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James Tye
James Tye
James Tye

James Tye

Country: United Kingdom
Birth: 1971

Having been a keen snapper from an early age, James has had the good fortune to work for clients in the UK and abroad, shooting magazine articles, travel guides and corporate work. Recent assignments have taken him to Asia and the US from where these submissions were shot. This career has provided him with an opportunity to indulge his creative passion, explore the world and amass a large collection of fridge magnets.

Statement

A camera is a great ice-breaker. It gives me an opportunity to approach and interact with people of other cultures and languages with whom I would otherwise merely observe from a distance. I’m keen to involve the subject in the process, creating a more intimate dynamic and making it a happy encounter for all. The images I’ve chosen to share are observations and chance encounters over several years, across four continents, often whilst riding a rental scooter at dawn and dusk.

Website

jamestye.com

 

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More Great Photographers To Discover

Chuck Close
Chuck Close
United States
1940 | † 2021
Chuck Close is an American artist known for his monumental photorealist portraits. Close received his B.A. from the University of Washington in 1962 and his M.F.A from Yale University in 1964. Upon graduation, he was chosen for the Fulbright Program grant, which he used to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Upon his return to the U.S., Close worked as an art teacher at the University of Massachusetts. In 1967, he moved to New York and began his work in SoHo. He was given his first solo exhibition in New York later that same year, followed by an exhibition at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. In kindergarten, Close learned that he suffered from prosopagnosia, commonly known as face blindness. He chose portraiture as a way to remember the significant people in his life. With his inability to recognize faces, Close uses a grid system to piece together his portraits. He said, “If you impose a limit to not do something you've done before, it will push you to where you've never gone before." Close suffered from a spinal artery collapse in 1988 that left half of his body paralyzed. Though many thought his artistic career was over, he re-taught himself to paint using a splint. He methodically paints in color or grey scale in low-resolution grid squares across the canvas. Close up his work looks like no more than blocks of color, but the colors combine to create a photorealistic image as you back away. Close is not only influential in the art world, but his early airbrush techniques also inspired the development of the ink jet printer. His portraits of famous artists are his most sought after works, and his work John (1971-1972) sold with Sotheby's for $4.8 million in 2005. Chuck Close has work featured in the permanent collections at the Albright-Knox Gallery in New York, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Georgia, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the MCA Chicago, the LACMA, the MFA Houston, the MFA Boston and the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Related Categories: Close-Up, Photorealistic, Hyperrealism, Photographic Source, Post-War American Art, Pixelated, Visual Perception, Drawing, Black-and-white Photography, Work on Paper Source: www.casterlinegoodman.com
Matthew Brandt
Matthew Brandt
United States
1982
Matthew Brandt (born 1958 in Los Angeles) is a American photographer and visual artist. Calling his approach "a little bit messy and experimental," Brandt produces large-scale photographs through labor-intensive processes recalling the 19th-century origins of photography, often incorporating the physical matter of the subject itself. Attuned to the history of his medium — and its resolute physicality — and inspired by classical American landscape photographs, Brandt traverses the West, photographing and collecting material samples from nature and cities. The reciprocal relationships that Matthew Brandt creates between his subjects and the materials used to represent them are always conceptually grounded, often in response to social and environmental issues. He is deeply inquisitive, even fearless, in his exploration of subjects, materials, and processes, reinvigorating the medium of photography with a sense of wonder.Source: The Lapis Press Matthew Brandt received his BFA from Cooper Union and MFA from UCLA. Brandt has been the subject of institutional solo shows at the Newark Museum, the Columbus Museum of Art, Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art and SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah. Recent group exhibitions include works in New Territory: Landscape Photography Today at the Denver Art Museum, The Magic Medium at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Light, Paper, Process: Reinventing Photography at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Second Chances at the Aspen Art Museum; What is a Photograph? at the International Center of Photography, New