Leica, the esteemed German camera brand, has announced the inauguration of its first immersive flagship store and gallery in the vibrant Meatpacking District of New York City, at 406 West 13th St.

This new establishment may be worthy of pilgrimage for photography enthusiasts, further enhancing Leica’s presence in Manhattan, while complementing its existing hubs across the city. It is a flagship store and gallery, underscoring the city’s renowned spirit of creativity, providing a haven for visual storytellers to discover inspiration and access tools that facilitate genuine visual expression.

Beyond retail, it aims to act as a hub for the art and culture of photography, though of course the new venue offers a captivating retail experience where customers can immerse themselves and acquire Leica’s comprehensive range of products, including cameras, lenses, and accessories.

Occupying two floors and spanning over 3,000 square feet along 13th Street, just steps away from the Highline and The Whitney Museum of American Art, the newly unveiled flagship store and gallery has been meticulously crafted to cater to a diverse clientele, ranging from seasoned professionals to avid photography enthusiasts.

The ground floor houses the Leica boutique, a haven displaying the complete lineup of cameras, lenses, sport optic products, the Leica watch collection, and the innovative Leica Cine 1 Laser TV. Additionally, visitors can immerse themselves in the captivating exhibitions at the Leica Gallery NYC, showcasing the works of established photographers alongside emerging talent.

Ascending to the top floor, guests discover a realm of inspiration. Here, a Leica Library awaits, inviting exploration through an array of meticulously curated photography books overseen by acclaimed photographer Todd Hido. Adjacent, the photo studio stands as a haven for creatives to experiment with Leica’s cutting-edge technology. 

Finally, the outdoor rooftop beckons visitors to engage in conversation, foster community, and spark collaboration amidst the picturesque cityscape—an unparalleled opportunity to delve into the rich tapestry of art and culture that photography embodies.

Dr. Andreas Kaufmann, Chairman of Leica’s Supervisory Board has this to say about the announcement:

“Leica has always been at the forefront of the photography industry, and our new Meatpacking flagship will further cement that position, this new space will open up the world of Leica to the public and give people more opportunities to engage with up-and-coming talent, fellow Leica fans, and renowned photographers.”

While Matthias Harsch, CEO of Leica Camera added:

“We are excited to expand our presence in Manhattan with the opening of our flagship store and gallery in the heart of the Meatpacking District. This new location, in one of the city’s most dynamic neighborhoods, provides photographers with a space to explore, connect, and find inspiration. We are thrilled to expose more people to the Leica experience, allowing them to discover the critical role photography plays in our society.”

This latest addition signifies the brand’s seventh Leica Store and third gallery in the United States.

The exclusive grand opening of Leica’s flagship store and gallery in New York City’s Meatpacking District (406 W 13th St.) is slated for Thursday, March 14, 2024. The event will include a ceremonial ribbon cutting, a reception, and an exhibition showcasing Leica’s newest offerings.

Moreover, the grand opening will extend into a weekend filled with immersive experiences accessible to the public. This includes a panel discussion featuring colleagues of the esteemed Leica photographer Elliott Erwitt on March 15th from 6 PM to 8 PM, a captivating talk and book signing with Ralph Gibson on March 16th from 6 PM to 8 PM, and opportunities for photowalks guided by Jason Roman and Gulnara Samoilova.

By Laura Sharman

Published: 11:18 EDT, 12 March 2024 | Updated: 11:47 EDT, 12 March 2024

Joel Sternfeld’s Domestic workers waiting for the bus, Atlanta, Georgia, April, (1983) might be the most mundane of nearly 200 photographs on view in “A Long Arc: Photography and the American South since 1845.” Three Black women (domestic workers) stand in the street (waiting for the bus) of an otherwise empty neighborhood (Atlanta).

Amidst the pictures of war and poverty and protest and violence and German Shepherd’s and Martin Luther King being arrested, there’s no particular reason to be stopped in your tracks by this wholly banal scene. Unless you’ve been there, as I have.

The picture’s title refers to Atlanta, I’d place this as a particular neighborhood in the suburban community of Sandy Springs, where I once lived. If I haven’t been on this exact street, perhaps even in one of these homes, I’ve been within a half mile of it.

That was more like 2003, but whether 1983, 2003, or 2023, I would be willing to bet a dollar to a donut–to use a Southern phrase–the street looks exactly the same today. Lawns uniformly closely clipped. Pine straw covering the landscaping. Everything just so.

Order. Conformity. Genteel. Southern.

There’s no need for a “white’s only” sign, it’s implied.

The women employed dusting and polishing inside the brick mansions wait on the bus because they can’t afford to own a car. I can assure you no one living in any of the houses along the street would be caught dead riding the bus in Atlanta–or even know how to. It’s just not done.

They drive cars. Nice ones. Big SUVs and European sedans.

