All about photo.com: photo contests, photography exhibitions, galleries, photographers, books, schools and venues.
Win a Solo Exhibition this February. Juror: Harvey Stein
Win a Solo Exhibition this February. Juror: Harvey Stein
Kang Le
Kang Le
Kang Le

Kang Le

Country: Taiwan

Kang Le, born in Taiwan, with majors in law and philosophy, is a self-taught visual creator. Taking the society in which he lives as the subject, he captures symbolized time and space as well as individuals that serve as microcosms of historical and cultural lineages. His themes touch on the movements and confluence of groups of people, yet without assuming or inferring their situations or tastes. Instead, he translates the consciousness developed by the groups and impressions of their personal lives into photographs.

Moths at the beginning of the century
"Moths at the beginning of the century" is his long-term photography project, where he organizes photos with poetic logic, creating sentimental colors, thereby searching for the intersection between reason and sentimentality, which is neither memory nor reality.
 

Inspiring Portfolios

Call for Entries
All About Photo Awards 2026
$5,000 Cash Prizes! Juror: Steve McCurry
 
Stay up-to-date  with call for entries, deadlines and other news about exhibitions, galleries, publications, & special events.

More Great Photographers To Discover

Bieke Depoorter
Belgium
1986
Bieke Depoorter (born 1986) is a Belgian photographer. She is a member of Magnum Photos and has published four books: Ou Menya, I am About to Call it a Day, As it May Be, and Sète#15. Depoorter received a master's degree in photography at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent in 2009. The relationships Depoorter establishes with the subjects of her photographs lie at the foundation of her artistic practice. Accidental encounters are the starting point, and how these interactions naturally develop dictate the nature of Depoorter’s work. Many of her self-initiated projects are about intimate situations in families and in peoples' homes. For her graduation project and her first book, Ou Menya (2011), she made three trips to Russia, photographing people in their homes that she met whilst travelling around. The series won the 2009 Magnum Expression Award. Bieke Depoorter made the work for her second book, I am About to Call it a Day (2014) in a similar way whilst hitchhiking and driving around the U.S. However several recent projects have been the result of Depoorter questioning the medium. In As it May Be, she gradually became more aware of her status as an outsider, both culturally and as a photographer. So, in 2017, she revisited Egypt with the first draft of the book, inviting people to write comments directly onto the photographs. In Sète#15, and also Dvalemodus, a short film she co-directed together with Mattias De Craene, she began to see her subjects as actors. Although she portrayed them in their true environments, she tried to project her own story onto the scenes, fictionalizing the realities of her subjects in a way that blurred the lines between their world and hers. In the ongoing project Agata, a project about a young woman Depoorter met at a striptease bar in Paris in October 2017, she explores her interest in collaborative portraiture. It’s an example of Depoorter’s interest in finding people that can work with her in telling a story. These stories are always partially hers, and partially theirs. In her latest project Michael, she investigates the disappearance and life of a man she met on the streets of Portland in 2015. After giving her three suitcases full of scrapbooks, notes and books, everyone lost sight of him. Bieke Depoorter became a nominee member of Magnum Photos in 2012, an associate member in 2014, and a full member in 2016. She is the fourth Belgian member of the agency, after Carl De Keyzer, Martine Franck, Harry Gruyaert... Depoorter has won the Magnum Expression Award, The Larry Sultan Award and the Prix Levallois.Source: Wikipedia For the past six years, Bieke Depoorter has spent countless nights photographing perfect strangers—people that she encounters on the street who are willing to open their homes to Depoorter and her camera. The project began when she was travelling on the Trans-Siberian Railway, in 2008. She didn’t speak the language, so photography became her mode of communication. (She carried a letter that a friend wrote in Russian that explained her intent.) After publishing the work as a book, called Ou Menya, Depoorter headed to the United States, in 2010, where she hitchhiked and drove around the country, creating the collection found in her latest book, I Am About to Call It a Day. The project, both intimate and removed, hinges upon Depoorter’s ability to build trust within a tight timeframe. In many of the photographs, she seems to go unnoticed, capturing the unguarded moments found only in the privacy of one’s own home. “I like the atmosphere of the night,” Depoorter told me. “When people go to sleep, I think it’s most real. No one is looking at them, and they become their true selves.” She told me that her process is intrinsic to the success of her images. “I try to not hope for a picture,” she said. “I am there as a person first, and a photographer second.”Source: The New Yorker
Emin Özmen
Turkey
1985
