Photographer Stacy Kranitz has always had a deep fascination with Appalachia, the lush, mountainous region that stretches across 13 states in the eastern United States. The decline of its coal industry, which took hold in the mid 19^th century, left the area and its people hugely impoverished; photographers duly descended on it in a bid to show the rest of the country what was happening there.

“They offered a simplistic and superficial image of poverty that has haunted the Appalachian people ever since,” Stacy explains. ​“I was drawn to making work there because I was interested in developing a project that would address the failure of objectivity in the documentary tradition. I wanted to look at a place where photography had failed the people it was trying to help.”

And so, all the time Stacy has spent in Appalachia over the last 15 years – she’s now based there, in the mountains of eastern Tennessee – has culminated in As It Was Give(n) To Me, an exhibition that pulls together photography, found imagery and sculptural artefacts that speak to the lives of marginalised communities. There are images of dramatic landscapes and burning cars, lovers embracing on horseback and girls stuffing menthol Marlboros down their bikini tops, each imbued with a melancholy that feels reminiscent of an Edward Hopper painting.

Since 2009, Stacy has observed plenty of changes in the region. ​“The most dramatic change was the downfall of the coal economy, but there was also the opioid epidemic, which wreaked havoc on communities,” she says. ​“There was a profound political transition at the end of Obama’s presidency, as Trump rose in popularity. The Black Lives Matter movement forced many people in the region to have overdue conversations about their relationship with the Confederate flag. The pandemic also illuminated the ways Appalachia’s rural healthcare system has been hollowed out and inadequately cares for people in the region.”

Catch As It Was Give(n) To Me at CCProjects gallery in New York, until 17^th May – for a window into lives that are rarely documented for what they really are, and the friendships Stacy has built.

“[Those are] the most significant experiences from the many years I made this work,” she says. ​“I can’t imagine my life without them.”

If you’ve ever wondered what’s involved with shooting large format 4×5 photographs, then this great video by the ABC on landscape and film photographer Dominique Pierre-Nina is well worth a watch.

Pierre-Nina describes setting up a large format photograph as “the dance” as it involves so many meticulous steps – setting up the camera, choosing an orientation, picking a shutter speed, focussing and then preparing for the shot itself. 

The Jamberoo NSW-based photographer has a black cloth he uses to block out glare so he can see the image on the back of his camera (which appears upside down). Next, a light meter is used to read the light in the scene and give a suggested aperture and shutter speed. 

“At this stage, I can decide whether to give the scene a little more light or a little less light. That is entirely up to the photographer and it is where the artistic flair of the photographer will come into play,” he explains. 

So, what do you think? If anything, the video shows just how much technology has transformed photography in the cameras we use today – while also serving as a reminder that the fundamentals of a good photograph remain the same. 

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails

Sign up to our free breaking news emails

It’s only eight years since the last major London museum show of photographs from Sir Elton John and David Furnish’s collection. Yet such is the scale of the couple’s holdings and the speed of their collecting they could probably have mounted 10 exhibitions over that period without repeating a single work.

Tate Modern’s 2016 show The Radical Eye focused on Sir Elton’s first photographic love, classic early modernist photography, often severely abstract and almost exclusively in black and white – a taste that might seem surprising in so flamboyant a figure. The far larger Fragile Beauty takes us into the succeeding era, from the post-war period to date, with the couple’s personal preoccupations explored through iconic images by some of the world’s greatest photographers. Themes include fashion, celebrity, desire as represented by the male body, and the idea, suggested in the show’s title, of beauty as something vulnerable, even inherently tragic. Indeed, judging by the advance images, anyone who felt short-changed by the Tate show’s lack of high-style glitz and rampant homoeroticism will be in seventh heaven here.

Yet the first section – one might almost call them chapters – on “Fashion” shows how much photography owes to the modernist pioneers seen in the Tate show, and how much Elton has learned about the medium’s abstract underpinnings by studying them. Irving Penn’s Harlequin Dress (1950) with its peerlessly elegant composition of black and white checked dress, evening gloves and hat – worn by a peerlessly elegant model – brings to mind the bold geometric patterns of so-called hard-edge abstract painting. Norman Parkinson’s Cardin Hat over Paris (1960) in which the model is framed in the cockpit of a helicopter soaring over the Eiffel Tower has that sense of bravura anything-is-possible modern style it seems impossible to achieve today no matter how large the format or how expensive the equipment. Tina Barney’s spectacular, high-gloss The Limo (2006), is a case in point. Showing a model styled to resemble the iconic designer Halston in the back seat of a car beside a black man clad only in an expensive designer jacket, it’s immediately arresting, though its points about the interaction of identities and who’s looking at who, feel slightly too easy.

