All about photo.com: photo contests, photography exhibitions, galleries, photographers, books, schools and venues.
PUBLICATION AND $1,000 CASH PRIZES: Last Call B&W
PUBLICATION AND $1,000 CASH PRIZES: Last Call B&W
Jakub Wencek
Jakub Wencek
Jakub Wencek

Jakub Wencek

Country: Poland
Birth: 1981

My name is Jakub Wencek and I am forester and nature photographer. Nature photography is my passion since I remember. I love to take photographs of the forest and nature because in this particular moment I'm often in awe of all the secrets it has within it. Taking photos of nature I would like to invite you on a journey to my forest, which shows me its secrets very often... You can find stories closed in frames in my photos. You can see there the eternal fight between light and shadow. Every scene tells us about different story, which really happened. All my photos, which are placed here, are unique because they are a record of a very short, little moment which will never happen again.
 

Inspiring Portfolios

Call for Entries
AAP Magazine #58 B&W
Publish your work in our printed magazine and win $1,000 cash prizes
 
Stay up-to-date  with call for entries, deadlines and other news about exhibitions, galleries, publications, & special events.

More Great Photographers To Discover

Fan Ho
China
1931 | † 2016
Fan Ho’s (born in Shanghai in 1931) photographic career started at the early age of 14 when given his first Kodak Brownie from his father. Within the first year he won his first award in 1949 in Shanghai. At the age of 18, he acquired his twin lens Rolleiflex with which he captured all his famous work after he moved to Hong Kong with his parents and continued to purse his love for photography. Dubbed the “Cartier-Bresson of the East”, Fan Ho patiently waited for ‘the decisive moment’; very often a collision of the unexpected, framed against a very clever composed background of geometrical construction, patterns and texture. He often created drama and atmosphere with backlit effects or through the combination of smoke and light. His favorite locations were the streets, alleys and markets around dusk or life on the sea. What made his work so intensely human is his love for the common Hong Kong people: Coolies, vendors, hawkers selling fruits and vegetables, kids playing in the street or doing their homework, people crossing the street… He never intended to create a historic record of the city’s buildings and monuments; rather he aimed to capture the soul of Hong Kong, the hardship and resilience of its citizens. Fan Ho was most prolific in his teens and 20s and created his biggest body of work before he reached the tender age of 28. His work did not go by unnoticed at his time. He won close to 300 local and international awards and titles in his day through competing in the salons. His talent was also spotted by the film industry where he started out as an actor before moving to film directing until retiring at 65. Fan Ho is a Fellow of the Photographic Society and the Royal Society of Arts in England, and an Honorary Member of the Photographic societies of Singapore, Argentina, Brazil, Germany, France, Italy and Belgium. He most recently won a "Life-time Achievement Award, the 2nd Global Chinese International Photography Award, China, 2015" by the Chinese Photographic Society (Guangzhou). During his long career he has taught photography and film making at a dozen universities worldwide. His work is in many private and public collection of which most notable are: M+ Museum, Hong Kong, Heritage Museum, Hong Kong, Bibliothèque National de France, Paris, France, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, USA, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, USA and many more. Source: fanho-forgetmenot.com
Arno Rafael Minkkinen
Arno Rafael Minkkinen is a Finnish-American photographer who works in the United States. Published and exhibited worldwide, Minkkinen's work can be found in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Finnish Museum of Photography. Seven solo monographs on his work have been published: Frostbite (1978), Waterline (1994, winner of the 25th Rencontres d'Arles Book Prize), Body Land (1999), SAGA: The Journey of Arno Rafael Minkkinen, 35 Years of Photographs (2005), Homework: The Finnish Photographs (2008), Swimming in the Air (2009), and Balanced Equation (2010). The retrospective survey SAGA premiered at the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, MA, in 2005. The 120-print retrospective toured to Romania, Slovakia, Finland, Italy, China, and Canada. Minkkinen was made a Knight of the Order of the Lion of Finland of the first class by the Finnish government in 1992, and awarded the Finnish State Art Prize in Photography in 2006. Minkkinen was born in Helsinki, Finland in 1945 and emigrated to the United States in 1951. He graduated from Wagner College with a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and began taking self-portraits in 1971, while working as an advertising copywriter on Madison Avenue in New York. He later studied with Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind at Rhode Island School of Design and earned his Master of Fine Arts degree in photography in 1974. Over the past four decades, Minkkinen has