John Edwin Mason: Documentary, Motorsports, Photo History

Carrie Mae Weems & Deborah Willis in Conversation at Look3

In one way or another, my work endlessly explodes the limits of tradition. I’m determined to find new models to live by. Aren’t you? --Carrie Mae Weems, 2009 * Black Twitter erupted with joy last night -- at least, my little slice of it erupted -- when word leaked out... Read more →

Look3, the Festival of the Photograph, 2013: On the Verge of Greatness

Look3, The Festival of the Photograph, has just announced its lineup of participating artists for 2013, and it's a stunner -- Carrie Mae Weems, Susan Meiselas, Gregory Crewdson, Josef Koudelka, Richard Misrach, and more. Each of these men and women has had a long and distinguished career, and they've all... Read more →

Making Peace with Look3, the Festival of the Photograph

For most of its brief life, Look3, the Festival of the Photograph, has been a spectacular success and a miserable failure. It's annually brought together some of the world's finest photographers for three days of peace, love, and photography. Or, to put it another way, for three days of exhibitions,... Read more →

Look3, the Festival of the Photograph: A New Beginning

Look3, the Festival of the Photograph, is turning the corner on race and ethnicity. * * * That, friends, is a sentence that I've been hoping to write ever since the festival first opened its doors, in 2007. Like many members of Charlottesville's photographic and academic communities, I've been ambivalent... Read more →

Look 3, the Festival of the Photograph: Afterthoughts, Part 3, Nick’s Tribe

A couple weeks ago, C-ville, a Charlottesville, Virginia, news weekly, ran a six-page spread celebrating Look 3, the Festival of the Photograph, which was about to open. In it Nick Nichols, the Look 3's co-founder and guiding spirit, called the Festival as gathering of "my tribe." This is an apt... Read more →

Look 3, the Festival of the Photograph: Afterthoughts, Part 2, James Nachtwey and George Steinmetz

N.B.: I've updated this post with a new final paragraph. Hang out with African artists or activists long enough and sooner or later the conversation will turn to the ways in which Africa is represented in the western media. The last time that I had this conversation was with the... Read more →

Look 3, the Festival of the Photograph: Afterthoughts, Part 1

Last week, a friend who’s running for the Charlottesville city council as a Democrat brought me in to do some campaign portraits. After the shoot, she told me that she’d just met somebody who was in town for Look 3, the Festival of the Photograph. He’s black, she said, and... Read more →