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Beth Moon
Beth Moon
Beth Moon

Beth Moon

Country: United States
Birth: 1956

San Francisco Bay Area artist, Beth Moon, has gained international recognition for her large-scale, richly toned platinum prints. Since 1999, Moon’s work has appeared in more than sixty solo and group exhibitions in the United States, Italy, England, France, Israel, Brazil, Dubai, Singapore, and Canada. Her work is held in numerous public and private collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, and the Fox Talbot Museum in Wiltshire, England.

In 2013, Between Earth and Sky, the first monograph of her work, was published by Charta Art Books of Milan. In 2014, Abbeville Press published, Ancient Trees: Portraits of Time, with a third book to follow that same year from Galerie Vevais, La Lange Verte. Moon studied fine art at the University of Wisconsin before moving to England where she experimented with alternative photographic processes and learned to make platinum prints.

Source: www.vervegallery.com


Beth Moon was born in Neenah, Wisconsin and studied fine art at the University of Wisconsin. Classes in painting, life drawing, sculpture, and design would set the groundwork for her work in photography, which was to come years later. Moving to England, a country with a love for all things arboreal, gave her a fresh look at a land that boasts the largest concentration of ancient trees. Inspired by these trees she decided to make a series of their portraits. Unhappy with the photographic tonality and stability of ink-jet printing, she started to experiment with alternative printing processes, learning platinum/palladium printing, an ideal process for her vision. She concentrated on mastering this printing technique, doing all of her own printing.

“By using the longest lasting photographic process, I hope to speak about survival, not only of man and nature’s but to photography’s survival as well. For each print I mix ground platinum and palladium metals, making a tincture that is hand-coated onto heavy watercolor paper and exposed to light. There are many steps involved in creating the final print and these are as important to me as the capturing of the image," said Moon. A platinum print can last for centuries, drawing on the common theme of time and survival, pairing photographic subject and process.

Source: www.josephsaxton.com

 

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More Great Photographers To Discover

