Cathleen Naundorf

More Great Photographers To Discover

United States

Brett Foraker began his career as a painter before turning to photography and filmmaking. All of his projects are imbued with a lyrical and at times surreal point of view. His early years were spent developing the lauded brand identities of channels such as TCM, Film4, and E4. He was appointed the youngest-ever Creative Director of Channel 4 (UK) where he directed the multi-award-winning C4 Idents and Faces of 4 campaigns. Since then, he has been making adverts through Ridley Scott Associates where he has directed award-winning campaigns for Toyota, Sony, British Heart Foundation, and Syfy, to name a few. Among his many accolades are awards from Cannes Lion, Creative Circle, BTAA, and the coveted Black Pencil from D&AD. He was the guiding force behind the 4Creative, and has been on Campaign's A-List as one of the world's leading creative thinkers. His work has appeared frequently in Creative Review, Boards, Shots, and was featured in Saatchi's Young Directors' Showcase in Cannes. Later he collaborated with brands such as Lexus, Puma, and Samsung+Rihanna. He lives and works in Los Angeles. As well as being an in-demand director and screenwriter, Foraker has been working on several portfolios of abstract and experimental photography. These are presented here for the first time. We asked him a few questions about his life and work. Statement I am a gestural photographer. I want to push beyond traditional image-making to incorporate abstraction and the energy of movement into my pictures. On some level I am trying to break photography or at least our previous ideas about what makes a beautiful picture. This started with experimentations in abstracting the everyday: people merging with the architecture of the city, spectral palm trees in the morning fog. It evolved into arresting the motion of common occurrences: exploding waves, rippling flags, the sculptural moment where a bridge and an onramp converge. I still felt the need to push further. I have long been intrigued by the errors that are generated by intentionally misusing our cameras and phones. By forcing these devices to act against their programming, we can replicate and even extend some of the experiments that were conducted in the early days of photography. Back then it was the use of long-exposure or even multi-exposure within individual frames that led to such accidents. Now, we can use these techniques as the building blocks for creating a kind of digital expressionism. The camera itself can record our gestures, acting as both brush and canvas, warping reality in a way that is at once controlled and randomized. I now apply these techniques to some of our oldest forms: landscapes, portraits, floral still lifes-everything is up for grabs. The fact that these images often express what it feels like to inhabit an increasingly fragmented digital world is more than a happy coincidence. It is what I was striving for all along. Exclusive Interview with Brett Foraker

Donald Graham

United States

Donald Graham is an internationally recognized portrait, fashion and fine art photographer whose work is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the International Center of Photography. He has exhibited his photography in numerous exhibitions and his photographs are held by many collectors. He is well known for his work photographing everyday people, celebrities and fashion for magazine and advertising clients including Vogue, Vanity Fair, Sports Illustrated and Time. Donald began his career in Paris as a fashion photographer. He then moved to New York and Los Angeles where he broadened his work to include portraiture for the movie, music, editorial and advertising industries and began devoting significant time to his personal fine art work. During his career, Donald has photographed in more than forty countries, with extensive travels in India, Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe. A book of his portraits, entitled ONE OF A KIND, was published by Hatje Cantz in 2021. After 20 years in New York City, Donald is currently based in Los Angeles, California and Taos, New Mexico. Statement "My portraits are about honest moments that display qualities of the human character including wisdom and sensitivity, peace and vulnerability, both joy and tragedy. I seek to make portraits that are driven by one's inner dialog. I'm not interested in poses or performances for the benefit of the camera. I'm interested in what a person is like when they are their most authentic." Authenticity, honesty, and trust characterize Donald Graham's portraits. They are not simply photographic recordings. Looking at them is like seeing human beings in the flesh, revealed to us by Graham with his virtuoso technique and sensibilities. His exquisite, strongly contrasting black-and-white photographs are evidence of attitude, rather than studied gestures. Eyes and faces are not model-like masks; instead, they express the unique nature of those portrayed. Inevitably, viewers find themselves in a dialogue with the images. You wonder about the stories behind these faces; though unfamiliar, they are nevertheless an emotional experience. One of A Kind

