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Madison Casagranda
Madison Casagranda
Madison Casagranda

Madison Casagranda

Country: United States

Madison Casagranda is a recent graduate from Brigham Young University where she studied photography and art education. She works primarily with alternative photographic processes in the darkroom, and enjoys the hands-on nature of these processes. Her goal is to communicate culturally and historically significant concepts and connect us to the past in order to address challenges in the present day. Her photography most often centers around her personal and family history, United States history, anti racism, and amplifying voices from marginalized communities. She has had two solo exhibitions at BYU and her work has been included in many group exhibitions across the country, including at The Springville Museum of Art, The Southeast Center for Photography, and The Praxis Gallery. Her work has been published in Communication Arts and she is currently working on self publishing a book of her series, The Black Stories Project.

The Black Stories Project
The wet plate collodion tintype process was first invented in the 1850s and became a primary photographic practice in the 1860s and 1870s, documenting much of the Civil War. The tintypes of the Black Stories Project embody the history of photography and the history of racial inequity in the United States and more specifically in the state of Utah. They draw a connection between the history of racism and the dialogue about race today. In a state where the black population is less than two percent and a dominant religious culture presents a unique and complicated narrative of the past and present, we can only address the current issues of systemic inequality while acknowledging and grappling with the history behind them. This project is a study about how the weight of our state's history and the lens through which it is told, affects how black individuals experience life here today. The Black Stories Project is made up of the portraits and voices of members of the black community here in Utah, and stands as an effort towards opening the conversation, understanding the past and changing the future narrative of our history.

Exhibition

The Black Stories Project

Websites

@maddiecasagranda

www.maddiecasagranda.com

 

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More Great Photographers To Discover

Oleg Dou
Oleg Dou
Russia
1983
As his mother was a painter and his father was a dress designer, in his childhood Oleg Dou used to gather with the artists and to spend a lot of time reading is father’s fashion magazines. At the age of 13, his parents offered him his first computer set up with an old version of Photoshop with which he already began to transform his schoolfriends or teachers faces. After studying design, he worked as a web designer. In 2005, he buys his first professional camera. Discovered in 2006 by Liza Fetissova, Oleg Dou is represented today by galleries in France, Belgium, Netherlands, Spain, Russia and United States. His worked has been published in a lot of international reviews. He is one of the most promising artist of his generation. In 2011, the Artprice company, leader of the information on art value, has graded Oleg Dou in the top 3 of the under 30 years old photographers the best saled in public auctions. One of his images will make the cover of an extensive " Frozen Dream, contemporary art from Russia" book, from TransGlobe Publishing and Thames & Hudson. Oleg Dou lives and works in Moscow. From Art and Haze Oleg Dou grew up in an artistic environment, with a mother and a father as artists. With 13 years, the young man gets a computer with Photoshop. He then begins to transform photographs, especially the faces of his classmates and teachers. After studying design in 2005 he bought his first professional camera. In a very short time, the artist attracted professionals from the world of art and collectors with a specific and recognizable universe. It is also noticed in 2006 by Liza Festissova, gallery to the Russian Tea Room. Between 2007 and 2008, he won the 1st prize of the International Photography Awards with his Toy Story series, doing portraits of children with extreme whiteness and exposed during the FIAC in 2008. Represented by galleries around the world, Oleg Dou is surely one of the most promising young Russian artists . In 2011, the company information on the art market on Artprice ranks him as one of the top three photographers under 30. “A game,” said Oleg Dou, 28, while summarizing his new exhibition titled “Another Face”. Very comfortable, this Muscovite in silhouette – editing pictures with a software to sublimate his thoughts. And these faces cover a multitude of dressings graceful as a plastic surgeon on acid looking for indulgence. These digital collages, quite confusing when watched closely, causing some embarrassment.Source: RTR Gallery
