The Museum of Modern Art’s 25th annual New Photography exhibition opened yesterday, featuring the work of Roe Ethridge, Elad Lassry, Alex Prager and Amanda Ross-Ho.

The exhibition, which each year highlights some of contemporary photography’s most interesting voices, includes short films by Lassry and Prager, the first films that have appeared in a New Photography show.

In her curatorial statement, MoMA photography curator Roxana Marcoci writes that the four artists she selected “engage in a kind of post-appropriative practice.” Though each artist appropriates images and ideas to create their photographs (and films), they do so for different reasons than Richard Prince did when he rephotographed ads in the Seventies to question “notions of originality.”

“This younger group of artists reinvest in photographic authorship, creating pictures that often exist simultaneously as commercial assignment and artwork,” Marcoci says.

Roe Ethridge’s contribution to the show includes a collage in which he lays an enlarged and pixilated image of a Crate & Barrel plate taken from their Web site over the top corner of an image of a checkered Comme de Garçons scarf; an enlarged image from The New York Times of a model at a Chanel fashion show; and a photograph of objects in his studio that includes a red bag plastic bag, a second-hand framed photo of a sailboat and a zoom lens.

Elad Lassry presents his images as small prints in frames whose colors correspond to those found in the image. In one work a vintage image of Goldie Hawn and a golden retriever is placed above a series of color-laminated wood blocks that vaguely resemble a TV test pattern. In Lassry’s silent film, Untitled (2009), which he shows at the same small size as his images, actor Eric Stoltz and an actress recreate a scene of director/choreographer Jerome Robbins instructing actress Mary Martin on a flying scene for the 1955 television adaptation of Peter Pan.

Alex Prager’s work borrows heavily from vintage cinema. Her bold color images of young women in wigs and period costumes evoke Alfred Hitchcock and film noir. Her film, “Despair,” in which one such woman throws herself from a window is based on the 1948 film “The Red Shoes,” about a ballerina who kills herself.

Amanda Ross-Ho’s work includes collages and photographs of hand-drilled sheet rock installations hung with found and/or appropriated images and other objects. One of her sheet-rock installations is included in the show.

Appropriation of popular images (i.e. images meant for mass consumption), and references to films, existing images and image styles, play a role in the work of each of these artists. Still, Marcoci believes they are “post-appropriation,” because their motivations are different than previous artists who rephotographed or reused the work of others to call attention to their own ideas.

The artists in New Photography 25 appear to share a curatorial, or editorial, impulse. They absorb images and references and place them together with their own photography create an order from the mass of images we’re bombarded with in contemporary society.

In the September issue of PDN we wrote about Sanctuary, Gregory Crewdson’s new book of black and white photographs made at the famed Cinecitta film studios in Rome, Italy, where directors from Rossellini to Fellini to Scorsese have worked on films.

This Tuesday New York Times film critic A.O. Scott, who wrote the introduction to Crewdson’s book, will interview Crewdson and writer-director Noah Baumbach in a TimesTalk, “Stories & Pictures.” PDN readers can purchase a special price ticket to the TimesTalk, $15 instead of $30. To get the special ticket price enter code NYTTF when ordering at TimesTalks.com.

Stories & Pictures: Noah Baumbach, Gregory Crewdson, and A.O. Scott
Tuesday, October 5th
6:30 – 8:30 PM

TheTimesCenter
242 West 41st St. NYC

A state court judge in Maryland has thrown out charges against a motorist for videotaping a police officer during a traffic stop, according to The Baltimore Sun. The judge said that as public officials, police have no reasonable expectation of privacy while carrying out their duty.

Motorcyclist Anthony Graber had been charged with violating Maryland’s wiretapping laws last spring after he used a helmet-mounted camera to tape his encounter with a state patrolman. Graber had the camera running as he sped along I-95, and kept it rolling as a plainclothes police officer eventually caught up with him and ordered him off the motorcycle at gunpoint. The police officer didn’t know he was being taped.

