Miska Draskoczy September 10, 2015

Egret above the Gowanus Canal. Brooklyn, New York 2013

Miska Draskoczy (b.1975, United States) is a photographer and filmmaker whose most recent project, Gowanus Wild, explores nature and wilderness in the notoriously polluted industrial neighborhood of Gowanus, Brooklyn where he lives. Miska’s photography has been exhibited in the US and abroad including solo shows at the Vermont Center for Photography, Ground Floor Gallery in Brooklyn and Davis Orton Gallery in Hudson, NY. He was recently named a Photolucida Critical Mass finalist and his work has been featured in The New Yorker’s Photo Booth, Time Out, PDN, and many other publications. Miska also works as a director, editor and animator on documentary and commercial projects through his production company snow23.

About the Photograph:
“I was taking pictures for the series at the end of this particularly tortured alley which ends in a tangle of metal and trees above the Gowanus Canal. I decided to go for a look right at the edge, pushing through a dense mass of vegetation with my tripod. Emerging onto a small rail precariously balanced 15 feet above the murk below, I was shocked to see a snow-white Egret perched in the tree next to me just a few yards away. I was suddenly thrown into the unfamiliar role of wildlife photographer, trying to shoot four second exposures on a clattering Rolleiflex without scaring the bird off, a seemingly hopeless task. Somehow I got a roll off before it flew away and luckily one shot came out sharp. It still amazes me this beautiful creature could survive in such a damaged environment. It’s these sorts of contradictions I find fascinating and they encourage me to keep looking.”

Rob Hart September 7, 2015

Red Neck Fishing Tournament in Bath, Illinois 2014

Rob Hart (b. 1982, United States) is an Adjunct Faculty of Photojournalism at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. He spent 12 years working for the Chicago Sun-Times Media and was named the 2013 Chicago Journalist of the Year.  Rob’s work has appeared in US News & World Report, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, The New York Times, USA Today, The Miami Herald, The Detroit News & Free Press, and many other newspapers and magazines.He has worked for corporate clients like Adidas and Nike.

About the photograph:

“My photos of the Red Neck Fishing Tournament in Bath, IL exist because my amigo and Weird Sports lover Sol Neelman roped me into going in 2011. It was a great adventure and at the time I was still working for a newspaper, so it was really nice to just go make photos for no reason on a boat in southern Illinois. Huge monster size Asian carp jump from the water and drunk people try and catch them with nets, and then bash them with bats. It’s equal parts disgusting and amazing. A completely  genius way to deal with the invasive species and draw attention to the problem.”

“When the opportunity came around to spend more time there last summer I couldn’t pass it up.  It’s a lot of everything I want to do as a photographer. Hang out, have a ludicrous amount of fun, and take great photos. I found a pantoon loaded with fun folks and we spent three hours with boats following us as the noise of the motor makes the carp jump. I just hung off the back and worked getting everything to line up, and let the world happen. Whenever I’d speed past another photographer in a boat covered in mud and fish guts we’d just look at each other with huge smiles, like it’s unbelievable this is a real way to live. It’s a unique experience, defiantly a top five day.”

Yeong-Ung Yang July 13, 2015

Bus Terminal Waiting Room. Sands Casino. Bethlehem, Pa 2013

Yeong-Ung Yang (b. 1984, South Korea) graduated from the Photojournalism & Documentary Photography Program at the International Center of Photography in New York City where he received the Rita K. Hilman Award. He was recently recognized as one of the 2015 PDN’s 30. Yeong-Ung completed an 2013 Emergency Fund Fellowship at the Magnum Foundation. His multimedia piece ‘Endless Bus Trip won Best of Show in the 2014 NPPA Northern Short Course Contest and Honorable Mention in the fourth Lumix Festival for Young Photojournalists. Yeong-Ung is based in New York City and his clients include the New York Times, Newsday, Corbis Image, Vogue Korea,and DAUM Media.

About the Photograph:

“Among thousands of people who ride the bus to the Sands Casino in Bethlehem, Pa, many of the patrons use the daily trips to make money by selling the free-play card that comes with each bus ride. The people who take the Chinese buses are from heavily Asian-populated neighborhoods mostly from Flushing, Chinatown and Brooklyn. They sell the gambling voucher worth 45 dollars in credit for 40 dollars cash. This earns them 25 dollars a trip subtracting the bus fare. Many of them go straight to the waiting room in the bus center without entering the casino fearing they may spend it inside the facility. In order to take the bus back home, they have to wait five hours. There is not much to do in a casino if your not gambling so most people sleep. I shot this image in the early stage of the project, and was surprised to see the waiting room packed with people all night long. Many of them sleep, some even play traditional Chinese board games or cards betting in coins.”

