Benjamin Fredrickson’s latest photo book is a celebration of atomic wedgies and the wedgie subculture

Anant Ambani-Radhika Merchant haldi ceremony: Photographer Joseph Radhik posted an insider picture of how fun the haldi was.

Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant are all set to tie the knot on July 12. Before their big day, the couple is celebrating various ceremonies such as mameru, sangeet, graha pooja and more. On Monday, they marked their haldi ceremony in extravagant outfits. Amid the celebrations, photographer Joseph Radhik posted an insider picture of how fun the haldi was. For the unversed, during haldi, a mix of turmeric, water and oil is applied to the bride and the groom.

“Looks like we photographed a peaceful haldi event last night,” wrote Radhik as he shared a picture of his cameras. The cameras can be seen covered in haldi stains. He also shared that the team had to send the cameras to a “spa” so they could get clean. (Also Read: Mumbai photographer who captured Anant Ambani, Radhika Merchant’s pre-wedding sums up ‘surreal week’ in one sentence)

Take a look at his post here:

The wedding celebrations of the two began with mameru ceremony. This was followed by a sangeet which looked no less than a blockbuster film. The sangeet also saw a performance from pop sensation Justin Bieber. Actors such as Salman Khan, Sara Ali Khan and Ananya Panday, Alia Bhatt Ranbir Kapoor, Social media influencer Orry, aka Orhan Awatramani were all seen enjoying at the party.

Just a few days ago, Radhika Merchant’s parents, Shaila and Viren Merchant, held a traditional Graha Shanti Pooja to bless their daughter ahead of her wedding. Radhika looked stunning in a classic white saree and a contrasting pink blouse. She finished her ensemble with diamond jewellery and a beautiful gajra in her hair. (Also Read: Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant big fat Indian wedding: A look at the timeline of events)

The three-day celebrations begin with the Shubh Vivaah (wedding), followed by the Shubh Aashirwad (blessing ceremony) on July 13, and the Mangal Utsav (wedding reception) on July 14.

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News / Trending / Anant Ambani, Radhika Merchant’s wedding photographer shows how haldi ceremony put his expensive gear at risk

Now in its 11th year, the California Academy of Sciences’ renowned BigPicture Natural World Photography Competition celebrates some of the world’s best photographers and the year’s most striking images. Judged by an esteemed panel of nature and conservation photography experts, chaired by wildlife photographer Suzi Eszterhas, the competition’s winning images and finalists highlight Earth’s biodiversity and illustrate the many threats that our planet faces. Each photo, in its own way, inspires viewers to value and protect the remarkable diversity of life on Earth. Below, we present the winners and some of bioGraphic‘s personal favorites from this year’s competition.

March of the Spider Orchids by Georgina Steytler

Against the moody, rain-soaked backdrop of Western Australia’s southern coast, flowers from a lone white spider orchid (likely of the Caladenia longicauda species complex) emerge from the brush and unfurl their spindly arms. Photographer Georgina Steytler used a combination of visual techniques to capture the eerie essence of these plants, whose flowering bodies and scents resemble those of their would-be pollinators. Several Caladenia orchid species are what scientists call “sexually deceptive,” producing so-called pseudopheromones that mimic the scent of female wasps. Paired with the orchid’s unique color and shape, these adaptations lure male wasps from afar and inspire them to try to copulate with the flower, covering the wasps with pollen in the process.

Although Caladenia orchids tend to exist as loners, rather than in clonal colonies, spider orchids thrive in the biodiverse forests of Western Australia. Depending on which taxonomist you ask, the spider orchid genus includes a staggering number of plants endemic to the region: Scientists estimate there are roughly 380 species of Caladenia orchids, with more than 185 in Western Australia alone. Because so many spider orchids are found only along the state’s southern coast, local government officials have promoted recovery plans to protect critically endangered species (such as Caladenia elegans) and recover their populations in regions devastated by invasive weeds and animals, wildfire and human activity.

