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Simon King
Simon King
Simon King

Simon King

Country: United Kingdom
Birth: 1995

Simon is a London based Street and Documentarian photographer. His time is divided between shooting personal projects, assignments, and general street photographs. Simon also teaches a short course in Street Photography at the University of the Arts, London, with a focus on empowering students to overcome boundaries when shooting on the street, as well as how to discover details and moments in the world around them, and translate those into images.

Simon's projects include work behind the scenes at London Fashion Week, as well as a number of movie and television sets. His BTS work relies heavily on his street photography style, and approach towards candid scenes. His work now takes him around the world, as he narrows the scope of his storytelling to focus on elements of humanity that fascinate him.

His photography features emotion and energy in every frame, with a real sense of empathy and compassion towards his subjects. Despite this emphasis on character and emotion his images are distinct in their minimalism, telling the story with as few elements as possible. The majority of his work is shot on 35mm film, which offers the best balance in terms of quality and manoeuvrability.

Websites

https://www.instagram.com/simonking_v

streetdances.wordpress.com

 

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More Great Photographers To Discover

Paolo Roversi
Paolo Roversi
Italy
1947
Paolo Roversi is an Italian-born fashion photographer based in Paris. His work is distinguished by soft, monochromatic images of women, with bodies veiled in shadow and captured with careful care to emphasize stunning facial features. Photography goes beyond the limits of reality and illusion. It brushes up against another life, another dimension, revealing not only what is there but what is not there. -- Paolo Roversi Paolo Roversi, who was born in Ravenna in 1947, became interested in photography as a teenager during a family vacation in Spain in 1964. Back at home, he established a darkroom in a convenient cellar with another keen amateur, local postman Battista Minguzzi, and began developing and printing his own black-and-white work. The meeting with a local professional photographer, Nevio Natali, was crucial: in Nevio's studio, Roversi spent many hours completing an important apprenticeship as well as a close and lasting friendship. In 1970, he began working with the Associated Press, and his first assignment was to cover Ezra Pound's burial in Venice. During the same year, Paolo Roversi founded his first portrait studio in Ravenna, capturing local celebrities and their families. In 1971, he met Peter Knapp, the legendary Art Director of Elle magazine, by chance in Ravenna. Paolo visited Paris in November 1973 at Knapp's invitation and has never returned. Paolo began working as a reporter for the Huppert Agency in Paris, but through his friends, he gradually began to explore fashion photography. But the photographers who piqued his interest at the time were reporters. Paolo Roversi knew nothing about fashion or fashion photography at the moment. Later, he discovered the work of Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Helmut Newton, Guy Bourdin, and many others. In 1974, the British photographer Lawrence Sackmann hired Paolo as an assistant. Paolo endured Sackmann for nine months: "Sackmann was very difficult. Most assistants only lasted a week before running away. But he taught me everything I needed to know in order to become a professional photographer. Sackmann taught me creativity. He was always trying new things even if he did always use the same camera and flash set-up. He was almost military-like in his approach to preparation for a shoot. But he always used to say ‘your tripod and your camera must be well-fixed but your eyes and mind should be free’." Then he went freelance, doing small jobs for magazines like Elle and Depeche Mode until Marie Claire published his first major fashion story. When I take a picture using window light, I always think about what a long trip the light is making to reach my subject. -- Paolo Roversi Roversi's portfolio now includes celebrity and fashion photography. He has been a consistent contributor to American Vogue, and Vogue Italia, W, Vanity Fair, Interview and i-D. He has also photographed advertising campaigns for Yohji Yamamoto, Comme des Garçons, Dior, Cerruti, GIADA, Yves Saint Laurent, Valentino and Alberta Ferreti. Continuing to be a major force in contemporary fashion, Paolo Roversi is notable for his use of 8x10 Polaroid film, which is no longer produced. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions worldwide, including at Pace MacGill Gallery in New York, James Gallery in Moscow, and Comme des Garçons in Tokyo, Rencontres d'Arles festival, France (2008), among others.
