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Win a Solo Exhibition in June 2026 + An Exclusive Interview!
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Chad Cowan
Chad Cowan
Chad Cowan

Chad Cowan

Country: United States
Birth: 1984

Chad Cowan is a photographer and aspiring filmmaker who has been chasing storms across America's Tornado Alley over the past 10 years and 200,000 miles. His goal is to capture the awe inspiring beauty of nature in the most extreme and violent weather on earth. Cowan's current film project for which he is seeking financing and distribution is a collection of timelapses of these supercells shot in 8k resolution.

Growing up in Kansas, the epicenter of severe weather on the planet, he quickly became obsessed with thunderstorms. Inspired by a few timely weather-related gifts from his grandfather at a young age, Cowan decided he wanted to chase them once he had his driver's license.

Cowan's photos have been published around the globe and his work has appeared in major motion pictures, and on most national news outlets. In 2010, his 'Icemaker' photo of the supercell that dropped the largest hailstone ever recorded on earth came in second place in a National Geographic photo contest.

He has a BS in Economics from Kansas State University

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More Great Photographers To Discover

Antonio Aragón  Renuncio
I have always loved photography... and tell stories. Browse faces, roads, lights... and shadows. I have no idea what that can last a lifetime -boredom prevails in too many hearts- that can happen within it. But what I know for sure, is the wonderful and perfect division of a second in magical fractions of light and color. And that in my world, in my mind it would be more accurate, it´s an argument more than enough to even let life steal. One "one hundred twenty-fifth of a second" may be the closest thing to eternity... And there was light... And that happened in some distant land across the vast ocean... Antonio Aragón Renuncio Since the mid-90s always involved with photography: Founds and chairs "Nostromo" Photographers Association (Spain). Photography professor (+15 years) in several universities: UC (Spain), UAM, UCA and URACCAN (Nicaragua)... He organizes and directs the I Photography Festival of Santander. He writes about photography in different publications and publishes reportages in international media. He was Publisher in "Xplorer" Magazine (Nicaragua). He has been free-lance photographer for several International News Agencies. General Manager in Xtreme Photo WS (Burkina Faso, Africa). He organizes and directs the Solidarity Photography Days "Fotografía un Mundo Mejor" (Murcia, Spain)... In 2003 he founds, and since then he presides, the NGO OASIS (www.ongoasis.org) which develops every year medical projects in some of the most depressed areas of the Gulf of Guinea in Africa. More than 80 exhibitions and several awards: IPOTY, Xativa International Photo Awards, Siena International Photo Awards, Moscow International Foto Awards, Rivne Photo Arts Cup, Odessa/Batumi Photo Days, Tokyo International Foto Awards, Direct Look, Photography Grant, HIPA, Indian Photo Festival, Photo Nikon Pro, III Documentary Photography Days, POYLatam, Humanity Photo Awards UNESCO/CFPA, II Photojournalism Biennial, CFC Medal, GEA Photowords, REVELA, FIAP & CEF Medal, Latin-American Documentary Photo Award...
Félix Bonfils
France
1831 | † 1885
Félix Adrien Bonfils was a French photographer and writer who was active in the Middle East. He was one of the first commercial photographers to produce images of the Middle East on a large scale and amongst the first to employ a new method of colour photography, developed in 1880. He was born in Saint-Hippolyte-du-Fort and died in Alès. Félix worked as a bookbinder. In 1860, he joined General d'Hautpoul's expedition to the Levant, organized by France following the massacre of Christians in the civil conflict between Christians and Druze in Mount Lebanon and Damascus. On his return to France, it is thought that Félix was taught the heliogravure printing process by Abel Niépce de Saint-Victor and opened a printing office in Alès in 1864. Soon after returning from Lebanon, he became a photographer. In 1857, he married Marie-Lydie Cabanis. When his son, Adrien, fell ill, Félix remembered the green hills around Beirut and sent him there to recover, being accompanied by Félix's wife. The family moved to Beirut in 1867 where they opened a photographic studio called "Maison Bonfils". Source: Wikipedia Félix Bonfils and his wife Lydie (1837-1918) came from Saint Hippolyte du Fort in the Gard. As a binder, then a printer, and finally a photographer trained by Niépce de Saint Victor, Félix Bonfils stayed in Lebanon in 1860 during France’s military expedition. He soon decided to transfer his activity