A Moment in the Sun by Kathleen Borshanian

Perched on the cliffs of the Pribilof Islands, this adorable Arctic blue fox (Vulpes lagopus pribilofensis) appears completely unbothered and tranquil as it basks in the sunlight—a rare occurrence for an archipelago often shrouded in a thick blanket of fog. Arctic blue foxes are endemic to these remote islands, which emerge from the Bering Sea some 750 miles west of Anchorage. Despite their seclusion and the near-complete lack of trees, the Pribilof Islands are surprisingly biodiverse, dubbed the “Galapagos of the North” by some biologists. The archipelago is the product of repeated volcanic eruptions that began hundreds of thousands of years ago, and today it is home to northern fur seal colonies, millions of seabird nests and very few humans. Yet mammals like the Arctic blue fox have adapted over generations to the unique, treeless environment: Below the pictured fox appears to be the entrance of a sprawling maze of tunnels that form an interconnected, underground nest for these secretive mammals. Photographer Kathleen Borshanian says the dens are practically ubiquitous on the Pribilof Islands, winding their way within a few feet of the island’s sheer 1,000-foot-high basaltic cliffs, and they serve as a crucial refuge from predators and a safe haven for rearing the next generation of fox pups.

The Forest of the Monarchs by Jaime Rojo

Upon first glance, this scene looks little more than a sunlit patch of leafy trees. But those clumps hanging off branches and blanketing tree trunks are actually millions of monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus), huddled for warmth in one of Mexico’s famous overwintering sites. Monarchs are the only butterfly species known to make a two-way migration to avoid North America’s freezing wintertime temperatures, traveling annually from summer breeding grounds down to the warm, humid climates of Mexico’s Sierra Madre Mountains—a journey that can stretch as far as 3,000 miles. To this day, researchers have yet to understand what triggers the monarch butterfly’s epic migration. Yet every year, between October and March, monarchs form colonies at the exact same overwintering sites located in a small stretch of Mexico’s temperate, high-altitude forests. Tens of thousands of butterflies will cluster on oyamel fir trees (Abies religiosa), cozying up to generate warmth and conserve energy as temperatures dip.

Photographer Jaime Rojo captured this sunset scene on Michoacan’s Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and annual overwintering grounds for the iconic butterflies. Though these orange-and-white beauties are perhaps the most familiar butterfly species in the world, monarchs nevertheless face existential challenges from encroaching agriculture, climate change and deforestation of their overwintering grounds. Rojo’s image serves as both a stunning representation of the monarch’s epic migration, and a visual reminder of the close symbiosis between these butterflies and the oyamel firs they rely on to survive.

Hopeless by Alvaro Herrero

This haunting image of an entangled humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) captures the grim reality these magnificent marine mammals face in oceans around the world. Decades of aggressive whale hunting, vessel strikes, disease and entanglement in fishing gear have collectively killed thousands of humpback whales and kept many cetacean populations worldwide on the brink of extinction. Photographer Alvaro Herrero says he captured the fatal entanglement of this juvenile humpback whale in order to paint an unflinching image of the life-threatening conditions whales face along their migrations—and also to illustrate the slow, painful death of our planet at the hands of human selfishness and inactivity.

Despite the immense challenges, scientists worldwide are fighting to protect these iconic species and create safer passages for whales migrating from their tropical wintering grounds to feeding areas in the North. After widespread commercial whaling ceased in the mid-1900s, international efforts to prevent humpback extinction have brought their populations from fewer than 5,000 individuals to more than 84,000 as of 2018. Today, organizations such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are closely monitoring their populations and regional distribution, demarcating specific marine protected areas around humpback feeding grounds, and initiating new conservation efforts focused on reducing entanglements and vessel strikes—two of the greatest threats to these cetaceans today.

Tadpole Migration by Shane Gross

Every summer day in the lakes of Vancouver Island, hundreds of paperclip-sized western toad tadpoles (Anaxyrus boreas) wriggle their way from the relatively safe depths of the water into sunlit shallows, where algae thrives and dinner awaits. Veteran underwater photographer Shane Gross had heard of the tadpoles’ great migration and spent a summer morning exploring a lake in the northern part of the island, only to learn from a local that the tadpoles tended to surface en masse in the late afternoon. Returning to the lake some hours later, camera in tow, Gross was amazed by the numbers of tadpoles he witnessed dancing in the water, their quick movements revealing little flecks of gold on their otherwise opaque black skin. Using a tilted fisheye lens, Gross was able to capture both the tadpoles’ rapturous journey to find sustenance and glimpses of the lake’s thicket of lily pads and towering forest-covered mountains. These tadpoles seem to have found strength in numbers, swarming past attacks from water bugs and leeches to continue nibbling on food—and any other appealing organisms that passed by.