been engaged as a teacher, curator, and writer while continuing to devote his photographic research and energies to the self-portrait. Minkkinen is a Professor of Art at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, and also serves as lecturer at Aalto University of Art & Design Helsinki. Earlier in his teaching career, he served as Assistant Professor at M.I.T., Visiting Artist at Philadelphia College of Art (now University of the Arts (Philadelphia)), the École d'Arts Appliqués in Vevey, Switzerland, and as graduate faculty at Maine Media College in Rockport, Maine. Since joining UMass Lowell in 1987, Minkkinen has taken students to Finland and Russia (1988), and Czechoslovakia (1989). In 1996, in a collaborative UMass Lowell/Lahti Institute of Design (Lahti, Finland) exchange program called Spirit Level, thirty Finnish, American, and Swiss students toured through Finland, Russia, and Eastern Europe for three weeks with Minkkinen and photo department head at Lahti, Timo Laaksonen. Among the students at the time was Mark Eshbaugh who later became an adjunct professor at UMass Lowell. Seven years after the first Spirit Level, together with Timo Laaksonen and Mark Eshbaugh a professor at Umass Lowell at that time, Tuscany in Italy (2003) and Oaxaca, Mexico (2007) were added to the program. [9] Later Minkinnen organized collaborations with Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland and the Foundation Studio Marangoni in Florence, Italy (2010) as well as the Bilder Nordic School of Photography in Oslo and the École Supérieure d'Arts & Medias de Caen/Cherbourg in France (2012) for an American Road Trip to the studio farmlands of American photographer Sally Mann.[10][11] The first three workshops resulted in the publication of a book commemorating those first three experiences. Minkkinen has taught workshops worldwide, particularly at the Maine Photographic Workshops (now Maine Media Workshops), Maine Media College (as part of the graduate faculty), the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University, Anderson Ranch in Colorado, Santa Fe Workshops in New Mexico, the Friends of Photography in Carmel, California, and in Europe at the Rencontres d'Arles in Arles, France, the Toscana Photographic Workshops in Tuscany, Italy, as well as workshop programs in Finland, Norway, Luxembourg, and China. Minkkinen served a second four-year term as national board member of the Society of Photographic Education (2008 to 2016). Since 2009, Minkkinen has developed a growing interest in feature filmmaking and screenwriting. In 2010, he received a first-round of support from the Finnish Film Foundation for a screenplay he had written and will be directing. It will be shot in Finnish Karelia and Finntown, Brooklyn. The demo preview of The Rain House was screened at the Film Society of Lincoln Center's Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center in connection with the Dance Films Association's 41st Dance on Camera Festival (2013).Source: Wikipedia Finnish-American photographer Arno Rafael Minkkinen has been capturing self-portraits of his nude body in natural surroundings for the better part of five decades. More than just existing in these scenic locations, Minkkinen fully merges his limbs and torso like a chameleon, blurring the lines between where the world ends and his body begins. The methods used to create these bold and uninhibited shots pre-date the use of Photoshop by decades, instead of relying on a simple 9-second shutter release that allows Minkkinen to quickly pose for each shot. He usually works completely alone, and won’t let anyone else look through his camera’s viewfinder, lest they instead be labeled ‘the photographer.’ What may appear as a simply composed photo with fortuitous timing, is often the result of Minkkinen taking dangerous risks as he submerges himself in strong currents, buries himself in ice, or balances precariously on the edge of a cliff.Source: Colossal
Francesca Woodman
United States
1958 | † 1981
Francesca Woodman was an American photographer best known for her black and white pictures featuring herself and female models. Many of her photographs show young women who are nude, blurred (due to movement and long exposure times), merging with their surroundings, or whose faces are obscured. Woodman attended public school in Boulder, Colorado, between 1963 and 1971 except for second grade, which she attended in Italy. She began high school in 1972 at the private Massachusetts boarding school Abbot Academy, where she began to develop her photographic skills and became interested in the art form. Abbot Academy merged with Phillips Academy in 1973; Woodman graduated from the public Boulder High School in 1975. Through 1975, she spent summers with her family in Italy. She spent her time in Italy in the Florentine countryside, where she lived on an old farm with her parents. Beginning in 1975, Woodman attended the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in Providence, Rhode Island. She studied in Rome between 1977 and 1978 in a RISD honors program. As she spoke fluent Italian, she was able to befriend Italian intellectuals and artists. She went back to Rhode Island in late 1978 to graduate from RISD. Woodman moved to New