By Claire O'Neill

Ryan Lintelman, curatorial assistant at the Smithsonian's Photographic History Collection, likens mutoscopes to YouTube. "They're accessible, they're cheap, and they're not as tightly censored as the movies, so we see a lot of sexual... [and] violent content." But that raises the question: What is a mutoscope? The Picture Show wanted to know more, so our friends at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History took us behind the scenes.

A mutoscope, Lintelman explained, was typically a large, cast iron machine that housed a hub of rotating images -- one of the very first motion picture devices. When flipped through with a crank, they produced a brief silent film (hence the name) that could be viewed by one person at a time.

Example of a mutoscope (Smithsonian Photographic History Collection © 2009)

Typically found in arcades, parlors and movie theaters, mutoscopes offered a cheap and private alternative to movies. On the exterior of each machine, a title card displayed the name and price of the film. Smithsonian has a whole collection of these handmade cards, which you can see in the gallery above. How could you resist titles like, "After He Bought Those Monkey Glands" and "The Lost Toupee"?

From daguerreotypes to one of the first digital cameras, the Smithsonian's Photographic History Collection offers an incredible array of materials: Ansel Adams prints, stereoscopes, photos of atomic explosions, and much more.

In this excerpt from the Smithsonian Channel television series "Stories From the Vaults," the photographic curator Shannon Perich tells Tom Cavanagh a bit more about the clunky contraptions.

• View more videos of Smithsonian Channel's Stories From The Vaults
• Check out this YouTube video (how appropriate) of a mutoscope made with Polaroids
• Learn more about Smithsonian's photography initiatives

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By Caryn Grant

The main topic of conversation at the World Swimming Championships in Rome this week has been those new-fangled swimsuits. The neck-to-ankle suits, enhanced with polyurethane, and now rubber, popped onto the scene in 2000 when they were cleared for competition at the Sydney Olympic Games. A number of world records have been broken since then, prompting swimming's governing body, FINA, to ban "non-textile" suits and limit the amount of coverage -- between the waist and knees for men, not past the shoulders or below the knees for women. The new standards, passed on Friday, will take effect in May 2010.

With the new ruling, who knows what we will see at the next Olympic Games? We take a look at the history of competitive swimsuits, from the teeny-tiny Speedo briefs to full-body coverage and back.

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Video by NPR staff photographer David Gilkey

Dehydration, sleep deprivation, boots soggy with sweat, 100 pounds of gear and 15 miles in 126-degree heat. Lance Cpl. Joseph Dills says you have no idea how bad it is until you do it. Luckily, NPR's staff photographer David Gilkey was embedded with Dills' battalion in Afghanistan, which gives us a rare glimpse of what life is like for Marines in the field.

Ahead of the 2009 presidential elections in Afghanistan, U.S. Marines with the 2nd Battalion, 8th regiment trekked miles each day, facing heavy resistance, in order to secure parts of Helmand province in the south. Watch Gilkey's video to get an idea of what it was like.

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More on NPR's news blog, The Two-Way.

More from Gilkey:

• Special Series On "America's Battalion"


• The Afghan Presidential Candidates


• Afghan Candidates Hit Campaign Trail


• NPR's Photographer Reports From Afghanistan


• Report from Mian Poshteh, Afghanistan


• Training The Elite Afghan Commandos

By Claire O'Neill

Photographing a model who is both beautiful and comfortable before a camera is one thing. But how do you capture the intellect of a writer? Marion Ettlinger may not have an answer or a formula, but she still knows how to do it. She's worked with Truman Capote, Haruki Murakami, Joyce Carol Oates, David Foster Wallace, Cormac McCarthy, Alice Munro... the list goes on. And despite the fact that these authors are not quite as comfortable as models, Ettlinger has done it with apparent ease.

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"How do you photograph that invisible thing?" Ettlinger mused aloud in an interview. That "thing" she's referring to is the elusive gift that produces good literature. Fascinated by questions like these, and by the contrast between a person's interior and exterior, she has been drawn to portraits since her early days. She took to sketching strangers at a young age, and translated those observational skills into photography while at art school.

Ettlinger's deference for her subjects shows in both her insightful images and her reluctance to talk too much about the authors. She did, however, share with Fresh Air's Terry Gross one particularly interesting story about photographing an intractable Truman Capote. Ettlinger doubts she'd make a good street photographer because she would "probably always miss the decisive moment," as she put it. But there are decisive moments in private, consensual settings as well -- and those, it's safe to say, she never misses. For that reason, she has become the nation's industry expert in author portraiture.

If you check out her Web site, you'll most likely see many of your favorite authors. Or just pull a book from a shelf and you might see her work on the jacket. Some of Ettlinger's most recent photographs can be viewed in the gallery above.

