Excerpt from the article on the Amateur Photographer website:

A rare £100,000 Nikon fisheye lens, said to be able to ‘see behind itself’ – and dwarfing any camera it is attached to – has gone on sale in London.

The Fisheye-Nikkor 6mm f/2.8 was credited as the world’s most extreme wideangle lens to cover the 24x36mm image area when it was unveiled at the Photokina trade show in Cologne, Germany in 1970.

It weighs a whopping 5.2kg, is 171mm long and has a diameter of 236mm.

‘We came across it around seven weeks ago,’ said Gray Levett, co-founder of Nikon dealer Grays of Westminster who told AP that he found the gem on a trip overseas.

Believed to be one of only a few hundred produced, it was principally designed for scientific and industrial applications and special effects when shooting portraits and architectural shots, for example.

The 12-elements-in-9-goups optic delivers a picture angle of 220º.

Kahlo’s personal photographs are on display for the first time in the U.S at Artisphere in Arlington, Virginia. The exhibit gives viewers intimate snapshots into her private life.

The private photos provide a glimpse into Kahlo's life with her husband, the severe pain she suffered as the result of a serious bus accident, as well as her talent in taking photographs herself. Though only a few of the photos in the exhibit are credited to Kahlo herself, it's clear that she sustained an interest in the medium. Many of the visual artists in Kahlo's circle were prominent photographers like Edward Weston, Manuel Alvarez Bravo and Tina Modotti; some of their photos are found in her collection.

The art gallery, Artisphere in Arlington, Virginia, is the twin town to Kahlo's home town in Mexico.

Artisphere
1101 Wilson Boulevard
Arlington, Virginia 22209

Through September 2, 2012

"This exhibition affirms that Weegee brought to street photography a new, often shocking vitality. The combination of grit, humanity, intensity, merciless opportunism and spatial precariousness...regularly resulted in pictures that you can’t stop looking at...and don't soon forget."
— The New York Times

International Center of Photography
1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street
New York, NY

The Jeu de Paume, will open a retrospective showcasing the photographs of Berenice Abbott. She came from Ohio but visited Paris in 1921 and apprenticed with Man Ray. In 1926 she opened her own studio where she made portraits of James Joyce, André Gide, Djuna Barnes, Jean Cocteau, etc. Abbott acquired 1,400 of Parisian documentary photographer, Eugène Atget's glass negatives, and 7,800 prints and sold them to the Museum of Modern Art in 1968.

In 1929 she visited New York intending to return to Paris, but instead, she began a project called Changing New York, which was subsidized by the Federal Art Project. She photographed buildings and this is what will be the centerpiece of the Jeu de Paume Paris show.

Some of what's new:

* The GUI with many new functions
* B&W wide AND narrow gamut
* The printer driver has been completely re-written and is more accurate

Visit Colorbytesoftware for a thorough explanation and examination of ImagePrint 9.

Through January 7, 2012

John Loengard's newest book - and the basis for this eponymous exhibition - Age of Silver, is the ode to the art form to which he has dedicated his life. Contained within its pages, and on exhibition, are Loengard's portraits and expressive candids of many of the most important photographers of the last half-century - Leibovitz, Avedon, Eisenstaedt, Cartier-Bresson, Salgado, Benson and many, many others.

Leica Gallery
In the Oskar Barnack Room
670 Broadway
New York City 10012

We would like to warn and suggest that you do not purchase ALPA products from non-official dealers. Please get in touch with the authorities or ALPA directly if you purchase any of the lenses having serial numbers outlined below.

Cecil Beaton photographs of Andy Warhol, Marilyn Monroe, and Audrey Hepburn to go on show at the Museum of the City of New York Oct 25 through Feb 20.

From the Museum of the City of New York web site:
From the 1920s through the ‘60s, Manhattan’s artistic and social circles embraced British-born photographer and designer Cecil Beaton (1904-80). Cecil Beaton: The New York Years brings together extraordinary photographs, drawings, and costumes by Beaton to chronicle his impact on the city’s cultural life. Beaton’s relentless energy and curiosity spurred him to pursue new fields, from fashion and portrait photography to costume and scenic design for Broadway, ballet, and opera, and to put his own aesthetic stamp on each of these endeavors.

Museum of the City of New York
1220 Fifth Avenue at 103rd Street
New York, NY 10029

International Center of Photography
1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street
New York, NY 10036

"Like Henri Cartier-Bresson, Mr. Erwitt has been a seeker of the 'decisive moment,' an instant in real time when people, animals or objects appear before the camera in surprising and illuminating ways. What distinguishes Mr. Erwitt's work has been his keen eye for the comedy in everyday life."
—The New York Times

International Center of Photography
1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street
New York, NY 10036

Ruth Gruber, Photojournalist celebrates the life, vision, and heroic tenacity of one of the 20th century's great humanitarians and photojournalists. Born in 1911 to Jewish immigrants in Brooklyn, Gruber was the youngest PhD in the world when she became the first journalist to travel to the Soviet Arctic and Siberian Gulag, in 1935. A celebrated author, lecturer, and intrepid correspondent, Gruber was appointed by U.S. Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes in 1941 to report on conditions in the Alaska Territory. She captured some of the earliest color images of Alaska's vast frontier, lives and customs of the native population, and conditions and experiences of American soldiers. In 1944, during the Second World War, Gruber stewarded the ship Henry Gibbins on a secret U.S. government mission that brought nearly 1,000 Jewish refugees from Europe to the U.S. Gruber subsequently shifted her attention to the lives of refugees and to issues of rescue, sanctuary, and liberation. In 1947, Gruber's iconic photographs documenting the harrowing voyage of Exodus 1947—a ship carrying Jewish refugees attempting to break the British blockade on immigration to Palestine—were sent to wire services throughout the world and significantly impacted perceptions of the plight of Jews seeking to enter Palestine. Organized by Adjunct Curator Maya Benton, and drawn from Gruber's private archive, this exhibition includes never-before-seen color photographs and vintage prints, made over more than half a century, on four continents, alongside contemporary prints made from her original negatives. Gruber is a recipient of the 2011 ICP Infinity Awards Cornell Capa Award.

