©David Doubilet. Penguins near Danko Island, Antarctic Penninsula. (Courtesy of the artist)

Photographers scheduled to talk about their work and careers as part of the Master Talks series at this year’s LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph will include Lynsey Addario, Ernesto Bazan, Camille Seaman, Bruce Gilden, Robin Schwartz, and Hank Willis Thomas, festival organizers have announced.

The festival will take place June 7, 8 and 9 in Charlottesville, Virginia.  LOOK3 bills itself as a celebration of photography, where attendees and featured artists can share images, ideas and inspiration over three days and nights.

Other recent additions to the schedule include renowned underwater photographer David Doubilet, who will give a pre-show lecture about his work on the evening of June 6. Doubilet’s images will be displayed on banners along the pedestrian mall in downtown Charlottesville.

Evening projections on June 8 and 9 will showcase works by more than three dozen photojournalists and artists, including Todd Hido, Moises Saman. Steve Winter, Arlene Gottfried, and Beth Dow, to name just a few of the established professionals. The work of several emerging photographers will also be part of the projections.

As previously announced by LOOK3 organizers, this year’s event will feature on-stage interviews with Alex Webb, Donna Ferrato and Stanley Greene. They will discuss their influences, processes, and inspiration in three separate present4ations.

In addition, several photographers will teach two-day master classes during the festival. They include Bazan, Addario and Thomas, as well as  Eugene Richards, David Alan Harvey, Maggie Steber, Brian Storm and Julieanne Kost.

The guest curators of this year’s LOOK3 program David Griffin, visuals editor of The Washington Post, and photographer Vincent J. Musi.

General admission passes for all of the events (except master classes) cost $145, or $75 for students. A premium pass (called The Big Love Pass) costs $450, and entitles pass holders to reserved seating at the on-stage interviews, master talks, and projections. Big Love Pass holders will also have a chance to meet all presenting photographers at a special reception on June 8.

Additional information about the festival is available at the LOOK3 Web site.

A student photographer has been cleared in court of disorderly conduct charges stemming from his arrest in New York City at the scene of an Occupy march in January, the Associated Press reports. Separately, prosecutors in Seattle decided to drop charges against a photographer arrested for allegedly assaulting a police officer there during May Day protest, The Seattle Times reports.

Video from the scene of the arrests helped clear the photographers in both cases.

In New York, police accused New York University photography student Alexander Arbuckle of blocking traffic at an Occupy protest march on January 1. He maintained that he was photographing from the sidewalk at the time of his arrest. At trial, the judge dismissed the charges after Arbuckle’s defense attorneys showed a video by another journalist showing police massing near people on the sidewalk, and then arresting them, according to AP.

In the Seattle incident, photographer Joshua Garland was accused of grabbing and twisting the arm of a police officer at a May Day protest in downtown Seattle. The Seattle Times reports that prosecutors decided they couldn’t prove the charges against Garland after his defense attorney showed a video of the incident. According to that same report, the attorney pieced the video together from “video segments posted on YouTube by witnesses and other footage shot by a local television station.”

In a post on The New York Times Lens blog, photojournalist Ben Lowy discusses collaborating with Hipstamatic on a “lens” and “film” combination for the popular photo app. Lowy’s series “iLibya,” shot during the Arab Spring, was made using his iPhone and the photographer is a proponent of using his mobile device on assignment as well as for personal work. His decision to create a Hipstamatic option that’s less stylized than most speaks to the growing concern that using the app for photojournalism is somewhat misleading due to the effects that it can impart. Many critics argue that using a lens or filter on Hipstamatic is similar to editing an image in Photoshop.

Lowy says he contacted Hipstamatic about creating an option in the app that better adheres to newspaper standards for photojournalists when he returned from Libya. He describes the Ben Lowy Lens as being “pure and fairly straightforward” and “slightly desaturated, clarity is up, it’s contrasty.”

