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Sarah Sasani
Sarah Sasani
Sarah Sasani

Sarah Sasani

Country: Iran
Birth: 1985

Sarah Sasani was born in 1985 in Tehran. She is graduated in the research of art and sociology. She has activated photojournalism in domestic and foreign newspapers and newsagents since 2003. She has had four solo exhibitions and has participated in more than fifty domestic and foreign virtual festivals and group exhibitions like Austria, France, American, Italy, Belgium, Georgia, and Germany and she has gained three prestigious national festivals.
And also she is a professor in the field of sociology of art and photography at the universities of Art and Sociology.

Monotony by Sarah Sasani
 

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More Great Photographers To Discover

Jonathan Banks
United Kingdom
1971
Jonathan Banks is an award-winning photographer with over 20 years' experience in commercial and media photography. Jonathan Banks studied under the prolific artist John Blakemore, and graduated from the University of Derby with a BA honours in Photographic Studies. He cut his teeth in editorial photography freelancing for The Daily Telegraph and various agencies. His work has appeared in international magazines and books. Jonathan has exhibited several bodies of work as a solo artist, as well as in conjunction with other photographers in the UK and abroad. These have ranged from – personal projects to editorial assignments and photographs supporting various charities. Jonathan has always worked with NGOs both in the U.K. and abroad. He is a British Red Cross volunteer and has exhibited work in support of International Alert. Jonathan currently works with a stable of blue chip clients, NGOs and architects providing a range of photographic and film services. Jonathan lives in Kent with his wife and two sons. Statement I have photographed in over 50 different countries, documenting subjects as diverse as mask dancing festivals in Burkina Faso, the effects of the Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine and the aftermath of 9/11 in New York. My international experience includes working in security impaired areas, where my communication skills and sensitivity allow me to capture subjects in the most challenging situations. Combined with my creativity and technical knowhow, this enables me to deliver award-winning images. I am passionate about my work and embrace the challenges of collaborating with global corporations, magazines and NGOs alike. Every assignment is different, and, as such, is approached uniquely. I am always on the lookout for new creative partnerships.
Rena Effendi
Azerbaijan
1977
Alexis Pichot
France
1980
In 2011, I made the bold decision to redirect my professional life into my self-guided passion, photography. I worked as an interior designer in Paris for more than ten years. Throughout that time I was very focused on the use of space and acquired a sensitivity that has greatly influenced my approach to volume in photography. At night, light and space are my sources of inspiration, experimentation and confrontation - but above all, of fulfilment. I pierce the night using physical movement, as well as using light in order to see beyond what is visible, to a place where the blackness has not yet absorbed everything. I have accomplished various large-scale artistic projects, often in partnership with private and public institutions. Notably, my project with the Hotel National des Invalides - which granted me access to all of the military sites in Ile de France - enabled me to bring to light this fragment of history in a large exposition in the moat of the Invalides. I also had the opportunity to work with the RATP, who commissioned me to enter a disused marshalling yard where their entire collection of rolling stock is preserved, covering 100 years of history. The images created were exhibited during "Les Journées du Patrimoine" (the Heritage Days) within their workshop-museum. The cities and their nocturnal vestiges have been sacred fields of investigation for me, as much for their architectural lines as for the histories to which they bear witness. Arising from an awareness of and sensitivity to modern society - alongside the fact that I live in a city - nature has become my source of regeneration.
Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen
Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen is a Finnish photographer who has worked in Britain since the 1960s. She was born in Myllykoski, municipality of Sippola (from 1975 part of the town of Anjalankoski, from 2009 part of the town of Kouvola), Finland in 1948. Konttinen became interested in photography at the age of 12 and was a member of a photography group in a nearby town. Intending to pursue photography as a career, she was apprenticed to a fashion photographer in Helsinki for a year. Konttinen studied photography in London in the 1960s, and cofounded the Amber Collective, which moved to the northeast of England in 1969. From 1969 Konttinen lived in Byker, and for seven years photographed and interviewed the residents of this area of terraced houses until her own house was demolished. She continued to work there for some time afterward. This resulted in the book Byker, which in David Alan Mellor's words "bore witness to her intimate embeddedness in the locality". In 1980 she became the first photographer since the Cultural Revolution to have her work exhibited by the British Council in China. Konttinen's next project was a study of girls attending dance schools in North Shields, their mothers, and the schools. The book Step by Step came from this. The book was an influence for the film Billy Elliot. Three years of photographing the beach between Seaham and Hartlepool resulted in the series Coal Coast. Konttinen later returned to Byker and photographed its new residents in colour.Source: Wikipedia Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen is a photographer and filmmaker, best known for her work documenting working-class life in North East England. She is also co-founder of the Amber Film and Photography Collective, based in Newcastle Upon Tyne and the Side Gallery, dedicated to socially engaged documentary photography. Her documentation of Byker, the close-knit community of Newcastle, led to national recognition as a key photographic and filmic account of the rich working-class culture on the eve of its destruction. In 2003-09 she returned to the Byker Wall Estate that came to replace the original community, with her Byker Revisited/Today I’m With You book and film. Konttinen’s other long-term projects include Step by Step/Keeping Time, Hoppings, Writing in the Sand, Letters to Katja and the Coal Coast/Song For Billy. In 2011 her photography was inscribed in the UNESCO UK Memory of the World Register. She has exhibited widely, with her works held in multiple collections including the Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The New York Public Library, Tate Modern, London, Victoria and Albert Museum, London and the AmberSide Collection Trust, Newcastle.Source: Artimage
Cao Luning
China
1990
Cao Luning is a street photographer who lives in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China, a city of 8 million people. He only started to do photography 3 years ago and all learnt by himself. For Cao Luning, photography is a means of getting to know and expressing himself. Just like the saying "You are what you read", he also believes "You are what you shoot". He's extremely crazy about Street, Travel and Documentary photography, and the uncertainty and infinite possibilities of them fascinate him. They are just similar to life, you never know what you are going to get tomorrow. You may capture some nice shots, or you might come back empty-handed. Street photographer is his identity. Cao Luning is a street wanderer and likes to watch people. He can linger on the streets all day long without feeling tired or fed up. When he shoots, he focuses on the serendipity of specific colors, light and shadows, gestures and the implied humor of scenes. Cao Luning reckons framing is crucial to a good photograph, and he's been greatly influenced by Henri Cartier-Bresson and his "The Decisive Moment Theory", which He thinks is something that every photographer should pay attention to. His mentors are Mangum Photographer Alex Webb and his wife Rebecca Norris Webb, and they both helped him a lot in developing his own vision. In his opinion, given different situations and scenarios, a good street photographer should swiftly apply different compositions that best suit the scenes, instead of using one or two methods for all situations, because that's not a creative process, it's just mechanical repetitions. Statement I'm a street photographer who started to do photography 3 years ago. For me, photography is a means of getting to know and expressing myself. Just like the saying "You are what you read", I also believe "You are what you shoot". I'm extremely crazy about Street, Travel and Documentary photography, and the uncertainty and infinite possibilities of them fascinate me. They are just similar to life, you never know what you are going to get tomorrow. You may capture many nice shots, or you might come back empty-handed. I'm a street wanderer and I like to watch people. I can linger on the streets all day long without feeling tired or fed up. When I shoot, I focus on the serendipity of specific colors, light and shadows, gestures and the implied humor of scenes. I reckon framing is crucial to a good photograph, and I've been greatly influenced by Henri Cartier-Bresson and his "The Decisive Moment Theory", which I think is something that every photographer should pay attention to. In my opinion, given different situations and scenarios, a good street photographer should swiftly apply different compositions that best suit the scenes, instead of using one or two methods for all situations, because that's not a creative process, it's just mechanical repetitions. Most of the works I submitted were shot during the pandemic in China.. On January 2020, The New Coronavirus Pneumonia (or COVID-19) outbroke in Wuhan, Hubei Province in China and soon spread all over the country. As a result, the Chinese government locked down the whole country, stopped all production activities, restricted intercity transportation, and people were advised not to go outside. I live in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, a city of 8 million people, and when it was shut down, it was a bit like a ghost town in the beginning, not completely empty, but hard to find people on the streets. However, I found out by the Yangtze River and some parks, there are some citizens. People would go fishing, do sports, exercise or simply relax. So I often go to those places with my camera, trying to capture their life under the influence of Coronavirus. The virus has pressed the pause button for most of us, though it's not a good thing, objectively speaking, it gives us a good opportunity to look inside and review our living states. It offers us a window to slow down and appreciate all the good and beautiful things around us as well. In the meantime, we are also given the possibility to do the things that we always wanted to do. We should cherish it and live in the moment, despite how dreadful the epidemic situation might be, life has to go on. I hope you'll enjoy my works and get to know me better by them.
