Lindsey O’Connor has been named the new executive director of Atlanta Celebrates Photography (ACP), it was announced today.

Prior to joining the organization, O’Connor was the Biennial coordinator at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, where she coordinated the 2017, 2019 and 2022 Biennial exhibitions and film programs and many emerging artists’ shows. She has also held positions at the Guggenheim Museum, American Federation of Arts and most recently was senior manager of exhibitions at the High Museum of Art.

“I moved back to Atlanta to create critical platforms that amplify the voices of artists living in the Southeast, and I look forward to realizing that commitment within the context of ACP’s already robust program,” O’Connor stated in a press release.

O’Connor will spearhead Atlanta Celebrates Photography’s initiative to present year-round programming and exhibitions, lead fund raising efforts and oversee the organization’s 25th annual festival which kicks off on September 28.

“Lindsey’s extensive exhibition planning and project management background makes her uniquely qualified to lead Atlanta Celebrates Photography into the next phase of our organizational development,” stated Mary Stanley, ACP board president, in a press release. “Her stellar track record working with artists across the globe to produce exhibitions, events and catalogues ensures ACP’s leadership as a connecting agent for lens-based artists in Atlanta, the Southeast and beyond.”

Stanley told ArtsATL that other changes are pending at the organization and will be announced shortly.

Upon moving to Atlanta in 2022, O’Connor also joined the board of directors for Full Radius Dance.

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An exhibition by sculptor Olu Amoda, winner of the 2022 Hudgens Prize, will open Saturday, August 19 at the Fowler Gallery of the Hudgens Center for Art and Learning. The exhibit is titled Scavenging and Scanning: Sculptural Exploration of the Earth’s Belly.

Amoda was born in Nigeria and is known for his use of discarded consumer products such as metal plates, bolts, rusty nails and pipes to create sculptural figures that highlight various social, political and cultural issues. In 2009, he received a Master’s degree in fine art from Georgia Southern University and now lives in Alpharetta.

“I am interested in the former lives of the objects I use and in the new meanings they take on when they are brought together,” Amoda stated in a press release.

Open only to Georgia residents, the Hudgens prize carries a $50,000 cash award, one of the nation’s largest art awards, and an invitation to a solo exhibit.

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Merrill Elam, a principal of Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects, Inc. in Atlanta, is one of only three architects named as 2023 members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Architecture. The others are Maurice Cox, planning director at the City of Detroit, and Michael Maltzan of Maltzan Architecture in Los Angeles.

Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects is designing MOCA GA’s new permanent facility at the Goat Farm arts complex.

The American Academy of Arts and Letters was founded in 1898 as an honor society of the country’s leading architects, artists, composers and writers. Other members elected this year include Maria Schneider (Music,) Yvonne Rainer (Art) and Anna Deavere Smith (Literature.) The Academy’s mission is to foster and sustain an interest in literature, music and the fine arts; the 300 members are elected for life and pay no dues.

The joy of photography is in how it manages to capture the beauty in the everyday world around us. That is why a picture is worth a thousand words. Delightful indie game Toem takes this idea to heart in its presentation of a deceptively mundane world that is full of potential adventure for the player, even if it is just through the lens of a camera. Now on Xbox Game Pass, Toem is a wonderfully relaxing title about the joys of photography that will leave you with a new outlook on life.

The world of Toem is rendered in simple black-grey tones. The game’s diorama-esque levels are full of different biomes, characters, and secrets to interact with. The game sets the player on their adventure by handing them a camera and tasking them with climbing to the top of a mountain in order to photograph the titular phenomenon.

Toem separates its adventure into smaller areas that range from snowy peaks to city streets. All of these are bustling with NPCs just living their lives in the world. In order to progress on to the next area in pursuit of your ultimate goal you will need to collect a certain number of stamps. Stamps are earned by completing side-quests given by the game’s NPCs.

These quests are delightfully silly and written with concise charm. You will likely only talk to an NPC a couple of times in the course of accomplishing whatever task they give you, but it is always a delightful fleeting moment. Every task given to you can be solved with some unconventional thinking and your camera. Somebody wants a picture of a fish, another wants you to scare away some birds, and there may even be a ghost haunting the woods.

All of these stories as small pastiches of life within the world of Toem. They rarely connect but they don’t need to. Like a scrapbook of photos, the individual snapshots of the people that these quests provide culminate in a more cohesive collage of the world. It is a living breathing thing, and by capturing passing moments with your camera you are able to appreciate them all the better.

Similarly, Toem’s compendium invites a deeper connection to the game’s world. Players can collect 54 pictures of every animal in the game in order to fill out their compendium. Like the game’s side-quests these compendium photos require the player to explore every corner of every map in Toem.

In addition to eventually finding the desired creature and taking a photo of it, the player will find themselves surrounded by things they never would have seen had they not gone out of their way to fill the compendium. It is a feeling akin to real-life photography, in which you set out on an adventure to capture a single image but find yourself taking in everything around you on the journey to that image being taken. That single photo — in real life or Toem’s compendium — is loaded with more experience than can be put on a roll of film.

For anybody with a passing interest in photography, or for those who just want a chill adventure filled with delightful characters, Toem is the perfect game to sit down with.

Toem is now on Xbox Game Pass.

