livebooks blog

• The long-awaited new LIFE.com has finally launched this week. A collaboration between LIFE and Getty Images, the new website features millions of images from the LIFE and Getty archives and more than 3,000 images are added to the site every day. You can download, share or print any of the images for free for personal, “non-commercial” use. We can’t deny this is an amazing (well-designed) resource, but like Vincent Laforet, we wonder how this will affect editorial licensing in the long run.

• This April is the inaugural Month of Photography Los Angeles, produced by the people behind the Lucie Awards in New York. The festival consists of exhibitions and lectures around the city, including a Douglas Kirkland exhibition at the new Annenberg Space for Photography and one by glamor duo Markus Klinko and Indrani at the Pacific Design Center.

• These days pretty much anything seems “greenable” so it’s not surprising that Aurora Photos is launching a “Green Collection” that “focuses on creative photography illustrating contemporary environmental themes and issues.” We like the journalistic approach of its “Nature and Environment Feature Stories,” which has slide shows that cover environmental issues from all over the world.

• The New York Times broke the sad news on Monday of Helen Levitt’s death. The photographer, famous for her poetic imagery of New York City streets, passed away in her sleep at her Manhattan home at the age of 95.

Miki Johnson: Tell me about the project you submitted for the 2008 Emerging Photographer Grant.

Sean Gallagher: The project I submitted for the Emerging Photographer’s Grant, The Silent Wave: Desertification in Western China, developed as a result of an article I read online in the summer of 2007, highlighting increased desertification in the north and west of China. My educational background is in the biological sciences, and I’ve always been particularly interested in environmental issues. This article caught my interest and I started to think about ways to do a photo-essay on the subject.

Around this time, I was regularly reading David Alan Harvey’s ‘Road Trips’ blog where he announced in July 2007 that there would be a chance for one photographer to have him review their portfolio and be showcased on his new blog. There was no money involved at that point. I decided to seize the opportunity and headed to China’s western deserts for a couple of weeks to shoot the story I had been thinking about.

On my return, I put an edit of 20 images together and submitted them to David. A little later, David announced that he had secured funding to award a $5,000 grant to the chosen photographer and he increased the possible number of submitted images from 20 to 40. Although I was tempted to add more, I stuck with my original tight edit and resisted fleshing it out with possibly weaker images.

MJ: Why was the grant important to your work? Did you use the money to finish the desertification project or to work on other projects?

SG: The grant has been incredibly important to me, especially at this point in my career. There are so many great photographers, both established and emerging, all competing for work. The grant allowed me to free myself from that competition for a while and just focus on shooting. At the time I was awarded the grant, recent unrest in Tibet meant that many of the areas I had previously photographed were temporarily off-limits to non-Chinese. I therefore decided to concentrate on other environmental issue such as dropping water levels in the Yangtze River, the condition of animals in China’s zoos, and air pollution in Beijing. I have also since had the chance to return to the desertification work. I see this as quite a long-term project and hope to make repeat trips to various locations across China.

MJ: Did you get additional work from the exposure granted by the award?

SG: The increased exposure my work has received has definitely been one of the main benefits of receiving the Emerging Photographer’s Grant. David’s reputation precedes him, so being linked in this way has provided me with many opportunities. I also made the effort to travel in 2008 to Festival of the Photograph in the U.S. and Visa Pour l’Image in France, both for the first time. The Emerging Photographer’s Grant was officially announced at Festival of the Photograph, so being there in person was a great experience and an opportunity to meet many people who had just become aware of my work. I have also recently secured further funding from the Pulitzer Center On Crisis Reporting to continue my work on desertification. My application for this was based partly on my recent personal work, much of which was funded by David’s Emerging Photographers Grant.

MJ: Did you know David before the grant and did he talk about why he had selected your work?

SG: I had met David previously while taking one of his workshops in Lisbon, Portugal, in 2004. I traveled from Japan, where I was working as an English teacher at the time. On presenting my portfolio to him, I distinctly remember him being very critical of it and barely liking any pictures. It ended up being the most valuable workshop I have taken. Getting an honest, critical opinion really spurred me on, as well as David’s encouragement to approach photography in our own way. After that I was then independently selected for the one-year paid internship program at Magnum, in their London office — another invaluable experience.

For the 2009 Emerging Photographers Grant, a panel of judges, sans David, will choose the recipient. For the 2008 grant, however, it was David who made the decision as the whole concept of the grant was in its infancy. In January 2008, David announced I was the recipient of the grant and commented on his blog, “i saw this essay as stylistically powerful and journalistically relevant…” However, as can be seen from David’s new online magazine Burn, he has an eclectic taste in photography; for the grant, I think any style has an opportunity.

World-renowned conservation and fine art photographer Art Wolfe is in the process of reinventing his business model — upgrading to a liveBooks website and selling his stock images directly through a Photoshelter account that is linked to it. Art will be contributing to RESOLVE regularly, but we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to record a few words of wisdom while he was visiting last week. We shot the short interview below with Art and Jim Martin, executive director of Art Wolfe Inc. and an accomplished photographer himself, near our San Francisco office.

When Art started to see diminishing returns from stock sales years ago, he reworked his business around selling images himself through his website. Understanding that “fur and feathers” stock photography was not sufficient to keep his business afloat, he also did what many photographers are now learning the value of — he diversified. On top of stock and print sales, Art is also reaching millions of viewers through his TV show Travels to the Edge and is reworking his workshops for more intimate, challenging classes.

• According to an Associated Press report, Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton called for the release of detained American-Iranian photojournalist Roxana Saberi at a press conference yesterday, two days after the NPPA released an announcement that the Iranian government admitted Saberi was held in prison. Since the US currently has no diplomatic relations with Iran, the State Department is now working with Swiss officials to find out details of her detention. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) started a Facebook petition which had already collected over 5,500 signatures as of yesterday afternoon. NPPA has more on Saberi and the arrest here and here. For a complete story and update, go to Free Roxana website.

• Moodboard, the London-based stock photo agency that has gained popularity in this struggling economy, debuted its digital magazine ONE this week. While some think that the stock industry is in freefall, Moodboard CEO Mike Watson thinks it is the perfect solution for photographers and creatives to counter the slashed marketing and photography budgets companies everywhere are experiencing. Regardless, we think the 34-page magazine is visually pleasing and a great attempt to connect with the photography community at large.

• The 50 States Project published its first “assignment” on March 1. The innovative online gallery pulls together 50 emerging photographers, one from each state, and asks them to make a photo according a bimonthly theme. The first theme was “People,” and the photographers were asked to create images that convey their own style as well as the feel of their home state. A Photo Editor has already given it his blessing and undoubtedly other editors have bookmarked the page as well.