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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 Book

One of a Kind
One of a Kind
Donald Graham

Inspiring Portfolios

Aleksander Rodchenko
© Aleksander Rodchenko
Fabien Dendiével
© Fabien Dendiével
Umberto Verdoliva
© Umberto Verdoliva
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More Great Photographers To Discover

Anna Grevenitis
Anna Grevenitis
France / United States
1974
French-born visual artist Anna Grevenitis found photography in a meandering way: her formative years were filled with the study and teaching of the English language and literature, but when her daughter was born--and a year later her son--her world naturally morphed into full-time mothering. Drawing on the experiences of the domestic to inform her daily practice, she uses her home as a stage and her body and the body of others in her familial sphere as characters to deliver, in her photographs, the essence of what she wants to express about family and the self. For her work, the act of performing is an essential step in image making. Nowadays she divides her time between research and creation, and she is interested in building long term projects in photography as an act of establishing visual memory and engaging in social visibility. Her photographs have been exhibited both in the United States and internationally. Statement REGARD /ʁə.ɡaʁ/ verb 1. To consider or think of (someone or something) in a specified way. When my daughter was born, I was told that she had the “physical markers” for Down syndrome. A few days later, the diagnosis of Trisomy 21 was confirmed with a simple blood test. Today, years later, Luigia is a lively teenager, yet these “markers” have grown with her, and her disability remains visible to the outside world. As we try to go about our ordinary lives in our community--getting ice cream after school, going grocery shopping or walking to the local library--I often catch people staring, gawking, or side-glancing at her, at us. Even though their gaze feels invasive, I perceive it as more questioning than judging, at least most of the time. With this on-going series REGARD, I am opening a window into our reality. To emphasize control over my message, these everyday scenes are meticulously set, lit up; they are staged and posed. The performers are my daughter and me. The double self-portraits are purposefully developed in black and white, for by refusing the decorative and emotionally evocative element of color, I aim to maintain a distance between us and them. The composition of the photographs expresses routine, domestic acts in which I address the viewers directly: look at us bathing; look at us grooming; here we are at bedtime; this is us on a random day at the beach. In each scene, the viewers are plunged into the outside perspective. At first glance, it may seem that I am offering us as vulnerable prey to their judgment, yet in fact I am guarding our lives, and the viewers are caught gawking--my direct gaze at the camera. My series is very basic in its concept: it shows a child, it shows a mother, it shows them living at home, performing familial acts. Because I believe in the connective power offered by the depiction of domesticity, I hope that REGARD helps the audience rethink some of their assumptions about people living with disabilities and with this, I hope my series finds a humble spot within the movement that helps people with disabilities gain visibility.
Cody Cobb
Cody Cobb
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Cody Cobb (b. 1984 in Shreveport, Louisiana) is a photographer based in Seattle, Washington. His photographs aim to capture brief moments of stillness from the chaos of nature. For weeks at a time, Cobb wanders the American West alone in order to fully immerse himself in seemingly untouched wilderness. This isolation allows for more sensitive observations of both the external landscape as well as the internal experience of solitude. Through subtle arrangements of light and geometry, the illusion of structure appears as a mystical visage. These portraits of the Earth's surface are an attempt to capture the emotion of the land as much as the topography. Cody Cobb was named one of PDN's 30 emerging photographers to watch in 2018 and is a part of Photolucida's Critical Mass Top 50. Cody's work has also appeared in publications such as The California Sunday Magazine, Aint-Bad Magazine, MADE Quarterly and 'Cascadia' by Another Place Press. "While American landscape photography has been historically tinged with a tendency to capture, stake claim, or make the land a souvenir for the rest of the world to see, Cobb's practice is humbler. For Cobb, it's not about conquering the wild and majestic; instead, he submits to a wilderness larger than us all." - Jon Feinstein for Photograph Magazine (Sept/Oct 2018) Article: West
Oliver Curtis
Oliver Curtis
United Kingdom
1963
Brought up in the Cotswolds, Curtis began his photographic education studying photography at the renowned course at Filton Technical College in Bristol. He went on to study film and television at the London College of Printing and has been balancing work in stills and moving image ever since. Curtis continues to produce stills portraiture for major broadcasters as well as generating his own projects for exhibition and publication. He sites as key influences William Eggleston, Saul Leiter and Paul Graham. He continues to plough a distinctly idiosyncratic path as Director of Photography on feature films as diverse as Clare Kilner's The Wedding Date, Frank Oz's Death At A Funeral and Joanna Hogg's Unrelated as well as experimental gallery-based installations such as Gideon Koppel's Borth. He remains in great demand worldwide shooting commercials for high profile clients such as Pantene, L'Oreal, La Perla, Ferragamo, Palmolive, Rimmel, Coca Cola, Sony, Guinness, Canon and Cadbury's. About Volte-Face: On visiting the Pyramids of Giza in Cairo in 2012, Oliver Curtis turned away and looked back in the direction he had come from. What he saw fascinated him so much that he has since made a point of turning his back on some of world's most photographed monuments and historic sites, looking at their counter-views and forgotten faces. Taken over a period of four years, Volte-face is an invitation to turn around and see a new aspect of the over-photographed sites of the world - to send our gaze elsewhere and to favour the incidental over the monumental... Curtis feels that despite the landmark not being present in the photograph, the images are still suffused with the aura of the construction. The camera lens effectively acts as a nodal point and, by giving the photograph the title of the unseen partner, this duality becomes a virtue. Volte-face will be published by Dewi Lewis featuring an essay by Geoff Dyer: https://www.dewilewis.com/collections/new-titles/products/volte-face The first exhibition of the Volte-face project was held at the Royal Geographical Society in London, Sept 2016. The collection has received a great deal of acclaim worldwide and has featured in the Financial Times Magazine (UK), NPR Radio New Hampshire (USA), Liberation (France) Wired.com and BBC World Update amongst many others.
