"Luxembourg," 1923-1925. Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Abbott-Levy Collection. Partial gift of Shirley C. Burden.

The Museum of Modern Art’s exhibit on Eugène Atget is named after the sign that hung outside of the photographer’s studio door, which simply said “Documents pour artistes” (Documents for Artists). Atget photographed Paris over the course of his 30-year career with the artist in mind, often capturing detail-rich scenes like an abandoned park or rural courtyard that could serve as source material for painters and others. Taking care to avoid cliché sites such as the Eiffel Tower, Atget instead “focused on the fabric of the city,” including parks, street scenes, store displays and building facades. The rare times Atget did photograph his fellow Parisians, he focused his camera on those living on the fringes of society: street merchants, Gypsies and prostitutes.

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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 © Mark Weinberg

The futuristic and almost extra-terrestrial forms of Santiago Calatrava’s Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias in Valencia, Spain, were like a magnet to photographer Mark Weinberg. After extensively researching this unique complex of buildings and reading about the architect and his inspiration, Mark went to photograph it. Santiago Calatrava has stated that, “You are only bound in terms of the limits you set.” These buildings are truly unlike anything else. Calatrava’s work is clearly not constrained by the limits common to most architecture.

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All Photos © Fred Mayer.

Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha is a major influence on Swiss photographer Fred Mayer’s life and work over a six-decade photographic career. To commemorate the 50th anniversary of Hesse’s death, Mayer traveled with his wife Ilse to Varanasi, India, to retrace in images the life of Hesse’s protagonist in the time of Buddha. Their personal, spiritual response to the novel features local subjects acting out scenes for the camera. With an endorsement from Hesse’s grandson Silver Hesse adding cachet, in September 2011 Mayer self-published a 280-page homage to Hesse in a jubilee edition with Blurb. Mayer’s work is one of twenty notable projects featured in the seventh annual Best of ASMP, a publication of the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP). From Thursday, October 27 to Saturday, October 29 ASMP will be an exhibitor at PDN’s PhotoPlus Expo at the Jacob Javits Center in New York. Stop by booth #1276 to pick up the print edition of the Best of ASMP or read extended interviews with all twenty featured photographers here.

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During the 1950s, Martin Karplus captured the lush hues of the Southwest’s culture and landscapes during his travels there as a post-doctorate fellow. Kodachrome may be gone, but its vivid color qualities lives on through his works which will be exhibited in Stoneham Gallery of the Griffin Museum from Jan.–Feb. 2012, as well as in three additional venues during the next two years featuring different bodies of work. Karplus is currently a Professor of Theoretical Chemistry and Biophysics at Harvard and showed his work as a participant at this year’s Photolucida in Portland, Oregon.

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