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Donald Graham
Donald Graham
Donald Graham

Donald Graham

Country: United States

Donald Graham is an internationally recognized portrait, fashion and fine art photographer whose work is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the International Center of Photography. He has exhibited his photography in numerous exhibitions and his photographs are held by many collectors. He is well known for his work photographing everyday people, celebrities and fashion for magazine and advertising clients including Vogue, Vanity Fair, Sports Illustrated and Time.

Donald began his career in Paris as a fashion photographer. He then moved to New York and Los Angeles where he broadened his work to include portraiture for the movie, music, editorial and advertising industries and began devoting significant time to his personal fine art work. During his career, Donald has photographed in more than forty countries, with extensive travels in India, Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe. A book of his portraits, entitled ONE OF A KIND, was published by Hatje Cantz in 2021. After 20 years in New York City, Donald is currently based in Los Angeles, California and Taos, New Mexico.

Statement
"My portraits are about honest moments that display qualities of the human character including wisdom and sensitivity, peace and vulnerability, both joy and tragedy. I seek to make portraits that are driven by one's inner dialog. I'm not interested in poses or performances for the benefit of the camera. I'm interested in what a person is like when they are their most authentic."

Authenticity, honesty, and trust characterize Donald Graham's portraits. They are not simply photographic recordings. Looking at them is like seeing human beings in the flesh, revealed to us by Graham with his virtuoso technique and sensibilities. His exquisite, strongly contrasting black-and-white photographs are evidence of attitude, rather than studied gestures. Eyes and faces are not model-like masks; instead, they express the unique nature of those portrayed. Inevitably, viewers find themselves in a dialogue with the images. You wonder about the stories behind these faces; though unfamiliar, they are nevertheless an emotional experience.

One of A Kind
Selected Books on Available on Amazon
One of a Kind
One of a Kind
Donald Graham

Websites

www.donaldgraham.com

www.donaldgrahamfineart.com

 

Selected Books

One of a Kind
One of a Kind
Donald Graham

Inspiring Portfolios

Jesús Umbría Brito
© Jesús Umbría Brito
Nanda Hagenaars
© Nanda Hagenaars
Carole Mills Noronha
© Carole Mills Noronha
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More Great Photographers To Discover

