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Peikwen Cheng
Peikwen Cheng
Peikwen Cheng

Peikwen Cheng

Country: China
Birth: 1975

Peikwen Cheng studied product design at Stanford University, graduating in 1997. He is a self-taught photographer who has exhibited his work in Cambodia, Canada, China, Germany, Greece, Poland, Singapore, Sweden, Syria, United Kingdom and United States. Before turning his focus to art, he was a designer and was awarded with a United States Design Patent and an Industrial Design Excellence Award by the Industrial Design Society of America. Peikwen Cheng lives in Beijing.

Peikwen Cheng is a Chinese-American artist based in New York and Shanghai. His work explores the process of change across cultures, time and place and seeks to discover magical moments in unexpected places.

His art has been exhibited in Belgium, Cambodia, Canada, China, Luxembourg, Germany, Greece, Poland, Singapore, Sweden, Syria, United Kingdom and the United States; and his work has been featured by BBC, CNN, BBC, Financial Times, The Guardian, National Public Radio, The Sunday Times, and Vogue.

He has been recognized by international awards including the Three Shadows Photography Award, National Geographic Award at the Eddie Adams Workshop, C/O Berlin Talents Award, Renaissance Photography Prize Category Winner, Flash Forward Selected Winner by the Magenta Foundation, Px3, and International Photography Awards. And as a designer, he was awarded with a United States Design Patent and an Industrial Design Excellence Award by the Industrial Design Society of America.

He is a graduate of Stanford University, Tsinghua University and Insead.

Source: Visura

 

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More Great Photographers To Discover

