For all of you photography and magazine lovers in the Bay Area, our friends at Aperture are collaborating with SF Camerawork to organize a terrific event, in conjunction with the release of the 200th (!) issue of Aperture magazine.

This Thursday, September 30th, from 6:00-8:00 p.m., you can attend their panel titled The Storehouse and the Arsenal: The Industry and Creative Environment of Magazine Publishing Today. Moderated by Aperture's Michelle Dunn Marsh, the panel will address the role of, and challenges faced by, contemporary publications. From their website:

With the recession and the Internet age weighing print businesses down, the time has come to consider the current state of the modern magazine and its success for the future. On the occasion of the publication of issue #200, Aperture has organized a bi-coastal conversation on this important subject.

Panelists will include some of the great minds behind some of our favorite publications and publishers, such as Dwell, Wired, The Believer, not to mention HHS! panelist Nion McEvoy, the CEO of Chronicle Books. They will discuss the unique opportunities and difficulties of the today's publishing industry, and what it all means for photographers. It is sure to be an enlightening event, especially for those involved or interested in the rapidly changing world of fine arts publishing.

You can take a look at the full event details and participant profiles here and if you plan to attend, make sure you RSVP to reserve a seat: attendance is free, but space is limited!

The Details:
The Storehouse and the Arsenal: The Industry and Creative Environment of Magazine Publishing Today
Thursday, September 30, 2010, 6:00-8:00 p.m.
at SF Camerawork
657 Mission Street, 2nd Floor
San Francisco, California

The Affordable Art Fair 2010 is coming to NYC this weekend. It seemed like a great place for us to connect with 20x200 collectors who will get excited about our whole "art for everyone" mission, so we've cooked up quite a presence at this NYC event. If you're in the area this weekend we'd love to see you. The chance to see your favorite 20x200 prints (including many by our Hot Shots) live and in person, all framed up and pretty, is reason enough to make a beeline for Booth E-200, but there's more! We're hosting a series of presentations and our pop-up framing shop will be making its grand debut.

Plus, friends of 20x200 (that means you!) get $5 off AAF admission (tickets are regularly $20). Get your discounted tickets here.

Here's where to find us:

20x200 at The Affordable Art Fair
The fun starts TOMORROW, Wednesday, September 29th, and continues through the weekend–Saturday, October 2 and Sunday, October 3.
7 West 34th Street
11th Floor Market Suites
Booth E-200 (scroll to the bottom for a map!)

There's so much to cover that we'll break it down into sections:

GREAT ART TO BROWSE (AND TAKE HOME)

We went through the 20z200 archives and plucked prints from a wide range of artists, which we've had professionally framed. See something you like? Take it home!

We'll be showing (and selling) work by: Clare Grill, Bert Teunissen, Carlo Van De Roer, Christian Chaize, Don Hamerman, Greg Allen, Hosang Park, Jane Mount, Jason Jagel, Jennifer Sanchez, Jeremy Kohm, Jessica Snow, Jonathan Lewis, Kent Rogowski, Kevin Cyr, Lauren DiCioccio, Michael Lundgren, Michelle Hinebrook, Mickey Smith, Penelope Umbrico, Sharon Montrose, Stefan Ruiz, Wendy MacNaughton and William Powhida.

20x200 TALKS

We'll also be hosting five talks in our space about the 20x200 story as well as practical advice for collecting and living with art.

Live With Art
Date: Friday, October 1 at 7pm
Speaker: Jen Bekman
Summary: Jen will be giving a personal talk about why she started 20x200. She'll also share some of our best 20x200 stories from a wide range of collectors.

Get Your Art On
Dates: Saturday, October 2 at 3pm + Sunday, October 3 at 3pm
Speaker: Jen Bekman
Summary: Jen will be talking about alternative ways to learn about and buy art—including, of course, the abundance of great resources available on the internet, as well as more personalized services.

Finishing the Picture: The Basics of Framing and Hanging
Dates: Saturday, October 2 at 1pm + Sunday, October 3 at 1pm
Speaker: Jeffrey Teuton
Summary: Jeffrey, Associate Director of Jen Bekman Gallery, will share his knowledge on framing and hanging artwork. He'll have a variety of examples on hand and will demonstrate installation techniques and offer tips on how to organize and save money when approaching a big art-hanging project.

20x200 POP-UP FRAME SHOP

** If you will be at the fair, we have just a few spots left for our framing pop-up shop, which is by reservation only. You can reserve a spot here and we'll be in touch to confirm your appointment. **

How many 20x200 prints do you have that you've never managed to get up on the wall that are, instead, sitting in a drawer? (Don't be ashamed! Some of us are guilty as well.) To remedy this we're running an affordable framing pop-up shop. Make an appointment and bring in your 8x10 and 11x14 20x200 prints and you'll leave with art that's ready to hang on your walls. We'll be offering high-quality, black, wooden frames, fitted with glass and custom archival mats, cut on site for your prints.

You'll also get a one-on-one consultation as we assemble everything for you, hopefully imparting some helpful tips along the way. The whole package is a steal: $45 per 8x10 print and $70 per 11x14 print. Plus, we've arranged for everyone with a framing appointment to get free admission to the fair.

Fill out our form to schedule your appointment--it will be fun and fast--a matter of minutes per print!

Select a one-hour slot between 11:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m on Saturday, October 2nd or Sunday, October 3rd and we'll have time to frame up to five prints together. Unfortunately, we have limited space; appointments will be filled on a first come, first served basis, so book today--don't delay! We'll be in touch to confirm your appointment and will look forward to seeing you soon.

WHERE TO FIND US

20x200 at The Affordable Art Fair
TOMORROW, Wednesday, September 29th–Saturday, October 2 + Sunday, October 3
7 West 34th Street
11th Floor Market Suites
Booth E-200

Here's a map of where to find us in Booth E-200:

Field of mirrors, harvesting the power of the sun by Shuli Hallak

Back in June 2009, we wrote about Summer 2007 Hot Shot Shuli Hallak's series of photographs seeking to document new sources of sustainable energy. More than a year later, this project is going strong; Shuli is just back from a trip to Canada, where she photographed one of the world's largest PV Solar Farms in Sarnia, Ontario, which will soon be able to provide energy to power as many as 10,000 (!) homes (for the unfamiliar, PV = "Photovoltaics").

The results of her journey are not only beautiful—her photographs of solar panels often recall Robert Smithson's Mirror Displacements—they also serve the critical function of raising awareness regarding the availability and efficacy of renewable energy.

She writes of the project:

Renewable Energy is not only happening, it's taking shape fast in fast developing countries like China and India. It's the next frontier of business development and investment, and the country to get on top of the game will likely wield hefty power, in every sense.

America and the world is undergoing a regeneration. We're moving from a post-Industrial Revolution world to a flat, globalized power-sharing world where we'll have to make do and thrive with dwindling resources of fossil fuels.

