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Win a Solo Exhibition in April 2026 + An Exclusive Interview!
Win a Solo Exhibition in April 2026 + An Exclusive Interview!
Jon Kolkin
Jon Kolkin
Jon Kolkin

Jon Kolkin

Country: United States

Jon Kolkin has rapidly drawn the attention of the art world due to his ability to look at his subject matter from a very fresh, original and unique vantage point. He is known for his minimalist style, stripping away all distractions and focusing on the sole of his subject matter. Each body of work typically contains numerous plots and subplots, often with a socially relevant underlying theme. Like many artists before him, Jon has had a love affair with both the arts and the sciences. He was first introduced to photography as a young boy working in his father’s darkroom. He expanded his artistic horizons, becoming a nationally recognized clarinetist who toured Europe with the National Youth Symphony. These passions, combined with his fascination with the sciences, resulted in Jon’s decision to pursue a major in chemistry at Emory University with a minor in the Arts. After college he received a degree in Medicine. However, he never abandoned his love for the arts, taking photography courses at night while simultaneously completing his residency in Orthopedics. He is the only professional photographer from the Southeastern United States to serve on the faculty of both the Santa Fe and Maine Media Workshops. Jon is also a trained health coach who is nationally recognized as a guest speaker and educator on topics related to finding wisdom and a healthy balance within our lives.
 

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AAP Magazine #56 Shadows
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More Great Photographers To Discover

Yusuf Sevinçli
Turkey
1980
Sevinçli’s images are highly personal, subjective and dreamlike, in which place and time are uncertain, redolent instead of a deeply felt vision of the world. His fleeting images of everyday life have an air of timelessness about them. Aesthetically and formally they manifest Sevinçli’s respect and deep engagement with the history of photography. Yusuf Sevinçli earned a bachelor’s degree in communications at Marmara University (Istanbul) in 2003, and attended a Masterclass dedicated to documentary photography in Sweden in 2005. From that moment on, he started building his own work through different series which include Good Dog (2012), Marseille (2014), Walking (2015) and exhibited in several solo and group shows in Le Botanique (Brussels, Belgium), Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire (Paris, France), Arter (Istanbul, Turkey), Angkor Festival (Angkor, Cambodia), Istanbul Modern (Istanbul, Turkey), Gallery Boavista (Lisbon, Portugal), Atelier de Visu (Marseille, France), Elipsis Gallery (Istanbul, Turkey), Rencontres d’Arles (Arles, France). One of his latest series ‘Dérive’ has been presented in several places in France, such as La Filature in Mulhouse, Le Château d’Eau in Toulouse, L’Atelier, Nantes as well as in Moscow during the city’s Biennal of Photography in 2016. He lives and works in Istanbul. Published books; Good Dog (Filigranes Editions, 2012), Marseille (le bec en l’air, 2014), Walking (Filigranes Editions, 2015), PUT (Fail Books, 2017). Source: Galerist Discover Oculus
Frances Benjamin Johnston
United States
1864 | † 1952
Frances "Fannie" Benjamin Johnston (15 January 1864 – 16 May 1952) was an early American female photographer and photojournalist whose career lasted for almost half a century. She is most known for her portraits, images of southern architecture, and various photographic series featuring African Americans and Native Americans at the turn of the 20th century. The only surviving child of wealthy and well connected parents, she was born in Grafton, West Virginia, raised in Washington, D.C., and studied at the Académie Julian in Paris and the Washington Students League following her graduation from Notre Dame of Maryland Collegiate Institute for Young Ladies in 1883 (now known as Notre Dame of Maryland University). An independent and strong-willed young woman, she wrote articles for periodicals before finding her creative outlet through photography after she was given her first camera by George Eastman, a close friend of the family, and inventor of the new, lighter, Eastman Kodak cameras. She received training in photography and dark-room techniques from Thomas Smillie, director of photography at the Smithsonian. She took portraits of friends, family and local figures before working as a freelance photographer and touring Europe in the 1890s, using her connection to Smillie to visit prominent photographers and gather items for the museum's collections. She gained further practical experience in her craft by working for the newly formed Eastman Kodak company in Washington, D.C., forwarding film for development and advising customers when cameras needed repairs. In 1894 she opened her own photographic studio in Washington, D.C., on V Street between 13th and 14th Streets, and at the time was the only woman photographer in the city. She took portraits of many famous contemporaries including Susan B. Anthony, Mark Twain and Booker T. Washington. Well connected among elite society, she was commissioned