ASPP DC/South Chapter

WHAT

Thirty students. Thirty cameras. Twelve days. Three neighborhoods. These are the ingredients for Investigating Where We Live (IWWL), a 4-week summer program created by the National Building Museum in which middle and high school students from the Washington, D.C. metro area use digital cameras to explore D.C. neighborhoods. Kealea Foy, age 15, noted her experience exploring the neighborhoods, “I got a hands-on approach that taught me more than a simple textbook would. To be able to hear peoples’ stories then document and preserve them gave me such a new take on things. Everything and everyone has a story, we just need to listen and preserve it with our own stories, writings and artwork.” The 2009 IWWL program examines the neighborhoods of Columbia Heights, Shaw, and the U Street Corridor in northwest Washington, D.C. The students’ goal is to design an exhibition, using photography as the main form of communication, which will offer visitors a chance to see their fresh perspectives on these vibrant and historic neighborhoods.

By meeting with photographer Camilo José Vergara, who has documented America’s inner cities for the last 40 years and whose exhibition Storefront Churches is on view at the Museum through the end of November; speaking with curators of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture’s Scurlock Studio & Black Washington: Picturing the Promise exhibition; and working alongside local photographers, students are better able to explore, document, and interpret the physical and cultural landscape of these neighborhoods.

The exhibition is on view to the public from August 8, 2009 through January 18, 2010. Visit the exhibition for a visual journey through Columbia Heights, Shaw, and the U Street Corridor.

Major funding for Investigating Where We Live is provided by the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, an agency supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts and The Beech Street Foundation.  Additional support for outreach programs is provided by The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation; The Capital Group Companies; the Government of the District of Columbia, Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development; the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture; and Joseph F. Horning, Jr., among others.

WHERE

National Building Museum
401 F Street NW
Washington, DC 20001 (Judiciary Square Metro, Red Line)

WHEN

Friday, August 7, 2009 / 6:00 – 8:00 pm
Investigating Where We Live: Communities in Motion Exhibition Opening Reception
Free. Refreshments will be served.

CONTACT

Sara Kabakoff, skabakoff@nbm.org, 202.272.2448, ext. 3201
Student Photos available on request.

Frank Goodyear of the National Portrait Gallery will lead a privately curated tour for ASPP members and guests of the Gallery’s Feature Photography exhibit, highlighting the contemporary portraiture of six photographers, on Wednesday, August 12, from 6-7 p.m. Members will also have an opportunity to view  part of the Gallery’s historical collection, which includes daguerrotypes. This event is free for both members and guests.

Please email jennasppdc@gmail.com to attend.

An open discussion about the business models, innovation, and power of community that are changing journalism

The web has turned us all into content creators, publishers, and influencers. Social media has created a new ecosystem for the distribution and consumption of information. But there’s a problem: that ecosystem is built on a foundation of free content. As ad revenue all but disappears, traditional news and online media organizations are feeling the financial pain of giving something away for free.

From micropayments to e-readers, no one knows what formula is going to secure the future of the news business, online media publications, or ultimately, the journalism profession itself. This panel discussion will bring together an esteemed group of professionals who have experienced firsthand the shift from traditional news & print organizations to online ventures, to talk about the transition and what tactics they are employing to stay in business.

Speakers include DC Magazine editor-in-chief Karen Sommer Shalett, executive producer of BBC World News America Rome Hartman, general manager of the Slate Group and publisher of Slate John Alderman, and senior political reporter for Politico Jonathan Martin.

WHEN
July 29, 2009
Doors open at 6:15 pm; panel begins at 7pm
Meet the panelists at our cash bar reception, 8:30pm

WHERE
K Street Lounge
Washington DC 20005

WHO
Journalists, writers, editors, publishers, and anyone involved in the creation or distribution of content interested in revenue models (and who isn’t?)

*You must be at least 21 years of age to attend this event.

PRICE
$30 ($25 for )

To register and more details click here

Humans are not the only species on Earth that hunt, farm and fight for resources. Some ants grow their own food, just like farmers. Other ants build highways that can be seen from the air. Some large ant colonies go to war with each other. Explore the fascinating world of ants in “Farmers, Warriors, Builders: The Hidden Life of Ants” which opened May 30, at the National Museum of Natural History and will continue through Oct. 10.

The exhibition features 39 incredible close-up photographs by Mark W. Moffett, photographer and Smithsonian research associate. “Ants” also includes a live leaf-cutter ant colony from the lab of Ted Schultz, the museum’s curator of ants, as well as a 6-foot-tall cast of an underground ant colony that was collected by Walter Tschinkel, who studies ant-nest architecture at Florida State University. More than 20 ant species are represented in Moffett’s photographs, including a weaver ant scouting the tree canopy in search of food, marauder ants overwhelming and killing a frog for food, a fire ant and an Argentine ant fighting over a dead grasshopper and a bulldog ant tending larvae. Moffett has been exploring and documenting the world of ants since his childhood, from his backyard in Wisconsin to the fields and jungles of Asia and South America. With an abundance of curiosity and a strong sense of adventure, he goes to where the ants live and waits patiently.

“I use my camera as a microscope to watch ants,” said Moffett. “The trick is not to be seen, to catch the ant in everyday behavior. You may only get one chance. Like any animal, ants are easiest to photograph when preoccupied.” The exhibition is made possible through the Windland Smith Rice Nature’s Best Photography Fund.

The National Museum of Natural History is located at 10th Street and Constitution Avenue N.W. in Washington, D.C.

