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Ellen Cantor
Ellen Cantor
Ellen Cantor

Ellen Cantor

Country: United States

Ellen Cantor is a Southern California artist who uses the camera to reimagine the family photo album and objects that hold personal histories in order to explore the distillation and persistence of memory.

She received a BS from The University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and continued her education in Interior and Architectural Design at UCLA.

Her work has been featured in 19 solo exhibitions including dnj gallery, Santa Monica, CA, The Griffin Museum of Photography, The Center for Fine Art Photography, and The Spartanburg Museum of Art. She was a Critical Mass finalist in 2015 and 2016 and winner of the Julia Margaret Cameron Award for Women Photographers as well as first place in the Fine Art category. Since 2016, she has participated in over 25 national and international group exhibitions which include the Italian Cultural Exchange in Naples, Italy.

Her photographs have been published in Harper's Magazine, Muzee Magazine and SHUTR Magazine and online in Lenscratch, f-stopmagazine, fraction magazine, rfotofolio, Voyage LA Magazine, My Daily Photograph, Lightleaked, a photo editor, Float Online Magazine, thisiscolossal.com and Silvershotz.

Ellen is represented by dnj gallery, Santa Monica, CA, Susan Spiritus Gallery, Irvine, CA and Truth and Beauty Gallery, Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Upcoming shows:
VISUAL DNA... the language of photographs at dnj Gallery, Santa Monica in March, 2020
Mimi and Her Purses at the Griffin Museum of Photography, Winchester, MA in Spring, 2020
 

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More Great Photographers To Discover