York; and Land Marks at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Brandt was shortlisted for the prestigious Prix Pictet Award in 2015 and had his work showcased in an exhibition at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. His work can be found in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Guggenheim Collection, NY; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Art Gallery of South Wales, Sydney, Australia; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; Cincinnati Art Museum; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Royal Danish Library, National Museum of Photography, Copenhagen; Denver Art Museum, Colorado; High Museum, Georgia; Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan; and the Columbus Museum of Art, among others. In 2014 a monograph devoted to Brandt’s work was published by Damiani. Matthew Brandt lives and works in Los Angeles.Source: matthewbrandt.com Matthew Brandt's photography conflates subject and material, incorporating physical elements from the sources he’s depicting to create unique compositions that are technically inventive and conceptually sly. For Lakes and Reservoirs, his landscapes were bathed in the water of their subjects; 2014’s Dust featured reproductions of historical photographs of demolished structures, rendered in pigments borne of debris collected from those buildings’ contemporary sites. For 1864, his first exhibition at Jackson Fine Art, Matthew Brandt again turns to the archives, reinterpreting George N. Barnard’s photographs of a post-Sherman Atlanta by making images of a shattered city into peach pie.Source: Jackson Fine Art
Peter Nitsch
Peter Nitsch
Germany
Peter Nitsch was part of the late eighties of the German Skater scene. He studied communication design in Munich and graduated as a designer from the University of Munich, Department of Design (specializing in motion design). As an on-air designer, he worked for clients such as Universal Studios, ProSieben, 13th Street, SciFi Channel, and the United Nations. He then began to concentrate on corporate design and photography. Nitsch has won several international awards both as a designer (New York Festival, BDA) and photographer (Los Angeles International Photography Award, Hasselblad Masters semifinalist). He is co-founder of 'Playboard Magazine', 'RUPA' and the former culture blog 'get addicted to'. In 2020 Nitsch became a lifetime member of The Royal Photographic Society of Thailand. Tango in the Big Mango For me, my photography has always been related to people, stories, and life's journey. Tango In The Big Mango is an attempt in observing moments of people in dialogue with life. The series explores Bangkok as a city in which the coexistence of different cultures and people from different countries, despite their peculiarities, have found a way to live together. Tango in the Big Mango photo book is a mixture of documentary/street and conceptual images. The series consists of four parts: documentary/street photography, and conceptual themes of greed, growth, and angst. Tango in the Big Mango captures the intensity of urban life and barrage of consumption, culture, and eccentricity in Bangkok. More about Tango in the Big Mango photo book
Mitch Epstein
Mitch Epstein
United States
1952
Mitchell Epstein (born 1952) is an American fine-art photographer, among the first to make significant use of color. Epstein's books include Sunshine Hotel (2019), Rocks and Clouds (2018), New York Arbor, (2013) Berlin (2011); American Power (2009); Mitch Epstein: Work ( 2006); Recreation: American Photographs 1973-1988 (2005); and Family Business (2003), which won the 2004 Kraszna-Krausz Photography Book Award. Epstein's work has been exhibited and published extensively in the United States and Europe, and collected by numerous major museums, including New York's Museum of Modern Art and Whitney Museum of Art, The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Tate Modern in London. He has also worked as a director, cinematographer, and production designer on several films, including Dad, Salaam Bombay!, and Mississippi Masala. Epstein was born and raised in a Jewish family in Holyoke, Massachusetts. He graduated from Williston Academy, where he studied with artist and bookmaker Barry Moser. In the early 1970s he studied at Union College, New York; Rhode Island School of Design, Rhode Island, and the Cooper Union, New York, where he was a student of photographer Garry Winogrand. By the mid-1970s, Epstein had abandoned his academic studies and begun to travel, embarking on a photographic exploration of the United States. Ten of the photographs he made during this period were in a 1977 group exhibition at Light Gallery in New York. In 1978, he journeyed to India with his future wife, director Mira Nair, where he was a producer, set designer, and cinematographer on several films, including Salaam Bombay! and India Cabaret. His book In Pursuit of India is a compilation of his Indian photographs from this period. From 1992 to 1995, Epstein photographed in Vietnam, which resulted in an exhibition of this work at Wooster Gardens in New York, along with a book