Love books? Love art? Love art books? Well, then you'll be just as excited as we are to head to the NY Art Book Fair which showcases over 150 independent artists and publishers, dealers of rare and antique books, as well as contemporary art publications from all over the world. This year's fair will be held at P.S.1 in Long Island City, Queens, from October 2-4th and is free and open to the public.

Hosted by Printed Matter, the fantastic Chelsea-based nonprofit dedicated to artists' publications, the fair will include a featured exhibition by Richard Prince titled Calling All Readers, an apt autumnal follow-up to Jen Bekman's Summer Reading. In addition, there will be screenings, book signings, and performances throughout the duration of the fair. Exhibitors include: Aperture, ARTFORUM, Eye Level Gallery, J&L Books, Red Fox Press, Texte Zur Kunst, Cabinet, and many, many more.

A benefit for Printed Matter hosted by Deitch Studios (LIC) will be held October 1st following the fair's preview (6-8 p.m.). Tickets are available at a range of prices starting at $20 and are accompanied by limited edition artworks, signed and numbered by the artists: Tom Sachs ($20/edition of 450), Jutta Koether ($150/edition of 150), Mungo Thomson ($150/edition of 150), and Elmgreen & Dragset ($3,000/edition of 1).

For a full list of events during the fair, a list of exhibitors, and more information, visit the site.

Early morning meditation on Mount Guogong by Xiao Xiao Xu

Chinese-born photographer Xiao Xiao Xu immigrated to the Netherlands at age 14 and only recently returned to the hometown she left a decade ago. Xu describes this town, Wenzhou, (also the name of the series), as a "very sentimental journey for me to rediscover my home, my childhood and my memories." Using photography—a medium she found as a way to express herself while searching for identity in the Netherlands—Xu captures a collection of portraits, interiors, and profiles of everyday objects in her native Wenzhou.

Together, the images form a humble large-scale portrait of a town that we are invited observe along with Xu as she rediscovers it herself. Two middle-aged men enjoy a cigarette break together, a young boy in school uniform stiffly holds his posture, and the crowded balconies of a skyrise residential building are murky but visible through the branches of a flowering tree. Xu suggests that her memory of her hometown is about the intimately commonplace—that to be in Wenzhou is to silently observe daily rhythms with the keen eye of someone native-born. Ten years spent away cannot remove the inevitable feeling that, for her, this is still home.

Many additional images from Wenzhou are available on Xu's website alongside several other projects. Next week I'll be looking at other young Chinese photographers whose work has caught our eye (including some of our very own Hot Shots and 20x200 artists), but we're also curious to hear of any projects coming-from or about China that have caught your eye. Please let us know!

We're pleased to pass along info that there's yet another great grant opportunity being offered to you photographers for all those projects you've been putting off until 2010:

Too much chocolate, which connects photographers of all ilks over the web is partnering with Kodak in an inaugural grant program that will provide 10 photographers with film for a personal project to be completed in 2010. All photographers who do not currently have representation are eligible to apply. The projects of the grant recipients will be exhibited online, in print, and in gallery spaces.

The cost of submission is only $10, so we encourage you to submit your work to this fantastic group of panelists:

Marcel Saba, Director of Redux Pictures
Clinton Cargill, Associate Picture Editor of the New York Times Magazine
Conor Risch, Features Editor of PDN
Andy Adams, Editor / Publisher of Flak Photo
Alison Morley, Chair of ICP's Documentary Photography and Photojournalism Program
Audrey Jonckheer, Director of Worldwide Pro Photographer Relations at Kodak
Jake Stangel, Founder / Editor of too much chocolate

An FAQ about the grant can be found here and submission info will be available on too much chocolate on September 1st.

Golden Eagle in Medroom by Annie Marie Musselman

As I reviewed the latest batch of Hey, Hot Shot! contenders, this image by Annie Marie Musselman stopped me in my tracks. It's from her series Finding Trust, about which she writes:

Looking for truth after my mother passed away in 2002 I found the Sarvey Wildlife Rehabilitation Center. Located in the foothills of the beautiful Cascade mountains, it's a place where injured, wild creatures come to finish their journeys or start new ones, where I've seen love, trust and intuition that equals that of a mother and child, a home where a few humans have come together to save the lives of many precious creatures.

Annie's series made me think of other striking animal portraits in recent memory, with Jill Greenberg's (aka The Manipulator) monkeys and bears foremost in my mind. Greenberg's well-known work is fantastic, but she presents her animal subjects as spectacles.

Worried, 2005, from the series Monkey Portraits by Jill Greenberg

Like much animal photography, Greenberg's work feels voyeuristic, as if I were peering through the bars of a (very clean) zoo. What appeals to me about Finding Trust is how candid and yet subtle the images are. Perhaps it's the palpable closeness between Annie and the animals she cares for that closes this gap of perception and emotion. Instead of feeling like I am watching from afar, her photographs give me the sensation of being with the animal in that exact point in space and time.

Fawn Looking Out Window by Annie Marie Musselman

Once drawn in, I feel the intense vulnerability and urgency of the moment. As Annie writes:

There is limited time for pictures during moments of crisis, constant worry over sick and dying animals, but all the while looking for moments to shoot the beauty around me. The more I am with these creatures, the more I see their inner beauty and intelligence and the more frustrated I become by humanity's neglect of nature. I believe the wild creatures among us embody the instinct and love we have lost, and with this I realize the purpose of my work.

I am reminded of something 2009 First Edition HHS! contender Sam Falls said in an interview. Though he wasn't talking about animals specifically, these words still resonate: "The pieces I always return to and can look at over and over in a museum's permanent collection are works that make me feel and not think, where there's no pedagogy but just empathy."

From the series The Valley We Call Death by Disco Meisch

Contender Disco Meisch writes:

I have become fascinated with exploring both the natural and supernatural elements of desert landscapes—including their unique flora and fauna, extreme climates and mystical associations. By their very nature, desert climates force extreme choices: basic questions of survival take priority and decisions become more clear-cut. The desert's natural wilderness elicits stagnation and adaptation, but also an intense clarity.

The landscape series Disco is speaking of, The Valley We Call Death, an ongoing project shot with a Polaroid Spectra 1200, recalls the work of numerous photographers who have found inspiration in the contemplative spaces of the West. However common images of the silent expanses of the West may seem, Disco approaches the subject uniquely, taking on the landscape tradition in a relatively lo-fi way. The series stands in opposition to the boisterousness of her commissioned portrait and fashion work which can be viewed on her website.

Dog Culture_3 by Philipp Engelhorn

Hong Kong-based photographer Philipp Englehorn captures photographic stories that take him to some of the world's poorest regions. In Dogs of Kabul, Engelhorn enters the ring of weekly dog fights, a tradition in the Muslim regions of Afghanistan that has been celebrated for centuries.

Dog-fighting, which carries weighty legal repercussions in the United States and many other Western countries, is a community event in Kabul serving as both ritual and spectacle. Englehorn notes,

Up to 1000 people gather in the early mornings to see Molossel Dogs (Powerful local Breeds Like Koochee Dogs) fought by strict rules. There are no death and only little blood in these fights...It feels like a wrestling match of 2 ancient warriors.

