ETSU Photo News

The largest camera store chain in the US has officially announced that not only will all Wolf Camera stores be liquidated, but the entire Ritz Camera empire will be shut down.  The company was recently purchased by Hilco, a n industrial liquidation company, which plans to shut down the stores and liquidate all the assets. The Ritz warehouse has been shut down, the online printing service is going offline, and all the company’s social networking accounts have been deleted. Yikes. Stores will only remain open a few more months, so maybe you can swoop in and grab some deals before the doors close.  If there’s any silver lining to this story, it’s that the photo lab and its services were reportedly purchased by a different company. This means that those services may re-emerge as new businesses under different names. 

This year's juror will be Sam Wang , distinguished professor and photographer, formerly at Clemson University. Submissions are now being accepted until October 31, 2012. Submission fee is $25 for 4 images.  Click here to learn more and download a prospectus. 

The Oxford American website has just announced a new feature, Eyes on the South , that will highlight one emerging/student photographer living and making photographs in the South every week. The submissions will be juried by photographer Jeff Rich , recent winner of the PhotoLucida Critical Mass Book Award for his extensive and ongoing project Watershed . Submissions must consist of 10-20 photographs that represent a subject dealing with the Southern United States in an interesting or culturally relevant way. Images should be saved as a 72ppi JPEG, sRGB color space, 600 pixels wide. Label each image with your last name and number in the sequence. Example: faulkner01.jpg, faulkner02.jpg, etc. Photographs must be accompanied by a Word document or PDF with image titles, artist statement (up to 300 words) and a short bio (up to 150 words). Email everything, along with website and preferred email address to oa.eyesonthesouth@gmail.com.

In another brilliant move of professional restructuring, Kodak has announced that it intends to sell off the most profitable wing of their commercial enterprise... Read more about the move here .  

Bikini Contest, Fort Lauderdale, FL, March 1983 © Joel Sternfeld Renowned American photographer and past ETSU visiting artist Joel Sternfeld will be giving a lecture at the High Museum of Art on Thursday, September 27 at 7pm as part of this year's Atlanta Celebrates Photography. The talk is free and open to the public, but seating is limited and must be reserved through the Woodruff Arts Center Box Office. Click here for more information.

If you've been paying close attention to the background action during these Olympic Games (and admit it, you have) you may have noticed amongst all the telephoto lenses attached to digital SLRs, one dude armed with a Speed Graphic 4x5. That would be veteran photographer David Burnett , who is currently covering his 8th Summer Olympic Games. Burnett is responsible for some of the most memorable images of recent Olympic history, working in both color and black-and-white with a variety of tools from Holga to 35mm to 4x5. The New York Times recently featured him on their blog, which can be found here . Check out his personal website for more work.

The Wall , 2010 © Pamela Pecchio Last year's visiting artist Pamela Pecchio will be jurying submissions for  Mimesis: A Contemporary Photography Exhibition  to be held at 311 West Martin Street Galleries in Raleigh, North Carolina. All entries must be submitted via SlideRoom by August 1, 2012. Check here for more details.