titled Vietnam: A Book of Changes. “I don’t know that Mitch Epstein’s glorious photographs record all of what is salient in end-of-the-twentieth century Vietnam,” wrote Susan Sontag for his book jacket, “for it’s been more than two decades since my two stays there. I can testify that his images confirm what moved and troubled me then… and offer shrewd and poignant glimpses into the costs of imposing a certain modernity. This is beautiful, authoritative work by an extremely intelligent and gifted photographer.” Reviewing an exhibition of the Vietnam pictures for Art in America, Peter Von Ziegesar writes, “In a show full of small pleasures, little prepares one for the stunning epiphany contained in Perfume Pagoda… Few photographers have managed to make an image so loaded and so beautiful at once.” Having lived and traveled beyond the United States for over a decade, Epstein began to spend more time in his adopted home of New York City. His 1999 series The City investigated the relationship between public and private life in New York. Reviewing The City exhibition at Sikkema Jenkins in New York, Vince Aletti wrote that the pictures “[are] as assured as they are ambitious.” In 1999, Epstein returned to his hometown of Holyoke, Massachusetts, to record the demise of his father's two businesses—a retail furniture store and a low-rent real estate empire. The resulting project assembled large-format photographs, video, archival materials, interviews and writing by the artist. The book Family Business, which combined all of these elements, won the 2004 Krazna-Kraus Best Photography Book of the Year award. In 2004, his work was exhibited during evening screenings at Rencontres d'Arles festival, France. From 2004 to 2009, Epstein investigated energy production and consumption in the United States, photographing in and around various energy production sites. This series, titled American Power, questions the meaning and make-up of power—electrical and political. Epstein made a monograph of the American Power pictures (2009), in which he wrote that he was often stopped by corporate security guards and once interrogated by the FBI for standing on public streets and pointing his camera at energy infrastructure. The large-scale prints from this series have been exhibited worldwide. In his Art in America review, Dave Coggins wrote that Epstein “grounds his images… in the human condition, combining empathy with sharp social observation, politics with sheer beauty.” In the New York Times, Martha Schwendener wrote: “What is interesting, beyond the haunting, complicated beauty and precision of these images, is Mr. Epstein's ability to merge what have long been considered opposing terms: photo-conceptualism and so-called documentary photography. He utilizes the supersize scale and saturated color of conceptualism, and his odd, implied narratives strongly recall the work of artists like Jeff Wall.” In 2008, Epstein won the Berlin Prize in Arts and Letters from the American Academy in Berlin. Awarded a 6-month residency, he moved to Berlin with his wife and daughter from January to June 2008. The photographs he made of significant historical sites were published in the monograph Berlin (Steidl and The American Academy in Berlin, 2011).Source: Wikipedia In 2013, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis commissioned and premiered a theatrical rendition of Epstein’s American Power photographic series. A collaboration between Epstein and cellist Eric Friedlander, the performance combined original live music, storytelling, video, and projected photographs and archival material. Epstein and Friedlander also performed at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio (2014), and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2015). His new series, Property Rights, was exhibited at Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York and Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne in the fall of 2019 and at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas in 2020-2021. Recent solo exhibitions include: Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow (2020), Museum Helmond, Netherlands (2019), Andreas Murkudis, Berlin; Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York; Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire, Paris (2016-17); as well as Fondation A Stichting in Brussels (2013); Sikkema Jenkins & Co., NY (2012); Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne (2012); Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris (2011); Kunstmuseum Bonn (2011); and Musee de l'Elysee in Lausanne (2011). In 2020, Mitch Epstein was inducted as an Academician to the National Academy of Design. In 2011, Epstein won the Prix Pictet for American Power. Among his other awards are the Berlin Prize in Arts and Letters from the American Academy in Berlin (2008), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2003).Source: mitchepstein.net At Cooper Union, Epstein was a student of photographer Garry Winogrand and was influenced both by Winogrand and William Eggleston's use of color. Epstein helped pioneer the redefinition of color photography as art form, as he was one of the earlier practitioners of fine-art color photography. He is well known for documenting his projects as books, which he feels allows him to form a narrative structure for his photographs. Epstein shoots film, as he believes he would not get the tonal rendering and detail for his large prints if he were to use digital.Source: International Center of Photography