It was sold to a private, anonymous collector from Asia.

The camera was one of about 25 prototypes made in 1923, two years before the celebrated German brand went into commercial production.

The previous world record was set last year when a collector paid 732,000 euros for a daguerreotype, the world's first commercially produced camera, which bore the rare signature of its French inventor.

Phase One has launched Media Pro, an updated and rebranded digital asset management app based on Microsoft Expression Media. It handles photos, videos and multimedia, and various storage types, like hard drives, DVDs and shared folders, with offline workflow. It bypasses an old barrier of 128,000 files per catalog, and can cope with an unlimited number of catalogs. Images can be added via drag and drop, and keyworded, browsed, rotated, cropped, resized and magnified, with search and annotation support. Catalogs can be archived, published as a slideshow or web gallery and distributed as a contact sheet or print.

Other additions include non-destructive editing using the engine of Phase One's RAW processing tool, Capture One, with which it works in tandem as changes to images from Capture One appear in Media Pro. The two apps exchange ratings, tags and metadata, with XMP support. An option exists to switch from Capture One's rendering engine to Core Image processing on the Mac, or Windows Imaging Components on Windows.

Media Pro's interface is likewise based on Capture One, focusing on photo management and supporting video. It also allows for audio, text, fonts and HTML files.

RAW file support covers most of the major cameras from Canon, Nikon, Leaf, Pentax, Olympus, Sony and Mamiya, totaling over 100 in all. The app can batch-process and tag thousands of images, and offers scripting support for repetitive tasks.

On a Mac Media Pro requires an Intel processor, 2GB of RAM and Mac OS 10.5.8 or 10.6.6. Windows requirements are a Pentium 4, 2GB of RAM and Windows XP SP3, Vista SP2 or 7 SP1. Media Pro normally costs $200, although a $60 upgrade is available for Expression Media 2 owners, and a $70 option is accessible to users of iView Media Pro/Expression Media 1.

April 13 - June 30, 2011

At the Amador Gallery, “Japan Today” is an exhibition which brings together the work of three prominent contemporary Japanese photographers: Taiji Matsue, Osamu Kanemura and Mikiko Hara. The exhibition presents each of their distinct approaches to capturing the unique character of Japan, its land and its people.

Osamu Kanemura embeds himself within the dense makeup of Tokyo, using the conventions of black and white street photography to novel ends by letting the layers of dense electrical and telecommunications wires to feature centrally within the series "My Name is Shockhammer". These stark images, whose tonal contrasts appear formally alluring and intricate, depict unfamiliar views of Japan that connect to one another through the dense network of wires that chaotically stream throughout them. The photos are thereby visually networked to one another in a manner analogous to the invisible electrical and communications networks that these wires create within the city itself.

Mikiko Hara’s work, from her book “Hysteric Thirteen” uses a snap-shot aesthetic to give her color images of urban life a casual appearance that contrasts with the ominous tensions legible in the faces and character of her subjects. Hara’s often bleached out, pastel pallet has a startlingly noirish allure. The figures, usually women, appear unknowable and distant; they are never fully accessible to the camera’s penetrating gaze. These ambiguous individuals create a startling sense of alienation that courses throughout the images and though never looking at the camera, the people seem aware that they are being watched, whether by Hara or by more sinister social forces.

Taiji Matsue’s JP-22 series refers to the 22nd prefecture of Japan, the Shizuoka region. Matsue uses the formal characteristics of color photography to great effect by framing sections of this visually diverse region from a greatly elevated viewpoint. The camera obliterates the horizon line ensconcing the viewer within an abstracted section of the landscape. The stunning details of these aerial vignettes are put in tension with the abstract patterns which emerge in them whereby the bustle of a dense urban neighborhood appears ordered within the grid structure of city streets and plots of farmland appear like assemblies of askew fractals and abstract quadrilaterals.

Above text from the Amador Gallery website.

Amador Gallery
The Fuller Building
41 E 57 Street 6 Fl
New York, NY 10022

Until May 8, 2011

From the ICP website:
The Mexican Suitcase will for the first time give the public an opportunity to experience images drawn from this famous collection of recovered negatives. In December 2007, three boxes filled with rolls of film, containing 4,500 35mm negatives of the Spanish Civil War by Robert Capa, Gerda Taro, and Chim (David Seymour)—which had been considered lost since 1939—arrived at the International Center of Photography. These three photographers, who lived in Paris, worked in Spain, and published internationally, laid the foundation for modern war photography. Their work has long been considered some of the most innovative and passionate coverage of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). Many of the contact sheets made from the negatives will be on view as part of the exhibition, which will look closely at some of the major stories by Capa, Taro, and Chim as interpreted through the individual frames. These images will be seen alongside the magazines of the period in which they were published and with the photographers' own contact notebooks. The exhibition is organized by ICP assistant curator Cynthia Young.

International Center of Photography
1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street
New York, NY 10036

Through February 26, 2011

Leica Gallery
670 Broadway
New York, NY 10012
212.777.3051

Tues.-Sat. 12-6