Part III in my brief ongoing survey of photographers from Eastern Europe, focusing today on Latvian photography.

The Latvian Museum of Photography houses a collection of contemporary Latvian art photography as well as a historical collection. Some of the more interesting contemporary artists follow:

Arno Antums creates manipulated photomontages, supplemented with graphic and painted elements.

Uldis Briedis captured the announcement of the declaration of independence of Latvia in 1990.

Janis Knakis' images contain surrealism influences.

Young Latvian artist Arnis Balcus repeatedly shoots his own self portrait.

Wilhelm Mikhailovsky is another photographer to embark on a project, Mine 365 Days of 1999, which captures one whole year in its entirety. He also photographed the period leading up to one man's execution.

Back on the international front, Salam Pax, the Iraqi blogger behind Where Is Raed? has started a photoblog. His first post on 13 June shows a Friday sermon in Kadhmia Mosque (via Anything But Ordinary).

Aperture has recently posted an imaginary interview by Japanese fine art photographer Yasumasa Morimura [in Japanese, click through links to department store floors in left menu)] with Frida Kahlo, taken from Daughters of Art History.

Julie Taymor, who made her directorial debut with Titus, has her new film, Frida, opening in Tokyo next month at Bunkamura Le Cinema in Shibuya. I, for one, will be clamouring to attend the first screening, as Frida Kahlo is the first artist whose work I fell in love with when I began studying art history twelve years ago.

A big welcome to new readers finding their way here from Harrumph. I'm a long-time fan of Heather's site and The Mirror Project, so it's great to connect up the dots.

Susannah Breslin of The Reverse Cowgirl's Blog has been photographing mannequins for quite some time. A new page on her blog highlights mannequins found in Los Angeles, New York and Amsterdam.

No Commercial Potential is also fascinated by mannequins, having photographed 45 different variations in unique and interesting ways (click individual image links half way down the page under 'Comparative Mannequinology').

In Issue 5 of the Tate Magazine, Carter Ratcliff considers the place of documentary photography in the world of fine art in this insightful article. "There is no need to call a document a work of art, nor would there be any need to make this obvious point if art galleries and museums had not been crowded in recent years by photographic images which have little beyond their documentary value to recommend them" (via Modern Art Notes).

The San Francisco Public Library has digitised 30,000 of the 250,000 images in its Historical Photograph Collection. The collection includes photos of the 1868 and 1906 earthquakes, the Golden Gate International Exposition held in 1939, and this captivating image of six divers in mid-air at Fleishhacker Pool.

PDN Online reviews a series of new releases of photography books on the Iraqi war. These include LIFE: The War in Iraq, The War in Iraq: A Photo History, Witness Iraq, and 21 Days to Baghdad: A Chronicle of the Iraq War, noting that several don't quite measure up in terms of editing and organisation.

Anne Makepeace's new documentary film devoted to the life of legendary Hungarian-born photojournalist Robert Capa: In Love and War draws on more than forty interviews of friends, family and admirers who knew Capa, as well as archival footage and a selection of the tens of thousands of images he shot over his lifetime. The 90-minute film is being screened daily at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. Until 18 July.

Andreas Seibert, a Swiss-born photographer based in Tokyo, has a new photo essay up on LookAt Photos on Swiss Butoh dancer, Imre Thormann. The black and white images are part of a long-term photographic documentation project on Thormann's life and art. Another interesting series of Seibert's images contrasts the 'haves' and the 'have-nots' of the Japanese recession.

Pedro Meyer, a highly regarded photographer living in Mexico and producer of ZoneZero, has written an interesting editorial on how he learned photography almost fifty years ago. Meyer, a long-time convert from film to digital, has also discussed whether you can protect your images on the Internet.

demo kreacja is a new photography portfolio site with a collection of grainy black and white still images by Polish photographer Maciek Blazniak. While the photographs themselves are quite lovely, unfortunately this site loads very slowly on Safari (I'm a recent convert), even with broadband (via Media Inspiration).

In 2001, photographer Justin Hession spent six months living and working in Dehli, India. While the experience seemed highly rewarding, it wasn't an easy one: "getting good images requires bags full of patience, loads of effort and a good many clean shirts...Shooting seemed only possible between 5am and 8am and even then the temperature would be 35-40 degrees". I particularly like these images of traffic congestion and a rickshaw driver.

