The Amador Gallery exhibit "Kobe," is a series of black and white photographs by Ryuji Miyamoto which display the architectural devastation wrought by the Great Hanshin earthquake upon the city of Kobe, Japan in 1995.

Over the years, Ryuji Miyamoto has kept a watchful eye on Japan's cities as they underwent vertiginous changes. His intention has been to photodocument the demolitions and reconstructions of whole quarters of the cities. Although he tries to photograph the architectural qualities of the cities, he often focuses on the aspect of destruction: the pictures of Kobe after the 1995 earthquake are his most renowned series.

Amador Gallery
41 E. 57 Street, 6th Floor
New York, NY 10022

ImagePrint v8.0 is a RIP designed for Epson models with some very handy features for wedding and events photographers, says Kevin Carter

Offering features such as borders, frames, layout packages and free access to a raft of first-rate profiles, ImagePrint is a RIP intended solely for photographers. As with rival software programs, it replaces the manufacturer's driver for complete control over the printer, either locally or over a network, so when purchasing a licence you specify a particular model. However there's a twist - the price is based on the format. For example, the license for the popular 17-inch Epson SP3800/3880 is priced at $895 (£570), while the roll-fed SP4880 is $1495 (£953). Support is mainly limited to Epson professional printers, although some pro-orientated HP and Canon models have been added recently and I'd expect to see more in future.

As an ICC colour managed application with support for both RGB and CMYK, ImagePrint can use the vast majority of ICC colour profiles, including your own custom-made profiles. But one of the big attractions of the program is access to ImagePrint's library of profiles, which includes some 27,000 profiles for over 400 papers. A number of profiles are shipped on the disc for your specified printer, but a download manager application is included to gain access to the library. Selecting and downloading the appropriate profile takes no more than a few minutes.
ImagePrint offers a range of greyscale and soft-proofing profiles for Photoshop, plus colour profiles for five lighting temperatures (daylight, tungsten, cool white fluorescent (CWF), CWF portrait and mixed lighting), across a range of Fine Art papers from Hahnemuehle, Canson, MOAB, Ilford, Epson and many others. If a particular profile isn't available Colorbytesoftware will build it for free (although wisely, it doesn't say how many times).

User's guide
I was expecting the user interface to be complicated but it has a very minimalist look and is reasonably intuitive. Colorbytesoftware's approach is to keep it as simple as possible. But relative simplicity masks enormous flexibility and if you are to use the program to its fullest extent, you will need to refer to the manual or watch online videos. There are number of floating windows, and not all of them open by default.
Images are selected from the browser and, providing you've selected the appropriate paper size from the main toolbar, you can add what you like by print size from the Layout window. You can add the same image as many times as you like, or add a mix - ImagePrint will do the rest. You can also position the image on the paper yourself, cramming on as many different sizes as you can. If one doesn't fit, ImagePrint will automatically add another page. If you're printing from cut-sheets, for instance using the SP3800, you can align mixed size photos with precision for the Rotatrim, saving paper waste and time. For a wedding or event photographer this is a hugely compelling feature and a real game changer.
Another attractive and unique feature is ImagePrint's ability to produce split tone prints with the greyscale profiles. I was able to add a split tone defining both the shadow and highlight tints and the point of separation, or blend, with ease. Two colour/tint pickers allow for easy selection, although I found it's easier to click on a point than drag the picker. A slider is used for the blend and the preview is updated in a real-time, making accurate selections possible. If I have a niggle it's that the image is low-resolution, and somewhat slightly disconcerting in use. But for wedding and fine art photographers the greyscale profiles and split-toning feature will have enormous potential.

Other features include adding borders and text, although this requires some skill and a concerted reading of the instruction manual. None of it seems really difficult, but don't expect to be able to knock something up on the fly. And if you do go wrong, you can always take a step back - none of the adjustments are destructive though. A border browser has some templates but with my installation, selecting this window caused ImagePrint to crash.

Crop marks are pretty simple to add and can be used for canvas wraps. Canvas users will also be interested in the ability to adjust the number of print-head passes - the default setting is four, but for media with pitted or highly absorbent surfaces it can be doubled to eight. Both choices have a high-speed option, like the original Epson driver, but unless otherwise required the 4-pass setting is sufficient for most needs. Like the choice of droplet size, either 1440 or 2880dpi, the number of print-head passes is made from the print dialog, so it can't be altered until you literally pass over to the IP driver. Still, without the frustrating resetting often seen in rival printer drivers, IP remembers the last setting making mistakes less likely.

Conclusions
Best of all was the quality of output. I have to say that that I've tried several high-end printer calibration solutions and although it is possible to calibrate for specific lighting, it's time-consuming and expensive. I also have to admit that I find Epson profiles pretty good all-round but there is room for improvement, as ImagePrint abundantly and consistently demonstrates.
One the downsides is that, to prevent misuse, a dongle is shipped with the software. As the discs are mailed from the USA, there's a possibility of VAT and import duties. But considering the support for custom-profiles and the ease of use overall, there's little here not to like.

