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Emily Schiffer
Emily Schiffer
Emily Schiffer

Emily Schiffer

Country: United States
Birth: 1980

Emily Schiffer is a documentary photographer interested in depicting essential details of life that are often overshadowed by more newsworthy circumstances.

In 2005, she founded the My Viewpoint Youth Photography Initiative on the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota, where she continues to teach and shoot.

In 2011 she co-created See Potential, a community engagement/public art photography project on Chicago’s South Side, promotes the revitalization efforts of community leaders and mobilizes residents.

Awards include: a 2012 Open Society Foundation Audience Engagement Grant, a 2011 Emergency Fund Grant from the Magnum Foundation, the 2010 Arnold Newman Prize for New Directions in Portraiture, the 2010 winner of the PDN Photo Annual Personal Project Category, the 2009 Inge Morath Award, presented by Magnum Photos and the Inge Morath Foundation, and a 2006-2007 Fulbright Fellowship in Photography.

Emily has exhibited her photographs internationally.

Publications include: Aperture, Smithsonian Magazine, Photo District News, TIME Magazine Lightbox, Mother Jones, and BURN Magazine. Her work is in the permanent collections of The Farnsworth Museum, US, The Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts, Japan, Foto Baryo, Philippines, and The Center for Fine Art Photography, US. Emily received her BA in Fine Art and African American Studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 2003.
 