Keiichi Tahara
Keiichi Tahara
Japan
1951 | † 2017
Tahara was born in Kyoto. He learned photographic techniques at an early age from his grandfather, a professional photographer. In 1972, he travelled Europe with Red Buddha Theatre as a lighting and visual technician. While in France, he encountered a sharp, harsh and piercing light that he had never experienced in Japan. Since then, he remained in Paris for next 30 years and started his career as a photographer. His first series of work "Ville (City)" (1973-1976) captured the unique light in Paris in black-and-white photography. His next series of work "Fenêtre (Windows)" (1973-1980) awarded the best new photographer by Arles International Photography Festival in 1977 and he moved into the limelight.The following year, he started the new series "Portrait" (1978), then "Eclat" (1979-1983) and "Polaroid" (1984) and received number of awards such as Ihei Kimura award (1985). His morphological approach to light has extended to sculpture, installations, and other various method crossing over the genre of photography. In 1993, in moat of the Castle of Angers (1993), the first light sculpture in France, "Fighting the Dragon" (1993) was installed. "Garden of Light" (Eniwa, Hokkaido, 1989) is a representative piece in which light sculptures are installed in a public space covered in snow for six months of the year. The light changes in response to music and presents a space of poetic dimensions. Based on the same concept, "Échos du Lumières" (2000) was installed in the Canal Saint-Martin, commissioned as a public space project by the City of Paris. The spectacle colors from the prisms illuminate the stone wall synchronizing with the sounds. The rest of his work include a permanent outdoor installation "Niwa (Garden)" (2001) at the Photography Museum in Paris (Maison Européenne de la Photographie), "Portail de Lumière", an installation created as a part of the cultural project Lille 2004, and " Light Sculpture" exhibition at Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum in 2004. In 2008, Tahara lead the project of building Ginza 888, with the artistic direction of the Museum of Islamic Art. A photography book was published. He continued to produce a number of light installation projects in urban spaces. He died on 6 June 2017. Source: Wikipedia When did you realize you wanted to be a photographer? It was 1972 when I am 21 years old Where did you study photography? With whom? From my grand father Do you have a mentor or role model? Trace of light. Moholy-Nagy / Man-Ray How long have you been a photographer? 40 years Do you remember your first shot? What was it? Yes, when I was 6 years old took the picture of garden of our family house What or who inspires you? So many artists which I met in my life How could you describe your style? Trace of light. Do you have a favorite photograph or series? Serie de Eclat 1979-1983 Do you spend a lot of time editing your images? For what purpose? Light/Observation/Notation what mistake should a young photographer avoid? Do not afraid mistake, mistake make a art An idea, a sentence, a project you would like to share? 1970 What are your projects? 1970
Nicola Perscheid
Nicola Perscheid
Germany
1864 | † 1930
Nicola Perscheid (3 December 1864 - 12 May 1930) was a German photographer. He is primarily known for his artistic portrait photography. He developed the "Perscheid lens", a soft focus lens for large format portrait photography. Perscheid was born as Nikolaus Perscheid in Moselweiβ [de] near Koblenz, Germany, where he also went to school. At the age of 15, he began an apprenticeship as a photographer. Subsequently, Perscheid earned his living as an itinerant photographer; he worked, amongst other places, in Saarbrücken, Trier, and Colmar, but also in Nice, Vienna, or Budapest. In Klagenfurt in Austria he finally found a permanent position and on 1 March 1887, he became a member of the Photographic Society of Vienna (Wiener Photographische Gesellschaft). In 1889, he moved to Dresden, where he initially worked in the studio of Wilhelm Höffert (1832-1901), a well-known studio in Germany at that time, before opening his own studio in Görlitz on 6 June 1891. The next year he was appointed court photographer at the court of Albert, King of Saxony. In 1894, Perscheid moved to Leipzig. Perscheid had his first publication of an image of his in a renowned photography magazine in 1897, and subsequently participated in many exhibitions and also had contacts with artist Max Klinger. As an established and well-known photographer, he moved in 1905 to Berlin. There, he experimented with early techniques for colour photography, without much success, and when his assistant Arthur Benda [de] left him in 1907, Perscheid gave up these experiments altogether. His portraits, however, won him several important prizes, but apparently were