Marco Grob's beautifully-designed flash site features a striking series of portrait, fashion and lifestyle photography, seamlessly linked together with horizontal sliding thumbnails (via madspedersen.com).

Say hello to frizzy hair! In Tokyo, we are now a week or two into rainy season, my least favourite time of year. For photographers and videographers who like to shoot street scenes using natural light, that means there are 6 weeks from early June to late July where we can expect rain 80% of the time!! So get in quick if you see a few rays of light between now and the end of July.

Michael Lovitt's site features a great selection of images shot in the rain at night in Austin, Texas. His work appeared in Issue 4 of 28mm.org.

No Rules Street Photography encourages image making which breaks all the normal rules of photography, particularly in inclement weather.

Ningen.com contributor Shuhei took a recent trip to Egypt, photographing himself in many of the locations he visited.

Inspired by David Hockney's photocollages, Phineas Jones of No Commercial Potential has created a series of interesting photocollage works taken in New York and Chicago (via artkrush).

More night photography on The Nocturnes. Troy Paiva, whose new book, Lost America, has just been published, explains how to shoot successfully at night and what equipment is needed (via a photo a day).

Today I received another wonderful new addition to my photography library: British-born Fergus Greer's photographic homage to an inimitable Australian performance artist and fashion designer extraordinaire, Leigh Bowery Looks, features 300 previously unpublished photographs of Bowery taken over the period from 1988 until the artist's death in 1994. An exhibition of this work was held at the ICA in London last year. Highly recommended for fans of this uniquely gifted artist and extraordinary personality.

Nick Knight, a highly influential fashion photographer, has shot both Yohji Yamamoto's fashion (currently on exhibition at the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art in Shinagawa) and Leigh Bowery's performed personae.

Continuing my photographic tour of websites in Eastern Europe, today I have highlighted photographers and travel photography in Lithuania.

Antanas Sutkus was one of the founding members of the Photography Art Society of Lithuania in 1969, which championed photography as an art form and is credited with gaining recognition for Lithuanian photographers on the national and international scene. He is currently the Chair of the Lithuanian Union of Art Photography. Sutkus' work is held in the photography collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum of London.

Romualdas Pozerskis photographs the richly coloured four seasons of Lithuania. I particularly like his black and white Little Alphonso series, which I highlighted several months ago.

Efendi Art Studio's site contains an interesting selection of manipulated images of Vilnius' Old Town.

Rich Benda's black and white images of Vilnius' Old Town, streets and churches are crisp and rich in detail.

Remigijus Audiejaitis is a blind Lithuanian photographer who is planning to photograph the street brawls he hears around him in Vilnius. While he has been taking photos for four years, unfortunately the story does not report on reactions of those who have seen his images. I am guessing his work is probably along the lines of the Don't Think, Just Shoot genre of Lomo photography.

Finally, a slight photographic detour back to Estonia: Photoblogger Scott of EdgeCurve visited Tallinn last year and photographed its cathedrals, alleys, and houses.

I'll pick up this thread again in Part III of my selection of Eastern Europe photography sites, focusing next on Riga and Latvian photography later in the week.

Following publication of the previous issue of his mini webzine, Geisha, fellow Tokyo blogger Jean Snow invited friends to contribute work to the next issue. I offered three photographs shot in vastly different styles that I have taken over the past six months in Tokyo: one of the airline cabin interior-cum-mini cafe inside the Shibuya Underpass Society, a close-up of an am/pm convenience store sign, and leather-clad rockabilly dancers in Ueno Park. So check out Geisha 7 on Jean Snow's homepage, linked from the orange cross icon in the far right-hand column. Thanks, Jean!

Light to Carry, a photoblog presumably from New York City, posts interesting sets of sixteen images at a time, displayed in diptych, each image relating to both the previous image and the next (via moderna).

Susan Bowen shoots multiple-exposure images with her Holga. These long overlapping images are created by only partially advancing the film between exposures; the overlapping occurs in the film itself (via Photojunkie).

