American photo 2013 09 10 by Eduardo Castañeda Winckelmann

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September/october 2013

Features 30 Creature of the Sea

Shooting commercial fshing operations in remote, treacherous waters is tough. It can be even tougher when you’re one of the fshermen. BY coreY arnold

38 Fashion’s Reigning Auteurs Meet Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott— the style-photography duo that has a kaleidescopic vision, a taste for pushing limits, and the fashion industry lining up for more. BY Matthew IsMael ruIz

50 Nature’s Mark Digital may have done away with darkroom experiments, but these photographers are reinventing the pictureas-object with techniques and artifacts from the land. BY lorI FredrIckson

Cover: © Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott. This page, from top: © Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott; Jane Fulton Alt.

on the cover Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott photographed Natalia Vodianova (represented by DNA Model Management) for French Vogue, March 2012.

This page, right, from top: Marion Cotillard, photographed for French Vogue by Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott (2012); “Burn No. 53,” by Jane Fulton Alt. Next page: “Boy in Yellow Shirt Smoking,” by Mark Cohen (1977).

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Departments 8 EDiTOR’S NOTE

September issues A lifelong fascination with fashion photography. By MiriaM leuchter 72 PARTiNg SHOT

Emotional Reservoirs Wendy Sacks taps into primal feelings with a child-centered series. By Jill c. shoMer

Gear

Focus 11 ONE TO WATCH

True to Form James Chororos dropped a promising architecture career to follow his passion. The risk is paying off. By Franklin Melendez

18 WORk iN PROgRESS

Lost in the Landscape

61 REViEW

Fernando Brito makes Mexico’s drug wars and its victims visible beyond the pages of his local newspaper.

Big iQ

By Jack crager

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20 BOOkS

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62 NEW STUFF

The goods Toys and tools—because you need both. From Sony, Canon, and more.

kindly Beasts Michael Nichols reveals the plight of African elephants, Steve McCurry goes behind his photos, and more.

Photos by Dave Harp.

By Jack crager

24 ON THE WALL 64 HANDS ON

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Women photographers in the Arab world, Lewis Hine times two, modern portraits, a color survey, and more.

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SubScriptionS: American Photo (ISSN 1046-8986) (USPS 526-930), September/October, Volume 24, No. 5. American Photo is published bimonthly (Jan/Feb, Mar/Apr, May/June, July/Aug, Sept/Oct, Nov/Dec) by Bonnier Corporation, 2 Park Ave., New York, NY 10016. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY 10016 and at additional mailing ofces. Authorized periodicals postage by the Post Ofce Department, Ottawa, Canada, and for payment in cash. poStMAStEr: Send address changes to American Photo, P.O. Box 420235, Palm Coast, FL 32142; 386-246-0408; www.americanphotomag.com/cs. If the postal services alert us that your magazine is undeliverable, we have no further obligation unless we receive a corrected address within one year. One-year subscription rate (six issues) for U.S. and possessions, $15; Canada, $25; and foreign, $35; cash orders only, payable in U.S. currency. Two years: U.S., $30; Canada, $50; and foreign, $70. Three years: U.S., $45; Canada, $75; and foreign, $105. CANADA POST: Publications Mail Agreement Number: 40612608. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: IMEX, P.O. Box 25542, London, ON N6C 6B2. For reprints e-mail reprints@bonniercorp.com.

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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF MIRIAM LEUCHTER FEATURES EDITOR Debbie Grossman TECHNICAL EDITOR Philip Ryan MANAGING EDITOR Jill C. Shomer PHOTO EDITOR Amy Berkley ASSISTANT PHOTO EDITOR Linzee Lichtman DESIGNER : Wesley Fulghum COPY EDITOR Meg Ryan Heery FACT CHECKER Rebecca Geiger ONLINE EDITORS Dan Bracaglia, Stan Horaczek SENIOR CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Jack Crager CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Aimee Baldridge, Lori Frederickson. Michael Kaplan CREATIVE DIRECTOR SAM SYED

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EDITOR’S NOTE

September Issues have been fascinated with fashion photography for as long as I can remember. Not the actual fashion (OK, a little of that), but how it is presented, in daring, decadent images. When I was in school, fashion magazines were treated with the kind of disdain usually reserved for romance novels, so I kept my torn-out pages of Vogue, W, and Interview hidden. Now, of course, I wallow in my guilty pleasure with impunity, and so does the rest of the world. Condé Nast and Hearst publish September issues as big as ottomans, and independent publishers with small circulations boast outsized influence. A photographic genre once seen as hopelessly commercial has become a staple in art galleries and museums. One way to catch up quickly with some of the field’s most influential artists is to take in the

straightforwardly named New Fashion Photography, edited by Paul Sloman and published last spring by Prestel. It presents 175 photos, many of them full-page, some double trucks, all made since 2000 by more than two dozen photographers from all over the globe. They range from Nick Knight’s collaborative experiments and Rankin’s nearly abstract closeups to Kourtney Roy’s ironic takes on vernacular imagery to Ruven Afanador’s oddball fantasy scenarios. Each artist in one way or another overturns the viewer’s expectations. And isn’t that a mark of all great photography? In our own September issue, fashion duo Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott discuss their controversial approach to shooting couture; Corey Arnold contemplates how his work as a commercial ﬁsherman has shaped his documentary photography; and ﬁne artists explore new ways to bring tactile experience into a form where digital now predominates. With art and commerce colliding everywhere, what do clothes really have to do with it?

MIRIAM LEUCHTER, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

From top: © Patrick James Miller; © Eugenio Recuenco

Above: Miriam Leuchter’s new headshot taken by Patrick James Miller. Left: “Les Costumes” for V Magazine/Madame Figaro by Eugenio Recuenco, 2009. Below: “Lily Cole” for Wig magazine by LaRoache Brothers, 2007, on the cover of New Fashion Photography (Prestel, 2013).

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the people behind the pics Work in Progress 16 Books 20 on the Wall 24

one to Watch

true to Form

Trained as an architect, New York–based James Chororos has traded in blueprints for snapshots By Franklin Melendez

n a scorching summer day on the Upper West Side, photographer James Chororos has no trouble keeping his cool. Just shy of his 30th birthday, he exudes the quiet confdence of someone used to taking things in stride. Lately, this includes tackling more than a few benchmarks, such as a new Manhattan studio (relocated from Brooklyn) and the growing buzz around his multifaceted freelance practice—a mixture of technical polish and poetic abandon that he’s made his own. This would be an accomplishment for any young photographer, much less one who

above: chororos’s shot of a couple watching the sun set behind fog in brooklyn bridge park, with Manhattan’s fnancial district in the background.

made the leap less than a year ago after abandoning a promising career in architecture to pursue a growing passion for the lens. As he notes with unstudied candor, the shift was far from planned. “To be honest,” he says, “the reason was very personal: My father became ill and passed away, and that experience made me reevaluate everything. Architecture was something I’d always wanted to do, and I was good at it. But I wasn’t as happy as I could be working on projects that sometimes take years and years to complete.

SepTeMBer/OCTOBer 2013 AMerICAnphOTOMAg.COM 11

Image making was the opposite. It’s all about rapid production, very energetic; you’re out in the wild. I never had time to think if I was good—I just did it.” Then again, this was the latest juncture in a long creative journey. As seen in his exacting structural shots and emotive portraits, his visual calling has deep and varied roots. Initially studying fne arts at rutgers University, he made the leap to engineering before tackling a graduate degree in architecture at the new Jersey Institute of Technology. That’s where he took up photography. “In graduate school, it was suggested by a couple of professors to get a DSLr to document our works, drawings, and things that inspired us,” he says. “That was the frst time I picked up a digital camera.” Chororos’s new passion did not immediately sway him from the straight and narrow, especially after he landed a coveted spot at a prestigious new York architecture frm, Studio Daniel Libeskind, just before graduating in 2010. The following years proved to be a juggling act between professional above: Red hook, brooklyn. below: “My wife’s hair mimicking the clouds.”

12 AMerICAnphOTOMAg.COM SepTeMBer/OCTOBer 2013

one to Watch

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Clockwise from left: A cyclist stops to grab his camera at Brooklyn Bridge Park; a woman at the crest of a hill in upstate New York; kids dance in the spray from an open fre hydrant in record heat in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

demands and his avocation. “i was very involved in the architecture track, and i didn’t have much free time,” he recalls. “i was working weekends, editing at night. i would shoot after work, whenever i could. i was always furiously making images.” the outlet for this output proved to be another turning point. chororos launched his own blog, which quickly became popular. “i started gaining a lot of followers, and eventually started getting job offers from the things i was posting online.” combined with image-sharing apps like insta-

gram, the blogosphere afforded chororos a rich platform to share ideas with pros and amateurs alike. “i started to post so i could evaluate my own work, have this stream of images and keep things fun.” Yet the experiment opened him up to new commercial work, online collaborations, and personal projects such as his deeply affecting images of the rockaways in the wake of hurricane sandy. “it was very compelling to shoot there,” he says. “You had this sense of awe, but you also have the reality of people dealing with the displacement.”

