Antonio Aragón Renuncio

Antonio Aragón Renuncio

Antonio Aragón Renuncio

Antonio Aragón Renuncio

Country: Spain
Birth: 1971

I have always loved photography... and tell stories. Browse faces, roads, lights... and shadows. I have no idea what that can last a lifetime -boredom prevails in too many hearts- that can happen within it. But what I know for sure, is the wonderful and perfect division of a second in magical fractions of light and color. And that in my world, in my mind it would be more accurate, it´s an argument more than enough to even let life steal. One "one hundred twenty-fifth of a second" may be the closest thing to eternity...

And there was light...
And that happened in some distant land across the vast ocean...
Antonio Aragón Renuncio

Since the mid-90s always involved with photography: Founds and chairs "Nostromo" Photographers Association (Spain). Photography professor (+15 years) in several universities: UC (Spain), UAM, UCA and URACCAN (Nicaragua)... He organizes and directs the I Photography Festival of Santander. He writes about photography in different publications and publishes reportages in international media. He was Publisher in "Xplorer" Magazine (Nicaragua). He has been free-lance photographer for several International News Agencies. General Manager in Xtreme Photo WS (Burkina Faso, Africa). He organizes and directs the Solidarity Photography Days "Fotografía un Mundo Mejor" (Murcia, Spain)...

In 2003 he founds, and since then he presides, the NGO OASIS (www.ongoasis.org) which develops every year medical projects in some of the most depressed areas of the Gulf of Guinea in Africa.

More than 80 exhibitions and several awards: IPOTY, Xativa International Photo Awards, Siena International Photo Awards, Moscow International Foto Awards, Rivne Photo Arts Cup, Odessa/Batumi Photo Days, Tokyo International Foto Awards, Direct Look, Photography Grant, HIPA, Indian Photo Festival, Photo Nikon Pro, III Documentary Photography Days, POYLatam, Humanity Photo Awards UNESCO/CFPA, II Photojournalism Biennial, CFC Medal, GEA Photowords, REVELA, FIAP & CEF Medal, Latin-American Documentary Photo Award...

Website

www.antonioaragonr.com

Inspiring Portfolios

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Vincenzo Barone

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Michael Ackerman

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© Michael Ackerman

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More Great Photographers To Discover

