All photographs © Jenny J. Norris. Guards check passports at Parliament in Kiev for a Liquidators rally on March 16, 2011.

Photographer Jenny J. Norris’s images of Chernobyl “Liquidators” and developmentally disabled children born in Chernobyl following the nuclear meltdown 25 years ago, are part of an exhibition and event series taking place at the Ukrainian Institute in New York City through April 26, 2011, in remembrance of the anniversary of the disaster. The importance of the Chernobyl anniversary has been magnified by the ongoing nuclear crisis at the Fukishima power plant in Japan, and the human cost of nuclear power takes center stage in Norris’ images of men and children whose lives are marked by the difficult legacy of Chernobyl.

(more…)

All Photos © Philip Poupin. Above: A young fighter of the Shabab shows his grenade on the road to the frontline near Ras Lanuf, Libya. The Shabab (meaning “youth’”) have taken part in the insurrection against the government of Muammar Qaddafi for more than a month.

Philip Poupin, a photojournalist based in Afghanistan, has covered conflict and human rights issues for six years, most recently covering the conflict in Libya from the rebels’ side. “These pictures were taken before the coalition strikes on the frontline. It was during the retreat of the Rebels before the allies decided to help them to avoid a massacre.” Now out of Libya for the time being, he writes, ” I wanted to stress the Youth who first went to the streets to chase the regime of Qaddafi,” before seizing weapons and launching civil war. Photographing the “mobile frontline” has  been one of the most intense experiences of his life.  “Rockets and bombs were firing around my head. I could clearly hear the whistle of the round passing by a few meters away. Two times I saw big rounds landing some 20 meters next to me but they did not explode. One landed in the sand and rebounded like a rugby ball.  I have been in firefights before, like in Afghanistan and the Congo. But nothing compared with this one where both sides fight with artillery and very few with … kalashnikovs.”

To see more of Poupin’s work click here.

(more…)

© Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Detroit Publishing Company Collection. Above: Mulberry Street, 1900.

Reuel Golden, a former executive editor of PDN, has worked with art publisher Benedikt Taschen to produce New York: Portrait of a City. Setting out to be the visual encyclopedia of all things New York, Golden’s book collects hundreds of iconic images from early 1900 to present day. To find out more information about Reuel Golden’s book click here.

Tonight is the opening of the exhibition, featuring images from Golden’s book, at the Levi’s Fall Workshop in New York city. Click here for more info.

(more…)

© Jan Banning

Jan Banning says, “This photo was made in the Old Secretariat in Patna, Bihar, India, while working on my project ‘Bureaucratics’. Because of the strong diagonal, I considered it too ‘dynamic’ to be included in the book or the exhibition of the same name. How dynamic was the situation in this typeroom really? When I entered, of the dozen or so people in the room, two or three were snoring. Others had their feet on the desk and were comfortably – but living dangerously – leaning backward on their chair’s two hind legs, dozing away. One man was actually doing what I naively thought they were all supposed to do: typing. When asked why they kept this ‘typewriter graveyard’, he answered: ‘This is not a  graveyard! These typewriters are awaiting new personnel. We’re 40% understaffed.”

‘Bureaucratics’ can be seen as part of the Moving Walls exhibit at Open Society Institute and also at the Half King gallery in New York, NY.

© Chris Burkard.

Crystal Thornburg surfing in Central California.

Surf trips come up rapidly, as quick as the swells that show up on surf maps, and the photographers and editors who cover them very seldom have a lot of time to plan their work. Grant Ellis has been the photo editor for Surfer Magazine for almost seven years. He started as a surf photographer and followed professional surfers around the world for three years, having surfed from the age of 8. Surfer works with a large number of photographers and surfers to find and produce the stunning images in the magazine.

Ellis says that he can track the swell as it moves across the Pacific or Indian oceans through the emails from his photographers around the world. And if big waves are the greatest thrill in surfing, getting an image in Surfer’s Big issue is the ambition of most surf photographers.

Because surf images reflect the many nuances of light and water, editors at Surfer do rounds and rounds of color proofing to make certain each image is just right. The wave comes through, and they do their best to catch it.

Pictured here is a selection from Surfer’s Big issue.

(more…)