Kahao Vargo, Vari, 2009 by Evi Lemberger

Photographer Evi Lemberger does several things very, very well. First, she has an uncanny sensitivity in rendering interiors as a kind of absent portrait, and then conversely in creating portraits that are capable about speaking on so much more than just the person photographed. Like someone I spent years envying in graduate school, Evi also finds or has the superhero power ability to attract beautifully lush color and natural light into every single shot.

woman, Lopukhovo, 2009 by Evi Lemberger

The body of work that she submitted is (fantastically) entitled Ein Nichtort, or: the Fairy Tale about the Galoshes of Fortune. Documentary in nature, these photographs focus upon the lives of the inhabitants of the border region called Transcarpathia, an area in the Western Ukraine. Disputed territory for the past hundred years, it has "belonged" to seven different countries in the 20th century. The residents speak Hungarian, Ukrainian, Russian, Romanian, Polish, German and other regional languages or dialects, creating barriers to efficient and effective communication. The region also faces up to 90% unemployment and Evi writes that this region tends to be "dismissed by the governments of both Ukraine and Hungary." On her website Lemberger writes of the project:

On a social scale people live peacefully together, although having sometimes 16 different nationalities and numerous religions in one city. Interaction between the different nationalities depends on the multiculturalism in each place. Sometimes it happens that people live together but have almost no connection on a social level. One odd outcome of this multiculturalism is the setting of time. Depending on the inhabitants and the size of the village, the time is set to Hungarian or Ukrainian time.

Ein Nichtort literally means a "non-place," a phrase coined by French cultural theorist and ethnographer Marc Augé. By his definition, a non-place was a location whose very state had become so transient that it could no longer be regarded as a place. Applying his theory to contemporary Parisian society, Augé found four precepts that embodied the principle of non-place, or ein nichtort:

(i) the paradoxical increase in the intensity of solitude brought about by the expansion of communications technologies; (ii) the strange recognition that the other is also an 'I'; (iii) the *non-place, the ambivalent space that has none of the familiar attributes of place - for instance, it incites no sense of belonging; (iv) the oblivion and aberration of memory.

While Lemberger's images are most certainly about real people in real spaces, they are also just as certainly about the precariousness of belonging and not belonging, about an inability to be classified and understood by an outside force or society. Seen in this context, these are not then just images of a people or culture living out of place or time, because the crux of the project is the fact that the space these people have inhabited have never had the luxury of a fixed place (understood as such), or even a fixed time (is it Ukrainian time or Hungarian time where these photographs are taken? Maybe it depends on whichever nationality the person asking the question might be). Neither are these images of people living on the margins, but rather of people living in the liminal, a no-man's land of disputed territory that no one seems very anxious to claim.

More of Evi Lemberger's work can be seen on her website.

Blogging, micro-blogging, vlogging, webinars—there are ever-increasing means and a multitude of ways that people are networking and communicating across the web these days. We'd like to turn your attention, art and tech-savvy among you, onto a new emergent trend of twitter chats, perfectly realized in a new joint venture by photographers and art bloggers (and chat moderators) Todd Walker and Harlan Erskine.

Transcripts of photoartchat with gallerist Debra Klomp Ching, March 16, 2010

Since mid-December 2009, Todd and Harlan have been sourcing guests for semi-regular moderated photoartchats, which take place entirely on Twitter. The format and time are always the same, Tuesdays at 9 p.m. EST (6 p.m. PST). There are usually two chats a month, each lasting for exactly one hour. Todd and Harlan both actively solicit the guest "chatters" as well as guide the evening's discussion; the quick format is fairly low-pressure for the guests, and really and truly only commits them to one hour of their time. Working artists, bloggers, collectors and anyone with interest is welcome to ask questions and participate in an extended (but at the same time micro!—as in 140 characters) topic of conversation. Past guests have included Radius Books editor (and HHS! panelist) Darius Himes, Fraction Magazine founder David Bram, gallerist Debra Klomp Ching of KLOMPCHING Gallery and most recently the editors of The Photography Post. Given the varied and impressive roster of invited guests, there's a wealth of information provided in a relatively informal and relaxed format—and it's available to anyone and everyone at any level of interest in photography and the arts.

Transcript of photoartchat with editors of The Photography Post, March 23, 2010

The next photoartchat is scheduled for Tuesday, April 13th. That night you'll get to tweet-meet Art Fag City's Paddy Johnson in, who'll be on hand to field questions about everything under the art-loving sun. So, get your questions ready! The easiest way to be notified about the times and guests for upcoming photoartchats is to follow the founders, Todd Walker (@ocularoctupus) and Harlan Erskine (@HarlanErskine), on Twitter.

Todd also recommends using the TweetChat client to more easily follow the posts, although you can also find them easily on Twitter by simply searching for the hashtag, #photoartchat. A complete transcript of each chat's discussion is available the day following the chat at What the Hashtag? #photoartchat (just scroll down the page and click on the tab for "transcript"—you can fill in a specific date or give a range of dates to view the entire archives of photoartchats).

Aunt Jan photographs Gran, Mom, and Harvey, 2008 by Carrie Chalmers

Photographing the invisible—what is missing from space—is to have the viewer project his or her own assumptions and ideals upon that emptiness. In the case of contender Carrie Chalmers, that projection is intended to be a person or people missing, either through death, distance or time. The missing people are Carrie's relatives who have passed away in the15 or more years since the original photographs—from which these images are re-created—were taken. Although highly personal, these images are accessible to us because Carrie represents the universal idea that one day we too will lose those that we love and only be left with the memories and ideals that we hold of those people.

Carrie writes about her work:

I am interested in human relationships and the uncomfortable balance between connection and vulnerability....I [can't] help seeing the rest of my family there in the space with me, mostly in the form of photographs I had taken years earlier.

