The show is indeed disturbing. Not so much for the images but for the issues they uncover: domestic violence, decaying corpses, mass graves for livestock, post-war trauma, pollution, nonconformist sexual practices, etc. Curators Germano Celant and Melissa Harris have hung on the white walls of the Triennale 260 pictures from 24 contemporary photographers. Each of these images follow the footsteps of the photos which emerged from Vietnam in the ’60s and ’70s and were so shocking that they played a crucial role in changing public opinion about the conflict

advertising

After the moving and now iconic series The Hyena and Other Men and the stunning
Nollywood, Hugo’s latest work, Permanent Error, portrays the people, animals and landscape of a dumping ground for computers and electronic waste from Europe and the US. The area, on the outskirts of a slum known as Agbogbloshie, in Ghana, is a shocking contrast to the better faster shinier life promised by the advances of technology

Some 100 works by photographers as Sibylle Bergemann, Evelyn Richter, Ulrich Wüst, Ute Mahler, Will McBride, Helga Paris and Roger Melis. In black and white, they have documented everyday situations that reflect the more recent history of East-Germany beyond high politics – snapshots that show the professional and private everyday life, political activities, urban landscapes, interiors and nudes

Fifty years after The Americans of Robert Frank, and practically at the same time as the reconstruction of the then pioneering exhibition “New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape”, FotoMuseum, through the exhibition American Documents, offers a comprehensive overview of the documentary trends in American photography from the 1970 until now

social

In this series of photos and installations in public space, Mitch Epstein explores and questions the ‘power’ that lays at the core of the United States. ‘Power’ in this case stands for both strength and energy. Over the course of 5 years he traveled through 25 states to photograph nuclear reactors, oil refineries, mines, rigs, abandoned gas pumps, wind parks, pipelines as well as their environs

Meiselas was 26 when she joined Magnum. One of the few women at the agency, she is probably better known for her work covering political upheavals in Central America in the 1970s and 1980s than for her coverage of the sex scene in the US. I saw both facets of her portfolio in London a few weeks ago

Chris Steele-Perkins unflinchingly records the absurdities, the pleasures and the tragedies of English life, invariably with wit and humour. There is a certain pathos in the image of a crowded beach, complete with donkeys, in which an unobserved dog pisses upon a windbreak: the English are unbelievably stoical holidaymakers

The photo series documents a traditional winter masquerade in Bulgaria that was originally aimed at frightening the evil spirits away but has now become way to welcome the new year. Estelle Hanania observed the scene from a nearby parking lot where participants changed into their costumes and masks

On June 30, the Democratic Republic of Congo will celebrate the 50th anniversary of its independence from Belgium. Photographer Carl de Keyzer traveled through the country following the “Guide Du Voyageur du Congo Belge”. Published in 1954, the touristic guide presented Congo as the ideal holiday destination with stunning scenery, brand new roads, musement parks for white people only, missions, factories, etc. These places have now lost much of their former glory, they are either ruins or used for identical or different purposes

The photo exhibition explores how our perception is mediated by and eventually adapts to the images coming from inquisitive medias such as satellites and security cameras. Everywhere around us, screens are showering our retina with information most of us hardly ever take the trouble to cross check. We tend to forget that these images are not first-hand, they are mediated, selected and distributed by media, political or scientific authorities

The 7th International Biennial of Photography and Visual Arts in Liege is one of the most exciting art events i’ve seen in a while. This year’s theme is (Out of) Control. It oscillates between the cheerful and the somber, between the mundane and the extraordinary. I’ll get back to you with a proper report but i couldn’t help singling out a quirky series of photos i discovered at the biennial

The illegal Israeli settlement Har Homa in the West Bank, the interior of the MIR space-station simulator in Moscow, the modernist monument in honour of WW II victims in Kosturnica, the bedsheet serving as an improvised cinema screen in a Chinese village – these are real Science Fiction scenarios, constructed man-made utopias, hurling their absurdities at the viewer

Moira Ricci delves into the photographs of the past following the tracks of her mother, whose dates of birth and death provide the series with its title and indicate the time span covered by the images. Digital processing of old family photographs enables the artist to appear beside and observe her mother while remaining an extraneous figure, a sort of ubiquitous ghost hovering on the edges of the images and events

Since 1955, the World Press Photo Foundation is awarding the most striking and representative images that have documented and illustrated the events of our times in the press. The winners of the photography contest are exhibited this year in 100 cities in 45 countries and is still expanding. The plethora of exhibition venues hardly justify why World Press Photo is so wantonly careless about the way the images are exhibited

Letizia Battaglia’s pictures, because of the corruption, silence, violence and suffering they laid bare, played a crucial role in the anti-mafia campaign. They show anti-mafia Judge Cesare Terranova shot in his car, corpses of mafiosi found by the road, tears of the wives and mothers when they discover the scene of the crime, arrests of the mafia boss, teenagers pretending to be though guys with attitude and guns

Photojournalist Geert Van Kesteren shows the disorienting reality of war-torn Iraq as he chronicles the lives of ordinary Iraqi people living in Baghdad, Jordan, Syria, and Turkey during 2006 and 2007. The book and exhibition combines Van Kesteren’s professionally photographed images with the stories of Iraqis in their own words and hundreds of cell phone pictures and digital snap shots taken by the Iraqis themselves. Some reveal places that journalists dare not tread