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Sirli Raitma
Sirli Raitma
Sirli Raitma

Sirli Raitma

Country: Estonia
Birth: 1975

Sirli Raitma is a London based photographer. She was born and grew up in Suure-Jaani in Estonia. Sirli's images span portraiture, landscapes and interiors, but portraiture - especially involving ambiguity via costume or displacement - is her heartland.

Project - Eha

EHA is a series of portraits of my mother, portrayed in a series of unusual situations, poses and attire. Eha was born in Estonia in 1950. Widowed, suffering from epilepsy and lacking great command of English, Eha stayed tightly involved in our lives. In 2015 Eha began to suffer from depression. Life became bleaker. Something had to be done. I came up with a plan to give her something new to focus on, beyond her new procession of doctor's appointments and medications. The 'EHA' project was born.

'Eha revealed herself to be a natural model, happy to play along with my increasingly imaginative visual fantasies. The 'EHA' project has had an effect on both of us. It is encouraging to see that the results for us are also having a resonance for others. The project has featured in UK and Estonian magazines. The feedback from readers has been fantastic and is consistent it that it has prompted many to look at their own family situations and how they treat each other.'

Websites

www.sirliraitma.com

www.instagram.com/sirliraitma

 

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Marijn Fidder
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More Great Photographers To Discover

Filippo Venturi
Filippo Venturi
Italy
1980
Filippo Venturi is an Italian documentary photographer working on editorial, corporate, commercial assignments and personal projects. His works have been published in different newspapers and magazines such as The Washington Post, Financial Times, Vanity Fair, Internazionale, La Stampa, Geo, Marie Claire, Die Zeit, Gente, D di Repubblica, Io Donna/Corriere della Sera. He cooperates with several agencies in Italy and abroad for advertisement projects. He also pursues many personal stories and projects on the critical issues that he finds interesting. In 2016 his work, "Made in Korea" about South Korea, has been hosted at the Italian Center for Fine Art Photography in Bibbiena, at Modena's Foro Boario as New Talent selected by the Modena Foundation Photography, at Rome's Museum of Contemporary Art (MACRO) as selected Emerging Talent and at Somerset House in London by the Sony World Photography Awards. In 2017 he was the photographer sent by Vanity Fair in North Korea. In 2018 he is Testimonial Photographer for Fujifilm.I work as a multi-disciplinary photographic artist specialising in conceptual documentary and reportage Photography. I look at identity, displacement and the human condition. I also work as a photojournalist, documentary filmmaker and freelance commercial photographer.About Korean Dream Between 1905 and 1945 Korea was dominated by the Japanese, thus becoming a colony of the Empire. In 1945, after Japan's defeat, Korea was involved in the Cold War and became an object of interest for the USA, the URSS and lately for China as well. This brought to the division of the country in two along the 38th parallel and to the Korean War between 1950 and 1953. On the 27th of July of 1953, an armistice was signed but a declaration of peace never followed, leaving the country in a permanent state of conflict. North Korea is officially a socialist State with formal elections but in fact, it is a totalitarian dictatorship based on the cult of the Kim dynasty, practically an absolute monarchy. Since 1948 the country was ruled by Kim Il-Sung, the "Great Leader"; in 1994 his son, Kim Jong-II the "Dear Leader" succeeded him and until in 2011 Kim Jong-Un, his son, the "Brilliant Comrade" became Supreme Leader. North Korea is one of the most secluded countries in the world, we know little about it and the citizens' rights are subdued to the country's needs. Citizens have no freedom of speech, media are strictly controlled, you can travel only with authorization and it is not allowed to leave the country. The few foreign travellers who get the visa can travel the country only with authorized Korean guides, who have also the task of controlling, censoring and finding spies. Pyongyang, the capital, is the centre of all the resources and the country's ambition to boast a strong and modern façade (the rest of North Korea is composed of countryside, rice-fields and villages usually with no water, electricity or gas). The continuous and incessant propaganda against the USA portraits the South Korean population as a victim of the American invasion; young generations live in a constant alert state as if the USA could attack any day. At the same time, the propaganda aims at instilling a great sense of pride for the country's technical progression, fueled by the Supreme Leader and culminating in the atomic bomb and the subsequent tests. Pyongyang youngsters have been educated to be learned and knowledgeable people, especially in the scientific field, to foster the development of armaments and technology, chasing the dream of reuniting Korea in a whole and free state.