Zhang Jingna
China
1988
Zhang Jingna born May 4, 1988 in Beijing, China is a photographer known widely on DeviantART as zemotion.Born in the suburbs of Beijing to a sporting family, Jingna moved to Singapore at the age of eight, where she attended Haig Girls' School. At the age of fourteen, nine months after picking up air rifle, Jingna broke a national record, and subsequently joined the national air rifle team. She was active in the team for six years, notable achievements include breaking a record in the 10m Air Rifle event at the Commonwealth Shooting Championships 2005 in Melbourne, and a bronze in the same event at the Commonwealth Games in 2006, awarding her the title of Sports Girl of the Year for 2006 by the Singapore National Olympic Council. She left the Raffles Girls' School at sixteen to pursue a degree in fashion design in Lasalle College of the Arts. At eighteen, Jingna picked up a camera. Probably due to her keen interest and achievements in photography, she left Lasalle in October 2007, and the rifle team in January 2008, to pursue photography full time. Jingna's clientele includes companies such as Mercedes Benz, Canon, Pond's, Ogilvy & Mather Advertising and Wacom. She also produced fashion editorials for magazines such as Harper's Bazaar, Elle and Flare. In September 2008, Jingna held her first solo exhibition, "Something Beautiful", at The Arts House in Singapore. In April 2010, 50 of her works were showcased along Orchard Road during Singapore's fashion festival - Fashion Seasons @ Orchard. The showcase was Singapore’s first large scale street exhibition featuring fashion photography. The street exhibition was followed immediately by her second gallery show, "Angel Dreams", at Japan Creative Centre, Singapore, supported by the Embassy of Japan. The show was noted for her photographs of Japanese musician Sugizo (Luna Sea, X Japan). She's influenced by people such as Peter Lindbergh, John William Waterhouse, Yoshitaka Amano and Zdzislaw Beksinski. Jingna also cites her friend Kuang Hong, a fellow artist whom she had managed since the age of fifteen, in numerous interviews, as one of the influences and foundations of her artistic development. She manages a professional Starcraft 2 team called Infinity Seven. Source: Wikipedia Born in Beijing and raised in Singapore, Jingna Zhang is a fine art photographer and art director in New York, Los Angeles, and Seattle. Inspired by the Pre-Raphaelites and anime, Jingna’s work interweaves Asian aesthetics with western art styles, bringing unique visions of painterly images to fashion and fine art photography. Jingna’s works have appeared on Vogue China, Vogue Japan, Harper’s Bazaar China, and Elle Singapore. She has exhibited with PhotoVogue at Leica Gallery Milan, Cle de Peau Beaute in Hong Kong, and Profoto at Tsinghua University. Her clients include brands like Mercedes Benz, Lancome, Canon, and Team Liquid. She has been a speaker and mentor at Square Enix Japan, Trojan Horse is a Unicorn, School of Visual Arts, Laguna College of Art and Design, and Monterrey Institute of Technology. Prior to her work behind the camera, Jingna was a national athlete on Team Singapore, and founder of an esports team in StarCraft 2. She was an agent for concept artists and illustrators, with clients such as LucasArts, Amazon Publishing, and Sony Music Japan. Jingna was named on Forbes Asia’s 30 Under 30 list for Art & Style in 2018. She is an alumna of Stanford Ignite. Jingna is currently working on Cara, a social network and artist platform that filters AI-generated media for the entertainment industry. Her ongoing projects include a course on artistic portrait photography, Motherland Chronicles, and an upcoming photobook inspired by anime and manga. Source: www.zhangjingna.com
Chuck Kimmerle
United States
Despite knowing little about photography at the time, I knew I was destined to make my living as a photographer when I received my first camera, a Canon Canonet QL17 GIII, as a high school graduation present. The entire process mesmerized me. I was hooked. However, a prior enlistment in the U.S. Army Infantry, which began shortly afterwards, put that dream on the back burner for a few years.Following my discharge, I enrolled in the Photographic Engineering Technology program at St. Cloud State University, thinking it a solid career backup plan should my dream of being a photographer be unrealized. The technically-focused program provided me with a solid background in photographic science, chemistry, processes and sensitometry.While at the university, I began working at the school paper, which was followed by a photojournalism position at the St. Cloud Times and, subsequently, jobs at newspapers in Pennsylvania and finally North Dakota, where I was part of a four-person staff named as finalists for the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography. In 2000, I left the erratic schedule of photojournalism to the more predictable hours as the staff photographer at the University of North Dakota, where I remained for the next 10 years.In 2010 I followed my wife, a New York City native, to her new job in the least populated state in the U.S., Wyoming, where I now work as an educational and commercial freelance photographer.Throughout the years working as a photographer for others, I spent a great deal of my free time doing personal work for myself. These images, which were infinitely more important to me that the work images, were primarily landscapes. However, I have never considered myself a nature photographer. Instead, I tend to gravitate towards those areas which are influenced by both man and nature.Despite having embraced the digital medium, I consider myself a landscape photographer in the traditional sense of the word. My style is straightforward and formal, with a deep depth-of-field and an unabashed honesty to the subject matter, and is in direct contrast to the contemporary trend of highly conceptualized pictorials. Who says newer is always better?In the past few years I've had the honor to study with such esteemed photographers as Alan Ross, George DeWolfe, Jean Meile, Jay Dusard, Jack Dykinga and Bruce Barnbaum. Source: chuckkimmerle.com
Jacob Riis
Denmark/United States
1849 | † 1914
Jacob August Riis was a Danish-American social reformer, "muckraking" journalist, and social documentary photographer. He contributed significantly to the cause of urban reform in America at the turn of the twentieth century. He is known for using his photographic and journalistic talents to help the impoverished in New York City; those impoverished New Yorkers were the subject of most of his prolific writings and photography. He endorsed the implementation of "model tenements" in New York with the help of humanitarian Lawrence Veiller. Additionally, as one of the most famous proponents of the newly practicable casual photography, he is considered one of the fathers of photography due to his very early adoption of flash. While living in New York, Riis experienced poverty and became a police reporter writing about the quality of life in the slums. He attempted to alleviate the bad living conditions of poor people by exposing their living conditions to the middle and upper classes. Riis had for some time been wondering how to show the squalor of which he wrote more vividly than his words could express. He tried sketching but was incompetent at this. Camera lenses of the 1880s were slow as was the emulsion of photographic plates; photography thus did not seem to be of any use for reporting about conditions of life in dark interiors. In early 1887, however, Riis was startled to read that "a way had been discovered to take pictures by flashlight. The darkest corner might be photographed that way." The German innovation, by Adolf Miethe and Johannes Gaedicke, flash powder was a mixture of magnesium with potassium chlorate and some antimony sulfide for added stability; the