In addition to her extensive documentation of industrial landscapes (she has also photographed geothermal power plans, farmland and much more), Shuli keeps an interesting and informative blog dedicated to environmental issues, called Observing the Green Revolution and founded The Renewable Project, which seeks to raise public awareness of both the limitations and potential of our natural resources.

Be sure to take a closer look at Shuli's work—much more from the series can be seen on her website. Her endeavors stand as a phenomenal example of photography's ability to inspire and transform.

Hope, 2010 from the series Heartland, by Aaron Nutter

A Pennsylvania native, Aaron Nutter took note when then-Senator Obama made his famous "clinging to guns and religion" comment while campaign stumping there in 2008. Curious to ascertain whether this was true or not, Nutter set out exploring the de-populated, rural Pennsylvania towns that comprise what politicos meant whenever they intoned anything having to do with people from "the Heartland." Traveling with his camera through what he describes as the "T" of the state, through cities such as Johnstown, Tower City and Colver, he discovered that despite their bristling at the President's characterization of them, natives of these towns did, indeed, "cling." From his artist's statement:

I found this atmosphere, condensed by the depopulation brought on by hard times, as I photographed in the small towns of central Pennsylvania. This area includes the rural communities located between Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh, and along the northern part of the state. What I discovered in such towns were many similarities. Most towns I explored did in fact have a failing industry. I found yards and homes filled with flags, banners and signs supporting faith and country. I found people holding on to this ideal. I found people who expressed fear and mistrust of the world outside of their community. I am interested in what has been ignored, and what has been left behind. I am interested in the loss of hope and the struggle to survive.

Fear, 2010 from the series Heartland, by Aaron Nutter

Coal plant, 2010 from the series Heartland, by Aaron Nutter

Images from this portfolio include individuals caught in moments of seeming reprieve—having a smoke on their porch, sitting cuddled together on a stoop—but their eyes are fraught with fatigue and anxiety, and a tension exists on all of the edges of the frame. While the gallery of images on his site is a little thin, what I do find notable and compelling about the images is that they do not seem to evince any judgment or bias, that they are depicting what is there and what the people in front of his camera are offering him. What's telling to me is that Aaron Nutter could have gone out and approached this documentary project with a pronounced expectation of finding guns, bitterness and religion. But it doesn't appear that he went on a hunting expedition for confirmations of a previously held opinion or prejudice. If he had, the distrust and disconnect would have shown in the photos. Instead what we have are an incomplete, but promising set of images that show people in a time and a place where people are tired and suspicious of what for them has amounted to empty promises, where their homes are in eternal need of repairs, where even jobs that most people wouldn't want are in short or no supply. This is a place where hope is a catch-phrase of politicians, and not a sentiment that has any tangible value.

The images from the entire Heartland series can be seen on Aaron Nutter's website. He also maintains a blog.

Sisters, Amsterdam, NY, 2010 by Eve Morgenstern

My fast-receding teenage years have been much on my mind of late. I'm currently reading a book called Eating the Dinosaur, the latest from the always-fun champion of pop culture, Chuck Klosterman, and in one of his essays (on time travel, no less) he poses a hypothetical question: if you were somehow granted the ability to telephone your fifteen-year-old self, what advice would you give him or her? (The catch is that the entire conversation could only last fifteen seconds, so providing some sort of explanation or context would be impossible—as Klosterman puts it: "You will only be able to give the younger version of yourself a fleeting, abstract message of unclear origin.") This idea has consumed my thoughts over the last few days, and although I haven't come up with a satisfactory answer to this (admittedly slightly silly question), Eve Morgenstern's HHS! submission made me think of those very strange and memorable years, yet again.

Morgenstern's photographs are part of a larger ongoing series, titled Of A Certain Age, for which she photographs women between the approximate ages of 13 and 40, as a response to, and means by which to examine her own aging. Her five photographs for HHS!, however, deal exclusively with adolescent and teenage girls; girls on the brink of womanhood. From her artist's statement:

I was in my late thirties when I started taking these images and now at 40, I am acutely aware of the closing door on this stage of life for a woman and all that it signifies. I am attracted to each one of my subjects for the hold their impressions have on me at this moment in their lives and in mine. Through this process of portrait taking I am working through my own feelings about entering 'middle age' and the ever-growing distance from my youth. These few images were taken recently on the streets of Brooklyn and in Amsterdam in Upstate NY. The prom girls were trying dresses on the street in Bedford Stuyvesant and the girls in Amsterdam were on their way home from school before the summer began. All of them appeared to me like young goddesses, very young yet hinting at their futures ahead.

Pink Prom Dress, Brooklyn, NY, 2010 by Eve Morgenstern

While Morgenstern's titles seem at first to have been chosen in the interest of maintaining the girls' anonymity and privacy—though it's also possible that she just never found out their names, as they were strangers she encountered on the street—I find it fascinating that she (with a single exception) identifies her subjects solely by the the clothes they wear. During a time where how one looks and presents themselves to others can seem so important, so critical, it feels telling that Morgenstern chose to emphasize, to draw our attention to this interest in appearance. (That she chose also to photograph girls trying on prom dresses seems similarly pointed).

The choice to photograph these girls in their own neighborhoods while spending time with friends and going about the business of their youth also seems important. They are not removed from their normal contexts for awkward, staged, studio portraits, but rather encouraged to pose in an environment where they feel at ease, and presumably more powerful. This aspect of the work, in combination with the emphasis on style and appearance suggested by the titles, succeeds in alluding to both the exciting new freedom and the inevitable insecurities that so often accompany one's teenage years.

Girl in Plaid Jacket, Amsterdam, NY , 2010 by Eve Morgenstern

These girls look for the most part a little guarded, defiant and uncertain, but I can see how they represent hope and expectation for Morgenstern. Ultimately, these photographs pretty accurately capture what I remember being a bizarre, sometimes difficult, and yet incredibly exciting age—one full of change and of seemingly limitless potential and possibility.

More of Morgenstern's work, from this series and from others, can be viewed on her website.

In my town and my neighborhood, as I'm sure in yours as well, visible and melancholy artifacts of an economy and a way of life in decline are in abundance. Maybe there are blocks and blocks of previously well-looked after, lived-in and loved homes on streets and in subdivisions that are now dotted with For Sale or Foreclosure signs. Maybe your downtown strip has as many empty buildings for lease as ones that still have independent businesses running. Maybe it's evident even on a drive from Point A to Point B where large tracts of commercial real estate that previously held box stores and strip malls are denuded of their corporate logos and left abandoned like some postmodern ghost town.

Danielle Aseff takes notice of these changes, and is interested in documenting this stripping away and transformation of a way of life that has characterized America for so long.

