Photographer Gregg Bleakney cycles from Alaska to Argentina with just two pairs of ExOfficio Give-N-Go underwear. Gregg teamed up with Novus Select to produce this amazing journey from one corner of the earth to another.

To view more videos, visit Novus Select.

Aurora Photographer Andrew Kornylak and Josh Fowler of Dead Point Media recently produced “A Fine Line”, a film that follows one climbing season along side some of the world’s most visionary boulderers as they peruse the best and the worst rock bouldering in America.

To view more images form Andrew Kornylak, visit Aurora Photos.

Aurora Contributor Pete McBride spent three years photographing and documenting the Colorado River. A Colorado native, McBride grew up in a ranching family that depended on the Colorado River to irrigate their crops. His goal was to find out where the irrigation water of his youth went after his family used it, and how long it took the water to reach the ocean. His journey shows how the thirst of the 30 million people that the river supports takes an unhealthy toll on the land.

His work was highlighted at the 5 Point Film festival, were he was awarded “Most Inspiring Story” for Chasing Water and has been turned into several magazine articles, a book, a museum exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, and a short film. In it, he discusses what has become of the Colorado River and what he learned over the course of this project.

Pete McBride / Aurora Photos

Pete McBrider / Aurora Photos

Pete McBrider / Aurora Photos

To view more images from Peter McBride, visit Aurora Photos.

Aurora Photographer Robert Benson’s photo of sailors and marines standing under a huge American flag was featured on Bing.com today in honor of Flag Day in America.

To view more images from Robert Benson, visit Aurora Photos.

Breaking Through Concrete (January 2012)

Aurora Photographer Michael Hanson recently took some time from his busy schedule to answer questions and talk about his upcoming book, Breaking Through Concrete.

Aurora Photos: Your photographs have you all over the world, how do you keep up with such a crazy travel schedule?

Michael Hanson: Lots of sticky notes on where to go next. I have struggle to be more organized than I naturally am to keep all the rental cars, flights, etc in order. I definitely travel differently than I did when I first started, but the anticipation and excitement of working outside the NW remains the same. I’ve become more targeted in my approach to a trip. I’m not wandering around aimlessly, though a huge part of me really misses that style. Photography is a key to people’s lives and homes. It’s an easy way to get access that other travelers don’t have, and I feel very fortunate to see other places and cultures through the camera. One thing the schedule has done has made part of me crave the Northwest and home. I love waking in my house and seeing my friends in Seattle, but after a short rest, I’m anxious to get back on the road. It’s a win-win, I guess.

A.P: You recently finished a study on Urban Farming, can you please share with us your experience and insight on this issue?

M.H: I was in Bolivia working on a project when news came in that the publisher had signed on to the idea of an urban farming ‘tour’ across the US. Immediately, we decided we couldn’t just drive a Subaru or a pickup truck to all these farms for 7 weeks; we had to do it with a certain style. In Bolivia, immaculate, white, retro-buses carry locals from one point to another. These buses are a brilliant white with an almost neon, summer popsicle colored stripe on the side. This inspiration led us to buy a short school bus which had been converted to an RV and ran on a combination veggie grease and diesel. We painted it white with a blue stripe on the side. We named him Lewis Lewis after a farming friend of ours who had recently passed away. We traveled for 7 weeks from Seattle to California across the Midwest to New Orleans and up the East Coast finally ending in Chicago. Each farm represents a different aspect of this urban farming movement. Some work with youth, some work with ex-incarcerated men and women, some are on rooftops, some are in the heart of a suburb and one was a collection of everyone’s yard. Of all the trips I’ve be lucky enough to be a part of, this remains at the top of the list. Every day was wild. I knew zero about diesel engines when we started and now I feel much more comfortable under the hood, or at least under the hood of a short school bus. I am sure that will come in handy again one day. Seriously though, sometimes the most adventurous trips aren’t in exotic locations or foreign countries. I can’t imagine a trip with more highs and lows, but I look back at this project as my favorite.

A.P: When will the book be Published and how can we find out more information about Urban Farming?

M.H: Breaking Through Concrete :: Building an Urban Farm Revival will be published in January 2012 by Univ. California Press. You can visit www.breakingthroughconcrete.com over the next few months as the website begins to get rebuilt in anticipation of the book release.

Michael Hanson / Aurora Photos

Michael Hanson / Aurora Photos

To view Michael Hanson’s Select Portfolio, visit Aurora Select.
To view more work from Michael Hanson, visit Aurora Photos.

Photograph by Jon Lowenstein / Noor / Aurora Photos

Aurora Photographer Jon Lowenstein has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in the field of Photography to allow him to pursue his long term project on the South Side of Chicago.

For the past decade, Jon has been documenting the lives and social interactions of the different communities present in the South Side. He will continue and expand his explorations into a participatory media project including a book and experimental film.

To view the South Side of Chicago photographs, visit Noor Images.
To view more photographs from Jon Lowenstein, visit Aurora Photos.

