Silhouette 1 by Tabitha L Lewis

The women in Tabitha L. Lewis' photographs begin to take on the characteristics of their natural surroundings. Limbs become branches and light shines through clothing as it does through leaves at the edges of a frame.

Lewis might be better known as Tabitha Soren, MTV VJ of "Chose or Lose" fame. She's done some growing up (along with the rest of us who would remember her from then) since appearing on television at the ripe age of 19. The themes in her work are evidence of this growing up — exploring the changing relationship women have with their own flesh and bones. She writes:

No longer are our bodies considered our genetic inheritance. They are projects to improve, design and update. My images are an attempt to align the varied, natural shapes of women with varied, natural shapes in the landscape.

See more of her work on her website.

Cage by Ania Gozdz

Polish-born RISD student Ania Gozdz's photographs resonate with the sort of existentialism that is central to a lot of Eastern European literature. But philosophical wonderings about the nature of our existence in words is one thing, representing them with images is another.

She writes:

Slipping in and out through the surface of representation, my work aims to highlight the symbiotic relationship between life and death and explore the failings of memory and materiality despite their perceived stability... I'm also intrigued by how flux and memory shape the distressed, porous narratives of our lives, and by how the ruptures in the understanding of ourselves can be the richest well of learning and reflection to draw from.

Gozdz's works walk the line between representation and abstraction, see more on her website.

We've been fielding lots of questions about HHS! contenders featured on this very blog and want to address the two most common asks today. The most important thing to know is that the work featured here is selected by the editors of this blog and should not be considered representative of the tastes and views of our esteemed panel.

Hope y'all find this helpful:

Q. If you are not featured on the blog as a contender, does that mean that your photography is not considered for 20x200 editions?

A. No. Each and every photographer who submits work to Hey, Hot Shot! is considered for participation in 20x200. Hey, Hot Shot! is the *only* way photography is reviewed for 20x200 which makes it extra important for us to look at each and every entry. In addition to viewing the three images every photographer has submitted, Ms. Jen Bekman (founder and curator of 20x200) will visit entrants' websites to view more work for potential 20x200 editions. We're thorough (and sneaky!) like that! So, don't be surprised if you don't see your work here and we drop you an email asking if you'd like to participate in 20x200.

Q. If you are not featured as a contender on the blog, does that mean you are not in the running to be a Hot Shot?

A. No. Again, please remember that the selections of the editors of this blog for contenders posts do not necessarily reflect the tastes and considerations of the HHS! panelists. While we love being able to feature a lot of great work here, it's really only a minor introduction to the wealth of work that is submitted by photographers and is carefully considered by our panel.

If you have more questions that are not answered in this post or in our FAQ, please write them in the comments and we'll do our best to answer those too! Thank you!

Thanksgiving by Aya Brackett

Hot Shot contender Aya Brackett writes of her upbringing in a traditional Japanese house in the mountains of Northern California. Having spent some time in Northern California myself observing the bounty of this region's land, I can see why Brackett turns her camera's eye to creating images of food, with aesthetics and arrangement inspired by still life painting.

She writes,

The Between Meals project is constantly ongoing simply because I am continually interested in how food still lifes suggest a greater context and a narrative of human life outside the camera frame. These are not really food shots per se, but compositions that happen to employ food; the inspiration derives from the objects humans consume and use in their everyday lives. I am moved by how these mundane objects can be evocative cues of domestic life, but are still aesthetically exciting.

The work in this series captures moments before and after meals, when ingredients are laid out on a table or counter, or only the last drops of red wine can be seen in the neck of a glass. One sees the rinds and peels of devoured fruit next to cigarette butts and cracked nut shells; the remnants of indulgence and enjoyment and ritual. Brackett captures food without its creators, but their presence can be felt strongly in each of her images.

See additional work on Aya's website.

We will announce the 2009 First Edition Hot Shots next Thursday, June 4th, 2009, instead of today. After extending the competition deadline (twice!), we found ourselves too short on time to carefully review each and every entry. We've said it before and will say it again — we're looking at an incredible amount of amazing work. We are sorry but promise the upcoming announcement will be worth the wait!

There's more exciting news coming even sooner next week. On Monday, June 1st, 2009, we will announce the 2008 Hey, Hot Shot! Ne Plus Ultras. Selected from all ten of the talented photographers who were Hot Shots in 2008 — Juliane Eirich, Derek Henderson, Roc Herms Pont, Kate Orne, Colleen Plumb, Yijun Liao, Hosang Park, Cara Phillips, John Mann and Donald Weber — the two Ultras will receive representation from Jen Bekman Gallery and be slated for solo exhibitions. Previous Ne Plus Ultra solo exhibitions at the gallery have been reviewed by The New York Times, The New Yorker, Le Monde, and Der Spiegel. Represented artists gain even more exposure and recognition via group exhibitions, participation in art fairs and opportunities to publish books and/or monographs. We're sure there will be lots of good things in store for the two newest Ultras.

In the meantime, see more contenders here, find us on Flickr and Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.

A Rock Decaying Around Itself by Jeremias Paul

A decaying rock, a dead bird, and a hole in a curtain can be simply taken as objects of everyday life, or, read with the significance of how these items and their circumstance came to be. HHS! contender Jeremias Paul explores "spirit-beings" through photography and sculpture; the works are meant to question existence and coincidence through the language of familiar forms, and encourage inquiry rather than simple answers or explanations.

Paul writes,

Songlines, as believed by the indigenous peoples of Australia, represent ancient paths left behind by ancestral spirit-beings during the creation of the world known as the Dreaming or Dreamtime. These spirit-beings manifested themselves in everyday forms ranging from inanimate objects to people, and even natural phenomena. It is believed that their existence is revealed to us through the signs that they have left behind in the world that surrounds us.

