Organized by MergeLeft Artist Agents, GOOD Works is a group exhibition of photographers and artists who have donated their works to benefit ReesSpecht Life, a foundation created after Rich and Samantha Specht lost their 22 month-old son in a tragic accident. Inspired to continue his legacy of kindness, the proceeds will go to The Richard Edwin Ehmer Specht (Rees) Memorial Scholarship Fund to be reinvested in the community of Smithtown, NY. The primary goal of the fund and awareness campaign is to remind people the importance of community, compassion and civility.

The exhibition and silent auction features work from MergeLeft photographers, along with several talented artists: Mark Tucker, Dustin Cohen, Matt Furman, Gustavo Marx, Mike Rubendall, JK5, Margaret Malandruccolo, Christine Blackburne, Eli Neurgeboren, Jess Koehler, Beau Chamberlain, Alison Donalty, Jess Koehler, Erika Munro, Butch Anthony, Jessica Musumeci and David Curcurito.

It opens on Thursday, May 23rd at 6:30pm at Fig. 19 Gallery in the Lower East Side, Manhattan.

Photo: Mark Tucker

Photo: Matt Furman

Marginal Waters, shot by American photographer Doug Ischar in 1985, documents one of the most visible urban gay beaches in North America—on the Belmont Rocks in the city of Chicago—during the height of the AIDS crisis. The images are multi-layered, they “depict a seemingly edenic world of toned, sun-bathed bodies, behind which lurk the spectres of AIDS and reaction.”

Undertow, a three part exhibition featuring Ischar’s Marginal Waters, his installation work of the 1990s, and his recent experimental films, is currently on view at Gallery 44 in Toronto, as part of the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival. It runs through June 15, 2013.

New York-based photographer Brian Finke has a new long-term project in the works entitled Hip Hop Honeys, a document of the models and culture in hip hop videos. Working with casting directors to obtain access, Finke says he is just getting started with the project, seeing what direction it takes—we think it’s safe to say, so far, so good.

All over the country, rest areas are losing the fight to commercial alternatives: drive-thrus at every exit and mega-sized travel centers offering car washes, wi-fi, grilled paninis and bladder-busting sized fountain drinks. Louisiana has closed 24 of its 34 stops, Virginia, 18 of its 42; pretty much every state in the country has reduced its number of rest areas, or at least cut operating hours. And they’re not just being closed, they’re being demolished.

For the past 53 years, rest stops have given us rest, relief, hospitality and nostalgia. They have been an oasis of green to walk your dog, have a picnic, study the map. We can all relate to rest stops and what they represent as social and architectural icons of Americana. To me though, they are disappearing waysides of memories, anticipation and mystery of what the next one down the road will look like.—Ryann Ford

Austin-based photographer Ryann Ford honors the charm of roadside rest stops throughout the U.S. in her series Rest Stops: Vanishing Relics of the American Roadside. Inspired to systematically document them before they disappear, Ford creates a typological highlight of their architecture, environment, and spirit.

White Sands National Monument, New Mexico

Near Burleson, Texas – I-35

Galveston, Texas

Walker Lake, Nevada – U.S. 95

Near Thackerville, Oklahoma – I-35

Monument Valley, Arizona

Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona

Near Abiquiu, New Mexico – U.S. 84

Juan Santa Cruz Picnic Area – Tucson, Arizona

Near Augustus, Texas – U.S. 84

Saguaro National Park, Arizona

Anthony, New Mexico – I-10 – New Mexico/Texas Border

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I’m going back to basics, back to the sheer joy of playing with color and line on paper, of drawing with light. This project re-engages with one of the simplest and most basic purposes of photography: to show us what would otherwise remain unseen. I’m using science and technology to show my particular romantic view of the medium of photography, where the failure and power of the medium cohere in material form.—Siri Kaur

Half of the Whole is a project that LA-based photographer Siri Kaur calls a photographic exploration of time and light. She started the project in 2007, traveling to Kitt Peak in Arizona to photograph outer space. With the help of planetary scientists, she captured pictures of distant galaxies on a digital sensor attached to a Meade solar telescope.

Post-shoot she works the techniques of traditional color darkroom printing—a subtractive color system—using cyan, magenta, and yellow filters to remove various colors of light from the negatives, eventually making contact prints that reveal the negative’s colors in reverse. The resulting images are microcosms of light and matter, each one unique from the next. Kaur calls them “experiments”, and we’re glad she’s conducting them.

