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Win a Solo Exhibition this February. Juror: Harvey Stein
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Mario Algaze
Mario Algaze

Mario Algaze

Country: Cuba / United States
Birth: 1947

Mario Algaze (born 1947 in Havana, Cuba) is a Cuban-American photographer whose work celebrates the culture of Latin America. At the age of thirteen he was forced to exile Cuba in 1960 and relocated to Miami, Florida. Miami offered a rich cultural mecca and a vibrant melting pot of culture which encouraged him to travel to Central and South America where he worked as a freelance photojournalist for national and international publications. These trips allowed him a glimpse of belonging within a familiar culture.

In finding his identity after exile, he began photographing Latin America in the 1970’s while reconnecting with the feeling of home. His photographs embody the everyday of Latin life. Between his travels in the late 70’s, Algaze studied visual art at Miami Dade College. Algaze’s masterful command of light illuminates his street scenes that detail the struggles and victories of Latin culture.

Mario Algaze is the recipient of various acclaimed awards, including the Florida Artist Fellowship from the Florida Arts Council (1985), the Cintas Foundation Fellowship in Photography (1991), the Visual Arts Fellowship and the SAF Artist Fellowship sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1992, he received the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Photography.

A retrospective collection of his work is showcased in the important monograph, Mario Algaze: Portfolio, published by Di Puglia Publisher, 2010. Additional monographs by the artist include, Mario Algaze: Portafolio Latinamericano, Mario Algaze: Cuba 1999-2000, and A Respect for Light: The Latin American Photographs: 1974-2008.

Algaze's documentary work is highly sought after by institutions and collectors worldwide. His work can be found in permanent collections at every corner of the world including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; Santa Barbara Museum; Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, DePaul University, Chicago and the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Source: PDNB Gallery


Mario Algaze was born in Havana, Cuba but emigrated to the United States in 1960, settling in Miami, Florida. In 1971, at the age of 24, he began a career as a freelance photojournalist. Although Algaze left Cuba as a teenager he has frequently turned to Latin America as the subject of his photographs, traveling extensively throughout the region. In his carefully composed black and white photographs, he captures people alone or in small groups on the streets and in cafes and parks. Many of his photographs of these everyday settings are infused with a soft light and marked by shadows, giving them a serene or mysterious quality, or evoking the passage of time. The region's conflicts and political activities, frequent subjects of photojournalism, are largely absent in his imagery; instead, he lends quiet insight into the cultural diversity of Latin America and the shape of daily life in countries as far spread as Mexico, Ecuador, and Argentina.

Source: Museum of Contemporary Photography


Selected Books on Available on Amazon
A Respect for Light: The Latin American Photographs 1974-2008
A Respect for Light: The Latin American Photographs 1974-2008
Mario Algaze

Galleries

PDNB Gallery

Peter Fetterman Gallery

Throckmorton Fine Art

Exhibition

Mario Algaze: Focus

 

Mario Algaze's Video

Selected Books

A Respect for Light: The Latin American Photographs 1974-2008
A Respect for Light: The Latin American Photographs 1974-2008
Mario Algaze

Inspiring Portfolios

Marijn Fidder
© Marijn Fidder
Julien Chatelin
© Julien Chatelin
Marcus Yam
© Marcus Yam
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More Great Photographers To Discover

