An Israeli police officer attacked a Haaretz photographer who was documenting a protest against Environment Minister Idit Silman on Thursday. The incident occurred outside a conference at Haifa University where the minister spoke.

In the footage of the attack, the riot police unit officer is seen forcefully pushing Haaretz photographer Rami Shllush without any provocation on his part. Shllush then fell on the ground, causing damage to his camera. Shllush said the policeman apologized afterward.

“While Silman was leaving the hall, I went towards the exit to photograph her and the protesters,” Shllush said. “One of the police officers told me to move. I replied that I’m a journalist, and then I moved to the area in front of the exit,” he added.

“A security guard from the [minister’s personal security] told me to move away, and I also told him I was a journalist – then he pushed me. Suddenly a riot police unit officer came from the side, threw me to the ground. The lens of my camera was damaged as a result.”

Following the incident, protesters started shouting “shame” at Silman.

Despite the policeman’s apology, Shllush said that he “expects the police to deal with journalists in an appropriate and non-violent manner.” He added that “Police spokesman Eli Levy also called me and said that he apologizes on behalf of the police, while adding that he discussed the case with the police commissioner to ensure that violence against journalists and citizens will not return.”

Alon Mashali, a witness of the attack, said that police officers also attacked protesters. “I saw the police violently pushing protesters – and the Haaretz photographer was also there,” he said. “No one approached the minister threateningly, and we made sure to keep a distance from her.”

The Police spokesperson said that “during the visit of the Environment Minister in University of Haifa police had to make way for her as she exited the hall due to the gathering of protesters. During the operation, one of the police officers pushed away a man who turned out to be a journalist who did not carry any means of identification.”

“The Police Station Commander and the officer met with the photographer and explained what happened. The case was also transferred to the competent authorities for a further review,” the statement read.

Morgan Otagburuagu
Doyle Wham, 91A Rivington Street, EC2A 3AY, until 10 June

A decade ago, it was difficult to find a single exhibition in London of contemporary African photography. Not anymore. Figurative art from Africa has become a mainstream preoccupation for the art market. But never before has an entire gallery dedicated itself to the essential artistic medium of the world’s fastest changing continent.

Doyle Wham, a gallery located in a former warehouse in Shoreditch, was launched in 2022 by Imme Dattenberg-Doyle, a recent graduate of the Royal College of Art in London, and Sofia Carreira-Wham, a Classics graduate from the University of Cambridge. Both Doyle and Wham are in their 20s: their roster includes African artists of the same generation, like the Gabonese photographer Yanis Davy Guibinga, and more established artists, like the Cameroonian photographer Angèle Etoundi Essamba.

But the chosen artist for London Gallery Weekend is the Nigerian photographer Morgan Otagburuagu; this is his first solo exhibition worldwide. The artist, born in 1997 in Nigeria’s coastal city of Port Harcourt, and now based in Lagos, is a graduate in computer science but committed to photography after the death of his parents in 2021. His portraits focus on the “inherent beauty” of the Black female form, the artist says.

Thomas Struth
Galerie Max Hetzler, 41 Dover Street, W1S 4NS, 2 June–29 July

On view for the first time in the UK, at the London outpost of the German gallery Galerie Max Hetzler, are Thomas Struth’s photographs of the European Center for Nuclear Research (Cern), the world’s largest scientific facility.

Struth initially studied painting at the Düsseldorf Kunstakademie under the eye of the once-unheralded professor Gerhard Richter, and then as one of the academy’s first photographic students under the aegis of Bernd and Hilla Becher. That period culminated in a residency at New York, during which Struth created dispassionate studies of the Manhattan cityscape that positioned him as the Bechers’ standard-bearer; a photographer whose studies of the built landscape can reveal, if you look closely enough, secret human histories.

Cern, then, is the perfect subject for Struth. This machine has been built to answer the questions of our existence. Its surfaces hold clues to its secrets within, secrets that might forever evade our full understanding.

Maisie Cousins
TJ Boulting, 59 Riding House Street, W1W 7EG, until 17 June

TJ Boulting was the first gallery to display Maisie Cousins’s photography. Her first exhibition, hosted by the gallery in 2017, was titled grass, peonie, bum. The title of the show matched its content: not exactly subtle, not very elegant. But direct, garish and overly sensual.

