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Paul Coghlin
Paul Coghlin
Paul Coghlin

Paul Coghlin

Country: United Kingdom
Birth: 1967

Growing-up near southern England's beautiful New Forest and coast, Paul Coghlin developed an interest in creative photography from a young age, regularly travelling out with a camera to capture the natural surroundings.

Now based in eastern England, the award-winning photographer has continued to expand his creative style across a range of subjects, with his images regularly appearing in exhibitions and international publications, and is a Fellow of the British Institute of Professional Photography (BIPP).

In 2011, Paul's work was also selected for the high profile “Wild Aid Auction” in San Francisco and for the prestigious Royal Academy of Arts' “Summer Exhibition” in London. At the beginning of 2013, Paul released his largest body of work to date: "Petalum", a series of thirty stunning black and white botanical studies, featuring the fine-art photographer's distinctive style and attention to subtle detail.

In addition to his photographic qualifications, Paul also holds a BSc(Hons) Degree in Environmental Science from Plymouth University and a Post-Graduate Diploma in Remote Sensing (Earth imaging/Photogrammetry) from University College London/Imperial College.
 

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Eugenio Recuenco
Eugenio Recuenco was born in Madrid in May of 1968, in the middle of student protests that had spread out from Paris. As he himself would say: " I heard all that to-do, and was in a rush to be born and see what was going on."He studied fine art, graduating with a degree in painting from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Without a space in which to create his large-scale paintings, he began to collaborate with fashion magazines - first in Spain and later in Paris, where he habitually spent long periods - while waiting to be able to devote himself to painting. Vogue Espana, Madame Figaro, Wad, Vogue UK, Spoon, Planet, Vanity Fair, Stern, Kult, Twill, GQ, and Zink are some of the magazines he's worked with.It was in Paris that he produced his first advertising piece for Boucheron. From that moment, many brands would begin to call him to create their images, including Nina Ricci, Diesel, Shanghai Tang, Yves Saint Laurent, Sony Playstation, Custo, Le Bon Marché, BSI Lugano and Pernod Ricard.In 2007 he was invited to create the Lavazza Calendar and from the US he was called to conceive, together withe Eric Dover, the set design and staging the opera, Les Huguenots, at the Richard B. Fisher Center in New York City.Paris became the city that established his rhythm. It is there where he also created his first advertising spot. This time it was for "Nina" by Nina Ricci. This newly-opened avenue quickly lead to opportunities with other brands such as Loewe, Freixenet, Mango, Codormiú,Chivas Regal, Regione Campania, Vanderbilt, and Motorola among others.In 2008 his video, Essence of a Seduction, won the award for best advertisement of the year in Spain and the award for best short film at the Mexico City International Film Week. From that moment, he continued to create short films and video clips, such as Rammstein's Mein Herz Brennt, for example. He is now preparing his first full length film.Although his photographs had already been shown at the Reina Sofia museum in Madrid, the BAC (Barcelona Arte Contemporáneo), the Naardeen Photo Festival, the FEM (Festival Edición Madrid), Les Rencontres d'Arles, PhotoEspana, Art Toronto, and the Spanish National Library, it was once again in Paris where he would have his first solo exhibit, "Dream and Storm" at the Bertin-Toublanc Gallery.In 2004 he was given the ABC National Photography Award, in 2009 he won Gold and Bronze Awards at the Sol Festival, and in 2006 and 2013 his photographs won Gold Lions at the Cannes Lions Festival.In 2013 teNeues approached him to create his first solo book, Revue, whose launch will coincide with an exhibit at Camera Work Contemporary in Berlin.Eugenio Recuendo currently lives behind a camera.All about Eugenio Recuendo:AAP:Do you have a mentor or role model?To be honest I only have my intuition.AAP: How long have you been a photographer?I think since I was born. Another question is from what moment afterwards and I began taking pictures. Light and its effects have a great influence on me; I was always conscious of what was happening around me. I think that’s the first need a photographer must have.AAP: Do you remember your first shot? What was it?They were some household pictures that I took after my dad finally let me borrow his camera. It was during a school-trip. Those pictures were horrible; and, however they were really symbolic and full of emotions. That’s what magic is all about.AAP: What or who inspires you?Life inspires me.AAP: How would you describe your style?I have no clue. I don’t frown upon a specific style; I just go along doing what I feel is best. I don’t tell