25 Under 25: Up-and-Coming American Photographers, Vol. 2

These photographs reflect the world as seen through young but sophisticated eyes—the devastation from Katrina; the battle-weary soldiers and civilian casualties of the Iraq War; explicit explorations of sexuality; urban and suburban landscapes. These images, whether of people or of what people leave behind, show us that the human imprint is everywhere, moving, altering, desiring, aspiring to permanence. The camera for these 25 photographers “is a license to explore,” as Lauren Greenfield wrote in her forward to 25 Under 25, Vol. 1. "It provides a shield of protection, a mandate, a reason for being at a place, for looking, for participating. . . . The camera affords freedom from social prohibitions, and is a passport for the journey." This collection includes a wide range of approaches: straight photography; documentary essays; highly personal and expressionistic stories; staged, spontaneous, or experimental images; and surreal tableaux.

Photographs by Kathryn Parker Almanas,

 Kim Badawi,
 Gina Brocker, Kitra Cahana, Rose Cromwell, Cary Dolan, Sean Donnelly, Nick Freeman, Rick Gershon, Ami Howard, Adam Kuehl, Brian Lesteberg, Elizabeth Looke-Stewart, Futoshi Miyagi, Greg Mrotek, Eleanor G. Oakes, Ashley Poole, Lissa Rivera, Elizabeth Claire Rose, Tamara Rosenblum, Irina Rozovsky, Will Steacy, Michael Harlan Turkell, Peter van Agtmael, and Beatriz Wallace

As seen in O, The Oprah Magazine, September 2008

“We search for that secret, which like a pearl in the ocean, is not easily found or given up. Our search is about an elusive, slippery moment that . . . comes once, and it is so intense that, when it works, what is visible and what is just sensed merge, and an image comes to life on a piece of paper. . . . Too often, in the service of politics and commerce, photographs are inadequate or false. But here, we project ourselves into these images filled with insight and compassion and enter their collective memory as a continuation in the history of photography. Each of these photographers, in their own perceptive way, surprise us with their finds.”
—Sylvia Plachy, from her introduction

“Each emerging artist in this vital new collection is a passionate searcher for the truth within a moment so evanescent it vanishes even as the shutter clicks. So a young man picks up waterlogged family photographs on the streets of post-Katrina New Orleans and trains his camera on these damaged memories. A young woman documents her sisters' evolution from childhood to the precarious border of adulthood. Prefaced by sometimes painfully intimate accounts of what set the photographers to work, these are visionary images of fragile worlds, seen through uncorrupted eyes.”
—Cathleen Medwick, O, The Oprah Magazine

“The body of work covers everything from the political to the metaphysical, and each photographer has in common the fact that they offer a unique truth through their extraordinary abilities in visual storytelling.”
—Max Gold, Coolhunting.com