Jacques Lowe
Jacques Lowe
United States
1930 | † 2001
Jacques Lowe (born Jascha Lülsdorf) was a photographer and publisher best known for his role as U.S. President John F. Kennedy's official photographer during his election campaign and presidency. Lowe was born in Cologne, Germany, on Jan. 24, 1930. He came to New York in 1949 and became an assistant to the photographer Arnold Newman in 1951. Lowe began working as Kennedy's campaign photographer in 1958, and documented the Kennedy administration after his election until 1962. Lowe died at his home in Manhattan on May 12, 2001. Months after his death, approximately 40,000 of Lowe's negatives were destroyed in the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.Source: Wikipedia Jacques Lowe is an internationally renowned photographer and photo journalist who is best known for his portraiture of the leading personalities of our time, nationally and internationally, in politics, business, and the entertainment world. In 1951, Mr. Lowe was a prize winner in Life magazine's contest for young photographers, after which Roy Stryker, the grand old man of photography, gave him an eight week assignment in Europe. Starting in 1953 as a contributor to Jubilee magazine he won numerous awards for his photo journalistic work among gypsies and other minorities. He went on to contribute to such magazines as Time, Life, Look, The Saturday Evening Post, Ladie's Home Journal, Paris Match, Epoca, Stern, and many others, and he was a staff photographer at Collier's Magazine at the time that journal folded. In 1956, through his work, he befriended Robert F. Kennedy who had been appointed majority counsel to the McClellan Committee. In 1958 Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy, who admired his work, asked him to photograph his "other son, Jack." That assignment led to his becoming the Official Campaign Photographer of John F. Kennedy's quest for the presidency and, when elected, the personal photographer of President Kennedy. Although offered the White House Photographer's job Lowe declined, but the president asked him to "stick around and record my administration. Don't worry, I'll make it worth your while." His work for the campaign, the Kennedy White House, and the Kennedy family has resulted in six books, numerous exhibitions from the USA to Moscow, several prime time television shows, and some 150 major magazine pieces and covers. Reviewers have credited Lowe's "natural, warm, and intimate images of the president and his family and the workings of the presidency with keeping alive the Kennedy flame for generations yet to come." Following his work at the Kennedy White House Lowe returned to his studio in New York where he renewed his magazine, advertising and corporate photography work. His clients ranged from AT&T to Hertz Cars, from DuPont to United Airlines He won numerous gold and silver art director's awards for his commercial work. Lowe was a 26 year old freelance journalist in 1956 when he was assigned by three magazines within the same week to photograph Chief Counsel Robert Kennedy. They became friends and Lowe soon was invited to spend weekends at Kennedy's Hickory Hill home in Virginia. Joseph Kennedy, Sr. was impressed with Lowe's photographs and requested he photograph his other son 'John'. Although the initial meeting between Lowe and Senator Jack Kennedy was not an auspicious start, the relationship soon changed course due to Lowe's honorable approach to his photographs and he was provided unprecedented access to one of the most iconic leaders of the 20th century, as well as members of his family. These legendary images share an intimate view of John F. Kennedy as he was on the intense campaign trail, important moments during the early years of his term as President and family moments with his wife Jackie and his children. The archive comprises over 40,000 images.Source: Westwood Gallery What do you do when, as a photographer, you are told your image archive is so precious that it's uninsurable? The answer for Jacques Lowe, whose images helped create the legend of John F Kennedy, was to store them in JP Morgan's seemingly impregnable vault in Tower 5 of New York's World Trade Center. But then 9/11 came, and his life's work went with it. After the terror attack, Jacques Lowe's daughter, Thomasina, campaigned to try and retrieve her father's archive from the twin tower's rubble before they were razed. Amazingly, the safe in which they were stored was found intact, but the contents – over 40,000 negatives – were reduced to ash. All was not completely lost though, as 1,500 of Lowe's contact sheets were located elsewhere in New York. From these, selected images were painstakingly restored for an exhibition at the Newseum in Washington DC. A collection of prints from the original negatives were also made by the photographer himself, prior to his death four months before 9/11. An exhibition at Proud Chelsea in London is now showcasing these rarities.Source: The Guardian
Annick Donkers
Annick Donkers
Belgium