Vicky Stromee
United States
1950
How I got interested in photography I was immersed in the arts from an early age. My father was an amateur photographer and my mother a painter and pianist. At 8, I got my first Brownie camera and began shooting everything I saw. Watching an image magically emerge from the developing tray in my dad's darkroom; spending afternoons lying under the baby grand piano with waves of sound resonating around and through me; texture, pattern, fluidity, and change - these were my earliest influences, and they continue to unfold in my work. Where I live and my work can be seen I am fortunate to call the Southwest - a place of incredible natural beauty - my home. I have lived in Tucson, AZ since 1975 when I moved here to pursue a master’s degree in Counseling at the University of Arizona. When I retired from a long career in mental health, I turned my attention full time to photography, ultimately finding my niche in photographing natural subjects. More recently I have begun to create photomontages incorporating these natural objects into both abstract images and scenes of imaginary realism. My work hangs in galleries, hospitals, and private and corporate collections throughout the US. It has been featured at the Griffin Museum of Photography, Boston; Waxlander Gallery, Santa Fe; PhotoPlace Gallery, Vermont; A Smith Gallery, Texas; Fotonostrum, Barcelona; and Afterimage Gallery in Dallas. Selected images have representation through Cynthia Byrnes Contemporary Art in New York. What captures my imagination and what I explore in my art I am interested in edges and intersections of transformation where one thing moves inexorably to become something else. When is the moment when love fades into anger and resentment; when disillusionment erupts into a violent uprising, when order descends into chaos? And when is the moment when war turns towards peace; unbearable grief shifts towards acceptance; or when pain gives way to relief? I feel the daily bombardment of stories about conflict and anger towards “otherness.” I’m disturbed by the disintegration of public discourse that has devolved into shouting tropes at one another and refusing to entertain differing points of view while using violence to subjugate and silence others. The cacophony of misinformation drives me into further retreat. I’ve always felt a kinship with Buddhist thought and the concept of nonduality - the belief that there is only one reality that is the summation of all experience. That there is no separation between subject and object; inner self and outer experience; self and other. We are drops in the ocean, interconnected manifestations of spirit. When I am engaged in the act of creation – no longer focused on trying to create, but simply being a conduit – time disappears. I’m following an intuitive process to listen for what comes next. The external chatter recedes, I feel a sense of calm, I feel connected to a deeper flow. Touching into these moments provides a respite and allows me to re-engage in the world with all its seemingly unresolvable conundrums. I make art as much for myself as for others; creating visual meditations is an end in and of itself.
Jan Saudek
Czech Republic
1935
Jan Saudek is an art photographer and painter. He and his twin brother Kaja Saudek are holocaust survivors. Jan Saudek's art work represents a unique technique combining photography and painting. In his country of origin, Czechoslovakia, Jan was considered a disturbed artist and oppressed by authorities. His art gained more prominence during the 1990s, thanks to his collaboration with the publisher Taschen. During the 2000s, Saudek lost all his photo negatives in a matrimonial dispute and his pictures are now displayed on the internet for free. Jan claims they were stolen from him. Jan is the author of many “mise en scene” that were re-taken and copied by other artists. The cliché of a naked man holding a naked newborn baby with tenderness became a picture that was reproduced so many times that the composition became as commonplace as posing for a graduation picture. I still dream of the day when I will take a photograph so beautiful that it can be called love. -- Jan Saudek During his life in communist Czechoslovakia, Jan was labeled by the totalitarian regime as a pornographer. He lived in poverty using the only room in his basement as his studio. A disintegrating wall and a window giving a glimpse into the backyard became the witnesses of his fantasies and collaborations with models of all different sizes and origins. Jan Saudek and his twin brother Karel (also known as Kája) were born to a Slavic (Czech) mother and Jewish father in Prague in 1935. Their mother's family came to Prague from Bohemia, and their father from the city of Děčín in the northwest part of that area. During World War II and after the invasion of the German Nazis, both sides of his family were racially persecuted by the invaders. Many of his Jewish relatives died in the Theresienstadt concentration camp during the war. Jan and his brother Karel were sent to a children's concentration