© Gerard H. Gaskin

Gerard H. Gaskin’s photography series on the African American and Latino house and ballroom subculture of urban, gay pageants has received the Center for Documentary Studies/Honickman First Book Prize.

The prize carries a $3,000 grant, and an opportunity to publish a book of the work and exhibit it online and at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. The images also go into the permanent collection at Duke’s Archive of Documentary Arts.

Judged by curator, historian and photographer Deborah Willis, the 2013 prize is the sixth biennial award given by Duke Center For Documentary Studies and the Honickman Foundation of Philadelphia.

According to Gaskin’ statement, “The balls are a celebration of black and Latino urban gay life and were born in Harlem out of a need for black and Latino gays to have a safe space to express themselves. Balls are constructed like beauty and talent pageants. The participants work to redefine and critique gender and sexual identity through an extravagant fashion masquerade.”

Though the balls originated in Harlem, Gaskin noted, the culture has grown and spread. He made his images in New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. “My images try to show a personal and intimate beauty, pride, dignity, courage, and grace that have been painfully challenged by mainstream society,” he says.

“Gaskin’s work looks at the notion of transformation as he turns his lens on what it means to be ‘desired,’ and at the same time, what it feels like to be alienated,” Willis said in a statement. “His photographs are as exciting to look at as they are a means for imagining the lived experiences of the communities he has documented.”

The prize is open to American and Canadian photographers of any age who have never published a book-length work. For more about the prize visit: firstbookprizephoto.com.

Curators Laura Moya and Laura Valenti Jelen are putting together an exhibition for this spring that showcases images that photographers made when they were children. “Early Works” will show in April at Newspace Center for Photography in Oregon during Portland Photo Month, and at RayKo Photo Center in San Francisco in Fall 2013.

According to the a Web site setup for “Early Works,” “naive” images made by  photographers “often reveal surprising talent, visual intuition, and honesty. Kept for many decades in shoeboxes and faded albums, the images are often cherished belongings that play a key role in defining the self as artist.”

There is no entry fee to submit work. The deadline is February 4th, 2013.

For more information visit: www.earlyworksproject.org

In Emmanuel Dunand’s photograph of Aline Marie, once can see the reporters gathered behind her. To see a larger version of the image visit NPR’s The Picture Show.

A photograph by AFP/Getty Images photographer Emmanuel Dunand of a woman mourning on the night of the Newtown, Connecticut shootings sparked a bit of controversy and a lot of discussion about journalistic etiquette on NPR’s The Picture Show blog yesterday.

NPR had run the photograph of Aline Marie praying in front of a statue of Mary outside a Newtown church with a story about the shootings. Marie got in touch with NPR to voice a complaint that her very private moment had been interrupted by photographers, and none of them had asked who she was. “I felt like a zoo animal,” Marie told NPR. “No one introduced themselves. I felt violated.”

Marie’s response was measured. She didn’t ask NPR to take down the photograph. And her story ended up on NPR’s blog.

There Coburn Dukehart wrote that he’d spoke with Dunand, the photographer, who said, Dukehart writes, “He thought that leaving her alone [with her grief] was the most respectful thing to do.” Dunand also told Dukehart that AFP did not require photographers to get their subjects’ names when making images in public places.

Getting the name of a subject helps a photographer deliver a more detailed caption that gives editors more information with which to work. This clearly isn’t possible during a fluid situation, especially one that involves large groups of people or takes place in the midst of a conflict. But when a photograph captures an intimate moment, and the power of their image is predicated on the emotion of a single person, being unable to identify that person runs contrary to the feeling of the image.

As one commenter noted: “I’ve been a professional photojournalist for nearly 30 years, and if I ever went back to an editor with that photo and no name, the first thing they would say is “‘nice photo, but we need a name.’”

On the other hand, there were clearly a number of photographers and videographers around Marie. Would she have wanted each one to introduce her or his self? Was it realistic to do so?

What would you have done?

The Orlando Sentinel is reporting that the lawsuit brought against photographer and filmmaker Lauren Greenfield by one of the subjects of her award-winning documentary “The Queen of Versailles” has been thrown out by a federal judge in Orlando. The parties have been ordered to seek arbitration.