Geert Broertjes
Geert Broertjes
The Netherlands
I try to look at the world as open and honestly as possible. No prejudices about people and not take things for granted. I'm a sensitive person, which means that I use my feelings as a guideline for everything I do. I think more with my heart than with my head. As a photographer I'm fascinated by the diversity of people. What are their motivations, on what do they base their choices in life and what is their purpose. This fascination began at an early age, when I was traveling with my parents through Europe. I used the old camera from my grandmother and I was immediately intrigued by this medium. After high school I studied Media & Information Management. But I soon realized that this was not for me and that my interest in photography was still there. So I began to study photography at the Photo Academy in Amsterdam where I graduated end of 2013. One of my strengths is that people quickly feel comfortable with me. This is because I have a sincere interest for the people I photograph and I'm open minded. This advantage I use in my photography. The photos I make are created from the feeling and trust that people have with me. They are personal, intimate and real. I'm not looking for the reality, because in my opinion, that doesn't exist. What I try to capture is a poetic, melancholic and romantic version of life. For my own projects I work with analogue cameras, because this expresses the mood I'm looking for. The magic of analog is that you never know for sure what the result will be. I encourage the viewer to use his or her own imagination. Since graduating I have been working as a freelance photographer for many different clients. I like the alternation between commercial assignments with a short span and my own long-term projects. About One Year In a very short space of time, Geert Broertttes lost the most important women in his life. His aunt, grandmother and mother passed away. He shared his grief with his girlfriend, who became a recurring theme in this series. But even this relationship ended, a couple of months after his mother passed. Broertttes photographed the process instinctively. It was only afterwards that he noticed the coherence of his work. It became a poetic story about love, loss and grief. The beautiful photographs, all shot analogue in raw black and white, reveal the dark feelings he experienced during this intense period in his life. All about One Year About Project K In March 2019 Geert had been suffering from abdominal pain for a while and it was getting worse. He had a rectal bleeding on the toilet and lost two liters of blood. After a few days in the hospital the doctor came with bad news. Geert had a tumor in his colon. They told him that he could not be saved anymore because the cancer had already spread to his lymph nodes, liver and lungs. After a second and third opinion in different hospitals the image was drastically adjusted. "It was all very strange and confusing, but after a few intense weeks the oncologists came with the message that I could get better." In April was the first operation, half of his colon was removed, then he underwent three chemotherapy treatments and in august he had another operation to remove pieces from his liver and gallbladder. His cancer is genetic. He got it because of the Lynch syndrome that his father was carrying, he past away last November. When Geert was diagnosed with colon cancer, Lotte asked him if she could make a portrait of Geert: "pure, without the presence of poisonous medicine in his body". That moment turned out to be the start of project 'K', in which we chose analogue photography to represent the three most common cancer treatments: chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery. Directly after his chemo, we used Geert's urine to soak the fim rolls with chemo. This way, we represented chemotherapy. To represent radiation, 4x5 inch film was irradiated in AMC hospital: the square in the middle of the film symbolizes Geerts' colon tumor which has the same size. Lastly, we partially burned some negatives to represent the surgery. With this series, we wanted to visualize the world you live in as a patient, and the huge contradiction in the treatments: it is made to make you better, but it breaks you down as well. Project "K" is about the fucked up reality in which strength and vulnerability play the lead role and hope is the constant factor. We are Geert Broertjes & Lotte Bronsgeest "Lotte explores the vulnerability of the body and the transience of life play an important role in her work, in which she always searches for the point where beauty meets confrontation. People are often quick in their judgement about each other, basing their opinions on the clothed body. Lotte is intrigued by discrepancies between opinions and reality." "Geert is fascinated by the diversity of people. What are their motivations, on what do they base their choices in life and what is their purpose. His work is a poetic, melancholic and romantic version of reality. He encourages the viewer to use his or her own imagination. His work is personal and emotional." We both graduated in 2013 from the Photo Academy in Amsterdam, that is where we met. We work as freelance photographers for different clients and create our own projects. Project K Website
Carlos Javier Ortiz
Carlos Javier Ortiz
United States
Carlos Javier is a director, cinematographer and documentary photographer who focuses on urban life, gun violence, racism, poverty and marginalized communities. In 2016, Carlos received a Guggenheim Fellowship for film/video. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in a variety of venues including the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts; the International Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester, NY; the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago; the Detroit Institute of Arts; and the Library of Congress. In addition, his photos were used to illustrate Ta-Nehisi Coates' The Case for Reparations (2014) article, which was the best selling issue in the history of the Atlantic Magazine. His photos have also been published in The New Yorker, Mother Jones, among many others. He is represented by the Karen Jenkins-Johnson Gallery in San Francisco. His film, We All We Got, uses images and sounds to convey a community's deep sense of loss and resilience in the face of gun violence. We All We Got has been screened at the Tribeca Film Festival, Los Angeles International Film Festival, St. Louis International Film Festival, CURRENTS Santa Fe International New Media Festival, and the Athens International Film + Video Festival. Carlos' current project is series of short films chronicling the contemporary stories of Black Americans who came to the North during the Great Migration. Beginning with his mother-in-law's story, Carlos is exploring the legacy of the Great Migration a century after it began. For Carlos, who moved back and forth between Puerto Rico and the U.S. mainland as a child, the story of a displaced people in search of stability and economic opportunity resonates with his own. Carlos' work has been supported by many organizations including: the University of Chicago Black Metropolis Research Consortium Short-term Fellowship (2015); the Economic Hardship Reporting Project (2015); the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting (2013); the California Endowment National Health Journalism Fellowship (2012); the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation (2011); Open Society Institute Audience Engagement Grant (2011); and the Illinois Arts Council Artist Fellowship Award (2011). In addition to his photography and film, Carlos Javier has taught at Northwestern University and the University of California, Berkeley. He lives in Chicago and Oakland with his wife and frequent collaborator, Tina K. Sacks, a professor of social welfare at the University of California, Berkeley.
Pavlos Evangelidis
Pavlos Evangelidis
Greece
1981
Pavlos Evangelidis established Wantok Photography (wantok.photos) in May 2017 in Honiara, Solomon Islands. “Wantok” is a Melanesian pidgin word derived from the English “one talk”. In the local culture, it refers to close friendship based on a common language. As our world gets increasingly inter-connected, we feel photography is the universal language, our wantok. Pavlos Evangelidis was born in Athens, Greece and grew up partly in Brussels, Belgium, where he finished the Lycée Français Jean Monnet before graduating with Honours in Civil Engineering at Imperial College, London, UK. He has been working in development aid and international cooperation at the European Commission first in Brussels, then Fiji and the South Pacific region, Solomon Islands & Vanuatu, Uganda and currently Benin. He married Zeenal in Fiji in 2014. Pavlos became interested in photography slowly, first learning about underwater photography and gradually working in nature, wildlife and travel photography. Along the way, Pavlos has won a number of photography awards and has been published by several print and online outlets. Pavlos & Zeenal established Wantok Photography to promote environmental conservation and help preserve the beauty of our natural capital from the challenges of climate change and human activity. This is a non-profit effort; any profits, including from international prizes or sales are directed to selected charities working for this cause
Peter Harlow
Peter Harlow
Australia
1948
Peter was born and educated to first degree standard in the UK. He gained a private pilot license in 1970. His career spans aerial photography, corporate communication and management development. After emigrating to Australia in 2001 he ran his own company providing small light aircraft to farmers, flying schools and private clients. Recently he took up commercial drone flying – which combines his love of photography and views from the sky. He currently lives in Melbourne with his artist partner. As a photographer, I have always been fascinated by the interplay of light, shadows and shapes that exist in both the natural and human-made world. For many years, as a pilot I saw the landscape from a small aeroplane. With the advent of drone technology, which enables the camera platform to remain static and fly much closer to the surface, I can now explore the landscape from new angles and perspectives, capturing images that were impossible from an aeroplane. Artist statement: One of the key elements of abstract art is the process of abstraction, where artists take familiar objects and break them down into their essential components. Similarly, my photographs capture landscapes from above, abstracting the natural world into a series of shapes, colours and textures that are sometimes quite different from their original form. By removing the context of the wider landscape, I want to encourage the viewer to see the world in a new light, as a collection of abstract forms that are both beautiful and intriguing. In abstracting the landscape, my aim is to create a body of work that challenges your perceptions and invites you to see the beauty and charm that exists all around us.
Anne Launcelott
Anne Launcelott
England/Canada
Anne is a self-taught photographer who began photographing her children as they were growing up in B&W. She would put her babies to bed, set up the darkroom in the apartment bathroom and print well into the wee hours. She went digital, and thus began shooting in colour, in 2010 when darkroom supplies and film were no longer available. Her first workshop was with the noted New York street photographer Jay Maisel who has influenced her use of colour, light and gesture. Her first photography expedition was with Steve McCurry in 2012 to Myanmar. On this trip she discovered her passion for travelling back in time to countries where the culture is so different from her own. People and the themes of everyday life are Anne's inspiration and she wants to draw the viewer in by telling a story through her imagery. Her preference is to explore the streets alone, camera in hand, in order to get into a Zen frame of mind. Walking, observing, interacting, and photographing... pure joy!
Brooke Shaden
Brooke Shaden
United States
1987
