Hot Shot, 20x200 edition-maker, and JB artist Joe Holmes just passed along a bit of very exciting news: his image, West Forty-third Street is today's PDN Photo of the Day!

Click on over to PDN to see the image larger.

Joe's editions, Prospect Park and amnh #30 have completely sold out on 20x200, but lucky for you, there are still editions of amnh #62, amnh #10 and Prospect Park #2 left. Look out for more 20x200 editions to come from Joe very soon!

P.S. Have you RSVP'ed for the first-ever Hey, Hot Shot! Confab + Print Trade yet? Read more about it here.

Untitled from Kirby Pilcher's series Room Temperature

If you happen to be lucky enough to call Rochester home, be sure to check out Hot Shot Kirby Pilcher's solo show at the University of Rochester. Kirby is showing images from his Room Temperature series which includes the photograph that caught Miss Bekman's discerning eye back in 2007, Fortune (will be successful in...). The photo was also selected as a 20x200 edition print and is one print away from selling out!

Room Temperature will be on exhibit through October 10, 2009 at the University of Rochester Art and Music Library Gallery.

See more of Kirby's work on his website.

This reminder is a bit last minute, but if you are in Boston this evening, Hot Shot Cara Phillips' first solo show, Singular Beauty opens tonight at the Suffolk University Art Museum at NESAD. There will be a reception from 6:00 to 8:30 p.m. and the show will remain on view through October 10th.

The show takes its title from Cara's series of the same name, taking a look into the machines and spaces that drive the beauty industry. She photographs machines used for cosmetic surgery and doctors' offices, highlighting the fluorescent tones of these processes. Though her images are devoid of Botox-ed women—and actually, any people at all—the severity of the beauty treatments individuals undergo is conveyed by the tools used to implement them.

Singular Beauty
Curated by James Hull
Suffolk University Art Museum at NESAD
75 Arlington St, Boston MA
Opening Reception September 17th, 6-8:30pm

Please join the Jen Bekman Projects community for our first Hey, Hot Shot! Confab and Print Trade on Tuesday, September 29th from 6:00 to 8:30 pm. Mingle with Hot Shots, esteemed panelists, contenders and fellow artists at White Rabbit, 145 E. Houston Street (between Eldridge + Forsythe) in New York City.

Space is limited, so please RSVP at RSVP@heyhotshot.com.

Participate in our Print Trade! Bring an 8.5" x 11" (or smaller) photographic print of your own and leave the party with another artist's work! Please email us a jpeg of the photograph (800 px across @ 72 dpi) you plan to bring to the Confab with your RSVP at RSVP@heyhotshot.com.

There will be drink specials, giveaways from our generous sponsors at Arlo/Artists and Crumpler—with a few surprises from JBP as well—and ample opportunities to meet fellow photographers and artists in the JBP community.

We'll see you there!

A stellar group of panelists will congregate this Thursday, September 17th at The New School in dialogue on contemporary photography issues that emerged in the making of the book project, Words Without Pictures. Moderated by Charlotte Cotton, curator and Head of the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department at LACMA, panelists include Alex Klein (artist and LACMA curatorial fellow), Matt Keegan (artist and editor of North Drive Press), David Reinfurt (graphic designer) and Denise Wolff (Editor at Aperture). Fia Backström, Johanna Burton, Melissa Catanese, Sarah Charlesworth, Moyra Davey, Darius Himes (Hey, Hot Shot! panelist), John Lehr, Miranda Lichtenstein, Arthur Ou, Ed Panar and Laurel Ptak will also be participating.

The panel, Words Without Pictures, is the inaugural event of the Confounding Expectations: Photography in Context series coordinated by Aperture in conjunction with The New School, the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, and the Photography Department at Parsons.

Words Without Pictures
Thursday, September 17, 2009
7:00 pm

The New School
Tishman Auditorium
66 West 12th Street
New York, New York

Copies of the book, Words Without Pictures will also be available at the event. Hope to see you there!

