Tracy Baran

It's an interesting thing to ponder: what happens to our work and photographic legacy when we pass on? Tracey Baran passed away in 2008, at 32, far too young an age. There are two events celebrating her work, The Tracey Baran Memorial Auction and a solo show at the Leslie Tonkonow Gallery in New York City that runs through October 17th. The auction, through igavel.com, has been arranged in order to raise funds for an annual grant awarded to an emerging female photographer from the US. It is in memory of Tracey, as a celebration of her life and photographic work, and to encourage interest in her work by a broader public. There are 47 photographic lots for sale in the Tracey Baran Memorial Auction. Highlights include photographs by Jack Pierson, Jonathan Torgovnik, Carrie Levy, Bill Jacobson, Brian Finke, and Elinor Carucci.

Tracy moved to New York City to attend the School of Visual Arts in 1993, from a small town in western New York, and began recording herself and her life. For the next 15 years, she approached her work with " an unusual blend of candor and empathy, her photographs intermingle spontaneously-recorded moments with posed and directed depictions that resonate with intense feeling, a painterly sensibility and her consummate skill as a color printer."

Tracey Baran’s first one-person exhibition took place in 1998 at the Liebman Magnan Gallery in New York. She had six additional solo shows, including a 2002 exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, and participated in more than thirty group shows at galleries and museums throughout the world, including, among others, the Guggenheim Museum (New York and Bilbao), the Folkwang Museum, Essen; P.S. 1/MoMA, New York; The Milwaukee Art Museum; and the Pusan Metropolitan Art Museum, Korea.

She was the recipient of several grants and awards including the Henry Buhl Foundation Grant (first prize) in 2002, the Aaron Siskind Foundation Individual Photographer’s Fellowship in 2005, and the Santa Fe Center for Photography Juror’s Choice Grant in 2006. Her work is included in the collections of the Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY; the Milwaukee Art Museum; the Miami Art Museum, and other institutions.

Shane Lavalette

If I could choose anywhere to have my work published, it would be in the New York Times Magazine. Kathy Ryan is an extraodrinary picture editor and I look forward to the magazine's images each Sunday, as much as the content. This Sunday, Shane Lavalette received just that honor, with his image of a Harvard classroom at rest.



If Mr. Lavalette's name is not a familiar one, it should be. He represents the next generation of smart, engaged photographers who have a fresh perspective and produce a tremendous amount in a short time. While Shane was working on his BFA at Tufts University and The School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, he created not only the well-read photography blog, Journal, but a unique approach to contemporary photography magazines, with his best selling success, Lay Flat.

His fine art work spans a broad spectrum of subjects, exploring the world near and far, from Vrindavan, India to the Champlain Valley Fair. To read more about Shane, the blog, Graphic Hug , features an interview as does Paul Giguere's Thoughts on Photography.

Statement for Slí na Boirne:These photographs come from a larger body of work that I began during a residency on western cost of Ireland in the small town of Ballyvaughan, County Clare. The photographs were made along a walking trail called Slí na Boirne [The Burren Way], which stretches 27 miles through the heart of the Burren, one of the country’s most beautiful and unique landscapes. Its limestone escarpment, made by way of erosion and the scouring of successive glaciation periods, extends north from Corofin to Bell Harbour, west to Black Head and down to Doolin, where it dies away.

Images from Slí na Boirne








Statement for New England: A series of photographs made in the Northeastern corner of the United States. New England consists of the states Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.

Images from New England

Chad Ress

Chad Ress is a commercial photographer that happens to create some wonderful fine art imagery. Born in Kentucky, he currently lives in Los Angeles. After recieving a photojournalism degree from Western Kentucky University, he became a photo assistant in New York. He quickly moved onto his own clients, and now, not only has a long, impressive roster of clients, but awards to match them. There are a couple of interesting interviews with Chad on, Feature Shoot, and F Stop.

There is an elegance and simplicity to his work that combines with a graphic sensibility. Chad knows just as much about what to leave out of the image, than what to put in.

‘I never try and pre-define an image too tightly. I’ve tried working this way in the past, and at least for me, the image can become sterile. There’s usually a lot of things floating around in my head, and my scouting is often an attempt to attach a visual to the thought. But I always keep my eyes open – I think inspiration can come from anywhere- and often things will present themselves when you least expect. Perhaps many photographer’s work differently. I’ve always enjoyed Robert Frank speaking about making ‘The Americans’ as a process of intuition, not intelligence. This seems to resonate with me.’

Heroic dogs, for Purina

War is Only Half the Story, Volume Two

I posted about The Aftermath Project Grants last month, and now Volume Two of War is Only Half of the Story is available for sale.



Sara Terry, founding director of The Aftermath Project, says We've just come out with our second publication, "War is Only Half the Story, Vol Two," featuring the stunning work of our 2008 grant winner Kathryn Cook ("Memory Denied: Turkey and the Armenian Genocide") and finalists Natala Grigalashvili, Tinka Dietz, Christine Fenzl and Pep Bonet. In addition, we are now accepting applications for our fourth year of granting (2010); we'll be giving out two grants, for $20,000 each. The application deadline is Nov 2nd. In a world of shrinking funds, we're proud to be making such a significant investment in photographers and in stories that aren't being told anywhere else.

Images by Kathryn Cook, 2008 grant winner for her work, Memory Denied: Turkey and the Armenian Genocide

C Gary Moyer

The toy camera evolution has been quite remarkable. When I started using Holgas and Dianas in the late 1990's and teaching toy camera classes in 2001, the only information available was on the Internet, on sites created by devoted fans. Diana cameras were hard to find pre-ebay and I remember spotting my first one in a thrift store in Seattle and crying with delight. Now there are numerous books, magazines, and reissued models sold in Urban Outfitters and at Lomography stores around the world. Toy cameras are being used to shoot political campaigns, the Olympics, wars, fashion, and are a staple in many a photographer's arsenal of cameras. Probably no one knows more about toy cameras than C Gary Moyer. Gary has been a vital part of the toy camera scene for a long while and he writes a regular column in Light Leaks magazine titled Gary's Toy Box, where he describes the qualities of different of toy cameras. He has also had numerous articles published (including JPG Magazine and Us Airways) and has exhibited widely. Gary's images reflect the toy camera at it's most fun, when brought to events that are full whimsy, celebrating and spotlighting the quirky and unusual. I guess you could call him the archaeologist of the toy camera world, brushing off plastic discoveries in hope of finding the perfect specimen.

Having spent the better part of my photography years obsessing over the sharpness of my images, my vision has now gotten blurry. Just as I find myself needing glasses, my photos are starting to reflect my aging eyes. Having found plastic cameras a few years ago, I actually see more clearly artistically.