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Paul Caponigro
Paul Caponigro

Paul Caponigro

Country: United States
Birth: 1932

Paul Caponigro (born December 7, 1932), is an American photographer from Boston, Massachusetts. He started having interests in photography at age 13. However, he also had a strong passion for music and began to study music at Boston University College of Music in 1950, before eventually deciding to focus on studying photography at the California School of Fine Art.

Caponigro studied with Minor White and has been awarded two Guggenheim Fellowships and three grants from the NEA. His best-known photographs are Running White Deer and Galaxy Apple. His subject matter includes landscape and still life, taking an interest in natural forms. He is best known for his landscape works and for the mystical and spiritual qualities of his work. He is often regarded as one of America's foremost landscape photographers. Caponigro's first one-man exhibition took place at the George Eastman House in 1958. In the 1960s Caponigro taught photography part-time at Boston University while consulting the Polaroid Corporation on various technical research. Caponigro lived in El Rancho de San Sebastian during his time in New Mexico from 1973-1993.

In 1971, his work was exhibited in group exhibition "Le Groupe Libre Expression : Expo 5", presented by Jean-Claude Gautrand, at Les Rencontres d'Arles festival, France.

Caponigro's work is included in the collections of the Guggenheim, Whitney, Norton Simon Museum, New Mexico Museum of Art and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He was awarded The Royal Photographic Society's Centenary Medal and Honorary Fellowship (HonFRPS) in recognition of a sustained, significant contribution to the art of photography in 2001.

Caponigro is a dedicated pianist and considers his training with music to be essential to his photographic imagery. His son, John Paul Caponigro, is a digital photographic artist.

Source: Wikipedia


Paul Caponigro is one of America’s foremost landscape photographers. While he became interested in photography at age of thirteen, he also had a strong passion for music; he studied at Boston University College of Music in 1950 before deciding to focus on photography at the California School of Fine Art, where Ansel Adams had established one of the first photography programs in the United States. Despite the shift from music to photography early in his artistic career, Caponigro remains a dedicated piano player who believes that his musical training and insight influences his photographic imagery. Caponigro is best known for his interest in natural forms, landscapes, and still lives. His subjects include Stonehenge and other Celtic megaliths of England and Ireland; the temples, shrines and sacred gardens of Japan; and the deep mystical woodland of New England.

Source: International Center of Photography


Paul Caponigro, renowned as one of America’s most significant master photographers is known for his captivating and mystical landscape images. His exquisite silver gelatin prints depict images of nature, including flowers, cloud formations, and forest settings. His work forms a visual bridge between the material world of physical forms and the living spirit behind them.

Source: Jackson Fine Art


Selected Books on Available on Amazon
Meditations In Silver: Photographic Studies By Paul Caponigro
Meditations In Silver: Photographic Studies By Paul Caponigro
Paul Caponigro
Paul Caponigro: New England Days
Paul Caponigro: New England Days
Paul Caponigro
Paul Caponigro: Masterworks from Forty Years
Paul Caponigro: Masterworks from Forty Years
Paul Caponigro
Paul Caponigro: The Wise Silence
Paul Caponigro: The Wise Silence
Paul Caponigro

Galleries

Weston Gallery

Jackson Fine Art

Peter Fetterman Gallery

 

Paul Caponigro's Video

Selected Books

Meditations In Silver: Photographic Studies By Paul Caponigro
Meditations In Silver: Photographic Studies By Paul Caponigro
Paul Caponigro
Paul Caponigro: New England Days
Paul Caponigro: New England Days
Paul Caponigro
Paul Caponigro: Masterworks from Forty Years
Paul Caponigro: Masterworks from Forty Years
Paul Caponigro
Paul Caponigro: The Wise Silence
Paul Caponigro: The Wise Silence
Paul Caponigro

Inspiring Portfolios

Mauro De Bettio
© Mauro De Bettio
Yulia Nevskaya
© Yulia Nevskaya
Mahendra Bakle
© Mahendra Bakle
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More Great Photographers To Discover