York City in 1979. After spending the summer of 1979 in Stanwood, Seattle whilst visiting her boyfriend at Pilchuck Glass School, she returned to New York "to make a career in photography." She sent portfolios of her work to fashion photographers, but "her solicitations did not lead anywhere. In the summer of 1980 she was an artist-in-residence at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire. In late 1980 Woodman became depressed due to the failure of her work to attract attention and to a broken relationship. She survived a suicide attempt, after which she lived with her parents in Manhattan. On January 19, 1981, she committed suicide by jumping out a loft window in New York. An acquaintance wrote, "things had been bad, there had been therapy, things had gotten better, guard had been let down." Her father has suggested that Woodman's suicide was related to an unsuccessful application for funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.Source: Wikipedia Francesca Woodman photographed herself, often nude, in empty interiors. But her pictures are not traditional self-portraits. She is usually half-hidden by objects or furniture or appears as a blur. The images convey an underlying sense of human fragility. This fragility is exaggerated by the fact that the photographs are printed on a very small scale – they seem personal and intimate. Most of the photographs in the ARTIST ROOMS collection come from Francesca’s former boyfriend Benjamin P. Moore. She gave him the photographs, and many of them include intimate messages written in their margins. The messages become part of the artwork. Woodman continuously explored and tested what she could do with photography. She challenged the idea that the camera fixes time and space – something that had always been seen as one of the fundamentals of photography. She playfully manipulated light, movement and photographic effects, and used carefully selected props, vintage clothing and decaying interiors to add a mysterious gothic atmosphere to the work. Her importance as an innovator is significant, particularly in the context of the 1970s when the status of photography was still regarded as less important than painting and sculpture. She led the way for later American artists who used photography to explore themes relating to identity such as Cindy Sherman and Nan Goldin. Francesca Woodman’s entire body of work was produced as a young person and created over just eight short years. Her photographs explore many themes that affect young people such as relationships, sexuality, questions of self, body image, alienation, isolation and confusion or ambiguity about personal identity.Source: Tate
Eadweard Muybridge
United Kingdom
1830 | † 1904
Eadweard James Muybridge was an English photographer important for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion and in motion-picture projection. He adopted the name Eadweard Muybridge, believing it to be the original Anglo-Saxon form of his name. He immigrated to the United States as a young man but remained obscure until 1868, when his large photographs of Yosemite Valley, California, made him world famous. Muybridge is known for his pioneering work on animal locomotion in 1877 and 1878, which used multiple cameras to capture motion in stop-action photographs, and his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting motion pictures that pre-dated the flexible perforated film strip used in cinematography. In his earlier years in San Francisco, Muybridge had become known for his landscape photography, particularly of the Yosemite Valley. He also photographed the Tlingit people in Alaska, and was commissioned by the United States Army to photograph the Modoc War in 1873. In 1874 he shot and killed Major Harry Larkyns, his wife's lover, and was acquitted in a jury trial on the grounds of justifiable homicide. He travelled for more than a year in Central America on a photographic expedition in 1875. In the 1880s, Muybridge entered a very productive period at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, producing over 100,000 images of animals and humans in motion, capturing what the human eye could not distinguish as separate movements. He spent much of his later years giving public lectures and demonstrations of his photography and early motion picture sequences. He also edited and published compilations of his work, which greatly influenced visual artists and the developing fields of scientific and industrial photography. Source: Wikipedia
Rena Effendi
Azerbaijan
1977
Hannah Altman
United States