Untitled, 2010 by Danielle Aseff

Untitled, 2010 by Danielle Aseff

In the series of work Danielle submitted, she takes a recently shuttered fast food joint as a point of departure. All of our common visual cues are confused when looking faded carpets, stripped interiors—at the shell of something that we had otherwise become so conditioned to recognize, whether we were patrons of these establishments or not. Commercial culture stripped of its iconography and branding is disorienting to our senses and, when shown plainly as Aseff has done in this portfolio, is oddly unsettling to look at. It's as if we're living in a dystopia or post-apocalyptic view, where our markers for commerce and economic vitality have been replaced with...what was it David Byrne sang about? "Nothing but flowers."

Untitled, 2010 by Danielle Aseff

Aseff's work, in this series and beyond, is focused upon the observance of consumerism in our culture, how our habits of consumerism have and continue to change, and how our actions as corporations, individuals and as a collective are informed by this fact of American life. Her portfolio tackles everything from the emotionally strained environments of everyday estate sales to what's left on the curb of suburban America on December 26th. Through photographing scenes and acts that are so ubiquitous and predictable in their nature and their manifestation, Aseff hopes to invoke a dialogue about the effects of hyper-consumerism on the environment, on the quality of life of the people who produce these products, and on a society focused more on the acquisition of things rather than on relationships, meaningful experiences and exchange of ideas. From her statement:

I attempt to capture the clash between human life and the natural world, revealing its impact in a not-so-pretty-but-you-can't-stop-looking kind of way. These images revolve around structures that are physical representations of an optimistic time now passed, yet these buildings still remain, despite the economic decline, left to rot and taking up land.

Between the short-term planning, lack of environmental impact studies performed and an overriding concern for profit above all else, it becomes clear why "disposable" architecture seems so prevalent in American culture. In some cases, it is the "short selling" of our land to businesses that are only temporary, yet have long term effects on our natural resources, which cannot be quickly or easily reclaimed. When these businesses close, they are broken down to just a shell, an empty hull devoid of life. Despite the inherent wastefulness of it all, I still consider these places intensely beautiful and mesmerizing displays of obsolescence.

While there are numerous sympatico photographers working in this vein (Brian Ulrich's Dark Stores project comes readily to mind), the different voices and conclusions made by more artists pursuing similar themes and questions will serve to make this visual field of inquiry richer and more complex.

More projects of Danielle Aseff's can be viewed on her website.

If you are a frequent reader of this blog, you're certain to have heard about our partnership with Blurb books by now: not only do we have a new bookstore featuring the Blurb-published books of our Hot Shots past and present, but Blurb also added a serious sweetener to our prize pot. Each of the five 2010 Hot Shots will receive a $1,000 Blurb credit to go towards the creation of their own book. Ms. Jen Bekman will also select one of the five Hot Shots to receive the invaluable services of professional book editor Darius Himes and a TBD professional designer to help guides them through the process.

In addition to being a HHS! panelist and book editor, Darius served as the lead juror of Blurb's Photography Book Now competition this year. They recently announced the the winning books and three of the photographers in this year's category awards from have been featured contenders in the 2010 HHS! competition, including Judith Stenneken, who took away Blurb's Grand Prize of $25,000 for her book project on the closing of Berlin's Tempelhof airport, entitled Last Call. 20x200 artist Emily Shur placed as a 1st runner-up for her book The Woods and she received an honorable mention for her other book project Shizenkan. The winner of our 1st Curator's Choice award, Phil Underdown, also won an honorable mention for his now sold-out book Grassland.

Honorable Mention, Fine Art Category, Phil Underdown, Grassland

Pink Pillows, 2007/2010 by Dorthe Alstrup

If you think you know the artist behind these photographs, you're probably not mistaken. Five years ago (has it really been that long?!) we selected contender Dorthe Alstrup as one of our Fall 2005 Hot Shots. Since then she has appeared regularly on our blogs, released two popular 20x200 editions, and shown at JBG. It's exciting, today, to come full circle and share completely new work from Dorthe in the place where we first discovered her images.

Dorthe describes her latest work as such:

What interests me are the nuances and subtleties of human relationships. I stage photographs that depict the ways in which individuals interact. What captures my attention are moments of pausing, examining what happens in between action and conversation, because of either contemplation or overlapping of events. I investigate connections between the architectural environment and the people who inhabit it, such as ways in which space has an effect on the individual.

What brought me to these images was exactly that: the powerful geometry and formal composition of the spaces Dorthe photographs. In the subdued image above, a couch uncannily extends the ornate textures of the tapestry behind it, but two flat blocks of color—(the Pink Pillows from which the image gets its name)—draw the composition back to the wall. Though there is an abstract study of color and pattern in the image, the push and pull of space leads not to further abstraction, but to wondering: what exactly goes on here?

Fair #9, 2007/2010 by Dorthe Alstrup

I'm reminded of contender Mark Lyon, whose surreal juxtaposition of doctor's offices and nature murals lead to a questioning of whether or not the environments we design for ourselves are sense or nonsense. Dorthe's images are less jarring, but when stared at they slowly reveal themselves. In Fair #9 the curves of a roller coaster and overlaid with and the straight angles of the power-lines

LJ and Chris, 2007/2010 by Dorthe Alstrup

When people are thrown into the mix (or, rather deliberately set up) they introduce a whole new element of space and interaction—in addition to the environment. Always looking away from the camera, their gazes create angles which extend backwards in space and move your eye through the frame. Drawing your eye and strongly sustaining that interest, these are images worthy of contemplation.

You can see more of Dorthe's work at her website, her Fall 2005 HHS! Profile and 20x200.

Catherine, After Treatment, 2008 by Melissa Rene Kaseman

The bulk of Melissa Kaseman's submission addresses momentous events in her life, although this may not be immediately obvious to the viewer. Her photographs, made with skill and precision, appear—for the most part—serene and beautiful. Their titles, however, speak of aging, disease and of death, where the images do not communicate so bluntly.

This series is both strikingly intimate, and yet manages to maintain a distance, never becoming invasive or voyeuristic. Kaseman allows the people that she portrays to retain some privacy and independence. In her only direct portrait, Catherine, After Treatment, her subject faces the camera, yet keeps her eyes closed. The title, and the woman's closely shorn hair indicate illness; we as viewers have been allowed into this private space to witness her vulnerability. Still, we are denied full access to Catherine, because her eyes are concealed and we can't see the one thing that (one might argue) makes her really her.

Morning of 30th Birthday, 2004 by Melissa Rene Kaseman

Likewise, in Morning of 30th Birthday we are provided with a fragmented, incomplete portrait: we see a tender close-up of just part of the torso and arm of a figure in bed, (perhaps the artist's significant other, still asleep?) We are given the faintest impression of a cozy, domestic scene, and a the title conveys a sense of the artist taking stock of her life on an important day.