Jo Ann Chauss

United States
1954

Jo Ann Chaus is an American photographer from and based in the New York metro area She holds two certificates from the International Center of Photography in New York City. In 2016 Jo Ann self-published "Sweetie & Hansom", a 60-image book with original text exploring family, relationships and loss. Her current body of work, "Conversations with Myself", is a collection of performative self-portraiture that explores women's roles and identity, currently under edit for publishing. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and she holds special recognitions and awards: Critical Mass Top 200 2020, 2019, 15th Julia Margaret Cameron Award for Women Photographers Winner Self Portrait Series, 14th Julia Margaret Cameron Awards Honorable Mention, Winner 13th Pollux Awards non-professional category, Critical Mass 2019 Top 200, Klompching Fresh 2019 Finalist, PDN Emerging Photographer Fall 2019 Winner, , Candela Unbound8! and 9! juried exhibitions, Permanent Collection in the Center for Creative Photography Qualities of Light Exhibition, Juror's Choice South East Center for Photography Portrait Exhibition 2019. Statement Jo Ann's work is a visual record of her interactions with and with-in her environment, and her curiosity to explore and discover personal truths, whether found or assembled, as metaphors for her inner landscape. She expresses the joys and pathos of a life, as seen and felt by the young girl within who became the woman, the mother, and the wife. Her perspective is through the eyes of an elder in our society, contemplating the challenges and incongruities of her own will, desire and constraints within a historical context. Heightened and enhanced by the literal light of day, it is an examination of life's ambiguities: the close and the distant, the beauty and the grit, the singular and the plural, satisfaction and longing, together and apart… all relentlessly seeking to understand and witness herself, past, present and future.