Graber was arrested for violating wiretap laws shortly after he posted the video of the incident on YouTube. When he was arrested, police raided his house and seized his cameras and computer gear.

Wiretapping laws are intended to protect privacy by preventing anyone from eavesdropping on or recording conversations without the knowledge of one or both parties. In many states, including Maryland, both parties must be aware that their conversation is being taped. But the judge in the Graber case said that a police stop is not a private conversation, so it isn’t covered by the state’s wiretapping laws.

The outcome of the Graber case has been watched closely by journalists and First Amendment advocates as a test of the power of police to prevent scrutiny of their activities. Police have tried to use wiretapping laws in several other jurisdictions, although the Graber ruling doesn’t apply outside Maryland.

The Impossible Project, the Dutch group engineering new analog instant film for vintage Polaroid cameras, premiered a new color film last week at the Photokina imaging fair in Cologne, Germany. The company also announced a new black and white film for Polaroid 600 cameras, and used their film for the first time in the 20 x 24 Polaroid camera.

The color film, is dubbed the PX 70 Color Shade First Flush, was created with vintage SX 70 Polaroid cameras in mind, however the film can be used in Polaroid 600 cameras that have an exposure control.

Polaroid stopped producing instant film in February 2008. In 2009, The Impossible Project signed an 10-year lease on Polaroid’s former factory in Enschede, Netherlands, and began developing new analog instant film packs with all new chemistry and components, the first of which premiered this past spring.

This first color film offering from the Impossible Project is not without its quirks. For instance, once a photograph is made, the photographer has to shield the film from light immediately for up to two minutes. And instructions on The Impossible Project Web site also note that, “Initial spots or other anomalies in the picture will disappear after 24 hours.” Original Polaroid color film did not have these characteristics.

The PX 70 Color Shade film is currently being offered in a three-pack that totals 18 exposures for $44.

A new black and white film, the PX 600 Silver Shade UV+ for Polaroid 600 cameras, was announced as well. The new film, which will be available in October, features a UV sheet that the company says will improve image tones and increase the stability of the film.

The famed 20 x 24 Polaroid camera also made an appearance at Photokina. At an evening event The Impossible Project introduced its first experimental film for the camera and made nine portraits of guests at the event. The Impossible Project also renewed its commitment to making 20 x 24 material commercially available in the future.

Photographer George “Elfie” Ballis, who became known for documenting the struggles of migrant farm workers and later the Civil Rights Movement, died Friday, September 24, in Fresno, California, after a lengthy illness. He was 85 years old.

Ballis, described on the Take Stock: Images of Change picture agency Web site as “a tough, wiry ex-marine with a pixie’s grin,” had first been a labor reporter in Chicago, then moved to Fresno in 1953, where he became editor of the Valley Labor Citizen. After taking a six-month photography course with Dorothea Lange, Ballis started taking pictures of migrant workers, their labor and their living conditions. Soon after he was shooting for the mostly Filipino union of field workers known as The Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC).

Ballis carried his cameras everywhere, and began to experiment with an unobtrusive style that well suited his purposes. “I began to consciously develop ‘invisibility’ for photographing people naturally and unposed,” he once recalled. “This involves turning down my electricity, going psychically ‘limp’ so that people do not feel threatened and, hopefully, my presence is virtually ignored.”

Eventually, he set his camera on the struggles of the United Farm Workers movement, led by Cesar Chavez. One of Ballis’s most memorable photographs shows Chavez leading farm workers on a pilgrimage from Delano to Sacramento in California in March of 1966.

In recent years Ballis followed protesters with his video camera, covering issues ranging from the treatment of animals to the war in Iraq. Some footage he shot during a Peace Fresno protest was included in Michael Moore’s 2004 movie Fahrenheit 9/11.

A federal district court in Florida has declined to throw out an infringement claim against Hachette Filipacchi Media for publishing a photo of a custom motorcycle from a press kit . The publisher asked the court to dismiss the case on fair use grounds, but the court ruled on September 21 that a fair use determination depended on questions of fact that only a jury could decide.

