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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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.

All photos © Elijah Gowin/courtesy Robert Mann Gallery. Above: “Into the Sun 12,” 2009

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.”

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