Penn Yan, N.Y. — If you plan to attend the Windmill Farm and Crafts Market in Penn Yan on Saturday, stop by Emily Stauring’s booth to pick up a free copy of her book, “Kiss It Cancer.”

Emily is a photographer and artist in the Finger Lakes region who lost her mother to cancer in 2013. Two years later, she lost her father after he suffered a fatal heart attack.

Emily created the book, which includes 50 images with inspiring quotes and verses, to help her mother get through her decade-long fight against cancer and also, to help others who find themselves in a similar situation.

“When my mom was fighting her battle, there wasn’t much for hope or encouraging words,” Emily said. “So, I used my photography and wrote it for her to help her fight, and after she passed, I decided to publish it to help others.”

Both of her parents would have celebrated their birthdays in the same week, June 28 – July 2, so in their honor, she is hosting the book giveaway.

“We all need a little hope and color in our lives, and I’m looking to give that to everyone that needs it,” said Emily.

Her goal is to give away 5000 books. She will be at the Windmill from 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Click here for more information.

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For the last two years, Mark Aitken has been working on a photo series in Lapland. “It’s called Presence of Absence,” he says, “and it explores the liminal and sometimes uncanny boundaries between life and death experienced by people living in this extreme climate and landscape.”

Aitken, who was born in New Zealand, raised in South Africa and has lived in London for years, took this photo in spring of this year, on a sheep farm. “Kukkola is a borderland hamlet in Finnish Lapland on the River Tornio, near Sweden. The farm has been running for 20 years and this lamb is one of about 100 born in March and April,” he says.

The young lamb doesn’t have a name, but the curious collie does. “He’s a lively young male called Possu; his name means piglet. I had gone into the barn to find one of the farm’s owners, Jaana, to arrange a time for taking her portrait when I came across the two animals interacting.”

Aitken usually works with 35mm film; he likes to spend time preparing the making of a photo, especially when the subject is people. “When the right atmosphere, light and mood is realised, I press the shutter. I like the discipline of this. This process extends to printmaking in the darkroom. Only then does the memory of the moment connect with the photo.”

That day, he didn’t have his camera to hand but he did have his iPhone SE. There, in front of him, the theme of his series was reflected in an entirely new way. “I felt a sense of wonder and curiosity about interspecies relationships. Possu was trying to herd the lamb, but failing. The lamb had yet to learn fear.”

Special to the Banner-News

Get ready to capture the beauty of a moment with local photographer Lisa Burton Tarver’s “Capturing a Moment in Time” Photography Portrait Workshop. The workshop will take place at the South Arkansas Arts Center on Saturday, July 27 from 10am to 3pm. The cost of the workshop is $50.

In this unique and interactive workshop, participants will have the opportunity to use professional lighting and backdrops to take stunning portraits of their own subjects. Using their camera or phone, participants will take pictures and then mat them to create a beautiful 4×6 portrait.

The workshop begins with participants learning the basics of portrait photography and gaining hands-on experience with taking and printing their own photographs. After lunch, participants are invited to have a family member or a friend join them for the hands-on portion of the workshop. So…get ready to capture memories that will last a lifetime and join in the fun!

“I’m thrilled to share my passion for photography with others and help them capture their special moments,” said Lisa Burton Tarver. “I love taking portraits and capturing those perfect and special moments with my camera. It is such an exhilarating feeling when you know you’ve captured that very moment in time.”

The workshop is open to all skill levels and no prior photography experience is necessary. Participants are encouraged to bring their iPhone, Android or any digital camera with an SD card.

Don’t miss this opportunity to capture a moment in time and take your photography skills to the next level. Register now for Lisa Burton Tarver’s “Capturing a Moment in Time” Photography Portrait Workshop at the South Arkansas Arts Center on July 27.

To register or for more information, please visit SAAC’s web site at www.saac-arts.org or call us at 870-862-5474. Join us for an unforgettable day of photography and create memories that will last a lifetime.

My beloved Nana died from dementia in June, less than two weeks before she would have turned 99. Her last five years had seen her lose the use of her legs, motor skills and voice – and finally, fatally, her ability to swallow food and drink. 

Although I’d had years to come to terms with the fact she was dying, I was floored and depressed by her death. My favorite member of my family, she’d been kind and loving with a hilarious sense of humor. She had been around for my whole life, and I couldn’t process the fact that she wasn’t anymore.

Of Iranian-Indian heritage, Nana had been stunning – a beauty queen in her hometown of Nairobi, Kenya. Last year, on her 98th birthday, my aunt had baked an amazing cake with a topper featuring a photograph of Nana in her prime. She had been so beautiful in an elegant off-the-shoulder 1950s dress, yet 70 years on she stared blankly at the walls of the care home, unable to focus on the photograph.

For the funeral, my mother asked me to send my aunt pictures of Nana. I only had a single photo before she went into care. Taken on Nana’s 84th birthday by a photographer friend of mine who owned a DSLR, it’s a nice picture, but not a particularly emotive one – Nana looks a bit bored.

The funeral took place on what would have been Nana’s 99th birthday. I was dreading it but, thanks to photography, it turned out to be a wonderful celebration of her life. My cousin had put together a slideshow of mostly black-and-white photos of Nana, the majority taken when she was young in the 1940s and 1950s. I have no idea who took them or by which method, but it was a real joy to see her as such a happy, fun-loving young woman.

We saw Nana in white sari and long black gloves on my grandfather Papa’s arm, looking for all the world like a Persian Audrey Hepburn. Ever the loving husband, we saw him dancing proudly with her, looking like the cat who got the cream. We saw Nana as a smiling beauty and a teenage ballerina, lithe and poised. There was even a funny photo of her crashed out asleep at a party, surrounded by balloons!

