3rd Ward Member Barnett Cohen Named A "Contender" For His Southern Gothic-influenced Photography

'Bust' by Barnett Cohen

3rd Ward member Barnett Cohen was recently named a "Contender" in Hey, Hot Shot!, an international photography competition presented by Jen Bekman Projects, so we asked him, how does it feel? "The opposite of Marlon Brando," he said. "I feel like a somebody."

In that witty and poignant response we see the spirit that makes Cohen's work so powerful and unique. The most frequent subject of his photographs is Oliver, who seems like a quintessential "Southern Eccentric," but Cohen's photographs don't simply affirm that stereotype. "They reflect an intimate relationship based on even needs: He wants to be seen and acknowledged, and I want to see him in the starkest of terms," Cohen says in his Contender post. Check out more of his photographs after the jump.

Here's how the Hey, Hot Shot! folks described Cohen's work:

In seeking out "eccentrics" from the South, Contender Barnett Cohen met and befriended a man named Oliver, the subject of much of his portfolio. Rather than creating images that focus on his subject's eccentricities and idiosyncrasies, however, the series offers an intimate look at a willing subject, complete with relics and glimpses at a past life.

While Cohen has been pursuing photography for a long time, he dispenses with any sort of myth-making or exaggeration in describing how he got started. I found a copy of COLORS magazine many, many years ago and was hooked," he says. "I did not grow up with a brownie box camera in my hand or drenched in processing chemicals."

Cohen continues to travel between Brooklyn and the South for his photography, and in June his will be featured in Small Works, a group show at Boston's Flash Forward Festival. "The show is curated by Jon Feinstein and Amani Olu of the Humble Arts Foundation in conjunction with the Magenta Foundation," he says. "I am pretty stoked about it." Then, in the fall he's headed for grad school to get his MFA in Photography. "No names just yet but I am going somewhere for sure," he says. "As always, stay tuned."

We will, and in the meantime we'll be rooting for him in Hey, Hot Shot! The competition's grand prize winner gets $10,000, a solo exhibition and two years of representation from Jen Bekman Gallery.

'Mailbox' by Barnett Cohen

"Oliver #1" by Barnett Cohen

'Oliver #8' by Barnett Cohen'Toothbrush Holder' by Barnett Cohen

'Present Tense' by Barnett Cohen

'Mark' by Barnett Cohen

'Shaka' by Barnett Cohen

-- John Ruscher

Catherine Kirkpatrick Profiles 30 Contemporary Women Photographers For Women's History Month

March is Women's History Month, and we're looking forward to a great project that one of 3rd Ward's own members will be unveiling throughout the month. Catherine Kirkpatrick will be presenting 30 by 30, a daily series of conversations with thirty contemporary women photographers about other women photographers who inspire them--hosted on the Professional Women Photographers website.

"The photographers range from photojournalists to fine art, fashion and portrait photographers, from age 26 to 99," Kirkpatrick tells us. A new segment will run each day on the PWP blog starting March 1.

"It grew out of a conversation with a museum publications director about how women of the Photo League were much less documented than their male counterparts," says Kirkpatrick. "And working in the Professional Women Photographers' archives I saw how much photography has changed in the past few decades. Opportunities we take for granted now didn't exist 30 to 40 years ago, both for women photographers and for photography as a fine art. So there was a need to acknowledge change, yet honor the pioneering women photographers who came before and were often overlooked."

Kirkpatrick is an accomplished photographer in her own right, and you can check some of her photographs after the jump. "I'm currently working on a portfolio of images using a Diana Camera plastic lens on a Canon 5D," she says. "It's a wonderful blend of high and low tech. The digital SLR provides a large, 16-bit file, and the plastic lens slurs the colors and warps the image in unexpected ways. Since you can't control everything, you have to relax, let go and have fun! Sometimes wonderful images result."