camp for Mischlinge (mixed-blood in German, as Nazis classified Jews as a race distinct from "Aryans"), located in Silesia near the present Polish-Czech border. Their father Gustav was deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp in February 1945. Although their mother and many other relatives died, both sons and father survived the war. A Communist-dominated government gained power after the war to rule the country, enforced by the Soviet Union and considered to be behind the Iron Curtain. According to Saudek's biography, he acquired his first camera, a Kodak Baby Brownie, in 1950. He apprenticed to a photographer, and in 1952 started working in a print shop; he was restricted to this work by the Communist government until 1983. In 1959, he started using the more advanced Flexaret 6x6 camera, and also engaged in painting and drawing. After completing his military service, he was inspired in 1963 by the catalogue for American photographer Edward Steichen's The Family of Man exhibition, and began to work to become a serious art photographer. In 1969, Saudek traveled to the United States, where he was encouraged in his work by curator Hugh Edwards of the Art Institute of Chicago. I have no way of portraying the lives of others. I portray my own. -- Jan Saudek Returning to Prague, Saudek had to work on his photography clandestinely in a cellar, to avoid the attention of the secret police. With his work turning to themes of personal erotic freedom, he used implicitly political symbols of corruption and innocence. In the late 1970s, he became recognized in the West as the leading Czech photographer, and also developed a following among photographers in his own country. In 1983, the first book of Saudek's work was published in the English-speaking world. The same year, he became a freelance photographer; the Czech Communist authorities allowed him to stop working in the print shop, and gave him permission to apply for a permit to work as an artist. In 1987, the archives of his negatives were seized by the police, but later returned. His best-known work is notable for its hand-tinted portrayal of painterly dream worlds, often inhabited by nude or semi-nude figures surrounded by bare plaster walls or painted backdrops. He frequently re-uses elements (for instance, a clouded sky or a view of Prague's Charles Bridge). In this his photographs suggest the studio and tableaux works of mid-19th century erotic photographers, as well as the works of the 20th-century painter Balthus, and of Bernard Faucon. Saudek's early art photography is noted for its evocation of childhood. His later works often portrayed the evolution from child to adult (re-photographing the same composition/pose, and with the same subjects, over many years). Religious motifs and the ambiguity between man and woman have also been some of Saudek's recurring themes. During the 1990s, his work at times generated censorship attempts in the West because of its provocative sexual content. Saudek's imagery has sometimes had a mixed reception internationally. He gained early shows in 1969 and 1970 in the United States and in Australia. In 1970 his work was shown at the Australian Centre for Photography and was welcomed by curator Jennie Boddington at the National Gallery of Victoria. Decades later, by contrast, his photograph Black Sheep & White Crow, which features a semi-naked pre-pubescent girl, was removed from the Ballarat International Foto Biennale in Victoria, Australia just before the opening on 21 August 2011; objections had been made related to allegations of child prostitution for his subject. Saudek's photographs have been featured as covers for the albums of Anorexia Nervosa (New Obscurantis Order), Soul Asylum (Grave Dancers Union), Daniel Lanois (For the Beauty of Wynona), Rorschach (Remain Sedate), and Beautiful South (Welcome to the Beautiful South). Saudek lives and works in Prague. His brother Kája Saudek was also an artist, the best-known Czech graphic novelist.Source: Wikipedia Saudek's pictures display a fondness for sequences that can be traced back to his childhood appreciation of comic books. More obviously, his work is often inspired by the nineteenth-century tradition of photographs of large women posed in lingerie reproduced as postcards (quite possibly also the source of inspiration for Saudek's collection 30 Postcards). His formal training occurred from 1950 to 1952, when Saudek attended Graphic Arts school and took a photography class. Saudek first exhibited in Prague in 1963 at the Hall of the Theatre on the Balustrade; though he continues to show work in his home country occasionally, Saudek's pictures are most widely exhibited in the United States. His work is held by such institutions as the Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris; Musée Nicephore Nièpce, Chalon-sur-Saone, France; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia; and Photo Art, Basel, Switzerland. Saudek continues to live and work in the Czech Republic.Source: Museum of Contemporary Photography
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