Stephan Vanfleteren

Stephan Vanfleteren studied photography at Lucas Institute in Brussels (1988-1992). From 1993 to 2009, he worked as a free-lance photographer for the Belgian Journal De Morgen and always worked and invested in his own personal projects. Actually, Stephan works for museums, he's publishing his portraits in foreign journals and several foreign magazines. He's cofounder of Hannibal Publishing and Cannibal Publishing. Stephan Vanfleteren is art-director for the two publishing houses.

PRICES
1996 - World Press Photo Award - Sports, third prize stories - Boxing in Cuba
1997 - World Press Photo Award - Daily Life, first prize stories - Aids, Kenia
1998 - European Fuji Awards
2000 - World Press Photo Award - Arts and Entertainment, third prize stories, Elvis & Presley
2001 - World Press Photo Award - Children's Award, prize singles - Afghanistan
2001 - European Fuji Award
2007 - Nikon Press Photo Award
2009 - Louis Paul Boon award - Belgium
2010 - Lead Awards: 'Portätfotografie des Jahres', Germany
2011 - Henri Nannen Price, Germany - Tomi Ungerer
2012 - Vijfjaarlijkse Cultuurprijs voor de Provincie West-Vlaanderen
2012 - National Portrait price of the Netherlands - Rem Koolhaas, Dutch architect
2013 - World Press Photo Award - Staged Portraits, first prize stories, People of Mercy
2019 - Henri Nannen Price, Germany - Angels of the Sea - Mare Publication.

BOOKS
1999 - Elvis&Presley, with photographer Robert Huber (Switserland)
2000 - Buren, with Mark Power & Eva Leitolf
2003 - Tales from a Globalizing World
2005 - Flandrien - Cannibal Publishing
2007 - Belgicum - Hannibal Publishing
2009 - Portret 1989-2009 - Lannoo
2012 - En avant, marche! - Hannibal Publishing
2013 - Façades & Vitrines (Limited edition 666 exp) - Hannibal Publishing
2014 - MMXIV - De Red Devils - Cannibal Publishing
2014 - Atlantic Wall - Hannibal Publishing
2015 - Charleroi, il est clair que le gris est noir - Hannibal Publishing
2018 - SURF TRIBE - Hannibal Publishing
2019 - PRESENT - Hannibal Publishing
2019 - ONUITGESPROKEN - Hannibal Publishing

About PRESENT

Stephan Vanfleteren is mainly known to the general public for his penetrating black & white portrait photography, but over the past decades his work has ranged to documentary, artistic and personal pictures. From street photography in world cities like New York to the genocide of Ruanda, from storefront façades to the mystical landscapes of the Atlantic wall, from still lifes to intense portraits. The iconic images sit side by side with unknown treasures in this heavy tome containing no less than 505 photographs.
In the very personal accompanying text, Vanfleteren reflects on how his own work and the photography genre as a whole have evolved in recent decades. You get a close-up look at his intriguing career from the very beginning, when he travelled the world with an appetite for action. He also photographed his home country: all of the headline news stories of the 1990s appeared before his lens. Around the Millennium, Vanfleteren started to focus on that which is disappearing. With painstaking attention to nuance he created a visual archive of his homeland and of his fellow Belgians, in his own inimitable style. In the last few years Vanfleteren has brought the world inside, to his daylight studio, resulting in many encounters and portraits. This book includes two new series – not previously published – which were born in the intimacy of his studio: an exploration of the still life and a study of nude photography, both in colour.
Present is an impressive overview of Vanfleteren's oeuvre that provides a complete picture of him as a photographer, an artist, and above all a human being who faces life with empathy, wonder, and curiosity.

