The Archive
Brian Stauffer
The Trace / NBC
What We Learned This Week: Mark Peterson Documents the Rise of White Nationalism
As we noted yesterday, photographer Mark Peterson has won the 2018 W. Eugene Smith Grant for Humanistic Photography for his long-term work on the rise of white nationalism and how the American confederacy manifests itself today. He will receive $35,000 to complete his work, "The Past Is Never Dead." Known for his stark images of American political culture, Peterson has been covering the rise of the right wing since 2013, sharply anticipating the Trump era. "This is a violent movement wrapped in the language of reclamation, patriotism and cultural heritage," he wrote in his proposal to the Smith Memorial Fund.
Screening Room: Human Stories From Central America
"Gentle and dreamlike, yet present and unflinching." That is how Short of the Week describes a new documentary called "Shelter: Human Stories from Central America." Director Matthew K. Firpo describes his his 14-minute film as "a quiet look at lives on the line." In it, he allows Central American migrants and asylum seekers searching for a better life in the north to tell their own stories, many of which are wrenching. Made with a crew of five with donated gear, the film attests "to a universal desire for simple things-family, safety, opportunity," adds SOTW. We spotlight it today.
NYC Weekend: LES and Gowanus
For the inaugural LES Art Week, the twenty-four participating galleries are featuring work by woman artists, both established and emerging—offering fuel for the blazing evidence for why there have been, until now, “no great woman artists.” Linda Nochlin’s dramatic feminist rallying cry of 1971 is being proclaimed in venues from coast to coast, and around the world, more so than ever this year. And this weekend, the LES is a great place to view the proof. LES Art Week, wh...
Spotlight: Sandra Cattaneo Adorno Captures a Stormy Day in Rio
It was not a typical day on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro. "The sea was very rough and the undertow was very strong. The bathers were hesitating to get into the sea," recalls photographer Sandra Cattaneo Adorno. On the other hand, what wasn't good for swimmers was very good for the photographer. "A thick mist hung over the beach and was colored by the light of the sunset," she says of the photo she shot, which was named a winner of the Latin American Fotografia 6 competition. Another of Adorno's photos, a portrait shot in London's Sloan Square, was also named a winner.
Profile: Hope Wurmfeld's Memory of Rome, 1964
Hope Wurmfeld's love of Rome began 53 years ago. That's also when she discovered her love of photography. As she came to discover, the two passions -- Rome and photography -- are abidingly linked. In 1964, Wurmfeld moved to Rome after marrying her college boyfriend, who was there for year on a Fulbright scholarship. In the city's black market she bought two Leica cameras, several lenses, and a light meter, and then photographed everything she saw. Wurmfeld went on to become a noted fine-art photographer, but recently went through her archive and rediscovered her old images of Rome -- a Rome that is no more. Now they are collected in a new book.
The SONY a9: What the Pros Have to Say
"Eventually you knew it had to happen. Sooner or later cameras would get so good at what they did that basically your job as a photographer would be to look for interesting things to shoot and then try not to get in the camera's way as it did it's thing capturing them. I mean, imagine if a camera had pretty much flawless exposure capability, flawless focusing and could fire and focus so fast it never missed a frame?" So writes Jeff Wignall in todays Street Test of the Sony a9 full-frame mirrorless camera. Sony Artisans of Imagery Katrin Eisman, Andy Katz, and Pat Murphy-Racey join in with their takes on the 24.2-megapixel camera that has caused an uproar in the photo industry.