myself that things have to be a certain determined way. I start building and end up doing it in a certain way. But it’s all about circumstances, your vibes and needs and priorities when it comes down to transmitting them that end up paving a style for each series.AAP: Do you have favorite pictures or series?I’ve hated all of them at one point or another for not being loyal to what I expected them to be like; and all of them are favorites because there is something from me in all.AAP: What kind of gear do you use? Camera, lens, digital, film?It depends on each cases. Now more digital, Canon and with Hasselblad; always old ones and which treat the image with honesty. That is why I like old ones, ones that have a less forced definition.AAP: Do you spend a lot of time editing your images? For what purpose?It depends. It's all in the take. After that it's all a question of taking out defects and over all working on the texture and what it looks like in the end.AAP: Favorite(s) photographer(s)?A lot of them. For example I love Paolo Ventura.AAP: What advice would you give a young photographer?Shoot and shoot. Above all to shoot what you feel; not what is in fashion.AAP: What mistake should a young photographer avoid?Trying to go too fast and do what is currently succesful. Because when doing that, success will be in another type of photography.AAP: An idea, a sentence, a project you would like to share?(W)Hole time. A project I would like to take to movie-making. AAP: What are your projects?A book with 365 pictures, it is a poetry about the world we live in and the full-length film that I mentioned before.AAP: Your best memory as a photographer?When I stumble upon a photograph I didn't mean to do.AAP: Your worst souvenir as a photographer?Deal with creative managers who don't have a clear concept of their idea. It happens quite often.AAP:If you were someone else who would it be?I don't know. You can be creative in any activity that humans do.AAP: Your favorite photo book?I have a huge library because I actually love photo books as an object as a whole; regardless of its content.
Matteo Bastianelli
Matteo Bastianelli (b. 1985) is a documentary photographer and filmmaker based in the Metropolitan City of Rome, Italy. He is a National Geographic Magazine contributor and a member of Italy's National Order of Journalists. Above all he works on personal projects and commissions related to social, environmental and human rights issues with a keen interest in the themes of memory, identity, inclusion and sustainability. His photographic and film projects have been regularly published and commissioned by Al Jazeera, CNN, Internazionale, The New York Times, National Geographic, Newsweek, The Guardian, Voice of America, Washington Post, among others. Since 2016 he has also been working on commission for NGOs such as Amnesty International, AVSI, Doctors Without Borders/MSF, Human Rights Watch and International Committee of the Red Cross. His projects have been widely shown in group and solo exhibitions and screenings around the world. A selection of Bastianelli’s accolades includes National Geographic Society’s Covid-19 Emergency Fund for Journalists, Emerging Talent Award at Reportage by Getty Images, AP32- American Photography Awards, PDN’s Photo Annual, Canon Young Photographers’ Award, Italian Doc Screenings Development Award for best documentary film and "Vittorio de Seta" prize for the director of the best documentary film at BIF&ST. He spent almost five years working in the former Yugoslavia, where he produced his early series. In 2012 was released his first monograph and documentary film, "The Bosnian Identity". In 2013 he started working on "Souls of Syrians", an ongoing project which stems from the concern to document the personal story of a Syrian youth who fled his country in search of salvation in Europe. In 2018 Bastianelli documented the world’s worst humanitarian disaster caused by the ongoing civil war in Yemen, focusing his attention on the resilience of civilians trapped in a life of violence and disease. His documentary film "Yemen Unveiled" was screened during the 2019 Human Rights Film Festival in Berlin, Germany and has been included in the Official Selection of the Health for All Film Festival 2020, organized by the World Health Organization in Geneva. In recent years, he has been continuing his research work on personal and small stories that, by synecdoche, represent a mosaic of contemporary history: from immigration to climate change, from social inclusion to the metamorphosis of the contemporary landscape. Movies:The Bosnian IdentityMal di Mare
Sheila Metzner
United States
1939