CONTACTS
Price, based on printer size:
13-inch $695
17-inch $895
24-inch $1495
44-inch $2495
60-inch $2995
Discounts are available for multiple licenses and flexible licensing on exchange for larger or smaller printers.

NEEDS
Intel Mac running OS X 10.4 or later.
Windows Vista, XP, 2000
colorbytesoftware.com.

Text from The British Journal of Photography website:

One of the first predecessors to modern cameras was invented in the 1800’s and were known as Daguerreotype’s, named after the inventor Jacques Mande Daguerre . One of first and most pristine examples of a Daguerreotype has surfaced in a private collection that was previously not known to exist. The camera is called the world’s oldest and most expensive.

The wooden sliding-box camera was made in Paris in September 1830 by Alphonse Giroux, the brother in law of the inventor of the camera. The camera is signed by Jacques Mande Daguerre to verify that the device is authentic.

The camera was found in Northern Germany and is in outstanding condition and even has the manual written in German that goes along with the camera. The whole works is up for auction at a starting price of 200,000 euro. The final sales price is expected to be 500,000 to 700,000 euro.

January 7 - February
 13

Two concurrent photography exhibitions featuring, respectively, a selection of rarely shown photographs by Diane Arbus and new work by William Eggleston. The installation of Arbus's work, In the Absence of Others, brings together a group of photographs of empty interiors and artificial landscapes spanning the 1960s. The Eggleston exhibition is titled 21st Century.

Cheim & Read
547 West 25th Street
New York, NY 10001

'Weegee-It's a crime to take photographs this good...'

11.25.09 - 01.09.10

From the Michael Hoppen Gallery website:

An exhibition of early photographs by Weegee the Famous and selected artists.

Always in the right place at the right time, Weegee’s lense was perpetually aimed the visceral and sometimes violent city of New York. In 1993, Wilma Fellig, Weegee’s widow, bequeathed his entire archive of original prints to the ICP in New York, and we are delighted to offer selected pieces of this unique photographers work which includes many images never previously seen in the UK.

Weegee photographed New York in the 1930s and 1940s in the same iconic and instantly recognisable way Woody Allen was to film the city in the 1970s. Weegee’s voyeuristic eye sought out theharsh realities of the urban experience, but also the joie de vivre and carefree attitude which typified the years between the wars.

Born in 1899 in the Austrian province of Galicia, which is today part of Ukraine, Weegee (real name Usher, then Arthur Fellig) was the second of seven children from Jewish parents. Weegee's family left Europe in 1910 for the Lower East Side ofManhattan, where Weegee grew up. He left home at 15 and in 1917 got a job in a photo studio and became assistant to a cameraman. In 1921, he got a part-time position at the New York Times and its legendary agency Wide World Photos, soon afterwards switching to Acme News pictures. Eventually, frustrated with the lack of recognition for his work, and not having his name on photographs, he became a freelance news photographer by late 1935.



Weegee’s images bridge the gap between art, evidence and photojournalism. His nickname was a phonetic rendering of ouija,as in ouija board, due to his sixth sense of being able to arrive at a scene minutes after the occurrence of a crime. In 1938, Fellig was the only New York newspaper reporter with a permit to have a portable police-band short wave radio. The trunk of his car was a carefully maintained darkroom, to enable himto deliver his freelance images tothe newspapers as speedily as possible. He worked predominantly at night listening closely to radio broadcasts, often beating the NYPD to the scene. It also meant he was on hand to document the raucous night life in the Bowery, Harlem and The Village, and he went on to document the society events and functions of the era.

Hisphotographs were taken with the very basic press photographer equipment, a Graflek and blue flashbulbs which gave his work such graphic qualities. He had no formal photographic training being entirely self taught, and was a relentless self-promoter.

As an adjunct to Weegee’s work, we will also be showing further images by Sergei Vasiliev, and Stan Healy.

Sergei Vasiliev's graphic and unflinching photographs show the grim reality of the Russian prison system and some of the characters that inhabit it. The tattoo motifs which Vasiliev was helping to document for the KGB represent the uncensored lives of the criminal classes, ranging from violence and pornography to politics. This was an underclass with its own caste and judicial system, and the history of each individual was instantly recognizable to the other.

Edward ‘Stan’ Healy was born in Missoula, Montana and as a local newspaper photojournalist documented crime scenes and local news stories. Healy has been praised for anability to capture a story in a single image and do so with an eye for composition. However, he also had a taste for the provocative and disturbing, and his images can be shocking. all the more so because of the parochial backdrop of mid 20th century Missoula- a small Midwest city whose boom years at the forefront of the logging industry were sadly over.

We strongly advise early viewing of this unique exhibition. Prepare to be shocked, amused and informed!

All pictures will be for sale.

