Jennette Williams

Jennette Williams, a photography instructor at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, is the fourth recipient of the biennial Center for Documentary Studies/Honickman First Book Prize in Photography. Her platinum prints of women bathers in Budapest and Istanbul were judged by Mary Ellen Mark as the prize winning project, selected from three hundred entries.

Creating the images in The Bathers, Williams drew on gestures and poses found in iconic paintings of nude women, including tableaux of bathers by Paul Cézanne and Auguste Renoir, renderings of Venus by Giorgione and Titian, Dominique Ingres’s Odalisque and Slave, and Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. By alluding to these images and others, Williams sought to reflect the religious and mythological associations of water with birth and rebirth, comfort and healing, purification and blessing. She also used copies of the paintings to communicate with her Hungarian- and Turkish-speaking subjects—homemakers, factory workers, saleswomen, secretaries, managers, teachers, and students. Working in steam-filled environments, Williams created quiet, dignified images that not only invoke canonical representations of female nudes but also early pictorial photography. At the same time, they raise contemporary questions about the gaze, the definition of documentary photography, and the representation and perception of beauty and femininity, particularly as they relate to the aging body. Above all else, her photos are sensuously evocative. They invite the viewer to feel the steam, hear the murmur of conversation, and to reflect on the allure of the female form.

Mary Ellen Mark wrote the foreword to Williams’s prize-winning book and states:
I asked Jennette about her process in taking these pictures—how she convinced these women to let her photograph them nude, how they came to trust her. First of all, of course, she was willing to be nude herself (though she often wore a vest or shorts with pockets to hold her film and light meter). Even so, many of the countries where she photographs are quite traditional, and it’s easy to imagine the difficulties she encountered in gaining these women’s confidence so that she could photograph among them freely. Jennette told me that she would shoot in the baths and then go back to her hotel room each night to process the film so that she could read the negatives. She would make prints back home and return to the baths with boxes of photographs to show and give to the women. When the women saw the photographs, they allowed her to continue to photograph them. I’m sure it was the beauty and dignity of her images as well as her approach that put them completely at ease in front of her camera.

Alex Prager

Alex Prager opens a new show at the M + B Gallery with work from her series, Week-end, part three in a trilogy that began with the series, Polyester and The Big Valley. The exhibition opens January 30th and will run through March 6th in Los Angeles.

This 29-year old photographer grew up between Los Angeles and Switzerland, her work reflecting the unreal reality of the influence of a cinematic childhood. After experiencing an exhibition by William Eggleston, this self-taught photographer never looked back.

Inspired by the high drama of classic movies—which, despite their theatricality, touch upon genuine emotions of alienation, fear, anger, longing, and lust—Prager's images seem at first to be all exquisite surface. However the girls of this series—named “Barbara,” “Jane,” “Lois” and other such conventional and slightly old-fashioned monikers—conceal pain beneath their lipstick-lined smiles and dead eyes. Informed largely by Los Angeles, with its perpetual blue skies and birds singing from imported palm trees, Prager’s work exudes an underlying sense of the eerie monotony and unease that can permeate beneath the surface of beauty and the promise of happiness.

In the artist's own words, she is “documenting a world that exists and doesn’t exist at the same time.” The trilogy began with girls playing archetypal roles in Polyester. Then in The Big Valley, the roles took on lives of their own, and the separation between make-believe and real life began to dissolve. With Week-end, which signifies the peak as well as the extent of the period, the façade becomes so thick that the illusion is now more real than the world they actually live in.

Paris Visone

For the past six years, Boston photographer, Paris Visone, has been capturing her world in a continuing series, Gender Roles and Appearance. She has been able to document her personal recollections and immortalize them from the time she was still a teenager, and as as she states, change is a natural progression. Although time and life is often perceived as a straight line, they are not. These concepts are vast yet narrow and complicated yet, clean. These photos herein lie what exists in-between, and are never premeditated. This 23 year old wunderkind went to the Art Institute of Boston and teaches digital photography at her alma mater in the summer.



Paris is a natural storyteller, and we have the lucky ability to see her short stories build into a novel. I'm sharing a lot of images, as her documentation is lengthy. Undoubtedly this series will continue indefinitely and I look forward to checking on her progress in the future.

