Issue No. 94

1. History of the B&W Contests

   Since we introduced our first special issue back in 2005, the Single Image and Portfolio contests have had a huge impact upon the international photographic community, launching many newcomers on fine art careers and helping established artists become even more successful. We take a look back at the contests as we prepare to make them bigger and better than ever.

2. Jed Fielding: a Question of Vision

   The ability to see is something we usually take for granted, so how do we define vision? Jed Fielding set out to explore that question in an ambitious and provocative series of photographs of children at several schools for the blind in Mexico City.

3. Interview: Daido Moriyama

   Iconoclastic, obsessive, innovative, edgy. Daido Moriyama, arguably Japan’s leading photographer, is all of these things and more. Since the early 1960s Moriyama has explored the darker corners of his native country, with a particular emphasis on Tokyo’s vibrant and notorious Shinjuku area. His work evokes the spiritual anarchy of Japan from its postwar era to the present.

4. Dominic Rouse: the Art of Telling Truthful Lies

   An expatatriate Englishman living in Thailand, Dominic Rouse creates phantasmagorical images that reflect what must be a very interesting subconscious. His elaborate constructions of imaginary worlds are shot through with dark humor, bizarre juxtapositions and “truthful lies.”

5. Mary Ellen Mark Goes to the Prom

   Decades after her own prom in 1958, Mary Ellen Mark set out to see how today’s teens celebrate that quintessentially American rite of passage. Her witty and perceptive photographs suggest that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

6. Umbo’s Startling Vision

   Otto Umbehr created for himself one of photography’s most intriguiging and unforget- table nicknames. He also crafted an impeccable and experimental body of work from the late 1920s to early 1930s that deserves to be much more widely seen and appreciated.

7. Mike Dvorak: Amish Portrait

   The Amish are famous for their self-reliance and tenacious pursuit of a traditional lifestyle that eschews the trappings of modern technology and culture. Photographing such an insular community isn’t easy, but Mike Dvorak has managed to create an unusually intimate look at everyday Amish life.

Spotlights

Michelle Rogers Pritzl
Jurgen Grade
Keith Broadhurst
Richard Allen Ashmore
James Helmer
Igor Svibilsky