Underwater Harmony and Chaos by Franco Banfi

The Ancient Greek word for “foolish” is moros, which is both a tongue-in-cheek epithet and the unfortunate namesake for the northern gannet (Morus bassanus). This Atlantic-dwelling gannet subspecies lives up to its name in more ways than one: Taxonomists apparently chose the genus name because of the gannet’s fearlessness when approached on their nesting grounds. Yet these birds are perhaps more famous for their dramatic hunting behavior, which sees flocks of gannets diving like vertical torpedoes from dozens of feet above the water’s surface. With their bills outstretched and wings folded tightly against their bodies, northern gannets can reach speeds up to 60 miles per hour and depths up to 70 feet as they jab into ocean waters to poach their prey. Following a cluster of fishing vessels off the coast of Scotland’s Shetland Islands, photographer Franco Banfi tracked an active colony of northern gannets and their feeding route, diving into the dark water to visually capture the chaos, beauty and unexpected harmony of the gannet’s daily fight for food and survival.

Good Fire by Maddy Rifka

“When you hear the words ‘wildfire’ and ‘California,’ many think first of ‘devastation,’” said photographer Maddy Rifka, referring to the spate of deadly, massive wildfires that have ripped through western North America in recent years. Yet for centuries, tribal communities across the West recognized fire as a force for good. Indigenous peoples of California historically tended the land by igniting frequent, low-intensity burns, mimicking natural disturbances caused by lightning. And where fire went, life followed. By clearing fire-prone brush that might otherwise take over, these regular burns encouraged beneficial growth patterns for native plants and fruits, simultaneously maintaining biodiversity and protecting local water supplies. Unfortunately, an era of federally enforced wildfire suppression and forest mismanagement primed Western forests for the kind of severe, mass-scale burns we experience today, thus maligning fire as unequivocally “bad.”

Only in recent years have federal officials and Western scientists begun to embrace fire as a crucial component of forest management and a ritual interlocking land stewardship with Indigenous cultural practice. Steven Saiz, pictured, is a Hoopa Valley tribal member and one of many Native Americans fighting to reclaim their ancestral right to burn on California lands. In this particular blaze, Saiz pours a steady stream of fuel onto a patch of brush, coaxing the flames to spread through the dense undergrowth surrounding a Yurok Tribe elder’s home. Here, Saiz knows that this intentional form of “destruction” will eventually encourage new life on the Yurok Reservation, and protect lives from the deadly, out-of-control blazes that have too often torn apart mismanaged forestlands. To Saiz, this burn is as much a tool of ecological regeneration as it is a form of elder care.

Beauty of the Desert by Hema Palan

Even though the Schokari sand racer (Psammophis schokari) is known for its whip-fast speed and agility, photographer Hema Palan managed to capture a tranquil nighttime shot of a lone sand racer moving through the branches of a shrub in India’s Thar Desert. As a diurnal ambush predator, this reptile was likely settling in for a night of rest before emerging in the daylight to hunt lizards, rodents and other prey. Their pursuits can reach speeds of up to nine miles per hour, earning the sand racer its title as one of the Middle East and South Asia’s fastest snakes.

This reptile faces few predators in the Thar Desert, yet increasing human presence, mining development and commercial farming have collectively threatened the region’s fragile ecosystems. With a population density of around 215 people per square mile, the Thar Desert is the most densely populated desert in the world, and also one of the world’s smallest. Despite its size and inhospitable, arid climate, the desert is itself a refuge for a surprisingly diverse variety of endemic and endangered species, including the globally threatened great Indian bustard (Ardeotis nigriceps), the mugger crocodile (Crocodylus palustris) and the phog shrub (Calligonum polygonoides) this sand racer has taken shelter in. Fortunately, efforts to protect these and other desert dwellers have resulted in conservation practices designed to mitigate the effects of extensive livestock grazing, as well as the creation of several sanctuaries and a national park.

