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.

To view more contest entries or submit to the 2012 Photo Annual, visit www.pdnphotoannual.com.

Related articles:

Photographers Beaten, Robbed as Pro-Mubarak Gangs Turn on Press (Update)

Photographer is First Media Fatality in Egypt: Situation Remains Dangerous

From Egypt, Photographers Persisted in Filing Stories

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.

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.

Top and above: Images from “Into the Flatland”

Blackbirds, from “Into the Flatland”

An interior image, part of Robbins’ ongoing series “In Cotton”

Burning Field, from “In Cotton”

Whittington Foyer, “In Cotton”

Above: Tokiland. Turkey is undergoing a huge modernization project to house the mass migration from the village to the city that is taking place throughout the whole country.  TOKI, the state owned housing development agency, has led this push. Almost always, the architecture and infrastructure are from the same blueprint. Cities are beginning to become carbon copies of each other.  Some worry that the sense of community which is so strong in Turkish culture will break down, bringing with it a number of social problems that are all too familiar in similar developments in Europe.

“New Photography” is on view at MoMA through January 16, 2012.

Hakkari.

Yenikoy.

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).

Siege of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzogevia (April 5, 1992- February 29, 1996).

Battle of Britain, Dover Coast (July 10, 1940-October 31, 1940)

Siege of Leningrad (St.Petersburg), Russia (September 8, 1941-January 27, 1944)

Battle of Monte Cassino, Italy (January 17-May18, 1944)

Battle of Gallipoli, Anzac (April 25, 1915-January 9, 1916)

Battle of Vittorio Veneto, Italy (October 24-November 3, 1918)

Battle of Kursk,  Prokhorovka (July 12, 1943)

Battle of Sevastopol, Crimean Peninsula (October 30, 1941-July 4, 1942)

Operation Overlord III, Omaha Beach (June 6, 1944)

]]> http://www.pdnphotooftheday.com/2011/10/11504/feed 5 http://www.pdnphotooftheday.com/2011/09/11287 http://www.pdnphotooftheday.com/2011/09/11287#comments Wed, 28 Sep 2011 16:00:25 +0000 Holly Stuart Hughes http://www.pdnphotooftheday.com/?p=11287

All photos © Jake Price

The six-month anniversary of the March 11 tsunami that struck northeastern Japan came and went with little attention in the Western press. But New York-based photographer Jake Price, who has spent a total of ten weeks in Tōhoku since March, believes the environmental devastation the disaster wrought will be a story for a long time to come. While the media has focused on nuclear contamination, he says, “Walking past overturned boats, cars, trucks, I realized that their oil, gas and other chemicals emptied into the soil and groundwater.” He photographed mounds made from the bulldozed debris of entire towns, which contain insulation, fiberglas and chemical contaminants.

The salt water and oil that washed into farms has made the land unusable for five years or more. ”Many elderly farmers will never see growth on their land again. Still they work diligently to hand it off to future generations, an issue that is filled with uncertainty because so many young people have left for the big cities.”

Price shot many still images, video and audio in the region, and the BBC showed some of his images in an audio slide show.

Of the limited press attention paid to the crisis, Price notes, “I think the perception … is that the Japanese have everything figured out because it is such an orderly society.  But that is simplistic at best.  People are still coping with enormous stress and loneliness after losing everything.”

Though assignments to cover the story are rare, Price is planning to return to the region soon. “The more I get to know about Tōhoku the more interested I become.” He wants to donate his images to libraries and community centers to help the region begin restoring the visual record lost in the tsunami.

Elijah Gowin has transgressed one of the most basic rules of photography in his latest series, “Into the Sun.” Shooting into the sun is a way of courting blindness, but it’s also a daring way to confront the source of the force and power of the center of our solar system. His exhibit “Into the Sun” is on display through October 22 at the Robert Mann Gallery in New York City.

Gowin, who received a John S. Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008, is currently associate professor in the department of art and art history at University of Missouri-Kansas City.  Critic Lyle Rexer has written, “Elijah Gowin is the prophet of this longing, the diviner of such dreams. His work confronts the impenetrability of the world and the challenge of representing it.”

“Into the Sun 23,” 2009.

“Into the Sun 26,” 2009.

The Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series is held from March through September, in locations around the world. In July, the fifth stop in the series took place in Malcestine on Lake Garda in Italy. About 15,000 spectators watched the event, not including the many people who moored their yachts and motorboats close to the steep cliffs for a good view of the competition. Each dive is scored by five judges who award points based on execution and degree of difficulty.

Photographers Romina Amato, Dean Treml, and Damiano Levanti captured the action in Malcestine for Red Bull.

Above: The Czech Republic’s Michal Navratil dives above Lake Garda.

© Romina Amato/Red Bull Cliff Diving

Jorge Ferzuli of Mexico performs his first round dive above the harbor.

© Dean Tremi/Red Bull Cliff Diving

Jorge Ferzuli of Mexico performs his first round dive above the harbor.