Giorgio Di Maio
Giorgio Di Maio
Italy
1963
Giorgio Di Maio (1963, Naples) begins to take photos during his Architectural studies (1990),where he understood the strength of the photography as a mean to extrapolate from the reality a piece of the reality itself, independent in the shape and in the substance having a own narrative meaning. The expositive activity (since 1992) and the professional one (since 1993) went forward together, and every kind of restructuring activity is an opportunity for linguistic research. In 2003 he held a Master in "Fotografia dello spettacolo" by Silvia Lelli, At European Institute of Design in Milano, that introduced him to a deep research into the American Photography. Between 20017 and 2010, in Basilicata, he developed the series "Paesaggi lucani" and tried in the same period the digital photo machine. In Di Maio, then, woke up his environmental soul that bring the artist in 2011 to a new exhibition "Non è Napoli" dedicated to his own city and its beauty during the rubbish scandal. Since 2013 he slowed down the architect profession starting to study philosophy as theorical support to the practical photography, going from Naples to Milan very often, and vice versa. Then he creates" Armonia nascosta", from his studies, that is written with a specific modus operandi, aware of his reasons and purpose. Starting form Heraclitus, the Hidden Harmony show the transmigration of the mystical and philosophical roots of Paul Klee e Vassilij Kandinskij's abstract art til the photography, transforming it into a growth process both spiritual and social of a man, who goes through the evidence of the visual data looking for the Hidden Harmony as it appears today. Some projects "I sentieri dell'acqua e Chiaroscuro" (2013-2014), "Feminine, Photokina" (2016), "Cristianesimo Arte e Paganesimo" (2017), "Correspondances" (2018), "Milano in Armonia" (2018), "Il mare di Leopardi (2020), always continuing his studies of the immaterial in the material world. In 2017 he published his Photographic-philosophic web site of his research, that will be considered by different international photographic magazines. Then he started an intense exhibitions period, among public exhibition and festivals, having so many positive feedbacks from the public but also from the sector critical. In 2019, the Prof. Guido Ferraro, full professor of "Semiotica e Teoria della narrazione" at Torino's University, named Di Maio's research with those by Franco Fontana, Luigi Ghirri and Mario Giacomelli. Giorgio di Maio goes from a city to another, looking for the Hidden Harmony in nowadays reality. About Hidden Harmony The project that I would represent is the mystical and philosophical roots of Abstract Art transmigration into the Photography. The Art as knowledge tool to understand the sense. Going over the phenomenon, the appearances, searching for the law that create each event, for everyone also individual or being part of a whole. Basically there is the rejection of materialism, the faith in progress and particularly the faith in the spiritual progress of the men helped from the artist which "has in himself a mysterious visionary force....to see and to show". The photographer artist isn't a perfected camera who think that the knowledge and the experiences are only a replica of reality, who limit to reproduction of the exteriority, closed from the barriers of the phenomenon, but he know and must to express an ethical content which he gets from the sensitive data. The equilibrium that comes out from the tens and integration of differences, where the opposites converge completing themselves and the materiality falls to leave space to the spiritual presence, transform every shot in a travel through the space-time instances, instead of being the static representation of the place. In the Photography the language remain the same, using shape and color like the musical notes that touch the soul when you press a key and the human spirit vibrate. The research is the Harmony: to identify in the reality different elements in contrast with each other but in a unitary composition to create a mutual stimulating of the sense of balance and rest. The Peace. The expressionism of Der Blaue Reiter started in the of age of the new spirituality. Instead the wars and the extermination camps comes. It doesn't mean that the materialism has won but only a wrong idea of the temporal date. We don't know how much time need to achieve the spiritual progress of the humanity, maybe thousands of years or more. The important thing is that each era made a new step in right direction and in the contemporary era the Photography could be the most powerful means to give a contribution in this way.
Jean-Francois Jonvelle
Jean-Francois Jonvelle
France
1943 | † 2002