Tina Modotti
Tina Modotti
Italy / United States
1896 | † 1942
With her camera, Tina Modotti presents a distinctive vision of 1920s Mexico. As a Hollywood actress turned Comintern agent, Modotti used photography as an artistic and political outlet. Born​ in Udine,Italy,​ ​Modotti emigrated to San Fransico at the age of sixteen. She quickly established herself as a successful actress and modeled for notable photographers including Jane Reece and Edward Weston. The latter became her lover and artistic mentor. In 1923, Weston and Modotti set up a successful portrait studio in Mexico City. While there, Modotti moved within avant-garde circles, befriending Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. It was during this period in Mexico that she developed her passion for both photography and politics; this culminated in a solo exhibition at the National Library in 1929 which emphasized the revolutionary quality of her work. A year later Modotti was exiled from Mexico because of anti-communist sentiments and in 1931 she set aside a promising career in photography to devote herself entirely to political activism. She worked as a Comintern agent until her death in 1942. Although her life and photographic style are often linked with Edward Westo​n, her political engagement and the eye for composition she harnessed to express it are her own. Calla Lilies (1925) represents a cool appraisal of natural beauty and shows Modotti’s interest in formalism, something she shared with Weston, as she emphasizes the stark lighting, the near symmetry, and the tactile presence of the flowers. In Workers Parade (1926), however, while Modotti’s skill in formal composition is still evident, as the lighting and angle emphasize the repeated pattern of the hats, this dramatic view of a May Day parade in Mexico City reveals Modotti’s Communist sympathies and her ambition to use photography to promote political change.Source: Hundred Heroines Tina Modotti was an Italian American photographer, model, actor, and revolutionary political activist for the Comintern. She left Italy in 1913 and moved to the USA, where she worked as a model and subsequently as a photographer. In 1922 she moved to Mexico, where she became an active Communist. Modotti was born Assunta Adelaide Luigia Modotti Mondini in Udine, Friuli, Italy. Her mother, Assunta, was a seamstress; her father, Giuseppe, was a mason. In 1913, at the age of 16, she immigrated to the United States to join her father in San Francisco, California. Attracted to the performing arts supported by the Italian émigré community in the San Francisco Bay Area, Modotti experimented with acting. She appeared in several plays, operas, and silent movies in the late 1910s and early 1920s, and also worked as an artist's model. In 1917, she met Roubaix "Robo" de l'Abrie Richey. Originally a farm boy from Oregon named Ruby Ritchie, the artist and poet assumed the more bohemian name Roubaix. In 1918, Modotti began a romantic relationship with him and moved with him to Los Angeles to pursue a career in the motion picture industry. Although the couple cohabited and lived as a "married couple", they were not married. She was listed as a U.S. citizen in the 1920 Los Angeles township census. Often playing the femme fatale, Modotti's movie career culminated in the 1920 film The Tiger's Coat. She had minor parts in two other films. The couple entered into a bohemian circle of friends. One of these fellow bohemians was Ricardo Gómez Robelo. Another was the photographer, Edward Weston. As a young girl in Italy her uncle, Pietro Modotti, maintained a photography studio. Later in the U.S., her father briefly ran a similar studio in San Francisco. While in Los Angeles, she met the photographer Edward Weston and his creative partner Margrethe Mather. It was through her relationship with Weston that Modotti developed as an important fine art photographer and documentarian. By 1921, Modotti was Weston's lover. Ricardo Gómez Robelo became the head of Mexico's Ministry of Education's Fine Arts Department, and persuaded Robo to come to Mexico with a promise of a job and a studio. Robo left for Mexico in December 1921. Perhaps unaware of his affair with Modotti, Robo took with him prints of Weston's, hoping to mount an exhibition of his and Weston's work in Mexico. While she was on her way to be with Robo, Modotti received word of his death from smallpox on February 9, 1922. Devastated, she arrived two days after his death. In March 1922, determined to see Robo's vision realized, she mounted a two-week exhibition of Robo's and Weston's work at the National Academy of Fine Arts in Mexico City. She sustained a second loss with the death of her father, which forced her to return to San Francisco later in March 1922. In 1923, Modotti returned to Mexico City with Weston and his son Chandler, leaving behind Weston's wife Flora and their youngest three children. She agreed to run Weston's studio free of charge in return for his mentoring her in photography. Together they opened a portrait studio in Mexico City. Modotti and Weston quickly gravitated toward the capital's bohemian scene and used their connections