To view more work from JR, visit Aurora Photos.

Photographer Ake Ericson/Aurora Photos

2011 marks the 25th Anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. At 01:23 April 26th, 1986, operators in the control room of Reactor #4 botched a routine safety test, resulting in an explosion, and a fire that burned for 10 days. The radioactive fallout spread over tens of thousands of square miles, driving more than a quarter of a million people permanently from their homes. It remains the world’s worst nuclear disaster to date.

Chernobyl caused “an anthropological shock” and became a popular metaphor for global environmental catastrophes and other social traumas. The health effects as well as the social and economic consequences of the accident are severe. In Belarus, the Ukraine and Russia an area of more than 150,000 km² was contaminated for a long period of time.

Over 7 million people were living in the region at the time of the disaster, about 2.2 million of them living in Belarus and 2.4 million in the Ukraine.

In order to cope with the disaster, approximately 800,000 people were deployed as so-called liquidators. In the long run all these people were exposed to significant additional health risks due to the radioactive exposure.

Photographer Ake Ericson/Aurora Photos

To view more photographs of Chernobyl, visit Aurora Photos.
To view more photographs from Ake Ericson, visit Aurora Photos.

“At the riverside of a narrow arm of Rio Negro in downtown Manaus, families live in suspended blockhouses over what has become a huge urban dump. Sensitive issues such as family, religion and poverty put together a complex mosaic of poetic disturbing images.”

Aurora Photos: What inspired you to make a documentary about the families living in downtown Manaus?

Fernanda Preto: The Amazon just got me in such a special way, I always wanted to go back there and hear the stories about the rain forest, the river, the adventures of living in the middle of the Amazon. Manaus is in the middle of the rain forest. It has a special atmosphere, even with all the barriers to living in a traditional way and the contradictions of a big city. As the city is growing and expanding, things are changing fast in Manaus. Traditional manners are in transition, the relations of the RIBEIRINHOS (people that used to live on the riverside in the forest), now living in the city, are changing dramatically everyday. I see that this change, this transition is history and it is an important story to be told! Not only in a superficial way, but to get inside these people’s lives and see how they go through these changes!

A.P: Can you explain what it was like working in such an austere environment?

F.P: Manaus is a very under developed city in terms of living. Most parts of the city are suburbs, which means that Manaus has a very clear separation of social classes; very poor and very rich. People used to say that it took five hundred years to have 1 million inhabitants and just 20 years to have another million; you can imagine how crowded Manaus is. Manaus also has a housing problem, mostly due to land invasion like the place we filmed. Well, this makes these places very hard to live, considering the drinking water and sewage.

Like any big city, the poor suburbs are an austere environment,and this place isn’t different. Sometimes in violence, but mostly in their ways of thinking, in how they understand the world and how they react to it.

It was very hard to encounter everyday with people living below the poverty line and know that is a very optomistic thought that the govnermment of this country will resolve this!! Why is the govnermment of the Amazon thinking about have the Soccer world cup, spending millions on the stadium, and these people do not even have food to eat! The hardest thing coming face to face with this reality that is very common in my country!!! It was hard to see that people just got used to living like that!

A.P: All of the interviews seem private and sincere, was it hard to get the people of Manaus to open up to you? How were you able to do it?

F.P: Manaus is my home!! Even though I had lived there for only 3 years, it felt like an eternity because of the way people respond to you. The Amazon people have such a cozy way of interacting with you, it is amazing! At first they are a little bit suspicious, because of their own past and the way they understand the “time”, but once you open up to them, everything changes!!! While living in Manaus I went to this place twice to do an essay about it, and I already knew the history of the place. When me and Bruno (the film director) got there, we went to speak with the community president, Mrs. Selma and she received us very well. After explaining our idea to her, she introduced us to some people, and that is how we got started. Then one family introduced us to others, and the kids from that place were always around, wanting pictures and to be filmed; in a way, we felted absorbed by the community and after 3 weeks filming we had a story! Many times we spent an entire day inside a family`s house observing their way of life, from very early in the morning to late into the night! Bruno Jorge, as a formal documentary director, has some devices to get the people to answer some hard questions about their lives; together we developed a very friendly atmosphere.

A.P: When can we look forward to seeing the entire Documentary?

F.P: At this time, we have started to send the film to festivals around the world. The idea is to have the film selected in an international festival, have the preview there, and them make a premiere here in São Paulo. After that, we can start the film distribution.

To see more work from Fernanda Preto, visit Aurora Photos.

Aurora photographer, David Nevala has been working in conjunction with Climate Wisconsin to create this educational multimedia project, which features stories of the changing climate entitled, “Climate Wisconsin: Stories From A State of Change.” The stories featured were created to foster both teaching and learning about the ever changing climate we live in and were documented over a 10 month period beginning in February of 2010, across the entire state of Wisconsin.

To view David’s latest project and to learn more about “Climate Wisconsin: Stories From A State of Change,” click here.

To see more work from David Nevala, visit Aurora Photos.