Ivan Ferrer
Ivan Ferrer
Israel
1951
Ivan Ferrer took up photography thirteen years ago as a part-time hobby, but it quickly evolved into an all-encompassing way of life. Ivan’s primary wellspring of inspiration is deeply grounded in the global diversity of cultures, encompassing the people, the defining street scenes, as well as their customs, beliefs, and ceremonies. Eager and motivated to showcase what he could, Ivan has travelled to more than 50 countries, determined to share these unique cultures with his viewers. Throughout his photographic career, Ivan has earned numerous prestigious international awards, a testament to his dedication and talent.
George Brassaï
George Brassaï
Hungary/France
1899 | † 1984
George Brassaï, the pseudonym of Gyula Halász, emerged as a Hungarian photographer, sculptor, and filmmaker who gained international recognition in 20th-century France. He was part of the vibrant community of Hungarian artists flourishing in Paris during the interwar period. In the early 21st century, the unearthing of over 200 letters and numerous drawings and artifacts from the years 1940–1984 has offered scholars valuable insights into his later life and career. Gyula (Jules) Halasz, in the Western order of his name, was born in Brassó, Transylvania, Kingdom of Hungary (known as Brasov, Romania, since 1920), to an Armenian mother and a Hungarian father. He grew up with Hungarian as his primary language. At the age of three, his family resided in Paris for a year, during which his father, a professor of French literature, taught at the Sorbonne. During his youth, Gyula Halász pursued studies in painting and sculpture at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts (Magyar Képzomuvészeti Egyetem) in Budapest. Subsequently, he enlisted in a cavalry regiment of the Austro-Hungarian army and served until the conclusion of the First World War. In 1920, Halász relocated to Berlin, where he took on the role of a journalist for the Hungarian newspapers Keleti and Napkelet. Simultaneously, he commenced his studies at the Berlin-Charlottenburg Academy of Fine Arts (Hochschule für Bildende Künste), now known as Universität der Künste Berlin. During this time, he formed connections with several older Hungarian artists and writers, such as painters Lajos Tihanyi and Bertalan Pór, and writer Gyorgy Boloni. These individuals, who later moved to Paris, became part of the Hungarian artistic circle. In 1924, Halász made the decisive move to Paris, where he would reside for the remainder of his life. In an effort to learn the French language, he embarked on a self-taught journey by immersing himself in the works of Marcel Proust. Living among the burgeoning community of young artists in the Montparnasse quarter, he took on a job as a journalist. It wasn't long before he forged friendships with notable figures such as the American writer Henry Miller, and the French writers Leon-Paul Fargue and Jacques Prévert. During the late 1920s, he shared the same hotel with Tihanyi. Halász's profession and his love for the city, where he often wandered the streets late at night, eventually led him to photography. Initially using photography as a means to supplement his articles for additional income, he quickly delved into exploring the city through this medium. His fellow Hungarian, André Kertész, served as his mentor in photography. Using the name of his birthplace, Gyula Halász adopted the pseudonym "Brassaï," meaning "from Brasso." Under this name, he captured the essence of the city in his photographs, culminating in the publication of his first collection in 1933 titled "Paris de nuit" (Paris by Night). The book achieved significant success, earning him the moniker "the eye of Paris" in an essay by his friend Henry Miller. In addition to capturing the more gritty aspects of Paris, Brassaï documented scenes from the city's high society, intellectuals, ballet performances, and grand operas. He formed a connection with a French family who granted him access to the upper echelons of society. Within these circles, Brassaï photographed many of his artist acquaintances, including Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Alberto Giacometti, as well as prominent writers of his era such as Jean Genet and Henri Michaux. Throughout the 1930s, a continuous stream of young Hungarian artists arrived in Paris, and the Hungarian circle welcomed most of them. André Kertèsz, a fellow Hungarian, emigrated to New York in 1936. Brassaï extended his friendships to the newcomers, including Ervin Marton, a nephew of Tihanyi, with whom he had been acquainted since 1920. Marton later gained recognition in street photography during the 1940s and 1950s. While Brassaï sustained himself through commercial work, he also contributed photographs to the U.S. magazine Harper's Bazaar. As a founding member of the Rapho agency, established in Paris by Charles Rado in 1933, Brassaï played a pivotal role. His photographs brought him international acclaim. In 1948, he held a solo exhibition in the United States at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City, subsequently traveling to the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, and the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois. MOMA featured more of Brassaï's works in 1953, 1956, and 1968. He was showcased at the Rencontres d'Arles festival in France in 1970, 1972, and 1974 as the guest of honor. In 1948, Brassaï married Gilberte Boyer, a French woman who collaborated with him in supporting his photographic endeavors.