In the above image, a red rock crumbles upon the surface of smaller rocks below it. Where does this rock come from, what causes it's decay, and where is it located? What makes this rock red? One can ask innumerable questions both big and small about both object and circumstance, no matter how minute the point of focus may at first seem. This pushes the viewer to examine the decaying rock, dead bird, and hole in curtain more closely, and then from further away, at each glance of the object.

See addition work from the Songlines series on Jeremias' website.

Support the Troops by Maury Gortemiller

HHS! contender Maury Gortemiller writes:

Robert Storr speaks of the estrangement of the photograph, the medium's capability to depict persons and objects in such a way that obliterates whatever context may have been attached to them. When photography is operating at the highest level, context as suggested by the photographer is ambiguous, allowing the viewer to re-contextualize as dictated by his or her experiences, intuition and knowledge.

It's dense text for an idea that's pretty simple when well executed (isn't that always the case!). And it's a case that can be made by images alone and the process of looking at them, as is evidenced above.

Was the ribbon sticker removed from the car or worn off by wind and sun? What kind of ribbon was it? Sans Gortemiller's title, would we be more likely to think it was formerly a pink ribbon for breast cancer survivors or a multicolored autism awareness ribbon? A purple one that demonstrates support for the elimination of cancer in our lifetime? Or a camo "Land of the Free because of the Brave" ribbon? It's quickly clear that this symbol signifies exactly everything and nothing all at once.

Whiling away at your desk before the long holiday weekend? Check out this video with apparently-made-for-radio Second Edition 2008 Hot Shot Donald Weber. Photographs from his series, The Drunken Bride, Russian Unveiled, are on view at CONTACT Toronto Photography Festival.

Read more about Weber's work in this interview and the 20x200 newsletter announcing his editions. Acquire (affordably!) Forest. Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl or Dinner. Village of Zorin, Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl for your photography collection.

Inauguration by Simon A Biswas

We're well past Obama's first one hundred days. And the worst economic climate we've recently encountered has proven to be a serious buzz kill. So, I was happy to stumble upon this photograph that gave me goosebumps again (we also have the a/c cranked in the office!).

On that Inauguration Day, people from all over the country gathered on the lawns of the White House, camped out to hear Obama's speech, even if he couldn't be seen and his words came through elevated speakers. It was one of those days that seemed too good to be true and that feeling is evident in the early morning light that echoes the hope expressed by this father photographed with his daughter, too young and too exhausted to really know what's going on.

Photographer Simon A Biswas, it seems, was in the right place at the right time, to capture the right man at the right moment.

Ben by Maureen R. Drennan

The tired eyes of Ben, above, speak to a life full of struggles. He lays in bed, looking one part listless, and one part contemplative; as a viewer, one wonders what it is that might be plaguing him. Contender Maureen Drennan has fixed her camera's eye on Ben for the last year and the ways being a marijuana grower in California puts him in a position of both social and cultural isolation.

Drennan writes,

We met a year ago and through this project have become close. Although marijuana is legal to grow and use in the state of California within strict guidelines, there are many situations in which it is still illegal. It is still not culturally acceptable to be involved in growing or selling pot. Due to the nature of rural farming and the reality of the illegalities of growing and distributing large amounts of marijuana "Ben" is socially and culturally isolated.

Situated between the fine lines of what's permitted and disallowed by the law, Ben becomes marginalized, while trying to maintain a living. Drennan documents small moments in his day: the morning in bed, weighing his crop, and walking down a quiet mountainous road to who-knows-where. Each speak to the lonesomeness that can come about by opting into a contentious trade, where the rules are as easily broken as they are made, because those rules are still as yet so unclear.

See additional work by Maureen on her website.

Jen Bekman, and New York Times Photo Director, Kathy Ryan were amongst the curators of this year's American Photography 25, selecting 351 winning photographs from a record-breaking 10,100 submissions to be included in AP25, a hard cover book that will be distributed internationally in November. In addition, 171 images received two votes, and were chosen for the web gallery, which will be launched in conjunction with the book.

Both the book and the website slideshow feature a wide range of images spanning from an iconic portrait of President Obama taken by Peter Yang, to the intimate scene of a family dinner by Hey, Hot Shot! contender Katrina d'Autremont. We also congratulate JB artist Brad Moore, Hot Shot Bob O'Connor, 20x200 edition-makers Kevin J. Miyazaki and Rachel Papo, and HHS! contender Ryan Monaghan who have been selected for either the book or web gallery!

The slide show will be up for a limited time in preparation for the official launch on November 12th and advance copies AP25 will be available in September at ai-ap.com (with a limited-offer discount). Congratulations to those selected for this year's AP25!

Sand Storm by Chelsea Brewer

Strange but true, I've managed to pick another photographer, this time Chelsea Brewer, who is working out of California. Maybe it's MOMA's Into the Sunset exhibition that has me subconsciously gravitating towards these photographs?

I was consciously drawn to this work, not because their left-coast-ness was clear, but at first glance, the image above reminded me of Michael Corridore's Aperture Portfolio Prize winning series Angry Black Snake. Corridore's photographs document that very specific moment of euphoria in spectator events when the climax has occurred and the crowd, covered in dust, ash or smoke, physically become part of the spectacle. In Brewer's above photo, the subjects are not watchers or participants, they are instead subject only to the wills of nature and the sand and sun and wind around them. It is these elements that unite her subjects throughout the series: as Corridore's portraits are as much of people as they are of sport, Brewer's photos are as much of people as they are of a place.

See more of Brewer's new work on her website website.