It is the uncomfortable balance that she strives for that interests me the most. In viewing her photographs, each of us is reliving a version of her memories, bringing us all back to a place of vulnerability. To imagine a lost loved one is to relive pain and sadness but at the same time, recall excitement, joy and the positive experiences that shaped us.

Deck, 1991 by Carrie Chalmers

Looking at Carrie's work I was reminded of a New Yorker essay written by Toni Morrison titled Strangers. In the essay she experiences the loss of a stranger—a woman she met once only briefly—but feels anger and a sense of devastation as though it were a woman she had been close to her whole life. In the essay Morrison writes:

To understand that I was longing for and missing some aspect of myself, and that there are no strangers...For the stranger is not foreign, she is random, not alien but remembered; and it is the randomness of the encounter with our already known--although unacknowledged--selves that summons a ripple of alarm.

I see this within Carrie's work. Her loved ones are strangers to us, unknowable. However, we can project our own ideals and aspects of ourselves onto these images, claiming ownership over the experience of looking. It is as though photographing empty space is the same as looking at the original photograph with her grandparents in it—those memories are still etched in her mind, and she enables them to find a way into ours as well. It is in considering these strangers and incorporating their images into our own minds, reforming our own memories that causes the "ripple of alarm" that Morrison writes about. One experiences a resurgence of feelings that had been pushed aside or nearly forgotten.

Comings and Goings, a multifaceted project by Spring 2007 Hot Shot Casey Orr, takes many different forms. First, it is a project comprised of three distinct groups of images: birds, migrant women, and prison inmates and their families. Second, it is an exhibition that was on view on the walls, both inside and outside, of Her Majesty's Prison in Leeds in 2009. Third, it is a forthcoming book to be published this summer in collaboration with Leeds City Museums, where Orr is currently the artist-in-residence.

Untitled by Casey Orr

In whichever context you view Comings and Goings, Orr makes a point about beings trapped in alien environments and how communication helps bridge barriers and connect one to the community. Birds also serve an underlying linguistic theme; as Orr writes, "Birds are linked through semantics to the other series in the work. Women are birds, prisoners are known as jail birds, and people—like birds—migrate and nest."

The inmates Orr photographed at the Leeds' prison were allowed to sit with their families during a specially arranged visit for a studio portrait that allowed cuddling, intimacy and space away from their jail cells. Each prisoner subsequently received a print of the family photograph to be hung in their cells, and the images were displayed on the prison's public-facing walls. Martin Wainwright of The Guardian wrote of the project last year, stating:

The prisoners will not see the wall - taking them outside in handcuffs and under guard was reckoned demeaning and impractical - but they have a scaled-down version now brightening up the visiting room...These are already firming up family ties, and the exhibition, entitled Comings and Goings, makes a point about that, which everyone involved echoes. Armley's inmates and their families are part of the local community too.

The act of being documented with their families in and of itself reiterates that family is not limited by physical barriers, and the public exhibition offers the prisoners hope that they can be viewed as individuals who are part of a larger network.

To see more work by Casey, hop on over to her portfolio.

Tokyo #2 by Sean J. Sprague

Pacific Distance is Sean J. Sprague's 3 years-in-the-making photographic investigation into, "treating documentary and travel subject matter in a constructed visual sensibility and style," stemming from, "thoughts of how in the anticipation of viewing a new subject, an individual constructs a view of a place even before visiting." In the images submitted to HHS!, Sean shows us glimpses of this constructed documentary mode in South Korea, China and Japan.

While the style and tone of these images evokes editorial photography (and Sprague has had his fair share of editorial assignments), what is striking to me about these photos is that if there is any intent or agenda here, it's to show us in a non-hyped up manner commonplace and quiet moments in the lives of people who live in large cities on the other side of the world.

Sean writes in his statement that through this project he is also interested in the photographic depiction of "the Other," which can be and is a pretty loaded critical term. When I think about the more canonized treatments of "the Other" that have occurred from a Westerner's eyes looking at people living in Asian metropolises, the temptation to exoticize and/or eroticize cultural differences in image-making is one that is seldom resisted (think Nan Goldin's Tokyo Love, or the early work of William Klein). What is rare and interesting in what Sean has submitted is that we are looking at singularly quiet and banal moments in the lives of these city dwellers: a man checking his cell phone in the relative calm of an underground garage and a businessman on his lunch break squinting his eyes against a too-bright sun as he attempts a little light reading.

Tokyo #1 by Sean J. Sprague

I once had a photographer instructor lamenting that there was no one out there that was making an artistic project of American life as it really is lived and experienced in all its glorious mundanity today. Who is documenting our mega malls, our food courts, our crippling consumer-driven contemporary economic reality? Since that time we have answers in images from great artists like Brian Ulrich and Zoe Strauss. Perhaps if he kept at it, Sean Sprague could do something similar by way of subverting our Westernized expectations of what kinds of images can be made of people living in places like Busan, Beijing and Tokyo.

For a more complete look at Sean's work, take a look at his portfolio on his website.

Untitled #1, from Exurbia, by Ryan Boatright

Photographer, research scientist and Hey, Hot Shot! contender Ryan Boatright divides his work into several categories, two of which are: Photographs and Photo Graphs. The difference between these two bodies of work is more than just semantics, it represents two different approaches to "evaluating photography's ability to measure experience."

First, the Photographs. After living in the same familiar neighborhood for 21 years, Boatright's parents moved to a bland, sprawling development. Referencing Bernd and Hilla Becher's cataloguing of industrial and architectural structures, Boatright photographed the suburban roofs of his new neighborhood peeking out from the bottom of each frame.

Boatright writes:

A vast, gray sky surrounds the emptiness of these structures. Builders construct homes of similar design for occupants who in turn conform to neighborhood codes and restrictions. The photographs describe the formal commonality of design that homogenizes mainstream American culture.