Lewis Hine

United States
1874 | † 1940

Lewis Hine was an American sociologist and photographer known for using his camera as a tool for social reform. His photographs were instrumental in changing child labor laws in the United States. There were two things I wanted to do. I wanted to show the things that had to be corrected. I wanted to show the things that had to be appreciated. -- Lewis Hine Lewis Hine was born on September 26, 1874, in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. After his father was killed in an accident, Hine began working and saving for college. He attended the University of Chicago, Columbia University, and New York University to study sociology. He became a teacher at the Ethical Culture School in New York City, where he encouraged his students to embrace photography as an instructional tool. Hine took his sociology pupils to New York Harbor's Ellis Island, where he photographed the thousands of immigrants that landed each day. Between 1904 and 1909, he shot over 200 plates (photographs) and realized that documentary photography could be used to effect social change and reform. Hine joined the Russell Sage Foundation's staff photographer in 1907, photographing life in the steel-making regions and inhabitants of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for the landmark sociological study The Pittsburgh Survey. The next year, he left his teaching post to work as a photographer for the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC). Lewis Hine recorded child labor during the next decade, with a concentration on the use of child labor in the Carolina Piedmont, to aid the NCLC's lobbying attempts to abolish the practice. In 1913, he chronicled juvenile laborers among cotton mill workers with a series of composite pictures by Francis Galton. Charlie Foster has a steady job in the Merrimack Mills. Huntsville, Alabama.© Lewis Hine / Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. Lewis Hine's work for the NCLC was frequently hazardous. Factory police and foremen routinely threatened him with violence or even death as a photographer. The immorality of child labor was intended to be hidden from the public at the time. Photography was not only forbidden, but it also posed a significant danger to the enterprise. Hine was compelled to disguise himself in order to gain access to the mills, mines, and factories. He worked as a fire inspector, postcard vendor, bible salesman, and even an industrial photographer documenting manufacturing technology. During and after World War I, he shot relief efforts for the American Red Cross in Europe. Hine created a series of work portraits in the 1920s and early 1930s that stressed the human contribution to modern industry. Lewis Hine was commissioned to photograph the Empire State Building's construction in 1930. He photographed the workers in perilous positions as they secured the structure's steel framework, taking many of the same hazards as the employees. He was hoisted out in a specially built basket 1,000 feet above Fifth Avenue to get the best views. He recalls hanging above the city at times, with nothing below but "a sheer drop of nearly a quarter-mile." Cherryville Mfg. Co., Cherryville, N.C. One of the smallest boys. Doffer. 1908© Lewis Hine / Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. During the Great Depression, Hine worked for the Red Cross, photographing drought relief in the American South, and for the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), documenting life in the mountains of eastern Tennessee. He was also the chief photographer for the Works Progress Administration's National Research Project, which investigated changes in the industry and their impact on employment. Hine was also on the faculty of the Ethical Culture Fieldston School. Lewis Hine was chosen as the photographer for the Works Projects Administration's National Research Project in 1936, but his work there was never completed. His final years were filled with professional struggles caused by the loss of government and corporate patronage. Hine hoped to participate in the Farm Security Administration photography project, but despite numerous letters to Roy Stryker, Stryker always declined. Hine lost his house and applied for welfare because few people were interested in his work, past or present. After an operation, he died on November 3, 1940, at Dobbs Ferry Hospital in Dobbs Ferry, New York. He was 66 years old at the time. Group of workers, including boys and girls, standing outdoors© Lewis Hine / Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. Hine's photographs aided the NCLC's campaign to end child labor, and the Children's Bureau was established in 1912. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 eventually put an end to child labor in the United States. Corydon Hine, Hine's son, donated his father's prints and negatives to the Photo League, which was disbanded in 1951. The Museum of Modern Art declined to accept his photographs, but the George Eastman House did. Wendy Lamb Books published Elizabeth Winthrop Alsop's historical fiction middle-grade novel Counting on Grace in 2006. The final chapters focus on Grace, a 12-year-old girl, and her life-changing encounter with Lewis Hine during his 1910 visit to a Vermont cotton mill known to employ a large number of child laborers. The iconic photograph of Grace's real-life counterpart, Addie Card (1897-1993), taken during Hine's undercover visit to the Pownal Cotton Mill, graces the cover. In 2016, TIME Magazine published colorized versions of several of Hine's photographs of child labor in the US. In the early days of my child labor activities I was an investigator with a camera attachment... but the emphasis became reversed until the camera stole the whole show. -- Lewis Hine Lewis Hine was trained to be an educator in Chicago and New York. A project photographing on Ellis Island with students from the Ethical Culture School in New York galvanized his recognition of the value of documentary photography in education. Soon after, he became a sociological photographer, establishing a studio in upstate New York in 1912. For nearly ten years Hine was the photographer for the National Child Labor Committee, contributing to exhibitions and the organization's publication, The Survey. Declaring that he "wanted to show things that had to be corrected," he was one of the earliest photographers to use the photograph as a documentary tool. Around 1920, however, Hine changed his studio publicity from "Social Photography by Lewis W. Hine" to "Lewis Wickes Hine, Interpretive Photography," to emphasize a more artistic approach to his imagemaking. Having joined the American Red Cross briefly in 1918, he continued to freelance for them through the 1930s. In 1936 Hine was appointed head photographer for the National Research Project of the Works Projects Administration, but his work for them was never completed. His last years were marked by professional struggles due to diminishing government and corporate patronage, and he died in 1940 at age sixty-six.Source: The J. Paul Getty Museum Born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, Lewis W. Hine studied sociology before moving to New York in 1901 to work at the Ethical Culture School, where he took up photography to enhance his teaching practices. By 1904 he had begun a series of photographs documenting the arrival of immigrants at Ellis Island; this project, along with his pictures of harsh labor conditions published in the Pittsburgh Survey, brought his work to the attention of the National Child Labor Committee. He served as its official photographer from 1911 to 1916, and later traveled with the Red Cross to Europe, where he documented the effects of World War I in France and the Balkans for Red Cross Magazine. After returning to the United States in 1922, he accepted commercial assignments, produced another series on Ellis Island immigrants, and photographed the construction of the Empire State Building. Several of these construction pictures were published in Men at Work (1932), a book celebrating the individual worker's interaction with machines in the modern world. Despite the success of this book, Hine's financial situation became desperate and his photography was virtually forgotten. Berenice Abbott and Elizabeth McCausland learned of his work through the New York City Photo League and mounted a traveling retrospective exhibition of his work to revive interest in it in 1939. Lewis Hine is best known for the documentary images of child labor practices that he produced under the aegis of the National Child Labor Committee from 1911 to 1916. These photographs not only have been credited as important in the passing of child labor laws, but also have been praised for their sympathetic depiction of individuals in abject working conditions. Hine labeled his pictures "photo-interpretations," emphasizing his subjective involvement with his subjects; this approach became the model for many later documentary photographers, such as Sid Grossman and Ben Shahn.Source: International Center of Photography