More about PRESENT

Selected Books on

Stephan Vanfleteren: Transcripts of a Sea

Stephan Vanfleteren

Stephan Vanfleteren: Flandrien

Websites

www.stephanvanfleteren.com

@stephanvanfleteren

Selected Books

Stephan Vanfleteren: Flandrien

Stephan Vanfleteren

Present

Stephan Vanfleteren

Belgicum

Stephan Vanfleteren

Surf Tribe

Stephan Vanfleteren

Inspiring Portfolios

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Lydia Panas

Grace Weston

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More Great Photographers To Discover

Toby Old

United States
1945

Toby Old was born in Stillwater, Minnesota in 1945. He started out majoring in biology at Hamline University, then moved on to the University of Minnesota where he trained to be a dentist. At the height of the Vietnam War he was drafted into the Army Dental Core. While serving in North Carolina, he began to explore art history and photography. After a 1976 summer workshop at Apieron Photographic Workshops in Millerton, New York, Old moved to New York City. He began working on his first extended series of the disco scene in 1976-1981. For this body of work, Standard Deviation, he was awarded a grant from the New York State Council of the Arts. In 1981 he received an NEA Survey Grant to document lower Manhattan below Chambers Street, and has continued photographing this section of the city since, includes an extended series on the boxing world. In the late 1980s he moved to upstate New York, where he began to document local events including county fairs and Civil War reenactments. He also began photographing national events such as the Kentucky Derby, Frontier Days, Mardi Gras, and spring break. Toby Old’s book, Times Squared, was offered through the 2005 Subscription Program and is still available for purchase in the Light Work Shop. Old participated in Light Work’s Artist-in-Residence Program in 1980. Toby Old captures animation in his photography, depicting both realistic and exciting observations of human life. Drawing on the inspiration of photographers of the 1960s, he has traveled the country photographing in many different environments, including street performances, beaches, fairs, fashion shows, nightclubs, boxing events, parks, and Fourth of July celebrations. His images capture extraordinary moments in human action and social and cultural experiences as they unfold. His photographs are not the kind to be taken in quickly, but images to be examined and scrutinized for details. According to Ted Hartwell, curator of photography at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, “Old’s work has always been characterized by a solid technical mastery of the medium-format camera as the tool for his wonderfully zany, insightful, and intelligent observations of the American scene.”Source: Light Work