Gosling Lake by Kurt Tong

RAF Vulcan XL-361 by Kurt Tong

See two new editions by 2009 First Edition Hot Shot, Kurt Tong on 20x200 today. Gosling Lake and RAF Vulcan XL-361 both come from Kurt's series Farewell in Labrador, which recently garnered him the Editorial Prize in Blurb's Photography.Book.Now competition.

And remember, the HHS! 2009 First Edition Exhibition at The Gallery closes this Saturday, September 19th, so make sure to stop over before then!

If you are lucky enough to be in Chicago this evening, Brian Ulrich is giving a public lecture at Gallery 400 at the University of Illinois, Chicago at 5 p.m.

He will be presenting images from several bodies of work including Copia, Dark Stores, Ghostboxes and Dead Malls. The gallery also has a related exhibition titled Project #12 on view by Michael Ruglio-Misurell, who has transformed the gallery into a shopping mall food court environment that has "endured an undetermined event, possibly a disaster, abandonment or human havoc."

Tuesday Sept 15, 5pm 

Gallery 400 Lecture Room
Art and Design Hall, First Floor
400 S. Peoria Street (@ Van Buren Street)
Chicago, IL

For more information about tonight's lecture and the ongoings at Gallery 400, head over to their blog.

Leon, 2009 by Michael C. Mccraw

Our latest contender, Michael C. Mccraw hails from the city of Birmingham, Alabama. His work focuses on the South as a place that is both his home and a place he longs to find the feeling he supposes that home is supposed to elicit. He writes of his work,

My work is about the comforts of home, and the constant search for it. What it means to be Southern, and the disconnect I feel with the region I've spent all my life. Our connection with the rivers and hills that run deep through our past. The ever-changing landscape and people. Slowly being choked by growth and kudzu.

Many photographers before Mccraw have focused on capturing the essence of the South, exceptional among them William Eggleston, Emmet Gowin, Ralph Eugene Meatyard and Paul Kwilecki. Each works in a unique tradition ranging from Kwilecki's documentation of the rural poor that seems an evolution of the photographers hired during the days of the Farm Security Administration to Meatyard's placid portraits of children and families in backyards, often dressed in costume or wearing masks. Eggleston's Memphis-born eye is often associated with the word "democracy," reflecting on his equanimous approach to both the portrait, the landscape, and the mundane; his recent retrospective at The Whitney was named Democratic Camera in acknowledgment of this approach. Emmet Gowin is best known for his large-format black and white rural landscapes, family and dramatic vignetting.

One is led to ask whether there is common thread through the work of all of these above, and if there is, is that thread quintessentially Southern? Must one be Southern born and bred in order to capture the South, or is the South more an idea than an aesthetic that can be captured at all?

Gene Thornton, in a review of the 1981 exhibit I Shall Save One Land Unvisited featuring 11 Southern photographers at the International Center of Photography, asks similar questions about characterizing the South:

What do people think about when they think about the South today? Magnolias and moonlight? Rednecks, sharecroppers and the Ku Klux Klan? The Old South of romance and legend as memorialized in ''Gone with the Wind'' and the novels of William Faulkner? The New South of Henry Grady and the Atlanta Constitution as anatomized in the novels of Walker Percy?

He goes on to write that new photography from the South is indistinguishable from new photography from elsewhere, but that doesn't mean it's not Southern. That the South has become a hotbed for photographers is the bigger reason for celebration than suggesting a unified essence emerges from it.

Mccraw recently began a blog which features more of his work; on it is currently a sole post of "travels with amy" featuring a selection of images, presumably taken in the South. Mccraw's work represents a glimpse of photography being made by young southerners today and suggests that the desire to continue the tradition of capturing a region is ever-strong.

Hey, all you Bay Area artists! Southern Exposure, the SF-based art-education and community center located in the Mission has announced several grants available to visual artists working in San Francisco and Alameda counties.