Now that there’s soon to be a Ben Lowy Lens, we started to think about what Hipstamatic lenses named for other photographers might look like. If you had your own Hipstamatic lens, what would it do?

Photographer Daniel Morel, who had his exclusive Haiti earthquake images ripped off by Agence France-Presse and Getty more than two years ago, has released more evidence in his claim against the two wire services in his ongoing fight for justice.

The new details, which are part of a motion Morel filed last month asking the judge to hold Getty and AFP liable for infringement, were sent by Morel’s lawyer to PDN and several others. They are neatly summarized by Jeremy Nicholl on The Russian Photos Blog.

Nicholl leads off by quoting an internal e-mail from AFP deputy photo editor for North America Eva Hambach:  “AFP got caught with its hand in the cookie jar, and will have to pay.” Ten days after Hambach wrote that to a colleague in March, 2010, AFP slapped Morel with a lawsuit to gag him and punish him for publicly accusing AFP of violating his copyrights.

To re-cap, Morel–a native of Haiti and a former AP photographer–was in Haiti at the time of the January, 2010 earthquake. He posted exclusive images of the destruction on his Twitpic account less than two hours later. The images were immediately stolen and re-posted under the name of another Twitter user. AFP picked up the images and distributed them under the false credit through its own image service and through Getty. They did that even though editors at both companies knew that the images were Morel’s, and that they did not have his permission to distribute them.

Morel objected. His agent, Corbis, sent take-down notices to Getty and AFP, but it took AFP two days to issue a kill notice. And when they did, they told clients and partners to kill images credited to Morel, but not the identical images that had been sent out initially under the false credit. Getty allegedly didn’t purge the images with the false credits, and continued to distribute them.

With Morel continuing to insist that his copyrights had been violated, AFP sued, and Morel fought back. Getty and AFP have done their best to wear Morel down by dragging out the process, but the photographer has refused to give up. He has already won an important decision against AFP, which argued that anything posted on Twitpic is free for the taking, according to the Twitpic terms of service. The court summarily rejected that defense.

Meanwhile, Getty continues to try to hide behind the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. The company says, in effect, that it was merely a passive provider of server space to AFP so it shouldn’t be held liable as an infringer. On the grounds that Getty is AFP’s partner and an active marketer and distributor of AFP images, Morel is asking the court to reject Getty’s DMCA defense.

What it boils down to is a case of two companies bullying a photographer they got caught stealing from. AFP and Getty aren’t the first to move images without permission in a cutthroat business that has a history of steal-now-and-apologize-later tactics. What’s unusual is the unwillingness of the two companies to own up to their ethical lapse and legal breach by apologizing and quietly paying to settle it.

We contacted Hambach to ask her about the internal repercussions of her “cookie jar” e-mail. Was she taken to the woodshed for it? Is there any sign that AFP is taking stock of its policies with regard to recouping images? “I can’t talk about this now,” she said, ending the conversation at the mention of her e-mail.

A hearing on Morel’s motion for summary judgment is scheduled for July. The judge is unlikely to issue a decision before fall.

From Richard Ross's "Juvenile Injustice" photo essay in the October 2011 issue of Harper's Magazine. © Richard Ross

Vogue won the prize for best overall use of photography at the 2012 National Magazine Awards, held in New York City last night. Given out by the American Society of Magazine Editors, the awards honor excellence in magazine editorial. Vogue beat out four other finalists in the category of Photography: GQ, Interview, National Geographic and Virginia Quarterly Review. The fashion title’s photography department is lead by photography director Ivan Shaw.

In the News and Documentary Photography category, Harper’s Magazine won for “Juvenile Injustice,” a photo essay on juvenile detainees by photographer Richard Ross. He worked with art director Stacey D. Clarkson and assistant art director Sam Finn Cate-Gumpert on the assignment. In the same category, Harper’s Magazine was also nominated for “Uncertain Exodus,” photographed by Ed Ou. The other finalists were National Geographic for “Too Young to Wed,” photographed by Stephanie Sinclair; The New York Times Magazine for “From Zero to 104,” photographed by Damon Winter; and Time for “Birds of Hope,” photographed by James Nachtwey.