there, and so Bonfils’s photographic studio was founded in Beirut in 1867. Bonfils was not a pioneer photography, yet he was the first Frenchman to open a studio in Beirut. His wife, soon assisted by their son Adrien (1861-1929), produced portraits and genre scenes as they travelled throughout Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt, Turkey and Greece before bringing back their shots. The Bonfils studio was above all renowned for its landscapes, sites and views of architecture made first of all for artists, wealthy travellers, art historians and archaeologists, then for an increasing number of tourists. Bonfils immediately became extremely active: at the beginning of the 1870s his catalogue included some fifteen thousand shots, five hundred and ninety-one negatives from Egypt, Palestine, Syria and Greece, and nine thousand stereoscopic views. In 1876, Constantinople was added. A new catalogue resuming these images was published in 1876. These shots were sold one by one on demand, but also brought together in albums. In 1872, Bonfils started out by presenting Architecture antique. Egypte. Grèce. Asie Mineure. Album de photographies published by Ducher in Paris and including fifty albumen originals tipped onto cards with printed captions. For the Paris World Fair in 1878, he produced a series of five volumes entitled: Souvenirs d’Orient : album pittoresque des sites, villes et ruines les plus remarquables… published by their author in Alès in 1877-1878 and covering the Orient from Egypt and Nubia (volumes I and II) to Athens and Constantinople (volume V). Each album included around forty original, tipped-in photographs, as well as an “historical, archaeological and descriptive notice opposite each plate”. These collections were thus offered to the buyers in a finished form, a little like the engraved keepsakes from the 1830s. They won a medal at the World Fair and the department of Stamps at the then Bibliothèque Impériale acquired the entire collection. At this time, the firm, which was now divided between Alès and Beirut, was renamed Bonfils et Cie. This enterprise had a commercial rationale: it was important for it to offer as broad an offer as possible covering all the countries of the Middle East, with all the sites, monuments and landscapes sought-out by its clientele. For this reason, Félix Bonfils was soon unable to do everything on his own. Apart from his wife and son, he took on the help of assistants who have mostly remained anonymous, as well as local photographers also from the Gard, such as Tancrède Dumas (1830-1905) and Jean-Baptiste Charlier (1822-1907) who sold on their shots to him. In 1875 Félix Bonfils felt the need to distribute his prints from Europe, even if he also had a network of foreign correspondents as can be seen in their often bilingual captions. He left his wife and son to manage the Beirut studio and moved back to Alès in the Gard to organize mail ordering of all the images they produced on the banks of the Mediterranean. After his death in 1885, the firm which had opened up several subsidies around the Middle East, was run by his wife and son, until 1895 when the latter turned towards the hotel business. It was only at the death of Lydie Bonfils in 1918 that Abraham Guiragossian, who had been an associate since 1909, brought up the business, which finally closed in 1938. The entire catalogue of works provided by the Bonfils company is as large as it is interesting, especially because these images marry a documentary concern with an aesthetic approach to composition and framing. The large number of photographers explains the obvious fluctuations of quality. The great demand, trade requirements, and the interest of the clientele in the obviously picturesque explains why a part of the production can be judged to be rather mediocre, unjustly obscuring pieces of great quality. This huge production spread out over more than half a century explains why Bonfils’s photographs are today heavily present in French public collections (the BnF, Médiathèque de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine, Musée Niépce…).Source: Bibliothèque Nationale de France
Dominique Isserman
