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Win a Solo Exhibition this October, Open Theme. Juror Aline Smithson.
Win a Solo Exhibition this October, Open Theme. Juror Aline Smithson.
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

Sam Haskins
United Kingdom
1926 | † 2009
Sam Haskins, was a British photographer, born and raised in South Africa. He started his career in Johannesburg and moved to London in 1968. Haskins is best known for his contribution to in-camera image montage, Haskins Posters (1973) and the 1960's figure photography trilogy Five Girls (1962), Cowboy Kate & Other Stories (1964) and November Girl (1967), plus an ode to sub-Saharan tribal Africa African Image (1967). Cowboy Kate & Other Stories was probably the first book to deliberately explore black-and-white photographic grain as a medium for expression and image design. It was highly influential at the time, sold roughly a million copies worldwide and won the Prix Nadar in France in 1964. It continues to influence contemporary photographers, filmmakers, fashion designers, and make-up artists. Cowboy Kate & Other Stories or 'Kate' as the book is often referred to, had its place in photographic history cemented in 2005 when the International Center of Photography in New York included the book in their exhibition The Open Book: A History of the Photographic Book from 1878 to the Present. November Girl contained key image collages which formed the basis of many graphic and surrealist experiments in the 1970s and 1980s. African Imagewas a visual homage to the indigenous people, culture, landscape and wildlife of sub-Saharan Africa. The images represent a lifelong interest in photographing graphically stimulating environments and formally document his passion for the indigenous craft. He broke bones on river rapids and wrote off two Volvo saloon cars on African dirt roads while shooting the book. Despite its international award, this meticulously constructed book, celebrating a love for sub-Saharan Africa, is probably the least known of his major creative projects, but it is coveted by serious collectors of African art and photography. In 1968, Haskins moved to London and ran a studio in Glebe Place just off the King's Road. He worked as an advertising photographer for international consumer brands Asahi Pentax, Bacardi, Cutty Sark whisky, Honda, BMW, Haig whisky, DeBeers, British Airways, Unilever and Zanders, and specialised in the art direction and shooting of calendars, especially for Asahi Pentax in Japan. Although he endorsed Hasselblad for a short period in the late 1960s and early 1970s, his loyalty to the medium format 6x7 camera and lenses from Asahi resulted in a rare long-term association between a camera manufacturer and photographer. From 1970 to 2000, Asahi Optical (later Pentax) produced 30 calendars, of which Haskins shot and art-directed 15 editions including the millennium calendar. No other photographer was invited to contribute more than once. He is still involved with the Pentax Forum Gallery in Tokyo, which hosts his exhibitions. His first contact came in 1967, when Asahi Optical presented him with a 35 mm camera after hearing that he had shot African Image with various competitors' products. In 1972, he produced his first colour book, Haskins Posters. The large-format publication contained pages printed on one side using thick stiff paper and a soft glue perfect binding allowing the pages to be removed and used as posters. Haskins and Alida successfully published the book internationally through their own company, Haskins Press. The book won a gold award at the New York One Show. At the time the best-known image from Haskins Posters, a girl's face superimposed on an apple with a bee near the stem, appeared on the cover or in editorials of almost every major photographic magazine around the world. This image was part of a well-publicised visual and graphic experimentation with the apple theme in the 1970s that for a while resulted in photographic journalists nicknaming him 'Sam the Apple man'. He suffered a stroke on 19 September 2009 the opening day of his exhibition to launch Fashion Etcetera at Milk Gallery in New York, and died at home in Bowral, Australia, nine weeks later.Source: Wikipedia
Emma Powell
United States
Emma Powell is an artist in residence and lecturer in photography at Iowa State University. Powell graduated from the College of Wooster in Ohio and received her MFA from Rochester Institute of Technology. Her work often examines photography's history while incorporating historic processes and or devices within the imagery. In her series In Search of Sleep, Powell uses the cyanotype process to create a visual lullaby in wish she explores personal narratives and metaphors.In Search of SleepFrom my earliest days I have had a difficult relationship with sleep. As a child I avoided it at all costs, especially at night. To get me back to bed, my father used to tell me stories. They were not traditional children’s bedtime stories, but invented tales that began on our quiet street and journeyed down open drains to a dream-world of caverns, forests, and oceans full of unexpected animals and dangers. The story would always find its way back to the real world and end where it had begun, hopefully but doubtfully with me that much closer to sleep.In Search of Sleep recreates this shadowy realm and allows me to explore my real-life questions, from personal dramas to romantic doubts. The cyanotype process, with its distinctive blue tones, visually traverses the distance between waking and sleeping. These images are also toned with tea and wine to both dull the blues and add warmth. Tea, wine, cyanide – all three of these substances relate to different levels of consciousness that often mirror the mental states evoked by my photographs. In Search of Sleep creates a visual lullaby that allows me to safely explore what I love, what I fear, what I remember, and what I imagine.