In this series of photographs, my intention is two-fold. First, is to explore the gender dynamics and sexuality of my subjects. Secondly, I am trying to capture how these dynamics are transformed into “appearances” which my subjects feel they must uphold. These dynamics are preserved as they are passed down from one generation to the next. "You have to look good.” “You have to be a man.” “You have to look young if you are old, and old if you are young.” “The more muscles you have, the better you are." These social pressures are a focus in many people's daily lives. For most people, young and old, maintaining and upholding an “image” has become an obsession. This obsession extends not only to appearance, but also to the gender roles one is imprinted with at a very young age. Throughout the course of their life, the majority of people are trapped in the confines of these roles, most oblivious to the existence of any confines at all. One can not escape that which he does not see.

There are layers of image-consciousness at work. I am emphasizing the way the subjects want to be perceived, the way the photographer is capturing them, and the way the viewer perceives the image as a whole.

Images from 2009














Images from 2008








Images from 2007








Images from 2006






Images from 2005




Images from 2004

Photographer's Response to Haiti

After some brief calculations, I figure I personally have donated close to $1,000 for Haitian relief....a figure that I find somewhat astounding. By selling my work on several auctions, and purchasing work on more auctions, I am able to donate monies that I could never have otherwise, and also have the good fortune to now own some terrific prints. I have come out of the experience with a profound admiration for our community, plus a new friend in the Netherlands who purchased one of my prints in the Flickr auction. I've watched as galleries and individuals have established their own auctions, how a photographer friend in LA is organizing a big fundraiser at her home next weekend, and how another photographer friend, Robby Larson, jumped on a plane to see how he could help. If you'd like to follow his blog of his time in Haiti, it's here.



I'd like to applaud Rafael Soldi, one of the first people to respond to this catastrophe, for creating the Haiti Relief Benefit Print sale. He ( and a group of photographers) has raised over $7,000 in 48 hours. Andrew Newson helped organize a worldwide Charity Print Auction on Flickr that will continue on until February 14th. Crista Dix, from Wallspace Gallery in Seattle, created the Life Support Auction, which has already raised thousands of dollars and will continue into March. New images are added daily including recent additions from David Bram, Liz Kuball, and Joanne Koltnow. Other responses are One Respe on Magcloud featuring the work of photographers such as Mary Ellen Mark and Chet Gordon, Track 16 Gallery in Los Angeles is having an Artists for Haiti Auction that will include work by Helen Garber, Ed Ruscha, and Chuck Arnoldi and as of last night, Eric Keller from Soulcatcher Studio has organized pictureHope, with a roster of wonderful women photographers that include Joni Sternbach, Natalie Young, Lauire Lambrecht, Brigitte Carnochan, Cat Gwynn, and Angela Bacon Kidwell. It's not too late to donate!

Curtis Koshimizu

The first photographer I had the pleasure of meeting with at Review LA was Los Angeles photographer, Curtis Koshimizu. My first reaction to his work was that it was a perfect marriage of camera and imagery for his work in China--the images featured today were all taken with a Holga --by using a simple toy camera, it allowed him to approach his subjects with a less-than-intimidating lens. Curtis has developed insight and compassion for all he photographs, possibly some of it coming from a history where all his family members served in the Japanese Internment Camps in WWll.

I photograph to preserve observations and moments in time that connect with who I am and my place in the world. I search for places that fascinate my imagination and inspire me to dream. I am interested in the traditions and cultures of people in the continual motion of our current time

My approach is influenced by my training as a painter and interest in the fine art of painting. Photography has been an evolution of my art and life. It is an evolution I consider a lifelong discipline. It is a craft that helps me to understand and appreciate the world I live. An approach I consider parallel with the meaning of my own family name, Koshimizu, which translates as “small clear water.”

Chi Fan Le Ma? This was the greeting I met with a minority woman standing on the path. This means “have you eaten yet?” She smiled and noticed I was obviously not from the local area. This was followed by an invitation to her home to eat lunch. It did not matter that we had never met before. She would not accept a refusal and we shared a nice friendly lunch over a warm coal fire.

A man walking along the road saw me and my friend walking along the ice road during the biggest snow storm in over fifty years. He lived nearby and helped us trek along the dangerous road. He invited us to eat dinner. We bought some drinks and some supplies to bring and we shared a dinner together. After we had eaten, I told him, “ people here have such good hearts. I admire very much.” He smiled and we continued our dinner.

Over the past several years, I have spent extended periods of time in China. I have walked through the countryside, mountains and cities. When I look back, the phrase that best exemplifies my feelings is, “Chi Fan Le Ma?“ The following images are various moments in time and various places in Mainland China.