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Marcin Owczarek
Marcin Owczarek
Marcin Owczarek

Marcin Owczarek

Country: Poland
Birth: 1985

My art has always been focusing on condition of our globe and the condition of man. My antiutopian, critical photography is based on the anthropological research. I focus on exploring and interpreting the impact of: new technologies, bio-science, unconscious, fears, morals, social situations, behaviors, habits, rituals, biological changes, the use of animals, depression in urban envi...ronments, destruction of the soil, overpopulation, deforestation, universal famine and - over human life. As a result, I create the image of the 21 century and the image of our current society. In this way, by commenting behaviour of human individuals I want to indicate that: Man is imperfect. Man is a savage, greedy rebel of Nature, living between the insanity and lunacy, away from his true nature. Man live in the play cage because he was captured by Illusions of this world: welfare tyranny, desire of possessing material things, consumption, jealousy, hate...what all in all led him to the broken relationship with the globe and other human beings. As a result I stress the present process of dehumanization, mechanization and standardization of human race, false norms and illusional values that was given for the truth to the society by religion, governments,laws,propaganda, false mirror of the television...etc. In my opinion, nowadays it is essential to articulate this kind of behavior, because the way which the present world run, might guide the human species: firstly- into a total slavery, then to new nuclear era, and finally to the total extinction...There is number of potential scenarios, but one of them is definitely Total Extinction... I admire the way of dadaism as well as surrealism. My spirit flies with counterculture and the idea of transgression. I regard my critical collages as the prediction of human degradation, and as a consequence - 'Apocalypse'....... Many wise people said that before but I will repeat: we are responsible for this world and for other human beings, and in our hands is decision: Do we want to live in coexistence or do want to reproduce another monsters to this world who will fight against each other in another nuclear war... What are the crucial implications of this? - The world's Future. "You pays your money and you takes your choice".
Marcin Owczarek, Lier 2011
 

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Wynn Bullock
United States
1902 | † 1975
Wynn Bullock (April 18, 1902 – November 16, 1975) was an American photographer whose work is included in over 90 major museum collections around the world. He received substantial critical acclaim during his lifetime, published numerous books and is mentioned in all the standard histories of modern photography. Bullock was born in Chicago and raised in South Pasadena, California. After high school graduation, he moved to New York to pursue a musical career and was hired as a chorus member in Irving Berlin’s Music Box Revue. He occasionally sang the primary tenor role when headliner John Steele was unable to appear and then was given a major role with the Music Box Review Road Company. During the mid-1920s, he furthered his career in Europe, studying voice and giving concerts in France, Germany and Italy. While living in Paris, Bullock became fascinated with the work of the Impressionists and post-Impressionists. He then discovered the work of Man Ray and László Moholy-Nagy and experienced an immediate affinity with photography, not only as an art form uniquely based on light, but also as a vehicle through which he could more creatively engage with the world. He bought his first camera and began taking pictures. During the Great Depression of the early 1930s, Bullock stopped his European travels and settled in West Virginia to manage his first wife's family business interests. He stopped singing professionally, completed some pre-law courses at the state university, and continued to take photographs as a hobby. In 1938, he moved his family back to Los Angeles and enrolled in law school at the University of Southern California where his mother Georgia Bullock (California's first woman jurist) had studied law. Completely dissatisfied after a few weeks, he left USC and became a student of photography at the nearby Art Center School. From 1938 to 1940, Bullock became deeply involved in exploring alternative processes such as solarization and bas relief. After graduation from Art Center, his experimental work was exhibited in one of Los Angeles County Museum of Art's early solo photographic exhibitions. During the early 40s, he worked as a commercial photographer and then enlisted in the Army. Released from the military to photograph for the aircraft industry, he was first employed at Lockheed and then headed the photographic department of Connors-Joyce until the end of the war. Remarried, and with a new daughter, Bullock traveled throughout California from 1945 to 1946, producing and selling postcard pictures while co-owning a commercial photographic business in Santa Maria. He also worked on developing a way to control the line effect of solarization for which he later was awarded two patents. In 1946, he settled with his family