14 americanphotomag.com september/october 2013

one to watch

Chororos is now in talks about an exhibition in new York and attending to a growing roster of commercial clients. his biggest challenge to date? “Architectural shoots,” he says. “Sometimes too much education can work against creativity. I like the exploration and challenge, which keeps things interesting and new.” aP

close-Up

James Chororos jameschororos.com

Lives In New York City Studied At Rutgers University (fne art); New Jersey Institute of Technology (architecture) Lesson Learned “How little technical knowledge means without experience,” Chororos says. “Having confdence in your vision and knowing what to do next out there in a variety of different scenarios is invaluable.” In the Bag “Most of my personal work is shot with a Fujiflm X-Pro1,” he says. “I love using it because it’s so compact and it can be a little unpredictable. For professional work, I carry two bodies, both Canon EOS 5D Mark II: It’s reliable and versatile, and it performs great in low light and extreme daylight.” AMerICAnphOTOMAg.COM 15

Lost in the Landscape In Western Mexico, Fernando Brito captures haunting scenes that symbolize social decay

16 september/october 2013 americanphotomag.com

By JACK CRAGER

Work in progress

or mexican photographer Fernando brito, views of death are an occupational hazard. as photo editor of the newspaper El Debate in culiacán, Sinaloa, he regularly sees and prints sensational scenes of murderous violence in the region, much of it sparked by turf wars between rival drug cartels and their battles with the mexican government. according to U.S. open borders, an online aggregator of news and information about the U.S.-mexico border, culiacán’s

Above and following page: Two untitled images from Fernando Brito’s series Your Steps Were Lost in the Landscape.

murder rate exceeds one per day and the state of Sinaloa’s is even higher. a few years ago brito began a personal project shooting alternate views of corpses he encountered in his work. “the idea was to make people aware of the problem. i think too often we are asleep, isolated, social orphans,” brito says. “it makes me sad to see these forgotten people, day in and day out. they go from real humans to statistics and old news overnight.” in his series Your Steps Were Lost in the Landscape, brito depicts the bucolic mexican countryside punctuated by bodies; the victims are shown from a respectful distance, isolated amid an eerie tranquility. “these are not sensationalist, tabloidlike photographs,” brito says, “and there is not a single living person in them.” in the photo community, the project has touched a nerve. brito’s numerous awards include third prize in general news at World press photo 2011 and the Descubrimientos phe award at photoespaña 2011, where he was overall winner of a global competition. the series has been shown in venues including the russian tea room gallery in paris and musée de l’elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland; it’s on view through September 1 at circulo de bellas arts in madrid as part of phe13. brito himself seems more interested in visual storytelling than receiving accolades. “i’m not an artist,” he says during a private press tour of his show in madrid. “i’m a citizen with a problem.” Yet isn’t this a story he’s conveying in an artful way? “i am trying to report what is happening,” he replies. “my job allows me to work on a project to denounce this problem, using the mask or disguise of art to be able to reach the galleries.” he concedes that the work is not for the squeamish. “i have been told about the emotions caused by my photographs,” he says. “once, i printed the images and someone who worked in the place where i did it recognized his brother in one of the photos. he said that he was oK with me being the one making the picture, because he could see the respect i feel for the dead and their families.” brito says he’s created this project alongside but separate from his newspaper reportage. “i’ve never been alone with a corpse,” he’s explained to Vice magazine. “i was never the frst on the scene. there are certain people that we call, like the police and funeral services. there are also usually other reporters there from other newspapers. We rely on each other so that we’re never alone. When i’m

September/october 2013 americanphotomag.com 17

Work in progress

Brito has placed many of his images in photo contests and art galleries “to turn some heads,” he says. “Every time someone sees a photo, they know more about what’s happening in Mexico and they’re more inclined to question it and possibly take steps to end it.”

CLOSE-UP

Fernando Brito

Lives In In Culiacán, Sinaloa, Mexico Studied At Universidad de Occidente Culiacán (marketing) Awards Include Descubrimientos PHE Award at PHotoEspaña 2011; Third Prize, General News, World Press Photo 2011; Mexican Expo Foto Periodismo, 2010 and 2011 Photo Training On the job, as photo editor of El Debate since 2004. “The moment when I started working at the newspaper, it changed my professional career,” Brito says. “I went to workshops and conferences, and received a good visual training through work.” In the Bag Nikon D800; Nikon SB-900 AF Speedlight; lenses include 50mm f/1.4 AF-S Nikkor, 24mm f/1.4G ED AF-S Nikkor wide-angle, and 80–200mm f/2.8D ED AF Zoom-Nikkor telephoto.

18 September/october 2013 americanphotomag.com

through with my tour around the body, getting the photos i need for the paper, i stand in a place where i will get the shot that i want and wait for everyone to move out of the frame. Sometimes i take a ton of photos; sometimes i take only one.” While the crime scenes vary, one common feature in the photographs is a rural landscape. “Some of these people were killed right there,” brito says, “and in some cases, the bodies were wrapped, moved, and thrown away.” While much of the violence can be traced to drug wars, brito says it’s simplistic to generalize. “many of these victims are innocent people caught in the crossfre,” he says. how long does he plan to continue the series? “it will go on indefnitely,” he says, adding that there’s no end in sight to the violence. “i just want to bring to light issues that some people try to ignore,” brito says, “in order to grant the dead a little more time in this world, so that they won’t be forgotten.” AP

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BOOKS

In an elephantine tribute, Michael Nichols exposes the underside of Africa’s ivory trade

earth to sKy: aMong afrICa’s elePhants, a sPeCIes In CrIsIs By Michael Nichols Aperture $34 For more than 20 years, National Geographic lensman michael “nick” nichols has documented life in the wilds of africa, traversing the continent with his longtime collaborator, biologist J. michael Fay. back in 1992, the two men came across the powerful might of frightened elephants in nations including the central african republic, congo, gabon, and chad, where the animals are under constant threat from poachers feeding the ivory trade. Later, nichols writes, “i had the opportunity to spend time among well-protected, happy herds in Samburu, Kenya.” this gave him new insight. “Watching elephant families from dawn to dusk—and sometimes by moonlight—showed me that these are the

Top: At the Samburu National Reserve in Kenya in 2007, surrounded and protected by adult females, younger elephants of the Virtues family play and mock-ﬁght.

20 americanphotomag.com September/october 2013

BY JACK CRAGER

most caring and sentient creatures on earth.” thus began a love affair that’s culminated with this richly rendered volume. nichols captures scenes ranging from warm interactions between herds to deathly confrontations between animals and poachers to the heroic efforts of humans who foster orphan elephants. it’s a heart-tugging collection, as visually dramatic as it is disturbing. backof-book charts on poaching stats and how-to-help listings round out the message. “the payoff of our work, and the work of many others with like minds, was the creation of 13 national parks in gabon, two in congo, and one in the central african republic,” nichols notes. “but they continue to face great challenges from poachers and lack of government and ngo action. much honest work is still to be done to establish truly lasting sanctuaries.”

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BOOKS

Untold: the storIes behInd the PhotograPhs

By Steve McCurry Phaidon $60 We’ve seen mccurry’s greatest hits—the afghan girl, the iridescent portraits in exotic lands. here we get the anecdotes behind these images, as well as a slew of lesser-known shots that indicate his ever-ready camera and trigger fnger. “You can’t get hung up on what you think your ‘real’ destination is,” mccurry notes. “You have to be open to what you see along the way, and ready to seize an opportunity—stop and make the picture.”

InvIsIble eve By Yousef Khanfar Rizzoli $75 perhaps the most striking thing about Khanfar’s portraits of women who are incarcerated for nonviolent crimes is their optimistic humanism. many are depicted with their children, some smiling in the clutch of hard time. in statements accompanying the images, most of these women seem remorseful and philosophical, but not bitter, about the crimes that got them there: “Life is not about fnding yourself,” declares Samalyah gipson (above). “it is about creating yourself.” 22 americanphotomag.com September/october 2013

the PhotograPhy of ModernIst CUIsIne

By Nathan Myhrvold Modernist Cuisine $108 Slice it, dice it, and marvel: these food forays take us from fsh in the wild to microscopic cell studies and back again. in a section called “cutaways,” entire dishes—say, a blender full of tomatoes—are cross-sectioned against glass so that we see the veggies, the machinery, and the wiring in all their scientifc splendor. the “cooking” chapter is sure to inspire culinary art (too bad it’s short on actual recipes). as the abstracted images veer from ice crystals to icebergs, we get it: Food is everything.

clockwise from top left: © Steve mccurry/magnum photos; © chris hoover/modernist cuisine LLc; © Yousef Khanfar

Clockwise from above: Steve McCurry’s shot of a mother and child looking in through a taxi window, Bombay, India, 1993; Nathan Myhrvold’s crosssection of a salad bowl; Yousef Khanfar’s portrait of Samalyah Gipson, in prison at the Mabel Bassett Correctional Center in Oklahoma for possession of a dangerous controlled substance within 2,000 feet of a park.

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on the wall

Unveiling Views she Who teLLs a story: Women PhotograPhers from iran and the araB WorLd Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, Aug. 27 – Jan. 12, 2014 mfa.org

this group show applauds the work of 12 prominent women photographers who have pioneered their discipline in the arab world. the collection explores cultural anchors such as identity and tradition within countries that recently have been roiled by political upheaval and power shifts. showcasing the work of photographers across a

Nermine Hammam’s “The Break, 2011,” part of the group exhibition She Who Tells a Story at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.

24 americanphotomag.com september/october 2013

By Lindsay ComstoCk

number of genres—the artsy war views of nermine hammam (above), the provocative documentary work of shirin neshat, the philosophical fne art of Jananne al-ani, the revealing gender studies of newsha tavakolian—the show sheds light on a complex part of the world at a time of critical change. tavakolian also has an eponymous solo show at the Los angeles county museum of art (lacma.org), in which the iranian-born photojournalist’s empathetic portraits in her native land lift the veil shrouding an oft-misunderstood culture.