by magazines to do "celebrity" portraits, such as Alice Roosevelt's wedding portrait, and was dubbed the "Photographer to the American court." She photographed Admiral Dewey on the deck of the USS Olympia,[6] the Roosevelt children playing with their pet pony at the White House and the gardens of Edith Wharton's famous villa near Paris. Her mother, Frances Antoinette Johnston, had been a congressional journalist and dramatic critic for the Baltimore Sun and her daughter built on her familiarity with the Washington political scene by becoming official White House photographer for the Harrison, Cleveland, McKinley, "TR" Roosevelt, and Taft presidential administrations. Johnston also photographed the famous American heiress and literary salon socialite Natalie Barney in Paris but perhaps her most famous work, shown here, is her self-portrait of the liberated "New Woman", petticoats showing and beer stein in hand. Johnston was a constant advocate for the role of women in the burgeoning art of photography. The Ladies' Home Journal published Johnston's article "What a Woman Can Do With a Camera" in 1897[9] and she co-curated (with Zaida Ben-Yusuf) an exhibition of photographs by twenty-eight women photographers at the 1900 Exposition Universelle, which afterwards travelled to Saint Petersburg, Moscow, and Washington, DC. She traveled widely in her thirties, taking a wide range of documentary and artistic photographs of coal miners, iron workers, women in New England's mills and sailors being tattooed on board ship as well as her society commissions. While in England she photographed the stage actress Mary Anderson, who was a friend of her mother. In 1899, she gained further notability when she was commissioned by Hollis Burke Frissell to photograph the buildings and students of the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Hampton, Virginia in order to show its success. This series, documenting the ordinary life of the school, remains as some of her most telling work. It was displayed at The Exhibit of American Negroes of the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1900. She photographed events such as world's fairs and peace-treaty signings and took the last portrait of President William McKinley, at the Pan-American Exposition of 1901 just before his assassination. With her partner, Mattie Edwards Hewitt, a successful freelance home and garden photographer in her own right, she opened a studio in New York in 1913 and moved in with her mother and aunt. Hewitt wrote Johnston love letters over the course of their relationship, which are chronicled in "The Woman Behind the Lens: The Life and Work of Frances Benjamin Johnston, 1864–1952." Many of the early letters focused on Hewitt's admiration for Johnston's work, but as their romance progressed, they became increasingly full of words of love: "...when I need you or you need me — [we] must hold each other all the closer and with your hand in mine, holding it tight..." She lectured at New York University on business for women and they produced a series of studies of New York architecture through the 1920s. In early 1920 her mother died in New York. In the 1920s, she became increasingly interested in photographing architecture, motivated by a desire to document buildings and gardens which were falling into disrepair or about to be redeveloped and lost. As her focus in architecture grew, she became specifically interested in documenting the architecture of the American South. Johnston was interested in preserving the everyday history of the American South through her art; she accomplished this by photographing barns, inns, and other ordinary structures. She was not interested in photographing the grand homes and estates of the American South, but rather the quickly deteriorating structures in these communities that portrayed the life of common southerners. Her photographs remain an important resource for modern architects, historians and conservationists. She exhibited a series of 247 photographs of Fredericksburg, Virginia, from the decaying mansions of the rich to the shacks of the poor, in 1928. The exhibition was entitled Pictorial Survey--Old Fredericksburg, Virginia--Old Falmouth and Nearby Places and described as "A Series of Photographic Studies of the Architecture of the Region Dating by Tradition from Colonial Times to Circa 1830" as "An Historical Record and to Preserve Something of the Atmosphere of An Old Virginia Town." Publicity from the display prompted the University of Virginia to hire her to document its buildings and the state of North Carolina to record its architectural history. Louisiana hired Johnston to document its huge inventory of rapidly deteriorating plantations and she was given a grant in 1933 by the Carnegie Corporation of New York to document Virginia's early architecture. This led to a series of grants and photographs of eight other southern states, all of which were given to the Library of Congress for public use. In December 1935, she began a year long project to capture the less evolved structures of the Colonial Era in Virginia. This was effort was intended to be a one year project, but evolved into an eight year extensive project, in which she surveyed 50,000 miles and 95 counties in Virginia. Johnston was named an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects for her work in preserving old and endangered buildings and her collections have been purchased by institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the Baltimore Museum of Art. Although her relentless traveling was curtailed by petrol rationing in the Second World War the tireless Johnston continued to photograph. Johnston acquired a home in the French Quarter of New Orleans in 1940, retiring there in 1945, where she died in 1952 at the age of eighty-eight.Source: Wikipedia