Annick Donkers is a documentary photographer from Antwerp, Belgium. After obtaining a Master’s degree in Psychology, she decided to specialize in photography. She has received a grant from the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs and was selected to participate in the Seminar on Contemporary Photography at the Centro de la Imagen in Mexico City (2008). Her work has been exhibited and published internationally. She was one of the winners at the Survival International Competition (2015), won an award at the San José Photo Festival in Uruguay (2016), the Sony Awards in UK (2016), the MIFA awards in Russia (2016), the IPA awards in USA (2016), the TIFA awards in Tokyo (2016), received an honorable mention at the Px3 Prix de la Photo in Paris(2016), was selected at Latin American Photography vol.5 (2016), on the cover of Dodho magazine (2016), shortlisted for the Kolga Tbilisi Awards and Athens Photo Festival (2017). She currently lives and works as a freelance photographer in Mexico City.About Lucha Libre Extrema The Lucha Libre Extrema series emerged from a growing interest I had in Mexican professional wrestling. I was soon drawn towards sub-genres of the sport such as Lucha Libre Exótica and Lucha Extrema. This semi-clandestine hardcore genre is currently prohibited in Mexico City because of how dangerous it is, but events still take place outside the capital, notably at a car wash-turned-arena in Tulancingo, the village where El Santo, Mexico’s most famous pro wrestler, was born. The participants receive professional training and are paid a little bit more because of the risks they take. They perform with a variety of weapons: chairs, thumbtacks, wire, and fluorescent lights, turning the ring into a war zone. Yet the community of luchadores “extremos” is closely knit and few outsiders have gained access. Mexico has been a very violent place in recent years. As such, I found it fascinating that people were drawn to the dangerous world of Lucha Libre Extrema and turned my camera to the audience in an attempt to understand their reasons. About Afromexican HealersAt the end of last year my attention was drawn to the coastal region of Guerrero known as Costa Chica, located to the south of Acapulco. This region is home to Mexicans descended from African slaves that identify themselves as being “black”. But outside this region they are little-known and they are currently fighting to be officially recognized by the Mexican State. The Costa Chica is also a place rooted in traditional beliefs that include appearances of trolls, the devil and spirit animals. The legend tells that when a baby is born, a member of the family brings the child to a crossroads up in the mountains where lots of wild animals pass by. The first creature to approach the child will be the child's spirit animal, or tono in Spanish, since there is now a dependency created between child and animal. This means that when the animal is hurt, wounded or dies, the person is too. In the Afromexican communities there are healers that will cure these "animal"-related illnesses, since conventional medicine will not work in these cases. The person is cured with herbs selected by the healers and also according to the needs of the animal. They call these healers curanderos del tono and there are only a small number of them left. I went to the Costa Chica region in an attempt to capture what remains of this Afromexican tradition.
Nick Turpin
Nick Turpin
United Kingdom
1969
Nick Turpin is a British street photographer and advertising and design photographer. He is based in London and near Lyon, France. He studied an art and design foundation course at the University of Gloucestershire, specializing in photography; then a BA in photography, film and video at the University of Westminster. Whilst at university he showed his second-year photojournalism stories to the picture editor at The Independent and in 1990, aged 20, quit his course to be a press photographer for the newspaper. He left The Independent in 1997 for a career in advertising and design photography that would finance his street photography (for example he photographed the cover of Bridget Jones's Diary (1995) by Helen Fielding). Turpin established the first international collective of street photographers, In-Public, in 2000 with the intention of bringing together like-minded photographers to hold exhibitions, produce books, and conduct workshops. Colin Westerbeck, writing in Time in 2011, said Turpin was "notable for having been instrumental in a collaborative documentary project", namely In-Public. He left the collective in 2018. His work has been published in his own book, On The Night Bus (2016), and in various survey publications, as well as being included in a number of group exhibitions. He publishes through Nick Turpin Publishing, makes short films, and gives workshops on street photography.Source: Wikipedia Artist Statement "There is something about the making of photographs in public places that resonates with me more than any other kind of photography. I think it simply suits my personality. It’s nice, when taking pictures in the street, not to have to participate in any way in the stream of life passing you by. It makes me feel special to be there but not to be chatting, not to be shopping or not even to be heading for somewhere else. I feel like I am invisible to the passing crowds. This in turn leads to a loss of my sense of self, which is the finest feeling of all. Having worked for several years both in newspapers and advertising, I am fascinated by the things that I ‘choose’ to photograph when I leave the house with my camera but without a ‘story’ or ‘brief’ to fulfill. These ‘choices’ are revealing,in some way, of who I am. I go to the busiest, public places to discover something very personal and private. It is an inescapable truth that the resulting photographs are as much about my inner state as they are about the external world they were made in. They are all self-portraits. It is important to me that my personal pictures don’t have to ‘do’ anything. They don’t have to sell in a gallery or sit well beside the ads in a magazine. I don’t have to make pictures that are easily categorised. They are not reportage, there is no subject, they are not art, there is no great technical craft or aesthetic beauty. They are just pictures about life. For these reasons, Picture Editors, Art Directors and Curators don’t know what to do with them, where to put them. I like that." -- Nick TurpinSource: In-Public