Julie-Anne Davies
Julie-Anne Davies
Canada
Julie-Anne’s earliest memories consist of lying on the carpet of her childhood home scouring through the pages of her father’s prolific National Geographic collection. Her mind was shaped at a young age by visuals of exotic far off lands, cultures completely unlike her own and wild creatures her imagination barely yet had the capacity to comprehend. On her 10th birthday she received her first camera and recalls a distinct sense of ‘knowing’ from that moment that photography was going to play a central and defining role in her life. In love with her rural home in the mountains of Western Canada, but unable to suppress her nomad heart, Julie-Anne has spent the past several decades traveling the world, often with her two young children in tow. She leads cultural photography tours for UK based Wild Images and is an expedition photographer and ‘Adventure Specialist’ (yes, this is her real job title) for the world’s largest outdoor female adventure company, Wild Women Expeditions. Her heart is drawn to remote and challenging to access corners of the world and in particular to regions where lives are still intricately and intrinsically tied to the land on which they depend. The human condition and how it is shaped by its relationship to nature drives an endless curiosity in Julie-Anne and forms the backbone of her photography work. Fascinated by cultural, religious and ethnic diversity, she is often driven by a sense of urgency to document within these remote parts of our planet ‘what still is’ before it becomes ‘what was’. In doing so, she hopes to play her part in contributing to a visual archive of the beautiful but rapidly vanishing cultural diversity among humanity. She is a five time exhibitor in the prestigious Atlas of Humanity project, an ethnographic showcase of the world’s diverse cultures in Paris, Milan and New York and has been featured in many international publications. At home, her energy is spent, other than with family, in photographing the stunning Canadian landscape and most recently shifting towards documenting our changing natural environment through film and storytelling. Wild Images Photo Tours Wild Women Expeditions
Paola Gareri
Paola Gareri
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Born in Calabria, South ItalyStudied Art and Literature in Bologna and Rome. Specialised in Photography at IED Rome.Works like freelance in advertising then in anthropological reportage for Ministry of Culture in Italy.The photography is for me like a mystic instant. When I can put into the small rectangle all my essence, reorganizing my interior universe through the apparent form of the outside world, the photo takes my own form and then I’m happy. This moment is a time suspension, an instant outside the time. It’s an inner experience, and this happen in the meeting and the fusion: the meeting with people or places, sometimes with objects, the meeting with the light and the outward form, the fusion between me and the word. My photography’s keys are light, meeting, fusion, melting.The photography is for me the possibility to be a witness about worlds, cultures, emotions of the life on the Earth. Some photos are in analogic camera, others made with a Rolleiflex 6x6
Nikos Economopoulos
Nikos Economopoulos
Greece
1953
Nikos Economopoulos (b.1953) is a Greek photographer known for his photography of the Balkans and of Greece in particular. Born in Kalamata, Economopoulos studied law at university and worked as a journalist. He only started taking photographs at 25 when a friend in Italy showed him a book of the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson, which had an impact that was both instant and lasting. Cartier-Bresson "showed me a new way to see things... What I saw in his work was not only geometry and composition, but a kind of ambiguity." Economopoulos recalls that even then he did not start photography for over two years but instead bought photography books. Then he started photography: "I never photographed sunrises or made souvenir pictures of my children. For about eight or nine years I photographed at weekends and during my holidays, always in a serious way, working from morning to night." 