Photographers Gigi Stoll and Flo Fox, who are featured in Kirkpatrick's 30 By 30 series.Photoshelter named Kirkpatrick's article Sgt. Pepper Uncovered, on pioneering women photographers and policewomen in the 1970s, one of their Best Photography Blog Posts of 2011. Her image Train Coming (check it out below) also received an honorable mention in the PWP International Open Call, which was juried by renowned photography Mary Ellen Mark. You can find more of Kirkpatrick's photography and art on her website and more of her writing on Photospire.org.

Train Coming by Catherine Kirkpatrick Overpass by Catherine Kirkpatrick

Clouds by Catherine Kirkpatrick

-- John Ruscher

Artist on Artist // Photographer Annie Collinge on Surrealist Nancy Fouts

All photos courtesy Annie CollingeFirstly, let's please take a moment to welcome our fabulous new writer to the 3rd Ward crew, Perrin Drumm. As you can see from her site, this is a woman with a resumé after our own heart. So with that, we bring you one of Drumm's first pieces:

Annie Collinge is a London-born, Brooklyn-based photographer whose work I fell head over heels in love with when discovering it last year via It's Nice That. If you visit Collinge's site you'll see one of the photos I was struck by--one that now hangs over my dining table and is actually far more vivid in person.

As it turned out, Annie and I were practically neighbors. In fact, she delivered the photo to me herself, arriving soaking wet after trekking through the rain from Williamsburg to Greenpoint. When she appeared on my doorstep, dripping and cold but smiling bright, I was convinced that this was a gifted, committed artist.

Recently, Annie emailed to tell me about her latest project: A Selby-esque photo tour through the home of surrealist Nancy Fouts. The images were so intriguing I required some backstory.

"I basically went to Nancy's house and photographed her, her art and her strange collections of things," Collinge told me. "She lives in an old vicarage in Camden Town, which is beautifully preserved and full of completely amazing artifacts.

"My friend, Sam Huntley, was making a little film about her work.  When he first went to her house he knew I would love it and suggested I come over and meet her--and as soon as I saw it knew it was right up my street. She has made and collected all these amazing things. She used to work making models for advertising. The giant scissors in the hall are from an old Silk Cut advert in the 1980's."

Though Collinge doesn't typically work this way, documenting other people's belongings, she noted that "the project fits into my usual work as I always seems to be drawn to people's relationship to objects."

Fouts' work is nothing if not object-oriented, though it's still difficult to describe. To paraphrase It's Nice That's acute take: "The work of Nancy Fouts smells like popcorn in a pool hall, sounds like the beating of butterfly wings and looks like something you might find in a wizard’s medicine cupboard. This brilliant artist can flip your expectations on their heads with her lookbook of visual puns both lovely and bizarre. A self proclaimed object hoarder, Fouts follows in the surrealist tradition of marrying unrelated items to turn the everyday into the uncanny. But it’s her knack for clean presentation which really helps these images pack a punch. Are we laughing? Are we cringing? Do we care?"

Meanwhile, take a moment to double-take on these:

See more images from this project on Annie's website and we highly recommend following her cheeky (and brilliant) blog.

-- Perrin Drumm

THIS THURSDAY // Holiday Photo Op: Say Cheese And Get Your Own Holiday Photo At Etsy Labs

Photo by sinstuff

With their seemingly infinite range of unique items, our friends at Etsy are an essential stop on your holiday gift hunt. But for those of us in the NYC area, they're offering up another way to spread the holiday cheer. This Thursday, December 8 from 6-9pm Etsy Labs in DUMBO will be hosting Making Smiles Bright: A Holiday Photo Card Event.

Bring along your family, friends, apartment mates, coworkers and whomever else you can think of and pose for a classic holiday portrait. You'll get to choose from three hand-curated backdrops featuring merchandise from Etsy sellers, and Magnolia Photo Booth Co. will be their to print and send your pictures. If you want to turn your photo into a proper holiday greeting card, printshop Moo will also be offering a 15% discount on their services. Etsy will be leading workshops to help you make your own envelopes, so bring along your favorite paper, old or new.