This is an image of white privilege.

The picture speaks to America’s structural racism and its racial wealth gap with a whisper, not a scream. Doing so reveals how it’s not just the racist sheriffs and brutes who poured milkshakes over the head of sit-in protesters at the Woolworth’s counter back in the day who are complicit in those systems. Doing so reminds us that the struggle for equality extends beyond the dramatic. Beyond the Edmond Pettis Bridge in Selma, or the bus boycotts in Montgomery.

It reminds us that we all play a part, often in ways we don’t even recognize.

Domestic workers waiting for the bus, Atlanta, Georgia, April can be seen at the Addison Gallery of American Art on the campus of Phillips Academy in Andover, MA as part of “A Long Arc” through July 31, 2024.

‘Dwelling in the Muck’

Organized by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, “A Long Arc” is the first major survey of Southern photography in the new millennium. Beginning with pictures from the dawn of photography in the Antebellum South of the 1840s through the Civil War, Great Depression, Civil Rights and through to the 2000s, the exhibition both reveals the South’s critical impact on the evolution of American photography and examines the region’s complex history.

The Massachusetts museum’s interest in Southern photography is historic.

Opening in 1931, the Addison acquired its first photographs in 1934–four prints by Margaret Bourke-White. This was decades before most museums in the United States began taking photography seriously as a fine art. Also in 1934, the Addison presented solo exhibitions of work by Bourke-White and Walker Evans (a Phillips Academy alumnus), both of whom have pictures featured in “A Long Arc.”

“The Addison’s commitment to photography has not wavered over the past 90 years and photographs now comprise over half of our 26,000-plus object strong collection,” Gordon Wilkins, Robert M. Walker Curator of American Art at the Addison Gallery of American Art, told Forbes.com. “It is impossible to tell the story of American photography without engaging with the history of photography in the American South, and that reality is manifested through our incredibly diverse and rich holdings of photographs of the South.”

The Addison Gallery lent over 20 works from its permanent collection to “A Long Arc,” and its presentation of the exhibition features dozens of additional works it owns.

“The irony of the High borrowing key, iconic works of Southern photography from the collection of a museum attached to the most quintessentially New England boarding school is not lost on us,” Wilkins added.

As distinct a region of the country as the South is–and New England for that matter– both–all regions–are now intractably bound to what has become the United States. What goes on in Mississippi maters in Massachusetts and vice versa.

“For those who have spent most of their lives in New England or, more broadly, in the ‘North,’ the South can oftentimes seem like a foreign country. As someone who has spent the bulk of their life and career in New England, I’ve often been struck by how persistently the South is ‘othered’ or treated as a foil, selectively employed to assert the relative virtue or progressiveness of the North in contradistinction to a backward, regressive South,” Wilkins said. “This exhibition lays bare the fallacy of this flawed logic and forces audiences to confront their preconceptions of the South—and, in many respects, reckon with the role that photography has played in the construction of their assumptions. As Sarah Kennel astutely points out in her (exhibition catalogue) essay, ‘part of the problem, it seems, is that we are still asking the question of whether the South is an exception to American democracy or the very crucible from which America’s identity was forged.’”

While organized chronologically, “A Long Arc” makes no attempt to impose a single, overarching narrative or thesis to 170-years of history across a vast and diverse chunk of the nation.

“It does not attempt to succinctly distill the messiness and infinite nuance of the Southern experience into an easily digestible parade of ‘greatest hits’ ended with a satisfying denouement,” Wilkins has previously written. “Instead, this exhibition encourages its viewers to dwell in the muck and the mire—to allow the remarkable photographs assembled for this once in a generation exhibition to bear witness to the region in all its complexity and contradictions.”

An effort is made, however, in exploring essential, recurrent themes characterizing the region across time. Imani Perry’s essay in the exhibition catalogue defines these as: “work, love, desire, despair, and always land.”

The African American Experience In The South

Domestic workers waiting for the bus, Atlanta, Georgia, April stands as one of dozens of examples of how “A Long Arc” forwards the African American experience in the South. From the earliest portraits on view and Black troops in the Civil War to Gillian Laub’s depiction of an interracial prom in 2011 and pairings from Dawoud Bey’s iconic 2012 “Birmingham Project,” the presentation makes clear that African Americans define the South to a degree unequalled anywhere else in the nation.

The roots for this, of course, lie with slavery. The long arm of racial discrimination extends throughout “A Long Arc” from start to finish. Nowhere is it portrayed more dramatically than in the section dedicated to the Civil Rights Movement.

Through pictures and figures both familiar–police dogs and firehoses in Birmingham, Rosa Parks being fingerprinted in Montgomery, Elizabeth Eckford sneered and jeered at by white female classmates entering Central High School in Little Rock in 1957–and previously unseen, the gravity and consequences of the struggle–lest they ever be forgotten, or erased–are made fresh again.