The fights celebrate the animals and their owners rather than positing the dogs as beings to be sacrificed either for money or for pride. The dogs are treated as loved and prized possessions and dog trainers spend hours exercising their "warriors" in preparation for the weekly fights. In the image above, the older man dressed in white serves as the judge of the day's fights making sure no dogs are excessively wounded as they tug and tussle with one another. The crowd billows into the mountains, fixated on the animals, and one stares back at the crowd in their dark dress worn against the snowy mountainous backdrop.

In contrast, the most visible images of modern-day Afghanistan in the media convey a different side of the country—one of perpetual turmoil and instability. Pictures depict American military troops stationed in Kabul, soldiers firing mortars and missiles from army bases, Afghanis lined up for an election with questionable validity, and innocent citizens injured by bombs and violence. Englehorn's essay offers unusual insight into a weekly ritual that offers a point of pride, entertainment, and reason for communing for this otherwise turbulent society and suggests that traditions as these are ways to hold on to the stability they can.

Untitled from the series Mongolia: The New El Dorado by Carlo De Keyzer

The Open Society Institute is now accepting submissions from both established and emerging photographers for their Moving Walls 17 exhibit. Moving Walls, founded in 1998, is committed towards supporting photography exploring humanitarian issues around the world. Applicants are asked to submit a body of work reflecting a complete body of work focused on a human rights or social issue and the OSI lists a number of topics of ongoing interest to them. These include: statelessness, migration, LGBTQI issues, Muslim communities in Europe, Women in post-conflict countries, economic downturn in the United States, Public health issues, and many others which you can see on the guidelines page for entering the competition. These topics are only meant to serve as an example—rather than a comprehensive list—of the types of portfolios of interest to Moving Walls.

Seven portfolios of 15-20 images will be selected from the pool of applicants, which must be accompanied by a one-page statement, and bio. The images must be submitted both as prints and in digital form. Submissions will be accepted through October 23, 2009 and the selected artists will be notified in late December 2009.

The OSI has provided tremendous support to a huge roster of talented photographers including Edward Burtynsky, Ed Kashi, and our own JBP artist and Hot Shot Nina Berman. Click over to Moving Walls to see some of the fantastic slideshows and essays from previously exhibited photographers.

Untitled (page no. 6) by Timothy D. White

HHS! contender Timothy D. White hails from Auckland. He's spent four years in the far northernmost reaches of New Zealand working on the project he has submitted to us, True North. White set out on the project to "explore preconceptions of an area of NZ regarded as 'hopeless' due to its poor socioeconomic nature and geographic isolation." His images, and accompanying self-published book, strive to show the true nature of the region.

As he writes, "the journey became an exploration of the area's spiritual nature as well as... the 'social landscape', including local Maori, organic farmers, and a disappearing way of life (or what has been described as a 'vision of the future' in uncertain economic times)."

I can't help but think of 2008 First Edition Hot Shot Derek Henderson's achingly beautiful Terrible Boredom of Paradise, also taken taken in New Zealand, and of course, 2009 First Edition Hot Shot Kurt Tong and his series, Farewell in Labrador. It seems that in the far corners of the world, where people are struggling to find a balance between a certain quality of life and inevitable "progress", there are, thankfully, a handful of photographers around to document what may be, or is already, lost. For as slowly as we may think time passes, it can all happen quite quickly.

The BLDGBLOG Book by Geoff Manaugh and Library of Dust by David Maisel, edited by Alan Rapp

After last week's flurry of announcements, there is very little that you don't know about Alan Rapp, the newly minted Associate Director of Hey, Hot Shot!

What you may not know is that Alan, a self-professed "book geek", can never turn down questions about publishing. At the top of his response to my questions was a disclaimer: "I have lots of opinions on this." Alan's experience in the world of what he jokingly refers to as "old school" publishing lends a unique perspective to anyone considering putting together their own book.

Tell me a little bit about your background with publishing and photography.
Like many people in book publishing, I am a lifelong book geek. For people like us, every aspect of a book—the weight and smell, the quality of the stock, small production details like head- and tailbands—are like a mysterious language that we keep striving to master. Books were all around me during childhood, at home and at the library, and I worked at several bookstores throughout high school.

In college, I had the privilege of working at the legendary art and architecture bookstore Hennessey + Ingalls in Santa Monica. I was an English major, but art books, in a way, became my second major. I knew I wanted to pursue this for a living somehow. I moved to San Francisco after graduation and started in the publicity department of Chronicle Books, a premier visual book publisher. After a few years as a publicist, I moved to the editorial department and managed the art, design, and photography books. So my interests converged in the perfect job, and I helped bring approximately a hundred books into being over the course of ten years.

What role did you play at Chronicle in putting together a book of photography, such as David Maisel's beautiful book Library of Dust?
Well, thank you for the kind words, that's a special project to me. I started attending photography portfolio reviews such as Review Santa Fe, Fotofest, and Photolucida, in order to keep apprised of the diversity of photographic work today, and also to help educate photographers about how they could adapt their work into a book and create effective book proposals.

At one of these reviews I met David, who had just published The Lake Project with the excellent Nazraeli Press. We bonded over numerous mutual interests, including an obsession with the artist Robert Smithson, and since he was also based in the Bay Area, we stayed in contact. I was gradually pushing Chronicle's photo book list in a direction that could accommodate strong fine art work, and by the time David was creating the work that would be Library of Dust, he felt there was an opportunity to publish it in a more ambitious way than his previous books had been [published]. I was honored to work with an artist I admired, who was also a friend, and I think the book benefited from a great level of collaboration. It was also one of the last books I worked on at Chronicle, so it felt a fitting end to that phase of my publishing career.

It's a given that with self-publishing, the creator has more control over their book, but what are some of the aspects of the traditional publishing process that self-publishers miss out on? How can self-publishers compensate for this?
I am not sure that it is a clear given that self-publishing affords authors more control over books, though in principle that seems right. As with many things, it depends on the author's level of education and awareness, because total control isn't worth much when your knowledge, imagination, and other means are limited. And the flip side of the "control" consideration is, now that you've created the book, you have to distribute it. Have fun—that is arguably the hardest part of the process, no matter if you publish with an established trade publisher or [if] your book is waiting for orders to get printed with a service such as Blurb.

But back to your question: for all the possible flaws in the trade publishing model, one thing I always liked about it is the collaborative process. It defies the auteur model; the author is almost never the sole creator. I suppose that this could sound like the ex-editor making a case for the value of his role in an industry that is really undergoing massive and fundamental changes, but I stand by the principle: all content benefits from editing. The author, whether a verbal or visual one, is almost always too involved with the material to see how it can be best adapted to another form. And the design and production processes are also critical to making the best book possible; one thing [that] I think is in danger of getting lost in self-publishing is the production potential. The physical aspects of books make important, and often subliminal, effects on the reader, but we are getting a much more homogenized offering through the current self-publishing models.