Emin Özmen (born 1985) is a Turkish photographer, photojournalist and film maker based in Istanbul. He has worked especially on Turkey, on refugees and in the wider Middle East, including Syria and Iraq. In 2013 he founded a photography cooperative named Agence Le Journal, which is based in Istanbul. In 2017, he became a nominee member of Magnum Photos. He currently lives in Istanbul.Source: Wikipedia In 2008, he published two photobooks, "Humans of Anatolia" and "Microcredit Stories in Turkey", a collection of stories on women who were able to access a microcredit in Turkey. That same year, he obtained a degree in media photography and documentary (photography) at the University of Art and Design in Linz, Austria. In 2011, his work on drought in Somalia was published in a book and he worked on the disaster of Tohoku Earthquake and economic protests in Greece. The following year, he covered the Syrian civil war and ISIS crises in Iraq. Since 2012, Emin Özmen is working on his longterm project "Limbo - Les Limbes" and has undertaken a long work of photographic documentation with the populations uprooted by the spiral of conflicts. He has traveled many times to Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia, Hungary, Austria, Germany, Italy and France to meet people who were forced into becoming “refugees”.Source: www.eminozmen.com Emin Özmen is concerned with documenting human rights violations in his home country of Turkey and around the world. His deeply affecting work has brought attention to the suffering of those who are victim to natural disaster, civil unrest and corruption. Since a few years, he has been working on his two long-term projects: Limbo - Les Limbes, which documents the populations uprooted by the spiral of conflicts and Hidden War about the Kurdish conflict that has simmered for decades in Turkey. He worked in South Sudan in 2018 on the adversity and resilience of life in a Protection of Civilians camp and surrounding villages. In 2019 he travelled to Venezuela, where he covered the humanitarian crisis inflicting the country. His work has been published by TIME Magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Der Spiegel, Le Monde magazine M, Paris Match, Newsweek, among others. Özmen has won several awards, among them two World Press Photo awards and Public Prize of The Bayeux Calvados awards for war correspondents. He was a member of the jury of 2016 and 2018 World Press Photo Multimedia contests.Source: Magnum Photos
Robin Hammond
New Zealand
1975
Hiroji Kubota
Japan
1939
Hiroji Kubota (born 2 August 1939) is a Japanese photographer, a member of Magnum Photos who has specialized in photographing the far east. Born in Kanda (Tokyo), Kubota studied politics at Waseda University, graduating in 1962. In 1961 he met the Magnum photographers René Burri, Elliott Erwitt, and Burt Glinn. He then studied journalism and international politics at the University of Chicago, and became an assistant to Erwitt and Cornell Capa, in 1965, a freelance photographer. Kubota photographed the 1968 US presidential election and then Ryūkyū islands before their return to Japan in 1972. He then photographed Saigon in 1975, North Korea in 1978, and China in 1979–85, and the USA in 1988–92, resulting in books and exhibitions. Kubota won the Mainichi Art Prize in 1980,[2] and the Annual Award of the Photographic Society of Japan in 1981. Three of his publications won him the first Kodansha Publishing Culture Award in 1970: "Black People", and essays on Calcutta and the Ryūkyū islands.Source: Wikipedia Hiroji Kubota sounds a little over-the-top when he insists his "life is meaningless" without photography. But a glance at his latest and 19th book will convince you he is absolutely right, given how his life has been intertwined with some of Magnum's legendary photographers, like René Burri, Burt Glinn and my father, Elliott Erwitt. He started out working with some of them as a fixer and translator, even though he refused payment at first. "I was brought up comfortably and didn't need it," he said. He did, however, accept a beat-up Leica M3 from Burri. His life changed when he got the first edition of Henri Cartier-Bresson's The Decisive Moment a month later. "When I opened it, I said, 'My gosh, what is this?" he recalled. "That motivated me. That's when I became serious." His fate was sealed when Burri showed him a Swiss magazine that featured his Gaucho pictures. "It shocked me like crazy," he said. "I knew then I wanted to be a photographer." The results of those personally decisive moments are evident in Aperture's Hiroji Kubota Photographer a retrospective covering 50 years of his work. I met Hiroji almost that long ago, because my father, Elliott Erwitt, sponsored him when he first came to America, even picking him up at the TWA terminal at Kennedy Airport. They had met when Hiroji worked as a fixer on one of my father's early trips to Japan, in 1962, to illustrate Robert Donovan's book PT 109, about John F. Kennedy's World War II exploits. Hiroji was my father's translator when he photographed the captain and crew of the destroyer that famously cut Kennedy's boat in two. That kind of work led to his meeting other influential photographers who would encourage him, eventually bringing him to New York, where he became a familiar figure at the Magnum offices. Back then, the agency was a small, international and slightly dysfunctional family that was accessible if you met the right people, which he did. Cornell Capa, a Magnum photographer, "adopted me literally, not legally," he said. "He had no children, so he needed a son, a fairly well-behaved son who could cook for him." Capa, who entertained "big