All photos © Ron Haviv/VII
Above: A pro-Mubarak supporter is stopped from shouting slogans and eventually is beaten by anti-government protesters before being turned over to the Army in Tahrir Square, Cairo.

Today marks one year since anti-government protesters who had gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, and the journalists covering the demonstrations, were overrun by mobs loyal to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. The two sides battled with rocks, curb stones and Molotov cocktails, and gunfire could be heard around the Square. As Ron Haviv and other photographers reported to PDN from Cairo at the time, pro-Mubarak demonstrators turned on the press, assaulting several and taking or smashing photojournalists’ cameras.

Ron Haviv’s coverage of the Tahrir Square demonstrations was honored in the Photojournalism/Sports/Documentary category of the 2011 PDN Photo Annual. The extended deadline for PDN’s 2012 Photo Annual is February 17, 2012.

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“Melvin Moore, 2008″ © Ellen Susan

Photographer Ellen Susan makes portraits of active-duty soldiers in the US Army using the wet plate collodion process, the primary photographic method used during the Civil War. Her portraits are included in “surFACE: Contemporary Wet Plate Collodion Portraiture,” now on view at Photo Center NW in Seattle. The show features tintypes and ambrotypes by five contemporary photographers who use the nineteenth-century wet plate technique:  Ellen Susan, Daniel Carrillo, Robb Kendrick, Jenny Sampson and Joni Sternbach.

Susan, who lives near two major Army installations, uses the deliberative, careful process to show members of the military in a way that invites a second look. The slow process requires her subjects to remain still for up to 60 seconds, gazing intently at the camera. Each detailed, grainless ambrotype she produces,  PCNW notes, “engages viewers in a manner that is distinct from the casually made, ephemeral images that have become so familiar.”

The exhibition is on view at PCNW through February 12.

All photos © Kathleen Robbins

Raised in the Mississippi Delta, photographer Kathleen Robbins has photographed rural life in the region in two bodies of work. Starting in 2003, when she began teaching at the University of South Carolina, she made repeated trips to to Belle Chase, her family’s farm, to explore familial obligations and her relationship with “home” in a project she calls “Into the Flatland.” Robbins says, “This is land that my family has inhabited for generations, and I am pulled to this place in a way that I am not able to fully articulate.”

Her new, ongoing series, “In Cotton,” looks at the lives of rural cotton farmers in the Yazoo Mississippi Delta. During the 2011 growing season, Robbins and writer Mary Carol Miller spent five weeks with ten farm families. Her work on the series continues.

Robbins, who is represented by Jennifer Schwartz Gallery in Atlanta, has had her work exhibited at The Light Factory, Rayko Gallery, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art and other venues. She is coordinator of the photography program at the University of South Carolina. This week, she was named first place winner of the 2011 PhotoNOLA Review Prize, selected by reviewers at the PhotoNOLA Portfolio Review in December 2011.

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All Photos © George Georgiou. Above: Seafront, Mersin, Turkey, 2007.
In his travels throughout Turkey in recent years, photographer George Georgiou has documented “the process of modernization, urbanization, and national identity that is happening in Turkey against a rising tide of nationalism and religion.” His compositions capture a country at a crossroads, caught between old and new, Europe and Asia, tradition and modernization. His series “Fault Lines” is currently being shown as part of the exhibition “New Photography 2011” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Also featured in the exhibition are Moyra Davey, Deana Lawson, Doug Rickard, Viviane Sassen and Zhang Dali.

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All Photos © Peter Hebeisen.

Swiss photographer Peter Hebeisen has visited 50 of the most famous European battlefields of the 20th century. Though once the epicenters of drama, these landscapes appear still and peaceful, like the calm after a storm. Hebeisen, who is based in Zurich and Paris, drove thousands of miles, capturing contemplative images in large format, in a project that attempts to come to grips with the past.  Twenty of Hebeisen’s large-format images are now on view in “Metamorphosis & Myth” at Gallery 291 in San Francisco through November 5.

Above: Battle of Halbe, Germany (April 24, 1945 to May 1, 1945).

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