not an economic success: he sold his studio on 24 June 1912. In October 1913, he held a course at the Swedish society of professional photographers, the Svenska Fotografernas Förbund, which must have been a success as it was praised even ten years later. In 1923, he followed a call by the Danish college for photography in Kopenhagen. Percheid had several students who would later become renowned photographers themselves. Arthur Benda studied with him from 1899 to 1902, and joined him again in 1906 as his assistant for experimenting with colour photography. Benda left Perscheid in 1907; together with Dora Kallmus he went to Vienna and worked in her studio Atelier d'Ora, which he eventually took over and that continued to exist under the name d'Ora-Benda until 1965. Kallmus herself also had studied from January to May 1907 at Perscheid's. Henry B. Goodwin, who later emigrated to Sweden and in 1913 organized Perscheid's course there, studied with Perscheid in 1903. In 1924 the Swedish photographer Curt Götlin (1900-1993) studied at Perscheid's studio. Perscheid also influenced the Japanese photographer Toragorō Ariga, who studied in Berlin from 1908 to 1914 and also followed Perscheid's courses. He returned in 1915 to Japan. The Perscheid lens was developed around 1920. It is a soft-focus lens with a wide depth of field, produced by Emil Busch AG after the specifications of Perscheid. The lens is designed especially for large format portrait photography. Ariga introduced the Perscheid lens in Japan, where it became very popular amongst Japanese portrait photographers of the 1920s. Even after the sale of his studio, Perscheid continued to work as a photographer and even rented other studio rooms in 1917. Besides artistic photography, he also always did "profane" studio portraits, for instance for the Postkartenvertrieb Willi Sanke in Berlin that between 1910 and 1918 published a series of about 600 to 700 numbered aviation postcards, including a large number of portraits of flying aces, a number of which were done by Perscheid. Towards the end of the 1920s, Perscheid had severe financial problems. In autumn 1929 he had to sub-rent his apartment to be able to pay his own rent. Shortly afterwards, he suffered a stroke, and was hospitalized in spring of 1930. While he was at the hospital, his belongings, including his cameras and photographic plates, but also all his furniture were auctioned off to pay his debts. Two weeks after the auction, on 12 May 1930, Perscheid died at the Charité hospital in Berlin. Source: Wikipedia
Cornell Capa
Cornell Capa
United States
1918 | † 2008
Cornell Capa (born Kornél Friedmann; April 10, 1918 – May 23, 2008) was a Hungarian American photographer, member of Magnum Photos, photo curator, and the younger brother of photo-journalist and war photographer Robert Capa. Graduating from Imre Madách Gymnasium in Budapest, he initially intended to study medicine, but instead joined his brother in Paris to pursue photography. Cornell was an ambitious photo enthusiast who founded the International Center of Photography in New York in 1974 with help from Micha Bar-Am after a stint of working for both Life magazine and Magnum Photos. Born as Kornél Friedmann in Budapest, he moved, aged 18, to Paris to work with his elder brother Robert Capa, a photo-journalist. In 1937, Cornell Capa moved to New York City to work in the Life magazine darkroom.[4] After serving in the U.S. Air Force, Capa became a Life staff photographer in 1946. The many covers that Capa shot for the magazine included portraits of television personality Jack Paar, painter Grandma Moses, and Clark Gable. In 1953 he visited Venezuela to make a photo-report of Caracas, on this trip he had the opportunity to photograph the artist Armando Reverón. In May 1954, his brother Robert Capa was killed by a landmine, while covering the final years of the First Indochina War. Cornell Capa joined Magnum Photos, the photo agency co-founded by Robert, the same year. For Magnum, Cornell Capa covered the Soviet Union, Israeli Six-Day War, and American politicians. Beginning in 1967, Capa mounted a series of exhibits and books entitled The Concerned Photographer. The exhibits led to his establishment in 1974 of the International Center of Photography in New York City. Capa served for many years as the director of the Center. Capa has published several collections of his photographs including JFK for President, a series of photographs of the 1960 presidential campaign that he took for Life magazine. Capa also produced a book documenting the first 100 days of the Kennedy presidency, with fellow Magnum photographers including Henri Cartier-Bresson and Elliott Erwitt. Capa died in New York City on May 23, 2008, of natural causes at the age of 90.Source: Wikipedia Cornell Capa (originally Cornell Friedmann) was born in Budapest and moved to Paris in 1936 to join his brother, Robert, who