to create an expanding portrait business. Together they found a community of cultural and political "avant-gardists", which included Frida Kahlo, Lupe Marín, Diego Rivera, and Jean Charlot. In general, Weston was moved by the landscape and folk art of Mexico to create abstract works, while Modotti was more captivated by the people of Mexico and blended this human interest with a modernist aesthetic. Modotti also became the photographer of choice for the blossoming Mexican mural movement, documenting the works of José Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera. Between 1924 and 1928, Modotti took hundreds of photographs of Rivera's murals at the Secretariat of Public Education in Mexico City. Modotti's visual vocabulary matured during this period, such as her formal experiments with architectural interiors, blooming flowers, urban landscapes, and especially in her many beautiful images of peasants and workers during the depression. In 1926, Modotti and Weston were commissioned by Anita Brenner to travel around Mexico and take photographs for what would become her influential book Idols Behind Altars. The relative contributions of Modotti and Weston to the project has been debated. Weston's son Brett, who accompanied the two on the project, indicated that the photographs were taken by Edward Weston. In 1925, Modotti joined International Red Aid, a Communist organization. In November 1926, Weston left Mexico and returned to California. During this time Modotti met several political radicals and Communists, including three Mexican Communist Party leaders who would all eventually become romantically linked with her: Xavier Guerrero, Julio Antonio Mella, and Vittorio Vidali. Starting in 1927, a much more politically active Modotti (she joined the Mexican Communist Party that year) found her focus shifting and more of her work becoming politically motivated. Around that time her photographs began appearing in publications such as Mexican Folkways, Forma, and the more radically motivated El Machete, the German Communist Party's Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung (AIZ), and New Masses. Mexican photographer Manuel Álvarez Bravo divided Modotti's career as a photographer into two distinct categories: "Romantic" and "Revolutionary", with the former period including her time spent as Weston's darkroom assistant, office manager and, finally, creative partner. Her later works were the focus of her one-woman retrospective exhibition at the National Library in December 1929, which was advertised as "The First Revolutionary Photographic Exhibition In Mexico". As a result of the anti-communist campaign by the Mexican government, Modotti was exiled from Mexico in 1930. She first spent several months in Berlin, followed by several years in Moscow. Traveling on a restricted visa that mandated her final destination as Italy, Modotti initially stopped in Berlin and from there visited Switzerland. The Italian government made concerted efforts to extradite her as a subversive national, but with the assistance of International Red Aid activists, she evaded detention by the fascist police. She apparently intended to make her way into Italy to join the anti-fascist resistance there. In response to the deteriorating political situation in Germany and her own exhausted resources, however, she followed the advice of Vittorio Vidali and moved to Moscow in 1931. After 1931, Modotti no longer photographed. Reports of later photographs are unsubstantiated. During the next few years she engaged in various missions on behalf of the Workers International Relief organizations as a Comintern agent in Europe. When the Spanish Civil War erupted in 1936, Vidali (then known as "Comandante Carlos") and Modotti (using the pseudonym "Maria") left Moscow for Spain, where they stayed and worked until 1939. She worked with Canadian Dr. Norman Bethune during the disastrous retreat from Málaga in 1937. In 1939, following the collapse of the Republican movement in Spain, Modotti left Spain with Vidali and returned to Mexico under a pseudonym. In 1942, at the age of 45, Modotti died from heart failure while on her way home in a taxi from a dinner at Hannes Meyer's home in Mexico City, under what are viewed by some as suspicious circumstances. After hearing about her death, Diego Rivera suggested that Vidali had orchestrated it. Modotti may have "known too much" about Vidali's activities in Spain, which included a rumoured 400 executions. An autopsy showed that she died of natural causes, namely congestive heart failure. Her grave is located within the vast Panteón de Dolores in Mexico City. Source: Wikipedia
Jost Franko
Jost Franko
Slovenia
1993
Jošt Franko is a young documentary photographer born in Slovenia in 1993. His work is mostly focused on long term projects exploring domestic and international social issues, and his themes often touch on the loss of traditional values in the modern world. Franko’s vision in photography is to document the world, and to thereby unfold, discover and understand it. He believes that his youth and curiosity drive him to pick up themes that are easily and often overlooked.