• Read this related article from The New York Times
• Listen to the Fresh Air interview
• Check out her bio and learn more about her book Author Photo: Portraits, 1983 - 2002

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By Claire O'Neill

Imagine attaching yourself to a rope and plunging down a 437-foot shaft into a pitch black pit. A "room" so dark you can't even see your hand in front of your face, and so immense that your friends can't hear you, even if you shout. Imagine trying to coordinate four other people dangling from walls to ignite magnesium flash powder (i.e. explosives) at the exact same moment so that for one split second, the space is brilliantly illuminated -- like a burst of lightning -- just long enough for you to click the shutter and say, "Got it!"

Stephen's Gap, Ala. (Stephen Alvarez / National Geographic © 2009)

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Stephen Alvarez does this sort of thing for a living. He's a National Geographic photographer, expert spelunker and, incidentally, a pyrotechnician. And he knows dedication. Each of his photographs, he says, can consume up to three days of his life. And in the end, only a few of them are published. Alvarez spent nearly 50 days in the field for a story in the June issue of National Geographic magazine, for example. The writer of the story spent about five.

But Alvarez really has something going for him: he's one of the few people in the world with the expertise for this rare genre of adventure photography. He's been all over the world photographing not only the most complex cave systems, but also all "places that haven't been cut down yet," as he puts it. This recent National Geographic story took him through the deep South: the caves of Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia -- commonly known to cavers as the TAG system.

"It is uncharted territory," says Alvarez. "If you want to do original physical exploration, you don't have a lot of choices. You can go to the deep ocean, which is prohibitively expensive. All the mountains have been climbed; the whole surface of the earth has been mapped. So that leaves you the underground world."

An underground world that has been millennia in the making and, in most instances, has remained untouched by man. Which is why cavers are reluctant to talk about discoveries and why, one would think, they'd hesitate to share their secret spots with a national magazine. But, as Alvarez says, the cavers in this story "were very receptive to the idea that this thing that they love would be shared with millions of people." They're protective of their caves, but more than anything, they want to share their excitement.

Alvarez shares a few stories about his background, about his life as a National Geographic photographer, and about the making of this magazine story. Here's a video of some field footage from the making of this article.

• Click through the gallery and listen to the photographer's narration.
• Also check out ngm.com to read the story and view more photos.
• More about Alvarez.

By Heather Murphy

Most foreigners seeking tranquility do not choose Caracas. Other parts of Venezuela perhaps -- the coast or Angel Falls. But photojournalists often have a skewed sense of calm. So when Christopher Anderson decided he was done photographing Mideast conflict zones, a few years back, he headed straight for Venezuela's capital. This was in 2004, as the country was preparing for a referendum on whether to keep President Hugo Chavez -- and as crime there was building to a crescendo that would gain it recognition as "murder capital of the world."

"I thought, let's go check it out. Then I kind of got sucked into the place," Anderson recalls over the phone.

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His latest book, Capitolio, coming out next month (Picture Show got a sneak peak) is the product of his five years there. The project recently pushed him to the top of a short list of photographers nominated for the environmental Prix Pictet award, another notch on his long awards belt.

The stunning black-and-white-photos hit on various aspects of life in the capitolio; shoot-em-ups between drunk police on motorcycles and streets gangs, slums writhing with sex and violence and, naturally, Chavez lovers and haters.

Even for a seasoned conflict photographer, Caracas proved a difficult place to photograph, he says. At first the government welcomed him, but then life got more complicated. He was arrested numerous times; people were perpetually suspicious of him.

"In Venezuela, the camera is a weapon for both sides of the issue, whether you are pro- or anti-Chavez," he recalls.

And so he took to using a small Contax T3 point-and-shoot which he says fit nicely into his fanny-pack, where no one would suspect that he was a serious Magnum photographer. (Note: the Picture Show endorses the use of fanny-packs only in special circumstances.)

The police let Anderson tag along during their frequent gun battles with gangs, which often occurred while drinking on motorcycles, he says. Christopher Anderson/Magnum

 

For the most part, he didn't take assignments during this period, he says, because he "didn't want to be controlled." He wanted to let the experience unfold without any predetermined plan.

Amid the rallies and oil fields, it's apparent that he did find moments of tranquility: an ethereal reflection in a window; a dog prancing through a cobweb of shadows; mist floating over tiny houses. In the book, these moments of peace are often juxtaposed with more jarring imagery -- a reminder of the contradictions inherent in Chavez Land.

Magnum put together an interesting audio slideshow of his photos, as well, that is worth checking out. The book, published by Editorial RM , should be available in late August.