These straightforward, sparse images of places and things exemplify his straight photographic style. However, as I explored his work further, the Exurbia project began to take its place in a broader investigation of family, memory and the medium of photography.

Grain Elevators by Bernd and Hilla Becher

At the other end of the spectrum are Boatright's Photo Graphs, which are process-rich images derived more from graphs and charts than representational imagery. To create the piece below, Boatright recorded every angle and path that a cue ball traveled during a game of pool with his father. He used these notes to create templates for darkroom burning. Over six to eight hours, he burned and developed the game on a sheet of photo paper, resulting in a layered image whose angles ostensibly tell about the motion of gameplay between father and son.

Pool by Ryan Boatright

In this sense, Boatright's work also recalls Nikki Graziano's series Found Functions, which superimposes tidy graphs and formulas onto photographs of clouds, shadows and plants.

Untitled from Found Functions by Nikki Graziano

But are Boatright's measured and charted images truly poignant? It's a question that he seems to explore not only on a conceptual level, but in terms of tools and materials. For four years Boatright was as a research scientist at the Image Permanence Institute at RIT. His research dealt primarily with characterizing the physical aspects of photographic prints. A major project of his was developing Graphic Atlas, a public facing database "that brings sophisticated print identification and characteristic exploration tools to the general public." Different methods of printing and reproduction can be viewed from all angles under varying sources of light in a way that makes a sprawling and complicated topic remarkably clear.

It's in the space between his scientific exploration of materials and his introspective analysis of family dynamics that Boatright's work gets interesting. Boatright has since left Rochester for Paris, France where he is currently pursuing his art practice and will be exhibiting a new series of work in May.

You can see more of and read more about Boatright's work on his website. For those interested in the process and research behind the images, Boatright maintains a running blog of pages from his notebook and also has links to more of his research.

Vegas (after Toulouse-Lautrec's 'Ballet Dancers') by Ian Epstein

There are writers who become writers by way of their own favorite authors. Filmmakers, fashion gurus and artists of all stripes alike usually cite influences from their chosen medium as important formative inspiration that help catalyze their careers. So one thing that immediately strikes me when looking at HHS! contender Ian Epstein's work is that his primary influences in his photographic work are are by and large painters—wielders of canvas, pigment and brushes, instead of the normally anticipated list of contemporary photographers. Speaking on his recent reading immersion into the world of postmodern art theory, Epstein writes on how the experience has been influencing his eye:

It has also led to a kind of hallucinatory confusion about whether rust trickling down old Chicago railway overpasses is just rust or an aesthetic phenomena akin to that sought out by Clyfford Still or Gerhard Richter. It has made me wonder if, like blank canvas, there is blank photography. Mostly, though, it has led to a body of work paralyzed by fracture, discontinuity and unfinished sentences trailing off with unpunctuated question marks that I hope keep a viewer's eyes moving.

Citing David Hockney's polaroids and the painter Gerhard Richter as inspirations, I can see how both the material and mental processes of both artists figure into Epstein's makeup. But, also evident in his submissions is a real facility with the specific texture and language of color photography as well as an innate formal appreciation for line and movement, which consciously or not might betray Epstein's Chicago roots (and for the better, of course: think Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind, Kenneth Josephson).

In his image above Vegas (after Toulouse-Lautrec's 'Ballet Dancers'), I'm subject to several different sensory treatments at once: the finger pushing into the cold glass of the mirrored closet, the play of lights from outside the room interacting in a near intersecting grid of bright vertical strips and a sea of illuminated horizontal points, and then there's the physical space of the room receding in the mirror's view, filling up the rest of the frame with a very tangible wash of mixed fluorescent light. Perhaps it's his training in theater and performance that allows him to find these seeming "sets" among real life, or maybe it is being able to think about photography like a painter after all.

Ian Epstein's work and words can be experienced more fully on his website.

Such a strange phenomenon: I'll try my hardest to block out a too-much-information (TMI) conversation happening in shared public space, like a talking-too-loud person on a subway or elevator. But, then I'll find myself sneakily side-glancing, rapt with attention at those details that are meant to be somewhat private, like straining to see what book someone's reading, or what they're texting in the seat next to me.

Porn and Haagen Dazs? by Kelly Shimoda

Thank photographer Kelly Shimoda, who can finally save me from myself (at least in this regard). A Spring 2007 Hot Shot, Shimoda is showing one of our favorite bodies of her work that addresses exactly this quixotic contradiction of modern life at Carrie Haddad Photographs in Hudson, New York.

From the press release:

Kelly Shimoda's photographic series, I guess you don't want to talk to me anymore, is a documentation of mobile phone text messages by and to people she has encountered - both those familiar to her and strangers. The 8 x 10 inch images provide the viewer an intimate look at this form of communication that is fleeting by design and rarely seen by anyone other than the original author or intended recipient.

For many, texting has become a way to avoid the most uncomfortable parts of face-to-face interaction or even talking on the telephone. They often feel liberated to spontaneously communicate intimate and revealing thoughts, but by being forced to encapsulate those thoughts in a mere 160 characters, the best messages read like haiku poems - brief, but full of meaning.

In the end, these enigmatic photographs ask as many questions as they answer, and force the viewer/reader to reflect and draw upon his or her own experience to make sense of them, ultimately pointing to the fundamentally fragile nature of human communication.

Lunar Eclipse by Kelly Shimoda

Architect in office across hall clearly does not remember... by Kelly Shimoda

When Kelly participated in our Summer Reading show last August, we likened the experience of these images to the infamous site Texts From Last Night. While there are some shared similarities of late night booty-calls, random non-sequiturs, and the odd confession, these "text portraits" have the effect of elevating the mundane by creating an object from it. In the process, they also draw our attention to a particular kind of nuanced ephemerality, rich with intended and unintended emotional layers. A pick-me-up care message from mom, a grocery trip update, a quick meditation on the intangibles of the sex act—the effect of visiting each of these received communiqués is not just that you also received the information, dear viewer, but that you're now a part of this collective universal culled from the minutely particular, the ability to fuse the two is the inherent charm of Kelly's work.