Cousins recently moved out of London to live in a seaside town on the south coast with her first child. Her new series is titled Walking Back To Happiness and seems to mediate, with an ambiguous, multivalent power, on her move away from the city—and away from the adrenal rush of care-free youth.

The photography on display here—including, most notably, a series of images created via an artificial-intelligence image generator— communicate complicated feelings about her childhood, her family, her responsibilities as a young mother and her relationship with the town she now calls home. The AI images are a machine’s response to a series of childhood memories Cousins fed it as ‘prompts’, while her photographs focus on the seaside paraphernalia that is designed to appeal to small children—sweets, inflatable or plasticised toys, theme park rides. The artist is interested in “the uncanny”, she says, and how this relates to the feelings of “nostalgia, feeling of uncertainty and unease” which we all carry around inside of us.

Oliviero Toscani
Mazzoleni, 15 Old Bond Street, W1S 4AX, until 4 June

The Milanese photographer Oliviero Toscani worked as the art director of the Italian fashion label United Colors of Benetton from 1982 to 2000. Throughout that 18-year period, Toscani oversaw advertising campaigns that, today, remain touchstones in how to reach a mass audience through controversial and confrontational visual marketing.

Toscani, born in 1942, grew up as Italy reformed itself after the fall of Mussolini. As a commercial artist, he was ahead of his time, seeming to presage advertising’s current engagement with geopolitical and social justice issues. For Benetton’s billboards, he photographed a man in the advanced stages of Aids, on the edge of death, surrounded by his family. He photographed a newly born baby, covered in their mother’s fluids, umbilical cord yet to be cut. He confronted racism—one campaign featured black and white hands handcuffed together. Or three human hearts; red, sinewy, fleshy muscles, upon which were written the words “white”, “black” and “yellow”. His campaigns dealt with anorexia, domestic violence and repressed sexuality, each time garnering outrage from conservatives.

A retrospective of Toscani’s work is now on show at Mazzoleni gallery, which is based between London and Turin, titled Toscani Chez Mazzoleni. Do the images Toscani made 30 years ago remain relevant today? Are they now irredeemably dated, or pioneers of a new consciousness? The debate is live.

Bob Colacello
Thaddaeus Ropac, 37 Dover Street, W1S 4NJ, 2 June-29 July

It Just Happened is the fitting title for Bob Colacello’s first solo exhibition in London. The native New Yorker, born in Brooklyn and raised on Long Island, managed to ingratiate himself with Andy Warhol’s Factory scene in the late 1970s.

Colacello made himself available for every party Warhol hosted at his studio on Broadway, as well as the now mythic nightclub Studio 54, held at the Broadway theatre on 254 West 54th Street. Colacello went to all of them with his Minox camera. Eighty of his surviving photographs, shot between 1976 and 1982, are currently on show at London’s Thaddaeus Ropac gallery. The exhibition also includes letters, magazines and memorabilia.

• The Art Newspaper is a media partner of London Gallery Weekend

The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s ArtWorks program uses art to promote hazard mitigation, and it opened a new call for artwork May 1. ArtWorks is looking for photography that shows the challenges of adapting to a changing climate and how natural hazards affect our lives and communities.

Artists within FEMA Region 8, which includes Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Wyoming and 29 Tribal Nations, can submit artwork. Submissions should include images and stories about them, which can be text, audio or video and should focus on the artist’s approach to overcoming climate change.

The call for artwork lists examples of image themes, including social strength, building community, occupations, cultural values, traditions, improving infrastructure and protecting natural systems. Submissions can include up to five images to support one story.

Artist’s storytelling can include quotes, emotions, reflections or experiences that show how climate change impacts the artist’s life. The call for artwork asks artists to help raise awareness, inspire dialogue and encourage action to build a more sustainable and resilient future.

FEMA will award up to six winners $7,000 each for licensing and use rights. Children and adults of all ages are encouraged to submit artwork online by June 30.

Find more information and make a submission at Bit.ly/FEMAArtWorks and send questions or comments to FEMA-ArtWorks@fema.dhs.gov.

