In case you missed it, we released this gorgeous edition by 2009 First Edition Hot Shot Mike Sinclair on 20x200 earlier this week. It is the first edition from this season's Hot Shots and there's more to come—keep your eyes out! If you'd like to be automatically emailed whenever we release a new edition, sign up for Jen's newsletter.

Mike's statement is a genial narrative of the summer holiday in the heart of the midwest.

This Fourth of July celebration took place on the lawn of the Truman Presidential Library in Independence, Missouri.

July nights are slow to get dark enough to set off fireworks and I remember this evening included some speeches, introductions of prominent citizens and a band concert that included a few numbers with a children's choir. I think the Declaration of Independence was read aloud. The lawn was full of people--some picnicking, some just there for the fireworks. A group of Civil War enactors had set up camp at the far edge of the lawn.

Towards dusk, a few vendors started moving through the crowd selling multi-colored plastic circles, like mini hula-hoops, that when activated, glowed in the dark. They were irresistible to kids bored with waiting so long for the main event and each vendor had a trail of children following him. Soon the lawn was spotted with the glowing necklaces.

At dark, the fireworks began. The haze in the picture is a combination of Missouri's humid summer weather, fireworks, and smoke from Civil War-era cannons fired while Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture played.

BBQ-ing, camping, watching the fireworks, listening to music + dancing, whatever you're doing, have a great weekend!

Untitled by Colleen Plumb

Well, aside from gaining the attention of Miss Jen Bekman, the trio are all participants in an online group exhibition entitled, The Un-Natural Nature of Food. The show was curated by Melanie McWhorter from the photography zine, Fraction. Scroll through the show here, but be forewarned, some images are, as the title might suggest, distressing.

From the curator's statement:

This exhibition is an extension of a personal exploration of my own relationship with food and, intentionally or not, is a political statement about the current relationship our society has to food -- where it is produced, how it is produced, who produces it and with what. I have grouped these images to create an aesthetic flow leading from comfortable to uncomfortable, practical to ridiculous, natural to artificial, knowledge to ignorance. It is in contrast to many of the aspects of pre-production and post-production. Here I am interested in food as an aesthetic, a commodity.

All of the photographers also have limited prints available on 20x200. Colleen's prints Amish Horses, Field Museum Sue, and Tiger Rug, Cabrini Green, are dwindling as we speak, as are Kevin's prints, Jones Boulevard Location, #1 and Highway 94 Location, #1. Brian's edition print, Untitled, Thrift 2006 (0635), is now sold out.

Brea & Barbara, 2009 by Brad Moore a recent winner as well as Winter 2007 Hot Shot!

The Center for Fine Art Photography is accepting submissions for their 2009 Portrait Prize.

Open to all levels of photographers, the jury is looking to see both traditional and experimental uses of the medium. Since a the definition of portrait is up for your interpretation (the likeness of a person, animal, place or thing), I suggest you start snapping!

The all chosen exhibitors will have their work displayed on the online gallery, a great opportunity to have your viewed by collectors and enthusiasts around the world. There are of course monetary prizes as well, check out the details here.

So get cracking, the deadline for these submissions is August 18th, 2009 with the winners being announced ten days later on August 28th. The entry fee is $35 for non members or why not consider becoming a member? Members get a discount on application fees for competitions (of which there are many) as well as a bevy of artist's services. Pay attention to how many images you submit though, submitting more than three will cost you an extra $10 per photograph.

To see more details of the competition head over to their website or start submitting your work right away

Those who have attended the prestigious annual portfolio review, Review Santa Fe, know that the support for photographers in this part of the Southwest rivals that of any other town. We received word via email yesterday of the Santa Fe Workshops schedule for the remainder of the year and wanted to pass along note of the opportunities they offer for photographers of all levels. The courses range in time and price, from 3-day long weekend intensive to week-long sessions, and range in subject matter from commercial lighting techniques to photographic book-making.

Some of the classes that especially caught my eye are: Visual Storytelling with Audio, Lighting the Editorial Portrait (taught by the renowned Andrew Eccles), and Blurb Intensive: Publishing Your Photographic Book, which focuses on guiding you towards editing and creating your own photo publication using Blurb's software. Classes can be great incentive to motivate past projects that may have plateaued at some point, or a good place to finally work on a project idea that you've been thinking about for ages.

If you do venture out to Santa Fe for a workshop, make sure to also stop by at photo-eye bookstore and gallery to browse amongst their expertly selected collection of photo books.

See here for the workshop schedule in Santa Fe, San Miguel de Allende, and around the world.

VII Photo Agency, founded by seven photo-journalists in 2002, has added four new photographers to their prestigious roster. Lynsey Addario, Ziyah Gafić, and Seamus Murphy will join the VII network and Adam Ferguson will join the Mentor Program under the guidance of Christopher Morris.

Conceived of in 2001, the photographers of VII are bonded by their mission to document they document social, political, and environmental conflict -- both in war-torn areas and in zones of peace. They document the individuals and places affected by major and minor conflicts all over the world.

Addario, Gafić, Murphy, and Ferguson are all courageous photographers who have traveled the world on a mission of capturing instances of devastation and places and people of transition for many years. Instanbul-based Addario is a self-taught photographer who has spent the last 10 years in Afghanistan, Darfur, and exploring horrific, but necessary stories like the images of her series, Rape in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Sarajevo-born Gafić has also focused on places of transition, including war-torn Bosnia, Rwanda, and Chechnya. Murphy's images -- many in a deeply emotive grainy black and white -- focus on Somalia, Nigeria, and war-torn Afghanistan, offering a scarily intimate perspective of violence, poverty, and a crumbled environment. Lastly, Ferguson has visited the depths of Mumbai slums and the valleys of Afghanistan where US forces have been training for the last several years. All of these photographers have risked their lives for the edification of viewers all over the world.