James Van Der Zee
James Van Der Zee
United States
1886 | † 1983
James Van Der Zee was an American photographer best known for his portraits of black New Yorkers. He was a leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance. Aside from the artistic merits of his work, Van Der Zee produced the most comprehensive documentation of the period. Among his most famous subjects during this time were Marcus Garvey, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and Countee Cullen. Born in Lenox, Massachusetts, Van Der Zee demonstrated an early gift for music and was initially aspired to a career as a professional violinist. Van Der Zee's second interest was in photography. He bought his first camera when he was a teenager, and improvised a darkroom in his parents' home. He took hundreds of photographs of his family as well as his hometown of Lenox. Van Der Zee was one of the first people to provide early documentation of his community life in small-town New England. In 1906, he moved with his father and brother to Harlem in New York City, where he worked as a waiter and elevator operator. By now Van Der Zee was a skilled pianist and aspiring professional violinist. He would become the primary creator and one of the five performers in a group known as the Harlem Orchestra. In March 1907, Van Der Zee married Kate L. Brown and they moved back to Lenox to have their daughter, Rachel, born in September. Soon after, they moved to Phoebus, Virginia. In 1908, their son, Emile, was born but died within a year from pneumonia. In 1915, he moved to Newark, New Jersey, where he took a job in a portrait studio, first as a darkroom assistant and then as a portraitist. That same year, he converted to Catholicism and began taking assignments from the Church. He returned to Harlem the following year, just as large numbers of Black immigrants and migrants were arriving in that part of the city. He set up a studio at the Toussaint Conservatory of Art and Music with his sister, Jennie Louise Van de Zee, also known as Madame E Toussaint, who had founded the conservatory in 1911. In 1916, Van Der Zee and Gaynella Greenlee launched the Guarantee Photo Studio on West 125th Street in Harlem. They married in 1918. His business boomed during World War I, and the portraits he shot from this period until 1945 have demanded the majority of critical attention. In 1919, he photographed the victory parade of the returning 369th Infantry Regiment, a predominantly African American unit sometimes called the "Harlem Hellfighters." During the 1920s and 1930s, he produced hundreds of photographs recording Harlem's growing middle class. Its residents entrusted the visual documentation of their weddings, funerals, celebrities and sports stars, and social life to his carefully composed images. Quickly Van Der Zee became the most successful photographer in Harlem. Among his many renowned subjects were poet Countee Cullen, dancer Bill ("Bojangles") Robinson, Charles M. "Daddy" Grace, Joe Louis, Florence Mills, and black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey. By the early 1930s, Van Der Zee found it harder to make an income from his work in photography, partly because of the strained economic circumstances of many of his customers and partly because the growing popularity of personal cameras reduced the need for professional photography. Van Der Zee worked predominantly in the studio and used a variety of props, including architectural elements, backdrops, and costumes, to achieve stylized tableaux vivant in keeping with late Victorian and Edwardian visual traditions. Sitters often copied celebrities of the 1920s and 1930s in their poses and expressions, and he retouched negatives and prints heavily to achieve an aura of glamour. He also created funeral photographs between the wars. These works were later collected in The Harlem Book of the Dead (1978), with a foreword by Toni Morrison. In 1982, at age 96, Van Der Zee photographed 21-year-old painter Jean-Michel Basquiat for the January 1983 issue of Interview magazine. Van Der Zee died in Washington, D.C. on May 15, 1983. Ten years later the National Portrait Gallery exhibited his work as a posthumous tribute. In 1984 Van Der Zee was inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum. It’s a hard job to get the camera to see it like you see it. Sometimes you have it just the way you want it, and then you look in the camera and you don’t have the balance. The main thing is to get the camera to see it the way you see it. -- James Van Der Zee Works by Van Der Zee are artistic as well as technically proficient. His work was in high demand, in part due to his