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Win a Solo Exhibition this October, Open Theme. Juror Aline Smithson.
Win a Solo Exhibition this October, Open Theme. Juror Aline Smithson.
Diana Rybakova
Diana Rybakova
Diana Rybakova

Diana Rybakova

Country: Russia/Spain
Birth: 1986

Diana Rybakova is a Moscow-based photographer with a degree in legal studies. What began as a hobby gradually turned into a profession. She worked as a reportage and later studio photographer, mainly collaborating with performing artists.

Her artistic perspective was shaped by influences such as Annie Leibovitz and Igor Mukhin. Diana is largely self-taught: she completed courses in classical and contemporary art, video editing, and learned studio photography independently — mostly through YouTube. Her true passion has always been black-and-white, street, and film photography.

The central theme of her personal projects is "invisible people and invisible problems" — portraits of alternative subcultures and documentary series with a historical focus. She explores how a single photograph can become a "portrait of an era," an "uncomfortable truth," a "forgotten story," or even evidence of why the present turned out the way it did. The past becomes a blurred dream — elusive, uncertain, and open to doubt and manipulation.

These ideas formed the basis of her project Insomnia.
In recent years, Diana has been living in Spain.

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More Great Photographers To Discover

Marina Lauar
Brazil
1993
Marina Lauar is a Brazilian visual artist. She develops her artwork in Fine Art Photography, where she uses a pictorial language to construct of her narratives. As a plural artist she appropriates elements that expand formal photography and allow the mix of printed photography with other gestures and techniques. She finds in the portrait an appropriate field for her discussions and critical reflection, which she builds through minimalist and potent images. Her research currently circulates between the deconstruction of already rooted stereotypes and her own self-perception. About Plastic Portraits The project was born during my renaissance as an artist. After some time feeling completely blocked, hands, feet, head, and heart tied, I found myself in a huge need to express my concerns through photography. Fine Art Photography is a fertile field that allows the cultivation of reflections and dialogues, so I chose it as language, to be the home of my yearnings. I create portraits aiming to deconstruct beliefs, sometimes using satire, sometimes critical reflections and their depths, sometimes pure intimacy, things that will never be said. The atmosphere is reaffirmed by the way I work with the light. I seek minimalism so that only a key element fulfils its role as a critical factor in the image. My principal goal with this project is to traverse. Conceive feelings, make the feeling palpable. Build next to portrayed the script that will guide us in the production of the pictures, in the choice of the element, so that everything there in that image has great strength and meaning to the portrayed. To emanate with my eyes feelings that overflow in the other.
Polly Gaillard
United States
1965
Polly Gaillard is a fine art photographer, writer, and educator. She is part-time Professor of Art at Furman University and has taught photography workshops and college courses for more than ten years including summers abroad teaching American students in Prague, Czech Republic, and Cortona, Italy. Polly received a Master of Fine Arts in Visual Arts from Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2010. She has exhibited her fine art photographs nationally and published a limited edition artist book, Pressure Points, with a foreword by actress Jamie Lee Curtis. Polly's photographic skills traverse contemporary art, documentary, portrait, and traditional photographic practices. She lives in Greenville, SC with her daughter. You, From a Distance Making portraits in a pandemic is challenging if you like to get closer than six feet to your subject. Frustrated by an inability to work at close range, I began to make portraits on my computer screen via FaceTime and Zoom by photographing friends, family, acquaintances, strangers, and my daughter at her father's home. This collaboration with others is particularly rewarding, especially when I've put the camera down, and we sit screen to screen discussing the changes in our collective worlds while checking in to make sure the other is okay. Each person has been generous in showing me around their homes to find the right background and light. They move furniture, take pictures off the wall, change clothing to create the right contrast, and position their laptops or phones so that I can take their picture at just the right angle. I sit behind my screen watching them do the work that I so desperately want to do as I experience a heightened sense of ambivalence, the love of "seeing" others, the distaste for lack of physical control over the situation. At times, the process calls for a third person to hold the camera phone, sometimes that assistant is a six-year-old girl, a father, a husband, or a cousin. During the awkwardness of the portrait session, there are moments of laughter when cats photobomb the sitting, a mother walks in the room wanting to reclaim her office space, a dad saunters by with a laundry basket, a sibling or grandchild screams from an adjoining room, and many phones crash to the floor from their perch of prime picture-taking position. We laugh together across connected distances about the absurdity of the situation and that I am trying to make a meaningful portrait amid unpredictability. Strangely, I find the absurdity satisfying; everything feels peculiar at this moment in time. For a more technically astute photographer than myself, the lack of technical command over