Kaseman writes of her work:

At a young age my home became divided, my memories fragmented, my recollections organized by season. Photography became a way for me to ground myself, and explore themes concerning loss, illness, nostalgia, intimacy, and hope. Interested in photography's capability to suspend moments, which are often over looked or forgotten, left only to be sensed when a memory is triggered, I use photography as a language to visually describe the moments that are significant to my life experience...Although the work is a direct reflection of myself, and my life experience, I aim to tell a poetic, open narrative. The photographs are meant to be quiet and contemplative, evoking a mood within the viewer, rather than revealing everything.

The Eve of Her Death, 2009 by Melissa Rene Kaseman

To some extent, Melissa's work recalls that of Félix González-Torres. Though Kaseman's approach and artistic vehicle is admittedly quite different, the manner in which she poetically addresses and evokes deeply personal experiences reminds me of Gonzalez-Torres' work addressing the death of his partner, Ross. (For example, in an untitled candy "spill" piece, produced immediately after Ross' death due to AIDS, the initial, ideal weight of the work is 175lbs—Ross' own ideal weight. As viewers remove candies, the pile diminishes, mimicking and reflecting his loss of weight due to illness.)

It is Kaseman's ability to gracefully and respectfully address change, sickness, pain and loss in a manner that can resonate with a wider audience, that I feel links her to González-Torres. This drive to create something that is simultaneously both private yet undeniably inclusive, represents the potential for art to connect people and to transform suffering into something beautiful and perhaps ultimately redemptive.

More of Kaseman's work from this same series, and from others can be viewed on her website.

One of the most gratifying things about doing any kind of work in the arts is, forgive me for stating the obvious, getting to work with and come in contact with the artists—the people out there actually making things in their daily lives. And it is equally inspiring and gratifying when even in the super-busy realms of JBP HQ, that the people that make this all of this possible also make it an equal priority continue to work/make/say/think as a practicing artist. Hot Shot, food-lover, editor and writer Youngna Park is one such person, and we wanted to take a moment and share with you where you can find her most recent endeavor.

Cover for upcoming release of Brooklyn Diary, published by Lines & Shapes

Youngna Park's photographs are featured in the publication Brooklyn Diary as one of the ten photographers showing images of the lives and environs of one of the most gritty, urban and artistic cities in the country. From the press release for the book:

Brooklyn, old and new, is known for its diversity and creative spirit. Brooklyn Diary takes a look inside the daily lives of twenty-one brooklyn artists, documented by ten different photographers. A place that is both dirty and beautiful, artistic endeavors are abundant in Brooklyn - from fashion and photography to organic gardens and distinctive food. the book is divided into categories of walk, eat, shop, home, and studio, and the artists profiled have shared their favorite (often lesser known) Brooklyn spots, making it a perfect, unconventional guide book for those planning to visit.

Untitled by Youngna Park, from Brooklyn Diary

Brooklyn Diary is one of several publications from Lines & Shapes, a joint endeavor between artists Maria Vettese and Lena Corwin. Emphasizing the simple, the everyday, the illustrative, photographic and text-based, books from Lines & Shapes tend to be deceptively spare yet richly sourced meditations on themes from everything from plant life to lazy Sundays and the food and the turf of Brooklyn. Much like commonplace books, except ones that are curated collaborations between artists and designers, Lines & Shapes make things that both a pleasurable recess from normal daily concerns and a delivery into contemplation about the fleeting ephemerality of things, places and activities that we deeply enjoy and cause us to feel connected to the world and those that we love.

For a limited time, Lines and Shapes is offering a discount on pre-orders of Brooklyn Diary, which is set to be released on October 11, 2010. Whether you're a Brooklynite or one that wanders its streets and sidewalks virtually (like me), snatch up a copy and enjoy a peek into the lives, both private and public, of the people and businesses therein.

We've all heard the assertion that to be alone is not the same thing as being lonely. In the photographs of Ryan Carver this is mostly if not always a truism. Using the city of San Francisco as a staging area, Carver hits the streets looking for the right combination of self-determined, stubborn isolationism. Oftentimes these images take the form of juxtaposed place and space, say: an airstream parked in the far corner of an otherwise totally empty lot; or the interior uppermost view of a botanical skylight, flanked on all sides by reaching greenery save for one.

Untitled, March 2010 by Ryan Carver

Untitled by Ryan Carver

Carver finds corners, angles, vistas and individuals that are all shown in moments of being-unto-themselves; unguarded, quiet and empty. Oftentimes the light in his photographs evoke a near-nostalgic sense of longing or canned sentimentality, but only nearly: they just manage to skirt the edges of saccharine sentimentality while still drawing a line in the sand declaring that no siree, that is not what this light is about. Having a facility to be able to name and describe such a nuanced brand of lonely made Carver's images a fitting partner to the equally defiantly un-pigeonhole-able text-based art of Mike Monteiro, with whom he collaborated on a book project they self-published this summer on Blurb.

As we wrote last month, Firecracker is the modern day Everyman's journey through the emotional minefields of a non-amicable breakup. Images from this submission to HHS! as well as many others are paired with Monteiro's heartbroken and searching narrative. As Youngna wrote, Carver's images, "...of the delightfully mundane—jugs of milk, shrubbery, parking lots, cars and empty roads—riff on photographic stereotypes of the forlorn wayfarer, but are worthwhile and stand-alone depictions of each."

page from Firecracker, by Ryan Carver and Mike Monteiro

page from Firecracker, by Ryan Carver and Mike Monteiro

As in acting, so too in life: it can be easy to do (or in this case, show), one flat wash of emotion. But it's a far harder trick to evoke the gray emotional in-between spaces of lonely-but-dealing-with-it, or happy-to-be-the-only-one-experiencing-this-right-now. In his rare moments where he gives us a person in the frame, the solitary experience of that individual performing alone in that space is the subject. Even more often what we're given in Carver's images is a sense of what places feel like when you take out all of the people, when they are filled with light and air and with the vantage point at which they are taken, as though by you, the viewer.

Ryan Carver and Mike Monteiro's book Firecracker is available for view and purchase on Blurb and more of Ryan Carver's work can be seen on his website.

We're pleased to announce that guest curator Alec Soth, renowned photographer and publisher of Little Brown Mushroom Books, has selected Glen Erler for our fifth and final Curator's Choice Award. Glen will receive the "Little Brown Mushroom Love Pack" a collection of publications including: an autographed edition of Bedknobs & Broomsticks by Trent Parke, Lost Boy Mountain by Lester B. Morrison, The Last Days of W. by Alec Soth and a screen-printed LBM t-shirt. Congratulations, Glen!