The enigmatic insights of women on both sides of the lens in the Middle East

A GROUNDBREAKING CONCEPT: COMPACT CAMERAS WITH THE FULL PERFORMANCE OF A DIGITAL SLR The DP Merrill series cameras are sized perfectly to go everywhere you do with stunning image quality that maintains its integrity when enlarged. An all-new genre of compact cameras delivering photographic excellence that exceeds all expectations given its very compact size. Praised and embraced by demanding photographers around the globe. These cameras represent the new definition of image quality in the compact digital category. The DP1 Merrill, DP2 Merrill and the DP3 Merrill all utilize the world’s only 46 megapixel full-color Foveon X3 direct image sensor which creates clear, sharp images with a uniquely three-dimensional feel. The result is images with the most astounding resolution, rich tones and gradation, vibrant color and ultimately, the most realistic photographs you’ve ever captured previously only associated with larger cameras.

Sigma Pro Ryan Brown captures this dramatic wide-angle landscape, taken with Sigma’s DP1 Merrill with a 19mm F2.8 lens.

WIDE-ANGLE, STUNNING IMAGES The Sigma DP1 Merrill is a camera for serious photographers—and for everyone who wants to experience the creative thrill of serious photography. With a 19mm F2.8 lens, which is the equivalent to a 28mm lens on a 35mm SLR camera its perfect for portraits, travel and documentary work. Dramatic wide angle shots with dynamic perspective show off the impeccable accuracy of this lens, which has versatility to render vast landscapes as effortlessly as candid portraiture. With 9 rounded blades, the DP1 produces smooth and beautiful bokeh for eye-catching images. It’s compact, lightweight and user friendly- perfect for any bag.

LIFE AND CREATIVITY The DP2 Merrill compact camera has a classic, standard prime lens of 30mm F2.8 which equates to a 45mm lens on a 35mm SLR closely matching the perspective of the human eye. This is the perfect camera when you want to capture the world the way you see it. For casual shots of everyday scenes, for spontaneous activities or unexpected moments during travel, the DP2 Merrill is the ideal creative tool for capturing oncein-a-lifetime moments that will become cherished images.

A LITTLE CAMERA THAT SHOOTS BIG The DP3 Merrill has the longest reach in the DP family, a medium telephoto with a 50mm F2.8 lens equivalent to 75mm on a 35mm SLR. A first in the DP Merrill family, the DP3 offers a 1:3 macro ratio. For the image quality purist, the DP3 prides itself on capturing super fine levels of detail for unique looking photographs. It’s perfect for studio photography and fine-art repro work, but the seriously compact body paired with the short tele also makes it great for travelling light. From macro images to portraiture, this lens offers an artistic palette capable of exquisite delicacy, profundity and narrative power.

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F aBout faCe: ContemPorary Portraiture Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, through Jan. 19, 2014 nelson-atkins.org

this exhibition includes 36 works by 29 artists around the world who have stretched the boundaries of portraiture beyond an image’s face value. here traditional ideals of gender, beauty, and expression are cast aside in an attempt to understand what lies beyond the skin. including work by pieter hugo, gohar Dashti, richard Learoyd, Latoya ruby Frazier, and alec soth, the exhibition coincides with Making Pictures of People, an online exhibition of portraiture culled from the web-based photo community and curated by Flakphoto.com creator andy adams. From top: “Prized Possession, Democratic Republic of Congo,” 2008, by Jim Goldberg, at NelsonAtkins; “Alamogordo Blues,” 1986, by Patrick Nagatani and Andrée Tracey, at Amon Carter; Lewis Hine’s shot of a child in Paintsville, KY, circa 1930, at ICP.

Also Showing at the Window: the Photographer’s View The Getty Center, Los Angeles, CA, Oct. 1 – Jan. 5, 2014 getty.org This group exhibition focuses on windows and how photographers throughout history have used them, both as a compositional device for framing and as a voyeuristic entry point into hidden realms. Featured photographers include William Henry Fox Talbot, Julia Margaret Cameron, Eugène Atget, Robert Adams, and Sebastião Salgado.

Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, Sept. 14 – Jan. 5, 2014 moma.org This year’s installment of MoMA’s annual collective presents eight artists who stretch the objectives of the photograph—conceptualizing the medium as an elastic digital platform through which bookmaking, music, social media, and medical imaging techniques interact with and transform still photography.

the errand of the eye: Photographs by rose mandel de Young Museum of Art, San Francisco, CA, through Oct. 13 deyoung.famsf.org Though Rose Mandel worked alongside photographers like Ansel Adams and Minor White, her black-and-white images of San Francisco street scenes and surreal images of the natural world remain underappreciated. This retrospective traces her artistic growth throughout her career, from the late 1940s through the early 1970s.

CoLor! ameriCan PhotograPhy transformed

Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, TX, Oct. 5 – Jan. 5, 2014 cartermuseum.org

“color is so integral to photography today,” says curator John rohrbach, “that it is diffcult to remember how new it is or realize how much it has changed the medium.” this show spans the genre’s growth, from Levi L. hill’s pioneering experiments in the 1800s to fne-art forays by the likes of William eggleston to the cinematic imagery of contemporary artists such as gregory crewdson.

F LeWis hine and LeWis hine’s Lasting LegaCy International Center of Photography, New York, NY, Oct. 4 – Jan. 12, 2014 icp.org

these concurrent shows represent an unprecedented overview of Lewis hine’s contribution to social documentary photography. included are hine’s infuential portraits on ellis island, his ambitious documentation of the american red cross in europe, and his Works progress administration series in the 1930s, for which he shot more than 700 images to document working conditions in industrial towns. 26 americanphotomag.com september/october 2013

Ver•nac•u•lar Stephen Cohen Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, through Sept. 7; New York, NY, through Sept. 8 stephencohengallery.com Drawing on gallery owner Stephen Cohen’s collection 40 years in the making, this show focuses on imagery with an immediacy that is untrained and colloquial in nature. “Collecting vernacular photography is a compulsion for a truth,” Cohen notes, “an honesty and sometimes a profound beauty that has been ‘found’ in the artless intent of their makers and far removed from their original purpose and which continues to capture our imagination.”

John divola: as far as i Could get Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA, Oct. 6 – Feb. 2, 2014 lacma.org This four-decade survey—the frst solo exhibition of John Divola’s work—traces his amalgamation of photography, painting, and conceptual and performance art into a distinctive style, a cross-media exploration of subjects ranging from otherworldly landscapes to architectural interiors.

From top: © Jim goldberg; © patrick nagatani and andrée tracey; © Lewis Wickes hine, international center of photography, gift of mildred baker

new Photography 2013

OCTOBER 1–6, 2013

Beneath a canopy of clouds, the impressive Arenal Volcano stands in the distance and a verdant world of tropical forests, twisting canyons, and cascading waterfalls awaits. Join Nikon professional photographers Lucas Gilman and Reed Hoffmann to experience the beauty of Costa Rica and explore the benefits of using video to tell a story using Nikon’s latest HD-SLRs. At Arenal Natura Ecological Park, we will turn our cameras to frogs, birds, reptiles, and other rare species to capture the array of brilliant colors present here. Press the “record” button to gather a world of sounds unique to this region. Consider your mentors’ best advice as they assist you in capturing the simple movements of graceful butterflies or representing the vibrant, yet peaceful ambience of the cloud forest. Secure your camera gear and sail above the treetops on a zip-line, and navigate through the lush tropical forest on a series of hanging bridges. Practice the camera movement techniques you’re learning along the way as you record the action of a brave adventurist rappelling down a river canyon over brilliant waterfalls and into the tropical waters beyond. Learning basic HD editing techniques and the considerations to be taken when motion and sound are added to your travel journal will leave you prepared to narrate a richer, fuller story.

COSTA RICA VIDEO WORKSHOP

MICHIGAN

OCTOBER 18-20, 2013 Home to expansive state and national parks, forests, lakes and rivers, Northern Michigan is situated in the heart of the stunning Great Lakes region. Head north to a territory rich in history and beauty, where generations of traders, ﬁsherman and farmers have left their mark in time. Join Mentor Series and Nikon professional photographers Mark Alberhasky and Bob Smith this October for a workshop designed to take advantage of the seasonal foliage and warm autumn colors that are brought to life by fall in Northern Michigan. With its miles of sandy beaches and bluffs extending 400 feet above Lake Michigan, Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore offers spectacular views of the area’s expansive shoreline and surrounding forests, inland lakes and streams. Photograph from scenic vistas and explore the terrain as you make your way to the dunes below. Experience sunset at Point Betsie Lighthouse, a historic landmark situated at the southern entrance to the Manitou Passage, and watch as the painted sky melts across the cool waters of Lake Michigan. On the picturesque Leelanau Peninsula, explore the original farmsteads, orchards and hillside villages. Visit the charming fishing village of Leland to photograph the rustic docks and shanties. Discover the vast and unrivaled beauty of the precious Great Lakes region on an unforgettable weekend workshop. Explore Northern Michigan with Mentor Series in October 2013, and bring your digital photography to life.