had escaped from the increasingly anti-Semitic climate of Hungary in 1930. Although he had intended to study medicine, Cornell was drawn to photography through his brother and began making prints for him, as well as for Henri Cartier-Bresson and Chim (David Seymour). This experience encouraged him to become a professional photojournalist, and in 1937 he moved to New York to pursue a career. After he had worked in the darkrooms of the Pix agency and LIFE for a few years, his first photo story was published in Picture Post in 1939. During World War II, Capa worked for the US Army Air Corps Photo-Intelligence Unit and the Army Air Corps's public relations department. In 1946, he became a staff photographer at LIFE, based mainly in the American Midwest, and covered some three hundred assignments over the next three years. He was the magazine's resident photographer in England for two years, after which he returned to the United States, to produced some of his most well-known photo essays, on subjects such as Adlai Stevenson's presidential campaign and the education of mentally retarded children. Upon Robert's death in 1954, Capa left LIFE to continue his borther's work at Magnum, the international cooperative photography agency co-founded in 1947 by Robert, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Chim (David Seymour), and George Rodger. Over the next twenty years, Capa photographed many important stories for Magnum, including the activities of the Perón government in Argentina; the Democratic National Conventions of 1956, 1960 and 1968; and John F. Kennedy's first hundred days in office. Capa's photographic production slowed in the mid-1970s as he devoted himself more to the care and promotion of other photographers' work through his International Fund for Concerned Photography. In 1964, he organized the exhibition The Concerned Photographer, which led to the establishment of the International Center of Photography, an organization dedicated to the support of photography as a means of communication and creative expression, and to the preservation of photographic archives as a vital component of twentieth-century history. Capa received ICP's Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995. Capa served as ICP's Director Emeritus until his death in 2008.Source: International Center of Photography In Mr. Capa’s nearly 30 years as a photojournalist, the professional code to which he steadfastly adhered is best summed up by the title of his 1968 book “The Concerned Photographer.” He used the phrase often to describe any photographer who was passionately dedicated to doing work that contributed to the understanding and well-being of humanity and who produced “images in which genuine human feeling predominates over commercial cynicism or disinterested formalism.” The subjects of greatest interest to Capa as a photographer were politics and social justice. He covered both presidential campaigns of Adlai Stevenson in the 1950s and also became a good friend of Stevenson. He covered John F. Kennedy’s successful presidential run in 1960, and then spearheaded a project in which he and nine fellow Magnum photographers documented the young president’s first hundred days, resulting in the book “Let Us Begin: The First One Hundred Days of the Kennedy Administration.” (He got to know the Kennedys well; Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis would become one of the first trustees of the I.C.P.) In Argentina, Mr. Capa documented the increasingly repressive tactics of the Peron regime and then the revolution that overthrew it. In Israel, he covered the 1967 Six Day-War. The vast number of picture essays he produced on assignment ranged in subject from Christian missionaries in the jungles of Latin America to the Russian Orthodox Church in Soviet Russia during the cold war, the elite Queen’s Guards in England and the education of mentally retarded children in New England. His work conformed to all the visual hallmarks of Life magazine photography: clear subject matter, strong composition, bold graphic impact and at times even a touch of wit. In his 1959 essay about the Ford Motor Company, for example, one picture presents a bird’s-eye view of 7,000 engineers lined up in rows behind the first compact car all of them were involved in developing: a single Ford Falcon. “I am not an artist, and I never intended to be one,” he wrote in the 1992 book Cornell Capa: Photographs. “I hope I have made some good photographs, but what I really hope is that I have done some good photo stories with memorable images that make a point, and, perhaps, even make a difference.”Source: The New-York Times
Laurent Baheux
Laurent Baheux
France
1970
