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Steff Gruber
Steff Gruber
Steff Gruber

Steff Gruber

Country: Switzerland
Birth: 1953

Steff Gruber (1953) is a Swiss photographer and filmmaker. He worked as a press photographer for Keystone Press and was one of the first filmmakers to explore the docudrama genre. He became internationally known with his documentary LOCATION AFRICA about the filming of COBRA VERDE, the last collaboration between Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski. His award-winning films have been shown at various international film festivals.

Based on his interest in documentaries, Steff Gruber began shooting photo stories in various countries, focusing, in particular, on human interest subjects and humanist concerns. Visiting places and people on repeated occasions, many of his photo series were produced over a period of several years.

In 2020 Steff Gruber opened the LUMIERE.GALLERY for digital photo exhibitions.

Steff Gruber is a member of the Swiss Association of Journalists and Photographers IMPRESSUM.
 

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More Great Photographers To Discover

Bill Owens
United States
1938
Bill Owens, born in 1938, is a well-known American photographer who documented suburban life in the 1970s. His photography provides a unique and deep look into the everyday lives of average Americans, capturing both the commonplace and remarkable features of suburbia life. Owens began his photographic career in the late 1960s as a staff photographer for a local newspaper in Livermore, California. During this period, he began his most noteworthy project, "Suburbia," which would become a major body of work in American documentary photography. "Suburbia" was published as a book in 1973, featuring Owens' images and conversations with suburban dwellers. The project's goal was to investigate the goals, aspirations, and inconsistencies of suburbia life, offering a critical yet sympathetic study of the American Dream. Owens' images depicted scenes of backyard barbecues, family gatherings, children at play, and the myriad rituals and social interactions that constituted suburban areas. He highlighted both the humor and the underlying intricacies of suburban life through his good observation and direct attitude. What distinguished Owens' work was his ability to see past the surface and capture the soul of his subjects. His images conveyed a sense of realism by portraying suburbanites in their natural settings and enabling their tales to flow through genuine moments captured in time. Owens' art struck a chord with a large audience because it highlighted a huge societal transition in America during the 1970s. Owens' images challenged the idealized image of suburban life by exposing the hardships, wants, and inconsistencies inherent in the pursuit of the American Dream. Throughout his career, Owens continued to explore various topics and subjects in addition to his "Suburbia" series. He documented the California wine industry, capturing the agricultural process as well as the people that make it happen. He also covered countercultural trends of the 1960s and 1970s, such as the rise of the hippie and biker subcultures. Bill Owens' contributions to documentary photography will be remembered. His ability to depict the everyday lives of regular people in suburbia America with honesty and empathy earned him a place in American photographic history. His work is still being shown and researched, providing important insights into the social and cultural fabric of a specific period and place.
Edward Steichen
Luxembourg/United States
1879 | † 1973
Edward Steichen (1879 - 1973) was born in Luxembourg, but immigrated to the United States, to Milwaukee, in 1880. In 1894, Steichen began a four-year lithography apprenticeship with the American Fine Art Company of Milwaukee. After hours, he would sketch and draw, and began to teach himself to paint. Having come across a camera shop near to his work, he bought his first camera, a secondhand Kodak box "detective" camera, in 1895. In 1900, as Steichen headed to Paris to study painting, he stopped in New York. By that time he was an aspiring painter and an accomplished photographer in the soft-focus, Pictorial style and he made a pilgrimage to the Camera Club of New York to show his work to Alfred Stieglitz, the leading tastemaker in American photography. Stieglitz, vice-president of the Camera Club and editor of its journal Camera Notes, was impressed by the young artist from Milwaukee and bought three of his photographs-a self-portrait and two moody, atmospheric woodland scenes printed in platinum-for the impressive sum of five dollars each. Elated, Steichen then boarded the ship for Europe. Once in France, Steichen quickly abandoned his painting studies and began to focus his energies on photography. He learned the technical intricacies of the gum bichromate process, popular among the members of the Photo-Club de Paris, and developed a reputation as a portraitist of noted artists, writers, and members of society. Arriving back in New York in 1902, Steichen rented a studio on the top floor of a brownstone at 291 Fifth Avenue and hung out his shingle; his work as a professional portrait photographer flourished. That same year, Stieglitz announced the formation of the Photo-Secession-the name he gave to the loose-knit group of photographers he exhibited, published, and promoted during the next decade and a half-and the publication of a new, still more lavish journal, Camera Work. Over the fifteen-year, fifty-issue run of Camera Work, no other artist would be featured as prominently as Steichen, who had sixty-five photographs and three paintings reproduced in fifteen issues, including a "Special Steichen Supplement" in April 1906 and an all-Steichen double issue in 1913. In 1906, Steichen determined "to get away from the lucrative but stultifying professional portrait business" and return to France with his family in hopes of resuscitating his idled painting career. It was a move with numerous consequences. For