Installation is now finished on the Photo Wall Gallery currently lining the Dojunkai Aoyama Apartment complex redevelopment on Omotesando Dori, which I recently mentioned. Entitled 'Link Link' (Link the Scenes: Present and Future), the exhibition is divided into four themes: Innocence, Passion, Bonds, and Dreams. Besides Corbis Japan and Magnum Photos Tokyo, Photonica is also a supporting partner in this project curated by Amana Images.

Currently at the Musee d'art contemporain de Montreal is an exhibition of Nan Goldin's work. This first solo exhibition in Canada, produced in collaboration with the Collection Lambert in Avignon, consists of a hundred photographs taken since 1972 and two installations made up of slide shows accompanied by soundtracks, both presented in the form of a photographic journal. Until 7 September (Thanks, Thomas).

The latest issue of the Cross Atlantic Report, with QuickTime movies from New York and still images from Paris and Brussels, is now up on moderna.

Noel Jackson's image content management system, PhotoPal, has now become PhotoStack 1.1. It is used by 37 Exposures, a lovely photoblog which mainly posts travel images.

There's a new photo essay, The Play of Light: Kyoto at Night, which utilises long exposures that capture certain elements of night light in rather interesting ways, on The Foreigner Japan (Thanks, Francois).

Two powerful new black and white photo essays are now up on ZoneZero: Humberto Farro documents the famous Bar El Chino in Buenos Aires where few tourists venture. With a fifty years of history decorating its walls, this bar resists the urge to succumb to the 'new internationalism' of interior design. In Monsoon, Pablo San Juan from Spain returns from a visit to South East Asia with images of rain-soaked people and urban settings in Manila, Phnom Penh, Saigon, Calcutta, and Dhaka.

Barcelona photographer Salvo Campillo's lovely work is showcased in this site (pity you can't turn the music off though). The portfolio includes work from Ethiopia, Cuba, Angkor, and Ecuador (via nervousroom).

My summer travel plans are slowly beginning to solidify, and I am currently organising a solo photography trip to Eastern Europe (St Petersburg, Moscow, Tallinn, Riga, Vilnius, and Helsinki) in August, so over the next few weeks, I will try to present discoveries of interesting photographers and photography sites in the region. Suggestions on photography highlights and tips for this part of the world are welcomed!

Focusing today on Estonia, first up is Olga Makina, a professional fashion and advertising photographer from Tallinn. She has a lovely selection of images in her travel gallery.

The Estonia photo club site features the work of ten photographers.

Finally, two local Estonian photographers: Images of Tallinn by Ivan Zharikov and Estonian landscapes by Arno Mikkor.

OK, I'm done...the last of my recent submissions to the Mirror Project has been accepted: the day after the new Prada store by Herzog and de Meuron opened in Aoyama, I went along with T to photograph the crowds and the hoopla! The building itself is really quite stunning, featuring several small city viewing rooms on the top floor...And the clothes? A whole floor dedicated to vintage Prada! Yum...

First pictures of the Venice Biennale, Dreams and Conflicts. Japan's participating artists are Yutaka Sone and Motohiko Odani in an exhibition entitled 'Heterotopia' (via artkrush).

Another new submission, this time taken in the French Concession district of Shanghai during my visit there in March, is now up on the Mirror Project.

Edward Burtynsky is a Canadian photographer who explores the colourful, industrialised landscapes of quarries, mines, refineries, tailing ponds, and recycling plants. An exhibition of his work, Manufactured Landscapes, closed last month at the National Gallery of Canada. Their site features a series of video interviews with the artist. (Thanks, Witold).

Albumen presents the art and science of albumen printing, bringing together instruction, research, information on print conservation, and a gallery of prints, including a small collection from Meiji Japan. Standout hand-coloured images are Geisha in Winter from c. 1880, Geisha Resting from c. 1885, and Bettoes Resting from c. 1870.

Yosuke Yamahata was a 28-year-old photographer in the Japanese Army at the time the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. He was assigned to document the effects of the bomb on the city, accompanied by a painter and writer. They arrived in Nagasaki less than 24 hours after the bomb had been dropped, and Yamahata immediately began to photograph what he saw, shooting more than one hundred 35mm exposures within half a day (via Conscientious).