In Celebration by Geo Cloete

Wading in the tidepools off of South Africa’s Cape Peninsula, photographer Geo Cloete leveraged his vision and creative use of a fisheye lens to capture the stunning symbiosis between the ocean’s crashing waves and sea anemones: Only when there is a chance of feeding do these colorful cnidarians bloom, extending their nimble tentacles outward to ensnare plankton, crabs and tiny fish. The vehicle for their prey? The breaking waves themselves, which sweep over tidepools and their inhabitants during high tide, delivering nutrients and other microscopic organisms to the pool’s intricate food web.

Not much is known about sea anemones endemic to South Africa’s intertidal zone, perhaps in part because these polyps retract their tentacles into tight bulbs during low tide and when exposed to air, sunlight and predators. In many regions of the world, sea anemones gather in thick colony-like blankets—much like the swath illustrated by Cloete’s image—latching onto rocky outcrops in large numbers. Some group-living species from the shores of California, for example, cluster and reproduce asexually to form a quasi “army” of genetically identical anemone clones, attacking neighboring colonies as scouting polyps settle on nearby coral skeletons and rocks in search of empty space to occupy.

Northern Ghosts by Peter Mather

Despite being one of the coldest and most barren places on Earth, the North American Arctic is surprisingly biodiverse. The region is famous for cold-adapted and iconic wildlife like caribou, bears and wolves, yet native Northerners know these animals to be extremely elusive, leaving behind few traces of life beyond tracks in the snow and howls in the night. To photographer Peter Mather, finding the Arctic’s transient wildlife feels like trying to pin down a ghost or apparition, which ultimately became the theme uniting Mather’s artfully rendered photo story. By placing motion-activated camera traps in the field and often leaving them over the span of months or years, Mather captured five rare visuals of wildlife in the ice-covered expanses of the Arctic, including this caribou (Rangifer tarandus granti) carcass pictured on Alaska’s North Slope. He then used both flash photography and a long exposure to illustrate the fleeting presence of an Arctic fox that seemed to be as curious about the carcass as he was.

Mather’s theme of transition, ephemeral wildlife and barren landscapes perhaps subconsciously addresses the other harsh reality of life in the Arctic: Even as extreme conditions and low accessibility have kept human impact on Arctic ecosystems low, climate change and increasing demand for Arctic resources are placing unprecedented pressure on the organisms that live there. Without adequate conservation efforts and a dramatic slowing of climate change, these animals might become the very apparitions of the Arctic that the photographer depicts.

Stardust Forest by Kazuaki Koseki

Would you believe your eyes if you saw ten million fireflies before you, dancing in the skies and lighting up the forest? Photographer Kazuaki Koseki would, having spent the past seven years studying the ecology and photographing the beautiful parabolic trajectories of these seemingly magical insects in the forests of the Yamagata Prefecture. Fireflies hold particular cultural importance in Japan, where their emergence marks the changing of the seasons and is thought to be a manifestation of the souls of soldiers who died in war. The floating light trails captured in this photo were mostly created by male fireflies, who hover and emit frequent bursts of light when trying to court mates. With smaller back wings that render them flightless, female fireflies of this particular species wait patiently on the forest floor or on trees, signaling to males every few seconds with similar flashes of light. Although Koseki’s use of long exposure helped illustrate the wandering luminescence of hundreds of fireflies, he ultimately viewed these insects as his creative collaborators: “The himebotaru is an artist, who paints light in the forest,” Koseki said.

This story originally appeared in bioGraphic, an independent magazine about nature and regeneration powered by the California Academy of Sciences.

Café Royal Books is an independent book publisher that publishes affordable photography books from some of the greatest photographers of all time, but in equal measure, provides a platform to some of the most underrated and unseen.

The small low-cost monograph books are now considered a staple in British photography culture and showcase some of the most important social documentary work ever made in the UK and Ireland. Among the best photographers to document life in the 20th century UK is undoubtedly Chris Killip and five of his Café Royal Books have been reissued due to high demand.

• See our guide to the best books on photography

Chris Killip is renowned for his incredible body of work including projects Seacoal, Skinningrove (recently published in a new book by Stanley / Barker), and Inflagrante which looked at life on the poverty line of the working class in post-war Britain. Killip’s ability to embed himself in a community and document it from within led to capturing authentic moments of the human condition that live long in the memory.

The five books being reissued for second editions by Café Royal Books are Askam-in-Furness 1982, Huddersfield 1974, The Seaside 1975–1981, Shipbuilding on Tyneside 1975–1976, and Isle of Man TT Races 1971.