Brooke Shaden is a fine art photographer, mixed media artist, and writer specializing in conceptual imagery and self-portraiture. She grew up in Lancaster, PA and has two degrees in English Literature and Filmmaking. Brooke has always seen the world as a dark yet beautiful place. Inspired at a young age by mortality, she has always had a fear of death and a fascination with it. That intrigue morphed into a deep desire to portray grief in a positive way, and that north star has guided her work since 2009. Over the past fifteen years, Brooke has helped new artists to reflect the way they see the world in their art and to heal through the experience. She specializes in finding beauty and darkness and utilizing a gentle approach to bring others into that space. Community is at the forefront of Brooke’s life. She hosts an annual creativity conference called Promoting Passion which focuses on our purpose, legacy, and impact. Outside of her own convention, Brooke speaks to crowds of thousands throughout each year to inspire personal growth and reflection. Represented by five galleries and with work collected by museums, her art has made an indelible mark and has inspired hundreds of thousands of up-and-coming photographers. With sponsorship from companies like Sony and Microsoft, Brooke has made it her mission to share inspiration far and wide. She was named in the top 10 most influential photographers, photographer of the year, winner of Ron Howard’s Project Imagination, and received the distinguished alumni award from her high school in 2019. In 2026, she signed a 2-book deal with HarperCollins to publish her dark fantasy books. Brooke co-founded The Light Space, a photography program for those vulnerable to human trafficking, and was a foster parent from 2019 to 2023 to six children. When Brooke isn’t making visual art or traveling, she’s either reading or writing fiction. Statement Brooke Shaden’s work blends nature and grief in darkly surreal compositions. Her process is largely solitary self-portraiture, allowing herself to be the character and the creator at once. Inspired by a childhood of intense fears, and later by the hard-won lessons of learning to say goodbye to her foster children, Brooke creates works that elicit hope while never shying away from darkness. Many of Brooke’s images are created on location, as her passion is as much for the art as the process of being in nature and integrating her surroundings in Northern Arizona. Guided by the philosophy that embracing ephemera leads to a fuller life, much of Brooke’s imagery focuses on how we can find beauty in grief by learning to release our attachments. Brooke has been a full-time artist since 2010 and continues to push boundaries in her genre, inspiring thousands of new artists to express their purpose in innovative ways. Article Exclusive Interview All About Photo Awards All About Photo Awards 2020 All About Photo Awards 2026
Frédéric Demeuse
Frédéric Demeuse
Belgium
1978
Frédéric Demeuse is a Belgian photographer and visual artist based in Brussels, Belgium. He is driven by a boundless passion for the outdoors, capturing the vital energy, beauty, and poetry of the world through his lens. From the smallest details to majestic landscapes, from wildlife to remote primary forests with limitless aesthetics, Frédéric transcribes the world around him into visually idealistic images. Through his work, Frédéric explores the relationship between humans and the living community, the scale of time, the history of evolution, and what exists beyond the human condition. He uses photography as a raw material, a permanent work of observation and research on light, texture, and composition. His images, inspired by living dreams and pure curiosity, are best expressed in black and white, as the soul of the subject is showcased without any distractions. The serve as a reminder of the importance of our relationship with the biosphere, and the hope that mankind will never forget that it is the most valuable element of our existence and of our community of destiny.
Margo MacArthur
Margo MacArthur
United States
1966
Margo MacArthur is a San Francisco Bay Area photographer. Her street photography practice has been influenced by a search for identity and discovery arising from various life transitions. She is drawn to themes of introspection, detachment, alienation, and quirk. Order is conferred via light, shadow, lines, color and shapes thus lending structure to the unsettling and often melancholic feelings that arise from these themes. Artist Statement "I’ve been interested in photography all my life, but — coincident with a relocation from the Midwest to the West Coast — came to street photography only relatively recently. Walking the streets of my new city, I explored my environs and photographed subjects residing within the light and shadows."
Sumit Gupta
Sumit Gupta
India
1983
While a software engineer by profession, Sumit has been capturing and sharing the stories of cities and cultures since 2013. He finds the experience of walking around the city streets with a camera almost therapeutic and meditative. Inspired by the human condition, Sumit has photographed mostly in India and Europe. Sumit's photographs are inspired by a personal desire to find meaning in the world around us and attempt to draw attention to the poetic and inspirational nature of human life all around us. All about the project 'The River' The Kumbh Mela is the largest religious gathering of humans on our planet. Over the two month period that this festival happens, once every 12 years in 4 Indian cities, millions of people come from all over the country (and outside of it) to take an auspicious bath in the holy waters of the river Ganga. I'm interested in portraying how the contemporary experience of the Kumbh Mela is influenced by aspects such as globalization, consumption and current trends of social behavior. People from all over India come to this event as a pilgrimage to wash away their sins, but they're also cohabiting with people that see this as a cultural attraction, as a possibility to experience a foreign culture and filter it through social media. What's the impact of hyper-communication and advertising in the collective atmosphere of this spiritual gathering? The project tries to reflect on those ideas by working through the psychological climate of the different people that are present in the event. The images evidence the paradoxical and complex nature of a spiritual event that feeds on tradition when young people seem to drift away from old collective habits. The river, the sacred area where people transcend their humanity, is the perfect metaphor for the current situation; affected by mass production and consumerism, the polluted river is still worshipped as a place for cleansing; time will tell if the memory that holds this identity will keep flowing through the divine water, or if it will drown to the mirage of pleasures that float in the immediacy of today's world.
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Exclusive Interview with Matthew Finley
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