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In 1993, Frank Viviano, who had first met Economopoulos in Timișoara just after the fall of Nicolae Ceauşescu, wrote that: "Economopoulos says his intention is to document the existence of what he calls the 'Balkan Man': to knit together the skeins of a collective identity in a region whose historical convulsions have made its name a synonym for implacable differences. It would appear to be a fool's errand. But almost anyone who has crossed the madman's web of frontiers and borders that stretches over the Balkans, from Istanbul to the Italian border, is likely to agree with Economopoulos's premise — and to recognize, in his work, the contradictions that sum up Balkan truth." With support from the Little Brothers of the Poor, in 1994 Economopoulos photographed gypsies in Greece, and in 1995–96 lignite miners and Muslims in Greece. In 1997–98 he concentrated on people living on the "Green Line" separating Northern Cyprus, illegal migration across the Albanian–Greek border, and young people in Tokyo; and for the next two years Albanians fleeing Kosovo. He also worked on a commission from the University of the Aegean on storytelling in the region. Economopoulos was dissatisfied with the assignment in Japan, as he felt unable to communicate with people and was just as estranged after three weeks of work as he had been on his arrival. By contrast, he writes that "I prefer to spend my time in my corner of the world, south Europe and west Asia, where I understand the codes and can make connections." This does not mean that the Balkans are an open book to him: Economopoulos has also written of the paradoxes apparent in Albania; and also across the Balkans, where faces can be sad even in wedding parties. Economopoulos's photography of Turkey won him the 2001 Abdi İpekçi Award for promoting friendship between Turkey and Greece. Painfully aware of the bitterness often encouraged in both Greece and Turkey toward the other, he has written appreciatively of the personal welcome given to him by the Turks that he meets. "There are no real differences [between Greeks and Turks]. I love Turkey and I can live there. I can't live in Paris or in London. But Istanbul — I can live there." Economopoulos's photographs have been published in The Guardian, The Independent, Le Monde, Libération, The New York Times, El País, and Die Zeit. He feels that there is no future in photojournalism. There is a loss of quality in photographs in newspapers, and Robert Capa would not take photographs if he were living today. But he concedes that Abbas and James Nachtwey would be among those who disagree.Source: Wikipedia In the mid-1990s, he started photographing the Roma and other minorities. In 2000, he completed a book project on the Aegean islands storytellers, commissioned by the University of the Aegean. A retrospective of his work titled Economopoulos, Photographer was published in 2002 and later exhibited at the Benaki Museum, Athens. Returning to Turkey, he pursued his long-term personal project, where he received the Abdi Ipektsi award (2001), for peace and friendship between Greek and Turkish people. He has recently turned to the use of color. Currently, he is spending most of his time away from Greece, traveling, teaching and photographing around the world, in the context of his long-term On The Road project.Source: Magnum Photos
Nick Brandt
Nick Brandt
United Kingdom
1964
Nick Brandt is an English photographer whose themes always relate to the disappearing natural world, before much of it is destroyed by mankind. From 2001 to 2018, he has photographed in Africa. In his trilogy, On This Earth, A Shadow Falls Across The Ravaged Land (2001-2012), he established a style of portrait photography of animals in the wild similar to that of the photography of humans in studio setting, shot on medium format film, attempting to portray animals as sentient creatures not so different from us. In Inherit the Dust (2016), in a series of panoramas, Brandt recorded the impact of man in places where animals used to roam, but no longer do. In each location, Brandt erected a life-size panel of one of his unreleased animal portrait photographs, placing the displaced animals on sites of explosive urban development, new factories, wastelands and quarries. This Empty World (2019) addresses the escalating destruction of the natural world at the hands of humans, showing a world where, overwhelmed by runaway development, there is no longer space for animals to survive. The people in the photos also often helplessly swept along by the relentless tide of 'progress'. Each image is a combination of two moments in time, captured weeks apart, almost all from the exact same locked-off camera position: A partial set is built and lit. Weeks follow whilst the wild animals in the area become comfortable enough to enter the frame. Once the animals are captured on camera, the full sets are built. A second sequence is then photographed with a cast of people drawn from local communities and beyond. Brandt has had solo gallery and museum shows around the world, including New York, London, Berlin, Stockholm, Paris and Los Angeles. Born and raised in England, he now lives in the southern Californian mountains. He is co-founder of Big Life Foundation, fighting to protect the