All photos © Jonathan Alpeyrie

Jonathan Alpeyrie‘s exhibition World War II Veterans is currently on view at Anastasia Photo. His documentation spans 62 nations and features a powerful selection of diptychs of veterans from opposing sides in the war. He hopes to publish a book as one way to possibly reunite veterans from these different nationalities. Anastasia-Photo specializes documentary photography and photojournalism, and connects its exhibitions to philanthropic organizations that are in some way related to each show. For Alpeyrie’s exhibition, the gallery has selected to support  Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

Above: Thomas was photographed during a WWII veteran rally in Scotland. He fought as a courier in North Africa and later in Burma with the Chindits.
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All photos © John Milisenda.

For photographer John Milisenda, the Lower East Side in the 1960′s was a neighborhood of “stark contrasts, a place that could easily be romanticized or quickly become mean streets.” It was populated with a diverse mix of working class families all living in close proximity. Milisenda witnessed a lot of violence growing up. He says, “ My Mother and I were walking along the street when a man suddenly hit the sidewalk in front of us. We found out later that he had been thrown off a roof by the local mob.”  He also recalls the lively social milieu of the streets, where neighborhood kids formed alliances and passed the days. They played dodgeball at one of the settlement houses, and invented games throughout the seasons: building scooters with plywood, playing Skellsie with metal bottle caps, and stoop ball. In the late 1960’s the arrival of hard drugs like heroin changed the neighborhood. Milisenda and his friends were drafted into the Vietnam War, while others enlisted as a way to escape the neighborhood. At the same time, urban renewal and gentrification took hold. The neighborhood Milisenda knew so well had disappeared.

John Milisenda’s series of photographs taken on the Lower East side of Manhattan during the 1960′s is now on display at Grand Central Library.  Many of these images were made when he was a teenager and before he studied art at Pratt Institute. His work is in the collections of the Museum Of Modern Art, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and the Brooklyn Museum. The exhibition will be on view until April 20th.

On April 14th, Milisenda will speak about the photographs and recollections of the Lower East Side from 10:30AM to 12:00 noon.

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© Ziyah Gafic

This month marks the 20th anniversary of the start of the conflict in Bosnia that eventually became the worst genocide Europe since World War II. While journalists who covered the conflict and historians are now reexamining the bloody conflict and its lessons, the events of 20 years ago are not yet relegated to history. “How could they be, when there hasn’t been catharsis or absolution?” says Ziyah Gafic, a Bosnian photographer.

Gafic, who was 12 years old when Serbs attacked Bosnia in a grab for power in the former Soviet satellite, has been working with the International Commission on Missing Persons to photograph the eyeglasses, snapshots, keys and other personal belongings of victims of ethnic cleansing. The items have been collected from mass graves and are being used as tools to identify some of the 30,000 missing Bosnians. Gafic’s goal is not only to help reunite these objects with the victims’ families, but to document and remember the genocide.

“We so desperately hoped lessons learned in Bosnia will help prevent or solve faster other conflicts, but how foolish was that?” Gafic says. “Just looking at Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Libya, makes ‘never again’ quite a cynical statement.”

Related Article: Ziyah Gafic: A Forensic Documentary of Genocide

© Tetsugo Hyakutake. Courtesy of Philadelphia Photo Arts Center.

This month marks the one-year anniversary of the undersea earthquake and resulting tsunami that struck Northern Japan. In observance of the tragedy, the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center (PPAC) is exhibiting “Silent Existence” by the fine-art photographer Tetsugo Hyakutake. Through his images, Hyakutake has said that he wishes to explore “contemporary issues in relation to their historical contexts.” For “Silent Existence,” the contemporary and historical meld into one, as the images show the destruction caused by the tsunami soon after it occurred. The resulting photos have a quiet sadness to them, featuring the things the wave left behind.

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© Lunar Orbiter I NASA: Earth Seen from the Far Side of the Moon, frame 102H. Vintage double silver print panorama, 17 x 44 in. (432 x 1118 mm), Aug 23, 1966; 16:35 GMT, on modern archival mount.

This is the first photograph of the Earth seen from the moon. Lunar Orbiter I was the first of five unmanned orbiter missions sent to obtain photographs of proposed Apollo landing sites. Its Kodak-designed photography system consisted of a dual-lens camera, on-board film processor, and readout equipment. An 80-mm lens provided wide coverage on negatives marked M (medium resolution), and a 610mm lens provided a smaller area of greater detail marked H (high resolution). Orbiter I was launched on August 10, 1966, began photographing on August 18, and made its last photograph August 29, before crashing into the moon. It completed 547 moon orbits, making 211 M frames and 211 H frames, from altitudes ranging from 45 to 1,454 km. Courtesy Charles Isaacs Photographs.

Charles Isaacs Photographs is one of 75 galleries showcasing photography during the AIPAD Photography Show New York from March 29 – April 1.