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"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 Consequentially, his series no longer represents characters but rather the often absurd track of their presence and their actions."

Photographic truth and Photoshop April 17th, 2009 Photography's anxiety about truth, manipulation and reality has been on show recently. In different ways and from different contexts, people have been asking: "how much Photoshop is too much"? From the realm of fashion, French Elle is being celebrated for running a cover story in which the models photographs have not been 'Photoshopped' (thereby confirming, as I've noted previously, that digital manipulation is the norm in this visual domain). From the world of photojournalism, blogs like 1854, PDNPulse and the Online Photographer (with a follow-up here) have been buzzing with the story of the Danish photographer Klavs Bo Christensen who was excluded from that country's Picture of the Year competition for excessive colour manipulation of his Haiti story. Along with two others, Christensen was asked to submit his RAW files to the competition judges who felt that the colour in his photographs had been excessively saturated (their debate can be heard here), and removed his images from the competition as a result. Christensen was subsequently happy to have his files put on the web for comparison and discussion, thereby performing an important service to the photographic community.

"Corentin Wauters: Gamma is one of the most famous photojournalism agencies. Some even call it legendary. How important has it been for photojournalism? Michiel Munneke: I think Gamma - but also others like Magnum, for instance - played an extremely important role from early years on, especially in documenting crucial news events around the world. It's important to realise that in those days you had magazines like Life and the Picture Post who very generously allocated tens of pages to events like the war in Vietnam, for example. Those publications and photographs made a huge impact on their readerships. I think it's fair to say that the founders of Gamma, like Raymond Depardon - although he moved to Magnum at the end of the '70s - and Gilles Corron, who died in 1970 in Cambodia, can be classified as legendary. They played a very important role in news documenting in those years. Raymond Depardon said that in 1966 you only had to travel far away and take three shots to get published in magazines Paris Match or Le Nouvel Observateur. How has the profession of photojournalism changed since Gamma was founded? If Depardon was saying that competition for space in publications like Paris Match or Le Nouvel Observateur is stronger, then he's absolutely right. Competition is far more severe. Circulations are going down, advertising revenues are shrinking, and consequently budgets for journalism and for photography are being cut. image Nowadays its very rare that publications send photographers for assignments overseas. Take a renowned magazine like Time. They still have photographers on staff but they very rarely get assignments to go overseas. It's a sign of the times. Gamma, but also other big photojournalism agencies like Sipa, were founded in Paris. The city had a big name as a centre for photojournalism. To what extent is that true today? I think for those years it was really true. But now, in the era of globalisation and digitisation, it doesnâ

What I guess goes through my mind when I'm taking a picture is I'm thinking wordlessly about how all these elements relate to each other and I'm thinking again wordlessly about finding a balance that I look for a point that seems central to the picture and when I find that point that tells me where to stand and where exactly to aim the camera. - Stephen Shore

Joe McNally is an internationally acclaimed American photographer and long-time photojournalist. McNally is known worldwide for his ability to produce technically and logistically complex assignments with expert use of color and light.

website of Joe McNally national geographic photographer

William Eggleston: The Tender-Cruel Camera by Thomas Weski 'I don't particularly like what's around me.' I said that could be a good reason to take pictures. He said: 'You know, that's not a bad idea.' Around the middle of the sixties, in the middle of the night, William Eggleston was standing in one of the first industrial photofinishing laboraties, watching hundreds of color photos being churned out of the developing machines on endless reels of paper. Countless such visits were to sharpen Eggleston's awareness of the world of images and its amateurish, unpretentious treatment by the masses of people who had their color snaps developed and printed in this laboratory overnight. For Eggleston, this confrontation with visual mediocrity was an altogether exciting and unforgettable experience and was to become an important basis for his later work.

William Eggleston: "I am at war with the obvious." William Eggleston, a hero to so many photographers, finally agreed to talk about his art while a camera was running. I haven't seen the film yet (I'm going to order it today), but I thought I'd share this inspiring clip to go along with your Monday morning coffee. Wow.

Joe McNally shoots assignments for magazines, ad agencies, & graphic design firms. Clients include Sports Illustrated, ESPN Magazine, National Geographic, Life, Time, Fortune, New York Magazine, GEO, Golf Digest, Discover, Men's Journal, Business Week, Rolling Stone, New York Stock Exchange, Target, Sony, GE, Nikon, Lehman Brothers, & PNC Bank. In addition to having been a recipient of the Alfred Eisenstaedt Award for outstanding magazine photography, McNally has been honored numerous times by several of the following: Communication Arts, Applied Arts, Photo District News, Pictures of the Year, The World Press Photo Foundation, The Art Directors' Club, American Photo, and Graphis. Joe's teaching credentials include: the Eddie Adams Workshop, the National Geographic Masters of Contemporary Photography, the Santa Fe Workshops, the Smithsonian Institute Masters of Photography, Rochester Institute of Technology, Maine Photo Workshops, Department of Defense Worldwide Military Workshops, and the Disney Institute. He has also worked on numerous "Day in the Life" projects. One of McNally's most notable large scale projects, "Faces of Ground Zero - Giant Polaroid Collection", has become known as one of the most primary and significant artistic responses to the tragedy at the World Trade Center. Joe was described by American Photo magazine as "perhaps the most versatile photojournalist working today" and was listed as one of the 100 most important people in photography. In January 1999, Kodak and Photo District News honored Joe by inducting him into their Legends Online archive. In 2001, Nikon Inc. bestowed upon him a similar honor when he was placed on their website's prestigious list of photographers noted as "Legends Behind the Lens".

Today we launch a new series of conversations with various Magnum photographers. For our first conversation we invited Jörg M. Colberg, founder and editor of the fine-art photography blog Conscientious and experienced interviewer, to talk to Magnum photographer Miguel Rio Branco about his work and photography. This conversation is cross-published at Jörg's own blog. I hope you enjoy the read and please let us know what you think.

In the first years of the Iraq war, Noor co-founder and Time magazine contributor Yuri Kozyrev travelled behind enemy lines, following the conflict from both the US military and Iraqi insurgents' perspectives. 'I spent a lot of time with both sides,' he says. 'I would be with the rebels and then go across the road, knock on the doors of a palace, go inside and find myself with the US military.'

On the eve of the election, a number of Magnum photographers have been venturing into American to capture what they can of this historic moment in time. The project is called InSight America. But rather than publish this work as a book a year after the fact, Magnum is posting the work online and on the fly. I caught up with Alex Webb after his recent journey to Ohio:

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