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Michael Wolf
Germany/United States
1954 | † 2019
The focus of the German photographer Michael Wolf’s work is life in megacities. many of his projects document the architecture and the vernacular culture of metropolises. Wolf grew up in Canada, Europe, and the United States, studying at UC Berkeley and at the Folkwang School with Otto Steinert in Essen, Germany. He moved to Hong Kong in 1994 where he worked for 8 years as a contract photographer for Stern Magazine. Since 2001, Wolf has been focusing on his own projects, many of which have been published as books. Wolf’s work has been exhibited in numerous locations, including the Venice Bienniale for Architecture, Aperture Gallery, New York; Museum Centre Vapriikki, Tempere, Finland, the Museum for Work in Hamburg, Germany, Hong Kong Shenzhen Biennial, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago. His work is held in many permanent collections, including the metropolitan museum of art in New York the Brooklyn Museum, the San Jose Museum of Art, California; the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; the Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany and the German Museum for Architecture, Frankfurt, Germany. He has won first prize in the World Press Photo Award competition on two occasions (2005 & 2010) and an honorable mention (2011) In 2010, Wolf was shortlisted for the Prix Pictet photography prize. He has published more than 13 photo books including Bottrop Ebel 1976 (Peperoni Press, 2012), Tokyo Compression Three (Peperoni Press / Asia One, 2012), Architecture of Density (Peperoni Press / Asia One, 2012), Hong Kong Corner Houses (Hong Kong University Press, 2011), Portraits (Superlabo, Japan, 2011), Tokyo Compression Revisited (Peperoni Press / Asia One, 2011), Real Fake Art (Peperoni Press / Asia One, 2011), FY (Peperoni Press, 2010), A Series of Unfortunate Events (Peperoni Press, 2010), Tokyo Compression (Peperoni Press / Asia One, 2010), Hong Kong Inside-Outside (Peperoni Press / Asia One, 2009), The Transparent City (Aperture, 2008) and Sitting in China (Steidl, 2002). Source: photomichaelwolf.com Michael Wolf’s work examines life in the layered urban landscape, addressing juxtapositions of public and private space, anonymity and individuality, history, and modern development. In a diverse array of photographic projects, from street views appropriated from Google Earth, to portraits capturing the crush of the Tokyo Subway, and dizzying architectural landscapes, Wolf explores the density of city life. Wolf currently lives and works in Hong Kong and Paris. His photographs are in the permanent collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Folkwang Museum, Essen, Germany; The Brooklyn Museum; the Cleveland Museum of Art; the Nelson-Atkins Art Museum, Kansas City; and the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago among others, and have been exhibited at the Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego (2011), Goethe Institute in Hong Kong (2010), Fotographie Museum, Amsterdam (2010), Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago (2008), Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2008), and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (2008), among others. Wolf was awarded First Place in the 2010 World Press Photo Award contest in the Daily Life category, and was shortlisted for the 2010 Prix Pictet. Wolf's numerous monographs include Tokyo Compression Revisited (Peperoni Books, 2011), Real Fake Art (Peperoni Books, 2011), Tokyo Compression (Peperoni Books, 2010), Hong Kong: Inside/Outside (Peperoni Books, 2009), The Transparent City (Aperture and MoCP, 2008), Hong Kong: Front Door/Back Door, (Thames & Hudson, 2005), and Sitting in China (Steidl, 2002). Source: Robert Koch Gallery Michael Wolf was born in 1954 in Munich, Germany. He grew up in the United States, Europe, and Canada, and studied at UC Berkeley and at the Folkwang School in Essen, Germany. In 1994, Wolf moved to Hong Kong and worked for eight years as a contract photographer for Stern magazine, until he left to pursue his own projects. Wolf's photographic work in Asia focuses on the city and its architectural structures and follows on from his interest in people and human interaction. He has published seven photobooks to date. Wolf's work has been exhibited extensively in galleries and art fairs throughout the world since 2005 and is held in permanent collections across the US and Germany. Wolf has won previously won a World Press Photo award, the first prize in Contemporary Issues stories in 2005. Source: World Press Photo
Frances Benjamin Johnston
United States
1864 | † 1952
Frances "Fannie" Benjamin Johnston (15 January 1864 – 16 May 1952) was an early American female photographer and photojournalist whose career lasted for almost half a century. She is most known for her portraits, images of southern architecture, and various photographic series featuring African Americans and Native Americans at the turn of the 20th century. The only surviving child of wealthy and well connected parents, she was born in Grafton, West Virginia, raised in Washington, D.C., and studied at the Académie Julian in Paris and the Washington Students League following her graduation from Notre Dame of Maryland Collegiate Institute for Young Ladies in 1883 (now known as Notre Dame of Maryland University). An independent and strong-willed young woman, she wrote articles for periodicals before finding her creative outlet through photography after she was given her first camera by George Eastman, a close friend of the family, and inventor of the new, lighter, Eastman Kodak cameras. She received training in photography and dark-room techniques from Thomas Smillie, director of photography at the Smithsonian. She took portraits of friends, family and local figures before working as a freelance photographer and touring Europe in the 1890s, using her connection to Smillie to visit prominent photographers and gather items for the museum's collections. She gained further practical experience in her craft by working for the newly formed Eastman Kodak company in Washington, D.C., forwarding film for development and advising customers when cameras needed repairs. In 1894 she opened her own photographic studio in Washington, D.C., on V Street between 13th and 14th Streets, and at the time was the only woman photographer in the city. She took portraits of many famous contemporaries including Susan B. Anthony, Mark Twain and Booker T. Washington. Well connected among elite society, she