Chris Steele-Perkins
United Kingdom
1947 | † 2025
At the age of two, Chris Steele-Perkins moved to England from Burma with his father. He went to school at Christ's Hospital. At the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, he studied psychology and worked for the student newspaper; he graduated with honors in 1970 and started to work as a freelance photographer, moving to London in 1971. Apart from a trip to Bangladesh in 1973, he worked mainly in Britain in areas concerned with urban poverty and subcultures. In 1975 he worked with EXIT, a collective dealing with social problems in British cities. This involvement culminated in the book Survival Programmes in 1982. He joined the Paris-based Viva agency in 1976. In 1979 he published his first solo book, The Teds; he also edited the Arts Council of Great Britain's book, About 70 Photographs. Steele-Perkins joined Magnum Photos in 1979 and soon began working extensively in the developing world, in particular in Africa, Central America and Lebanon, as well as continuing to take photographs in Britain: The Pleasure Principle explores Britain in the 1980s. In 1992 he published Afghanistan, the result of four trips over four years. After marrying his second wife, Miyako Yamada, he embarked on a long-term photographic exploration of Japan, publishing Fuji in 2000. A highly personal diary of 2001, Echoes, was published in 2003, and the second of his Japanese books, Tokyo Love Hello, in March 2007. He continues to work in Britain, documenting rural life in County Durham, which was published as Northern Exposures in 2007. In 2009 he published a collection of work from 40 years of photographing England - England, My England. A new book, on British centenarians, Fading Light will be published at the end of July. Steele-Perkins has two sons, Cedric, born 16th November 1990, and Cameron, born 18th June 1992. With his marriage to Miyako Yamada he has a stepson, Daisuke and a grand-daughter, Momoe. Source Magnum Photos
Sven Delaye
France
1984
Sven Delaye, a digital nomad and videogames translator, has been traveling around the world for nine years. Throughout his journey, he always enjoyed capturing moments of life, but everything changed in early 2020: for a long time, he kept his street photography private, convinced it wouldn't interest others. In 2020, he submitted some landscape photos for the cover of a Guatemalan magazine. These photos were declined. However, the publisher explored his Instagram account and discovered the sole street photo he had shared. That single image was selected for the magazine's cover. Encouraged by this recognition, Sven began sharing his street photography, which quickly gained international acclaim in countries such as the USA, Mexico, Italy, the UK, Greece, France, and South Korea. For several years now, Sven has dedicated himself to street photography. Through his travels, it became a way to capture fleeting moments of everyday life, rediscover the poetry hidden in the mundane, and avoid the artificial clichés often propagated by social media. His inspiration comes from the simplicity of daily life: a stranger passing by, a fleeting glance, the curve of a smile, or the beauty of a quiet scene at a street corner. Sven finds poetry in unexpected places—a gutter, a park, or the shadow of a feeling in a small gesture. He believes this beauty surrounds us constantly, yet it often goes unnoticed. Whether it's because people choose to ignore it or have grown desensitized to it, he doesn’t know. What he does know is that his camera allows him to capture these overlooked moments and reveal the richness of life to those willing to see. Awarded Photographer of the Week - Week 03
Paul Carruthers
United Kingdom
1970
Born on Merseyside in 1970, Carruthers was a footballer first and creative second. Only after a knee injury ended his playing career did he begin to see the world through a different lens. Wandering around the streets of Liverpool with his trusted Fuji, Carruthers’ early work examined the funny, the absurd and the beautiful. A move to Devon in the 2000’s saw him begin the approaches for which he is most famous for today. Serene landscapes and still water marked his style during this period, with an emphasis on strong contrasts and stylised seascapes. He became the British Life Photographer of the Year in 2017, with his photograph Lifeguard earning national news coverage. His photographs have toured Australia and Asia and he has been recognised by a number of prestigious magazines and competitions: most notably the Head On Photography Awards and the ND Awards. His seminal series Grockles explores the relationship between tourist (or Grockle, as they’re known in Devon) and local, and has garnered widespread accolades. Often taking a humorous tone to serious