I asked my cousin for the photos and he shared the Google Drive link. The photos were labelled with generic filenames, so I relabelled them more evocatively, like ‘Nana Audrey Hepburn’ and ‘Ballerina Nana’. I am planning to order four prints of them for my room.

I only have 14 folders on my desktop – and Nana’s photos are now in their own folder. Every time I need a pick-me-up, I open it and smile, seeing my charming and mischievous Nana full of joie de vivre, having a brilliant time in her youth. Dementia sucked all the pleasure and hope from her existence, but the photos are a much-needed reminder that she’d led an incredible life.

Check our guide to the best photo scanners to avoid reflections when you take pics of your old photo prints.

A new photography book, Visitors, takes an in-depth look at the unexpected intersection between art and deathmatch wrestling, a hardcore offshoot of traditional wrestling that involves everything from nail-studded props and broken glass to barbed wire.

A collaboration between Adam Abdalla, the founder of New York-based art consultancy Cultural Counsel, and photographer Nick Karp, Visitors is aimed at both diehard deathmatch devotees and newcomers alike. Abdalla – who is also the founder of Orange Crush, an annual publication that seeks to bridge the gap between art and wrestling – has long been one of those devotees. ‘I’ve been a fan since the late 1990s,’ he says. ‘Back then, the only way to get your hands on deathmatches was through tape trading. It was eye-opening to see elements of real life and real danger – barbed wire, fire, piranhas – incorporated into professional wrestling.’

The book came about when, in October 2023, deathmatch promoter Game Changer Wrestling became the first American independent professional wrestling company to stage their own show at Tokyo’s Korakuen Hall, a legendary venue in the world of wrestling. The event brought more than 20 wrestlers and referees from the US and Mexico, many performing in Japan for the first time, and, recognising its significance, Abdalla saw an opportunity to creatively document the trip.

He brought Karp on board to capture life on the road – before, during and after the show – and the resulting hardcover book, hand-painted in blood red, features 200 pages of behind-the-scenes moments and match highlights, in all their bloodied glory.

Beautifully shot, in graphic detail and a vividly rich colour palette, the images can make for uncomfortable viewing. The matches are violent and there is much bloodshed.

But for Russian-American pro wrestler Masha Slamovich, one of the show’s competitors and a star of the book, it’s important that viewers can see beyond just the violence. ‘I think many people simply turn away once they see the blood and feel their initial reaction,’ she says. ‘But art is not always comfortable or easily digested. Sometimes art makes you stop and think and feel certain things you don’t want to face.’

Visitors, by Nick Karp and Adam Abdalla, £61, is available in a limited edition of 1,000 from orangecrush.art

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Exhibit ‘Photography Strictly Prohibited’ features selection of images from 20,000 photographs taken over 60 years; is on display at BIC until July 7

An exhibition of photographs by Navroze Contractor, titled ‘Photography Strictly Prohibited’ was inaugurated at the Bangalore International Centre (BIC) on Friday. A book with the same title was also released at the event, featuring a few of Navroze’s interviews. The exhibition marks the first anniversary of his death as well as his birthday. He would have turned 80 on July 7 of this year.

Curated by documentary producer, director, and editor Sanjiv Shah, photographer and motorcycle enthusiast Himanshu Panchal, and photographer Anuj Ambalal, the exhibition showcases the work of the renowned cinematographer and prolific still photographer Navroze Contractor. Contractor’s collection of photographs of jazz musicians is now with the Smithsonian Museum. This exhibition features a selection from over 20,000 images taken over 60 years, many of which have not been previously exhibited. The retrospective hopes to reflect Contractor’s empathetic gaze and his ability to capture the perfect photographic moment.

“In the 35 years that I knew him, I rarely ever remember him stepping out of the house without a still camera. Of the hundreds of photographs taken of Navroze, starting in the early 1960s, there are rarely any photos of him where he could be seen without a camera dangling from his neck or shoulder, unless, of course, he was astride a motorcycle. But except for a brief period during the late 1960s when he worked for the Ford Foundation as a photographer, he was never a photographer in the classical sense. Other than the jazz musicians that he photographed for over three decades, he rarely ever pursued a subject or story,” Sanjiv Shah said in the curatorial note.

Shah added that Contractor had the unique gift of connecting with people of all ages and across cross-sections of society. He liked to observe people, meet them, talk to them, and know about them even when he was not shooting pictures. Growing up in a time when the country offered space for multiple viewpoints and artists of all ilk—poets, writers, painters, and filmmakers—believed their work could contribute to the creation of an equitable nation, he aligned with progressive politics that empathised with the underprivileged and the marginalized. “This informed the way he captured people on his camera, always with compassion and never allowing the camera to impose, intrude, or be patronizing. For him, the camera was an extension of his ‘eye’, to capture the world as he saw it. A documentation of his journey through life, in a way, that was not even necessary to share with the world,” he adds.

Other than the jazz photographs and a smaller set of photographs of the traditional Kushti Akhadas of Dharwar, none of his other work has been shown publicly, the curators noted. “In fact, it was only in the last few years that he was convinced to shed his reluctance to share this part of his life and agree to digitise his analogue images, which could then be curated and exhibited,” Shah says. The book and the images aim to share the unseen work with the public.

The show’s opening was followed by a talk by writer Arshia Sattar and included the screening of ‘Jharu Katha’, a 64-minute documentary film photographed and directed by Navroze. The exhibition will be on until July 7 from 11 am to 8 pm at BIC. The exhibition will travel across India, with a longer halt in Ahmedabad in October.