Jean-François Jonvelle, born on October 3, 1943, in Cavaillon was a French photographer of fashion, glamor and portraiture. Work on the release of 20 ans magazine and then work on Dim, Dam, Dom, Vogue, Stern, Gala, Elle. In the 1960s, Jonvelle was assistant to Richard Avedon. During his career, he made many portraits of women, often his friends: natural young people, often naked, unconcerned. Unlike other fashion and glamor photographers, who offer a provocative woman, Jean-François Jonvelle's performance is much softer, more natural, more jovial but equally sensual. He died at the age of 58 years of terminal cancer, 15 days after it was detected on January 16, 2002, in Paris.Source: Wikipedia Jean-François Jonvelle was snatched by the hand of death with a suddenness to match the photographs that were his life. Just as that life was dedicated to capturing these stolen moments, so death followed suit, carrying him off in the midst of life. A tumor was discovered in early January, a final farewell just a fortnight later. He was gone in a flash. As I turn the pages of my friend’s last book my eyes mist over. My tears dissolve Jonvelle’s photographs into the soft focus of a David Hamilton. Jonvelle’s work is often described as being – in the time-honored formula – ‘sexy but not vulgar’. I prefer his own description of what he sought out: ‘la poésie du quotidien’, ‘the poetry of the everyday’. Photographs freeze moments of truth, all you have to do is choose the ones that do it best. "I tell myself that the present and the future don’t exist", he also used to say. "Everyone, every day, creates their own past." The quality that makes his images more moving than the rest is their vulnerability. Jonvelle taught me one crucial lesson: in photography, as in literature, what counts is feeling. Eroticism and tenderness are not sworn enemies. A downy arm, the frail nape of a neck, an uptilted breast, the curve of a back beneath the sheets, damp hair, closed eyelids, the trace of a kiss on the neck all these can be arousing. Jonvelle’s women are fresh and natural because they are unaware of our gaze. Jonvelle makes adoring voyeurs of us all. He shows us why heterosexuality can be so painful: everywhere, in every house and every bathroom, paradise lurks. Paradise delicately removes her T-shirt, brushes her teeth, buttocks pert, the curve of her breasts taut, timeless. Suddenly paradise parts her legs in silence, biting her fingernails as she looks you straight in the eye, teasing you as she waits for you on the sheets. Jonvelle is in paradise now, but for him nothing has changed: he was already there in his lifetime. As I gaze in wonder, the way I always do, at these images, so far removed from the familiar clichés, my thoughts turn to the beautiful women he immortalized. Photographs fix the fleeting, immortalize the ephemeral. Many of the women Jonvelle photographed are now old or dead, but – thanks to this photographer who is now also dead – their perfection will never fade. Every one of Jonvelle’s photographs is a declaration of love. One day, at my request, he photographed Delphine Vallette, the mother of my daughter. I wanted to give this brunette whom I loved a portrait. Never have I felt such a cuckold – though in the most erotic of ways. Beauty is an evanescent mystery that some artists have the ability to capture. As I look again at these wonderful images, I’m reminded of the title of that American comedy Drop Dead Gorgeous. Jonvelle’s work as a whole is not an ode to femininity; the story it tells is of the battle to vanquish death by means of the celebration of desire. All these shoulders caught by surprise, these half-seen breasts, these finely- arched insteps, these flawless backs, this sensual solitude, this calm between two storms, all these beautiful women who don’t give a damn are simply doors softly opened, through which we may catch a glimpse of eternal life. -- Frédéric Beigbeder Jean-François Jonvelle was born in 1943 in Cavaillon, south of France. Soon he will sell famous melons to buy Hasselblad. Its inspirations will come from the painting of Balthus, Bacon, of Schiele, but the true influence comes from films from Mankiewicz, Lubitsch, Fritz Lang, Orson Welles, Arthur PEN, Minnelli and more recently of Terry Gillian of which it acknowledges to have seen eleven times the film Brazil; Finally its preferred film: Jules and Jim of François Truffaut. In 1959, it is the photographer George Glasberg who initiates him with photography while making him make the turn of France of the cathedrals. It is a photographic revelation which will leave it never again. At the age of 20 he becomes the assistant of the American photographer Richard Avedon. After this enriching experiment he becomes his own 'Master' whose favorite subject will be the woman. Her mom and her small sister of whom he always was very near will be her 'first agreeing victims'. Then come the first 'muse' and accomplice, Tina Sportolaro whom he meets in 1982 and with which he carries out some of his more beautiful images. Will be then Béatrice, Myriam and many others.Source: The Eye of Photography
