While I don't necessarily understand some of the editing choices he has made, the portfolios of California based photographer Victor Cobo contain some compelling images full of narrative delight and mystery.

John Chiara by using archaic techniques and hand built cameras has become of photography's most innovative landscape photographers. Working with giant truck-sized cameras that he actually crawls inside of while creating an image he produces one of a kind prints that manage to evoke not only the grand tradition of making landscape pictures but also of the essence of photography itself.
If you happen to be in New York, there are only a few days left to visit his exhibition at The Von Lintel Gallery. Go See the works in person as they demand to be seen.

This short video (real player format) of Chiara shows something of his technique.

John Davies is on the short list of four finalists for this year's Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2008. His large scale prints are best seen in person as they contain an incredible amount of detail. They're currently in a show of prize finalists in London. Of course any British readers of this blog have probably already seen the exhibition.

The Photographers’ Gallery
5 & 8 Great Newport Street
London WC2H 7HY

The artist David Horvitz maintains a web page titled "THINGS FOR SALE THAT I WILL MAIL YOU". On it he offers exchange of money for his time.

For example,

If you give me $400 I will take a train to a desolate area with a packed lunch and sit down and read Anna Karenina. I will do this for 6-10 hours. I will repeat the same thing the following days until I have finally read the entire book. Finally! I am only going to do this once, so this is an edition of one only. I will send you documentation of this from the closest mailbox to where I do this. I'll also write the location of the mailbox on the envelope if you ever wish to go to where I will have sent it to you from.

and

This one is really serious. I'm scared to do this. But I think I have to. If you give me $10 I will think really hard of someone who I need to apologize to. I will write them a letter of apology. I will make two copies of the letter. I will send one to you and one to the person who I am apologizing to.

(via jen bekman who spends most days sitting at a desk a few feet away from me in the 20x200 office and still manages to send several IMs and many emails a day)

Leonie Purchas' In The Family project is full of the type of photography that gets me out of bed in the morning- intimate, revealing, and true with the occassional punch in the solar plexus to leave you totally gobsmacked.

In my next life I will be a Japanese game show host.
I will hand out cream pies to ladies in bikinis.
I will supervise games of human tetris.
I will watch grown men in diapers yodel the Beatles.
My hair will be streaked purple
My suits will be boxy
My manner: always enthusiastic.

I will smoke
and drink santori whiskey
and be the lovable liar
A fixture at dinner parties
and late night karaoke booths
My bed will never be cold.
Everyone wants to know a famous tv personality.

When the camera's red light is on
I am on
My hangovers hidden
My hollowness masked with an enthusiastic “Genki des!”
but in my quiet moments
Amidst the human cannonballs and noodle eating contests
I will dream of another life
Maybe one with two boys
A wife who loves me despite my flaws,
And the knowledge that
The best parts of life while hidden,
are sometimes glimpsed
In the glimmer of what might have been

Related: TV in Japan

One of the games I play with my 3 year old is to present him with images of family members when they were younger to see if he recognizes them. He recognizes his mother back into her childhood, his grandfather he sees only with a beard, and me he has no problem identifying after about the age of 16. Today I presented him with this image, a picture I found of myself circa 1992, taken while out backpacking.

I had a pretty full beard, was very skinny and to my eyes look barely unrecognizable, but my son was almost annoyed when I asked who was in the picture. "It's you daddy. You have a big beard, blue shirt, and a hat with a P. You are outside."

"Are you sure it's me" I asked.

"Yeah. Daddy it's you." Then he studied the picture a bit more, "But where am I?" he asked.

Almost 2 years ago I linked to an audio clip of Werner Herzog ruminating on the jungle. I went looking for my post today and found a longer video clip on youtube instead.

Note whenever I'm bored with myself I mentally switch my inner dialog over to Herzog voice and suddenly I bore myself a bit less. I recommend this.

I love this sign (now go out there and vote Obama):

One of my favorite blogs, Square America, has posted an online show titled African-American Portraits & Snapshots, a collection of 160 photographs taken between 1900 to 1975 (several home movies are also included). It's a rich and varied collection that I hope gets put into book form some day. Note the site takes a few seconds to load and the site curator Nicholas Osborn mentioned he's still tweaking the layout, so things might change in a day or two.

The truth is you never know what people are thinking.

I was eating lunch alone in a Vietnamese restaurant in Chinatown today—the order was a limeade and Bo La Lot over rice— when the waitress, perhaps seeing me staring out the window, asked what I was thinking about. How could I explain I was thinking of the bug trucks which would roll slowly through the backroads of my Texas hometown? They would appear at sunset spraying a fine mist of mosquito repellent in the air. I wasn't thinking of the trucks themselves, but rather of the kerosene smell and how we would ride up along side the trucks on our banana bikes holding onto ladders on the tanks with one hand so we wouldn't have to pedal. We would look back through the spray at the sunset which, because of oil, would flare into countless oily rainbows. We would call to each other. "Marco"
"Polo"
"Marco"
"Ten four"
"Keep on truckin' dude."
Jay would flick matches back at the spray hoping to ignite a fireball. Having convinced ourselves that one day he would succeed creating an Evel Knievel Snake River Canyon style propulsion, we held the ladders with only our fingers ready to peel off at any moment. He could light and flick matches with one hand. It was an impressive skill which we chalked up to the fact that he was both double jointed and six months older than the rest of us. We would ride the trucks until twilight or until we were kicked off or until someone started coughing too much. Sometimes even a few days later you would still have the smell in your nose. It was hard to wash off.

Jay died in a car accident right out of college. He fell asleep at the wheel on one those long straight country highways and drifted off the road. And today sitting at lunch down on Baxter Street I was thinking about how I wished that just once he had managed to set the spray off and propelled that bug truck down the street like we had imagined because it would have been something to remember. But this was all too complicated to explain to the waitress so I just said I was thinking about the limeade and how delicious it was on a rainy winter day even though limeade is a summer drink that evokes Texas and August sunsets.

Photo by Tony Cenicola
Great story in today's Times on Robert Capa's lost negatives.

A list torn from a yellow notepad (scan to follow):

Resolutions 2008

1. Be smart.
2. Be strong.
3. Be aggressive!
4. End it with M.
5. Get through #4. No guilt.
6. Tell B how I feel.
7. Make B understand.
8. Don't make mistakes with B.
9. Love like a Tiger.
10. Live the life.
11. BE with B.
12. Forget THE PAST.
13. Get healthy in the brain.
14. Be happy.
15. Don't think about things too much.

Unlike many photographers who visit to Pyongyang, North Korea only return with images of the Potemkin Village spectacles put on for tourists, Charlie Crane manages to capture the some of the stark emptiness and weirdness of the place. Crane's recent Welcome to Pyongyang is one of the best of the recent spate of North Korea books and has been widely hailed as one of the best photo books of 2007.

We have a Charlie Crane print available on 20x200 this week!