All Photos © Gianni Giosue.

Gianni Giosue spent over two weeks in the North East of Japan to document the consequences of the gigantic Tsunami which swept away hundreds of kilometers of coast line. Buildings were destroyed, roads stripped, lives were lost and precious memories from inside the houses, like photographs of loved ones, stolen for ever. Gianni Giosue is a European photographer based in Tokyo and covers social issues around the world. Recently he was awarded a ‘Coup de Coeur’ nomination at the 2010 “VISA Pour L’ Image” Photojournalism Festival for his work “One year in Russia”. To see more of Giosue’s work click here
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© Colleen Plumb

Colleen Plumb’s new book, Animals Are Outside Today, explores the contradictory relationship between humans and other animal species. Photographs from the series are currently on view at Jen Bekman Gallery, New York. For well over a decade, the Chicago based photographer has been investigating the myriad ways that we’ve integrated animals into our lives. Her book was recently published by Radius Books. To see more of Plumb’s work click here.

All photos © Angela Bacon-Kidwell

Angela Bacon-Kidwell’s series “Traveling Dream” was named the grand prize winner of the Connect 2011 Slide Show Contest at the Palm Springs Photo Festival on March 31.

Bacon-Kidwell says she uses her dreams as inspiration for images she creates with the help of sets she constructs,  props and models. She explains the series by saying that as she observes her encounters throughout her day, “I mentally record the details of these situations, and these fleeting associations replay themselves in my dreams. The random moments combine to form sleep stories that are rich narratives, ripe with symbolism.”  She adds, “In essence, I attempt to create a waking dream.”

More of Bacon-Kidwell’s work can be found at www.angelabaconkidwell.com.

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Above: A young Libyan boy rides his bike past a burnt out  government building, following Rebel control of the city on March 26 2011 in Ajdabiya, Libya. ©Benjamin Lowy/Reportage by Getty Images.

Photojournalist Ben Lowy was in Libya on assignment for 3 weeks in March, traveling between the Rebel stronghold of Bengazi to various front line towns like Ajdabiya, Brega, Ras Lanuf, and Bin Jawad. In between photographing with DSLR’s he made images on his iPhone and brought the news directly to an audience by immediately posting them to his blog. Since featuring this new work, people’s interest has grown exponentially and, he says, “reaffirmed my belief in this new paradigm in journalism. My work these days, like Iraq from Humvee windows and Night Vision Goggles, abstracts of the BP oil spill, Holga panoramics and now this iPhone series, is about creating a visual narrative that looks different from the norm. I’m hoping to capture the audience through the aesthetics, to get them to move closer to the image, and most importantly engage the viewer to examine the content.”

WARNING: THIS GALLERY CONTAINS GRAPHIC CONTENT.

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All photos © Rena Effendi. Above: Mountain dweller on horseback in Xinaliq Village, Azerbaijan.

Rena Effendi’s new exhibition, Real Color, on view at the Gallery.Photographer.ru at Winzavod Center of Contemporary Art in Moscow includes photographs from four different series, all united by the idea of “documentary color” as a form of artistic expression. Red is the festive color in the clothes and wedding ceremony interiors of a highland village, Khinalug, and in this case denotes fertility and emergence of a new life. Brown dominates in charred bombed walls, smoky refugees’ housings and the distribution of ocher-colored bread in a godforsaken barn chronicled during the five-day war in Georgia. Black gold gleams on the sunburned Absheron coast’s industrial oil landscapes gleam, serving as a dramatic background for local inhabitants. White is prominent in the story on Chernobyl exclusion zone settlers as radiation, the unseen enemy, is in the winter landscape of abandoned villages, the dust of a deserted town and the gray hair of the last remaining residents. To see more of Effendi’s work click here To see more of Effendi’s work click here.

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