A few longtime readers might remember that I started our #1 son with his rolling R lessons very early. Now it's time to begin with #2:

It's not in hand yet, but I'm excited to have the new book Phantom Shanghai on order. The book is a record of Shanghai's vanishing historic architecture by Canadian photographer Greg Girard who has lived in the city for almost a decade. Magenta Magazine has a nice piece on the project which is available as a pdf download. From what I've seen so far, the images are imbued with a palpable melancholic beauty. Can't wait to see the rest of the book

"Why? Who cares? Who doesn't care? Dada is dead. Or is Dada still alive? We cannot revive something alive just as we cannot revive anything that is dead.
Is Dada dead?
Is Dada alive?
Dada is.
Dadaism.

Man Ray
July 8 1958"

The original handwritten note and an extensive archive of Man Ray images can be found at the Man Ray Trust.

Mal Hombre
Amanacer Ranchero
Te Quiero Asi
Pero Hay Que Triste

Related: Boing Boing just posted a nice roundup of romanticos

I was going to blog these all separately but it would take forever, so here are a few more portfolios I saw at Review Santa Fe that caught my eye:

I've mentioned Birthe Piontek on this blog before. Meeting her in person and discovering her to be modest, sensitive and funny made me like the work all the more.

Paula McCartney showed a portfolio of fake birds in nature. Not sure if that description sounds appealing, but I assure you the prints had a touch of magic to them. She also handcrafts jewel-like artist's books.

I noted the work of Ferit Kuyas before heading out to Santa Fe and his work did not disappoint. While his website is still down it's worth checking back in to look for his project on Chongqing. One of the things that came out of the review was a name change for the project. The working title was Double Happiness which was a deeply personal choice (his wife is from Chongqing), but during the course of one of the reviews he realized a more apt title would be City of Ambition riffing on Stieglitz... I like the new title and love the images from the project.

Daniel Traub was also showing work from China. His project called The City's Edge an especially relevant in a time where Chinese cities are growing at an almost unfathomable pace. Daniel lives in Shanghai and was just selected to be in Jen Bekman's spring Hot Shots show (full disclosure I was on this Hot Shot's Reviewer Panel)

Rachel Herman was another photographer with really beautiful prints. The web doesn't do them justice.

Sarah Wilson is a photographer for Texas Monthly which is known for it's deeply researched stories and sharp photography. Her photographic essay on the murder of James Byrd in Jasper Texas reveals the ripples and scars left by the events of that night nine years ago.

Finally I hope you visit the work of Kay Lynn Deveney who presented a project called The Day to Day Life of Albert Hastings, a Welshman she she met while in graduate school. For each of her photographs she had Mr. Hastings write a caption and the images were presented together with his text. A book of their collaboration will be available soon from Princeton Architectural Press.

1. Map of a house in Houston on Langdon Lane. Includes three trees in the front yard and neighbor Jimmy's garage and backyard. Ends at the fence in the back. circa 1970.

2. Map of all the playgrounds in 75901. circa 1975

3. Map of a time capsule buried at 1430 Sleepy Hollow in Lufkin Texas. Problem with this map is calibrating 10 year old footsteps with adult footsteps. circa 1977

4. Map of the Whisper Islands, an imaginary set of islands that happen to float on the clouds off the coast of India. Islanders communicate between islands with balloons, kites, and model rockets. circa 1980.

5. Map of every road out of Burnet, Texas in a radius of 20 miles. Includes the road to Oatmeal, Texas. circa 1984.

6. Map of Macondo. circa 1986.

7. Map of the way to my brother's grave. circa 1990.

8. Map of all 5 ice cream shops in Shanghai. circa 1993.

9. Map of taco stands from Santa Monica to Glendale. circa 1998.

8. Map of all the major (and some minor) bus routes in Kham. circa 2001.

10. Map of "no-turn" routes (between our old house and a variety of destinations) in LA for my new wife who, while exceptional at most things, is directionally challenged. circa 2003.

11. Map of all the parks with playgrounds in 11201. present day

One of the nice things about a portfolio review is that you get to look at a broad range of work outside of your own specific interests. I rarely seek out industrial or architectural photography, but at the review I got a chance to look at several excellent portfolios in this genre including the work of New York based Israeli photographer Shuli Hallak. She makes big powerful prints of the world's largest cargo ships and factories and so on... Ms. Hallak was also a pick in PDN's 30 emerging photographers for 2007. The portfolio worth checking out even if this isn't normally your kind of thing.