Individuals are awarded up to $3,500, for projects that contribute to the community and upon completion, are publicly accessible for viewing. Since the inception of the grant program, $95,000 has been awarded to 33 Bay Area visual arts groups and projects, including Hamburger Eyes, Practice + Practice, Rowan Morrison Gallery, the Underground Art Crew and many, many more.

There is an information session available to those interested in the grant on Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at Receiver Gallery, also a previous grant recipient:

Wednesday, September 30, 2009
6:00 PM - 7:30 pm
Receiver Gallery
1415 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

To apply, download the guidelines & application at Alternative Exposure and be sure to also check out the projects of previous grant recipients The deadline for all applications is November 6, 2009.

I recently became aware (courtesy of the New York Times) of kickstarter.com, a Brooklyn-based online community that attempts to match artists and creative thinkers with interested patrons to support their projects. Judging by the popularity of this relatively young micropayment model, this seems like a smart way to bring people together to realize a creative goal (and sometimes lifelong dream)

The founders of Kickstarter do not receive any money from the projects or seek creative rights. Project creators can offer numerous incentives to solicit patron donations, including artwork.

While Kickstarter requires that the financial goal be met in order for any funds to be disbursed, there is ample potential to exceed donation expectations. Artist Laura Kicey, for example, set out to raise $350 to go to Iceland and take photos. She offered prints of her excursion for anyone who helped sponsor the trip, and ended up raising $1630!

On a larger scale, FOUND magazine co-creator Jason Bitner teamed up with Emmy-nominated editor and director Joe Beshenkovsky, to create a documentary film based on found studio portraits of the populace of LaPorte, Indiana by photographer Frank Pease. The film, based on Bitner's previously published book of the photographs, will share the stories of this tight-knit American community. Their goal to raise $7,500 was greatly exceeded (to the tune of $12,153) with pledges made in exchange for original photographs, caricatures, VIP tickets to the premiere, and even a "song portrait" sung to you by their super musician friend.

This past January one of our own 20x200 artists and Hey, Hot Shot! panelists, Kent Rogowski launched Scaffold (announced here earlier), a non-profit that also supports emerging and mid-career artists by rewarding fellowships. With Scaffold, Kent intends to create an artists-helping-artists environment whereby the community essentially serves itself. Lots of small contributions, made by donations and application fees, aggregate to provide the award. Fellowships are awarding in the continuous bi-monthly schedule and unlike Kickstarter there is no time limit for pledging donations. Also, Scaffold is specifically geared toward painters, sculptors, photographers and new media artists, making this art funding from within the art world itself.

All this reminded me of Youngna and Sara's SXSW2010 panel proposal about supporting artists through social networking. Whether your project is big or small, social media networking can really promote and support artists, while also reaching a mass audience that is not exclusive to the art world. This is yet another innovative, web-enabled way to spread creativity — and another great funding opportunity for all you creative people with big ideas.

Liao, Shanghai, China, 2009 by Shen Wei

This morning we received an exciting update from Fall 2006 Hot Shot and 20x200 edition-maker Shen Wei—he has been awarded the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center for the Creative Arts Residency in Lake Como, Italy for the month of October 2009:

Bellagio creative arts residencies - for composers, novelists, playwrights, poets, video/filmmakers and visual artists - provide time for disciplined work, individual reflection, and collegial engagement, uninterrupted by the usual professional and personal demands.

Shen writes that he will use his time in Italy to begin working on new projects.

In the past year, Shen has been busy, busy, busy, traveling to China for his beautiful new project Chinese Sentiment, having his first solo show in the US—Almost Naked at the Randall Scott Gallery—and putting together the series in a beautiful limited-edition book. In addition to being recently published in LIFE Magazine China, Shen's work is part of a traveling exhibition which just opened in Italy as part of the SIFest2009 photography festival.

