All Photos © Kevin Cooley.

Skyward  is Kevin Cooley’s new video installation project portraying Los Angeles’ manufactured landscape and its relationship to the natural world. Presented as a projection on the ceiling, the work is a metaphysical gaze skyward – past the gridlock of street-level to the pristine blue sky promising freedom and limitless possibility.

Shot entirely in L.A. County, the work is comprised of hundreds of individual shots, presented in one continuous sequence. Cooley explains the visual narrative: ”We begin downtown near Bunker Hill and make stops through various parts of the city. Flurries of overlapping flight paths, of birds, helicopters and more, are punctuated by the brief appearance of iconic southern California structural elements such as freeway interchanges and rows of palm trees and we discover interdependent ecosystems largely overlooked in everyday life.” Cooley’s installation is on view  at YOUNGPROJECTS, a contemporary gallery for moving images, until March 9, 2012. Read the rest of this entry »

All photos © Ron Haviv/VII
Above: A pro-Mubarak supporter is stopped from shouting slogans and eventually is beaten by anti-government protesters before being turned over to the Army in Tahrir Square, Cairo.

Today marks one year since anti-government protesters who had gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, and the journalists covering the demonstrations, were overrun by mobs loyal to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. The two sides battled with rocks, curb stones and Molotov cocktails, and gunfire could be heard around the Square. As Ron Haviv and other photographers reported to PDN from Cairo at the time, pro-Mubarak demonstrators turned on the press, assaulting several and taking or smashing photojournalists’ cameras.

Ron Haviv’s coverage of the Tahrir Square demonstrations was honored in the Photojournalism/Sports/Documentary category of the 2011 PDN Photo Annual. The extended deadline for PDN’s 2012 Photo Annual is February 17, 2012.

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© Monika Sziladi, courtesy Klompching Gallery. Untitled (Ribs) 2010.

KLOMPCHING GALLERY has brought to New York, The Architecture of Space, originally curated for and enthusiastically received at the inaugural Flash Forward Festival in Toronto (October, 2010). This is an exhibition of contemporary photography exploring the perception and representation of space—the collapse between public and private, it’s abstract form and its role as metaphor. Artists’ reception is on February 2, 6pm—9pm and the exhibition continues through to March 2, 2012.

All photos © David Rochkind. Above: “Border,” February 2007, Mexico.

David Rochkind’s series, “Heavy Hand, Sunken Spirit” is about the social costs and consequences of Mexico’s violent drug war. In the four years since President Felipe Calderon’s inauguration, over 35,000 people have been killed and kidnappings have skyrocketed. The cartels are ruthless, leaving the gruesome nature of their crimes visible to everyone.

Rochkind explains how Mexico is a country in crisis: “The government is battling the drug cartels, the drug cartels are battling each other and there is a palpable fear across the nation. Corruption exists throughout the state and complaints of human rights abuses by the army are widespread. The line between criminals and the authorities is so blurred that the average citizen fears everyone. These photographs attempt to move beyond simple depictions of carnage to explore the stress and tension that is left in the wake of such violence and illustrate how this conflict will impact and handicap Mexico’s future.” Rochkind’s exhibition, “Heavy Hand, Sunken Spirit,” opens at Blue Sky gallery in Portland, Oregon, on February 2, 2012.

Above: This stretch of the border divides Nogales, Arizona, at left and Nogales, Sonora, at right. There has been little violent spillover into the U.S., though recently U.S. citizens have been killed with more frequency in Mexico. In March of 2010, two U.S. Consulate workers were gunned down in Ciudad Juarez. –Courtesy of Blue Sky Gallery

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All photos © Julia Fullerton-Batten. Above: The Departure.

In her latest project, called Mothers and Daughters, Julia Fullerton-Batten portrays the complex and sometimes challenging relationship between mothers and their daughters. Both documentary and biographical, these images illustrate the artist’s memories of her two sisters’ and her relationships with their mother and in turn, their mother’s relationship with their grandmother.

Choosing to work with real mother and daughter pairs in their own environments, the subjects create their own world together while at the same time revive the artist’s personal memories through staging. Over the course of their lives the dependence switches from the child’s need for security and nurturing to the mother’s dependence on the daughter to satisfy emotional needs. In the adult relationship, the intimacy of the bond is established by the love, struggle and acceptance of each other.

-courtesy Randall Scott Projects.

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