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Philippe Chancel
Philippe Chancel
Philippe Chancel

Philippe Chancel

Country: France
Birth: 1959

Over the past twenty years Philippe Chancel’s photography has explored the complex, shifting and fertile territory where art, documentaries and journalism meet. His is a constantly evolving project, focusing on the status of images when they are confronted with what constitutes “images” in the contemporary world.

Born in 1959, Philippe Chancel now works and lives in Paris. He was introduced to photography at a very young age, took an economics degree at the University of Paris (Nanterre) followed by a post-graduate diploma in journalism at the Cfpj in Paris.

Philippe Chancel’s work has been widely exhibited and published in France and abroad in a number of prestigious publications. These include « Regards d’artistes » – portraits of contemporary artists –, « Souvenirs » – a series of portraits of great capital cities (Paris, London, New York, Tokyo, Brussels) glimpsed through shop windows - produced in collaboration with Valérie Weill, and, lastly, his North Korean project, which brought him international recognition.

« DPRK », in which Chancel offers a revealing and original vision of North Korea, was first shown in 2006 at the « Rencontres d’Arles », then at the C/O Berlin. It was also exhibited at the Photographers’ Gallery in London, as part of the Deutsche Borse photography prize exhibition, where it won the visitors’ poll. « DPRK » also appeared in book form, published by Thames and Hudson. His Emirates project was initially presented at the 53rd Venice Biennale in the Abu Dhabi pavilion, curated by Catherine David, and was part of the « Dreamlands » exhibition at the Pompidou Centre from May 2010 followed by many others all over the world. « Desert sprit » published by Xavier Barral and « Dubai » published by be-pôles already present this project in book form. « Workers Emirates », published by Bernard Chauveau Editeur, is his latest photo essay book.

Philippe Chancel is currently working on a new long-term project entitled « Datazone » that aims to explore the many-faceted aftermaths within the documentary field, revealing some of the world’s most singular lands which are recurrently in the news or, conversely, hardly ever picked up by the media radar. This visionary quest has already taken him from Port au Prince to Kabul via Fukushima, Niger's delta, Pyongyang or Astana. His work is included in many permanent public collections as well as private collections.
 

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More Great Photographers To Discover