Greenfield and the Sundance Institute, which runs the Sundance Film Festival, were sued for defamation by timeshare developer David A. Siegel, whose family is the subject of Greenfield’s documentary. “The Queen of Versailles” tells the story of the billionaire Siegels as they attempt to build the biggest house in America, only to struggle as the economic downturn threatens their business and their 90,000-square-foot dream home.

The content of the film was not at issue; the lawsuit was over the press release for the film. In his lawsuit, Siegel claimed that the original press release for the Sundance Film Festival premiere of the film made three false and defamatory statements: That “[the Siegel's] timeshare empire collapses”; that “[the Siegel's] house is foreclosed”; and that the film tells a “rags-to-riches-to-rags story.”

Lawyers for Siegel objected to the wording of the press release. It was amended and publications that covered the news, including The New York Times, were contacted to correct the information. The suit alleged, however, that the damage to Siegel’s reputation, and that of his timeshare business, Westgate Resorts, LTD. had been done because the original description had already spread via the internet, appearing on more than 12,000 Web sites, according to the complaint.

In her decision, which was filed on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Anne Conway noted that Siegel’s testimony before the court was “inconsistent and incredible.”

Related: Greenfield Wins Sundance Director Prize
Lauren Greenfield Sued For Defamation By Documentary Subject

© Justin Maxon, from his Alexia Grant supported project. Jasmine Rasheed-Bacon, 6, consoles her cousin, Breonna Starkey-Bacon, 6, after she went into a closet to cry because of a disturbance in the house. The two cousins are very close and rely on each other for support. The girls live in a dangerous neighborhood called the Sun Village in Chester, PA, which is notorious for its drug trafficking and drug related crime.

The deadline for the 2013 Alexia Foundation grant is this Friday, January 18. The $15,000 grant will be awarded to a photographer who is looking for funding “to produce a substantial picture story that furthers the Foundation’s goals of promoting world peace and cultural understanding.”

The Alexia Foundation supports photojournalism that explores issues of social justice and cultural awareness. It was founded by Peter and Aphrodite Tsairis, in memory of their daughter, Alexia, who was killed in the bombing of a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.

In addition to the professional grant, the Alexia Foundation will also give out student awards that provide educational opportunities and cash grants for photography undergraduate and graduate students who are making work that coincides with the goals of the foundation. The deadline for entries for the student awards is February 1.

Last year’s professional grant was awarded to Justin Maxon, who has used the funding to work on a project about the number of murders that go unsolved in America. The student award went to Katie Orlinsky, who completed an internship at MediaStorm and worked on her project about the human cost of Mexico’s drug war.

Both Maxon and Orlinsky will speak about their work at “Images & Issues,” an Alexia Foundation exhibition and fundraising event that will be held January 23 at 25CPW Gallery in New York City. The event will feature an exhibition of the work of last year’s grant recipients, and images from past Alexia Grant winners, including Melanie Blanding, Wesley Law, Ismail Ferdous, Ezra Shaw, Bob Miller, Marie Aragon, Juliette Lynch, Matt Lutton, Veronica Wilson, Justin Yurkanin, Mark Murrmann, Christopher Lane, Ryan Henriksen, Peggy Peattie, Matt Black, Mackenzie Reiss, Ami Vitale, Katie Orlinsky, Justin Maxon, Stephanie Sinclair and Khaled Hasan.

Visit the Alexia Foundation site for more information on the grants and the exhibition.

Related: Anatomy of a Successful Grant Application: Tim Matsui on the Women’s Initiative Grant [Subscribers only; PDN subscribers can login to read this story]
Justin Maxon Wins $15,000 Alexia Foundation Grant

Harman technology, LTD, the company that owns Ilford Photo, has invested more than £350K (568,645 US Dollars) in creating its own 35mm film cassette manufacturing facility, the company announced today.

Maintaining a reliable supply of cassettes from external suppliers has been “problematic,” the company said in its announcement.

“This is just another example of our ongoing commitment to traditional monochrome photography,” Harman Managing Director Peter Elton said in a statement. “We are now able to manufacture our own cassettes and this gives us, and our customers, improved security for the future of film production.”

