West Fayette Street, #5, 2012

Syracuse-based photographer and teacher Willson Cummer’s new project “Available” explores buildings and vacant lots in Central New York that are for sale or lease. “In the current economy, there are hundreds of such properties,” Cummer says. “The state of availability is a poignant one. When a person says they’re available, it means they are looking for a new romantic relationship. These vacant buildings and sites are also looking for new life. They are in limbo states between one purpose and another. I am attracted to the humble paint jobs that cover up graffiti, as well as the buildings that sport graffiti. Often these structures appear to have been made without much concern for architecture. A certain amount of square footage was needed, and a building was thrown up to suit. The vernacular architecture is visually intriguing.”

Cummer, whose work plumbs the intersection of the built and natural worlds, recently exhibited another of his projects, a series of images of parking garages, at OK Harris gallery in New York City.

Bowman Road, 2012.

East Jefferson Street, 2011.

West Fayette Street #1, 2011.

Solar Street, 2012.

West Fayette Street, #2.

Wyoming Street, 2012.

West Fayette Street #3, 2012.

Walton Street, 2012.

West Fayette Street #4, 2012.

Photographers and filmmakers Sara Terry (director) and Henry Jacobson (cinematographer) are currently at work on a feature length documentary, FOLK, that follows several singer-songwriters as they travel the United States, sharing their music with fans and fellow musicians. The film, which is currently in post-production, is “part music documentary and part road trip movie,” Terry writes in a description of the film. “FOLK lets our characters’ lives and their songs do what singer-songwriters have always done: amplify the themes that resonate across our cultural landscape—whether it’s re-defining success in the face of failure, trying to find wholeness in an increasingly fragmented world, or struggling to make sense of the trials and triumphs that make us all so human.”

This is the second documentary from Terry and Jacobson. Their award-winning first film, Fambul Tok, told the story of a grassroots organization promoting healing and reconciliation in post-conflict Sierra Leone.

Related: To Forgive, Not Forget: Sara Terry’s New Film Fambul Tok

A new exhibition of the work of LIFE magazine staff photographer and editor John Loengard’s black-and-white photographs is currently showing through the end of January at the Monroe Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Among the prints in the exhibition are several photographs of legendary photographers like Henri Cartier-Bresson, Alfred Eisenstadt, Annie Leibovitz and Richard Avedon. These photographs are also part of Loengard’s new book, Age of Silver: Encounters With Great Photographers (powerHouse), which celebrates, through Loengard’s portraits, some of the most notable photographers in the history of the medium.

Henri Cartier-Bresson sketching in the Bois de Boulogne, Paris, 1987.

Alfred Eisenstaedt holds the negative with his famous WWII photograph of a sailor and nurse kissing on VJ-day, New York City, 1992.

During the nine days of campaigning in the lead up to Singapore’s historic general elections on May 7, photographer Darren Soh documented several rallies using the technique of a landscape photographer.

Using a borrowed Leica S2, Soh photographed the rallies, then stitched images together to create final files that are roughly 1GB.

“The most obvious way of photographing an election campaign is to show people’s faces and emotions, and the candidates up-close,” Soh, who is based in Singapore, explains. “I wanted to show the scale of these rallies.”

Rally, National Solidarity Party, 2nd May, 2011

As many as 50,000 people were reported to have turned out for some of the rallies that preceded the election, which saw the ruling People’s Action Party lose seats in a parliament it has dominated since the city-state’s independence in 1956. Though the opposition Workers’ Party won only six of the 87 parliamentary seats, they made a strong enough showing that Singapore’s founder, Lee Kuan Yew, and another ex-prime minister resigned from Singapore’s cabinet earlier this week, ceding control of their party to younger members who they feel are more in tune with the concerns of Singapore’s people.

Lunchtime Rally, People’s Action Party, 3rd May, 2011

“Singaporeans are generally known to be apolitical—if it doesn’t rock their boat they’re happy to carry on their lives,” Soh explains. “In the nine days of campaigning the turnout at these rallies showed that Singaporeans do care about their political future… They want to hear what the various candidates have to offer. Photographing from this distance shows in a very basic way how much they care, because of the sheer numbers.”

Rally, Workers’ Party, 1st May, 2011

The images Soh and other Singaporean photographers made during the general elections will be published in a book, GE 2011: We Were There. Proceeds will help establish a documentary photography fund administered by the journalism school at a local university.

All photographs © Jenny J. Norris. Guards check passports at Parliament in Kiev for a Liquidators rally on March 16, 2011.

Photographer Jenny J. Norris’s images of Chernobyl “Liquidators” and developmentally disabled children born in Chernobyl following the nuclear meltdown 25 years ago, are part of an exhibition and event series taking place at the Ukrainian Institute in New York City through April 26, 2011, in remembrance of the anniversary of the disaster. The importance of the Chernobyl anniversary has been magnified by the ongoing nuclear crisis at the Fukishima power plant in Japan, and the human cost of nuclear power takes center stage in Norris’ images of men and children whose lives are marked by the difficult legacy of Chernobyl.

