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Wiin a Solo Exhibition this June, Open Theme, Final Deadline Friday!
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Paul Kessel
Photo © Russ Rowland
Paul Kessel
Paul Kessel

Paul Kessel

Country: United States
Birth: 1937

After a career in clinical psychology and university teaching, I began photography late in life. (one-month shy of my 70th birthday). I always owned a camera before this time but rarely used it. In 2008 I started photography courses at The International Center of Photography in NYC and never stopped until ten years later. Originally, I was interested in portrait photography but discovered street photography and became immersed in it.

I have been in about 180 group exhibitions. Some are by invitation and most are from contests. In addition, I have had 5 solo shows at New York Galleries and one in Germany. I have been a Finalist in many street photography festivals, worldwide and have been the winner of a few.

I treat street photography as a sport. It is the quest and the elusiveness of a truly good photograph that keeps me going.
 

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More Great Photographers To Discover

Mostafa Nodeh
Mostafa Nodeh (b. 1980) is an Iranian artist and self-taught photographer based in Guilan, on the northern coast of Iran. He is known for his captivating minimalist landscape photographs in black and white, which, inspired by conceptual photography, are strongly rooted in themes, ideas and symbolism. About the Freedom Collection Global Appeal and Interpretative Depth The Freedom collection showcases how the simplest of elements can carry profound meanings. While some may see in his images themes of hope and resilience, others might interpret them as reflections on personal growth or the changing seasons of life. A Celebration of Universal Themes Mostafa Nodeh’s Freedom is a testament to his belief that freedom is a deeply personal and universal experience. The collection invites viewers to reflect on their journeys, embodying resilience and aspiration through serene imagery. Nodeh’s work serves as an invitation to pause, appreciate the quiet elegance of the world, and find strength in simplicity. Nodeh’s photography reminds us that within each image lies an opportunity to find peace and inspiration, celebrating the beauty of life’s most fundamental experiences. Statement Very poetic and existential in nature, Nodeh's works invite us to reflect on the deeper questions in life. What is the meaning of it? How are we spending it? Or to engage with more politically charged questions such as which lives matter? Or who is disposable? All the while they also hold another important message, which perhaps is the root of Nodeh’s minimalism: ''To me minimal photography is an art in the way that artists learn how to omit the extra elements which seem to be very necessary in such a hectic life. I see it as an international language to communicate with the people round the world'' Awarded Photographer of the Week - Week 49
Jacqueline Walters
United Kingdom/United States
Born in Cambridge, England, Jacqueline Walters is a fine art photographer based in San Francisco. She received a master’s degree from San Francisco State University, and a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley. Both are in English Literature. It was through literature that she discovered photography. In her artistic practice, she explores the themes of transformation of place, layering of time and space, and memory. Since 2009 her work has been exhibited in the San Francisco Bay Area at Corden|Potts Gallery, Gray Loft Gallery, Rayko Photo Center, Santa Clara University, and The Center for Photographic Arts; in Oregon at LightBox Photographic Gallery; in New York at the SOHO Photo Gallery; in Massachusetts at the Griffin Museum of Photography; as well as many other galleries in the United States, and internationally at the Complesso Monumentale del San Giovanni, Catanzaro, Italy, and The 11th Shanghai International Photographic Festival: Invitation Exhibition, Shanghai, China. Her work has been published in LENSCRATCH, SHOTS, and AAP Magazine. Walters’ work is part of private collections nationally and internationally. She was a 2020 Griffin Museum of Photography solo exhibition awardee. About Learning Mandarin and the Language of Lumens "When I began learning Mandarin little did I realize how it would inform my artistic vision. This became evident when I began to experiment with Lumen printing. With the former, I discovered how a seemingly endless permutation of lines, dots, and dashes written within an imaginary square formed meaning through simple and complex forms. With the latter, my thoughts shifted from acquisition of craft to learning a language. In my Lumen prints, instead of ink, I used various biological materials to form bold strokes and elegant lines or whispers of dots and dashes. The imaginary square was transformed into rectangles or other shapes defining the space. The written language is both a means of communication and the art form that is calligraphy. Just as the defining characteristics of the calligrapher’s hand suggests a personality, so too each paper I use reveals a different latent color as if speaking to the personality of the paper. My project, “Learning Mandarin and the Language of Lumens,” is about learning a process that harkens back to photography’s beginnings, influenced by the visual poetry and rhythmic grace of an old writing system." -- Jacqueline Walters
Ansel Adams
United States
1902 | † 1984