Sherrie Nickol
Sherrie Nickol
United States
Sherrie Nickol is a fine art photographer who captures moments in time - and in life - with an almost tangible warmth and energy. She was grew up in Osceola, Arkansas and has lived her adult life in New York City. Nickol studied photography at the University of Cincinnati and later at the International Center of Photography in New York City. Her photographs are in the permanent collection of the Bibliotheque Nationale de France in Paris, and in numerous private collections in the United States. She has mounted one-person exhibitions at Temple University and The National Arts Club in New York City. In recent years, Nickol has focused especially on exploring the relationships between people and their environments. She is interested in families as they come together to share experiences and in individuals as they navigate their space alone. Her work examines the different ways to experience public and private spaces, and she brings a sincerity to her approach that breaks down barriers and allows her to connect deeply with her subjects - a connection which is evident in the photographs themselves. Les étés en bretagne Les étés en Bretagne (Summers in Brittany) is part of my larger series By the Water which is a meditatation on the carefree days of summer. When my son turned six our family began spending a part of each summer near the seaside town of Dinard, on the north coast of Brittany, and I began a project documenting the lives of French families as they vacationed on various beaches. We always rented the same home near the seaside, a short car ride from our relatives, who lived in an old stone house on a working farm. The scenes spoke of another era, with seaside picnics and striped cabanas dotting the beaches. The photographs in this series show the intimacy among families, friends, and lovers as they break from their routines and come together at the water.
Peter van Agtmael
Peter van Agtmael
United States
1981
Peter van Agtmael (born 1981) is a documentary photographer based in New York. Since 2006 he has concentrated on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and their consequences in the United States. He is a member of Magnum Photos. Van Agtmael's photo essays have been published in The New York Times Magazine, TIME Magazine, The New Yorker and The Guardian. He has published three books. His first, 2nd Tour Hope I Don't Die, was published by Photolucida as a prize for winning their Critical Mass Book Award. He received a W. Eugene Smith Grant from the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund to complete his second book, Disco Night Sept. 11. His third, Buzzing at the Sill, was published by Kehrer Verlag in 2016. He has twice received awards from World Press Photo, the Infinity Award for Young Photographer from the International Center of Photography and a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Van Agtmael was born in Washington D.C. and grew up in Bethesda, Maryland. He studied history at Yale, graduating in 2003. He became a nominee member of Magnum Photos in 2008, an associate member in 2011, and a full member in 2013. After graduation he received a fellowship to live in China for a year and document the consequences of the Three Gorges Dam. He has covered HIV-positive refugees in South Africa; the Asian tsunami in 2005; humanitarian relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina's effects on New Orleans in 2005 and after the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the filming of the first season of TV series Treme on location in New Orleans in 2010; the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and its aftermath, Nabi Salih and Halamish in the West Bank in 2013 and the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict and its aftermath. Since 2006 he has concentrated on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and their consequences in the United States. He first visited Iraq in 2006 at age 24 and has returned to Iraq and Afghanistan a number of times, embedded with US military troops. Later he continued to investigate the effects of those wars within the US. In 2007 his portfolio from Iraq and Afghanistan won the Monograph Award (softbound) in Photolucida's Critical Mass Book Award. As part of the prize Photolucida published his first book, 2nd Tour, Hope I Don’t Die. With work made between January 2006 and December 2008, this "is a young photojournalist’s firsthand experience: the wars’ effects on him, on the soldiers and on the countries involved." The 2012 W. Eugene Smith Grant for Humanistic Photography provided $30,000 to work on his second book, Disco Night Sept. 11, which "chronicles the lives of the soldiers he has met in the field and back home."Source: Wikipedia