To top it all off, Shen ends his email with a modest, "that's it for now."

Both of Shen's 20x200 editions, Yi, Beijing and Blessing over the Rice Machine, Guiyang, Guizhou Province, are still available and would make a fabulous addition to any collection.

Thanks to all who came out to the gallery last night to see the work of our five newest Hot Shots. We're excited to have their work on our walls and hope you'll stop by while the exhibit is up through Saturday, September 19th.

One of the prints it seemed everyone was gushing over was Kurt Tong's Guangzhou Zoo II, part of the People's Park series which we found out this morning won Kurt the editorial category of the Photography.Book.Now competition. And if that alone doesn't impress you, Kurt also received second runner-up honors in the category for his submission, In Case It Rains In Heaven.

Congratulations, Kurt!

Darius Himes, lead judge of the competition, wrote of Tong,

The fact that two of [Tong's] books were chosen as winners really speaks to the quality of his photographic vision and the strength of the projects themselves...The judges were really pleased to be able to support him.

We also extend hearty applause to the other winners of the competition, including the recipient of the Grand Prize, Rafal Milach for Black Sea of Concrete, Joshua Deaner in the art category for I Sell Fish, and Dennis Kleiman for Volume One in the commercial category.

All of the winners' books are for sale via blurb, and we hope you'll stop by and see Kurt's work in-person at the gallery as part of the Hey, Hot Shot! 2009 First Edition Exhibition.

For those of you in New York, please join us tonight, Wednesday, September 9th (9/9/09!), from 6-8 p.m., Jen Bekman Gallery for the opening of the Hey, Hot Shot! 2009 First Edition Group Exhibition!

Come see photographs by Michelle Arcila, Daniel Cheek, Mike Sinclair, Parsley Steinweiss and Kurt Tong.

Work by some of our Hot Shots is already on 20x200 including Mike Sinclair's Fourth of July #2, Independence, Missouri and forthcoming today, two new editions from Michelle Arcila.

We hope to see you at the gallery this evening! Please say hi, and the Hot Shots above will also be mingling about.

Jen Bekman Gallery
6 Spring Street
(between Elizabeth + Bowery)
New York, New York 10012

Gallery Hours:
Wednesday - Saturday | Noon - 6pm
Opening Reception: Wednesday, September 9th, 6pm - 8pm
On View: September 10 through September 19, 2009

Jen Bekman Projects is now accepting entries for the Hey, Hot Shot! 2009 Second Edition Competition. The entry deadline is Friday, October 23rd, 2009 at 8:00 p.m. EDT

Upload your photos today!

Girl on Wilshire by Bryan Formhals

Bryan Formhals has enough creative activity going that he merits an extended post. As a curator (or, visual editor? more on that below) his online exhibition endeavor La Pura Vida Gallery, which presents innovative monthly group exhibitions, just turned two years old. Pooled from Flickr and presented with a simple PREV/NEXT navigation, these shows have an unmediated intimacy that exemplifies what an online gallery should be.

But of course Bryan is himself a photographer and worthy Hey, Hot Shot! contender whose Girl On Wilshire is from a body of work created on peregrinations around his former base of Los Angeles, where the "pure, golden, electric sunshine" seduced him into photography. It also embodies the creative ambiguities inherent in his photographs; here a woman-shaped outline hovers among a conflation of picture planes and reflections at indeterminate distances. It is an image of fugitive images.

Bryan took some time out to answer a few questions about La Pura Vida and how his photography coincides with the practice of editing and curating images.

What seemed missing from the way that photography was presented online that you wanted to address when you started LPV Gallery two years ago?
I'm not sure I was addressing the wider spectrum of photography online, it was more related to how photography was presented and organized on Flickr that I wanted to address. I was an admin for HCSP (Hardcore Street Photography), which was my first taste of editing photos. After doing that for about a year I become a bit bored with editing a single type of genre. My interest in photography was expanding and I simply wanted to investigate a wider variety of work. The way photos are presented in pools on Flickr is basically a constant stream. It's hard to sequence and really present a selection of photos in an interesting way. So really, I wanted to take some of the great work we were finding on Flickr and present it in a more manageable and interesting way, which meant taking it off Flickr.

