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AAP Magazine Portrait. Early Bird Deadline Ends May 1st!
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Lu Yanpeng
Lu Yanpeng
Lu Yanpeng

Lu Yanpeng

Country: China
Birth: 1984

Lu Yanpeng was born in 1984 in Fujian Province. He presently lives and works in Beijing. After graduating from the Art Institute of Fujian University in 2005, he has participated in numerous exhibitions both in China and internationally. Lu Yanpeng was nominated for the FOAM Paul Huf Award in the Netherlands in 2011 and received the top award at the 2011 Pingyao International Photography Festival for the Best Photographer for his work Open Air. He was the youngest artist to ever receive this award.

Lu Yanpeng is a magician as if he has Midas touch. His darkroom is his magician's cloth, where his photos are but a spectacular performance in the void. He uses his hands, a symbol of the mortal body, paintbrushes, a symbol of tools, and the material world, as represented by light and stones that become a medium for thoughts.

Although we are only able to recall from his work, we can easily imagine the details involved, because everything seems to have been done to perfection, which is in itself incredible. His darkroom skills and creative work have bypassed the barriers of human languages and tools. His strong awareness of his subjects carries him into an autonomous state. The artist in this state is not to be limited by his techniques; he is feeling the subjects spiritually without actually observing them.

Source: www.m97gallery.com

 

