Nymphoto interview with Amanda Marsalis (full text, here)

"NP: Where do you find inspiration?

AM: That is a hard question to answer. My first instinct is to say light – even to say love. When I love someone or something, I want to take a picture. When the light is beautiful, I want to take a picture. I would put Joan Didion on my list of inspirations, along with great meals, bands I love, the Met on a Sunday afternoon. It is so open though..."






P.S.>> I'm almost done with Miranda July's book "No One Belongs Here More Than You". It's a complex little collection of short stories. It's worth the read.

Timothy Greenfield-Sanders

Nadine Rovner

Nadine Rovner

via la pura vida gallery tumbler

Andrew B. Myers

Andrew B. Myers -- Toronto based photog -- & still a student -- reminds me of the washed-out graphic style of one of my favorite photographers, Nick Meek

Simon Roberts: Lens Culture Conversations with Photographers from Jim Casper on Vimeo.

"What I claim is to live to the full the contradiction of my time, which may well make sarcasm the condition of truth" Roland Barthes preface to "Mythologies"

"If you weren’t a painter, what would you be doing?

Probably delivering pizzas or murdering people. I don’t know. I couldn’t imagine my life without being able to make things that I fall in love with."

Anthony Lister interview w Anthem, here

Photos i found on my desktop that my mom took in florida last year.

Martin Parr

© Martin Parr -- great interview w him here via lens culture

My Grandfather wore that sweater and that tie

James Welling

"...Appearance and illusion, the reality of the camera and the photographic print, what we see or think we see, perception and how things are revealed photographically have always been in dialogue in his work. " (more from his "Glass House" series here)

IT'S THE NEW YEAR AND I NEED TO START WRITING MORE ON THIS THING AGAIN!

© Arnaud Pyvka

Angelina Jolie, you used to be so interesting. Why did you stop?

Gorgeous photos © Gilles Bensimon

:..I enjoyed my meal as I watched the sun's descent in a cloudless sky. It was a relaxing moment. The vault of the world was magnificently tinted. The stars were eager to participate; hardly had the blanket of colour been pulled a little then they started to shine through the deep blue. The wind blew with a faint, warm breeze and the sea moved about kindly, the water peaking and troughing like people dancing in a circle who come together and rise their hands and more apart and come together again, over and over..:

Beautiful; Life of Pi; stillll reading this book

2010: What I hope to do in the New Year,

- go to sleep early; get up early

- yoga/exercise/meditation more often

- read more; spend less time online/on my computer

- eat wholesomely with care

- speak with confidence

- speak with love

- take more pictures

Lin Zhipeng, here's his website (a little too much skin and sex for me, but the fews gems have really awesome energy and humor)

"Wherever and whatever I read, I have to have a pencil, not a pen—preferably a stub of a pencil so I can get close to the words, underline well-turned sentences, brilliant or stupid ideas, interesting words and bits of information, and write short or elaborate comments in the margins, put question marks, check marks and other private notations next to paragraphs that only I—and sometimes not even I—can later decipher. I would love to see an anthology of comments and underlined passages by readers of history books in public libraries, who despite the strict prohibition of such activity could not help themselves and had to register their complaints about the author of the book or the direction in which humanity has been heading for the last few thousand years.

Witold Gombrowicz says somewhere in his diaries that we write not in the name of some higher purpose, but to assert our very existence. This is true not only of poets and novelists, I think, but also of anyone who feels moved to deface pristine pages of books. With that in mind, for someone like me, the attraction some people have for the Kindle and other electronic reading devices is unfathomable. I prefer my Plato dog-eared, my Philip Roth with coffee stains, and can’t wait to get my hands on that new volume of poetry by Sharon Olds I saw in a bookstore window late last night" -- Charles Simic NYR blog

"If we, citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the alter of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams. " -- Yann Martel author's note, "Life of Pi"

Mike Pisciteli via his blog, you won't fit it here

Big Surf Sun City Arizona, 1980 -- David Hurn via Today's Pictures

My friend, Stani here is her :: website

"Is That The Place?"

I got to work on a shoot today with Mary Ellen Mark. I came home and just spent an hour or so looking through the collection of work on her website. I didn't realize she has photographed so many of the very smart and talented people of our time. Really made me wonder what it would be like to have met all of those people.

"Reality is always extraordinary"

Recent photos from Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland

Montage of clips of Richard Avedon on Charlie Rose

"I suspect it is for one's self-interest that one looks at one's surroundings and one's self. This search is personally born and is indeed my reason and motive for making photographs. The camera is not merely a reflecting pool and the photographs are not exactly the mirror, mirror on the wall that speaks with a twisted tongue. Witness is borne and puzzles comes together at the photographic moment which is very simple and complete. The mind-finger presses the release on the silly machine and it stops time and holds what its jaws can encompass and what the light will stain" Lee Friedlander via the pura vida gallery

one of my favorite portraits by r.avedon

"Our connection to animals today is often developed through assimilation and appropriation; they are absorbed in our lives, yet we no longer know of their origin. Most people are cut off from the steps involved in their processing or acquisition, shielded from witnessing their death or decay. I am interested in moving within these contradictions, always wondering if the notion of sacred will survive alongside our evolution."

Colleen Plumb

Asger Carlsen, also repped by Marge Casey

catss

More Dan Winters,