With additional support from: FOLLOW US ON Mentor Series Worldwide Treks

THAILAND

NOVEMBER 1–10, 2013 From the glint of golden temples to the flash of city lights and saffroncolored robes, focus your lens on the vibrant colors and iconic scenery of Thailand. Join the Mentor Series and Nikon professional photographers David Tejada and Reed Hoffmann as we travel to the majestic cities of Bangkok, Chiang Rai, and Chiang Mai. In Bangkok, we begin our tour with a visit to the Grand Palace, a complex of courtyards, gardens, and buildings adorned in gold leaf and colored glass, followed by a visit to the giant reclining Buddha at Wat Pho. Photograph local merchants selling fresh fruit, vegetables, and orchid blossoms from boats overflowing with produce in the crowded canals of the Floating Market at Damnoen Saduak. We continue on to Northern Thailand, where the kingdom borders Laos at the Mekong River, offering views of lush jungle, elephant farms, hill tribe villages, and tea plantations in Chiang Rai. Visit the northern city of Chiang Mai, with its characteristic teak and gold temples. Photograph hillside temples at sunset, visit a tiger sanctuary, and attend morning prayer sessions with local Buddhist monks. Spend an afternoon with the elephants as our mentors offer tips and techniques for capturing these impressive creatures up close. This year, with Mentor Series at your side, experience the exquisite natural beauty of Thailand!

FOR THE PAST 15 YEARS, the Mentor Series has taken photo enthusiasts to destinations across the country and around the world. With top Nikon professional photographers accompanying participants every day and teaching them how and what to shoot, there’s nothing like a Mentor Series trek. You and your photography will never be the same!

VIRGIN ISLANDS DECEMBER 5-8, 2013

Discover the turquoise waters of the U.S. Virgin Islands, where the white sand beaches and deep coves beckon like hidden treasures. Join Mentor Series and Nikon professional photographers Layne Kennedy and Jeff Diener in December as we explore the captivating islands of St. Thomas and St. John. St. Thomas offers everything from windsurﬁng, snorkeling, and deep-sea ﬁshing, to bustling markets and outdoor cafes, all encased by the island’s pristine white sand beaches. Paradise Point offers dramatic views of Charlotte Amalie’s harbor and an ideal setting to capture a beautiful evening sunset. St. John is the smallest and least densely populated of the U.S. Virgin Islands, with more than two-thirds of the island preserved as a national park. The uninhabited beaches, rocky coastline, and beautiful crescent-shaped bays of St. John will provide wonderful opportunities for exploring and further developing your photography skill set. Next, we’ll visit Trunk Bay, a picture-perfect, quarter-mile-long beach considered one of the world’s most beautiful. It is famous for a 670-foot snorkeling trail marked with underwater informational signs. The Nikon 1 system, Nikkor lenses and Nikon underwater housing will be available for you to use or borrow so you can explore “beneath the surface” with our expert mentors at your side. Don’t miss the opportunity to experience some of the world’s most beautiful beaches while building on your photo expertise in a delightful tropical location.

Come on a Mentor Series trek and try out offers some of the latest equipment that including their high-performance HD-SLRs, NIKKOR lenses, the Nikon 1 System and a variety of COOLPIX compact digital cameras.

Special thanks to our premier sponsor: D7100

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D800

ÂŠ Corey Arnold

Creature of the Sea

On the Job

On chronicling the life and work of commercial fshermen By Corey Arnold as told to Meg Ryan Heery

september/october 2013 americanphotomag.com 31

he bering sea is one of the most plentiful sources for crab in the world, and with swells that can reach as high as 40 feet, it’s one of the roughest oceans that is regularly fshed. rogue waves can sweep across the deck, 50-knot winds can lash the boat in a storm; occasionally a line under extreme tension snaps. the crab pots, huge metal cages weighing 800 pounds each, have to be swung into the boat by hand. even in relatively calm weather, they can turn into wrecking balls. somehow i managed to break only three camera lenses in my seven years photographing commercial fshing while working as a crabber. i consider myself both a photographer and a fsherman equally. i actually started working as a fsherman several years before i made money from photography—which didn’t really happen until years after i started shooting Fish-Work in 2002. Four seasons ago i bought a permit to commercial-fsh for salmon in bristol bay, alaska, and have been making a portion of my living off of salmon ever since. the seven weeks each summer when i fsh bristol bay is my favorite time of the year. it’s my

Above: Eric Nyhammer and Matthew Sullivan sort Opilio crab in the Bering Sea aboard the F/V Rollo. Right: Matthew Sullivan holds a Pacifc sleeper shark we caught while long-lining for halibut aboard the F/V Two Bears. Previous spread: My frst season crabbing in the Bering Sea, shot in 2003 aboard the deck of the F/V Rollo.

32 americanphotomag.com september/october 2013

escape from staring at a glowing screen in order to manage my photography business. i completely detach from the outside world—it’s often hard to take photos out there because when i’m fshing, i’m fully immersed in the community and the job of managing a fshing operation. but i try, in my photographs of life here in alaska and in the fshing industry around the world, to show all aspects of a commercial fsherman’s experience— the work, the camaraderie, the vastness and diversity of the ocean, and the often surreal encounters with the natural world that few people will ever experience frsthand. in the ocean, there is a seemingly endless variety of sea creatures. it’s not like, say, sport-fshing in a lake, where you’ll fnd maybe fve species of fsh. What lies beneath the surface of the sea is always a mystery. there is always the possibility of capturing something huge or strange—a rare bottom-dwelling shark that weighs several hundred pounds or a prehistoric-looking ratfsh. that’s part of the reason i became addicted to ocean sport-fshing early in my youth. my dad had two businesses, an avocado grove and a wholesale tropical houseplant business, that required long

On the Job

On the Job The deck of the F/V Dutch Beam Trawler heading out in the North Sea, 2010.

Photographer and commercial fsherman Corey Arnold, based in Portland, Oregon, shows his work and shoots editorial and advertising assignments when he is not captaining his wild salmon gillnetting operation in Bristol Bay, Alaska. His lifelong project, Fish-Work, documents the commercial fshing lifestyle around the world. He is represented by Charles A. Hartman Fine Art in Portland, Richard Heller Gallery in Santa Monica, CA, and Redeye Reps in Los Angeles. See more of his work at coreyfshes.com.

34 americanphotomag.com september/october 2013

work hours. he kept a 21-foot boat docked at oceanside, california, and fshing was his escape. he began taking me out to sea as soon as i could walk, and for many years we would launch our boat a few times a month targeting yellowtail, tuna, bass, rockfsh. my dad was also a photo buff and catalogued our catch of the day religiously after every outing. (he bought me a pentax K1000 when i was about 10 years old and inspired me to start shooting, too.) in elementary school i was known for dazzling the crowd with my ice chest full of odd sea creatures: a fsh i’d never seen before or a miniature shark. skate eggs were a big hit in class. they’re perfectly disguised as kelp, but when you hold them up to the light you can see the embryo, complete with umbilical cord. When i grew older we began taking trips north in the summer, frst to british columbia and eventually to alaska. in 1995 i got a job on a salmon boat in bristol bay and fshed every summer through college. When i graduated from the academy of art college in san Francisco, i assisted photographers for a couple of years, but with the dot-com collapse in 2001, it didn’t seem like a very good time to strike out on my own photo career. instead, i drove up to seattle in search of fshing work on higher seas. Deckhand work is long and tedious, often dangerous, and you are living in close quarters with people you are not required to like. everyone on the crew handles the pressure differently. at any given time during one of our 18- to 20-hour work days, one guy might be stumbling around on the brink of exhaustion; another is losing his temper and wildly throwing things around on deck; someone else might just be catching his third or fourth wind and working super hard. all together it gets pretty intense. at the same time, i knew this could really make for an interesting project. not many people had photographed commercial fshing, and the general public didn’t have a very good understanding of what modern commercial fshing looks like. people read about overfshing, the environmental costs of the industry, or sustainability, but a direct connection to the fshing industry was lacking. i wanted to celebrate the lifestyle of fshermen but also explore deeper issues about ocean sustainability on a global scale. at frst i fgured i’d work on a boat for maybe two years, then switch to another boat and work a couple years, documenting different types of fshing—frst off alaska; then norway, where i split my time for several years working and photographing; then around the world. instead i ended up working on a crabbing boat called the F/V Rollo for seven years. the captain of the Rollo (yes, the same Rollo that was featured in the Discovery series Deadliest Catch) was eric nyhammer. he was the type of leader who didn’t yell or stress you out. he just

expected you to do the job and do it well. he had a way of making you want his approval without saying anything; he also happened to be a painter. We meshed really well, and he understood what i was trying to do, so he let me shoot a little bit here and there while at work. i had to bargain with the crew every time i wanted to shoot for a few minutes, because whenever i had to jump off deck and grab my camera, it made a lot more work for them. there’s a system that works harmoniously on deck, and if one person is out of the mix, it makes everything a little bit harder. but the tradeoff is capturing these moments that don’t happen anywhere else: You can be working 20-hour days, in close quar-

ters with the same people for weeks at a time; you’re exhausted and everything hurts. then, you look up at the horizon; it’s just birds everywhere and beautiful deep green waves, and you disappear from the chaos and exhaustion of the boat. one fascinating thing about this work is that despite all the drama of storms or the excitement of hauling in a catch, the ocean itself moves very slowly. one fsherman i work with in bristol bay has been there for 50 years and has watched boom and bust cycles happen fve times over. it’s not always to do with overfshing. a lot goes on in the open ocean that is hard to understand. natural fuctuations occur all the time. Just a few years ago the crab supply was much lower than september/october 2013 americanphotomag.com 35

Commercial salmon set-net fsherman Rian Ten Kley stands on the mud near the mouth of the Kvichak river, near Bristol Bay, AK.