making screen portraits would be unnerving. In essence, the image is blurry if the Wifi connection isn't clear. There are uncontrollable color shifts due to monitor calibrations; a moire pattern may appear because the screen is refreshing, and the perspective of the body can distort if the phone isn't perfectly parallel to the subject. I won't elaborate on how the highlights and shadows clip. The image noise and pixelation can drive you mad if you don't accept it as divine intervention. I find myself wanting to jump into the scene and move things and bodies, hold reflectors, close blinds, and refrain from making my subject do the heavy lifting. However, I sit behind the computer giving direction to "look to the right, chin down, eyes up, come closer to the camera" and then I embrace every technical flaw as if it's a gift. The power I have over the subject and the limitation I command over the image humbles me. The vulnerability I feel in putting these imperfect images into the world is tempered by the realization that we are all powerless in the face of this pandemic. You, From a Distance reflects the way I have experienced life during the Covid-19 pandemic- a personal feeling of distance and loss but with a desire to hold onto normalcy of making pictures, albeit without influence over the outcome. I am interested in these new ways of seeing each other and being together without being together - I look at you on my computer, in return, you look back at me through a phone or laptop while you can also see yourself in the frame. Who are we looking at - ourselves or others? The intersection of gazes is countless at times; it excites and confuses me. The process of looking and seeing divided by screens changes everything I have learned about image-making. The portraits become my memory of shared moments across time zones with distant faces; the four walls of my house expand into the space of others' homes. The intimacy I feel with the subject ironically is far greater than the portraits I make in-person in a time before social distance. In the span of one month, I have virtually traveled to five countries, five states, and homes nearby in South Carolina. Although more than the required physical distance is maintained through these portrait sittings, the mutual human connection is undoubtedly rich with meaning and unlimited possibility. December and Everything After
Joakim Eskildsen
Denmark
1971
Joakim Eskildsen was born in Copenhagen in 1971 where he trained with Royal Court photographer, Mrs. Rigmor Mydtskov. In 1994, he moved to Finland to learn the craft of photographic book making with Jyrki Parantainen and Pentti Sammallahti at the University of Art and Design in Helsinki, graduating with an MA degree in photography in 1998. He often collaborates on projects with writer Cia Rinne, and his publications include Nordic Signs (1995), Blue-tide (1997), iChickenMoon (1999), which was awarded Best Foreign Title of 2000 in the Photo-Eye Books & Prints Annual Awards, the portfolio al-Madina (2002), which was made in collaboration with Kristoffer Albrecht and Pentti Sammallahti, and the book The Roma Journeys (Steidl 2007), which a.o. has been awarded with the Amilcare Ponchielli Award in 2008, Deutscher Fotobuchpreis (Gold) 2009, the Otto Pankok Promotion Prize, and the David Octavius Hill-medal awarded by Deutsche Fotografsche Akademie in 2009. Joakim lives and works in Berlin.Source: www.joakimeskildsen.com Joakim Eskildsen (born 1971 in Copenhagen) is a Danish art photographer. Eskildsen was a pupil of Rigmor Mydtskov in Copenhagen and went to Finland in 1994 to study photographic book making with Pentti Sammallahti at the University of Art and Design Helsinki. He lives near Copenhagen and has shown some of his works in Europe (including Germany, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, France, England, Italy), China, and South Africa. From 2000-2006, together with the writer Cia Rinne, Eskildsen sought out Roma in various (mainly Eastern European) countries and other ethnic groups in India who are possibly related to the Roma. The fruits of this work have found their way into the book The Roma Journeys, which delivers insight into the life of the Roma by its text and more than 200 photographs. Source: Wikipedia
Julius Shulman
United States
1910 | † 2009
Julius Shulman was an American architectural photographer best known for his photograph Case Study House #22, Los Angeles, 1960. Pierre Koenig, Architect. The house is also known as the Stahl House. Shulman's photography spread the aesthetic of California's Mid-century modern architecture around the world. Through his many books, exhibits, and personal appearances his work ushered in a new appreciation for the movement beginning in the 1990s. His vast library of images currently resides at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. His contemporaries include Ezra Stoller and Hedrich Blessing photographers. In 1947, Julius Shulman asked architect Raphael Soriano to build a mid-century steel home and studio in the Hollywood Hills. Some of his architectural photographs, like the iconic shots of Frank Lloyd Wright's or Pierre Koenig's remarkable structures, have been published countless times. The brilliance of buildings like those by Charles Eames, as well as those of his close friends, Richard Neutra and Raphael Soriano, was first brought to wider attention by Shulman's photography. The clarity of his work added to the idea that architectural photography be considered as an independent art form in which perception and understanding for the buildings and their place in the landscape informs the photograph. Many of the buildings photographed by Shulman have since been demolished or re-purposed, lending to the popularity of his images. I’m not modest about myself. I know for a fact that I am good. But good in the sense that I can put things together. I expound vociferously