Sean Carroll July 2, 2015

Grazing Buck, Yosemite National Park, California, 2013

Sean Carroll  (b. 1978, United States) is an artist working in photography and video raised in coastal Massachusetts now based in New York City. His works have been shown in exhibitions in New York, Detroit, Washington, DC, Northern Virginia, and North Carolina, including most recently, at Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts and Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art. His photos have been featured by PDN, Fraction Magazine, Ain’t Bad, and Lint Roller. He received an MFA in Photography from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and a BA in Visual Media from American University in Washington, DC.

About the Photograph:

“Yosemite Valley is one of the most visited natural sites in America. A lush river valley surrounded by dramatic waterfalls and sheer granite cliffs it attracts crowds of tourists to it’s famous vista points. To serve the visitors it is filled with a myriad of options for lodging, dining, transportation, and shopping. The diverse wildlife that call the valley home must coexist with the crowds and live within the shadows of hotels, parking lots, RVs, and gift shops. Late afternoon in September I came upon this male mule deer grazing in a small meadow in Yosemite Valley adjacent to the historic Ahwahnee Hotel and it’s bustling outdoor restaurant. For nearly an hour the deer enjoyed a late afternoon snack before slipping back into the forest as a steady stream of visitors, weary from the day’s adventures, made their observation of the wildlife.”

Jason Tannen June 18, 2015

Chinatown, San Francisco 2011

Jason Tannen (b. 1950, USA) is a photographer, curator, and photo educator. For over three decades his work has explored the urban landscape, utilizing both an observational street photography approach, and a more controlled and cinematic style. Recent exhibitions have included SF Camerawork, Black Box Gallery, Portland, OR, Index Art Center, Newark, NJ, Bakehouse Art Complex, Miami, FL, and Fukushima Contemporary Art Biennale, Fukushima, Japan. From 1998 to 2014 Jason was the curator at the University Art Gallery at California State University, Chico, where he also taught Film as Visual Art and the History of Photography. He is currently developing Two Truths and A Lie, an exhibition featuring work by New York tabloid photographer Weegee (Arthur Fellig 1899-1968) for the University Art Gallery, California State University, Chico.

About the Photograph:

“In 2010, I started a project photographing San Francisco’s Chinatown neighborhood. I was drawn to Chinatown’s physical and visual density of buildings, storefronts, signs and symbols. For me, those elements could best be explored in black and white. Over time, I was struck by the neighborhood’s ever-present cultural mixing of East and West, especially a unique, personal and sometimes highly eccentric approach to commercial display. When I photographed Pyramid, I was shooting close to the windows, looking deep into the storefronts and allowing foreground objects to loom around the edges of the frame. The result here is a composition featuring diagonal lines and crossing shapes, the reflected urban backdrop, and a reference to the human presence.​”

Jessica Auer June 11, 2015

Las Vegas, Nevada, 2004

Jessica Auer (b.1978, Canada) is a documentary-style landscape photographer concerned with the study of cultural sites focusing on themes that connect place, journey and cultural experience. Jessica holds an MFA from Concordia University and is the recipient of several awards such as the W.B. Bruce European Fine Art Travel Fellowship and the Roloff Beny Prize. Her work has been exhibited in galleries, museums and public spaces across Canada and abroad. Her first book, Unmarked Sites, was noted by Photo-Eye and the Indie Photobook Library as one of the top ten photography books published in 2011. Jessica is a co-founder of Galerie Les Territoires in Montréal and teaches photography at Concordia University.

About the Photograph:

“This was the first photo that I produced for a series titled Re-creational Spaces, a project that I pursued for seven years and became my best-known work. At that time I considered creating a photographic series exclusively about Las Vegas and booked a cheap ticket to do some scouting. I had just read Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown’s Learning from Las Vegas as part of my MFA thesis research and the opening sentence stuck with me, Learning from an existing landscape is a way of being revolutionary for an architect. Having long been interested in landscape and the built environment, I was curious to see for myself how the Strip had shifted and evolved since the 70’s.”

“When I arrived camera in hand, I gravitated towards the hotels that were smaller-scale replicas of other places in the World – Paris, New York, and in the case of this photo, Venice. What I remember most about the moment I took this photo was contemplating how this site must have looked before the city was built, and this image in mind – a nearly blank desert landscape – was such a stark contrast to what I was witnessing. When I later looked at this image in print and was able to spend more time with all details, such as the gondola driver on his PDA, and the words Mirage repeated over and over, I decided to only use this one photograph. From there, I began a series linking different tourist destinations, showing how the landscape has been altered and commodified for sightseeing.”