Small, light and fast, the Leica was the cellphone camera of its day. When it launched in the 1920s, professional photographers took to the streets with it and captured quick, spontaneous images that hadn’t been possible with their lumbering view cameras. Perhaps no group used the camera better in its early days than the New York Photo League, a ragtag band of urban photographers who were equally passionate about politics and aesthetics. In the 1930s and 40s, their documentation would provide a vibrant record of everyday life in New York City.
     The Radical Camera: The New York Photo League 1936-1951, now at the Jewish Museum, pays tribute to the ninety-some photographers involved in this short-lived, feisty little organization. Notably, most Photo League members came from modest backgrounds (a lot were first-generation American Jews). Their aim was to throw light on their own poor neighborhoods and others, and by doing so, to effect social change. Not for them the beautiful, static landscapes being captured by Ansel Adams in the same years; instead, they turned their lenses on the teeming streets of the Lower East Side and Harlem, where children played in abandoned buildings and garbage littered the streets.

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With the L.A. Auto Show taking place this week, PLANET spoke to a genuine auto visionary. He may not believe in man-made climate change, and he may rail against what he calls the media’s tendency to smother the makers of hybrid vehicles like Toyota in superlatives for their environmental correctness. But in the last decade, there is arguably no one else in Detroit who has done more to promote clean, efficient cars than Bob Lutz.
     After stints at other automakers, he rejoined his first employer, General Motors, as vice chairman in 2001 and oversaw the development of the Chevy Volt, a plug-in gas/electric hybrid. The car’s $40,000 price tag puts it out of reach for most drivers, and GM is unlikely to meet its target of 10,000 sales by year’s end, yet the Volt denotes an important if tentative step nevertheless. Now 79 and retired, Lutz talked openly about the events covered in his book, Car Guys VS. Bean Counters, including the past failures of the American auto industry and the road ahead to a future devoid of gasoline:

Artist team Sarah Cooper and Nina Gorfer revel in the other side of digital photography. Instead of the ubiquitous, instantaneous snapshot, Cooper & Gorfer devote hours to composing and digitally augmenting each photo, ending with a surreal image of almost-impenetrable depth. Sometimes only a simple color filter is needed to make an austere backdrop of mountains suddenly loom into the foreground; sometimes everything but a woman’s face is digitally replaced with rich, fantastic prints and colors. Depth has no fixed value in Cooper & Gorfer’s work, and light is even less reliable.
     When the technique is applied to portraiture, the resulting narrative implications are arresting. My Quiet of Gold, now at Gestalten Space in Berlin through November 27th, features a series of portraits made in rural Kyrgyzstan of locals who first recounted their own remarkable personal histories to the photographers through interviews and conversations. Taken as a whole, the exhibition offers the sum of a story without conforming to sequential form, and without ever speaking a word.

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WIthout is the new feature film written and directed by Mark Jackson, with cinematography by Jessica Dimmock and Diego Garcia. Hauntingly shot in lush, luminous color, the film has a gritty realism that is softened by a sensitive performance by newcomer Joslyn Jensen, whose intense portrayal of a girl on the edge of an emotional breakdown has drawn comparisons with a young Isabelle Huppert.
     The story centers round a teenage girl (Jensen) who takes a job as a caretaker for a near catatonic elderly man on a remote Pacific Northwest Island. With no internet or cell phone access, she is almost completely cut off from the outside world and struggles to maintain a daily routine. As the days pass, she begins a slow progression of mental and emotional disintegration, all the while grappling with her own issues of loss, guilt and sexuality.

Many may be familiar with photographer Marcelo Gomes for his mood-evoking fashion, lifestyle and portrait work. However few have seen much of his equally moving personal imagery, such as the series here on the ocean, where Gomes’ love for nature and style converge in perfect harmony. It’s not surprising then, to hear Gomes state his passion for texture and light and his inspiration in works by Takashi Homma, Wolfgang Tillmans and Mark Borthwick. We’re pleased to present this exclusive selection that Marcelo put together for PLANET.

