Four of my images from the series Young and Abandoned, portraits of orphans on the verge of institutionalization in rural Jiangsu Province, China, will be included in an exhibition at Fe艺术iv’Art (Feztiv Art) in Shanghai, China, from January 22-26th, 2010. There is an opening on January 22 at 6:30 pm. I'll be there. The festival was created by the Artdidact, the Artistic Commission of the French Junior Chamber International of Shanghai, whose aim is "to take part and contribute to the progress of the global community by giving to the young the opportunity to develop their leadership skills, their social responsibility and the necessary solidarity for taking actions to produce positive changes. Members of the JCI identify and realize projects to serve the positive evolution of their city in all fields: arts, social, economics, cultural, community…” The subject of the exhibition is "China Youth," and the pictures will be on display at Art + Shanghai Gallery at Fumin Lu, Lane 22, House 2, (Near Yanan Lu). Phone: +86-21 6248 4388.

I'm excited to announce that I've been awarded an Honorable Mention for Sports Action in the 2009 Atlanta Photojournalism Contest for my photo (above) of Spanky Spangler's botched daredevil jump at Butte, Montana's Evel Kenievel Days festival. As you can see in a shot taken 1 second earlier, I don't have the only pictures of the crash....

A while back, Jonathan Cherry asked me if I'd answer a few questions for his new project, Mull It Over. After delays on my part, the resulting interview is up on his site, alongside the likes of Daniel Shea and Phillip Toledano and Emilio Granado and others. The process gave me a chance to think about my own work in a way that I haven't done so recently, and for that alone the interview was valuable to me. Big thanks to Jon Cherry for the opportunity to be a part of his project.

Thanks to Michael Shaw of BagNewsNotes for including dvafoto, my blog with Matt Lutton, in the top 10 list of visual politics/photojournalism blogs over at blogs.com. We've been seeing steady increases in discussion, traffic, and linking over the past year that dvafoto has been going strong, and we have no inclination to stop. Here's to another year.

I've returned to China after a successful round of editor meetings in New York. In Jiangsu Province, at the moment, but quickly will be en route to Sichuan Province. Facebook remains blocked by the Great Firewall. I can be reached by email: [email protected], by skype: m.scott.brauer, or by phone: +86-13770324102 or +1 (917) 512-3473.