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Colin Jones
United Kingdom
1936
Colin Jones is an English ballet dancer-turned-photographer and prolific photojournalist of post-war Britain. Jones documented facets of social history as diverse as the vanishing industrial working lives of the North East coalfields, Grafters, delinquent Afro-Caribbean youth in London, The Black House, hedonistic 1960s Swinging London with pictures of The Who early in their career, the 1963 race riots in Alabama, Soviet Leningrad, and remnants of a rural Britain now lost to history. Jones was born in 1936. He experienced a war childhood; his father, a Poplar, East End printer, went away as a soldier on the Burma campaign. Jones' family was evacuated to Essex and he attended a succession of thirteen schools whilst struggling with dyslexia, before the age of sixteen, when he took up ballet lessons. In 1960 Jones was called up for national service and served in the Queen's Royal Regiment. Fresh out of the army, Colin joined the Royal Opera House, later moving to the Touring Royal Ballet and embarked on a nine-month world tour. Jones met, and for four years was married to, the great ballerina Lynn Seymour. Whilst on tour and running an errand for Dame Margot Fonteyn, he purchased his first camera, a Leica 3C rangefinder, in 1958 and started taking photographs of the dancers and backstage life during the Australian leg of the circuit. Jones admired the available-light backstage photography of Michael Peto, a Hungarian émigré, who agreed to mentor him. Colin Jones took advantage of the ballet company's travel to photograph extensively in the streets of Tokyo, Hong Kong and the Gorbals, Glasgow in 1961. Driving with fellow dancers from Newcastle to Sunderland that year, he saw, north of Birmingham, coal searchers on the spoil-heaps. In 1962, having changed his career to become a photographer for The Observer he returned to produce a series of photographs recording the vanishing industrial working poor and mining communities in the North East of England, later publishing the essay as the book Grafters. At The Observer he worked alongside photographers Philip Jones Griffiths and Don McCullin. He worked in Fleet Street for several years before turning freelance. Commissioned assignments took him to New York City in 1962; Liverpool docks in 1963; the race riots in Birmingham, Alabama, USA, where he made portraits of both 'Bull' Connor, and Dr Martin Luther King in 1963; Leningrad, USSR in 1964. In 1966 he photographed the British rock band The Who at the beginning of their career, and Pete Townshend, then Mick Jagger in 1967. He travelled to the Philippines in 1969 where he photographed the sex trade. He portrayed significant dancers, including Rudolph Nureyev for several publications. Jones’ work has been published in major publications including Life, National Geographic, Geo and Nova as well as many supplements for major broadsheet newspapers, most prominently The Times, who dubbed Jones "The George Orwell of British photography". In his later career he covered assignments around the world, including Jamaica in 1978; the indigenes of the New Hebrides and Zaire in 1980; Tom Waits in New York, 1981; San Blas Islands in 1982; Ireland in 1984; Xian, China in 1985; Ladakh in northern India 1994 and Bunker Hill, Kansas in 1996. Solo exhibitions have been devoted to his work: The Black House: Colin Jones at The Photographers' Gallery in London, 4 May – 4 June 1977 as well as at many other galleries. Martin Harrison’s Young Meteors associated Jones with other important British photographers including Don McCullin and Terence Donovan. In 2013 the Victoria and Albert Museum acquired three of Jones' historic photographs from The Black House series, along with a photograph by Dennis Morris depicting the original Black House associated with Michael X, both acquired as part of Staying Power, a five year partnership between the V&A and Black Cultural Archives, preserving black British experience from the 1950s to the 1990s through photographs and oral histories. The Arts Council also purchased his work.Source: Wikipedia The art of photography remains so fascinating because of the individuals who arrive from unexpected places and take the medium through a lifetime of changes. The career of Colin Jones has a startling trajectory. He was born in 1936, in time to be a war child, a father away as a soldier, and 13 different schools. An element of chance, as well as talent, led to a scholarship at the Royal Ballet School. The moment that defined Jones's later life occurred as he was driving with fellow-dancers from Newcastle to Sunderland one day in 1961. Travelling north of Birmingham and seeing the winding gear of coalmines had always excited Jones, who was steeped in the books of George Orwell, but now he saw the extraordinary drama of spoil-heaps swarming with coal searchers - an epic of reality and survival. Colin Jones is one of the most celebrated and prolific photographers of post-war Britain. He has documented facets of social history over the years as diverse as the vanishing industrial working lives of the Northeast (Grafters), delinquent Afro-Caribbean youth in London (The Black House), and most recently, the high-octane hedonism of Swinging London with his famous pictures of The Who early in their career. His work has been published in every major publication with any regard for the image and photography. Such as Life, and National Geographic, as well as many supplements for the major broadsheets. He has had solo exhibitions at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC and at the Photographers Gallery in London, as well as at many other venues internationally.Source: Michael Hoppen Gallery
O. Winston Link
United States
1914 | † 2001
Ogle Winston Link (December 16, 1914 – January 30, 2001), known commonly as O. Winston Link, was an American photographer, best known for his black-and-white photography and sound recordings of the last days of steam locomotive railroading on the Norfolk & Western in the United States in the late 1950s. A commercial photographer, Link helped establish rail photography as a hobby. He also pioneered night photography, producing several well-known examples including Hotshot Eastbound, a photograph of a steam train passing a drive-in movie theater, and Hawksbill Creek Swimming Hole showing a train crossing a bridge above children bathing. O. Winston Link and his siblings, Eleanor and Albert Jr., spent their childhood in the borough of Brooklyn, New York City, where they lived with their parents, Albert Link, Sr. and Anne Winston Jones Link. Link's given names honor ancestors Alexander Ogle and John Winston Jones, who had served in the U.S. House of Representatives in the 19th century. Al Link taught woodworking in the New York City Public School system, and encouraged his children's interest in arts and crafts, and first introduced Winston to photography. Link's early photography was created with a borrowed medium format Autographic Kodak camera. By the time