Blog of Public Life

It took us some weeks and the decisions did not come easy sometimes, but we have now come to a result. The following photographers were nominated by a majority to join Public Life: Ying Tang from Shanghai (China), Marja Skotheim Folde from Granada (Spain) and Orville Robertson from New York (USA). Also the photographer Robert M. Johnson from Worcester, Massachusetts (USA) was directly nominated after the relaunch of the Public Life website.

Ying Tang, born and grown up in Shanghai (China), studied at the New York Institute of Photography and at the School of Photography at the City College of San Francisco. His works were published in the San Francisco Chronicle, the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune.
Website of Ying: www.yingphotography.com

Marja Skotheim Folde currently lives in Granada (Spain). She studied photography and graphic print in Barcelona and currently studies architecture and urbanism at the University of Granada. Recently she gave an exhibition of her work Ciudad-Presente (The city told in split seconds).
Photographs of Marja: Flickr album

Orville Robertson, born in Jamaica, today living in Queens, New York, has been a street photographer for over 25 years. His photographs were shown in numerous exhibitions, and are featured in many big museums as well as private and collaborative collections. He is editor of the photography magazine Fotophile, founded in 1993, and was awarded a photography scholarship by the New York Foundation for the Arts in 2002.
Website of Orville: www.newyorkstreetphotography.com

Robert M. Johnson was born in Youngstown, Ohio (USA), and later went to Worcester, Massachusetts (USA), where he still lives today. One could say that Johnson is a street photographer of the old school. His photographs were shown and published in numerous exhibitions and magazines.
Website of Robert: www.fullframeimages.com

At this point we would also like to thank all non-nominated applicants, who made the effort to submit their work to us.

Photographs (from left to right) by Felipe Taborda, Thomas Hoepker and Evelyn Richter
Until 6th of July shows the Munich City Museum, the exhibition "Augenblicke" (Moments), photographs by Dimitri Soulas. Soulas was born in 1938 in Thessaloniki and started in the 60s as journalist for several agencies and newspapers.

As a complement shows the museum the exhibition "Street Life", with photographs from 1930 to 1975. Shown amongst others photographs from Jerry Cooke, Robert Lebeck, Stefan Moses, Thomas Hoepker.

Exhibition "augenblicke" by Dimitri Soulas (German)
Exhibition Streetlife (German)

Peter Feldhaus is the author of the popular blog "The Sonic Blog". Focal point is art photography and photography itself. Feldhaus presents a special about street photography from May 26th until 1st of June 2008. He talks about various communities and also interviews german street photographer and their views of the street photography. Featured photographers are: Dagmar Schwelle, Kay von Aspern, Bruno Trematore, Stefan Rohner, Henrik Rieß, Robert Engelhardt, Elisabeth Schuh, Rudi Meisel, Christian Reister and Andreas Herzau. In any case, have a look!

Street photography today
Street photography communities
Interview with Street photographers from the German space - Part one
Part two of Interview with Street photographers from the German space

Photograph by Letizia Battaglia
From the May 17th until the 22nd of June 2008, the Willy-Brandt-Haus shows an exhibition with 78 photographs by Letizia Battaglia, who has been fighting against the Italian Mafia for decades, not only through her photography. Her pictures tell of sorrow and document crimes against humanity. For her work Letiza Battaglia has received numerous international awards.

More informations:
Willy Brandt Haus

The Magnum photographer and former president of Magnum Cornell Capa (Cornell Friedmann), the brother of Endre Ernő Friedmann (Robert Capa), died in the early morning of May 23rd at age 90 in his home in New York. Cornell was born in 1918, founded the International Center of Photography in New York and joined Magnum Photos in 1954. Cornell died peacefully after battling with Parkinson for several years.

Cornell Capa at Magnum
Article at New York Times
Article at PDN Online

Exhibiton with Siegfried Hansen
Elbart

Photographs by Alec Soth
The C/O Berlin presents from the May 16th until the 13th of July 2008 the work "Paris/Minnesota" of the photographer Alec Soth.

C/O Berlin website
Article about the exhibition on Spiegle Online (German)

Photograph by Activestills
Activestills are photographers and peace activists and they bring the conflict between Israel and Palestina out on the streets. Activestills consists of three mid-twenties. "What we do is photo activism", say Keren, member of Activestills. "That means, we are professional photographers and nevertheless we have a clear political position. We are against the wall between us and the palestinians and we use the photography to change the awareness of the population."

Activestills website
Article of the TAZ (German)
Activestills on Flickr

Metropolitan Police campaign
The Western world finds itself in a constantly alerting sensitisation towards terrorism. Since September 11th 2001 the governments of the threatened countries endeavour to protect themselves from the acute threat of radical Islamist by means of legislation and preventive alertness of this topic. It is certainly debatable, whether those means of alertness and sensitisation do not rather run the risk of turning into panic mongering, creating a situation of general suspicion.

At the moment it seems extensively to take this direction. The London Metropolitan Police launched a poster campaign, which points out that, in order to plan their actions, terrorists take pictures and notes on security. Where this points to, quickly becomes clear, and thus straightaway a storm of indignation broke out amongst amateur, professional and famous street photographers. Without further ado, this poster campaign seems to cast general suspicion on photographing in public, and with it, on the photographer, who - for better or for worse - might just as well be a scout for terrorist attacks. Meanwhile in London clashes occur between photographers and police, who prohibit taking pictures in certain places with reference to explicit laws, and demand that photos which were made, to be erased under supervision. This procedure however is practised to a much greater extend. Many photographers regard this as a curtailment of their freedom to take pictures in public, and thus an online petition against this procedure was initiated.