Photographs by Kelly Shimoda
Carrie Haddad Photographs
On view: March 11 - April 18, 2010
318 Warren Street
Hudson, NY 12534

Lastly, If you didn't snatch up Kelly's red-hot edition on 20x200 (only one print left!), she also has an image up for sale as part of the excellent Collect[dot]Give project, where photographers donate an edition and all the proceeds to a worthy charity of their choosing.

Before lunch: Flaccanicco, Italy by Kelly Shimoda

Kelly's edition for sale through the site will benefit Start Small. Think Big., Inc, which works to empower low-income working families in the South Bronx, New York to increase their economic opportunities and build sustainable financial independence.

I've always held the belief that photographers who work at night are a certain kind of storyteller. They are those who enjoy experiencing the day at its edges—dawn and dusk—when sounds, sights and smells are magnified by the imagination. They are forced to be patient and wait for their eyes to adjust, to make do with the light of sidewalk lamps, the light coming a boat in the sea off in the distance, or the light emanating from the house of strangers awake at odd hours. They are those who are driven by the nervous anticipation of what might be lurking in the shadows, or the belief that something is lurking in the shadows, waiting to be discovered.

Fireflies, a series made by Gregory Crewdson over the course of two months in the mid-90s, is a perfect story of summer, told through his myriad experiences of night. Crewdson captured the flickers of the sky, the trees, the grass, and these tiny bugs' luminescence, with a process that one imagines to involve spending many hours crouched on the dew-y ground, looking out into the darkness thinking about the night itself.

Untitled, 1996 by Gregory Crewdson

Robert Adams also also pays tribute to the simultaneous beauty and uncertainty of the night in Summer Nights, Walking, a collection of 50 images (currently on view through April 17th at Matthew Marks). The nocturnal landscapes, made over the course of 6 years in Longmont, CO have a languorous and apprehensive overtone, of a man who paced slowly along the sidewalks, peering through windows and hiding amongst the shadows waiting for the beautiful to reveal itself.

Longmont, Colorado, 1980 by Robert Adams

From the press release,

Lit by the setting sun, street lamps, and moonlight, his compositions are never conventionally beautiful. They vacillate between quiet foreboding and tranquil domesticity and, as the photographer has expressed in his own writing, attempt to capture the timelessness and peace of warm summer evenings.

The expanded group of images in this exhibition is at times unsettling, conveying the menacing and occasionally hostile attitudes of suspicious onlookers the photographer encountered while walking and evoking a sense of unease that is often part of our nighttime experience.

Untitled (Pink-footed Geese, Norfolk), 2007 by Milo Newman

HHS! contender Milo Newman also photographs landscapes at twilight, or as he puts it "at the beginnings and ends of winter days." Limiting his canvases to minimal lines and shapes—of the sea, the sky, and a lone house on the horizon, his canvases take on a painterly quality driven by texture rather than object. Like Crewdson and Adams before him, Newman's night captures required long walks and confrontations with nature. His images took him along the low-lying areas of the British coastline, an area that has been threatened by violent storms enveloping the land.

Untitled (The North Sea, Norfolk), 2007 by Milo Newman

Newman writes of his work:

The photographs are meditations on the concepts of transience and fragility, shattering the illusions of permanence that we have built up around our societal and architectural endeavours. They are direct responses to these landscapes, as well as to vernacular objects found within them, speaking of the wider social and environmental themes involved in how we choose to react to the threat of anthropogenic climate change.

This strategy [of photographing at twilight] enabled me to make use of the vague, grey light that causes a de-lineation of form, melting the corporeal world, thus speaking of loss, as well as of change, and try to convey the fragile beauty of our deteriorating world.

It is no surprise that each of these photographers works in black and white, allowing the full range of grays in the film to hold onto the mysteries of the landscapes. The grays invite question of what time of day it really is, and whether those who are willing to wander and wait for night to fully blossom are privy to a much grander version of it.

Effigy of the Unmarked but Persistent Passing of Time by Colin Blakely

The newest issue of the always-fantastic Photography Quarterly, published by The Center for Photography at Woodstock is out, and features the portfolios of six photographers selected by Jen during the 2009 Photography Now competition including Colin Blakely, Rona Chang, Stacy Arezou Mehrfar, Chris Mottalini, Eric Percher and Saul Robbins. The magazine also features images by their current artists-in-residence, several essays, an investigation about the state of photography in the blogosphere by Liz Unterman, and reviews of several recently published photography books of note.

If you're not familiar with CPW, they are hosts to an ongoing series of excellent artist-in-residence programs, workshops and lectures in addition to publishing Photography Quarterly. Their workshop schedule ramps up at the very end of May, and throughout the summer and into the fall, the Center offers programs in digital techniques, printing, portfolio development, and creative vision with photographers including Mary Ellen Mark, Chris Jordan and David Hiliard.

Photography Quarterly #98 and all past issues are available for $15 apiece on CPW's website. To order, just email info@cpw.org.

Apply to HHS! by April 22nd to win a chance at a generous gift bag from Radius Books

We are extremely excited to announce that Darius Himes, a founding editor of Radius Books and also a HHS! panelist, will be the guest curator for the first month of competition! Radius Books is a non-profit art book publishing company based out of Santa Fe, New Mexico. But, beyond producing an exquisite collection of books, Radius also encourages an ongoing and challenging dialogue in the arts.

All contenders who enter the competition by April 22nd are automatically considered for this first Curator's Choice Award.

Hot Shot Artist Pages

Aside from revamping the HHS! competition for our 5th anniversary, we launched an awesome new feature: Hot Shot Artist Pages. Now, every season of the competition and every individual Hot Shot since the competition first opened five years ago has their own profile page! Here's a random sample of artist pages: Mickey Smith, Birthe Piontek, Michelle Arcila, and Justin James King.