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NPR.org is getting a face-lift:

By Claire O'Neill

The best way to photograph a culture is to first understand it. This is what makes Alexandra Avakian such an effective photojournalist: For nearly two decades, she has traveled the world from Mississippi to Iran studying, documenting and immersing herself in various Muslim cultures. For Avakian, her new book, Windows of the Soul: My Journey in the Muslim World, is a stunning visual recollection of the things she has seen. For the rest of us, it's an intimate introduction to a richly diverse Muslim world.

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Avakian has arguably seen the worst: war, poverty, repression, death. A regular contributor to National Geographic and a member of Contact Press Images, she has also been published in The New York Times Magazine, Life and Time, to name a few. Even from a young age, she was drawn to stories of struggle, revolution and conflict. In her words:

Focal Point/National Geographic, 2008

I had been fascinated by revolution and civil war and longed to learn more about the lengths to which people go to change their living conditions and achieve basic human rights. I was less interested in ideology than in the human capacity for bravery in the fight for freedom.

Her photos take us from Gaza to Iran, from Somalia to Pennsylvania. A young boy in Morocco, arms crossed, maybe 9 years old, smokes a cigarette with a smirk as others play foosball; a Sufi worshiper wails on his knees after having swallowed glass shards -- a gesture of religious penitence; children glow in evening light as they play in a rusty, abandoned car at a refugee camp in Gaza. Avakian has traveled the world working on many different kinds of stories, but has found herself often drawn back to the Middle East.

Some of her photographs are difficult to look at -- images of famine, bloodshed and loss. But putting herself in such situations, Avakian says, was facilitated by a certain sense of mission. She writes that many Americans "see only brief news reports, which tend to prominently feature violence and anger. While my own photographs contributed to these quick news bites," she continues, "there is much more to the story." Her work tells that story, because although some photos are difficult to look at, many others show quiet moments, both happy and sad, that humanize what for many is just a news story. One might say that Avakian is as much an anthropologist as she is a photographer.

• D.C. readers will have a chance to see Avakian present her work tomorrow at the Middle East Institute. Read more about the event.
• The Windows of the Soul exhibition will premier this August at the International Photo Festival Visa pour l'Image in Perpignan, France.

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By Heather Murphy and Claire O'Neill

Millions across the world took to the streets early this morning to relish a rare sight: a total solar eclipse. The moon moved directly between the sun and the Earth for as long as 6 minutes and 39 seconds in some parts, making it the longest such event of the 21st century. And here's an even rarer sight: millions of people wearing dorky glasses.

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Starting off in India just after dawn, the eclipse was visible throughout parts of Asia before moving over southern Japan and then into the Pacific Ocean. From Hawaii to South America, young and old gathered with their special viewing devices, watching in wonder as the sky turned black. Dogs barked, people cried, cows acted strangely.

Meanwhile, photographers from across the globe gave up their own precious viewing moments and snapped away. Check it out. There won't be a longer eclipse until 2132.

The eclipse as seen in the Indian city of Varanasi on Wednesday. Pedro Ugarte/AFP/Getty Images

 

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By Claire O'Neill

New iPhones have three. Most point-and-shoot digital cameras have about 10. The Canon 5D Mark II has a ridiculous 21.1. Megapixels, that is. So imagine what 0.3 megapixels look like. (Here's a hint: pretty terrible.) That's what inspired Michal Daniel to use a camera of that size. While everyone else was shopping around for the highest quality camera, he was hunting for the worst.

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The real source of inspiration for Daniel was Star Trek, his favorite show in the early 1970s. "I dreamt of an electronic notebook with a camera, like the personal communicators on the Enterprise," he writes. He purchased a now-obsolete Eyemodule2 -- which offers the lowest resolution possible -- attached it to a digital organizer (something like a Palm Pilot), and was instantly stealthy as a spy.

Daniel's camera

Typically a photographer of theater, he was seeking candid, offstage moments, but felt hindered by clunky cameras that made his presence too obvious. The hand-held device offered a disguise. His series and book In Your Face is a small selection of images taken with this small camera, all extreme close-ups of people without guards.

Daniel quotes James Agee:

"Only in certain waking moments of suspension, of quiet, of solitude, are these guards down, and these moments are only rarely to be seen by the person himself, or by any other human being."

"This is my collection of some of these unguarded moments," he writes. Captain Kirk would undoubtedly be impressed.

• View more photos taken with this camera here.
• Check out Michal Daniel's Web site for his professional work.

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By Claire O'Neill

By now the moon buzz may be a bit tedious. But here's an interesting fact:

In 1962, Mercury astronaut John Glenn bought a cheap 35mm camera at a Cocoa Beach, Fla., drug store, because he alone thought America's first orbital spaceflight deserved to be documented with still images. Photographer Michael Light shares this bit of information in his project Full Moon. Over time, Light explains, NASA recognized the value of in-flight photography and invested in medium-format Hasselblad cameras for the Gemini program -- arguably the best cameras out there.