Hannah Altman is a Jewish-American artist from New Jersey. She holds an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. Through photographic based media, her work interprets relationships between gestures, the body, lineage, and interior space. She has recently exhibited with the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, Blue Sky Gallery, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, and Photoville Festival. Her work has been featured in publications such as Vanity Fair, Carnegie Museum of Art Storyboard, Huffington Post, New York Times, Fotoroom, Cosmopolitan, i-D, and British Journal of Photography. She was the recipient of the 2019 Bertha Anolic Israel Travel Award and included in the 2020 Critical Mass and Lenscratch Student Prize Finalists. She has delivered lectures on her work and research across the country, including Yale University and the Society for Photographic Education National Conference. Her first monograph, published by Kris Graves Projects, is in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Thomas J Watson Library. Kavana Jewish thought suggests that the memory of an action is as primary as the action itself. This is to say that when my hand is wounded, I remember other hands. I trace ache back to other aches - my mother grabbing my wrist pulling me across the intersection, my great-grandmother's fingers numb on the ship headed towards Cuba fleeing the Nazis, Miriam's palms pouring water for the Hebrews in the desert - this is how a Jew understands action. Because no physical space is a given for the Jewish diaspora, time and the rituals that steep into it are centered as a mode of carrying on. The bloodline of a folktale, an object, a ritual, pulses through interpretation and enactment. In this work I explore notions of Jewish memory, narrative heirlooms, and image making; the works position themselves in the past as memories, in the present as stories being told, and in the future as actions to interpret and repeat. To approach an image in this way is not only to ask what it looks like but asks: what does it remember like?
Bill Brandt
Germany/United Kingdom
1904 | † 1983
Bill Brandt  was a British photographer and photojournalist. Born in Germany, Brandt moved to England, where he became known for his images of British society for such magazines as Lilliput and Picture Post; later he made distorted nudes, portraits of famous artists and landscapes. He is widely considered to be one of the most important British photographers of the 20th century. Photographers should follow their own judgment, and not the fads and dictates of others. Photography is still a very new medium and everything is allowed and everything should be tried and dared... Photography has no rules. It is not a sport. It is the result which counts, no matter how it was achieved. -- Bill Brandt Born in Hamburg, Germany, son of a British father and German mother, Brandt grew up during World War I, during which his father, who had lived in Germany since the age of five, was interned for six months by the Germans as a British citizen. Brandt later disowned his German heritage and would claim he was born in South London. Shortly after the war, he contracted tuberculosis and spent much of his youth in a sanatorium in Davos, Switzerland. He traveled to Vienna to undertake a course of treatment for tuberculosis by psychoanalysis. He was, in any case, pronounced cured and was taken under the wing of socialite Eugenie Schwarzwald. When Ezra Pound visited the Schwarzwald residence, Brandt made his portrait. In appreciation, Pound allegedly offered Brandt an introduction to Man Ray, in whose Paris studio Brandt would assist in 1930. In 1933 Brandt moved to London and began documenting all levels of British society. This kind of documentary was uncommon at that time. Brandt published two books showcasing this work, The English at Home (1936) and A Night in London (1938). He was a regular contributor to magazines such as Lilliput, Picture Post and Harper's Bazaar. He documented the Underground bomb shelters of London during The Blitz in 1940, commissioned by the Ministry of Information. During World War II, Brandt focused every kind of subject - as can be seen in his Camera in London (1948) but excelled in portraiture and landscape. To mark the arrival of peace in 1945 he began a celebrated series of nudes. His major books from the post-war period are Literary Britain (1951), and Perspective of Nudes (1961), followed by a compilation of the best of all areas of his work, Shadow of Light (1966). Brandt became Britain's most influential and internationally admired photographer of the 20th century. Many of his works have important social commentary but also poetic resonance. His landscapes and nudes are dynamic, intense and powerful, often using wide-angle lenses and distortion. Brandt died in London in 1983.Source: Wikipedia See the subject first. Do not try to force it to be a picture of this, that or the other thing. Stand apart from it. Then something will happen. -- Bill Brandt Bill Brandt was one of the acknowledged masters of 20th-century photography. Taken as a whole, his work constitutes one of the most varied and vivid social documents of Great Britain. Brandt was largely self-taught in photography and worked as a student-assistant to Man-Ray in Paris from 1929 to 1930. This exposure would determine the surrealist undercurrent and tension of many of Brandt’s images. Brandt’s work was shown in numerous exhibitions throughout Europe and the US during his career, including two one-person exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in 1948 and 1969. There are over a dozen published books of his work from the 1930s through the 1980s. Brandt’s work was extensively collected by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.Source: The Halsted Gallery
Advertisement
AAP Magazine #58 B&W
Win a Solo Exhibition in July
AAP Magazine #58 B&W

