Chris Marker's La Jet�e

I teach the Freshman Seminar course in the photography program at Parsons The New School for Design. The course serves to give incoming students both a technical and conceptual overview of all things photography and a foundation of knowledge that they can build on throughout the rest of their time in the program. Each year one of the first things I do is show the students the 1962 science

Five in Focus

Still from Ulrich Seidl's Dog DaysI love movies, so I was pretty excited when Focus Features asked me to do a writeup of the five films that have inspired my creative process. Wittling it down to five was no easy task, but I feel pretty good about my list. After you check out my five, take a look at lists by Gregory Crewdson, Lauren Greenfield and Larry Sultan.What's your top five?

Movies I Can't Wait to See

Blindness and The Road are two of the best books I've read in, well, ever. Both books are being made into major motion pictures to be released this year. I am excited and nervous as all hell. On paper both movies look pretty good, but you never know with these things. Fernando Meirelles and John Hillcoat, I beg you not to fuck these up.

Saturday Night Party Then Sunday Afternoon Kong

Edinburgh, UK 2003 � Brian UlrichLast night I went to a party at the fabulous home of photography collector Joe Baio. Each year Joe throws a big shindig during AIPAD to show off his amazing collection of photographs. The walls were covered in photographs by Sally Mann, Brian Ulrich, Arthur Tress, Vik Muniz, Loretta Lux, Angelika Rinnhofer, Muzi Quawson...the list goes on and on. The joint was

Photographic Truthiness

This is not the LusitaniaDocumentary filmmaker, Errol Morris, who directed one of my all time favorite movies, Fast, Cheap, & Out of Control, takes up the debate about photography and truth in a blog article in today's New York Times: The idea that photographs hand us an objective piece of reality, that they by themselves provide us with the truth, is an idea that has been with us since the

I *Heart* Zoe Strauss

� Zoe StraussI admit it. I have a complete photo crush on Zoe Strauss. I have never met her, so it's hard to nail down why I have become so enamored of late. The source of my shine may be the immense talent that put her in the Whitney Biennial. It may be because she is single-handedly stripping away the crusty mantle of art world pretension that has built up between artists, their subjects,