Watch a related video on ants

“Kodachrome Culture, The American Tourist in Europe,” a new photography exhibit displaying more than 100 photos from 21 countries across Europe, is on display at the National Geographic Museum till  Sept. 7, 2009. The bold 1950s and 1960s Kodachrome color photographs documented an era of peacetime travel and helped shape National Geographic’s tradition of photographic excellence by offering a fresh look at distant places.

During the rebuilding effort of the post-World War II era, higher wages and disposable income afforded many Americans a new opportunity to travel. The growing economy and advances in air travel fostered a budding interest in touring the world, particularly Europe. During this decade, National Geographic photographers used Kodak’s revolutionary Kodachrome color film to bring its readers closer to the places they longed to visit.

Trieste, Italy, 1956 Photo by B. Anthony Stewart

“Kodachrome Culture” will take visitors on a vicarious vacation to the streets of Britain, the fjords of Scandinavia, the cliffs of Greece and other European locales. Culled from the National Geographic archives, the images showcase the work of more than 35 legendary photographers — including Luis Marden, Volkmar Wentzel, Thomas Abercrombie, James Blair and Winfield Parks — and revisit a photographic medium that changed the way we document the world.

National Geographic pioneered the use of Kodachrome film in the late 1930s and was among the first to recognize its advantages. The film produced a dye image without the grain found in other color processes, and the photographs could be enlarged without loss of detail. The film was also faster. Instead of requiring a tripod, color shots taken with a compact 35mm camera could be spontaneously composed. By the time American tourism was taking off in the 1950s, National Geographic photographers were adept at using Kodachrome. The images helped National Geographic stand out from other magazines still publishing in black-and-white. Eventually Kodachrome became the most widely used color film in the United States.

The National Geographic Museum, 1145 17th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C., is open Mondays through Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free. For information on the “Kodachrome Culture” exhibit, the public should call

ASPP DC/South invites its chapter members and guests for the third “Share, See and Sip” of 2009. We will gather at Busboys and Poets in downtown Washington DC on Thursday July 16, 2009.

The presenters for the third edition are -

Susana Raab

Susana Raab is a documentary photographer who began her career as a photojournalist in Washington, DC covering politics.  She worked for the New York Times Washington bureau for four years before attending graduate school at Ohio University’s School of Visual Communications.  While in graduate school, she was an intern at the Palm Beach Post. Her work there was part of a team package on the 2004 hurricanes that earned the paper the distinction of finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in feature photography.  In Ohio, she began two long-term projects: Consumed: Fast Food in the US; and Off-Season: America at Leisure.  These projects have received much recognition from the White House News Photographers’ Association, The Ernst Haas/Golden Light Awards, the Center, Photo District News, and PhotoEspana, among others.  Her work is widely exhibited, both nationally and internationally.

Susana will be showing work from two ongoing complementary projects: Consumed, which looks at the culture and iconography of fast food consumption in the US; and Off-Season, which examines America’s relationship with leisure time in the US, the marketed moment, and purveyance of pleasure.

Ting Li Wang

Ting-Li Wang discovered the beauty of photography while studying to become a better writer at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.  She later continued her path to becoming a photojournalist at Ohio University, in Athens, OH.  After internships in Kansas, Michigan, and Virginia, Ting-Li became a staff photographer at The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, VA in 1998.  Whether it was a single mom with 6 children living in a lead-contaminated housing project in Portsmouth, VA or the devastating earthquake in Turkey in 1999, photographing ordinary people in extraordinary situations became Ting-Li’s passion.  She was named National Press Photographer Association’s Region Three Photographer of the Year in 2000.

Ting-Li joined the photo staff at The New York Times the same year.  She covered her first national political campaign with Democratic presidential candidates John Edwards and John Kerry in 2004.  Photographing Costa Rica, Cuba, Bali and China for the Travel section ranks among her favorite assignments.  She visited China the first time in 2004 while shooting a travel piece on emerging eco-tourism near the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain in southwestern China.

After working 6 years at The New York Times, Ting-Li joined the faculty at Shantou University’s Cheung Kong School of Journalism and Communication in Guangdong Province, China.  She taught basic and advanced photojournalism focusing on picture stories reflecting life in rural China.  While teaching, Ting-Li continued her pictorial exploration of acrobats and elderly leprosy survivors.  She is constantly inspired by the shared humanity of peoples all over the world and the power of photography to transcend differences.

Ting Li will talk about travel photography while working for The NY Times and her teaching experience in China.

Sebastian John

Sebastian is a photo editor at K12. Sebastian immigrated to the United States in 2006, after a brief freelance career with a local California newspaper, joined National Geographic News as News Photo Editor. In India he worked at The Associated Press as the photo editor, and also in many leading Indian media companies in various positions.

A native of Bombay, he divided his childhood between Tanzania, United Arab Emirates and India. After completing his graduate degrees in Geology, and Journalism, and a brief stint in writing, Sebastian has been in involved in visual journalism for the past 12 years. Photographing mostly in his spare time, he likes to explore sub-cultures. One of his projects is the farmers markets in the United States which he began to photograph in late 2007. He explores the food culture in the US, the life around farmers markets, and the thin line between eating healthy and the fad of eating organic food.

To RSVP: Please email jennasppdc@gmail.com

Date
Thursday, July 16, 2009
7 PM – 9PM

Venue
Busboys and Poets
Cullen Room
1025 5th Street NW (corner of 5th and K St NW)
Washington, DC 20001
(202) 789-2227

Getting There and Parking
Closest metros: Mt. Vernon Square and Gallery Place-Chinatown (each two blocks away)
There is ample car parking space near the venue.

Busboys and Poets Website

Map

Entry
ASPP members – free
Guests – $5
ASPP DC/South will not provide refreshments but Busboys and Poets has a full-service restaurant and bar