Bharat Patel

United Kingdom
1949

Bharat is an Indian born photographer living in Oxford, UK. At first embracing many genres of photography but since the last ten years he has been mainly involved in travel and documentary photography, some of these in collaboration with NGOs. Underlying influence in his photography is his upbringing in the British colonies and his exposure to different cultures and social structures. He has lived and experienced life in four different continents with vastly different life styles. From a young age his inclination to connect everything has had an influence on his photography. Mixed with this is his formal education as Electronic Engineer which exposed him to world of sub-atomic matter where order and hierarchy exist amongst the chaos, just like his experiences in real life. Bharat considers his work as “Photography for a Purpose”. This can be seen in his long-term project on “Nomadic Tribes of India”, “Brick Workers” and “Women Workers in the Informal Sector”. Always looking to preserve these as documentaries to retain the importance of what is present and that which may inform the future. Bharat uses both black and white and colour images depending on what he wants to portray. Without the distracting colours, his black and white images lay bare the subjects and show their inner selves. In his words everything is waiting to be photographed and to be remembered, it is how you photograph it that counts. Bharat is a member of the Royal Photographic Society.

Raghu Rai

India
1942

Raghu Rai (born in December 1942) qualified as a civil engineer, started photography at the age of 23 in 1965. He joined The Statesman newspaper as their chief photographer (1966 to 1976), and was then Picture Editor with Sunday—a weekly news magazine published from Calcutta (1977 to 1980). In 1971, impressed by Rai’s exhibition at Gallery Delpire, Paris, the legendary photographer Henri Cartier Bresson nominated him to Magnum Photos, the world’s most prestigious photographer’s cooperative which Rai could start only in 1977, Rai took over as Picture Editor-Visualiser- Photographer of India Today, India’s leading news magazine in its formative years. He worked on special issues and designs, contributing trailblazing picture essays on social, political and cultural themes of the decade (1982 to 1991). He was awarded the "Padmashree" in 1972 for the body of works he produced on Bangladesh refugees, the war and its surrender. In 1992 he was awarded “Photographer of the Year” in the United States for the story “Human Management of Wildlife in India” published in National Geographic. In 2009 he was conferred Officier des Arts et des Lettres by French Government. His photo essays have appeared in many of the world’s leading magazines and newspapers - including Time, Life, GEO, Le Figaro, Le Monde, Die Welt, The New York Times, Sunday The Times-London, Newsweek, Vogue, GQ, D magazine, Marie Claire, The Independent and The New Yorker. He has been an adjudicator for World Press Photo contest, Amsterdam and UNESCO’s International Photo Contest for many times. Currently, Raghu Rai lives in New Delhi and is working on his 57th book.Source: raghuraifoundation.org Rai has specialized in extensive coverage of India. He has produced a lot of books, including Raghu Rai's Delhi, The Sikhs, Calcutta, Khajuraho, Taj Mahal, Tibet in Exile, India, and Mother Teresa. His photo essays have appeared in many magazines and newspapers. For Greenpeace, he has completed an in-depth documentary project on the chemical disaster at Bhopal in 1984, which he covered as a journalist with India Today, and on its ongoing effects on the lives of gas victims. This work resulted in a book, Exposure: A Corporate Crime and three exhibitions that toured Europe, America, India and southeast Asia after 2004, the 20th anniversary of the disaster. Rai wanted the exhibition to support the many survivors through creating greater awareness, both about the tragedy, and about the victims – many who are still uncompensated – who continue to live in the contaminated environment around Bhopal. In 2003, while on an assignment for Geo Magazine in Bombay City, he switched to using a digital Nikon D100 camera "and from that moment to today, I haven't been able to go back to using film." In 2017, Avani Rai, his daughter followed her father on one of his trips to Kashmir to get an insight into his life and know him better. She documented this journey and released a documentary on it called Raghu Rai: An Unframed Portrait. It depicts a historical narrative through Raghu Rai's photographs through time, as he tells some of his unique experiences that not only affected him deeply but also important landmarks in the young yet crucial history of India. It was executive produced by Anurag Kashyap.Source: Wikipedia Rai was awarded the "Padmashree" in 1971, one of India’s highest civilian awards ever given to a photographer. In 1992, his National Geographic cover story Human Management of Wildlife in India won him widespread critical acclaim for the piece. Besides winning many national and international awards, Rai has exhibited his works in London, Paris, New York, Hamburg, Prague, Tokyo, Zurich and Sydney. His photo essays have appeared in many of the world’s leading magazines and newspapers. He has served three times on the jury of the World Press Photo and twice on the jury of UNESCO’s International Photo Contest. Raghu Rai lives in Delhi with his family and continues to be a correspondent of Magnum Photos.Source: Magnum Photos