Guest Curator Alec Soth writes of Glen's Hey, Hot Shot! entry:
Photography is almost invariably linked with nostalgia. While it is the essential charm of vernacular photography, nostalgia often sinks the art photography ship. But every so often a photographer comes along who is able to harness the power of nostalgia without becoming maudlin. Glen Erler navigates this terrain with dexterity and restraint.

Alec, and our panel, had the unusual opportunity to look at fifteen images submitted by Glen, who made three submissions to Hey, Hot Shot! from his series Family Tree. Below is a selection from these images.

Baseball Backstop. La Mesa, Ca, 2006 by Glen Erler

Portrait Of Coral With Baby Olivia. Oceanside, Ca., 2007 by Glen Erler

My Aunt Holly Holding A Picture Of Dinah. La Mesa, Ca., 2005 by Glen Erler

Logan Lying By The Pool. Vista, Ca., 2008 by Glen Erler

Weeds. Valley Center, Ca., 2007 by Glen Erler

Cross Above Tootie's Bed. Santee, Ca., 2009 by Glen Erler

Glen Erler's Statement:
Family Tree is a project about the loss and rebirth of my family. I moved from Southern California to England 14 years ago and whilst visiting family members back home, I started photographing the people and places that were important memories in the shaping of who I am today. While I've been living in England, many of my relatives on both my fathers and mothers sides have passed away and this has made me realize the impact death has on the lives of those remaining. These images explore the current status of some of my remaining family members in their daily lives and are moments spent together during family gatherings. I also concentrated on returning to places where either significant events in my life happened or happened to those around me and have remained with me since childhood. They are not always memories of great importance but in fact played a role in the life I once knew. This project also explores the addition of a new generation into our family. My nieces are now wives and mothers and their children will experience a very similar life to what I experienced. I tried to find beauty in the everyday life I took for granted while retracing footsteps of places where my memories lay and a new generation of actions will take place.

We'd like to extend our tremendous gratitude to Alec for taking the time out of his extremely busy schedule to guest curate our final award. To say Alec Soth is busy is an understatement; the first U.S. survey of Soth's work, From Here To There: Alec Soth's America opened yesterday at The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, to much anticipation and great excitement. Encompassing traditions of road photography, documentary work and a broad range of portraiture, the exhibition embraces the scope of Soth's practice, which seamlessly incorporates photography, video, sound and writing into inquiries and stories about life both in the middle-of, and on the fringes of, America.

Left: the exhibition catalog to From Here To There: Alec Soth's America; Right (top): Cemetery, Fountain City, Wisconsin 2002 by Alec Soth; (bottom): Broken Manual

Alec also has two new books out: the exhibition catalog, of the same name as the show and available for pre-order from the Walker Art Center, features more than 100 photographs made over the last fifteen years and a 48-page artist book by Soth titled The Loneliest Man in Missouri alongside essays by exhibition curator Siri Engberg, art historian Britt Salvesen and critic Barry Schwabsky. Broken Manual, Soth's newest and long-awaited publication, is also available as part of a special limited edition of 300 from Steidl. A culmination of works created around the United States from 2006-2010, Soth traveled the country capturing "the places in which people retreat to escape civilization." Each of the edition of 300 is signed and numbered, and housed inside another one-of-a-kind book that is cut by hand. These 300 unique editions will be included in the exhibition at the Walker, before being shipped to collectors in 2011.

If you are lucky enough to be in Minneapolis before January 2nd, we urge you to visit the Walker Art Center for Alec's exhibition. If you can't make it there, you can keep tabs on Alec and LBM's ventures by following their blog, Twitter and Tumblr. Soth also maintains a blog at the New York Times, Continental Picture Show, featuring photo and video from his adventures around the country, including the latest installation: Looking for Luck in South Texas.

"Uncanny" is one of those words that I think I know, but then it turns out that I don't. On the first flush of grasping for definition, it seems synonymous with a sense of disbelief; the uncanny is the inconceivable. But it turns out that this is not right. Its roots are actually psychoanalytic philosophy, from the German Das Unheimliche, literally, that which is "unhomely." Freud's essay on the subject in 1919 summarizes the uncanny as that which is both familiar and foreign at the same time, resulting in a feeling of uncomfortable strangeness.

My reason for sussing out exactness in meaning and phrase is due to the work of Portuguese photographer Virgílio Ferreira, whose project Uncanny Places seeks to evoke this very sense in the viewer as they move through spaces that are common yet distorted, creating a feeling that Raul Gutierrez described once as being inside "the memory of a memory."

Untitled, from the series Uncanny Places by Virgílio Ferreira

Untitled, from the series Uncanny Places by Virgílio Ferreira

Using a medium-format camera and double-exposures made in a very short time span of one another, Ferreira seeks to create a sensation of overlapping chronologies, discordant narratives, and the feeling that your psyche might be playing tricks on you. From his artist's statement:

There is therefore in my photographs a permanent process of interpreting my view of reality, fictionalizing it and a natural predisposition to create mystery images. In a dialogue between me and the external world, driven by an inquiry on the complexity of the world, this project moves towards introspection. It is between opposite poles - logic and magic, the rationality and irrationality - that I intend to work. Uncanny Places enhances different trajectories, which correlate practical and symbolic actions with several frameworks and signifiers—awe, fear, memory, myth, fantasy—which I try to recreate visually. It is in a casual but intuitive way that I move through apparently common places, with no compass; this deliberate aimlessness paves the way for moments of serendipity. A double-exposure is intentionally used, in a very short time-span, in the same image, for the same occurrence. This is to create a notion of continuity between "there" and "here", where two points in time overlap in the same place.

Untitled, from the series Uncanny Places by Virgílio Ferreira

There is a long-standing association between the making of photographs and their relation to memory and to creating memories, and perhaps an equally long history of manipulating the camera by use of blur and double-exposures to further enhance these associations. But what Ferreira does is not to neatly refer to the process of our own memory-making brains, or to create a gimmick out of what he thinks that this might mean by making chroma-intense blurry renderings of environments that we can just make out. In Uncanny Places, Ferreira is deliberately calling out the slippery edges of what we take to be personal versus collective memory, and what he is blurring is not the focal plane of an image, but our own ability to know which is which.

I see the work of Virgílio Ferreira as an alchemy of image making—that which causes the intensely personal to bubble up to the surface of consciousness in the viewer, making them question how that happened simply by looking at a picture. We've made mention recently of how some photographers as modern-day flâneurs, roving the city as a stranger to better explain it to the inhabitants. Ferreira is a flâneur too, but of a more interior, and less easily explainable sort. Instead of being a "botanist of the sidewalk", his laboratory is that of a collective unconscious, a realm of associative feeling and sense of having been somewhere that blends fiction and fact, drive and wish-fulfillment. In his multi-layered chronologies and narratives, I am reminded of the work of another Portuguese artist that was also fond of mixing up streams of being, the poet Fernando Pessoa:

Each of us is various, many people, a proxclivity of selves. Which is why the person who disdains his world is not the same as the person who rejoices or suffers because of this world. In the vast colony of our being there are many species of people, thinking and feeling differently...

