Barry Phipps moved to Iowa City in 2012. In the last six years, he’s tried to cover every hidden corner of the state, devoting countless hours to the road with no clear destination in sight. His book Between Gravity and What Cheer: Iowa Photographs, published by the University of Iowa Press, is the story of the place he now calls home.

Date:2016/11/6. Shooting place: Osezaki Shizuoka.
Scientific name: Lubricogobius exiguus. English name: Golden goby.

Date:2013/5/9. Shooting place: Hakodate Usujiri Hokkaido.
Scientific name: Sargassum horneri (Turner) C. Agard Hypoptychus dybows.
English name: Eggs of Naked sand lance with Sargassum.

Date:2015/12/1. Shooting place:Hakodate Usujiri Hokkaido.
Scientific name:Enteroctopus dofleini. English name:Giant pacific octopus.

The ocean is a place of magic and mystery, perhaps the one last frontier left on earth. Its depths have never been plumbed or mapped; the marvels they contain are rarely revealed to those who walk the land.

Japanese photographer Toru Kasaya understands this well: we need not go far off shore before we encounter the mesmerizing and beautiful. “I take my photos near populous coasts. Not many residents are aware of the bountiful life under their noses,” Kasaya reveals in his artist statement.

“Even fishermen, who make a living from the sea, are surprised when they look at my photos, saying that they had no idea marine creatures were living this way as they only see them out of the ocean.”

Cloud Geometry © Jacob Schlather (@jacobschlather)

Stars Below – Dog © Evelyn Pritt (@pritt)

The Cloud © David Korsten (@dkorsten)

In the 1920s, Alfred Stieglitz set out to convince the world that the value of photographs was independent from the value of their chosen subject. A true photographer could give meaning to anything, if it was given the right attention. To prove his point, he chose one unlikely muse: the sky. “Clouds were there for everyone,” he later said. “No tax as yet on them, free.” His cloud photographs, titled Equivalents, changed the course of photographic history forever. The camera, we learned, could capture more than an objective reality. It could capture something symbolic and ephemeral.

We settled on cloudscapes for the theme of this online group show. The inspiring images featured in this collection are part of our global project The Print Swap. They range from the representation to the abstract, and while some include markers of our world (humans, buildings, mountains), others plunge us headlong into a celestial expanse of blue and white. As always, photographers around the world are welcome to submit by tagging #theprintswap. We select outstanding submissions, and participating photographers give and receive prints. All Print Swap photographers can now sell their work via our store, Superfine Prints, and photos tagged between now and July 6th will be considered not only for the swap itself but also for our upcoming exhibition at Photoville. It’s free to submit, but selected photographers pay $40 to participate. The fee covers printing and shipping.

“The Equivalents remain photography’s most radical demonstration of faith in the existence of a reality behind and beyond that offered by the world of appearances,” Andy Grundberg wrote for the New York Times in 1983, decades after Stieglitz’s passed away. “They are intended to function evocatively, like music, and they express a desire to leave behind the physical world.” These photographs take us on a similar journey into the unknown. Join us. Learn more on our website and @theprintswap on Instagram.

What goes on behind closed doors? It’s a curious thought that might pass our minds when walking through familiar or alien territory, though we seldom get a glimpse inside the  bedrooms of strangers. And yet the bedroom—a space synonymous with intimacy—may well offer the best impression of a person stripped of all the personas that we wear in public.

For the past two and a half years, Maine photographer Barbara Peacock has been travelling across the United States photographing people in their bedrooms. Her ongoing series American Bedroom is a sensitive, anthropological portrait of individuals, couples and families in the private dwellings we seldom see; the possessions with which they’ve surrounded themselves provide insight into their character, while the familiar environment and unthreatening presence of the photographer allows them to drop their guard. Each image is accompanied with a quote from the person portrayed, providing the viewer with a deeper sense of the subject’s character.

To witness the myriad of different cultures and personalities portrayed by Beacock that coexist in this vast territory—and vary regionally and based on factors such as class—the image of a homogenous cultural landscape that one might associated with this capitalist country is shattered.

© Maggie Steber

“My job in teaching is to help you see magic where others don’t,” the prolific photojournalist and educator Maggie Steber says. This summer, she and a group of her pioneering peers, including Nancy Borowick, Matt Eich, Daniella Zalcman, Xyza Cruz Bacani, Matt Cosby, Steven Wilkes, and more, will head over to the coast of Rockport, Maine to host workshops at the Maine Media Workshops + College. As the longest running photography workshop program of its kind, Maine Media home to some of the most brilliant minds to pick up a camera; past teachers include Mary Ellen Mark, Sally Mann, Arnold Newman, Duane Michals, Ernst Haas, and many others. The classes are intensive and limited to a small number of students, meaning that each one gets full advantage of the guidance of their mentors and the input of their peers.

Lake Tree, Beihai Park, Beijing, China, 2008

Bamboo and Tree, Qingkou Village, Yunnan, China, 2013

Huangshan Mountains, Study 13, Anhui, China, 2008

As a young boy growing up in the town of Widnes in northwest England, photographer Michael Kenna discovered a tree at the edge of a field in Victoria Park and made it his own. He and his brothers staked out their respective arboreal homes, hidden from the world, they could escape into the limitless expanses of their imaginations. Those trees became sanctuaries from all that civilization demanded of them, allowing them a space to commune with nature, free and unfettered.