Given that Elton has lived for decades with the consequences of celebrity, it’s hardly surprising that “Stars of Stage, Screen and Studio” should be a theme here. The tragic destinies of two artists who obsess him, Marilyn Monroe and the doomed jazz trumpeter Chet Baker – both seen in superb photographs – embody not only his concept of fragile beauty, but the kind of fame-related disasters that could all too easily have befallen him. At the same time, we can sense his open-mouthed awe at being able to acquire seminal images of figures who have for him – and for many others – a near-religious mystique. We’re shown Sinatra with his Mafiosi minders in Frank Sinatra on the Boardwalk, Miami, 1968 by Terry O’Neill; Miles Davis, represented by three images of his very shiny hands, by Irving Penn; Bruce Davidson’s wonderful image The Supremes Preparing for a Show at the Apollo Theatre (1965).

Perhaps most telling are Richard Avedon’s amazing portraits of The Beatles, taken on 11 August 1967, at the summit of their celebrity, looking back at us with expressions that are at once wide-eyed and friendly and resolutely enigmatic. Their personalities have been shaped by an experience of fame that only they could ever fully comprehend.

The images of “Desire” feel more obvious, simply because the exclusively male subjects, from Gilbert & George in oversized underpants to Robert Mapplethorpe naked in the bath, are all so cheerfully “in on” the creation of the images. The only picture with the sense of risk necessary to a truly great photograph is Walter Pfeiffer’s Untitled (1984) in which five well-muscled young men look back at the camera with subtly varied expressions of confusion and hostility. No one, least of all the snapper, seems to know quite what’s going on.

But the most powerful section is “Reportage”, looking at the subject of “photojournalism”, which takes us to world-changing moments with an intensity that utterly transcends that rather bland term. We’re right up close with Martin Luther King, chuckling with his wife Coretta Scott King, captured by Stephen Somerstein at the end of the Selma to Montgomery March in 1965. We look on at the moment of stunned confusion immediately after the shooting of Robert Kennedy, snapped by Boris Yaro, in 1968.

Best of all are eight large, intensely dramatic, but unrelated images, all recent, any one of which has the capacity to reduce us to jelly, placed together on a single wall: from a ragged stars and stripes being carried upside down through a riot-torn American city in 2020 to Ukrainian women being waved off on a train and a dust-covered woman emerging from the bombardment of a Syrian city. While no specific point or narrative emerges, it’s clear that documentary photography – in the classic sense of going to a conflict zone and pressing the shutter – still has the capacity to yield images of immense power.

Yet in the section devoted to “Fragile Beauty” as a subject in its own right, the focus shifts from the intense scrutiny of the external subject to the subject performing their predicaments for the camera. An entire room is covered from floor to ceiling with Nan Goldin’s brutally raw images of marginalised 1980s New Yorkers, sprawled around their squalid rooms and acting up at bohemian parties. After the real-life horrors of the previous rooms, the allure of their self-advertising micro-dramas soon wears thin.

In the final stages of the exhibition, including an extensive section on “Constructed Images”, the emphasis shifts from the subject to the manipulation of the medium, whether it’s Andreas Gursky’s wall-filling digitally doctored images of North Korean rallies or Back to Black director Sam Taylor-Johnson’s faux-candid studies of famous actors crying for the camera. While it provides a visually compelling showcase for where art photography is now, it all feels a shade thin after the first half of the show’s brilliant exposition of photography as the ultimate observational tool.

Photography’s original promise was to give us chunks of physical reality with a veracity and level of detail that had never been seen before. Over the second century of the medium’s existence, we’ve become so preoccupied with the ease with which photography can be manipulated, with the fact that the camera actually does lie at every turn, that we’ve almost lost sight of that original power. The best images in this tumultuous show, from whichever period, have the capacity to make us excited about the very idea of photography, all over again.

At the V&A, from 18 May to 5 January

Within the room is a white structure, a shrine, to the work of Goldin, with 149 prints spanning a quarter of a century. It is simply stunning. These are deeply personal snapshots of a generation and a culture. All of human life is here: joy, sex, despair, abuse, death, friendship. It’s totally absorbing, it’s totally shocking and feels totally real. It’s hard to leave.

Pittsburgh Sports Now photographer David Hague has been named a finalist in the 2024 edition of the World Sports Photography Awards, basketball category.

When Pitt hosted Wake Forest on Jan. 25, 2023, at the Petersen Events Center, Hague — who covers all things Pitt athletics for PSN — was in attendance to photograph the ACC clash. And he caught Wake Forest head coach Steve Forbes reacting to the Oakland Zoo, the Pitt student section, tossing shredded white paper up into the air.

Pitt would go on to knock off the Demon Deacons 81-79 behind eight 3-pointers from Blake Hinson, which set a program record that he broke twice last season.