When you started out how did photographers find you to submit their work?
Like I mentioned, LPV spun off from HCSP which is one of the most prominent documentary/fine art groups on Flickr. Most of the photographers that initially found LPV came from there and through basic networking and promotion on Flickr. These days though, the blog, Twitter, and Tumblr also bring in new submissions.

What I think is unique about LPV and the network of groups we have established on Flickr is that we're essentially crowd sourcing the editing. There's the perception that finding work on Flickr is challenging and it can be, but if you network and follow certain people and groups, the good work gets filtered up to you. I have the 'favorites' of a few dependable people on my RSS and keep tabs on a few pools, so that's how I find the work. And really, that's how much of it bubbles up to LPV. It's actually very interesting how it kind of organically happens.

As a photographer, when did the path of curating engage your curiosity, and how?
I was in L.A. because I wanted to be a screenwriter and about 4 years ago I got burned out and just lost the motivation to write, but I still had creative impulses that needed to be satisfied. So I started bringing a camera with me on my walks around LA. As is the case with many people, I became addicted and started to study the history of photography. But at the same time I was networking with other aspiring amateurs on Flickr and eventually fell in with the street photography crowd.

As I continued to study photography, I quickly learned that lesson that everyone interested photography learns, which is that you need to look at lots and lots of photography. And right now, there's really no better place to find a high volume of new photography than Flickr. Editing and curating forces you to make choices. I enjoy that. I like deconstructing a photograph and figuring out why I like it (sometimes I have no idea why!). The process of fine tuning one's sensibility is one of the joys of consuming and appreciating art. The simple act of discovering new photography is thrilling to me. And for my own work as a photographer, it's absolutely necessary because I want to improve and expand my photographic vocabulary. It's a never-ending process I imagine.

Untitled by Lina Scheynius

At first the shows were "edited," but now they are "curated." Is this just a difference of phrasing or is there a philosophical difference?
Back at the beginning I did most of the edits and I can't call myself a curator with a straight face, so I always put "edited by." But when I started bringing on different editors each month, they would say "curated" by and I would just leave it. For me, what we're doing on LPV is editing. I know online curation is a bit of a buzz term but I'm not sure it's appropriate. I think people are probably throwing it around because it adds a bit of gravitas to what we're all doing. But essentially, I think we're editors.

Your show titles and themes have an allusive, poetic quality to them. What defines an LPV Gallery show?
The titles and themes were an accidental quirk. We really didn't even have themes until April 2008. I was doing an edit and when I saw this photograph the phrase 'beautiful consciousness' just popped into my head. From there, I went with it and we started using quotes, songs, and book passages as the themes. This probably isn't unique to LPV, but I think it's part of what defines an LPV show. We take our inspiration from more poetic or philosophical ideas rather than anything too literal. An LPV show is kind of a mash-up of vernacular, documentary and fine art photography. I don't really like looking at photography through the prism of genres though. It gets too rigid for me.

You also seem to follow issues around copyright, appropriation, and larger theoretical debates about representation. How do these issues inform your "big picture" (yes, pun) of the state of photography today? And does this change the kind of work you are interested in?
I'm very interested to see how photography evolves online and it bothers me when corporations and unscrupulous entrepreneurs use the chaos of the internet to take advantage of content creators. Of course, the use of content on the web can be confusing and is ever evolving, so I think we need to keep an open mind. But we also need to speak up and keep people informed when we see something we know to be wrong. I want to see photographers and artists take more control of their content and not be so shackled to the whims of publishers and the bottom line. I'm really interested in photographers and groups who can build their own kingdom so to speak.

