Lyndie Benson, a photographer who specializes in naturalistic portraiture of children, recently signed a representation and marketing agreement with FogStock, a stock photography agency based in Portland, Ore. Benson, who lives in the Seattle area, studied under Herb Ritts and counts among her credits a portrait of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s dog Buddy.
Natalie Fobes, a photographer based in West Seattle, was named a finalist for the Alicia Patterson Fellowship, making her the first former recipient to be nominated again. Twenty years ago, Fobes received a fellowship for her salmon project. Her current project examines how China’s one-child policy affects people in China and the United States by following a fam-ily through the process of adoption.
Photographer David Julian has created a documentary series of images illustrating the turmoil that followed Hurricane Katrina’s assault on the Gulf Coast. “Taken From the Heart: Images of Intimate Loss After Katrina” will be exhibited at the reopened New Orleans Museum of Art from June through August, and at Houston’s Museum of Cultural Arts in September. In addition, Julian’s photo-illustrations recently garnered two Maggie awards for George Lucas’ Edutopia magazine.
The fine-art photography of Doug Landreth was included at Art Expo 2006, held in New York City in March. Landreth’s newest portfolio is “Off I-5,” for which he traveled up and down Interstate 5 photographing the landscapes along the exits. His images have appeared in publications such as Graphis Photo Annual and Applied Arts.
Camille Licchtenstern, a participant in the Academy of Art University, San Francisco’s Saturday Art Experience, has won first place in Artwire.com’s Celebrity Deface Off competition. Licchtenstern, a San Francisco resident, reinterpreted Marilyn Monroe’s subway grate scene from “The Seven Year Itch” in an image featuring rock celebrity Marilyn Manson.
For the fourth year in a row, Portland photographer John McAnulty’s images have been selected for Oregon State University’s annual Art About Agriculture Tour. This year’s tour included two of McAnulty’s images, “Palouse Spring Morning” and “Ready
for Picking.” In addition, “Palouse Spring Morning” was selected for the Dean and Director Award, College of Agricultural Sciences and Oregon Agriculture Experiment Station.
Commercial photographer Doug Walker, of Walker Photography in Olympia, Wash., received a National Merit award from the Professional Photographers of America judges at the Professional Photographers of Washington’s Annual Educational Conference and Print Competition. The winning entry can be seen at www.walkerphoto.com/awards.html.
“Headhunt Revisited,” the portraiture project of Michele Westmorland and Karen Huntt Mason, was the subject of Smithsonian magazine’s April issue. The article, “A Gibson Girl in New Guinea,” can be read online at www.smithsonianmagazine.com. Westmorland, who is based in Mill Creek, Wash., teamed up with Mason for a two-month expedition to Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, retracing anthropologist Caroline Mytinger’s journey of the 1920s.
In Memoriam
Thomas J. Abercrombie, a photographer for National Geographic for nearly 40 years, died April 3 of complications from open-heart surgery at the age of 75.
Abercrombie was born in Stillwater, Minn., in 1930. In addition to taking photographs on seven continents, he was the first journalist to reach the South Pole in 1957, one year after joining the National Geographic staff.
Abercrombie was the first person to win both the Newspaper Photographer of the Year (1954) and the Magazine Photographer of the Year (1959) awards. After retiring from National Geographic in 1993, he became a geography professor at George Washington University.
Abercrombie was married to fellow National Geographic photographer Lynn Abercrombie for 53 years, and the two often worked on assignments together. In addition to his wife, he is survived by his children, Bruce and Mari, and grandchildren.
Adolph Gasser, founder of San Francisco’s venerable photography store, Adolph Gasser, Inc., died March 23 at the age of 94.
Gasser was born in San Francisco in 1912 to Swiss and German immigrants, Adolph and Marie Gasser. He began his photographic career as a camera repairman and opened his own repair shop in 1936. In addition to simple repairs, Gasser designed custom parts and worked with optics in still and motion picture equipment. Among his clientele were Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham and other noted West Coast photographers.
During World War II, Gasser served in the Photo Division of the Army Air Corps, servicing the cameras on B-29 bombers. After the war, he traveled to Japan, where he became a technical consultant for Nikon. Gasser contributed many technical innovations to the industry, including sync systems used in many models of the Nikon camera, a special enlarger commissioned by Adams and a strobe unit for use in an Egyptian pyramid.
He is survived by his son, John Gasser; a daughter, Dorothy Cox; four grandchildren; three great-grandchildren; and two great-great-grandchildren. John Gasser will continue to run the family business.
Photojournalist Gordon Parks, known for his work with Life magazine as well as for directing films, died at his home in New York City on March 7, at the age of 93.
Parks was born in Fort Scott, Kan., in 1912, the youngest of 15 children. In 1941, he became the first photographer to receive a fellowship from the Julius Rosenwald Foundation. He joined the staff of the Farm Security Administration and, later, the Office of War Information, whose combined collection of documentary photographs is among the most famous ever produced.