Pieter Hugo
South Africa
1976
Pieter Hugo was born 1976 and grew up in Cape Town, South Africa. He is a South African photographer who primarily works in portraiture and whose work engages with both documentary and art traditions with a focus on African communities. Hugo is self-taught, having picked up a camera aged 10. He remembers the first image he printed, which was a homeless person in Johannes. After working in the film industry in Cape Town, Pieter Hugo spent a two-year Residency at Fabrica, Treviso, Italy. Hugo has called himself a political-with-a-small-p photographer... it's hard not to be as soon as you pick up a camera in South Africa'. He believes that "the power of photography is inherently voyeuristic but I want that desire to look to be confronted." He also states that he is "deeply suspicious of the power of photography." Early on in his career he noticed that, "he often found himself being critically scrutinized by the subject he was photographing. It was then that he decided to switch to a larger and more cumbersome format of photography, one that would require negotiating consent and dialogue with the person being photographed - a more sedate and contemplative approach." He is known to use a Hasselblad camera and regularly shoots in the 4x5 format. His influences range from South African photojournalist David Goldblatt to Boris Mikhailov. However, his work reacts against 'the culture of realism that defined South African photography in the struggle years.' Hugo's first major photo collection Looking Aside consisted of a collection of portraits of people "whose appearance makes us look aside", his subjects including the blind, people with albinism, the aged, his family and himself. Explaining his interest in the marginal he has said, "My homeland is Africa, but I'm white. I feel African, whatever that means, but if you ask anyone in South Africa if I'm African, they will almost certainly say no. I don't fit into the social topography of my country and that certainly fuelled why I became a photographer." This was followed by Rwanda 2004: Vestiges of a Genocide which the Rwanda Genocide Institute describes as offering "a forensic view of some of the sites of mass execution and graves that stand as lingering memorials to the many thousands of people slaughtered." His most recognized work is the series called The Hyena & Other Men and which was published as a monograph. It has received a great deal of attention. Hugo won first prize in the Portraits section of the World Press Photo 2005 for a portrait of a man with a hyena. In 2007, Hugo received the Standard Bank Young Artist Award 07. Hugo was also working on a series of photographs called Messina/Mussina that were taken in the town of Musina on the border between Zimbabwe and South Africa and which was published as a monograph. At the time Colors magazine asked Hugo to work on an AIDS story and he was fascinated by the marginal aspect of the town. This was followed by a return to Nigeria with Nollywood, which consists of pictures of the Nigerian film industry. Permanent Error followed in 2011 where Hugo photographed the people and landscape of an expansive dump of obsolete technology in Ghana. Sean O'Toole writes "if Nollywood was playfully over-the-top, a smart riposte to accusations of freakishness and racism leveled at his photography..., Permanent Error marks Hugo’s return to a less self-reflexive mode of practice." In 2011 Hugo collaborated with Michel Cleary and co-directed the video of South African producer/DJ Spoek Mathambo's cover version of Joy Division's She's Lost Control, the fourth single from his album Mshini Wam. Commissioned by Italian luxury label Bottega Veneta, Hugo photographed models Amanda Murphy and Mark Cox for the brand’s spring/summer 2014 campaign, with the images shot in a wood in New Jersey. In the Spring of 2014, Hugo was commissioned by Creative Court to go to Rwanda and capture stories of forgiveness as a part of Creative Court's project Rwanda 20 Years: Portraits of Forgiveness. The project was displayed in The Hague in the Atrium of The Hague City Hall for the 20th commemoration of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. A selection of the photos have also been displayed in New York at the exhibition Post-Conflict which was curated by Bradley McCallum, Artist in Residence for the Coalition for the International Criminal Court. Flat Noodle Soup (2016) chronicles Hugo's lengthy engagement with the city of Beijing, exploring how concerns with expressing personal identity within societal norms and pressures are universal and transnational. La Cucaracha is a 2019 body of work made during four trips to Mexico over a two-year period. The photographic series explores Hugo's perception of the flamboyant and violent environment of Mexico with overt art historical references to the nation's visual canon of pre-colonial customs and revolutionary ideology.Source: Wikipedia Between 2006 and 2013, Pieter Hugo worked on a project that he called Kin. This deals with home, proximity, identification and a sense of belonging – something that, in South Africa, he has always experienced as being critical and riddled with conflict: How can one live in this country, which only shed its colonial heritage relatively recently, and which is plagued by racism and a growing chasm between rich and poor? Hugo shot photos at home, in townships and at historical sites, taking portraits of his pregnant wife, of domestic servants and of homeless people. The calm and clearly composed shots show beauty and ugliness, wealth and poverty, private and public, historical and topical. Without either idealising or dramatizing the subject matter, they paint a portrait of the complex society in South Africa today. This is because any notion of harmony in the “Rainbow Nation” is wishful thinking. Even twenty years after the end of apartheid, black and white South Africans are still very much divided. In the series of 94 platinum prints There Is A Place in Hell for Me and My Friends (2011-2012), Pieter Hugo explores the supposed differences between skin colours. To do so, he took portraits of himself and South African friends. The close-ups, generally in the form of frontal head and shoulder portraits, were digitally processed afterwards. The image manipulation, whereby the colour channels were translated into grey tones, emphasise the pigmentation of the skin, using UV irradiation to render visible skin damage and small blood vessels directly beneath the skin. The results are quite astounding: on these photographs, all people are coloured. There is no longer a difference between “white” and “black” skin, but rather a variety of individual shades. The portraits show the powerful presence of each individual and, at the same time, the fragility of all people and the softness and utter vulnerability of their outer shell. With his various photo series, Pieter Hugo has put together an impressive body of work in the space of just a few years. Through this intense perception of corporeality, he captures the complexity and inconsistency of society. Constants in his work include seriousness, neutrality and an underlying respect for his protagonists, whose dignity always remains intact. In this regard, his works are comparable with the monumental portrait works of August Sanders, who created a contemporary picture of the Weimar Republic with his large-scale cycle “Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts” (People of the 20th Century).Source: Priska Pasquer