Ralph Gibson
United States
1939
Ralph Gibson is an American art photographer best known for his photographic books. His images often incorporate fragments with erotic and mysterious undertones, building narrative meaning through contextualization and surreal juxtaposition. Ralph Gibson studied photography while in the US Navy and then at the San Francisco Art Institute. He began his professional career as an assistant to Dorothea Lange and went on to work with Robert Frank on two films. Gibson has maintained a lifelong fascination with books and book-making. Since the appearance in 1970 of The Somnambulist, his work has been steadily impelled towards the printed page. To date he has produced over 40 monographs, his most current projects being State of the Axe published by Yale University Press in Fall of 2008 and Nude by Taschen (2009). His photographs are included in over one hundred and fifty museum collections around the world, and have appeared in hundreds of exhibitions. Gibson has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1973, 1975, 1986), a Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (D.A.A.D.) Exchange, Berlin (1977), a New York State Council of the Arts (C.A.P.S.) fellowship (1977), and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (1985). The Rencontres d'Arles festival presented his work in 1975, 1976, 1977, 1979, 1989 and 1994. I embrace the abstract in photography and exist on a few bits of order extracted from the chaos of reality. -- Ralph Gibson His book Syntax received a mention for the Rencontres d'Arles Book Award in 1983. He was decorated as an Officier de L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (1986) and appointed, Commandeur de L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2005) by the French government. His awards include: Leica Medal of Excellence Award (1988), "150 Years of Photography" Award, Photographic Society of Japan (1989), a Grande Medaille de la Ville d'Arles (1994) and the Lucie Award for lifetime achievement (2008). Gibson also received an honorary doctorate of Fine Arts from the University of Maryland (1991), and a second honorary doctorate from the Ohio Wesleyan University (1998). He has worked exclusively with Leica for almost 50 years. Gibson currently lives in New York and travels frequently to Europe and Brazil.Source: Wikipedia Having begun his acclaimed photographic career as an apprentice to the great documentarians Dorothea Lange and Robert Frank, Ralph Gibson is known for his highly distinctive vision in still photography. By intensifying contrast and emphasizing the grain of the film in his prints, Gibson concentrates on the minute details: the edge of a café table, the arc of a hip, the glint of a fork. Gibson’s works are both formally vigorous and eternally evocative. His photographs are in major private and public collections worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.Source: Weston Gallery I’m interested in producing truncated shapes in proportion to the frame and composition, shapes that are preferably luminous. I’m not interested in the full-figure. I want to abstract forms. -- Ralph Gibson
 JR
France
1983
JR has the largest art gallery in the world. Thanks to his photographic collage technique, he exhibits his work free of charge on the walls of the whole world - attracting the attention of those who do not usually go to museums. Originator of the 28 Millimeters Project which he started in and around Clichy-Montfermeil in 2004, continued in the Middle East with Face 2 Face (2007), in Brazil and Kenya for Women Are Heroes (2008-2011), the documentary for which was presented at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010 (Critics' Week). JR has created "Infiltrating art". During his collage activities, the local communities take part in the act of artistic creation, with no stage separating actors from spectators. The anonymity of JR and the absence of any explanation accompanying his huge portraits leave him with a free space in which issues and actors, performers and passers-by meet, forming the essence of his work. In 2011 he received the Ted Prize, giving him the opportunity to make a vow to change the world. He created Inside Out, an international participatory art project that allows people from around the world to receive a print of their portrait and then billboard it as support for an idea, a project, an action and share that experience. In 2014, working with the New York City Ballet, he used the language of dance to tell his version of the riots in the Clichy-Montfermeil district. He created The Groves, a ballet and short film, the music for which was composed by Woodkid, Hans Zimmer and Pharrell Williams, and which was presented at the Tribeca Film Festival. At the same time, JR worked in the abandoned hospital of Ellis Island, an important place in the history of immigration - and made the short film ELLIS, with Robert De Niro. In 2016, JR was invited by the Louvre, whose pyramid he made disappear the with the help of an astonishing anamorphosis. The same year, during the Olympic Games in Rio, he created gigantic new sculptural installations throughout the city, to underline the beauty of the sporting gesture. JR & Agnès Varda - Faces, Places. In 2017, he co-directed with Agnès Varda "Faces, Place"s, screened the same year in the official selection out of competition for the Cannes Film Festival. The film won the Golden Eye (for best documentary) and was nominated for a Caesar and an Oscar in the same category in 2018. He has received other awards around the world. In 2013, the first retrospectives of JR's work took place in Tokyo (at the Watari-Um Museum) and the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center, followed by exhibitions at the Frieder Burda Museum in Baden Baden in 2014, and at the HOCA Foundation in Hong Kong in 2015. He exhibited in 2018 at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, and in 2019 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) and the Brooklyn Museum. Source: jr-art.net
Jill Freedman
United States
1939 | † 2109
