. Albania has a small number of
photographers, therefore "my war" takes on a sublime meaning. Also, I
prefer to believe in the uniqueness of things in life. Nothing can be
repeated in a photo, even when moments are recreated. I don't discover
the importance of the photo at the moment of capture, but after, while I
feel it as it is. What photo can be created as absolutely perfect? On
the contrary, what is not photographed is what contains the DNA of the
absolute and perfect. I have doubts of the rightful moment of an image.
I think that values in time are clearly understandable in the hundreds of
seconds and achieve their importance in their solitude. Of course there
are ceses when I go back to subjects and follow them for some time, for
other interests, and I never find the same situations, there is always a
continuous movement. Also, it should be kept in mind that I use
photography to document something, I do not attempt to be an artist and I
do not worry to find the specifying category. I don't believe in the
elite, but the individuals. The Albanian society has surprised me with
its paradoxes, with completely medevial phenomenons that would make it
noticible in all Europe. I think that it is a good place to further study
what awes me. I want to be a witness of what I see and all this is also a
question to myself and to what I share with my photography. I worry of
what I will leave behind to the coming generations, I don't know how to
respect the present but the future and I am a fanatic visionary.
Photography has the most universal and primary role in communication,
something I use and want to go deeper in. I still have faith of the value
of photography and always will. I would like to be absolute in this.

DM: What is your next project ?
BF:I am working on a project that will be quite boring and will have also a
boring exhibition. It will be the capturing of very ordinary, unimportant
places for anyone, almost places where nothing happens, but hide a
dimentinal path, a gate toward death. This is a project that is distant
and I have overcome some difficulties that have forced me to slowly work
on it. Maybe I won't be able to finish it in the time I have set for
myself.

Exhibition : Between the Sexes

Opening of an exhibition in Beijing at the Paris- Beijing Photo Gallery , Between the Sexes featuring different works from Chinese Photographers.
Here the introduction of the exhibition :
Man-woman relationships are the central theme in this game of tug-of-war, in which each photographer directs an amusing battle between the sexes. Whether set up by a male or female photographer, the women are always the main protagonists. The camera follows her as the narrative develops, generating tension (and humor) due to a lack of balance in the interplay of sexual identity. As “opposites attract,” the paradox of the male and female characters become the source of their interaction, where pain is tangled with pleasure, boredom triggers destruction, intrusion leads to resignation, liberty contradicts equality, and sex appeal becomes either a toy or a weapon. Under the spotlight, each figure confronts his/her various roles in relation to the opposite sex, questioning the traditional values of love, passion and companionship.The works of both renowned and emerging artists are displayed in this group exhibition, in which most of them have been rarely shown and some are presented for the very first time.
Yan Zhuangmei – Soap Opera
In Yan Zhuangmei fantasy-world, the young and daring celebrates moments of excitement full of vibrant colors and sexual energy with an insatiable appetite.
Xu Yong & Yu Na – Solution Scheme
In a typical office with metallic-yellow walls, the unclothed female leads a group of middle-aged men in suits, with full control of the scene clutched in her hand.
Liu Lijie – Another Episode II
Tension grows as the storyline of an adult woman’s daily life unfolds, as she is haunted by isolation and intrusion of hostile men in cold rooms.
Li Wei – Dream-like Love
Li Wei offers himself as a plaything for his beloved in the game of seduction, where he bounces around hoping to satisfy her unpredictable demands.
Jiang Zhi – I’m so Bored
An abandoned woman kills time by cutting her nails, “taking care” of herself as she waits expressionlessly on her king-size bed.
Gao Brothers – Opposite
The black and white photographs capture the vacant, inhuman concrete blocks, where a vulnerable yet armed woman hides in fear and pleasure from the one lingering on the opposite side of the wall.
Opening on Saturday, April 4th, 2009 Reception at the Paris Beijing Photo Gallery I - 3pm
Exhibition Dates: April 4th, 2009 – May 30th, 2009 Venue: Paris-Beijing Photo Gallery I

Profile : Helen Levitt (August 31, 1913 – March 29, 2009)