36 americanphotomag.com september/october 2013

and high-quality fshery. then you’ve got factory trawlers hauling up sometimes a million pounds of groundfsh in one tow, and all these incredible fsh are getting crushed and mushed and made into fsh sticks. in many ways the individual fshermen are really the heart of coastal communities. the preservation of a way of life is a big part of why i take these pictures. the graveyard point series shows a seasonal community of fshermen, including myself, who spend the summers in a remote part of bristol bay, at the mouth of the Kvichak river. We live in an old cannery that was built around 1900 and abandoned in 1952. about 130 people and about

it is now. there have been periods when some regions have been overfshed, but because they’ve been managed well, they’ve been able to rebound. some of the most obvious changes so far are procedural. When i started crabbing, it was in the derby days, when about 300 boats started the season together and raced, without sleep, to catch as much as possible before the overall feet quota was gobbled up. that might take fve days, ten days, or a few weeks. nowadays a lot of fsheries are switching to catch shares, where owners purchase a percentage of the quota of fsh. You have all year to reach the quota, so the pace has relaxed a bit, but we don’t know yet what the effects on fsheries or the environment might be. You have to look back much further to see the impact the fshing industry has had on whole communities. the days of all the harbors flled with fshing boats—those photos you see in fsh restaurants—are very romanticized. now those harbors are practically empty. Fishing boats are much more effcient now, so there are fewer of them. i think, who knows what this will all look like in 60 years, how different will things be? and i just want to keep documenting these incremental changes. Whatever happens in those coastal communities, fshermen hold the keys to keeping them alive. a lot of them were built around small-boat fshing operations; today more individual quotas are owned by large corporations. that’s dangerous, because it shortchanges the inshore small fshermen. it’s like the difference between a huge corporate farm that uses pesticides and modifed seeds to maximize proft and the small organic farmer who gets the higher price and handles their food with better quality. in bristol bay, the feet is divided up into thousands of tiny boats that all have an equal shot at catching fsh. We are small, and we handle our fsh really well. this is a truly sustainable

On the Job

50 boats live and fsh out of there in June and July. two mining frms want to dig a massive open-pit copper mine, known as pebble mine, at the headwaters of the Kvichak and the nushagak rivers. now, these two rivers are very remote, but combined they yield more than half of the sockeye salmon in the world. the water there is also very pure, with extremely low mineral concentrationsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;an ideal salmon habitat. if they proceed, pebble mine would become one of the largest mines in the world, generating 10 billion tons of wastewater to be contained in perpetuity. according to a 2012 report by the Wild salmon center, even small amounts of mineral contami-

Commercial salmon fshermen from Graveyard Point explore a nearby abandoned cannery called Nakeen during some rare time off in fshing season.

nants and sediment would alter ph levels enough to jeopardize the ecosystem and potentially devastate the fsheries. my graveyard point series is a picture of a community that, if the mine goes through, probably wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t exist for more than another 100 years or so. this is part of my home and livelihood, so itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s more than just a photo series or an environmental issue to me. Fishing is in my blood, and i want to keep working and photographing on boats around the world, putting out books and making exhibitions as i go. i want to continue showing the world a broader perspective of the people who are bringing wild seafood to the masses. AP

september/october 2013 americanphotomag.com 37

ƒreignin

ashion’s

auteurs Exuberantly defant in its variety, the work of Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott is consistent in its brashness. And it’s made the duo among the most sought-after and talked-about photographers in the business. PhotograPhs by Mert alas & Marcus Piggott story by Matthew isMael ruiz

38 AMericAnPhotoMAg.coM SePteMber/october 2013

Mert & Marcus

Fashion’s Reigning Auteurs ert Alas and Marcus Piggott—affectionately known in fashion circles as simply Mert & Marcus—live a charmed life. As art-conscious club kids in the ’90s, they fell backward into fashion, each other’s arms, and, most important, photography. they choose not to discuss their romantic status, but their creative collaboration is so powerful that it has long transcended physical attraction. Alas told us that for him, making Mert & Marcus pictures is about the time they share and the work that goes into them—neither has any desire to work separately—and continually pulling from an eclectic range of infuences in the service of their point of view. the duo’s discerning, constantly evolving aesthetic makes them coveted among haute-couture magazines and advertisers who give them the freedom to make images without the constraints placed on many of their fellow photographers. in the economics of photography, the divide between commercial and editorial work is pronounced; for fashion, even more so. Fashion photographers use editorial work, often unpaid, to express themselves artistically and to attract the attention of deep-pocketed luxury brands. Alas and Piggott developed their aesthetic shooting and styling for forward-thinking magazines such as Dazed & Confused and i-D and moved on to regularly shoot editorial work for the likes of Vogue and W and ads for brands such as Louis Vuitton and givenchy. Stylists love the pair because their infnitely expanding collection of infuences means they might be working with any imagery, from raw nature to space alien to zombie baroque. Designers love them because they entice people into a world where a handbag costs more than some cars. “our job is to create an identity for brands so people can relate to them,” Alas says. “but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hold any artistic value within that process.” Such a perspective is not necessarily unique, but what sets them apart is their range. Many photographers become known for an easily identifable style that editors and art directors can bank on. but these two seem to be from the bruce Lee school of photography. the martial artist whose style became famous for having no identifable style was unbeatable because opponents could never predict his next move. by not restricting themselves to one style—often even they don’t know what’s coming next—Alas and Piggott have made themselves appealingly versatile. “it probably would be easy to have one style, to be honest,” Piggott says. “but we would get bored.”

40 AMericAnPhotoMAg.coM SePteMber/october 2013

Above: Natalia Vodianova, for W, 2012. Previous spread: Lara Stone, for French Vogue, October 2010.

September/OctOber 2013 americanphOtOmag.cOm 41

Fashion’s Reigning Auteurs Below: Jessica Stam, for W, March 2005. Right: Christina Ricci, for POP Autumn/Winter 2004.

42 americanphOtOmag.cOm September/OctOber 2013

‘

PIGGOTT: IT PrObably wOuld be easy TO have One sTyle, TO be hOnesT. buT we wOuld GeT bOred.

‘

alas concurs: “the substance directs the light, the look, the colors, not our style,” he says. “it would be so vain to start a project with our style. that’s not how we approach it.” When alas and piggott met in 1993 at a party on a pier in hastings, england, they were barely in their twenties, both club kids looking for the next party. alas, a turkish emigré who had studied classical music, tells us that before they met, they hadn’t lived much life yet, and that, in effect, growing up together formed the basis of their fuid working relationship. “We kind of experienced everything together anyway, from the start, so it’s so easy to communicate. it’s like looking back at your diary to say, ‘Oh, do you remember this?’ it evolves very quickly between ourselves.” their meeting began a whirlwind romance that ultimately led to their picking up a camera and learning how to make pictures together. they ran with an artsy east London crowd, going to galleries with Lee mcQueen (founder of the alexander

alas: IT wOuld be sO vaIn TO sTarT a PrOjecT wITh Our sTyle.

ÂŠ Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott (2)

SePteMber/october 2013 AMericAnPhotoMAg.coM 43

Fashion’s Reigning Auteurs mcQueen design house) and stylist and fashion editor Katy england, and chasing artists like groupies. piggott taught alas, who was assisting mcQueen at shows during the early ’90s, how to use a camera, and they developed their workfow and aesthetic in a loft on Old Street. the two would go to bookshops on charing cross road, look at the their favorite monographs, and try to fgure out the lighting. For their earliest shoots, they did everything themselves— styling, hair, makeup, and set design. their frst published work in Dazed & Confused was sparked, unsurprisingly, over drinks with friends who just happened to work there. early work for cult titles like Dazed allowed them to work in fashion while retaining the freedom to push their limits artistically. “the Love magazine, the i-D magazine, and in the old days, The Face magazine—all these magazines didn’t have so much of a commercial purpose, but they did have prices of the clothes,” alas says. “So, yes, we want to do art, we want to show the world that we’re not just about a bag and shoe. Yes, we are rebels and we don’t care about money. but it’s an industry. it’s commercial, plus culture, plus art. in one bag.” the pair’s pragmatic attitude has helped them navigate the world of commercial fashion, but their taste is responsible for their status as trendsetters. they borrow only from the best. images by mert & marcus draw on the work of such notables as guy bourdin, robert mapplethorpe, and helmut newton, and the duo continually pull from new infuences. but with that approach, their visibility opens them to controversy. a 2011 Love magazine editorial alas and piggott produced called “What Lies beneath” drew criticism online for bearing an undeniable likeness to photographer Jeff bark’s haunting series Woodpecker. their 46-page spread, with its striking similarities in subject, tone, and iconography—and even some props—can be said to expand upon the vision of berk’s original eight images, with a bigger budget and higher production values. indeed, not much shackles their creativity: their shoots boast some of the biggest budgets, most talented collaborators, and hippest infuences. they create images with cameras and computers with help from a small army of digital technicians, retouchers, and art assistants before, during, and after their shoots, obsessing about every detail and fnding solutions to every problem that arises. having a team allows them the luxury to concentrate on the more artistic decisions to be made on set rather than be bogged down by technical troubleshooting. those artistic decisions are typically collaborations with like-minded creative rock stars like Love founder and editor Katie grand or Vogue creative director grace coddington. their circle of coconspirators is small but close. they talk on set in a sort of culture-vulture shorthand, using loose associations to describe the desired vibe for the shoot. When they say to coddington, “Factory girl, ’60s england, she’s poor, she’s lonely, she’s depressed,”

Left: Adele, for U.S. Vogue, March 2012. Above: Daria Werbowy, for French Vogue, September 2012.

everyone knows what they’re going to get. So when Vogue’s imposing fashion director, tonne goodman, invited them to do last year’s infamous shoot with adele—which we included in our 2012 images of the Year (January/February 2013)—they trusted that their vision would make it to the page. though they were excited fans of adele’s music, alas and piggott had no interest in painting the media’s well-worn picture of a heartsick young starlet with a sharp cockney cackle and velvet vocal chords. they wanted to bring her into their world, make her one of their characters. “We wanted to embrace her beauty, her fgure,” alas says. “bring her into this world of romance.” again, controversy followed. the resulting images drew jeers from critics who called for more authenticity, up in arms at the extensive post-

September/OctOber 2013 americanphOtOmag.cOm 45

46 AMericAnPhotoMAg.coM SePteMber/october 2013

Fashion’s Reigning Auteurs

‘

Left: Angela Lindvall, for POP Fall/Winter 2002/2003. Above: Malgosia Bela, for LOVE Issue #8.

alas: we wanT TO dO arT, we wanT TO shOw The wOrld ThaT we’re nOT jusT abOuT a baG and shOe.