Austrailian-based photographer Graham Miller combines constructed portraits, documentary street portraits, landscapes and still lifes in a series named after the 1992 Leonard Cohen song, Waiting for the Miracle. Miller explores narratives created through the interplay of these images and the connections made between them. While this results in an open ended and ambiguous experience, the images seem to hold compelling stories within the fictional coastal town Miller has constructed. Miller echoes the words of photographer Robert Adams in his statement, speaking of the young protagonists that “cling precariously but tenaciously to a sense of possibility, hope, and resolve.”

Behind the Edge showcases hotel facades in Jesolo Beach, Venice. Shot by Italian born, New York-based photographer Luigi Bonaventura, his intention is to show each structure as its Platonic ideal—as the architect imagined it. The repetitive forms and pops of color combine to create a graphic, eye-pleasing series.

This series was inspired by an assignment in which we were asked to cut a burrito in half for a client. Normally for a job, we photograph the surface of food, occasionally taking a bite or a piece out, but rarely the cross section of a finished dish. By cutting these items in half we move past the simple appetite appeal we normally try to achieve and explore the interior worlds of these products.
—Beth Galton

Cut Food, a series by New York-based still life and food photographer Beth Galton, delivers an eye-pleasing, intriguing new look at what we eat. A collaboration with food stylist Charlotte Omnès, the duo worked meticulously to showcase the dynamic cross sections, each one differing in level of difficulty to achieve. Some items looked great being cut in half without any manipulation—the donuts and ice cream, for example—while others proved to require some of Omnès’ handy styling tricks—like using gelatin to solidify liquid in the soup cans.

New York-based photographer Carolyn Marks Blackwood has a knack for capturing the natural world and the beauty that lies therein. Shot from her home in the Hudson Valley where light and big sky are at their best, Clouds is a collection of color and texture, endless abstractions that stretch far beyond the capture. Gallerist Alan Klotz says of the work:

The clouds are all about the colors present in the moment, dynamic and ephemeral. It’s hard to photograph clouds, not just because they are moving, nor because of the proprietary hold on them by Stieglitz and Constable, but because in order to be successful with clouds you almost have to get away from their identity…the pictures can be nebulous, but not cloud-like…they can be recognizable, but not common. These are not common, and like their Stieglitzian forebears they are non metaphorical equivalents, aspiring to the condition of music.

Lady Gaga – small plate of cheese (non-smelly, non-sweaty) on ice.

I was inspired to create this series after reviewing a few riders from some of the biggest acts in the world, all of which were ridiculous. But what I found most interesting about them is that they offered a glimpse into their larger-than-life personalities.

I decided to focus on the quirkiest requests and shoot them in a Flemish Baroque still-life style because I felt that there was a direct connection between the themes in these types of paintings and the riders: the idea of time passing and the ultimate mortality of a musician’s career as the limelight inevitably fades.—Henry Hargreaves

Here’s another fun project from Brooklyn-based photographer Henry Hargreaves. This time he brings to life the items requested in riders from a handful of famous musicians, Dutch-still life style.

Rihanna – Hard boiled eggs, turkey bacon, turkey sausage at any time throughout the day, please be prepared!

Mariah Carey – Cristal Champagne, bendy straws.

Frank Sinatra – 1 bottle each: Absolute, Jack Daniels, Chivas Regal, Courvoisier, Beefeater gin, white wine, red wine, 24 chilled jumbo shrimp, life savers, cough drops.

Van Halen – Herring in sour cream, large tube of KY jelly, M&M’s (warning absolutely no brown ones)

Nine Inch Nails – 2 boxes of corn starch

Al Green – 24 long stem (dethroned) red roses

Axl Rose – Fresh Wonder Bread (white), Dom Perignon

Juicy baked chicken. Garlic, sea salt, black pepper and Cayenne pepper HEAVILY SEASONED!! Beyonce can only have Pepsi products.

Britney Spears – Fish and chips, McDonalds cheeseburgers without the buns, 100 prunes and figs, a framed photo of Princess Diana.

Busta Rhymes – 24 piece Fried Chicken, Rough Rider condoms, Guinness.

Foo Fighters – Big ass kielbasas that make men feel self conscious.

Marilyn Manson – Gummi bears.

New Kids on the Block – Haagen Das ice cream, Oreo cookies.

Prince – coffee and tea set up (include honey, lemon, sugar, cream, fresh ginger root), physician will be used to administer a B-12 injection.

Billy idol – 1 tub ‘I can’t believe it’s not butter,’ Pepperidge farms Soft Baked Nantucket chocolate chip cookies.