Dear readers, our sincere apologies go out to you!

We haven't kept our promise to post about contenders every day since the panel but we'll make it up to you! We are overwhelmed by all the great work we've seen and want to be sure we're able to recognize it here before we announce the Hot Shots one week from Thursday, on May 28th.

In addition to more contenders posts, we'll have a wrap up of NYPH'09 (which kept us super busy!) and the recently announced new American Photography 25. All this, starting tomorrow! Till then!

Jen Bekman Gallery artists, Joseph O. Holmes and Brad Moore feature work in the 14th Annual PRC Juried Exhibition, Exposure, on view May 22nd - June 28, 2009. We are huge fans of Boston, a fine town for photography, and the PRC, or Photographic Resource Center at Boston University, offers fantastic classes and portfolio reviews, is home to the Aaron Siskind Library, and Curator, Leslie K. Brown oversees high-caliber exhibits showcasing the work of both emerging and established photographers in the PRC gallery. (It also happens to be where Hot Shot/Jen Bekman artist and current HHS panelist Christine Collins lives!)

This year's guest juror was Russell Hart, Executive Editor of American Photo magazine and Editor of American Photo On Campus who selected Holmes, Moore, and photographer, blogger, and twitter-friend, Elizabeth Fleming as three of the fourteen artists who will exhibit at the show. Holmes will feature a selection of images form his series LCD, where he has photographed the LCD screens of visitors to the Museum of Natural History. Past jurors of the show include Jen (2007), who also guest-lecturing at BU about how to break into the gallery world and self-market, and Lesley A. Martin (2008), also a HHS! panelist.

There will be an opening reception next Thursday, May 21st, 5:30 - 7:30 p.m., and the show will remain on view through June 28, 2009. PRC is located at 832 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA.

We wish we were in Boston so we could drop by, but alas, we'll be manning HHS! HQ and preparing to announce our latest round of Hot Shots! If you do drop by, we'd love to hear what you think of this year's show.

Los Angeles-based artist Jenny Walters, a Hot Shot during the inaugural season of the competition in Spring 2005, currently has a solo show, In Lieu of Gifts, on exhibit at The Green Lantern Gallery in Chicago. Walters is exhibiting both photographs and video, which explore the impact of major life events, and how personal identity is tugged and shaped by these events both during and after they transpire.

The Green Lantern Gallery writes,

A pervasive sense of feminine desire, vulnerability and desperation links a number of these pieces, but they are also marked by an attraction to universally theatrical gestures and scenarios that signal the complexities of relationships with oneself, others and the future. The installation explores the issues of aging, mortality and performance while presenting visual information that allows the viewer to recognize and share the inherent intimacy in failure. Constructing a sort of psychological anthropology via performance and the photo/video document, Walters recognizes that it is in our failures that we begin to see each other and ourselves and draw closer together.

The show is on view by appointment only through June 13, 2009 at The Green Lantern Gallery | 1511 N. Milwaukee Avenue, Second Floor, Chicago, Illinois 60622-2009

sprinkle by Mary L. Rasmussen

It's warm and sunny and the weather's just right for a little day-dreaming about longer days and later evenings. Most of Mary L. Rasmussen's photographs appear to be taken during that extended period of time between late afternoon and early evening when you're not quite sure when one has ended and the other has begun and all of a sudden you realize that the sun may soon be rising.

Both her portraits and landscapes are dark and mysterious, her subjects are guarded but not distant — they're really a bit of a tease. For more, see Mary's website, appropriately titled faint in between.

The New York Photo Festival '09 kicks off this evening and gets into full swing tomorrow. Exhibitions, satellite shows, panels + talks, and award ceremonies continue through Sunday, May 17th for four seriously jam-packed days in DUMBO. It's a lot of ground to cover, so here's a rundown on the comings and goings of some JBP-related peeps:

Exhibitions:
HHS! panelist + 20x200 artist, photographer Stefan Ruiz is included in Chris Boot's main exhibition, Gay Men Play. He'll be showing portraits of gay men taken during party weekends in Berlin and San Francisco.

Portfolio Reviews:
Jeffrey Teuton, Associate Director of Jen Bekman Gallery and myself, Sara Distin, Associate Director of Jen Bekman Projects, Inc. | 20x200 + Hey, Hot Shot! will be reviewing portfolios in the review pavilion.
I'll be there Saturday + Sunday afternoon from 3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. Jeffrey will be there Friday morning from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. and Sunday afternoon from 3:00 to 6:00 p.m.
Sign-ups for morning sessions begin at 8:00 a.m. and at 1:00 p.m. for afternoon sessions. You can opt for a slew of reviews or for just one.

Panels:
On Friday, May 15th, two talks that are definitely going to be worth listening to include: at 10:00 a.m. "Blogging in the Photography Community," a panel lead by Joerg Colberg with Cara Phillips, Laurel Ptak, Andrew Hetherington, and Brian Ulrich and at 5:00 p.m. "The Edge of Vision, Abstraction in Contemporary Photography" presented by Aperture with Lyle Rexer, Jack Sal, Silvio Wolf and Penelope Umbrico. *

Books + Magazines:
NYPH'09's Book Soup is Thursday, May 14th from 8:00 - 9:00 p.m. The event includes a talk, "The Death of the Photo Book," lead by powerHouse Books CEO Daniel Power and followed by book signings. 20x200 artist Rachel Papo and HHS! panelist + 20x200 artist Kent Rogowski have both published books with powerHouse.
HHS! panelist Stephen Frailey serves as Editor in Chief of DEAR DAVE, magazine. Visit the Media Lounge of St. Ann's Warehouse to be the lucky recipient of a limited number of Issue #4 that will be handed out for free!