These days, you can find 20x200 photographer Kevin Miyazaki in the classroom at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design where he is busy teaching the course Professional Practices. But Kevin, who you may know for his his blog or his ongoing curated group show on the web, Tiny Tiny Group Show, is not settling for in-classroom teaching alone. His latest web endeavor, MIAD-FA382 (named after the course title), serves as an online photographic resource for his students (and the lucky public). The site, in the form of a blog, includes an extensive collection of artist and industry interviews culled from blogs and magazines, gallery listings, and also features the work of his very own students.

We've picked out a few of our favorite interviews from his listings to get you acquainted. Start with an interview with last week's 20x200 edition maker Liz Kuball who discusses her early beginnings and her most recent series California Vernacular, from which two editions are currently available on 20x200. Other 20x200 artist interviews include an in-depth look at internet phenom Noah Kalina, the creative processes of Curtis Mann, and Joseph Holmes' dialogue on photography from start to finish. Also not-to-be-missed are the interviews with photography heavyweights Ryan McGinley, Cindy Sherman, and Andreas Gursky. Whatever your tastes, you'll come away from Kevin Miyazaki's experiment in education both inspired and informed.

Happy Labor Day weekend! We're celebrating at JBP HQ because it's also 20x200's birthday *today*!

There's some fun in the sun in store but a quick note to you all first:

*** FREE SHIPPING at 20x200 on all print orders over $50 (before taxes, shipping + handling!) ***

The offer extends until Monday at midnight EST and will automatically apply to your order if your total exceeds $50 before checkout; no code is needed. The offer does not apply to orders outside of the U.S. or to gift certificate purchases.

In case you missed it earlier this week, we released two stunning editions from HHS! contender and honorable mention, Liz Kuball. Odes to California, both photos evoke endless summers. While this season may be coming to a close, we're looking forward to exciting beginnings as we enter our third year at 20x200. Cheers!

As we all too well know, the right combination of the internet and photography can provide for some highly addictive websites. Whether it is online galleries, photo-sharing networks, art projects, well-designed portfolios, or friends' ffffound accounts, our ability to easily discover, aggregate, and create galleries of compelling images is in large part attributable to the ease of the web.

Enter mus-mus, a collaborative photography space on the web founded earlier this year that "will strive to use the ease and power of the web combined with the talents and camaraderie of the global photography community to develop a striking online archive of images." They do this by compelling photographers and photo-experts to contemplate a topic, most recently by taking us on a quick virtual trip to gay ol' @PARIS. In this newest "exhibit," mus-mus presents essays and a photo gallery featuring work by our own Joe Holmes, Colleen Plumb and Beth Dow, Hot Shot Georg Parthen, contender Shane Lavalette, and many other names familiar to the JBP family.

Darius Himes, one of our esteemed Hot Shot panelists also makes his mark on @PARIS in an essay titled Abdu'l-Baha In Paris. Himes examines a photograph of Abdu'l-Baha Abbas, a man photographed at age 65 under the Eiffel Tower after being exiled from Persia for 50 years, and suggests that the moment captured is both an explicit record of the past as well as a "signpost" for the future. While the group's posture, suggestion of time and day, and the history of the subject's travels become locked into the story of this single frame, the ideas of Abbas and his desire to build cultural bridges, cannot be bound to this image alone. History and photography are also entrenched in Ulrich Baer's essay Photography and Paris as the Promise of Possibility. Both essays are available, in full, online.

The photographs in @PARIS are displayed in non-symmetric columns and span the gamut from historical to whimsical. Jurors Stephen Shore, Gil Blank, and Denise Wolff had the tough task of capturing the essence of place through this curated selection of images. Like any portrait of a place, one version exists through the eye of the beholder, but a more collective (if less cohesive) version exists through the eyes of many. Bruce Davidson's Central Park is a very different place than Tod Papageorge's, which is a very different place from the Central Park of all flickr users combined. In creating a collective portrait of Paris, already imbued with heightened romance, style, nostalgia and history, it invites the challenge upon the jurors of discerning the ineffable elements that comprise true Parisian essence. Click over to the gallery to see the full collection of images.