Where do you see self-publishing heading?
I can't see the exact shape of it, but I see self-publishing services taking on more traits of the traditional publishing house, and trade publishers incorporating more of the self-publishing model. They are going to keep meeting in the middle. With primarily verbal, or at least one-color, books, this is getting more and more refined—more books republished on demand through Lightning Source-type services, and even bookstores hosting printing and binding machines like the vaunted (and terribly named)Espresso Book Machine. It's visual books that are still the big question mark to me. They require more intensive design and production than non-visual books, and the material costs are high (and ever higher). They also tend to be for a smaller and more select audience—take that all together and you get a really delicately poised product profile. I think everyone who creates and consumes visual books wants to figure this out and keep quality publishing alive regardless of the model.

The Espresso Book Machine can print and bind a book in just a few minutes at the push of a button, while you wait.

You were the editor of the BLDGBLOG book, which, as its name suggests, is a blog-turned-book. What's so special about print?
It's fairly common publishing practice now to harvest book content from blogs, and this has been done in various degrees of success. When I started talking to Geoff Manaugh, the author of BLDGBLOG and the new BLDGBLOG Book, I wasn't thinking in terms of let's flip blog content for a quickie book. I was foremost a fan of the site. BLDGBLOG is exceptional among many blogs in that it is very writerly and the posts are rather long-form; Geoff is a very book-oriented person as well. He wanted to explore the possibilities of the book, from how he wrote it, to the design and production features. So, we were in agreement that the blog is the blog, but the for the book, we wouldn't hew to those conventions; there are enough creative possibilities in books. It worked out great, I think, though I know I am biased.

We've talked to two artists who have submitted to Blurb's Photography.Book.Now competition, so, we know a bit about what that's like, but what's it like to judge those thousands of entries?
Thankfully the level at which I was judging, I did not go through every single entry. There were several categories, and then a core group of judges tightened the selection further before we got to it. That said, there were still a lot of books, and we were evaluating ten different qualities of each. I try to "read" visual books with attention, which means it can be slow going, but the entrants all put a ton of work into these and so it's attention befitting of their effort.

What do you look for in a photo book?
The first level is almost always the photos themselves, of course. But that doesn't mean I must have a personal predilection for the kind of work to appreciate it, and everyone's work can be put in the best light through the particular framing of book conventions. That sounds heady and wordy, but I mean basics such as the edit, the sequence of images, how the reproductions lay on the page and work on the spread, how the other components, like text, interact with the art, and the physical qualities of the book. At workshops I call books "machines," which sounds kooky and sci-fi, but I really mean that they are still unparalleled technologies for presenting content, and every part of them makes them behave differently. All that to say, I try to look for everything in a photo book, and when all the components work together in a compelling way, you have a great book.

Cape Girardeau, Missouri 2002, from the series Sleeping by the Mississippi by Alec Soth

What is your favorite photo book?
That's the ultimate question, isn't it? I'll venture my first edition of Alec Soth's Sleeping by the Mississippi. I met Alec before he published it and, like many people, fell in love with his work. But I also think that the book is so strong because it conveys the concepts and methodology behind the photos exceptionally well. The geographic journey Alec made for that body of work is a conceptual echo of the journey the reader takes through the book.

What advice to do you have for photographers who are self-publishing their own books?
Know thyself and know the field. All decent work can make for a good book, but there may only be a few ways to make the "right" book of your photographs. If you are confident about your own work then you will have a much clearer understanding of how it can adapt to the book form. But also do your homework about photo book history and conventions; start paying attention to every aspect of your favorite photo books, and learn from them.

So concludes another interview. Next week we will wrap up with a reflection on our interviews and the state of self publishing today. Stay tuned and let us know how those books are coming along, everyone.

Our Border by David Rochkind

Whether you're a seasoned photographer or just have a passing interest in photography, don't miss the article on page C1 of yesterday's New York Times by Randy Kennedy, Treasures From an Underground Trove. The big news is that, for the first time ever, a small portion of the subterranean National Geographic Society photo archives in Washington are being unearthed for an upcoming gallery show in Chelsea. While there will surely be controversy about the possible sale of these artifacts to private collectors, the part of the article that most interested me was this comment by Maura A. Mulvihill, vice president for the society's image collection and sales:

Photojournalism has really only recently been recognized in the fine-art world... And we are sitting on this vast, amazing collection, and started wanting to find a way to get it out into the world.

This quote in particular strikes a chord with me because just yesterday we received an entry from Mexico City-based contender David Rochkind, whose entire practice straddles the line between fine art photography and photojournalism. The photograph above is from his series Heat, about which he writes:

Heat is a project about Mexico while it is undergoing a transformation caused by a drug war that has seen inconceivable brutality and violence. The drama is played out on a daily basis and is becoming routine, even banal, to those involved. The wounds of the war bleed into every corner of the country, staining the very fabric of Mexican life with violence, death and fear. I am fascinated by the space between what Mexico has always been and what this carnage is creating. The heat of the conflict is melting two worlds together, making a singular Mexico defined as much by violence and tension as by history and culture.

Differently from many fine art photographers, on David's website each photo has a caption and each series has a story. As he writes, "I want to draw viewers in with beauty, engage them with social conscience and, finally, force an emotional investment in the picture from shared feeling and experience." To think that photojournalistic content is only just emerging from its role as strictly news blows my mind. In a way, David's combination of fine art and photojournalism parallels the "melting of two worlds" shown in his captivating images.

Angel Mthembo by Ian van Coller

Hot Shot Ian van Coller's series Interior Relations will be on view from September 3-27, 2009, at Portland's Blue Sky Gallery. The series pictures women wearing their favorite clothing posed inside the homes that they are employed to clean.

van Coller writes:

In this immediate post-Apartheid era, there remain few employment opportunities for many black South African women aside from domestic work. And with a fifty-percent unemployment rate, domestic service fills a critical need for women seeking to support their families. My intent is to capture some of the complexities that all South Africans face in creating and asserting post-Apartheid identities in the face of dramatic economic and cultural realities.

Ian van Coller | Interior Relations
September 3-27, 2009
Artist Reception, September 3rd, 6-9pm
Blue Sky Gallery
122 NW 8th
Portland, Oregon

Last week the glorious swissmiss posted a very intriguing trailer for an upcoming documentary about Polaroid photography by internet-famous photographer Grant Hamilton.

I first stumbled across Grant's graphic, colorful, geometric Polaroids on Flickr a few years ago and they stopped me in my tracks. Polaroid photography had always seemed, to me, to be a medium exclusively devoted to overt sentimentality or the impulsive antics and wild partying of Dash Snow; Grant's minimalist compositions were eye-opening.

Assorted Polaroids by Grant Hamilton

The documentary, to be released in 2010, is called TIME ZERO: the last year of Polaroid film. Grant's strong engagement with the medium makes me confident that this film is going to rock!