Laurent Baheux is a French photographer born in 1970 in Poitiers. After covering unrestrained international sport news, Laurent Baheux turned towards nature and wilderness. Its been fifteen years since the photographer works on making collections of images of nature in a dense and contrasting style. Laurent Baheux tries to develop a different way of photographing nature and its faune by attempting to create portraits that depict the personality and humanity of each animal, as an individual. He adopts an animal portrayer approach where aesthetics and sensibility prevail over the documentary vision. Tight or misaligned layouts, blur or grain, raw and deep blacks, he explores all the ways possible, having as only requirement the magnification of his subject instead of just representing it. The photographer actively advocates for organizations of environmental protection such as WWF, the Foundation Good Planet, the Institute Jane Goodall or the Association Cheetah for Ever. In 2013, he became goodwill ambassador for the United Nations program for the environment on the anti-poaching campaign Wild and Precious. His photographs are exhibited in galleries and are part of books, publications and exhibitions in France and abroad. Interview Exclusive Interview with Laurent Baheux
Katharine Cooper
Katharine Cooper
South Africa
1978
Katharine Cooper, born 1978 in Grahamstown, in South Africa's Eastern Cape, moved at a young age to Zimbabwe, where she completed her schooling. In 1998, she moved to the United Kingdom to pursue her studies in photography, before finally landing at the Arles national school of photography, from which she graduated with honours in 2004, notably for her film "Family Archive". Katharine worked as in-house printer to photographer Lucien Clergue, in his Arles-based atelier, from 2004 up until his death in 2014. Her work has been exhibited in various collective shows, and bought by art-collectors from around the world. Katharine Cooper regularly teaches workshops in the Arles region, whose Camargue landscapes and strong winds remind her of her homeland. In 2012 Katharine Cooper received the Academy of the Arts' Photography Prize for her series "White Africans", which showed in Paris October/November 2013.
Flip Schulke
Flip Schulke
United States
1930 | † 2008
Flip Schulke was an American photographer, born Graeme Phillips Schulke. He grew up in New Ulm, Minnesota. Schulke's nickname "Flip" came about from his interest in gymnastics. He graduated from Macalester College, then moved to Miami. He taught briefly at the University of Miami, then began working as a freelance photographer. He worked for Life , and covered a variety of events, including the Cuban revolution. In 1962, he visited and photographed the Berlin Wall. Schulke began photographing the civil rights movement in the American south as early as 1956. He formed a bond with civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr. after an all-night conversation in 1958, and began photographing him. King invited Schulke to photograph secret planning meetings of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, though not all of the activists trusted him being there. He also photographed the 1963 March on Washington and the 1965 Selma to Montgomery March. They traveled together until King's death in 1968, which upset Schulke so much that he stopped covering the civil rights movement and began to work on more commercial projects. In all, he took around 11,000 photographs of King, including some of his funeral. Schulke photographed Muhammad Ali, Jacques Cousteau, Fidel Castro and John F. Kennedy. He also was a photographer for the Environmental Protection Agency's Documerica program in the early 1970s. Schulke died on May 15, 2008 at age 77. The Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin holds 300,000 of his photographs. His photographs are also held in a variety of museums, including the Harvard Art Museums, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the National Museum of American History, the University of Michigan Museum of Art, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the Lehigh University Art Galleries.Source: Wikipedia My biggest problem with young photographers is that they don't think about context. They think about drama. You've got to know where to point your camera. -- Flip Schulke When the Berlin Wall came down, thousands of people from around the world converged to celebrate the end of over 40 years of a divided Europe. Among them was American photojournalist Flip Schulke, who had visited the wall many times since it was erected in 1961 in an attempt to document what he described as "man's physical ability to build a bastion between himself and his own dignity, if he tries hard enough". As he mingled with the crowd, he heard on their lips not a German protest song, but the famous American civil rights anthem "We shall overcome". It was a song he knew well. As a photojournalist in the 1950s and 1960s, Schulke captured many significant moments in the nation's struggle for civil rights in the 1960s, such as the marches to end