experimentation and skill in double exposures and in retouching negatives of children. One theme that recurs in his photographs was the emergent black middle class, which he captured using traditional techniques in often idealistic images. Negatives were retouched to show glamor and an aura of perfection. This affected the likeness of the person photographed, but he felt each photo should transcend the subject. His carefully posed family portraits reveal that the family unit was an important aspect of Van Der Zee's life. "I tried to see that every picture was better-looking than the person ... I had one woman come to me and say 'Mr. VanDerZee my friends tell that's a nice picture, but it doesn't look like you.' That was my style", said VanDerZee. Van Der Zee sometimes combined several photos in one image, for example by adding a ghostly child to an image of a wedding to suggest the couple's future, or by superimposing a funeral image upon a photograph of a dead woman to give the feeling of her eerie presence. Van Der Zee said, "I wanted to make the camera take what I thought should be there." Van Der Zee was a working photographer who supported himself through portraiture, and he devoted time to his professional work before his more artistic compositions. Many famous residents of Harlem were among his subjects. In addition to portraits, Van Der Zee photographed organizations, events, and other businesses.Source: Wikipedia
Miho Kajioka
Miho Kajioka
Japan
1973
Miho Kajioka was born February 21st, 1973 in Japan and studied at Concordia University and the San Francisco Art institute in the 1990s. Kajioka's artistic practice is in principal snapshot based; she carries her camera everywhere and intuitively takes photos of whatever she finds interesting. These collected images serve as the basic material for her work in the darkroom where she creates her poetic and suggestive image-objects through elaborate, alternative printing methods. Kajioka regards herself more as a painter/drawer than as a photographer. She feels that photographic techniques help her to create works that fully express her artistic vision. Her images evoke a sense of mystery in her constant search for beauty. The focused, creative and respectful way in which she uses the medium of photography to create her works seems to fit in the tradition of Japanese art that is characterized by the specifically Japanese sense of beauty: wabi sabi. Wabi has been described as 'serene attention to simple things' and sabi as 'beauty acquired through the patina of time'. The artist regards herself as a maker of objects rather than a maker of photographs, using moments of her everday life as both inspiration and material. Source: Peter Fetterman Gallery Miho Kajioka (b. 1973, Japan, lives in Kyoto) studied fine art in the United States and Canada and started her career as a journalist in her native country Japan. It was after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that Kajioka was reconnected to her photographic art. Two months after the disaster, while reporting in the coastal city of Kamaishi, where over 800 people died, she found roses blooming beside a blasted building. That mixture of grace and ruin made her think of a Japanese poem: In the spring, cherry blossoms, In the summer the cuckoo, In autumn the moon, and in Winter the snow, clear, cold. Written by the Zen monk Dogen, the poem describes the fleeting, fragile beauty of the changing seasons. The roses Kajioka saw in Kamaishi bloomed simply because it was spring. That beautiful and uncomplicated statement, made by roses in the midst of ruin, impressed her, and returned her to photography. The photos presented, span Kajioka's adulthood, including pictures she took while living abroad, as well as scenes she captured in Japan after the disaster. The little pictures of a flower, or a running boy, are scenes from daily life, as it is. These fragments of her life, from various periods and against changing backdrops, are not so different from each other, and the differences that remain aren't important. Happiness, sadness, beauty and tragedy only exist in our minds. Things are just as they are. Since 2013 Kajioka's work has been exhibited in France, the Netherlands, Colombia, the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany and Spain. Source: IBASHO Exhibitions 2020 tanzaku, The Photographers' Gallery Print Sales (February 7 to March 22) 2019 time travel (duo exhibition with Rens Horn), de ketelfactory, Schiedam, the Netherlands (September 28 to December 22) And, where did the peacocks go?, International Photo Festival InCadaqués, Cadaqués, Spain (September 20 to 29) And, where