1Picture of the Week

Martin Waltz

2How Magnum Reinvented, Redefined and Revolutionized Photography

Ever since the camera became a pervasive technology we have lived in a world of images, a world in which we make sense of events through their representations – the image is more immediate than the written word and more mutually intelligible than sound (though we see the camera as the primary means of recording and disseminating “truth,” it is, of course, operated by a human photographer, and thus is hardly a neutral device). A world historical event hardly deserves the name before it is recorded – the old question about trees, sound and forests is given real world import when applied to the situation of photography, especially now; has an event truly occurred if it hasn’t been photographed? An action has happened of course, but is it truly an event – an action of significance, an action of importance beyond the immediately affected. In a way, it is the photograph, not the action, that truly constitutes the event (a photograph can even constitute an event in the absence of an outside action – the photograph, that is, becomes the action and signifier itself).

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3DC police officer’s passion for capturing photos of life on District streets

D.C. police officer Shaun Heffelman uses his time on the streets to uncover a hidden world through his amazing black and white photography.
An eight-year veteran, Heffelman developed a passion for street photography while on a recent family vacation. He said he fell in love with the unmediated chance encounters that street photography brings.
“Riding around in a police car, you get to see a lot of things that other people don’t pay attention to on a daily basis,” he said. Heffelman says that he doesn’t take photos while on duty. Instead, he says, he revisits places that he encountered while on the job.

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4Street appeal: New Orleans life through the lens of Cheryl Gerber

Shooting on the streets can be challenging but mostly entertaining and rewarding. I was standing at the corner of Canal Street and St. Charles Avenue on a dreary day, lamenting the current political state of our country, when a red streetcar pulled to a stop right in front of me. The door popped open, revealing a middle-aged man seated in the conductor’s chair dressed in red, white and blue from head to toe. My entire mood changed. The day didn’t seem as dreary any more.

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5The Shaving of the Beasts

It is seven in the morning and dozens of locals and visitors, on foot and on horseback, begin a walk from the church of Sabucedo to the top of the hills that surround this small village in the heart of Galicia. More than an hour later, they reach the top of the hill. The eyes of the farmers roam the extraordinary landscape, still shadowed by morning clouds.
The first whispers are heard and all eyes shift to a herd of 20 horses. A small group of men and women devise a plan to surround them. Walking slowly, they spread out around the animals. But the fog closes in and the herd escapes. At the top of the hill, Michel Touriño calls out, “Let’s enter the Galician jungle!” before running into the gorse shrubs that cover the land here.

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6Danny Lyon at Edwynn Houk Gallery, Zurich

Edwynn Houk Gallery, Zurich presents an exhibition of works by American photographer Danny Lyon.
The exhibition features works from two of the photographer’s series, Civil Rights and The Bikeriders. Considered to be one of the most important American photographers of the last half-century to work in the field of documentary photography he has reinvigorated the genre with a sense of justice and the universal desire for freedom. Actively involved in the Civil Rights movement as a participant and a photojournalist Lyon published his first book, The Movement in 1964 that brought in a new style of realistic photography where the photographer is entirely immersed himself in the subject’s world. Four years later the photographer published The Bikeriders (1968) that further cemented this ‘New Journalism’ and his considered one of his seminal works. The series is a collection of photographs and interviews gathered over the course of a four-year period that Lyon spent documenting members of a motorcycle club known as the Chicago Outlaws, a group vilified for their efforts to live free of the conventional expectations of society.

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Street Photography