Latest Interviews

Exclusive Interview with Trevor Cole: Pastoral Peoples and Practices
For this interview, we wanted to focus specifically on The Face of the Mundari and the wider Pastoral Peoples and Practices series. We spoke with Trevor about his long-term work among the Mundari, what continues to draw him back to their cattle camps, and the experience of documenting a culture whose identity remains deeply connected to livestock, tradition, and the natural environment.
Exclusive Interview with Frank Meo
In our latest exclusive feature for All About Photo, I speak with veteran photography representative Frank Meo about what it truly takes to build a sustainable creative career today. Frank brings decades of experience working with Fortune 500 companies, major agencies, and documentary photographers to the table. We dive into the critical business skills often left out of art school curriculums, the power of mentorship, and the inspiring evolution of PROJECTIONS—his international salon platform for visual storytellers. It’s an essential read for anyone navigating the commercial or editorial photography landscape today.
Exclusive Interview with Carolyn Moore
American photographer Carolyn Moore explores the inner landscape of emotion, memory, and personal transformation through a deeply intuitive photographic practice. Her work unfolds as a quiet dialogue between artist and viewer, where images become a space for reflection, vulnerability, and connection.
Exclusive Interview with Luca Desienna and Laura Estelle Barmwoldt
For over seven years, Of Lilies and Remains has explored the depths of the goth and darkwave underground, unfolding in Leipzig—a city long associated with a vibrant and enduring subcultural scene. Moving between iconic gatherings such as Wave-Gotik-Treffen and more intimate moments on the fringes, the project offers a rare and immersive glimpse into a world often misunderstood, yet rich in expression and community. Created by Luca in collaboration with Laura Estelle Barmwoldt, the work embraces a cinematic and deeply personal approach. Rather than documenting from a distance, it moves within the scene itself, capturing its atmosphere, its codes, and its quiet contradictions. The title Of Lilies and Remains hints at this duality—where beauty and darkness, fragility and strength coexist. As the book prepares for its release, we spoke with both artists about the origins of the project, their process, and what it means to document a subculture that continues to evolve while remaining true to its spirit.
Exclusive Interview with Matthew Finley
American photographer Matthew Finley turns inward, using photography as a way to explore identity, memory, and emotional truth. Based in Los Angeles, his practice moves between performance, gesture, and found imagery, creating a visual language that is both intimate and deeply personal
Exclusive Interview with Jan Janssen
Dutch photographer Jan Janssen explores universal human experiences through his long-term project It Matters, winner of the May 2025 Solo Exhibition. Begun in 2016, the series captures intimate moments of everyday life—love, loss, connection, and belonging—across Central and Eastern Europe. Working in countries such as Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia, Janssen spends extended time within communities, building relationships based on trust and respect. His approach allows him to move beyond observation, revealing deeply human and authentic moments. Rooted in travel and personal discovery, It Matters reflects Janssen’s search for what connects us all in an increasingly divided world. The project is ongoing and will culminate in a photobook scheduled for publication in 2026.
Exclusive Interview with Henk Kosche
German photographer Henk Kosche turns his lens toward the streets of Halle an der Saale, capturing everyday life in the late years of the former German Democratic Republic. At the time, Kosche was studying design and exploring the city with his camera, drawn to the atmosphere of its industrial landscape and the quiet rhythms of daily life. His series Street Photography at the End of the 80s, selected as the Solo Exhibition for July 2025, revisits a body of work created just before a period of profound change. Rediscovered decades later in a small box of 35mm negatives, these photographs offer glimpses of a city and its people at a moment suspended between the familiar and the unknown.
Exclusive Interview with Anastasia Samoylova
Anastasia Samoylova is an American artist whose photographic practice is shaped by close observation and a deep attentiveness to place. Working between documentary and formal exploration, she photographs landscapes, architecture, and everyday scenes with a sensitivity to light, structure, and atmosphere. Since relocating to Miami in 2016, her work has increasingly focused on how environments—both natural and built—carry social, cultural, and emotional traces. We asked her a few questions about her practice and her way of seeing, to better understand the thoughts and experiences that shape her work—while allowing the images themselves to remain open and speak in their own time.
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.
Call for Entries
AAP Magazine #58 B&W
Publish your work in our printed magazine and win $1,000 cash prizes