National Public Radio features the work of Roy DeCarava, who died recently at the age of 89, with Black-And-White America, an online gallery plus an interview and audio about the man and his work.

At The Metropolitan Museum of Art

September 22, 2009–January 3, 2010

From the Met website:
This exhibition celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The Americans, Robert Frank’s influential suite of black-and-white photographs made on a cross-country road trip in 1955–56. Although Frank’s depiction of American life was criticized when the book was released in the U.S. in 1959, it soon became recognized as a masterpiece of street photography. Born in Switzerland in 1924, Frank is considered one of the great living masters of photography. The exhibition will feature all 83 photographs published in The Americans and will be the first time that this body of work is presented to a New York audience. In addition, the exhibition includes contact sheets that Frank used to create the book; earlier photographs made in Europe, Peru, and New York; a short film by the artist on his life; and his later re-use of iconic images from the series

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street
New York City

The Joy of Portraits

September 9 - November 7

In 1976 Keizo Kitajima made his impressive debut with photographs capturing Koza in Okinawa, a town near the US military base, in the period just after the end of the Vietnam War. Subsequently, he expanded his purview to include Tokyo, New York, Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union, just as that nation was on the verge of collapse.

The Joy of Portraits, featuring portrait work from each of these series, presents the most complete picture to date of the extraordinary photographer Keizo Kitajima's work from 1975 - 1991, including many previously unseen images.

Amador Gallery
41 E. 57th Street
New York, NY 10022

212 759 6740

Harman Technology is introducing a new online print service aimed at black-and-white shooters. The service is available for UK and European customers. For more details, visit ilfordlab.com.

Ilford Lab Direct allows photographers to upload their digital files and receive back silver gelatine prints, using Ilford's black-and-white chemistry and paper.

Film photographers can also use the site to download order forms for 35mm and 120 film processing to be used with Ilford Photo's direct mail order service. The service is operated from the Ilford Photo's manufacturing site in Mobberley, Cheshire, and processing of digital files takes up to five working days.

From the online British Journal of Photography:
The German manufacturer responsible for 6x6 format camera bodies for both Leaf and Sinar is to close. The firm broke the news to its 131 employees earlier this week. The closure could dramatically affect the medium format camera market, days after Phase One announced it would buy Leaf's assets

Until July 31, 2009

From the Gitterman Gallery website:

Gitterman Gallery is proud to present an exhibition of black and white photographs by Debbie Fleming Caffery. The exhibition will open with a book signing and reception for the artist on Thursday, May 21st from 6 to 8 p.m. and continue through Friday, July 31st.

Debbie Fleming Caffery has been photographing in Mexico since 1990. This exhibition focuses on the images Caffery made of women working as prostitutes. These photographs explore the complexities of their situation in life, showing their vulnerability and their strength. The exhibition is concurrent with the release of Caffery’s fourth major monograph, The Spirit & The Flesh (Radius Books, 2009), which spans her entire body of work in Mexico and includes an essay by Carrie Springer, Senior Curatorial Assistant at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Gitterman Gallery
170 East 75th Street
New York, NY 10021
T: 212.734.0868

7 May - 3 July 2009

From the Fraenkel Gallery website:
Through approximately twenty works in various formats, the exhibition will present a concise array of the subjects of primary importance to the Bechers over their ong career. At the same time, the works on view will highlight the artists' evolving modes of presentation, from their diptychs of the early 1970's, through ambitious multi-part typologies, and the large-format single images first introduced in 1990 in a renowned exhibition at the DIA Art Foundation in New York. The most recent works to be exhibited were made in 2006, the year of Bernd Becher's death.

Fraenkel Gallery
49 Geary Street
San Francisco, CA 94108

Adams wins approximately £40,000 for his work spanning more than four decades. 'Adams is one of the most important and influential photographers of the last 40 years,' says the Foundation. 'During that time he has worked almost exclusively in the American West, and, as photography has altered and fragmented, he has refined and reaffirmed its inherent language, adapting the legacies of nineteenth century and modernist photography to his own very singular purpose.

'Precise and undramatic, Adams' accumulative vision of the West now stands as a formidable document, reflecting broader, global concerns about the environment, while consistently recognising signs of human aspiration and elements of hope across a particular changing landscape.'

His prize, along with a gold medal, will be presented at a ceremony at the Hasselblad Centre in Gothenburg in November, where an exhibition of his life's work will go on show.

NEW YORK — A very early photograph of New York City in the 1840s has sold for $62,500.

The photo depicting Manhattan's Upper West Side as open countryside was sold Monday at Sotheby's auction house.

The photo is a daguerreotype, an early form of photography that was used mainly for portraits. It is believed to date from 1848 and shows a white house with shutters, a grassy hillside and a horse-drawn carriage.

Sotheby's said the photo was recently discovered in New England. Neither the buyer nor the seller was identified.

The auction house estimated the pre-sale value of the daguerrotype at $50,000 to $70,000.