JONATHAN SMITH: Untold Stories

Photograph (c) Jonathan Smith /All Rights Reserved

Photograph (c) Jonathan Smith /All Rights Reserved

La Lettre de la Photographie 1.18.11
Photographer Sylvia Plachy with Jonathan Smith
Hearst 2011 8x10 Photography Biennial Opening Night

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"Jonathan Smith's use of lighting and décor emotionally augment his true subjects - the colors of night air and the abandonment that floats in it."

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Eight winners and ten honorable mentions were selected for the 2011 Hearst 8x10 Photography Biennial from over 4,600 entries from across the U.S. and 70 other countries. Jonathan Smith was spotlighted as one of the eight emerging photographers, in an exhibition currently at the Hearst Towers Alexey Brodovitch Gallery, for his series Untold Stories.

Jonathan Smith studied in the United Kingdom at the Kent Institute of Design (KIAD) and the International Center for Photography in New York. Smith worked in the studio of the renowned New York photographer, Joel Meyerowitz from 2000 until 2009. He had his first solo show Untold Stories at Rick Wester Fine Art in September 2010. His work has appeared in Metropolis and View magazines, PDN, Art and Architecture and The Royal Photographic Society Magazine.

Jonathan Smith Photography

BRANDON SCHULMAN: A Portrait of America Left Behind

La Lettre de la Photographie
Hearst 2011 8x10 Photography Biennial

Sugar Cane Processing Plant, Atchafalaya Delta, LA
Photograph (c) Brandon Schulman /All Rights Reserved

Windmill, Carson City, NV
Photograph (c) Brandon Schulman /All Rights Reserved

Eight winners and ten honorable mentions were selected for the 2011 Hearst 8x10 Photography Biennial from over 4,600 entries from across the U.S. and 70 other countries. Brandon Shulman was awarded an Honorable Mention for his series A Portrait of America Left Behind.

"A Portrait of America Left Behind is a photographic study that I have been conducting over the past two years. The photographs represent the presence that humanity plays on the land even when they are not in view. The objects and buildings that we create for our needs, and our discarding when they are not. Zig-zagging my way thru 13 states, 15,000 miles over 3 trips, 2 months and 100’s of hours in my darkroom it has yet come to an end."

Brandon Schulman Website

La Lettre de la Photographie
Hearst 2011 8x10 Photography Biennial: Part I
Hearst 2011 8x10 Photography Biennial: Part II

CHRIS VERENE: Family

My Twin Cousin's Husband's Brother's Cousin's Cousins
Photograph (c) Chris Verene /All Rights Reserved

The Same Day They Signed The Divorce Papers, A Tornado Hit The House

Photograph (c) Chris Verene /All Rights Reserved

Cheyenne and Dalton
Photograph (c) Chris Verene /All Rights Reserved

CHRIS VERENE follows the lives of his family and friends. “Verene walks right into the lives of his folks, showing you how they are, without any embarrassment on either side. Their togetherness is taken for granted so openly that the viewer feels at each moment like one of them, a member of the clan. Verene’s color [is] tender, warm and sensual, though stops well short of being glamorous . . . flooding them all with a strange, sweet romance. These pictures convey his bittersweet fondness for a smaller world in which he grew up but no longer shares, but which has lessons to teach him about the inroads of aging, disability and other difficulties. People do what they can to help each other and themselves, all from ‘leaking boats.’ Meanwhile, the dark room and the night bring tidings of their isolation. Many viewers are familiar with visits back home in this mood, which Verene renders luminous and fatal.”–Max Kozloff, The Theater of the Face: Portrait Photography Since 1900

Verene first received recognition in 2000 appearing in The Whitney Biennial and the publication of CHRIS VERENE by Twin Palms Publications with concurrent exhibits at The Pat Hearn Gallery, Colin DeLand American Fine Arts Co., and The Paul Morris Gallery. Verene’s work is in the collection of The Whitney Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Jewish Museum,, The Walker Art Center, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, among others. In 2001, Verene was the recipient of the first Pollock/Krasner award given for photography. His work has been featured in ARTFORUM, Art In America, ArtNews, The New York Times, The Village Voice, Vanity Fair, Harper’s, Vogue, and The New Yorker, among others.

Monograph FAMILY / Twin Palms Publishers / Spring 2010

MARK JENKINSON: On Death Row

Lethal Injection Chamber, (Executioner's view), Huntsville, TX
Photograph (c) Mark Jenkinson /All Rights Reserved

Colonel Donald Hocutt, (ret.) Executioner, Parchman State Penitentiary, Mississippi Photograph (c) Mark Jenkinson /All Rights Reserved

Gas Chamber, Carson City, NV
Photograph (c) Mark Jenkinson /All Rights Reserved

Lethal Injection Chamber, Angola, LA
Photograph (c) Mark Jenkinson /All Rights Reserved

Shareef Cousin, on his first day on Death Row, Angola, LA
Photograph (c) Mark Jenkinson /All Rights Reserved

I photographed Shareef on his first day on Death Row. He was seventeen years old. It later came to light that witnesses who were able to exonerate Shareef were not allowed to testify at his first trial. Eventually he was granted a new trial and the D. A. declined to retry him. After three years on Death Row, the murder charges against Shareef were dismissed.

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Mark Jenkinson's editorial, corporate and advertising photography, an estimated 30,000 plus photographs, have been published in virtually every major magazine in the world. He's won numerous awards including the Meade, AR 100, and Society of Publication Design awards. His photographs have been exhibited at the International Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House, San Francisco Art Institute, Light Gallery, Daniel Wolf Gallery, O.K. Harris Gallery, Parsons School of Design, Rhode Island School of Design, Cooper Union and others. He teaches in the Photography and Imaging Department at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.

Jenkinson spent over ten years photographing on America's Death Row. "This project began as an outgrowth of my "Hidden Interiors" project, starting with photographs of execution sites. Eventually I became consumed with the subject of capital punishment and began a long term personal project photographing convicted murders, families of victims, executioners, and prosecutors. Most of this project has been financed by my commercial work, but a few magazines (Esquire, German Playboy, Newsweek and Time) have commissioned major features of the subject. I started the project as a death penalty abolitionist, but have come to understand that the issues are not the abstract arguments I started with. The issues became far more complex and personal once you spend time with a parent whose child had been brutally murdered, an inmate who's facing a fast approaching date with death, or a Warden who has been charged with executing a man he believes to be innocent. Nothing is so simple except that is final."

MARK JENKINSON WEBSITE
Mark Jenkinson's Blog Photography Essentials