powder was used in a pistol-like device that fired cartridges. This was the introduction of flash photography. Recognizing the potential of the flash, Riis informed a friend, Dr. John Nagle, chief of the Bureau of Vital Statistics in the City Health Department who was also a keen amateur photographer. Nagle found two more photographer friends, Henry Piffard and Richard Hoe Lawrence, and the four of them began to photograph the slums. Their first report was published in the New York newspaper The Sun on February 12, 1888; it was an unsigned article by Riis which described its author as "an energetic gentleman, who combines in his person, though not in practice, the two dignities of deacon in a Long Island church and a police reporter in New York." The "pictures of Gotham's crime and misery by night and day" are described as "a foundation for a lecture called 'The Other Half: How It Lives and Dies in New York.' to give at church and Sunday school exhibitions, and the like." The article was illustrated by twelve-line drawings based on the photographs. Riis and his photographers were among the first Americans to use flash photography. Pistol lamps were dangerous and looked threatening, and would soon be replaced by another method for which Riis lit magnesium powder on a frying pan. The process involved removing the lens cap, igniting the flash powder, and replacing the lens cap; the time taken to ignite the flash powder sometimes allowed a visible image blurring created by the flash. Riis's first team soon tired of the late hours, and Riis had to find other help. Both his assistants were lazy and one was dishonest, selling plates for which Riis had paid. Riis sued him in court successfully. Nagle suggested that Riis should become self-sufficient, so in January 1888 Riis paid $25 for a 4×5 box camera, plate holders, a tripod and equipment for developing and printing. He took the equipment to the potter's field cemetery on Hart Island to practice, making two exposures. The result was seriously overexposed but successful. For three years, Riis combined his own photographs with others commissioned of professionals, donations by amateurs and purchased lantern slides, all of which formed the basis for his photographic archive. Because of the nighttime work, he was able to photograph the worst elements of the New York slums, the dark streets, tenement apartments, and "stale-beer" dives, and documented the hardships faced by the poor and criminal, especially in the vicinity of notorious Mulberry Street. A particularly important effort by Riis was his exposure of the condition of New York's water supply. His five-column story "Some Things We Drink", in the August 21, 1891, edition of the New York Evening Sun, included six photographs (later lost). Riis wrote: "I took my camera and went up in the watershed photographing my evidence wherever I found it. Populous towns sewered directly into our drinking water. I went to the doctors and asked how many days a vigorous cholera bacillus may live and multiply in running water. About seven, said they. My case was made." The story resulted in the purchase by New York City of areas around the New Croton Reservoir, and may well have saved New Yorkers from an epidemic of cholera. Riis tried hard to have the slums around Five Points demolished and replaced with a park. His writings resulted in the Drexel Committee's investigation of unsafe tenements; this resulted in the Small Park Act of 1887. Riis was not invited to the eventual opening of the park on June 15, 1897, but went all the same, together with Lincoln Steffens. In the last speech, the street cleaning commissioner credited Riis for the park and led the public in giving him three cheers of "Hooray, Jacob Riis!" Other parks also were created, and Riis was popularly credited with them as well.Source: Wikipedia
Ole Marius Joergensen
Ole Marius Joergensen is an artist with a background in film based in Asker, Norway. He is best known for his meticulously staged cinematic photographs. With the use of theatrical light and vivid color juxtapositions, Ole Marius' work emphasizes the mystery and duality of rural life in the modern world. A child of 80s rural Norway, he became fascinated with suburban America, like the popular narratives told on screen by Steven Spielberg and the storytelling of author Stephen King. Drawn to the descriptive narrative and quality of light, he found himself wanting to create his own stories. Influenced by the work of the mid century painter Hopper and the directors Alfred Hitchcock, David Lynch, as well as 19th Century painting traditions of David Caspar Frederic, his work often depicts ordinary situations infused with a unique narrative that unlocks an unexpected mystery that feels both old and new. In 2014 he debuted his first major series "No Superhero," an ode to one of his childhood heroes, and a playful series with dark undertones. Ole Marius views Superman as a metaphor for taking risks and the worry of failure. Each scene is depicted through a lens that captures childhood nostalgia with the hero as an ordinary man. In 2015 Ole Marius made the series "Space Travels" which was his rediscovery of his native country. It was a narrative driven by the feeling of being trapped in a place and yearning for a new adventure that is out of reach. "Vignettes of a Salesman" (2016) is a love letter to simpler times of Scandinavia in the 1950s and 1960s. This series follows the main protagonist on a silent, solitary journey and the complex emotions, from the dark to the eccentric, associated with a stranger's life unfulfilled. Ole Marius' work has been exhibited widely in the United States, Asia, and Europe. His work can be found in private collections in Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Oslo, New York, Madrid and Berlin. His work has been featured on international art & culture websites, as well as in printed publications around the world.
Keith Carter
United States
1948
Keith Carter is an American photographer who is known for his dreamlike black and white photographs of the figure, animals, and meaningful objects. He began photographing new and unknown realities in his native East Texas environment. This setting, with heavy folklore, religious, and cultural motifs, inspired Carter to create some of his most iconic images. Since his start in Texas, his work continues to push imaginative realms in his travels within the United States and across oceans. In 1970, Carter earned a Business Management degree from Lamar University and began his career as a commercial photographer while working on personal projects. These personal projects have resulted in a long career and over twelve published monographs. Carter currently teaches photography at Lamar University as a Distinguished Faculty Lecturer. He travels worldwide providing photography lectures and workshops for artists. Carter's fine art career has made him the recipient of an array of awards such as the 2009 Texas Medal of Arts, 2009 Artist of the Year presented by the Art League Houston and, in 1991 the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University presented Carter with the Lange-Taylor Prize. His work has also been featured in print and online publications, television, and film. In 2006, the Anthropy Arts in New York filmed a documentary about Carter's photographic work, and in 1997 CBS made an art segment on Carter's work for public television. He has extensively exhibited his work throughout the world and participated in over 100 solo exhibitions. Permanent collections of his work can be found in many private and public institutions including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the George Eastman House, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Dallas Museum of Art, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Art Institute of Chicago.
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