Photo Awards:
Many congratulations are due to Bob O'Connor, Kevin Miyazaki, Daniel Traub, Juliane Eirich,** Brad Moore, Yijun Liao and Shen Wei.*** Among hundreds of nominees, these seven are up for New York Photo Awards this year. Come out to cheer them on when the Winners and Honorable Mentions are announced (and their work presented) at the Gala Ceremony for the New York Photo Awards 2009 on Friday, May 15th at 8pm in the St. Ann's Warehouse Auditorium.

Hope to see you down under the bridge this weekend!

Bummed you won't be in Brooklyn? We have some 20x200 photo greatness to lift your spirits:

* TOMORROW! 20x200 presents a special edition by Penelope Umbrico to benefit Aperture. Be sure to get your hands on a print by signing up for the mailing list.
** See new work from Juliane Eirich at 2:00 p.m. today on 20x200.
*** Sign up for Jen's newsletter to be among the first to see Shen Wei's 20x200 editions this summer.

Bird teeth lunch of beans, Jonesport, Maine, August 2007 by Jonathan Levitt

Contender Jonathan Levitt writes that the images in the project, Wake to Songbirds Wake to Crows are about the "idea of home." When one looks to this series on his website, one finds photographs of chickens and horses, tractors and trailers, dogs running wild, and fresh tomatoes in the sunlight--an idea of home that is far from the urban bustle of HHS! HQ in downtown Manhattan. The fields looks idyllic and peaceful, like a place where the rhythms of the day move slowly and deliberately.

A photographer who comes by way of culinary school and time spent on farms, Levitt lives-by and observes the land with the eye of someone who has toiled many hours in the sun and dirt. His images whet the tongue with the lure of some kind of quiet life, where carrots are eaten after being pulled fresh from the ground and the eggs you cook with are never more than a few hours old. He tells a story about cycles--of life to death, morning to night, spring to fall--with this growing series of work, capturing elements of the spirit of rural Maine.

See more images by Jonathan Levitt on his website.

We've been all a buzz lately about 2008 First Edition Hot Shot Colleen Plumb. Jen just caught up with her at the NEXT Art Fair in Chicago where Colleen teaches at Columbia College and reviewed some of her new work from Animals are Outside Today. This last weekend, Jen + I were still lingering over the photos as she paired one of Plumb's pics with a poem and I drafted a post for Flavorwire. Jen + Colleen's conversation about Animals must have really stuck with Jen because it was still swirling in her head as she wrote today's 20x200 newsletter.

If you happen to be in Denver and would like to see some more of Colleen's work up close and in-person, swing by van Straaten Gallery (formerly Sandy Carson Gallery) at 760 Santa Fe Drive this Thursday night, May 14th, from 6:00 - 8:00 p.m. The show will be on view through June 20th.

Memory Grove, Salt Lake City by John Paul Jespersen

Contender John Paul Jespersen's night images offer up winter wonderlands that, at first glance, appear unreal or created. There is hardly a trace of man in the backyards of condos or on the snowy mountains he captures, but then, in the distance, a light can be spotted off in the distance.

The skies take on green and yellow and purple hues, full of the swirling colors of both ambient and incandescent lights, emanating from street lamps and reflecting off the snow that has piled onto trees and homes. His world is quiet, and at rest, unaware it is being captured through a camera.

See additional work by John Paul Jespersen on his website.

Terrain Vague #2 by Christian Vium

Christian Vium's HHS! entry "explores the fringes of Nouakchott, the windblown capital of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, where [Vium is] currently conducting long-term research on climate change, water scarcity, human adaptation and vulnerability." While his stated purpose is clearly documentary, the photographs remind me a bit of the surreal work by former documentary photographer Roger Ballen. Discarded bits of scattered trash become stage props — a fire burning low and skeletons of ships at sea. Unlike Ballen's work, human presence is marked only by their absence and what they've left behind:

In effect, the objects seemingly scattered in the open space are the traces of nomad encampments, the former residents now most likely inhabitants of the vast slum areas closer to the city, where an estimated 65 percent of the city's population lives. The particular beige light is a result of the constantly blowing winds, which hurls sand particles into the air, blurring the boundary between heaven and earth.

Vium is a photographer and anthropologist currently employed as a Ph.D. Fellow at the Institute of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. See more of his photography on his website.

Tonight's the night our fabulous panel will gather in NYC to review the hundreds of entries we've received at Hey, Hot Shot! since we opened the flood gates on March 5th. Arriving from all parts of the country, panelists will hunker down in a cozy office space in Chelsea to consider each and every photograph submitted. It's a grueling task but one that we look forward to!

Among this meeting of the minds?
Jen Bekman, Founder of Jen Bekman Projects, including HHS!, 20x200, and Jen Bekman Gallery
Christine Collins, JBG artist and photographer, professor at the Art Institute Boston
Caterina Fake, Co-founder of Flickr and up-coming Hunch.com
Dana Faconti, Editor and Publisher of Blind Spot
Stephen Frailey, Chair of the Photo Dept at SVA, Editor in Chief of Dear Dave
Raul Gutierrez, photographer, Spring 2006 Hot Shot and critical player on team 20x200
Darius Himes, Founding Editor of photo-Eye Booklist and Founding Member of Radius Books
Jenni Holder, Former Director of Edwynn Houk Gallery
Julia Leach, Founder of Chance Studio and former EVP/Creative Director for kate spade
Nion McEvoy, Chairman and CEO of Chronicle Books and the McEvoy Group
Lesley A. Martin, Publisher at Aperture's book program
Kent Rogowski, photographer and visiting critic at RISD, Founder of Scaffold
Stefan Ruiz, photographer and former Creative Director of Colors Magazine

Quite a crew, no? A couple individuals will be sadly missed this evening but they'll be considering all the entries from afar via our handy online review tool. Everyone's contributions are essential in this marathon process. Slow and steady we go — agonizing deliberations continue until the Hot Shots are announced on May 28th!

