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Savas Onur Sen
Savas Onur Sen
Savas Onur Sen

Savas Onur Sen

Country: Turkey
Birth: 1978

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.

Websites

www.savasonursen.com

@savasonursen

 

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More Great Photographers To Discover

Les Schmidt
Les Schmidt
United States
I didn't start photographing until I got into my late thirties after moving into the Warehouse Arts District of New Orleans. I was passionate about collecting modern furniture at the time and only after a chance meeting with a local architect and an interior magazine photographer did I get the opportunity to get behind a professional camera for the first time. I was asked to style several photo shoots for the pair not knowing at the time that this informal training of creating vignettes would become a catalyst for my future work. From capturing sparse coastal and warehouse landscapes in the early 2000s and recording the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 to personal still life projects dealing with memory and loss my photographs can be viewed through this same minimalistic lens. My current body of work consists of shooting and printing large-scale nature images as well as a local portraiture series composed in B&W.
John Rankin
John Rankin
United Kingdom
1966
Synonymous with compelling portraiture, Rankin's lens captures, creates and unveils icons. Rankin made his name in publishing, founding the seminal monthly magazine Dazed & Confused with Jefferson Hack in 1992. It provided a platform for innovation for emerging stylists, designers, photographers and writers. The magazine went on to forge a distinctive mark in the arts and publishing spheres, and developed a cult status by forming and moulding trends, and bringing some of the brightest lights in fashion to the foreground. Rankin has created landmark editorial and advertising campaigns. His body of work features some of the most celebrated publications, biggest brands and pioneering charities, including Nike, Swatch, Dove, Pantene, Diageo, Women's Aid, and Breakthrough Breast Cancer. He has shot covers for Elle, German Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Esquire, GQ, Rolling Stone and Wonderland. His work has always endeavoured to question social norms and ideas of beauty and, in late 2000, Rankin published the heteroclite quarterly Rank, an experimental anti-fashion magazine celebrating the unconventional. In 2001, Jefferson and Rankin launched AnOther Magazine. With a focus on fashion, originality, and distinction. In response to the expanding menswear market, in 2005 AnOther Man was introduced, combining intelligent editorial with groundbreaking design and style. More recently, the Dazed Group has established itself as an online authority, via AnOthermag.com, Dazeddigital.com and Dazedtv.com. Rankin celebrated Dazed & Confused's 20th anniversary, shooting 20 front covers of Dazed favourites and 20 inside covers of the next generation of talent, for the December 2011 issue. Tapping into the consciousness of the 90s and 00s with his intimate approach and playful sense of humour, Rankin became known for his portraiture of bands, artists, supermodels and politicians. 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Hoang Long Ly
Hoang Long Ly
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Irving Penn
Irving Penn
United States
1917 | † 2009
Irving Penn was born on June 16, 1917 in Plainfield, New Jersey, to Harry Penn and Sonia Greenberg. In 1922, Irving Penn's younger brother, Arthur Penn, was born, who would go on to become a film director and producer. Irving Penn attended the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art (now the University of the Arts) from 1934 to 1938, where he studied drawing, painting, graphics, and industrial arts under Alexey Brodovitch. While still a student, Penn worked under Brodovitch at Harper's Bazaar, where several of Penn's drawings were published. Irving Penn worked for two years as a freelance designer and making his first amateur photographs before taking Brodovitch's position as the art director at Saks Fifth Avenue in 1940. Penn remained at Saks Fifth Avenue for a year before leaving to spend a year painting and taking photographs in Mexico and across the US. When Irving Penn returned to New York, Alexander Liberman offered him a position as an associate in the Vogue magazine Art Department, where Penn worked on layout before Liberman asked him to try his hand at photography for the magazine. Irving Penn photographed his first cover for Vogue magazine in 1943 and continued to work at the magazine throughout his career, shooting covers, portraits, still lifes, fashion, and photographic essays. In the 1950s, Penn founded his own studio in New York and began making advertising photographs. Over the years, Penn's list of clients grew to include General Foods, De Beers, Issey Miyake, and Clinique. Irving Penn met fashion model Lisa Fonssagrives at a photo shoot in 1947. In 1950, the two married at Chelsea Register Office, and two years later Lisa gave birth to their son, Tom Penn, who would go on to become a metal designer. Lisa Fonssagrives died in 1992. Irving Penn died aged 92 on October 7, 2009 at his home in Manhattan. Source: Wikipedia