Consuelo Kanaga

United States
1894 | † 1978

Consuelo Kanaga (born Consuelo Delesseps Kanaga) was an American photographer and writer who became well known for her photographs of African-Americans. She is one of the pioneers of modern American photography, began her career as a photojournalist in 1915 in San Francisco. In the 1920s, Alfred Stieglitz inspired her to develop a more aesthetic approach, and a trip to Europe in 1928 awakened her lifelong preoccupation with European modernist painting and the ways in which that work was influenced by the sculpture of Africa. Kanaga successfully combined a Pictorialist aesthetic with a realist strategy, producing handsomely composed and carefully printed images. She was one of few white American photographers in the 1930s to make artistic portraits of African Americans.Source: The Brooklyn Museum Kanaga was born on May 25, 1894 in Astoria, Oregon, the second child of Amos Ream Kanaga and Mathilda Carolina Hartwig. Her father was a successful lawyer and judge in Ohio. After moving to Astoria he became the district attorney for the city, and he also traveled widely, often leaving his family behind with little notice. After they moved to California in 1915 her mother became a real estate broker, a highly unusual occupation for a woman at that time. The last name "Kanaga" is of Swiss origin, and a family genealogy traces its roots back at least 250 years. She spelled her first name "Consuela," at least in the 1920s and '30s, but it is generally listed now as Consuelo, a more common Spanish name. Her middle name "Delesseps" is said to have come from her mother's admiration for Ferdinand de Lesseps, the French diplomat and developer of the Suez Canal. In 1911 the family moved from Oregon to Larkspur in Marin County, California. In 1915 Kanaga got a job as a reporter, feature writer and part-time photographer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Dorothea Lange later said that Kanaga was the first female newspaper photographer she had ever encountered. It was there that she discovered Alfred Stieglitz's journal Camera Work and decided to become a photographer. Lange encouraged her to take up photography as a career and introduced her to the growing San Francisco Bay Area community of artistic photographers, notably Anne Brigman, Edward Weston, Francis Bruguière, and Louise Dahl-Wolf. In 1919 she married mining engineer Evans Davidson, but they separated within two years. In 1922 she moved to New York in order to work as a photojournalist for the New York American newspaper. While in New York a co-worker at the newspaper, Donald Litchfield, introduced her to Alfred Stieglitz. Stieglitz worked with Kanaga to help transform her vision from photojournalism to a more artistic photographic style. By March 1923 she was living with Litchfield, although at the time she had not yet divorced Davidson. In 1924 she and Litchfield moved to California, living at times near Santa Cruz, San Francisco and Los Angeles. By the end of the year she had finalized divorce proceedings against Davidson, and she became engaged to Litchfield. The engagement lasted only six months, however, and by the end of the year they were no longer a couple. In 1926 she met Tina Modotti, who was visiting San Francisco, and she put together a small exhibition of Modotti's photographs at the Kanaga Studio on Post Street. Aided by art patron Albert Bender, she began planning a prolonged "tour" of Europe, and in 1927 she spent the latter part of the year traveling and photographing in France, Germany, Hungary and Italy. While there she met up with Dahl, and the two of them spent many weeks traveling together. While traveling to Tunisia in January 1928, she met James Barry McCarthy, an Irish writer and ex-pilot, and by March they were married. In May they returned to New York City and took up residence there. Kanaga initially found work as a photographic retoucher, but within a few months she had her own darkroom and was printing the first of her many photos from Europe. In 1930 she and McCarthy moved to San Francisco, and soon she was re-established in the photographic community there. In 1931 she met and began to employ African-American Eluard Luchell McDaniels, a young "man-of-all-trades" who worked for her as a handyman and chauffeur. She began to photograph him around her home, and as they talked she became captivated by the plight of African-Americans and their continuing fight against racism. Soon she was devoting much of her photography to images of African-Americans, their homes and their culture. In 1932 she was invited by Weston and Ansel Adams to participate in the famous Group f/64 show at the M.H. de Young Museum, and she showed four prints. There is some confusion about whether Kanaga should actually be called a "member" of Group f/64. The announcement for the show at the de Young Museum listed seven photographers in Group f/64 and said "From time to time various other photographers will be asked to display their work with Group f/64. Those invited for the first showing are: Preston Holder, Consuela Kanaga, Alma Lavenson, Brett Weston." However, in 1934 the group posted a notice in Camera Craft magazine that said "The F:64 group includes in its membership such well known names as Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, Willard Van Dyke, John Paul Edwards, Imogene [sic] Cunningham, Consuela Kanaga and several others." In an interview later in her life, Kanaga herself said "I was in that f/64 show with Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham, Willard Van Dyke and Ansel Adams, but I wasn't in a group, nor did I belong to anything ever. I wasn't a belonger." In 1935 she moved back to New York without McCarthy, and the two apparently were divorced sometime that year. She began plans for a portfolio of African Americans and interviewed several families in Harlem with whom she hoped to live while documenting their lives. While there she encountered painter Wallace Putnam, whom she had met the last time she lived in New York. Within three months they were married. They spent part of their honeymoon visiting Alfred Stieglitz at his home at Lake George. In 1938 she joined the Photo League, where she lectured a new generation of artistic photographers and became the leader of the Documentary Group projects, including Neighborhoods of New York. Her photographs were printed in progressive publications of the time, including New Masses, Labor Defender, and Sunday Worker. By 1940 she found teaching too restrictive, and she returned to taking photographs full time. She was actively photographing and exhibiting throughout the 1940s, 50s and 60s. In the latter decade she became very active in civil rights, and she took part in and photographed many demonstrations and marches. In 1963 she was arrested in Albany, Georgia during the Walk for Peace. She finally seemed to have found the right romantic and creative partner in Putnam, and the two of them remained together for the rest of her life. They traveled frequently and spent the last half of the 1960s going back and forth to France. A review published in New York Times described that "She continued to work into her 70s, despite suffering from emphysema and cancer, which were probably caused by the chemicals used in creating her prints. Her body of work, though comparatively small, is consistently exceptional. Consuelo Kanaga died virtually unknown on February 28, 1978, but her talent endures." Her entire estate amounted to $1,345 in photographic equipment, almost 2,500 negatives and 375 prints. Everything else she had given away to friends.Source: Wikipedia

