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Enter AAP Magazine 54 Nature: Landscape, Wildlife, Flora & Fauna
Enter AAP Magazine 54 Nature: Landscape, Wildlife, Flora & Fauna
Hyun De Grande
Hyun De Grande
Hyun De Grande

Hyun De Grande

Country: South Korea/Belgium
Birth: 1987

My name is Hyun De Grande. I was born in Seoul, South Korea in 1987 and I was adopted to Belgium when I was around 4 months old. I grew up in a small town called Oostkamp together with my parents and my brother, who is also adopted.

At the age of 15, I started studying film and photography at the Art Academy in Bruges, which was my introduction to both artforms. After two more years of studying film at the School of Arts in Ghent, I moved to Brussels in 2008 to specialize in cinematography at the RITCS. I'm still residing in Brussels, and I currently work as a cinematographer in the narrative and commercial fields.

Street photography is a passion to which I love devoting my energy to in between jobs. It's obvious that my cinematography background has heavily influenced my photography style, yet I try to approach things in a different way when I'm taking pictures compared to shooting a movie. It's mainly much more personal because I don't share the creative process with other people, which allows me to explore themes that are closer to myself as a person.

Statement
As a photographer I'm very fascinated by the feelings of loneliness, isolation and/or alienation because they strongly resonate with me personally. Perhaps it can be back-tracked to my adoption, which has created a sense of never really feeling at home anywhere I go, and therefore these emotions have always been a big part of my life.

Esthetically, I'm mainly looking for clear shapes and lines as an arena for my subjects, both coming from light and/or architecture. I feel that the solidity of these shapes enhances the fragility of the people portrayed within these lines. Trapped or lost in a cold and unforgiving environment.

I also love working in a wider frame as it allows me to use that extra horizontal space to evoke emptiness. I find it interesting to utilize the surroundings of my characters to create emotional context, even when these surroundings are blank or abstract. I use a 2:1 ratio on all of my photographs, which stems from my cinematography background.
 

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More Great Photographers To Discover