was commissioned by magazines to do "celebrity" portraits, such as Alice Roosevelt's wedding portrait, and was dubbed the "Photographer to the American court." She photographed Admiral Dewey on the deck of the USS Olympia,[6] the Roosevelt children playing with their pet pony at the White House and the gardens of Edith Wharton's famous villa near Paris. Her mother, Frances Antoinette Johnston, had been a congressional journalist and dramatic critic for the Baltimore Sun and her daughter built on her familiarity with the Washington political scene by becoming official White House photographer for the Harrison, Cleveland, McKinley, "TR" Roosevelt, and Taft presidential administrations. Johnston also photographed the famous American heiress and literary salon socialite Natalie Barney in Paris but perhaps her most famous work, shown here, is her self-portrait of the liberated "New Woman", petticoats showing and beer stein in hand. Johnston was a constant advocate for the role of women in the burgeoning art of photography. The Ladies' Home Journal published Johnston's article "What a Woman Can Do With a Camera" in 1897[9] and she co-curated (with Zaida Ben-Yusuf) an exhibition of photographs by twenty-eight women photographers at the 1900 Exposition Universelle, which afterwards travelled to Saint Petersburg, Moscow, and Washington, DC. She traveled widely in her thirties, taking a wide range of documentary and artistic photographs of coal miners, iron workers, women in New England's mills and sailors being tattooed on board ship as well as her society commissions. While in England she photographed the stage actress Mary Anderson, who was a friend of her mother. In 1899, she gained further notability when she was commissioned by Hollis Burke Frissell to photograph the buildings and students of the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Hampton, Virginia in order to show its success. This series, documenting the ordinary life of the school, remains as some of her most telling work. It was displayed at The Exhibit of American Negroes of the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1900. She photographed events such as world's fairs and peace-treaty signings and took the last portrait of President William McKinley, at the Pan-American Exposition of 1901 just before his assassination. With her partner, Mattie Edwards Hewitt, a successful freelance home and garden photographer in her own right, she opened a studio in New York in 1913 and moved in with her mother and aunt. Hewitt wrote Johnston love letters over the course of their relationship, which are chronicled in "The Woman Behind the Lens: The Life and Work of Frances Benjamin Johnston, 1864–1952." Many of the early letters focused on Hewitt's admiration for Johnston's work, but as their romance progressed, they became increasingly full of words of love: "...when I need you or you need me — [we] must hold each other all the closer and with your hand in mine, holding it tight..." She lectured at New York University on business for women and they produced a series of studies of New York architecture through the 1920s. In early 1920 her mother died in New York. In the 1920s, she became increasingly interested in photographing architecture, motivated by a desire to document buildings and gardens which were falling into disrepair or about to be redeveloped and lost. As her focus in architecture grew, she became specifically interested in documenting the architecture of the American South. Johnston was interested in preserving the everyday history of the American South through her art; she accomplished this by photographing barns, inns, and other ordinary structures. She was not interested in photographing the grand homes and estates of the American South, but rather the quickly deteriorating structures in these communities that portrayed the life of common southerners. Her photographs remain an important resource for modern architects, historians and conservationists. She exhibited a series of 247 photographs of Fredericksburg, Virginia, from the decaying mansions of the rich to the shacks of the poor, in 1928. The exhibition was entitled Pictorial Survey--Old Fredericksburg, Virginia--Old Falmouth and Nearby Places and described as "A Series of Photographic Studies of the Architecture of the Region Dating by Tradition from Colonial Times to Circa 1830" as "An Historical Record and to Preserve Something of the Atmosphere of An Old Virginia Town." Publicity from the display prompted the University of Virginia to hire her to document its buildings and the state of North Carolina to record its architectural history. Louisiana hired Johnston to document its huge inventory of rapidly deteriorating plantations and she was given a grant in 1933 by the Carnegie Corporation of New York to document Virginia's early architecture. This led to a series of grants and photographs of eight other southern states, all of which were given to the Library of Congress for public use. In December 1935, she began a year long project to capture the less evolved structures of the Colonial Era in Virginia. This was effort was intended to be a one year project, but evolved into an eight year extensive project, in which she surveyed 50,000 miles and 95 counties in Virginia. Johnston was named an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects for her work in preserving old and endangered buildings and her collections have been purchased by institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the Baltimore Museum of Art. Although her relentless traveling was curtailed by petrol rationing in the Second World War the tireless Johnston continued to photograph. Johnston acquired a home in the French Quarter of New Orleans in 1940, retiring there in 1945, where she died in 1952 at the age of eighty-eight.Source: Wikipedia
Désirée Dolron
Netherlands
1963