In the digital age, where advancements in camera technology and photo editing allow people to take professional-quality pictures on their phones, some are looking to the past for new inspiration.

Film was for many decades the preeminent medium for photographers. However, with the evolution and proliferation of digital cameras in the 21st century, the film medium dwindled in significance with many manufacturers discontinuing their film-based products.

And yet, despite becoming an endangered species, so to speak, the late 2010s saw a renewed interest in film photography, surging during the COVID-19 pandemic when people sought new hobbies while in isolation, according to a report by Marketplace.

Tori Fyfe, a Chattanooga film photographer, who opened the community film development lab, Safelight District, in 2019, says she has seen an uptick in business since the pandemic began in 2020.

Safelight District is a community darkroom, open 24/7 to anyone with darkroom experience. There is a one-time fee to use the space, which can be reserved online to ensure it’s not overbooked. And first-timers are given a quick overview before use.

    Staff photo by Olivia Ross / Tori Fyfe cuts negatives.
  

“A lot of people were looking for a hobby during the pandemic,” Fyfe says. “Or maybe [film photography] was something that they had put on the shelf and wanted to get back to eventually, and the pandemic kind of gave them an opportunity to do that.”

Fyfe says younger people are drawn to film photography because they can achieve a unique look with their photos without the need for social media filters. She also credits the delayed gratification of receiving the developed photos as a quality that makes film photography special.

“When I develop the film, I see those memories come back,” Fyfe says. “But with the phone, I’m just like, ‘What’s this for?’ [The photos are] just going into the abyss of the rest of my camera photos on my phone.”

Film photographers say one of the medium’s biggest draws is the photo-taking process. They enjoy slowing down to explore their surroundings and look at the world around them in new ways, exposing each frame on their roll of film with intention rather than with the reckless abandon they’ve become accustomed to with digital photography.

Reed Darden, 30, who recently moved to Chattanooga, took up film photography within the past year. The film photography process has provided him with a much-needed respite from all the technology that surrounds him in everyday life.

    Staff photo by Olivia Ross / Vintage cameras sit on a shelf at Safelight District.
  

“I just wanted to pick up a hobby where I could kind of disconnect a little bit [from being on the phone and computer],” Darden says. “I thought about photography, and that’s what kind of drew me to doing film instead of … digital.”

Additionally, Darden says film photography has helped him see more of the city he now calls home.

“[Film photography has] gotten me to go out and explore a little bit,” Darden says. “Chattanooga is such a beautiful city; there are so many great spots that you can take pictures of.”

With increased interest in film photography comes increased demand, but limited supplies have led to price hikes in recent years on cameras and film, according to Marketplace. To combat increased prices, Fyfe suggests starting out small by buying cheaper film like the kinds made by Fujifilm and looking for affordable cameras in antique stores or on websites like eBay.

Chattanoogans looking to get involved in the city’s film photography community can connect with Safelight District via their website, safelightdistrict.com, or social media, @safelightdistrict.

    Staff photo by Olivia Ross / Tori Fyfe cuts negatives.
  

EASTON, Pa. — Angel Sanchez and his friends smiled proudly Wednesday as they pointed at a large photo hung on a chain link fence.

The four buddies are among 12 middle school students who participated in an after-school photography class at Easton Area Community Center.

The young students attended the unveiling of their project, a photo exhibit called “Inside Outside World” at West Ward Market, between 12th and Northampton Streets.

• The Inside Outside World project at Easton’s West Ward Market features hundreds of photos taken by young photographers
• The photos will be on display through September
• Shoppers at the West Ward Market donated to those displaced by Monday’s fire on Ferry Street

Joining them at the unveiling were Easton Mayor Sal Panto Jr., and Lisa Campbell, director of Easton Area Community Center.
The photo exhibit will be on display every Wednesday until September.

During the three-week class, the Easton-area students were taught about the history of portrait photography to inspire their own portraits and self portraits while learning techniques of composition, staging, lighting and color.

“I learned a lot like how to use cameras the old way,” Angel, 11, said. “It was a lot of fun. I enjoyed participating in the class.”

The workshop was taught by Ghen Dennis, founder of Overtown Media + Arts in Easton.