Everything around me is evaporating. My whole life, my memories, my imagination and its contents, my personality—it's all evaporating. I continuously feel that I was someone else, that I felt something else, that I thought something else. What I'm attending here is a show with another set. And the show I'm attending is myself. —excerpt from The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa

Virgílio Ferreira was an honorable mention in the 2008 First Edition HHS! and his work has been exhibited on a wide and international scale. An interview with him and his working process can be viewed here, and his website, which I highly recommend an extended sit with, can be seen here.

Untitled (Ocean), from Folded in Place, by John Mann

Happy early birthday to Piece of Cake North America! While it's not something you can eat, the work produced by this one year old group of top-notch North American photographers is a feast for the eyes.

The POC website provides a little more background about the original European group:

Created in Rouen in 2002 at the initiative of French photographer Charles Fréger, "POC" - standing for "Piece of Cake" - comprises twenty or so young European artists whose preferred medium is photography. The group's raison d'être is to enable the artists to interact as they create, produce and distribute their works. The permanent links for this exchange network, in the form of e-mail and other multimedia tools, and an efficient website, form the vectors for POC's activities.

The North American branch doesn't technically turn one until October, so we're celebrating a little bit early, but they've been keeping busy. They recently guest blogged on I Heart Photograph, and have held two workshops this year. POC member Brian Ulrich provided some insight into how the group formed and how they work with each other on his blog:

In 2009, Cara Phillips approached me about the possibility of creating a North America faction of Piece of Cake. Charles and the Euro members has initiated the idea with her and she became the organizer of testing the waters to see if artists here in the states felt like a POC collective would be beneficial. Honestly my early reaction was based on the fact that I often operate this way regardless, without the strong community and network of artists and comrades I wouldn't have had half the luck navigating the difficult sea of making my work a full time job. An email call for submissions was put forth and the Europeans POC's made the votes on who would be the first US members.

The group has so far had 2 workshops, where all the US members (+ two Euro members) gather for a intense weekend of sharing work, crits, meetings with local professionals and general art debauchery (i.e. booze). I can't write how wonderful it's been to get to know all these talented people and feel their strong commitment to each other and their own work. We'll define our antics as we move along.

Who exactly is POC North America? You may find you know many of their names. Let's start with the Hot Shots—of which there are plenty in the group: John Mann, Cara Phillips, Birthe Piontek, and Justin James Reed; as well as several photographers who have done 20x200 editions like William Lamson, and Stefan Ruiz, and Brian Ulrich. The group is rounded out by photographers Timothy Briner, Kelli Connell, Matthew Gamber, Christian Patterson, Will Steacy, Amy Stein, Bill Sullivan, and Ofer Wolberger.

Piece of Cake North America, Chicago Workshop, May 2010. Photo by Justin James Reed with shutter release by Jon Gitelson. Top Row from L: Timothy Briner, John Mann, Ofer Wolberger, Justin James Reed, Mathieu Bernard-Reymond. Bottom Row: Brian Ulrich, Kelli Connell, Amy Stein, Birthe Piontek, Cara Phillips, Matthew Gamber, Bill Sullivan. Not Pictured: Christian Patterson, Will Steacy, William Lamson, Stefan Ruiz

Come October, make sure to wish a happy birthday to this inspired group of photographers. You can stay updated about the members and the group at their website-we look forward to seeing what's next from Piece of Cake!

Teton Nosebleed, 2010 by Tyler Mast

There is something eerie, something sinister about Tyler Mast's photographs; his subjects seem stuck, immobile and—for the most part—miserable. Teton Nosebleed is the most obvious example of this: the girl depicted sits (or stands), entirely passive, allowing blood to trickle over her lips, into her mouth, and then down her chin. She is seemingly unable—or unwilling—to do anything to staunch its flow. The photograph is cropped closely around the girl's face (although her gaze won't meet the camera, giving it a somewhat voyeuristic feel). We as viewers are allowed no background, no context—nothing, save her pain, and her powerlessness to improve her circumstances.

Similarly, Richards Neighbor shows someone in another uncomfortable position. Here, an elderly man is crouched awkwardly on the small, barren strip of brownish grass between suburban sidewalk and road. Again, this figure's situation seems far from desirable, and yet somehow fixed; he appears almost rooted to the ground. I can't imagine why or how he found himself there, but also can't envision him ever being able to stand up and walk back into the house behind him.

Richards Neighbor, 2010 by Tyler Mast

Mast's palette is very much in keeping with these subjects; the colors are muted; bland blues, greens, browns and grays prevail. He writes of his submission:

These photos are about the people and places of my past, present, and future, and they are also inevitably about myself. I took them throughout the summer of 2010 as I visited my hometown of Camarillo, CA and then took a road trip with my girlfriend that ended in Montana. To me, these photos document the stillness of the people and places of my past as if they are nothing more than a memory because so little there has changed. And they also speak to the contrast between past and future, familiar and new.

The bulk of Mast's characters seem trapped in a sort of limbo; they are like ghosts, doomed to repeat mistakes and to endure discomfort indefinitely.

It is in his last submitted photograph that this idea of the future, of transformation and escape is most fully realized. This image shows Tyler and his girlfriend (or so I assume - the piece is titled Rhianna and I), with their backs to the camera, racing, rushing into a vast, expansive and stunning landscape. It is in this photograph that a hint of vivid color also finds its way in by way of the bright sunlight reflecting off of the rocks and in the bold floral pattern on Rhianna's sundress.

Rhianna and I, 2010 by Tyler Mast

These two figures are distinctly set apart from the other subjects in the series in their dynamism and, most importantly, their seeming control and freedom. That the couple has their faces turned from the camera makes it seem as though they've managed to escape the fate of the others that Mast portrays—they aren't compliant subjects of Mast's lens, but rather free agents, with the whole world spread out before them.

Though the landscape that the couple charges towards could perhaps be viewed as desolate (though undeniably beautiful), and the darkening clouds overhead appear just-a-little threatening, this shot appears as an ultimate glimmer of hope in an otherwise insular, claustrophobic and troubling series: as symbolic of the artist's ability through his work to confront, and finally escape his past, and to boldly embrace whatever his future has in store.

More work from this series and from others can be viewed on Tyler's website.

Rachel Sussman gives a TED Talk on The World's Oldest Living Things

Rachel Sussman's 2,000 year old trees and shrubs have made a few appearances here in the past on both the HHS! and 20x200 blogs. But, there is a new reason to cheer for Rachel's astoundingly (geographically and chronologically) ambitious project, The Oldest Living Things in the World. We find cause to write about Rachel and her project yet again today, as the project is experiencing even more (much-merited!) exposure: Rachel was invited to give a talk about the project as part of the TED lecture series, offering a concise and fascinating account of her ongoing endeavor to track and document of some of the world's oldest living organisms.