The New York Times Magazine won the Feature Photography award for “Vamps, Crooks & Killers.” Alex Prager shot actors dressed as iconic villains for the photo essay and accompanying video. She worked with director of photography Kathy Ryan, deputy photo editor Joanna Milter, design director Arem Duplessis and editor Hugo Lindgren on the assignment. The other nominees in the category were National Geographic for “Taming the Wild,” photographed by Vincent J. Musi; Time for “Portraits of Resilience,” photographed by Marco Grob; Vogue for “Lady Be Good,” photographed by Steven Klein; and W for “Planet Tilda,” photographed by Tim Walker.

For a complete list of winners, visit magazine.org.

Related Article:

ESPN, W, New York Times Magazine Win 2011 National Magazine Awards for Photography

Three photographers who had covered organized crime and drug violence in the Mexican state of Veracruz were found dead yesterday, AP reports. The bodies of  Guillermo Luna Varela, Gabriel Huge and Esteban Rodriguez were recovered from a wastewater canal near the port city of Veracruz, about 250 miles east of Mexico City. Their bodies had been dismembered and stuffed into black plastic bags. The Veracruz Attorney General’s office also reported that their bodies showed signs of torture.

Their deaths, discovered on World Press Freedom Day, bring to seven the number of journalists killed in Veracruz in the past year and a half. “Veracruz has seen a wave of lethal anti-press violence that is sowing widespread fear and self-censorship,” Carlos Lauria of Committee to Protect Journalists said in a statement.  Lauria called on Mexico’s government “to end the deadly cycle of impunity in crimes against the press.”

Luna was a photographer on the crime beat for the web site veracruznews.com.mx who was last seen on Wednesday May 2. He was the nephew of Huge, a journalist who had been working for the local newspaper Notiver until he fled Veracruz after two of the newspaper’s reporters were murdered last year. According to a fellow journalist who spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity, Huge had recently returned to the state. Esteban Rodriguez had been a photographer with the newspaper AZ until he too fled; according to some news reports, he had recently been working as a welder. Also found on the scene was the body of Luna’s girlfriend, Irasema Becerra.

The 28th Annual International Center of Photography Infinity Awards, held May 2 in New York City, paid tribute to its departing director, ICP director Willis E. “Buzz” Hartshorn, who last year announced he wanted to step down for medical reasons. Though Hartshorn will continue to work with ICP, this was his last Infinity Awards as director, a role he has held since 1994, when he took over from ICP founder Cornell Capa.

The crowd gave a standing ovation to Hartshorn, who oversaw the expansion of both the ICP museum’s exhibition space and its photography school and the creation of the ICP Triennial exhibition. In accepting a special Infinity Award last night, Hartshorn said that in the 30 years he’s been associated with ICP, its mission has evolved from promoting the appreciation of photography to exploring “how pictures create meaning.” He thanked the ICP board for creating a new advisory position for him within the institution. He also expressed gratitude to ICP founder Cornell Capa for his leadership and encouragement. Looking first toward the heavens and then, after a pause, downwards, Hartshorn said, “Cornell, thank you for giving me this opportunity.”

Photographer Daido Moriyama won the Lifetime Achievement Award. A video that preceded the presentation showed Moriyama capturing his black-and-white, expressionistic images, shooting on the streets of Tokyo with a small pocket camera, sometimes from the hip or without looking through the viewfinder. Moriyama took his iconic photo “Stray Dog” while in his 20s, but for a time he abandoned photography, frustrated that his work was only copying. After falling into a period of drug use, he by chance found and bought a used Pentax and then returned to making art. (more…)

Photographer Carlos Miller, owner of the Photography Is Not a Crime blog, has learned that the Miami-Dade Police Department is watching him like, well, police states watch dissidents, just looking for reasons to arrest him.

