Photography

Beginning in the mid-1850s, Paris experienced a grand transformation. At the orders of Napoleon III, old, narrow streets made way for wide boulevards, thousands of gas lamps lit the streets at night, and a host of other public projects thoroughly modernized the city. Charles Marville, a photographer employed by the city, was charged with documenting those changes. “The random, organic city, the city built by successive generations on top of itself, was pushed back and de-emphasized. The standardized city we see today was replaced,” said Jeff Rosenheim, curator of “Charles Marville: Photographer of Paris,” now on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

We definitely love our latest list, 23 beautifully bizarre abandoned places where nature takes over the places. These places got abandoned but nature returned i

Lu Nan’s Trilogy of Men: China’s Catholicism & Forgotten People, and 4 Seasons in Tibet

Influential Chinese Photographer Lu Nan 呂楠 is a man of mystery, shying away from cameras, the public and publicity. Lu has also been known to hide his name and movements under various pseudonyms. He applied for membership at Magnum Photos under the name Mao Xiaohu.

And while Lu once said it didn’t matter who the photographer was that took the pictures (good or bad), it is hard to ignore and not attribute to him his immense body of work, namely the ‘Trilogy’ series which took 15 years to complete. First in the trilogy were Lu’s photographs of patients at China’s mental hospitals titled ‘The Forgotten People, the state of Chinese psychiatric wards’.

This was followed by a documentary of the catholic church in China and pilgrimages made by its followers. The last were photographs of peasants in Tibet called ‘Four Seasons’, rumoured to be made whilst Lu was on the run from ‘unfriendlies’. In 2009, Lu also made controversial photographs of prisoners in Northern Myanmar camps.