Among these books are some of Killip’s most intimate photographs. His ability to capture portraits goes far beyond our typical understanding as he combines portraiture, documentary, and reportage photographs to capture a picture of place and time.

Included in the reissues is his work on the Isle of Man TT Races in 1971, a rare publication that captures historic documentation of the races and the culture. Among the images are some of Killip’s best portraits, and it is a masterclass in environmental portraiture and composition – an invaluable resource for photographers who capture people!

The five books can be ordered now directly from the Café Royal Books website for the incredibly low price of $9 / £6.70 / AU $13 each or $40 / £30 / AU $60 for the bundle of five books. Additional shipping costs apply.

These books are incredible introductions to British documentary photography throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and there are some real hidden gems in the collection – and if for any reason you are previously unfamiliar with Killip’s work, I urge you to take a look as he is not just one of my all-time favorites, but the nations!

You may also be interested in our guides to the best coffee table books, the best books on photography, and the best books on portrait photography. 

HTech is set to launch the Honor 200 series in India on July 18. Ahead of the launch, the company has confirmed several details about the upcoming smartphones — Honor 200 and Honor 200 Pro. Now, the smartphone maker has confirmed key camera details about the Honor 200 smartphone models.

Honor 200 series: Key camera details

For the upcoming Honor 200 series, the company has collaborated with Studio Harcourt, a Parisian portrait photography house, to co-engineer the Honor AI Portrait Engine.By combining Studio Harcourt’s expertise and Honor’s platform-level AI and hardware capabilities, the Honor 200 series promises to bring studio-level portrait photography on smartphones.
HONOR 200 Pro will house a triple back camera setup which will include a 50MP Portrait main camera, with Super Dynamic H9000 Sensor, a 50MP telephoto lens with Sony IMX 856 Sensor that offers 2.5x optical zoom, and a 12MP ultra-wide and macro unit.
The company claims that the smartphone’s dual OIS-backed cameras will enable users to capture clear and detailed portraits, even in the most challenging lighting conditions.
Honor 200 also comes with similar hardware specs, except for the fact that the 50MP Portrait main camera on this handset is equipped with a 1/1.56-inch Sony IMX906 large sensor and OIS,
Additionally, the Honor 200 Pro will also come with a dual front camera setup consisting of a 50MP Portrait Selfie Camera with an f/2.1 aperture while the second sensor will be able to detect and adjust colour temperatures suitable for Indian skin tones.
Both front and back cameras will support 4K video recording and the device also comes with a Pro video mode in the Honor 200 Pro for better videos.

Honor 200 series: Confirmed AI photography features

The Honor 200 series aims to take smartphone portrait photography to a new level with their AI Portrait Engine. Here’s what it’ll offer:
Studio-like results: Developed with renowned portrait studio, Studio Harcourt, the AI engine uses special lighting and shadow techniques for professional-looking photos.
Exceptional image quality: Large sensors and AI processing ensure sharp images with natural background blur (bokeh effect).
Accurate depth at all zooms: By using different lens combinations for various zoom ranges, the phone calculates depth accurately for realistic portraits.
Enhanced details: AI helps refine skin texture, hair, and other facial features for lifelike portraits.
Artistic touches: AI can adjust skin tones, add subtle vignette effects, and offer new portrait modes for a creative touch.
The company also claimed that the Honor 200 series can take great outdoor portraits with balanced lighting and clarity. It also boasts an AI Motion Sensing feature to capture clear moving shots.
Here are some other AI features that enhance the Honor 200 series camera experience:
AI Vlog Master: Helps vloggers create high-quality content with auto-editing, shot suggestions, and video improvements.
AI Auto Capture: Automatically captures the best moments without you needing to take photos or videos manually.
AI Scene Recognition: Smartly adjusts camera settings based on the scene for optimal photos.
AI One Click Movie: Creates professional-looking movies with a single click.
AI Night Video: Improves video recording in low light with better brightness, reduced noise, and accurate colours.
AI Multi-video: Allows recording from multiple cameras (front and rear) simultaneously.

Ellen Wexler

Assistant Editor, Humanities

Vivian Maier took more than 150,000 photographs as she scoured the streets of New York and Chicago. She rarely looked at them; often, she didn’t even develop the negatives. Without any formal training, she created a sprawling body of work that demonstrated a wholly original way of looking at the world. Today, she is considered one of the best street photographers of the 20th century.