Dominique Issermann (born April 11, 1947) is a French photographer. She works primarily with black and white photography, and is known for her works in portraits, fashion and advertising. She has shot campaigns for Sonia Rykiel, Christian Dior, Nina Ricci, Guess, Lancôme, La Perla, Tiffany, Chanel and many others. Her work has also been featured in the fashion supplements for The New York Times, Corriere Della Sera and Le Monde. Issermann is noted for having photographed Leonard Cohen over several decades. The two had a long relationship, and Cohen dedicated his album I'm Your Man to her.Source: Wikipedia Cinema has played a major role in the life and career of Paris-based photographer Dominique Issermann. This year’s recipient of the Lucie Award for Achievement in Fashion was majoring in literature at the Sorbonne when she moved to Rome with Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a student leader of the May 1968 protests in Paris, and French New Wave filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard to work on films. In the Italian capital, she co-directed the avant-garde films Tamaout and Elettra with Marc’O. Upon Issermann’s return to Paris in 1973, she produced a series of photo essays for Zoom magazine on the movie sets of Federico Fellini’s Casanova and Bernardo Bertolucci’s Novecento. In these formative years, she photographed up-and-coming and now-legendary actors, including Catherine Deneuve, Gérard Depardieu and Isabelle Adjani. In 1979, designer Sonia Rykiel hired Issermann to collaborate with her on advertising campaigns for her fashion line, which put her front and center in the world of mode. Fashion editorials for periodicals from American Vogue to Elle soon followed. Her work continues to flow seamlessly between fashion, portraiture and advertising campaigns for major brands from Chanel, Christian Dior, Lancôme and Yves Saint Laurent to GUESS, Victoria’s Secret, Tiffany & Co., and Hermès. In addition to shooting or directing commercials and shorts for some of these fashion and beauty houses, Issermann has created music videos with her signature free-flowing, yet immaculately framed shots.Source: Digital Photo Pro Along the way she also applies her distinctive style onto moving images for which she still has a prominent taste, directing several music videos for Leonard Cohen, notably Dance me & Manhattan – and shooting TV commercials for many of her clients, including the memorable Eau Sauvage and Dune for Christian Dior and the Victoria’s Secret legendary commercial featuring Bob Dylan. Her recent music collaborations also include work with Nick Cave. Dominique Issermann has published several books – one of which Laetitia Casta achieves considerable success – and exhibits her work around the world with major retrospectives at the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie at Arles and at the Paris Maison Européenne de la Photographie, and recently at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport where 80 of her most famous pictures were exhibited on 400 digital advertising panels throughout all terminals. Her unique style has been praised by many, Dominique Issermann invents, in the black studio, a white light that seems to glow from under the skin of the characters and that the schools of photography teach under the name of Light Issermann. Amongst the many accolades she has received for her work, Dominique Issermann is the first woman to receive the equivalent of an Oscar for her fashion photography at the 1987 French Fashion Awards. In January 2007, she was promoted to the rank of Officer of France’s Order of Arts and Letter and in March 2012, she was named to the National Order of Merit.Source: The Lucie Awards
Gabriele Viertel
German fine art photographer, born near Cologne, Gabriele Viertel now lives and works in Eindhoven, Netherlands. She grew up as the youngest of 3 children in a rural area with an extended family of aunts, uncles and cousins. Inspired by her father, an avid filmmaker and amateur photographer, she took for the first time at the age of 14 his analogue camera to photograph the children of the family. During the education in technical design, she worked as a model to fund the studie. Completed the degree, Gabriele decided to move on to pursue the international career as a model and worked more than a decade for designers such as Dior and Karl Lagerfeld. Since 2008 she dedicated herself entirely to the art of photography as a freelance artist. Conceptually, Viertel's images play with the dialog between the mediums of painting and photography. The magical, often surreal pictorial language and the chiaroscuro light are characteristic means of expression. The major part of her works is staged underwater. Gabriele has received numerous awards, most recently the platin award of Graphis New York, the gold medal of the International Color Award, the silver medal of Prix de la Photographie Paris as well as the Merit Award of Best of Contemporary Photography, Fort Wayne Museum of Art. Her work has been featured in international exhibitions and publications in Europe and North America, notably the Museum of Art Fort Wayne and the Heritage Municipal Museum Malaga. One book on her work has been published by Associazione Artistico Culturale Cameraraw.it. Gabriele's works are in the public collections of the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Indiana USA and the University of Art, Rotterdam NL as well as in various private collections.
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