He wakes up, takes a walk with dad, sees 2 rabbits, 1 beaver, 2 deer, 4 ducks, and several fish...asks if we are in a zoo.

He marvels at the lack of cars on the roads. Creates a song called, "'No car street. No car day."

He stands and ponders the expanse of grass. For the New York City kid a few hundred feet of unpeopled grass is unheard of. City two year olds are constantly being told not to run, not to go too far, not to touch, to look both ways, et-cetera. Two year olds are of course programmed to run, so an endless swath of grass looks like pure freedom. He pauses as the exhilaration builds, laughs and takes off at high speed for the top of the hill. Unlike older kids, the two year old does not modulate his speed. He runs as fast as he can as far as he can. Reaching the top of the hill and seeing nothing but more grass on the other side he runs down. Soon he falls and rolls but falling on grass doesn't hurt. This is novel. In the city when you fall it stings. Not so here. Giggling uncontrollably he rolls around some more, springs up and runs up another hill.

He sees a sky full of stars for the first time in his life and gets very quiet. After a while he asks, "Daddy, stars take home?"

"I am often accused of being a portrait photographer. A bit like accusing your reflection of being mirror. My people may be staring at the camera but they are not portraits. They are not staring at you, I am."

read the entire post on Olivier Laude's new blog...

I'm back in New York and have nothing but good things to say about Review Santa Fe...

For the next few days I'll highlight work from photographers I met at the review...

First up, Karolina Karlic whose portfolio of images from Detroit was notable not only for the loving handling of her subject matter but also for her luscious prints. Karolina now lives in Minneapolis home to a strong community of smart young photographers.

In a couple of hours I'm headed out to attend Review Santa Fe, so over the weekend posting will be sparse...

I've been so busy I haven't had much time to think about Santa Fe, but I'm sure things will click once I'm out there as I have a super list of people to meet. The reviewer lottery was most kind.

Here are just a few Santa Fe participants whose portfolios popped for me: Jeongmee Yoon, William Lamson, Caitlin Atkinson, Whitney Hubbs, Garie Waltzer, Derek Dudek, and Ferit Kuyas (whose website appears to be down right now)... of course there are many others.

This week's New Yorker Banksy article is online.

The other day I mentioned a photographer named Li Yu in passing and said his portfolio on the Beijing Fotofest site suffered from lack of explanation. Thomas Wain of Stoke-on-Kent, England who saw one of the photos on Tim Atherton's site wrote me asking if I knew of a web page that had those explanations (the images are recreations of scenes from local newspaper crime blotters)... indeed I do.

The portfolio is called 13 Months in the Year of the Dog and contains English translations. In describing the work Li Yu writes:

"A boy was riding a bicycle with a girl on the backseat in the street. Many passers-by accused them of violating the traffic rules, which forbade bikers to have anyone on the backseat. Instead of following their advice, the boy rode faster. All of a sudden, the girl shrieked in alarm. Her skirt was tangled up into the wheel and completely torn up. Soon the boy fell onto the ground with the bicycle while the girl stood aside, blushing and only appearing in her underwear. This was a news story I read in high school and it still remains vivid in my memory. The extremely critical writing of the reporter who wrote the story severely condemned certain uncivilized phenomena in the society and met the needs of his readers.

The year of 2006 was the year of the dog according to the Chinese lunar calendar. It consisted of 13 months and four Valentine's Days, totaling 385 days. In the same year, Liu Bo and I launched an art project entitled "13 Months in the Year of the Dog." We picked out two local news stories from newspapers in Wuhan, restaged the reported scenes, and shot large photographs of them. During this process, we brought our own imaginations and other everyday experiences such as the secondhand experiences we had obtained from films, TV and news photos into this project.

Our selection of the news stories was inspired by the early-mentioned news report. But nowadays, the magic power and literary value of news has far exceeded our anticipation and even films: deceit, murder, eroticism and violence…so striking and unimaginable. How can one decide whether these stories have truly happened or not simply relying on written words? Maybe it's not important, at least they have truly existed in the papers. But as for the readers, these stories are as eye-catching as the blushing girl in her torn-up skirt. That's the so-called media truth. The life of today is the history of tomorrow. Someone says that history is like a girl ready to be dressed up by anyone. Now, let's put the girl with the torn-up skirt back into another beautiful outfit."