For Your Viewing Pleasure
>> Dec 24, 2008
When I was in Atlanta, one of the photographers that reviewed my portfolio told me "I can see your vision, I like the way you see, and I can tell you look at a lot of other photography." He's right, I look at a ton of photography. Almost every night, I spend time looking at the work of others before heading off to bed. It's astounding how much great work is out there.
And since I've had plenty of extra time to burn on OU's marathon of a winter break, I thought I would share a few things that have been pretty inspiring to me lately.
Away we go...
1. Jonas Bendiksen's recent project, "The Places We Live," takes a look at the rising population of people living in urban slums (over 1 billion). While it is available in book form that I hope to get my hands on soon, the web presence for this project is fantastic. After the intro, there is an interactive map where you can click on any of the 4 areas where he focused his work (Mumbai, Jakarta, Nairobi, and Caracas). Once you pick a location, a short slideshow of photos runs over ambient sounds from the neighborhood. After that, you can then click on a family who will tell you about their living conditions and how they make ends meet while you scroll around a 360 degree photo of their living area. It's fantastic storytelling and the images take you straight into the environment in which so many of the people on this planet live in. Click here to check it out.
2. I've been digging through the POYi archives recently and by far my favorite project I saw there was Jim Lo Scalzo's multimedia piece on the political circus that invades the usually quiet state of Iowa every election season. In "Iowa's Unlikely Privilege," he mixes a cross section of photographs and video from throughout state with audio of rhetoric that bounces around from candidate to candidate. There is a lot going on and a lot to look at, but it all ties together perfectly and each element on the screen and coming out of the speakers is there for a reason. I think campaign photography is sort of like sports photography- in the sense that it can get quite mundane when you keep seeing the same type of imagery over and over and over again. But when people put their own spin on it and come up with new ways of seeing and presenting it, it can be something totally fresh. Click here to watch.
3. This last group of photos is from a Getty photographer named Jeff Hutchens. The collection is called "Nebulous." I don't have much to say about them other than it is simply a collection of beautiful photographs, most of which seem to have been taken on his way from one place to the next. A lot of transient, quiet photographs. Unlike the previous 2 projects, these photos are all about the image and less about meaning or any sort of news value or storytelling. View the collection here.
That's it for now.
Happy Holidays.