Lynn Gilbert

United States
1938

As a photographer, my mission is to document unrecorded areas of society, shining a light on the lives and stories of those often overlooked. This work is not just a passion, but a significant contribution to our understanding of the world. In the 1970s, I took environmental portraits of children from more than a hundred families in New York City from different socioeconomic backgrounds, shedding light on the diversity of urban life. My portrait of Louise Nevelson in 1976, one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, inspired my first book. Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Have Shaped Our Time, 1981, includes portraits of the trailblazers who transformed the American Landscape. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Billie Jean King, Julie Child, Gloria Steinem, and 42 other women share their inspiring stories in their own words. For almost a decade, I documented the interiors of the Traditional houses of Turkey to preserve a disappearing way of life. The municipal government in towns and villages across the country helped select these houses, a significant part of the country's cultural heritage. My book The Silk Road: Then and Now, 2017, includes images from this series. For four years, I documented the changing seasons of a world-class garden. It grew into a documentary about a multi-generational family of 30, which revolves around this garden. My work has been widely published and appeared on over 1,000 media platforms, including Netflix, Nvidia, Intel, National Geographic, MoMA, the British Museum, and The Washington Post. My portraits are in the Smithsonian, the National Portrait Gallery, the Smithsonian, and the New York Historical Society. Recently, I started photographing and interviewing 1970s kids from different socioeconomic backgrounds to document what happened to their lives. At 86, I'm still working as fast as I can. There's so much more I want to accomplish, and I'm determined to keep pushing the boundaries of my art. Artist Statement What is a Portrait? According to the dictionary it can be a painting, photograph, drawing, or even a description. A successful portrait is achieving an image that is a timeless representation of the subject. Even with inanimate things or portraits of spaces, the goal for me is the same, to capture its soul. I've photographed hundreds of people. I have a series of NYC children and another Women of Wisdom. Getting beyond that awkwardness is not easy. The clock is ticking. Even children are uncomfortable, under the scrutiny of a prying eye. As a photographer, I'm always nervous, ''will I get that one image.'' What works for me is to keep the conversation flowing. Eventually the awkwardness fades. When photographing children there are endless things to talk about, however it is not as simple with adults. If the person is well-known then I do a lot or research about them. As the conversation progresses, I keep the camera clicking. The first pictures never work but they are important part of the process. The subjects get used to the clicking and the images get better. After about an hour I find a person relaxes. That is the moment, I can capture my subject. Real character is revealed. The tilt of the head, the shoulders go soft, the fingers relax, the legs are at ease and the eyes are unguarded. That final image happens in a split second. Decades later the portrait must still work.

Lynn Savarese

United States
1956

For me, the greatest joy of photography is the experience of intimate observation of elements from the natural world, and how my images often serve as metaphoric portraits of my own thoughts and feelings. Originally from a small town in Texas, I lived and traveled throughout the world before making New York City my home in the early ‘80s following my graduation from Harvard Law School. In the decade since taking up photography, my work has appeared in numerous solo and group exhibitions both in the USA and abroad, and has earned me prestigious national and international recognition. Statement Creative endeavor often begins with paper. The novelist, playwright, and poet; the composer; the painter and sculptor—each commence with a blank sheet of paper. During Covid confinement, I also turned to paper for inspiration, seeking to metaphorically portray it spawning and nurturing creation, from ovulation and gestation to birth and fully formed progeny. In the process, I experienced how paper has a life force of its own—its own particular physics—that resists complete manipulation even as it remains malleable. Paper reams and splayed books insist on unfurling in their own way, and crumpled wads of paper insist on their own projectile designs—invariably more complex than one could ever engineer.

K-Narf

France/Australia
1970

Using adhesive tape to manually process my photographs, open to influences from street art and video, the medium of photography is for me not only limited to truth-seeking but is also a toy to create and play. Both conceptual and experimental, definitely non-conventional, my work documents, recycles and collects the visual anachronisms of a world in a perpetual mutation.For the past decade K-narf has lived and exhibited worldwide including Japan, Australia, France, Singapore, USA and Italy. His exhibitions, often taking the form of ephemeral installations, are shown without distinction in a plant still in operation, an old theatre, Art galleries, Art biennales or an abandoned garage. His work has been shown atthe Museum of Contemporary Art in Scottsdale (US), the Museum of Sydney, the Japan Foundation for the Arts, The Yves Klein Archives, Issey Miyake (Paris), the Clic gallery in NYC as well as a solo show during the Arles photo festival.