Jill Freedman was a highly respected New York City documentary photographer whose award-winning work is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the International Center of Photography, George Eastman House, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the New York Public Library, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, among others. She appeared in solo and group exhibitions throughout the world, and contributed to many prominent publications. Jill Freedman was best known for her street and documentary photography, recalling the work of André Kertész, W. Eugene Smith, Dorothea Lange, and Cartier-Bresson. She published seven books: Resurrection City; Circus Days; Firehouse; Street Cops; A Time That Was: Irish Moments; Jill’s Dogs; and Ireland Ever. Jill Freedman lived and worked on the Upper West Side of New York City. The Joy of Photography "When I was seven I found old Life Magazines in the attic. My parents had kept the ones from the war and for a year I used to go up there after school, look at the pictures, cry, then go play softball. When my parents realized that I had found them and how they affected me, they burned them, but it was too late, those pictures had burned into my brain. Outwardly I was normal, but those images were always with me, and in my dreams. Even now I can see them, the man who had tried to escape the burning barn, the concentration camp. I majored in Sociology in college, then spent a few years traveling around Europe singing for my supper. I’d spend the days wandering around, searching for adventure, meeting all kinds of eccentric characters and loving their stories. When I ran out of money I’d sing again. I settled in New York, got a job, tried to figure out what I wanted to do. Something meaningful, not just work. I was starting to worry. Then one day I woke up and wanted a camera. I borrowed one. I had never taken a picture before, and as soon as I held it in my hands it felt good. I never had the sense of holding a machine. I read the instructions, went out into the street, shot two rolls, had them developed. I was thunderstruck. It were as though I had been taking pictures for years, but in my head, without a camera. “That’s it,” I said. “I’m a photographer.” What a relief. Photojournalism was always it for me. Those pictures in the attic had set my course. Those, and all the characters I’d met. To tell a story in the blink of an eye, have it printed so that millions of people could see it and wrap their fish in it, to have my pictures reach people the way those Life magazines had reached me, now that was doing something. I am self taught. I got a copywriting job to support myself and I started learning, devouring books and looking at good work, walking a lot, and shooting. Those early years were fired with an intensity and passion I had never felt before. I was obsessed and driven. I thought about photography all of the time. And my pictures, if no one else had liked them, it wouldn’t have mattered, I loved them. Sometimes I’d look at them and think, What if I wake up one day and it’s gone? What if it goes away like it came? With each paycheck I bought equipment and built a darkroom and when I finally made my first print, I was hooked for good. It was the first time that I had ever finished something I had started. My father used to say, “You blow hot and cold.” But it was magic, watching it come up in the developer. I still feel it. I worked hard, learning my craft. I like to work two ways, either on a specific idea or just wandering around, getting lost, snapping. Eventually, all the wanderings go together, and then I find out what I’ve been doing. Photography is magic. You can stop time itself. Catch slivers of moments to savor and share time and again. Tell beautiful silver stories, one photo alone, or many playing together to form a book. A photograph is a sharing, it says “Hey, look at this!”, it’s a miracle, is what it is. And when you’re going good and you get a new picture you love, there’s nothing better. That’s the joy of photography, and the fun." -- Jill Freedman Source: www.jillfreedman.com Freedman was born in Pittsburgh in 1939 to a traveling salesman and a nurse. After college, she traveled to Israel and England before taking up copywriting jobs in New York to sustain herself. She had not grown up taking photographs, but she said in New York one day she “woke and wanted a camera,” according to an essay she published on her website. She wrote that she was inspired by copies of Life Magazine she had pored over as a child. Looking back on a photograph from the early years of her career in a 2017 interview with The Guardian, Freedman said activism and protests had been the catalysts for her photography: "I studied sociology and anthropology and now realise that what I’ve been doing with my camera all these years is documenting human behavior. But I was taking pictures in my head long before I became a photographer. It was the Vietnam war that changed everything for me. I was angry and wanted to photograph anti-war demonstrations, so got my first camera." After her stint in activism, Freedman joined the circus for several months, taking mesmerizing photographs of clowns, chained elephants, and beartamers. Freedman applied a similar level of vigor and rigor to documenting the lives of public servants, photographing intimate moments of firefighters’ and policemen’s work. She followed firefighters in Harlem and the South Bronx for two years at a time women tended to not be allowed in these environments, offering her an unguarded view of their lives. She also took a positive view of cops and thought they faced unfair criticism. “I set out to deglamorize violence,” Freedman told the New York Times in 2015. In the 1980s, Freedman started to work less due to health complications, receiving a breast cancer diagnosis in 1988 and breaking her pelvis later. She had hoped to create one last photobook before she died, to be titled Madhattan, and was featured in the street photography documentary Everybody Street (2013), alongside the likes of Bruce Davidson and Joel Meyerowitz. The Steven Kasher Gallery organized an exhibition spanning four decades of her career in 2015 and, in 2017, a show devoted to her Resurrection City photographs.Source: Artsy
