The photographers (row by row, left to right)

Jen Davis
Santiago Mostyn

Elizabeth Weinberg
Marvin Orellana

David Wright
Annie Ling

Samantha Contis
Bon Duke

Curan Hatleberg
Ina Jang

LaToya Ruby Frazier
Dru Donovan

iO Tillet Wright (not shown)

Introducing Meet, a beautiful hotel-like New York City-based collaborative rental space designed by Marc and Sara Schiller, co-founders of popular street-art site Wooster Collective. From art openings with Phil Toledano to creative powwows with SwissMiss, this creative 2500 square foot loft in Soho offers much-needed space for creative collaboration and community.

Sunny shots from Brooklyn for your Saturday via NYC-based photographer Valery Rizzo.

You should check out this great blog while you’re at it.

Work by Flora Hanitijo, New York-based photographer by way of Macau and Montreal. Hanitijo has received a slew of laudable accolades, including being named in PDN 30 as a photographer to watch in 2009. I’ve had her work bookmarked for months and thought this cloudy morning was the perfect time to showcase her work.

While in Las Vegas last week for the apparel shows, I stopped by sales and branding agency Indigo Showroom‘s booth. While looking through their client roster, I discovered Uhuru, a Brooklyn-based furniture company focused on environmental sustainability with an avant garde design sense. Uhuru was founded in 2004 by RISD grads Jason Horvath and Bill Hilgendorf.

“We strongly agree with the shaker assertion that ‘beauty rests on utility’ We strive to make furniture and products that are beautiful in their simplicity with an acute awareness of materials, and craft. Many of the items we create utilize materials that have been reclaimed, recycled, repurposed, reused or otherwise rejected from their original function.”

If you’re visiting or living in New York, you’re probably hiding out from the cold and snow in your tiny apartment or hotel room. Mama’s Food Shop (200 East 3rd Street, btwn Ave A + B) is a reason to pile on the scarves, pull on the gloves and trudge to the Lower East Side.

Run by Chicago-native brothers Jeremiah and Brendan Clancy, this comfort-food focused restaurant will send your blood happily to your stomach, where it belongs. A member of the staff (perhaps the third Clancy sibling, Erin) will hand you a heaping plate of incredible comfort food that you will eat happily under dozens of framed portraits of Mom.

Jeremiah, a NYU Tisch grad, photographer, video artist, father of two, and member of Fischerspooner runs the front of the house. Brendan is a formally trained chef who quickly moved up the ladder in fine-dining establishments around the world, including the W Hotel in Mexico City. Obviously, these two don’t mess around.

So, pull on your boots and head down to Mama’s Food Shop to see the Clancy brothers tonight. Done and done. And please note that a “vintage” photo of the Clancy brothers’ Mom, Christine, will be front and center (middle photo, above). She’s the one with candles lit by her framed image. And if you get lucky, Chris will be visiting from Chicago when you stop by.

Manjari Sharma‘s series of shower images are intimate, voyeuristic and eerily beautiful. For the past few months, the Indian-born, New York-based photographer has been inviting men and women who are essentially strangers into her bathroom-turned-studio to create portraits. She has subsequently experienced “the fastest, most disarming relationships I have formed with people in this country.”

More comments from her website:
“I noticed that once the warm water ran over my subjects bodies it often relieved them of some of the awkwardness the camera brought about. Once they were relaxed, the bathroom, formerly a beauty parlor, now turned into a confessional and I the hair dresser. With ever new visit I’ve had a new protagonist; a new plot and a new parable of hurt and heroism that has come undone under my shower.”

Spotted on photographer Elizabeth Fleming‘s blog.

I recently came upon the work of Tobin Yelland, a northern California-born, New York based photographer. His work is rough around the edges in the best way, covering everything from skaters to gang members. He started off early-on shooting for Thrasher as a teenager, and since his work has been exhibited The Luggage Store, Deitch Projects, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

I realize I have posted about this little New York-based store before, but you’ll thank me for reminding you about it! Go to Kiosk‘s site this weekend and shop dozens of creative, odd, simple, quirkly, original, useful, friendly, inexpensive gifts for nearly everyone on your list. Okay, maybe everyone.

The store’s concept is best described on their blog:

Kiosk offers a curated range of prod­ucts from all over the world in an exhi­bi­tion for­mat. Every­thing is sourced dur­ing our trav­els; we build the col­lec­tion while away and then fea­ture what we found at KIOSK for 4 — 6 months. Our cur­rent show is AMERICAN INSTALLMENT #2, in addi­tion we also have an “Ongo­ing” col­lec­tion of objects from pre­vi­ous exhibitions.

We opened the store to offer an alter­na­tive to over-design. We con­sider the objects we stock to be hum­ble, straight­for­ward and beau­ti­ful for their sim­plic­ity and direct­ness. Often they are tra­di­tional goods that have devel­oped over gen­er­a­tions or anony­mous design found in gen­eral stores, DIYs and kiosks. Prod­ucts cre­ated by not one per­son­al­ity but things that are the result of local aes­thet­ics and needs. Their beauty is some­times hard to see in today’s mar­ket; our moti­va­tion to start Kiosk was to shed some light on these anony­mous objects and sup­port inde­pen­dent producers.

A little bright and sparkly neon inspiration from the streets of Manhattan.