shots" at his Fifth Avenue apartment, helped Hiroji make a few extra dollars by having him cook. Burt Glinn also hired Hiroji as an assistant to help him get by. Hiroji showed similar ingenuity when he spent the better part of a year photographing in Chicago, where he ran an ad hoc Japanese catering business every other weekend to help pay the bills. By 1967, he was a successful photographer firmly ensconced at Magnum, and it was time to return to Japan. He has proved to be a remarkably tenacious photographer who immerses himself in a story and returns to it until he is satisfied. He has managed to get to places others can't - like his unlimited access on many trips to China, when travel within the country was still limited. He would talk government officials into allowing him the time and access he needed to achieve his purpose. Same with North Korea; he has made countless visits - at its invitation - at a time when it was essentially a closed country. -- By Misha ErwittSource: The New York Times During a visit by Magnum members to Japan in 1961, Hiroji Kubota came to know René Burri, Burt Glinn and Elliott Erwitt. After graduating in political science from Tokyo’s University of Waseda in 1962, Kubota moved to the US, settling in Chicago, where he continued photographing while supporting himself by working in a Japanese catering business. He became a freelance photographer in 1965, and his first assignment for the UK newspaper The Times was to Jackson Pollock’s grave in East Hampton. In 1968, Kubota returned to live in Japan, where his work was recognized with a Publishing Culture Award from Kodansha in 1970. The next year he became a Magnum associate. Kubota witnessed the fall of Saigon in 1975, refocusing his attention on Asia. It took him several years to get permission to photograph in China. Finally, between 1979 and 1984, Kubota embarked on a 1,000-day tour, during which he made more than 200,000 photographs. The book and exhibit, China, appeared in 1985. Kubota’s awards in Japan include the Nendo Sho (Annual Award) of the Japanese Photographic Society (1982), and the Mainichi Art Prize (1983). He has photographed most of the Asian continent for his book Out of the East, published in 1997, which led to a two-year project, in turn resulting in the book Can We Feed Ourselves? Kubota has had solo shows in Tokyo, Osaka, Beijing, New York, Washington, Rome, London, Vienna, Paris and many other cities. He has just completed Japan, a book on his homeland and the country where he continues to be based.Source: Magnum Photos
Jan Janssen
Netherlands
1963
As a social photographer, Jan Janssen captures the moments he recognises in his fellow human beings, especially those elsewhere in the world. In everyday moments, he finds the same needs, insecurities or pleasures that all people enjoy in their lives - albeit to different degrees. Travelling is inseparable from Janssen photographic practice. On the one hand, travelling is an opportunity to discover who you are yourself. By travelling to other places, Jan seeks precisely the things we have in common. In a world of polarisation and contrasts, sometimes even on one continent, Janssen settles geographical and symbolic boundaries by photographing people in a pure essence. He photographs the richness of our most basic human needs, like freedom, family and security - or, conversely, the absence of their obviousness. To create his photographs, Janssen works on location for long periods of time. He often returns to the same place during subsequent trips. Here he builds a bond with the local people, a bond based on mutual respect and dignity. This photographing with a free heart allows him to get as close to people as possible. Only in this way can he penetrate to the essence of their being, and then capture it on camera. It Matters Pieces of Europe is a long-term photography project, started in 2016. In this series, I show the moments I recognise in my fellow human beings. Things that are common to our human existence, such as love, play, growing up, loss and need for contact. Things that are present everywhere in the world, in anyone. Several times a year, I travel to destinations in Central and Eastern Europe. For these photos, I travelled to Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia, among others. Once arrived in the country, I work together with the locals to find entry into these communities. I find it very important that I approach them as an equal, and not as a western outsider just using them to take a photo. I build a bond with my portrayed people by following them for weeks, sometimes months. I may return regularly after my visit or stay in touch with my portraits online or remotely. Through this long-term contact, I get to know their traits and discover when they are at their most beautiful, their most vulnerable or their purest. It is at these moments that the most beautiful photos are created. The series is growing and will culminate in a book of the same name in 2026. Travelling is inseparable from my practice. It is an opportunity to discover who I am. By travelling to other places, I seek precisely the things we have in common. It is also a way for me to remind myself of the gratitude of a simple existence in places elsewhere in the world: things I take for granted in the West.
Martin Parr
United Kingdom
1952 | † 2025