John Engstead
United States
1909 | † 1983
John Engstead (22 September 1909 in California - 15 April 1983 in West Hollywood, California) was an American photographer. Engstead began his career in 1926, when he was hired as an office boy by Paramount Pictures' head of studio publicity, Harold Harley. In 1927, Engstead pleased his boss by arranging a photo session for actress Clara Bow with photographer Otto Dyer using an outdoor setting which was unusual at that time. Engstead's creative direction of photographs of actress Louise Brooks led to a promotion to art supervisor, where he oversaw the production of Paramount's publicity stills. In 1932, due to a strike by photographers, Engstead assumed the position of studio portrait photographer, despite having never previously photographed anyone. Actor Cary Grant posed for his practice shots. He returned to his job as art supervisor after the strike was resolved. In 1941, Paramount Pictures fired Engstead, and Harper's Bazaar hired him for freelance advertising and portrait photography assignments. From 1941 to 1949, he took fashion photography assignments from numerous other magazines, including Collier's, Esquire, House Beautiful, Ladies Home Journal, Life, Look, Mademoiselle, McCall's, Vogue, and Women's Home Companion. In the 1940s, Engstead photographed many celebrities, including Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Maureen O'Hara and Shirley Temple. Unlike other photographers, he often shot his subjects at home or outdoors, and his portraits of a young Judy Garland in Carmel, California were particularly successful. During this decade, he built a studio in Los Angeles that became a gathering place for celebrities. Engstead continued to photograph movie stars and other celebrities through the 1950s (Marilyn Monroe) and 1960s. He produced promotional material for many television personalities, including Pat Boone, Carmel Quinn, Donna Reed, Ozzie and Harriet, Eve Arden, and Lucille Ball. He also shot cover photos for albums recorded by singers such as Peggy Lee and Connie Francis, as well as society portraits. His work extended into governmental figures in the 1950s, including then-Second Lady Pat Nixon. Engstead closed his studio in 1970 but continued to accept special portrait and television assignments until his death in 1984 at age 72. Engstead's images are represented by the Motion Picture and Television Photo Archive and can be viewed by the public at MPTV.net. Source: Wikipedia Engstead began his career in 1926, when he was hired as an office boy by Paramount Pictures’ head of studio publicity. Engstead impressed bosses and was promoted to art supervisor, where he oversaw the production of Paramount’s publicity stills. In 1932, Engstead assumed the position of studio portrait photographer, despite having never previously photographed anyone. By 1941, Engstead was working for various magazines, including Harper’s Bazaar, Esquire, Life, Look and Vogue. Engstead built a studio in Los Angeles that became a gathering place for celebrities. Engstead continued to photograph movie stars and other celebrities through the 1950s and 1960s. Engstead closed his studio in 1970 but continued to accept special portrait and television assignments until his death.Source: Motion Picture and Television Photo Archive
Alberto  del Hoyo Mora
Alberto del Hoyo is a Spanish photographer living in Tenerife. He holds an MBA from the Instituto de Empresa Business School and is a graduate in Business Administration and Photography. His own curiosity about the different forms of life has taken him to remote tribal territories in Asia, South America and Africa in search of the distinctive beauty and variety of his people. In 2016, after 2 years of incursions into the Omo Valley of Ethiopia, he founded Pics 4 Pills. Modest fundraising initiative for the people of the Omo Valley Three years later, at the end of 2018 he published the book Mystic Valley. Photographic travel notebook fruit of 4 years of photographic incursions in the Omo Valley. 100% of the revenues from sales are destined to solidarity projects in the different photographed tribal areas. Also in 2018, Alberto presented the Fine Art portrait exhibition with the same name "Mystic Valley", as a complement of the book. The objective is responsible photographic dissemination. Show the beauty of heterogeneity and cultural identity. About Mystic Valley Nadoria is a 13 years old girl of the Suri tribe in Ethiopia, lives in a small mountain village near the border with Sudan. She is the daughter of one of the elders of the tribe. The size of her ear plate indicates the extent of her dowry. "The bigger my ear plate, the higher number of cows my family will get from my marriage". Barduri, is a young man of 17 years of the same Suri tribe in Ethiopia. He has lost vision in his right eye as a result of a wound during the celebration of the "stick fight", ancestral ceremony consisting of an unprotected one-on-one stick fight battle against young members of the neighboring tribes. The fights can be furious and can result in death. A ritual for the transition of young stars to men. Far from feeling sorry Barduri feels pride, he has shown his family that he is a brave man, he has become a man, a warrior of honor. He has won his right in the tribe to be able to choose his wife and that she respect him. From the beginning of history the human race is composed of a large number of cultures, people and tribes. Each one has its own way of life, values and social rituals. The portraits of these people invite our conscience to remember the importance of understanding cultural identities in all their variety. Portraits of the fragility of a female childhood subrogated to warriors of honor. Portraits of his reality. It is vast, silent. Magical. Omo Valley
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