Sheila Metzner (born 1939) is an American photographer. She was the first female photographer to collaborate with the Vogue magazine on an ongoing basis. Metzner lives in Brooklyn, New York. Metzner graduated from the Higher School of Art and Design and the Faculty of Visual Communications of the Pratt Institute. After that, she was engaged in promotional activities. In the 1960s, she became the first woman to be promoted to art director by Doyle Dane Bernbach, an advertising agency. Thanks to this, she successfully collaborated with well-known photographers, including Richard Avedon, Melvin Sokolsky, Bob Richardson and Diane Arbus. Inspired by the work of 19th-century English photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, who painted pictures of her family, Metzner photographed her husband, artist Jeffrey Metzner, and her children. In the first 10 years, she shot only her family without publishing photos. Her first show in New York was called Friends & Family. She decided to show part of the images to the director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, John Sarkovsky. In 1978, he bought one and included in MoMA exhibition Mirrors and Windows: American Photography Since 1960. A second exhibition – Photography (Spring 1981): Couches, Diamonds and Pie – took place there. After that, The New York Times and The Sunday Times published a photograph of Sheila's husband. In 2008 the School of Visual Arts presented the exhibition Time Line: Shelia Metzner at the Visual Arts Museum, New York. Sheila Metzner lives in New York. She was married to the artist Jeffrey Metzner, with whom she had seven children.Source: Wikipedia Sheila Metzner's unique photographic style has positioned her as a contemporary master in the worlds of fine art, fashion, portraiture, still life and landscape photography. Born in Brooklyn, she attended Pratt Institute, where she majored in Visual Communications, and was then hired by Doyle Dane Bernbach advertising agency as its first female art director. She took pictures all the while, amassing them slowly over the next thirteen years, while raising five children. One of these photographs was included in a famous and controversial exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art - Mirrors and Windows: American Photography since 1960 - and became the dark horse hit of the exhibition. Gallery shows and commercial clients soon followed. Her first commercial client was Valentino, followed by Elizabeth Arden, Perry Ellis, Shiseido, Fendi, Saks Fifth Avenue, Paloma Picasso, Victoria's Secret, Revlon, and in recent years Levi's, Ralph Lauren, Club Monaco, Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus. Sheila's fine art photographs are featured in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, The J. Paul Getty Museum, The International Center of Photography, The Brooklyn Museum, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Chrysler Museum, The Art Institute of Chicago, Agfa and Polaroid Corporations, Saks Fifth Avenue, as well as many personal collections. She has published five monographs: Objects of Desire, which won the American Society of Magazine Photographers Ansel Adams Award for Book Photography; Sheila Metzner's Color; Inherit the Earth, a collection of landscapes shot during her travels, Form and Fashion, a collection of images culled from twenty years of her work in fine-art and fashion, and Sheila Metzner: From Life in 2017.Source: sheilametzner.com
Patrick Zachmann
Patrick Zachmann, born on November 21, 1955, is a renowned French photographer and filmmaker acclaimed for his insightful documentation of cultural and social issues. With a career spanning decades, he has become synonymous with the Magnum Photos agency, a prestigious cooperative of photographers. Zachmann's journey into photography began in the 1970s. He initially pursued studies in cinema at the University of Paris, but it was during a trip to New York in 1976 that he discovered his passion for still imagery. Captivated by the bustling streets and diverse communities, he decided to shift his focus to photography. In 1982, Patrick Zachmann joined Magnum Photos, a cooperative founded by legendary photographers like Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson. This association marked a turning point in his career, providing a platform for his distinctive visual storytelling. I became a photographer because I have no memory. Photography allows me to reconstruct the family albums I never had, the missing images becoming the engine of my research. My contact sheets are my personal diary. – Patrick Zachmann A significant chapter in Zachmann's portfolio is his work on the Chinese diaspora. In the 1980s, he embarked on an extensive project documenting the lives of the Chinese community in various countries, exploring themes of identity, migration, and cultural adaptation. His empathetic lens captured the struggles and triumphs of individuals within this global diaspora, resulting in a powerful body of work. One of Zachmann's notable projects is Wén, a documentary that delves into the life of a Chinese family living in France. This intimate portrayal earned him widespread acclaim for his ability to navigate complex narratives with sensitivity and depth. The project exemplifies Zachmann's commitment to shedding light on marginalized stories and