When the first digital cameras became available on the commercial market in the early 90s, it was as if we had been thrown into the future, where you could actually see the image before you develop it! Now, they’re everywhere you turn and getting fancier and fancier. Why, Olympus has just released its new PEN E-PL2 lightweight compact camera which functions more like a DSLR than a point and shoot, with interchangeable lenses and all. But, on top of the advances in the field of digital cameras, there is an all-new breed of cameras being born that pledge to revolutionise the way we take pictures.

Niklas Zimmer

 

In this ongoing body of work paying homage to the so-called ‘King of Kitsch’, Niklas Zimmer contemporises the iconic imagery of Vladimir Tretchikoff by re-interpreting his paintings as elegantly stylized photographs. Engaging with Tretchikoff’s distinctive aesthetic motifs, Zimmer breathes new life into the work of one of South Africa’s most renowned artists with a series of meticulously considered and visually breathtaking photographs that transpose the spirit of the painter into the realm of photography…

See http://www.museum-gallery.co.za/ for more info.

South African war photo grapher Joao Silva continued to take pictures after his legs were blown off in a mine explosion in Afghanistan yesterday.

A member of the "Bang Bang Club" of fearless photojournalists who covered political violence before South Africa's 1994 elections - and a subject of a recently released film - Silva stepped on an antipersonnel mine while on patrol with US soldiers near the war-torn city of Kandahar.

While waiting to be evacuated, Silva continued photographing the scene of the explosion. Read full story

"Binyanvanga Wainaina’s essay How to Write About Africa remains one of the most powerfully insightful criticism and accusation of the continued dehumanization and oppression of Africa and Africans that continues in modern day language, photography, fine art, literature, poetry and the stultifying and lobotomizing rhetoric of so-called aid organizations and their employees.

It was an essay that stopped me in my tracks and forever changed the way I looked at Africa as a photographer and as a viewer of photography from the continent. It was also the essay that led me to search out more interesting, complex and human works from and about that continent. This search led me to such wonderful works as that by Steve Simon’s The Grandmother Spirit - a project that will, as Steve describes it, ‘…illuminate the determination, strength, resiliency and inspiration of The African Grandmother – the heart, soul and hands of response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic there" READ MORE . In Musings On Confusions, Photography, The Daily Discussion 

Middle Classes in Africa » is a project created and run by the photographer Joan BARDELETTI, in collaboration with various partners. It aims at understanding and describing who are the middle classes in Africa and the role of this population in the development of the continent. This in-depth project is done  through a 20 months and 6 countries photo essay associated with journalism and research publications.http://www.classesmoyennes-afrique.org

Registration is now open for the year-long Photojournalism and Documentary Photography Programme (PDP). Formulated with the support of Getty Images and the Open Society Foundation, the course is aimed at producing informed and curious African photojournalists and documentary photographers who also have high levels of technical competence.

Intermediate to advanced knowledge of photography is desirable for those wishing to enrol in the PDP, which combines theory and practice.