Madhur Dhingra

India
1958

I was born an only child to my parents, in Delhi, into a family torn apart by the aftermath of the India-Pakistan partition. Hailing from a affluent background in Pakistan my family was now struggling for survival in the walled city of Delhi totally penniless. Imbedded with deep insecurities and freshly bearing the scars of partition my family was now setting up trade in the walled city dealing in fabric. It is relevant for me to mention this background for these very insecurities I too inherited from my family and they remain with me till date even with the changed times and lifestyle. Things improved gradually financially, with the trade flourishing and much because of the sheer hard work of my grandfather, father& chachas(father's brothers).We settled in Delhi at the start as big joint family. I have grown up hearing tales of how we had started life selling fabric on the pavements of the walled city where we now own several properties. My father could never get over those scars of partition. I too was repeatedly made to realize that ( for better or for worse) even though I was born much later in Delhi. At the age of five I was put to school at St.Xavier's High School, Raj Niwas Marg, Delhi. That period was to become the most memorable part of my life. I remember enjoying that period thoroughly. I was always an above average student with a lot of love for extracurricular activities. In school I would love going hiking, camping, swimming & cycling with the boy scouts. From the very start I was naughty and mischievous and was a regular in getting in and out of trouble. After school I went to the Delhi University and took up English Hons as my subject. But nowhere was it in my mind to take up studies serious. Restless from the start I wanted to travel the world. I now join the Merchant Navy at the age of seventeen ,as a deck cadet leaving college in the first year itself. I loved this new experience and was good at learning navigation. Very soon I was promoted to become the navigating officer. For the first year I never came back home at all. I was fulfilling my desire to see the world thoroughly meeting different types of people and experiencing different kinds of cultures . Once while travelling in the city of Jeddah near Mecca during Ramadan I was amazed to see gold slabs and coins being sold on the pavements of the city. On the loudspeaker I then heard the azaan (prayer call) and to my utter astonishment I saw people leave all this gold unattended and enter the nearby mazjid for prayer. Such was the strictness of the prevailing law of the land that anybody caught stealing would have his hand chopped off. Nobody dared to steal. Now quite a different experience was when my ship first entered Thailand. To my utter surprise I saw hoards of women entering my ship. Their numbers must have been no less than a hundred odd. I was on duty and I objected to their entry and was immediately informed by my senior officer to back off as they were entering with the permission of the captain. These were prostitutes who stayed on my ship till the time it stayed there. Nobody was questioning the morality or the ethics. It was gala time for all officers, crew, and the Captain. This was the way of life for most sailors . One horrific incident I remember was when our Burmese radio officer died on the ship due to a liver problem. As we were still some days away from the next port,his body was put in the deep freezer of the ship, the same place where all vegetables and other eatables were stored. Life was going on as if nothing had happened and everybody was eating and drinking as any other day. In a ship life all relationships and friendships are very temporary and the moment a person gets off the ship all these are left behind and forgotten. My bag of experiences was filling up fast. The restlessness and void was again setting in fast. I was getting bored again after about five years of sailing. The novelty had worn off and my inherent nature and upbringing was not that of a sailor in any way .I finally decided to say quits and joined the family business which was waiting for me to return. My dad was overjoyed at this decision of mine. I had no problem settling into this environment as it just happened to be in my blood. I now decide to get married too. I get married and soon after become a father of two adorable children. My age at that period would have been early twenty or so. Time flew by fast earning bread and butter for my family. Nothing was more important than bringing up the kids properly and with a lot of love, something which I was deprived of badly during my childhood days. But now again the same restlessness and void was setting in. I was in a dilemma, now trying out new ways to end this emptiness . I initially tried my hands at learning sculpture at Triveni Kala Sangam Mandi House, but I soon realized that medium was not meant for me. Destiny seemed to have other plans for me and it was during this period that I was gifted a SLR by someone, a Ricoh 500 as I now try to remember. The camera body had a dial with some numbers and also some numbers on the lens of which I had no clue. There were photography classes also being held in Triveni Kala Sangam and I joined these classes with sculpture classes I was already doing. It was here I met my photography teacher and now a lifelong friend Satyasri Ukil for the first time. The Basic course was about learning the techniques of Black & White photography. Satyasri was a dedicated, honest & straightforward teacher. His likes and dislikes purely dealt with the merits of the image and not with the person who had shot the image. I was learning fast with my association with Satyasri at Triveni where he was teaching then . A few of us guys(now renowned photographers), formed a sort of a team under the guidance of Ukil (as we address Satyasri,till date).We were shooting developing and printing the whole day long. Photography was now no longer a hobby but a frenzy. I soon set up my own darkroom in my house and would develop and print negatives all night long. I now start trekking again now with a new SLR in hand going to high altitudes and to very difficult locales. I remember showing my first serious work to Ukil and found him overjoyed. Soon my ambitions grew and I start shooting product for the advertising agencies. My first breakthrough as I clearly remember had come from the agency 0& M whose creative head then was Benoy Mitra, who was one day present at the colour lab called "MultiColour in Jhandewalan, when my portfolio prints were coming out of the lab. He saw my work and quietly handed over his card asking me to see him in the agency. I was overjoyed. This was breakthrough I needed desperately. I soon started getting assignments from most major agencies. But now I started getting bored again shooting mountains product and off and on some fashion. I still needed to express myself in a different way. I decide to work towards my first solo exhibition and I show my landscapes and mountain work to the management of INDIA INTERNATIONAL CENTRE. After seeing my work they agree to sponsor my show fixing the date to 28th November 1998.It is pertinent to mention here that I had then "only" shown them my beautiful landscapes and mountain TP's as I had nothing more at that time in my kitty. I started a new journey, first shooting Ladakh. I found immense peace and tranquility (acting as a balm for my troubled mind )in the monasteries I visited. The filtrations of light from the windows and doors into the dark interiors of the monasteries were indeed very beautiful, tranquil and peaceful. I would sit inside these monasteries for hours at a stretch calming my taut nerves. The prayer gong would echo inside the main hall and seep deep inside my soul. I have always equated light with God and have believed that the darkness of the human soul will ultimately come alive with the play of Light (God) on it. My next visit was to Banaras. Here I found people visiting the Ghats in very colorful attires. A activity on these ancient Ghats like the Dashashwamedh Ghat would start very early in the morning. People from all over India visit Banaras to perform various religious rituals, right from the birth of a child to the cremation of the dead and also later to perform rites for their safe and comfortable passage after death. The quality of light that I found in Banaras was very warm & golden and I wouldn't hesitate a moment to call it heavenly. Now a special reference to the Manikarnika Ghat " the ghat of the dead" is needed. People from all over India come to Kashi (ancient name of Banaras)to cremate their dead at Manikarnika.It is believed by Hindus that a cremation at Manikarnika Ghat gives the human soul an unhindered passage to heaven. Pyres are being lit here continuously without getting extinguished for the last 3000 years. But it was on this BURNING GHAT that my worst nightmare was to begin. I would visit this ghat daily looking at the activities. It was not very long before I realised that whenever a body of a poor person would come in, it would be cremated in a bizarre manner. It required two mun wood at the least (mun is an Indian measure of weight equivalent to 20 kgs) to cover a human body completely for cremation. But the person accompanying the dead body did not have that much money in his pocket. So only that much wood was purchased in which only the torso could be covered by wood. The legs and head were left hanging out and the pyre lit. The head would get burnt in a horrific manner with the head and feet falling away from the torso partially burnt. Then these torn away parts were picked up and put into the pyre or thrown into the Ganges. This whole sequence was so bizarre that I decided to get it on film and show it to the world. This I did manage to photograph secretly even after a lot of objections and hindrances from the people in charge at Manikarnika. Man really "was" meeting his God in Kashi, though in a very bizarre manner. So much for Kashi, our GATEWAY TO HEAVEN.I have posted only a few of those pictures on this website just to avoid unnecessary disturbance to people's minds. In the meantime the Purn Kumbh was being held at Hardwar. This again has become a very interesting event to relate. I was aghast to see completely naked so called Naga "sadhus" storming the streets of Hardwar. It was here I came to understand from the local inhabitants of Hardwar that this whole show was a complete farce. These so called ascetics only stormed the streets during the Khumb. Neither do they live in the remoteness of the Himalayas leading a renounced life, but on the contrary live in air conditioned lavishly furnished akharas in Hardwar itself. They were a weird sight. ( I have shown some photographs of them in my Black & White section). Here I saw them fight pitched battles with the police before the procession. DOWNRIGHT CRIMINALS TO THE VERY CORE, MOST OF THEM. On the day of the procession I got up early in the morning and positioned myself on roof top of a house near the Niranjani Akhara.This was very early in the morning and I was testing the auto focusing of my telephoto 300mm Canon lens when I saw a group of nagas in the akhara compound. I was taken aback when I saw one Naga fiddling with the genitals of the other Naga, "AND I TOOK THE SHOT".(later to appear on the first page of THE INDIAN EXPRESS). There were hutments built for sadhus by the kumbh authorities across the river bed. I would visit those and sit with some real sanyasis and listen to their discourses and hear them sing bhajans. This was a very nice and peaceful experience. The Kumbh ended and my exhibition date also was drawing near. The IIC Gallery wanted to see the final prints that I had decided to display. Nowhere in my final selection were those beautiful landscapes to be seen. Their place had been taken by naked sadhus with Trishuls and burning ghats & corpses. The Gallery management told me in no uncertain terms that they will not allow the show to go on unless these pictures were withdrawn. My dilemma was that my photo essay "Where Man Meets God'" was a story of a man's passage of life, his wanderings, his search for God. This essay was incomplete without these pictures. I told the management that I will show my work as it is and will not remove any picture from the list. Much courage to take this right stand was coming from Satyasri Ukil who stood by me all this while withstanding this massive ONSLOUGHT . IIC Management banned my exhibition. It was during this period that me and Satyasri Ukil were introduced to Suneet Chopra a reputed Art Critic. He later introduced us to Siddharth Tagore, a gallery owner at Art Consult Hauz Khas Village. Siddharth Tagore offered to hold my preview party at his gallery inviting respected artists like B.C.Sanyal, Jatin Das and many other artists of repute. The preview was a major success with all these stalwarts in their respective art fields giving their nod to my exhibition. Mr.Khushwant Singh the famous and a very respected writer too came up with an article on me in his column "Malice Towards One And All .Now IIC started shifting its stance and a compromise was reached. "That the images will be allowed to display but only facing towards the Gallery wall, whoever who wanted to see them could do so at his own discretion". Almost everybody saw those images.. Many reputed people visited the exhibition, some of them I mention in my TESTIMONIAL column. Eight major newspapers wrote elaborately on this exhibition. There was a TV interview also held by a channel also. The exhibition was a huge success on the whole. I am now planning another exhibition with a different theme and gearing up to hold another show in Milan. Life for me as a photographer continues...