John Kayacan
John Kayacan
United States
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I am a passionate street photographer with an unyielding curiosity for the vibrancy of life. Born and raised in Los Angeles, I developed a keen eye for capturing candid moments that reflect the raw energy and emotions of the streets. Street photography is all about capturing the essence of everyday life, there's a rawness to it that can’t really be matched by any other art-form.It allows you to freeze moments in time that might otherwise go unnoticed. I started photography at the age of 14, shooting photos with a camera my parents had, and it eventually formed into an obsession with capturing things, and thus turned into an ever growing portfolio of work to someday look back on.
Luke Stambouliah
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Luke Stambouliah was born and raised in Sydney, Australia. He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) from the University of New South Wales, College of Fine Arts. He established his practice as a contemporary artist and commercial portrait photographer across the film, television and theatre industries. Statement "Growing up in a household where Super 8 was like another member of the family, Luke’s fascination with photography and cinema was nurtured. Intrigued by his father’s profession as a psychologist and his sister’s craft as an actor, he wanted to fuse the study of the mind with the power of expression. His exhibited works are imbued with a sense of cinematic storytelling suspended in the calm of a single image. Beyond the gallery walls, Luke continued his path into film and television, shooting editorial portraits and publicity stills for Australia’s leading actors, artists and productions."
Philippe Fatin
Philippe Fatin
France
1962
Philippe Fatin is a photographer and a great traveller: after first stays in Mexico and South America, he discovered Asia (Nepal, India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Japan, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Korea) and fell in love with China and more particularly with the region of Guizhou. After an interlude with the Wayanas Indians in French Guyana and the publication of his first book Guyane terre d'espace, he multiplies his travels to the Miao people of Guizhou and ends up residing there for more than twenty years. He published a book Randonnée d'un photographe voyageur in China and exhibits at the Guiyang museum, he also publishes in the national and international press. He is also a collector, organized various exhibitions of his personal collections in French museums: Gold and lacquers from Burma, tribal textiles from southwest China, Nuo masks from the exorcism theatre of China accompanied by publications. In The Mounts of the Moon When I got off the Trans-Siberian Railway in 1985, I knew nothing about China. The blue of the heater set the tone on a red background. I spent the first two years getting to know this culture, before discovering a province in the southwest that was still untouched by any contact with the outside world. The last Westerners present in the region were missionaries, who were driven out of it in 1949 by the communists. The province of Guizhou is one of the poorest, along with that of Gansu. "There are never three days of good weather in a row, the inhabitant does not have three sapeques in his pocket, and there are not three lilies of the flat country." That sets the tone. This province is rich in the diversity of its ethnic minorities, who had managed to maintain an authentic way of life. The villages still lived in autarky, protected by the mountain rampart. Ninety percent of the territory is karst peaks. My camera equipment consists of two Leica M6 cameras and four lenses: 28, 35, 50, and 90mm. With 270 days of rain per year and a constant fog, I use 400 ASA B/W silver film. The access of this province being forbidden to tourism, the task was not easy. The game of cat and mouse with the local authorities was not a perennial solution to penetrate these misty mountains concealing so many secrets. My approach was to establish a base in the provincial capital. I made "Guangxi" connections, and gained the trust of the people and the local authorities. I worked hard to make them understand my work of investigating ethnic groups, especially the Miaos. I obtained special permits to stay in various valleys and villages. After years, I was able to set up different bases in villages that were completely self-sufficient. Sharing the intimacy of the people and building trust, I was able to open the doors to them. My curiosity allowed the rest It would absorb twenty years of my life, during which I photographed a way of life that surged from festivals governed by the gods and the seasons. The evolution of the country a galloping modernization was going to change the situation. Obeying the three priorities of the government: water, electricity and roads, the opening up of the province would radically shape a new face of the population and its environment. In fifteen intervals, my photographic work has thus taken on a patrimonial status. A massive folklorization of ethnic groups (amusement park, pilot village,) their acculturation by the Han mass, the race for enrichment, have contributed to a new mode of integration of these ethnic minorities. This modernization of China and its brutal change of vision of society, over a short period of time, swept away ancestral cultures. Few Westerners have lived in this province, which is now crossed by highways connecting Shanghai, or Guangzhou. My photos are a testimony acquired over the long term, on a way of life that is disappearing in favour of a strong nationalism. It seems to me essential to show the cultural richness of this people, (Nine million people). The province of Guizhou is the home of the Miao diaspora (more than three hundred clans), a threatened melting pot of traditions and rituals mostly ignored by the Han. Indeed, in this rapidly changing society, the peasant populations, known as "floating", have been the cheap labour of China's economic departure.
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Oscar González
Oscar González
Costa Rica
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Jakub Wencek
Jakub Wencek
Poland
1981
My name is Jakub Wencek and I am forester and nature photographer. Nature photography is my passion since I remember. I love to take photographs of the forest and nature because in this particular moment I'm often in awe of all the secrets it has within it. Taking photos of nature I would like to invite you on a journey to my forest, which shows me its secrets very often... You can find stories closed in frames in my photos. You can see there the eternal fight between light and shadow. Every scene tells us about different story, which really happened. All my photos, which are placed here, are unique because they are a record of a very short, little moment which will never happen again.
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