Dennis, who handed photography books to the youngsters as a gift at the event, volunteered her time and shared some of the printing costs for the project.

She said her goal was to show the students what it was like to take photos pre-digital times.

“They experimented with black-and-white Polaroid film and some of them had the idea to include the Polaroids in their [finished] shot,” she said.

“For a lot of young people, photographs aren’t material things. They get traded digitally. Thinking about having a tactile object, I think surprised them.”

The project also was funded by the West Ward Community initiative.

‘All in this together’

The unveiling of the students’ banners brought some happiness days as the neighborhood, between Sixth and 15th streets, is rallying together after a fire Monday that destroyed a dozen homes on the 900 block of Ferry Street and displaced 61 residents.

On Wednesday afternoon, residents were seen dropping off bags of non-perishable food and gently used clothing. One unidentified donor gave $450 in gift cards.

“It was all increments of $50, so that will help six families,” said Tanya Ruiz, manager of the West Ward Community Initiative, who lives a block away from the fire site.

As she sorted through donations Wednesday, Ruiz said she watched as her neighborhood was engulfed in flames on Memorial Day.

”It is so sad that this happened, but there’s a lot of people helping out,” she said. “People are coming together and giving back.”

The clothing collected Wednesday will be distributed at an event held in the next few weeks at Paxinosa Elememtary School.

Charitable organizations such as the American Red Cross Pennsylvania Rivers Chapter, the Third Street Alliance, West Ward WISE and local church groups also are assisting those in need.

A ‘berry’ good day

Attendees at the exhibit listened to tunes by Scott Harrington, a local singer-guitarist, while celebrating “Strawberry Day” at the West Ward Market.

The market features dozens of locally sourced vendors selling fruit, vegetables, flowers, fresh eggs, baked breads, cookies and pastries, jams, honey and condiments.

It was founded in 2022 by the GEDP as part of a collaboration to expand access healthy food for residents throughout the Valley.

Shoppers can pay for goods with cash, credit or debit cards and EBT.

It is open 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Wednesdays through September.

By Jorge Fuentelsaz

New York, May 31 (EFE).- The intoxicating passion of a new relationship, betrayal, narcissistic love, violence, intimacy, politics, sex and devotion through illness and past death are some of the themes captured in photographs by 16 international artists which will be on display beginning Friday at New York’s International Center of Photography Museum (ICP).

“Love Songs, Photography and Intimacy” is the name of this exhibition conceived of as an old “cassette” on which songs were compiled as a present for a friend, relative or lover, exhibition curator Sara Raza told EFE.

She said she envisioned the exhibit as a way to rethink different kinds of relationships, and what that really means, thereby moving beyond the romantic version of how we think about love and intimacy.

Raza explained that, in putting together the exhibition, she was also interested in including and exploring different ways of recording, whether it be global, local, digital or analog.

Among the works on display, Raza emphasized that of US photographer Clifford Prince King, one of whose photos is on the cover of the exhibition’s catalog showing two young men seated on a grassy hill in the country and embracing.

It’s a photograph full of color that plays with the public, with LGBT love, with privacy, what is noticed and what is hidden, the urban world and rural spaces.

Also standing out among the photos in the exhibit are shots by Japan’s Nobuyoshi Araki, a series that dates back to 1971 and is made up of photos of his honeymoon with his wife Yoko Aoki. On the opposite wall is another of Araki’s photo series from 1989-1990 documenting Aoki’s illness and death.

The heartbreaking and violent love of US photographer Nan Goldin has also earned a place in the exhibit, which was put on display for the first time at the Maison Euopeenne de la Photographie (MEP) in Paris.

For this show, however, Raza has added five new artists to give it a more American accent and include a new layer – namely one “beyond romantic love” that is more political and more international.

The sad, naked look of Angel Zinovieff, the partner of photographer Collier Schorr, is also included in the extensive catalog, where works dating back to the 1950s are combined with more recent photos.

That’s the case with Franco-Dominican photographer Karla Hiraldo Voleau, who in her 2022 work “Another Love Story” presents a hybrid viewpoint between photography and narrative, where her own real-life experience is mingled with fiction.

