About ten years ago, Swedish photographer Sebastian Sardi was working on a project called A Cirkusz – a photographic exploration of the traveling circus community and their freedoms. It was around then that he came across a news story that argued against the officially released data claiming that the number of deaths and injuries related to coal mining in China were very low. The reality was in fact much worse. This piqued an interest in Sardi and he began searching for images of coal mining in China. Unfortunately, there was very little he could find and so he decided to go to China himself, as a photographer. This was the beginning of his journey in documenting the effects of coal mining on its communities, around parts of the world.

Taken April 27, 2016 during a rally in West Baltimore. As protestors and supporters march through the street, two young boys on bicycles raise their fists as a police car drives away from them. This image was taken around the one-year anniversary of the death of Freddie Gray and the 2015 uprising. © Shan Wallace

© Rhynna M. Santos

Bryan Stevenson, founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama, stands among memorial pillars at The National Memorial for Peace and Justice of those lynched in various counties and states. Photographed for NPR. © Lynsey Weatherspoon

The history of photography has been written primarily by white, cis-gendered, heterosexual men. “Culture is driven by creatives of color, but so often mainstream media removes the cultural significance, voice, and tone and seemingly co-opts our brain power,” the Atlanta-based photographer Lynsey Weatherspoon writes. “Lifting up and centering stories of color is critical, as is making space for women and creatives of color to tell their own stories.” Weatherspoon is one of 30 photographers selected to be part of The Lit List, a new award devoted to doing exactly that. 

The Lit List, launched by the photographer and writer Oriana Koren of the Authority Collective in collaboration with Diversify.Photo, amplifies the voices of marginalized and underrepresented lens-based artists. This includes but is not limited to womxn, transgender, and non-binary photographers and filmmakers of color. This year’s superstar jury included the photographer and professor Zora J Murff, California Sunday‘s Paloma Shutes, The New Yorker‘s Siobhan Bohnacker, the Magnum Foundation’s Noelle Flores Theard, Wired‘s Sara Urbaez, the visual historian Renata Charlise of Blvck Vrchives, the art director and illustrator Jaya Nicely, the photographer and photo editor Danielle Scruggs, and Hannah Kuo of Lucky88.

La visitacion, ca. 1934, printed 1971. Brooklyn Museum.

Los almiares (Labores), ca. 1940.

Lola Álvarez Bravo (1903-1993) was a singular figure in twentieth-century art, a woman whose independence defined the spirit of the era. “I had a strange need for something and I didn’t know what it was. I was in intense rebellion against certain things that they thought I should do because I was a ‘little woman’ and a ‘young lady,’” Álvarez Bravo told Olivier Debroise for Sin título [Biography of Lola Álvarez Bravo] in 1979.

“They thought I would respond to a predetermined social plan. But I felt a strange rebelliousness. I wanted to be something. . . . It was an internal rebellion.”

That something propelled her to tremendous heights, with a career that spans more than half a century as an artist, curator, activist, and educator. As one of the few leading women artists in Mexico during the post-revolutionary renaissance, Álvarez Bravo would become an integral figure in a coterie that included Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and David Alfaro Siqueiros.

Dust Storm, Rajasthan, India, 1983 © Steve McCurry

Bear One, Devon Island, Canadian Arctic, 2008 © Sebastian Copeland

Constant industrial developments and a significant increase in the consumption of Earth’s resources over the last few decades have resulted in environmental disasters that continue to negatively impact the our climate today. Now more than ever, environmental issues are at the center of social and political debates all over the world.

Artists and journalist alike have directed their lens towards this pressing issue and documented the causes and the effects of climate change all over the world. In the hopes of raising more awareness, Lucie Foundation collaborated with The Royal Photographic Society of Thailand and Bangkok Art and Culture Centre to present the exhibition Beyond the Air We Breathe. Featuring over 80 of the world’s most accomplished and renowned photographers, including Steve McCurry, Sebastian Copeland, and James Nachtwey, the exhibition aims to highlight the astonishing stories of photographers dedicated to the protection of the environment.

© Rebecca Norris Webb

© Alex Webb

For more than a century, Cuba has mesmerized the world, beckoning visitors to its vibrant shores and the rich fertile soil that has earned the island the little-known name of the “Violet Isle.” It is a land of captivating beauty, majestic wonder, and alluring mystique, one whose magic and mysteries are slowly revealed through the work of artists, filmmakers, and musicians.

