Soldiers from the U.S. Army Old Guard place flags at grave stones at Arlington National Cemetery May 21 in Arlington, Va., in preparation for Memorial Day weekend. It took 1,300 soldiers, sailors and Marines about three hours to place a flag at each of the more than 300,000 gravestones.

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Curator and photographer Maya Joseph Goteiner recently sent out this great announcement:

We will celebrate the opening of 2,191 Days and Counting at Powerhouse Arena in Dumbo, Brooklyn on March 7th. I have been working with Chere Krakovsky to organize and curate this exhibition which will benefit the Iraq Veterans Against the War. All proceeds will be donated to IVAW's Winter Soldier Project to collect soldiers' firsthand accounts of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan regardless of their politics, regardless of whether the soldiers are pro or anti war, while providing them with much needed legal and mental health support.

Please join us on March 7th, from 6-10pm: 6-8pm is the reception and 8-10pm is the performance. You can find more details and a list of participating artists and performers at: www.2191daysandcounting.com

Please rsvp through the following link: http://www.mobaganda.com/2191daysandcountingopening

PDN 30 announced its annual coveted prize a few days ago... Check out the honored photographers here.

Pete Souza, Professor of Photojournalism at Ohio U., accepted the job as Barack Obama's White House photographer earlier this week. Although I was convinced Callie was going to win the gold, Souza has shot some striking images of the Obama's in the past, including images from his book The Rise of Barack Obama.

South African photographer Mikhael Subotzky is making some of the most interesting photographs of post-apartheid South Africa that I have seen. Documenting both the imprisoned and post-prisoner, Subotzky's captures a historical institution representing racism and political oppression, and the outcomes that the result from the system. Subotzky also taught photographic workshops within the prison system, showcasing those images alongside his own photographs.

He published a book this year, and has a show currently up at MOMA in New York. His images can be seen here.

Since we are coming to the end of the year, it's only appropriate to make a year end best of list... But rather than make a fresh attempt at a specific category, Ive gathered a podge of some of my favorite fashion-photo-centric tidbits from 2008...ten of them in no particular order....

1) Vanity Fair, Year in Pictures part one and two-- From an American Solider in Afghanistan to that questionable picture of Miley Cyrus, the Vanity Fair wrap-up is one of the best around. With a staff of photographers consisting of Annie Leibovitz and Mark Seliger it would be silly not to over-promote the images.... Along with the magazine greats, the museum show 'Vanity Fair Portraits' launched in February at the National Portrait Gallery in London, and will continue to travel throughout the year.

2) Juergen Teller shoots Marc Jacobs-- The esteemed grit of Juergen Teller once again belongs to Marc Jacobs. I fell in love with Teller after reading a piece in New York Magazine about his career. Opposing the glamarama of traditional fashion photography, Teller paved the road for the stark and full-flash look that is now ubiquitous in fashion ad campaigns. My personal favorites the year? M.I.A for Marc by Marc Jacobs in the spring campaign, and Victoria Beckham's dangling legs.

3) Terry Richardson: From Supreme to Tom Ford--Two campaigns represent the diversity in Richardson's work for the year: the oh-so-youthful Kermit the Frog shoot for Supreme, and reaching over to the opposite end of the spectrum, the semi-pornographic campaign for Tom Ford. How can you not love a man that can jump from the muppets to smut in the blink of an eye!

4) Eva Mendes for Vogue Italy shot by Steven Meisel-- I love Italian Vogue. It makes the American version look like a Disney Movie to its X17. The semi-nude photo shoot of Eva Mendes provoked a lot of buzz on the blogs, but in reality, the images were absolutely fantastic.

5) Italian Vogue The Black Issue- Vogue began in 1916, and a black model didn't grace its cover until 1976... and there has been a disproportion ever since. When The Black Issue was released earlier this year, it accounted for an explosion in the fashion world, causing magazines to rethink the disparity of black models NOT gracing their covers.

6) The Sartorialist in Chelsea-- A street-style trend hit the interwebs in 2008, promoting an August Sanders-esque look at street-life in urban centers. The most popular of these street-fashion blogs was 'The Sartorialist' written and photographed by ex men's fashion director Scott Schuman. The New York Times Magazine recently came out with an article listing some additional street-style sites "Face Hunter, Style-Arena, Stockholm Street Style", but none quite match up to the fame of The Sartorialist. With a blockbuster show at Danziger Galleries in New York, and an additional inclusion in Danziger's most recent show 'Sander's Children', Schuman made the leap from DIY blogger to successful fine art photographer.