In several photo panels, Hiraldo presents photos of her year-long romantic relationship with a former partner: trips, visits to the beach and taking baths together, chats at home and in bars, intimate moments in their room. These images all depict a happy relationship full of love, as recorded on Instagram.

And yet, between each group of Hiraldo’s photos a telephone conversation is interspersed in which the artist and another girl simultaneously discover that they are sharing the same lover without knowing it.

It’s a very tragic love story, Hiraldo told EFE, about how she found out that her ex-partner simultaneously had a life with another woman.

These are real photos, although the face of her “ex” is not seen, with snapshots that reproduce real moments where the person shown is an actor paid by Hiraldo and not, in fact, her former lover, with whom she shared an apartment for a year.

“It’s an auto-fiction,” she said, adding that she loves putting herself in between reality and fiction, erasing the border between what’s real and what is not, because, especially, in this project, “I didn’t know (the difference) either.”

Hiraldo’s work, and that of the other photographers, seeks to capture the complexities, elusiveness and subjectivity of love – Raza said – along with its inability to be quantified, its chemistry and incompleteness, the absence of some of its frequencies, just like the songs that are not included on those cassette tapes we made for others.

EFE

jfu/fjo/jrh/bp

The work of local photographer Diane Beatty opens today in the Thomases Family Endowment of the Youngstown Area Jewish Federation Art Gallery.

“Color vs. Black and White” will feature a few of her favorite photos, some in color, some in black and white and a few featuring both.

Beatty studied art at Youngstown State University in the 1980s, but her journey into photography didn’t begin until April 2014, when she felt compelled to photograph the demolition of General Electric on Hughes Street in Youngstown. That same year, she created a Facebook group called Youngstown Photography Group where she met other photographers that helped her learn and grow as an artist.

Since then, she has won many awards in local art shows and has been featured in the Regional Photography exhibit at the Butler institute of American Art.

According to Beatty, “You may wonder why I prefer to show a photo in black and white versus color. There are a couple factors. If the image is strong, sometimes color can be distracting. My eye is drawn to red, for example, so if it takes away from the composition, I will see how the photo looks in black and white. The other factor is if the sky is blown out. I don’t like to shoot on a sunny day, because of this. When I first started to exhibit my work, one of my YSU professors asked to see my work. After seeing it he asked, ‘Where is the color?’ The photos were all black and white. Since then, no matter where I go to photograph, I ask myself that question and specifically look for a colorful image.”

Beatty primarily is interested in historical and abandoned sites, relishing the challenge of capturing images in low light and composing unique photographs that tell a story.

Her work will on display through July 30 at the gallery, located inside the Jewish Community Center of Youngstown, 505 Gypsy Lane. A reception with the artist is scheduled from 1 to 3 p.m. Sunday.

A photograph that captures the image of women drying incense sticks in Hanoi’s Quang Phu Cau Village has won the Gold Award in the Travel category at the 2023 Color Photography Contest.

Taken by Bangladeshi Azim Khan Ronnie, the photo shows two women wearing conical hats surrounded by thousands of incense sticks in Quang Phu Cau, 35 km south of downtown Hanoi.

“Incense plays an important role in the spiritual lives of Vietnamese people,” he said, noting that the pink sticks are usually used in worship activities.

Women dry incense sticks in Quang Phu Cau Village on the outskirts of Hanoi. Photo by Azim Khan Ronnie

Quang Phu Cau has over 300 households engaged in the trade passed down through generations. In the run up to the Lunar New Year holiday, the village is at its busiest as nearly the entire population lights incense at home and pagodas.

Village products are consumed not only in Vietnam but also in India, China, Malaysia, and other countries. On average, Quang Phu Cau uses around 200 tons of materials to produce 50 tons of incense a month.

This year’s contest attracted thousands of photographers from nearly 70 countries to compete in different categories such as travel, abstract, aerial, architecture, life and fashion, with winners selected by an esteemed panel of judges from major publications and museums.

The overall winner was Belgian photojournalist Alain Schroeder for his photo showing two people resting and checking each other’s eyes after training in Kushti, a traditional form of Indian wrestling.

Launched by new photo contest platform reFocus Awards, the contest aims to honor color photography.