We'll try and tweet a few peeks into the process this evening — stay tuned.

Image by Hot Shot Rachel Hulin

Two distinguished Hot Shots, Rachel Hulin and Willamain Somma, along with Meagan Ziegler-Haynes and Marla Leigh Caplan, are members of LUCI, a new curatorial collective. The fab four have curated a satellite show, (super)natural, to correspond with this week's New York Photo Festival in Brooklyn. A reception for the artists will be held this Thursday, May 14, from 5:30 - 7 pm, at the Tobacco Warehouse.

From the press release:

(super)natural is a group show featuring artists whose work engages with and reimagines the idea of nature and natural phenomena. From large format landscape photography to site-specific installation, the work on view gives visible form to the trace of something just beyond - pointing to an excess of visual language and yet an ultimate failure to convey a precise meaning. The awesome and terrifying aspect of the sublime explains the darkness that pervades the show, evident in the depths of Victoria Sambunaris' cave; the threat of storm beneath Christopher Lamarca's rainbow; Theresa Ganz's delicately encroaching vines suddenly strangling. Chasing after the elusive spirit of the landscape, these images explore the expanse of history and possibility beneath a deceptively mundane surface.

(super)natural : May 14th-16th, 10 am to 7 pm
Curated by LUCI
Satellite Show @ The Tobacco Warehouse
Directions: The Tobacco Warehouse is on the corner of Water + Dock streets in Dumbo, F train to Jay st

More info? Click here.

We've been nice and extended the deadline twice but this time it's final:

Hey, Hot Shot! competition closes *this* evening, Friday, May 8th @ 11:00 p.m. EST

We look forward to seeing your work!

If you didn't enter this time around but would like to know about future competitions, sign up for our low-volume mailing list.

You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

If you're in NYC and a reality-TV addict, don't miss tonight's panel on the next wave of 15 minutes of fame and whether or not it'd be a good thing for art and artists.

Moderated by Artlog and comprised of Sara Friedlander, Specialist in the Post-War and Contemporary Art Department at Christie's, Dawn Chan, Writer/Critic Art Forum, Victor Samra, Technology & Marketing MoMA, and our very own Ms. Jen Bekman, the panel will address:

How is technology and the American media impacting artists and their ability to gain recognition? What role do the museums have in using technology and programming to promote up and coming artists to the mass audience? How is the economy impacting opportunities for emerging artists? Is the general American public interested in star artists? How do collectors find these Next Top Artists before they hit it big? Are institutions actively trying to establish so called star artists?

The panel is part of the Affordable Art Fair and will take place TONIGHT, Friday, May 8th, from 6:30 - 7:30 p.m. @ 7 West 34th Street, New York, New York, 10001.

PSSST! Hey, Hot Shot! competition ends tonight! at 11:00 p.m. EST so be sure to get your entry in right after you get home from the panel!

psst! psst! Hot Shot Chad Muthard's photo above is available on 20x200.

When We Finally Came to Rest by Cody Bratt

With just hours left to apply to Hey, Hot Shot!, we're tapping our fingers watching the last minute submissions roll in. One submission that came in late last night was the cinematic trio of images from Cody Bratt's series From Home and Back. Shooting stars criss-cross the desert night sky, taking me to an un-specifiable place out West where I half expect to see a cowboy to stumble across the image. In one image, lights are on in a home that sits alone in a great expanse, and a trailer door flaps open in the photo above, but human presence can only be detected through these hints, rather than seen standing in the open.

The blue, cold hue of the scenes captured here feel like movie stills from the Coen Brothers' No Country For Old Men. One can imagine the protagonist, Llewelyn Moss, who finds himself on the lam from a cold-hearted killer after finding a suitcase full of cash, in a setting such as these, hiding out for night in this trailer before taking off on the run again.

For Bratt, these images are about abandonment and discovery, and he writes,

There are likely thousands of stories in each place and, on the face of it, the voices inhabiting them have long since silenced themselves and moved on. But it is precisely this abandonment that makes these photographs about the opposite - discovery. Or put another way, accumulation. Each shot is a discovery and a love letter to the stories people held dear in these places.

The stories here are left to the imagination, and for Bratt, writing a history in found objects and places, is the beginning of a way to grow attached to what he has discovered.

Settlement 1 by Corinne Silva

Plastic doesn't leave us, it's become ubiquitous. We're slowly training ourselves to not use it and reuse it when we have to but we're a little late in the game. We've all seen Chris Jordan's Running the Numbers and Plastic Bags, 2007 which depicts 60,000 plastic bags, the number used in the US every five seconds. But, the plastic habit is not particular to Americans, it's all over the world, and as photographer Corinne Silva points out, it's all over the desert region of Almeria in southeast Spain. Working as part landscape photographer, part documentary photographer, Silva's work examines the many ways plastic is utilized in this arid, isolated, and rapidly developing region and all of the things its use has come to mean.

She writes:

Here on the periphery of Europe, the northern and southern hemispheres meet, as do migrants from both compass points. Historically a contested border territory, Almeria still bears the traces of past empires: crumbling watchtowers guard the coastline and Moorish castles compete for space with ancient Catholic churches.... Increasingly visible in the landscape is plastic, innovatively used and reused. Plastic simultaneously coats and reveals. I focus on the use of plastic and what it represents to examine the physical effects of exclusion, desire and exploitation.

