Benjamin Barakat

Rory Lewis is a British portrait photographer whose work carries the language of the Old Masters into the present day. A historian before he was a photographer — he read Medieval History at King's College London — Lewis came to the camera through painting: Holbein's court portraits, Caravaggio's tenebrism, Rembrandt's candour. Twenty-three years on, that education still governs the work, which he describes simply as capturing history, one portrait at a time.

Born in Bukhara, Uzbekistan, Behzod Boltaev is a visual artist and street photographer whose work explores human presence, architectural geometry, and the dramatic interplay of light and shadow. His photographic practice was shaped in part by his family heritage, as he learned the fundamentals of visual language from his father. Through his images, he brings together observation, composition, and atmosphere to reveal poetic connections between people and the spaces they inhabit.

John Gubertini is an Italian photographer and visual storyteller based in Tenerife, Canary Islands. With more than forty years behind the camera, his work is rooted in observation rather than spectacle, seeking the quiet emotional truths hidden within everyday life. His photography has a strong connection with black-and-white imagery, where light, shadow, and silence become essential elements of the narrative. His photographs often explore themes of memory, identity, vulnerability, and the invisible dialogue between people and their environment.

I was 8 years old in Lincoln, Nebraska, when my dad gave me my first camera. I cherished it. I also loved our family tape recorder—a novelty in 1963—and a listening device with a parabolic dish called “The Big Ear.” These things, plus a chromed Raleigh bike, were prized possessions. I had mobility and means to record sights and sounds. After many years in the midwest—running a business and raising a family—I moved to Sedona, Arizona.

Though photography was not Jim Lustenader’s profession, it became his calling decades ago, thanks to Life magazine, the Kodak Brownie and an enduring wanderlust. When he moved to New York City in 1970 to work in advertising, Lustenader discovered the excitement and challenges of street photography — its combination of photojournalism, documentary and pure surprise that invites the viewer to share unguarded slices of time.

My work explores the relationship between place, time, and memory, revealing the narratives that exist within both natural landscapes and human environments. It moves between quiet observation and more untamed experiences, but at its core, it is about connection to place and the way experience shapes how an image is seen and understood. I’m drawn to places where natural systems and human presence intersect.