Over a period of 15 years, American photographers Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb made 11 trips to Cuba, each drawn to difference elements of this multi-faceted gem. Alex Webb explored the country’s street life, capturing scenes of everyday life set in a prism of vivid colors that glow under the Caribbean sun, while Rebecca Norris Webb was drawn to the resounding presence of animal life, photographing tiny zoos, pigeon societies, and personal menageries.

The result is Violet Isle (Radius Books), their first collaboration. First published in 2009, the book is a photographic duet that pairs two distinct but complementary visions of Cuba at the turn of the millennium. The book, long unavailable, has just been re-released. We speak with the authors here about their fresh take on a much-photographed land, giving us new perspectives of life on the Violet Isle.

Guy Bourdin (French, 1928-1991); Fuji crystal archive print;
45.7 x 34.3 cm (18 x 13 1/2 in.); EX.2018.7.6

Jamel Shabazz (American, born 1960); Digital chromogenic print;
25.4 x 20.3 cm (10 x 8 in.); EX.2018.7.163

Hailing from Brooklyn, Jamel Shabazz began taking photographs of his friends during the late 1970s. After returning from the Army in 1980, he began to dedicate himself to documenting life on the streets of New York, taking portraits of street legends and regular folks alike, taking an entirely new approach to the art of the fashion photograph.

With an eye for style, Shabazz used the camera as a vehicle for conversations with his subjects, who are predominantly African American and Latinx teens. Focused on helping them to develop a knowledge of self and how to survive in America, Shabazz easily spent hours with his subject before photographing them. The result is a series of portraits that convey a sense of power, pride, and dignity. As an independent artist working outside the fashion and publishing industry for decades, Shabazz has established himself as the rare artist who has been able to crossover long after this body of work was made.

Now a selection of Shabazz’s work can be seen alongside the likes of Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Cecil Beaton, Guy Bourdin, William Klein, Antonio Lopez, and Herb Ritts in the new exhibition Icons of Style: A Century of Fashion Photography, 1911-2011 at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, now on view through October 21, and accompanying catalogue of the same name. Shabazz shares his thoughts on the power of fashion photography, the importance of visibility and representation, and the power of staying true to one’s vision.

Scout

Shy Girl

“Scout the sheep is my muse,” the photographer Janet Holmes tells me. As a volunteer at the Catskill Animal Sanctuary in Saugerties, New York, she’s developed a bond with many of the rescued farm animals, but none quite compare to Scout. “Sheep can recognize human faces, and she seems to remember me,” she continues. “Almost every time I visit, she comes over to say hello and asks for a back scratch just the way a dog does, by nudging her head under my hand. She’ll lean her weight against my leg and even rest her head on my shoulder.”

“It was a foggy autumn morning and I was on my way to an appointment,” Switzerland-based photographer Marco Zedler tells me. “From the road I saw the top of a dead birch tree nestled behind trees and bushes. That made me curious, as birches are usually removed from densely populated areas.” He’s recalling the first time he discovered the hidden, mystical landscapes pictured in his ongoing Wetland series.

A few days later, Zedler returned to this location and noticed a small swamp just beyond the brush. He couldn’t see much. Everything was overgrown. But as he crept past the underwood in this area along the Rhine River, it was as if he stepped through what he calls a “magical portal.” In what felt like an instant, Zedler was transported from a noisy, densely populated street into a world of nature and solitude.

Memory is a channel filled with fragments of sensations that compose themselves along a highlight reel that runs inside our heads. The more painful the memory, the less inclined we are to return, wishing to distance ourselves from the possibility of reopening the wound. Yet it remains tender, never healing, always present even when it’s buried deep, always susceptible to being triggered and inflamed.

For Tom Griggs and Paul Kwiatkowski, the subject of memory and its response to death is at the heart of an intense book titled Ghost Guessed (Mesaestandar), that examines the persistent presence of loss. The book begins in the weeks following the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight 370. Griggs and his wife have traveled to Kuala Lumpur for her piano concert there. In the presence of so much confusion, grief, and tragedy, the memories of Griggs’ cousin Andrew resurfaced.