By Claire Blaha

Fashion Nova creating sweatshops in America

Fashion Nova is an inexpensive and trendy brand that has perfected fast fashion in an age of fast-paced and social media-obsessed world. Their clothes can be made at a fraction of the normal price and at lightning speeds; they sell everything from skin-tight jeans to cheaply processed crop tops. Los Angeles is filled with factories that pay workers under-the-table and in very small amounts. Many of these workers are also undocumented immigrants who are most likley not going to stand up for better pay or working conditions.

The New York Times wrote a story about investigations into these makeshift sweatshops, and included a photo essay showing the men and women that do this work. They found that, since 2016, Fashion Nova has clothing being made in dozens of different factories across LA that owed $3.8 million in back wages to their workers. The piece featured Mercedes Cortes who worked in a Fashion Nova factory and talked about the awful conditions that she worked in. Many Americans are aware of the sweatshops that often exist in other countries, like Vietnam or Bangladesh, but they don’t know that people are being treated terribly in the workplace right under their noses. Fashion Nova remains a popular brand because it speaks to a generation looking for cheap and in style, but many are beginning to look ethically at the labor put into it.

© Jonah M. Kessel for The New York Times

Methane, an invisible gas, photographed

The New York Times went to one of the biggest oil fields in the United States with an infrared camera to show methane that is being pumped into the sky. After chartering a research plane, reporters flew over a large area in Texas that contains numerous oil and gas sites. Once they identified the sites that were spurting out the largest quantity of the gas, they attempted to get images from the ground. Without access, the reporters often had to shoot through fences and from far distances in order to keep within the law.

Using a computer that showed live methane readings near them, the team then employed their custom-built FLIR A8389sc infrared camera that captures the heat energy and converts it into moving images. It requires a lot of power in order to capture these images; to actually see the gas in the air, helium is used to decrease the temperature to about minus 200 degrees Celsius, or the temperature of liquid nitrogen. The results are quite disturbing. Methane is a natural gas that is contributing to the increasing temperatures on Earth, and these images present some pretty unarguable proof of that.

Banksy’s photographer releases photo book

Steve Lazarides, the personal photographer for the world-renowned street artist, Banksy has released a book titled, Banksy Captured. In an interview with The Guardian discussing his experience working with, and photographing such a famous yet hidden figure. Regarding their scams, Lazarides explains how, for 11 years, he helped Banksy get away with unlawful activity by working as his business partner, his agent and overall his partner in crime. They would unlawfully use hi-vis vests and traffic cones to prevent people from suspecting anything or interfering with Banksy’s process.

Lazarides’ new book shows this process while Banksy and himself worked together. In the images, viewers can see Banksy at work, but not his face or anything else that might reveal his identity of course. This insider information often shows the artist from behind, showing a figure creating the famous pieces that we have come to see in so many different pieces. Within days of its release, “Banksy Captured” sold 5,000 copies, and they are now selling on eBay for about £600 each. Lazarides and Banksy have since gone their separate ways to pursue different projects. Lazarides wants to continue to help underground artists find a place that doesn’t require them to commit to the snobbery requirements and expectations of art galleries: “Affordable art, like we did back in the day. I want to use this as a model for how to sell artists’ work. No third parties. Just me and the public. I can be an art world gangster again.”

© Zach Gibson for Getty Images on CNN.com

New statue of a African American soldier, respond to Confederate memorials

Kehinde Wiley created a statue titled, Rumors of War that presents a young African American man on horseback, appearing to be heading into battle, that was unveiled in its final home on Dec. 10. Wiley is known for his painted portrait of President Obama that now hangs in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. This statue was originally revealed in Times Square back in September, but it has now found it’s permanent home in Virginia at the “Richmond’s Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA),” near the Confederate statue depicting Gen. James Ewell Brown (Jeb Stuart) that it was modeled after. The museum has stated that the statue is Wiley’s response to the many Confederate memorial sculptures and statues that are across the United States. This response is important in the middle of the long-running debate regarding the idea of memorializing the Confederacy in this country in any way at this point in American history.

Despite the representation of only one man in the piece, Wiley wants it to stand for all black men and society as a whole. “It’s about a society that can include all of us,” he said, “and in that sense, we should all be proud about what this America looks like.”

The Guardian announces top 10 photography shows of the year

The Guardian released a collection of this year’s best photography shows. Highlighting European exhibits which showcased the likes of Cindy Sherman, Diane Arbus, Nan Goldin, and others. Short, 100-word pieces were written describing each show that made the list, with links included to reviews and more elaborate descriptions of each exhibition. From Cindy Sherman’s retrospective in the National Portrait Gallery in London, to Nan Goldin’s first retrospective since 2002, titled Sirens that came out of her experiences with an Oxycontin addiction, each blurb talks about the conceptual and visual successes of the selected works.

The number one spot was given to the Czech photographer Libuše Jarcovjáková and her work Evokativ that chronicles her life during a time of political oppression. She is a self-taught photographer who captured images in the 1970s and ‘80s that were well received at this year’s Arles’ photo festival. The author of this review, Sean O’Hagan discussed that each of these exhibitions captivated him in differing ways, but he describes them all as exceptional photography shows worth seeing.

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