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Hossein Fardinfard
Hossein Fardinfard
Hossein Fardinfard

Hossein Fardinfard

Country: Iran
Birth: 1985

Netherlands-based Iranian documentary photographer Hossein Fardinfard (born 1985) took an unconventional path to his profession. After majoring in cartography, geomorphology, and IT, ultimately he discovered his aptitude for visual storytelling at the age of 30.

Fardinfard came to see photography as a means for observing society more intimately, and for knowing himself more deeply in turn. He has thus come to specialize in photography that explores social observation, human rights, and identity.

"I like storytelling not only as a process of documenting but also as a means for exerting a constructive influence on society, something like what Lewis Hine, the pioneer of photojournalism, did in his era in the USA. My relationships with photography subjects enhance my understanding of concepts like human rights. To understand this keyword, I need to know people first. Through knowing them, my spiritual investment in human rights has grown remarkably."

In the second phase of Fardinfard's artistic life -- at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague -- he had the chance to reflect more intently on the meaning and philosophies of photography and the pictorial arts. This experience also equipped him with principles of psychology and sociology that he readily applied to his photographic gaze. "It's more thrilling when I can find a scientific explanation of the social behaviors and interactions I'm capturing. I believe we can talk about Human Rights in scientific terms. There should be a point where the hard and soft sciences meet. I try to connect them and then visualize that point."
 

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More Great Photographers To Discover

