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David Goldblatt has photographed his native South Africa since the early 1970's, carefully observing the social, cultural and economic divides that characterise the country. His first publication, On the Mines, examined gold-mining in the East Rand area of the country. In Boksburg documented a small town which he sees as "shaped by white dreams and white properties" but which is ultimately "nondescript and elusive". Goldblatt often creates webs of likenesses and contrasts across an image, such as seen and seeing; young and old.

"Lars Tunbjörk Represented by Gallery VU' Swedish. Born in 1956 in Boras. Lives in Stockholm. Whether creating an acid portrait of Sweden, representing the nightmarish world of business offices, tapping into the desolate uniformity of petrified, petit-bourgeois neighbourhoods, examining the state of marginalised peoples in a nation praised for its system of social protection, or exploring the strangeness of a town on the cusp of the Arctic Circle, Lars Tunbjörk has totally forgotten his black and white beginnings. All his energy is now devoted to the exploration of colour, which he approaches in the style of 1970's American photographers. This is his starting point for questioning the world, a series of interrogations more than observations, which he develops without pessimism but with an undeniable affliction softened by a biting humour. Over time, his approach has become radicalised and purified by being less and less anecdotal. Consequentially, his series no longer represents characters but rather the often absurd track of their presence and their actions."

Photographer and MacArthur fellow Susan Meiselas is best known for her work covering political upheavals in Central America in the 1970s and 80s. The International Center of Photography (ICP) is hosting the first U.S. overview of her work, "Susan Meiselas: In History." It's on display through January 4, 2009.

THEORY: "Lee Friedlander: Museum of Modern Art, New York" Lee Friedlander: Museum of Modern Art, New York ArtForum, Sept, 2005 by Carol Armstrong Walking with a friend through the Lee Friedlander retrospective at MOMA, I noticed that the two of us each had a different way of looking at almost every early street photograph on view: One of us saw the photograph a certain way right off the bat and couldn't easily see it otherwise, while the other noticed everything else in the photo and could only see the "hook" after having it pointed out. What in one viewing looked like Americanized pieces of Cartier-Bresson poetic doubling in another couldn't be disentangled from a set of densely stratified spatial and perceptual conundrums that at once posit the transparency of photography and question it at every level.