Bert Stern
Bert Stern
United States
1929 | † 2013
Bertram Stern (October 3, 1929 – June 26, 2013) was a self-taught American commercial photographer. He was the son of Jewish immigrants and grew up in Brooklyn. His father worked as a children’s portrait photographer. After dropping out of high school at the age of 16, he gained a job in the mail room at Look magazine. He became art director at Mayfair magazine, where Stern learned how to develop film and make contact sheets, and started taking his own pictures. In 1951, Stern was drafted into the US Army and was sent to Japan and assigned to the photographic department. In the 1960s Stern's heavy use of amphetamines, led to the destruction to his marriage to Balanchine ballerina, Allegra Kent. By the late 1970s Stern returned to the U.S. to photograph portraits and fashion. He was the subject of the 2010 documentary, "Bert Stern: Original Madman," directed by his secret wife, Shannah Laumeister. Ms. Laumeister and Stern never lived together, and Stern had a long standing relationship of 20+ years with Lynette Lavender who was his constant and devoted companion. His first professional assignment was in 1955 for a Madison Avenue advertising agency for Smirnoff vodka. His best known work is arguably The Last Sitting, is a collection of 2,500 photographs taken for Vogue of Marilyn Monroe over a three-day period, six weeks before her death. Stern's book The Last Sitting was published in 1982 and again in 2000. He has photographed Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Madonna, Kylie Minogue, Drew Barrymore and Lindsay Lohan (recreating The Last Sitting), among others, in addition to his work for advertising and travel publications.(Source: en.wikipedia.org)
Khanh Phan Thi
Khanh Phan Thi
Vietnam
1985
Hi I'm Khanh Phan, I'm 34 and I'm from Vietnam. I was born in 1985. I was born in Quỳnh Phụ, Thái Bình, a mainly agricultural land. My parents were farmers. I currently work at the bank and I am a bank teller. Photography is my passion. After a broken marriage in 2017, I was heartbroken and desperated and losing faith in life. Then I thought, I couldn't be like this forever, I needed to get over it and I bought a camera. First I went to take photos of flowers in a park near my house, then I realized that Vietnam, my beloved country, has so many hidden fabulous natural and cultural scenes that only few places in the world have. I have been to many places, met and learned about the different regional customs and practices. I then took those pictures, posted them on social media, and became popular with my friends. Photography has changed my life, got me through difficult times and is now my only personal joy today. At first I received strong opposition from my family. My mother thinks photography is too dangerous. I often have to go to the sunrise photograph from 4 am, come home after sunset. There are nights when I wait for the night dew, or milkyway, I have to be outside all night. My mother worried that I would be in danger of being robbed because women who go out late at night are very dangerous. And with my income, my mother is afraid that I will not be able to take care of my son and maintain a stable life if i pursues photography because photographic equipment is very expensive. I have never taken a class in photography and photoshop, I myself researched and practiced on photoshop and learned the experience for myself. I have been taking pictures for 2 years. Finally, with my own efforts, I received some small awards in photography, my mother believed in me and she supported my work. Vietnam is a country with many feudal dynasties. The Vietnamese family is mainly patriarchal. Today Vietnamese women know how to fight for gender equality, a few participate in politics and hold important positions in the state, but the gender discrimination is still quite clear. In addition to working for a living as a man does, we also hold the maternity role, take care of childeren and family, do the houseworks and rarely have the time to do the things we love. In order to persue my passion for photography, I have to sacrifice my happiness. I could not get married again. My income is about 15 million VND per month (about 600$ per month). With that income, it is enough to raise my son and still has a small part of it for photography enthusiasts including equipments and travel expenses. I often had to take pictures alone, and experienced many life-threatening things like staying in the cemetery alone at night when waiting for the sunrise at the churchs in Thanh Xa, Bao Loc, Lam Dong, wrestling with waves at Hang Rai, Phan Rang seashores, climbing mountains, or wading into swamps. Sometimes I forget