Miller, who has been a tireless critic of police harassment of journalists, was the only person arrested when police cleared the Occupy Miami encampment in January. He recorded his arrest on video, and although police tried to erase it, he later recovered the file and posted it on his blog.

The incident left Miller wondering not only why he was singled out among other journalists for arrest, but also why he was arrested after police had cleared the encampment, broken ranks and were leaving the scene.

It turns out Miller wasn’t just being paranoid. As a result of a Freedom of Information Act request by a citizen, Miller got his hands on internal police e-mails that  show they were on the lookout for him.

Miller recently reported: “Eleven hours before I was arrested during the Occupy Miami eviction in January, the Miami-Dade Police Homeland Security Bureau sent an email to various police officers [including the arresting officer]… It included my Facebook profile photo [and]…the following statement about me: Carlos Miller is a Miami multimedia journalist who has been arrested twice for taking pictures of law enforcement.  He has publicly posted on social networks that he will be taking pictures today in order to document the eviction.”

The e-mail doesn’t instruct officers to arrest Miller, but other e-mails among about 200 released in response to the FOIA request suggest the law enforcement officials are looking for reasons to haul him in. For instance, after Miller posted a picture of the officer who arrested him on his web site, the head of the Miam-Dade Police Department’s Homeland Security Bureau sent an e-mail to a subordinate asking her to look into whether the posting of a police officer’s picture violated any laws. (Miller obtained the photo from a police web site that’s accessible to the public.)

In another e-mail exchange, a police officer tells the officer who arrested Miller, “Carlos Miller is on his high horse again.  He continues to post negative statements regarding law enforcement.  I will continue to monitor for additional information.” The same officer wrote in another e-mail to the arresting officer, “This guy is targeting you and I believe he is trying to get some monetary gain as well as publicity.”

Police also went online to monitor a panel discussion Miller participated in, and ended up putting out another notice about him:  “Carlos Miller stated he intends to to attend the RNC in Tampa August 27-30, 2012 to record and document the event. Proper notifications will be made for situational awareness purposes.”

Apparently, Carlos Miller is being scheduled for another arrest for daring to hold police accountable to the First Amendment. Stay tuned.

Related:
After Arrest, Photog Recovers Deleted Video File and Vows to Sue Police
Other Police Intimidation Watch stories:
Photog Sues Long Island Police Department
Photog Agrees to Community Service for Trespassing on a Public Street
Journalists Detained for Being Present at a Chicago News Event
Beating a Photojournalist on a Lisbon Street

There are several deadlines on the horizon for notable grants and contests. They include big-money prizes that support personal and documentary work or emerging photographers, plus some worthy photo contests, open to photographers in all genres, organized by old friends of PDN.

Moving Walls 20: deadline April 30
Open Society Foundations are now accepting photographers’ proposals for Moving Walls, the group photography exhibition featuring “in-depth and nuanced explorations of human rights and social issues,” especially those issues on which the Open Society is currently working. The Moving Walls photographers receive a $2500 honorarium, and the exhibition will be displayed at the Open Society Foundations’ offices in New York and Washington, DC in early 2013.
www.soros.org/initiatives/photography/focus_areas/mw/guidelines

W. Eugene Smith Grant:  deadline May 31
The W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography supports a photographer whose past work and proposed project, as judged by a panel of experts chaired by PDN‘s Lauren Wendle, follows the tradition of W. Eugene Smith’s concerned photography and dedicated compassion. The grant in 2012 will be $30,000.
http://smithfund.org/

ASMP New York Image 12: deadline May 1
The New York chapter of the American Society of Media Photographers is sponsoring the Image 12 contest, open to both professionals and student photographers. The winners will be featured in an exhibition in New York, and two first place student winners and one first place pro winner will also be featured in an ad in Photo District News. Five judges, including  PDN’s editor, will select the winners.
www.asmp.org/image11/rules.php

