While researching Kelefa Sanneh’s article about Dapper Dan, which ran in The New Yorker’s recent Style Issue, we looked at the work of many photographers who covered the eighties hip-hop scene. One of them, Janette Beckman, recently returned from Caracas, where she photographed the hip-hop community at a school that teaches a new kind of break dance and music called Tuki, which mixes street styles, pop culture, house, and techno.

Tuki is taught at Tiuna el Fuerte, a cultural center built from old shipping containers and covered in graffiti, in the El Valle barrio. There is a recording studio, an underground performance space, and hip-hop and break-dancing workshops. It’s funded by the Chávez government, and is run by the rap artists Apache, a.k.a. Cultur MC, and Piky.

Matthew McKnight writes about a case challenging the N.Y. Police Department’s stop-and-frisk policy: “The relationship between law enforcement and communities that the N.Y.P.D. has determined contain high concentrations of crime—thus requiring a heightened police presence—is a complicated, quarrelsome one”: http://nyr.kr/Zy8Rsb

Here, see a selection of photojournalist Nina Berman’s work documenting community outrage around the N.Y.P.D.’s controversial stop-&-frisk policy: http://nyr.kr/NWEGWY

(Source: newyorker.com)

Elissa Curtis: 

Taking our cue from the current Style Issue of the magazine, we’re wrapping up the week on Photo Booth with a selection of pictures from the photographer Lauren Lancaster’s first foray into New York Fashion Week, this past February. She documented models getting primped for the runway, last-minute wardrobe adjustments, and the pre-show buzz of anticipation, and also noticed a newly ubiquitous object at the shows: the iPhone. “Where waiting once might have meant boredom and daydreams, emotions now were hidden behind the familiar posture of a bowed head and nose-to-phone stony stare,” Lancaster said. 

Click-through for a slideshow of Lancaster’s photos: http://nyr.kr/YwIdx7

Last week, the photographer Matt Eich took The New Yorker’s Instagram feed with him to Sweetwater, Texas, for the Sweetwater Rattlesnake Roundup. At the roundup, held each year since 1958, thousands of wild rattlesnakes are captured, sold, displayed, and, often, killed as part of the week’s events. “The idea of being around thousands of snakes wasn’t high on my bucket list.” Eich told me. “Still, I decided it would be worth seeing and experiencing, so I marked the event on my calendar nearly a year out.”

Click-through for a slideshow of Eich’s photos, and for more from Maria Lokke on his experience: http://nyr.kr/WONILl

(Source: newyorker.com)

In this week’s issue of the magazine, Robin Schwartz photographed Lena Dunham’s dog Lamby for Dunham’s Personal History “A Box of Puppies.” Schwartz, who took her first photograph of an animal at ten years old, told me, “I am an animal person. I cannot survive without animals, this is who I have always been.” Her assistant on the shoot was her thirteen-year-old daughter, Amelia, who is also the subject of Schwartz’s body of work “Amelia’s World,” a magical portrait stretching over eleven years, which pictures Amelia with all types of animals—the largest is an elephant and the smallest is a Cotton-Top Tamarin. Schwartz is a professor of photography at William Paterson University, in New Jersey, and is represented by ClampArt.

Click-through for a selection of images from “Amelia’s World,” accompanied by Amelia’s captions and memories, and followed by a brief Q. & A. with Schwartz: http://nyr.kr/Xq4jkK

In this week’s issue of the magazine (the Style Issue), Pari Dukovic’s Portfolio of the emerging punk culture in Burma follows Calvin Tomkins’s piece about the upcoming exhibition at the Met’s Costume Institute “Punk: Chaos to Couture.” As the introduction to Dukovic’s photographs explains,

Punk in nineteen-seventies New York tended to be more concerned with aesthetics than with politics. It was spare, nervy music created in reaction to the embarrassing excesses of arena rock. Often, the “establishment” it railed against was your mom, or your school principal. (The final scene of the Ramones’ movie “Rock ’n’ Roll High School” is Vince Lombardi High exploding in flames.) Decades later, a punk diaspora thrives around the world. In Myanmar, a small punk community that stayed underground through decades of military rule is beginning to emerge.

Click-through for more, plus a slideshow of Dukovic’s photos: http://nyr.kr/YNc5aT

Last week, Ed Kashi posted to The New Yorker’s Instagram feed from Nicaragua, where he spent the week working on an ongoing project about Chronic Kidney Disease of unknown origin (CKDu), an epidemic that has killed thousands of sugar-cane workers throughout Central America. The disease is more than twenty years old, and has now reached its third generation of workers, many of whom are young men in their twenties. Kashi spent most of his trip in the town of Chichigalpa, the center of the epidemic, which has been called the Island of Widows.

Click-through for a slideshow of Kashi’s photos: http://nyr.kr/YwOGHA

(Source: newyorker.com)

Steve McCurry, “Geisha in subway” (2007), Kyoto, Japan
This picture reflects the juxtaposition of an ancient tradition in the modern world. The woman is the epitome of elegance in a utilitarian, stark, unromantic setting. It captures the paradox of the classic in a hurried world.

Earlier this month, Photo Booth looked at the New York City subway over time. This week, they’ve curated a selection of contemporary images from subways around the world. Click-through for a slideshow: http://nyr.kr/10JfLhy 

Michael Wolf, “Tokyo Compression #17” (2010)
“The Tokyo compression images were taken at one subway stop over a period of thirty days each morning during peak rush hour, between 7:30 and 9 A.M.,” Wolf told me. “Every eighty seconds, another train would pull up to the platform, jammed full of passengers on their way to work.” 

Earlier this month, Photo Booth looked at the New York City subway over time. This week, they’ve curated a selection of contemporary images from subways around the world. Click-through for a slideshow: http://nyr.kr/10JfLhy 

Pari Dukovic, a regular contributor toThe New Yorker, will see his first solo show open at Giacobetti Paul Gallery in Dumbo tonight.

Over the course of two years, Dukovic photographed burlesque performers in New York City. His interest in the scene was fuelled by the contrast between an artist’s public and private persona: “A burlesque performer takes a piece of themselves and builds a character in their fantasy world,” he writes. “While these performances take place in public, performers actually share a very private story.”

The resulting photographs are emotional and quite intimate: “I wanted my viewer to enter the emotional state of the performer’s character and psyche.” For Dukovic, the biggest challenge was “to capture the most ethereal moments of the performers and to have the sense of looking into a private world.”

I think he succeeds.

“Burlesque” opens tonight at 111 Front Street, Suite 220, at 6 P.M. There will be an encore opening, to coincide with the Armory art show, on Saturday, March 9th, from 6 to 9 P.M.

(Source: newyorker.com)