Parks’ first commercial work was as a fashion photographer, and he contributed to Vogue, Glamour and Life magazines in the 1940s. Parks made the transition to film in the 1960s, becoming the first African American to produce and direct a film for a major studio: “The Learning Tree,” based on his semi-autobiographical novel. His second film, “Shaft,” was a commercial success and has become a cult classic.
Parks was inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum in 2002. In addition, he received a Notable Book Award from the American Library Association in 1966, for “A Choice of Weapons”; an Emmy in 1968, for the documentary, “Diary of a Harlem Family”; and the Jackie Robinson Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002.
Transitions
Jeff Burke has retired as senior vice president for product strategy at Jupitermedia, owner of the Jupiterimage stock agency. Lorraine Triolo, Jupitermedia creative director and Burke’s wife, also is leaving the company. In the 1980s, the duo founded the PictureArt stock agency, which was acquired by Jupitermedia last year. Burke will remain chairman of the Picture Licensing Universal System Coalition, which is seeking to develop a standard system of copyright and permission management for
photographs.
Special Honors
Two Pulitzer Prizes for photography have been awarded this year. The staff of the Dallas Morning News won the award for Breaking News Photography, for its coverage of the chaos that resulted from Hurricane Katrina’s rampage across the Gulf states.
In the Feature Photography category, Todd Heisler of Denver’s Rocky Mountain News won the prize for his behind-the-scenes look at funerals for Colorado Marines who had returned from Iraq. Heisler previously was recognized by the Pulitzer board in 2003, for his participation in the Rocky Mountain News team’s coverage of wildfires.
Photographers from the Los Angeles Times were finalists in both photography categories. Carolyn Cole and Brian Vander Brug were nominated for breaking news for their coverage of the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, while Damon Winter was nominated for a photo story about decades-old sexual abuse by a missionary in Inuit villages.
Earlier this year, at its 12th Annual Summit, the North American Nature Photography Association recognized a number of photographers whose work has helped to promote the field of nature photography. Patricio Robles Gil, whose books illuminate the beauty and fragility of Mexico’s ecosystems, was named the 2006 Outstanding Photographer of the Year. Lifetime Achievement Awards were presented to environmental and fine-art photographer Pat O’Hara and Les Line, former editor-in-chief at Audubon for 25 years.
Three industry veterans were named NANPA Fellows, a designation bestowed on those who have contributed at least 20 years to the industry. They were Boyd Norton, a noted nature photographer and workshop leader; Bonnie Stutski, currently the photo editor of Smithsonian magazine and a longtime advocate for nature photographers; and Tom Till, a landscape photographer based in Moab, Utah.
The NANPA Recognition Award was presented to photographer and teacher Ray Pfortner for his support of the student scholarship program. The Outstanding Service Award, honoring a member who has served NANPA in an extraordinary way, went to Kevin Fitz Patrick, a field contributor to Nature Photographer, who was nominated for his work supporting the NANPA Student Program since its inception.
The International Photographic Council has announced the recipients of its eighth annual IPC Professional Photographer Leadership Awards.
Winners were selected by each of six professional photography organizations from among their members: Advertising Photographers of America, Barbara Bordnick; American Society of Media Photographers, George Long; Professional Photographers of America, Jo Alice and Tom McDonald; Professional School Photographers Association International, Anthony J. Cilento Jr.; White House News Photographers Association, Mannie Garcia; and Wedding Portrait Photographers International, Rick and Deborah Ferro.
Mark Getty and Jonathan Klein, who co-founded Getty Images in 1995, were honored by the International Center for Photography with its inaugural Trustees Award. Getty and Rosen were recognized for their efforts to modernize the stock photography industry, their grants for editorial photography and their philanthropic activities.
Ramsay de Give, a second-year student at Brooks Institute of Photography in Ventura, Calif.,
received a third-place award in
the Picture of the Year International competition, sponsored by the University of Missouri School of Journalism, for his photographs of the Southern California wildfires of late 2005.
The International Center of Photography recently announced the winners of its 2006 Infinity Awards. Don McCullin, a photojournalist who spent nearly 20 years as a correspondent for London’s Sunday Times Magazine, was the recipient of the Cornell Capa Award, named for ICP’s founding director. The organization’s Lifetime Achievement Award was bestowed upon Lee Friedlander.
Also honored were Dutch photographer Ahmet Polat, as the year’s Young Photographer; German Thomas Ruff, in the Art category; Time magazine’s Yuri Kozyrev, for Photojournalism; and Steven Meisel, for Applied/Fashion/Advertising. Geoff Dyer’s photography criticism was recognized in the writing category, and the Amsterdam-based World Press Photo’s retrospective of the organization’s 50-year involvement in photojournalism, “As They Are: Photojournalism in Context Since 1955,” also was recognized.