I'm a woman. I have won a number of awards such as Sonyworld award 2019, Skypixel 2019, Drone award of Siena 2019 but some people do not recognize my ability and efforts. They think I'm lucky and for the reason that I am a woman. Vietnam from Above Vietnam is a beautiful country with a diverse culture. Each region will have many unique cultural features with traditional villages that are hundreds of years old. The Vietnamese people stick to the traditional profession and take it as a way of gratitude to their ancestors. Although the traditional profession is very hard and low-income compared to other modern jobs, the artisans still stick to the profession as flesh and blood and want to pass it on to future generations. The daily lives and jobs of Vietnamese workers are recorded from above.
Alireza Memariani
Alireza Memariani
Iran
1984
Graduate of Industrial Design from Art College 2009. He is a contemporary Iranian photographer and documentary living and working in Tehran. His work is influenced by the poverty that exists in Iranian societies. Much of his work came from these people's real lives. Cinema extras, miners, fish dryers, and... The core of Alireza's work is real. Originally a documentary photographer, it was several years before he started stage photography. He has been living and working in Hormuz Island since year 2014. Hormuz is an island in the Persian Gulf in southern Iran. It is one of the deprived areas of Iran. The result of his life in Hormoz Island is a collection of staged photographs displayed in various galleries in Tehran. Photos are generally symbolic of the new conditions in which he lives. Statement "Hormuz An ancient island, lies in the Strait of Hormuz, between the waters of the Persian Gulf. Because of the special climate that has, it will donate unique features. The mystery of Hormuz's nature is the result of its wild geography. High humidity and heat have eroded more than anywhere in Iran. Hormuz has an ancient history, but for me, where I had lived there for seven years, it has an imaginary history. The nights of Hormuz are foggy. Light is spreading, and this is where photography approaches me for painting. I walk the streets and paint with my camera and city lights. The softness and velvety nature of fog blows my mind. On some nights I could not recognize the lights, it seemed superhuman beings were, trying to conquer the island. Jinns, sea ghosts and maybe Martians. Whatever they are I welcome them..." -- Alireza Memariani
Ren Hang
Ren Hang
Chinese
1987 | † 2017
Ren Hang (Chinese: 任航; March 30, 1987 – February 24, 2017) was a Chinese photographer and poet. During Ren's incipient career, he was known mostly for nude photographic portraits of his friends. His work is significant for its representation of Chinese sexuality within a heavily censored society. For these erotic undertones, he was arrested by PRC authorities several times. He received the backing of the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who included Ren in his 2013 Netherlands show, Fuck Off 2 The Sequel, and curated the photographer's 2014 exhibition in Paris, France. Ren's erotic, playful and casual yet provocative expression gained him worldwide fame. Ren was born in 1987, in a suburb of Changchun, Jilin province, in northeastern China. In 2007, in order to relieve the boredom of studying advertising at college, he bought a point-and-shoot camera and began shooting his friends. As a self-taught photographer, he said his style of photography was inspired by the artist Shūji Terayama. Ren suffered from depression. He posted a series of diary entries titled My depression on his blog, recording the fear, anxiety and internal conflicts he experienced. Ren died by suicide on February 24, 2017 in Beijing. Ren Hang first began taking pictures of his roommates and friends in 2007, shooting them in the nude as all were close and seeking excitement. In an interview, he also admitted: “I usually shoot my friends, because strangers make me nervous.” He arranged his subjects' naked limbs in his photographs. Ren did not consider his work inappropriate: “I don’t really view my work as taboo, because I don’t think so much in cultural context, or political context. I don’t intentionally push boundaries, I just do what I do.” This may account for his reticence to limit his work to indoor settings. He said there were no preferred places for him to work, as he believed anywhere was beautiful and worthy to be shot, including sparse studios, parks forests, and atop buildings. Ren's photos employ nude groups and solo portraits of men and women often contorted into highly performative positions. For example, hands reach down milky thighs, a limp penis flops onto a watermelon and a series of backsides imitate a mountain range. Questioning the purpose of his work, he once stated that his creation was a way to seek