to students of architecture and photography, the significance of design. A photograph is a design in which you assemble thoughts in your mind. -- Julius Shulman Julius Shulman was born in Brooklyn to Russian-Jewish parents on October 10, 1910, and grew up on a small farm in Connecticut before moving to Los Angeles while still a boy. He briefly attended the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of California, Berkeley, and earned pocket money by selling his photographs to fellow students. In 1936 he returned to Los Angeles, where he was enlisted by a friend, working as a draftsman for Richard Neutra, to take photographs of a new, Neutra-designed Kun Residence in Hollywood with his amateur Kodak Vest Pocket camera. When Neutra saw the pictures, he asked to meet the photographer and proceeded to give him his first assignments which assisted Shulman in launching his career in architectural photography. Shulman opened a studio in Los Angeles in 1950, by that time drawing much of his work from magazines based in New York. He remained in business full-time until the late 1980s. In 2000, Shulman gave up retirement to begin working with business partner Juergen Nogai. The Getty Research Institute held a 2005–2006 exhibition of Shulman's prints entitled Julius Shulman, Modernity and the Metropolis. The exhibition included sections entitled Framing the California Lifestyle, Promoting the Power of Modern Architecture, The Tools of an Innovator and The Development of a Metropolis. The exhibition traveled to the National Building Museum and to the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1987, the Shulman House was designated a Cultural Heritage Monument by the city of Los Angeles. Shulman himself had a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars dedicated to him in 2006. He died at his home in Los Angeles, California on July 15, 2009; he was 98 years old. He was buried at Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California.Source: Wikipedia I sell architecture better and more directly and more vividly than the architect does... The average architect is stupid. He doesn’t know how to sell. He’s not a merchandiser. He doesn’t know how to express his own image. He doesn’t know how to create a design of his image... And I do it. I’ve done it all my career over half a century, and it gets better. -- Julius Shulman
Louis Faurer
United States
1916 | † 2001
Louis Faurer was an American candid or street photographer. He was a quiet artist who never achieved the broad public recognition that his best-known contemporaries did; however, the significance and caliber of his work were lauded by insiders, among them Robert Frank, William Eggleston, and Edward Steichen, who included his work in the Museum of Modern Art exhibitions In and Out of Focus (1948) and The Family of Man (1955). Growing up in Philadelphia, Faurer showed an early aptitude for illustration. He bought his first camera in 1937 from the photographer Ben Somoroff. After a couple of jobs as a photographic technician, Faurer made his way to Manhattan and into the world of fashion photography. He quickly made contacts that stood him in good stead: Robert Frank, with whom he shared a darkroom/studio and fast friendship, and Walker Evans, whom he'd long admired, who introduced him to Alexander Liberman at Vogue. Faurer did fashion photography for Vogue, Junior Bazaar, Harper's Bazaar, Mademoiselle, Elle, and Glamour, as well as assignments for Life and Look for more than twenty years. He complained that his work at Life involved too much travel, so he quit in the early 1950s. Most of the prints and negatives of his fashion work have probably been discarded, as Faurer stored them with a friend when he left the country in the late 1960s, then failed to reclaim them. It is Faurer’s personal work from the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s for which he is best remembered. He photographed the streets of New York City and Philadelphia, capturing the restless energy of urban life. His photographs show the great variety of the city's human face. As Robert Frank said in 1994: "Faurer ... proves to be an extraordinary artist. His eye is on the pulse [of New York City] - the lonely 'Times-Square people' for whom Faurer felt a deep sympathy. Every photograph is witness to the compassion and obsession accompanying his life like a shadow. I am happy that these images survive while the world keeps changing." Faurer experimented with blur, grain, double exposures, sandwiched negatives, reflections, slow film speeds, and low lighting. His 1950 photographs of Robert Frank and his new wife Mary at the San Gennaro Festival in New York are a case in point, exploiting maximum-aperture shallow depth of field, reflections and halation of out-of-focus light sources for intimate, romantic results. One of the series attracted the attention of curator Edward Steichen who included it in the world-touring Museum of Modern Art exhibition, The Family of Man, seen by 9 million visitors, and in its catalogue, which has never been out of print. As exacting in the darkroom as he was in the field, he was notorious for being a tireless perfectionist when it came to cropping and printing his work. In the mid-and late 1960s, Faurer experimented with hand-held 16 mm film, using Arriflex and Beaulieu movie cameras, filming in the streets of Manhattan, extending his still camera style into a cinematic medium. Between 1969 and 1974 he lived and worked abroad, mostly in Paris. From the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, Faurer taught at numerous art schools and universities, including the Parsons School of Design in New York City, Yale University, the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, The New School for Social Research and Stockton State College in New Jersey. In 1984, while running to catch a New York city bus, Faurer was struck by a car and seriously injured. He never photographed again. Faurer spoke of his “intense desire to record life as I see it” as his only motivation: “As long as I’m amazed and astonished, as long as I feel that events, messages, expressions and movements are all shot through with the miraculous, I’ll feel filled with the certainty I need to keep going.” The late Walter Hopps, who was curator of American art at the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian's National Collection of Fine Arts, commented on Faurer's work: "I am in awe of the high point he can reach in a photograph such as Family, Times Square, at the center of New York in the center of our century. Perhaps no other American image stands comparison with Picasso’s Family of Saltimbanques, on their imagined European plane in 1905… Faurer stands and lives as a master of his medium."Source: Wikipedia