Fenqiang Liu

United States

Fenqiang Liu is a fine art nature photographer based in Orlando, Florida. His work captures the enchanting essence of natural Florida and transforms it into a paradise within his imagination. With an education and experience in drawing, Chinese literature, cinema, and photography, Fenqiang utilizes his unique blend of cultural influences from both the East and West, along with his artistic background and mastery of photography, to express his thoughts and emotions in a distinct and meaningful way. Fenqiang's project, Secret Garden, aims to capture the exquisite moments of Great Egrets in their natural Florida habitat, showcasing their unparalleled beauty in all its splendor. His vision for this concept arises from overwhelming excitement and a burning desire to share his experiences with others. Recognizing that the power of a live encounter surpasses any portrayal, he strives to create an equally thrilling visual experience for the viewer. Through meticulously composed images, skillful use of light and shadow, and some digital enhancements, Fenqiang seeks to challenge the boundaries of traditional photography and create an ideal paradise that transcends realism, inspiring viewers with the captivating fantasy world within his imagination. Fenqiang has received multiple awards from international photo contests, a testament to his passion, creativity, and dedication to the art form. Secret Garden AAP Magazine Winner AAP Magazine 32 B&W

Marco Gualazzini

Marco Gualazzini

Italy
1976

Born in Parma in 1976, Marco Gualazzini began his career as a photographer in 2004, with his home town's local daily, La Gazzetta di Parma. His works include reportage photography on microfinance in India, on the freedom of expression in Myanmar, on the discrimination of minorities in Pakistan. For the last few years he has been covering Africa extensively. He devised and took part in the creation of a documentary for the Italian national TV network RAI on the caste system in India, which has been selected at IDFA- The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, and has been awarded with the Best Camera Work Award at the Aljazeera International Documentary Film Festival 2014. Gualazzini published in national and international titles and he has received numerous accolades, including the Getty Images Grant for Editorial Photography, the PDN and the World Press Photo. Represented by CONTRASTO Agency Resilient is his first book and it's published by ContrastoBooks PUBLICATION: The New York Times, GEO, Al-Jazeera, Paris Match, LIGHTBOX- TIME magazine, Courrier International, L'Express, 6Mois, Internazionale, L'Espresso, InsideOver, CNN, M (Le Monde), Der Spiegel, The Sunday Times Magazine, Newsweek Japan, and Vanity Fair. AWARDS: Nomination award HPA2011- the Humanity photo awards 2011 Finalist CGAP 2011- Microfinance Photograpy contest Short-Listed, premio internacional de fotografia humanitaria Luis ValtueÑa 2011 Short-Listed 3rd Lumix Festival for Young Photojournalism, Hannover 2012 Silver Medal, category press-war, Prix de la Photographie 2013 Premio giornalistico Marco Luchetta- Miran Hrovatin 2013, 1st Prize Getty Images Grants for Editorial Photography Recipient 2013 Short Listed Premio giornalistico Internazionale Marco Luchetta - Miran Hrovatin 2014 Lucie Fondation, Photo Taken Scholarship Recipient 2015 Winner in PDN Photo Annual photo contest 2016 Final 100 to The Other Hundred Educators, The Other Hundred 2016 Photographer of the year All About Photo Awards, 2017 Short Listed - Premio giornalistico Internazionale Marco Luchetta 2017 Wiki Loves Africa, 2nd Prize All About Photo Awards 2019, 4th Prize Wiki Loves Africa, 1st Prize World Press Photo 2019 Photo Contest, Environment, Stories, 1st Prize EXHIBITIONS & SCREENINGS: Palazzo Pigorini, Collettiva sulla città con i fotografi NEOS, Parma, Italy, 2009 Galleria d'arte Camera Sedici, Storie in tre scatti, Milano, Italy, 2010 FoFu Phot'arte, Festival internazionale fotografico, Fucecchio (FI), Italy, 2011 Medicos del Mundo, premio Luis ValtueÑa, Madrid, Spain, 2011 The Humanity photo awards, Memories of Mankind VII, con il patrocinio dell' UNESCO, Beijing, Cina, 2011 3rd Lumix Festival for Young Photojournalism, Hannover, Germany, 2012 Angkor Photo Festival, Angkor, Cambodia, 2013 Les Rencontres d'Arles, Screening, Arles, France, 2013 Visa pour L'image, Screening, Perpignan, France, 2013 'Italy. Another View' Vadehra Art Gallery, India Art Fair, NSIC Exhibition Grounds, New Delhi, India, 2014 One Day in Africa - Spazio Oberdan, Milan, Italy, 2014 "One World" - Photofestival Horizonte, Zingst, Germany, 2014 Angkor Photo Festival, Screening, Angkor, Cambodia, 2015 World Humanitarian Summit, Istanbul, Turkey, 2016 Pune Biennale, Pune, India, 2017 Visa pour l'image, Screening in Campo Santo, Perpignan, France, 2017 Spazio Forma Meravigli, solo exhibition , Milan, Italy, 2019 Palazzo Pigorini, solo exhibition , Parma, Italy, 2019 World Press Photo, World Wide, 2019 RESILIENTI2020 - Installation Art Città di Parma, Parma, 2020