We congratulate Addario, Gafić, Murphy and Ferguson their addition to VII and look forward to the amazing photo-documentation we are sure they will continue to produce.

Daisy Angy Kekae, collage portrait by Ian van Coller
Fall 2007 Hot Shot, Ian van Coller is showing his series of collage portraits of South African female domestic and farm workers are making their debut at Philadelphia's Sol Mednick Gallery now through the end of August. The exhibition, Looking Forward: Portraits of South African Women, also features portraits from Coller's series Domestic Relations which pictures women wearing their favorite clothing posed inside the homes that they are employed to clean. Both series seek to engage a conversation about post-Colonial identities in a post-Apartheid South Africa.

From Ian's statement on his collage portraits:

My portrait collage series combines several influences that have personally been relevant to my art-making process. The work grew out of my experimentation with the use of quilting techniques based on traditions from Africa and Gees Bend, Alabama as a way to tell stories and record oral histories. The manner in which individuals in these portrait collages are presented, was heavily influenced by posters from the period of resistance against apartheid in South Africa (particularly 1980s and early 1990s). The union posters are now iconic examples of the strong printmaking tradition that grew out of resistance and artistic movements that began in the townships, and which often created "heroic" figures out of ordinary people.

Looking Forward: Portraits of South African Women
Sol Mednick Gallery
211 S Broad St, Fl 15th
Philadelphia, PA

Ian is also showing work at Chicago's Schneider Gallery in group show, A Glance at Photography, now through August 22.

A Glance at Photography
Schneider Gallery
230 West Superior St.
Chicago, IL

Jacob Pritchard photographs girls in bed. That is: girls with cats, girls with ipods, girls with their boyfriends, girls asleep and girls with books. In this new project, Pictures in Bed, he shoots aerial portraits of twenty-somethings snuggling, making out, drinking tea, reading, and twisted between their sheets and blankets. The lighting is bright and even and the frame extends so that the bed's surroundings form an even frame around the mattress.

Like a honed-in version of The Selby, where photographer Todd Selby photographs the creative and fashionable in their homes, Pritchard's project attempts to create an image of their person with this slice of their personal space. The images form a set of snapshots that suggest our beds, their order and disorder, and how we occupy them are another form of self-portrait. In Pritchard's project, we would love him branch out to a far more diverse demographic whose bodies are less posed in the motions of sleep. Theories on sleep -- the meaning of postures, how many hours we need, what it means to dream -- are abound, but what does it mean to be in bed and not be asleep? We're curious to see where Pritchard goes with this project, and who and how he finds people in bed.

London-based photography and fine art printer, theprintspace, is running a monthly photography competition judged by photographers Julia Fullerton-Batten, Harry Borden, Rob Jarvis, and Editor & director of 1000 Words Photography Magazine, Tim Clark.

Each month brings a new theme and a new round of the competition; photographers can submit up to 5 images each month. All images selected for monthly competitions will also be included in theprintspace's two-week long grand bi-annual group show at their gallery in East London, opening at a TBD date. Winners of the monthly competitions will also receive a mounted 20x24-inch print of their choice from theprintspace studio, an entry on the 1000 Words photography blog and continued exposure from theprintspace.

This month's theme is Portraiture and the deadline for entries is tomorrow, June 30th. Applicants must join theprintspace's Facebook group for further details about entry terms and conditions. Winners will be announced on July 13th and notified via Facebook. Good luck to all applicants!

Two Cowboys, 2006 by Juliana Beasley

Fall 2006 Hot Shot Juliana Beasley was recently awarded a NJ Arts Council Grant, and since then has been steadily showing work and receiving accolades from NYMPHOTO, as well as a feature on Lens Culture.

Images from Juliana's poignant series of Mennonites living in the Southern Yucatan are currently on view at Daniel Cooney Fine Art's Summer Salon of Emerging Photographers. The exhibition will run through July 31.

Summer Salon of Emerging Photographers: Juliana Beasley, Felix Cid, Bradley Peters and Rebecca Schrock
DCFA 511 West 25th Street, #506 | New York

If you're a photographer and you want a book, and what photographer doesn't want a book (?), Blurb's Photography.Book.Now competition is for you. The grand prize is worth $25,000. The competition kicked off last year and was won by Jen Bekman Gallery's very own Beth Dow*.

Photography.Book.Now juror (and HHS! panelist), Darius Himes, helpfully outlined the ins and outs of the competition's new categories on his blog. This year's contest is all about showcasing a really brilliant book concept, so pay attention to these hints!

You can read more from Darius in this Q&A over on the Dodge & Burn blog.

And as Darius notes at the end of his post, to learn even more about photography + art book publishing, pick up The Photobook: A History, Volumes 1 & 2 by Martin Parr and Gerry Badger (Phaidon) or a copy of the newly released WordsWithoutPictures.org, conceived and edited by Charlotte Cotton at LACMA, to which he contributed an essay, about, you guessed it, photo books. Darius, a perennial fountain of knowledge for photographers has also managed to co-author a book with Mary Virginia Swanson, to be published in 2010.

The Photography.Book.Now. deadline is July 16th @ 12 p.m. PDT so you've got some time to read and review all of this essential info, get your photos together and enter!

* Beth Dow's photograph featured here is from her series, In the Garden, and can be found at 20x200.