Alicia Moneva
"The common thread in all my work is the footprint of the human, with humanized objects and spaces made by man, architectural painting and photography, trying to explain social and psychological concepts through the figure. Coming from the world of painting my type of photography is built. Based on a generic idea, will be taking individual photos that will form part of the final work. Each shot in digital format, will later join with the help of photoshop. This tool is almost exclusively used for the matrix composition. All these pictures are real, the waters of colors are stained for each session, lights, ropes, etc. are used maybe that way I put me more in the concept that I want to express. My work models are people I know, in my environment, there is a complicity and prior understanding, they bring to the session his way of expressing the idea, much enriched the work. Also, say the interest that raised me shadows, which is evidenced in my way of photographing. Penumbra, in my opinion, they dimension the vacuum of space, they materialize it, make it real. My work is the antithesis of the photography, which I would call operating room, without just shadows. Overhead view of my work, is strongly influenced by the years that I was in contact with the architects. At the end of my studies of biological sciences I worked continuously with them. My task there was the explanation of the urban projects through roof planes. With a pictorial abstraction were given a human scale. I was very lucky, I found interesting people that opened a world of possibilities, which taught me to see after looking at. At the same time, painting was transformed into something serious in my life, I started to exhibit and to devote myself more professionally to art. Photography was in principle a work tool, a tool more for my collection of data, it helped me to paint everything you had no way of doing so natural. Little by little I found comfortable with the photographic image and the human figure to express the ideas that were emerging. I went through a very unproductive at work time, since I opposed the painting to photography, when they were actually for me very complementary. At this time that seemed to lost went back to College, first studying psychology and later philosophy. None of the two races ended them, as it was not so important to have an academic degree, but if you continue learning, similar of being alive. My exhibitions were photography, although in principle and respect for the world of photography, I thought that I was an intruder, had the desire and the security to do so, also the need. Self-portrait I submit for publication to reflect a state of confusion we all, from time to time we have suffered, when a mesh does not let you see clearly the reality. As if it were a necessary self-deception on occasions." -- Alicia Moneva - Madrid, October 2013 Interview with Alicia Moneva AAP: When did you realize you wanted to be a photographer?It was progressive. I needed to work with the human figure and I felt more comfortable with photography. AAP: Where did you study photography?I didn't study painting or photography. My teachers were architects who knew the method and had perception. AAP: How long have you been a photographer?I have been taking photographs for 20 years but, professionally, just 10. AAP: Do you remember your first shot? What was it?They were objects that I wanted to paint in my Studio and I couldn't move them from the place they were. And also black and white portraits, many portraits. AAP: What or who inspires you?I am inspired by philosophy, anthropology, biology... and now also particle physics. Science and arts basically. AAP: Do you have a favorite photograph or series?My favorite series are the last I have been working on: The disease in our culture, which is about chronically ill people, the unknown heroes of our time. It is a tribute to them, their carers and families. AAP: What kind of gear do you use? Camera, lens, digital, film?When I started I used an old Pentax, with black and white rolls for portraits and color rolls for objects I painted later. Now I work with a Canon 5D Mark II and a Canon 7D. The lenses are also Canon. AAP: Do you spend a lot of time editing your images? For what purpose?My pictures are made of many individual photographs. I use photo editing programs to assemble and compose the final image. For me it is important to convey the idea I have in mind and I edit the photos until I think the concept is understood. AAP: Favorite(s) photographer(s)?I really like Spanish creativity. My favorite are perhaps Chema Madoz for his pulchritudinous images which I would summarize in "less is more". And Cristina García Rodero because she transmits me all the strength of human feelings. AAP: What advice would you give a young photographer?To be passionate about what he is doing, to follow his instincts. And, especially, to be honest with what he thinks, beacuse that will be his way of looking at what the others see. AAP: What mistake should a young photographer avoid?Wanting to be very original? Or thinking you already know everything? AAP: An idea, a sentence, a project you would like to share?I would mention a fragment of one of José Hierro's poems that summarizes well how sometimes a moment can be turned into something timeless. "...But there are things that do not die and others who never lived. And there are some that fill the universe, And it is not possible to get rid of its memory." (José Hierro / "Alegría" 1947). AAP: What are your projects?I have been working lately on a new project with another Spanish photographer, Judith Sansó. It is shared project with a performance which combines photography and video art. The first of these series is called "the distance between her and yesterday is a photo" and talks about memories and how they shape our personality. These are some of the links to the performance and the making of the video work: YouTube video (In Spanish) YouTube video YouTube video AAP: Your best memory as a photographer?None in particular. I like when I start a new project. AAP: Your worst souvenir as a photographer?I can't remember. A well-known neurologist (Á. Pascual Leone) once said that it's more important to forget than to remember, especially bad memories AAP:If you were someone else who would it be?I would have liked to be a good silent film director like Fritz Lang, Renoir or Murnau.
