Karolina Karlic

Body Shop Boys, Metro Detroit, Michigan

These images are from Karolina's series ELEMENTARZ. In her words:

"ELEMENTARZ (2010), tracks the reach of the U.S. auto industry (stretching from Detroit to California to Eastern Europe, where my father implemented new industrial plants) while depicting the efforts at communication between engineer father and artist daughter. Both images and excerpts of conversation allude to fractured ideologies of individual worth, religion and family, while signs of car culture mixed with evidence of economic plight recur. A mood of longing pervades ELEMENTARZ, coupled with absentminded dreaming, characteristic of both Eastern European immigrants and African Americans of the Great Migration."

Mason Motors Thunderbird, Excelsior, Minnesota

Father and Son, Preston, Mississippi

Here's one excerpted conversation from her publication ELEMENTARZ:

It was long time since we talk together. I missed you. I hope that everything is OK with you and your project(s)? I am really busy here - too many things too less resources. Nevertheless, we all here have very nice problem -we have too much work and customer orders. People are very nice. Everything looks here strange and grey. Life is simple for me - work and hotel. I missed badly my wife and my daughters. I am hoping that I could get back to Detroit next Saturday. Original plan was to fly back tomorrow but I have a lot of problems with some machinery here and had to stay here longer.
I will try to call you tomorrow. Stay in touch.
Father

Father Shaving Nr. 1

Father Shaving Nr. 2

Father Shaving Nr. 3

Strawberries on White Satin Sheet, Wroclaw, Poland

Factory - west end, Swindnica

Installation view of Factory - west end, Swindnica

Mother in red dress, Krasnik

Fiat, Wroclaw

Father before the storm, Garbatka

You can see more of her work here.

Hannah Wilke

Selection from Hannah Wilke's final series Intra-Venus. Wilke chronicled the effects of her chemotherapy treatment between December 1991 and August 1992. She died January 28, 1993.

Documentary Uncertainty

Filmmaker and author, Hito Steyerl, on the instability and uncertainty that surrounds forms of documentary.

From Hito Steyerl: "The more real documentary seems to get, the more we are at a loss conceptually. The more secured the knowledge that documentary articulations seem to offer, the less can be safely said about them—all terms used to describe them turn out to be dubious, debatable and risky."

Documentary Uncertainty

[Above: Image of former Homeland Security Advisory System]

josef koudelka

see more here. begin to learn more about the events here and here.

[all josef koudelka from the book 'prague 68'. top to bottom: warsaw pact troops invade prague, in front of the radio headquarters. wenceslas square, protesting the warsaw pact troops invasion. invasion by warsaw pact troops.]

Malwine Rafalski

In Holon, Malwine Rafalski photographs the radical living situations of people who have fled Western society to live sustainably and autonomously. See more of her work here.

[all Malwine Rafalski, from Holon, 2009]

Timothy Briner

*All photographers posted today are participating in the exhibition "Sea Change" on view this weekend as part of the Wassaic Summer Festival. Info here.





Work by Timothy Briner. See more here and, this weekend, here

[all Timothy Briner, from Boonville, 2007-2008]

Matt Green: I'm Just Walkin'

Thank you, iheartphotograph for the opportunity to guest blog! I'll be posting some of my favorite emerging and established photo-based artists. If you have any questions about anything I post, or would like to say "Hi" you can contact me at erinjanenelson[at]gmail.com

-Erin

I'm Just Walkin' is a photo blog updated throughout each day that Matt Green continues on his walk across the country from Rockaway Beach, NY to Rockaway Beach, OR. Matt is currently walking into Washington. You can see more from his walk here.

[all Matt Green, from I'm just Walkin', 2010]

the sunday best

multi-media project from natalie conn and peter smith. they describe it as "a documentary project about ordinary people doing extraordinary things". see more here.

[all sunday best.]

robert overweg

work by robert overweg documenting virtual environments, he explores these worlds as our "new public spaces." see more here.

[all robert overweg.]

interview • terttu uibopuu

i heart photograph: i'm wondering if you could first describe your subtopia project and how this image, blowdry, fits into the series.

terttu uibopuu: subtopia is project about women in the chicago suburbs. when i started this series last fall i really intended to make this into a "straight documentary" project but ended up just focusing on the portraits and some of the landscape of suburbia. i was moreover telling my own story and showing my own experience of life in the 'burbs. showing what it was like for me to move to cary, illinois five years ago from estonia. because i was kind of in a shock and felt really out of place at that time. but now i really feel it's time to get over myself and learn something from other people's experiences. thanks to my teacher paul d'amato, i started to ask the question "what do these women do?" and focus on their stories and just let things happen. i got really excited about the picture of a girl under the blow-drier, and i knew that this was a breakthrough for me and a direction i wanted to take with subtopia. now i really love exploring different environments other than the homes of these women. it's intriguing for me to try to tell a story of a very mundane activity, like sitting and waiting for your hair to dry.