John Divola
John Divola
United States
1949
John Divola is an American contemporary visual artist born in 1949 in Los Angeles, CA. He received a B.A. from California State University, Northridge in 1971 and later received an M.F.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1974. He has held residencies at many institutions including the California Institute of the Arts. He has held the position of Professor in the art department at the University of California Riverside since 1988. His work has been featured in many solo exhibitions across the United States, Europe, Japan, and Australia. He participated in 1978, 1989, and 2000 Museum of Modern Art group exhibitions and in the 1981 Whitney Biennial. Divola received awards as Individual Artist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1973, 1976, 1979, 1990 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1986. He published four books: Continuity, Isolated Houses, Dogs Chasing My Car In The Desert, and Three Acts. In Zuma project, he has described being interested in the relationship between real artworks and representations of them, and the issues of the natural and the artificial. Divola said "I attempted ... to develop a practice in which there could be no distinction between the document and the original." In his series of photographs from 1977, he used deserted houses on Zuma Beach and covered their walls in graffiti. He photographed the ocean from the house's interior through windows and cracks. Divola states: "On initially arriving I would move through the house looking for areas or situations to photograph. If nothing seemed to interest me I would move things around or do some spray painting. The painting was done in much the same way that one might doodle on a piece of paper. At that point, I would return to the camera and explore whatever new potentials existed." These cyclical images skillfully juxtapose romantic skies and sunsets with a seaside structure that, frame by frame, deteriorates into ruin as it is vandalized by the artist and others who eventually set it on fire. Divola's works trace a schematic desire for escape, movement, and transcendence. "My acts, my painting, my photographing, my considering, are part of, not separate from, this process of evolution and change. These photographs are not so much about this process as they are remnants from it. My participation was not so much one of intellectual consideration as one of visceral involvement." Dogs Chasing My Car In The Desert are images of dogs in the desert captured in the midst of running wildly after the car. Emphasizing the grain of the image, these black and white photographs capture a haunting moment in which there is a duality between a sense of absence and presence. The behavior of the dogs suggests a lack of previous stimuli, and loneliness at the same time as an all-consuming reaction to the now, a presence. "It could be viewed as a visceral and kinetic dance. Here we have two vectors and velocities, that of a dog and that of a car and, seeing that a camera will never capture reality and that a dog will never catch a car, evidence of devotion to a hopeless enterprise". In the Dark Star series, dark circles have been painted on the walls of an abandoned house. Creation and destruction are held in a delicate equilibrium, the white rooms of the house, are tattered and derelict. The domestic ruins suggest social collapse, secret renditions of something darkly sinister illuminating our conflicted recent history, updating Zuma and Vandalism for our age of foreclosure. In the As Far As I Can Get project, he made photographs by pushing the self-timer button on his camera. An exposure is made in 10 seconds. John Divola currently lives and works in Riverside, CA. Divola works in photography, describing himself as exploring the landscape by looking for the edge between the abstract and the specific.Source: Wikipedia
Ren Hang
Ren Hang
Chinese
1987 | † 2017
Ren Hang (Chinese: 任航; March 30, 1987 – February 24, 2017) was a Chinese photographer and poet. During Ren's incipient career, he was known mostly for nude photographic portraits of his friends. His work is significant for its representation of Chinese sexuality within a heavily censored society. For these erotic undertones, he was arrested by PRC authorities several times. He received the backing of the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who included Ren in his 2013 Netherlands show, Fuck Off 2 The Sequel, and curated the photographer's 2014 exhibition in Paris, France. Ren's erotic, playful and casual yet provocative expression gained him worldwide fame. Ren was born in 1987, in a suburb of Changchun, Jilin province, in northeastern China. In 2007, in order to relieve the boredom of studying advertising at college, he bought a point-and-shoot camera and began shooting his friends. As a self-taught photographer, he said his style of photography was inspired by the artist Shūji Terayama. Ren suffered from depression. He posted a series of diary entries titled My depression on his blog, recording the fear, anxiety and internal conflicts he experienced. Ren died by suicide on February 24, 2017 in Beijing. Ren Hang first began taking pictures of his roommates and friends in 2007, shooting them in the nude as all were close and seeking excitement. In