In addition to walking away with a timeless snapshot, you'll also have the chance to win some of the items featured in Etsy's backdrops as they'll be raffled off throughout the evening. So pull on that ugly holiday sweater, gather up your friends and grab your ticket for Thursday's event. We'll most definitely be seeing you there.

-- John Ruscher

MEMBER PROFILE // Photographer Shirley Rodriguez Finds the Magic Formula

We're fuzzy on the exact statistics, but for every 20 or so photographers tending bar, waiting tables, or even filing tax returns to make ends meet, there's one Shirley Rodriguez--one person who's been showing since her teens and actually makes a living solely off her art. Proud to call her a 3rd Ward member, Rodriguez appeared on the scene with her series "LatiNatural." She shot portraits of 150 Latina women nude or draped in a white sheet with a blank background and zero make-up. Showing at New York galleries at age 18 or 19 is nothing to scoff at, but Rodriguez explains "That's the thing about growing up in New York. When you start showing in galleries, they're here, and people here see them."

A Rodriguez portrait of rapper Asher RothComing off of that success, she co-founded a commercial studio called Somos Arte, which landed jobs for Olay, McDonalds, Simon & Schuster, Vibe magazine--a bit of everything. And then Rodriguez left.

"I wanted to work with more artists," she says. "It will still be a commercial studio, just a different one." While Shooting Range, her new studio in Williamsburg gets off the ground, Rodriguez is working on a series called "The Master's Tools," which will focus on ways that physical labor has disfigured people. 

Rodriguez is one of those archetypal modern artists, finding a way to support herself by retaining a style she believes in. We're rooting for both Shooting Range and "The Master's Tools"--and hoping, just a little, that she'll maybe bottle the secret to success.

--Layla Schlack

POLAROID SERIES // Former 3rd Ward Staffer Devin Elijah Publishes a Book

Manchildblack & Moku, Bedstuy, 2011

Close to five years ago, a young photographer left Boston to make it in the big city.

Since then, Devin Elijah put in some time here at 3rd Ward and landed gigs for big-name fashion houses like Isaac Mizrahi and Marc Ecko--where he's now a staff photographer. In addition to working with the big dogs, Eljiah's gone ahead and published a book: A Chronicle of Love & Loss in Sickness & in Health, a truly stunning collection of Polaroid portraits. We recently caught up with him via email to learn a bit more about the collection and were delighted by the expansive openness of his responses. Unprepared for the wellspring of heavy spirituality and philosophizing we'd tap into with our questions, we've opted to leave Elijah's responses largely unedited.

Full interview--along with some relatively NSFW images--after the jump.

Angyl Valantino, formerly Antino Angyl Crowley, Brooklyn, 2011

With your book, which came first, the title/concept, or the images?

I had a modest premonition the other night. I was lying in bed unsuccessfully trying to disunite my conscious from the world and fall asleep, confident that the tireless efforts of the earth's axis would dutifully spin me back to myself before long, and with a new day as it's ever-consistent offering. I was engaging in the typical imaginary conversation with you in my head, in the way we all rehearse forthcoming repartee, general mental preparation for our intended interview the next day. In forecasting your possible questions I got up and grabbed my Moleskine, the eloquent innocence of its Le Petit Prince illustration adorning the leather-bound cover, acting as both a shelter and a paradox to the journal's confessional doctrine--a rorschach of daily catharsis, and shorthand as description for the long days spent in our city of a hundred million artificial lights. 

"L' essentiel est invisible pour les yeux" or "What is essential is invisible to the eye" Along the conduit of my thruway in life, attempting to articulate my own place in the world- if just for the sake of self identifying with an acceptable version of sanity, unlike the Little Prince I'd clung to the idea of simplicity buried at the core of complexity and not the other way around. I sat down with pen and page and foretold your forthcoming question "Which influenced the other, was it the title of the series or the images themselves that came first?" My response to myself: "I've long been a fan of the much too long, of the self- indulged and grandiosely- unreticent title, the title that still manages a genuine poetic fluidity, though notwithstanding the figurative burdens of melodramatic, self awareness" 'A Chronicle of Love & Loss in Sickness & in Health' The challenge of the actual work to live up to it's eponymous moniker, it seemed might only be balanced by the clear evidence of self deprecation, or otherwise a magnificently naive faith in the power of it's exaggeration.