Notice the face of the woman in Bruce Davidson’s Arrest of a Demonstrator, Birmingham, (1963).

Gordon Parks’ Ondria Tanner and Her Grandmother Window-Shopping, Mobile, Alabama (1956) shows what segregation looks like in shocking color. A picture truly being worth a thousand words.

One, after another, after another.

The South’s long arc continues.

“A Long Arc” can be seen at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond October 5, 2024, through January 26. 2025, following its presentation at the Addison Gallery.

On Sunday, Kensington Palace released a photo of Kate Middleton smiling with her children to celebrate UK Mother’s Day, unaware they were about to set off a major international news story.

Within hours, the portrait had been recalled by photo agencies over concerns around digital manipulation, and the following day, Kate issued a personal apology. Kate’s admittance of editing the photograph, which was taken by Prince William, did not do much to quiet conspiracy theorists, and soon, outlets like the and were analyzing the metadata on the picture to try and understand what happened.

Analysis of the photograph’s metadata by revealed that the file was saved twice in Adobe Photoshop, once on Friday, March 8 at 9:54 p.m. GMT, and again on Saturday, March 9, at 9:39 a.m. GMT. The camera used to take the photograph was ausing a Canon 50mm F1.2 lens. They also found the photograph was taken at Adelaide Cottage, the Wales family’s home in Windsor.

So while the metadata reveals that the photo was edited, as Kate said, it does not detail when the photograph was originally taken, or what edits were made. The most obvious error, however, is that Princess Charlotte’s sweater sleeve is missing, and the zipper on Kate’s jacket disappears. In addition, Kate’s right hand is blurry, while Louis’s sweater is crystal-clear. The BBC notes “One possible explanation for some of the glitches would be if several photos were taken and shots were overlaid – perhaps because not all the children were smiling in a single image.” But it’s unclear if this is the case.

The Telegraph reports, “The digital fingerprint of the Princess of Wales’s family photograph suggests that she merged multiple images using Photoshop. Analysis of data embedded in the image indicates that a copy and paste function was used, most likely in the section featuring her face. The method appears to be confirmed by the clear horizontal line stretching across the Princess’s chest, albeit not exactly in line,” which could suggest that she replaced her face with another image.

In response to Kate’s admittance of editing the photograph, CNN reported they are now “reviewing all handout photos previously provided by Kensington Palace.” The Palace does not plan to release the unedited photograph.

Emily Burack (she/her) is the Senior News Editor for Town & Country, where she covers entertainment, culture, the royals, and a range of other subjects. Before joining T&C, she was the deputy managing editor at Hey Alma, a Jewish culture site. Follow her @emburack on Twitter and Instagram.

The World Photography Organization has unveiled the 10 category winners in this year’s Sony World Photography Awards Open competition, “recognizing the best single images from across the world in 2023.”

Nearly 400,000 images from over 220 countries and territories were submitted to this year’s photo contest, so these 10 winning photographers had to beat some serious competition.

Beyond the Open competition winners, the Sony World Photography Awards also names National and Regional winners, which the World Photo Organization did last month. There are also Professional category winners, which names the best photo series in the world. This winner will be named on April 18 at the Sony World Photography Awards 2024 show at Somerset House in London.

The Open segment has 10 categories: Architecture, Creative, Landscape, Lifestyle, Motion, Natural World and Wildlife, Object, Portraiture, Street Photography, and Travel.

Ian Ford won the “Natural World and Wildlife” category with the brilliant image “Caiman Crunch,” featured above. The other nine brilliant winning photographers and their pictures are showcased below.

Architecture — Ana Skobe (Slovenia)

Creative — Rob Blanken (Netherlands)

Landscape — Liam Man (United Kingdom)

Lifestyle — Alvin Kamau (Kenya)

Motion — Samuel Andersen (Norway)

Object — Toni Rinaldo (Indonesia)

Portraiture — Michelle Sank (United Kingdom)

Street Photography — Callie Eh (Malaysia)

Travel — Yan Li (China)

More From the Sony World Photography Awards 2024

As mentioned, the World Photography Organization has already announced the National and Regional winners from this year’s contest, and the 31 winning images are spectacular and well worth checking out.

Additional winners, including the Professional and Student winners, will be unveiled on April 18. The competition’s overall winner will win $25,000 plus Sony digital imaging equipment. Alongside these great prizes, the overall winner and the top three in each category will be featured in the Sony World Photography Awards exhibit and book. Shortlisted photographers will also be included in the exhibit.

The Sony World Photography Awards is one of, if not the, most prestigious photography contests in the world. Winning a prize in the competition is a significant accomplishment for any photographer.

Image credits: Sony World Photography Awards | All individual photographers are credited in the image captions