Last week in Barcelona, American photographer Spencer Tunick gathered 7000 naked strangers (registration required) who had volunteered to participate in his latest mass nude performance/installation, Nude Adrift. Photographing his subjects from above using an elevated platform, Tunick took three pictures of the crowd: one of them lying on their backs, another kneeling with their bottoms in the air and a third of couples embracing. The Barcelona event, which broke the world record for the largest nude photo shoot, continues his documentation of live nude figure group performances. Previous cities include Montreal, Prague, St Petersburg, Tokyo, Cape Town, Santiago, Helsinki and New York.

Digital Camera Resource Page has posted a full review of the new Canon Powershot G5 digital camera, noting several pros (excellent photo quality in most situations, super fast performance, 4x zoom a nice change from the usual 3x zoom, CompactFlash Type II slot, impressive movie & playback modes, has an AF illuminator lamp, FlexiZone focusing system lets you focus on any area of frame) and cons (redeye worse than expected, too much purple fringing, lens blocks view through optical viewfinder at wide-angle setting). There's also a first look review up on Steve's Digicams now (via PhotographyBLOG).

African Aperture brings together photographers who focus on Africa. Recent photo essays include Lamu Island (Kenya) by David Deveson, Urban Africa in the Post Colonial Era (Senegal) by Kerry Stuart Coppin, an overview of Robert Maletta's work, and African Journey by Pete Turner. The site also features a weblog (via Dublog)

One of the photographer's above, David Deveson, is part of Odyssey Photography, a new site for travel and documentary photography. Countries featured include Vietnam, Myanmar, South Africa, and Romania.

UK nights is a collection of night photography images shot throughout the UK (via brownglasses).

While visiting the Sony Building in Ginza yesterday, I had a chance to see the newly announced Sony Qualia 016 2-megapixel digital still camera, part of their high-end Qualia product line developed only for the Japanese market. This tiny compact camera, clearly designed to appeal to the James Bond wannabe, retails for 380,000 yen (approx. US$3200), and ships with a number of detachable components: a lens hood, viewer, tele conversion lens, wide conversion lens, remote timer, flash unit and a video output unit, together in an exquisitely presented black leather case.

The first of some of my new Mirror Project submissions are now online. This shot was taken in Thailand from the back of a tuk tuk while trying not to suffocate from all the noxious traffic fumes from the millions of cars that swarm the streets of Bangkok everyday.

Reporters Without Borders gave a number of disposable cameras to international celebrities, including Jodie Foster and French actor Vincent Cassel, asking them to capture glimpses of their daily lives, such visiting the Cannes Film Festival, their behind the scenes of a film set, or their friends. They will auction off the unopened cameras at a charity event tomorrow.

Finally, apologies for the intermittent downtime over the last 48 hours. My flakey and unreliable host was upgrading its network, and took everything offline for most of the weekend!!! No mail, no web hosting, no tech support! I'm jumping ship next month so hopefully most of the hosting problems I've experienced over the past six months will be solved once I move over to a Unix box (currently I'm hosted on an NT server).

The Mirror Project has finished moving to a new server and is now accepting submissions again. I've just submitted two photographs which I'll post the URLs for once they are online.

Tom Pietrasik is a British documentary photographer living in New Dehli with a powerful portfolio of images, including Bombay's Juhu Beach and fairground, night fishing in the Bay of Bengal, residents living alongside the dam construction on the Narmada River, and the Mahalaxmi Racecourse.

A survey exhibition of Cindy Sherman's work is currently being held at the Serpentine Gallery in London, highlighting the characters she has been exploring over the past 25 years (her work is held in numerous international art museum collections worldwide). In this Artforum interview (registration required), she discusses the evolution of her work through the 1980s. The Telegraph reviews the show: "Sherman often seems to be driving at something so private and troubling that no cliche or stereotype in the world could possibly communicate it". Until 25 August.

Jeff T Alu creates lovely manipulated digital images of landscapes and building exteriors in the deserts of Southern California. He explains his use of Photoshop for digital manipulation (via Coudal).