Evy Huppert
United States
Evy Huppert lives and works in the Upper Valley of the Connecticut River spanning Vermont and New Hampshire. She is a fine art photographer, administrator, and educator. Her black and white film-based work explores emotional narrative in both landscape and portraiture. A native of Minnesota and long-time resident of New England, she considers herself to be a true 'child of the North.' Permanently light-deprived, her remedy for personal and collective seasonal affective disorder is making images that are often about light itself. Evy is a 2019 Critical Mass Finalist. Her work has been exhibited as a Portfolio Showcase by the Davis-Orton Gallery, Hudson NY, and included in exhibitions at the Griffin Museum of Photography, Winchester MA, ASmith Gallery, Johnson City, TX, the Center for Fine Art Photography, Ft. Collins, CO, PhotoPlace Gallery, Middlebury, VT and others. Her project "Wild Spirits" was featured in Lenscratch in July 2019. Evy was the Fall, 2017 featured Emerging Photographer in SHOTS Magazine. Her work has also appeared in The Hand Magazine, and will be included in the forthcoming 10th anniversary issue of Diffusion Annual. Wild Spirits I made this work on journeys south to untamed places in the Sea Islands of Georgia with a tribe of like-minded artists. The images and characters come from dreams and memories the land drew out from my personal mythology. Timeless, yet inhabited for millennia, the islands carry a spiritual presence of deep wildness palpable in the light and shadows; the ancient alligators and birds, the feral pigs and donkeys, and the artifacts of their existence lying everywhere. My photographs explore the emotions and spiritual experiences that the land and the light evoked: vulnerability, captivity, lost-ness, sanctuary, and wildness set free. Photographing in collaboration with the other artists, I conceived of these images made on black and white film as stills taken from a movie. Each is an instant of a longer feature, of a fuller picture not seen but understood to exist. There is a narrative between the frames and a soundtrack within us that I aim to invoke. What we imagine might be the rest of the story is as much a part of the photograph as what we believe we are seeing.
Joanna Borowiec
Poland
1971
Joanna Borowiec, a graduate of the European Academy of Photography in Warsaw, diploma thesis in the Creative and Expressive Photography Workshop, Dr Izabela Jaroszewska. Member of the Association of Polish Art Photographers (ZPAF). Scholarship holder of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage 2020. Photography Workshop. Enthusiast of medium- and large-format analogue photography. Uses historic photographic processes like ambrotype – wet collodion technique, cyanotype e.c.t. The main topic of her photos is humanistic photography, human. Winner International Photography Awards IPA 2021- category Deeper Perspective Photographer of the Year. She was also awarded the third place in Photographer of the Year category of the Black& White Spider Awards competition. Prize-winner of the Portfolio Black + White Photography UK, the Portfolio Black & White for Collectors Of Fine Photography Canada, the Portfolio 2012 Shot Magazine USA. Her works and interviews with her were published in many magazines, i.a. the Black+ White Photography UK (the cover), the Shot Magazine USA, the Black and White Magazine Canada and in national magazines. Her photographs can be found in public and private collections at home and abroad, i.a. in Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Sweden, USA e.c.t. She has participated in individual and collective exhibitions at home and abroad, i.a. in Poland, Germany, Spain, Singapore, Canada, USA e.c.t. Blue Story Many of my cyanotypes are created by layering a combination of objects and film imagery with carefully timed light exposures for a depth of blue/indigo colors. Inspired by nature and how we interact with it, I arrange natural objects such as leaves, flowers and vines with human made objects or images of objects. I choose to work with cyanotypes "live", in sunlight for the spontaneity of arranging the objects and often have a general idea of what I want to do allowing for of-the-minute additions and subtractions of objects and timing of exposures. I sometimes add acryl paint, or colored pencil to a washed and dried print. Cyanotype is a contact print process using treated, UV light sensitive paper. It results in a Prussian blue final print. Also known as photogram, sun print. The English scientist and astronomer Sir John Herschel discovered this procedure in 1842. (...) Due to the coating and printing process Cyanotypes are always non reproducible unique items in itself. Dreams Unfinished It is a story about pain, love and longing. The photos were taken after the death of my father. He passed away suddenly in his sleep. I could not understand what happened, to come to terms with the loss. I looked for him everywhere and imagined he was asleep and dreaming. As a result, I have contact with him in the dream world he is with me. Works depict dreams, motifs, shards of memories which probably appear in everyone's dreams. Dreams - eternal companions of human life - encourage us to analyse our own experiences and understand our fate. They enable us to bring to surface deeply hidden secrets and go beyond the earthly matters. These records are born out of imagination and perishable ephemeral memory. They are not meant to be unambiguous; they should leave the door open for free interpretation and free reading to enable everyone to supplement them with their own story. Glass Faces "The eyes and faces all turned themselves towards me, and guiding myself by them, as by a magical thread, I stepped into the room" Sylvia Plath Glass Faces present unique, enchanting, climatic and hypnotising portraits. Bewitching with natural beauty and somewhat unreal, mysterious, silent and oozing various emotions. Faces of friends and people we have just met. Ambrotypes - positive images created on a sheet of glass using the 19th century wet collodion process - are the vital element of the project. The ambrotype is inimitable. You may try to reproduce it, but a piece created on black glass remains unique. Ambrotype - Ambrotos means immortal... I was born in a camp The story of Jan Chmiel, who was born in the Waltrop forced labor camp - a city in western Germany. According to a record issued by a German official, he was born in 1944. , according to information provided by the mother in 1942. Of the 143 children captured in the Waltrop camp, three survived, including Jan.
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