We're always excited to see photography being curated and presented in new ways online, like mus-mus has done here. We're curious—what are some of your favorite web-only photography projects, and how does the presentation service the medium?

Untitled by Reuven Lebovitch

Contender Reuven Lebovitch's submitted series stages humorous situations around the home inspired by deeper psychological complexities. A woman simultaneously knits and unravels a sweater, so it is unclear whether she moving forwards or unwinding. A cross-stitched image of a small town in the mountains is hung precariously on a wall with dozens of nails and holes of past attempts surrounding the frame. Lebovitch's images suggest that the home is an extension of the human psyche—our desires to decorate and partake in domestic activities like knitting a sweater are bathed in a Rorschach of process. Reuven suggests that how we go about these daily tasks speaks volumes about our individual quirks—and that perhaps she who is most focused on knitting the sweater may also be the last to notice that it is unraveling.

See more work by Reuven on his website and additional images by this season's contenders on facebook and flickr.

Love books? Love art? Love art books? Well, then you'll be just as excited as we are to head to the NY Art Book Fair which showcases over 150 independent artists and publishers, dealers of rare and antique books, as well as contemporary art publications from all over the world. This year's fair will be held at P.S.1 in Long Island City, Queens, from October 2-4th and is free and open to the public.

Hosted by Printed Matter, the fantastic Chelsea-based nonprofit dedicated to artists' publications, the fair will include a featured exhibition by Richard Prince titled Calling All Readers, an apt autumnal follow-up to Jen Bekman's Summer Reading. In addition, there will be screenings, book signings, and performances throughout the duration of the fair. Exhibitors include: Aperture, ARTFORUM, Eye Level Gallery, J&L Books, Red Fox Press, Texte Zur Kunst, Cabinet, and many, many more.

A benefit for Printed Matter hosted by Deitch Studios (LIC) will be held October 1st following the fair's preview (6-8 p.m.). Tickets are available at a range of prices starting at $20 and are accompanied by limited edition artworks, signed and numbered by the artists: Tom Sachs ($20/edition of 450), Jutta Koether ($150/edition of 150), Mungo Thomson ($150/edition of 150), and Elmgreen & Dragset ($3,000/edition of 1).

For a full list of events during the fair, a list of exhibitors, and more information, visit the site.

Early morning meditation on Mount Guogong by Xiao Xiao Xu

Chinese-born photographer Xiao Xiao Xu immigrated to the Netherlands at age 14 and only recently returned to the hometown she left a decade ago. Xu describes this town, Wenzhou, (also the name of the series), as a "very sentimental journey for me to rediscover my home, my childhood and my memories." Using photography—a medium she found as a way to express herself while searching for identity in the Netherlands—Xu captures a collection of portraits, interiors, and profiles of everyday objects in her native Wenzhou.

Together, the images form a humble large-scale portrait of a town that we are invited observe along with Xu as she rediscovers it herself. Two middle-aged men enjoy a cigarette break together, a young boy in school uniform stiffly holds his posture, and the crowded balconies of a skyrise residential building are murky but visible through the branches of a flowering tree. Xu suggests that her memory of her hometown is about the intimately commonplace—that to be in Wenzhou is to silently observe daily rhythms with the keen eye of someone native-born. Ten years spent away cannot remove the inevitable feeling that, for her, this is still home.

Many additional images from Wenzhou are available on Xu's website alongside several other projects. Next week I'll be looking at other young Chinese photographers whose work has caught our eye (including some of our very own Hot Shots and 20x200 artists), but we're also curious to hear of any projects coming-from or about China that have caught your eye. Please let us know!