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Marcel Van Balken
Marcel Van Balken
Marcel Van Balken

Marcel Van Balken

Country: Netherlands

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

 

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Fern L. Nesson
Fern L. Nesson
United States
Fern L. Nesson is a graduate of Harvard Law School. She received an M.A. in American History from Brandeis and an M.F.A in Photography from the Maine Media College. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She practiced law in Boston for twenty years and subsequently taught American History and Mathematics. Nesson's photographs have been shown internationally in solo exhibitions at the Politecnico University in Torino, Italy, Les Rencontres de la Photographie in Arles, France, Ph21 Gallery in Budapest, Hungary and at The University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica. In the United States, Nesson has had solo exhibitions at the Griffin Museum of Photography, at MIT and Harvard, and at the Beacon Gallery in Boston, Massachusetts, the Pascal Gallery in Rockport, and Maine, and Through This Lens Gallery in Durham, NC. Additionally, her work has been selected for numerous juried exhibitions in the U.S., Barcelona, Rome and Budapest. Nesson's photobooks, Signet of Eternity and WORD, won the 10th and the 12th Annual Photobooks Award from the Davis-Orton Gallery. Her photography can be found at www.fernlnesson. Statement ''Art should not be copies of living things but... [itself] be [a] living thing – a real living form.'' Malevich (1916) My photographs capture the moment when mass becomes energy. My goal is to create living works of art that offer energy to the viewer. I shoot from reality; my images are never constructed, only sparingly edited. They distill a scene or an object it to its essence. Photographs that embody energy rely upon the camera to record a specific moment but, if they hit their mark, they escape and float free of it. The energy from the moment of capture enlivens these images. Like Cezanne's paintings, they are alive, they breathe. An energetic image expresses interconnectedness, visualizes movement and flow. It constitutes a moment of transcendence and teaches us that, although everything changes form, nothing is ever destroyed. It lives on, resonating with the past, celebrating the present, pointing to the future, embodying the universal, iconically representing the eternal. As Whitman’s wrote in Leaves of Grass, it can “chant the [viewer] into a new state of being, get him psychically airborne, boost him up to that height where he can identify with the past and commune with the future.”
Julien Sunyé
Julien Sunyé
Netherlands
1982
As a small child I was already overwhelmed by the beauty we find in the world, whether it was the warm colours of the setting sun on the reed I could see from my window, or the sun throwing Jacob’s ladders from the sky as it burst through the clouds. I’ve always felt there is something painful about beauty that appears and then passes without being able to hold onto it or to share it with others. I must have been about six or seven years old when I first attempted at capturing this beauty photographically and I haven’t stopped since. For many years I had been photographing the streets of Paris and Istanbul, inspired by the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson. Until I wanted to do make a triptych featuring a female nude in a war-torn landscape. It introduced me into the world of art nude photography which I haven’t left since, combining the beauty of the female form with that of land- and cityscapes. Recently I have started experimenting with mixed media, but the desire to capture beauty that passes with time still underpins my primary motivation to photograph. Awarded Photographer of the Week - Week 15
Larry Towell
Larry Towell
Canada
1953
Larry Towell (born 1953) is a Canadian photographer, poet, and oral historian. Towell is known for his photographs of sites of political conflict in the Ukraine, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Standing Rock and Afghanistan, among others. In 1988, Towell became the first Canadian member of Magnum Photos. Towell was born in Chatham-Kent, Ontario and grew up in a large family in rural Ontario, attending local schools. At college, he studied visual arts at York University in Toronto, where his interest in photography first began. In 1976 Towell volunteered to work in Calcutta, India, where he became interested in questions about the distribution of wealth and issues of land and landlessness. Returning to Canada, Towell taught folk music and wrote poetry during the 1980s. He became a freelance photographer in 1984. His early work included projects on the Contra war in Nicaragua, the civil war in El Salvador, relatives of the disappeared in Guatemala, and American Vietnam War veterans who worked to rebuild Vietnam. His first magazine essay looked at the ecological damages from the Exxon Valdez oil spill. In 1988, Towell joined the Magnum Photos agency, becoming the first Canadian associated with the group. He has had picture essays published in The New York Times, Life, Rolling Stone, and other magazines. His work has included documentation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Mennonite migrant workers in Mexico, and a personal project on his family's farm in southern Ontario. He works in both film and digital photography formats. He has said "Black and white is still the poetic form of photography. Digital is for the moment; black and white is an investment of time and love." He has also worked with panoramic cameras to documents the impact of natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina. From 2008 to 2011, Towell traveled five times to Afghanistan to photograph the social effects of the Afghan civil war. Between 2013 and 2015, Towell photographed the above and underground construction work in Toronto's Union Station. In 2015 his photo Isaac's first swim was published by Canada Post as a stamp. In 2016 Towell photographed the Standing Rock protest in Standing Rock, North Dakota. Towell has published books of photographs, poetry, and oral history. He has also recorded several audio CDs of original poetry and songs. Towell lives in rural Lambton County Ontario and sharecrops a 75-acre farm with his wife Ann and their four children.Source: Wikipedia Larry Towell is Canada's most decorated photojournalist and is the country's first photographer to be made a member of Magnum, the world's most prestigious photo agency that was founded by Henry Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa in 1947. Larry served as Vice-President of Magnum's New York office for several years between 2007 and 2016. After completing a Visual Arts degree at York University, Toronto, he began photographing and writing in Calcutta. He then went on to complete book projects in Central America on the Nicaraguan Contra War and on the relatives of the disappeared in Guatemala. In 1996, Towell completed a monograph based on ten years of reportage in the brutal civil war in El Salvador, followed by a major book on the Palestinians. His fascination with landlessness also led him to the Mennonite migrant workers of Mexico, an eleven-year work he completed in 2000. After receiving the inaugural Henri Cartier-Bresson Award, Larry finished a second critically acclaimed book on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict (No Man's Land, 2005), followed by The World From My Front Porch (2008) and most recently, Afghanistan (2014). Towell's photo stories have been published in many international magazines including; LIFE, The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Elle, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, Geo, and Stern. His international photo awards include: The Henri Cartier-Bresson Award (first recipient); several first place World Press awards including the 1994 Photo of the Year; a Hasselblad Award; The Alfred Eisenstadt Award; The Oskar Barnack Award; the first Roloff Beny Book prize, a Paul de Hueck and Norman Walford Career Achievement Award, the Prix Nadar of France, and a British Design and Art Direction (D&AD) Award. Larry is also a gifted writer and musician and is known for his innovative live performances incorporating original music, video, poetry, and stills. He is the author of four music albums, fourteen books, as well as Indecisive Moments (2008), an award-winning short film. Towell has had numerous one person and group exhibitions around the globe and is represented in many international public and private collections. His current projects include the war in Ukraine and Central American migrants crossing Mexico. Larry lives in rural Ontario where he sharecrops a 75-acre farm.Source: www.bulgergallery.com
Isa Leshko
Isa Leshko
United States
1971
Isa Leshko is a fine art photographer living in Philadelphia, PA. She has had solo exhibitions at the Corden|Potts Gallery, the Galveston Arts Center, the Griffin Museum of Photography, the Houston Center for Photography, the Silver Eye Center for Photography, and the Richard Levy Gallery. Her prints are in numerous private and public collections including the Boston Public Library, the Harry Ransom Center, Haverford College, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Her images have been published in print and/or online editions of The Atlantic, The Boston Globe, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, The Guardian, Harper’s Magazine, The New York Times, Photo District News and Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin.In 2012, Isa received both the Houston Center for Photography Fellowship and the Silver Eye Center for Photography Keystone Award for her Elderly Animals project. She was nominated for the 2011 Santa Fe Prize for Photography and was named a finalist for the 2011 New Orleans Photo Alliance Clarence John Laughlin Award.Isa grew up in Carteret, NJ and received her BA from Haverford College, where she studied cognitive psychology and neurobiology. She spent the 1990s working for dot.com startups as a project manager and software engineer before she discovered her passion for photography. She has lived in Houston, TX, Salem, MA and Providence, RI.
Jean-Marie Périer
Jean-Marie Périer
France
1940
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
Davide Monteleone
Davide Monteleone
Italy
1974
Davide Monteleone is a photographer, researcher, and a National Geographic Fellow. He works on long-term project using photography video and text, exploring the relation between structures of Power and individuals. Known for his specific interest in the post-soviet countries, he published five books: Dusha, Russian Soul in 2007, La Linea Inesistente, in 2009, Red Thistle in 2012 and Spasibo in 2013, The April Theses, 2017. His projects have brought him numerous awards, including several World Press Photo prizes, and grants such as the Aftermath Grant, European Publishers Award and Carmignac Photojournalism Award. He regularly contributes for leading publications all over the world, and his projects have been presented as installations, exhibitions and screenings at festivals and galleries worldwide including the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, Saatchi Gallery in London, MEP in Paris and Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome. He