did the peacocks go?, Kunstenfestival Watou, Watou, Belgium (June 29 to September 1) 2018 (all solo) So it goes, IBASHO Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium (September 9 to November 4, 2018) So it goes, Caroline O'Breen Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherland (September 8 to October 13, 2018) Half a dozen, Residency Program, Lisbon, Portugal (May 24 to August 31, 2018) Unfinished spaces, The Photographers' Gallery, Print Sales, London, UK (Feb 23 to April 14) 2017 And, where did the peacocks go?, Corden Potts Gallery, San Francisco, US (March 23 to April 29) 2016 And, where did the peacocks go?, Galerie VU', Paris, France (June 8 to September 2 – Solo) Et, où les paons sont-ils allés?, Festival La Gacilly Photo, France (June 3 to September 30) Grace and Ruin, SeeLevel Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherland And, where did the peacocks go?, Central Colombo Americano, Bogota, Colombia 2015 Renaissance Photography Prize, Getty Images Gallery, London, UK (Group) And, did the peacocks go?, ARTBO, Bogota, Colombia (Solo) And, where did the peacocks go?, Twenty 14 Contemporary, Milan, Italy (Solo) UNREAL, M2 Gallery, Sydney, Australia (Group) 2014 LAYERS, Microprisma, Rome, Italy (Solo) as it is, Fotografika Galerie, Gland, Switzerland (Solo) Balade(s) Parcours Photographique, Galerie Le Neuf, Lodève, France (Group) Boutographies, Montpellier, France (Group) Catching tails, Linke, Milan, (Group) 2013 As It is, Centro Italiano della Fotografia d'Autore, Bibbiena, Italy (Group) Reality and Emotion, Valid Foto BCN Gallery, Barcelona (Group) Galleries IBASHO, Antwerp, Belgium The Photographers' Gallery, Print Sales, London, United Kingdom Galerie Caroline o'Breen, Amsterdam, the Netherlands Ira Stehmann Fine Art, Munich, Germany Bildhalle, Zürich, Swizterland Polka Galerie, Paris, France Twenty14 Contemporary, Milan, Italy Peter Fetterman Gallery, Santa Monica, United States
Oana Daian
Oana Daian
Romania
Oana Daian is a photographer from Romania, currently based in Iasi. After a 12-year career in local television, where she worked as a presenter, show producer, and, for the past four years, as a marketing coordinator, she has now chosen to join the team of the National Theatre in Iasi as the institution’s PR representative. Her interest in visual imagery, its composition, and the communication of emotions and information through it was the trigger that inspired her to embark on a magical journey into the world of photography. Statement: Nature has always been my silent companion and greatest teacher. Through photography, I seek to capture its details, its distances, its depths, and its essence — all in synchronicity with my own presence within it.Between me and all of this, a camera and a lens that that explore the world beyond and my inner self; two universes resonating in unison, living the same moment and the same emotion, dissolving the boundaries between them and becoming a mirror of all our experiences. I wish for those who look at my photographs to rediscover, in this mirror, the most beautiful part of their soul. AAP Magazine: AAP Magazine 51 Colors
Laura Mohiuddin
Laura Mohiuddin
Bangladesh
Laura Mohiuddin is a Bangladeshi activist, philanthropist, and a documentary photographer. Laura is best known for her various philanthropic activities and ventures in her country. Through her photographs, she tries to raise awareness about social issues such as patriarchy, gender inequality, violence against women and poverty. Being the daughter of freedom fighter diplomat Mohiuddin Ahmed, she spent years in Jeddah and Indonesia and returned to Bangladesh at the age of eight. As part of her career, she headed the award winning Infolady Social Entrepreneurship Program, where women on bicycles provided their services to poverty-stricken families in remote villages across Bangladesh. She also helped build the digital client profile of another award-winning program, Targeting the Ultra Poor (TUP) of BRAC, the largest NGO in the world. Her best captures are A grieving mother, which is attributed to the women who lost their husbands and sons during the mother language movement in Bangladesh in 1952. A Tribute to Nirbhaya is ascribed to a medical student in India who was brutally raped in a bus and finally succumbed to her injuries. Silent Tears speak of the women who are victims of domestic violence and abuse but do not come forward due to the various social restrictions and taboos in the Bangladeshi society. Currently she is trying to raise awareness against animal abuse and corruption in the animal welfare sector in Bangladesh through her various work.