OjodePez/Photo Espana Award for Human Values: deadline May 10
OjodePez, the documentary photography magazine, is offering a 3,000 euro prize for photographers doing documentary work “in which human values such as solidarity, ethics, dedication or justice stand out.” In addition to prize money, the winning work, selected by an international panel of judges (including photo editors at Le Monde, The Guardian Weekend magazine and the Israel Museum of Jerusalem) will be featured in the September issue of OjodePez and may be featured in an exhibition.
www.ojodepez.org/premio

Burn Magazine Emerging Photographer Grant: deadline May 15
The Emerging Photographer Grant supports the continuation of a photographer’s ongoing personal project, whether it’s artistic or journalistic. A jury of photographers has not yet been chosen to select the winners and runners up, but past judges have included Gilles Peress, Eugene Richards, Susan Meiselas, Maggie Steber and James Nachtwey. Past winners have received $15,000 in grant money, supported by the Magnum Foundation.
www.burnmagazine.org/emerging-photographer-grant/

Photo Center NW Photo Competition Exhibition: deadline May 18
The non-profit Photo Center NW is now seeking entries for its 17th annual Photo Competition Exhibition, to be judged by collector and author W.M. Hunt. The first, second and third prize winners of the juried exhibition receive $1,000, $500 and $250.
pcnw.org

Manuel Rivera-Ortiz Foundation for International Photography 2012 Grant: deadline May 31
The Manuel Rivera-Ortiz Foundation is seeking global and social documentary reportage. Now in its second year, the $5,000 grant supports work covering covering issues such as health, poverty, oppression, war, famine, migration and immigration. For information, click on the “Grant 2012″ tab on http://mrofoundation.org/

City of Levallois Photography Award: deadline May 18
The winner of the City of Levallois Photography Award receives a 10,000 euro grant and an exhibition at the Photo Levallois festival, which takes place in October and November in France. Note: The prize is only open to artists under the age of 35.
www.photo-levallois.org/en/

Santa Fe Workshop Contest: late deadline April 30
The semi-annual Santa Fe Photography Contest honors photographers in all genres, and offers more than $15,000 worth of prizes including tuition for Santa Fe Workshops, gear and cameras. The jurors include PDN‘s photo editor. The early deadline has past, but the final submission deadline is April 30.
www.santafeworkshops.com/contest/

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Inaugural Photoville Event in Brooklyn to Feature 35 Exhibitions, Unique Photo Installation (and a dog run)

Over 400 Bosnian and foreign journalists who covered the Bosnian war gathered in Sarajevo last week for the 20th anniversary of the outbreak of the conflict. But the reunion, organized by former Le Monde correspondent and editor Remy Ourdan and TV reporter Willem Lust,  with support from AFP, the Association of Journalists of Bosnia and Herzegovina and other organizations, generated as much discussion about the problems in today’s Bosnia as it did about the past, according to photographer Gary Knight, who traveled to the event with his wife, filmmaker Fiona Turner. “It wasn’t very celebratory,” says Knight. “For so many of us, there was an affirmation that we need to get back to work in that country.”

In Sarajevo, Knight, Ourdan and photographer Jon Jones (now director of photography for London’s Sunday Times Magazine)  presented the layout of the book they are self-publishing: Bosnia 1992 to 1995, featuring images donated by 45 photographers and essays by journalists who covered the conflict, edited by Jones. When the book is published in July, they will donate about 250 copies to Bosnian public libraries; they will also sell copies and send proceeds to charities in Bosnia (selected with help from Bosnian colleagues). Though Knight had anticipated that revisiting Bosnia and reconnecting with his old colleagues would be “emotional,” he says, “I didn’t anticipate to what degree and why.” He explains, “It’s staggering what has not happened in 20 years.”

The official unemployment rate in Bosnia is 45 percent. Tens of thousands are still displaced 20 years after they were forced out of their homes. “You have people living on 100 euros a month,” he notes, “and there’s no justice.”

(more…)