Ride from Jen Bekman Gallery to the BAM Silent Auction + Cocktail Reception (and back!)

We'll be chartering a coach bus from Jen Bekman Gallery to the Brooklyn Academy of Music and back tomorrow, March 27th, for the 6th Annual BAM Silent Auction + Cocktail Reception. Work by Hot Shots Ian Baguskas and Colleen Plumb are on the block so we hope you'll come out with us to bid on their work and support BAM! You *must* RSVP ahead of time to reserve a seat on the bus.

This Week's Contenders

This week we kicked off our series of Hey, Hot Shot! Contender posts. One of the perks of entering the competition is that our team will be blogging regularly about entries that catch our eye up until the day the Hot Shots are announced.

Nathan Perkel	Anne Berry

Hey, Hot Shot! News

• The home of photographer and design aficionado (he's the head of the Cooper Hewitt shop!) Gregory Krum is featured this week on Sight Unseen.
• HHS! Panelist and publisher of the Aperture Foundation books program, Lesley A. Martin is interviewed with photographer Trevor Paglen, whose monograph will be published by Aperture this fall.
• Colin Blakely was featured this week on NPR's The Picture Show blog, which presented a slideshow of Colin's work, along with a 100 word statement.

From the Web

• We just posted over at the Jen Bekman Gallery blog about one of our favorite photographers, Zoe Strauss, who will be concluding her celebrated I-95 project this year. She'll also be in Philadelphia making Polaroid portraits tomorrow, March 27th from 1:00 - 4:00 p.m. at 838 Cantrell Street.
• Jamie of From Me To You was one of the winners of our Twitter contest who got invited to the SNAP! Out of Winter Party at Aperture last Friday. She posted a nice set of pictures from the event. Also, JBP's own Kika and Sukchander won a raffle at the party and got this beautiful print.

Photography on 20x200

Blue-and-yellow Macaw_044 by Andrew Zuckerman

This week on 20x200 we were excited to release a starkly colorful edition by studio-photographer Andrew Zuckerman. The images seem to be straight forward, but perfectly capturing these rare species in motion is no easy task. The grand scheme his work is extremely ambitious and interesting:

The animal series will continue with endangered animals; the human portraits will continue into fashion and film. Ultimately, the volumes will comprise a singular view of both the animal and human world, brought into focus under one lens, in one light.

Don't miss the high definition BIRD film (set, appropriately, to Animal Collective.) Also, our awesome friends at Chronicle Books are offering an exclusive discount: 30% off and free shipping (within North America) on purchases of Andrew Zuckerman's BIRD book, featuring 200 color photographs from the series. Simply use promo code BIRD30 at checkout on ChronicleBooks.com

That's it for this week! If you see anything we missed drop us a line on Twitter @heyhotshot. Have a great weekend!

Namaste, 2009 by Anne Berry

Contender Anne Berry was trained both in photography and horse science, so it seems only natural that her camera find its place in the animal world. In her series Menagerie she creates concentrated portraits of monkeys, bears, rhinos, baboons and myriad other creatures, each with the seriousness and focus of someone who has utmost respect for animals and their emotions. In her images, Berry largely de-contextualizes her animals from their environments. The viewer doesn't know if they are in a zoo or in the wild, stuffed animals imbued with life through the craft of the camera, or living animals frozen in time. Berry seems intent on having her subjects transcend their context and writes of her images,

Today people wander through urban environments disconnected from nature, dreams, and myth. Animals, because they exist both literally and in the universally understood world of metaphor and dream, form a bridge between the visible material realm and an essential reality that is not easily seen or understood.

Animals have been subjects of photography from as long as the medium has existed. Starting in 1878, Edward Muybridge carried out a series of photographic experiments, creating a set of images that deconstructed the movements of a horse. He subsequently captured dogs, monkeys, deers, and then humans, using the camera and its capacity to freeze time as his tool for analyzing form and motion.

I am also reminded of a series of diorama images in the American Museum of Natural History's Picturing the Museum collection, which documents exhibits and the preparation of exhibits back to the early 1900s. Though the backdrops to animal dioramas are largely manufactured and the animals stuffed and preserved, they are captured and presented as though in their natural habitats. Through clever staging at the hands of the museum and clever framing on the part of the photographer, it is easy to imagine that the animals are in the wild, as vital as ever.

White Heron or American Egret habitat Group from South Carolina, 1928 by H.S. Rice & Irving Dutcherfrom the collection of the American Museum of Natural History

On 20x200 this week we featured Blue-and-yellow Macaw_044 by Andrew Zuckerman, an artist who adopts digital technologies to capture rare and tropical birds. This photographic process enables the bird to appear in a "hyper-real Edenic state," as Sara Distin wrote in the newsletter, highlighting the equisite palette of the bird's coat, isolated from its natural habitat.

All of these photographers' work points out that our eyes are drawn to animals for innumerable reasons: they fascinate us, they elicit great emotion, they are beautiful to look at, they can have spiritual important, and they connect us with the natural world even when removed from it. Anne explicates on her own many reasons for photographing animals, which she documents on her blog.

When we first decided to announce this year's Curator's Choice Awards we thought long and hard about what this would mean for all our contending photographers. What it does mean is there are yet another pair of discerning and experienced eyes reviewing your work. And, it's a chance for you to learn a bit more about a few of our affiliate organizations—and why we love them. And, it's another chance at a bit more exposure, constructive critique...and prizes!

So, we are extremely excited to announce that Darius Himes, a founding editor of Radius Books and also a HHS! panelist, will be the guest curator for the first month of competition! Radius Books is a non-profit art book publishing company based out of Santa Fe, New Mexico. But, beyond producing an exquisite collection of books, Radius also encourages an ongoing and challenging dialogue in the arts.