Tim Flach
United Kingdom
1958
Tim Flach is an animal photographer with an interest in the way humans shape animals and shape their meaning while exploring the role of imagery in fostering an emotional connection. Bringing to life the complexity of the animal kingdom, his work ranges widely across species, united by a distinctive stylisation reflecting an interest in how we better connect people to the natural world. He has four major bodies of work concerning different subjects: Equus (2008) focusing on the horse, Dogs Gods (2010) on canines, More Than Human (2012) a broad exploration of the world’s species, and Endangered (2017) a powerful document of species on the edge of extinction. He has published five books; Endangered (2017), Evolution (2013), More than Human, (2012), Dogs Gods (2010) and Equus (2008). Flach is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society, and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from University of the Arts London in 2013. He lives and works in London with his wife and son. Source: timflach.com Over the past decade, Flach's work has increasingly focused on animals, ranging widely across species but united by a distinctive style that is derived from his concerns with anthropomorphism and anthropocentrism. His interests lie in the way humans shape animals, and shape their meaning. He has three major bodies of work: More Than Human, Dogs Gods, and Equus. Through the related books and exhibitions, Flach has attracted international interest. His images have been acquired by major public and private collections. Commissions by leading editorial and commercial clients have also garnered multiple awards, including three Cannes Lions. He has won the International Photography Award's Professional Photographer of the Year for fine art, and in 2013 was conferred with an Honorary Doctorate from Norwich University of the Arts, in recognition of his contribution to photography.
Fang Tong
China/Canada
Fang Tong is an awarded-winning photographer based in Vancouver Canada. In 2015, she won first prize in the Nikon International Photography Competition. She had an interview with Canada Broadcasting Corporation CBC Arts in 2019. Fang Tong had solo and group shows in cities such as Paris, Sicily, Budapest, Barcelona, London, Shanghai, and Vancouver. Fang Tong is a cinematic-style photographer, as a spectator of life. Her works are embedded with an implied narrative, which is left to the viewer to resolve over time with their own imagination. Reflecting her background in classical art, photography is carefully planned to control the frame and the expression of details, giving her work an ethos of a painter. As a bystander, Fang Tong captures the potential that photography can embody pieces with an eternal quality, thereby creating a slightly fictional world that resembles reality but transcends consciousness. Fang Tong’s passion is for her work to border on the surreal, yet hold back enough to keep it firmly in the real world. Her photos provoke audiences to create a narrative out of cinematic pictures. There may be no clearly defined story behind the scene, but there is a strong mood and atmosphere throughout the whole image. The imaginary world is strangely familiar while the narrative arc takes audiences on a hyper-visual ride through people's subconsciousness. She nurtures the balance between the real and the surreal that pulls her audiences into the world she created, but she also allows the audience to discover their own answers.
Maurizio Di Pietro
Maurizio Di Pietro is an Italian freelance documentary photographer, primarily focused on social and environmental issues. He graduated in 2001 with a degree in Computer Science and often incorporates his passion for science and technology into his work, along with a sense of intimacy and delicacy. After working for many years as a stage photographer, he became involved with several non-governmental organizations in Morocco, Sri Lanka, Guatemala, and the West Bank, where he discovered and developed a passion for documentary photography and soon began a career as a freelance photographer. Today he also works as a reportage photography teacher at the Factory10 photography school. His images have been published in national and international magazines such as National Geographic, Geo France, Der Spiegel, BBC, L’Espresso, and many others. His work has been awarded in prestigious international competitions, including the Sony World Photography Awards, Pictures of the Year, and Lucie. In 2023, he was honored as Environmental Photographer of the Year. Turkana’s Resilience: Turkana, in northwest Kenya, is the poorest and least developed county in the ASALs (Arid and Semi-Arid Lands). More than 60% of the inhabitants of the Turkana district are pastoralists, so their survival depends entirely on livestock, natural resources for food and daily activities. In the last few decades, the region has experienced a growing population, the air temperature increased by about 3 degrees, while more frequent and prolonged droughts have reduced the natural resource base. Rainfed agriculture is not possible. Pasture resources for livestock have dramatically reduced, encouraging those closest to Lake Turkana to turn to fishing as an alternative livelihood. Communication, roads, social services, and political support are almost non-existent, leaving those living around Lake Turkana physically isolated and politically marginalized. Chronic dependence on food aid is high. The area is the fuse of violent conflict, indeed proliferation of illegal arms from southern Sudan has contributed to the escalation of insecurity along the area’s shared borders with Ethiopia, Sudan, and Uganda and other counties in Kenya as Pokot and Marsabit. Warfare is traditionally an essential part of Turkana life and the principal occupation of young men. Weapons are considered a man’s proud possessions and the practical tool for increasing herds by raiding and for expanding their territory. Fear of conflict and prolonged drought have pushed many to move to urban centers, up to Nairobi, looking for a new life. Furthermore, significant oil reserves have been discovered recently in Turkana County. The dimensions are immense. The main basin in Turkana alone contains more than 600 million barrels of oil according to the UK-based operating company Tullow Oil. For the government of Kenya, the discovery of oil is very good news instead for the pastoral communities the effects of oil exploration are likely to be more ambivalent.
Alison Wright
United States
1961 | † 2022