animals and ecosystem of a large area of Kenya and Tanzania. On this Earth: The first book in the trilogy, On This Earth (Chronicle Books, 2005) constitutes 66 photos taken 2000-2004, with introductions by the conservationist and primatologist Jane Goodall and the author Alice Sebold. The photographs in this book are a unadulterated vision of an African paradise, deliberately contrasting with what is to follow in the subsequent books. Elephant with Exploding Dust, Amboseli 2004, the photo on the book's cover, has since become one of Brandt's best-known images. Critical response to the book, heralded Brandt's photographic achievement. Black and White magazine called his photos "heartbreakingly beautiful". A Shadow Falls: The second book in the trilogy, A Shadow Falls, (Abrams, 2009) features 58 photographs taken 2005-2008. It is generally regarded to be superior to "On This Earth". In additional introductions, philosopher Peter Singer, author of the groundbreaking Animal Liberation, explains why Brandt's photographs speak to an increasing human moral conscience about our treatment of animals. The photography critic Vicki Goldberg places Brandt's work in the history of the medium. As the title of the book implies, this book, although replete with images of ethereal beauty and poetry, is a more melancholic interpretation of the world he photographs. Indeed, critic Vicki Goldberg writes: " A Shadow Falls, taken in its entirely, is a love story without a happily ever after." The photos in the book are deliberately sequenced: the opening images are of an unspoiled lush green world, filled with animals and water ("Wildebeest Arc, Masai Mara 2006" ). As the book progresses, the photos become gradually more stark, until towards the end, the trees are dead, the water gone, the animals are vastly reduced in numbers, until the book closes with the final ambiguous image, of a lone, abandoned ostrich egg on a parched lake bed. "Abandoned Ostrich Egg, Amboseli 2007". In addition the Artist's Edition book, entitled, On this Earth, a Shadow Falls, (Abrams Books/Big Life Editions) was published in 2010, combining the best 90 photos from the first two books, in a larger volume with much superior printing to the first two books. Across The Ravaged Land: The completion of Nick Brandt’s trilogy: “On This Earth, A Shadow Falls, Across The Ravaged Land.” Release date, September 3, 2013 (Abrams Books, 2013), documents the disappearing natural world and animals of East Africa. This is the third and final volume of Nick Brandt's work which reveals the darker side of his vision of East Africa’s animal kingdom and the juxtaposition of mankind. The trilogy marks the last decade of a stunning world of the beauty of East Africa’s Serengeti, Marsai Mara, Amboseli, and ends with a dark and well-known unhappy ending. “Across The Ravaged Land” introduces humans in his photography for the first time exhibiting the cost of poachers, killing for profit. One such example is Ranger with Tusks of Killed Elephant, Amboseli 2011. This photograph features one of the rangers employed by Big Life Foundation, the Foundation that Nick Brandt started in 2010. The ranger holds the tusks of an elephant killed by poachers in the years prior to the Foundation's inception. Brandt captures the trophies in these epic landscapes and the images of perfectly preserved creatures calcified by the salts of the Rift Valley soda lake. In both instances, the creatures appear in an ethereal animated state seemingly posing for their portraits. Big Life Foundation: In September 2010, in urgent response to the escalation of poaching in Africa due to increased demand from the Far East, Nick Brandt founded the non-profit organization called Big Life Foundation, dedicated to the conservation of Africa's wildlife and ecosystems. With one of the most spectacular elephant populations in Africa being rapidly diminished by poachers, the Amboseli ecosystem, which straddles both Kenya and Tanzania, became the Foundation's large-scale pilot project. Headed up in Kenya by renowned conservationist Richard Bonham, multiple fully equipped teams of anti-poaching rangers have been placed in newly built outposts in the critical areas throughout the 2-million-acre (8,100 km2) + area, resulting in a dramatically reduced incidence of killing and poaching of wildlife in the ecosystem. Source: Wikipedia Must Read Articles Exclusive Interview with Nick Brandt Big Life Foundation This Empty World, Inherit The Dust
Katharine Cooper
Katharine Cooper
South Africa
1978
Katharine Cooper, born 1978 in Grahamstown, in South Africa's Eastern Cape, moved at a young age to Zimbabwe, where she completed her schooling. In 1998, she moved to the United Kingdom to pursue her studies in photography, before finally landing at the Arles national school of photography, from which she graduated with honours in 2004, notably for her film "Family Archive". Katharine worked as in-house printer to photographer Lucien Clergue, in his Arles-based atelier, from 2004 up until his death in 2014. Her work has been exhibited in various collective shows, and bought by art-collectors from around the world. Katharine Cooper regularly teaches workshops in the Arles region, whose Camargue landscapes and strong winds remind her of her homeland. In 2012 Katharine Cooper received the Academy of the Arts' Photography Prize for her series "White Africans", which showed in Paris October/November 2013.
