NASA says that its twin probes are scheduled to arrive on the moon New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. The data they collect may solve some of the mystery that remains about the lunar surface. The mission’s chief scientist, Maria Zuber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told the AP: ”We actually know more about Mars … than we do about our own moon.”

For her series Moon Studies and Star Scratches,  Sharon Harper photographed the moon over a period of days, weeks and months on a single sheet of film.  Harper says the camera is “a metaphor for the pervasive presence of technology within the landscape, a presence that often interrupts our experience of the natural world. The camera here, however, creates possibilities for re-interpreting contemporary experience as it mediates and records, generating images that cannot be seen without it. In the images from the series…the moon links our understanding of time in terms of a monthly calendar with a celestial realm where time is measured in light years.” Moon Studies and Star Scratches is featured in Daylight Magazine’s current issue, Cosmos. Harper’s newer series, Sun/Moon (Trying to See through a Telescope), is currently on view at Galerie Roepke in Cologne through January 21st.

Wishing you all new perspectives for 2012.

Moon Studies and Star Scratches, No. 12. April 1 – May 30, 2006. Rincón, Puerto Rico; Spy Pond, Massachusetts. 1.25, 2.25 hour exposures; 20, 15, 5 minute exposures; 2, 3, 2 second exposures

Moon Studies and Star Scratches, No. 14. July 1-7, 2006. Middlesex, Vermont, 4 hour exposure; 35, 10, 1 minute exposures; 20, 15, 20 second exposures.

Moon Studies and Star Scratches, No. 6. June – September 2004. Saratoga Springs, New York; Middlesex, Vermont; Johnson, Vermont; Eden Mills, Vermont; Greensboro, North Carolina.

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.

Carolyn Marks Blackwood’s  images are on view at the Alan Klotz Gallery in New York  in a show called “The Wind Blows Through My Heart.” The poetic title seems appropriate for her deceptively simple photos. Blackwood photographs moments when elements — ice on the Hudson River, clouds in the late afternoon – are being transformed by wind, sun, or tides.  As the gallery’s notes for the show explain, her shards of ice look like forbidding landscapes, and her clouds are “the meteorological equivalents of brushstrokes.”

“Cloud Series #6″

“The Wind Blows Through My Heart” runs through June 25. More information on Blackwood’s work is available through Alan Klotz Gallery.

“Ice # 100″

“Cloud Series # 103″

“Ice #198″

© Catherine Nelson/Galerie Paris-Beijing.

As a contemporary ode to Nature, the image series “Creation” by Catherine Nelson contains sublime and dreamlike elements, staged as serenely revolving spheres. Photographs of nature are blended with digital techniques to give shape to these transcendental landscapes. Every image is meticulously composed with thousands of precisely assembled details, capturing the essence and peaceful strength of various imaginary places. Nelson’s photographs are on view at Galerie Paris-Beijing in Paris until June 2, 2011.

Storm clouds swirl around the Capitol building on a stormy spring afternoon in Washington, DC. Ryan Heffernan is one of the PDN’s 30 Emerging Photographers for 2011. To see more of his work visit http://www.ryanheffernan.com/.

Since the 1960s, Wessel has photographed vernacular scenes of the American West, particularly in California. Immediately drawn to the quality of light he encountered during a visit from New York to Los Angeles, Wessel moved cross-country to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1971. From stretches of dusty highway to modest California bungalows framed by telephone poles and palm trees, Wessel’s often spare and solitary images capture the idiosyncrasies and irony of American life with a wry objectivity. His photographs of parking lots, beach-goers, and shrubbery — all illuminated by the brilliance of Western light — find beauty and intrigue in the commonplace and document the social landscape in a manner that is casual yet formally compelling. An exhibition featuring 29 vintage photographs taken by Wessel from the late 1960s to the late 1980s opens tomorrow evening at the Pace MacGill gallery. The exhibition is on view until July 11, 2011.

-Pace MacGill Gallery

Bidding winter farewell and welcoming spring, Risaku Suzuki‘s (*1963, Japan) first European solo exhibition, Yuki – Sakura, at the Christophe Guye Galerie in Zurich presents photographs from various series of works focusing on the enticing, emblematically Japanese subjects such as the cherry blossoms. Suzuki‘s show coincides with the Sakura Celebration, one of the most popular spring events in Japan. Like the annual festival, Suzuki’s images celebrate tradition, renewal, and the inevitable passage of time from one season to the next. To see more of Suzuki‘s work click here.

- courtesy of Christophe Guye Galerie.

]]> http://www.pdnphotooftheday.com/2011/04/9080/feed 11 http://www.pdnphotooftheday.com/2011/03/9016 http://www.pdnphotooftheday.com/2011/03/9016#comments Thu, 31 Mar 2011 16:00:23 +0000 Amber Terranova http://www.pdnphotooftheday.com/?p=9016 All Photos © Carsten Peter/National Geographic. Above: The lava at Nyiragongo is made of an alkali-rich volcanic rock; its unusual composition may be a factor in the lava’s fluidity.

Photographer Carsten Peter descended into the fiery center of Nyiragongo—an active volcano towering over a city of one million people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo—for the April issue of National Geographic magazine.  See Carsten and his team explore the depths of Nyiragongo in Man vs. Volcano on the National Geographic channel. To see more of Carsten Peter’s work click here.

A member of the expedition walks on the caldera’s cooled lava floor, turned red by the reflected glow of the lake. “Down here you feel the volcano,” says photographer Carsten Peter. “It’s a low-frequency rumbling that pulses through your body – like being inside a giant subwoofer.”

Traders ferry logs and charcoal 12 miles from the forests around Nyiragongo to Goma, which continues to swell with refugees fleeing the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s war-torn east. The plume rising from the mountain reminds residents of yet another threat: eruption.

Many of the porters were local women, who huddled in the cold at the crater rim.

Rising gas bubbles explode, splattering lava up to 60 feet in the air over Nyiragongo’s fiery lake.

Constant bubbling sends waves of lava lapping over the rim. Scientists aren’t sure of the lake’s depth, though recent lava samples indicate the magma originated in the Earth’s mantle more than 46 miles below.

Photographer Carsten Peter tests the thermal suit that Sims used to get close to the lava lake. “It can protect you from the radiant heat, but if you get hit with a lava splatter, the force will likely kill you,” he says. For 30 years Peter has explored volcanoes around the world. “Seeing at close range the primal forces that shaped the planet can be hypnotic. You cannot allow yourself to fall under a volcano’s spell, especially one as unpredictable as Nyiragongo. That can be a fatal mistake.”