in Monterey, where he had obtained the photographic concession at the Fort Ord military base. He left the concession in 1959, but continued commercial free-lance work until 1968. A major turning point in Bullock's life as a creative photographer occurred in 1948, when he met Edward Weston. Inspired by the power and beauty of Weston's prints, he began to explore "straight photography" for himself. Throughout the decade of the 1950s, he devoted himself to developing his own vision, establishing deep, direct connections with nature. A lifelong learner, he also read widely in the areas of physics, general semantics, philosophy, psychology, eastern religion and art. Studying the work of such people as Albert Einstein, Korzybski, Alfred North Whitehead, Bertrand Russell, LaoTzu and Klee, he kept evolving his own dynamic system of principles and concepts that both reflected and nurtured his creative journey.Source: Wikipedia Bullock came into the public spotlight when Museum of Modern Art curator Edward Steichen chose two of his photographs for the 1955 Family of Man exhibition. When the exhibition was shown at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., his photograph Let There Be Light, was voted most popular. The second, Child in Forest, became one of the exhibition’s most memorable images. By the end of that decade, his work was widely exhibited and published worldwide and in 1957, he was honored with a medal from the Salon of International Photography. During the early 1960s, Bullock departed from the black-and-white imagery for which he was known and produced a major body of work, Color Light Abstractions, which expressed his belief that light is a great force at the heart of all being. Further image-making innovation included alternative approaches including extended time exposures, photograms, and negative printing. During the 1960s and 1970s Bullock expanded his influence through other roles. In 1968, he became a trustee and chairman of the exhibition committee during formative years at Friends of Photography in Carmel, California. He taught advanced photography courses at Chicago’s Institute of Design during Aaron Siskind’s sabbatical and at San Francisco State College at John Gutmann’s invitation. In the last decades of his life, he lectured widely, participated in many photographic seminars and symposia, and was a guest instructor for the Ansel Adams Yosemite Workshops. Bullock died at the age of 73 in November 1975. Along with Ansel Adams, Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind, and Frederick Sommer, he was one of the founding photographers whose archives established the Center for Creative Photography in 1975. The Bullock collection consists of 223 prints and 90 linear feet of archival materials, including personal papers, diaries, correspondence, activity files, audio-visual and photographic materials. The archive offers significant information on the exhibition, publication, and sale of Bullock's photographs; his experiments with solarization; his involvement with the Friends of Photography; and his teaching activities. The collection offers insight into Bullock's attitudes toward his own work and the development of his philosophical approach to the medium.Source: Center for Creative Photography
Sajedeh Zarei
I am an Iranian documentary photographer based in Shiraz, Iran. I was born in 1983 and have a MSc degree in Geology. Being a photographer has been my lifelong goal so I started photography since March 2018 and I left my job as an associate research director to focus all my attention on visual storytelling. As part of my career, I have performed some researches in water management and climate change. That is why my photography projects focus on environmental issues and their social impacts. In addition, cultural and social themes attract my curiosity. My aim is to photograph people and create stories that witness the multiplicity of human experience. The Longest Paths Begin With A Step Patrilineal is one of the important indicators of male superiority over women that is observed in all patriarchal societies such as Iran. The patriarchy considers the continuation of the generation through men. This project is about a rural mother who has been trying to change this belief and tradition since her pregnancy and provide an environment free of discrimination between her six-year-old daughter and her son. Although maintaining this balance in the village is difficult due to group life, but the mother's efforts have been so successful that the girl's relationship with her brother is sincere and away from jealousy. This project has started since the mother's pregnancy, about 17 months ago, and is a continuation of the project that started about 2 years ago in one of the remote villages of Fars province in southwestern Iran. This project is still ongoing. Under the Roof of the Davar
Lynn Gilbert
United States
1938