A young woman residing in the low dependency ward of Vesnova Mental Asylum, Chernobyl zone, Belarus.

Norris first became interested in creating a series of images about Chernobyl through her personal work teaching art and photography to children in impoverished areas around the world. She made arrangements through Chernobyl Children International to teach and make photographs at the Vesnova Mental Asylum in Belarus. Many of the children and young adults there were born in Chernobyl after the disaster, and though Norris says that staff at the asylum do not say explicitly that the developmental disabilities of the residents are radiation-related, there is an unspoken assumption. While at Vesnova, Norris showed residents how to make pictures, printing out their work for them on a portable printer she brought. “They were practically tearing the photos I gave them because they were so excited,” Norris recalls.

Vesnova Mental Asylum, Belarus. Going for a daily walk around the complex. Most children never leave the Asylum until they are 18, when they are transferred to another mental asylum for adults in the neighboring region.

A bed-ridden child that was abandoned by parents living in the Chernobyl zone. Vesnova Mental Asylum, Belarus.

A child born in the Chernobyl zone without legs and abandoned by his parents. Vesnova Mental Asylum, Belarus.

The group of more than 800,000 men who carried the burden of cleaning up the Chernobyl site are referred to as “Liquidators.” Though tens of thousands of the liquidators died within the first 10 years after the cleanup, many more live on with physical and psychological ailments, and they have struggled to get the benefits promised to them by the Soviet and subsequent governments for their sacrifice. With help from the Chernobyl Museum in Kiev, Norris made arrangements to photograph a rally the liquidators held in Kiev, and also to interview several of them about their experiences.

“Careful! Radioactive!” Liquidators of Chernobyl protesting for health benefits in Kiev. March 16th, 2011

According to Norris’ accounts of her conversations with the liquidators, a majority of the men were drafted to clean up the site, and were not told about the danger inherent in the work they were being asked to do. Many were coal miners, and they were told that their work was “going to be coal mining training,” Norris says. “They literally watched friends die in front of them from acute radiation poisoning.”

Liquidators of Chernobyl who worked on the roof near the sarcophagus, clearing highly radioactive debris from the explosion. Workers were only allowed in two minute shifts to avoid acute radiation syndrome.

Miners from the south of Ukraine drafted as liquidators describing their experiences while working in Chernobyl. “Most of our friends have died of cancer from radiation exposure.”

Norris plans to continue her project by speaking with Chernobyl survivors who now live in the New York area. “It’s a very current issue—where the sources of energy are coming from. And I think people should really question that.” Interestingly, Norris says that despite what the liquidators have been through as a result of Chernobyl, all of the men she spoke with still support nuclear energy.

Abram Deyo works in Beijing arranging tours of China for foreign rock bands, but he also happens to be a photographer. Deyo made these images during a recent tour by American performer Dead Elvis & His One Man Grave.

On a plane in Beijing.

Walking the streets of Shanghai.

The Chongqing to Wuhan train.

Dead Elvis at the Great Wall.

Before a show at the Folk Hand Bar in Wuhan.

Late night street food in Wuhan.

Sabine. Seattle, WA. 2008. © Emiliano Granado

Emiliano Granado’s Time For Print is a series of portraits of aspiring models the photographer met through the online photography community Model Mayhem. “Time For Print” or “Test For Print” or “TFP,” as the communities refer to it, is the practice of unestablished models and photographers getting together for a shoot, each donating their time to further their portfolios. An exhibition of Granado’s series, which he calls “A study of beauty, sexuality and the compulsion to be seen in the Internet age,” opens tomorrow at EYELEVEL BQE in Brooklyn, NY. For more, visit Granado’s Web site for the project: http://www.projecttfp.com/

On March 3 an exhibition of Scott Conarroe’s “Shore” project, a series of landscape images exploring the coasts of North America, will open at Toronto’s Stephen Bulger Gallery and run through April 2. Notes Stephen Bulger Gallery, “Canada has the most expansive coastline on Earth; its boundary with the United States is the world’s longest non-militarized boarder. Together these two nations form a vast geo-cultural bloc that extends from polar extremes to the tropics, from sparse hinterlands to modern metropolises. [Conarroe's work] presents a study of North America on the cusp of a new climatic era. Cataclysmic weather and global social upheaval are anticipated, but for the time being they are seen as problems for others elsewhere. Conarroe’s photographs present the fading innocence of this idyll and a visual reference of the current state of the continent’s shorelines.” Conarroe has also traveled extensively in North America documenting the continent’s railway infrastructure. That series, “By Rail,” can be seen on his Web site, here.

Fog, Port Aux Basques NL, 2009

Lake Pontchartrain, Metairie LA, 2010

Shacks Island, Pipers Lagoon, BC, 2010

The Mona Lisa, Squamish BC, 2010

Cruise Ship, Portland ME, 2009

Pedestrian Walkway, Santa Monica CA, 2010

Loop, Biloxi MS, 2010

Econoline, Ketchikan AK, 2010

Pedicabs, Atlantic City NJ, 2009