See the rest of the series on her website.

Huber Hans, Lam. by Er Lemberger

In his project, Between then and now, German-born Er Lemberger photographs the disappearing rural homes of the Bavarian Forest. As the region modernizes, many of the area's traditionally rural structures are being torn down or neglected, and so the Bavarian Forest many have known for ages is physically disappearing, values and traditions along with it.

Er ruminates on this idea and writes,

This vanishing world can be seen everywhere where changes in the social structure happen, where modernization is taking place. Modernization is a phenomenon which happens everywhere and at every time. Old ideas are left behind and replaced by other ideas, which are considered as an improvement, a natural development within our society. But this highly scientific phenomenon is also filled with stories - stories of the past, and the people and places that remain. Places which were part of old traditions and values are abandoned; people who were growing up during a different time still remain. Both of them are carrying the traces of their lives, of their history. For my documentary project I am documenting these vanishing places.

The idea of documenting a place before it is gone exists in many iterations in the photography world, whether it is a photographer who inadvertently captures the era and preserves its aesthetic through family snapshots, or whether it is documentation of a place being changed by war, boundaries, ethnic flight, or as is the case here, by modernization. Modernizing is often assumed to bring positive change and is intrinsically tied to the notion of "progress," even when traditions, values, and regional identity are lost in this transition. Lemberger's photos allude to the religiosity of people living in the Bavarian Forest, and also unadorned interiors that suggest simplicity is crucial to these people's lives. Whether modernity is brought to the Bavarian Forest, or organically adopted by people living there, capturing change through images is one attempt at preservation.

Don't dilly dally — time is running out! We've extended it twice and now the deadline's finally arrived:
all entries for the first round of 2009 Hey, Hot Shot! competition are due

TONIGHT, Friday, May 8th at 11:00 p.m. EST.

Upload your photos, find out more, see who will be seeing your work, and keep an eye on the contenders.

This round's Hot Shots will be announced on Thursday, May 28th.

20x200 and Jen Bekman Gallery artist, Carrie Marill, who you may know from her delightfully tiny paints of plants, birds, and color-fields of all kinds, donated Optical (2008) to BAMart's currently on-going Fifth Annual Silent Auction.

If you're already a fan of Carrie's work, you'll know her attention to detail is impeccable, so what may seem like a deceptively simple painting is all part of a subtle-but-impressive illusion. This particular piece has also been painted on stretched paper, which adds unique texture to the work, and something that makes seeing Optical in person really worthwhile.

Kent Rogowski, another JB artist and 20x200 edition-maker also has a stellar piece up for grabs at the auction. In fact, we love this piece so much we have an edition of Untitled #8 hanging into he 20x200 office. It's a brilliant piece to walk into and see every day at work, welcoming us into an infinitely more magical world that is always full of blooming flowers and cerulean blue skies.

If you'd like to see Carrie and Ken's pieces in person (as you should!), there will be a reception this Saturday, May 9th, from 5 - 7 p.m. in the Dorothy W. Levitt lobby of the Peter Jay Sharp Building at 30 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn, NY and you can also bid online through May 11th!

Normandy#1 by Patrick Lyn

At first glance, one cannot discern whether contender Patrick Lyn's images are fact or fiction. They are, as it turns out, partially both—with The Theator of War= bringing Normandy back to life through ship explosions, fallen soldiers, and men dressed and armed with the garb of an era before this one.

Patrick writes,

By visually alluding to many of the images from actual war photographers such as Robert Capa, and Don Mccullin, my hope is to bring a sense of both familiarity and also the weight and preconceptions that come with viewing war photography. But because of course the subject matter is of re-enactors and not the actual wars themselves, the ideas of how our society celebrates and perceives past wars are brought into question. This idea of how a viewer initially perceives an image and the ideas brought upon closer examination is an important thread through out my work.

Lyn's work stirs up important questions about the visualization of war--and the normalizing of wartime images in our culture. Are we de-sensitized to violence because of war imagery? Do we celebrate the soldier? Celebrate their valor? Is there a "right" way to perceive war and its repercussions?

By creating images of recreations, Lyn suggests there are aesthetics to war that people interpret as its reality. Other elements of war--the emotional struggle, sense of loss, homesickness, injury, and isolation--cannot be created, but perhaps, also cannot be easily portrayed in pictures.

See additional work from this series on Patrick Lyn's website.

Humming Bird by Kelli L. Pennington

Kelli L. Pennington writes:

My practice uses the snapshot aesthetic to engage desire and intimacy. By photographing my friends, family, lover, and myself, I want to mirror the experiences of tenderness, cruelty, and love directly and with limited mediation.

There is certainly something both tender and cruel, sad and beautiful, and despite Kelli's role as a passive mediator, surreal about this photograph. While the moments when the animal and human worlds collide, most often to the detriment of the former, are fairly common, they often feel out of the ordinary. The power that we wield over the animal kingdom is tangible and the fragility of birds and beasts evident. It can be heartbreaking.

The shirtless subject in Pennington's photo is rendered softly, obscured by the reflections of trees and clouds; the empathy she feels for both the hummingbird and captor is palpable. On her website, Penningon's woven formal and casual portraits with landscapes, fluidly moving from one to the other — it's elegant everyday drama.

Pregnant Girl with Keys by JO ANN WALTERS

Informed by her upbringing in the "Middle West" of America in a small town by the Mississippi River, Jo Ann Walters makes portraits of the men, women, girls, and boys who make up her surroundings, capturing them with the intimate eye of an insider. In the image above, Pregnant Girl with Keys, the young woman clutches her chest and holds a glassy expression in her face, her maybe-visible pregnant stomach hidden by the folds of her soft gray sweatshirt. Walters portraits show subjects with a veneer of poise that seems undermined by their youth, or a questioning stance that suggests an underdeveloped hardness they want to possess. The images bring Tema Stauffer's The Ballad of Sad Young Men to mind in which a series of teens and twenty-somethings are posed along Main Street of blue-collar Binghamton and emanate a visible tension and uncertainty in their gait.

