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Maynard Switzer
Maynard Switzer
Maynard Switzer

Maynard Switzer

Country: Canada

Maynard Switzer was born in Los Angeles and is a professional freelance travel and documentary photographer. He is a graduate of the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and a former assistant to legendary photographer Richard Avedon. He has taught at the International Center of Photography in New York City and has written many magazine articles about travel photography. His love of foreign cultures and their fascinating customs has been the main catalyst for Maynard’s photography around the globe. Maynard has had his photography published in National Geographic Traveler Magazine, Geo Magazine, Afar Magazine and the prestigious Fine Art Spanish Magazine Art Fotografico.



Statement
There are approximately 195 independent countries in the world and an estimated 6,800 different languages spoken, and often times there is a breakdown in communication. Some caused by language barriers, other times lost or inadequate translation and sometimes a woeful attempt at hand signals. However, images are universally understood. The cliché "a picture is worth a thousand words" certainly rings true. Pictures speak a thousand words to a thousand different people in a thousand different ways. This global understanding has been the main reason that I have been documenting various cultures around the world. Over the past 20+ years I have concentrated on photographing people and their various ways of life that seem to have been left behind by the world's rush to modernize. Certain aspects of these various cultures seem to be in a time warp, many within their own country. The photographs presented here are part of a long-term project photographing some of these people that live and work in challenging environments that time seems to have forgotten and whose way of life may never be seen again.

Websites

www.maynardswitzer.com

www.instagram.com/maynardswitzer

 

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More Great Photographers To Discover