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There's a selection of NASA images that we've seen over and over again. The iconic photograph of Buzz Aldrin's footprint on the moon, for example, has become something of a cliche. Nevertheless, it is a provocative image; it symbolizes both the enduring American myth of Manifest Destiny and the human impulse to explore. Mostly, though, that footprint shows the forever-altered surface of the moon that for 4.5 billion years had remained completely pristine.

Nowadays, it's easy to take the moon for granted. But on the 40th anniversary of the very first Apollo moon landing, it's still interesting to take a step back and look through NASA's photo archives -- to remember what made that first moon mission so incredible. Michael Light's Full Moon, published in 1999, is dedicated to precisely that.

As a landscape photographer drawn to new and unusual terrain, Light has something in common with the moonwalking astronauts. In an ideal world, he would have donned a spacesuit and taken photographs of the moon himself. Instead, he did the next best -- and more reasonable -- thing. He resurrected master negatives and transparencies from the NASA archives, and created a book of artfully digitized prints, mostly never before seen. The photos are from various Apollo and space exploration missions and were taken by the astronauts themselves.

A few moments with the photographs, and you'll find yourself immersed in a surreal world of cosmic winds, low gravity and 273 degrees of lunar heat. It's hard to imagine existing in those conditions, let alone photographing in a place where light and atmosphere are so far from what the human eye is used to. That's the real source of awe. And Michael Light's reverence for both the art of photography and the thrill of exploration imbues every image.

A similar project, 100 Suns, documents the era of nuclear testing, featuring previously classified photographs and spectacular explosions. Check out his Web site for more info on Full Moon and other works.

Related links:

• Morning Edition interview with Buzz Aldrin


• Moon series page

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By Claire O'Neill

Here are some share-worthy videos we've encountered lately.

Drawing with light:

Light-Paint Piano Player from Ryan Cashman on Vimeo.

Tilt-shift stop motion:

Helpless from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Five 5-second videos:

5x5 of things that I do in a day from txcrew on Vimeo.

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By Claire O'Neill

Architectural photography legend Julius Shulman died on Wednesday at the age of 98. Take a look at this gallery we did in March, and listen to the All Things Considered story.

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By Claire O'Neill

The recent death of renowned architectural photographer Julius Shulman has prompted us to take a look back at that particular genre of photography. In a rather timely coincidence, The Huntington Library in San Marino, Calif., recently announced the online opening of The Maynard L. Parker Collection -- an exhaustive catalog of the photographer's work. Much like Shulman, Parker's most successful photographs were of California homes.

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Born in Vermont in 1901, Maynard Parker was a Los Angeles-based photographer, specializing in architecture, gardens and design. Throughout the mid-century, his images were found in many of the country's most popular magazines, such as House Beautiful, Better Homes & Gardens and Architectural Digest. Not only did he photograph the homes of celebrities like Alfred Hitchcock and Judy Garland, but he also chronicled the work of the country's best architecture and design pioneers, such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Paul Laszlo and Thomas Church.

Maynard Parker sets up his camera on a forklift, Courtesy The Huntington Library

As a library statement reads, Parker's work "captured a postwar era of suburban middle class homes that celebrated an indoor outdoor lifestyle and burgeoning consumer culture. ... He captured California's outdoor lifestyle in sun washed images of the patios, lush lawns, and backyard swimming pools."

Jennifer Watts, curator of photography at The Huntington, put together an introductory presentation of Parker's work called California and the Postwar Suburban Home, which is well worth a read:

Between 1950 and 1970, the nation's suburban population doubled (from 36 million to 74 million residents), with 83 percent of the nation's growth in the suburbs. California's abundant land, cheap labor, and mild climate put it in the vanguard of the new housing movement. ... Home and garden magazines ... capitalized on housing trends and provided a blueprint for modern living.

A sleek and minimalist poolside bungalow; an office with the same stark and sleek appeal as an episode of Mad Men; a "top of the line" kitchen that to us seems so quaintly vintage: together these images create a vivid view of a distinct time and place. But the work of photographers like Parker and Shulman often goes unrecognized. Every day we flip through magazines and rarely do we stop to wonder who took the photographs. Especially in hindsight, though, we can recognize the value of photographic collections like Parker's. He and his contemporaries not only documented what at the time was modern, but they also preserved an era of design in American memory.

The Maynard L. Parker collection consists of approximately 58,000 negatives, transparencies and photographs, of which nearly 6,000 have been digitized to view online. Learn more about Parker and the collection on The Huntington Library's Web site.

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By Claire O'Neill

The Prix Pictet is a world photography award dedicated to environmental sustainability. Twelve international photographers were named to a shortlist July 9, one of whom will be selected later this year to receive the prize.