Ansel Adams was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West. He helped found Group f/64, an association of photographers advocating "pure" photography which favored sharp focus and the use of the full tonal range of a photograph. He and Fred Archer developed an exacting system of image-making called the Zone System, a method of achieving a desired final print through a deeply technical understanding of how tonal range is recorded and developed during exposure, negative development, and printing. The resulting clarity and depth of such images characterized his photography. Adams was a life-long advocate for environmental conservation, and his photographic practice was deeply entwined with this advocacy. At age 12, he was given his first camera during his first visit to Yosemite National Park. He developed his early photographic work as a member of the Sierra Club. He was later contracted with the United States Department of the Interior to make photographs of national parks. For his work and his persistent advocacy, which helped expand the National Park system, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980. Adams was a key advisor in establishing the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, an important landmark in securing photography's institutional legitimacy. He helped to stage that department's first photography exhibition, helped found the photography magazine Aperture, and co-founded the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona. In his autobiography, Adams expressed his concern about Americans' loss of connection to nature in the course of industrialization and the exploitation of the land's natural resources. He stated, "We all know the tragedy of the dustbowls, the cruel unforgivable erosions of the soil, the depletion of fish or game, and the shrinking of the noble forests. And we know that such catastrophes shrivel the spirit of the people... The wilderness is pushed back, man is everywhere. Solitude, so vital to the individual man, is almost nowhere."Source: Wikipedia To photograph truthfully and effectively is to see beneath the surfaces and record the qualities of nature and humanity which live or are latent in all things. -- Ansel Adams American photographer and environmentalist known for his black and white photographs of the American West in Sierra Nevada and in Yosemite National Park. Ansel Easton Adams was born in 1902 in an upper-class family. His family migrated from Ireland in the early 1700s. He was the only child of Charles and Olive Adams. His paternal grandfather founded a successful lumber business, which was later run by Ansel’s father. His mother’s family came from Baltimore. His maternal grandfather had a successful Freight-Hauling business, but squandered his wealth in numerous investment ventures. His nose was broken and scared during the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 as an aftershock threw him up against a wall. After the death of his grandfather the family business was hit by the bank crisis of 1907 and by 1912, his family’s standard of living had been dearly impacted. Ansel was a hyperactive child prone to sickness. After being expelled from several schools due to his restlessness, at age 12, his father decided to tutor him at home with the help of professors and Ansel’s aunt. He soon became interested in music and started learning the piano, but all changed when aged 14, his aunt gave him a copy of “In the Heart of the Sierras”. The photographs by Georges Fiske were a revelation and Ansel persuaded his parents to visit Yosemite National Park during the following vacations. Equiped with a Kodak Box Brownie n°1, Ansel Adams first visited Yosemite National Park in 1916. Amazed by the site and the light, he returned to Yosemite National Park the following year with better cameras and a tripod. He will return regularly to Yosemite National Park where he will even meet his future wife, Virginia Best. You don’t take a photograph, you make it. -- Ansel Adams At age 17, Adams joined the Sierra Club, a wildlife preservation group. He will remain a convinced environmentalist and a member of the Sierra Club his entire life. His work will promote the goals of the Sierra Club and bring environmental issues to light. In 1932, Adams founded the group f/64 with photographer friend Edward Weston, to promote their independent and modernist vision of photography. It is with Fred Archer that Adams will develop the Zone System (1939-40), a technique which allows photographers to define the proper exposure on negatives and adjust the contrasts on the prints. The depth and clarity of Ansel Adam’s photographs illustrate this technique. Initially, despite their size and weight, Ansel Adams used large format cameras as they offered a high resolution and a sharp image. The timeless photographs and the striking visual beauty clearly characterize Ansel Adams’ photographs. In 1952, he was also one of the founders of Aperture magazine. He died in 1984 from a cardio Vascular disease. Shortly after his death in 1984, the Minarets Wilderness in the Inyo National Forest was renamed the Ansel Adams Wilderness. In 1985, a peak in Sierra Nevada, was named Mount Ansel Adams. He was survived by his wife, two children and 5 grand children.Source: The Ansel Adams Gallery
Ayanava Sil