he was in high school, he had built his own photographic enlarger. After completing high school, Link attended the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, receiving a degree in civil engineering. Before his graduation in 1937, he spoke at a banquet for the institute's newspaper, where he served as photo editor. An executive from Carl Byoir's public relations firm was present and was impressed by Link's speaking ability. He offered Link a job as a photographer. O. Winston Link worked for Carl Byoir and Associates for five years, learning his trade on the job. He adapted to the technique of making posed photographs looking candid, as well as creatively emphasizing a point. On his first major assignment, to photograph part of the state of Louisiana in the summer of 1937, he found himself in New Iberia, the location where Cecil B. DeMille's 1938 movie "The Buccaneer", about Jean LaFitte was being filmed. Here he met his future first wife, a former Miss Ark-La-Tex, now actress/model/body double, Vanda Marteal Oglesby, who stood-in for lead actress Franciska Gaal. They 'took a shine' to one another and later that year she posed for some of his photographs in the French Quarter of New Orleans. They eventually married in 1942, but later divorced. Some of Link's photographs from this time included an image of a man aiming a gun at a pig wearing a bulletproof vest, and one eventually known as What Is This Girl Selling? or Girl on Ice, which was widely published in the United States and later featured in Life as a "classic publicity picture. According to Thomas Garver, a later assistant to Link, during his employment at Byoir's firm, Link "clearly defined a point of view and developed working methods that were to shape his entire career." While in Staunton, Virginia, for an industrial photography job in 1955, O. Winston Link's longstanding love of railroads became focused on the nearby Norfolk and Western Railway line. N&W was the last major (Class I) railroad to make the transition from steam to diesel motive power and had refined its use of steam locomotives, earning a reputation for "precision transportation." Link took his first night photograph of the road on January 21, 1955, in Waynesboro, Virginia. On May 29, 1955 the N&W announced its first conversion to diesel and Link's work became a documentation of the end of the steam era. He returned to Virginia for about twenty visits to continue photographing the N&W. His last night shot was taken in 1959 and the last of all in 1960, the year the road completed the transition to diesel, by which time he had accumulated 2400 negatives on the project. Although it was entirely self-financed, Link's work was encouraged and facilitated by N&W officials, from President Robert Hall Smith downwards. Besides the locomotives, he captured the people of the N&W performing their jobs on the railroad and in the trackside communities. Some of his images were of the massive Roanoke Shops, where the company had long built and maintained its own locomotives. O. Winston Link's images were always meticulously set up and posed, and he chose to take most of his railroad photographs at night. He said "I can't move the sun — and it's always in the wrong place — and I can't even move the tracks, so I had to create my own environment through lighting." Although others, including Philip Hastings and Jim Shaughnessy, had photographed locomotives at night before, Link's vision required him to develop new techniques for flash photography of such large subjects. For instance, the movie theater image Hotshot Eastbound (Iaeger, West Virginia), photographed on August 2, 1956 [negative NW1103], used 42 #2 flashbulbs and one #0 fired simultaneously. Link, with an assistant such as George Thom, had to lug all his equipment into position and wire it up: this was done in series so any failure would prevent a picture being taken at all; and in taking night shots of moving trains the right position for the subject could only be guessed at. Link used a 4 x 5 Graphic View view camera with black and white film, from which he produced silver gelatin prints. From 1960 until he retired in 1983 Link devoted himself to advertising. Among notable pictures taken during this period are those recording construction of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and other views of New York Harbor including the great ocean liners. In retirement, Link moved to South Salem, Westchester County, New York. In 1996, Link's second wife, Conchita, was arrested for (and later convicted of) stealing a collection of Link's photographs and attempting to sell them, claiming that Link had Alzheimer's disease and that she had power of attorney. She served six years in prison. After being released, she again attempted to sell some of Link's works that she had stolen, this time using the Internet auction site eBay. She received a three-year sentence. Conchita was also accused of imprisoning her husband. However, this allegation is disputed by some, and it never led to any criminal charges against Conchita. The story of Winston and Conchita became the subject of the documentary "The Photographer, His Wife, Her Lover" (2005) made by Paul Yule. Link made a cameo appearance as a steam locomotive engineer in the 1999 film October Sky. He was actively involved with the planning of a museum of his work when he suffered a heart attack near his home in South Salem. He was transported to Northern Westchester Hospital in Mt. Kisco, Westchester County, NY where he died on January 30, 2001. Mr. Link was interred adjacent to his parents in Elmwood Cemetery, Shepherdstown, Jefferson County, West Virginia.Source: Wikipedia Link's reasons for shooting at night were simple. For one, it was more romantic and dramatic. For Link the trains were comparable to Garbo and Dietrich at their most glamorous. Secondly, steam from the trains against a night sky photographed white. Against a day sky it came out a dirty grey. Whatever the circumstances, Link's pictures were an intense labor of love. Indeed, he discovered, shortly after starting the Norfolk and Western project, that no one was much interested in photographs of a fast disappearing mode of transport. This was, after all, the beginning of the era of the great American car. At first Link's photographs were appreciated for their combination of nostalgia, technical virtuosity, and – partly due to Link's famously cranky character and disposition - almost outsider artist's vision. But as photography has moved on, Link's work is increasingly seen and appreciated for the degree to which he controlled, planned, and constructed each image, prefiguring such well known contemporary artists as Gregory Crewdson and Jeff Wall, both of whom willingly acknowledge their interest in and appreciation of Link's work. His work has been exhibited throughout the U.S., Europe and in Japan and is present in numerous major museum collections around the world. His rail photography is exhibited at the O. Winston Link Museum in Roanoke, Virginia, refurbished by the famous industrial designer, Raymond Loewy, which opened in 2004.Source: Danziger Gallery