Andy Warhol: His Works, Idea and Process is currently on at the Parco Museum in Shibuya, with works lent by The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. The exhibition features a surprising number of polaroids, including four self-portraits in drag (looking suspiciously like an aging Candy Darling), as well as candid snapshots of celebrities such as Keith Haring, Francesco Clemente, Jean-Michel Basquiat, William S Burroughs, Liza Minelli and Dennis Hopper. Until 30 June.

Two new arrivals in my mailbox from Amazon: The History of Japanese Photography by Anne Tucker, the exhibition catalogue accompanying the show of the same name which was originally held at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2 March - 27 April 2003) and is currently at the Cleveland Museum of Art (Until 27 July). This book is the first authorative guide to historical and contemporary Japanese photography ever to be published in English. I'm very much looking forward to dipping in and out of this book (it's huge!), so I hope to post some of my discoveries here in coming months.

The second addition to my library is Adobe Photoshop 7.0 for Photographers. While I've been using Photoshop for more than seven years, I felt that I could really benefit from overhauling what I already know, specifically from a photographer's perspective. If any readers have other recommendations on Photoshop books for photography, please let me know. Others I am considering include The Photoshop Book for Digital Photographers and Real World Adobe Photoshop 7.

There's some great content in the June issue of The Digital Journalist. Highlights include:

Bollywood Dreams by Jonathan Torgovnik is a photo essay on the romance, lust, action, dance and music-filled world of the Indian film industry. His new book, Bollywood Dreams: An Exploration of the Motion Picture Industry and Its Culture in India, is now available from Phaidon Press.

Roger Hutchings finds his own visual representation of Berlin. "The best way to know a city is to walk through the city streets without prejudice, leaving at home the tourist guides and discarding other people’s ideas, trying to use our own minds and our own emotional visions, pursuing our own personal research and not accepting the recollection of a deja-vu."

Dirck Halstead reports on his personal visit to Bill Gates' collection of 11 million photographs which are now located in a refrigerated environment within an abandoned limestone mine near Butler, Pennsylvania.

Nicholas McClelland has produced Subway, a beautiful collection of 16 images of New York's underground train system (via The Solipsistic Gazette).

Txema Yeste's site contains some lovely fashion editorials. La Viuda, a study of an elderly white-haired woman shot mostly underwater, is particularly worth a look (via Newstoday).

An interestingly packaged flash site with a sliding navigation menu, cloats stylishly combines eating with bowling and golfing (via Styleboost).

As Antipixel recently pointed out, the Japanese construction industry excels at the immaculate wrapping of buildings while they are under construction. Tadao Ando's redevelopment of the Dojunkai Aoyama Apartment complex on Omotesando Dori is no exception, and is, perhaps, more striking than most. Over the last few days, a selection of more than twenty 5m high photographs have slowly been mounted onto the approx. 100m long hoardings fronting this redevelopment. The images have been supplied by Magnum Photos Tokyo and Corbis Japan, and feature works by acclaimed photographers such as nonagenarian Eve Arnold and Elliott Erwitt. Installation will be completed by Tuesday, and should prove to be a rather tasty visual feast for all photography buffs.

Photos from the G8 riots in Geneva on Sunday 1 June and Monday 2 June by travel photographer Christophe Gevrey (via Boing Boing).

Japanese photographer Hisashi Murayama's delicate black-and-white work, Parol, is highlighted in this flash presentation on French photography collective site, Tangophoto.

La Familia Rodelu is a moving photo essay by Daniel Machado about Jose Rodelu, the only remaining member of a middle class family from Uruguay who were prominent in the first half of the twentieth century. Jose now lives mostly confined to his bedroom, surrounded by the memories of his family.

Peter Conrad reviews a series of photography exhibitions in London, questioning the distinction between photography as art and photography as documentation: "In the era of Big Brother, everything exists to be photographed--though that does not mean that the result is worth looking at". On the current exhibition at the Tate Modern, Cruel and Tender, he notes:

Walter Benjamin praised Atget's photographs of deserted, dejected Parisian streets for 'sucking the aura from reality like water from a sinking ship'. Benjamin valued the camera as an alienatory tool, which censored affection and intimacy 'in favour of the illumination of details'. Has this insidious machine depleted the world it so unstoppably records?