Erich Hartmann

Germany / United States
1922 | † 1999

Erich Hartmann was a German-born American photographer. Hartmann was born July 29, 1922 in Munich, Germany, the eldest child of Max and Irma Hartmann who lived in Passau, a small city on the Danube near the Austrian border in which they were one of a five Jewish families. Erich Hartmann's family belonged to the middle class, and his father, a social-democrat who served during World War I and been imprisoned by the British, was highly respected. In 1930, only eight years old, Erich took his first photographs. Life became increasingly difficult after the Nazi takeover in 1933, including personal, financial, business, and family restrictions and the beginning of deportations of Jews to the first so-called 'labor camp' in the village of Dachau. The Hartmann family moved to Munich that year, in search of a more tolerant and cosmopolitan environment. The situation only worsened, however, and the family determined that they had to leave Germany. In August 1938, they accepted the opportunity to emigrate to the United States, having received the necessary affidavit of support from distant relatives there. They sailed from Hamburg to New York, staying initially in Washington Heights, before settling outside Albany, New York. The only English speaker in the family, Erich Hartmann worked in a textile mill in Albany, New York, attending evening high school and later taking night courses at Siena College. On December 8, 1941, the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the US entered the war, and Erich enlisted in the US Army. Trained in Virginia and at Ohio State University, he had to wait until 1943 before serving in England, Belgium (Battle of the Bulge) and France, and with the liberating forces as a court interpreter at Nazi trials in Cologne, Germany. At the end of the war he moved to New York City where, in 1946, he married Ruth Bains; they had two children, Nicholas (born in 1952) and Celia (born in 1956). During these years, he worked as an assistant to portrait photographer George Feyer, and then as a freelancer. He studied at the New School for Social Research with Charles Leirens, Berenice Abbott, and Alexey Brodovitch. His portrait subjects over the years included architect Walter Gropius, writers Arthur Koestler and Rachel Carson, musicians Leonard Bernstein and Gidon Kremer, actor Marcel Marceau, fellow photographer Ed Feingersh, and many other literary and musical personalities. Music played a great role in his life and work: "Music captured me before photography did," he recalled. "In my parents' house there was not much music except for a hand-cranked gramophone on which I surreptitiously and repeatedly played a record of arias from Carmen. This was before I could read!″ In the 1950s Erich Hartmann first became known to the wider public for his poetic approach to science, industry and architecture in a series of photo essays for Fortune magazine, beginning with The Deep North, The Building of Saint Lawrence Seaway and Shapes of Sound. He later did similar essays on the poetics of science and technology for French, German and American Geo and other magazines. Throughout his life he traveled widely on assignments for the major magazines of the US, Europe and Japan and for many corporations such as AT&T, Boeing, Bowater, Citroën, Citibank, Corning Glass, DuPont, European Space Agency, Ford, IBM, Johns Hopkins University, Kimberly-Clark, Pillsbury Company, Nippon Airways, Schlumberger, TWA, and Woolworth, for all of which he used color. In 1952 he was invited to join Magnum Photos, the international photographers’ cooperative founded in 1947 by Robert Capa, David Seymour, George Rodger and Henri Cartier-Bresson, he served on the board of directors from 1967 to 1986, and as President in 1985–1986. For more than eight weeks in 1994, Erich and Ruth Hartmann undertook a winter journey to photograph the remains of the Nazi concentration and extermination camps, and places of deportation, throughout Europe. He was determined to take only black and white photographs and to capture only what he saw, immediately when arriving, no matter whether days looked like nights. He returned to New York with 120 rolls of film, from which he made a first edit of 300 photographs and a final selection of only 74 frames. These, together with text by Ruth Bains Hartmann, formed the book and exhibition In the Camps, published in 1995 in English, French, and German and exhibited in more than twenty venues in the US and Europe in the years since. In all of his travel, for work and pleasure, Hartmann carried a small camera with a few rolls of black and white film, prepared for every visual opportunity. He also deliberately pursued a series of imaginative projects including experiments with ink in water, stroboscopic light effects, beach pebbles constrained in boxes, and others. In the late 1990s, with an eye to a future retrospective exhibition, Hartmann began making a definitive selection from fifty years of this personal work in black and white. Just a few months before his death he began discussions with a gallery in Austria about organizing an exhibition called Where I Was. On February 4, 1999 Erich Hartmann died unexpectedly from a heart attack in New York. Source: Wikipedia In the late 1960s and 1970s he lived in London. He documented the construction of the Britannia aircraft for the Bristol Aeroplane Company and he photographed for the leading colour magazines: the Sunday Times, the Observer and the Telegraph, notably on such stories as Shakespeare's Warwickshire and The Norman Conquest Descendants. For the Weekend Telegraph he made sensitive colour pictures of Styles of English Architecture, in a series of photo-essays for which Sir John Betjeman wrote the words, and he also travelled with Betjeman to the Faeroe Islands. Later Hartmann returned to Germany where he had lived in the shadow of the Nazis until he was 16, and chose a project for himself: the death camps. He made an unforgettable book, In the Camps (1995). He said, "I simply felt obliged to stand in as many of the camps as I could reach, to fulfill a duty that I could not define and to pay a belated tribute with the tools of my profession." The book is a magnificent tribute. There is hardly a person in it. So solitary is it, so desolate, that we people the pages with our own ghosts, we bring to it our own fears and imagery. These imaginings have the feeling of poetry. We see a room full of broken shoes; another room of battered satchels; another of torn children's clothes; the windowless barracks in four tiers in which multitudes tried to survive; or a square in which a gallows hangs in the wind. The railway tracks which many took into the camp; a single gas chamber in Auschwitz. It is hard to go from examining the book to describe all Erich Hartmann did for the Magnum co-operative when he served on the board or was vice-president (1975 and 1979) or president (1985). Burt Glinn describes how he and Hartmann came to Magnum at the same time, almost 47 years ago: "We have photographed together and met together and consulted together about ethics and journalism, and we have attended 46 Magnum General Meetings, the first with only eight other photographers and the last with more than 50, but all of them passionate, contentious and personal." He goes on: "Through all these years Erich, more than anyone else, has been my moral compass. No matter how knotty the problem he never settled for the facile compromise. He was always wise, judicious, and ferocious to find the right answer rather than the easy one. When I suspected that I was pursuing my self-interest rather than the common good I would glance over at Erich and if I encountered his quizzically cocked eyebrow I would shut up."Source: Independent

