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During the past thirty years, there has emerged throughout America a new kind of urban vision that blends residential/suburban development with large-scale commercial centers. Rolling farmland and country estates that used to surround towns and cities have given way to vast housing developments that feature nearly identical, hastily built mini-mansions with enormous garages and fancy yards. These are the new bedroom communities for middle-class Americans who commute to urban America where the jobs are.

In 1976 the American artist Mike Smith traded in his his Leica for a Linhof Press 23 camera, and moved away from spontaneous street photography to more intimate portraits. He would go on to produce a detailed record of the inhabitants of Boston’s streets in an inclusive, non-judgmental, and yet direct approach. Smith worked with a large camera that got peoples attention and held it long enough for him to complete the related tasks to operate it successfully. “The driving force, above of all, was my whole-hearted embrace of photography as a way of life. As a Vietnam veteran (where I first discovered the medium) at the age of twenty, for the first time, I believed I had a future to pursue.”

On the Basis of Art: 150 Years of Women at Yale showcases and celebrates the remarkable achievements of an impressive roster of women artists who have graduated from Yale University. Presented on the occasion of two major milestones—the 50th anniversary of coeducation at Yale College and the 150th anniversary of the first women students at the University, who came to study at the Yale School of the Fine Arts when it opened in 1869—the exhibition features works drawn entirely from the collection of the Yale University Art Gallery that span a variety of media, such as paintings, sculpture, drawings, prints, photography, and video.

Lake Pictures, by Lucinda Devlin, is a wonderful new book that celebrates the variations on a theme of Lake Huron, one of the American Great Lakes. At one level, every picture is the same. A square image, the horizon set in the middle, water below, sky above. But after that, the collection ranges through weather and light to create a type of photo-poem that asks us to hold each image, each memory, in our head as the new variation is revealed.

Lake Pictures is a series of color photographs of Lake Huron, one of the Great Lakes with borders on the state of Michigan and Canada. The pictures--made from the same vantage point during different seasons, times of day or night, and weather conditions--explore the changing character and nature of the lake. There is an interplay of day and season, wind, sun and moonlight upon the reflections and water's surface and the variously colored glows of the atmosphere above.  Precisely bisecting Devlin's square images, the thin line of the horizon suggests the immensity of the space between these two elements, pulling the viewer into the center of the photographs where they converge.

Curator of photography Eric Paddock shared this photo series from artist Gus Powell. Known for his street photography in New York, Powell is observing the new (or not so new) ways city dwellers interact with the city and each other during this time of social distancing.

People are changing their behavior fast to contend with the new coronavirus threat. Those who must still take transit, for example, wonder if avoiding surfaces on trains and buses will help them stay healthy. A survey of about 11,000 people in 11 countries conducted in early February by Britain's Reckitt Benckiser Group Plc, which makes cleaning products under its Lysol brand, found that 44% are avoiding crowds and 29% are staying off public transit. Campaigns from public-health agencies seem to be resonating: 54% said they're washing their hands more often, and 32% are trying not to touch their eys, nose, and mouth. Whether any of the lessons on cleanliness will lead to lasting behavioral changes is perhaps a question for later. (view Gus Powell's photographs from this story here)

“Is this still a red and blue world? I see it as dark as night. Not that it is obscure; rather, it’s opaque.” Eudora Welty, On Writing, 1949. 

Warning Shots by Mike Smith is not an easy book of pleasing pictures from the quaint, rural South. This is not a book filled with hope of a brighter future, at least not at first glance. It is dark as night.

It’s in this darkness of shadow that we see the first person emerge after a dozen photographs into the book. It’s Smith’s shadow cast onto the first few steps of a home whose lawn is decorated by black lawn-jockeys.

Lucinda Devlin (LD): When I was young, I was interested in interior space, and I used to make a lot of mock-ups and models. I used clay, and I made rooms. I'm not sure why, but I had a real interest in that. When I went to college, I thought I would get a degree in interior design. The school I went to did not have an interior design program, so I became an English major with an art minor. It wasn't until the end of my four years of college that I ended up taking a three-dimensional design course. We were expected to do a project that dealt with time, and I chose to use a camera, and really, that was the beginning of my interest in photography.

Jen Davis is included in the current show, "Photography and Memory," at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, through fall 2019.  Many of the pictures displayed in this installation highlight significant monuments, memorials, and landscapes. Some focus on the senses, especially touch and sound. And others connect recollection and imagination. Documentary works jostle alongside wildly experimental ones, and historical images hang next to contemporary counterparts. Viewing these selections offers us a moment to reflect on the nature of memory and its importance to photographers and artists throughout history.