Last month the International Photography Awards were launched in LA. As part of the competition, lifetime achievement awards will be presented to masters of photography in the fields of fashion, photojournalism, advertising and fine art. Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton and Sebastiao Salgado have been highlighted as potential inaugural recipients. The winner of the entire competition will be named International Photographer of the Year and will win US$10,000.

Kepek.creart.hu is a beautifully designed royalty-free stock photography site from Hungary. You can browse their collections of architecture, objects, animals and nature (via Coolstop).

Robert Mapplethorpe is in the news in Japan: Takashi Asai, publisher of the 1994 book, Mapplethorpe, a comprehensive collection of 260 of the photographer's black-and-white photos, is currently fighting a case in the Supreme Court of Japan to have the book legally brought into Japan despite the fact that it was published here and has already sold more than 1200 copies, without it being deemed as "obscene" and "harmful to public morals". While the district court originally ruled in his favour, the Tokyo Hight Court later reversed the ruling (via Brent on artkrush).

Rob Pegoraro discusses the pros and cons of film vs digital in this interesting article in The Washington Post.

Following a link from Consumptive to the Naked Tokyo exhibition, curated by Tim Porter, which is being held this week at Gallery Es in Omotesando, I unearthed a couple of other interesting Tokyo photography projects:

Carla Hernandez originally showed her Red Light series as part of The Red Spot, a virtual tour of the unknown side of Tokyo's urban subculture that encourages the users to participate in the experience of strolling on the streets of Tokyo night.

Tokyo Squint showcases the photographs and portfolios of photographers from around the world and provides information on photography-related events in the Tokyo area.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner. The Canon PowerShot G5 has officially arrived! Consider me first in line when it hits the stores...

The specs are rather impressive for a 'pro-sumer' compact digital camera, so it will be interesting to see how Digital Photography Review and Steve's Digicams weigh in on this one.

28mm.org turns one this issue, and just gets better and better. The June 2003 issue features a stunning photo essay on the beach by Noah Grey, a night photography series shot with a Holga by Mark Warren, and some delicate rose interior views by Erin Malone.

The recently launched online magazine of narrative journalism encompassing text, film/video, photography and sound, Six Billion, dedicates its inaugural issue to the theme, 'Obituary'. The photography section presents a photo essay by Lois Raimondo examining life in Tibet (via Scene 360).

The National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo is holding a retrospective of Japanese photographer, Shigeo Gocho, who died in 1983 at the age of 36. Self & Others, a short documentary film directed by Makoto Sato, was made in 2001 about Gocho's life. Until 21 July.

Brian Howell's work appears in a new book, One Ring Circus, from Arsenal Pulp Press. "Disco Fury. Wrathchild. Bam-Bam Bambi. Ladies Choice. Backyard Billy. Cheerleader Melissa. Backwoods Militia. Gorgeous Michelle Starr. Welcome to the world of minor-league professional wrestling." Howell spent three years tracking the extreme wrestling circuit, gaining access to some public and private moments of some its flamboyant community members.

Attila Hartwig's striking beauty, fashion and interior photography is beautifully showcased in this novel and slick flash site (via Pixelsurgeon).

While I almost never post about what's happening in my daily life, I feel compelled to note my sadness that Aux Bacchanales (on Meiji Dori in Harajuku), my favourite Sunday morning cafe for a scrumptious chocolate brioche or an almond and chocolate croissant, had with the best cafe au lait in Tokyo, is closing its doors for good this coming Sunday. The building that houses Aux Bach is being torn down because the owners claim it is "too old"...if it were 100 years old, I could understand that, but at just over 30 years, is that really "old"?!!

This month the Photographic Society of Japan is hosting the annual Month of Photography in Tokyo. Held in multiple venues across the city, the exhibition features the work of young Korean and Japanese photographers at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, women photographers at the Shinjuku Park Tower Atrium (don't forget to visit the fabulous Conran Shop while you're there), and award-winning works of the Photographic Society of Japan annual photo awards, including Sebastiao Salgado and Naoya Hatakeyama, and the Ginza Fuji Photo Salon. Until mid June (via PhotoGuide Japan).

During her stay in Tokyo, Montreal-based photographer Nathalie Doust had a rare opportunity to photograph the foreign strippers in Roppongi for her Tokyo Pin Up Girls series.