However, by the time this film about the end-times of Polaroid is released, the format may have made it's comeback thanks to The Impossible Project. Started shortly after Polaroid announced the shutdown of their film factory in Netherlands, the team secured a 10-year lease on the building and aims to not just revive, but arguably reinvent instant film in a way that is more sustainable to produce.

P.S. The excellent Chronicle Books blog rounded up some great Polaroid links and images in a post a few days ago, don't miss it!

Flora 026 by David Axelbank

HHS! contender David Axelbank's entry instantly reminded me of a show I saw at the Guggenheim three years ago, "Spanish Paintings From El Greco to Picasso." No, his photographs do not recall El Greco or Picasso, but brought to mind lesser-known still-life painters Zurbar and Juan Sánchez Cotán. I was then, as I am now when looking at David's work, impressed by the depth of the darkness that the three artists employ in their compositions.

From his statement, David writes:

The flower forms emerge out of the dark, their distinct personalities condensed against the black background. Simple and raw in their presentation, these compositions nevertheless maintain a formality typical in floral photography, their night time setting serving to heighten their sensual beauty and the sensory experience for the viewer.

View more of David's work on his site.

Elena by Pedro Cota

Just a brief moment of introduction—my name is Alan and I've just joined the team at Hey, Hot Shot! This is extremely exciting for me because, as mentioned earlier, I had the privilege of developing numerous photography books as an editor at Chronicle Books.

Being involved with Hey, Hot Shot! is a chance for me to continue to work with the photography community in a new way, and the opportunity to see new work continues to thrill me. Jen Bekman and I met years ago at one of the photography portfolio reviews that I used to attend fairly often, and have stayed friends ever since; that we now get to work together is a treat. I'm looking forward to helping her and the whole great team here continue to keep Hey, Hot Shot! the best thing going for photographers everywhere.

All that said, I'd like to introduce contender Pedro Cota, whose mysterious Elena portrays his wife descending a pedestrian bridge in an atmospheric fog. Based in Guadalajara, Mexico, Cota arranges his subject and surrounding elements in a way that is arguably theatrical. This careful composition, combined with precisely selective lighting, reflects his training as a cinematographer in Madrid. This is a suspended moment whose ultimate narrative is elusive.

Cota has more work up at his site and some allusive questions about photography and representation (in Spanish). Keep the amazing entries coming—enter now!

Blind Spot's Summer Sale is on—if you've admired their gorgeous editions for a while and have some cash burning a hole in your pocket, now's the time to act on impulse!
Here's the deal:

20% off all purchases up to $500.
30% off all purchases up to $2,000.
40% off all purchases of $5,000 or more.

Use coupon code Summer2009 at checkout. Please note that a 20% discount will appear on your receipt, but we will apply higher discounts where applicable before processing your card.

Some of what you will find while browsing the Blind Spot editions:

Attracted to Light (film still) by Doug and Mike Starn

When we released an edition by the Starn Brothers to benefit Blind Spot on 20x200, the prints sold out in a matter of seconds. I didn't get one and have regretted it ever since! If I had the cash now, I wouldn't second guess this chance to bring some Starns home.

Untitled, 1974 by Stephen Shore

Classic! So classic! How is it possible that this is still available?!?

Untitled from the series The New Scent by Jason Evans

This RC print from Jason Evans comes in as one of the most affordable: was $500, now $400. If this were on my wall, every time I looked at it, I would inevitably think of Jason's The Daily Nice, which always makes me smile.

Moonshadow 2008 by Spencer Finch

This light proof archival black box by Spencer Finch is such a tease: it contains an exposed yet undeveloped image of a moonshadow (which is invisible to the naked eye).

I will forgive Finch though, since his brilliant and light-filled installation, The River That Flows Both Ways, is currently on view, in broad daylight, for all to see, on the High Line, much thanks to the folks at Creative Time.

They Sprang When Everything Was Still by Elizabeth M. Brooks

Baltimore-based HHS! contender Elizabeth M. Brooks writes:

The pictures make precise reference to the world of fact, the world of the real, and then they distort it. Ever so slightly, lights, figures, juxtapositions, and oddities disobey the conventions that we use to parse reality. In the images, I am blurring the edge between what exists and what does not. These images are selections from a larger body of work titled Penumbra.


Penumbra literally means the space around a shadow, or the halo that hovers around a glowing object. It is a liminal space, a fiction created by our eyes to reconcile visual incongruence, and to make sense of juxtaposition. A penumbra is entirely subjective; it exists only by virtue of what it stands next to. I see the penumbra as a metaphor for the way that we perceive almost everything. It is impossible to escape the subjectivity of our vision and memory, our efforts to locate the self in relation to everything else.

Her ideas are akin to Fall 2007 Hot Shot Carlo Van de Roer's two most recent projects, Orbs and The Aura Portrait Machine. Between the two projects, Van de Roer explores the nature of vision and photography's inadequacies in deciphering and explaining both how and what we see. It seems, if seeing is believing, deciding the truth is still up to the seer.

They also recall Duane Michals' narrative and philosophical interests. He was among the first to push the conventions of traditional photography, manipulating light and creating a world where all is not what is appears to be.

Sadly, more of the Penumbra series is not yet available on Brooks' website for further inspection of what is, what seems to be and what may be appearing in the world that she is creating. Looks like more is coming soon though!

PS. If you want to support Carlo's The Aura Portrait Machine, pick up Orb 5 (Long Island, New York) on 20x200! Proceeds from sales go to benefit Carlo's new work. Read all the details in Jen's newsletter.

Summer greetings, my photo-loving friends! It's me, Jen! I haven't been around these parts for a while, busy as I am penning 20x200 newsletters and such, but who needs me? The blog's been percolating along quite nicely, thanks to the efforts of the many wonderful, amazing people working at Jen Bekman Projects HQ. I'm dropping by today with news of another exciting addition to that already brilliant mix, Mr. Alan E. Rapp.

Alan recently joined the JBP team as the Associate Director of Hey, Hot Shot!. As our intrepid panelist Nion McEvoy can attest, we're awfully lucky to have him! Alan arrived here in NYC about a year ago, leaving behind SF and his plum role as Senior Editor of art, design & photography titles at Chronicle Books. Nion—Chronicle's Chairman and CEO —was recently telling me how hard it's been to fill Alan's shoes, giving me the opportunity to proudly announce our good fortune. (There might've been a little bit of "Nyah! Nyah!" in there, not that I'm competitive or anything.)

I'm including Alan's bio below, but once I'm done introducing him today, he'll be speaking up for himself. And he's got plenty to talk about; he's cooking up all kinds of big plans for Hey, Hot Shot! and I can't hardly wait for them to be unveiled. I've long thought that, great as it is, HHS! could be so much more. Alan's got the experience, creativity and enthusiasm to take things to the next level, so I'm really thrilled that he'll be taking the lead here.