Over the past 35 years, Kenna has dedicated himself to photographing trees all around the globe. Using a Hasselblad to create exquisite black and white silver gelatin prints, Kenna’s portraits of trees are like Zen koans: tranquil and enchanting, minimal and moody, and powerfully evocative of life’s deepest mysteries.

A selection of these works is on view in ‘Philosopher’s Tree’ by Michael Kenna at Blue Lotus Gallery, Hong Kong, from June 15 through July 1, 2018. The works take us around the world, into different realms where trees have their own unique relationship with the landscape and the environment. Whether in China or Italy, Norway or Brazil, Kenna’s relationship to the trees is an unwavering act of devotion.

Skeely Street Game, Spanish Harlem, New York, 1987.
Courtesy Galerie Bene Taschen.

Saturday Night Cards, Rodriguez Family Spanish Harlem, New York, 1987.

In the wake of World War I, Puerto Rican and Latin American immigrants first began arriving in New York, settling in a little corner of upper Manhattan around 110th Street and Lexington Avenue, which is now known as Spanish Harlem. With a foothold firmly established in El Barrio, the neighborhood blossomed after World War II, when a new wave of immigration transformed the face of the city.

By 1960, some 63,000 Puerto Ricans called Spanish Harlem home, bringing the culture of the Caribbean to the northern climes. With bodegas and botánicas catering to the culinary and spiritual needs of the people, Spanish Harlem became an enclave unto itself.

But the land of the free was hardly this to the immigrants who faced a system of exclusion that kept them in a state of poverty. By 1970, Nixon aide Daniel Patrick Moynihan established a policy of “benign neglect” that deprived Latinx and African-American communities nationwide of basic government systems. Add to this a drug war started by the Nixon White House to flood these neighborhoods with heroin in order to destabilize and criminalize the population, and the results were devastating.

‘Rian with Friends, 2017’ © Peyton Fulford. This image was part of The 2017 Print Swap exhibition at Photoville.

The Print Swap is coming to Photoville! After a year of traveling to Sydney, Los Angeles, Berlin, and India, we will return to Brooklyn Bridge Park, the site of the first-ever Print Swap exhibition one year ago, in an exhibition curated by Alison Zavos and Ellyn Kail, the Founder/Editor-in-Chief and Editor of Feature Shoot, respectively. All photographers are welcome to submit by tagging their images #theprintswap. As with last year’s exhibition, the theme is open. We will select images that inspire and spark the imagination across genres and political and cultural boundaries.

Photoville, as its name suggests, is the largest annual photography event in New York City. Now in its seventh year, Photoville by United Photo Industries features dozens of modular gallery spaces made from repurposed shipping containers, all installed along the waterfront. Photoville has hosted exhibitions by organizations ranging from The New York Times, TIME Magazine, and National Geographic to Instagram, The Pulitzer Center, and the Magnum Foundation, and more than 80,000 people visited the 70+ immersive exhibitions, workshops, panels, and nighttime events at Photoville 2017. We will choose a total of thirty outstanding photographs to be part of the 2018 show. This will be the seventh Print Swap exhibition to date. Although The Print Swap is open year-round, only photos submitted between May 29th and July 7, 2018 will be considered for the show.

Photographers who participate in The Print Swap give a print and receive a print from another photographer. The Print Swap collection is carefully curated by Zavos, and prints are mailed out at random, so we never know which print will end up with which photographer until the day it arrives. Going forward, Print Swap photographers will now be able to sell their their via our new store, Superfine Prints. Inclusion in The Print Swap does not necessarily mean inclusion in our offline exhibitions, but all images will be featured on one or more of our platforms: Feature Shoot, Facebook, and/or the @featureshoot or @theprintswap Instagram accounts. It’s free to submit your images for consideration for The Print Swap, though selected photographers pay $40 per image to participate.

From the gang “Cuadrilla de Juquilita”, Coatepec, Veracruz, Mexico, 2016. © Lujan Agusti, 2017 Lucie Foundation Emerging Artist Scholarship Recipient

The 2018 Emerging Scholarships by the Lucie Foundation are now open for submissions! For the last fifteen years, the Lucie Foundation has honored and supported pioneering voices within the photography community through the Lucie Awards, and now they’re looking to jump-start the careers of three talented individuals through their scholarship program. This year, the Lucie Foundation will offer a cash grant of $2500 to one photographer working in any genre and two additional grants of $1000 to fine art or documentary photographers.

All emerging photographers age eighteen and older are welcome to enter. “We define ’emerging’ as any photographer enrolled as a student, in the first five years of their photography career, or does not earn the majority of their income from photography,” the team explains. The grants are to support the continuation works in-progress or the creation of a new body of work. Last year’s LF Emerging Scholarship recipients include Patricia Voulgaris, Maurizio Di Pietro, and Lujan Agusti, whose photograph is featured at the top of this post. Agusti’s $2500 grant went towards the creation of Bailes Sagrados/Holy Dances, her portrait project on the dancing clowns in Veracruz, Mexico, who perform as part of religious celebrations for figures like the Saints or Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Photographers must submit work by June 15th, 2018 in order to be considered for the Lucie Foundation Scholarships. As always, the judges will look for work that is powerful, resonant, and unique. In addition to the cash grant, scholarship recipients will receive widespread exposure. “Photographers make images,” the foundation writes. “Visionaries teach you how to see.” These scholarships empower visionaries around the world. Apply here.