Orestes Gonzalez
Orestes Gonzalez
United States
I am a NYC based photographer since 1987. I went to UT Austin, where I got a Bachelors of Architecture in 1982. I practiced both Architecture and Photography for many years, finally specializing only in  photographic work after experiencing 9/11. This event made me realize that life is fleeting, and you must do what you truly love. I believe it is a primal human quality to create pictures. From the earliest cave paintings, we've made pictures as a way to validate our existence. History's millennia-long narrative of drawing and painting cannot compare with the short period that photography has been in existence. Yet this form holds a special place in my heart and integrates me to mans recording of his intransigence on this planet.
Jennifer Thoreson (Hudson)
Jennifer Thoreson (Hudson)
United States
Jennifer B Thoreson (Hudson) is a fresh, young visual fine art photographer creating staged imagery that is both artistically stylized and meticulously crafted. Drawing inspirations from themes of faith, restitution and re-purpose, and the intricacy of personal relationships, Jennifer is a dynamic and emotional illustrator of the human heart. With an innate ability to plumb the antique, the work is soulful; seeking the use of the forgotten or discarded, eerie and quiet. Raised in a spiritual and conservative home in rural Texas, Jennifer grew up imaginative, curious, and experimental, and has used her upbringing in her intensely personal artwork to bring insight and awareness using heartfelt, acutely mapped personal experiences. Jennifer is currently working in Albuquerque. New Mexico. she is an MFA Degree Candidate at the University of New Mexico, and is studying within the studio art in Photography program. Alongside varied private portrait commissions, she is an international speaker and lecturer whose programs are sought after year after year by many professional public and private photographic organizations. She has just completed her latest major body of work entitled ‘Medic’, a collection of ten images exploring the breadth of human relationships during illness and recovery. Jennifer’s work has been a part of many group and solo exhibitions, and is represented by three major galleries across the country. Exclusive Interview with Jennifer B Thoreson (Hudson): All About Photo: Where did you study photography? Jennifer Thoreson:The University of New Mexico How long have you been a photographer?About 12 years. What or who inspires you?Thomas Demand, Ann Hamilton, Rachel Whiteread, Francesca Woodman, Deborah Turbeville, Sarah Moon, Gertrude Kassebier, Julia Margaret Cameron Do you have a favorite photograph or series?Deborah Turbeville's Past Imperfect What kind of gear do you use? Camera, lens, digital, film?I have a Nikon D3, and use the 24-70mm 2.8 for just about everything. What advice would you give a young photographer?First, commitment and conviction are paramount. If you combine conviction and energy, you've really got something. Second, be humble, engaged, passionate, and well spoken. An idea, a sentence, a project you would like to share?I'm working on a project now about re-birth and reconciliation. I'm creating large scale installations in each room of a house, and photographing them with human subjects. The house itself, and all of the furnishings are unwanted or discarded items I have collected. I'm repairing them, beautifying, and repurposing them for the photographs; sort of a baptism for each object. The finished work will be photographs; small records, or documents of the transformation. The compliment that touched you most?Someone once told me that one of my photographs helped her to cope and heal from a life crisis. It meant the world to me. If you were someone else who would it be?Imogen Heap.Your favorite photo book?'Francesca Woodman' See the Book
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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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Exclusive Interview with Peter Ydeen
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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Exclusive Interview with Julie Wang
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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Exclusive Interview with Ghawam Kouchaki
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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Exclusive Interview with Tommi Viitala
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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Exclusive Interview with Robert Mack
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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Exclusive Interview with Alan Schaller About Irys
Interview
Exclusive Interview with Alan Schaller About Irys
Alan Schaller is a London-based photographer best known for his striking black-and-white street photography and as co-founder of Street Photography International, one of the largest online communities dedicated to the genre. With years of experience both behind the camera and in building platforms that give visibility to photographers, Schaller has now turned his focus to creating a new digital space for photography itself. His latest venture, Irys, is a photography app designed by photographers, for photographers, with the aim of offering a dedicated platform where images are respected as works of art rather than treated as disposable content.
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Call for Entries
All About Photo Awards 2026
$5,000 Cash Prizes! Juror: Steve McCurry
© Fernando Morales Roca
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