fun for both photographer and the photographed. However, once he had reached fame on an international level, he began to think deeply about his work. The British Journal of Photography quoted him as once saying: "I don't want others having the impression that Chinese people are robots... Or they do have sexual genitals but always keep them as some secret treasures. I want to say that our cocks and pussies are not embarrassing at all." Ren also focused on marginalised people in Chinese society with gender identity disorders by 'indeterminating' sex and gender in some of his work: a group of naked bodies stacked together, men wearing silk stockings and wearing lipstick. He denied having a preference in models: “Gender… only matters to me when I’m having sex.” The international quarterly photography journal Aperture used his photo as the cover for its Queer theme. Commentators also see his work, the naked body and the starched penis, as evolving sexual mores and the struggle for creative and sexual freedom in a conservative, tightly controlled society. But Ren Hang also announced "I don't try to get a message across, I don't give my works names, I don't date them. I don’t want to instill them with any vocabulary. I don't like to explain my photos or work as a whole". It has been mentioned that Ren's work is softcore pornography because of the degree of nudity and sex in it, but he also worked with other themes. The most famous was titled My Mum. Although still under a fetishistic atmosphere, posing with usual props in Ren's works like animals and plants, Ren's mother posed as a clothed model, in a light-hearted way to represent her daily life. Ren's photographs have been included in magazines L'Officiel, GQ Style, and Vice. He worked with fashion companies Gucci, Rick Owens, and Loewe. Ren's work is included in Frank Ocean's magazine Boys Don't Cry. Ren Hang is noted to be greatly influenced by Chinese and Asian contemporary art and in particular, Japanese photographer and contemporary artist Nobuyoshi Araki. Ren Hang mainly worked with a simple point-and-shoot camera. He would direct the models as to how to place their bodies and shoot in quick succession. Genitalia, breasts and anuses were not covered up, but featured, or accentuated with props and close-ups. Colors were rich and high in contrast, increasing visual impact. This, along with the fact all bodies were slim, lithe and relatively hairless, made the impact of his photographs more impressive. His work communicated a raw, stark aesthetic that countered taboos and celebrated sexuality and it was this contemporary form of poeticism in a visual context in which Ren Hang expressed themes of identity, the body, love, loss and death. Nudity is not a theme in art that can be widely accepted by the Chinese older generation. Ren Hang's works are sometimes misinterpreted by the public as pornography. Although some have written that Ren Hang used his photographs to challenge Chinese cultural norms of shame around nudity, he did not believe he was challenging the stereotype and leading a revolution. For him, nudity and sexuality are natural themes which he used in his work. "Nudes are there since always. We were born nude. So talking about revolution, I don't think there's anything to revolutionize. Unless people are born with clothes on, and I want to take their clothes off, then I think this is a revolution. If it was already like that, then it's not a revolution. I just photographed things on their more natural conditions." He said he was not trying to liberate nudity and sexuality since he believed that the Chinese young generation was open-minded and less affected by the old-fashioned cultures. When Ren Hang talked about the question whether the topic of sexuality was still a taboo in China, he said: "I don't think it's related to our times, these are individual cases. Like how to say it, I think it depends on different people, it doesn't really relate to other things. I was not in the whole parents told you that you can only have sex if you get married era. The time after I grow up was already over that period, it was already different like everyone was already more relaxed."Source: Wikipedia Flesh, corpses, souls and bland flashlights, all composite into seconds or milliseconds of lights and shadows, projecting onto the film that never knows how to lie. Focus gathering and the shutter releasing, connecting his unpretentious, rebellious, wild and free perspectives towards the naked human body. The images look so natural, yet fun and unexpected. One soul after another all blossom like a newborn baby, urging to crawl out of his mother’s womb, dying to be redefined. In this era that we live in, being censored by the Chinese government has almost become a stamp of approval for contemporary artists. Ren Hang, a young man with a mature look and tanned