Martin Stranka
Martin Stranka was born on Friday April 13, 1984 in Most, Czech Republic, where he lived with his parents and older sister until the age of three. For the next twenty years, family then moves to Litoměřice, where he attends elementary school and the Josef Jungmann Gymnasium. He went on to study economics in Prague, where he has lived and worked ever since. He never studied art, but after the loss of a close friend in 2007 he turned to photography as therapy to regain his balance in life. After completing his university studies, he worked as a human resources manager while continuing in his pursuit of photography which later became his passion. In December 2010 his passion became his profession when he accepted commissions from New York publishing houses Sterling Publishing and HarperCollins. In his seventeen-year career, Stranka won more than 90 international awards, and honorary mentions in photography, of which the most significant include Special Photographer of the Year from the International photography Awards in New York in 2022, and 1st place in the Sony World Photography Awards that he won in 2018 and 2019 in London. His works were exhibited and auctioned at Christie’s in London in early 2023. Martin Stranka exhibited his work in New York, Miami, London, Paris, Prague, and Shanghai, in galleries including Christie’s London, Saatchi Gallery, SNAP! Orlando, Somerset House in London, or the exhibition hall of Prague’s Mánes. His works already attract the attention of art collectors and can be seen on the covers of books published by HarperCollins, Sterling Publishing, and Penguin Random House. Martin has also created several photographic visuals for the National Theater, the National Theater Ballet, and the National Theater Opera. He has published four monographic books the last of which was published the retrospective book for the exhibition at the Danubiana Meulensteen Art Museum. Statement Martin wrote about his work: ''I’m always searching for beauty, but to me, the sort of beauty that is obvious seems uninteresting and empty. To the contrary, a flaw in something that is seemingly perfect adds vital meaning to the captured scene and catches my often-distracted attention. At least a small wobble of emotion to contrast the calmness of mind in a piece of art makes sense to me. As an artist, I need to strip both myself and the viewer of certainty in order to create space for the necessary multitude of questions. I look for form and content that harmonizes with people and provides them with a quiet visual refuge. At first glance, the images I capture are calm, yet under the surface, they rage and roar. I plant a sense of dismay into the same artwork, be it only with the slightest hint of something sinister lurking beneath the surface. And it never ceases to amaze me that such seemingly incompatible contrasts can be combined into one image. I constantly return to the narrative of the relationship between mankind and nature, as well as the exploration of human existence itself. Loneliness and isolation – such relevant topics today – seem to me like an endless line of poetry that I stitch through every photograph, even if only marginally. I can’t let go of the feeling that it is in isolation that I find a much-needed dialogue. A dialogue with myself, within myself, into myself. The visible silence in a photograph is contrasted by hectic thoughts that I’m unable to resist. And after all, I don’t want to defy them, I just need to accept everything as an observer. Observation and voyeurism become the best ways to learn. I repeatedly try to discover the connection between visual beauty and dramatic reality. What connects the state of oversaturation of human relationships and the state of one’s own loneliness? I need to know the answer. In my work, I continue to experiment with the portrayal of personally experienced intimacy contrasted against the more ephemeral feelings of closeness between strangers. I try to give meaning to situations and objects beyond how they are perceived. I’m driven to tear down traditional contexts, to give states and objects different meanings, and thus place ordinary experiences in extraordinary contexts. Although this process may seem complicated, to me it comes completely spontaneously every step of the way. The medium of photography allows me to materialize all these external happenings and flickering events onto paper.''
Benjamin Dimmitt
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Savas Onur Sen
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Savaş Onur Şen is a Turkish photographer based in Van. He has graduated from Ankara University Faculty of Communication, Department of Journalism. He has taken his master's degree in photography and a Ph.D. degree in photojournalism. Now he is working at Van Yuzuncu Yil University as an Assistant Professor. Savaş Onur Şen is trying to use photography to tell stories. These days he focused on the stories of the animals who live in the urban lifestyle. Precarious If certain lives do not qualify as lives or are, from the start, not conceivable as lives within certain epistemological frames, then these lives are never lived nor lost in the full sense. Judith Butler Current laws and regulations do not adequately protect the animals in Turkey. Violence, especially against stray animals, is increasing due to the lack of an animal rights law demanded by animal lovers and sensible groups. It is possible to see the traces of the rising vio-lence in mainstream and social media. Almost every day, we come across news of rape, torture, violence, and abuse, especially against stray animals. This situation also causes conflicts between people who are sensitive to the issue and are against feeding stray animals. It is said that there are over 20 thousand stray dogs in the city where I live. Although I don't have the chance to reach all of them, I have been feeding several stray dogs for many years and trying to find solutions to their problems. While doing this, I have also been taking photos of them for the last two years. "Precarious" is the first significant part of my work on stray dogs. This work aims to present an epistemological framework for the lives of stray dogs.
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United States
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Soumya Sankar Bose
I am a documentary photographer based in India. I did my Post graduate diploma in photography from Pathshala South Asian Media Institute.Born in 1990 Midnapore - Lives and works in KolkataAwards and Fellowships: The Toto-Tasveer Emerging Photographer of the Year. India foundation for the Arts grant for the Project "Let's Sing an Old Song". Magnum Foundation's Photography and Social Justice Fellowship for the Project "Full Moon in a Dark night"Publications: The Telegraph, The Indian Express , Better Photography, Kindle Magazine, Mint Lounge, The Caravan, Wired, A’int-Bad Magazine, Platform, Harmony . As well as online portals such as Scroll.in, The Huffington Post, BBC Online, Gallery Carte Blanche, F-Stop Magazine, Galli Magazine, Fltr , Medium and etc. AAP: Do you have a mentor or role model? Yes, Shahidul Alam who is the principal of Pathshala .And Morten Krogvold was one of my mentor during Chobimela VII .AAP: Do you remember your first shot? What was it?I don't remember my first shot exactly but when I was 7-8 years old, I got a Kodak KB10 from my mother and then I started to capture each and everything around me.AAP: What or who inspires you?My Parents ,Friends, Barnali But mostly my Grand father whose photographs inspire me to become a photographer in my childhood.AAP: How could you describe your style?Once one of my mentor Hasib Zakaria told me that my work is about hyper real. "Hyper reality is seen as a condition in which what is real and what is fiction are seamlessly blended together so that there is no clear distinction between where one ends and the other begins."AAP: What kind of gear do you use? Camera, lens, digital, film?I like to shoot only on 35mm Prime lens in Film and Digital both.AAP: Do you spend a lot of time editing your images? For what purpose?I don't spend lot of time in editing my pictures but what I keep in mind during my editing is that I should not off-tracked.AAP: Favorite(s) photographer(s)?Alec Soth, Stfan bladh, Graciela Iturbide, Diane Arbus, Dayanita Singh and so on.AAP: What advice would you give a young photographer?I am also a young Photographer.AAP: What are your projects?My project documents retired Jatra artists (Jatra is four hundred years old Bengali folk theater which is disappearing day by day) or who have been working in Jatra for more than 25-30 years.AAP: Your favorite photo book?Calcutta Ladies by Dayanita Singh, Fauna and Flora by Dietmar Busse and so on.
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AAP Magazine #54 Nature
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