Candy Lopesino
Candy Lopesino
Spain
1958
Spanish photographer and cinematographer born in Madrid 1958, Candy Campesino lives and works in Madrid. She is a member of the global community Women Street Photographers and a member of DOCMA Documentary Filmmakers Association. "The first time I saw the black and white image appear in the developer tank, I knew that photographing was what I wanted to do for a lifetime. Photography helps me discover the world around me, to know better myself and to express myself. With which I manage to unite two of my passions, photography and traveling. My professional career begins as a graphic reporter under the signature of Hidalgo-Lopesino photographers collaborating with the Incafo publishing house and in collaboration with the UNESCO it realizes articles for the collection of books 'The Heritage of the Humanity' in Mexico, Bulgaria, Tunis, Portugal, Italy, Great Britain, Spain, France, Panama… I have collaborated with others magazines: GEO Spain, GEO Japan, Viajes National Geographic, Traveler, Volta ao Mundo, Saveur Magazine New York, Rutas del Mundo, Península, Descubrir, Altaïr… There was a first photography exhibition that made a huge impact on me. They were the portraits that Edward Sheriff Curtis had made of the North American Indians and to which he had dedicated 30 years of his life. The portraits were impressive, and the time spent on the project blew me away. I left the showroom wanting to do a long-term personal project. This is how I start my personal project 'The Iberians' in which I have been working for the first two decades of the 21st century and in which I continue to photographing. " The Iberian: The Iberian Peninsula is a geographical concept formed by Spain and Portugal, two geographically united countries but separately by an invisible border. THE IBERIANS is an essay about my travels through this territory visually narrating the things that happen while wandering around Iberia, how to write in a sketchbook. The knowledge of a specific territory gives depth and meaning to my project, that is why my work is a continuous journey through Spain and Portugal. They are places where I explore the concepts of territory, border, light, memory and identity through the observation of the other. In The Iberians I rediscover the common places, their people, their culture, their realities circumscribed to geography, in short, I explore the human condition.
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
Christopher Makos
Christopher Makos
United States
1948
Christopher Makos is an American photographer and artist. He apprenticed with photographer Man Ray in Paris and collaborated with Andy Warhol, whom he showed how to use his first camera. He introduced Warhol to the work of both Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. Makos's work has been in the permanent collections of more than 100 museums and major private collections, including those of Malcolm Forbes, Pedro Almodóvar, and Gianni Versace. His photographs of Warhol, Haring, Tennessee Williams, and others have been auctioned regularly at Sotheby's. Warhol called Makos the "most modern photographer in America". Chris Makos was born in Massachusetts, but grew up in California before moving to Paris, to work as an apprentice with Man Ray. Since the early 1970s he has worked at developing a style of boldly graphic photojournalism. His photographs have been the subject of numerous exhibitions both in galleries and museums throughout the United States, Europe and Japan and have appeared in countless magazines and newspapers worldwide. He has been a seminal figure in the contemporary art scene in New York. His book, Warhol: A Photographic Memoir, published by New American Library, chronicles his close friendship and extensive travels with Warhol. Makos' photographs have been published in Interview, Rolling Stone, House & Garden, Connoisseur, New York Magazine, Esquire, Genre and People, among others. His portrait of Warhol wrapped in a flag was featured on the front cover of the Spring 1990 issue of the Smithsonian Studies, the academic journal of the Smithsonian Institution. Makos' Icons portfolio is a collection of silkscreen portraits of Andy Warhol, Elizabeth Taylor, Salvador Dalí, John Lennon, and Mick Jagger.Source: Wikipedia Christopher Makos is one of the best and most-known photographers in the world, having photographed New York’s art scene since 1970, the punk and rock scene of the 1980s and 1990s in America, as well as the architecture and artistic scene of European cities. He became famous, making portraits sculptured with the immediacy that characterized the bohemian stream that cheered diversity and urged people not to fear to show what they were. At the age of 66, he still retains his youthful, artistic