Stanley Greene has won the 2013 Aftermath Grant for his proposal to create a new project, “The Rise of Islam in the Caucasus,” The Aftermath Project organization announced today. The Aftermath Grant, worth $20,000 in 2013, supports photographers whose work addresses the legacy of conflict.

In making the announcement, The Aftermath Project noted that Greene is the first “conflict photographer,” as Greene is widely known, to win an Aftermath Project grant. Greene is a member of the photographer collective NOOR Images.

Finalists for the grant include Gwenn Dubourthoumieu, who is pursuing an ongoing project about sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; Boryana Katsarova, who is working in post-conflict Kosovo, concentrating on the city of Kosovska Mitrovia; Isabel Kiesewetter, who is working on a project that investigates how former military bases in East and West Germany are presently being utilized; and Martino Lombezzi, whose project examines the impact of the border fence between Lebanon and Israel has on local populations.

Greene’s proposal and those of the finalists were selected from 234 entries from around the world.

The first round of judging for the grant was completed by Aftermath Project Founder Sara Terry and Aperture editor Denise Wolff. Terry and photographers Nina Berman and Eros Hoagland selected the winner and finalists.

The 2013 Aftermath Project grant is supported by The Foundation to Promote Open Society.

Related: Anatomy of a Successful Grant Application
$20,000 Aftermath Project Grant for 2012 Awarded to Andrew Lichtenstein
Look3 Report: Stanley Greene on Luck, Film and Supporting Young Photographers
Eros Hoagland Wins $20K Grant for Conflict Photographers

The five publishers responsible for the European Publisher’s Award for Photography are now accepting submissions for their 2013 competition. The award, which gives one photographer the opportunity to publish a book with publishers in France, Spain, Great Britain, Germany and Italy, celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2013.

Past winners include Bruce Gilden, Simon Norfolk, Paolo Pellegrin, Jacob Aue Sobol, Davide Monteleone and, most recently, Alessandro Imbriaco.

The five publishers who give the award are: Actes Sud (France), Blume (Spain), Dewi Lewis Publishing (Great Britain), Kehrer Verlag (Germany) and Peliti Associati (Italy).

The competition is open to photographers worldwide. The deadline for submissions January 31, 2013. For rules and entry instructions see Dewi Lewis Publishing’s site here.

© Tim Hetherington (center), courtesy Sundance Film Festival.

“Which Way is the Front Line from Here? The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington,” Sebastian Junger’s documentary about the life and work of his friend and colleague, the award-winning photographer, will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January in Park City, Utah.

Hetherington was killed in a rocket attack in Libya in April 2011 while covering the uprising there.

When the premier was announced earlier this week, Sundance Film Festival programming director Trevor Goth told CBS News: “For me, it just adds another layer to the human cost of what that these guys are trying to expose. I think it’s going to be a very emotional moment at the festival.”

When the project was announced last year as a joint production of HBO and Nick Quested’s Goldcrest Films (Quested also produced Junger and Hetherington’s Oscar-nominated documentary “Restrepo”), Quested told RealScreen that the film would be based on a wealth of existing material, including interviews with Hetherington and footage of him working. “Tim was one of the most well-documented people you could possibly imagine,” Quested said.

According to Goldcrest Films, after the documentary premieres at Sundance, it will air on HBO.

Photographer Carrie Mae Weems received a State Department medal from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at a luncheon on Friday, November 30, at the State Department in Washington, D.C. Clinton honored Weems and four other artists—Jeff Koons, Cai Guo-Qiang, Shahzia Sikander and Kiki Smith—with the first U.S. Department of State Medals of Arts ever awarded. The medals recognized the artists’ contributions to the “Art in Embassies” program, which creates art exhibitions in U.S. diplomatic buildings overseas. The EIN program celebrated its 50-year anniversary this year.

“Art is…a tool of diplomacy,” Clinton said during her remarks at the ceremony. “It is one that reaches beyond governments, past all of the official conference rooms and the presidential palaces, to connect with people all over the world.”

For more, including a video of Clinton’s remarks, visit the State Department site.