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FINAL CALL TO ENTER AAP MAGAZINE SHAPES: PUBLICATION AND $1,000 CASH PRIZES
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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

Monica Testa
Italy
1967
Shortly after my art studies, I started working as a fashion designer for a large company, which allowed me to deepen my knowledge and work in the world of graphics and style. It was a challenging and rewarding job, thanks to which I had the opportunity to travel a lot around the world, meeting people from various ethnic backgrounds, enriching myself enormously from a cultural and personal point of view. I had always been passionate about photography and to such an extent that I could no longer do without it. After taking several courses and studying the greatest photographers in history, I decided to enrol at the Italian Institute of Photography in Milan: a constructive experience that made me grow a lot, both on a technical and creative level. I truly enjoy observing people and also studying their psychological side. That's why I especially love working on portraits and telling the stories of those I meet, always keeping a careful and respectful eye, tiptoeing into situations that I find interesting. I delve into them, I make them my own. I use photography to express how I feel, how I see, how I perceive and absorb the flow of life around me. I transform my thoughts and my feelings into images, thus aiming to become a same part of the image I portray. The River Text from "Monica’s Diary (Benin 2019):" Today we reached a small village flooded by the abundant rains of recent days. The tribe that lives there is accustomed to this situation and in effect they live in real palafittes suspended on the water; and so we reached the village in the only way possible ... by canoe. We brought t-shirts for the children, eggs for snacks and, more importantly, mosquito nets which, given the area they live in, particularly humid and infested with mosquitoes, are essential. The landscape was spectacular and my eyes saw incredible realities... all so far from our daily life! The school was small and very crowded, obviously they had been warned of our arrival and especially the children were waiting for us with trepidation. Compared to other villages we had visited the previous days, the people who live here are quite aggressive. They were a little agitated, they all talked loudly, they pushed us constantly. The adults looked at us with curiosity and the children with shyness: it was noticeable that they were not used to seeing people of a different color in their village. For this we were escorted by the local police, in case the situation deteriorated. But everything went well and another day passed ... lived as if it were a whole life. Face to Face Form zero to one hundred This is an ambitious project, started in 2017 and not yet finished. The idea would be to photograph portraits of people of different ages, sex and ethnicity, who in some way fascinated me and consequently I asked them to pose for me. I would like to get to a hundred photos, a different one for each age from zero to one hundred years.
Aurore Valade
France
1981
Aurore Valade is a French photographer born in 1981. She creates images that play with the iconic register of scenography. In these elaborate stagings, we are often confronted with clichés, meaningful reflections of a social, economic, or cultural situation in contemporary life. In 2008, she won the HSBC Prize for Photography for a series in which she photographs people who perform their own roles, in their interiors. From there, his work evolved into a political approach to the image. In 2015, she was an artist member of the Casa de Velázquez (Académie de France in Madrid), where she initiated research on indignation which gave rise to the Digo yo and Se manifester series, for which she obtained the Photo Folio Prize. Review of the Rencontres d'Arles1 Festival in 2017. Very elaborate, the staging of his photographs can be considered as "significant reflections of a social, economic or cultural situation of our time but also certain values ​​which question the limits of privacy."Source: Wikipedia It has been said that intimacy is connected to the art of talking about life. That art is precisely what Aurore Valade’s project summons. Her starting point is the art of conversation: con-verse means to go with another, to walk along the same road together, and that is what gives rise to the collaboration between the artist and those she photographs. Aurore Valade explores an “intimacy liberated” by the desire to share the voice and listen to other voices of those who recognize that every life is exceptional, for, each time, that life is always the only one that can be lived. Each of these photographs shows a shared space that concentrates and exudes that irreducible, excessive vitality. That is why Aurore Valade wanted to explore the specific space in which there is a constant tension between the intimate and the political, where its liberation is always transgressive and inhabits the very heart of revolt.Source: Arles - Les Rencontres de la Photographie
Astrid Verhoef
Netherlands
