Renowned Japanese photographer Miyako Ishiuchi has been named this year’s recipient of the prestigious Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography, accompanied by a sizable cash prize.

The award, given out each year to a photographer “recognized for major achievements”, is worth 1,000,000 Swedish Krona (about NZ$185,000) and was awarded to Ishiuchi at an award ceremony in Tokyo late last week.

The foundation says Ishiuchi was chosen for the award because over a career of 35 years her uncompromising vision has produced some of the most powerful and personal representations of postwar Japan.

“Ishiuchi’s work is extremely coherent and developing in a determined and distinctive way; using the camera and all of its aesthetic potential to investigate the intersection of the political and the personal aspects of memory Ishiuchi has been both a pioneer and a role model for younger artists, not least as a woman working in the male-dominated field of Japanese photography,” the foundation’s citation explains.

Ishiuchi joins a prestigious line up of photographers who have received the award since its inception in 1980, including Ansel Adams, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Richard Avedon, William Eggleston and Cindy ...full story

Legendary photographer Peter Bush tracks down an old friend to talk about jumping tracks from photojournalist to locomotive engineer in The Photographer’s Mail

I would like to introduce photojournalist Andrew Gorrie, who embodies every quality I admire about the new age of photographers.

He’s a tall, unassuming, highly talented man who enjoys talking shop about his favourite images created by photojournalists of past years, like Cartier-Bresson, as well as some of the up-and-coming younger photogs of the new age. Andrew is still very passionate about all aspects of photography and, until recently, he was a top photojournalist on Wellington’s Dom Post, the capital’s daily newspaper. Now, however, he is a locomotive engineer, driving the trains that deliver the daily paper he once worked on to readers throughout the Wellington region.

Now, before anyone starts asking if he was fired or became bored with life, this was a decision he made after careful consideration with his Brazilian-born wife, Ceci. And, yes, he still loves photography.

To leave a secure newspaper job like that is a challenge I could imagine a young teenager reaching out ...full story

Returning home after years abroad, photographer Harry Culy decided to reacquaint himself with Aotearoa by taking a series of road trips throughout the country, his camera along to document the odyssey. He talks with D-Photo‘s Point-Shoot blog about the unearthed  darkness and beauty that make up his photo project, By the Wayside.

D-Photo: Hi Harry, to begin with can you tell us a little about yourself and what you do?

Harry Culy: Hello. I  have just finished my studies up at Massey University. I’m a documentary and freelance photographer based between NZ and Australia.

Can you give us a brief outline of the By the Wayside exhibition?

By the Wayside was a project I started not long after returning to New Zealand after being abroad for five years. I came back with this new perspective on my homeland – so I started taking road trips at any available chance. I actually ended up going all over New Zealand. It was a great excuse to get to know Aotearoa again, meet the people and see the sights. I would just drive around and pull over at ...full story

Luke White looks at the origins of the rapidly growing HD DSLR film-making trend and explains why you should get on board in the first in his ongoing series of columns of film-making for The Photographer’s Mail

It all changed in September 2008. That was when photographer Vincent Laforet managed to get hold of a pre-production Canon 5D Mark II. The camera had been announced a week earlier, and Laforet was intrigued by the idea of a DSLR with video recording capabilities. It wasn’t easy to talk Canon into lending him an unreleased camera for a weekend but, fortunately for Canon, Laforet is a very persuasive man. Reverie was shot in less than 72 hours; the short film was watched more than two million times within a fortnight of its release, and the rest is history.

Reverie by Vincent Laforet, shot with Canon 5D Mark II

Suddenly here was a completely new tool in the hands of photographers across the world and it was free, built right into their camera.

Film-makers ...full story

D-Photo is proud to present a selection of winners from the latest edition of the world’s biggest and most prestigious photojournalism competition, the World Press Photo contest.

Marking 57 years of the event, 2014 saw 53 photographers of 25 nationalities across the globe awarded prizes in nine themed categories.

World Press Photo of the Year 2013

John Stanmeyer, USA, VII for National Geographic

February 26, 2013, Djibouti City, Djibouti: African migrants on the shore of Djibouti city at night, raising their phones in an attempt to capture an inexpensive signal from neighboring Somalia—a tenuous link to relatives abroad. Djibouti is a common stop-off point for migrants in transit from such countries as Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea, seeking a better life in Europe and the Middle East.

Speaking of the winning image, jury member Jillian Edelstein praised Stanmeyer for the subtle poetics underlying a message of grave relevance.

“It’s a photo that is connected to so many other stories—it opens up discussions about technology, globalization, migration, poverty, desperation, alienation, humanity. It’s a very sophisticated, powerfully nuanced image.” (more…)