Alejandra Nowiczewski
Italy/Argentina
1966
Born in Buenos Aires and based in Madrid since 2022, Alejandra Nowiczewski is a sworn translator and a photographer specializing in philosophical, social and environmental issues. She obtained a Master’s Degree in Photographic Projects from PhotoESPAÑA and completed several photography workshops and mentorship programs in Argentina and Madrid. She has recently exhibited in Madrid Penumbra, a conceptual photobook dummy based on a book she wrote on the translation of legal metaphor and its social dimension. Addressing metaphor and symbol, she presents her photographic series as a visual and metaphorical reinterpretation of processes, concepts or essential texts. Within the framework of contemporary photography, she seeks to explore the ability of the photographic document to suggest something more than itself, to serve as a conduit to visualize social, philosophical or environmental topics. Her works were featured in Artdoc Magazine and in its online exhibition. She was also a nominee in the reFocus Awards 2022, Black & White Photo Contest, Minimalism, and was selected for PhotoESPAÑA’s Descubrimientos PHE25 portfolio review. She has exhibited her photographic work in Buenos Aires (Rolf Art, Ingõt Arte, Pinta BAphoto 2024 and 2022, and BAphoto 2021) and Madrid (PhotoESPAÑA, Centro de Arte Alcobendas, Museo Zapadores Ciudad del Arte and PhotoESPAÑA, Galería Nueva Las Letras). Her works are also in private collections in Argentina. Statement: I intend that my work, in its form of expression, should have the potential to add meaning and raise awareness. In line with my training in translation and its social dimension, I am interested in creating visual metaphors from linguistic metaphors, with the aim of bringing the cognitive into the visual universe and thus broadening its understanding. My work also explores a variety of themes, ranging from philosophical to climate change, biodiversity and sustainability issues. In the first case, I try to awaken intuition regarding the symbolic; in the second, I compose my images in such a way that, beyond their aesthetic component, they raise awareness about these critical global issues, which I consider priority for human and natural systems. I also accompany my projects with documentary archives that support the research on these topics.
Matthew Finley
United States
1972
Matthew Finley uses his photography to express himself and connect to the world around him. With a variety of photography processes, he explores intimate emotions through gesture, line and performance to communicate his experience. Growing up queer in an unaccepting environment, Finley felt apart from the world around him. Now, as an adult working through social anxiety, the studio is a safe space to create where he can be vulnerable and express his true self. Creating and exhibiting his work is a way to forge relationships with viewers and help those who see themselves reflected in it to feel less alone. Finding inspiration in nature, classic art and found photographs, he address-es modern issues such as his coming out story, intimate relationships, and finding peace in our tumultuous world. Based in Los Angeles, Finley’s work has shown in solo and group shows in multiple galleries across the U.S. Most recently, his work was on the walls of the esteemed Fahey/Klein Gallery in Los Angeles with the likes of Herb Ritts and Herbert List. Other works have circled the globe as part of the FOTOFILMIC 17 traveling show and he has pieces in the permanent col-lections of the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College Chicago, The Museum of Art and History, Lancaster, and the Center for Fine Art Photography. His images have also appeared in publications including Oxford American, Shots Magazine, and Plates to Pixels where he won the Juror Award in The Visual Armistice 10th Annual Juried Showcase. Finley’s most current project An Impossibly Normal Life recently received Center Santa Fe’s 2024 Personal Award as well as the Center for Photographic Art’s 2024 LGBTQ+ Artist Grant. Article Exclusive Interview
Edouard Elias
I chose photography naturally. It is surely the result of a double education: separated between Egypt and France, I learned to consider images both as memories and objects that allowed me to transpose myself into places where I could only remain for a moment, but also as historical documents, more in accordance with my classical instruction. In addition, many cartoons have certainly trained me in a straight, frontal and clear frame, so I was very early aware of geopolitical events as well as of the problems of population movement linked to war or suffering. At the age of 18, after a A level, ignoring which way to choose, and to comply with family expectations, I went to a business school. It was not for me, no compatibility possible. I then attempted a reconversion in the school of photography in Nancy. It was a revelation, I was fitting in the right place. Different encounters, for example with the reporter Luca Catalano Gonzaga in Rome, with the books of the agency Magnum, with some documentaries on photography report, made me eager to watch History in progress, to live it through my camera and especially not to forget it. So, instead of completing my internship at the end of the year in an identity photo shop, I went to Turkey in the Syrian refugee camps and then to Syria, producing my first photoreport. My childhood allowed me to acquire the faculty of movement, not limiting myself to the borders of my village or the cities of my region. So I naturally started on the road of reporting. The conditions and the encounters engendered satisfy the need I have to answer personal questions. All the means necessary to photograph a human being in a difficult situation (pain, loss, war, poverty, suffering) result from a deep desire and a work on personal adaptability. Nevertheless, the essence of our work must be focused first and foremost on the subject. The results today of the image on the international scene leave me skeptical, but I think that these photographs, although they unfortunately are taking the risk of not changing the situation, will allow us to remember. I keep on practicing photo reportage. The Foreign Legion committed to the Central African Republic and then to its surroundings in France, punctuated my work for a year. Lebanon, Jordan on the Syrian refugee crisis with the organization Première Urgence Internationale, the Congo DRC on rape as a weapon of war and its doctor Denis Mukwege or the closed educational centers of the Judicial Police of Youth are, as well as the rescues of migrants in the Mediterranean, part of my subjects. Visa for the image allowed me to sell my first photographs of Aleppo in Syria, to meet professionals who will become dear friends. I have, besides my personal projects orders and projects to realize in France and I dedicate all of my activity to photography. My pictures have been published in: Paris Match, Der Spiegel, Sunday Times magazine, Time Lightbox, VSD, Le Monde, Figaro Magazine, Le Parisien Magazine, Polka, Le Point, Libération, LFI Leica international, Gala..."Source: edouardelias.net
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