I am Ayanava Sil a resident of Kolkata, India. By education I hold a degree of Master Of Business Administration in Marketing. Photography to me is an exemption to see things differently. I am a Street and Documentary photographer, with an objective of documenting everyday life. The uncertainty and the suspense drives me the most towards these genres of Photography. Documenting people over the years has provided me with the invaluable opportunity to explore the unknown and to embrace the conglomerate realities of people. I am one of the administrators and curator of Streets Of Calcutta which is the oldest and the largest Street Photography archive of Kolkata. My works has been published and recognized by different platforms like National Geographic, National Geographic Traveller India, CNN America, Getty Images, Business Standard, World-Street-Photography Book 5, APF Street Photography Magazine, Better Photography India, Asian Photography, Chiiz Magazine etc. I have been awarded by The Andrei Stenin International Press Photo Awards, News Times, Eye Win Awards, Golden Orchid International Photography Awards etc. My works has also been exhibited in multiple photography exhibition, to name a few, Jaipur Art Summit 2016, Ariano International Film Festival 2017, Kolkata International Photography Festival 2019, Wlasnymi Slowami Film Festival 2019. Where I Bloom As the world combats with an invisible enemy, many of our lives have come to a standstill now. A month ago our lives were pretty foreseeable with simple daily conventional work that all of us were looking forward to. The coronavirus pandemic has changed the whole scenario, today countries are under locked down, schools and universities have been closed, events are cancelled and many people have been asked to work from home. We have seen the Government enforcing every preventive measure to slow the spread of the virus and flatten the curve. During this critical time, it is essential that everyone stays at home and helps to prevent the spread of this virus. In these tough times, photography is one of the major businesses that has been affected a lot by this pandemic. All studios have been shut down, weddings have been postponed, all the sports events have been cancelled and presently more than half of the world is locked down and there is no possibility of travelling. I am a photographer who loves to roam around the city unwearyingly to document life on the streets but due to the pandemic it is impossible to go out of my house to shoot now. So to keep myself in practice and to keep my sanity I chose to document my house but with a definite objective as this work of mine will have a different approach from the rest of my works. Also, I challenged myself to shoot everything through my phone only. So I started shooting every corner of my house from the ground floor to the terrace, through the windows and the doors, the plants in my house to the birds which flies above my terrace. I decide not to include any human subject and the only reason behind this decision is because we often feel like we are the most important species, but the fact is that we will fade away with time but we will leave behind a lot of things when we are gone. I tried to portray those moments keeping the photographs minimalist and graphical in form and ambiguous in nature. During all this time I had an interesting observation and I discovered that sunlight creates fascinating graphical shadow movements in different parts of my house during each phase of the day. I think that the only positive outlook amidst the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak is that nature has started healing. I do not remember when I last saw such timely Norwesters in the past few years. The Norwesters generally hit during the months of April and May. It mostly occurs late in the evening when thick, dark and black clouds start appearing in the sky. It generally moves from west to east bringing torrential rain often with strong wind and lasts only for a short period of time. The Norwesters are beneficial for cultivation purposes in West Bengal and Bangladesh. This year, the Norwesters bought different and beautiful cloud patterns and I tried to weave them within my work as well.
Pablo Trilles Farrington
Since I was little I was fascinated by animals, especially wildlife. I loved learning about them, their habits, behaviors, most remarkable characteristics such as size, speed, height, feeding, etc. As I grew up, that passion for wildlife began to fall asleep, giving way to other types of concerns. During my youth, my father gave me his SLR camera with interchangeable objects and taught me the basics of photography. I liked taking photographs of all kinds, from portraits to landscapes. They weren't good pictures, although it amused me. But after a few years, when I lived in my apartment, they broke in and took the photographic equipment. That was the end of my adventure in photography. Many years passed until, on a work trip I had to make to Guatemala, I managed to visit the Mayan ruins of Tikal recommended by my father, which he visited in the past. That trip, in the middle of the jungle and surrounded by wild animals, reawakened in me the passion for wildlife and the adventure of exploring natural places. At the same time, smartphones appeared and with them photography within everyone's reach. So I took pictures again this time with my mobile. The mobile was fitted with mini lenses for macro photography. Then I bought a zoom lens that connected to the mobile via Bluetooth. From there it went to a 70-200 lens connected to the phone, which I took on safari to Kenya and the Corcovado peninsula in Costa Rica. I finally understood that my passion for photography and wildlife justified investing in a mirrorless camera as well as better lenses. Until today I have two cameras and seven lenses that I have been using in my travels through Uganda, UAE, Morocco, Svalbard, etc. Always learning to achieve photographs that transmit and connect with the observer. Although in recent years I have obtained prizes, recognitions and honorable mentions that have sweetened the path, the real prize is the opportunity to live unique experiences and to invest the vital energy in this art called photography.
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