Maier’s photos provide audiences with a tantalizing peek behind the curtain into a remarkable mind. But she never intended to have an audience. A nanny by trade, she rarely showed anyone her prints. In her final years, she stashed five decades of work in storage lockers, which she eventually stopped paying for. Their contents went to auction in 2007.

Many of Maier’s photos ended up with amateur historian John Maloof, who purchased 30,000 negatives for about $400. In the years that followed, he sought out other collectors who had purchased boxes from the same lockers. He didn’t learn the photographer’s identity until 2009, when he found her name scrawled on an envelope among the negatives. A quick Google search revealed that Maier had died just a few days earlier. Uncertain of how to proceed, Maloof started posting her images online.

“I guess my question is, what do I do with this stuff?” he wrote in a Flickr post. “Is this type of work worthy of exhibitions, a book? Or do bodies of work like this come up often? Any direction would be great.”

Maier quickly became a sensation. Everyone wanted to know about the recluse who had so adeptly captured 20th-century America. Her life and work have since been the subject of a best-selling book, a documentary and exhibitions around the world.

Now, the self-taught photographer is headlining her first major American retrospective. “Vivian Maier: Unseen Work,” which is currently on view at Fotografiska New York, features some 230 pieces from the 1950s through the 1990s, including black-and-white and color photos, vintage and modern prints, films, and sound recordings. The show is also billed as the first museum exhibition in Maier’s hometown, the city where she nurtured her nascent interest in photography.

Born in New York City in 1926, Maier grew up mostly in France, where she began experimenting with a Kodak Brownie, an affordable early camera designed for amateurs. After returning to New York in 1951, she purchased a Rolleiflex, a high-end camera held at the waist, and began developing her signature style: images of everyday life framed with a stark humor and intuitive understanding of human emotion. She started working as a governess, a role that allowed her to spend hours wandering the city, children in tow, as she snapped away.

She left New York about five years later, when she secured a job as a nanny for three boys—John, Lane and Matthew Gensburg—in the Chicago suburbs. The family was devoted to Maier, though they knew very little about her. The boys remember attending art films and picking wild strawberries as her charges, but they don’t recall her ever mentioning any family or friends. Their parents knew that Maier traveled—they would hire a replacement nanny in her absence—but they didn’t know where she went.

“You really wouldn’t ask her about it at all,” Nancy Gensburg, the boys’ mother, told Chicago magazine in 2010. “I mean, you could, but she was private. Period.”

Despite Maier’s reclusive tendencies, the Gensburgs knew about her photography. It would have been difficult to hide. After all, she lived with the family and had a private bathroom, which she used as a darkroom to develop black-and-white photos herself. The Gensburgs frequently witnessed her taking photos; on rare occasions, she even showed them her prints.

Maier stayed with the Gensburgs until the early 1970s, when the boys were too old for a nanny. She spent the next few decades working in other caretaking roles, though she doesn’t appear to have developed a similar relationship with these families, who viewed her as a competent caregiver with an eccentric personality. Most never saw her prints, though they do remember her moving into their homes with hundreds of boxes of photos in tow.

“I once saw her taking a picture inside a refuse can,” talk show host Phil Donahue, who employed Maier as a nanny for less than a year, told Chicago magazine. “I never remotely thought that what she was doing would have some special artistic value.”

Meanwhile, the Gensburgs kept in touch. As Maier grew older, they took care of her, eventually moving her to a nursing home. They never knew about the storage lockers. When she died at age 83, a short obituary appeared in the Chicago Tribune, describing her as a “second mother” to the three boys, a “free and kindred spirit,” and a “movie critic and photographer extraordinaire.”

Maier’s mysterious backstory is a large part of her present-day appeal. Fans are captivated by the photos, but they’re also intrigued by the reclusive nanny who developed her talents in secret. “Vivian Maier the mystery, the discovery and the work—those three parts together are difficult to separate,” Anne Morin, curator of the new exhibition, tells CNN.

The show is meant to focus on the work rather than the mystery. As Morin says to the Art Newspaper, she hopes to avoid “imposing an overexposed interpretation of her character.” Instead, the exhibition aims to elevate Maier’s name to the level of other famous street photographers—such as Robert Frank and Diane Arbus—and take on the daunting task of examining her large oeuvre.