i.h.p.: at first glance this looks like a straightforward image of a beauty parlor but several details make it start to seem much more complex. i'm thinking of the fact that the room doesn't really resemble my idea of a beauty parlor, that the woman seems far to young to use that kind of equipment, and the mysterious piece of paper she's holding. could you talk a bit about the question of how much visual information you want the viewer to have available when they see the picture?

t.u.: in this case, i was just so amazed by that darth vader looking blow-drier and that was it for me. i really didn't want to have any specific environment nor other details in this picture, i wanted it to be tight. i just loved the fact that she really didn't seem to fit in to this place. the piece of paper just has a print out of a celebrity's hair style that she wanted. and her expression kind of reminded me of avedon's shot of marilyn monroe where for that split second she just let her guard down and wasn't aware of the camera, i just love that.

i.h.p.: i'm also not quite sure whether this image might be a documentary image of a stranger or a carefully-arranged portrait of someone you know. is "documentary reality" something important to you in this image?

t.u.: i've had many battles with this word documentary, but actually this image is probably far more true to "the truth" or real life than any of the others from subtopia. i went to this beauty salon in the north shore suburbs of chicago to take pictures of all the elderly ladies who go there every week, but stumbled upon her. she and her girlfriends were getting ready for a high school dance in the same salon. and because she had very long and thick hair she had to be under that hot heat helmet for a very long time, which was perfect for me to set up a 4-x-5 camera. all of those things are not really evident in the picture which does make me question the documentary aspect of it. but i think documentary work doesn't always have to have the whole truth just a sliver of truth is often enough. in the end it's always just the picture itself that matters the most to me.

i.h.p.: could you explain what you mean when say you have problems with documentary?

t.u.: it's like philosophy, you'll never get to the real truth, but it's just important to keep trying. in the end i think that the true documentary happens only when the camera is not present, because the presence of a camera always either exaggerates the truth or doesn't show it at all.

i.h.p.: knowing that you used a 4-x-5, how does the process of using a large-format camera affect what and where you choose to shoot?

t.u.: i only used to shoot with a medium format camera, and not too long ago switched to a larger format. using a 4-x-5 really hasn't stopped me from going into places, i always try to ask permission and usually get it. when i shoot i just get very excited and kind of giddy, which might help to ease off some of the seriousness that the presence of the 4-x-5 has. by the time i'm ready to shoot, hopefully the person has become less self-aware. but i really love the slowness of this camera and how it pushes me to try to make each negative precious.

[photo: blowdry by terttu uibopuu. 2008. see more of terttu's work here.]

interview is a weekly column by nicholas grider that appears each tuesday on i heart photograph.

jessica dimmock

jessica dimmock's recent book the ninth floor explores the daily lives of hard-core heroin users living together in an apartment in nyc. it's one of the more compelling photojournalistic projects i've come across in a while and it's even fetched jessica the inge morath award from magnum and the f award for concerned photography fromforma and fabrica, among other accolades. read a little about the project here and take a look at even more of jessica's work here.

[all jessica dimmock. from the series the ninth floor.]

alyse emdur

linda d. cooper
i am a four time lightning survivor. i was first struck in ft. lauderdale, florida on september 15, 1983 while walking toward the post office to mail a package. the second incident occurred on may 27, 1993 at my home in hillsboro beach, florida while talking on the telephone to my daughter. it struck again a year later on july 11, 1994. i had just finished making jell-o for my family and was about to rinse out the cup when lightning came through the water faucets and ran up my arms. then in 2003, i was with my friend susan cooper in a steinway parking lot. lightning hit outside the car, came through the car and blew the cell phone out of her hand to mine.

ed, liz, erin ellickson
we were taking our daughter erin back to school in pensacola, florida on august 21, 2004 when lightning struck a tree, traveled through the ground, up a stair railing and through ed and erin. the blast knocked all three of us to ground. my husband and i suffered no long-term effects but erin suffers from short-term memory loss and has not been able to return to school, yet.

kim grills
i was struck on wed. june 7, 1989 in ingersoil ontaria, canada while golfing.

in an i heart photograph exclusive we get a first look at alyse emdur's new project about people who have survived being struck by lightning. i love the contrast between the sensational subject mater and the banality of these photographs. see more of alyse's work here.

[all alyse emdur. 2007]

albrecht tübke • heads

i enjoy these portraits by albrecht tübke. as val williams has commented about his work, "tübke has a gift for allowing his subjects to perform in their own solitary drama." see more of his work here.

[all albrecht tübke. from the series heads.]