Thursday, May 22, 2008

Justin Guariglia: Planet Shanghai


Justin Guariglia's latest book, Planet Shanghai, is his attempt to preserve the city's unique culture, traditions and its people. The ICP will be having a book signing event with Justin Guariglia on Friday, May 23 (6:00 pm - 7:30 pm) at its store on 1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street, NYC.

Here are some samples from Planet Shanghai

From the New Yorker magazine:

It’s amazing how much you can accomplish in Shanghai while wearing pajamas. In recent years, Shanghai newspapers have worried that this sartorial habit will give the city a slovenly image, but it seems that many natives see little divide between public and private space. Justin Guariglia, an American photographer who lived in Asia for nearly a decade, captures the city in its most informal moments. His book includes dozens of portraits of pajama’d Shanghainese: visiting the supermarket, riding motorcycles, walking dogs, playing mah-jongg, going to McDonald’s, smoking cigarettes. Guariglia works close to the ground; he shoots the undersides of bridges and the sheen of vegetables at the market, and includes no fewer than sixteen pages of footwear, a common Chinese obsession. His search for street style uncovers moments of unexpected beauty: a rainbow pile of scrap wire, a heart-shaped decoration on an anti-theft gate, a boarded-up door crisscrossed with lines as straight and true as a calligrapher’s best brushwork.

Ben Curtis: Bakhtiari Wedding

Photograph © Ben Curtis/AP-All Rights Reserved

Ben Curtis of SnapperTalk blog, brings us his work on a Bakhtiari Wedding while traveling in Iran. The audio was captured using a Zoom H2. Listening to the soundtrack, you'll hear the women's ululations, an ancient and traditional form of celebratory expressions in the Middle East and beyond.

The Bakhtiaris, who are Shi'a Muslims and speak a Persian dialect known as Luri, are one of two main nomadic groups in Iran, along with the ethnic Turkic Qashqai group. Iran has one of the largest nomadic populations in the world, an estimated 1.5 million in a country of some 70 million, according to the government's agency for nomad affairs.

Ben Curtis is currently based in Cairo, Egypt where he is Middle East Photographer & Photo Editor for the Associated Press.

Here's Ben Curtis' Bakhtiari Wedding

National Geographic Assignment


As reported by PDN Online, the National Geographic Society launched a new photo assignments division to handle commercial representation for 27 photographers.

National Geographic Assignment will represent the following photographers: William Albert Allard, Stephen Alvarez, Ira Block, John Burcham, Jimmy Chin, Jodi Cobb, Pablo Corral Vega, Bruce Dale, David Doubilet, Annie Griffiths Belt, Justin Guariglia, Bill Hatcher, Beverly Joubert, Tim Laman, David Liittschwager, Michael Melford, Michael Nichols, Paul Nicklen, Michael O’Brien, Randy Olson, Jim Richardson, Joel Sartore, Brian Skerry, Steve Winter, Gordon Wiltsie, Alison Wright and Mike Yamashita.

The new division will be managed by Alice Keating, a 13-year veteran of Geographic's stock and syndication arm, the National Geographic Image Collection.

Via The Click