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A native of Benin and founder of the tiny West African nation’s first photography school, Leonce Raphael Agbodjélou has always produced portraits that are uniquely poised between tradition and modernity. His latest series of photographs captures the extraordinary costumes of the Egungun ritual, a Yoruba masquerade performed by the entire community to reach out to the dead. In full regalia the masqueraders are resplendent in textiles of complex patterning and opulent color, yet the obscuration of their faces tinge their energy with an unapproachable eeriness. Each subject stands on a sunlight-soaked village street, as much a fixture of present-day Yoruba society as ever. Agbodjélou’s gloriously technicolor lens finally records Egungun garb in a way that can do it justice. The Egungun Project exhibition opens at the Jack Bell Gallery in London on November 11th.

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Sunny optimism about renewable energy’s prospects has rarely been abundant in Washington. But just as the business of clean energy is poised to take off, a cloud of suspicion over the White House’s stimulus support of a photovoltaic manufacturer has engulfed the Capitol and diverted attention from new developments taking shape within the solar industry that are worthy of being championed.
     As covered ad nauseum, the Fremont, CA-based company Solyndra went bankrupt in September after having earlier received a $535 million federal loan guarantee. Last week, the Republican-led Energy and Commerce Committee voted to subpoena documents from the White House relating to the company. Now armed with over 85,000 pages of documents already in its possession, the committee is almost sure to uncover some amount of mini scandals and embarrassing pieces of communications. But what the investigation certainly won’t reveal is the other solar energy story that’s waiting to be noticed out in the light of day. It’s the story of our next great energy resource slowly but surely coming into its own.
     Here then, for the benefit of our Congressmen and anyone else who might care to notice, are four examples of meaningful research and development advancements being made in solar technology right here in the United States. Sunny optimism is a potential side effect, so proceed with caution.

Iranian artist Shirin Neshat’s latest curated show, The Mask and The Mirror, is a thoughtful and timely collection of self- portraits from a provocative and diverse group of contemporary artists. Featuring works by Marina Abramović, Matthew Barney, Paolo Canevari, Feridoun Ghaffari, Ramin Haerizadeh, Lyle Ashton Harris, Y.Z. Kami, Shahram Karimi, Robert Mapplethorpe, Youssef Nabil, Nicky Nodjoumi, Bahar Sabzevari, Cindy Sherman and Shahzia Sikander, the self-portraits provide an intimate, emotional insight as well as a social documentary reflecting cultural, political and religious issues. Through costume, disguise and illusion the artist creates a world that is both fantastical and highly personal.
     Shirin Neshat has always been interested in the idea of the capturing of identity and self expression and how this has been shaped and influenced by Western culture. In 1993 she created the photographic self portrait series Women of Allah. For her, more than being autobiographical, the self portraits allowed her to provide a personal narration of other people’s stories. She used her own body as a vehicle of political and cultural expression. 

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For many of us who’ve never been there, Africa is a myth more than a place, an imaginary landscape of unspoiled deserts, grasslands and forests. So David Adjaye’s new book of photographs of the continent’s cities, African Metropolitan Architecture, is revelatory. Adjaye is a celebrated London-based, Tanzania-born architect who has traveled through Africa since he was a child. This seven-volume set collects thousands of photos he took when visiting fifty-two different cities over the past decade. The book is organized geographically, with separate volumes featuring cities in the Maghreb (the northwest shore), the Sahara desert, the Sahel (the zone just south of the desert), the forest, the savanna, and the mountains.
     Adjaye’s photographs aren’t rigidly composed, as one would expect from an architect, and have a snapshot-like immediacy. They look as if they were taken by a traveler moving comfortably and inconspicuously through these places, with a personal rather than academic interest. But Adjaye is highly deliberate about what he chooses to photograph, focusing on buildings, streets, parks and plazas that capture the spirit of each city’s life.

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German-based photographer Mario Marino has now been immersed in his “Faces of Africa” project for over six months, producing powerfully sensitive portraits of South Ethiopians. His latest show, opening at Galerie Brockstedt, Berlin, on November 4th, focuses on the area’s children, who have inherited the tradition of wearing the leaves, chalk, and branches of the landscape as ornaments. Marino’s goal of capturing the extraordinary artistry and individualism of this practice has always existed under the threat of time—as with so many others, the regional custom recedes as tourism and technology increase their presence. But Marino’s newest portraits show a cultural heritage alive and well in the youngest generation.

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