fostering cross-cultural understanding. Throughout his career, Zachmann has covered significant historical events. He documented the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, capturing the emotions and reactions of individuals on both sides of this momentous divide. His work during the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 further solidified his reputation as a photojournalist with an acute sense of social responsibility. Beyond his photojournalistic endeavors, Patrick Zachmann has explored personal and introspective themes. His project My Father's Testimony is a poignant reflection on his own family history, incorporating photographs, letters, and personal artifacts to create a visual narrative that transcends individual experiences to resonate on a universal level. In addition to his photographic pursuits, Zachmann has ventured into filmmaking. His documentary China, the Empire of Art? offers a nuanced exploration of China's contemporary art scene, reflecting his multifaceted approach to storytelling. Patrick Zachmann's contributions to photography have earned him numerous accolades, including the prestigious Nadar Award in 1993 and the World Press Photo Award in 1994. His work has been exhibited in major galleries and museums worldwide, solidifying his place as a respected documentarian and storyteller. As he continues to explore new facets of visual storytelling, Patrick Zachmann's enduring commitment to capturing the human experience with authenticity and empathy underscores the timeless relevance of his work in the realm of documentary photography and filmmaking.
Larry Fink
United States
1941 | † 2023
Larry Fink is an American photographer best known for his black-and-white images of people at parties and in other social situations. Fink was born in 1941 in Brooklyn, New York. His father, Bernard Fink, was a lawyer, and his mother, Sylvia Caplan Fink, was an anti-nuclear weapon activist and an elder rights activist for the Gray Panthers. His younger sister was noted lawyer Elizabeth Fink (1945–2015). He grew up in a politically conscious household and has described himself as "a Marxist from Long Island." He studied at the New School for Social Research in New York City, where photographer Lisette Model was one of his teachers and encouraged his work. He has been on the faculty of Bard College since 1986. Earlier he taught at other institutions including the Yale University School of Art (1977–1978), Cooper Union School of Art and Architecture (1978–1983), Parsons School of Design, and New York University. Fink's best-known work is Social Graces, a series of photographs he produced in the 1970s that depicted and contrasted wealthy Manhattanites at fashionable clubs and social events alongside working-class people from rural Pennsylvania participating in events such as high school graduations. Social Graces was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1979 and was published in book form in 1984. A New York Times reviewer described the series as exploring social class by comparing "two radically divergent worlds", while accomplishing "one of the things that straight photography does best: provid[ing] excruciatingly intimate glimpses of real people and their all-too-fallibly-human lives." In 2001, for an assignment from The New York Times Magazine, Larry Fink created a series of satirical color images of President George W. Bush and his cabinet (portrayed by stand-ins) in scenes of decadent revelry modeled on paintings by Weimar-era painters Max Beckmann, Otto Dix and George Grosz. The planned publication of the series was canceled after the September 11 attacks, but was displayed in the summer of 2004 at the PowerHouse Gallery in New York, in a show titled The Forbidden Pictures: A Political Tableau. Larry Fink was the recipient of Guggenheim Fellowships in 1976 and 1979 and National Endowment for the Arts Individual Photography Fellowships in 1978 and 1986. In 2002 he received an honorary doctorate from the College for Creative Studies in Detroit.Source: Wikipedia Working as a professional photographer for over fifty-five years, Larry Fink has had one-man shows at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art amongst others. On the European continent, he has had one-man shows at the Musee de l’Elysee in Lausanne, Switzerland, the Musee de la Photographie in Charleroi, Belgium, and in 2019 a retrospective at Fotografia Europea in Italy. He was awarded the “Best of Show” for an exhibition curated by Christian Caujolle at the Arles Festival of Photography in France. In recent years retrospective shows have been shown at the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo in Panama City as well as six different museums in Spain. This past year in 2018, Larry had a solo show featuring The Boxing Photographs at The Philadelphia Museum of Art, and at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum with the show Primal Empathy. Larry was the recipient of the Lucie Award for