Afer a few pokes at this particular issue, I’ve added a filing category to this journal, specific to the question: where can I find great new black and white photography?

The addition was spurred a bit by this post from Fred on APUG. It reminded me that I’ve been keeping some lists, piles of bookmarks in various browsers on different machines — and that one of my monthly chores (though hardly a chore!) has been to pick-through the link references in magazine like B&W, Black and White Photography, and Shots. I could just cross-reference them via del.io.us (and maybe I will!), but why not here too?

So as a tip of the karmic kap to Fred, here are the links he mentioned, all coming from the most recent issue of B&W.

For those who want a fast browse, I’ve marked favorites with ⇒ and → characters.

Paul Kozal

Paul Kozal approaches very traditional wild western landscape with a split-toned selenium/sepia process. While the prints are pretty, it's not surprising to find them a bit... familiar, even to the point of shooting stalwarts like Ranchos de Taos and the Taos Pueblo. Lovely on the office wall, but very safe.

Edward Riddell

Another portfolio heavy on western landscape — big Wyoming skies, bare black trees protruding from featureless snow. Photographers like these remind me of classical pianists — one does not expect them to re-write Chopin, though their performance of the familiar works can still be technically impressive.

⇒ Carl Chiarenza

Some of Chiarenza's collages resemble landscape, while other are less-representational and remind me of Minor White. Chiarenza's collections are exactingly made in the studio, and his awareness of the specific qualities of the B&W medium jibe well with his statements: "One of the essential aspects of art is transformation - transformation of pigment, of sound, of silver halides, into a new configuration, a new object, a new experience."

⇒ Joseph Szabo

Szabo's portraits are arresting and so very exactly in the spirit of 1970's photography — one can easily imagine him sitting 'round the coffee table sliding prints back and forth with Larry Clark or Ted Papageorge. I love this sort of thing, and his ability to carry the late-day light is not casually aquired, either.

Seema Weatherwax

Seema Weatherwax is now 100 years old, and today is working with Jason Weston, yet another of the illustrious Weston clan. Her photos stretch back to the 1930's — she travelled with Edward Weston & Ansel Adams both. Her photos show some predictable similarities in approach and subject. Recently she donated a lot of these photos to U.C. Santa Cruz.

Russ Levin

Levin owns a gallery and is part of the radiating Monterey B&W scene founded back in the &#131/64 days. He carries some great prints by other artists like Jock Sturges & Jerry Uelsman, but his own works seem rather dry, either photos of well-known photographers or nudes that lean very much toward the realm of the "glamour photo" culture — a layer of diffusion and an expensive background to aestheticize what are really just girlie pics.

⇒ Sylvia de Swaan

This portfolio does well to capture the collisons of memory against the real experiences of returning to somewhere important but almost forgotten from childhood (in her case, via a trainride to Romania).

→ Milan Hristev

Hristev, like myself, is interested in the layering of imagery from multiple exposure (Happily for me his approach and subjects are completely different from mine!). There is something in his photography of ancient mediterranean ruins that gives these places an ominous power that they've largely lacked since becoming such iconic tourist destinations.

→ Aleksey Lapkovsky & Katya Evdokimova

Stylish, eastern, and yes commercial

⇒ John Poteete

I quite agree with Fred — Fabulous stuff throughout, with a fair amount of variety. I'm especially fond of his portraiture.

⇒ Dorothy Richardson

One of the few pinhole shooters who's not afraid to aim at unpredictable living subjects — e.g. her "Sunshower." Not restricted to pinhole however, and her artist's statement is simple and sums up much of current B&W art photography: "For me, photography should cause an interaction between the viewer and the image — taking the mind away from the present into the realm of memory and dream." Easy to say, but hard to do!

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