skin, hair as short as a Chinese soldiers’, always carrying an irresistibly cute and innocent smile on his cheeks. He is, perhaps, the sole artist and photographer with the most edgy outlook towards the naked human body. Ren Hang continues to stress the fact that he is “boring“. Especially when asked about those basic questions of his inspirational origins and meanings behind the photos, he always just smiles naively, shakes his shoulders and says, “I don’t really know. I never really thought about it.” Perhaps he is such a paver, heading towards the direction of happiness and creative freedom without realizing the pathways he has left behind. You might find him confusing and puzzling, but he has the ambience of such kindness that you would always trust that no evil can come out from him. He is merely a pure form of naked human beings. Source: ITSLIQUID
Builder Levy
Builder Levy
United States
New Yorker Builder Levy has been photographing America and her inhabitants for the past 50 years. His social consciousness took him to significant areas of our country during tumultuous times. His commitment to aesthetically [or artistically] documenting the world around him earned him the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008. Levy's work is in more than 50 public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, High Museum of Art, International Center of Photography, Victoria and Albert Museum, and La Bibliotheque Nationale. He is also the author of two published photographic books. Source: Arnika Dawkins Gallery Intertwining social documentary, art and street photography, Builder Levy has been making photographs as objects of art that celebrate the human spirit for almost fifty years. He was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (’08), an Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellowship (‘04), a Furthermore Grant (‘03), Puffin Foundation Grant (‘01), and National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artists Fellowship in Photography (‘82), and two commissions from the Appalachian College Association (’95 and ‘02). Levy’s two books are Images of Appalachian Coalfields, Temple Univ. Press, with a foreword by Cornell Capa, and Builder Levy Photographer, A.R.T. Press, with an introduction by noted photo historian Naomi Rosenblum. Levy has exhibited in more than 200 shows, including more than 50 one-person exhibitions in New York City, throughout the United States and around the world. In the Fall 2011, he is included in the exhibits Coal + Ice, curated by Susan Meiselas & Jeroen de Vries, a project of the Asia Society, at the Three Shadows Art Centre in Beijing; Posing Beauty, curated by Deborah Willis at Fisher Museum of Art, USC, Los Angeles (9/11-12/11); Photo Folio at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (10/11-1/12); at the Arnika Dawkins Gallery (Black & White and Color), (with 13 photographs) (10/1-10/29/11) in conjunction with Atlanta Celebrates Photography; and Mirrors and Reflections: A Group Show, curated by Evelyne Z. Daitz with co-curator Alison Bradley at the Robert Anderson Gallery at 24 West 57th Street, New York (11/17/11-1/7/12) The High Museum of Art included Levy’s photographs in the historic exhibition, Road to Freedom: Photographs of the Civil Rights Movement, 1956-1968 (and the accompanying eponymous book/catalogue), curated by Julian Cox. It opened at the High Museum of Art in 2008, and traveled for two years to museums in D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City. The Rubin Museum of Art in NYC featured 14 of Levy’s photographs in the show Mongolia: Beyond Chinggis Khan, 11/06-4/07. Levy’s work is in more than 50 public collections in the US and around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, High Museum of Art, International Center of Photography, Victoria and Albert Museum, and La Bibliotheque Nationale. His photographs are featured in more than 25 books including, Harlem, A Century in Images, Studio Museum of Harlem, Skira/Rizzoli 2010, Freedom, Phaidon Press, 100 New York Photographers, Schiffer Press ‘09, Deborah Willis’ Posing Beauty, Norton Press, ‘09, Coal Country, Sierra Club Books, ’09, and Road To Freedom: Photographs of the Civil Rights Movement, 1956-1968. He was the featured artist (with 22 photos) in Appalachian Heritage, (Spring 2010). His subjects include inner-city New York City where he was a NYC teacher of at-risk adolescents for 35 years; coalfield Appalachia (spanning more than 40 years), civil rights and peace demonstrations (in the 1960s), Mongolia and other developing nations. He is completing a new book, Appalachia USA. Source: builderlevy.com
Sumaya Agha
Sumaya Agha
Syria/United States
1970