Martin Parr is a British photojournalist, documentary photographer, and collector of photobooks. He is renowned for his photography works that critically examine various facets of contemporary society, particularly English suburban and rural life. Since 1994, Martin Parr has been a member of Magnum Photos. Parr, who was born in Epsom, Surrey, intended to be a documentary photographer since he was fourteen, and credits his grandpa, an amateur photographer, as an early inspiration. He studied photography at Manchester Polytechnic from 1970 to 1973. In 1980, he married Susan Mitchell, and they have one child, Ellen Parr (born 1986). He has been a resident of Bristol since 1987. Spain. Benidorm. 1997Courtesy Magnum Photos / © Martin Parr Martin Parr began his career as a professional photographer and has taught photography on and off since the mid-1970s. He was first recognized in the north of England for his black-and-white photography, Bad Weather (1982) and A Fair Day (1984), but switched to color photography in 1984. Last Resort: Photographs of New Brighton, the resulting work, was published in 1986. Martin Parr has nearly 100 books published and has been featured in over 100 exhibitions worldwide, including one at the Barbican Arts Centre in London. His retrospective exhibition was chosen as the main show for Singapore's Month of Photography Asia in 2007. In 2008, he was named Honorary Doctor of Arts at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) in recognition of his ongoing contributions to photography and MMU's School of Art. The easy bit is picking up a camera and pointing and shooting. But then you have to decide what it is you’re trying to say and express. -- Martin Parr Martin Parr's documentary photography style is intimate, anthropological, and satirical. Macro lenses, ring flash, high-saturation color film, and, since it became a more convenient format to work in, digital photography, all allow him to put his subjects "under the microscope" in their own environment, allowing them to expose their lives and values in ways that often involve inadvertent humor. For example, in order to create his book Signs of the Times: A Portrait of the Nation's Tastes (1992), Parr went into ordinary people's homes and photographed the mundane aspects of his hosts' lives, combining the images with quotes from his subjects in order to bring viewers uncomfortably close to them. The end result of Parr's technique has been described as ambiguous emotional reactions, with viewers unsure whether to laugh or cry. IRELAND. Galway. Galway Races. 1997Courtesy Magnum Photos / © Martin Parr Parr is also a curator and editor. He has curated two photography festivals, one in Arles in 2004 and the other in Brighton in 2010. Parr recently curated the Strange and Familiar exhibition at the Barbican. Many major museums, including the Tate, the Centre Pompidou, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, have acquired Martin Parr's work. In 2017, Martin Parr established the Martin Parr Foundation. Unless it hurts, unless there’s some vulnerability there, I don’t think you’re going to get good photographs. -- Martin Parr
Fern L. Nesson
United States
Fern L. Nesson is a graduate of Harvard Law School. She received an M.A. in American History from Brandeis and an M.F.A in Photography from the Maine Media College. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She practiced law in Boston for twenty years and subsequently taught American History and Mathematics. Nesson's photographs have been shown internationally in solo exhibitions at the Politecnico University in Torino, Italy, Les Rencontres de la Photographie in Arles, France, Ph21 Gallery in Budapest, Hungary and at The University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica. In the United States, Nesson has had solo exhibitions at the Griffin Museum of Photography, at MIT and Harvard, and at the Beacon Gallery in Boston, Massachusetts, the Pascal Gallery in Rockport, and Maine, and Through This Lens Gallery in Durham, NC. Additionally, her work has been selected for numerous juried exhibitions in the U.S., Barcelona, Rome and Budapest. Nesson's photobooks, Signet of Eternity and WORD, won the 10th and the 12th Annual Photobooks Award from the Davis-Orton Gallery. Her photography can be found at www.fernlnesson. Statement ''Art should not be copies of living things but... [itself] be [a] living thing – a real living form.'' Malevich (1916) My photographs capture the moment when mass becomes energy. My goal is to create living works of art that offer energy to the viewer. I shoot from reality; my images are never constructed, only sparingly edited. They distill a scene or an object it to its essence. Photographs that embody energy rely upon the camera to record a specific moment but, if they hit their mark, they escape and float free of it. The energy from the moment of capture enlivens these images. Like Cezanne's paintings, they are alive, they breathe. An energetic image expresses interconnectedness, visualizes movement and flow. It constitutes a moment of transcendence and teaches us that, although everything changes form, nothing is ever destroyed. It lives on, resonating with the past, celebrating the present, pointing to the future, embodying the universal, iconically representing the eternal. As Whitman’s wrote in Leaves of Grass, it can “chant the [viewer] into a new state of being, get him psychically airborne, boost him up to that height where he can identify with the past and commune with the future.”
Advertisement
All About Photo Awards 2026
Win a Solo Exhibition in February
All About Photo Awards 2026