Rod Harbinson

United Kingdom

During the initial emergence of coronavirus in 2020, Rod published a photobook: Zen in the Time of Corona - A photographic homage to Japanese Buddhism during the Coronavirus pandemic: Writer, photographer and filmmaker, Rod often reports in Asia, drawing attention to critical environmental and human-rights issues. From deforestation in Borneo, to mining protests by Cambodian fisherfolk, his stories and investigations have appeared in books, documentaries and over fifty high-profile academic and media titles. Long engaged in climate change, forest, Indigenous rights and biodiversity issues, he has a record of working with non-profit, academic and media organisations and has a Masters in Environment and Development. He led the Environment and Climate Change Programmes at Panos London, was a founder of the Climate Change Media Partnership, and editor of seven magazines and academic journals. His 2014 documentary, 'Defenders of the Spirit Forest' explores efforts by Cambodian people to defend the last forests in the country. It premiered at Glasgow's Document international Human Rights film festival. During the Kosovan war, Rod led the Kosovan Information programme at the British Refugee Council. Here he produced a film about returning refugees and published a book about the conflict, which featured his photographic coverage of the war. He worked with several organisations in the 1990's to stop the global spread of genetically engineered crops, and to uphold the rights of Indigenous people and small farmers, over their land and genetic resources. This came during a global rise of social movements questioning the rapid acceleration of neo-liberal economic globalisation. Actively engaged, Rod photographed this period of dynamic social change. His forest investigations and campaigning, have profiled numerous concerns and highlighted environmental crimes. He has documented mineral mining conflicts in forest regions in Madagascar, Zambia, Laos and the Philippines, to name a few. He also co-produced a book on campaigns to save Europe's Forests. Agencies representing his photography, Zuma Press and Polaris Images, carry his news and feature stories. He shares his expertise through freelance and consultancy work. Born in the UK in 1966, when not publishing books, Rod explores the outside world with a camera and the inner world through meditation and yoga. Zen In The Time Of Corona