subjects, Carruthers’ work has tackled wide ranging topics including tourism, the housing crisis, light pollution, and more. His keen eye for light, shadow and colour, demonstrated through award winning images like ‘Vitamin C’ and ‘Better Call Saul’, is subtle in its use of its environment to illustrate meaning behind the centered characters. Through this work, Carruthers was recently crowned as Oneeyeland’s number 1 UK street photographer. His work continues to highlight one of the unseen crises at the heart of the UK, and in typical British style, to explore the humour, absurdity and beauty that are present in seaside communities across Devon and Cornwall. Statement: Imagine you’re on a Devon high street under the hot sun, or on the edge of a breakwater as the water strikes the stone. This is beautiful country, patchwork country. Fields knit together like coloured felt. Expensive boots strike against cobbles, or are stripped away and discarded in favour of sandy feet. The water is still; the water is uproarious. The locals wipe away a sheen of sweat. There is everything. Beauty and silence, underpinned by the absurdity of hordes of tourists descending upon a part of the world that for many years was home to nothing but fishermen, or, when times were bad, shipwreckers. Second homes sit dormant for most of the year. Industries strain under the pressure of the boom and bust of the holiday season. For an artist, this is a treasure trove. Nature and people both exist simultaneously in ideal form and under great stress. I’ve explored a number of projects over the years, from the horses of Carlisle Bay in Barbados, to Lost in Venice, but my greatest body of works lies in both my landscape series Devotion, and my street photography series Grockles. It is in these that I paint an honest picture of a region and its people.
Jean-Pierre Laffont
Jean-Pierre Laffont attended the School of Graphic Art in Vevey, Switzerland, where he graduated with a Master's Degree in Photography. He was a founding member of the Gamma USA and Sygma Photo News agencies. For more than five decades, Laffont traveled the globe, covering the news, the people, and the social and economic issues of his time. His photos were published in the world's leading news magazines, including Le Figaro, London Sunday Times, Newsweek, Paris Match, Stern, and Time. He was named one of the one hundred most important people in photography. Among the numerous awards Laffont has received are the Overseas Press Club of America's Madeline Dane Ross Award, the World Press Photo General Picture Award, University of Missouri's World Understanding Award and First Prize from the New York Newspaper Guild. In 1996 he was honored with the National French Order of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (a Knight in the National French Order of Arts and Letters). In 2016 Jean Pierre was named International Photographer of the Year of the Pingyao Photo Festival in China. In 2020 he received The Lucie Award for Achievement in Photojournalism and The Visa D'Or Award du Figaro Magazine for Lifetime Achievement. Laffont resides in New York with his wife Eliane, his daughter and his two granddaughters. Awards and Honors: 1962: Cross for Military Valor for his humanitarian acts during the Algerian War 1979: First Prize: New York Newspaper Guild, for "Child Labor"; Overseas Press Club: Madeline Dane Ross award, for originating the use of photography to raise awareness of child labor conditions around the world. 1980: World Press: First Prize, General Picture category; University of Missouri, School of Journalism: First Prize, World Understanding Award 1996: French National Order of Merit: named Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres 2016: International Photographer of the year of The Pingyao Photo Festival; China. 2020: Lucie Award for Achievement in Photojournalism. 2020: Visa D'Or Award du Figaro Magazine for Lifetime Achievement. Bibliography: Contribution to the A Day in the Life Series (HarperCollins): 1983: A day in the life of Hawaii 1984: A day in the life of Canada 1985: A day in the life of Japan 1986: A day in the life of United States 1987: A day in the life of Spain 1987: A day in the life of USSR 1989: A day in the life of China 1990: A day in the life of Italy 1991: A day in the life of Ireland 1992: A day in the life of Hollywood Other Selected Publications: 1986: The Long March (Intercontinental Press); in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Mao Zedong's historical Long March 1989: Trois Jour en France (Nathan/France) 1992: America Then and Now (Cohen/HarperCollins) 1999: Les 100 photos du Siècle (Editions du Chêne) 2003: America 24/7 in Manhattan (NY State) 2011: The New York Times Magazine: Photographs (Aperture Foundation) 2013: 40 ans de Photojournalisme: Generation Sygma (Editions de La Martinière/France) Monographs: 1976: CB Bible, Porter Bibb (Doubleday) 1981: Women of Iron (Playboy) 2008: Jean-Pierre Laffont Foreign Correspondent (Editions C.D.P/France) 2014: Photographer's Paradise: Turbulent America 1960-1990: (Glitterati) named best picture book by The Lucie Awards 2017: New York City Up and Down: (Glitterati) 2019: Nos Stars en Amèrique Cartes postales de Jean Pierre Laffont: (Editions de La Martinière) For special print requests please contact us directly.