For more articles and information:
Online petitions
Times Online
Current Video - You can't picture this
BBC
Amateur photographer
Urban75
Wired blog

Scenes of the film from Michael Engler
The film of Michael Engler from the year 1982 showing the different methods of operation of photgraphers Harry Callahan, Mark Cohen, Robert Frank, Ralph Gibson, Duane Michals, Joel Meyerowitz, Stephen Shore, Garry Winogrand and other. The Film arrived the title: Particularly valuable.

Here you can buy the film on DVD for 19,90 EUR

Interesting and controversial exhibition in Paris of color photographs of life under the German occupation. Read the full report about the exhibition on Spiegel Online

Buy at Paris Bibliotheques: Les Parisiens sous l'Occupation - Occupied Paris Shown Full Color

Photograph by Martin Parr
Interview with Martin Parr on Spiegel Online (German)

Exhibition from Siegfried Hansen
1-30 .April in Hamburg

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4. triennale der photographie

from over 7000 streetphotos mr Stuart Franklin (magnum) choose 30 winnerpics for an exhibition in Arles (at july to 16.september 2007). So he choose two of mine :-)

1st pic
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2 nd pic

A portfolio of public-life member Juan Buhler was published in Black & White Photography Magazine (issue #68, January 2007). Congratulations, Juan!

Go check out this magazine, people! You can read some more about it in a blog post on The Online Photographer.

Simon is a Danish photographer, on his website you can find an interesting mix of street photography, documentary and conceptual work. I found his series "Faces of York" very good, and was also impressed by his diary-style reports of his travels from Copenhagen to Istanbul (by bike!) and from Copenhagen to the Mediterranian Sea with only 14 Euros in his pockets.

Check out his website!

Gomma is a non-profit print magazine devoted to photography. The current issue (#2) appears to be already sold out but the first issue can be bought online for 2 euros (+ shipping) - a bargain.

Public-life.org was featured in the news section of Gomma Portal on their website:

"..if you are a street photographer you gotta check Public Life..."

Check out the Gomma website!

Reknowned photographer Louis Stettner depicts the ever evolving city of New York in a fascinating collection of pictures ranging from the 1950s through the 1990s to the present. 100 duotone photographs.

Buy at Amazon: Louis Stettner's New York

Matt Weber first started taking photographs while working as a NYC taxi driver. He soon discovered that the idea of seeing something and recording it was really what he'd been doing all along, mentally framing shots as he drove around town on twelve hour shifts. Gradually his confidence began to build, and he began to see himself as a photographer with a taxi, rather than a cabbie with a camera.

Although Weber's book can be viewed as a revival of classic street photography, as Lifson points out in his introduction, "he works at being nobody but himself." Images go from despairing to hopeful, alarming to mundane, but are never contrived, moments which appeared on their own, rather than being orchestrated to achieve their effect. "His strongest pictures have no minor subjects or incidental matter and thus achieve a seamless coherence of subject and context."

not exactly a steal at $60, but Matt did put lots of sweat and effort in it to get the book published in great quality...

Buy at abebooks.com: Urban Prisoner

Anything can happen on the streets of New York City. For instance, a former art director for Saks Fifth Avenue could decide to become a taxi driver, and then start photographing all the other crazy things and moments of city life going on around him. David Bradford is one of the few American-born, English-speaking cabbies left in Manhattan, and the only one he knows of that shoots photos while he drives. Using high-speed black and white film and an automatic camera, Bradford has been shooting the New York streets since 1990. The more than 600 photos here reveal an edgy, unguarded New York, catching street vendors, other drivers, billboards, the soaring architecture of skyscrapers and bridges, nighttime revelers, graffiti, and abstract patterns of lights and rhythmic structures, along with such whimsical images as a line of young women by a truck, each toting a bare-bottomed male mannequin. Several essays describe Bradford and his methods, in English, German, and French.

Buy at Amazon: Drive by Shootings

from amazon.com:
This landmark book, a monumental chronicle of the photographic genre created from the chaotic energy of everyday street life, grew out of a fifteen-year collaboration between an esteemed curator and a distinguished photographer. The work of such celebrated masters as Atget, Stieglitz, Cartier-Bresson, Brassaï, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, and Garry Winogrand are presented here, along with extraordinary photographs by complete unknowns. Colin Westerbeck's enlightening text illuminates each of these images, and a new illustrated afterword by Westerbeck, only available in this paperback edition, examines contemporary street photography.

Buy at Amazon: Bystander : A History of Street Photography

For everyone interested in documentary photography, this is a fascinating book. Not only does it conatin images by 61 members of the legendary Magnum photo agency, these photographers also discuss their work, careers and beliefs.

Buy at Amazon: Magnum Stories

In the winter of 1998/99 photographer Luc Delahaye traveled through Russia. This book contains the pictures he took on his journey: dark, depressing. Beautiful at the same time. A small (13 x 18 cm) yet remarkable book.

Buy at Amazon: Winterreise

Another of those Taschen bargains... :-) For €19.99, you get a beautiful, large "coffee-table" book, full of fascinating B&W pictures, very nice print quality. And not only are the photos a pleasure to look at, the text is also fun and worth reading.

Buy at Amazon: Jeanloup Sieff. 40 Years of Photography

Willy Ronis is a key figure in the history of French photography. He is regarded as one of the most important representatives of the humanist school of photography. This new book offers an overwiev of his work, a bit of everything: street photos, reportage, portraits and nudes. 192 pages of wonderful B&W photos. Print quality is excellent, especially considering the cheap price - for €19.99, this book is a bargain.

Buy at Amazon: Willy Ronis