Flash back to last spring, and the series was lingering at thirty-odd, images, an allocation of them reinforced for critique and others still acting as nothing more than visual garnish. At the time, I was still in need of affirmation that concentrating in a vintage medium circa 2011, when the average cellphone app was capable of a comparable photographic artifice, wasn't a drastic creative misstep. I was studying an assemblage of eight Polaroids, conjointly acting as the tangible means to an end of three inherently doomed romantic relationships, at one point inexplicably intertwined in each others consummate volatility, and it was then, within the diameter of this interval that the title of the series presented itself, bringing with it the epiphany that self-censorship wouldn't have a cohesively thematic place in the future of my maturing visual monograph. 

So it was the early part of the series that served as the initial inspiration behind the eventual title, and the title itself that forced me to envision a more ambitious creative bar. Flash forward to present; the following day being given our interview's first question, it became clear that the night prior I had already intuitively answered it.

Frank G, Brooklyn, 2010

Why did you choose Polaroid for this series? 

If I'm telling it straight I'd have to say Polaroid chose me. It sounds very trite, like the stuff of which cliches are made. In a burgeoning career feeling rooted in realism and an oft-stifling need for visual perfection, Polaroid enabled me an impressionistic view of the people rotating in and around the orbit of my life. I was working for Time Out New York during the early part of last year when my then photo editor gifted me a pair of vintage Polaroid cameras. He'd established a part of his own career through a similar devotion to analog, and it felt to be the passing of a significant torch--one that, without question, needed to be needed in order to burn, to become the true, graceful sum of it's intended value. Taking those early Polaroids I felt possessed, imbued by the spirit of an 18-year-old me, discovering that the view through his 35mm camera was not impossibly abstract as was the view when putting it down. Any element of our lives that authorities the ability to transport us back to moments we'd assumed the tidal of many more moments had since washed over, is to be regarded for exactly what it is: salvation. 

Jasper James, Brooklyn, 2010You've got an impressive portfolio of fashion and celeb portraits. Do you have a different approach when shooting someone who's used to having their picture taken than you do when shooting ordinary civilians?

I approach every individual subject individually, as if a quantum component of a unified struggle, to find and remain connected to those who intrinsically understand us. I comply with the inarguable truth that in striving to manifest our improbable destinies, there has to be an appreciable form of solace along that path. Simply put, there is no one person exempt from the inherent, virtuous nature of human sensitivity, each of us carrying an unflinching reciprocal need for that exact sentiment. With these thoughts regarded, I approach each subject as if I'm shooting a self portrait- a photograph of them as filtered through my consciousness, and with that, the belief that my need for them is a direct derivative of their need for me. 

So no, absolutely not. Whether a plain-clothes subject or one of celebratory status, their deservedness to be in front of the lens is only equivalent to their degree of acknowledgment, of the transcendental potentialities of the medium of photography.

What's next? What are you working on now?

Very next is "A Chronicle" occupying its first solo exhibition, opening in April at Canada's La Petit Mort Gallery, and aside from that, I'm actually beginning to spend some quality time in the digital realm again. Considering that I likely surpassed the quota in breaking down contextual motives related to my art--I think I managed to pull a 1,400-word essay out of a four-question interview, which probably displays not-so-subtle signs of an acute, egodystonic reality (there's a word we can all google) So in lieu of explaining the entire back-story of my next series, which will be a strictly digital affair, I'll offer up the title with synopsized explanation. The series is titled "All the Real Kids." Each one of my subjects, however adult in age, in a way are really all my children, whom I genuinely love in expansively varying degrees. They all, in their individual ways, continually show me that my own innocence is still present, however tainted by sex, drugs and indie rock it may be.