Micha Bar-Am
Germany
1930
Micha Bar-Am is a German-born Israeli journalistic photographer. His images cover every aspect of life in Israel in the past sixty years. Since 1968 he has been a correspondent with Magnum, the photographic cooperative. From 1968 to 1992, he was The New York Times photographic correspondent from Israel. He has published several books of photography, beginning in 1957. His work is held in numerous international museums and institutes throughout the world. Born in Berlin to a Jewish family, Bar-Am moved with his parents in 1936 to then British Mandate of Palestine. He attended local schools. He was drafted in 1948 and served during the 1947–1949 Palestine war, when he was part of the Palmach Unit. Afterward, he worked several jobs, including as a locksmith and a mounted guard, before becoming a photographer. In 1949 he co-founded the kibbutz Malkia in Galilee. Later he became a member of Kibbutz Gesher HaZiv. In the early 1940s, Bar-Am started taking pictures of life on a kibbutz; he used borrowed cameras until he bought a Leica. After his military service, he began photographing more seriously. After publishing his first book, Across Sinai (1957), Bar-Am gained work as a photographic reporter and in the editorial staff of the Israeli Army magazine, Ba-Mahaneh, from 1957 to 1967. In 1961 he covered the Eichmann trial. In 1967 he covered the Six-Day War, during which time he met Cornell Capa. Many of his war images brought him renown. Since 1968, he has been a correspondent for Magnum Photos. In 1974 he helped Capa found the International Center of Photography in New York City. In 1968, Bar-Am also became the photographic correspondent from Israel for The New York Times, a position he held until 1992. From 1977 to 1992, he was head of the department of photography at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. He continues to work on his photography. He writes about his work: "I keep my internal eye open for that other, metaphorical image that transcends illustration to achieve a wholeness of its own. I strive for the elusive entity that is both evidence and evocation, public record and personal vision." He says that he has adopted Robert Capa's saying, "If your photographs aren't good enough, you weren't close enough," but has added a caveat: "If you're too close you lose perspective. It is not easy to be fair with the facts and keep your own convictions out of the picture. It is almost impossible to be both a participant in the events and their observer, witness, interpreter. The effort brings great frustration, and equally great reward."Source: Wikipedia Born in Berlin in 1930, Micha Bar-Am emigrated to Israel (then Palestine) with his parents at age six. During his youth, Bar-Am became active in the pre-state underground and was drafted in 1948. After serving in the war, he helped found the Kibbutz Malkiya in Galilee. Soon after, Bar-Am moved to Kibbutz Gesher-Haziv, where he took his first photographs of archeological digs in the Judean desert. He borrowed his camera from an American member of his kibbutz who teased that though Bar-Am’s photographs were better than his own, they would never be used, as Bar- Am was only a “kibbutz dilettante.” Bar-Am proved this statement wrong; his work was soon published in the Israeli Army magazine Bama Hana. In 1957, he was offered a full time job as a staff photographer for the magazine. In the following years, Bar-Am continued to document the Israeli army. In 1967, he photographed the Six-Day War, during which he met Cornell Capa. Capa and Bar-Am became friends and he introduced Bar-Am to Magnum, a photographic co-operative where Bar-Am would become an associate. In 1968, Bar-Am began his career as a New York Times correspondent and documented the Israeli Palestinian conflict from Suez to the Golan Heights. Bar-Am was closely involved with the founding of the International Center of Photography in 1974, working alongside Cornell Capa as a curator. He became the Curator of Photography for the Tel Aviv Art Museum in 1977. He left this position in 1992, and has been working on his own photography ever since. Though often classified as such, Micha Bar-Am is not merely a photojournalist (an assignation Bar-Am himself refuses). His work represents more than documentation of the action of war. Bar-Am’s photography captures the changed lives and lifestyles of Israeli men and women as a result of the years of conflict. His carefully composed shots contain a thoughtfulness and artfulness often unseen within documentary photography. His work continues to be published and exhibited around the world.Source: International Center of Photography
Philipp Bolthausen
United States
Akzidenz currently living and working between Paris and New York. His education focused around art and communication studies in Paris and New York, where he lived and worked for many years before returning to Paris. He presently works as an art director for some of the mosthigh-end luxury brands worldwide.This background has a rooted presence in his work - in that he is less interested in the representational qualities of the photograph, focusing more on the exploration of the fringes of each terrain. This focus stems from the will to not use photography as a traditional means of representation of reality but creating a platform for discourse and thought. In order to achieve this dais, he tries to invent his own visual language, using multi-exposures, superposition, juxtaposition and ‘sequentiality’ to interpret, rewrite and therefore, relate to manufactured experiences which are being created on a daily basis by mass media.In short his photography can be summed into Objects, which create an intrinsic world of their own, or in his own words: “My works aren’t pictures of something, but objects about something.”Akzidenz purposefully chooses to use the 20th century medium of film allowing him to see, and therefore place the present into perspective. The choice of black & white and grain become the signifiers that depict and foster the equivalence of life and shape within his work. The single ‘effects’ of contemporary post-processing are not important to his work, to the point that he refuses to use such ‘effects’ - anything beyond the traditional workflow of the darkroom is prohibited in his work.
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.
Justine Kurland
United States
1969