The Shipwreck by Yann le Coroller

Hey, Hot Shot! contender Yann le Coroller sites Americans Gregory Crewdson and Philip Lorca diCorcia and Canadian Jeff Wall as influences on his work but it was seeing the photography of Masashi Asada in Japan that sparked his series about Alonso Quixano. Adopted from and inspired by Don Quixote, le Coroller composes and photographs the lighthearted and surreal adventures of a man "a little bit lost in [his fantasies]."

While the filmic parallels between le Coroller's work and that of his influences are evident, his series is a little less Lynch and Hitchcock and little more Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Juenet's Amelie seems a likely female counterpart to le Coroller's Alonso. Unlike Amelie, Alonso's adventures occur outside of France, in Vietnam instead, exaggerating his stereotypically French appearance.

The photographs comprise a book but each image contains its own story, leaving lots of opportunity to invent your own narratives. Daydream a little on Yann le Coroller's website.

Our hosting provider Media Temple had a massive outage over the weekend that took some 15,000 sites offline, ours included. Things are mostly back to normal now (this blog is missing a few images which we'll be restoring today, but otherwise everything is where it should be.).

The outage hit just as our competition was ending, so we've extended the deadline to Friday, May 8th at 11PM. Entries which are stored on a separate server were unaffected.

Lauren at the Gorge, Reading, VT by Samuel F. Falls

The first time I wrote about Samuel F. Falls' work, I wasn't sure what to say. All I knew was that the images hit me in my gut in a good/disturbing kind of way.

I was somewhat relieved when I came across Johanna Reed's interview with Falls. If you're curious but a little speechless about the work, it's a must read. Part of the reason the work is so hard to write about is that Falls chooses highly personal, emotional subjects that are often linked only by Falls himself. But as in life, people, animals, and places reappear again and again, providing a semblance of history and the passage of time, and gradually instilling trust in Sam's way of working.

For his HHS! entry this time around, Falls selected three images of his ex-fiancee, Lauren, including a black and white portrait taken with expired film on the Valentines' Day the relationship ended. Falls' statment and images recall the tradition of photographers and their muses, historically including the likes of Edward Weston and Tina Modotti and more recently, Leigh Ledare and his mother. Falls revisited the photographs post-break-up and created a new project, Monocarpic. He writes:

The images here are from this series depicting Lauren over the course of our relationship from its beginning in May 2008 right up until our "disengagement" late this winter... The images I've collected range from places like New York City, Panama, Florida, and Vermont, and traverse extreme happiness to bold sadness. Though the photos were taken with my Crown Graflex, I never intended them as part of a preconceived project, which I believe has allowed me to capture the emotion and natural snapshot feel without loosing the pristine photographic capacity of a 4x5 camera. Lauren has helped me edit these images into a 112 page book, Monocarpic, which means "(of a plant) flowering only once and then dying".

The series also falls into context with Falls' larger body of work on his website.

Campground 086, Winter by Jon Sheridan

Hey, Hot Shot! contender Jon Sheridan's How To Fix A Campground series tells a story and a memory about the farm and camp he grew up on in Charlottesville, Virginia.

He writes,

In the late 1960s, my family converted part of our farm in rural Virginia into a campground. We ran it until 1997, closing it when my father died. My family is now renovating our rundown business. We sort through objects and spend time in ramshackle spaces, remembering when they were new. We tear out old rotting walls and burn the debris; we clear underwood and burn the brush. These pictures are about our day-to-day laboring as we try to reverse entropy. Things fell apart. We are putting them back together again, blending old meaning with new.

His work pays homage to a place that was once greater than its current remnants, as his family simultaneously tries to rebuild their campground to its state of former glory. The images show a place that changes with the seasons, and only survives by the efforts of Sheridan's family. They labor in the snow, at night, and through all states of emotion -- sweeping, sanding, and stacking wood--working by the blueprint of a former place to create a place that will exist in their future. He raises questions about humans' relationship to nature, and what it means to create a meaningful physical space that will also serve as a place in our memories.

See more work from How to Fix a Campground on Jon's website.

Sunset, Isla Vista, California by Liz Kuball

Sunshine and palm trees, long stretches of highways and beaches, California is many things to many people. None the least, it's a western outpost, a land of milk and honey, Steinbeck's promised state of epic stories in East of Eden. Like the Trasks and the Hamiltons, generations have immigrated and emigrated to CA, fleeing past lives and loves and searching for something better for themselves and their families. Full of allusions and illusions, the destination may or may not be exactly what one's searching for. Photographer Liz Kuball knows this well, she writes:

When you move out to California from back east, you come for a reason: You're leaving behind a bad relationship, or escaping your hometown, or thinking you'll be a star. And what you find when you get here is that things aren't what you thought they'd be... And you'd think that, after all this, you'd become disillusioned and go back home, and some do, of course, but many more of us stay and instead of growing bitter, we hang on — hang on to a world that, to us, is even more fantastic than the one we thought we'd find, because it's real in its absurdity and because we have stories to tell.

In her series California Vernacular, she's found and documented CA's reoccurring themes of both personal and grand proportions, a visual equivalent to literature. For her HHS! entry, Kuball shared with us a few examples: an orange tree, heavy with fruit, dripping from the other side of someone else's fence, the odd manifestations of best efforts to manicure lawns, and in Sunset, Isla Vista, California (above) evidence of endless vistas and opportunities cropping up in the most unlikely place — on an apartment building with a For Rent sign, large and blocky, edging out blinding light.

