Abuelo y Maria Esther.

All Photos © Katrina M. d’Autremont

Katrina M. d’Autremont’s relationship to her South American family and the search to find her place amidst different cultures and generations is the subject of 26 color prints in her series “Si Dios Quiere” (If God Wants). The Philadelphia-based photographer was recently selected as the winner of the Silver Eye Center for Photography Fellowship Competition for this body of work, currently on view in a solo exhibit at Silver Eye in Pittsburgh through March 20.

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All photos © Todd Heisler/Rocky Mountain News. All rights reserved.

Todd Heisler’s “Final Salute” was named by PDNOnline readers one of the most influential photo essays of the past ten years in a survey conducted for PDN’s Visions of the Decade issue. While a staff photographer at the Rocky Mountain News, Heisler (now at The New York Times) spent a year documenting the work of Major Steve Beck and the Marine Honor Guard who handle family notifications and the funerals of Marines killed during the Iraq War. At a time when the Pentagon barred photographers from covering the return of military caskets to Dover Air Force Base, Heisler’s “Final Salute” provided a rare and intimate look at the dignity of military funeral rites.

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Elephant, from Michael Patrick O’Leary’s ongoing Urban Jungle project, dealing with kids love for animals and their endless imaginations.

“Accademia Bridge, Venice, Italy 2007,” © Michael Kenna, Courtesy of Robert Mann Gallery, New York City

A toned silver print of this image is included in Michael Kenna’s new exhibit, “Venezia,” on view at the Robert Mann Gallery in New York City through March 13. The book Michael Kenna: Venezia will be published this spring by Nazraeli Press.

All photographs © Gary Cialdella. Two Houses, Steiber Street Whiting, IN 1999.

Once a major crossroads for American industry, the Calumet Region sits on the south shore of Lake Michigan, just east of Chicago, straddling the border between Illinois and northern Indiana. Like so many American post-industrial regions, the Calumet is a mixture of rail yards, refineries, abandoned or underused plants, once-prosperous Main Streets, modest homes, changing neighborhoods and signs of urban renewal.

Photographer Gary Cialdella grew up on the Eastern edge of the Calumet in Blue Island, Illinois. When he left for college, he had no thoughts of returning, but as an adult he moved to nearby Michigan. More than 20 years ago, he reacquainted himself with the area and began photographing it. He recently released his book of black-and-white landscapes, The Calumet Region: An American Place (University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago/Brauer Museum of Art, Valparaiso University). The work is also on display at the Brauer Museum of Art through March 21, 2010.

For more on Gary Cialdella’s project The Calumet Region, see our article, “Ain’t That America” (Exposures, January 2010). (more…)