an interview, he also admitted: “I usually shoot my friends, because strangers make me nervous.” He arranged his subjects' naked limbs in his photographs. Ren did not consider his work inappropriate: “I don’t really view my work as taboo, because I don’t think so much in cultural context, or political context. I don’t intentionally push boundaries, I just do what I do.” This may account for his reticence to limit his work to indoor settings. He said there were no preferred places for him to work, as he believed anywhere was beautiful and worthy to be shot, including sparse studios, parks forests, and atop buildings. Ren's photos employ nude groups and solo portraits of men and women often contorted into highly performative positions. For example, hands reach down milky thighs, a limp penis flops onto a watermelon and a series of backsides imitate a mountain range. Questioning the purpose of his work, he once stated that his creation was a way to seek fun for both photographer and the photographed. However, once he had reached fame on an international level, he began to think deeply about his work. The British Journal of Photography quoted him as once saying: "I don't want others having the impression that Chinese people are robots... Or they do have sexual genitals but always keep them as some secret treasures. I want to say that our cocks and pussies are not embarrassing at all." Ren also focused on marginalised people in Chinese society with gender identity disorders by 'indeterminating' sex and gender in some of his work: a group of naked bodies stacked together, men wearing silk stockings and wearing lipstick. He denied having a preference in models: “Gender… only matters to me when I’m having sex.” The international quarterly photography journal Aperture used his photo as the cover for its Queer theme. Commentators also see his work, the naked body and the starched penis, as evolving sexual mores and the struggle for creative and sexual freedom in a conservative, tightly controlled society. But Ren Hang also announced "I don't try to get a message across, I don't give my works names, I don't date them. I don’t want to instill them with any vocabulary. I don't like to explain my photos or work as a whole". It has been mentioned that Ren's work is softcore pornography because of the degree of nudity and sex in it, but he also worked with other themes. The most famous was titled My Mum. Although still under a fetishistic atmosphere, posing with usual props in Ren's works like animals and plants, Ren's mother posed as a clothed model, in a light-hearted way to represent her daily life. Ren's photographs have been included in magazines L'Officiel, GQ Style, and Vice. He worked with fashion companies Gucci, Rick Owens, and Loewe. Ren's work is included in Frank Ocean's magazine Boys Don't Cry. Ren Hang is noted to be greatly influenced by Chinese and Asian contemporary art and in particular, Japanese photographer and contemporary artist Nobuyoshi Araki. Ren Hang mainly worked with a simple point-and-shoot camera. He would direct the models as to how to place their bodies and shoot in quick succession. Genitalia, breasts and anuses were not covered up, but featured, or accentuated with props and close-ups. Colors were rich and high in contrast, increasing visual impact. This, along with the fact all bodies were slim, lithe and relatively hairless, made the impact of his photographs more impressive. His work communicated a raw, stark aesthetic that countered taboos and celebrated sexuality and it was this contemporary form of poeticism in a visual context in which Ren Hang expressed themes of identity, the body, love, loss and death. Nudity is not a theme in art that can be widely accepted by the Chinese older generation. Ren Hang's works are sometimes misinterpreted by the public as pornography. Although some have written that Ren Hang used his photographs to challenge Chinese cultural norms of shame around nudity, he did not believe he was challenging the stereotype and leading a revolution. For him, nudity and sexuality are natural themes which he used in his work. "Nudes are there since always. We were born nude. So talking about revolution, I don't think there's anything to revolutionize. Unless people are born with clothes on, and I want to take their clothes off, then I think this is a revolution. If it was already like that, then it's not a revolution. I just photographed things on their more natural conditions." He said he was not trying to liberate nudity and sexuality since he believed that the Chinese young generation was open-minded and less affected by the old-fashioned cultures. When Ren Hang talked about the question whether the topic of sexuality was still a taboo in China, he said: "I don't think it's related to our times, these are individual cases. Like how to say it, I think it depends on different people, it doesn't really relate to other things. I was not in the whole parents told you that you can only have sex if you get married era. The time after I grow up was already over that period, it was already different like everyone was already more relaxed."Source: Wikipedia Flesh, corpses, souls and bland flashlights, all composite into seconds or milliseconds of lights and shadows, projecting onto the film that never knows how to lie. Focus gathering and the shutter releasing, connecting his unpretentious, rebellious, wild