Justine Kurland was born in Warsaw, New York. She earned her B.F.A. from the School of Visual Arts in 1996. She went on to Yale University and graduated with an M.F.A. in 1998. Kurland first gained public notice with her work in the group show Another Girl, Another Planet (1999), at New York's Van Doren Waxter gallery. The show included her large c-print staged tableau pictures of neo-romantic landscapes inhabited by young adolescent girls, half-sprites, half juvenile delinquents. This was her first exhibition of a photographic interest that lasted from 1997, when she began taking pictures of her mentor Laurie Simmons's babysitter and her friends, to 2002. Altogether, Kurland published 69 pictures of girls in a series called Girl Pictures. The staged photos take place in urban and wilderness settings, with girls depicted as though to imply they are runaways, hopeful and independent. As landscapes, she chose the "secret places" of late childhood; wasteland on the edges of suburbia, "owned" only by a feral nature and unsupervised children. Her book Spirit West (2000) featured similar work on a more ambitious scale. In early 2001 Kurland spent several months in New Zealand, where she created similar work with schoolgirls there. In her show Community, Skyblue (2002), Kurland turned to document the utopian communes of Virginia and California, highlighting the unworldly aspirations of the communards by having them appear naked in her pictures and showing them as only distant figures in their landscape. In 2003 she had European solo shows Golden Dawn (London) and Welcome Home (Vienna), based around these series of commune images. Old Joy (2004) turns to men. She shows visionaries trekking naked into the wilderness, where they undergo spiritual experiences. In her 2004 show Songs of Experience, she explored medieval and Biblical imagery. In 2005 she had a solo show in Japan. After having a son, Kurland began to photograph pregnant women and new mothers (Mama Baby, 2004-2007). Her son's interest in trains would lead her to photograph hobos and trains from 2007 to 2011 (This Train Is Bound for Glory); as he grew up, she became interested in American masculinity, and created photographs of cars and mechanics (Sincere Auto Care, 2014-2015). Kurland's work appears on the cover and liner notes of French electronic/shoegaze group M83's 2004 album Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts, as well as the covers of the EP releases for the album. In an article in ArtForum (April 2000) she talked of her inspirations: "I'm always thinking about painting: nineteenth-century English picturesque landscapes and the utopian ideal, genre paintings, and also Julia Margaret Cameron's photographs. I started going to museums at an early age, but my imagery is equally influenced by illustrations from the fairy tales I read as a child." Selections from her work Highway Kind were published in the book The Open Road: Photography & the American Road Trip by David Campany.
George Rodger
United Kingdom
1908 | † 1995
George Rodger was a British photojournalist and war photographer, best known for his work documenting World War II and Africa. He was born on May 20, 1908, in Hale, Cheshire, England, and began his career as a photographer in the 1930s, working for magazines such as National Geographic and Illustrated London News. In 1940, Rodger joined the British Army as a war photographer, and covered the North Africa campaign and the invasion of Sicily. He later joined the RAF and covered the Normandy invasion and the liberation of Europe. His photographs from this period captured the harsh realities of war and the human impact of the conflict. When I discovered that I could look at the horror of Belsen—4,000 dead and starving lying around—and think only of a nice photographic composition, I knew something had happened to me and it had to stop. -- George Rodger After the war, George Rodger traveled to Africa and documented the continent's people and cultures. He spent several years living and working in West Africa, and his photographs from this period captured the daily lives of the people and the beauty of the land. He also documented the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya, which aimed to end British colonial rule, and the effects of the rebellion on the local population. In addition to his work as a photojournalist, Rodger was also a founding member of the Magnum Photos agency, along with other renowned photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, and David "Chim" Seymour. He served as the first president of the agency and played an important role in establishing its reputation as one of the premier photographic agencies in the world. Rodger's photographs have been widely exhibited and published, and his work is held in several major museums and collections, including the National Portrait Gallery in London, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris. I had no contact with my contemporaries in the photographic field, nor even knowledge of their work. So I was influenced by no-one and there were no short cuts for me. I was self-taught the hard way, by trial and error... -- George Rodger Throughout his career, George Rodger always sought to document the human experience, whether it was the horrors of war or the beauty of everyday life. He believed that photography had the power to change the world and to bring about social change, and his work continues to inspire and inform photographers and photojournalists today. George Rodger passed away on July 9, 1995, in London, England. His legacy continues to inspire photographers around the world with his dedication to document the human experience, and his work remains iconic and powerful to this day.
Hannah Villiger
Switzerland
1951 | † 1997
Capturing the essence of self, frequently in sensual sequences, Hannah Villiger employed her own body as both material and subject. She played a pivotal role in the artistic emancipation of women in the 1980s. Born in 1951 in Cham, near Zug, Villiger earned a diploma in sculpture from Lucerne’s Schule für Gestaltung at the age of twenty-three. Her early work swiftly garnered attention from critics, including Jean-Christophe Ammann, whose support catapulted her to recognition. Seeking her own artistic language, Villiger gradually transitioned to exclusive work in photography. Initially using a reflex camera and producing black-and-white images, her early work retained the influence of Land Art and Arte Povera. In 1980, she exclusively embraced Polaroid film, shaping her photography around a singular subject—her own body. Over a period of seventeen years, Villiger approached her body in a novel way, avoiding personal anecdotes and the allure of the flesh. Shamelessly and without narcissism, she focused solely on the volume and forms of her anatomy, manipulating and contorting it as one would with clay or a sculptor's chisel. The considerable size of these Polaroids, enlarged to be larger than life, imbued the images with a commanding physical presence. Yet, unlike some of her contemporaries associated with the Body Art movement, Villiger imposed no voyeurism on the viewer. In 1986, she settled in Paris, participating in the Venice Biennale in 1991 and the São Paulo Biennial in 1994, where she exhibited alongside Pipilotti Rist. Despite her premature death at the age of forty-six, Villiger left behind a bold and distinctive body of work, featured in public and private collections in Switzerland and abroad, notably in the United States. Institutional exhibitions featuring Hannah Villiger's work have been held at various venues, including the Centre culturel suisse, Paris (1986); Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel (1988); Kunstverein Frankfurt (1991); and the 22nd Bienal de São Paulo (1994), where she showcased her art in the Swiss Pavilion alongside Pipilotti Rist. Posthumous solo exhibitions have been organized at Kunsthalle Basel (2001); Kunsthalle Bonn (2001); nGbK Neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst, Berlin (2002); MAMCO Musée d'art moderne et contemporain, Geneva (2007); Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel (2008); and Centre culturel suisse, Paris (2012). Additionally, in 2020 and 2021, Villiger's work was featured in group exhibitions at Kolumba, Cologne, and the Museum zu Allerheiligen, Schaffhausen.
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