Initially inspired by an encounter with the 2,200-year-old Jōmon Sugi tree, while on a trip to Japan, for the past five years Rachel has traveled the globe, hunting and photographing ancient, continuously-living species of plant, fungus and bacteria, among others. She set 2,000 years as a minimum age—the idea being that everything documented would thus pre-date what is commonly thought of as "Year Zero".

On her adventures, Rachel has encountered some amazing things, many of which she describes in the lecture: Siberian Actinobacteria (400,000-600,000 years old!); Baobab trees in South Africa, which grow so large that their hollow interiors have in the past been variously used by people as toilets, prisons, and even bars; as well as a clonal colony of Quaking Aspen trees in Utah, (80,000 years old!) which resembles an entire forest, but is in fact a single tree, all connected by one enormous subterranean root system.

sunland baobab #0707-2301 (2,000 years old; limpopo province, south africa) by Rachel Sussman

Rachel has traveled around Africa, Asia, North and South America, and to Greenland and Scandinavia. She has a map where you can follow her progress—blue markers indicate the places and species she's photographed; red ones are those she has yet to visit, in part funded by her successful campaign on the micro-funding site, Kickstarter. She estimates she will spend another two years on the project, and has trips to Sicily, Australia, Antarctica and others in the works. She also keeps a blog that charts the progression of her research and travels in detail.

She describes The Oldest Living Things in the World as "a record and celebration of our past, a call to action in the present, and a barometer of our future." With the project, Sussman attempts to call attention to these astonishing and little-known environmental phenomena, and in so doing, ensure their continued preservation.

Watch her TED talk above—it's an excellent and thoroughly entertaining introduction to her project, and check out more images from the series on her website, (but be prepared for the frenzy of nature-related Google-ing that it will doubtless inspire).

Benoît Aquin (a Winter 2006 Hot Shot) is having his second solo show at Montreal's Galerie Pangée, opening tonight(!), September 8th. The exhibition,Haïti after the Earthquake, was first shown earlier this summer at the Musée de l'Elysée Lausanne in Switzerland, as part of a series called Les Lauréats du Prix Pictet, which showcased the winners of the prestigious Prix Pictet (which Benoît won in 2008 for his work on the Chinese Dust Bowl).

The upcoming show includes atmospheric and deeply affecting photographs that Benoît took while working as a volunteer in Haïti, shortly after the January 12th disaster. From the show announcement:

Aquin went to Haiti as a volunteer with the CECI (Centre for International Studies and Cooperation) immediately after the earthquake and went back for a second trip four months later.

The photographs in Haïti after the Earthquake bear witness to the human drama that unfolded after the catastrophe. By taking [them] at dusk, Aquin was able to achieve a blue-grey aesthetic in all the photographs.

If you find yourself in Montreal this weekend, make sure you stop by for what is certain to be a stellar—and emotional show. You can also check out more of Benoît's work on his website.

The details:
Haïti after the Earthquake
On view: September 8th to October 11th, 2010.
Opening Reception: September 8th at 6 p.m.
Galerie Pangée
40 St. Paul ouest
Montréal, Québec, Canada H2Y 1Y8.
Open 7 days a week, 10:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m.

Almond polers near Lost Hills, CA. A crew of workers stands among almond trees during the annual harvest outside of Lost Hills. Every fall for six to eight weeks fleets of tractors harvest almonds by shaking the trees so vigorously that all but a few nuts fall instantly to the ground. Those that remain are knocked out of the trees manually by men and women using bamboo pikes., September 16, 2009, from Lost Hills, by Sam Comen

Inspired by Walker Evans' and James Agee's collaborative book on 1930's sharecroppers, contender Sam Comen and writer/filmmaker Alex Sherman set out for Lost Hills, California to document what they call, "the emblematic frontier town of the 21st Century." Nearly 75 years after Dorothea Lange photographed her iconic Migrant Mother—not too far off from this town—the fragile local economy continues to revolve around migrant workers and agriculture. Depending on how you look at it, the community reveals itself to be "fraught with the ambitions and anxieties of [these] pioneers."

The story of each photograph overflows from the frame in the form of longwinded captions that follow each image. What's unusual is that Sam's photographs are shot in bright daylight, but they're augmented with seemingly brighter artificial lights. Incongruous with the subject matter, the light casts a banal glamour over the scenes, reminiscent of Philip-Lorca diCorcia's street photography.

Saturday morning in Lost Hills, CA. Neighbors lend a hand to pave a new driveway. With only 175 registered voters out of approximately 2,000 residents, Lost Hills has little political pull at the county level, and residents there must take it upon themselves to make their own community improvements., March 28, 2009, from Lost Hills, by Sam Comen

Sam writes:

On first glance it might appear Lost Hills' residents are living the American Dream. They work hard to improve their economic lot, and come together on their own time to elevate their community. I think of the photo of neighbors pouring a new driveway as a version of an all-American barn raising. But because many of the residents in Lost Hills are undocumented, they may be cut out of the benefits of the Dream they're working toward. It's just as much an American nightmare as it is American dream. Just as troubling is the ecological unsustainability of the farming that support Lost Hills: the vast fruit and nut orchards are wholly dependent on water imported from Northern California, and the state is in its fourth year of drought. I'm interested in depicting how Lost Hills' residents negotiate the instability of their position while attempting to create a better life for themselves and their families.

Perhaps the best part of the project is it's comprehensive website, where the two continue to post new photographs, videos and writing from the field.

Jose on Chapulín in Lost Hills, CA. Jose Saldaña wears the traditional dress of the Charreada, or Mexican rodeo while astride his colt Chapulín in the front yard of his home in Lost Hills. Jose, 25, works in the oil fields outside of town and supports his aunt, uncle, sister, and two nieces. On his days off Jose practices the equestrian and lariat events and regularly competes with a team at Charreadas in the Central Valley and Los Angeles., March 28, 2009, from Lost Hills, by Sam Comen

The video excerpts posted by Alex, part of a larger documentary titled Harvest, are reminiscent of Jennifer Baichwal's 2006 film Manufactured Landscapes, about documentary photographer Edward Burtynsky. The two excerpts on the website incorporate Sam's still photographs, shots of the photographer at work, and documentary-style interviews with workers from the community.

After taking in all that has come out of the project so far, I can hardly wait for the next chapter from Lost Hills. You can stay tuned to The Lost Hills Project at it's official website and check out more work from Sam and Alex at their respective portfolios.

