Tagged with Portraits

LOS THROWAWAYS

Images by Keith Dannemiller.

My portrait project, Los Throwaways, is another station on a continuing photographic journey over the past 25 years in Mexico. It is an encounter with a group of ‘pepenadores’, garbage separators, who spend their day picking over and recycling some four thousand metric tons of refuse out of the thirteen thousand generated each day by the megalopolis that is Mexico City. A sufferable job, but one that has nonetheless sustained generations of families. These men and women work at the Bordo Poniente (Western Edge), which will be closed permanently on December 31, 2011. The long-standing tradition of the pepenador in Mexican society is slowly disappearing, but more importantly, some 1500 laborers will be out of work. Fortunately, a good portion of the trash of modern society that they sort is, in one way or another, recyclable and even reusable; sadly, as is usually the case, they and their jobs are not. For me, this project presents the possibility to discover directly something of the lives of this rather recalcitrant, closed group. They operate on their own, with tenuous ties to city authorities and outsiders. But the fact that they represent an outmoded work model places them in an extremely vulnerable position. Asked what they plan to do when left without a job, most have no idea.

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(Yes. Bordo Poniente is closing. It is said to be the one of the 5 largest dumps in the world. The city government argues it is for the best, since the contamination it provokes in the area is extremely high: it releases almost 1.5 million tons of methane per year, according to the Clinton Foundation. The new plans promise new methods of recycling, greener areas, cleaner air, the possibility of rescuing the lake near by. So we shall see what we shall see. Though, meanwhile, as Keith points out, it is strange how ‘sustainable solutions’ rarely take the local human element into account.)

 

 

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TRAVELING CINEMA

Family Business, series by Amit Madheshiya

Says The Independent:

Some of those enamoured by the first grainy images of cinema had brought a projector in 1940s Bombay. As the first images whirred to life on a taut white cloth raised in clearings in villages, a novel cultural experience presented itself before audiences who sat agape, witnessing the magic. Gradually, old projectors found themselves carted off into dusty villages by maverick lawyers, doctors and producers who formed the first touring cinema companies. Till today, the same projectors- though modified and much Indianized – have been handed down like heirlooms across generations spanning more than six decades.

More here, at World Press Photo

(Gracias Anita Doron)

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DOUPLEGANGER MUGSHOTS

Least Wanted: A Century of American Mugshots is a book by designer Mark Michaelson; a collection of mugshots of petty thieves that he has amassed over the years.

Filmmaker Errol Morris wrote about the selection of pictures that you see above.

You can also read an article on this book at the Smithsonian Magazine, and see more images here.

(The New York Times called the pictures “a catalog of the human face and the things that can happen to it.”)

(One is one from the front and one is another from the side. From the back? Only the other knows.)

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THE LAST DAYS OF ERNEST J. BELLOCQ

Says American Suburb X:

In the early 1900s, Ernest J. Bellocq carried his 8 x 10-inch view camera across Basin Street to photograph the women of New Orleans’ notorious district of legalized prostitution, Storyville. His private photographic project remained unknown until after his death, but eventually found its way to international acclaim. Yet virtually no prostitute portraits printed by Bellocq himself have surfaced. He kept his Storyville project secret from everyone except a few of his closest friends, and it remained secret until his glass negative plates were discovered languishing in a junk shop years after his death.

In 1967, Master photographer Lee Friedlander acquired and began to make prints from Bellocq’s glass negative plates, and the Museum of Modern Art hung an exhibition of them in 1970. Bellocq then took his place as the photography world’s best-known photographer of prostitutes.

Find full article here.

(Interesting read.)

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FAMILIES GETTING TOGETHER ON XMAS


Images by Verner Soler.

“I try and visit my family once a year, and every time I brace myself for the shock of seeing them age in yearly increments. The ensuing typology includes over seventy relatives spanning three generations so far. Their faces are photographed straight on, from each side, and under the same exact lighting conditions, achieving an objective comparison of facial features.”

(Via Exposures blog.)

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FOLK YOU OUT, SET THE DEAL STRAIGHT

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Images by Clare Rojas

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OTHER OPTICS, SOMEWHERE FACES

Images by Tanyth Berkeley.

Says the fantastic AmericanSuburbX website:

Tanyth Berkeley likes the special ones.

She likes the pale ones, the large headed types, the big bodies and the long giraffe necks. She likes the Robert Crumb shapes and the vampire faces, the glowing white skin and the men-in-dresses with womanly laces. She likes the eyes set back in the skull or the shoulders holding up those big heads that are smashed in like a pretty pumpkin in certain places. Her specialty is the awkward, the rare flower, the big cheek boned and special feminine shells and large sizes and different races. And what about those “beautiful” humans. What about the “blessed” ones that run around naked with their skinny bodies in the fields and the forest, all pretty and young, perfect skin and perfect faces. The free ones that climb naked and glistening in trees to let the gold sun reflect from their perfect skin as they celebrate their perfect shapes.

F-k them.

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PHOTOFIT

Images by Giles Revell. More here.

Via but does it float, a grand blog.

(Gracias Pancho)

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…Y ÉSTA ES MI GENTE

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While things slowly get back to normal in Mexico City, photographer Nicola Okin has been active during the swine flu epidemic. Watch the complete gallery here.

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JOSE LUIS CUEVAS

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Two images, as teasers, of a new project by Mexican photographer José Luis Cuevas, whose work we have show quite a few times in the Toxi-blog. What can we say. We are fans. Look at those faces. And more on their way.

(José Luis was enrolled in the Tóxico Martin Parr Master-Class.)

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SOME PORTRAITS BY STEFAN RUIZ

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Señor Stefan Ruiz has a great new website which you can visit here. He is also coming down to Mexico City again in March to finish his Telenovela series: a project which Tóxico is helping to coordinate.

( You can read an interview I did with him here, en español.)

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FAMILY GAMES

“French photographer Diane Ducruet has come up with a  series of staged portraits that play with the ideas of family dynamics, identity, control, influence, postures of power, and more. The work becomes a kaleidoscope of subtext as members of the family slip in and out of expected roles: mother, father, sister, brother, daughter, son, husband and wife.” More here.

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CARLA VAN DE PUTTELAAR

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Retratos de Carla van de Puttelaar, fotógrafa holandesa conocida por sus desnudos femeninos. Más de su trabajo aquí.
(Click en la imagen para agrandarla.)

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ABOUT A STREET STUDIO, AND ABOUT SEEING: LIKE HUNTING, LIKE DREAMING

Images by Michael Itkoff

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(“At first it would seem that nothing could be easier than seeing. We just point our eyes to where we want them to go, and gather in whatever there is to see. The truth is more difficult: seeing is irrational, inconsistent and undependable. Seeing is like hunting and like dreaming, it is entangled in the passions and soaked up in affect. Ultimately, seeing alters the thing that is seen and transforms the seer. Seeing is metamorphosis, not mechanism. Seeing bodies of any sort has an intense fascination all of their own. In daily life, as each new scene presents itself, we tend to look first at bodies and only afterward let our eyes take in whatever else there is. It may be that the unthinking search for bodies is the most fundamental operation of vision and that, even when there are no bodies present we tend to think in bodily forms.”

James Elkins, The Object Stares Back)

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SEXY PEOPLE

“A Celebration of The Perfect Portrait”

Más aquí.

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