Oliviero Toscani
Italy
1942 | † 2025
Oliviero Toscani was an Italian photographer whose groundbreaking and often controversial advertising campaigns revolutionized the intersection of art, commerce, and social commentary. Best known for his work with Italian fashion brand Benetton from 1982 to 2000, Toscani transformed advertising into a platform for provocative and thought-provoking messages on issues such as AIDS, racism, religion, and capital punishment. Born in Milan, Toscani inherited a passion for photography from his father, Fedele Toscani, a renowned photojournalist and co-founder of the Publifoto agency. After earning his diploma at the Kunstgewerbeschule Zürich, Toscani began his career collaborating with leading magazines such as Elle, Vogue, L’Uomo Vogue, and Harper’s Bazaar. His early work set the stage for a career that would challenge conventions and ignite conversations worldwide. In 1982, Toscani became Art Director for the Benetton Group, where he created some of the most iconic and controversial advertising campaigns in history. Among these was the unforgettable image of David Kirby, a man dying of AIDS, which echoed the composition of religious pietà paintings. While some criticized the ad for exploiting tragedy to sell clothing, the Kirby family praised it for raising global awareness about AIDS. Other campaigns addressed themes of racial equality, war, and even the death penalty, pushing boundaries and reshaping public perceptions of advertising's role in society. In the early 1990s, Toscani co-founded Colors, a magazine created with American graphic designer Tibor Kalman. With the tagline “a magazine about the rest of the world,” Colors reflected the multicultural ethos of Benetton's campaigns while maintaining editorial independence. Toscani’s tenure at Benetton ended in 2000, but his impact on the brand—and the advertising world—remains indelible. A resident of Tuscany, Toscani continued to innovate beyond the fashion industry. In 2003, he founded La Sterpaia, a research facility dedicated to modern communication, in collaboration with the Regione Toscana. His later projects, including campaigns addressing anorexia and LGBTQ+ rights, further demonstrated his commitment to using photography as a medium for social change. Toscani’s career was not without controversy. His 2005 campaign for the clothing brand Ra-Re, featuring images of men engaging in intimate behavior, sparked outrage among conservative groups. In 2007, his stark portrayal of anorexia through the haunting image of Isabelle Caro drew both acclaim and criticism for its raw honesty. Despite these controversies, Toscani remained a cultural force. When Luciano Benetton returned to the helm of the Benetton Group in 2018, Toscani rejoined him, marking a new chapter in their creative partnership. That same year, he became a member of Italy's Democratic Party, further highlighting his engagement with societal issues. Toscani faced health challenges in his later years, battling amyloidosis. He was hospitalized on January 10, 2025, and passed away three days later at the age of 82. Oliviero Toscani's legacy endures as a testament to the power of photography to challenge norms, inspire dialogue, and provoke change. His work reminds us that art can be more than an aesthetic endeavor—it can be a catalyst for understanding and transformation in the world.
Kathryn Oliver
United States
Kathryn discovered a love for making pictures as a small child and developed a rich inner life of impressions. As she grew, creative aspirations led her to bring this inner world forward through art. Self taught, her creative journey has repeatedly taken her into the field of metaphor and myth as a way to express something eternal within herself. Her professional arts background of painting, theater and dance feeds the photography she does now as she blends hints of all these elements into her images. She currently creates and exhibits black and white fine art photography and photo encaustics, teaching workshops on the midcoast of Maine throughout the year. Drawn to the symbolic language of myth and archetypes, I am forever on a quest, seeking a visual narrative that evokes an internal recognition of nature — something in exile, lost, or hidden — yet leaves an impression inwardly known.About the series The Wild Garden Of Childhood: When I was a child the best part of me was wild. The Wild Garden Of Childhood is an exploration into the untamed vitality and sacred beauty of being young. That universality of raw spirit, where emotional authenticity reigns naturally and fiercely -- dancing on the edge of innocence. Arising from my own fragmented memories, inspired by the open innocence and un-self conscious freedom of my subjects, a world is conjured, somewhere between the real and imagined - where the fertile ground of being is at play. The most precious of stories are stored away for safe keeping, Somewhere In the wild garden of childhood awaiting becomingness
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