SePteMber/october 2013 AMericAnPhotoMAg.coM 47

processing applied to the images. Alas could not care less. “When i see a celebrity the way the celebrity [always] is, i have no interest,” he says. Alas and Piggott do not confne their artistic expression to glossy magazine pages. For years they’ve been working on an archive of personal work, including plenty of nudes, destined eventually for a book (they’ve been offered deals by a few major publishers but have yet to sign). Whatever a Mert & Marcus book ends up looking like, the duo will likely have moved on to something new. And to be sure, it will unpeel more layers of artistic inspiration. For Piggott, those eclectic touchstones include “dreams and holidays and life,” while Alas explains how his travels infuence the work. “You go to a museum, you remember Mona Lisa looking at you,” he says. “You see a girl that looks like Mona

Above: Jeisa Chiminazzo, for POP Autumn/Winter 2005. Right: Kate Moss, for Love Issue #3.

48 AMericAnPhotoMAg.coM SePteMber/october 2013

Lisa, and you remember that experience.” that such art informs their work doesn’t mean they’re trying to make a new Mona Lisa. they don’t hide their infuences; they made a cactus shrine to helmut newton at their palacio in ibiza after the photographic great died. Lots of photographers borrow from newton, and from richard Avedon and bill brandt. but what holds these two together as a team and sets them apart from others is their point of view and their restless hunger to try something else—and then something else again. Alas says that he doesn’t even like 80 percent of their past work. it’s that drive and dissatisfaction that pushes them forward. “i think that’s the hardest thing, when you have a certain level of taste,” Piggott says. “trying to please yourself.” aP

Fashion’s Reigning Auteurs

50 americanphotomag.com september/october 2013

Matthew Brandt’s “Marys Lake MT 2.” The fnal image is a C-print soaked in water from Marys Lake, which is depicted in this photograph.

Natureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

Mark While darkroom experimentation is largely a thing of the past, the longing to connect with a physical aspect of picturemaking remains, especially for photographers working with natural subjects. Their resulting photos broaden the exploration of elemental phenomena, and engage more personal ties to land, material, and memory. By Lori FredricksoN

Nature’s Mark

choing generations of landscape photographers, matthew brandt says, “What makes nature such a compelling subject is that it’s truly inexhaustible.” the 31-year-old Los angeles– based artist has explored the natural world and its disruptions over the past few years, most prominently in his series Lakes and Reservoirs. these landscape photographs are bathed after printing in solutions made partly of water collected from the source he’s depicting. brandt has incorporated the material of his subjects into images ranging from bees to trees to demolition projects near his studio. if experimenting with the processing and surfaces of photographic prints seems like a relic in the digital age, it’s far from it. if anything, today’s predominance of screen-only interaction has made the importance of the photo as object more beguiling to both emerging and established photographers. Von Lintel gallery in new York city held a show last spring organized around such an interest. titled Unique, the group show featured photographers including brandt who explore the material process of image-making. gallery director amy sande-Friedman says that the artists in the show tended to work physically with their photographs when they used natural subjects. “there’s a renewed interest in hands-on types of work,” sande-Friedman says, citing Klea

From top: Brandt’s “American Lake WA E3,” C-print soaked in American Lake water; “Dexter Lake OR 3,” C-print soaked in Dexter Lake water.

52 americanphotomag.com september/october 2013

this page: © matthew brandt. opposite: © Jane Fulton alt.

mcKenna’s photogram series Rain Studies, the chemigram-based work of amanda means, and the traveling camera obscura of John chiara. “When we increasingly use the computer to mediate between ourselves and the natural world, there’s more desire to engage with it directly. these artists are interested in really getting inside nature—both in organic imagery and working with nature as an idea.” brandt’s work on Lakes and Reservoirs extended in part from experiments with salted-paper printing, but he says chemistry was more a road to an idea than the idea itself. he was also inspired by a popular story that the british landscape painter J.m.W. turner had himself strapped to the mast of

Jane Fulton Alt’s “Burn No. 49” is one of a series for which the photographer trailed restoration ecologists to capture controlled prairie burns.

a boat in order to experience the full force of a gale before painting it. “it’s having a fuller understanding of nature when working with it,” brandt says. Watching the way that lake water degraded print emulsions gave him a broader sense of the process of natural erosion. as he continued to develop his technique, brandt found that he was getting results that, much like erosion itself, were controlled yet unpredictable. “i like the idea of guiding, assisting,” brandt says. “When things end up being overly controlled, you can tell that it lacks gesture.” since his lake-water experiments, brandt has incorporated a range of natural phenomena into the photo-making process. For his series

september/october 2013 americanphotomag.com 53

Honeybees—conceived in 2007, when he began noticing masses of bees dying on a local beach from colony collapse disorder—brandt photographed the insects and used their carcasses in the emulsion for his prints. in a more recent series, Night Skies, he applies cocaine directly to black photographer’s velvet then sandwiches the image between plates of clear glass. and brandt’s heliographs of the La brea tar pits—stemming from the frst-ever permanent photographic process of 19th-century inventor Joseph nicéphore niépce, which involved hardening an asphalt derivative on pewter and washing away certain areas with lavender oil—make both the substance and capture of his subject part of the unique fnal images.

“Burn No. 79” by Jane Fulton Alt.

54 americanphotomag.com september/october 2013

smoke screen interacting with nature in the process of making an image can be intensely personal. in her six-year series The Burn, evanston, illinois–based photographer Jane Fulton alt shadowed restoration ecologists to capture images of controlled prairie fres, a subject she frst encountered in 2007 during an artist’s residency at the ragdale Foundation in Lake Forest, illinois. Witnessing a controlled fre on the grounds there, she photographed it, collected some ash, and asked some of the ecologists involved if she could follow them for a shoot. alt’s frst trip out the following spring had a greater signifcance: it coincided with the birth of her frst grandchild. it was also her sister’s frst day of chemotherapy treatment for ovarian cancer.

Nature’s Mark

When she looked through the viewfnder, alt says, “i was thinking about the parallels between the burn on the prairie and the burn going on in [my sister’s] body. For me, it became a whole parallel universe and process and a way of trying to understand the life cycles.” the ensuing series, which recently concluded and which is being released in october as a book (The Burn, Kehrer Verlag), was as much about the images as it was about focusing on that connection, which sustained alt throughout her sister’s battle with the disease. “they became much more subjective pictures than they would have been if i had simply documented the burn,” she recalls. “i shied away from shooting the fre—it felt too violent, and i was more interested in the ephemeral quality of the

Alt’s “Burn No. 53.”

smoke.” the images focus instead on its obscuring, destructive, and regenerative properties. photographically, The Burn was also an extension of alt’s earlier work altering image surfaces with beeswax to add luminosity to prints of natural subjects. the smoke, she says, “was the frst time i’d found that luminosity in the subject of the print itself”—and while she was satisfed with uncoated prints for the book and exhibitions, on individual prints for custom copies of the book she applies coats of beeswax to add depth. the shooting experience was both intense and strangely soothing, especially as she returned to it repeatedly over time. While the restoration ecologists alt trailed were careful to keep her out of danger, she found herself nevertheless compelled

september/october 2013 americanphotomag.com 55

toward the hot ash, making images, coming home with her clothes and equipment blanketed in soot. For alt, it was as much about being immersed in the physical environment as it was about capturing fnal images—having the tangible experience of natural burn and regrowth helped her to tie the idea for the series into a broader idea of both ecological and human life cycles. her sister died of her disease, but alt found that having worked with controlled fres as closely as she had enabled her to cope in a way she otherwise might not have. “i was able to focus on the loss within a larger idea of regeneration, the idea that new life comes out of things that die or pass away,” she says. the work is dedicated to her sister.