Everyone comes of age according to his or her own ideals, and in regard to the personal timeline that fits in the space, which those ideals allot to them. I spent the last four-plus years filling in plenty of hours that were devoid of inspiration, inheriting the dark and cozy comforts of various dive bars. Mid 90's jukeboxes and mid 30's go-go dancers, the ones that always seem to be, at a certain point still twirling even once the music fades, like a flesh colored kaleidoscope of peripheral ornamentation. Along with them, the congregations embodying these lonesome sanctuaries, poetically making both idle and philosophical conversation sound as one. Many times over I've met the brother, the father and the grandfather, as apparitions ubiquitously occupying barstools on either side of me, alternately, in place of the formality of unworn familial ties. These transient figures whom still, enigmatically I knew so well, ironically existed as each of the aforementioned genealogical- bridges, leading to someone else's past or to their future, each as structures engineered with vastly, divergent degrees of regard.

Imagine the bittersweet aura cocooning two intoxicated strangers, if for just a few hours in their mutual life and times, their nightly objective- to commiserate on the single most regrettable, nevertheless inalterable human commonality: The passing of time…and we carry on, drinks in hand as if we know that it's all ending in the very same occurrence that it's beginning. These are the moments both subtly and explicitly suggested in the overtones and in the undertones of my work, whatever rest between the two opposing timbre belongs to the viewer, and therein lies the work's subjectivity. In youth and in age, in the tug of war that's the embrace or the denial of human mortality, is where we find or where we lose our own reprieve. 

I'm certain that some day any Q&As and autobiographical writing on my over-interpretation of my own work, will be collected in the Psychotherapist Handbook, illustrating the definition of paradoxical intention, and stating it as inherent to any one of three definitive personality types: sociopaths, creative geniuses, and just plain fucking assholes. I've got to be one of the above right? 

Angyl Valantino #3, Brooklyn, 2011Safa Ali, or Erick Kubak, Inwood, 2011-- Layla Schlack

ARTIST FOLLOW UP // Photographer Johanna Heldebro Takes Haunting Body of Work Global

Ed. note: You may have glimpsed this post quickly last Tuesday, though a couple minor corrections were needed so we pulled it down temporarily.

In the two years since her exhibit To Come Within Reach of You... hung at 3rd Ward's Fall Solo Show, photographer Johanna Heldebro has been busy showing the series around the world.

To give you the body's backdrop:

Heldebro and her father became distant after her parents divorced. He left to essentially live with a second family in his native Sweden. Heldebro traveled to Stockholm and (unbeknownst to him) follow him; taking pictures of his house, zooming in through his windows. She never took pictures of his girlfriend or children, only him. The resulting images are both incredibly intimate and heartbreakingly distant. And as of this month, the work reaches an even larger global audience.

In Moscow, she's showing To Come Within Reach of You... as part of an exhibition called Wrong Address, which opened on September 22 at the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art and runs until October 31.  She tells us "It is curated by Anna-Kaisa Rastenberger (Chief Curator at the Finnish Museum of Photography in Helsinki) and Tero Puha (a Finnish visual artist) and the show also includes work by Tero Puha, Minna Suoniemi, Pilvi Takala, Jarkko Räsänen and Taus Makhacheva."

From there, Heldebro's work returns to Sweden; the Galleri Box in Gothenburg--running from October 13 until November 14. But don't expect her father to show up.  When asked if she's become closer with him since the show's become successful, her response: "Becoming closer to someone is different from developing a relationship with someone. Our relationship is that he is my father, I am his daughter." 

--Layla Schlack

OPENING SOON // The Bronx Documentary Center brings Film, Photo and Community Involvement to the Borough

The Bronx Documentary Center at Courtlandt Ave. and 151st St.

Next month, a fantastic new gallery and educational space will launch in the Bronx--though even before officially openings its doors, it's already been making an impact in the community.