William Eggleston

United States
1939

William Eggleston was born in Memphis, Tennessee and raised in Sumner, Mississippi. His father was an engineer and his mother was the daughter of a prominent local judge. As a boy, Eggleston was introverted; he enjoyed playing the piano, drawing, and working with electronics. From an early age, he was also drawn to visual media, and reportedly enjoyed buying postcards and cutting out pictures from magazines. At the age of 15, Eggleston was sent to the Webb School, a boarding establishment. Eggleston later recalled few fond memories of the school, telling a reporter, "It had a kind of Spartan routine to 'build character'. I never knew what that was supposed to mean. It was so callous and dumb. It was the kind of place where it was considered effeminate to like music and painting." Eggleston was unusual among his peers in eschewing the traditional Southern male pursuits of hunting and sports, in favor of artistic pursuits and observation of the world. Nevertheless, Eggleston noted that he never felt like an outsider. "I never had the feeling that I didn't fit in," he told a reporter, "But probably I didn't." Eggleston attended Vanderbilt University for a year, Delta State College for a semester, and the University of Mississippi for about five years, but did not complete any degree. Nonetheless, his interest in photography took root when a friend at Vanderbilt gave Eggleston a Leica camera. He was introduced to abstract expressionism at Ole Miss by visiting painter Tom Young. Eggleston's early photographic efforts were inspired by the work of Swiss-born photographer Robert Frank, and by French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson's book, The Decisive Moment. Eggleston later recalled that the book was "the first serious book I found, from many awful books...I didn't understand it a bit, and then it sank in, and I realized, my God, this is a great one." First photographing in black-and-white, Eggleston began experimenting with color in 1965 and 1966 after being introduced to the medium by William Christenberry. Color transparency film became his dominant medium in the later 1960s. Eggleston's development as a photographer seems to have taken place in relative isolation from other artists. In an interview, John Szarkowski describes his first encounter with the young Eggleston in 1969 as being "absolutely out of the blue". After reviewing Eggleston's work (which he recalled as a suitcase full of "drugstore" color prints) Szarkowski prevailed upon the Photography Committee of MoMA to buy one of Eggleston's photographs. In 1970, Eggleston's friend William Christenberry introduced him to Walter Hopps, director of Washington, D.C.'s Corcoran Gallery. Hopps later reported being "stunned" by Eggleston's work: "I had never seen anything like it." Eggleston taught at Harvard in 1973 and 1974, and it was during these years that he discovered dye-transfer printing; he was examining the price list of a photographic lab in Chicago when he read about the process. As Eggleston later recalled: "It advertised 'from the cheapest to the ultimate print.' The ultimate print was a dye-transfer. I went straight up there to look and everything I saw was commercial work like pictures of cigarette packs or perfume bottles but the colour saturation and the quality of the ink was overwhelming. I couldn't wait to see what a plain Eggleston picture would look like with the same process. Every photograph I subsequently printed with the process seemed fantastic and each one seemed better than the previous one." The dye-transfer process resulted in some of Eggleston's most striking and famous work, such as his 1973 photograph entitled The Red Ceiling, of which Eggleston said, "The Red Ceiling is so powerful, that in fact I've never seen it reproduced on the page to my satisfaction. When you look at the dye it is like red blood that's wet on the wall.... A little red is usually enough, but to work with an entire red surface was a challenge." At Harvard, Eggleston prepared his first portfolio, entitled 14 Pictures (1974). Eggleston's work was exhibited at MoMA in 1976. Although this was over three decades after MoMa had mounted a solo exhibition of color photographs by Eliot Porter, and a decade after MoMA had exhibited color photographs by Ernst Haas, the tale that the Eggleston exhibition was MoMA's first exhibition of color photography is frequently repeated, and the 1976 show is regarded as a watershed moment in the history of photography, by marking "the acceptance of colour photography by the highest validating institution" (in the words of Mark Holborn). Around the time of his 1976 MoMA exhibition, Eggleston was introduced to Viva, the Andy Warhol "superstar", with whom he began a long relationship. During this period Eggleston became familiar with Andy Warhol's circle, a connection that may have helped foster Eggleston's idea of the "democratic camera", Mark Holborn suggests. Also in the 1970s Eggleston experimented with video, producing several hours of roughly edited footage Eggleston calls Stranded in Canton. Writer Richard Woodward, who has viewed the footage, likens it to a "demented home movie", mixing tender shots of his children at home with shots of drunken parties, public urination and a man biting off a chicken's head before a cheering crowd in New Orleans. Woodward suggests that the film is reflective of Eggleston's "fearless naturalism—a belief that by looking patiently at what others ignore or look away from, interesting things can be seen." Eggleston's published books and portfolios include Los Alamos (completed in 1974, but published much later), William Eggleston's Guide (the catalog of the 1976 MoMa exhibit), the massive Election Eve (1977; a portfolio of photographs taken around Plains, Georgia, the rural seat of Jimmy Carter before the 1976 presidential election), The Morals of Vision (1978), Flowers (1978), Wedgwood Blue (1979), Seven (1979), Troubled Waters (1980), The Louisiana Project (1980), William Eggleston's Graceland (1984; a series of commissioned photographs of Elvis Presley's Graceland, depicting the singer's home as an airless, windowless tomb in custom-made bad taste), The Democratic Forest (1989), Faulkner's Mississippi (1990), and Ancient and Modern(1992). Some of his early series have not been shown until the late 2000s. The Nightclub Portraits (1973), a series of large black-and-white portraits in bars and clubs around Memphis was, for the most part, not shown until 2005. Lost and Found, part of Eggleston's Los Alamos series, is a body of photographs that have remained unseen for decades because until 2008 no one knew that they belonged to Walter Hopps; the works from this series chronicle road trips the artist took with Hopps, leaving from Memphis and traveling as far as the West Coast. Eggleston's Election Eve photographs were not editioned until 2011. Eggleston also worked with filmmakers, photographing the set of John Huston's film Annie (1982) and documenting the making of David Byrne's film True Stories (1986). In 2017 an album of Eggleston's music was released, Musik. It comprises 13 "experimental electronic soundscapes", "often dramatic improvisations on compositions by Bach (his hero) and Haendel as well as his singular takes on a Gilbert and Sullivan tune and the jazz standard On the Street Where You Live." Musik was made entirely on a 1980s Korg synthesiser, and recorded to floppy disks. The 2017 compilation Musik was produced by Tom Lunt, and released on Secretly Canadian. In 2018, Áine O'Dwyer performed the music on a pipe organ at the Big Ears music festival in Knoxville. Source: Wikipedia William Eggleston assumes a neutral gaze and creates his art from commonplace subjects: a farmer's muddy Ford truck, a red ceiling in a friend's house, the contents of his own refrigerator. In his work, Eggleston photographs "democratically"--literally photographing the world around him. His large-format prints monumentalize everyday subjects, everything is equally important; every detail deserves attention. A native Southerner raised on a cotton plantation in the Mississippi Delta, Eggleston has created a singular portrait of his native South since the late 1960s. After discovering photography in the early 1960s, he abandoned a traditional education and instead learned from photographically illustrated books by Walker Evans, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Robert Frank. Although he began his career making black-and-white images, he soon abandoned them to experiment with color technology to record experiences in more sensual and accurate terms at a time when color photography was largely confined to commercial advertising. In 1976 with the support of John Szarkowski, the influential photography historian, critic, and curator, Eggleston mounted "Color Photographs" a now famous exhibition of his work at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. William Eggleston's Guide , in which Szarkowski called Eggleston's photographs "perfect," accompanied this groundbreaking one-person show that established his reputation as a pioneer of color photography. His subjects were mundane, everyday, often trivial, so that the real subject was seen to be color itself. These images helped establish Eggleston as one of the first non-commercial photographers working in color and inspired a new generation of photographers, as well as filmmakers. Eggleston has published his work extensively. He continues to live and work in Memphis, and travels considerably for photographic projects. Source: The Getty Museum