7) ICP's announcement, The Year in Fashion-- The International Center of Photography is kicking off their 2009 season with a fashion-centric showcase. Seven exhibits featured over the course of '09 will examine how fashion imagery has effected women over the last 90 years. "Weird Beauty" kicks off the year, and will explore how modern technology, digital manipulation, and the overabundance of the airbrush, have changed our fashion standards.

8) The New York Times Style Magazine: The Videos-- From the beautifully simple and rough-cut "Screen Test" series, to the improvisational T Takes shot mostly at Sundance, the Video section of T Magazine online is a fresh assortment of multimedia. Although T Magazine launched in December of 2007, I think the continuously growing video section of this online fashion magazine is one of the strongest in the style world.

9) Superheros: Fashion, Fantasy, and The Box Office-- Superheros: Fashion and Fantasy was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art earlier this year, an exhibit juxtaposing superhero prototypes to their runway contemporaries. The graphic body, the patriotic body, the virile body; Bernhard Willhelm, Catherine Malandrino, Alexander McQueen... And we saw this obsession with the virile, the armored, the paradoxical within Edward Norton's The Hulk, Robert Downey Jr's Iron Man, and Christian Bale's Batman. It was a year for the superhero, even though the economic downturn matched the bleakness of Gotham City, and not the indestructibility of Iron Man.

10) Michelle Obama- A Future Fashion Icon-- It seems like there hasn't been this much positive buzz (including articles titled, Why the Fashion Industry Needs Michelle) around the wardrobe of a First Lady since Jackie O. From the website 'Mrs. O' to the 'Michelle Obama Fashion Retrospective' on the Black Snob, to the buzz building around inauguration choices (we are thinking Tracy Reese...) Michelle's attire is photogenic. And, according to a bit of gossip news, Michelle might grace the March cover of Vogue... an interesting tie-in to #5 on my list for the year.

These are some of my favorites, please post if you have anything else to share...

In case you haven't noticed... Pixcetera has teamed up with the NPPA (National Press Photographers Association) to host the award winning monthly clip contest. In case you haven't seen the first housed gallery on the site check it out here.



Check back for more gallery features every month, courtesy of the NPPA.

Now in its third week, the community curated blog too much chocolate is a nice addition to the photo blogosphere. The concept is simple-- the blog is a domino curatorial effect, allowing each photographer displayed to choose the following week's portfolio. It's a site creating a community of curators more so than a solitary voice creating a community of photographers.

Curation has surpassed conventional definitions of its previous invariable stature. Opening the forum instead of promotion via an inclusive voice offers a salon-style narrative. Perhaps we are more interested in seeing "hey look what I found guys" instead of 'definitive' work.

Thus far the photography has been solid. Although reminiscent of a particular style of photography, the interest lies in the anticipation for next week's work instead of relying on something predictably formulaic. I'm interested in seeing how the work iterates, and what future ventures iterate from too much chocolate.

Tonight, Aperture held an event featuring Tina Barney explaining the trajectory of her career. With debonair ease, Barney meticulously described the start of her photographic endeavors as a curiosity catalyzed by an amazing high-school teacher. She went through her entire history of development-- working in black and white, moving to larger format, photographing families, her own family, the Europeans, editorial. Barney is a noted photographer with works in a myriad of famous museums and magazines; listening to her speak reinforced the idea of continuous, forceful progression instead of instantaneous success. She noted it took her 6 years, between 1983 and 1989, to build up enough strength to simply have her subjects gaze directly into the camera.

Barney reminded us that young photographers can't all be Ryan McGinleys. We cant all have a genius banner hung above our heads without going through year after year of ceaseless learning...and even after that, no promise is made.

It was refreshing to hear Barney, so incredibly talented, openly speak about her somewhat lengthy development time-line, and that a few key ingredients were her keys-- not technical training, not working as an assistant for top names and top connections, but understanding the matching colors of interior design and the beauty of renaissance art. The same set of rules to getting it right obviously don't exist.