At issue are five beauty shots of Kawasaki’s high-performance ZX-14 motorcycle that photographer Tod Latimer shot in early 2006. Latimer, who had been documenting the construction of a custom version of the motorcycle for 2 Wheel Tuner magazine, shot the images as a favor to the custom motorcycle shop. The shop owners provided the images to Kawasaki.

Kawasaki included the images in a press kit. Hachette’s Cycle World magazine published the images, scooping its competitors (and Latimer’s original client). Latimer sued Kawasaki, the motorcycle shop and Hachette in in 2006, claiming that his images had been distributed without permission.

But Latimer had little paperwork to back up his claim. It was thrown out in the first legal round on the grounds that Latimer gave Kawasaki and implied license to distribute the images, and that Hachette’s use of his images was fair use.

Latimer appealed, and last Spring, an appeals court in Atlanta, Georgia restored his claim–at least in part–by ruling that Kawasaki may have over-stepped the the terms of its implied license. The appeals court also threw out the lower court’s fair use finding in Hachette’s favor, because Hachette hadn’t ever raised that issue.

The case went back to the lower court, where Hachette finally raised a fair use defense and asked the court to dismiss the case again. But the court, more cautious this time, said fair use in this case was a question for a jury. At the same time, though, the lower court limited Latimer to actual damages on any claims he wins because he failed to prove a connection between the use of his images and any profits earned by Kawasaki or Hachette.

In short, some of Latimer’s claims remain standing after several legal rounds, but the court has lowered the stakes, putting pressure on Latimer to settle out of court.

A Mexican photographer and an Argentinian writer have won the New Journalism CEMEX-FNPI Award, one of Latin America’s most coveted journalism awards, the AP reports.

Mexican photographer Alejandro Cossio, who has documented Mexico’s drug war for the weekly magazine Zeta, won for a series of images that depicts the chilling violence of that war in and around the border town of Tijuana. (WARNING: graphic image after the jump that may disturb some readers) (more…)

A young British fashion photographer has won $129,249 in damages against a pornographic movie distributor who used a self-portrait of the photographer as cover art for an X-rated DVD without permission. The award was for defamation, misappropriation for commercial purposes, and copyright infringement.

Lara Jade Coton filed suit in Florida in 2007 against Robert Burge of Florida and his company, Televised Visual X-ography, after she learned that Burge used one of her self-portraits for a DVD called Body Art. The image (reproduced at right), shot in 2004 when Coton was 14, shows her in a formal dress and top hat in front of a window. She uploaded the image to a site called deviantART.com, where photographers post images to get feedback and sell their work. (more…)

Are we in a Romantic revival?

In the Romantic era of the late 18th and early 19th century, ruins were in fashion. Aristocrats taking the Grand Tour of Europe sought out sites of classical ruins. Once they returned home, they commissioned landscape architects to create fake ruins overgrown with ivy. These “follies,” as they were called, were inspired by a fascination with the power of nature to reclaim the once impressive works of man.

In the 21st century,  we’re seeing a new fascination with ruins, this time expressed in photo essays on once impressive structures that have been abandoned or allowed to decay. The number of picturesque ruins showing up in photo projects may reflect our skepticism about the institutions we once trusted. (images after the jump)

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Just this week, Nikon unveiled the new D700, a 16.2mp prosumer DSLR that can capture 1080p HD video. (See Dan Havlik’s Gear Guide report here.)  It replaces the popular D90, the first DSLR with HD video capabilities.

Before the public launch, Nikon asked photographer and blogger Chase Jarvis  to shoot a short film testing the video.  The film isn’t out yet, but  he’s posted a behind-the-scenes video about the making of the test video on his blog. He’s also posted some stills he shot with the camera.

The behind the scenes video shows how the camera , which has full-time autofocusing, shoots HD video under different lighting conditions. It also shows  how through video and voiceover how Jarvis wrangles and cheerleads his models.