Alan won't be a one man show, of course. HHS! has been thriving for years now and has improved exponentially as the JBP team has grown. Sara Distin is now spending most of her time on curatorial development for 20x200, and Youngna Park is plenty busy working on all of our websites, but both of these talented women will continue to be contributors to the HHS! effort. Jeffrey Teuton is overseeing the gallery itself, where our last round of winning Hot Shots will make their Jen Bekman Gallery debut on September 9th. And as always, Raul Gutierrez and our tech crew will keep the site humming. Rounding out the team are intrepid blogger Kara Canal and JBP's latest addition, our new administrative assistant — former intern and lifelong photographer — Ms. Kika Gilbert. Casey Gollan's been contributing some excellent new content here and a crop of fresh-faced interns should be arriving soon too—even with such a great team, there's still plenty to keep them busy.

Alan E. Rapp
Alan E. Rapp is former senior editor of art, design, and photography at Chronicle Books. With more than fifteen years publishing experience, he now works on independent book projects while simultaneously pursuing an advanced degree in Design Criticism. He has collaborated with dozens of artists in bringing their work to publication, including Jim Marshall, Elinor Carucci, Justin Guariglia, Misty Keasler, David Maisel, and Linda Connor. He is a writer who has contributed to Design Observer, San Francisco Magazine, Dwell, Photo District News, and Photo-eye Booklist, among other publications. He's also the editor of Critical Terrain, where "the images, objects, concepts, and disciplines that shape the designed environment are explored and interpreted."

Second in our blog-mini-series about self-publishing is an interview with esteemed photographer, best-selling 20x200 edition-maker and acclaimed self-publisher,Beth Dow. A few months ago, there was an extremely well done interview with Beth in Macworld UK, that covered lots of bases, but we sent her some burning questions of our own:

Tell me about your book.
I received a generous fellowship from the McKnight Foundation several years ago to make most of these pictures. I lived in London for many years, and grew to love the sense of quiet confusion, and occasional danger, of these unusual landscapes. I never think of gardens as pretty places. At least not the gardens I choose to visit. This book invites the viewer to lose themselves in landscapes that are confounding yet beautiful.

Why did you want to put together a book?
Every single photograph I have ever made has been with the hope that it would be part of a book. Yes, I know that's a little pathetic. Holding a book can be a much more intimate experience than viewing a photograph in a gallery. I love the physical nature of books, and they just smell so good! I was that freak in elementary school who sniffed the new textbooks.

I put together my Blurb book in very little time as an exercise in sequencing and curiosity about the software. I think I have a good eye for design, as well as some experience with typography, and was stuck on my ass with a freshly broken ankle. The Photography.Book.Now deadline was looming and so I gave it a stab. I was thrilled with the result. Like most photographers, I'm used to the letter that begins, "Competition was fierce this year, and we regret . . ."

It's no secret that print-on-demand has pretty weak profit margins for content producers and most print-on-demand books only ever sell a few copies or are created as promotional giveaways. Did winning the competition result in significant profits from the sale of your book?
I don't get a huge amount from a sale, but I have sold more books than I anticipated.

Who is your audience?
These garden pictures have different crossover appeal from my other work. I hope gardeners, Anglophiles, and other dark souls will understand the work, and that people who are not regular fans of landscape photographs will change their minds about what a carefully considered and articulated environment can be. Americans tend to think gardens are where we keep the pretty flowers. I'm not interested in such places, and flowers are rarely in my work.

How is putting together a book of photography different from putting together an exhibition?
It depends on the book, I suppose. A print-on-demand book can be re-sequenced and re-designed as often as you like. A published book is set in stone, and that finality must be deliciously comforting. My photographs have hung in many different kinds of venues, and I love how the special demands of each space affects the relationships between images.

Did you look at other options? Why did you choose Blurb?
What were my other options? I still want a publisher for this work, and all of my other projects as well! I chose Blurb because of the fantastic competition and its stellar judging panel. [I] then made the book as an exercise and love the resulting book. I'm still very open to completely changing the format and design, and want, most of all, for it to be printed by a fine press on gorgeous paper. How could I not want that? The original prints are handmade in platinum, on lovely paper. The physicality of a photograph is integral to my work, and I always say photographs are three-dimensional objects rather than 2-D images.

It seems like everyone I know has publishers falling all over themselves, and two more friends announced their new books just this week. I haven't learned that secret handshake. If you know it, please tell me. There is nothing I want more than for a publisher to express interest in my photographs, but I have yet to crack that code. My Fieldwork project was recently one of the top six finalists for the Critical Mass book award, so I was in with a chance for a little while, at least.

What was the process like? What took the longest?
This book design really was a fluke. It's more quiet and conservative than me, but I went with the requirements of the images. I spent most of a day putting together a completely different project (Fieldwork) but didn't like the way those square images sat on the rectangular page. No matter how I re-sized the images and moved them around, I just wasn't happy, and I would love those to be printed in a huge square slab.

Out of frustration, I switched to the garden pictures simply because they are slightly rectangular, and went with that. This was around 2 days before the entry deadline, so I had no time to second-guess myself. My design instincts are usually good, and I only run into trouble when I have a lot of time to over-think things.

What is your biggest problem with self-publishing? How long did it take to make?
My biggest problem is that people seem to assume it was my goal all along. Instead, it was an invaluable tool to mess around with sequencing and to make me feel I was actually getting somewhere. Absolute instant gratification. It took me 2 1/2 days, start to finish. Did I mention the Percocet from my orthopedic surgeon? Might have helped.

Do you plan to self-publish in the future?
Sure. It's a great way to throw together a sequence and see what happens, and I like that an artist can also just order a single book and not offer copies for sale. I also might shoot some pictures exclusively for a Blurb book project. I see those book ideas as tangential, however. There is nothing I want more than a publisher who really loves and understands the possibilities of well-made book to take a risk with me.

What's your favorite photo book?
That answer changes all the time, so I won't even begin to throw titles at you.

What things are important to consider when creating your own photo book?
Know what you like, but be willing to do what's right for the images. If your favorite picture doesn't play well with others, let it sit this one out. Decide from the start if the book is all about the pictures or all about clever design, and don't think one of those choices is necessarily better than the other. I tend to prefer books that facilitate my experience with the photographs and eschew noise.

Clever-clogs typography usually pisses me off, and I just dislike it when a book looks like it was designed by a hired [hand] that didn't understand the images. This isn't to say I don't like bold design, though, and a good example would be my friend Chris Shaw's stunning book, Life as a Night Porter, from Twin Palms.

from Life as a Night Porter by Chris Shaw

Attention-getting design that is a natural companion to the images is an amazing thing to see. Look at the stunning things John Gossage makes. Mercy me! And please don't forget that the cover is important. In some odd way, it can be the most important because it has the most power to lure a person to pick it up. Or, of course, to ignore it altogether.

What advice do you have to photographers self-publishing their own books?
First of all, understand why you want a book. There are so many good reasons, and not all involve aesthetic issues. For example, a book might function as a kind of catalog for a project. In this case, like the best web sites, the design will get the hell out of the way of the images.

