The New York Times Monday February 21, 2022
Dr. Stacy L. Smith, director of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, has been studying the gender and race breakdown of Hollywood’s top-grossing directors since 2007, and for the first time since her work began Smith has seen sustained progress for women and people of color working behind the camera, reports The New York Times. Over the 15 years of the study, which analyzed 1,542 directors, only 5.4 percent were women. In 2020, that percentage rose to 15 percent and in 2021, it stood at 12.7 percent. Read the full Story >>
The New Yorker Monday February 21, 2022
"Photography doesn’t just force me to leave the house, it forces me to leave my head (briefly),” Alec Soth writes in his new book, A Pound of Pictures, which PPD has previously spotlighted. At The New Yorker, critic Vince Aletti, discusses the book, noting that at age 52, Soth is “arguably the most influential photographer of the past twenty years, owing, in large part, to how comfortable he is with his own influences.” Soth has long been conscious of carrying on the tradition of photographers from Walker Evans to William Eggleston, notes Aletti. Read the full Story >>
CNBC Monday February 21, 2022
In 2021, Brittany Pierre made over $109,000 selling NFTs of her own photography and flipping other NFTs she bought for a profit. Before that, Pierre was struggling to pay rent on her Chicago apartment or afford groceries and bus fare, notes CNBC. Pierre learned about nonfungible tokens last March, after a friend and fellow artist sold an NFT of her work for over $17,600. “I dove straight in, just doing a YouTube and a Google deep dive for a couple of days,” said Pierre. Read the full Story >>
Underwater Photographer of the Year Monday February 21, 2022
Rafael Fernandez Caballero of Spain is the overall winner of the 2022 Underwater Photographer of the Year competition for his image “Dancing with the Giants of the Night.” The photo captures five whale sharks, the largest known fish in the world, feeding on nocturnal plankton near the Maldives, in the Indian Ocean. “It was already incredible when one whale shark came to our boat,” says Caballero, whose work was chosen from among 4,200 submitted entries by photographers from 71 countries. Read the full Story >>