Jessica Todd Harper

Jessica Todd Harper

United States
1975

Jessica spent much of her childhood wandering around museums with a sketchbook, copying paintings. This traditional artistic preparation took an unexpected course when she started making photographs as a teenager, but the familiar canvases of her childhood heroes -John Singer Sargent, Whistler, Vermeer- still have their influences today: she is interested in making intimate, psychological portraits, where the environment plays a large role. Jessica Todd Harper uses portraiture to explore the subtle tensions within daily family interactions and the complexity of human relationships. Her work is grounded in art historical tradition, but with a psychological undercurrent that marks its modernity. A silver medalist in the Prix de la Photographie in Paris (2014), she was an Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition prizewinner (2016) and selected that same year for the Taylor Wessing Portrait competition at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Her work will be significantly represented in Kinship, opening at the Smithosonian's National Portrait Gallery in late 2022, and running until 2024. Harper has published two prize-winning books of photography, Interior Exposure (2008) and The Home Stage (2014) (both Damiani Editore). Damiani’s third book of her work, Here, is due out in late 2022. HERE Like 17th-century Dutch painters who made otherwise ordinary interior scenes appear charged with meaning, Pennsylvania-based photographer Jessica Todd Harper (born 1975) looks for the value in everyday moments. The characters in her imagery are the people around her—friends, herself, family—but it is not so much they who are important as the way in which they are organized and lit by Harper. A woman helping her child practice the piano is not a particularly sacred moment, but as in a Vermeer painting, the way the composition and lighting influence the content suggests that perhaps it is. This collection of photographs presented in Harper's third monograph makes use of what is right in front of the artist, what is here, a place that many of us came to contemplate especially during the pandemic. Beauty, goodness and truth can reveal themselves in daily life, as in the Dutch paintings of everyday domestic scenes that are somehow lit up with mysterious import. Harper shows how our unexamined or even seemingly dull surroundings can sometimes be illuminating. Exlusive Interview with Jessica Todd Harper about her Book Here

Lise Sarfati

France
1958

Lise Sarfati has lived and worked in the United States since 2003. She has realized six important series of photographs there. They have been followed by exhibitions and publications. Each of her works makes clear the identity of an approach focused on the intensity of the rapport established with the person photographed, and of that person with the context. A vision in which the individual is environment, a map outlining a perilous cultural geography. The richness of perception is constructed without effects. The compositions are flawless in the simplicity and unity of the image – the style tends to be elementary and clean, avoiding all qualifications, but the traits of each thing and each person trace a hundred thousand folds. The dimension of the interplay of postures is that of a solemn immaturity: the scenery formed by the people and places is the silent crumpling of a dream in which each risks his or her skin. A feminine seduction tinged with fateful coincidences; the beauty of the adolescents looks like a magic spell. Their solitude and strangeness in the world turn the image into an echo chamber inhabited by the photographer, her subject and the viewer. The earlier period of a photographic work carried out in Russia (continuously from 1989 to 1999) confirms the tendency of this research. She identifies a very precise and endless psychological spectrum. The projections, the ambitions associated with the immense space, the way in which they compose these figures, play an essential role: the supporting roles are incandescent. A determinism of the heroic, inevitably tragic figure, as if not even we really have another choice.