Another kind of book might require a bigger experience, and use color, typography, scale or texture to transform the context of the images. Keep looking at books to learn what you like and dislike. Self-publishing through a print-on-demand house only costs you the price of a single copy. If you hate it, no big deal. Keep going until you get it right or accept it's a pile of crap and move on. If you're not confident in your design skills, find someone who can help you. Maybe you can barter some prints or copies of the book as payment. Just make something that you can love.

So concludes another post. Don't miss Beth's beautiful and award-winning book, In the Garden. Check back next week for an interview with Alan Rapp.

The Aperture Foundation is teaming up with the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund to support five emerging photographers—including Fall 2006 Hot Shot and 20x200 artist Shen Wei—in documenting New York City's green carts. Focusing on these mobile produce stand, located on street corners all over the city, the photographers have been asked to apply their own style of portraiture, landscapes, and street photography to this project. Photographers LaToya Ruby Frazier, Thomas Holton, Gabriele Stabile, and Will Steacy have also been selected to participate and we are thrilled to see these fine emerging artists have the opportunity the embark on a project unifying their individual artistic visions with a project embracing these historical and timely landmarks of New York City streets.

artdaily.org writes,

The photographers will capture the Green Carts in designated neighborhoods in all five boroughs over the next eighteen months, photographing not only the carts themselves, but also the stories of the vendors, customers, and communities around them. The photographers are: LaToya Ruby Frazier, Thomas Holton, Gabriele Stabile, Will Steacy, and Shen Wei. The overall goal is to raise awareness about the geography of healthy food options and its relationship to a community's health, and to document the challenges and opportunities of starting a new business. Each of the five professional photographers brings a unique artistic vision and point of view to this effort.

Aperture will exhibit the works created in September 2011 as well as publish images throughout the project in their quarterly, Aperture Magazine. Congratulations to all of the photographers; we look forward to seeing the images you create!

Just Before the Moment of Overwhelming Awareness, 2008 by Mario David Correa

Contender Mario David Correa's series, The Window Seat, is inspired by Russian Constructivism photomontages. Although the work is not politically driven, Correa finds enchantment in collaging together a "combination of unrelated subjects, locations, times and events" on an overhead projector. Once the new composition is arranged, Correa rephotographs the image to create a new narrative landscape.

See more of Correa's work on his site.

Human Landscape by Natalie Chan

Having grown up in Taiwan, contender Natalie Chan views her new-found home in New York as an inspiring playground in which to make images. Currently a student at the School of Visual Arts, Chan describes her experience of creating images in the city as a way of simultaneously looking both inward and outward. She writes of her series Waterland,

I photograph people that catch my immediate attention--often those absorbed in their own world. In contrast, my photography of objects leads to a process of self-reflection. Many of my images are of single isolated objects; in a way they are portraits. However, they involve a different kind of perception. No one looks back at me or communicates with me, so rather than interpret someone else, I am forced to look more and more into myself.

The majority of images in this series, more of which you can view on her website, are taken by bodies of water in and around New York: the beaches of Long Island and Coney, Liberty, and Governor's Island. While swimmers, sunbathers, and sand—obvious indicators of waterside activity—are present, Chan also finds a plethora of coastal anomalies: the boy on crutches who can't go in the water, a woman dressed entirely in gold awkwardly draped across a chain-link fence, and a beach full of massive multi-colored balloons that seem to swallow up all the people running around below.

Head over to Natalie's website to see more from the Waterland series and other projects.

Speedboat & Hearse by Chris Hoare

London based Hey, Hot Shot! contender Chris Hoare left his job as a graphic designer and picked up a Wista Field camera to aid him in "capturing the enivronments in which people live and regularly come into contact with, but remain largely unnoticed".

See more of Chris's work on his site.

Independence Day #5 by Paccarik Orue

Peruvian contender, Paccarik Orue, whose name means "tomorrow" in Quechua sends us images from his series Independence Day, which focuses on American SUV culture. He looks at the irony of Americans celebrating the Fourth of July in their fuel-charged vehicles, blind to the implicit dependency on oil and resources created by the vehicles they drive. He writes,

In the 1990s, Sport Utility Vehicles (S.U.Vs) became extremely popular in the United States, due in part to low gasoline prices. These vehicles became a cultural symbol of the country's dedication to the motto "bigger is better." That was until the price of oil reached record highs in the mid-2000s...for many, the S.U.V. is a way of life and there is no other type of car that will do. This work is a portrait of Shelter Cove, a small town in northern California, taken July 4, 2009. The American way of celebrating Independence Day involves S.U.Vs, illustrating the irony that people celebrate freedom and democracy with vehicles which further our dependence on cheap, foreign oil, which mostly comes from places where there is neither freedom nor democracy.

The recently introduced Cash for Clunkers bill, which offers $3,500 - $4,500 of government rebate money to those who trade in their current cars for more fuel-efficient vehicles was so popular in its first 24 hours that it expended the entire $1 billion dollars allotted to the program. The senate voted to add another $2 billion to the program, suggesting that the trend towards bigger, faster, and gas-guzzling cars may be coming to an end. But, in order to bring the ever-present lust and cultural acceptability of the SUV to an end, their normalized omnipresence in American suburbs and role as vehicles to aspire to owning must also come to an end. Perhaps in another decade, the image of kids running a muck next to flags and having a barbecue—as depicted in Paccarik's images—will no longer feature the SUV as an symbol of identifiable Americana as well.

p.s. Haven't applied to HHS! yet? Why wait? Apply here!

X-mas tree, Mojave, California by Stephen Antonopoulos

Australian photographer Stephen Antonopoulos writes, "I try to examine bonds formed amongst people and the places they inhabit. " In the case of the photo featured above, the absence of people illustrates their relationship with the Mojave and the harshness of its climate. The scalding light and withered state of the tree and surrounding "live" plants also make clear the unforgiving nature of the desert.

The abandoned Christmas tree is a bit of an emblem of Western culture, even without the tree-stand still attached to its base, the origin of the acutely out-of-place vegetation would be clear. In this photo, a seemingly benign tradition appears to be odd and maybe even sinister—the remains of something that might be stumbled upon in a Coen brothers film.

Take the photo below, from 2009 First Edition Hot Shot Mike Sinclair, as a "before" image to Antonopoulos' "after":

Antonopoulos' image is from his series Mojave. See more of the images on his website.

I know it's early in the year to be talking about the holidays and you may be thinking it's also early in the season to consider submitting your photos to HHS! But, it's not! We'll be seeing turkeys and tinsel before we know it and even before that, this round of HHS! will come to an end.

uncl jimmi s hog crossin by Tom Swanston

Hey, Hot Shot! contender Tom Swanston hails from Chattachoochee Hills, Georgia, a place we imagine from his submission is rife with slow-moving rivers and long dirt roads. Describing himself only as a "southern man," Swanston's images offer a sepia-toned glimpse into slow bodies of water and land that perhaps dictate his days. One imagines characters like Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer floating down river on a raft, drifting between fallen trees and weeping willows while the sun beats down from the sky.

With titles like, walkin by em ol ten ants farm and uncl jimmi s hog crossin, southern inflection is implicit in Swanston's depiction of place. One gets the sense that Swanston is strolling by on a hot summer's day, stopping for a pause while he pulls out his camera and takes in the southern air.