All submissions made before April 22nd, 2010 are automatically eligible to win a generous gift bag from Radius, including these three outstanding monographs:

Those three books were all selected by members on the Hey, Hot Shot! team ('cause they're near and dear to us) and we're thrilled that Radius is enabling us to offer them as a prize. The photographer Darius selects will be notified by email and featured here on the blog and in the newsletter in late April, so stay tuned, and make sure to get your submissions in!

In recent weeks and months, the phrase "ordinary Americans" has become President Obama's go-to moniker for people facing everyday struggles with jobs, health, finances and family. It refers to the unexceptional but ubiquitous American — the ones bogged down by car payments and mortgages, who are doing their best to get by, whether they are in Boise, Idaho or Concord, New Hampshire.

Gas Station Attendant, Boise, Idaho, 2008 by Nathan Perkel

Boise and Concord are two of the places that contender Nathan Perkel finds his wandering eye, taking a combination of formal and environmental portraits in contexts of everyday life. The family dining table and the window of gas station are familiar stages for countless moments in nearly all of our lives, and for the most part, we experience them and forget about them. But, this is where Perkel searches "for those instants when the world achieves stillness, even amidst the turbulence of life; when an environment becomes silent and placid."

Perkel's subjects, whether people, animals or objects, are nearly always centered in the frame, acknowledging him, but also keen on being themselves. He photographs people that one might call "normal," not rich, nor poor, not celebrities nor models, not the abject nor the noble, but shoots them with a democratic eye that also channels Rineke Dijkstra.

Hickey, 2009 by Nathan Perkel

Perkel's website features a number of projects from which his submission was culled, alongside his editorial and commercial commissions. Be sure to check out Just Passing Through and From Germany With Love, two of my favorites from among his works.

Dresses 1, by Elizabeth Ribuffo

Of all the student photography shows in New York, SVA's annual Mentors exhibition — which opens tonight in New York — ranks among the most interesting in concept. Curated by Stephen Frailey, HHS! panelist and head of the school's BFA photo program, the show features work by over 80 students inspired by mentorships with some of NYC's best known art figures. "Our mentors are from every corner of the photography community - they help to inspire our students to take their work to a new level and to grow as professional photographers," writes Frailey.

This year's diverse group of mentors included several of our esteemed Hey, Hot Shot! panelists: Jen Bekman, Darius Himes, and Lesley A. Martin; photographers Taryn Simon, Gregory Crewdson, Ryan McGinley, and Brian Ulrich; gallerists Yossi Milo, Julie Saul, and Yancey Richardson; and photographer/blogger Joerg Colberg. The list goes on and on, and it's star-studded enough to make any photo-buff jealous.

Pictured in this post is work being exhibited by Jen's mentee Elizabeth Ribuffo, who stopped by JBP HQ on Friday to catch up with Jen and talk about the exhibition. The images are from her series Production Stills, taken while Elizabeth works on film sets.

"I was really struck by Liz's resourcefulness," says Jen, "I love that she's showing work that she made while on film sets, because it's the sort of thing I've seen evolve with other photographers who are trying to figure out how to make a living." The work of 20x200 edition maker — and HHS! honorable mention — Lacey Terrell comes to mind, for obvious reasons!.

Jen continues:

I'm impressed that Liz had the maturity to figure out how to work on parallel paths in an interesting way. It reminds me that great work is often made while working on other stuff. William Carlos Williams was a freaking DOCTOR and one of the greatest American poets ever. Once you enter the real world it's a huge struggle to not give up, I see it all the time. So I am really heartened by Liz's approach. I really love that wedding dress photo because it's kind of a perfect metaphor on a lot of levels."

"I think working on other things can make work more interesting. Not always, but often," says Jen. For the young photographers who were given the opportunity to work alongside these established mentors, the years of experience and second opinions are sure to have made the work more interesting. Mentors is only up through April 3rd, so make sure to get over to SVA and catch the show before it closes.

Mentors
March 19 - April 3, 2010
Reception: Tuesday, March 23, 6-8pm

School of Visual Arts Gallery
601 West 26 Street, 15th floor
New York, NY 10001

Installation shot of work by Elizabeth Ribuffo

Corrin by Hot Shot Derek Henderson

I'm thrilled to lead Hey, Hot Shot! into 2010 and we are now officially open for entries! As Jen mentioned last week, this year's competition offers myriad new opportunities for all of our contenders. We also have the honor of celebrating our 5th anniversary this year, so are introducing a $5,000 grand prize honorarium, 5 Curator's Choice Awards, and increased the number of images each contender can submit from three to five.

The deadline for submissions is August 22, 2010 at 8:00 p.m. (EDT), but don't delay, as the entry fee will increase incrementally throughout the competition. Our panel looks forward to seeing your submissions and we will be posting about contenders throughout the entry period right here on the blog. Read on for all the details!

A diverse panel of photography professionals--including founder Jen Bekman, Aperture Foundation publisher Lesley A. Martin, Chronicle Books chairman and CEO Nion McEvoy, a founding editor of Radius Books Darius Himes and photographer Kent Rogowski--reviews every entry.

This season, we are thrilled to welcome Tod Lippy, editor-in-chief of Esopus magazine and president of the Esopus Foundation Ltd., to our panel. Tod served as a senior editor at Print magazine from 1990 to 1997, is an award-winning filmmaker and also a frequent lecturer on topics ranging from screenwriting to graphic design.

Our panel will select five photographers as the 2010 Hot Shots. Each photographer will be awarded:

+ A $500 honorarium.
+ Participation in the 2010 Hot Shot Exhibition at Jen Bekman Gallery.
+ The opportunity to release an edition on 20x200.

Jen Bekman will select one of the five 2010 Hot Shots for the Grand Prize and announce the recipient on March 15, 2011. In addition to the honors as a Hot Shot, the grand prize recipient will be awarded:

+ A $5,000 honorarium to support a personal project.
+ A solo exhibition at Jen Bekman Gallery.
+ Representation from Jen Bekman Gallery for two years, commencing with his/her selection.