Dan Budnik
Dan Budnik
United States
1933 | † 2020
Dan Budnik (b.1933, Long Island, NY) studied painting at the Art Students’ League of New York. After being drafted, he started photographing the New York school of Abstracts Expressionist and Pop Artists in the mid-fifties, making it a primary focus for several decades. He made major photo-essays on Willem de Kooning and David Smith, among many other artists. It was his teacher Charles Alston at the Art Students’ League of New York, the first African American to teach at the League, who inspired his interest in documentary photography and the budding Civil Rights Movement. In 1957 he started working at Magnum Photos, New York, assisting several photographers, notably Cornell Capa, Burt Glinn, Eve Arnold, Ernst Haas, Eric Hartmann and Elliott Erwitt. In March 1958 Budnik travelled to live with the underground in Havana for 6 weeks during the Cuban revolution. Budnik continued to work with Magnum for half of his time, until joining as an associate member in 1963. In 1964 he left Magnum and continued specializing in essays for leading national and international magazines, focussing on civil and human rights, ecological issues and artists. Since 1970 Budnik has worked with the Hopi and Navaho traditional people of northern Arizona, and received for this work a National Endowment for the Arts Grant in 1973 and a Polaroid Foundation Grant in 1980. In 1998 he was the recipient of the Honor Roll Award of the American Society of Media Photographers. He lives and works in Tucson and Flagstaff, Arizona. Source: danbudnik.com
Pierre Verger
Pierre Verger
France
1902 | † 1996
Pierre Edouard Leopold Verger, alias Fatumbi or Fátúmbí was a photographer, self-taught ethnographer, and babalawo (Yoruba priest of Ifa) who devoted most of his life to the study of the African diaspora - the slave trade, the African-based religions of the new world, and the resulting cultural and economical flows from and to Africa. At the age of 30, after losing his family, Pierre Verger took up the career of journalistic photographer. Over the next 15 years, he traveled the four continents, documenting many civilizations that would soon be effaced by progress. His destinations included Tahiti (1933); United States, Japan, and China (1934 and 1937); Italy, Spain, Sudan (now Mali), Niger, Upper Volta, Togo and Dahomey (now Benin, 1935); the West Indies (1936); Mexico (1937, 1939, and 1957); the Philippines and Indochina (now Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, 1938); Guatemala and Ecuador (1939); Senegal (as a conscript, 1940); Argentina (1941), Peru and Bolivia (1942 and 1946); and finally Brazil (1946). His photographs were featured in magazines such as Paris-Soir, Daily Mirror (under the pseudonym of Mr. Lensman), Life, and Paris Match. In the city of Salvador, Brazil he fell in love with the place and people, and decided to stay for good. Having become interested in the local history and culture, he turned from errant photographer to a researcher of the African diaspora in the Americas. His subsequent voyages are focused on that goal: the west coast of Africa and Paramaribo (1948), Haiti (1949), and Cuba (1957). After studying the Yoruba culture and its influences in Brazil, Verger became an initiated of the Candomblé religion, and officiated at its rituals. During a visit to Benin, he was initiated into Ifá (cowrie-shell divination), became a babalawo (priest) of Orunmila, and was renamed Fátúmbí ("he who is reborn through the Ifá"). Veger's contributions to ethnography are embodied in dozens of conference papers, journal articles and books and were recognized by Sorbonne University, which conferred upon him a doctoral degree (Docteur 3eme Cycle) in 1966 — quite a feat for someone who dropped out of high school at 17. Verger continued to study and document his chosen subject right until his death in Salvador, at the age of 94. During that time he became a professor at the Federal University of Bahia in 1973, where he was responsible for the establishment of the Afro-Brazilian Museum in Salvador; and served as visiting professor at the University of Ifé in Nigeria. The non-profit Pierre Verger Foundation in Salvador, which he established to continue his work, holds more than 63,000 photos and negatives taken until 1973, as well as his papers and correspondence. Source: Wikipedia
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All About Photo Awards 2026
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Interview
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.
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