segregation from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, and Martin Luther King's funeral in 1968. After the Berlin Wall went up in 1961, Schulke brought his civil rights experiences with him as he attempted to capture the wall's symbolic and physical power. "This is the wall that fear built," Schulke wrote in notes during his visit to the wall in 1962. "This was the wall where hate stood guard, and men stooped much lower than angels. On one side it was bright and clean from the sun of freedom. (On) the other dark and bitter - the rot of slavery." Comprised of bricks, mortar, steel wire and jagged glass fragments to deter climbers, the wall both appalled and shocked Schulke, who described it as having a "jerry built" look. "It just can't be real," he noted, adding that the wall was a "monument to human misery" that "splits the world in half like a melon". He recalled how on the western side German children played tag in the shadows of tank traps while on the other side children stood "dull-eyed and pinch-faced in darkened doorways - wondering how one learns to laugh". As East German guards looked at him through their binoculars, Schulke observed recent East German escapees in West Berlin standing near the wall and signaling to friends and relatives back in East Berlin or waiting for relatives to appear. "One woman waited five hours to see her mother who never turned up," Schulke wrote. "Another couple stood by the River Spree, the girl crying softly, trying to catch a glimpse of her mother across the river." During Schulke's early coverage of the civil rights movement, he had a relatively balanced journalistic outlook and tried to see both sides, says Gary Truman, a long-time friend and former colleague. "But that faded quickly because he said that sometimes there is no other reasonable opposite view, there was only right and wrong," Truman says. "I think his coverage of the Berlin Wall stated immediately: this simply is wrong." Schulke saw both the wall and the civil rights movement as part of "a greater conflict over universal human freedoms," says Truman, who became the archivist of Schulke's photo collection after the photographer's death in 2008. "Similarities always exist in the artist's eyes." Schulke was far from alone in seeing the parallels between division in America and in Berlin. Even before the famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech by President John F Kennedy, his brother Robert Kennedy came to Berlin as US Attorney General in February 1962. "For a hundred years, despite out protestations of equality, we had, as you know, a wall of our own - a wall of segregation erected against Negroes," Kennedy said. "That wall is coming down."Source: BBC
Leo Touchet
Leo Touchet
United States
1939
Leo Touchet is an American photographer, Born in Abbeville, Louisiana, in 1939. Throughout his 50-plus year career, photographer Leo Touchet’s work has captured the essence of people and cultures all across the world. In July 1965, inspired by the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson on view at MoMA, Touchet purchased a Leica M2 and began photographing the streets of New York. Soon after, his work drew the eye of a Life Magazine photo editor. That chance encounter led him on assignment for UNICEF to war-torn Vietnam, the first stop on a career that led Touchet through fifty countries across the world. Touchet’s fascination with photography began after pouring through photos an uncle had taken while deployed during World War II. In college, Touchet studied architecture where he was introduced to the principles of composition, form, light, and perspective. This architectural training deeply informed his later photographic work. Upon meeting Henri Cartier-Bresson in 1972, the man whose work inspired Touchet’s career suggested he return home and photograph the people and culture. Touchet took the advice and turned his lens upon his birth state of Louisiana, a sample of which was beautifully collected in the monograph Rejoice When You Die - The New Orleans Jazz Funerals. In total, six monographs of Touchet’s work have been published. Additionally, his work has been featured in numerous publications including Time, Life, National Geographic, and New York Times. Numerous museums and private collections hold Touchet’s work, including the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Everson Museum of Art, Hofstra University Museum, the Sir Elton John Photography Collection, Chase Manhattan Collection, and the United States National Park Service. Touchet’s work has been exhibited internationally numerous times notably including solo exhibitions at the Acadiana Center for the Arts, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Miami Art Center and the Mint Museum.Source: Jackson Fine Art Artist Statement "My earliest memory of photography was at the age of six in my hometown of Abbeville, Louisiana