charm and intense energy, and he never stops preferring to live in the moment and follow his instinct. Chris Makos was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1948, by an Italian mother and a Greek father. His Greek grandparents settled in Lowell in the 1920s and became laborers at the factory in the area, which was the occasion for their acquaintance and the creation of their family – the name “Economacos” became “Makos” after the installation of the family in the US. Little Chris grew up in California and moved to New York after high school in the late 1960s, with no plans or ambitions. He studied architecture in Paris, but not photography. His love for that art was created when he received a camera on his birthday. It was then the beginning, followed by an apprenticeship under Man Ray, who taught him to trust the “original impressions”. New York, in the 1970s, was the scene of a unique creative explosion with Chris Makos fitting easily into it because of his open mind, as he says, and immortalizing “a visual manifesto of the time” and its relationship with the “crude naivety” of the decade. Makos photographed the “madness” of New York clubs, including the famous frequenters of Studio 54, including Liz Taylor, Salvador Dali, Jean-Michel Basquiat, John Lennon, David Bowie and Mick Jagger, who left their signature on the stunning creativity of the Greek photographer. He himself was the starting point for many developments on the scene of modern American art and one of those who narrated the history of punk.Source: www.ellines.com
Erich Hartmann
Erich Hartmann
Germany / United States
1922 | † 1999
Erich Hartmann was a German-born American photographer. Hartmann was born July 29, 1922 in Munich, Germany, the eldest child of Max and Irma Hartmann who lived in Passau, a small city on the Danube near the Austrian border in which they were one of a five Jewish families. Erich Hartmann's family belonged to the middle class, and his father, a social-democrat who served during World War I and been imprisoned by the British, was highly respected. In 1930, only eight years old, Erich took his first photographs. Life became increasingly difficult after the Nazi takeover in 1933, including personal, financial, business, and family restrictions and the beginning of deportations of Jews to the first so-called 'labor camp' in the village of Dachau. The Hartmann family moved to Munich that year, in search of a more tolerant and cosmopolitan environment. The situation only worsened, however, and the family determined that they had to leave Germany. In August 1938, they accepted the opportunity to emigrate to the United States, having received the necessary affidavit of support from distant relatives there. They sailed from Hamburg to New York, staying initially in Washington Heights, before settling outside Albany, New York. The only English speaker in the family, Erich Hartmann worked in a textile mill in Albany, New York, attending evening high school and later taking night courses at Siena College. On December 8, 1941, the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the US entered the war, and Erich enlisted in the US Army. Trained in Virginia and at Ohio State University, he had to wait until 1943 before serving in England, Belgium (Battle of the Bulge) and France, and with the liberating forces as a court interpreter at Nazi trials in Cologne, Germany. At the end of the war he moved to New York City where, in 1946, he married Ruth Bains; they had two children, Nicholas (born in 1952) and Celia (born in 1956). During these years, he worked as an assistant to portrait photographer George Feyer, and then as a freelancer. He studied at the New School for Social Research with Charles Leirens, Berenice Abbott, and Alexey Brodovitch. His portrait subjects over the years included architect Walter Gropius, writers Arthur Koestler and Rachel Carson, musicians Leonard Bernstein and Gidon Kremer, actor Marcel Marceau, fellow photographer Ed Feingersh, and many other literary and musical personalities. Music played a great role in his life and work: "Music captured me before photography did," he recalled. "In my parents' house there was not much music except for a hand-cranked gramophone on which I surreptitiously and repeatedly played a record of arias from Carmen. This was before I could read!″ In the 1950s Erich Hartmann first became known to the wider public for his poetic approach to science, industry and architecture in a series of photo essays for Fortune magazine, beginning with The Deep North, The Building of Saint Lawrence Seaway and Shapes of Sound. He later did similar essays on the poetics of science and technology for French, German and American Geo and other magazines. Throughout his life he traveled widely on assignments for the major magazines of the US, Europe and Japan and for many corporations such as AT&T, Boeing, Bowater, Citroën, Citibank, Corning Glass, DuPont, European Space Agency, Ford, IBM, Johns Hopkins University, Kimberly-Clark, Pillsbury Company, Nippon Airways, Schlumberger, TWA, and Woolworth, for all of which he used color. In 1952 he was invited to join Magnum Photos, the