Alison Wright, an award-winning documentary photographer and author, has travelled to 150 countries photographing indigenous cultures and people while covering issues concerning the human condition. She is a recipient of the Dorothea Lange Award in Documentary Photography, a two-time winner of the Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Award, and an Explorers Club Fellow. She was recently named a National Geographic Traveler of the Year as someone who travels "with a sense of passion and purpose." Alison has published ten books. Her upcoming book, Grit and Grace: Women at Work documents the empowerment of women working in global communities (Schiffer 2021). Her work has been published in numerous magazines including National Geographic, National Geographic Traveler, National Geographic Adventure, Outside, Islands and Smithsonian. Alison's life was nearly cut short during a devastating bus accident on a remote jungle road in Laos. Her best-selling memoir, Learning to Breathe; One Woman's Journey of Spirit and Survival, chronicles her inspirational story of survival, the years of rehabilitation and her ongoing determination to recover and continue traveling the world as an intrepid visual storyteller. This experience while working in post disaster/conflict areas inspired her to establish a foundation called Faces of Hope (facesofhope.org); a non-profit that globally supports women and children's rights by creating visual awareness and donating directly to grass-roots organizations that help sustain them through education and healthcare. About Human Tribe "The emotive beauty and grace of the human face, in all its diversity, will never cease to inspire me but it's the enduring spirit of our collective tribe of humanity that will always certainly amaze me. One of the many things I have learned during my years of global travel as a documentary photographer is that no matter how unique we may look in appearance, from the exotic to the mundane, we basically have the same universal desires and concerns. Our needs are actually quite simple: to love and be loved; to have a useful place in our society with some meaningful and fulfilling occupation in our life; work that will hopefully provide us with enough money in our pocket to get by; food on the table; education, health and safety for ourselves, our family and our children. The freedom to be oneself is a right that creates the exquisiteness of our human race. These portraits are an unguarded moment in the lives of a few of the people I have photographed from our remarkable human tapestry. Some are celebrating significant events, while others are living out ordinary days. Others are merely struggling to survive. Many are from countries whose lives are in flux or change due to war, natural disaster or the inevitable rapid progression of modernity. I feel drawn to those who live close to the land, documenting communities that may not last even another generation. Most are surprised that I actually wanted to stop and photograph someone who is considered in their culture to be such an ordinary looking person. From tribes in Africa, to nomads in Asia, survivors of post conflict and disaster, families and individuals around the world have graciously opened up their homes and hearts to me. Surprisingly, I have discovered that it is often the ones who have the least who share the most. I find compassion in what can seem to be a world of chaos. The planet, at times, can seem so vast, with the numbers almost too large for us to comprehend. But when you capture the look in someone's eyes, an intimate stare, a knowing glance, his or her situation becomes a shared experience, a more personal connection. Their eyes seem to radiate a dignity, a claim for a right to be seen, no matter what their circumstances. These eyes are what initially draws us in and connects us together. These photos are a celebration of the universal human spirit within us all. It is what bonds us as humankind, a continued thread, as together we continue this journey on the pilgrimage of life. "
Mariska Karto
Netherlands
Mariska Karto is an artist/ fine art-photographer born in Suriname (South-America) and raised in the Netherlands. In this age of rapidity and technical development, in which human is exposed to impersonal detachment of current technical era, Mariska Karto creates the vulnerable and intensive dimensions of human feelings and emotions. This all happens in the dreamworld she has created with her technique in which past and present have found their way to each other, in this era of transformation.She talks to you in a language without words using symbolism in a dreamworld of historic paintings atmosphere.Mystique, tragic and erotic are the keywords for her work. Her work are like old stories escaped from an old world of eternal dreams, eternal emotions and eternal feelings that existed for hundred of years but still repeats themselves as in a pattern of an earthy rite, in this new modern contemporary era.Her works are like poems and thoughts, restless ones but are also like whispers of thoughtless experiences, floating in a centuries long movement in time.Artist Statement"My work is based on a period in which photography did not exist, It was not until the end of the 18th century that it was invented. As a result of this, people thought that photography would make the art of painting disappear, especially in the post modern era, the traditional art had to make way for new technical developments. In my work I seek and found a respectful connection of technique and traditional craft through a striking contradiction. Painters in the Baroque/renaissance time were trying to paint as true-to-life with painting-techniques and color applications. What a camera does is portray the world in its realistic colors. That’s the contradiction in my work, it’s the other way around. I shoot realistic images and through an intensive transformation process, the work is changed, true-to-life in the characteristic Baroque colors and style of that time. Eventually, this says nothing about photography and technique, but more about the great masters of that gone era, they were able to be as realistic and accurate as possible with brush and paint the world in all its reality… That’s the great contradiction in my work, I’m leaving the visible reality of our current time, and bring the invisible realism of the past forward in my work. As a result of this, I pull away present time from its structure and then time appears to be just a definition, which slowly fades away, when current and past becomes interwoven with each other.” More background info: "I mix skills from different worlds together. It is a blend of skills of my (I'm originally a painter and sketcher, textiles - I was a textile artist some years ago, photography and image processing) that ultimately meets each other in this form of art. A main factor are also social emotional influences in my life which developed how I see, learn and finally understand things in an essential (psychological) way. All these (artistic) elements from different areas and personal influences come together in a work of mine."
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