Pascal Maitre

France
1955

Born in Buzançais, France, in 1955, Pascal Maitre studied psychology before beginning a career in photojournalism in 1979. His numerous assignments have taken him all over the Earth, from Afghanistan to South America. His books, In the Heart of Africa and Madagascar: Travels in a World Apart, gather images from 15 years of work in Africa. His photographs have been published in publications around the world, including GEO, Le Figaro Magazine, Newsweek, Life, and many others. His photographs first appeared in National Geographic in a September 2005 article on oil in Africa. Maitre is based in Paris, France. Source: National Geographic After studying psychology, he starts his carrier as photojournalist with the Jeune Afrique press group. In 1984 he joins the Gamma staff and then in 1989, he cofounds the Odyssey Images agency. From 1994 to 2018, he was a member of Cosmos Agency. He is now represented by MYOP. He has worked with many prestigious international magazines including, the Figaro Magazine, Geo, Paris Match, Stern, Brigitt and the National Geographic. In 2000, he published My Africa, a book that compiles 15 years of his work on this continent, with Aperture in the USA and Geo in Germany. In September 2001, the French version is released by Vents de Sable editions. In 2012 he publishes Amazing Africa, a compilation of 30 years of his work on Africa, with edition Lammerhuber and Unesco. Pascal Maitre has worked in over 40 countries in Africa, while tackling many different aspects, men and their way of life, politics, conflicts, tradition or the environement. He received numerous awards, including some World Press Photo awards, the AFD/Polka Prize for the Best Photo Report Project, the VISA D’Or 'Honneur for Lifetime Achievement'. He had eight personal exhibitions at Visa pour l'Image in Perpignan, two personal exhibitions at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris and a personal exhibition about his work at The Arche de la Défense in Paris.Source: MYOP

Benjamin Hoffman

France
1986

Benjamin Hoffman is a documentary filmmaker and a photographer with a journalistic education and background. He is mainly focused on documenting issues related to cultural migrations and population displacements. He has published several photography books, Beta Israël, the Remnant of Ethiopian Jewry (2012), Testament Manouche (2016), Au Bord (2018), Farewell Cape Town (2019) and The Bay (to be published in 2020). Benjamin Hoffman is also the founder and curator of the Studio Kameni project that aims to explore, discover and give new life to photographic archives of the Cameroonian photographer Michel Kamni.

