jblau.com and finitefoto.com, a new media collective that investigates and promotes the intersection of photography and culture in the state of New Mexico, founded my the artist

“I’m interested in the way photography is used to deceive. Millions, if not billions of advertising dollars are spent annually photographing food and obfuscating reality. Fast food conglomerates are certainly the worst culprits, but everywhere we see glamorized versions of what we eat.

Food is clearly a potent symbol of wealth, power, health, and globalization for the 21st Century. Its value is determined by the price of oil, its transnational transport contributes to Global Warming, its ingredients entice America into obesity, and its production processes animals into floss and mush.

The photographs in this project attempt to strip back the artifice; to depict food items as they were sold, (minus packaging,) without styling, retouching, or artificial lighting. Each image represents a dollar’s worth of food purchased from various markets in New Mexico. The subjects exist as equivalent amounts of commodity, and nothing more. The resulting images allow for a meditation on the power and seductive nature of the photographic medium itself.”

one dollar’s worth of conventional grapefruit from supersave

one dollar’s worth of candy neckaces from china

one dollar’s worth of escargot from indonesia

one dollar’s worth of dried smelt

one dollar’s worth of potted meat food product

one dollar’s worth of fenugreek seeds from india

more photos on the artist’s website
found on collect.give, a place to collect contemporary photography and donate to worthy causes at the same time,
previously featured on Oitzarisme, too

ambershields.com

“There is a statue called The Pioneer Woman in the middle of Ponca City, Oklahoma, my grandmother’s hometown. It serves as a tribute to the frontier women who helped settle the American West. As a child, I fixated on her bronze bonnet and proud stride – family tales of my mother as a child climbing to the top or the family portrait taken at her feet. Born into a family of women, the statue resonated deep within me. And today, the Pioneer Woman stands as a reminder of a similarly fierce woman in my life – my grandmother, Johanne.

As I imagine with most pioneer women, it is impossible to tell a traditional story of a life content. And her story is also a different one. She is a woman, sometimes mean, who pioneered her own path of feminism at an unacceptable time, who fought the traditional female role her entire life and one who, at the end of her life, painfully hesitates to confront the face of mortality Over the last 15 years, my grandmother has allowed me to document her life and now, her death.

At the beginning, photographing her was my way of learning more about her life. From her weekly trips to the hair parlor to her enthusiasm for cooking a good southern meal, my early images depict the daily routines of a vibrant, self-sufficient woman. I came to recognize she was at the forefront of the second feminist movement, albeit not by choice. With outside appearances manicured, on the inside my grandmother locked out an abusive husband, the stigma of divorce, and sexism in the office as she built a successful career in the only field permissible for a woman at the time, an executive secretary. She was the breadwinner and matriarch of her family. She defied all measures during a time when women were suppose to stay at home and Ozzie and Harriet were the model family.

But as the years passed my images of her became increasingly macabre. From frequent visits to relatives’ gravesites, to stints in nursing homes for broken bones, the images mark her physical and mental battles with mortality. At times, a bottle tucked away under the sink was her only coping mechanism for the isolation and boredom of a world that was becoming increasingly limited. And because of our intimate relationship, I was there. I was allowed to be present at her most vulnerable time. Like a family recipe, she was passing down the accumulated wisdom from her life. As a witness, a granddaughter and a documentarian, Johanne’s final lesson to me is a greater understanding of mortality.”

more photographs and two great videos with Johanne on the artists’ website ; found via FlakPhoto

kallekataila.com

“Kalle Kataila is a young Finnish photographer that developed in the artistic unity called “the school of Helsinki” which includes artists that express themselves through the language of video and photography. Kataila immortalizes suggestive natural landscapes that pertain to different geographic realities. After inheriting the notion of panorama from the Romantic movement, intended as nature to be admired and contemplated, he dedicated himself to immortalizing it thanks to an exemplary means, that of the photo camera.”

“The soft and diffused light of the first hours of the day give each shot a great sense of tranquillity and a pantheistic immersion even if it deals with a glacier or an expanse of snow as far as the eye can see. Naked and silent city horizons with the setting of the sun, remembering Cormac McCarthy, with cold and unsaturated colours, and always thanks to an immersive light never seem apocalyptic.
The spectacularity depicted or perhaps it is better to say “written with light” is a reflective mirror of the emotional experience of who is contemplating it. Photography has always had a double connotation, artistic as well as a documentary nature. From its beginning, attention was focused on the faithful restitution of the captured image, so as to permit reflection around the visible components, but the stylistic value was quickly discovered as well.”

“A beautiful sight is beautiful in and of itself and does not need disguises nor diadems to complete it or to render it more persuasive. What is certain is that the slice of “stolen reality” is filtered by the eye of who photographs it. And so from simple photography, one arrives to photographic works where the interpretation of the photographer, bringer of stories, identity, culture and character intervenes in a clear and recognizable way. Kataila’s work, Landscapes and Contemplations, shows solitary silhouettes whose gaze is fixed on boundless views that stand out in front of them.
The figure always occupies the central position within the composition resulting in being totally surrounded by the landscape, immersed in the view. The people have their backs to the observer. We look at them; they look in front of them. What exactly are they gazing at?”

continued on the artists’ website