copyright Mikhael Subotzky

This week on his blog Conscientious, Jörg Colberg posted an interview with magnum Photographer Mikhael Subotzky.

Jörg Colberg: A lot of your work so far has dealt with crime and punishment. You portrayed the conditions of prisons in South Africa, and your first book Beaufort West opens with an aerial shot of the little town, in whose very center there is a prison. How did you get interested in this subject matter?

copyright Mikhael Subotzky

Mikhael Subotzky: In 2004 we had our third democratic election in South Africa, and there was a prominent Constitutional Court case going on which was to decide whether prisoners could or couldn't vote. This question interested me in relationship to our history of disenfranchisement, but also in relation to the experience of living in South Africa at a time when crime levels were supposedly peaking.

Read more on Conscientious.

There is much discussion about the connection between photography and memory, and many photographers cite explorations of this relationship as the basis for their work. A new series of studies presented in an article on Wired Science Blog show how the mind can be made to create false memories, in this case specifically related to interrogation, even when confronted with a visual record of a photograph.

"Using data from soldiers in a mock prisoner-of-war exercise within the Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape programs of the U.S. military, new research shows that 85 percent of soldiers chose the man in the photograph - who was not involved in any way - instead of the man who had actually subjected them to what the military calls a "very stressful interrogation" that could have included a variety of physically demanding tasks and some violence."

Read more on Wired Magazine Blog.

copyright Angus McDiarmind, courtesy Wired Science Blog

World Press Photo of the Year 2008: Anthony Suau, USA, for Time

"US photographer Anthony Suau has won Photo of the Year at the 52nd World Press Photo contest. Suau's winning photograph shows an armed officer of the Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Department moving through a home in Cleveland, Ohio, following an eviction as a result of mortgage foreclosure. As jury chair MaryAnne Golon points out, the image is 'a double entendre. It looks like a classic conflict photograph, but it is simply the eviction of people from a house. Now war in its classic sense is coming into people's houses because they can't pay their mortgages.'"

Other winners were Brenda Ann Kenneally, Callie Shell, Tomasz Wiech, Carlos Cazalis, Chiba Yasuyoshi, Steve Winter, Chen Qinggang, Olivier Laban Mattei, Zhao Qing, Mashid Mohadjerin, Luiz Vasconcelo, and Wojciech Grzedzinski.

Read more about the projects and the winners at World Press Photo or Creative Review Blog.

copyright JR from Kenya Project, courtesy Lens Culture Blog

Social photographer and installation artist JR and his team have previously worked in Brazil, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Sudan. Like his previous projects, this new piece is designed to draw attention to the plight of women in impoverished areas, and specifically in this region of Kenya. JR has a history of installing photographs on the sides of buildings, walls, and even abandoned trailer trucks; however, this project takes the idea of public installation one step further, residing on the tops of structures: often the homes of their subject, and even an active train. The exhibition is on such as scale that it is "designed to be visible from Google Earth satellites as well as the elevated train tracks that pass by the village twice a day."

Lens Culture Blog and JR's website 28millimetres has more information about this, previous and future installations.

'Kenyans celebrated Senator Barack Obama's election victory at his family homestead near Kisumu, in western Kenya' photo: Evelyn Hockstein for The New York Times, from "The World Reacts"

Only a handful of times in our lives can we say, with certainty, that history is being profoundly shaped before our watching eyes. The election of Barack Obama as the next president of the United States is undoubtedly one of these moments. The world has watched the election and its results with rapt attention, not least of all the international community that adds the prefix "photo" to everything it touches. As such, here are some interesting takes, celebrations and comments from around the photo-blogosphere:

Rob Haggard (A Photo Editor) points out some great examples of the effective use of photography throughout the campaign. PDN lists five photos that clinched the election for Barack (and point out that it's a good day for print) while Boston.com posts 35 of the best images from the campaign trail. David Levi Strauss deconstructs Obama's groud-breaking 30 minute ad on the Exposures blog at Aperture, while Magnum posts photographs by several of their members, taken on election night. And of course, there are the gleeful and whimsical celebratory posts.

Additionally, The New York Times has a host of slideshows with some brilliant photographs in them, particularly "The World Reacts".

Errata Editions, the new publisher founded by Jeff Ladd, Ed Grazda and Valerie Sonnenthal, is getting ready to launch the first four titles in their eagerly anticipated "Books on Books" series:

Books on Books #1: Photographe de Paris - Eugene Atget

Books on Books #2: American Photographs - Walker Evans

Books on Books #3: Fait - Sophie Ristelhueber

Books on Books #4: In Flagrante - Chris Killip

Jeff Ladd recently completed a series of posts on 5b4 detailing his experience in China while on press for these initial offerings in the eagerly anticipated series. Throughout the posts Jeff switches between a blow for blow account of the printing process:

...and the story of the series from early inception forward:

The account is a must read — easily one of the most enlightening and entertaining explorations of the process to date. (Of course, we expected no less from one of the world's leading photobook connoisseurs.)

Read parts one, two, three, four and five plus a recent Books on Books Series Update at 5b4 — learn more about Errata Editions at their website.

This last Thursday, August the 21st, was the 40th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. Jim Johnson over at (Notes On) Politics, Theory and Photography had a couple good posts on how Magnum, Aperture and some of the general media have addressed the anniversary. Most interesting is perhaps Sean O'Hagan's profile on Josef Koudelka, recently published on the Guardian UK's website.

The article goes on to shed much light on some of the lesser-known chapters in the legendary Czech photographer's personal and professional history. It is well worth the read.

From Library of Dust by David Maisel, published by Chronicle Books

Geoff Manaugh [BLDGBLOG] wrote one of the essays for David Maisel's incredible forthcoming monograph, Library of Dust, and has just posted it in its entirety here. The essay is a fantastic read, and a perfect introduction to this masterfully rich body of work.

Go ahead and read the whole thing.

Andrew Phelps, the wonderful photographer behind last year's Higley (Kehrer Verlag), has just launched The Buffet, a promising new blog described as:

Plus, don't forget to check out Andrew's reflections on The Americans in the newest issue of the magazine.