As a photographer, my mission is to document unrecorded areas of society, shining a light on the lives and stories of those often overlooked. This work is not just a passion, but a significant contribution to our understanding of the world. In the 1970s, I took environmental portraits of children from more than a hundred families in New York City from different socioeconomic backgrounds, shedding light on the diversity of urban life. My portrait of Louise Nevelson in 1976, one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, inspired my first book. Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Have Shaped Our Time, 1981, includes portraits of the trailblazers who transformed the American Landscape. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Billie Jean King, Julie Child, Gloria Steinem, and 42 other women share their inspiring stories in their own words. For almost a decade, I documented the interiors of the Traditional houses of Turkey to preserve a disappearing way of life. The municipal government in towns and villages across the country helped select these houses, a significant part of the country's cultural heritage. My book The Silk Road: Then and Now, 2017, includes images from this series. For four years, I documented the changing seasons of a world-class garden. It grew into a documentary about a multi-generational family of 30, which revolves around this garden. My work has been widely published and appeared on over 1,000 media platforms, including Netflix, Nvidia, Intel, National Geographic, MoMA, the British Museum, and The Washington Post. My portraits are in the Smithsonian, the National Portrait Gallery, the Smithsonian, and the New York Historical Society. Recently, I started photographing and interviewing 1970s kids from different socioeconomic backgrounds to document what happened to their lives. At 86, I'm still working as fast as I can. There's so much more I want to accomplish, and I'm determined to keep pushing the boundaries of my art. Artist Statement What is a Portrait? According to the dictionary it can be a painting, photograph, drawing, or even a description. A successful portrait is achieving an image that is a timeless representation of the subject. Even with inanimate things or portraits of spaces, the goal for me is the same, to capture its soul. I've photographed hundreds of people. I have a series of NYC children and another Women of Wisdom. Getting beyond that awkwardness is not easy. The clock is ticking. Even children are uncomfortable, under the scrutiny of a prying eye. As a photographer, I'm always nervous, ''will I get that one image.'' What works for me is to keep the conversation flowing. Eventually the awkwardness fades. When photographing children there are endless things to talk about, however it is not as simple with adults. If the person is well-known then I do a lot or research about them. As the conversation progresses, I keep the camera clicking. The first pictures never work but they are important part of the process. The subjects get used to the clicking and the images get better. After about an hour I find a person relaxes. That is the moment, I can capture my subject. Real character is revealed. The tilt of the head, the shoulders go soft, the fingers relax, the legs are at ease and the eyes are unguarded. That final image happens in a split second. Decades later the portrait must still work.
Massimo Vitali
Massimo Vitali was born in Como, Italy, in 1944. He moved to London after high-school, where he studied Photography at the London College of Printing. In the early Sixties he started working as a photojournalist, collaborating with many magazines and agencies in Italy and Europe. It was during this time that he met Simon Guttman, the founder of the agency Report, who was to become fundamental in Massimo's growth as a "Concerned Photographer." At the beginning of the Eighties, a growing mistrust in the belief that photography had an absolute capacity to reproduce the subtleties of reality led to a change in his career path. He began working as a cinematographer for television and cinema. However, his relationship with the still camera never ceased, and he eventually turned his attention back to "photography as a means for artistic research." His series of Italian beach panoramas, starting in 1995, began in the light of drastic political changes in Italy. Massimo started to observe his fellow countrymen very carefully. He depicted a "sanitized, complacent view of Italian normalities," at the same time revealing "the inner conditions and disturbances of normality: its cosmetic fakery, sexual innuendo, commodified leisure, deluded sense of affluence, and rigid conformism." (October Magazine 2006, no. 117, p. 90, How to Make Analogies in a Digital Age by Whitney Davis) Over the past 22 years he has developed a new approach to portraying the world, illuminating the apotheosis of the Herd, expressing and commenting through one of the most intriguing, palpable forms of contemporary art - Photography. He lives and works in Lucca, Italy, and in Berlin, Germany sometimes. Vitali’s work has been collected in four books: Natural Habitats, Landscapes With Figures, Beach and Disco, and Entering a New World. His photographs have been published in magazines, newspapers, and other periodicals around the world. Additionally, his work is represented in the world’s major museums, including the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, the Fond National Art Contemporain in Paris, the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris, the Fondation Cartier in Paris, and the Museo Luigi Pecci in Prato.
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