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.

Bowman Road, 2012.

East Jefferson Street, 2011.

West Fayette Street #1, 2011.

Solar Street, 2012.

West Fayette Street, #2.

Wyoming Street, 2012.

West Fayette Street #3, 2012.

Walton Street, 2012.

West Fayette Street #4, 2012.

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.

BMX, 2000

Ann (Slingshot), 2007

Tim (Black Eye), 2005

Jake (Shining Rock), 2008

Brandee (Driftwood), 2011

Nick (Blood Falls), 2009

Jake (Fall Foliage), 2011

Coco’s Cliff, 2008

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.

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.

Father Luke Nguyen and the Mary Queen of Vietnam Church were the catalyst for the development of backyard gardens that helped resurrect the predominately Vietnamese Versailles community of East New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

Mary Seton Corboy, the director of the Greensgrow Farm in Philadelphia, tends to her bees. Initially, Mary kept bees to deter intruders from entering the farm. Now she has hundreds of CSA members throughout the Philadelphia area and provides produce for restaurants, community members and the farmer’s market.

Children eat mango at the Garden at Westerly Creek Park in Denver, CO. Refugees from countries including Bhoutan, Somolia, and Sudan gather at this community farm where they now grow a city block’s worth of produce.

Annie Novak at Eagle Street rooftop garden in Brooklyn, NY. Her farm provides produce for a CSA, local restaurants, and a farmer’s market.

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”

With consistent formality—disciplined use of line, frame and subtle light—Andrew Borowiec transforms the banality of the Midwest industrial landscape into compelling black and white photographs that are powerful for their quiet contemplation and topographic rendering. Along The Ohio is a masterful series of photographs, on view through January 7 at Sasha Wolf Gallery in New York City.

Cory Richards, a professional photographer and climber for The North Face athlete team, captured this image during the team’s 30-hour weather window which allowed them to summit Gasherbrum II, known as The Shining Mountain, an 8,000 meter (26,240 feet) peak in Pakistan that bridges the boarders of China and India. At 29, Richards was the youngest member and first American, to summit with his team members Simone Moro (Italy) and Denis Urubko (Kazakhstan). “The climb came after 26 years of failed attempts to climb one of the Pakistani 8,000 meter peaks in winter.”

Richards explains how he got the shot: “We were at about 24,270 feet, it was -45º, and we had been climbing since 3:00 am.  I knew the sunrise was coming and there wasn’t going to be another opportunity like this. Trying to anticipate that, I ran (or tried to run) ahead, and promptly vomited from the effort. As I collected myself and caught my breath, I turned and fired off maybe 10 frames…this was the only one that was sharp enough to pass. It was one of those very rare and special moments where everything aligned…or at least close enough…to tell a monumental story of human effort in a massive and beautiful environment…in a single frame. I don’t think these happen very often in a career…where we can actually see the whole of our efforts is greater than the sum of all the parts.”

Over ten years ago Michael Levin began his photographic journey in the Pacific Northwest and has since broadened his geographic horizons to include Japan, Iceland, France and beyond. Though Levin’s photographs are made at a wide range of locations, the individual images are not necessarily about the specific place, but rather a moment in time and the experience of arriving there. Instead of seeking out a predetermined location, Levin travels and waits for a location to speak to him in a process that he describes more intuitive than logical. Levin’s exhibition, “Continuum,” opens on Dec. 16, 2011 at the photo-eye Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It will be on display until February 4, 2012.