Diversity in photography

En Foco is a non-profit organization that nurtures and supports contemporary fine art and documentary photographers of diverse cultures, primarily U.S. residents of Latino, African and Asian heritage, and Native Peoples of the Americas and the Pacific.

This year is En Foco's 35th Anniversary, and it has remained a leader in documenting the artistic journeys created by artists often overlooked by the mainstream art world. Through our visual arts programs, including Nueva Luz photographic journal, artists are free to explore or reinvent cultural traditions, challenge preconceived notions, and engage audiences in a manner that honors all.

Real Images

The Centre for Documentary Practice (CDP), under the auspice of Griffith University in Australia, hopes to provoke debate about issues pertinent to journalism and documentary practice and act as a resource for research and storytelling by providing exemplars to this community through it's publication, The Australian PhotoJournalist and its website. The publications aim to give a voice to the marginalised and the vulnerable, to celebrate our successes and reveal our excesses. For more information and to view featured stories visit:http://cdp.edu.au/

She's a jolly good Fellow!

Good news regarding a classmate of my alma mater, New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program. Camille Utterbeck has been selected as a 2009 MacArthur Foundation Fellow for her ground-breaking digital media art which beautifully takes advantage of user-input to create new non-linear works. 

Here's the announcement on the MacArthur Foundation website: 

Camille Utterback is an artist who uses digital technologies to create visually arresting works that redefine how viewers experience and interact with art. Drawing upon traditional media such as painting, photography, and sculpture, she writes computer code that seamlessly blends the interactive elements of each piece with her aesthetic vision. In her 1999 video installation Text Rain, made with Romy Achituv, the interface of video camera and tracking software allows a viewer’s entire body to engage with text. As viewers stand in front of the projection, their shadows interrupt the falling streams of seemingly random words; the words eventually come to rest on the outline of the viewers’ bodies to reveal lines of a poem. With this distinctive and absorbing work, Utterback combines interactivity with a visual and literary experience that captivates people of all ages, including children. While her early work focused on text and movement, in recent years painterly imagery has had a profound influence on a number of her projects. 

In the External Measures series (2001-2008), she turned the digital medium into abstract pictorial compositions of infinite variety. These dynamic installations react to people’s motions and involve the viewer in the act of creating monumental paintings and drawings. Utterback’s Abundance (2007), a temporary outdoor video projected onto San Jose’s Richard Meier-designed City Hall dome, transformed an impersonal public space and modern edifice into a vibrant, colorful environment responsive to human presence and movement. With each subsequent project, Utterback is creating works that encourage audiences to take part in new and exciting artistic collaborations and enriching the experience of living in a technological age.

Camille Utterback received a B.A. (1992) from Williams College and an M.P.S. (1999) from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University. Her work has appeared in numerous solo and group exhibitions at such venues as the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Fabric Workshop, the Netherlands Media Art Institute, and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.  For more, see: Rhizome site

Maximum Grid

APERTURE FOUNDATION Portfolio Prize announcement

All of us at Aperture Foundation would like to thank everyone who submitted work to the 2009 Aperture Portfolio Prize. This year, Aperture’s editorial and limited-edition print departments—four staff members and three work scholars in all—reviewed over seven hundred portfolios. Our challenge was to select one top prize and five honorable mentions from this overwhelming response. Thus, we are pleased to present Alexander Gronsky’s The Edge/Pastoral as this year’s winner. 

Congratulations also to Keliy Anderson-Staley, Off the Grid; Alejandro Cartagena, Lost Rivers; Maureen Drennan, Meet Me in the Green Glen; Jason Hanasik, He Opened Up Somewhere Along the Eastern Shore; and Mark Lyon, Landscapes for the People. 

Keliy's work is currently on-view at UCR California Museum of Photography's Digital Studio Gallery.