and free perspectives towards the naked human body. The images look so natural, yet fun and unexpected. One soul after another all blossom like a newborn baby, urging to crawl out of his mother’s womb, dying to be redefined. In this era that we live in, being censored by the Chinese government has almost become a stamp of approval for contemporary artists. Ren Hang, a young man with a mature look and tanned skin, hair as short as a Chinese soldiers’, always carrying an irresistibly cute and innocent smile on his cheeks. He is, perhaps, the sole artist and photographer with the most edgy outlook towards the naked human body. Ren Hang continues to stress the fact that he is “boring“. Especially when asked about those basic questions of his inspirational origins and meanings behind the photos, he always just smiles naively, shakes his shoulders and says, “I don’t really know. I never really thought about it.” Perhaps he is such a paver, heading towards the direction of happiness and creative freedom without realizing the pathways he has left behind. You might find him confusing and puzzling, but he has the ambience of such kindness that you would always trust that no evil can come out from him. He is merely a pure form of naked human beings. Source: ITSLIQUID
Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll
United Kingdom
1832 | † 1898
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (27 January 1832 - 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English writer of world-famous children's fiction, notably Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass. He was noted for his facility at word play, logic and fantasy. The poems Jabberwocky and The Hunting of the Snark are classified in the genre of literary nonsense. He was also a mathematician, photographer and Anglican deacon. Carroll came from a family of high church Anglicans, and developed a long relationship with Christ Church, Oxford, where he lived for most of his life as a scholar and teacher. Alice Liddell, daughter of the Dean of Christ Church, Henry Liddell, is widely identified as the original for Alice in Wonderland, though Carroll always denied this. Photography (1856–1880) In 1856, Dodgson took up the new art form of photography under the influence first of his uncle Skeffington Lutwidge, and later of his Oxford friend Reginald Southey. He soon excelled at the art and became a well-known gentleman-photographer, and he seems even to have toyed with the idea of making a living out of it in his very early years. A study by Roger Taylor and Edward Wakeling exhaustively lists every surviving print, and Taylor calculates that just over half of his surviving work depicts young girls, though about 60% of his original photographic portfolio is now missing. Dodgson also made many studies of men, women, boys, and landscapes; his subjects also include skeletons, dolls, dogs, statues, paintings, and trees. His pictures of children were taken with a parent in attendance and many of the pictures were taken in the Liddell garden because natural sunlight was required for good exposures. He also found photography to be a useful entrée into higher social circles. During the most productive part of his career, he made portraits of notable sitters such as John Everett Millais, Ellen Terry, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Julia Margaret Cameron, Michael Faraday, Lord Salisbury, and Alfred Tennyson. By the time that Dodgson abruptly ceased photography (1880, over 24 years), he had established his own studio on the roof of Tom Quad, created around 3,000 images, and was an amateur master of the medium, though fewer than 1,000 images have survived time and deliberate destruction. He stopped taking photographs because keeping his studio working was too time-consuming. He used the wet collodion process; commercial photographers who started using the dry-plate process in the 1870s took pictures more quickly.[62] Popular taste changed with the advent of Modernism, affecting the types of photographs that he produced. He died of pneumonia following influenza on 14 January 1898 at his sisters' home, "The Chestnuts", in Guildford. He was two weeks away from turning 66 years old. His funeral was held at the nearby St Mary's Church. He is buried in Guildford at the Mount Cemetery.Source: Wikipedia
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Exclusive Interview with Steff Gruber
Steff Gruber, is a renowned Swiss photographer and filmmaker whose career spans decades of impactful storytelling. Having started as a press photographer for Keystone Press, Gruber was one of the pioneers of the docudrama genre, making his mark with the internationally acclaimed documentary LOCATION AFRICA. This film, which followed the intense dynamic between Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski during the making of COBRA VERDE, earned him international recognition and set the tone for his distinct filmmaking style. Gruber's passion for human interest stories has taken him to various countries, where he has documented diverse subjects through his compelling photo stories, often returning multiple times to deepen his understanding of the people and places he captures. His work is celebrated for its striking visual language and his bold approach to narrative, which continues to push boundaries in both photography and film. We asked him a few questions about his life and work.