Désirée Dolron is a Dutch photographer and filmmaker. Her oeuvre ranges from documentary photography and still lifes to portraiture and film.Throughout her career, Dolron has been investigating themes such as the passing of time, the relation between finite and transcendent and the complexity and impermanence of the human condition. Dolron was awarded the 1996 Laureate Prix de Rome (Amsterdam, NL). Her work is represented in numerous international public and private collections including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, Collection H&F in Barcelona, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, la Collection Neuflize Vie in Paris and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Désirée Dolron lives and works in Amsterdam. Source: desireedolron.com The meticulous attention to production details characterizes her body of work, and elements such as sound (or its absence –silence) are often used as important tools of narration, helping the viewer to enter into the conceptual depth of Dolron’s works. Both moving and still images are composed by the artist and manage to recreate a reality that is a-temporal, undefined yet extremely present. Desirée Dolron (1963 Haarlem, NL) was awarded the 1996 Laureate Prix de Rome (Amsterdam, NL), and her work is part of major international collections such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York (US), the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid (SP), the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (NL), and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (UK). Source: GRIMM Gallery
Castro Frank
United States
Castro Frank is a Los Angeles based visual artist who has translated his personal experiences of growing up in the San Fernando Valley into a signature journalistic and candid approach to photography. Through captured moments that reveal the overlooked details of everyday life, to double exposures that force a viewer to question their perceptions, and now diving into the realm of abstraction to evoke deep seeded emotions, Castro's work defies the limitations of the photographic medium. Even his portraiture takes on a new life by not only capturing the raw essence of his subjects but the vitality of the city they inhabit. As a growing multidisciplinary artist, incorporating painting and other mediums into his work, Castro continually discovers new ways to envelope the viewer in the experiences encapsulated within his work. ​Castro's work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions across California with institutions including South Grand, Rvcc Gallery, Communion Gallery, and Embed Gallery. The popularity of his work led to commissions from musicians as well as television networks utilizing his work in their stage design. His work has also been featured in large public installations and charity campaigns with nonprofit organizations, such as INCLUSIVACTION, to benefit the Los Angeles community. Additionally, works by Castro is featured in the Jumex Museum's founder, Eugenio Lopez's, private collection. His work received praise in prominent publications such as The Huffington Post and Los Angeles Times. Castro's work continues to evolve into new mediums, methods, and subjects. Through the development of his practice, he is excited to find new ways to capture the everyday. As he journeys on to create astounding imagery he hopes that his work will inspire youth to pursue their dreams. Exclusive Interview with Castro Frank
Jennifer Little
United States
1977
Jennifer Little (b. 1977) lives in Oakland, California. Her current photographic work focuses on social and ecological concerns and documents intersections between the natural and the man made. Jennifer received a B.F.A. in Photography from Washington University in St. Louis and an M.F.A. from the University of Texas at Austin. She is a tenured Associate Professor at University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, where she teaches courses covering Digital Photography, Video Production, Documentary Photography, the History of Photography, and Web Design. Jennifer is Chair of the Art Department at University of the Pacific. Jennifer Little's new photographic series, 100 Years of Dust: Owens Lake and the Los Angeles Aqueduct, is receiving significant recognition from galleries, publications, and curators. It just won the prestigious 2014 Critical Mass Top 50 Award from PhotoLucida. This series has also been selected for a solo exhibition at University of the Arts' Sol Mednick Gallery in Philadelphia from March 20 - April 24, 2015. Jennifer has been invited to give a presentation about Owens Lake at the Society for Photographic Education (SPE) National Conference in New Orleans, LA, from March 12-15, 2015. She also presented at the SPE West Regional Conference in Los Angeles on November 15, 2014, with Kathy Bancroft, the Tribal Historic Preservation Officer for the Lone Pine Paiute-Shoshone Reservation. Jennifer's series about Owens Lake won the 2014 "Dotphotozine Award for Excellence in Photography" and is featured in the September, 2014, issue of the magazine. This series also won first prize in an October - November, 2013, juried exhibition at Book and Job Gallery on Geary Street in San Francisco: The Human Impact: New Directions in Landscape Photography. Jennifer has exhibited her work at galleries and museums including Stanford University’s Thomas Welton Stanford Art Gallery; Tag Gallery in Bergamot Station Arts Center, Santa Monica, CA; Photo Center Northwest, Seattle, WA; Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, CA; The San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery; The LAB, San Francisco; Viewpoint Photographic Art Center in Sacramento, CA; Eisentrager-Howard Gallery at The University of Nebraska at Lincoln; The Marin Museum of Contemporary Art in Novato, CA; The Center for Fine Art Photography in Fort Collins, CO; and Jay Etkin Gallery in Memphis, TN. Jennifer’s work has been published and reviewed in Dotphotozine, View Camera Magazine, ArtAscent Magazine, Camera Arts Magazine, and The Austin Chronicle. Jennifer has presented artist talks at Stanford University, San Francisco Art Institute, the Foto 3 Conference, Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, CA, and the Dimen Cultural Eco-museum Forum on the Preservation and Development of Ancient Villages, Dimen, Guizhou, China.About Owens Lake and the Los Angeles AqueductThis project documents the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s (LADWP) legally mandated dust mitigation program at Owens Dry Lake in Southern California. It is the latest chapter in a century of legal battles over water rights and air quality in Owens Valley. Owens Lake lies in Southern California's eastern Sierra, about 200 miles northeast of Los Angeles. This 110-square-mile lake began to dry up in 1913 when the City of Los Angeles diverted the Owens River into the Los Angeles Aqueduct. The new water supply allowed Los Angeles to continue its rapid growth and turned the arid San Fernando Valley into an agricultural oasis, but at a tremendous environmental cost. By 1926, Owens Lake was a dry alkali flat, and its dust became the largest source of carcinogenic particulate air pollution in North America.1
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