Marcel Van Balken

Netherlands Photographer

Marcel van Balken is a self-taught photographer from the Netherlands for about 40 years. As a photographer he is interested in specific themes and conceptual photography. He believes in working thematically with an absolute preference for surrealistic and creative photography. He gives himself a kind of theme or assignment and will not stop making photographs unless he thinks he got everything out of this assignment.

Marcel moves as a photographer ideally in the field of surrealism and magic realism. He prefers to create photographic images inspired by everyday reality combined with his own imagination. He strives to carefully compose photographic compositions of realistic looking scenes in unreal and sometimes magical spheres.

With his pictures he wants to tell a story with some level of abstraction: the image is not an explicit example of the concept, but a general expression of the idea. His goal in conceptual photography is to create a concrete image of abstract definition; to take a concept or idea and create a visual representation of it. A way of looking at the world in a completely different, sometimes surrealistic, manner.

Website:

www.photure.nl

Selected Work:

More Great Photographers To Discover

Lee Friedlander

Nationality: American

Born: 1934

Lee Friedlander (born July 14, 1934) is an American photographer and artist. In the 1960s and 70s, working primarily with 35mm cameras and black and white film, Friedlander evolved an influential and often imitated visual language of urban "social landscape," with many of his photographs including fragments of store-front reflections, structures framed by fences, posters and street-signs. Friedlander studied photography at the Art Center College of Design located in (…)

All About Lee Friedlander

Joakim Eskildsen

Nationality: Danish

Born: 1971

From www.joakimeskildsen.com
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 (…)

All About Joakim Eskildsen

Marco Gualazzini

Nationality: Italian

Born: 1976

Born in Parma in 1976, Marco Gualazzini began his career as a photographer in 2004, with his home town's local daily, La Gazzetta di Parma.

His recent works include reportage on microfinance in India, on the freedom of expression in Myanmar, on the discrimination of Christians in Pakistan.

For the last few years he has been covering Africa extensively.
He devised and took part in the creation of a documentary for the Italian national TV network RAI on the (…)

All About Marco Gualazzini

Mario Giacomelli

Nationality: Italian

Born: 1926 - Died: 2000

Giacomelli was a self-taught photographer. At 13, he left high school, began working as a typesetter and spent his weekends painting. After the horrors of World War II, he turned to the more immediate medium of photography. He wandered the streets and fields of post-war Italy, inspired by the gritty Neo-Realist films of Vittorio De Sica and Roberto Rossellini, and influenced by the renewed Italian photographer Giuseppe Cavalli, and developed a style characterized by (…)

All About Mario Giacomelli

Jeff Brouws

Nationality: American

Born: 1955

Jeff Brouws, born in San Francisco in 1955, is a self-taught artist. Pursuing photography since age 13, where he roamed the railroad and industrial corridors of the South Bay Peninsula, Brouws has compiled a visual survey of America's evolving rural, urban and suburban cultural landscapes. Using single photographs as subtle narratives and compiling typologies to index the nation's character, he revels in the "readymades" found in many of these environments. Influenced (…)

All About Jeff Brouws

Marjorie Salvaterra

Nationality: American

Marjorie Salvaterra�s images reveal �a fine line between sanity and insanity,� according to Virginia Heckart, Associate Curator of Photography at The Getty Center. Salvaterra�s exhibitions include: Rencontres d�Arles, Arles, France; Clark-Oshin Gallery, Los Angeles, Solo Exhibit, 2011; MOPLA Opening Night Solo Exhibit - 2011, Los Angeles; "Fuck Pretty" - Robert Berman Gallery, Los Angeles, 2011, �Classic Camera Show,� Rayko Photo Center, San Francisco; �Contrast LA,� at A&I (…)

All About Marjorie Salvaterra

Zanele Muholi

Nationality: South African

Born: 1972

Zanele Muholi was born in Umlazi, Durban, in 1972. She completed an Advanced Photography course at the Market Photo Workshop in Newtown and held her first solo exhibition at the Johannesburg Art Gallery in 2004. She has worked as a community relations officer for the Forum for the Empowerment of Women (FEW), a black lesbian organisation based in Gauteng, and as a photographer and reporter for Behind the Mask, an online magazine on lesbian and gay issues in Africa. Her work (…)

All About Zanele Muholi

Paola Gareri

Nationality: Italian

Born in Calabria, South Italy
Studied Art and Literature in Bologna and Rome. Specialised in Photography at IED Rome.
Works like freelance in advertising then in anthropological reportage for Ministry of Culture in Italy.
The photography is for me like a mystic instant. When I can put into the small rectangle all my essence, reorganizing my interior universe through the apparent form of the outside world, the photo takes my own form and then I�m happy. This moment (…)

All About Paola Gareri

Robert Adams

Nationality: American

Born: 1937

Robert Adams (born May 8, 1937) is an American photographer who has focused on the changing landscape of the American West. His work first came to prominence in the mid-1970s through the book The New West (1974) and the exhibition New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape (1975). He was a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow in photography in 1973 and 1980, and he received the MacArthur Foundation's MacArthur Fellowship in 1994.

(…)

All About Robert Adams

Anton Gorlin

Nationality: Australian

Anton Gorlin is a landscape and a real estate photographer, who tries to capture the essence of the moment and beauty of shapes and forms.
Originally from Ukraine, he now lives and works in Sydney, Australia. Anton enjoys the beauty of Australian nature and does several trips a year to keep his portfolio growing. Prints of his photos landed in Ukraine, Russia, Germany, Australia, USA and other countries. Anton's works have been published in various magazines and (…)

All About Anton Gorlin