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The prize reinforces the fact that photography has a communicative purpose. Last year's theme, water, prompted photographs of desertification, flash floods and glacial melting that showed the merciless forces of nature, as well as the environment's vulnerability to man. This year, the theme is Earth -- and the imagery is no less stunning.

Among the subjects featured by this year's finalists: a photo collage of colonial Congo and today's neglected oil infrastructure; a seemingly infinite wasteland of trash in Mexico City; displaced communities along the Yangtze River; and the horrific effects of oil production in the Niger Delta.

The images testify to the environmental cost of human "progress" and show the irreversible toll of exploiting the planet's resources. More importantly, though, the ideal is to provoke action. The artists shed light on places and issues that might otherwise seem inaccessible to people. Take a look at this gallery of nominees, and check out the Prix Pictet Web site to view entire series from each photographer. Who do you think should win?

• You may also be interested in this Weekend Edition story on Ed Kashi's Curse of the Black Gold.

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By Heather Murphy

Philip Trager has spent his life photographing two seemingly disparate subjects: architecture and dancers. In his latest exhibit, Form and Movement at The Building Museum in D.C., the two bodies of work appear side by side.

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Positioned in this way, parallels emerge between the structure of chiseled dancers and concrete walls, shadows on faces and staircases.

"Considering buildings and bodies side by side, we are invited to see the organic in what we build and the structural in who we are," the show's curator explains.

The exhibit evokes the peculiar feeling that the world has been frozen by a futuristic time-stopper. Dancers are suspended in midair, cityscapes are free of any signs of life.

"I've always had the feeling that the presence of people would interfere with my feeling of the building," Trager says, explaining his compartmentalized approach over the phone.

Likewise, when photographing dancers, he removes distractions by taking them far away from stages and by capturing them -- as he does buildings -- in natural light.

Trager never expected to make a living from photography. He started out as a lawyer. Even as he became well-known for his architectural photography in the 1970s and '80s, he spent his days in an office.

"Making a living from fine art photography was virtually impossible back then ... the prices were much lower," he says.

These days, he has moved from black-and-white film to digital color. We can look forward to a very different sort of exhibit from him, he says, a few years down the line.

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By Claire O'Neill

These images are paired with NPR's Exclusive First Listen feature on Bill Frisell's new album Disfarmer.

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Music inspired by photography is not unheard of. Film scores, for one, rely heavily on visuals to tell a musical narrative, as the story in turn relies on the music. Jazz guitarist Bill Frisell has taken the idea to another level with a new album Disfarmer, inspired by the lifetime photographic corpus of Mike Disfarmer.

Disfarmer seems an unusual name -- and that's because the man made it up. Born Michael Meyer to immigrant German parents in 1884, he changed his name to indicate a rift with both his kin and his agrarian surroundings -- believing Meyer to be German for "farmer." This alone might set him apart as singularly unusual, but his vocation as a small town portraitist in Heber Springs, Ark. estranged him still further from his farming contemporaries.

His photographs trace the emotional ebb and flow of town life from World War I to the Great Depression, from the solemn scene before World War II to the war's more optimistic aftermath. A notoriously unfriendly oddity, Disfarmer's presence behind the camera hardly elicited grins from the townsfolk. His eccentricities and social quirks are palpable in his portraits: the subjects stand solemnly, often awkwardly -- a token of their unfamiliarity with a big camera as well as Disfarmer's personality.

This somewhat recently assembled collection of photographs provides a rare big-picture portrait of a small town and all its various faces. Chuck Helm, director of performing arts at the Wexner Center in Columbus, Ohio, had a hunch that musician Bill Frisell would be inspired by Disfarmer's photography. He could not have been more correct.

In Frisell's words:

I try to picture what went on in Disfarmer's mind. How did he really feel about the people in this town? What was he thinking? What did he see? We'll never know, but as I write the music, I'd like to imagine it coming from his point of view. The sound of him looking through the lens.

Take a listen to Frisell's album Disfarmer while clicking through these images. The haunting reverberations of steel guitar and melancholy strings will transport you to an era mostly lost to American memory -- save what's preserved in these photos. Read more about the album and the photos on NPR music.

• You may also be interested in The Oxford Project.

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By Claire O'Neill

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NPR staff photographer David Gilkey says that the number one rule for a photographer is: never abandon your equipment. But he decided to do just that -- leaving most of his things behind except a camera, a lens and a bulletproof vest. What was supposed to be a brief patrol with the Marines in southern Afghanistan turned into a 7-day trek through the surprisingly lush Helmand River Province.

Trekking in temperatures well over 110 degrees, the Marines abandoned almost all of their belongings except their weapons, and dodged almost constant fire with only the clothes on their backs.