Jean-Marie Périer
Jean-Marie Périer (born in Neuilly in 1940) is a French photographer and film director. He began his career as Daniel Filipacchi’s assistant in 1956. Soon he was working for Jazz magazine, Paris-Match and Tele7Jours. He was drafted to serve in Algeria where he worked in the French Army’s Photographic Department. From 1962 to 1974 he was the official photographer of ‘Les Copains’, the world leading magazine in music. Jean-Marie Périer’s fame goes back to his iconic photographs of The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, James Brown, to name but a few; images that indelibly captured the Pop and Rock scenes of the Sixties. In 1990, Jean-Marie returned home to Paris having spent ten years in LA and NY directing commercials for such prominent clients as Coca-Cola, Canada Dry, Ford and Nestlé. It was photography that he wished to return; to once again feel the freedom and creativity he experienced during those Rock n’ Roll years. ELLE magazine gave him carte blanche to produce a series of images, entitled “The World of Fashion Designers” that presented the glamour and elegance of the fashion industry and its icons. The most famous fashion designers posed for him: Saint-Laurent, Armani, Tom Ford, Christian Lacroix, Gaultier, Alaïa… At the same time he directed several series of documentaries for television; in 2008 he directed 50 short films with Jacques Dutronc for the French channel Paris Premiere and another series of 50 short films about the sixties for France 5 . His first major exhibition took place at the Paris Hotel de Ville in 2002. Since then, he has had numerous solo exhibitions worldwide and his works have been acquired by significant public and private collections.Source: Fahey/Klein Gallery
Alfred Wertheimer
United States
1929 | † 2014
Alfred Wertheimer was an American photographer best known for his intimate and iconic images of Elvis Presley during his early career. His photographs provide a rare and intimate look into the life of one of music's most influential figures. Wertheimer was hired by RCA Victor Records in 1956, at the age of 26, to document the rising star Elvis Presley. Wertheimer followed Presley on tour for several months, capturing candid moments both on and off stage. His photographs revealed the young musician's raw and unguarded side, highlighting his charisma, vulnerability, and undeniable talent. Wertheimer's photographs of Elvis Presley have come to represent the spirit and energy of early rock and roll. Wertheimer's lens captured the essence of Elvis' cultural phenomenon, from backstage encounters to private moments at home. The most famous photograph in Wertheimer's collection is arguably "The Kiss." The photograph, taken during a train ride in 1956, captures a tender moment between Elvis and a young woman through a train window. This image has come to represent Elvis Presley's allure and magnetism as a cultural icon. Wertheimer's work extended beyond his time with Elvis throughout his career. He shot a diverse range of subjects, including well-known musicians, politicians, and cultural figures. His photographs have been shown in galleries all over the world, have been published in numerous books, and are still admired for their artistic and historical significance. The photographs of Elvis Presley by Alfred Wertheimer have left an indelible mark on the worlds of music and photography. He captured the essence of a young musician on the verge of stardom through his lens, providing a glimpse into the humanity behind the legend. Wertheimer's photographs are as powerful and captivating today as they were when they were first captured, capturing the spirit of a cultural icon and the energy of a transformative era.
Paul Caponigro
United States
1932
Paul Caponigro (born December 7, 1932), is an American photographer from Boston, Massachusetts. He started having interests in photography at age 13. However, he also had a strong passion for music and began to study music at Boston University College of Music in 1950, before eventually deciding to focus on studying photography at the California School of Fine Art. Caponigro studied with Minor White and has been awarded two Guggenheim Fellowships and three grants from the NEA. His best-known photographs are Running White Deer and Galaxy Apple. His subject matter includes landscape and still life, taking an interest in natural forms. He is best known for his landscape works and for the mystical and spiritual qualities of his work. He is often regarded as one of America's foremost landscape photographers. Caponigro's first one-man exhibition took place at the George Eastman House in 1958. In the 1960s Caponigro taught photography part-time at Boston University while consulting the Polaroid Corporation on various technical research. Caponigro lived in El Rancho de San Sebastian during his time in New Mexico from 1973-1993. In 1971, his work was exhibited in group exhibition "Le Groupe Libre Expression : Expo 5", presented by Jean-Claude Gautrand, at Les Rencontres d'Arles festival, France. Caponigro's work is included in the collections of the Guggenheim, Whitney, Norton Simon Museum, New Mexico Museum of Art and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He was awarded The Royal Photographic Society's Centenary Medal and Honorary Fellowship (HonFRPS) in recognition of a sustained, significant contribution to the art of photography in 2001. Caponigro is a dedicated pianist and considers his training with music to be essential to his photographic imagery. His son, John Paul Caponigro, is a digital photographic artist.Source: Wikipedia Paul Caponigro is one of America’s foremost landscape photographers. While he became interested in photography at age of thirteen, he also had a strong passion for music; he studied at Boston University College of Music in 1950 before deciding to focus on photography at the California School of Fine Art, where Ansel Adams had established one of the first photography programs in the United States. Despite the shift from music to photography early in his artistic career, Caponigro remains a dedicated piano player who believes that his musical training and insight influences his photographic imagery. Caponigro is best known for his interest in natural forms, landscapes, and still lives. His subjects include Stonehenge and other Celtic megaliths of England and Ireland; the temples, shrines and sacred gardens of Japan; and the deep mystical woodland of New England.Source: International Center of Photography Paul Caponigro, renowned as one of America’s most significant master photographers is known for his captivating and mystical landscape images. His exquisite silver gelatin prints depict images of nature, including flowers, cloud formations, and forest settings. His work forms a visual bridge between the material world of physical forms and the living spirit behind them.Source: Jackson Fine Art
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