Susan Borowitz
Susan Borowitz
United States
1959
After a successful career writing for American television comedies, Susan Borowitz embarked on a study of the practice of photography in 2011 and discovered a new medium by which to tell stories. Classes at New York City's International Center for Photography led to creative self-portraiture and ultimately fine art photography, specifically staged narratives, where she expresses reflections of psychological journeys. She has won several awards for images in her series Locked-In, most notably Pollux Awards, LifeFramer, One Eyeland, and Chromatic Awards, and has been the subject of several artist interviews/profiles for online and print publications. Exhibition venues include New York, Ohio, Berlin and Barcelona. Locked-In The series “Locked-In” explores the phenomenon of feeling stuck and the accompanying sense of failure to control the forces that seem to dictate our lives. Using metaphor and imagery that suggest the inability to move on, the series evokes the absence of agency and a perceived futility of each waking day. The choice to use self-portraiture reflects not only a personal journey, but also a common experience of women who feel consciously aware of what they should pursue or speak up about but feel impotent in the face of a dominant power: unequal relationships, demons residing in the subconscious, societal expectations and especially the disappearance of relevancy with encroaching age.
Mattia Vacca
Mattia Vacca
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Mattia Vacca is an award-winning photojournalist focused on social issues and the aftermath of war. His first book, A Winter's Tale came out in 2014. His photographs have been featured on The New Republic, The Guardian, The Independent, ZEIT, L'Oeil de la Photographie, VICE, Corriere della Sera, La Repubblica, La Stampa and France Soir among the others. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including Sony World Photography Awards, Royal Photographic Society Awards, Renaissance Prize and NY Photo Awards.
Galuh Tunggadewi Sahid
Galuh Tunggadewi Sahid
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Galuh Tunggadewi is an Indonesian photographer whose work explores the small dramas and subtle patterns of urban life. Through her lens, everyday city scenes - from rain-soaked streets to abandoned objects on sidewalks - become stories about how we inhabit shared spaces. Based in Berlin, finds stories in places most people walk past without a second glance. Statement Cities are weird, beautiful things. Every street corner holds a story - in the half-drunk coffee cup someone left behind, in the way strangers dance around each other at train stations, in the beat-up couch with a "zu verschenken" (to give away) sign that might be trash or treasure. These are the moments I chase with my camera. I'm drawn to how cities change people, and how people change their cities right back. Sometimes it's in big ways, but mostly it's in the little things - the umbrella dance everyone does when it rains, the way commuters create accidental patterns in morning light, the silent conversation between someone leaving something on the street and someone else deciding to take it home. My photographs are about finding those in-between moments when the city drops its mask and shows its real face. It's in these quiet seconds - between the digital and physical, between the rush hours, between the planned and unplanned - that you can see how we all write our own little chapters in the city's endless story. Awarded Photographer of the Week - Week 47
Vincent Laforet
Vincent Laforet
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Vincent Laforet is a French-American director and photographer. He shared the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography with four other photographers (Stephen Crowley, Chang Lee, James Hill, Ruth Fremson) as a member of The New York Times staff's coverage of the post 9/11 events overseas that captured "the pain and the perseverance of people enduring protracted conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan." In 2006, Laforet became The Times' s first national contract photographer. He has been sent on assignment by Vanity Fair, The New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, Sports Illustrated, Time, Newsweek, and Life. He is represented by the Stockland Martel agency. In 2002, PDN named Vincent Laforet as one of the "30 photographers under 30 to watch″. In 2005, American Photo Magazine recognized Laforet as one of the "100 Most Influential People in Photography." He and four other photographers were awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Feature Photography for their post-9/11 coverage overseas in 2002. His work has been recognized in the Communication Arts Annual, PDN Annual, The SPD Magazine Cover of the Year (Society of Publication Designers), The World Press Photo Awards, The Pictures of the Year Competition, The Overseas Press Club, The National Headliners Awards, The Pro-Football Hall of Fame. Vincent is a Canon Explorer of Light and Canon Printmaster and serves as consultant to companies such as Apple, Adobe, Carl Zeiss, Leica, Canon, Bogen, Lexar, and X-Rite. He and his work have been profiled on CNN and Good Morning America. In 2008, Laforet directed Reverie, the first widely available short film shot with the Canon 5D Mark II camera. The video has been cited by proposers of the use of DSLR cameras in digital cinematography. In 2010, he launched a nationwide film competition Beyond The Still and he directed the final chapter the film which was screened at the Sundance Film Festival. He is a DGA Director (Directors Guild of America) and of the ICG (International Cinematographers' Guild – Local 600.) He has directed a number of short films and numerous commercials. In 2011, he was chosen by Canon to be one of the first 4 filmmakers to shoot with their first cinema camera, the Canon C300, and he directed the film Mobius which premiered at Paramount Studios. The opening was attended by Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, Robert Rodriguez, and JJ Abrams. The same year, his first book Visual Stories was released by Peachpit and describes his thought process and approach to a variety of assignments throughout his photography career. He has been awarded 3 of the prestigious Cannes Lions (Platinum, Gold, Silver) for his commercial directing work. Vincent Laforet attended the Dalton School and received his B.S. from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in 1997. He is fluent in French and English, and speaks Russian and Spanish. He lives in Manhattan Beach, California. Laforet was an adjunct professor at the Columbia Journalism's Graduate School of Journalism, the International Center of Photography and the Poynter Institute. He was inducted in Northwestern's Alumni Hall of Fame in 2010. In the fall of 2020 Laforet joined Apple Inc, with a focus on photography, video and future technologies.Source: Wikipedia
Ellen Auerbach
Ellen Auerbach
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Micha Bar-Am
Micha Bar-Am
Germany
1930
Micha Bar-Am is a German-born Israeli journalistic photographer. His images cover every aspect of life in Israel in the past sixty years. Since 1968 he has been a correspondent with Magnum, the photographic cooperative. From 1968 to 1992, he was The New York Times photographic correspondent from Israel. He has published several books of photography, beginning in 1957. His work is held in numerous international museums and institutes throughout the world. Born in Berlin to a Jewish family, Bar-Am moved with his parents in 1936 to then British Mandate of Palestine. He attended local schools. He was drafted in 1948 and served during the 1947–1949 Palestine war, when he was part of the Palmach Unit. Afterward, he worked several jobs, including as a locksmith and a mounted guard, before becoming a photographer. In 1949 he co-founded the kibbutz Malkia in Galilee. Later he became a member of Kibbutz Gesher HaZiv. In the early 1940s, Bar-Am started taking pictures of life on a kibbutz; he used borrowed cameras until he bought a Leica. After his military service, he began photographing more seriously. After publishing his first book, Across Sinai (1957), Bar-Am gained work as a photographic reporter and in the editorial staff of the Israeli Army magazine, Ba-Mahaneh, from 1957 to 1967. In 1961 he covered the Eichmann trial. In 1967 he covered the Six-Day War, during which time he met Cornell Capa. Many of his war images brought him renown. Since 1968, he has been a correspondent for Magnum Photos. In 1974 he helped Capa found the International Center of Photography in New York City. In 1968, Bar-Am also became the photographic correspondent from Israel for The New York Times, a position he held until 1992. From 1977 to 1992, he was head of the department of photography at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. He continues to work on his photography. He writes about his work: "I keep my internal eye open for that other, metaphorical image that transcends illustration to achieve a wholeness of its own. I strive for the elusive entity that is both evidence and evocation, public record and personal vision." He says that he has adopted Robert Capa's saying, "If your photographs aren't good enough, you weren't close enough," but has added a caveat: "If you're too close you lose perspective. It is not easy to be fair with the facts and keep your own convictions out of the picture. It is almost impossible to be both a participant in the events and their observer, witness, interpreter. The effort brings great frustration, and equally great reward."Source: Wikipedia Born in Berlin in 1930, Micha Bar-Am emigrated to Israel (then Palestine) with his parents at age six. During his youth, Bar-Am became active in the pre-state underground and was drafted in 1948. After serving in the war, he helped found the Kibbutz Malkiya in Galilee. Soon after, Bar-Am moved to Kibbutz Gesher-Haziv, where he took his first photographs of archeological digs in the Judean desert. He borrowed his camera from an American member of his kibbutz who teased that though Bar-Am’s photographs were better than his own, they would never be used, as Bar- Am was only a “kibbutz dilettante.” Bar-Am proved this statement wrong; his work was soon published in the Israeli Army magazine Bama Hana. In 1957, he was offered a full time job as a staff photographer for the magazine. In the following years, Bar-Am continued to document the Israeli army. In 1967, he photographed the Six-Day War, during which he met Cornell Capa. Capa and Bar-Am became friends and he introduced Bar-Am to Magnum, a photographic co-operative where Bar-Am would become an associate. In 1968, Bar-Am began his career as a New York Times correspondent and documented the Israeli Palestinian conflict from Suez to the Golan Heights. Bar-Am was closely involved with the founding of the International Center of Photography in 1974, working alongside Cornell Capa as a curator. He became the Curator of Photography for the Tel Aviv Art Museum in 1977. He left this position in 1992, and has been working on his own photography ever since. Though often classified as such, Micha Bar-Am is not merely a photojournalist (an assignation Bar-Am himself refuses). His work represents more than documentation of the action of war. Bar-Am’s photography captures the changed lives and lifestyles of Israeli men and women as a result of the years of conflict. His carefully composed shots contain a thoughtfulness and artfulness often unseen within documentary photography. His work continues to be published and exhibited around the world.Source: International Center of Photography
Clark et Pougnaud
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Paula Aranoa
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Yuji Watanabe
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