Documentary Photography in 2017, and in 2015, he received the International Center of Photography (ICP) Infinity Award for Lifetime Fine Art Photography. He has also been awarded two John Simon Guggenheim Fellowships and two National Endowment for the Arts, Individual Photography Fellowships. He has been teaching for over fifty-two years, with professorial positions held at Yale University, Cooper Union, and lastly at Bard College, where he is an honored professor emeritus. Larry’s first monograph, the seminal Social Graces (Aperture, 1984) left a lasting impression in the photographic community. There have been twelve other monographs with the subject matter crossing the class barrier in unexpected ways. Two of his most recently published books were on several “Best Of” lists of the year: The Beats published by Artiere /powerhouse and Larry Fink on Composition and Improvisation published by Aperture. As an editorial photographer, The New Yorker and Vanity Fair have been amongst a long list of accounts. He is currently collaborating with fashion house Jil Sander based in Milan, Italy. In the summer of 2017, Larry’s work from The Beats and The Vanities was on display at Giorgio Armani’s beautiful Armani/Silos exhibition space in Milan, Italy. This exhibition was the first of its kind for the space. Additionally, the Newport Museum of Art in Rhode Island exhibited pictures from his monograph Somewhere There’s Music. Fink On Warhol: New York Photographs of the 1960s, Larry’s latest monograph was released Spring 2017 featuring rare photographs of Andy Warhol and his friends at the Factory interspersed with street scenes and the political atmosphere of 1960s New York. Also released in 2017 was The Polarities chronicling five years of recent work, and The Outpour containing images taken at and around the Women’s March on Washington, D.C. Source: www.larryfinkphotography.com
Brian Ulrich
United States
1971
Brian Ulrich is an American photographer known for his exploration of consumer culture. Ulrich's work is held many collections including the Art Institute of Chicago and the Cleveland Museum of Art. Photo District News named Ulrich as one of 30 Emerging Photographers (2007). He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship (2009). His work has been featured in the New York Times Magazine; Time Magazine; Mother Jones; Artforum; and Harper’s. Aperture and the Cleveland Museum of Art published his first major monograph, Is This Place Great or What (2011). The Anderson Gallery published the catalog Closeout: Retail, Relics and Ephemera (2013).Source: Rhode Island School of Design Ulrich was born in Northport, New York, and lives in Providence, Rhode Island. He received a BFA in photography from University of Akron in Akron, Ohio (1996) and an MFA in photography from Columbia College Chicago (2004). He has taught photography at Columbia College Chicago and Gallery 37, both in Chicago; and at the University of Akron. He is an Associate Professor of Photography at the Rhode Island School of Design. In 2001 in response to a national call for citizens to bolster the American economy through shopping, Ulrich began a project to document consumer culture. This project, Copia, is a series of large-scale photographs of shoppers, retail spaces, and displays of goods. Initially focused on big-box retail establishments and shoppers, the series expanded to include thrift stores, back rooms of retail businesses, art fairs, and most recently empty retail stores and dead malls. Ulrich works with a combination of 4×5 large format and medium format cameras, and also incorporates found objects as sculpture, juxtaposed with his photographs on gallery walls.Source: Wikipedia
Karen Knorr
United States
1954
Karen Knorr was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany and was raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico in the 1960s. She finished her education in Paris and London. Karen has taught, exhibited and lectured internationally, including at Tate Britain, Tate Modern, The University of Westminster, Goldsmiths, Harvard and The Art Institute of Chicago. She studied at the University of Westminster in the mid-1970s, exhibiting photography that addressed debates in cultural studies and film theory concerning the ‘politics of representation’ practices which emerged during the late 1970s qnd early 1980s. She is currently Professor of Photography at the University for the Creative Arts in Farnham, Surrey. Karen Knorr produced Belgravia (1979-1981) a series of black and white photographs with ironic and humorous texts that highlighted aspirations, lifestyle and the British class system under the neo liberalist Thatcher era in the late 70’s and early 80’s. Her most well known work called Gentlemen (1981-1983) was photographed in Saint James’s clubs in London and investigated the patriarchal conservative values of Britain during the Falklands war. Karen ’s work developed a critical and playful dialogue with documentary photography using