Ashifty industrialist sits behind a shining phone in Weimar Cologne. Three young farmers, on their way to a dance, stop for a second in sharp new suits. A gentleman beggar holds out his hat, as if in greeting, while travelling musicians roam the villages, bears dance in city squares, military cadets fight duels and the Turkish pedlar flogs his mousetraps. Anyone – everyone – is here.
This was August Sander’s lifelong ambition, of course: to photograph the whole of Germany. It was an impossible vision, thwarted by the Nazis, and inevitably defeated by the artist’s death. But by then, Sander (1876-1964) had cycled around depicting every face that struck him – farmers, politicians, plasterers, nuns, cleaners, writers, Gypsies, bankers, painters of both canvases and walls – to produce the greatest work of documentary photography in existence. Nothing less than humanity was Sander’s subject, and he found it everywhere he looked. Each individual is accorded equal dignity.
The George Eastman Museum, in Rochester, NY, is the first museum to dedicate a retrospective to American photographer Eugene Richards.
Photographer Eugene Richards is widely respected and internationally renowned for the integrity and power of his work, which is deeply informed by his dedication to social and economic issues. For the past several decades, he has explored complicated subjects such as racism, poverty, emergency medicine, drug addition, cancer, the American family, aging, the effects of war and terrorism, and the depopulation of rural America. The Run-On of Time, an exhibition co-organized by the George Eastman Museum and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, explores Richards’s career as a photojournalist and documentary photographer from 1968 to the present. On view at the Eastman Museum June 10–October 22, it is the first museum retrospective devoted to his work.
An American photographer has created a collection of images he has captured on the streets of Taipei over the three and half years he has lived in Taiwan.
The photographer, Andrew Haimerl (韓莫), 30, first came to Taiwan “to experience something unique while practicing my creative passion.” What started as a one-year stint has turned into over three years, but Haimerl says it feels like only six months and he could spend the rest of his life in Taiwan taking photos.
When asked why he likes street photography, Haimerl said, “I often find funny or strange people to shoot. I feel that street photography is a good extension of my personality.” With photos of ordinary people such as these, Haimerl is also seeking to “expand people’s consciousness by pointing out things that often go ignored in our daily lives.”
For Stijn Hoekstra, 33, a cinematographer from Amsterdam, visiting Havana was always a dream. “Cuba has been on my list for such a long time, I can’t even remember,” Hoekstra told weather.com. “It has to do with the way the people live there.”
His trip to Cuba was focused on capturing the essence of the city through the people. “For this trip, I wanted to shoot more portraits next to my street photography,” he said. Though he didn’t speak Spanish, he learned how to ask “Could I take your photo” and that alone provided him with enough to take stunning shots of Cubans. “The Cuban people are so kind and generous, nobody really told me I couldn’t.”
Instead of taking portrait shots closely cropped to the individual, Hoekstra wanted to highlight the streets and architecture of the city. His eye as a cinematographer proved helpful. “I just love showing the streets through my photographs with my own framing,” he said. Details like the cobblestone streets, vintage cars and colorful buildings add to the highlighted cultural beauty of cities like Havana. “You don’t always have to get that close to someone.”
Survivor is a decade-long documentary photography project following the story of Mohammed, a young cluster bomb survivor. During the summer 2006 Israel-Hizbollah war in Lebanon he was riding as a passenger on his father’s motorbike when it struck a cluster bomb. Over the past 10 years I have documented how Mohammed, like so many other survivors around the world, lives with the horrifying repercussions of cluster munitions.
Mohammed was eleven years old when he lost both legs during the last week of the conflict. The fact that he lives a five-minute drive from my parents’ home made it easier to follow him through the years. I saw the young boy who had to endure physical and emotional trauma. I saw the teenager who loves to swim but needs help with everyday tasks. And I know the young, jobless man who spends hours surfing the Internet trying to meet a girl who might become his girlfriend. His daily reality continues to be shaped by the sudden loss of his legs, as it always will.