one, it positioned him to embrace the Autochrome, the process for making glass-plate color transparencies introduced by the Lumière brothers in 1907. Steichen-who had experimented with various methods such as gum bichromate to introduce color into his photographs-was enthralled by the technique. Steichen also made what he called his "first attempt at serious documentary reportage" in the summer of 1907, using a borrowed hand camera. Steichen returned to the U.S. in 1914. Serving in the US Army in World War I (and the US Navy in the Second World War), Steichen commanded significant units contributing to military photography. After World War I, during which he commanded the photographic division of the American Expeditionary Forces, he reverted to straight photography, gradually moving into editorial and fashion photography. His portraits of Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Gloria Swanson, and other celebrities appeared in Vogue and Vanity Fair in the 1920s and 1930s. From 1947-1962, Steichen served as the Director of Photography at New York's Museum of Modern Art.. Among other accomplishments, Steichen is appreciated for creating the 1955 exhibition, The Family of Man, at the Museum of Modern Art consisting of over 500 photographs. Steichen purchased a farm that he called Umpawaug in 1928, just outside West Redding, Connecticut, and lived there until his death. Source: Howard Greenberg Gallery
Dimitris Lambridis
Dimitris Lambridis was born in Athens, Greece. He has studied photography at the NewYork Film Academy and Film Production at the University for The Creative Arts, in Farnham, UK. He works as a photographer and cinematographer between London and Athens, while creating personal projects in the medium of photography. These projects focus mostly on stories that involve themes such as loss, the margins, community and irreversibility. Red Willow: "Red Willow" is the name of the Native American tribe of Pueblo Indians residing in the Taos Pueblo, in the city of Taos, New Mexico. The Red Willow tribe operates as an independent sovereign state, with its own hospital, school system and governing body. The Taos Pueblo was probably built between 1000 and 1450, making it one of the oldest continuously inhabited communities in the United States. It is also said that the Red Willow tribe is one of the first forms of society in the US - prior to the arrival of the Spanish in 1598 and other colonizers who played a definitive role in the history of the country and the fate of all Native Americans. A really important establishment introduced to the Natives was Christianity, which fit within the already highly spiritual culture, without pushing their spiritual practices away. It fit, and was accepted as it functioned in a different layer. Faith plays a large role in Native American art and other forms of expression. The history of relations between the US government and the Native American Indians has been a difficult one. Increasingly, today's Native American groups are sovereign within their own territory but continue to have close connections with the US federal government. Access to higher education for Native Americans is limited as the opportunities afforded them are not broad. The people's attitude in conjunction with the endless desert, allowed for a clarity of mind, which was almost taking me by the hand and pointing the camera towards the things that really did matter. The earth, the mountain, and the deepest bond that will never be taken away from Red Willow - their connection to their land. Photographic approach As soon as I was granted access to photograph within the pueblo in Taos, New Mexico. I started thinking about the form in which the narrative would be best preserved. The magnitude of this culture in relation to the history that comes after they encountered the colonizers, is one to be deeply respected. Appropriately, I thought that the clean strong image of a medium format camera, will function also as an update to Ansel Adams' documentation of the tribe- made in the 1930's- yet with elements of our times, such as the colour film and the inevitably modern landscape within and around the Pueblo, such as cars, clothing and establishments. Approaching the Pueblo in relation to the outside environment of the town of Taos, was something that I wanted to establish after I witnessed a certain codependence, which might not be preferred by the tribal members, but seems necessary.
Thierry Camus
France
1959
From the black and white film photo lab of my teenage high school to my full-size CANON of today, passing through slides in the 90s and the arrival of digital in the early 2000s : a lifetime with photography as a passion, amateur and self-taught. Over the years, my way of taking pictures matured and I felt like "interpreting" what I was seing, discovering the world and showing it in my own way. Taking pictures meets the need and the secret desire, to leave a trace of this vision and to convey an emotion. Offering my point of view and expressing my uniqueness, this is what being a photographer means to me. ARCHITECTURAL photography fascinates me and the city is my inexhaustible source of inspiration, the URBAN BODY. It’s not the building itself that interests me, but its LINES and COLORS, as shown by my first serie "my LINES on BLUE" and "STRICTLY LINE". Then architectural photography became URBAN LANDSCAPE, mixing stone and urban objets, always without human pesence, to forget scale and remain abstract. That brought me to my serie "STRICTLY COLOR". « Locked up at home » during the first confinement, I discovered that natural light could create interesting shadows and reflections on my everyday objects surrounding me. It was giving them poeetry and even sensuality, and a real architectural spirit … I created my last series "at HOME" and "my POETRY of the ORDINARY". Always the same thread : LINES and COLORS. Exterior or interior architecture, with details taken out of their context, with frontal, tight and minimalist framings, and unusual angle views, all references are lost. My images become almost unreal and theatrical, in order to exacerbate strength, materiality, power and sometimes violence of buildings and objects. Playing with geometry and shapes being drawn by colors, they are highly graphic. I like that « decisive moment » when I look for the photo, find it, integrate it, then shoot it and, last but not least, interpret and finalize it. I am happy to share this work.
