rain celebration

alison grippo
born: New York, NY.
Currently resides in New York, New York

website: www.flickr.com/photos/binkybink

work statement
I took my first photograph with a pinhole camera and never looked back. I shoot people, people in thier moments, finding thier space inside of crowds and cities and thick urban landscapes. I shoot thier single moment when they are entirely who they are and may not even know it. I shoot them anywhere they shine. The submissions are two from the chinese firework festival in new york, and then one special one of a woman in a small coffee shop having just left a hosipital to get a cup of coffee. she was clearly mentally unstable and arguing with her self in the coner of the shop with a bandage still on her hand from where the iv once was.

bio
I grew up in manhattan, born and bred a native new yorker i’ve never learned to drive. i have no formal training in photographer other than my eyes and years of trial and error with reading as many books as i can get my hands on. there is also the constantly asking questions of those i think are better than me so i can learn. i’m 33, i’m old enough to sign most any legal waiver. as for what got me into photography - my father, he spoke of his darkroom often and i caught his bug.

pumping station, west ham, london, april 2006

michael itkoff
born: Philadelphia, PA.
Currently resides in New York, New York

websites:
www.daylightmagazine.org
www.michaelitkoff.com
work statement
One sleepless night when I was fourteen I started taking pictures of my room. It was a point and shoot camera and I wasted most of the pictures but I became obsessed with the pleasure of seeing things differently through a lens.

I lived on the edge of a state park and would often walk around it with my dog. Both of us felt constricted by the boundaries of life and leash and in the park we could wander freely. The most interesting places to explore were the edges of the park where one could see evidence of human endeavor through the trees. In those liminal zones, the wilds of nature made made even pre-fab housing and strip malls look idyllic.

Years later I moved to a city but continued to be fascinated with the places where the concrete met soil. There was a perceptible presence there, a living tension between natural flora and society’s efforts to keep it at bay. One could almost watch as, year by year, the city spread its concrete tendrils further and further afield. Soon, having man-made structures inescapably discernable through the trees began to inspire within me a vague sense of dread.

These are photographs of a landscape under seige - meditations on the mesh of human society and nature that exist woven together. Within the clusters of growth there is life, and hope, that the tide of concrete and steel is high. A city or suburb allowed to lie fallow for twenty years would soon be swallowed by bushes and wildflowers poking up from gaps in the pavement…

bio
Michael Itkoff grew up in the suburban sprawl outside of Philadelphia, PA. After studying photography at the Slade School of Fine Art in London and Sarah Lawrence College in New York, he received his BA in 2004.

Michael is one of the founding editors of Daylight Magazine, a documentary photography publication, and was an editorial work-scholar for Aperture Foundation as well as an intern for the Annie Leibovitz Studio.

untitled 3

casey kelbaugh
born: Princeton, NJ.
Currently resides in New York, New York

website: www.caseykelbaugh.com
www.slideluckpotshow.com

work statement
I shoot a variety of subject matter, but what I strive for is a sense of authenticity in my photographs. I tend to stay away from staging, forcing, or over-producing my pictures, as I find that there is so much richness in the world that already exists. With the corners of my frame, I try to provide a thoughtful, clear window into a world where truth meets beauty.

bio
I was born in Princeton, NJ in 1974, though most of my upbringing took place in Seattle. I studied Psychology and Painting at Middlebury College (’96) in Vermont.

I began taking photographs in 1997 while living in Tokyo. At the time I was studying sumi-e ink painting under a Zen Buddhist master. I began to experience the limitations of the medium, and found photography gave me much greater access to the world and allowed me to participate in it, rather than sketching it from afar. I got my basic training at Tokyo Photo Workshops, and then at the Photocenter NW in Seattle. I spent the next few years studying, interning at galleries, traveling and shooting around the world, and assisting commercial and editorial photographers. It was also during this time that I started Slideluck Potshow, which is a slideshow potluck that I brought to NYC, and now exists in a number of cities around the country.

After working for all of the editorial clients in Seattle and doing a substantial amount of commercial work, I moved to NYC in the fall of 2003. Since that time I have done some very high-end advertising work as well shot for a number of publications. I am represented by World Picture News and shoot for the NY Times on a near-daily basis. In fact, I have to run now to shoot something for them.

chip’s drawing of a robot from outer space, 2005

andrea longacre-white
born: suburban Philadelphia
Currently resides in New York, New York

website: www.andrealongacrewhite.blogspot.com

work statement
These photos reflect an ongoing investigation into isolation and
connection within contemporary American culture. Upon quiet backdrops
both literal and social architectures suffocate space, complicate the
relation and separation of person and place, and punctuate loneliness
with moments of affinity.

In this age of standardization and acclimation I look to make record
of the human or individual mark, and see photography as a means from
which to indexically highlight and collect.

I hope to gain insight into issues of daily isolation, detachment and
reconnection, by focusing upon imaging rituals of everyday life, their
remnants and their discards; from the indelibly prominent mark to the
nearly invisible trace of human interaction in and with the world.

bio
I grew up in the suburbs of philadelphia and became interested in photography at an early age as a form of rebellion against my mother who was a painter/designer. Photography became mine, and though literature history and cultural studies throughout college were hugely important, photography was and remains my first and greatest love.

