West Fayette Street, #5, 2012

Syracuse-based photographer and teacher Willson Cummer’s new project “Available” explores buildings and vacant lots in Central New York that are for sale or lease. “In the current economy, there are hundreds of such properties,” Cummer says. “The state of availability is a poignant one. When a person says they’re available, it means they are looking for a new romantic relationship. These vacant buildings and sites are also looking for new life. They are in limbo states between one purpose and another. I am attracted to the humble paint jobs that cover up graffiti, as well as the buildings that sport graffiti. Often these structures appear to have been made without much concern for architecture. A certain amount of square footage was needed, and a building was thrown up to suit. The vernacular architecture is visually intriguing.”

Cummer, whose work plumbs the intersection of the built and natural worlds, recently exhibited another of his projects, a series of images of parking garages, at OK Harris gallery in New York City. (more…)

© Ryan McGinley. Above: Brennan (Blue), 2007.

Ryan McGinley’s premier retrospective monograph, You and I recently released by Twin Palms Publishers creates a portrait of a generation that is savvy about visual culture and acutely aware of how identity can be communicated through photography.

-courtesy Twin Palms Publishers.

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All photos © Erika Larsen.
Erika Larsen’s long term project ‘Sami: The People Who Walk With Reindeer’ will be on exhibit at The Half King Gallery in NYC with an opening reception on Tuesday, January 24, 2012 at 7:30pm. Shot from 2007-2011, the project is an intimate look at one of the oldest nomadic herding cultures in the world. Larsen says, “I came here to understand the primal drive of the modern hunter and to find a people who, when the land spoke, could interpret its language. I also came in search of silence so I could begin to hear again.”

The reception will feature a film screening and slide-show with a discussion moderated by Erika and Sarah Leen, senior photo editor at National Geographic Magazine. The exhibit will run until March 13th. To see a more intimate glimpse of Larsen’s project, watch this short video.

-courtesy Redux.

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All photos © Michael Hanson. Above: Paul Glowaski, the director of the Homeless Garden Project in Santa Cruz, CA, stands in a field at sunset.

People have always grown food in urban spaces—on windowsills and sidewalks, and in backyards and neighborhood parks—but today, urban farmers are leading an environmental and social movement with intent to transform our national food system. To explore this agricultural renaissance, brothers David and Michael Hanson and urban farmer Edwin Marty document twelve successful urban farm programs, from an alternative school for girls in Detroit, to a backyard food swap in New Orleans, to a restaurant supply garden on a rooftop in Brooklyn. Each essay offers practical advice for budding farmers, such as composting and keeping livestock in the city, decontaminating toxic soil, even changing zoning laws.

For seven weeks, David, Michael, and videographer, Charlie Hoxie, traveled the country in a short school bus powered by veggie grease (and a minivan after too many breakdowns delayed the production). The trio slept in empty lots overlooking the Pacific Ocean, mall parking lots, and alongside the very farms they were documenting.The images and stories to come out of these farms show that America’s urban landscape is rich with opportunity for fresh local food. Hanson’s book, Breaking Through Concrete : Building an Urban Farm Revival, published by University of California Press, was recently released.

-courtesy Michael Hanson.

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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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