Kuball is no stranger to fiction, she has masters degrees in both literature and writing, learning along the way that she was really a photographer. Her debt to schools has not gone to waste, her blog provides good reading fodder, especially for fellow HHS! contenders. If you're still putting your entry together (do it fast, you're running out of time!) or are wondering what it's like to pick just three images for a very discriminating panel, read Liz's post from two Sundays ago, Status Report. Then cross your fingers and hold your breath with the rest of us!

untitled 2 paperbacks by Mary Ellen Bartley

I, like everyone at HHS! HQ, am a lover of the book, so I was excited (beyond words!) to see a submission from contender Mary Ellen Bartley, whose paperbacks series challenges us not to judge a book by the cover, the title, or the spine. Bartley stacks books in towers and rows, exposing us to pages available in myriad shades of white, and asks us to consider the book-as-object, and that object as emotional, even without knowing its interior contents.

She writes,

I'm exploring the possibility of creating beautiful even emotionally moving images by photographing mundane things in a purely formal way, investigating their visual qualities and relationships without assigning them much meaning or significance. The palette I discovered in the stacks, containing chalky Necco wafer pastels, fog grays and tooth colored whites, creates a calm meditative atmosphere. The quiet colors and the deliberate exclusion of clues to the books' contents serve to mute the narratives, information and ideas the books must contain - implying that the act of simply looking can be enough in a photograph.

Mickey Smith, a 2007 Winter Hot Shot and 20x200 artist, first brought us work from the stacks with her project Volume. She, like Bartley, pays heed to repetition, line, and mass, but also celebrates the Pantone-palette of color one can find in the library with works like Word Study and More Books. Bartley's books suggest a quieter relationship to her library, and I can imagine her stacking books one-by-one, rearranging their white-ness until they look just right. Perhaps it is true in this instance, that what's on the outside is more important, than what is on the inside.

Also! If you haven't yet heard, the deadline for HHS! has been extended to next Tuesday, May 5th @ 11 p.m.. Apply here!

Gardner by Ryan Monaghan

At the core of hunting, is the basic mission to kill. Whether killing for food, or as sport, the task is visceral and physical, both for hunter and hunt-ed alike. Hey, Hot Shot! contender Ryan Monaghan explores this culture in his work, showing the two-sided beauty and brutality of hunting and trapping.

He writes,

They [the images] show the results of a tradition that is no longer vital for human survival, but yet has spawned an entire subculture around it. The photographs touch on the complex sentiments felt when successfully acting upon the primitive urge to harvest something wild and elusive, and explore the cold beauty that is often found in a world considered so violent by so many.

Like photographer Erika Larsen, whose photo essays The Hunt and Young Blood also explore the clashing duality of the gruesome and the graceful in hunting culture, Monaghan's portraits of show much more than the blood of capture. Community, connection to the outdoors, and elements of ritual reaffirm the bonds some feel to this age-old pastime.

See additional work from this series on Ryan's website.

Bihac, Bosnia & Herzegowina by Frederic M. Lezmi

Contender Frederic M. Lezmi's series From Vienna to Beirut focuses on the cultural and geographical spaces and signs his finds on the borders between Europe and the Middle East. He calls it the "in between'' and it's clear that there is no clear line between here and there, or if there is one, it's not continuous. There's evidence of history and the present, the East and the West, and young and old intermingling and confusing one for the other. While these themes course through much of our news today, this work is an exploration that is also relevant on a personal level for Geneva-raised, Germany-based, half-Lebanese Lezmi.

While his approach is entirely different, his work is slightly related to that of recent Hot Shot Yijun Liao, and fellow contender Ayano Hisa. All of the photographers blend a little personal history with contemporary global issues regarding the continued cycle of meetings, clashes, and reconciliations between the East and the West.

See the rest of From Vienna to Beirut on Lezmi'swebsite.

The deadline for Hey, Hot Shot!'s first round of competition in 2009 has been extended through this weekend! Entries must now be completed by Tuesday, May 5th at 11:00 p.m. EST.

Don't miss this chance to get your work out there. The opportunities and exposure available for Hot Shots, honorable mentions and *all* contenders are better than ever. Apply now!

As you might already know, Jen Bekman and Jeffrey Teuton, Associate Director of the JB Gallery, are representing a slew of Hot Shots at NEXT Art Fair in Chicago this weekend.

And, this last week we featured photography editions from two Hot Shots on 20x200: see Forest. Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl and Dinner. Village of Zorin, Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl by Second Edition 2008 Hot Shot Donald Weber. Spring 2005 Hot Shot Matthew Tischler released his second double edition, offering Untitled #17 and Untitled #9 as follow-ups to his popular Untitled #4 and Untitled #15, all from Screen Series. Matthew's photographs have been snatched up by collectors since they were previewed in Domino magazine (RIP!).

IMPORTANT: all photography submitted to Hey, Hot Shot! is considered for 20x200. Hey, Hot Shot! is the only way we review photography for 20x200 so rest assured that even if we can't post about your entry here (as per usual, there are just too many amazing entries to get them all on the blog!) your work will still be reviewed for 20x200. In the meantime, we'll do our best and continue posting about contenders until the Hot Shots are announced on Thursday, May 28th.

So what are you waiting for? Get your work out there: Apply Now!

The deadline for submissions is now Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 @ 11pm EST.

Hot Shots will be announced on Thursday, May 28th, 2009.

There is a $60 handling fee for your entry.

Submissions are open to everyone, from anywhere in the world!