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Claudio Rasano
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Roberto Pireddu
Roberto Pireddu
Italy
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Noell Oszvald
Noell Oszvald
Hungary
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Noell Oszvald was born in Hungary in 1990. While preferring to be labeled as a visual artist, Noell Oszvald uses the photographic medium as the raw material through which she channels her emotions. Favoring black and white in order to avoid any distraction that may be created by colors, she strips her images to their bare essence. Her compositions rely on pure straight lines into which the subject fuses, hence rubbing off all hierarchy within the components. The resulting sobriety, reinforced by the choice of a square format, acts as a breeding ground to a complex melange of subtle feelings derived from her melancholy and loneliness. Indeed, while all facial features are deliberately kept hidden, Oszvald’s work could easily fall within the self-portrait category; “they’re reflections of who I am,” says the artist about her images. However, the spectral presence of the character merging with its surroundings, the full-fledged role played by the environment and the powerful sensitivity that exudes through, are closer to the conceptual photography of the similarly precocious Francesca Woodman. Yet, more than her self, Oszvald conveys an apparent yet suspicious sense of calmness, well guarded by a perfectly controlled composition. In addition to the lines dividing space, the impeccable geometric interactions and the sharp contrast between the various shades of black are brought into opposition with the muffled silence of her quiescent emotions. It triggers a delicate duality, which underlies a rich and complex inner world. The reassuring perfection of these images acts like a robust armor to the highly sensitive Oszvald, who despite her young age, proves herself to be an accomplished artist. “My aim is to set up concepts using the human body as a base, while not making it the main focus of the picture. The result is a still image that is built around a person, but all parts of the whole are of equal importance. I reduce my pictures to content, composition, and form because this minimalist approach allows me to put equal emphasis on the idea behind the artwork and the entirety of the image. Portraying a sense of calmness with images that are built up based on geometric shapes is a recurring theme of my work.”Source: Artpil Noell Oszvald only shoots in black and white because she finds colors to be distracting. “I feel the same way about clothes and other matters of appearance, which why I like to reduce my images to forms, composition and content.” When asked what the story is behind one of her photo, Prejudice, Noell Oszald shared this, “I had the idea of Prejudice in my mind for a long time before I finally made it. I was very unsure about it, because I wanted the picture to look absolutely the way it does now, but to achieve this composition I had to paint the bird in, in not exactly the right position. I feared people would pick on me and call me ignorant, because the image is not precise. I was afraid of being judged while working on a picture about prejudice. How ironic.” As you look through Oszvald's beautiful and sometimes haunting images, you can't help but feel a mix of emotions. They all fall in the conceptual photography field, meaning, they illustrate an idea but one that Oszald believes should be personal to the viewer. “I don't want to tell people what to see in my images,” explains Oszland, “this is the reason why I never really write any descriptions other than titles. It shows what I wish to express but everyone is free to figure out what the picture says to them. It's very interesting to read so many different thoughts about the same piece of work.”Source: My Modern Met
Taralynn Disher
Taralynn Disher
Canada
I am not the collection of words you’re about to read, but rather a mere description of who I was that has led me to become who I am today and the person I will be tomorrow. Taralynn Disher is a Canadian-Native-born artist and creative turned professional photographer with a background in dentistry. Disher’s calling as a photographer began at the age of 16. During this time, her frustration with not finding reference images she would envision as part of her painting process, fuelled her to pursue photography to bring her visions to life.
Lorenzo Formicola
Lorenzo Formicola
Italy
1990
My Name is Lorenzo Formicola, I was born in Italy. After completing my degree in photography in Rome, I worked as an assistant for different photographers including Mario Testino, Peter Lindbergh and Craig McDean.My work is clean, with bright lighting, and shows my youthful visions and sensitivity to textures.
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All About Photo Awards 2026
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