Remember: the competition is open for entries through October 23rd, and we'll be blogging here about contenders until the Hot Shots are announced. Follow us on twitter, facebook, and flickr for updates on contenders, past and present Hot Shots, and other photography news.

Happy Friday!

A few weeks ago, we got an email from our 2006 Ultra and 20x200 edition-maker, Alison Grippo, letting us know that she had just self-published her first book: CHASING: The Friday Night Fights NYC using Blurb.com. Intrigued, we sent Alison a few questions about her self-publishing process:

Tell me about your book.
It's a documentary about the fighters from The Friday Night Fights NYC. It's funny, I was looking through it and it actually does not have any photos of people hitting each other. I heard about the fights from a friend a few years ago and I thought, "Wow, men fighting in the basement of a church...who doesn't want to photograph that?"

I was completely in the dark about the sport, about this particular group, all of it; I just thought, "Holy spectacle." After the first fight, I realized that I had happened upon something that was easy to judge but not so easy to understand. At that point, I just wanted to keep photographing the fights, and the man who runs the show, Justin, was kind enough to let me come a few times. By the third fight, I knew that I wanted to do something bigger than just a few photos. I had proclaimed, "I'm going to do a book about this!" without really knowing what it means to create a book, a body of work, etc.

That seems to be how I operate though, I go way in above my head and then push to figure it out and make it happen because I said I would do it. Also, in working with everyone, from the trainers to the boxers, it became more of a requirement than a goal. Here were people that were working hard for something with the same odds as the lottery—how could they go unknown?

Why did you want to put together a book?
For boxing at least, it's a narrative. I lean more towards documentary work probably because I'm a nosy little brat...

I feel that all the photos [in the book] are required to get the story across, they work together, they share the overall point. There are some photos I have which I think capture a particular portion of what I wanted to say, but only when coupled with the rest is the story really told...

The point of the book (once I figured out the point) is not to show the dirt or the primal aspect of fighting that people immediately assume, it was to show the nobility of it, the beauty of the fighters and the scene, the character it takes to really be a fighter and stand up in a ring with another man who you respect and admire with the idea that you are there to best him. Part of why it's a book is because I can't explain it in words but I think I can explain it in photos. I hope I did—certainly the people involved deserve that.

How is putting together a book of photography different from putting together an exhibition?
Volume for sure. I couldn't do a show of 70 images just about boxing. Maybe I could but I don't think it would be as effective. In the end, I want people to own the whole collection even if there are some photos which don't resonate for them because it is meant to be seen as a whole.

As an exhibition, I think I'd have to do a lot a more of telling the tale behind some of the images because they could be out of context. Then again, I've had the luck of seeing some of the images at 20"x30" and the impact is completely different.

Did you look at other options? Why did you end up choosing Blurb?
I had a few options, some small places were genuinely interested in releasing the book and some independent publishers too but photo books are a rough business. I don't think you do it to make a living, unless of course you're a collective like Magnum, or you're Annie Leibovitz or Vanity Fair.

I didn't want to do a book that was a limited edition and super expensive. That did not fit with the topic, the purpose or the spirit of what I was doing. Most of those interested in working with the book wanted to do very selective, limited releases. I didn't spend the last 2+ years shooting this because I wanted 500 people to own it, I wanted people to know who these boxers were, I wanted people to see what I saw. I had already invested so much of myself in the project that the idea of not making this as available as possible was counter-intuitive. Then there is the fact that I'm not exactly Annie Leibovitz and there won't be a hoard of people rushing to grab my retrospective on boxing.

I chose Blurb for a couple of reasons. If I did it through Blurb, then I had to really own it and finish it. I had to edit it and take that last step in the process of creating this story. I like that I can I say it's 100% what I wanted; of course, if it sucks, I prefer people leave me to my own delusions. I'm sure if I had worked with a publisher, issues like how much it costs to print, how many photos I could have, the theme, etc. would have been up for more debate. I didn't want to debate that. I will see how this does as I think it's still pretty costly. I will probably release a less expensive version (smaller, maybe softcover) later on if the interest is there. Again, this is about people learning about boxers like Damon Rowe, or Jamel Spencer, and the more who can, the better.

The other reason is that Blurb runs Photography.Book.Now which gave me a deadline. I need deadlines. I was really motivated by the jury who was looking at the work, and that Beth Dow won last year (and I just love her work, all of it). I'm looking now at all the submissions and another freaky portion of publishing a book online is that you see everyone's everything...

What was the process like? What took the longest?
I made about five versions, so the process was exhausting. The multiple versions came from having to own up to what I wanted to say. One version was about the glory, which was wrong. Another was about the environment, which was totally wrong. Each was a topic that alluded to what I wanted to say but never actually said it because I was afraid. When I finally sucked it up and said to myself, "This is what you're going to focus on," it became easier.

Editing is an amazing learning experience, I've edited words but not photos as much. I've done a few articles and other short pieces with my photography so I'm not totally new to the editing process but taking on something that personal and that large was daunting. At one point, I actually stopped working on the book and started shooting again to avoid having to go through the photos and give myself more to procrastinate with. Going through your own work is brutal, often I just sat there saying, "Wow, wow I'm really horrible, these are awful, what was I thinking?" There was a great deal of self-flagellation, there still is. I gave up a few times. It's like anything else very personal, you're your own worst critic so you have to fight with yourself to just keep going. Wow, that sounds like a self-help platitude.

The longest part was accepting what I was going to be talking about or showing. I have a personal relationship with a lot of people in the book, some very close, and I was very unsure of how they might feel towards me if I did a book that was not the glory tale. This isn't a book about winning, it's about losing. It's about what it means to endure for a dream you will probably not achieve and how phenomenal of a person you become through the process of trying. I didn't want to judge but I had a point of view.

From a purely technical standpoint, having to actually lay it out, pick photos, beg people who I trust to look at it and tell me, "That's a really bad idea," so I could do better was painful. There are a few folks out there who I owe a lot to but want to choke to death for making me delete photos, change the order or rewrite the intro over and over and over again.

What is your biggest problem with self-publishing? How long did it take to make?
The printing. The printing is not exact, so you can print at home and it looks great, then you get the proof and you want to cry. Then you get another proof and even though you've done nothing to the photos, for some reason, they are all green. Black and white printing is no one's specialty, I think. The first proof I received, the cover was bubbly and the blacks on the photo didn't match the black on the book.

I've done a few test prints with Blurb to try and calibrate and I've gotten pretty good at telling what will print well and what won't, but (sorry Blurb 'cause I love you) it's still a bit of a crap shoot. My photos are very high contrast, I like my blacks to be black and my whites super white, sometimes the tones just don't come out through the printing process there. But I haven't seen anyone do it better than Blurb (and I've tested a lot of self-publishers). The premium paper helps exponentially but I'd love it if there was more consistency between what I print and what they print. Such is life.