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AAP Magazine #56 Shadows
Win a Solo Exhibition in April
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Latest Interviews

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.
Exclusive Interview with Josh S. Rose
Josh S. Rose is a multidisciplinary artist working across photography, film, and writing. His practice bridges visual and performing arts, with a strong focus on movement, emotion, and the expressive potential of the image. Known for his long-standing collaborations with leading dance companies and performers, Rose brings together authenticity and precise composition—a balance he describes as “technical romanticism.” His work has been commissioned and exhibited internationally, appearing in outlets such as Vogue, at the Super Bowl, in film festivals, and most recently as a large-scale installation for Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. A sought-after collaborator, he has worked with major artists, cultural institutions, and brands, following a previous career as Chief Creative Officer at Interpublic Group and the founder of Humans Are Social. We asked him a few questions about his life and work.
Interview with Maureen Ruddy Burkhart
Photographer Maureen Ruddy Burkhart brings a quietly attentive and deeply human sensibility to her exploration of the world through images. Shaped by a life immersed in photography, film, and visual storytelling, her work is guided by intuition, observation, and an enduring interest in the emotional undercurrents of everyday life. With a practice rooted in both fine art traditions and documentary awareness, she approaches her subjects with sensitivity, allowing subtle moments to emerge naturally rather than be imposed. Her series Til Death, selected as the Solo Exhibition for February 2025, reflects this long-standing commitment to photography as a space for reflection rather than spectacle. Drawn to moments that exist just outside the expected frame, Burkhart’s images suggest narratives without resolving them, leaving room for ambiguity, humor, and quiet connection. We asked her a few questions about her life and work.
Exclusive Interview with Peter Ydeen
Winner of AAP Magazine #45 Travels, his series reflects this unique vision—capturing the spirit of place through subtle layers of light, color, and emotion. Whether traveling abroad or observing the rhythms of his own surroundings, Ydeen creates images that feel both grounded and enchanted, inviting viewers into a world where reality and reverie meet.
Exclusive Interview with Julie Wang
Chinese-born photographer Julie Wang brings a poetic, contemplative sensitivity to her visual exploration of the world. Having lived for nearly equal parts of her life in China, Europe, and the United States, she approaches her subjects with the nuanced perspective of someone shaped by many cultures. This blend of distance, curiosity, and emotional resonance infuses her work with a quiet depth, allowing her to reveal the fragile beauty and subtle tensions that often pass unnoticed.
Exclusive Interview with Ghawam Kouchaki
American photographer Ghawam Kouchaki brings a sharply observant and introspective gaze to the streets of Japan’s capital. Based in Los Angeles, he approaches Tokyo with the distance — and curiosity — of an outsider, allowing him to uncover the city’s subtle contradictions, quiet tensions, and fleeting gestures that often go unnoticed. His series Tokyo no no, selected as the Solo Exhibition for December 2024, explores the hidden undercurrents of urban life: the unspoken rules, the small ruptures in routine, the poetic strangeness found in everyday moments. Through muted tones, instinctive timing, and meticulous framing, Kouchaki reveals a Tokyo that exists somewhere between reality and imagination — both intimate and enigmatic. We asked him a few questions about his life and work.
Exclusive Interview with Tommi Viitala
Tommi Viitala, winner of AAP Magazine #44: Street, is a Finnish photographer celebrated for his striking and cinematic street photography. With a keen eye for atmosphere and composition, he captures fleeting urban moments that reveal the poetry of everyday life. His work often explores the tension between solitude and connection within contemporary cityscapes, blending documentary realism with artistic sensibility. Viitala’s photographs have been exhibited internationally and recognized for their strong visual storytelling and emotional depth. We asked him a few questions about his life and work.
Exclusive Interview with Robert Mack
Robert Mack is a California-based visual artist, photographer, and filmmaker. His fine art photography and films have been exhibited widely in the United States and Europe, with major shows at the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Reiss-Engelhorn Museum in Mannheim, Germany. Both institutions hold his work in their permanent collections. Working across different media, Mack has built a career exploring the complexities of human presence and representation. In 1981, while living in Baltimore, he produced The Perkins Project: Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity, a rare photographic and film study inside Maryland’s hospital for the criminally insane. These stark yet compassionate black-and-white portraits remain one of his most powerful and controversial bodies of work.
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