livebooks blog

Young debutantes are presented at their "coming out" at Bal des Berceaux, a high-society charity event at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan. ©Mark Peterson/Redux

Q. What was the initial concept for American Youth? Why did you want to approach this topic?

A. Our original idea was to produce a promo piece about one topic, something that art buyers and photo editors wouldn’t automatically chuck in the trash can.

Q. Marcel Saba [director of Redux] came up with the general topic of American youth and then Redux photographers shot new work exploring that topic. Did you know there were specific aspects of the youth culture you wanted to touch on, or did those develop organically from the projects photographers came up with?

A. We knew we wanted a cross section of Americans documented. Most people had their own ideas but as the photographers started sending in their work, we saw some holes in coverage. For instance, we lacked any stories about poverty, or war widows, or something on kids who are into extreme sports. So we assigned stories to fill those gaps.

Sam, 20, and Erin, 19. They have been dating for two years. ©Erika Larsen/Redux

Q. Did you help the photographers in the book with their stories so they would work best for what you envisioned?

A. The advantage of working on something long term is you have time to shoot, look at the work, and then maybe shoot some more. For example, John Keatley did a series on street youth in Seattle, and we were able to offer feedback to him on what was working and what wasn’t. He went out and did more, and it turned out great.

Q. You brought in a lot of guest editors to make the (close to) final edit. Did you give them some guidelines or did the edit style evolve through that process?

A. We asked the editors to narrow the work down to 5-10 of their favorite images from each shoot. We wanted to publish everything they chose but it wasn’t possible, so in the end Marcel and I narrowed it down, along with great input from the book designer, Gilbert Li.

Special challenges arose because we were editing a collection of different stories by many photographers.  We had to choose images that could tell a complete story, but that also worked with the flow of other people’s work.

Q. Aside from the great exposure, what other benefits might a photographer expect from being part of a group book like this?

A. The best thing about American Youth is that it motivated all the photographers to create something new for it. Shooting personal work isn’t always at the top of people’s priority lists, but look at the benefits! The book has gotten a lot of attention on blogs, has been part of the NY Photo Festival, will be on exhibit at LOOK3 in Charlottesville, and was recently reviewed by The Washington Post. We’ve also had slideshows on NPR, The Daily Beast and Time.com and a story in PDN.  This exposure will continue to bring attention to the photographers which is always a good thing.

Aside from the promotional benefits, some photographers are continuing work on their projects. Gina LeVay is continuing to photograph young war widows. A number of shots are making it into people’s portfolios and their promo pieces.

King Penguin, Bay of Isles, South Georgia Island, UK ©Art Wolfe

Antarctica remains the last great wilderness in the world. The continent encompasses a vast array of environments, from the lifeless high plateau surrounding the South Pole, where miles-thick ice presses down the bedrock, to ice shelves extruding into the sea and the dry valleys where snow seldom falls. The Antarctic Convergence, the boundary where cold and warm water meet, rings Antarctica hundreds of miles from land. It extends so far north that it encompasses South Georgia, where tens of thousands of King Penguins nest on beaches beneath glaciated mountains 11,000-feet tall. Elephant seals guard their harems, and albatrosses soar above the waters.

The Antarctic Peninsula is an extension of the Andes. There is no other place on earth, including Alaska and the fjords of Patagonia, where such an impressive sequence of large glaciated peaks continues unbroken for so far. As you cruise south along the peninsula’s west coast, it’s easy to imagine yourself on the Orient Express through the Himalaya.

No animals larger than micro-organisms live at the Pole, but the northern tip of the Peninsula abounds with life. Penguins and blue-eyed shags nest in the rocks where a few hardy plants have taken root. Crab-eater seals loll on flat icebergs where the top predator, the leopard seal, is less likely to attack. Minke whales patrol the bays, surfacing with an explosive exhalation. Gentoo and Adelie penguins porpoise as they approach the shore either to confuse the leopard seals, or for the sheer joy of it.

A snow overhang on the Antarctic Peninsula. © Art Wolfe

The scenery here is so grand, and the animals so numerous and spectacular, that photographers often find themselves with a common problem. How do you avoid the image that has already been taken a thousand times? Your eye is naturally pulled toward one postcard view after another. How do you endow an image with a deeper power or a sense of surprise? Here are a few tricks I use:

1. Change your perspective. Get off the ship. Unless you set off on a different route, you are limited to a single point of view (although a battery of lenses can add some flexibility). Once on shore or in a Zodiac boat, you can place an iceberg or a rack of whale ribs in the foreground, wheel around to position an animal against a good background, or crawl behind a curtain of icicles.

2. Get Closer. A close up shot usually has a better chance to be involving. In Antarctica, the rules prohibit approaching wildlife too closely. But they don’t prohibit the wildlife from approaching you. I often find if I set up in the general vicinity of penguins or seals, one of them will come to investigate, nosing right up to my lens. This isn’t for everyone, since it usually means you are sprawled in guano, and more than once a curious elephant seal pup has crawled right up on top of me.

3. Skip Dinner. It is an unfortunate coincidence that dinner is inevitably served when the light is best. You can eat later — you may never have the chance to shoot this place in this light again. Always take advantage of unique opportunities.

For more tips and hands-on instruction, join me on my next two trips to Antarctica, in November 2009 and 2010. For details, check my website, call my office at 206-332-0993, or email info@artwolfe.com.

• This week marks the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Protests. The iconic image of the “Tank Man” is splattered all over the internet, except on the Great-Fire-Wall-bound Chinese internet. The New York Times photo blog, Lens, has a great interview with photographers explaining how their version of the Tank Man came about. Most interesting of all, though, is a follow-up post yesterday showing a never before published photo of the Tank Man getting ready for the confrontation.

• Have you seen The Vendor Client Relationship video yet? If not, you might be the last one. Go check it out now and we won’t tell anyone ;-) It’s a hilarious take on the real world situation for those who work in the photography and advertising business.

• A Photo Editor pointed us to another noteworthy new online video — Michael Almereyda’s documentary about photography icon William Eggleston on Snag Film, William Eggleston in the Real World. The fillmmaker followed Eggleston on various trips around the country, capturing his complex personality and how it affects his work.

• The winning images of the PDN Photography Annual 2009 are now available on its website. We want to give a big shout out to our friends and contributors Alan Chin and Ed Kashi, who won the Photojournalism/Sports/Documentary and Corporate Design/Photo Products categories respectively.