Rare Disorder Drives Woman to Document Industrial Canaries

Back in 2003, photographer Thilde Jensen started getting sick. She had problems with her sinuses, flu-like symptoms, a weird tingling in parts of her body and at times felt drunk and foggy.

“I felt like my blood was running backwards,” she said.

The weirdest part was what set if off. First she noticed that the symptoms would appear whenever she was around a lot of car exhaust. Then she experienced similar symptoms whenever she was around books. Then it was cigarette smoke and perfume.

“It just kept getting worse and worse,” says Jensen, 40, who at the time was living in New York City. “It actually became kind of surreal. It was like being in a Hitchcock movie, like everything was out to get me.”

Finally, Jensen says, it got the point where there were so many triggers that she became totally disoriented and completely non-functional. By that point certain foods were also making her sick, as were electronics that emitted radiation, like phones and computers.

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British Journal of Photography iPhone App Gets it Right

Photos and creative page layouts look great when they’re big, so photo mags have a difficult time porting their efforts to the iPhone’s relatively small screen. Viewing a large amount of content through a limited window can be frustrating and disorienting. That’s why we like the British Journal of Photography iPhone app that was released today.

The app delivers bite-sized chunks of their content that are straightforward and easy to parse in an iPhone-specific format. The issues are perfect for the 20 minutes you spend on the subway commuting to work.

BJP will deliver one in-depth feature per week for $1, while a monthly subscription is $3. If you download the app now, the first issue is free. They’ve also included a live news feed that culls smaller stories from the BJP website but doesn’t interfere with your navigation of the longer feature. Easy.

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Veterans’ Photo Scrapbooking Offers New Therapy, Window Into Experiences

Soldiers returning from war face huge obstacles getting back into civilian life: The loss of friends, limbs, minds and perhaps innocence, too, take their toll. As a supplement to traditional therapies for these issues, artist Monica Haller thinks photography and art can play a big role in a vet’s recovery.

In 2010, she established the Veterans Book Project (VBP), a book-crafting program to help returning soldiers process and share not only their stories, but their photographs, too.

“We pull from the banal, forgotten images. Sometimes we use photos that were never actually incorporated into memory,” says Haller. “I ask each author to bypass rhetoric; sometimes we’re able to, sometimes not. Both practically and symbolically, digging into the materials allows vets to tell their stories.”

Upon return, over 50 percent of U.S. military personnel undergo mental or physical health treatments. Research suggests that 18 to 30 percent of Vietnam veterans, and 10 to 20 percent of Iraq War veterans have experienced Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Memories can be distorted; emotions can be suppressed. It can take a long time to make sense of war, if it happens at all.

Veteran and VBP participant, Ehren Tool, is surprised by people’s reactions to his book of fragments.

“They seem shocked and confused that I don’t have a simple, clear narrative,” says Tool. “Or maybe they are surprised that there is love and empathy inside of the Jarhead?”

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Camera Bag Delivers WWII Style and Modern Day Function

Langly_Backpack_1

Elegant is not the first word that comes to mind when photographers think of most camera bags. Boring is more like it. The Kickstarter-funded bags offered by Langly change all that.

Based on World War II rucksack designs, a Langly bag looks like something you’d find in a high-end men’s clothing store rather than a camera shop.

“World War II is an obsession of mine, and for some reason rucksacks are really hot right now,” says Langly creator and photographer Evan Lane.

This fresh take on a primarily utilitarian category of bag feeds many a photojournalist fantasy. Now you can feel like Joe Rosenthal while you’re shooting flowers in the park. Thoughtful details like brass hardware and vegetable-tanned leather straps complete the indulgent escapism.

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Unsung Color Photographer Saul Leiter Is In No Great Hurry

A new documentary about photographer and painter, Saul Leiter, is a reflection not only on the artist but on life and art in general. Best known for his quiet, and often abstract, color street photography, the trailer above shows Leiter in a cluttered apartment taking a modest view of his decades of influence.

At age 89, Leiter now sits on a body of work that exists on the periphery of the art world while simultaneously being widely regarded as one of the pioneering visions of color photography. In No Great Hurry was directed by British filmmaker Tomas Leach, and takes us into this contradiction of fame versus impact.

The film, which is now looking for contributions as it makes its way through the post-production phase, is an extension of the director’s role as the creative director of a web-based short documentary series on creative people and their ideas called Little Scraps of Paper.

Leiter’s photographic work was previously brought together in book-form in 2006 with Stiedl’s publishing of Early Color.

“In order to build a career and to be successful, one has to be determined. One has to be ambitious. I much prefer to drink coffee, listen to music and to paint when I feel like it.”
-Saul Leiter

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