For her series Thrice Upon a Time, Odette England asked her parents to walk the grounds of her childhood home with her negatives of that place attached to the soles of their shoes. Above: “Mum #4 (Right Foot).”

constructive destruction For australia-based odette england’s project Thrice Upon a Time, working with the material of the landscape was literally tied to the land itself. england focused on the terrain of her childhood home, a 200-acre farm in the small settlement of ponde in south australia, by a two-step process: a 2005 jour56 americanphotomag.com september/october 2013

ney (before conceiving the project) to capture the location on flm, and a 2010 return by her parents, who re-trod the area with the processed negatives attached to the soles of their shoes. For england, the concept of having the flm “work the land” related to how her parents physically worked the land when she was a child, before the threat of fnancial troubles forced her family to leave in 1989. “Living on a farm not only ties you to a specifc economy, but also to seasonal rhythms,” she says. “the farm has changed hands four or fve times since then, and with each passing year and new owner, i can’t help but feel that the farm dies a small death.” england relocated to a nearby rural area as an adolescent and later would often drive past the farm; it wasn’t until December 2005, returning with a medium-format hasselblad flm camera, that she captured it. she processed the flm and held onto the negatives but wasn’t sure what to do with the project. in 2010, while living in providence, rhode island, she ran across the negatives and began experimenting with them on a lightbox—scratching

Nature’s Mark

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Nature’s Mark some, cutting others, burning a few. “it was cathartic and horrifying, but i was enthralled,” she says. Feeling more directly connected to her childhood memories of love versus loss, england ultimately came upon the idea of her parents’ revisiting the farm: “traversing it on my behalf—looking for locations of where they’d taken snapshots of my brother and me as children,” she says. over six to eight months, her parents took numerous treks, each time with three to fve negatives taped to each shoe. some came back relatively intact, others in fragments; england turned them into large-scale pigment prints. Ultimately, she says, photographing the farm wouldn’t have made sense without a material connection—what had been lacking in her memory was that physical relationship. “it was an urgent thing to understand this particular patch of dirt,” england says. “it was the material that made me.” AP

From top: England’s “Dad #10 (Right Foot),” and “Mum #3 (Right Foot),” from her series Thrice Upon a Time.

58 americanphotomag.com september/october 2013

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Big iQ Phase One’s 80MP medium-format IQ280 back proves that size matters By stan horaczek

egapixel counts are on the rise in DSLRs, and manufacturers have started claiming medium-format-like performance from their cameras. Phase One’s 80-megapixel IQ280 digital back, however, is a clear reminder that there’s still a signifcant gap between the 645 format and 35mm, in more ways than just the price. The IQ280 that the company lent us for review showed up in a 30-pound hard case and felt like a piece of industrial equipment; opening it up augmented the effect. Everything about the back and the Phase One 645DF+ body it was attached to upon arrival seem driven by one purpose: Achieve maximum image quality. The back is controlled by four simple buttons and a 3.2-inch touchscreen display. High-end DSLRs put up many pages of menu options; the IQ280, just a page and a half. Its ISO range goes from 35 to only 3200 (and that’s in expanded mode, which reduces resolution to 20MP)—paltry in a time when consumer-grade DSLRs routinely climb to, or above, ISO 25,000. And the camera’s autofocus system is loud and a little fnicky. It quickly becomes apparent that none of this matters. After uploading the frst batch of massive

images—each RAW fle is roughly 100 megabytes— I was shocked at the detail. I zoomed in to 100 percent (actual size) on a model’s eye and could count the daisies on the set refected in it. The default fles come out looking a little fat, but that’s by design. Once you start editing in capture One software, required for RAW conversion, the beneft of true 16-bit capture becomes evident. The blacks and whites seem the same, but all that data translates into smoother, more accurate color. Despite its spartan build, the back has plenty of bells and whistles. The built-in wireless connection lets you control the camera and preview high-res fles in real time via iPhone or iPad, and it does so with unexpected speed. Plus, it has live view and a version of focus peaking Phase One calls “Focus Mask” for making use of shallow depth of feld. Ultimately, this isn’t a camera to take out shooting; it’s a camera to build photo shoots around. It affords incredible photographic power, but it will also underscore your faws as a shooter. And it’s an amazing machine, a lot like a high-performance race car: It has few frills and unbelievable horsepower, but it needs someone who can open up the throttle without smashing it into the wall. ap

noteworthy specs SENSOR 80MP medium-format (53.7mm x 40.4mm) CCD SENSITIVITY ISO 35–800 (full resolution); 140–3200 (20MP resolution) COLOR DEPTH 16-bit per color OUTPUT FILES IIQ RAW (storage); TIFF-RGB, TIFF-CMYK, JPEG (via Capture One) LCD SCREEN 3.2-inch, 1.15MP touchscreen with 170-degree viewing angle IQ BACK MOUNTS Phase One 645DF+; Mamiya 645DF+ (also RZ67 Pro II and RB67 via adaptor); Hasselblad H1, H2, 555ELD, 553ELX, 503CW, and 501CM; Contax 645AF 4x5 CAMERAS Via FlexAdaptor: Arca Swiss, Cambo, Linhof, Toyo, Sinar, Plaubel, Horseman BUY IT $51,000 for kit with Phase One 645HD+ body and Schneider Kreuznach 80mm f/2.8 Leaf Shutter AF lens; phaseone.com

SEPTEMbER/OcTObER 2013 AMERIcAnPHOTOMAg.cOM 61

the goods Hot new tools and toys for photographers By the editors of american photo

sMALL BUt sPeedy

SanDisk 64GB Extreme MicroSDXC Video shooters prize fast, high-capacity memory cards, but action cams like GoPro’s, which take MicroSD, have been sidelined in the speed race. No longer. This new card, the fastest in the format, allows 80MB/sec read and 50MB/sec write speeds, is built to withstand more abuse than SanDisk’s Ultra cards, and comes with a download of RescuePro Deluxe recovery software. Buy it $200; sandisk.com

NeW tWist oN AUtofoCUs

PiCtUres iNto PAiNtiNGs

Corel Painter X3 Now in version 13, Painter is a favorite among photographers who use its huge array of realistic paintbrushes, papers, and paint types to transform photos into paintings. When output on a surface such as watercolor paper or canvas, the resulting print appears as if done by hand. Buy it $429 new, $229 upgrade; corel.com

eNtry-LeVeL X

Fujiflm X-M1 The latest addition to Fujiflm’s spiffy X-series ditches the electronic viewfnder in favor of a 3-inch, 920,000-dot tilting LCD. Like the X-E1, the X-M1 has an APS-C-sized 16.3-megapixel X-Trans sensor with an expanded ISO range of 100–25,600. But it adds built-in Wi-Fi and focus peaking, and its new 16–50mm f/3.5– 5.6 stabilized kit lens employs 12 elements (three aspherical) in 10 groups. Buy it $700 body only, $800 with kit lens; fujiflm.com 62 americanphotomag.com SeptemBer/octoBer 2013

Canon EOS 70D With an innovative phase-detection system that puts fast and accurate autofocus right on the image sensor, this upgrade of Canon’s popular EOS 60D offers special benefts to live-view and video shooters. Traditional still photographers will fnd plenty to love, too: a boost to 20.2 megapixels from 18, an additional stop of sensitivity (to ISO 25,600), burst shooting of 7 frames per second (up from 5.3), touch controls on the articulating 3-inch LCD, and built-in Wi-Fi. Even the regular AF system got a lift to the same 19 cross-points as on Canon’s top APS-C model, the 7D. Buy it $1,200 body only; $1,350 EF-S 18–55mm f/3.5–5.6 IS STM lens (shown); usa.canon.com

MAKING ROOM ON THE BACK

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 II Backside illuminated (BSI) sensors, which put the circuitry behind the silicon wafer rather than alongside the pixels on the front, have boosted low-light performance in smartphone and security cameras for a few years, but with this updated compact Sony introduces the frst BSI sensor in the much larger 1-inch format. Although the 20.2MP pixel count remains the same as on the original RX100, sensitivity extends a stop further, to ISO 12,800. The 28–100mm (equivalent) f/1.8–4.9 Carl Zeiss VarioSonnar T* lens returns, but there’s now a multi-interface shoe for accessories. Wi-Fi? Built in. Buy It $750; sonydigitalimaging.com

THE HOLD STEADY

Manfrotto Pixi Built for ILCs, this little tabletop tripod and button-control ballhead holds up to 2.2 pounds. The legs fold together into a comfortable hand grip, too. Buy It $28; manfrotto.com

SERIOUS CAMERA IN A PHONE

Nokia Lumia 1020 Camera or phone? Both, please. Nokia’s new smartphone sports a 41-megapixel sensor, f/2.2 lens, and Xenon fash. All those pixels give images enough resolution to crop or apply noise reduction without sacrifcing quality. It runs Windows Phone, so apps aren’t as plentiful as they are for iOS and Android (no Instagram!), but it includes Nokia Camera Pro for manual control over exposure and focus, among other useful capabilities. Buy It $300 with two-year AT&T contract; nokia.com

WIDE-ANGLE WONDER

tokina 12–28mm f/4 At-X A reformulated replacement for Tokina’s popular 12–24mm f/4 for APS-C-sensor DSLR bodies, this new constant-aperture zoom does more than just add reach. Two super-low dispersion (SD) lens elements fght chromatic aberration, while a pair of aspherical elements work together to minimize distortion, maintain sharpness at the edges, and help focus marginal light rays. A new magnetic precision sensor helps the AF system achieve fast and accurate autofocus. See how it fared in our sister publication’s lab tests at PopPhoto.com/gear. Buy It $600; tokinalens.com

SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED

Lomography Konstruktor It looks like a model-building kit, but after an hour or two of assembly the result is a working 35mm flm camera with a 50mm f/10 lens and waist-level viewfnder. The Konstruktor, like other plastic cameras such as the Holga and Diana, provides little control or predictability, but that’s half the fun. Buy It $35; lomography.com September/october 2013 americanphotomag.com 63

hands on

Photography on the

The best mobile apps for before, during, and after a shoot By Theano nikiTas y now there’s probably not a photographer on the planet who doesn’t carry a smartphone—and a tablet—in their camera bag. but the role of mobile apps and devices in photography goes far beyond the instant gratifcation of snapping and sharing with instagram or hipstamatic. now photographers are integrating their devices and apps into their regular workfow. Separating an app store’s gold from its dross can be a real chore, though. So we’ve pulled together some of the best apps—some quite new, some that have proven their worth after years of use—that provide tools to make the most of your mobile device, regardless of what camera you use. For each category, we highlight our favorite and offer a couple of alternatives that deserve a look.

anyone who photographs strangers (or even friends) or on private property knows the value of a signed release. Without this crucial permit, a photo can be much harder to sell—and much easier to get sued over. thanks to apps like Easy Release, paper forms are rapidly becoming a thing of the past. this app, recognized by stock agencies such as getty images, provides standard release forms with felds for info about the model/property and shoot with room to customize (even more if you buy in-app options). pDFs of the release can be e-mailed, and cloud storage syncs data across all ioS devices. a bonus is that pDFs are available in a range of languages (13 for ioS, 12 for android). it’s altogether convenient and, as the name implies, easy to use. Buy it $9.99, plus $3.99 for in-app options; ioS 5.0 or later, android 2.1 or later; applicationgap.com AltERnAtivEs ASMP Releases: Free; ioS 4.0 or later; asmp.org Top Model Release: $8.99; ioS 5.0 or later; topmodelrelease.com

64 americanphotomag.com September/october 2013

GeT help foR ouTdooR phoTos For landscape shooters, available light is all. that means knowing when the sun will strike the scene from the best angle or when a full moon will appear over the horizon. the Photographer’s Ephemeris comes with multiple search options, including location, date, lunar phase, and the sun’s angle. For shooting in the mountains, for example, the app can show whether the sun will rise high enough to illuminate a particular area of the landscape. Learning how to interpret some of the data takes a little effort, but the app provides built-in help and its website has online tutorials. it’s an amazing app well worth the learning curve. Buy it $8.99 ioS, $4.99 android; ioS 5.1, android 2.2; photoephemeris.com AltERnAtivEs LightTrac: $4.99; ioS 5.0 or later, android 1.6 or later; lighttracapp.com PhotoMoon: $2.99; ioS 5.0 or later; rivolu.com (requires sign-up with e-mail address) Sun Seeker: $6.99 ioS, $5.99 android; ioS 5.0 or later, android 2.2 or later; ozpda.com

Model Releases aT The Ready

Above: Prezent (page 68) puts sophisticated portfolio options within reach. left: Easy Release keeps track of crucial permissions. Right: the Photographer’s Ephemeris provides geographical and astronomical details for landscape shooters.

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For mobile image-editing prowess, nothing comes close to Filterstorm Pro 2.6.1. it has all the key components for advanced adjustments with familiar tools such as curves, levels, clone, masks, and layers. edits can be saved as automations, ioS-supported raW fles can be edited, and iptc data can be created, edited, and saved. plus there’s batch processing, digital asset management, and numerous export options. Filterstorm 4.6.2, its less expensive sibling, lacks only batch processing and Dam tools. Buy it $14.99, pro version; $3.99 regular; ioS 5.1 or later; flterstorm.com AltERnAtivEs Adobe Photoshop Touch: phone version $4.99, ioS 6.0 or later, android 4.0 or later; tablet version $9.99, ioS 5.0 or later, android 3.1 or later; adobe.com Aviary: Free; ioS 5.0 or later, android, Windows phone 8; aviary.com Snapseed: Free; ioS 5.0 or later, android; snapseed.com

left: Filterstorm Pro 2.6.1 allows sophisticated editing on a phone or tablet. Right: with Marksta, you can put detailed copyright info on images before sharing.

pRoTecT shaRed iMaGes copyright infringement runs rampant on the internet given the ease and frequency with which images are copied, downloaded, and reposted. photojournalist John D. mchugh designed Marksta to help alleviate it. this quick and easy watermark app goes beyond just adding a copyright line: You can add multiple lines of text, logos, hashtags, iptc (including contact information), eXiF, and location data to the image so there’s no doubt who owns it. it may not halt copyright infringement, but using it to watermark images on an iphone or ipad before sending them off is an excellent deterrent. Buy it $1.99; ioS 5.0; marksta.com AltERnAtivEs Add Watermark: Free; android 2.0 or later; androidville.wordpress.com Impression: $1.99; ioS 5.1 or later; bluecrowbar.com/ impressionapp iWatermark: $1.99; ioS 5.1 or later, android 2.1 or later; plumamazing.com/mac/iwatermark

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hands on shooT ReMoTe— Really With Wi-Fi built into ever more cameras, remote shooting is now easier and more commonplace. but true remote image capture and viewing with control over camera settings has always been relegated to computer software. apps like Phase One’s Capture Pilot and Capture Control have changed that. capture pilot provides remote viewing on mobile devices; capture control lets photographers adjust parameters such as aperture, shutter speed, and iSo. and they work not just with phase one cameras but with tethered canons, nikons, Sonys, and other DSLrs. For full functionality the apps need capture one software ($299). a more budget-friendly option is the capture pilot app, which works with capture one express 7 software, albeit with limitations. Buy it Free (capture pilot) or $14.99 (capture control, in-app purchase); ioS 4.3 or later; phaseone.com AltERnAtivEs Camera Remote: Free, $0.99 for ad-free version; android 2.0 and later; busywww.com/ cameraremote.aspx Hasselblad Phocus Mobile: Free; also requires free hasselblad phocus software (does not require a hasselblad camera); hasselbladusa .com/products/phocus.aspx

ask any two photographers for the best tablet portfolio app and you’ll get two different answers. there are snazzier ones than Prezent, but it puts sophisticated functions within reach. prezent’s ability to combine motion on the same page as (or even within) a still image is particularly compelling. it allows links to related media from the main pages, and video plays automatically when the viewer swipes to a page with motion content (set sound levels before launching the app). Buy it $8.99; ioS 4.3 or later (ipad only); prezentapp.com AltERnAtivEs FolioBook Photo Portfolio: $12.99 (plus $1.99, in-app purchase, for video plug-in); ioS 5.0 or later (ipad only); rocketgardenlabs.com Portfolio for Android: Free; android 3.0 or later (7-inch and 10-inch devices); port4droid.com/index.php?/en Xtrafolio: $16.99; ioS 4.0 or later (ipad only); xtrafolio.com ap 68 americanphotomag.com

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READERS’

2013photo 20th Annual

contESt

The 20th Annual Popular Photography Photo Contest gives photographers the opportunity to win prizes and have their work recognized in the January 2014 issue of Popular Photography, the largest photo magazine in the world, as well as on our website, PopPhoto.com.

categories • ACTION/SPORTS • ANIMALS • CITIeS/ARChITeCTuRe

• LANDSCAPe/NATuRe • OBJeCTS/STILL LIFe • PeOPLe

• PeOPLe’S ChOICe - PopPhoto readers will vote for their

favorite image! All entrants will automatically be entered in this category.

Submissions The competition is open to work produced from June 2012 —October 2013. All submitted artwork should be of reproduction quality.

ENTRY FEE: DEADLINE:

$10 October 20, 2013

Credits (clockwise): MB Birdy, Ben Goode, Jacom Stephens, Jasmina007, Kent Weakley

For a complete set of contest rules, prizes or to enter, please visit: www.PopPhoto.com/readerscontest2013 The Readers’ Contest, sponsored by Popular Photography magazine, a publication of Bonnier Corporation, is open only to individuals who are sixteen (16) years or older at time of entry, excluding residents of Cuba, Iran, North Korea, the province of Quebec, Sudan, Syria, and any other jurisdiction where this contest is prohibited by law. To enter and for complete Ofcial Rules, visit http://www.popphoto.com/readerscontest2013 between May 13, 2013 and October 20, 2013.

PARTING SHOT

Emotional Reservoirs s a pediatric emergency physician, Wendy Sacks photographed her young patients to clinically document their illnesses and as an emotional outlet for the stress and grief associated with her job. “i turned everything into pictures,” Sacks says. after a debilitating connective-tissue disease forced her to leave medicine, she started taking photos of her own children. While photographing them during bathtime, her own intense feelings about life, death, healing, and physical struggle emerged, and her series Immersed in Living Water was born. Sacks showed some of her images to a photographer in January 2010; in march of the same year she was encouraged to take a leap of faith and brought her work to FotoFest in

“Brothers,” by Wendy Sacks, 2011. See this and other images from the series at wendysacks .photoshelter.com.

72 americanphotomag.com September/october 2013

By Jill c. ShomeR

houston. positive response there and at other portfolio reviews was immediate and tremendous, and Sacks was soon having her work displayed and winning awards around the world. Sacks photographs her young subjects in a stainless-steel tank at her home near rochester, new York. She doesn’t use professional models— the boys in the photo above are the sons of a man Sacks met at a local festival. She feels strongly that each session is a profound experience and that her work captures and celebrates the feeting nature of the moment. Yet she embraces her audience’s individual reactions to the images. Immersed in Living Water will be part of a book published by contrejour, the publishing house of French photographer claude nori, in 2014. AP

Wendy Sacks taps into primal feelings with her photo series Immersed in Living Water

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