All entrants are reviewed for participation in 20x200; entering the competition is the only way for photographers to have their work considered for an edition. In addition, we will feature one contender each weekday during the competition on the Hey, Hot Shot! blog. Every contender receives ample opportunity for online exposure through our blog and on Facebook, Flickr and Twitter, where HHS! has thousands of fans and followers and serves as a leading voice in the dialogue about contemporary photography.

Ever looking to expand contenders' opportunities for recognition, each month, a guest curator will choose a photographer from those who have applied todate for a Curator's Choice Award. This contender will be featured in a Hey, Hot Shot! newsletter and awarded a prize from the curator's affiliate organization.

Stay tuned on our blog, mailing list and Twitter for upcoming details about the first Curator's Choice Award.

The guidelines are simple: submit five photographs from a single body of work, using our online upload tool, with an entry fee starting at $60.

The entry fee will increase throughout the competition, so don't delay: Apply now!

JBP's Youngna Park

Over the past five years, our incredible community of Hot Shots has been featured in countless shows, won prestigious awards, and — most importantly — continued to create really amazing work. This year we're making exciting changes to the competition to, as founder and panelist Jen Bekman put it, "expand the opportunities for artists, even as we make the competition more fierce."

We're almost ready to talk about all the details of Hey, Hot Shot! 2010, but before we begin, we want to announce that Summer 2005 Hot Shot and Associate Producer of Jen Bekman Projects, Youngna Park, will be taking the lead on this year's competition. I recently chatted with Jen about why Youngna is a great fit for Hey, Hot Shot! and here's what she had to say:

"Youngna was one of the very first Hot Shots and since then she's been embedded in the organization so Hey, Hot Shot! is in her DNA. Youngna was also a PHOTOBLOGGER and no one even remembers what those are. I mean that's the thing, we share a common love for photography and the internet; and are part of a community of like-minded folks which includes Raul, David Yee and many other people involved in the smoking hot NYC startup scene, like Eliot Shepard who's at Curbed and Jake Dobkin from Gothamist. But also, I love that photography is just one lens for YP--so to speak--she also is a writer, and a cook and an urban explorer and a country mouse too, she's a well-rounded individual that one is!"

To learn more about Youngna, you can read her 20x200 bio, browse her eponymous photoblog, and check out her photography portfolio.

In our conversation, Jen also talked a little bit about why she's so excited for Hey, Hot Shot! 2010 and gave a few hints about the details of the upcoming round, which will be announced on Monday:

"Hey, Hot Shot! keeps us connected with the photography community—we have such a good sense of what's going on in photo because we get to see so much work from all over the world. On our part, we're working on growing our community of the best and brightest photographers and it'll be that much easier to integrate the competition into all of our programs with someone who's full time at JBP taking the lead."

"I'm excited about about Hey, Hot Shot! 2010 because 5 is my favorite number (I am a spazz but I totally mean it!) and also because we get to offer greater opportunities than ever before. There's the chance at a gallery show, 20x200 editions, and being featured on the blog as contenders. This year we're also introducing new aspects, like an increased honorarium, curators' choice prizes, and a new panel format inspired by my turn as a juror for this year's American Photography, AP-25, which was chaired by Kathy Ryan. Our jurors pay close attention but this new format will allow them to participate in a group review AND also drill down and curate based upon their particular point of view."

We can't wait to unveil all the details! Make sure to get on the mailing list if you aren't already to hear the news as soon as it breaks.

Hey, Hot Shot! 2010 opens next Monday
Later today we'll be giving you a sneak-peek at HHS! 2010, which will be headed by JBP's own Associate Producer, Summer 2005 Hot Shot, and 20x200 artist Youngna Park. Jen Bekman will be chiming in with a few thoughts on why Youngna is a great fit to lead the 2010 HHS! competition and why we're so excited for this year. The competition opens on Monday, March 22nd, so if you're not on the mailing list, sign up now!

A photo-full weekend in NYC

It's going to be an INSANELY PACKED weekend of photo events in NYC, so if you missed our roundup make sure to skim through and take some notes. Just to recap, we've got: AIPAD, tonight's SNAP! Out of Winter Aperture Party, two 20x200 edition-makers in gallery shows, two Hot Shots in gallery shows, and all this is in addition to the Hey, Hot Shot! Second Edition Showcase at Jen Bekman Gallery, which closes tomorrow, March 20th.

Foam TALENT Call For Entries Now Open!

Designed as a showcase for up-and-coming young talent from all reaches of the globe, the Foam editorial team will select portfolios to fill the double issue cover-to-cover. The 2009 TALENT issue featured 6 photographers, each with a sixteen-page spread and an additional twelve photographers, each with an 8-page spread. That's 250 pages of photography!

Happy 7th Birthday, Dear JBG

Monday, March 15th marked the seven (!) year anniversary of Jen Bekman Gallery, so we rounded up a few of the gorgeous works that have graced the gallery walls over the the last few years. There's lots more to look forward to, starting with the opening of Carrie Marill's Visual Aides next Friday, March 26th from 6 - 8 p.m.!

+ Noah Kalina is featured in a new book by Scott Belsky titled Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality.
+ A beautiful slideshow of work by Colin Blakely, along with 100 words about his work are featured on NPR's Picture Show blog.
+ Joe Holmes has a new edition on 20x200 this week titled Nethermead. Now that it's finally (approaching) warm and sunny status, pictures of winter suddenly look dreamy!

That's it for this week. We'll be back on Monday to kick off an AMAZING new round of HHS!