Since early summer, the Bronx Documentary Center has been hosting screenings and lectures in its garden patio, presenting films like the Oscar-winning Born into Brothels and speakers such as war photographer João Silva. In October it will celebrate its grand opening with an exhibition featuring the work of the late Tim Hetherington, who co-directed the amazing 2010 documentary Restrepo and was killed this April while covering the front lines in Libya.

We spoke with award-winning New York Times photojournalist and Bronx Documentary Center's founder, Michael Kamber to find out more. Read on after the jump.

The Hetherington exhibition is a natural first step for the center, as the space was a vision that he and Kamber shared. "Tim was involved in the early planning for the BDC before he was killed," Kamber says. "His death really solidified our resolve to create a documentary studies center in his memory. Since his death, we will be the first venue in the world to devote a solo show to his photo, film and multimedia work.  We are particularly excited about getting his work out to young audiences."

"Tim was, in my opinion, the greatest documentarian of our generation," Kamber continues. "He was also my closest friend—we worked and lived together for many years. Tim gave workshops throughout Africa and the Middle East and was deeply committed to spreading documentary photography and film into areas such as the Bronx."

The idea for the center had been brewing for some time, Kamber tells us. "I'd been thinking for years about starting a gallery and educational organization in a neighborhood where one doesn't usually see this kind of space," he says. "I've always been frustrated that a lot of journalism and documentary work is created in underserved areas, then taken out for consumption elsewhere. We want to change this equation."

"There is not a single gallery devoted to photography and film in the Bronx, a borough of nearly 2 million people.  We are very much focused on working closely with our community, in becoming a place the community comes to for stimulation, culture and education."

Kamber envisions the center as an integral part of its surrounding community, a role its already begun to fill with this summer's events. "Many neighbors have told us that there is the need for a community center like the BDC, focused on the types of cultural and educational events we have planned," Kamber says.

Stay tuned to the Bronx Documentary Center's website and Facebook page for more updates and the exact date of its opening exhibition. If you're interested in helping out, you can donate or get in touch about becoming a volunteer or intern.

-- John Ruscher

Q&A // All-Analogue UK Photographer Ellen Rogers on Her Process, Inspirations and New Book

We find it painfully difficult to stop looking at Ellen Rogers' photographs. They're content and composition is mezmerizing and otherworldly, as though they might be long-lost images from some distant era. The fact that she works without the aid of any digital technology, opting instead for the painstaking processes of film, darkroom, vintage cameras and analogue experimentation, makes her photography that much more awe-inspiring. We're reminded of the beautifully wrought fancy portraits of Julia Margaret Cameron and the dreamy, soft-focus images of David Hamilton.

In late 2010, we featured her images in our winter magazine, though last week we caught up with Rogers to ask her a few questions about her work and her new book, Aberrant Necropolis. Check out the Q&A and a selection of Rogers' photographs (beware: some are likely NSFW) after the jump.

3rd Ward: Can you describe your creative process?

Ellen Rogers: I can certainly have a go.

If we are talking 'process' in the existential sense, it is absolutely bloody chaotic. 

I will read something or see a tree and think of black branches. I could see a face I can't forget or mimic a feeling I can never speak. All these intangible and abstract notions need to become solid. So I go about making them something I can hold. I guess that's when it becomes arduous.  I need to explain to people that I have some hair brained notation and that it needs to be something stupid like 'solid' and they lose faith, stare at me and think I'm weird. All this I am used to but try doing this every week with ten new people who think you are potentially mad or dangerous. So I spend time with the teams, explaining things, rushing about manically and somehow eventually they know what I mean or they at least pretend to. It is at that point that I make a set, or do a horrible drawing, or find a model and things are more 'tangible.' 

Things are changing though as a direct need to be more clear about who I am and what I believe is good and bad.

3W: What has made you stick with completely analogue equipment and methods?