Hear Gilkey talk about what it's like taking photos in a war zone.

• Gilkey also discussed his experience on All Things Considered.

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By Claire O'Neill

For the Pacific Northwest, times have changed since the frontier days of Darius Kinsey. Back when both the American West and the art of photography were still young, Kinsey used a large format camera to document the logging and lumber industry. Contemporary photographer Eirik Johnson has a similar documentary project, but his images show a landscape much altered by years of deforestation.

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Johnson's series and Aperture book, Sawdust Mountain, "encompasses not only fishermen and hatchery specialists, lumber workers, and reforestation projects, but also the disenfranchised: abandoned buildings and vehicles, makeshift stores only one step above yard sales," says the introduction. It provides a glimpse of life in the overcast, wooded hinterlands of Oregon, Washington and California, and compares our romantic notions of the American West with ecological concerns of today.

Johnson has an upcoming exhibition at Henry Art Gallery in Seattle. To view more of his work, take a look at his Web site.

Images courtesy of Eirik Johnson, from the book Sawdust Mountain (Aperture, 2009).

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By Claire O'Neill

Influence is a mysterious thing. Just when you think you've done something original, you discover something impossibly similar -- and 30 years older. To say that American photographers are influenced by Edward Hopper does not necessarily mean they're imitating him. But when you place a 1930s Hopper painting next to a 1960s Robert Adams photograph, you might be surprised by the resemblance. Perhaps the similarities can simply be attributed to a shared history and culture, but it's hard to dismiss Hopper's legacy.

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Fraenkel Gallery's new book Edward Hopper and Company takes a look at Hopper's influence on photography. He is known as a painter of loneliness and desolation. When other artists were painting abstract splatters and blocks of color, Hopper was still painting landscapes and portraits. But an eerie use of light created a sense of foreboding in his work -- an ironic type of noir that was unlike the paintings of his predecessors. With scenes of rural abandonment and urban solitude, Hopper illustrated the gothic side of the American spirit: empty, lonely and vast.

He had a deadpan way of portraying the world, and that same voice resonates in the photographs of Lee Friedlander, Walker Evans, Diane Arbus, and more. After all, these photographers, roughly around the 1960s and onward, were doing a similar thing. They were departing from the traditional landscapes of Ansel Adams and moving toward a new aesthetic: snapshots of quotidian places and faces. Jeffrey Fraenkel writes in the introduction:

Edward Hopper's relevance to American photography becomes clearer with each passing decade. His respect for humble subjects, his interest in the psychological, his depth as a landscape artist, and his astonishing sensitivity to color as a means of communicating feeling, are only some of the elements that may have led the writer Geoff Dyer to theorize that Hopper 'could claim to be the most influential American photographer of the twentieth century--even though he didn't take any photographs.'

The book compares 10 of Hopper's works with carefully selected photographs of eight masters: Adams, Friedlander, Evans and Arbus, along with Harry Callahan, William Eggleston, Robert Frank and Stephen Shore. The sole quotation from a photographer comes from Adams who recalls the first time he saw a Hopper painting as a child. "The pictures were a comfort," he writes, "but of course none could permanently transport me home. In the months that followed, however, they began to give me something lasting, a realization of the poignancy of light. With it, all places were interesting."

What do you think? Can a case be made for Hopper's influence? Or did the painter simply share an aesthetic, a culture and history with the photographers that ensued him?

• Also related: Hopper's legacy continues today in The Washington Post's annual Peeps diorama contest.

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By Coburn Dukehart

NPR photographer David Gilkey is embedded with U.S Marines in Southern Afghanistan. Seven days ago, they left their camp for what was supposed to be a 24-hour patrol. They ran into heavy fighting, and it's been too dangerous for them to turn back.

These photos showing the Marines engaged in battle were taken Wednesday in Mian Poshteh, Afghanistan.

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The Marines from the 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment are part of Operation Khanjar, which was launched to take areas in the Southern Helmand province that Taliban fighters use as a resupply route. The goal is to clear insurgents from the volatile region before the nation's Aug. 20 presidential election and to restore stability to the region.

Gilkey is traveling with platoons from Golf and Echo companies, as well as with photographers from ABC and Getty Images. He says has spent the last 10 days walking in extreme heat and "sleeping in dust," without showering or brushing his teeth. The group has been shot at repeatedly, he reports.

The trucks that were supposed to bring their gear overland have yet to make it there. The word on the ground is that they were attacked, although there are no reports of casualties, he says.

He has nothing with him except the clothes on his back - and one working camera.

"This is the hardest, most amazing thing I've ever had to go through," he said. "We go out every day and get shot at."