Latest Interviews

Exclusive Interview with Marijn Fidder
Marijn Fidder is a Dutch documentary photographer whose work powerfully engages with current affairs and contemporary social issues. Driven by a deep sense of social justice, she uses photography to speak on behalf of the voiceless and to advocate for the rights of those who are most vulnerable. Her images have been widely published in major international outlets including National Geographic, CNN Style, NRC Handelsblad, Volkskrant, GUP New Talent, and ZEIT Magazin. Her long-term commitment to disability rights—particularly through years of work in Uganda—culminated in her acclaimed project Inclusive Nation, which earned her the title of Photographer of the Year 2025 at the All About Photo Awards. She is also the recipient of multiple prestigious honors, including awards from World Press Photo and the Global Peace Photo Award. We asked her a few questions about her life and work.
Exclusive Interview with Josh S. Rose
Josh S. Rose is a multidisciplinary artist working across photography, film, and writing. His practice bridges visual and performing arts, with a strong focus on movement, emotion, and the expressive potential of the image. Known for his long-standing collaborations with leading dance companies and performers, Rose brings together authenticity and precise composition—a balance he describes as “technical romanticism.” His work has been commissioned and exhibited internationally, appearing in outlets such as Vogue, at the Super Bowl, in film festivals, and most recently as a large-scale installation for Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. A sought-after collaborator, he has worked with major artists, cultural institutions, and brands, following a previous career as Chief Creative Officer at Interpublic Group and the founder of Humans Are Social. We asked him a few questions about his life and work.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Exclusive Interview with Alan Schaller About Irys
Alan Schaller is a London-based photographer best known for his striking black-and-white street photography and as co-founder of Street Photography International, one of the largest online communities dedicated to the genre. With years of experience both behind the camera and in building platforms that give visibility to photographers, Schaller has now turned his focus to creating a new digital space for photography itself. His latest venture, Irys, is a photography app designed by photographers, for photographers, with the aim of offering a dedicated platform where images are respected as works of art rather than treated as disposable content.
Call for Entries
All About Photo Awards 2026
$5,000 Cash Prizes! Juror: Steve McCurry