is engaged with educational activities, regularly lecturing at universities and teaching workshops internationally. Italian photographer born in 1974, member of VU’ Agency since 2017, based in Zürich (Switzerland) After beginning engineering studies, David Monteleone quickly turned to journalism and photography. Holding a Master research in Art and Politics from the Goldsmiths University in London, he first worked as an agency correspondent in Moscow from 2001 to 2003. Since 2003, Davide Monteleone’s documentary photographic writing has enabled him to carry out, between Italy and Russia, numerous editorial assignments and regular collaborations with prestigious international press titles (TIME Magazine, The New Yorker, National Geographic, etc.). He also develops long-term personal projects focused on social issues and conflictual relationship between Power and individuals. Particularly committed to documenting the survivals and new aspirations of the post-Soviet world, he published his first book Dusha, Russian Soul in 2007, followed by La Liena Inesistente in 2009, Red Thistle in 2012, Spasibo in 2013 , « The April Theses » in 2017 and « In The Russian East » in 2019. In 2014, he goes beyond the borders of the post-Soviet territories and initiates a work – still in progress – about geopolitical, socio-economic, and environmental impact of the New Silk Roads (“Yi Dai Yi Lu”) and thus about Chinese expansion on several continents. Exhibited in many countries, his work has received prestigious awards, among which several World Press Photo awards (2007, 2009, 2011), the Aftermath Project award (2010), the European Publishers Award for Photography (2011), the European Photo Exhibition Award (2012), the Carmignac Prize for photojournalism (2013), the Asia Society Fellowship (2016) or the National Geographic Storytelling Fellowship (2019-2020).Source: VU' l'agence
Guilhem Alandry
Guilhem Alandry
France
Guilhem is a London based photographer and multimedia producer who has exhibited his work as an international artist around the world. He founded Documentography in 2000 and has worked in socially engaged issues for a number of charities, agencies, magazines and galleries. He is a pioneer of interactive photographic narratives and is highly accomplished in new media forms. He is a true multimedia artist, versatile and comfortable using photography, video, VR technology and sound and always looking for new ways to bring them together. Guilhem won important awards and his work as been shown in forms as varied as print, interactive projects, exhibitions and TV.
Alessandro Zanoni
Alessandro Zanoni
Italy
1970
Alessandro Zanoni is an Italian Art Director and Photographer. His interest encompasses a profound love for urban landscapes, architecture, and the allure of night photography. Zanoni's reportages have garnered recognition, finding a place in esteemed publications such as Domus, Life Framer, Vice, Fubiz, Divisare, Photography of China, Creative Boom, Pellicola Mag, Il Fotografo, Style Magazine, and many others. His lens has captured the essence of China with in-depth reports on Wuhan, documenting the evolution of ghost towns in Inner Mongolia, and chronicling the gradual disappearance of urban villages in the bustling cities of Shenzhen and Shanghai. Beyond China, Zanoni explored the urban landscapes of Tokyo, Taipei, Seoul, and Hanoi. Delving into unusual and desolate urban vistas, he explores the intricate relationship between humanity and the cities it inhabits, creating a visual dialogue that transcends borders. Zanoni also often turns his attention to the landscapes of his upbringing, immersing himself in the ethereal mists of the Po Valley. A recipient of numerous international photography accolades, including honours from the International Photography Awards, The Independent Photographer, Sony World Photography Awards, Lens Culture, and Life Framer, Zanoni's portfolio graces solo and group exhibitions in Europe and the USA.
Iness Rychlik
Iness Rychlik
Poland
Iness Rychlik is a Polish-born photographer and filmmaker with a particular interest in historical drama. Despite her severe myopia, she has been dedicated to visual storytelling for over a decade. Iness graduated with First Class Honours in Film from Screen Academy Scotland. Set in Victorian London, her final-year film ‘The Dark Box' follows an unhappily married woman, who pursues photography to escape from her oppressive relationship. ‘The Dark Box' premiered at Camerimage, where Iness received a Golden Tadpole nomination for her cinematography. Rychlik is recognised for her dark feminine erotica. She is fascinated by the idea of conveying sexuality and cruelty in a subtle evocative way. Her conceptual self-portraits aim to provoke the viewer's imagination, rather than satisfy it. ARTIST STATEMENT Although greatly influenced by historical drama, my work is deeply personal and symbolic in nature. I suffer from a hyper-sensitive skin condition. As a teenager, I would often attempt to cover it up; I resented being asked if I had accidentally burnt myself. Throughout the years, I have learnt to see my skin as a canvas of expression, rather than an ugly inconvenience that should be kept hidden. I use my very own body to explore the themes of solitude and objectification, often employing antique garments or props to depict the parallels between my experiences and the inferior female position in Victorian Britain. I honour the concept of transforming hidden pain into art – exposed, disturbing and beautiful.
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All About Photo Awards 2026
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