Latitude 47 is a new annual photography magazine published by Seattle’s Photographic Center Northwest. Conceived and directed by Minor Matters Books founder and PCNW Executive Director Michelle Dunn Marsh, and renowned photographer and PCNW Programs Chair Eirik Johnson, Latitude 47 aims to bring the refined work and tight community of Northwest photographers to the rest of the world. While online content marketing (i.e. your favorite photo blogs) has done a great job of democratizing work of many artists, this traditional method of getting work in front of influencers promises to give Northwest photographers a larger footprint on the map. We spoke with Eirik Johnson about the project and ideas behind its first issue, which includes work from Seattle photographers and photo-based artists Canh Nguyen, Susan Robb, Glenn Rudolph, and Serrah Russell.
© The Collection of Robert E. Jackson
Lurking in Robert E. Jackson's collection of more than eleven thousand American snapshots are some of the most peculiar photographs of ordinary people posing for the camera in their Halloween "best." Culled from anonymous family photographs found in auctions and other carefully selected archives, Jackson's eye for the curious and absurd remains unrivaled. "I am interested in the dark side of snapshots, " says Jackson, " and what they tell us about our deepest fears and motivations. There is a voyeuristic side to collecting which searching for Halloween photos brings out. It is the hidden which attracts."
So behold 13 of Jackson's unsettling Halloween gems. See more on his Instagram feed, or learn more about his practice in an interview we conducted earlier this year.
Keith, 2015 ©Kris Graves Ferratti, 2015 © Kris Graves
Kris Graves’ latest series, The Testament Project uses portraiture, video interviews and anonymously submitted written testimonials to explore the varied experience of contemporary Black masculinity in America. Graves examines various media driven stereotypes in an effort to uncover their deep roots of institutionalized racism. For Graves, and many of the men he’s photographed and interviewed, these ideas transcend class and geography, and are a constant reminder that despite significant progress, our nation has much to overcome.
Despite what some people might SAY they're tired of, breaking ones laurels to click away at every proclaimed top-anything lists of Instagram photographers to follow is as American as a Big Mac. If we were writing for SEO points, we might cull this into a shoddy scroll of tips (like "think outside the box..." LOL) to get more traction, but that's not really what Humble Arts Foundation is all about. Or is it? At the end of the day, our goal REALLY IS to get more eyes on photographers who deserve it, so we've continued to invite them to participate in week-long Humble Arts Foundation Instagram residencies to share their chops. Like Ben Alper who spent his residency showcasing his collection of strange vernacular imagery purchased from Ebay, or Erin O'Keefe who used her week to share some of her surprisingly un-retouched studio views. So behold: highlights from the past 13 weeks of Instagram takeovers from some of our favorite photographers today. We encourage you to take your click one step further by following them now.
Image Courtesy of Shutterstock
NASA recently released new high-resolution photographs of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, unveiling images its spacecraft New Horizons had uncovered at the solar system's far out regions. As we get closer to understanding worlds beyond, outer space continues to be an abstract mystery, ripe with metaphor and science fiction...and naturally, photographic interpretation. With this move into new frontiers, for Humble Arts Foundation's next online exhibition, we want to see your vision of outer space. Abstraction, appropriation, strange narratives, and if you somehow broke through the atmosphere and "documented" your travels, we'd love to see those too.
Deadline: November 15th, 2015