Oftentimes in the practice of art one project feeds into the next. Sometimes this migration between bodies of work is graceful and intuitive, as when Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki, after photographing his wife for many years, photographed only the skyline for an entire year after her death; at other times the shift may only be a subconscious thread from one study to the next, from one set of questions to the next. Part of the visual puzzle to solve then becomes intertwined with the psychological maze of motivations, drives, attractions and repulsions.

In an earlier body of work shown on her website, Come Home, Sophie Barbasch embarked on a brave distillation of the classically dysfunctional family, using her own as the point of reference. The spare images show portraits of her parents either defiantly staring down the photographer, or actively avoiding eye or emotional contact with her. Even without knowing that she and her father had stopped speaking to one another, the images are uncomfortably emotionally charged.

Untitled, from the series Come Home by Sophie Barbasch

In her statement for this body of work, Barbasch wrote:

I started this project to understand how three people could share the same emotional narratives and never see or speak to each other. Coming to terms with our separation has meant normalizing an inexplicable void... I hope to show that the idea of togetherness is hard to dismiss.

Sophie Barbasch's new images, submitted here, are compelling fragments of a tale that has yet to be told; in fact one that may be indefinitely withheld from being spoken or fully shown. My choosing of the phrasing "fragment" is deliberate, because Barbasch's intention is to provide us fragments of stories without the context for more; a point in a narrative that, by nature of her investigation, the whole of which is to remain obscured.

Pig by Sophie Barbasch

Driving Lesson by Sophie Barbasch

In viewing these images, I'm uncertain whether they are personal in the autobiographical sense that Come Home is personal to Barbasch, or whether they are slices of the impersonal personal, seen and taken from the lives of those who are strangers to the photographer. I suppose that ultimately it doesn't matter which is which, but it is my suspicion that the new images are related to the older body of work by virtue of what is left unsaid both literally and in the frame; that the story we are being shown is only part of larger whole, and the privilege of omniscience is not granted to us, or even perhaps to the photographer wielding the camera, either.

Wall by Sophie Barbasch

From her statement on these more recent photographs:

These images track an ongoing sense of being without an owner, a context, or a map. They are about inscrutable communication and disrupted stories. I explore my failure to graft my experience onto a linear, predictable template, expressing my feelings by photographing shifting spaces and unpredictable, unprotected scenarios.

Barbasch has a gift for piecing out the startling or the unseen disquiet that, were we as attuned to it as she, we would probably find on the peripheries of all of our lives. It will be interesting and instructive to see whether and how far she can take disjointed splice narratives.

More images from this ongoing series, as well as older bodies of work, can be seen on Sophie Barbasch's website.

Mongolian Village, 2010 by Shawn Records

Like the recently featured contender Noah Addis, who we discovered years ago from his previous and winning submission to HHS!, Shawn Records first came into our purview when he was selected as a Hot Shot in the fall of 2005. You may also be familiar with his work from from We Love You So, the website of Spike Jonze and his film Where the Wild Things Are, where Shawn's son Max played the lead character and he documented the set during the filming of the movie.

Shawn's latest HHS! submission is comprised of personal photos that he took while on a two-week trip to China, and at first glimpse it appears as a pretty rosy view of the country: his colors are bright and cheerful, his images crisp and meticulously composed, and the scenes depicted are static and serene, ever-pleasant and—at times—rather romantic.

The rainbow—an immediately identifiable symbol of hope, prosperity and innocence—recurs three times as a motif in five submitted photographs, a move that seems intentionally uniting. Although what initially drew me to Records' photos is their apparent sunny disposition and their undeniable aesthetic appeal, closer inspection detects a hint of irony; I'm forced to acknowledge that these photos must be intended as a specific comment, and perhaps even criticism.

This leads us to the back-story to Records' project: the Chinese Government in fact sponsored his trip. Records, along with five other American photographers (who were at all times escorted by government officials), traveled to predetermined locations, which included wetlands, oil fields, a coal mine, and oil and coal museums. Their assignment was to take photographs that would be used to promote tourism in China. The photographs submitted to HHS! are ones he took in an attempt to document this (I imagine incredibly bizarre) experience. The question that most concerns me from seeing his work: how on earth does one tackle the challenge of presenting a coal mine as appealing to potential visitors to China?

Oil Museum, Daqing, 2010 by Shawn Records

Records provides a canny explanation of his submitted works in his artist's statement, and one that confirms my initial, (visual) suspicions regarding the complex, and certainly to some extent critical intentions of these photographs:

There's a Chinese saying, zuijing guantian, "like looking at the sky from the bottom of a well." These photographs were made from the bottom of that well. Ultimately, this work is wrapped up in the complexity of global economics and its web of politics, propaganda, environmental whitewashing, and good-old romanticism. But in the end, my limited knowledge and opportunity show just a sliver of this sky. I'm not sure what I can say, conclusively, other than people all over the world really, really want to be happy; and advertising, whether it's created by Western corporations or Eastern governments, uses that. We want to believe that everything's going to be alright. We want to believe that there's something special at the end of that rainbow.

Record's experience of China calls to my mind a book that I read more than a decade ago: Red China Blues, by Chinese-Canadian journalist Jan Wong. The book is a very honest, and often self-deprecating account of her experience moving to Beijing in 1972 (having grown up in Montreal, and not speaking the language) to study at Beijing University, and then going on to actively participate in the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Although the political circumstances, and involvement of Records and Wong with the Chinese government are certainly vastly different, I draw a link between the experience of two outsiders attempting to navigate, and becoming intimately acquainted with ideas and goals of an unfamiliar and reputedly very complex administration.

Ultimately, Records' submission represents a thoroughly intriguing meditation on the nature of advertising, on cultural pride, on propaganda, and on how we choose to view and represent the world that surrounds us. More of his work (although not from this series) can be seen on his website.

You might be celebrating (or mourning) the end of summer this weekend—but either way, here's something you can cheer about: it's 20x200's third birthday! We're not ones to celebrate alone so we're offering an uncommon deal to all of you out there:

Consider this a stock up sale! You'll be saving lots by picking up scores of 8"x10" and 11"x14" prints. (Usually shipping starts at $8.50.) You can put as many prints in these two sizes as you'd like and it's still just $3. One detail to keep in mind: the $3 shipping and handling fee is applied per size, so if you're mixing things up with both 8"x10" and 11"x14" prints, the absolute most you'll pay is $6—still a steal.

Be sure to peruse all the fabulous photography available on the site. Here's a taste of Hot Shots editions that bid adieu to summer and ring in the fall to whet your palate:

Midway, Neshoba County Fair, Philadelphia, Mississippi by Mike Sinclair

Golf Driving Range by James Deavin

Rincon Artificial Island and Pipeline, Ventura, California by Ian Baguskas

Norristown, Pennsylvania by Justin James Reed

Driveway, Ashland, Oregon by Jeffrey Krolick

* Rate is applied per size. Special rate can only be applied to orders within the U.S. and does not apply to international orders.