international photographers’ cooperative founded in 1947 by Robert Capa, David Seymour, George Rodger and Henri Cartier-Bresson, he served on the board of directors from 1967 to 1986, and as President in 1985–1986. For more than eight weeks in 1994, Erich and Ruth Hartmann undertook a winter journey to photograph the remains of the Nazi concentration and extermination camps, and places of deportation, throughout Europe. He was determined to take only black and white photographs and to capture only what he saw, immediately when arriving, no matter whether days looked like nights. He returned to New York with 120 rolls of film, from which he made a first edit of 300 photographs and a final selection of only 74 frames. These, together with text by Ruth Bains Hartmann, formed the book and exhibition In the Camps, published in 1995 in English, French, and German and exhibited in more than twenty venues in the US and Europe in the years since. In all of his travel, for work and pleasure, Hartmann carried a small camera with a few rolls of black and white film, prepared for every visual opportunity. He also deliberately pursued a series of imaginative projects including experiments with ink in water, stroboscopic light effects, beach pebbles constrained in boxes, and others. In the late 1990s, with an eye to a future retrospective exhibition, Hartmann began making a definitive selection from fifty years of this personal work in black and white. Just a few months before his death he began discussions with a gallery in Austria about organizing an exhibition called Where I Was. On February 4, 1999 Erich Hartmann died unexpectedly from a heart attack in New York. Source: Wikipedia In the late 1960s and 1970s he lived in London. He documented the construction of the Britannia aircraft for the Bristol Aeroplane Company and he photographed for the leading colour magazines: the Sunday Times, the Observer and the Telegraph, notably on such stories as Shakespeare's Warwickshire and The Norman Conquest Descendants. For the Weekend Telegraph he made sensitive colour pictures of Styles of English Architecture, in a series of photo-essays for which Sir John Betjeman wrote the words, and he also travelled with Betjeman to the Faeroe Islands. Later Hartmann returned to Germany where he had lived in the shadow of the Nazis until he was 16, and chose a project for himself: the death camps. He made an unforgettable book, In the Camps (1995). He said, "I simply felt obliged to stand in as many of the camps as I could reach, to fulfill a duty that I could not define and to pay a belated tribute with the tools of my profession." The book is a magnificent tribute. There is hardly a person in it. So solitary is it, so desolate, that we people the pages with our own ghosts, we bring to it our own fears and imagery. These imaginings have the feeling of poetry. We see a room full of broken shoes; another room of battered satchels; another of torn children's clothes; the windowless barracks in four tiers in which multitudes tried to survive; or a square in which a gallows hangs in the wind. The railway tracks which many took into the camp; a single gas chamber in Auschwitz. It is hard to go from examining the book to describe all Erich Hartmann did for the Magnum co-operative when he served on the board or was vice-president (1975 and 1979) or president (1985). Burt Glinn describes how he and Hartmann came to Magnum at the same time, almost 47 years ago: "We have photographed together and met together and consulted together about ethics and journalism, and we have attended 46 Magnum General Meetings, the first with only eight other photographers and the last with more than 50, but all of them passionate, contentious and personal." He goes on: "Through all these years Erich, more than anyone else, has been my moral compass. No matter how knotty the problem he never settled for the facile compromise. He was always wise, judicious, and ferocious to find the right answer rather than the easy one. When I suspected that I was pursuing my self-interest rather than the common good I would glance over at Erich and if I encountered his quizzically cocked eyebrow I would shut up."Source: Independent
Kieran Kesner
Kieran Kesner
United States
Kieran Kesner is currently on assignment working with Roma communities in Eastern Europe.Kieran is an award-winning photographer, videographer and visual storyteller based in Boston. He has experience in photojournalism, documentary, editorial and commercial photography and is available for international, domestic and regional assignments. Recent recognitions include a Webby for Best Use of Photography, first place in International News at NPPA Best of Photojournalism competition, National Headliner Award first place and grand award, CPOY first place in portraiture, and a U.S. Embassy Grant.
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Interview
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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Call for Entries
Solo Exhibition November 2024
Win an Online Solo Exhibition in November 2024
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