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Exclusive Interview with Eric Kunsman
Interview
Exclusive Interview with Eric Kunsman
Eric Kunsman is a renowned photographer and educator whose work explores the intersection of history, culture, and social commentary. Known for his thought-provoking series and meticulous attention to detail, Kunsman captures powerful narratives that challenge conventional perspectives. In this interview, we delve into his creative process, inspirations, and the stories behind his most compelling projects
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Exclusive Interview with Laurie Victor Kay
Interview
Exclusive Interview with Laurie Victor Kay
Laurie Victor Kay is a versatile, multi-disciplinary artist whose practice seamlessly merges photography, painting, installation, and digital media. Her work explores themes of constructed imagination, idealization, and the surreal, creating thought-provoking visual narratives that challenge traditional boundaries between mediums. We asked her a few questions about her background and work.
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Exclusive Interview with Nanda Hagenaars
Interview
Exclusive Interview with Nanda Hagenaars
Nanda Hagenaars approaches photography with a poetic and emotionally rich sensibility, creating images that reflect her intuitive connection to the world. Fascinated by the relationship between time and timelessness, she often works in black and white, a medium that aligns with her creative vision. We discovered her beautiful work through her submission to AAP Magazine Portrait, and we were captivated by her series Perspective. We asked her a few questions about her life and work.
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Exclusive Interview with Lisa McCord
Interview
Exclusive Interview with Lisa McCord
Lisa McCord is a fine art and documentary photographer whose work deeply reflects her roots in the Arkansas Delta. Known for her evocative explorations of storytelling, memory, and time, McCord draws inspiration from her family’s cotton farm in her series Rotan Switch, which won a solo exhibition and has now been published as a book by Kehrer Verlag. We asked her a few questions about her life and wor
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Exclusive Interview with Laurent Baheux
Interview
Exclusive Interview with Laurent Baheux
French photographer Laurent Baheux, follows the tradition of humanist photographers by capturing black-and-white images of nature and wildlife. His subjects are not confined to cages or enclosures; they are free individuals, captured in the moment, displaying the full strength of their freedom, the beauty of their personalities, and the tenderness of their communal lives. Celebrated for their aesthetic power and authenticity, Laurent's black-and-white photographs have been featured in books, publications, exhibitions, and conferences, and are displayed in galleries both in France and internationally.
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Reflections by Jon Enoch
Photographer
Interview
Reflections by Jon Enoch
Jon Enoch is a London-based freelance photographer, who works with celebrities, sports people, CEOs, as well as advertising agencies and brands. Jon regularly creates his own personal work, which have won numerous awards over the years. Jon’s recent project ‘The Candymen of Mumbai’ has won a Portrait of Humanity award and was the overall winner of the Pink Lady Food Photographer of the year 2023. His previous 2019 project called ‘Bikes of Hanoi’ also picked up multiple awards including the Paris Photo Prize - Gold in 2019, Portrait of Humanity Award 2020 and was the Smithsonian Grand Prize Winner in 2020. He was also shortlisted for the Sony World Photography Awards in 2020 and nominated for the Lens Culture Portrait Prize 2020. We asked him a few questions about his project 'Reflections'
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Exclusive Interview with George Byrne
Interview
Exclusive Interview with George Byrne
George Byrne is an acclaimed Australian photographer known for his striking use of color and composition. Byrne's work often captures urban landscapes with a minimalist and abstract aesthetic, transforming ordinary cityscapes into vivid, painterly images. His distinctive style highlights the beauty in everyday scenes, emphasizing geometry, light, and shadow to create visually captivating pieces. Byrne has gained international recognition for his unique approach to photography, blending elements of fine art and documentary to offer a fresh perspective on the urban environment.
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Barbara Cole and Wet Collodion Photographs
Interview
Photographer
Barbara Cole and Wet Collodion Photographs
Cole is best known for her underwater photography, but her other studio practice during the cold months in Toronto is an ongoing series of wet collodion photographs. This heavily analog process from the 19th Century is a years-long endeavor of revitalization and experimentation, offering modern day viewers an understanding of what it took to develop photographs in the early days of its invention. Cole has added her own unique take on the process by adding a layer of color in contrast to the usual sepia tones associated with the genre. The resulting wet plate photographs are tactile and dimensional dances between light and shadow, past and present, depicting women in timeless dreamscapes. We asked her a few questions about this specific project
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