different visual and textual strategies to explore her chosen subject matter that ranges from the family and lifestyle to the animal and its representation in the museum context. In 1986 her work Connoisseurs used colour to explore connoisseurship regarding authenticity, heritage and art in England. Here she introduced elements and staged events in the architectural interiors of Chiswick House, Osterley Park House and the Dulwich Picture Gallery. The use of text and captioning appeared as a device to slow down consumption of the image and to comment on the received ideas of fine art in museum culture. These strategies still appear in her photography today with digital collage of animals, objects and social actors in museums and architecture challenging the authority and power of heritage sites in Europe and more recently in India. Academies (1994- 2001), a series of colour photographs taken in academies and museums across Europe, reflects on the relationship between the production of western fine art, its transmission and consumption. The work continues a critical dialogue with conceptual art, visual culture, feminism and animal studies reflecting an engaged interest in theory and its relation to photographic practice. In 1995 the Academies project included video and installation with wall text transfers in order the explore the relationship between art and science in the staging of transgressive performative events and gestures in museums. Being for Another (1995), an 18 minute video records a young man caressing an 18th century sculpture by Canova in the Victoria and Albert Museum and three lifeclass models enact the lifeclass on the dissecting table of the anatomy theatre of Uppsala University in Lessons (2002). The introduction of a sound glass sculpture with recorded birdsong responded to the furniture and art collection of The Wallace Collection in 2001 synthesizing a 1960’s Pete Seeger song with an actual blackbird’s sound. In her series Fables (2004-2008) photographs mixes analogue and digital photography playfully reconfiguring tales (Ovid, Aesop La Fontaine) with popular culture (Disney and Attenborough) in museums and heritage sites which include Carnavalet Museum, the Museum of Hunt and Nature in Paris, Chambord Castle and the Conde Museum in Chantilly Castle. The visuality of these photographs is rich with reference to the baroque. In the last section of the work, Knorr interrogated the free flowing space of modern architecture in Corbusier’s Villa Savoye reintroducing life into the modernist aesthetic of a building. Since her life changing journey to Rajasthan, India in 2008, Karen Knorr’s work continues to explore Rajput and Mughal cultural heritage and its relationship to questions of feminine subjectivity and animality. India Song, a series of carefully crafted photographs explores the past and its relation to India’s contemporary heritage sites across Rajasthan. Since 2012 Knorr has been visiting Japan to reflect on tradition within contemporary Japan referencing Ukiyo-e prints and folktales connected to Shinto and Buddhist heritage sites.Her first series entitled Monagatari, places animals and humans in temple sites found in Nara, Kyoto, Tokyo and Ohara. Her second related series Karyukai is inspired by the Kano’s 36 portraits of poets also referencing “bijinga” prints of the 17th century. Women photographed by Karen Knorr were asked to compose waka and haiku reflecting on their life and dreams. Source: karenknorr.com About India Song Karen Knorr’s past work from the 1980’s onwards took as its theme the ideas of power that underlie cultural heritage, playfully challenging the underlying assumptions of fine art collections in academies and museums in Europe through photography and video. Since 2008 her work has taken a new turn and focused its gaze on the upper caste culture of the Rajput in India and its relationship to the "other" through the use of photography, video and performance. The photographic series considers men's space (mardana) and women's space (zanana) in Mughal and Rajput palace architecture, havelis and mausoleums through large format digital photography. Karen Knorr celebrates the rich visual culture, the foundation myths and stories of northern India, focusing on Rajasthan and using sacred and secular sites to consider caste, femininity and its relationship to the animal world. Interiors are painstakingly photographed with a large format Sinar P3 analogue camera and scanned to very high resolution. Live animals are inserted into the architectural sites, fusing high resolution digital with analogue photography. Animals photographed in sanctuaries, zoos and cities inhabit palaces, mausoleums , temples and holy sites, interrogating Indian cultural heritage and rigid hierarchies. Cranes, zebus, langurs, tigers and elephants mutate from princely pets to avatars of past feminine historic characters, blurring boundaries between reality and illusion and reinventing the Panchatantra for the 21st century.