Gilkey transmitted images to NPR through Getty photographer Joe Raedle, who has a working satellite phone.

He says no more Marines have been killed since the first day of the battle, although many have been flown out because of heat exhaustion. Helicopters are able to get in, but no trucks.

He hopes to get his gear within the next 24 hours. "Inshallah," he says.

Gilkey, along with NPR reporter Tom Bowman and producer Graham Smith, has been following the troops known as "America's Battalion" since they left North Carolina's Camp Lejeune in May. See the NPR series here.

More NPR stories and photo galleries from Afghanistan:

• First U.S. Casualties Reported In Afghanistan Push
• Marines Train To Conquer Taliban, Their Own Fears
• In Afghan Heat, Marines Prepare For The Storm

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By Heather Murphy

After more than twenty years as a commercial photographer, Ernesto Bazan took what he calls his "first good picture in Cuba." It was 1993. A young girl purses her lips in concentration, holding billowy white fabric to her head, as if she's a bride. The shadow of another child, hidden by the veil, floats on a hot cement wall behind her.

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Bazan had taken thousands of photographs before, but there was something about this delicate image of a stranger that got at the "essence of life" in a way that his work for magazines could not. Soon after, he gave himself entirely to this approach -- wandering the streets, like a "hunter stalking game," he explains in a Sicilian accent coated by 14 years in Cuba. He gave up assignments and funded his work through grants and teaching, which he found -- to his surprise -- he was good at.

The resulting images appear in a self-published masterpiece, titled simply Bazan Cuba. After three years in production, the book emerged this spring and won the best photography book of the year award at the New York Photo Festival.

 

This week, its pages have special significance. On July Fourth three years ago, the Italian-born Bazan reluctantly left the country he had fallen in love with. Cuban police told him, without much explanation, that he could no longer teach photography workshops. Taking this as a signal that he, his Cuban wife and twin boys were no longer safe on the island, they moved to Mexico.

It was a jarring turn of events for a man who had once been granted unprecedented access to Fidel Castro's military. "Not because my pictures were showing Cuba in a positive light," he says. "I was photographing the harshest moment in its history. ... They liked the fact that I tried to take pictures of people's plight. I feel that the indomitable spirit of humanity comes through."

Cuba is a highly photographed place, but Bazan's vision is distinctive. He gracefully delivers moments in Cuban life that only an extremely sensitive outsider-turned-insider could possibly find.

His images are full of surprises -- look quickly and you'll see a beautiful photograph; linger and you'll begin to grasp a more complex subplot. There is often something hidden -- a solemn face peeking out between a girls' shiny fingernails, a hand reaching eerily through a stream, a car bumper that is actually a man's head.

 

This is one of Bazan's favorite photos. Listen to him explain why:

"I like to incorporate different moments taking place at the same time, but the moments are unrelated to one another," he says. "I do that sometimes because I like to show the multilayered nature of life and reality."

Compiling 14 years of experience with Cuban reality took several years. Rather than give up control, he published the book himself with the help of 50 friends and students, involving photography experts and beginners alike in the editing process. Production was an invigorating collaborative process. Though it occurred far from the island, the process, he says, felt very Cuban.

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By Claire O'Neill

Photographer Brigitte Lacombe is shy, says her editor. But how can a timid person take such bold photographs? How does she stand before dignitaries such as the Dalai Lama -- or celebrities like Meryl Streep and Martin Scorsese -- and maintain composure, both photographically and personally?

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One possible answer is that with shyness often comes intuition. Lacombe is just that: an intuitive photographer who cares little for the trappings of stardom. Her impulse is to capture the essence of her subjects. This explains the title of her most recent book, Anima/Persona. A retrospective collection of portraits, mostly black and white, it explores the various faces of fame: There's the way we perceive celebrities, but there's also the character beneath the facade. Lacombe's mission is to present the latter.

The book is full of quiet, intimate moments -- from 1975 to today. Nicole Kidman gets dressed for the film Cold Mountain, seemingly unaware of Lacombe's presence; Kate Moss and Twiggy, typically made-up and dressed-up on magazine covers, are stripped down to the minimum; Bob Dylan, in his 60s, walks with his back to Lacombe on his California ranch.

Frank Rich of The New York Times puts it well in his introduction:

There is art, and there is show business. In a young century overdosing on glossy and voyeuristic celebrity exploitation masquerading as photojournalism, it's essential to keep the boundary distinct. That is the key to appreciating the photography of Brigitte Lacombe, whose work often takes her into the realm of show business but whose pictures strip the commerce away from the artists until we are face-to-face with what some of the seminal figures of our time are trying to say to their audience.

In that sense, Lacombe provides more than just a lens; she also gives a voice, despite being shy.

To view more of her work, check out her Web site.