Sumaya Agha is a freelance photographer based in Portland, OR, who began documenting the Syrian refugee crisis over four years ago in Jordan and Europe. She is of Syrian descent with many aunts, uncles, and cousins still living in Damascus. Sumaya holds a BS in Applied Art and Design with a concentration in Photography from Cal Poly State University in San Luis Obispo, CA and an MPA from Middlebury Institute of International Studies. Her worked appeared in the Huffington Post, BBC Focus on Africa, Forbes Africa, and NPR.org, and she was a still photographer for the Academy Award winning film “The Fog of War.” She has lived in Syria, Liberia, and the United States. Watching from afar as civil war ripped apart Syria, I felt compelled to help the refugees whose lives have been destroyed by the conflict. And with dozens of close relatives enduring the horrors in their hometown of Damascus, I had a personal connection to the crisis. I moved to Amman, Jordan in 2012 and began working as a photographer for humanitarian organizations helping mitigate the crisis that had spilled over from neighboring Syria. While in Jordan, I spent many days in the refugee camps and host communities, getting to know countless families living there and documenting their substandard living conditions. I heard myriad stories of heartbreaking loss and brutality and enduring spirit, and found that hopelessness is pervasive among the young, as they cannot see a future for themselves. In January 2016 I went on assignment to Macedonia and Serbia to photograph the refugees migrating through the Balkans. Throughout the freezing winter, 2,200 refugees per day crossed into Serbia. Up to 10,000 a day crossed in warmer months. They came from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds, including many families with young children. The typical journey went like this: flee their home country, take a perilous raft ride from Turkey to Greece, and then move onward through foreign lands in search of a peaceful home. Now that the Balkan borders are closed to refugees, thousands are stranded in Eastern Europe, hoping to be relocated to Western Europe. More than 60,000 refugees are in camps throughout Greece, including Ritsona Refugee Camp, where I went on assignment in July to document the crisis. With no end in sight to the conflict in Syria and elsewhere, the refugee crisis is certain to continue right along with it. That means millions of regular people continuing to seek safety and some sense of normalcy in the absence of peace.
Leo Rubinfien
Leo Rubinfien
United States
1953
Leo Rubinfien, born in Chicago, Illinois, is a photographer and essayist from the United States. He currently resides and works in New York City. Rubinfien rose to popularity in the 1970s as a member of a group of artist-photographers who experimented with new color processes and materials. In 1981, Leo Rubinfien had his first one-person exhibition at Castelli Graphics in New York, and he has since had solo exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Seattle Art Museum, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, and the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University. He is the author of two photobooks, A Map of the East (Godine, Thames & Hudson, Toshi Shuppan, 1992) and Wounded Cities. Leo Rubinfien is also a prolific writer, having produced numerous extensive essays on famous twentieth-century photographers. He contributed a memoir, Colors of Daylight, to Starburst: Color Photography in America, 1970-1980 (Kevin Moore, Cincinnati Art Museum / Hatje Caantz 2010), and wrote Wounded Cities, a long personal and historical essay about the September 11th, 2001 attacks and the years that followed. He was the Guest Co-curator of Shomei Tomatsu's retrospective at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art from 2001 to 2004, and he is the co-author of Shomei Tomatsu / Skin of the Nation (Yale University Press, 2004). Since 2010, he has served as Guest Curator for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's exhibition of Garry Winogrand's work, which will embark on a world tour in 2013. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Seattle Art Museum, the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Yale University Art Gallery, the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, and the Fogg Museum have all acquired Rubinfien's work. Leo Rubinfien has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Japan Foundation, Asian Cultural Council, and New York University's International Center for Advanced Studies, and he was given the Gold Prize at the 5th Lianzhou International Photography Festival in 2009.
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Exclusive Interview with Tommi Viitala
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Exclusive Interview with Robert Mack
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Exclusive Interview with Tomasz Trzebiatowski Editor-in-chief FRAMES Magazine
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