Ruth Lauer Manenti
United States
Ruth Lauer Manenti received an MFA from The Yale School of Art in painting and drawing in 1994. In 2012, she was given a large format camera and taught herself how to use it. Gradually she accomplished what she was striving for in drawing and painting, through photography. Her mother was also an artist who left behind a legacy of unknown work. Part of Ruth's determination as an artist is to reward her mother for her efforts and to create a continuum. She was awarded a NYFA grant in photography in 2016 and had a solo exhibition at The Center for Photography in Woodstock, NY in 2020. Her book Alms is currently on view on an online exhibition at The Griffin Museum of Photography. Her recent book of photographs entitled Since Seeing You, is a visual diary of the woods behind her house as experienced during Lockdown. The pictures give pause, to process the sorrow of the time, rather than as an escape or erasure. Since breaking her neck in a car crash at the age of twenty, Ruth has developed a spiritual life and practice that has propelled much of her photographic work. She lives in the Catskill Mountains in NY. Shard: This ongoing series of photos called Shard was made over the last 4 years during which time I was wanting to see whether I could place objects on a table as arrangements for unspoken emotions. In 2017-18 I was unwell. It wasn't mental illness but the line between that and trauma was sometimes hard to find. I stayed indoors and at home as much as possible. I spent a lot of time watching daylight enter through the windows in different ways according to the clouds, seasons and weather. The windows are old, and the glass is wavy so that the sun rays come in as ripples. I was interested in using objects as symbols of fragility. I found that the work of making the pictures, and the safe cocoon that I had created between myself and the table, was informed by a kind of benevolent force that accompanied me through my suffering. In some traditions it is believed that when the heart breaks an entrance for Spirit is created. It's a way that trauma or defeat can become a portal; so much so that sometimes people have a nostalgia for the times in their life when they have suffered most. More recently I have been thinking about the process of repairing things rather than throwing them away. I wonder if appreciating something damaged, torn, or saved, even if no longer usable, could have an implied nonliteral meaning for getting through the past year, 2020, gracefully, despite so much loss and depression. I think there is a beauty in the effort of putting one's life back together after experiencing brokenness and I have tried through still life to communicate that.
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Eric is addicted to street photography — and he’s been chasing its highs since 2014. Logging thousands of miles through city streets, he captures quirky, satirical, and often humorous moments that reflect the absurdities of modern urban life. His recent series, Life Is But a Dream, won him a solo exhibition and challenges viewers to look up from their screens and truly observe the world around them. Through his lens, the ordinary becomes extraordinary — and sometimes, even a wake-up call.
Interview with Anna and Jordan Rathkopf: On Seeing Ourselves Through Illness
Visual storytellers Anna and Jordan Rathkopf didn’t set out to make a book, an exhibition, or a lecture series. When Anna was diagnosed with HER2-positive breast cancer at 37, their shared creative language—photography—became a way to stay connected, grounded, and emotionally present. Nearly a decade later, that body of work has evolved into HER2: The Diagnosed, The Caregiver, and Their Son—a book and traveling exhibition that blends fine art, writing, and lived experience to explore how illness reshapes marriage, identity, and family. The exhibition opens June 7 at Photoville Festival in New York City and will travel through Czechia beginning in Fall 2025. Below, Anna and Jordan reflect on how they shaped the project, how their perspectives stayed distinct, and how it became the first major initiative of their nonprofit, the Patient Caregiver Artist Coalition (PCAC).
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