when an uncle returned from World War II with boxes of photographs he had taken, and I have since wanted to travel. While in high school, I was selected to be the high school photographer. My equipment then was an old 4x5 Crown Graphic Camera with screw in flash bulbs. After high school and a stint in the Army, I enrolled in Architecture school at the University of Southwest Louisiana (now the University of Louisiana Lafayette). There I was introduced to composition, form, light and perspective. My photography has since used all of these elements. Most of my photos are full-frame images, cropped in the camera. I later worked in Cleveland and New York as a draftsman and later as an industrial designer. Eventually I became bored with working in an office on a drawing board. In July 1965, on a visit to the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), I was captivated by the photos of Henri Cartier-Bresson. The next day, I bought a used Leica M2 camera and began photographing on the streets of New York. The photography archives at MOMA were open to the public and most of my photography education resulted from my many hours studying photos of Cartier-Bresson, Paul Strand, Eugene Smith, Edward Steichen, Gordon Parks and many other photographers in the collection. Later that year, I bought a ticket to Vietnam to become a photographer." -- Leo TouchetSource: leotouchet.com
Sonia Costa
Sonia Costa
Italy
Sonia Costa is an was born in Northeast Italy and is temporarily based in Rome. With her studies in Geography and her passion for nature and worldwide different cultures, she has been traveling the world for years studying the interrelationship between people and environment. Promoting a sustainable tourism with a low environmental impact, she has long worked in Indian Sub-Continent, South East Asia and in the most isolated corners of the planet. Award winning free-lance photographer, she has been taking street and documentary photographs for years. Her essential subject is social life, focusing mostly in ordinary life, cultural stories and contemporary issues, always attracted by old stories, isolated places and people out of the spotlight. Her special passion for intimacy led her to develop portraiture as one of preferred means to interact with people and better understand the human condition. Wandering the planet including its remote regions, she has always been fascinated by the profound resilience with which simple people, especially women and children, face life . In a world submerged by conflicts, she tries to document the beauty and delicacy she can still find out there. In 2016 her first pocketbook was published: "La figlia di Saadi" Ed. Polaris, a tour around the world through short stories and photographs dedicated to the female universe. She published her photographs in magazines and books and exhibited her work in collective and solo shows in Italy and in collective shows in USA and Spain, upcoming in Japan. After being away from photography world for a while, she started to share her photographs just three years ago and be awarded in various International Photography Contests. Tokyo International Awards - IPA International Awards - Julia Cameron Awards - Prix de La Photographie Paris. Nominees and Honorable mentions, Merit of Excellence and Nominees : All About Photo APP Magazine - Monochrome Awards - Fine Art Photography Awards - Pollux Awards - Black and White Spider Awards - International Colors Awards - IPA Street Awards. Ordinary life through an extraordinary year I have always loved isolated places and being able to capture images with few people filling empty spaces I felt, in some way, as I was in my loved remote and lonely journeys. I usually travel and live out of my country months a year. Due to Covid-19 Pandemic, I spent most of 2020 stuck in Italy and luckily, when possible, in other European countries. During the lockdown, I wandered through the deserted cities with my camera, in this project I tried to document the ordinary life of two Italian symbol cities: Rome and Venice. In summertime, Venice had somehow returned to what it once was many years ago, even if in indoor places masks were still compulsory. Without crowds of tourists poured through the narrow streets and the cruise ships that monstrously invaded the lagoon, I could hear my voice again and the silent canals could finally breath. Rome, in late spring and fall, looked like certain sunny summers when the city empties itself for holidays and the sultry heat. Only few people going around by tramways or in empty squares patrolled by policemen with the sound of the sea gulls in the air. Documenting ordinary life along the streets, it was like looking at old photographs during the pandemic Spanish flu in 1918. Used to observe distant countries, see and record the changing world, last year I observed and caught the world through our changing cities.