Valerie Laney
United States
1964
Valerie Elizabeth Laney was born in sunny San Diego, California, and was raised in rural North Carolina, where she spent endless summers catching tadpoles and chasing fireflies and exploring the surrounding woods, creeks and tobacco fields. Growing up in and around nature inspired her to spread her wings, and she has spent years exploring and photographing our wondrous planet. Valerie holds a degree in Visual Design from North Carolina State University, College of Design which, when combined with a career as a Graphic Designer, enhances her skill in composition as well as visual story telling. Photography was a natural outcome of her love of nature and her skill as an artist; and it has become her passion to capture images of unique places, diverse landscapes and fascinating cultures. A love of adventure sends her on photo expeditions to places like Iceland, Madagascar and the steppes of Mongolia, where her photographs capture majestic landscapes, native cultures, wildlife and underwater marine life. Valerie loves sharing her photography and hopes it inspires dreams, travel and memories for her growing audience. Statement Photography allows one to capture the world in a way that is unique to the beholder. Photos are visual story telling, but yet, everyone is left to their own interpretation of the story that is being told. So in that way, photography allows both the photographer and the onlooker to take part in the creative process. I compose photos to give a sense of what is happening in the shot: viewers should feel the cold, smell the air, and feel like they can anticipate the moments that followed as if they were present.
Yoni Blau
Israel
1982
I consider myself a travel photographer, but my primary focus is on people and cultures rather than nature, landscape and wildlife. I was fortunate enough to be able to spend a good amount of time traveling and I genuinely wish I will be able to keep exploring this beautiful planet of ours and the fascinatingly different cultures around the globe. Proud Women of the Omo Valley This project ("Proud Women of the Omo Valley") was taken inside a Suri tribe in the Omo Valley in Southern Ethiopia. The models were not dressed, simply recorded as is. No artificial lighting was used. The pictures with the black backdrop were taken within a dark tent with the light coming in from the entrance of the tent. In the Omo Valley, it feels as if time has no meaning. Days, months, seasons and years are irrelevant in this timeless corner of the world. Same goes for the concept of money, or the modern angst that comes with intellectual pursuit of the meaning of life and death. There, it's about life's essentials. It's about freedom and bare necessities. About being satisfied, joyful and surrounded by loved ones. I tried capturing the essence of what it means to be "stuck in time" which made me keep wondering whether they were left behind or whether the modern world is the one who made the wrong turn. This project taken in Dec 2019 feels more current than ever, especially in times like these with the Covid-19 global health crisis and the economic downturn, when we all got to spend some alone time and got back in touch with our most basic human needs and what "really matters".
Terri Gold
United States
1955
Terri Gold is a photographer known for her poetic infrared and color imagery of people from the remote corners of the globe. Her ongoing project "Still Points in a Turning World" explores our universal cross-cultural truths: the importance of family, community, ritual and the amazing diversity of its expression. As the timeless past meets the imminent future, indigenous cultures that still follow their traditional way of life are rapidly disappearing. At risk is a vast archive of knowledge and expertise. What is the value of ancient practices? What will be discarded and what will be treasured? If we share our stories and appreciate the mysteries of every realm, we may gain a deeper understanding of that which lies both behind and ahead of us. Her work has garnered many awards, is shown in galleries internationally and published extensively. Recent publications of her work include articles in the BBC Picture Desk, The Huffington Post, aCurator, and Featureshoot. She had a solo show at the Salomon Arts Gallery in New York in 2018. Her work won the Grand Prize in Shadow and Light magazine competition in 2019 and in The Santa Fe Photographic Workshops’ "Diversity" competition. She has received recent awards in the International Photography Awards, Prix de la Photographie, Paris (Px3), Humanity Photo Awards, and the Black and White Spider Awards. She is always happiest with a camera or three in her hands. Statement In the Sahel desert in Chad, the nomadic Wodaabe people spend months apart, searching out pastures for their herds and shelter for the families. When the rains are good, the clans celebrate with an extraordinary courtship ritual and beauty contest called The Gerewol and it's the men who are on parade. The sweltering desert region of Chad seems an unlikely place to be so concerned with beauty yet it is an integral part of the Wodaabe culture. They consider themselves to be the most beautiful people on earth. They display their beauty as a spiritual act, full of dignity and honor. Each person is an artist and they are their art. A living canvas. The intensity rises as they dance all night in their technicolor dreamcoats, a surreal line-dance. Many different arrangements are made at the festival, some for the night, some for a lifetime. All is possible at the Gerewol...
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