Helen Levitt died at 95 some days ago, one of the first woman street's photographer. With her Leica she has captured the daily life of New York and in particular Harlem in the 40s.
Here an extract from an article of Los Angeles Times :
Using East Harlem and the Lower East Side of New York City as frequent settings, Levitt caught the humor, frustration and delight of everyday life, particularly among the city's poor. She was quick to recognize an extraordinary scene and quick to react."Helen was one of the first American photographers to identify street photography as potentially an art form," said Sandra Phillips, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art senior curator of photography. "She wasn't a photojournalist, she was more like a poet."Levitt bought a used Leica in 1936 and took to the city streets, making children her most frequent subjects. Her images of young girls following soap bubbles down a street, boys waltzing on the sidewalk and laughing at themselves, children playing on the narrow ledge above a doorway like a Grecian frieze come to life, capture the sense of discovery that is part of childhood."There is a sweetness to Levitt's work, but the subjects are serious," Arthur Ollman, the former director of the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego said in a 2004 interview with The Times. "She recognized real, formative moments in a child's life. She saw the dignity of children, they were not strange 'other' beings to her."
Her pictures of white chalk drawings are a historical record of the innocence of children at play. One of them shows a drawing of a bicycle that is so carefully detailed it suggests a wish to own such a marvelous thing. Another shows neat, concentric circles accompanied by a message: "Button to Secret Passage. Press."
"People think I love children, but I don't," Levitt said in a 2001 interview with the New Yorker magazine. "Not more than the next person. It was just that children were out in the street."
In the 1930s, she said, a lot of living went on in public places. "That was before television and air-conditioning," Levitt told the Chicago Tribune in 2003. "People would be outside, and if you just waited long enough they forgot about you." She set her lens focus and waited.
The results were like "fragments of a play whose first and last acts are elsewhere," New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik said in the forward to Levitt's book "Here and There" (2002).

Profile : Peter Lindbergh

I usually dont post much on Fashion photography, I am not a big expert in the topic and indeed i found fashion photography mostly a matter of post production, more and more the final result is a massive re-interpretation of the shooting . Big ability on computer and less freedom of expression from photographers.Few are the photographers who can still recall a style and still can be recognized to produce an interesting work without a massive post production. Today I would like to speak about the well renovated Peter Lindbergh. He is one of the few who can dictate a certain way of seeing and created a certain style which connects to an historical european photography. I wish fashion photography could be always like Peter Lindbergh see it.
Here some note from his web site :
One of the most respected and widely emulated photographers working today, Peter Lindbergh has been described as a "poet of glamour." Since 1978, when Stern Magazine published his first series of fashion photographs, his work has been published by every major international fashion magazine and commissioned for the influential campaigns of the worlds leading fashion designers.Born on the Polish border of East Germany in 1944, Peter Lindbergh spent his childhood in the West German town of Duisburg. Located at the heart of the Ruhr coal field, Duisburg was then a flourishing center of heavy industry. His uncle worked as a sheep farmer with a herd of 3,000, which he kept on a rented parcel of land near the Rhine River. Growing up, Lindbergh spent all of his free time outdoors. The side of the river where he lived was flanked by green grass and trees, while the other was crammed with factories and bordered by ship loading docks.
Photographic historian Martin Harrison noted the impact of these contrasting environments in Images of Women, Lindbergh's 1997 book, which provided an overview of his work from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. "The opposition of the bare tree and the electricity pylon [referring to two images on page 108-109], is revealed as a symbol of Lindbergh's autobiography, a clue to a thread which runs through much of his work."
One of his most well known early photographs, shot in 1988 for a Comme des Garçons campaign, shows three robotic-looking models dwarfed against the overwhelming scale of the machinery in a steam-era factory. The image crystallizes the enormous political, industrial and cultural changes, which occurred in Europe at the end of the 1980s.
Lindbergh's current photography mirrors contemporary life. Describing his work, American Photo has said: "The most important quality in Peter Lindbergh's fashion photography is a forthright, almost shocking honesty. His models seem to open themselves emotionally to his camera. Amid the artifice, they seem real."