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By Claire O'Neill

There's a common belief that revelations occur when you least expect them. The proverbial Newton-apple, Ben Franklin-kite thing. This was the case for photographer Ed Kashi who, lying in bed one morning, envisioned three photos from his archives flowing through his mind "like a cinematic strip." Hence the birth of his newest project, Three.

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Kashi is an award-winning photojournalist, whose still images and photo essays have illustrated the pages of National Geographic, The New York Times Magazine and Time, to name a few. He's also a multimedia pioneer, creating waves in the online world with works such as Aging in America and this "flipbook" project on Iraqi Kurdistan. He and his wife Julie Winokur founded Talking Eyes Media -- an organization dedicated to social change through visual media.

He's been all over the world, documenting some pretty tough pills to swallow. That's why this latest project is a real departure. In his book Three, photographs are presented as triptychs with no context, no captions. Some come from the same series, but many are related solely on a visual level: They're arranged to guide the eye in a certain way, or they all share a color palette or similar shapes. There's no real story. It's just an organic journey through his archives.

Ed Kashi

 

The triptych on the book's cover is of the mythic, 74 year-old, Brazilian fisherman Ze Peixe, or "the fish." These are the images that came to Kashi in his dream. For him, this triptych is one of the most effective, "and it came from an unconscious moment," he said from his studio in New Jersey.

I find that in general, it's when you forget about yourself, and you forget about what you're doing -- and you get into an almost meditative or trance-like state -- that you do your greatest work.

Ed Kashi

 

It's interesting that this trance-like state yielded a traditionally reverent art form: Triptychs originated as early Christian art. Kashi's reverence, though, is really directed toward his vocation. It's his eagerness to experiment and to embrace change that has made him so successful. In the field, he has an instinctive command of his camera and his surroundings. And in production, it seems like he's always a step ahead of the crowd. Once a film purist, he's now a digital proselyte, thrilled and empowered by the way technology has altered his work.

Once I had digitized a critical mass of my pictures, I could dip into one well to see everything. ... I'm the guy who was quoted, I'm sure, 10 years ago: "I'm never going to shoot digital." I'm proud to say, thank God, that I didn't stand by that statement. ... Because of Photoshop -- as opposed to going into the darkroom, and instead of taking a week to put three pictures on an easel on one sheet of paper -- I could do it in 30 minutes.

In the wake of deadlines, overstimulation and diminishing attention spans, Kashi's Three is a reminder that it's important to take a step back and digest the things we create. It's OK to take things out of context every once in a while. It's fun to play.

Be sure to check out the multimedia presentation produced by Julie Winokur that accompanies this book.

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By Claire O'Neill

We all perform. It's what we do for each other all the time, deliberately or unintentionally. It's a way of telling about ourselves in the hope of being recognized as what we'd like to be. -- Richard Avedon

If you close your eyes and think of Marilyn Monroe, Bob Dylan or Andy Warhol, the images that come to mind were likely taken by Richard Avedon. So begins John Lahr's introduction to a book of Avedon's photographs -- but his list of celebrity names is much, much longer. And that's because throughout his career, Avedon photographed nearly everyone: actors, musicians, playwrights, dancers ... the list goes on. A selection of these images has been compiled in an impressive, 304-page encyclopedia of fame called Performance.

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For performers and models alike, to be photographed by Avedon was a signal of having "made it." With big, black eyes magnified by thick lenses, he was a keen observer. He had the acuity to perceive subtleties of personality -- and the artistry to translate them into images that would inform public perception. As one of the most famed portrait photographers, he was responsible for perpetuating legendary figures in America's collective memory. And he had fun with it.

Lahr, senior drama critic for The New Yorker magazine, writes:

Avedon's archive is a sort of memory theater of the great players and the occasional walk-ons who fretted and strutted their hour upon the last century's noisy stage. ... Over the years, as his understanding of life and of performance deepened, Avedon also discovered the exhaustion beneath the dynamism of fame's workhorses.

Aside from the large, crisp prints in this book, the best part is Lahr's description of what it was like to be photographed by Avedon. The text takes us into a big, white studio, beneath key lights, in front of Avedon's camera -- on stage, more or less. It also places us next to Avedon, behind the lens, face-to-face with some of history's most famous faces.

On one hand, he was a spectator; but on the other, his act of photographing was a performance itself. His success stemmed from a love for flare, an ability to really see people, and an unconscious sensitivity to movement and expression. Performance is just as much an homage to Avedon's legacy as it is a catalog of American celebrity.

Avedon's portfolio most certainly is not limited to celebrities and models. But more images from the book, including the cover, are available for preview on The Richard Avedon Foundation Web site.

Images courtesy of The Richard Avedon Foundation, Performance, Abrams Books, 2008.

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