Who is your audience?
My mom. Oh, who is it intended for, not who do I think is actually going to read it and tell me I'm special? My bad. You know, I didn't think about it. I just thought, someone needs to see this, someone needs to know how hard these men work.

Do you plan to self-publish in the future?
Not a clue. If I can come up with an idea that merits a book, maybe. Right now the idea of doing another book on the heels of just finishing one seems masochistic :)

What's your favorite photo book?
Ack. No idea. I've been searching for an out of print Gilles Peress book which might be my favorite, if I find it. I just went to look at what photo books I own and I can't pick a favorite.

What things are important to consider when creating your own photo book?
Have a point of view, stick to it, and edit edit edit. If you have a great photo that doesn't work with story you're trying to tell, then it isn't right for the book.

What's next for you? What are you working on now?
Right now, sleep is on my radar. I need to just clear my head for a while I think and see what happens next. I haven't taken a photo in a while but I'm going to start carrying the camera around again. I received a great piece of advice once from a super fancy photographer during a portfolio review; he said, "Just when you think you're done, throw it all out and start again, bust it all wide open." That's where I'm at, I need to throw it all out, start again, and see what happens.

Good luck and thanks for taking the time to answer our questions, Alison!
So there you have it! Make sure to check out the preview of Alison's book, CHASING, and then buy a copy or five. Tune in same time next week for an interview with JBG artist, 20x200 edition-maker, self-publisher, and winner of last year's PBN Grand Prize: Beth Dow!

Slideluck Potshow XIII, the slideshow + potluck event brought to you by Spring 2006 Hot Shot Casey Kelbaugh, will host it's 8th gathering tomorrow evening—Thursday, August 6th at Canoe Studios (601 West 26th St., Suite 1465) in Chelsea.

This newest installment of Slideluck Potshow, which begins with the potluck component at 6:30 p.m., will feature 2009 First Edition Hot Shot Parsley Steinweiss, Spring 2007 Hot Shot and Summer Reading artist Kelly Shimoda, JBG favorite Brian Ulrich, and many others. Swing by with your best home-cooked specialty and see some great presentations featuring the following artists:

Myriam Abdelaziz, Kyohei Abe, Christopher Anderson/Magnum, Rob Ball, Yasmina Belkacem, Eric Cheng, Carlos Ciccelli , Gregory Crewdson/Luhring Augustine, Alinka Echeverria, Shepard Fairey, Tim Hetherington, Edith Maybin, Peter Mullaney, Christoph Niemann, Claudio Papapietro, Paolo Pellegrin/Magnum, Platon, Alex Prager/Yancey Richardson, Jing Quek/Josette Lata, Kim Reierson, Benjamin Rusnak, Jonah Samson, Emily Schiffer, Kelly Shimoda, Pete Souza, Parsley Steinweiss, Phillip Toledano, Brian Ulrich, D.A. Wagner, Erin Wigger, Robin F. Williams, Kristiina Wilson, Lisa Wiseman, Michael Wolf/Aperture, James Worrel, Robert Wright

We also want to congratulate Casey and the Slideluck Potshow team on receiving official non-profit status a few weeks ago, and for being named as one of the "most rule-breaking, model-changing ideas" in New York as featured on All Day Buffet.

PetaPixel, the photography blog geared towards the tech-savvy, has an interview up with our very own two-time Hot Shot and Jen Bekman artist, Joseph Holmes. In it, he talks about his popular blog, joe's nyc, his workflow, which camera he takes out on the streets, and how he got acquainted with JBP.

Here's a snippet of Joe's interview (including some very kind words about HHS!), but click over to PetaPixel for the full interview!

PP: How does one become represented by a gallery?

JH: I can't tell you how it works for most people. In my case, I had a new project in the fall of 2005 that really excited me (the amnh series ), so I entered Jen Bekman's Hey, Hot Shot competition, partly because one of the prizes is representation by Jen. I had entered before without any luck, but this time around the amnh series won one of the slots in the Hey, Hot Shot show.

Though I wasn't ultimately picked for representation, I was really encouraged by Jen's reaction to my work, and we got along really well. So about a year later, I submitted images from my new Workspace project. Not only did I win another slot, but at the end of the year Jen selected me as one of four photographers to be represented, and I've been working with Jen and her fantastic crew ever since. You can see some of my prints on Jen's 20x200 project.

I'm sure there's a lesson in persistence there. You can't let rejection stop you from continuing to create and show your work. No matter how long you've been working, there's always another rejection around the corner; it's just part of the landscape.

I became represented by Crista Dix's wallspace gallery in Seattle in a similar way. In the fall of 2006 I submitted images from my amnh series to wallspace's annual "In a New Direction" show, and I was selected. Crista contacted me after the show came down and offered to represent me. My solo show at wallspace last October, "Under | Exposed," included prints from three of my projects: Workspace, CBGB, and amnh.

Two Mantles, 2009 by Jacqueline Bates

Contender Jacqueline Bates makes work about identity. More specifically, she makes work that examines her own vulnerability as an Italian American woman. With her series of diptychs, La Vita Americana, Bates provokes a conversation about past and present conceptions of Italian feminine identity.

From her statement about her work she writes:

I am interested in the position of a woman in a family, what her roles are, how they transform from generation to generation, and how isolating they can be. I examine rites of passage and family traditions which, although far removed from their socio-spiritual origins, continue to be a central part of Italian-American cultural identity. To contrast the color suburban photographs, I present three types of black-and-white imagery: film stills from Michelangelo Antonioni's classic 1960 film L'avventura; snapshots of my parents at the time of their marriage; and my own fictional film stills.

View more of Jacqueline's work on her site.

Slaughterhouse 1, 2007 by Axel Dupeux

The bloody reds of Axel Dupeux's series about slaughterhouses are affronting and catch you off-guard. Animal parts are strewn in the drain of a sink, and blood runs thick like a river. One feels exposed to information about their food-source that perhaps was really not meant to be seen and the slaughterhouses, devoid of human presence, seem like a fresh crime scene left-behind.

Dupeux writes,

On one hand, I thought the texture of blood had an inner violence and a certain beauty at the same time. The Slaughter of the beef by Rembrandt was one of the main images I had in mind. On the other hand, I always find some ambiguity in the way infrastructures are built to deal with serial production; in this particular case, I was torn between a contradictory feeling of seeing the perfect mechanism of the slaughtering process, yet I couldn't help thinking it was also a somewhat terrifying illustration of the level of development Humankind reached.

Dupeaux's series brings to mind Erika Larsen's series about hunting, The Hunt. Here, speckles of blood in the snow and bloodied fingers and animals are also present, but there is also a sense of community and comradeship that motivates the actions of the hunters. Their connection to nature—the long walks through the woods and late nights under bright stars—also complete the hunting experience. On the contrary, Dupeux's images depict a de-humanized killing factory, where the killing the animal is purely for profit, rather than experiential in itself. It renders his exposè of food-production far more brutal and--literally--difficult to swallow.

See more of Dupeux's work on his website, including additional images from his slaughterhouse series. [Warning: some readers may find the images from this project to be disturbing]