ER: Primarily my dad, he is so critical of my work. He was an analogue photographer (obviously) and he always says things like, 'These stink you never wash your prints long enough, they won’t last,' or 'That’s too blown out, watch your exposures,' etc etc. So I became infatuated with pleasing his eye. I always try to make perfect something so entirely imperfect like film. I always aim for absolute skill and creative control but add to it anomalies that breathe in new chaos. But, goodness me, I’m terribly fussy about prints, I actually carry a magnifying glass around to check grain. I have so, so much to learn too. The world of analogue lends itself to such adventures in the 'po-face' that annoying people like me can indulge in.

3W: What are some of your influences or inspirations?

ER: House of Leaves, Magma (the band), Fentiman's Curiosity Cola and many more.

3W: How did you decide on the title Aberrant Necropolis?

ER: It's quite literal actually, and I am glad you ask as so many people email about it. It is, 'Aberrant' as in Chromatic aberration (lens distortion) and 'Necropolis' as in city of dead people. That’s how I have come to see my work ever since this experience.

3W: Tell us more about the book...

ER: It is a puzzle, to be solved, harbouring a key inside that unlocks unseen material online. That said it is also a picture book including 72 photos and a lovely forward by my friend and master of the Internet, Warren Ellis. 

3W: What are you working on right now?

ER: Sorting my life out, I have become a rather chaotic and bizarre person in the last year. I fear I may be going slowly and irreversibly mad. Aside from the terminal sanity I have moved into a beautiful new place and I am trying to remedy those cerebral aliments. I will let you know if it works out.

As for work, I am doing a project with Vania Zouravliov who I admire tremendously.

--John Ruscher

ALUMNI UPDATE // Gina Pollack joins team of internationally-renowned photographer JR

Gina Pollack (second from left) in the South Bronx working on a group action for JR's Inside Out project.

Today we check in 3rd Ward member with 3rd Ward alum Gina Pollack, who got her current job, working in the studio of renowned French photographer JR, through 3rd Ward's exclusive Membership Newsletter.

After graduating from NYU, where she studied Photography and Journalism, Pollack worked for a while as a photo re-toucher in a commercial studio, doing mostly cosmetic product photography. "Not surprisingly, I hated it," she says. And then one day the Member Newsletter arrived in her inbox. "I immediately noticed JR's name and the opening to work in his studio on the Inside Out project," she says. "I applied immediately and was called into the studio the next day."

Now Pollack works full-time on Inside Out, a large-scale participatory project. "JR won the TED Prize for 2011 and his wish was to get everyone involved in street art to tell their own stories," she says. "People everywhere from Tunisia to Abu Dhabi upload portraits with personal statements everyday. We approve their submissions at the studio, print their photos into posters and mail them with pasting instructions. Donations are accepted but not required. It's important that anyone can participate."

In addition to being inspired by creativity and diversity that the project has attracted, from group projects on child monks in Thailand to gay rights in Russia to the homeless community in San Francisco, Pollack has learned the unique skill of pasting. "I worked on the wall at Bowery/Houston and Grand/ Wooster, mounting images of Native Americans from a reservation in North Dakota, as well as a project celebrating women in the South Bronx, where we pasted faces from the community holding the eyes of women over their own," she says.

Right now Pollack is working a group action for the anniversary of September 11th, as well as upcoming large-scale actions around the world in places like the Middle East, Detroit and Philadelphia.

Outside of her work with JR, Pollack freelances for the Village Voice, shooting restaurants and concerts, and works on her own travel and documentary projects. "I've self-published a book called 'Sorority Girls,' which documents sorority life in Southern California, and I hope to gain more access to sorority houses to continue the project in the near future," she says. "Last Fall, I photographed an outsider's view of israel, highlighting the many groups (Jews, Muslims, Christians, Yeminites, and Palestinians) and the way they all co-exist in such a beautiful, war-torn country. I am currently working on a new project to document graffiti on ads in the New York subways."

Hit the jump to check out some of Gina Pollack's photography below and swing by her website.

Also, Pollack tells us that JR and his crew are always looking for participants, so if you are interested in leading a group action or submitting a portrait, visit his website and get in touch.