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TBW's newest book is Dru Donovan's Lifting Water, a re-enactment of her relationship as a caregiver to a dying man. This is the third installment in the publisher's new photography series, which has also included work by Mark Steinmetz, Katy Grannan and Elaine Stocki. The shared theme seems to be relationships and collaborations in picture-making, in which tensions and uncertainty arise.
http://www.tbwbooks.com/books/Subscription-Series-3

Spanish photographer Sebastián Liste, one of the Juror Picks in the 2011 Daylight / CDS Awards, has spent much of the past two years working in Brazil, where — among other things — he photographed families living in an abandoned chocolate factory. For his latest project, he has returned home to Spain and found a counter-world to the former factory he had been documenting in Brazil. Titled "On This Side of the Mountain," the project shows the daily life of his girlfriend Laura and her family at their home in the Alicante Mountains.

He describes the setting in his project statement:

They built their home stone by stone, expanding it as the family grew, using rocks that fell from the mountain to construct not only the house, but a corral for animals and ponds to irrigate their land. They live in perfect harmony with their environment, respecting their place in nature and altering the landscape as little as possible.

In a second interview with Daylight (below), Mr. Liste discusses his upcoming project.

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Interview by Trent Davis Bailey
Photographs by Sebastián Liste

Daylight: How did Laura and you first meet?

Sebastián Liste: I met Laura during high school, when I was 17, and we’ve been together since.

D: Has the process of photographing in the Alicante Mountains — and seeing Laura's family's symbiosis with the land — given you any revelations about the natural world?

SL: For me, it was not just to photograph, but also to live in this place, to share life with Laura's family and to learn how they live in harmony with the environment around them. Living in the middle of nature makes you make aware of your position in the world, to see the world in proper scale, and relate with the problems that arise in life.

D: In your statement you mention, "I discovered the meaning of personal photography." Can you elaborate on that?

SL: For me personal photography means the searching for visual symbols that can create a life experience map. It is a level of communication with oneself to repair tensions, creating images that demonstrate where conflicting emotions meet. The bipolarity between chaos and harmony in life led me to create a personal language of visual symbols, which recreate a sense of reality by bridging the gap between fiction and reality.

D: What do you feel a personal photography project, such as this one, can communicate to a viewer?

SL: With this project, I tried to create a personal journey about the life of a family and my relationship with them, with the place, and with my girlfriend. All the photographs from this project are visual interpretations of existing things, real feelings, and thoughts. As I reinterpret my world, I hope these pictures always leave the door open to free interpretation and leave the viewer with a chance to transform them into personal reflection. I hope my images can become personal for the viewer so he or she can recreate the story with open situations, to imagine a beginning and end, and formulate new meanings.

D: These pictures, more so than your previous series, have a dreamlike, hallucinatory quality to them. Maybe it is because of your repeated use of reflections as well as photographing through smoke, fog, or in lowlight. Are you trying to suggest this place through the gaze of an altered state or distorted reality?

SL: This psychological convergence between reality and imagination is what led me to photograph in this way. I was looking for a more organic and spiritual feelings. Not reality, but not direct fantasy either—more of a long and slow dance between the two worlds. It’s like trying to make a film about your dreams and the fragments of a family’s memory not yet written.

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For more information about Sebastián and his work, visit: http://www.sebastianliste.com

Photographer Ben Roberts' interesting project Occupied Spaces features interiors of tents at the Occupy encampment outside St. Paul's Cathedral in London.

"The traces of activity and inhabitance serve as a document of the intense utilisation of a limited space by a large number of both permanent and temporary residents." —from the project statement; more info here

I cannot recall the first time that I saw Romare Bearden’s work, but I can definitely recall the last. It was an unforgettable evening just two months ago in Charlotte, North Carolina at the Mint Museum (its uptown location) during the opening of Romare Bearden: Southern Recollections. This exhibition will set sail in January 2012 from the Mint Museum to the Tampa Museum of Art (Tampa, Fla) and arrive at the Newark Museum (Newark, NJ) in May 2012.

For those of you that do not know who Romare Bearden was (and I hope that you are few) and have no clue as to the enduring legacy of his work, this is your lucky break-------listen up.

September 2, 2011 marked the centennial year of Bearden’s birth. To celebrate the life and work of one of the most important artists of the 20th century, museums (and other institutions) across the country are mounting exhibitions and launching programs through September 2, 2012. The Studio Museum in Harlem has launched The Bearden Project as well as created a website with information about Romare Bearden and other happenings in regards to this yearlong celebration. Go to www.studiomuseum.org  for more information.

Much has been written about Bearden’s travels and his life in New York-especially his time in Harlem but he was born in Charlotte, North Carolina and the South (especially Mecklenburg County) was like a North Star for his artistic practice. He never lost sight of her rituals, landscapes and people. These images would become the foundation of a practice that combined influences from the European avant-garde with the aesthetic traditions of the African diaspora. In Bearden’s paintings, prints and especially his masterful collages, the American visual archive is appropriated and re-inscribed with all manner of genius and power.

In the 1960’s, Romare Bearden began a serious investigation of collage and in doing so, he created his black-n-white Projections made from collaged, readymade photographic images that he enlarged using a Photostatic process. This process allowed him to shift the scale of his works as well as allow images to appear seamless causing an even greater marriage of the disparate, engaging bits and pieces of his work. He was also able to make multiples of works and repeat the organizational structures of his iconic collages. The use of repetition would become one of several Bearden hallmarks.

My favorite of these Projections is entitled Mysteries, a 1964 Photostat mounted on fiberboard that measures 28 ½ x 36 ¼ inches.

So, its Romare Bearden’s birthday ALL YEAR LONG and you are invited to the party, so please attend. Go to a location near you and L-O-O-K, then look again at the work of this American master. Happy Birthday Romare Bearden!

The following sites will keep you updated with the latest information on this yearlong celebration:

www.beardencentennial.org
www.beardenfoundation.org

Stephen Ferry has won the first annual Tim Hetherington Grant for his project "Violentology: A Manual of the Colombian Conflict." Ferry has spent over a decade working on Violentology, an exploration of the dynamics of the conflict in Colombia and its impact on civilians. With support from the Audience Engagement Grant from the Open Society Institute, and with the goal of reaching as many Colombians as possible, Violentology will be disseminated as a book, an exhibition (images can be wheat-pasted or taped onto walls), and booklets (free PDFs of selected chapters from the book that can be widely disseminated to rural areas).

TEDtalk with Stephen Ferry: presenting Violentology as "a potential model of grassroots journalism and an alternative to commercial media."

The Tim Hetherington Grant, a joint venture between World Press Photo and Human Rights Watch, and supported by Hetherington's parents, awards € 20.000 to a photographer to complete an existing project focusing on human rights. The Grant looks for "work that operates on multiple platforms and in a variety of formats; that crosses boundaries between breaking news and longer-term investigation; and that demonstrates a consistent moral commitment to the lives and stories of the photographic subjects."