I am a Finalist in the World Sports Photography Awards 2024 in Basketball sponsored by @mpbcom #wspa23

This photo of Wake Forest coach Steve Forbes reacts as @theoaklandzoo toss their ripped up new paper. #H2P

📷 for @pittsburghsportsnow pic.twitter.com/yaugYEZNE0

— David Hague (@DHPhoto11) May 14, 2024

The World Sports Photography Awards (WSPA), according to its website, is the world’s biggest sports photography award show, covering 24 categories all over the world.

The WSPA jury, which is made up of senior individuals from the sport, media, brand and photography industry, will vote on the categories.

The winners will be announced later this year by the World Sports Photography Awards jury.

At 19, Russell Frederick got his first studio apartment in Bedford Stuyvesant for $425 a month. It was the late 80s, and the neighborhood was not a desirable place to live.

“In the 80s and 90s, nobody wanted to come to Brooklyn,” said Frederick, who grew up in Bushwick.

Frederick, who’s current home studio is on the ground floor of a classic Brooklyn brownstone, has spent more than 25 years documenting Bed-Stuy and its people through his striking black-and-white photography. Now, the prolific photographer, who has been struggling with vision loss since 2015, is facing potential displacement from the home studio he lives and works in.

Passion for His Community

Frederick first fell in love with photography while working as a young nurse. He turned to the medium after becoming dismayed with the politics of the healthcare field.

“I saw that healthcare wasn’t about really the patient, it was a lot more about the business and the politics of it,” said Frederick. “I felt that I had a bigger calling than being of service as a nurse. And I also had a gut feeling that I was supposed to do something artistic.”

After taking a photography class at the International Center of Photography in 1997, Frederick decided to purse photography full time. “I was 27 and I never looked back.”

He looked to his neighborhood for inspiration. Frederick’s goal was to capture Black people and the people of Bed-Stuy in a truer fashion than he’d seen before. He wanted to show that the neighborhood had more to offer than its negative stereotypes, which centered around violence and poverty.

“I started to focus on Bed-Stuy because I wanted to change the way the world saw my community,” said Frederick. “Walking the streets, what I saw was not what I had read about Bed-Stuy.”

In the early days, Frederick would stand with his camera and light meter on the corner of Bedford and Fulton Streets, and strike up a conversation with people he wanted to photograph. He used black-and-white film to develop his signature style.

Even in the late 90s, Frederick said he anticipated the negative effects of gentrification on the historically Black community of Bed-Stuy.

“I knew I had to honor all of the good people who made up this community before they got priced out,” he said.

After becoming known for his work, Frederick went on to photograph in locations such as Ethiopia and Jamaica. His work has been displayed in galleries in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and he has taught as a guest lecturer at New York University, the School of Visual Arts, Columbia University and elsewhere.

“I saw how my camera could uplift people, I saw how my camera can make some people smile. I also saw how my camera could also to make some people nervous, and how my camera could be a reflection that some people weren’t always comfortable with,” he said.

Sudden Loss

When Frederick learned that he had a detached retina and a form of glaucoma in 2015, doctors told him his vision loss could one day be completely restored. Within the first year, he had three eye surgeries. By 2017, he was completely blind in his right eye.

At a follow-up visit, his ophthalmologist told him there was nothing further that could be done for his vision loss. For the photographer, this bleak diagnosis felt like a “death sentence.”

“I had to start using some other senses to kind of overcompensate for what I was losing in vision,” Frederick said. “The hardest part was just daily functions that I used take for granted like reading the newspaper, opening up some mail, reading the back of a food label.”

Glaucoma is an eye disease that typically has no symptoms on onset. It effects Black and Latino people at much higher rates than whites. According to a 2022 Mount Sinai study, Black patients are six times more likely to have advanced vision loss after a glaucoma diagnosis than white patients.

After spending half of his life taking photos, losing a large portion of his vision called for a major adjustment to how Frederick worked. He adapted by using digital cameras and the autofocus features.

“[Vision loss] has made me develop skill sets with digital photography, shooting more in color, as well as certain editing techniques on the computer,” he noted.

A Fight For The Future

A decade into his battle with glaucoma, the impact of his vision loss on his ability to work has begun to add up. Numerous surgeries and long recovery periods have caused Frederick to miss out on work opportunities over the years, creating serious financial instability.

Now, the die-hard Bed-Stuy resident may soon be displaced from the community he’s dedicated his life to reflecting. After falling behind on rent and facing a rent increase, a friend of Frederick’s has decided to launch a GoFundMe campaign to help him with back rent and moving expenses.

“To not be able to take care of some of your needs is not something that I wish on anybody,” said Frederick. “The Black and brown people who made this community what it is deserve better. Some laws must be passed to preserve & protect the long-term homeowners & renters, so Bed-Stuy does not turn into Park Slope.”

Frederick still plans to complete his most important project: compiling more than 10,000 photographs of Bed-Stuy into a book.

“To publish the work will be one of the happiest days of my life,” he said. “So many people have trusted me with their image over these 25 years. I have to honor them and show the world this visual journal of soul that Bed-Stuy is.”