Penelope James

United States
1974

I have lived many lives. A girl. A woman. A mother. A friend. A traveler. A believer. A creator and so many more. These lives have interwoven and diverged, twisted and tangled more times than I can count, but they've ultimately intersected into who I am today. As the journey unfolded, a camera fell into my hands and a passion was unleashed. My work shows you the world, perhaps, not as it is, but as I see it through the lens of my many lives and the passion that resides behind the camera. Statement These self portraits were created out of an abundance of nervous energy that demanded an outlet. Each photo is a visual representation of the very deep and powerful emotions that were provoked during the insidious year of 2020, and each photo also represents the release of that emotion as the process was completed. Never before had I experienced the therapeutic effects of creating art as I did during that time. There was not a specific theme in mind when creating these. In fact, there was not even a plan to have more than one. But time and circumstances demanded the energy be released and eventually the theme became clear: A hope to fly away. To escape. To be free.

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Debe Arlook is an award-winning American artist working in photography. Through color and diverse photographic processes, Arlook’s conceptual work is a response to her surroundings and the larger environment, as she attempts to understand the inner and outer worlds of human relationships. Degrees in filmmaking and psychology inform these views.

Orchestrating Light: Seth Dickerman Talks About his Passion for Photographic Printmaking

Orchestrating Light: Seth Dickerman Talks About his Passion for Photographic Printmaking

Seth Dickerman is a master manipulator of the wide spectrum of light densities that reflect off the surface of a photographic print and enter into our field of vision. His singular intent in making prints is to bring out the best an image has to offer, which means giving an image the ability to hold our attention, to engage us, and to allow us to discover something about an image that is meaningful and significant.

Exclusive Interview with Michel Haddi

Exclusive Interview with Michel Haddi

Photographer and film director, Michel Haddi has photographed many high-profile celebrities while living in the USA including, Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese, David Bowie, Uma Thurman, Francis Ford Coppola, Cameron Diaz, Faye Dunaway, Nicholas Cage, Johnny Depp, Heath Ledger, Angelina Jolie, Janet Jackson, Jennifer Lopez, and many others. He also manages a publishing house, MHS publishing, which publishes his own books. Currently based in London we have asked him a few questions about his life and work

Exclusive Interview with Sebastien Sardi

Exclusive Interview with Sebastien Sardi

In 2008, Swedish photographer Sebastian Sardi, inspired by an article exposing hidden mining-related incidents, embarked on a photography journey. Without formal training, he explored mines and ventured to India's Jharkhand state to document coal miners in Dhanbad, known as the "coal capital." His project, "Black Diamond," captured the lives of people, including men, women, and children, dedicated to coal extraction in grueling conditions.

Exclusive Interview with Debra Achen

Exclusive Interview with Debra Achen

Monterey-based photographer Debra Achen was born and raised near Pittsburgh, PA, where she developed a passion for both nature and art. She studied a variety of studio arts, including drawing, painting, and printmaking in addition to her training in traditional film and darkroom photography. Her project 'Folding and Mending' won the September 2022 Solo Exhibition. We asked here a few questions about her life and work.

Exclusive Interview with Steve Hoffman

Exclusive Interview with Steve Hoffman

Steve Hoffman is a documentary photographer who has who spent the last dozen years working with and photographing the people that live the housing projects in Coney Island. He was the winner of the July and August 2022 Solo Exhibition. We asked him a few questions about his life and work.

Exclusive Interview with Aya Okawa

Exclusive Interview with Aya Okawa

Aya is passionate about exploring the natural world and protecting ecosystems and wild landsAll about Photo: Tell us about your first introduction to photography. What drew you into this world? Her project The Systems That Shape Us'won the February 2022 Solo Exhibition. We asked her a few questions about her life and her work.

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