Astrid Verhoef is a fine art photographer based in Amsterdam. She graduated from the Arts Academy “Hoogeschool voor de Beeldende Kunsten Utrecht” in 1998. Astrid started as a classic landscape photographer, inspired by photographers like Ansel Adams, but gradually felt the need to express herself differently, in a manner that more reflected her imagination and creativity. She started building a new portfolio around 2007, and by 2010 she had fully adopted the theatrical visual language we can recognise in her photography today. Her work can since be defined as surreal compositions, showing figures and objects that seem to be at odds with the desolate environments they find themselves in. Astrid aims to emphasize the contrast between the human presence and the landscape, while exploring her personal relationship with the natural world. Throughout her career Astrid also worked as a curator, and has produced exhibitions in New York, Amsterdam, Leiden and Tokyo. She’s collaborated with Photoville New York and was a program manager and curator for photography platform Photo31 from 2018 until 2024. But her main focus will always be her autonomous artwork which leads her to magnificent landscapes, from The Netherlands and Spain to Australia and the USA, to explore her personal relationship with the natural world. Astrid usually works solo and therefore is also the model in most of her images. If needed she uses basic collage techniques in her artworks top achieve the desired image, but she never adds any components by using AI. The props and figures are all actually photographed, which makes every artwork a cherished memory as well. Astrid’s artworks have been internationally awarded, and have been exhibited in London, Amsterdam, Los Angeles, Berlin, Cannes, Milan, New York, Paris, Rotterdam, Sydney, and Tokyo. Her artwork is included in the collection of the Société Nationale des Beaux Arts in Paris. Statement: As a fine art photographer Astrid Verhoef explores her personal connection to the natural world. The complicated relationship between human and nature is a common thread throughout her work, from the ‘Inscapes’ and ‘Human//Nature’ series up to the more recent single images. When she photographs herself in these desolate landscapes an anonymous character arises that wants to connect with her surroundings. However, her roots in contemporary modern life often remain visible in the form of an unnatural element. The serene images can be seen as emotional translations where the desire for synergy is challenged by an urge to control. The long-term project 'Human//Nature' is a logical continuation of Verhoef’s well known 'Inscapes' series. With an increasing minimal visual language and a more geometrical approach to composition, she aims to emphasize the contrast between the human presence and the natural. With her latest work, At the same time she wants to create moments or scenes that can only exist because of the combination of the two. Her theatrical photography is also an ode to imagination itself. For these images Astrid Verhoef works solo on location, all elements are photographed and she acts as a model in her own images. These images do not contain any AI generated components. Only basic Photoshop tools were used, such as color /contrast adjustments, collage technique (if needed). Astrid Verhoef has photographed on locations in Australia (Northern Territory, Southern & West Australia), Spain (mainland & Canary Islands), USA (Utah, Nevada, Arizona & California) and The Netherlands.
Sumit Gupta
India
1983
While a software engineer by profession, Sumit has been capturing and sharing the stories of cities and cultures since 2013. He finds the experience of walking around the city streets with a camera almost therapeutic and meditative. Inspired by the human condition, Sumit has photographed mostly in India and Europe. Sumit's photographs are inspired by a personal desire to find meaning in the world around us and attempt to draw attention to the poetic and inspirational nature of human life all around us. All about the project 'The River' The Kumbh Mela is the largest religious gathering of humans on our planet. Over the two month period that this festival happens, once every 12 years in 4 Indian cities, millions of people come from all over the country (and outside of it) to take an auspicious bath in the holy waters of the river Ganga. I'm interested in portraying how the contemporary experience of the Kumbh Mela is influenced by aspects such as globalization, consumption and current trends of social behavior. People from all over India come to this event as a pilgrimage to wash away their sins, but they're also cohabiting with people that see this as a cultural attraction, as a possibility to experience a foreign culture and filter it through social media. What's the impact of hyper-communication and advertising in the collective atmosphere of this spiritual gathering? The project tries to reflect on those ideas by working through the psychological climate of the different people that are present in the event. The images evidence the paradoxical and complex nature of a spiritual event that feeds on tradition when young people seem to drift away from old collective habits. The river, the sacred area where people transcend their humanity, is the perfect metaphor for the current situation; affected by mass production and consumerism, the polluted river is still worshipped as a place for cleansing; time will tell if the memory that holds this identity will keep flowing through the divine water, or if it will drown to the mirage of pleasures that float in the immediacy of today's world.
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Call for Entries
AAP Magazine #59 Shapes
Publish your work in our printed magazine and win $1,000 cash prizes