Get plenty of rest this week and take your vitamins, because it's going to be a busy weekend in the city for all of you photography lovers. To help you out, I put together a mini break-down of things that can be added to your to-do list if you're keen on partaking of the various upcoming art offerings:

©korafotomorgana on Flickr

First, it's the AIPAD Photography Show (The Association of International Photography Art Dealers) this weekend! We made a pre-announcement about this annual event last month, but now the time is at-hand. As I wrote last month, it's the one time of year where a whole lot of the photo-focused galleries of the world come to you, in one building. Open and your eyes and mind (and wallets, if you're in a prospecting mode), and come on down to the Park Avenue Armory.

AIPAD will be on view from:
Thursday, March 18 11:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Friday, March 19 11:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Saturday, March 20 11:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Sunday, March 21 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

For more information on ticket sales and special exhibition talks (want to hear Bruce Davidson speak?), visit the AIPAD website and download their education program (pdf).

Whenever the AIPAD weekend rolls around in the city, many other galleries and photo-interested venues put on their Sunday Best, and the frequent problem that one confronts is how to cram in all of the amazing spring shows that are opening and closing all over the place. One event that you don't want to miss is the Aperture SNAP! Out of Winter party. As Youngna wrote earlier, there will be giveaways, drinks, desserts, a polaroid photo booth, chances to meet and mingle with Jen Bekman (a party co-chair), the JBP crew and the many friends of Aperture.

Party tickets are available at a range of prices, from $100 to $250, depending if you come solo, come in a pair, or purchase a ticket to include an exclusive limited-edition print by Dan Winters and an Aperture magazine subscription. Keep an eye out on JBP's twitter feeds (@JenBekman, @heyhotshot and @20x200) as well, because we'll be giving away a few tickets to a few of you followers out there.

For more info about the party and to purchase tickets, check out the event website.

SNAP! OUT OF WINTER
Friday, March 19, 2919
Aperture Gallery
547 West 27th Street, 4th Floor (Between 10th + 11th Avenue)
New York, NY 10001

Other shows of interest that I'd be wearing out the pavement trying to get to if I were you:

(Left) Peri, Route 64, Kentucky 2005 by Amy Stein and (Right) Kentucky Fried Chicken, 2009 by Brian Ulrich

Instruments of Empire, with photographic powerhouses Amy Stein and Brian Ulrich in holy-cow collaboration at Caption Gallery in Dumbo, Brooklyn.

From the exhibition statement:

Amy Stein and Brian Ulrich present a vision of global capitalism's flipside: disposable spaces, stranded people, ruined avatars of global brands, the empty enthusiasm of advertising's incitements and the angry graffiti of those left out. Their powerful, dystopic visions expose the transformation of human beings into consumers. They recall the phrase of Napolean, "In the eyes of the empire builders, men are not men but instruments."

Instruments of Empire
Caption Gallery
Hours: Monday - Friday, 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
55 Washington Street, No. 802
Brooklyn, NY

Angler Fish, 2009 by Lori Nix

Another strong group show I'm dying to see:The Museum of Natural Unhistory, a photographic exhibit about Natural History Museum installations, at CLAMPART, with work by Richard Barnes, Amy Stein, Justine Cooper, Jason DeMarte, Blake Fitch, Jill Greenberg, Nicole Hatanaka, Harri Kallio, Hippolyte-Alexandre Michallon, Lori Nix, Matthew Pillsbury, Elliot Ross and Marisol Villanueva.

The Museum of Natural Unhistory
CLAMPART
521-531 West 25th Street, Ground Floor
New York, NY 10001

20x200-artist and constructed-scene avian photographer Paula McCartney has an ongoing show at KLOMPCHING gallery of her Bird Watching series.

Bird Watching
KLOMPCHING Gallery
111 Front Street, Suite 206
Brooklyn, NY 11201

2005 Spring Hot Shot Rachel Sussman is sharing the gallery wall with 31 Women in Art

31 Women in Art
Affirmation Arts
523 W. 37th Street
New York, NY 10018

And, to cap off your weekend—a show near and dear to our hearts: it's your last chance this weekend to catch our Hey Hot Shot! 2009 Second Edition show at our very own Jen Bekman Gallery, on display through Saturday, March 20th. HHS! Second Edition features fifteen works by the five photographers newest to our Hot Shot roster: Marisa Aragona, Leah Tepper Byrne, Alejandro Cartagena, Jessica Eaton and Justin James King.

Girl coming home to suburb in Juarez from a night out in the city, 2009, Suburbia Mexicana Project by Alejandro Cartagena

Hey Hot Shot! 2009 Second Edition
Jen Bekman Gallery
6 Spring street
New York, NY 10012

We also want to remind you that we're celebrating the fifth anniversary of Hey, Hot Shot! in 2010 and will officially open for entries on Monday, March 22nd. To be automatically notified of the competition's opening, sign up for the low-volume newsletter, keep your eye on the HHS! site and follow us on Twitter.

Foam, the quarterly international photography magazine that did a lovely 6-page spread on Jen in 2008 titled "Jen Bekman: Gallery Without Walls" [Click for PDF download], is currently accepting submissions for their forthcoming TALENT issue, to be published in September 2010.

Designed as a showcase for up-and-coming young talent from all reaches of the globe, the Foam editorial team will select portfolios to fill the double issue cover-to-cover. The 2009 TALENT issue featured 6 photographers, each with a sixteen-page spread and an additional twelve photographers, each with an 8-page spread. That's 250 pages of photography!

For all who have had the pleasure of leafing through an issue of Foam, it's heft and print-quality are part of what makes this opportunity the honor that it is. Transfigurations & Matter, two series published in last year's issue by 20x200 artist Michael Lundgren, investigate the components and remnants of various landscapes. The publication allows one to unfold the works by each artist in full bleed, enabling a truly standard-setting viewing experience for works in print.

To enter:
+ You must be a photographer between the age of 18 - 35.
+ Submissions will be accepted until May 1st, 2010
+ Read detailed instructions on submission format and requirements here.