All photos © Eleonora Ghioldi

Los Angeles-based fine-art photographer Eleonora Ghioldi learned about photography through printing the work of renowned photographers, including Helmut Newton, Graciela Iturbide, Lauren Greenfield, Wim Wenders and Donata Wenders. In her current series, Ghioldi aims to challenge the concept of female identity. “Women are identified primarily through their physical appearance in our society; their bodies are tools to express moods, desires, feelings and ideas,” she explains. By stripping away traditional elements that often define women in our contemporary society, Ghioldi presents the female form in its most bare state.

These images were captured with a 35 mm and a medium-format camera, and printed on 16 x 20 silver gelatin prints.

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All photos © LUCEO.

On Friday, January 13th, from 6-10PM the LUCEO cooperative is hosting their third annual exhibition at 25CPW in New York City. Titled “Greater Than The Sum”, the exhibition highlights the group’s ability to connect, collaborate and create. LUCEO seeks to engage the audience, making them the final arbiter in the work. Breaking from tradition, their new exhibition “Greater Than The Sum” combines a broad curation of each photographers work into one 163′ run that spans the entire gallery. Rather than selling individual prints, LUCEO is selling CUTS which give guests the opportunity to hand-cut a 24×24″ section of the print they most want. The show also consists of an interactive installation and a soundscape scored by composer Tyler Strickland.

For those that can’t attend in person, you can still reserve a CUT and LUCEO will have a stand-in make the cut for you, or you can purchase a limited edition catalogue from the LUCEO store. The catalogue also includes a download score for the unique soundscape.

-courtesy LUCEO.

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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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© Natalie Halford

The first public exhibition of the Young Photographers Alliance (YPA) 2011 Mentoring Program will take place at the Calumet Gallery in New York City on January 12th. The theme for the program is “Everything is Energy,” which the 60 mentees interpreted in a wide variety of ways to create a compelling collection of photo essays. Natalie Halford, from the University of Westminster, focused on photographing teenagers because “they are full of life and have boundless energy, they represent the now, however, everyone can relate to this energy as it is inscribed in all of us … we were all that age once.”

With financial assistance from ASMP Foundation, YPA coordinated 15 teams, mentored by 25 professional photographers, in cities around the world: U.S. (Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, New York City, San Diego and Seattle), Canada (Toronto), China (Beijing), Thailand (Bangkok) and U.K. (London and Glasgow).

All photos © Jason Houston.

These still images are from the filming of Picture the Leviathan, a documentary film by Jason Houston and Hal Clifford scheduled for completion in May 2012. Picture the Leviathan shows the passion and effort James Prosek puts into making his extraordinary watercolor portraits. The film’s theme—that art makes a difference—is supported by three legs: The quest inherent in Prosek’s journeys; the making of the art; and Prosek’s deeply humble, almost mystical relationship to other species.

Prosek paints in the tradition of 19th-century naturalists who catalogued the world as it was discovered—but he paints creatures that are vanishing. It’s a truism that in order to care for something you first must know it. And we don’t know the once-dominant, majestic creatures of the Atlantic, some of which humans are fishing toward extinction. Facts about the oceans’ decline pile up like sand, with little effect on human behavior. This is where art comes in. Prosek is on a quest to paint approximately 40 Atlantic fish species that are significant to humans—and paint them from life, full-size, after seeing them [in their natural habitat]. Nobody has ever tried to do this—after all, it’s challenging to observe some of these fish in [nature]. His quest takes him stalking swordfish off Nova Scotia; night fishing for deep-water cod; to the Bahamas for giant grouper; to the Cape Verde Islands to see a 900-pound blue marlin. He believes he must be there—right there—when a true, live, leviathan rises from the deep.

The film is intended to help, in a small way, shift the culture by altering the viewer’s perception of our relationship to fish and oceans. Because Picture the Leviathan is part of a larger media suite—the film documents the creation of a body of art that will form the basis for a 2012 book and art exhibit—it will both expand upon and amplify James’s work and that work’s implicit messages about our relationship to the ocean and its megafauna.

— Text courtesy of Jason Houston.

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