“In ten years, we could do another completely different show,” Morin tells CNN. “She has more than enough material to bring to the table.”

The subjects of Maier’s street photos ran the gamut, but she often turned her lens toward “people on the margins of society who weren’t usually photographed and of whom images were rarely published,” per a statement from Fotografiska New York. The Gensburg boys recall her taking them all over the city, adamant that they witness what life was like beyond the confines of their affluent suburb.

The exhibition is organized thematically, with sections devoted to Maier’s famous street photos, her experimental abstract compositions and her stylized self-portraits. The self-portraits, which frequently incorporate mirrors and reflections, amplify her enigmatic qualities, usually showing her with a deadpan, focused expression. Her voice can be heard in numerous audio recordings, which play throughout the exhibition. As such, even as the show focuses on the work, Maier the person is still a frequent presence in it.

Finding Vivian Maier – Official Movie Trailer

“The paradox of Vivian Maier is that the lifetime of anonymity that has captured the public imagination persists in the work,” writes art critic Arthur Lubow for the New York Times, adding, “An artist uses a camera as a tool of self-expression. Maier was a supremely gifted chameleon. After immersing myself in her work, other than detecting a certain wryness, I could not get much sense of her sensibility.”

The artist undoubtedly possessed a curiosity about her immediate surroundings, which she photographed with a “lack of self-consciousness,” Sophie Wright, the New York museum’s director, tells CNN. “There’s no audience in mind.” There is no evidence that Maier wondered about her viewers—or that she ever imagined having viewers in the first place. They, however, will never stop wondering about her.

“Vivian Maier: Unseen Work” is on view at Fotografiska New York through September 29.

We could dive into our archives and find interviews with nearly endless photographers who’ve channeled trauma into their images. Learning how to transmute feelings into something else is truly important not only for self-expression but for humanity. Those memories take shape in a subtle yet cinematic way in Tracy L. Chandler’s series A Poor Sort of Memory. The series, which has been in the PH Museum, is now being made into a book by Deadbeat Press and will launch in September of 2024. Of course, trauma changes over the years for all of us. So how does that affect our image-making process?

All images by Tracy L. Chandler. Used with permission. For more, please check out her website and Instagram.

“The memories definitely evolve over time,” says Tracy L. Chandler to the Phoblographer in an interview. “As I revisit a familiar location from my past, I am imposing the subjectivity of the present. Maybe that is whatever feeling I happen to have that day or some new understanding of myself and the world I was awkwardly trying to navigate as a youth.” Tracy grew up in the California desert with a childhood that we’ve seen described as morbid chaos.

With the help of therapy, Tracy’s perspective has shifted into something she labels as more mature while being present and challenging those feelings. Specifically for her, it’s provided her with the courage to go back to places that elicit fear, loss, and pain within her. Places are often associated with certain emotions, the same way that a song can make you feel a certain way.

“But either way, I am very aware that I am now supplanting the old memory with a new morphed version.”

To that end, Tracy finds the process endlessly fascinating as cameras are supposed to document the truth and keep a record of what has happened. However, she admits to the obvious subjectivity that framing her images provides. “Photographs are subject to the ravages of time just like all objects,” she states. “The process of revisiting my past and trying to photograph it, has taught me to let go. To let go of all of that searching for some objective truth and trying to keep things safe and secure.” In this way, she uses photography as a form of therapy — therefore allowing her to grow in a way similar to nature taking back the world from humanity.

In this way, she’s looking at how things are now instead of embracing the memories deep within her. They start with tracing her past, but then take on a mind and path of their own.

Tracy’s photographs embrace the idea of a very personal essay. They beg the viewer to get closer and explore the oddities they have. In many ways, they take on a surreal life of their own but stand together at their best when they’re a complete series. I don’t think that the word “interesting” does the work justice. Instead, they’re intriguing and as complex as a Where’s Waldo puzzle. With the idea of trauma in mind, you know that this is what you’re looking for. Your eyes then scan the images and find it in some way or another. However, that trauma could be your own internal version of it, depending on your own personal experience. Tracy’s images do this while embracing a very simple look — further adding to their brilliance.