It’s a Barbie world, and Nicole Houff is living in it.

The Minneapolis-based artist has made a specialty of posing dolls — Mattel’s most famous, to be exact — and photographing them around the state, in miniature midcentury modern sets and sometimes cheeky positions. (Picture a naked Ken doll with a strategically placed surfboard, or a holiday scene with Barbie posed on a couch with a martini in hand and nearby Ken tied up in Christmas lights.) She has even crafted a First Avenue Barbie and a State Fair Barbie.

Houff scours Etsy and eBay for the outfits, furnishings and accessories for the more than 100 Barbie dolls she owns. And then she builds a theme, creates a backdrop and positions them ever-so-delicately in her home studio.

We talked with Houff about her photographic homage to Barbie, Barbie’s big moment and why she’s not a diehard collector.

Q: Describe your art.
A: I do fine art photographs featuring Barbie and Ken dolls. In a nutshell, that’s what I do. I’ll have a general concept for a scene or a theme. Then, in my Minneapolis studio, what I do is I’ll pull together the doll accessories, anything that I need for the shoot, and I set them up, and then I design lighting around it.

Q: How long have you been doing this?
A: Sixteen years.

Q: So, why Barbie?
A: I think Barbie’s journey from 1959 to where she is now is incredibly fascinating. Not many toys are relevant 65 years later.

Q: How do you find the pieces to make these elaborate scenes?
A: That’s really the most fun part. I have about 100 dolls, but finding all the little accessories and all the little details is like an adventure leading up to the actual shoot. I can use eBay and Etsy and Facebook Marketplace, anything like that. Even from Mattel, some of the stuff I use is directly from them, but way more stuff is made through a third party.

Q: Are all of the accessories you have official Barbie accessories?
A: There’s more than just Barbie stuff, because it’s the size that matters. There’s dollhouse scale, model train scale, and Barbie scale, a 1:6 scale. I can do searches for the right-sized items. Especially nowadays with 3-D printers, people make accessories that you wouldn’t have been able to find a few years ago, so the sky’s the limit.

Q: Are all of your dolls Barbie dolls?
A: They’re all Barbie. I use a lot of reproduction dolls or vintage-inspired dolls because I like referencing the aesthetic from the 1950s and ’60s. I do have one doll made by Mattel that’s actually a Julie doll. She has the same face as one of the Kristy dolls, which is one of Barbie’s friends. That’s just me being a little overshare-y now.

Q: Please, overshare! Are you a Barbie collector on top of a Barbie photographer?
A: I get asked that all the time. I manhandle the dolls, I don’t have dolls that are still in the box and I use a lot of reproduction dolls. So, I wouldn’t be considered a classic collector, but I still do collect the dolls. I have around 100 Barbies and Kens in total, and some of them would be considered solid collector dolls, even if they’re out of the box.

Q: What is it like for a Barbie lover to see people go crazy over Barbie again?
A: I do art fairs, and I’ve done them for around a dozen years. It’s one of my favorite ways to interact with people because people don’t tend to have filters at an art fair. You get to see some real emotions, expressions and reactions.

Over the years, it’s been fun when people see my art and it spurs a lot of questions and excitement. This summer has been next level because Barbie is so in the ether and on top of the public consciousness. The movie has generated this newfound audience for me, which has been incredibly exciting.

Q: How did you make my favorites, Grain Belt Barbie and State Fair Barbie?
A: What I do is I go to the location first, and I get the photo. Then I print it on a matte, non-reflective paper and hang it like a backdrop in the studio and set up the dolls so they look people-sized. Of course, it gives me a reason to go out and have some fun in our city.

Q: How do you get Barbie to do things like hold a drink?
A: There’s a lot of trickery, if you will. I can suspend things with a little bit of wire, because Barbie hands aren’t that functional. I get these little clear glue dots that crafters use. They’re very easy to hide. I don’t add things digitally to my photographs.

Q: What do you hope to see in the Barbie movie?
A: It’s obviously well put together, very thoughtful, and the aesthetic is very over-the-top. I mean just the extra, extra, extra pink. I don’t do a ton of really pink pieces, but I’ve noticed this summer people are really gravitating to more of my pieces that have pink in them. I’m looking forward to seeing the movie to see if I’m inspired. I’m definitely going to make some new work on top of the pieces I already have.

The exposure triangle is practically gospel that just about every new photographer needs to master, but there is more to it than simply varying shutter speed, aperture, and ISO to create a balanced exposure. This helpful video tutorial features an experienced landscape photographer discussing how to properly approach the exposure triangle to ensure you can make photos that are both technically and creatively satisfying. 

Coming to you from Christian Irmler – Landscape Photography, this great video tutorial discusses the idea of turning the exposure triangle into a “triangle of styles.” The idea is to uncouple style and exposure so your creative vision is not inadvertently cast aside by the goal of getting a technically correct exposure. Creative vision should dictate the technical exposure, as there are many different ways to represent the same scene, and each of those will require a different combination of shutter speed, aperture, and ISO and often, different total exposures. Learning to approach the process in this manner will help you gain far more creative control over images. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Irmler. 

And if you really want to dive into landscape photography, check out “Photographing The World 1: Landscape Photography and Post-Processing with Elia Locardi.”