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Exclusive Interview with Josh S. Rose

Josh S. Rose is a multidisciplinary artist working across photography, film, and writing. His practice bridges visual and performing arts, with a strong focus on movement, emotion, and the expressive potential of the image. Known for his long-standing collaborations with leading dance companies and performers, Rose brings together authenticity and precise composition—a balance he describes as “technical romanticism.” His work has been commissioned and exhibited internationally, appearing in outlets such as Vogue, at the Super Bowl, in film festivals, and most recently as a large-scale installation for Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. A sought-after collaborator, he has worked with major artists, cultural institutions, and brands, following a previous career as Chief Creative Officer at Interpublic Group and the founder of Humans Are Social. We asked him a few questions about his life and work.

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Interview

Interview with Maureen Ruddy Burkhart

Photographer Maureen Ruddy Burkhart brings a quietly attentive and deeply human sensibility to her exploration of the world through images. Shaped by a life immersed in photography, film, and visual storytelling, her work is guided by intuition, observation, and an enduring interest in the emotional undercurrents of everyday life. With a practice rooted in both fine art traditions and documentary awareness, she approaches her subjects with sensitivity, allowing subtle moments to emerge naturally rather than be imposed. Her series Til Death, selected as the Solo Exhibition for February 2025, reflects this long-standing commitment to photography as a space for reflection rather than spectacle. Drawn to moments that exist just outside the expected frame, Burkhart’s images suggest narratives without resolving them, leaving room for ambiguity, humor, and quiet connection. We asked her a few questions about her life and work.

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Interview

Exclusive Interview with Peter Ydeen

Winner of AAP Magazine #45 Travels, his series reflects this unique vision—capturing the spirit of place through subtle layers of light, color, and emotion. Whether traveling abroad or observing the rhythms of his own surroundings, Ydeen creates images that feel both grounded and enchanted, inviting viewers into a world where reality and reverie meet.

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Interview

Exclusive Interview with Julie Wang

Chinese-born photographer Julie Wang brings a poetic, contemplative sensitivity to her visual exploration of the world. Having lived for nearly equal parts of her life in China, Europe, and the United States, she approaches her subjects with the nuanced perspective of someone shaped by many cultures. This blend of distance, curiosity, and emotional resonance infuses her work with a quiet depth, allowing her to reveal the fragile beauty and subtle tensions that often pass unnoticed.

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Interview

Exclusive Interview with Ghawam Kouchaki

American photographer Ghawam Kouchaki brings a sharply observant and introspective gaze to the streets of Japan’s capital. Based in Los Angeles, he approaches Tokyo with the distance — and curiosity — of an outsider, allowing him to uncover the city’s subtle contradictions, quiet tensions, and fleeting gestures that often go unnoticed. His series Tokyo no no, selected as the Solo Exhibition for December 2024, explores the hidden undercurrents of urban life: the unspoken rules, the small ruptures in routine, the poetic strangeness found in everyday moments. Through muted tones, instinctive timing, and meticulous framing, Kouchaki reveals a Tokyo that exists somewhere between reality and imagination — both intimate and enigmatic. We asked him a few questions about his life and work.

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Interview

Exclusive Interview with Tommi Viitala

Tommi Viitala, winner of AAP Magazine #44: Street, is a Finnish photographer celebrated for his striking and cinematic street photography. With a keen eye for atmosphere and composition, he captures fleeting urban moments that reveal the poetry of everyday life. His work often explores the tension between solitude and connection within contemporary cityscapes, blending documentary realism with artistic sensibility. Viitala’s photographs have been exhibited internationally and recognized for their strong visual storytelling and emotional depth. We asked him a few questions about his life and work.

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Interview

Exclusive Interview with Robert Mack

Robert Mack is a California-based visual artist, photographer, and filmmaker. His fine art photography and films have been exhibited widely in the United States and Europe, with major shows at the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Reiss-Engelhorn Museum in Mannheim, Germany. Both institutions hold his work in their permanent collections. Working across different media, Mack has built a career exploring the complexities of human presence and representation. In 1981, while living in Baltimore, he produced The Perkins Project: Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity, a rare photographic and film study inside Maryland’s hospital for the criminally insane. These stark yet compassionate black-and-white portraits remain one of his most powerful and controversial bodies of work.

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