All Photos © Alexander James

Photographer Alexander James was inspired by the recent loss of three close friends to create this underwater butterfly series. Using the butterfly as a symbol of rebirth, he explains, “Imagine the whole of your life changing to such an extreme where you are unrecognizable at the end of the transformation. This offers great hope to me.” James also found comfort in the way Greek mythology links butterflies to the souls of those who have died. He presents the photographs in this series “as shot,” without any post-production.

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© Firooz Zahedi/courtesy Leila Heller Gallery, New York

“Firooz Zahedi: Elizabeth Taylor in Iran”, on view through October 29, 2011, at Leila Heller Gallery in New York, presents an insider‘s look at Zahedi’s experience of traveling with the screen legend to his home country Iran in 1976. The series includes sumptuous photographs of Elizabeth Taylor posing in odalisque costumes and fashionable chadors. The series was recently on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and has been loaned by LACMA to Leila Heller Gallery for this exhibition. Before her death last March, Elizabeth Taylor said to her close friend Firooz, “Seeing these photographs brings back fond memories of my visit to Iran, a country blessed with a rich and colorful culture that dates back many centuries.” Zahedi, who now lives in Los Angeles, started his career in New York during the mid-1970s working with Andy Warhol and Interview. He is known for his portrait work for publications including Vanity Fair, Town & Country, Esquire, InStyle, and Time.

Above: Elizabeth Taylor Wearing a Chador at the Shah Cheragh Shrine, Shiraz , 1976

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All photos © Ahae

“Through My Window”, an exhibition of photographs by the Korean artist, environmentalist, entrepreneur, poet, and septuagenarian Ahae, is on view from October 13 – 22, 2011, in New York City at Grand Central Terminal’s Vanderbilt Hall. The exhibition features more than 50 images of landscape and wildlife (selected from more than one million) taken in the years 2008-2010 from one window of his home and studio overlooking a nature preserve in the countryside outside Seoul. Through his photography, Ahae seeks to call attention the extent to which nature — delicate and magnificent, modest and courageous — can thrive when left alone to flourish.

“Ahae’s tribute to the world outside his window is direct and uncomplicated; one might say normal. This normal, everyday world contains a great deal of magic, which we can discover though careful observation. And Ahae is this careful observer,” wrote Milan Knížák, General Director of Prague’s National Gallery, which has exhibited the work. The exhibit has also been to London and Moscow, and will travel to the Alinari National Museum of Photography in Florence, Italy, from December  1 through 31, 2011; and to the Magazzini del Sale in Venice, Italy,  from March 20 through April 27, 2012.

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All photos © Corey & Chris Arnold

Corey Arnold has worked seasonally in Alaska as a commercial fisherman for the past 15 years. He is best known for his ongoing photo series entitled Fish-Work, which is a photo essay chronicling the lives of commercial fishermen worldwide. His latest exhibition, Fishing with My Dad 1978-1995, opens at Ampersand Gallery and Fine Books in Portland Oregon on October 15th. The show is a collaboration of sorts between Corey & his father, Chris Arnold, who were avid sportfishermen and made these photographs of each other holding their catch throughout Corey’s childhood. The photographs speak to the fact that fishing and storytelling go hand in hand, and that cameras and their snapshots have historically served to verify the truth of often questionable narratives.

Recently published by Nazraeli Press in One Picture Book #69 (video of the book here) the photographs also record the trajectory of a life in which fishing and photography have never been far apart. He brings to this body of work not only his own firsthand experience as an Alaskan commercial fisherman; but a life-long passion for fishing, the roots of which we see here in snapshots that were made while fishing with his dad.

-courtesy Corey Arnold.

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All Photos © Maureen Drennan

Maureen Drennan’s photo exhibit of a reclusive pot farmer in Northern California is opening at The Wild Project on Wednesday, Oct. 12. “Meet Me in the Green Glen” is a portrait of Ben, a marijuana grower in California. Although marijuana is legal to grow and use in California within strict guidelines, it is not culturally acceptable to grow or sell despite the fact that it is a large part of the local economy. Every year Ben hires young men to help with the harvest season. They work for about one month and then he is alone again. The story Maureen is communicating is not simply about pot growing, it is also about the experience of a socially isolated person and her relationship with him. American Literature, in particular Flannery O’Connor and Annie Proulx, have had a significant influence on her work. They depict flawed characters and anti-heroes for whom life is a constant struggle, yet who maintain grace despite hardship. In describing the landscape, both writers evoke an ominously psychological and emotional sense of place in which the environment becomes a character unto itself and amplifies the isolation of their protagonists.

-courtesy Maureen Drennan.

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