Going to Hampshire College, the interdisciplinary nature of my studies was heralded, and it was not until leaving school and coming to new york, that a sense of careerism or specificity was forced upon me, and while doing freelance design work to pay the bills, I have continued to shoot. I’m currently 25.

growing

stefan simikich
born: Van Nuys, CA.
Currently resides in San Francisco, California

website: www.hamburgereyes.com

work statement
I shot photos cause I can’t spell for shit. Its my diary, a kinda visual diary. I am intrigued by people and how they live and what they do. Even everyday stuff is interesting if I just imagine I didn’t see it everyday. I like to document the continuing story of life on earth. capturing honest uncontrived moments that capture me forever.

I started shooting photos cause I wanted to gather subject matter to take home and recreate in a painting. Well I never made any paintings just kept gathering interesting subjects since then. I took a couple classes and read alot of “how to books” for photography. I had many people that are close to me show me the ropes in the begining. Just lots of practicing I guess.
I’m inspired by the great photographers of our time like… Bruce Gilden, Jim Goldberg, Bill Owens, gary winogrand, diane arbus, robert frank….plus many others. magnum crew.

bio
I am a painting contractor in my everyday non photo life.. Its a family buisness. My 6 uncles are painters, my father, and the grandpa owned a paint store. I was born in Van Nuys CA. (somewhere in LA?). My father gave me his pentax k1000 it was my first camera. I think I was like 17 ? I had used it for years after that. I grew up mostly all over california southern to northern. I went to school in WA and lived there for years. I never took a photo classes in school. I have a degree in electronic media??? kinda like an engineer in a creative realm? anyhow I took a color photo/ studio and printing class after I graduated. The teacher let me “sit in” I had painted his house. he was a cool guy. I just had to pretend I was a student.

I am also co founder of hamburgereyes photo magazine.
It keeps me inspired.

pappa sleeping

sarah small
born: Washington, D.C.
Currently resides in Brooklyn, New York

website: www.sarahsmall.com

work statement
I make photographs that capture spontaneous, theatrical moments. These images serve as a serio-comic dreamscape featuring vivid candy colors, tight cropping and cinematic rhythm. Although each image can stand alone, they are meant to flow together like a line of film stills captured at climactic moments.

I explore the dichotomy between the severe and mundane, the odious and humorous, the grotesque and terrifying, the filthy, the erotic, the sexy, the uncanny, and the primal. This process yields work that is bound thematically by psychological content and emotional interplay.

The images provoke ambivalent and contradictory responses in the viewer–an enjoyable, yet mysterious imbalance, a rocking back and forth between projection and introspection. Viewers are unbalanced, but not out of sync.

Previously, I have focused on intimate subjects within my personal circle. As I refine my working methods, I find that I’m venturing beyond these bounds. Instead of waiting for pinnacle events to happen, I deliberately seek out and construct these moments in public life.

bio
Sarah Small was born in 1979 in Washington, D.C., to two musicians. She spent her high school years photographing her freckled and (usually) cooperative younger sister, Rachel. In 1997, Sarah began her studies at the RISD where she was awarded a merit scholarship. Since graduation in 2001, her images have been showcased in publications including Life Magazine, The New York Times, Visionaire, Surface, Planet, Psychology Today, Playgirl, XLR8R, Resonance, Topic, and Shots Magazine. Sarah has received numerous photography awards and has exhibited in group and solo shows nationally and internationally.

When not photographing, Sarah spends her free time singing and performing with Yasna Voices, a small, Brooklyn-based Bulgarian Women’s Choir. Every day for the past eight years, Sarah has taken a Polaroid of herself. She plans on pursuing this project for life.

Sarah’s ambition is to carry on her search for images that move her, eventually nurture a family, and continue to engage all her musical interests.

Hot Shot Floriane de Lassee took a road trip across America last August before returning to France; she documented gas stations thoughout the country.
Since then, she has had three shows: Nightviews, Supermarkets, and Gaz Stations. She recently returned from Shanghai where she exhibited her Nightviews series, and in June, HSBC + AD magazine will sponsor her Nightviews solo show in
Moscow. In July, Floriane will participate in the Voies Off Fringe Festival during the Rencontres Internationales de la
Photographie in Arles.
To boot, Floriane was recently featured as the “Young Talent of the Month” in Photo Magazine.
I’d say she’s doing well.

Rachel Sudlow claims, “I’m still running around the Kansas prairie, shooting landscapes, cowscapes and the like.” Lucky.

Rachel was a Fall, 2005, Hot Shot, and in February she was awarded first place in the Five State Photography Comepition and Exhibition based out of Hays, Kansas.
Rachel also hung a show in Lawrence, Kansas, at the Bourgeois Pig and has been sending her work wholesale to galleries across the country.
You can see more of her photos and the jewerly she’s been making on her site as well as on Etsy.

forming a bridge (S19 E110)

taking a picture with one hand behind my back (N51 W278)

forming a bridge (S26 E140)

Michael Taglieri’s from Ontario, and he submitted some photos from his series “Wearing a Raincoat in Case it Begins to rain”. I think these photos are just swell. This is what Michael wrote about the series:

“In the series ‘wearing a raincoat in case it begins to rain’, the landscape is appropriated as a site for performance. I am also engaged by the tropes of landscape photography, creating works that reintroduce the figure into the melancholy blankness of familiar ruralscapes in playful and engaging ways”.

Good news for all the folks who didn’t make the Monday, May 8th, deadline.
We have extended the deadline as we have a few times in the past.
So, the new deadline is MONDAY, MAY 15TH, at NOON.
Submit your work! We’re waiting for it!

This photo, Ariella and Crow, was submitted to the competition by Sarah Small.