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Interview
Interview with Maureen Ruddy Burkhart
Photographer Maureen Ruddy Burkhart brings a quietly attentive and deeply human sensibility to her exploration of the world through images. Shaped by a life immersed in photography, film, and visual storytelling, her work is guided by intuition, observation, and an enduring interest in the emotional undercurrents of everyday life. With a practice rooted in both fine art traditions and documentary awareness, she approaches her subjects with sensitivity, allowing subtle moments to emerge naturally rather than be imposed. Her series Til Death, selected as the Solo Exhibition for February 2025, reflects this long-standing commitment to photography as a space for reflection rather than spectacle. Drawn to moments that exist just outside the expected frame, Burkhart’s images suggest narratives without resolving them, leaving room for ambiguity, humor, and quiet connection. We asked her a few questions about her life and work.
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Exclusive Interview with Peter Ydeen
Interview
Exclusive Interview with Peter Ydeen
Winner of AAP Magazine #45 Travels, his series reflects this unique vision—capturing the spirit of place through subtle layers of light, color, and emotion. Whether traveling abroad or observing the rhythms of his own surroundings, Ydeen creates images that feel both grounded and enchanted, inviting viewers into a world where reality and reverie meet.
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Exclusive Interview with Julie Wang
Interview
Exclusive Interview with Julie Wang
Chinese-born photographer Julie Wang brings a poetic, contemplative sensitivity to her visual exploration of the world. Having lived for nearly equal parts of her life in China, Europe, and the United States, she approaches her subjects with the nuanced perspective of someone shaped by many cultures. This blend of distance, curiosity, and emotional resonance infuses her work with a quiet depth, allowing her to reveal the fragile beauty and subtle tensions that often pass unnoticed.
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Exclusive Interview with Ghawam Kouchaki
Interview
Exclusive Interview with Ghawam Kouchaki
American photographer Ghawam Kouchaki brings a sharply observant and introspective gaze to the streets of Japan’s capital. Based in Los Angeles, he approaches Tokyo with the distance — and curiosity — of an outsider, allowing him to uncover the city’s subtle contradictions, quiet tensions, and fleeting gestures that often go unnoticed. His series Tokyo no no, selected as the Solo Exhibition for December 2024, explores the hidden undercurrents of urban life: the unspoken rules, the small ruptures in routine, the poetic strangeness found in everyday moments. Through muted tones, instinctive timing, and meticulous framing, Kouchaki reveals a Tokyo that exists somewhere between reality and imagination — both intimate and enigmatic. We asked him a few questions about his life and work.
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Exclusive Interview with Tommi Viitala
Interview
Exclusive Interview with Tommi Viitala
Tommi Viitala, winner of AAP Magazine #44: Street, is a Finnish photographer celebrated for his striking and cinematic street photography. With a keen eye for atmosphere and composition, he captures fleeting urban moments that reveal the poetry of everyday life. His work often explores the tension between solitude and connection within contemporary cityscapes, blending documentary realism with artistic sensibility. Viitala’s photographs have been exhibited internationally and recognized for their strong visual storytelling and emotional depth. We asked him a few questions about his life and work.
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Exclusive Interview with Robert Mack
Interview
Exclusive Interview with Robert Mack
Robert Mack is a California-based visual artist, photographer, and filmmaker. His fine art photography and films have been exhibited widely in the United States and Europe, with major shows at the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Reiss-Engelhorn Museum in Mannheim, Germany. Both institutions hold his work in their permanent collections. Working across different media, Mack has built a career exploring the complexities of human presence and representation. In 1981, while living in Baltimore, he produced The Perkins Project: Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity, a rare photographic and film study inside Maryland’s hospital for the criminally insane. These stark yet compassionate black-and-white portraits remain one of his most powerful and controversial bodies of work.
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