Carl Mydans

United States
1907 | † 2004

Carl Mydans was an American photographer who worked for the Farm Security Administration and Life magazine. Mydans grew up playing on the Mystic River near Medford, near Boston, Massachusetts. His father was an oboist. Mydans became devoted to photography while in college at Boston University. While working on the Boston University News he abandoned childhood dreams of being a surgeon or a boat builder in favor of journalism. His first reporting jobs were for The Boston Globe and the Boston Herald. After college, he went to New York as a writer for American Banker and then in 1935 to Washington to join a group of photographers in the Farm Security Administration. There he worked with other photographers like Dorothea Lange and Ben Shahn to document the conditions of the American rural workers. In 1935, he traveled throughout New England and America's South, documenting the end of a rural-based economy, and gained a measure of renown for his images of bedraggled Arkansas farmers and their families. It was the Great Depression, and the poorest of America's poor were devastated by the economic downturn. "One picture, of a Tennessee family living in a hut built on an abandoned truck chassis, portrays the misery of the times," noted Mydans' Times of London obituary, "as starkly as any photographs by his more celebrated contemporaries." In 1936, he joined Life as one of its earliest staff photographers (Alfred Eisenstaedt, Margaret Bourke-White, Thomas McAvoy and Peter Stackpole were the original staff photographers) and a pioneering photojournalist. Mydans recorded photographic images of life and death throughout Europe and Asia during World War II traveling over 45,000 miles (72,000 km). In 1941, the photographer and Shelley Mydans were the first husband and wife team on the magazine's staff. Shelley and Carl were captured by the invading Japanese forces in the Philippines and interned for nearly a year in Manila, then for another year in Shanghai, China, before they were released as part of a prisoner-of-war exchange in December 1943. After their release, Mydans was sent back into Europe for pivotal battles in Italy and France. By 1944, Mydans was back in the Philippines to cover MacArthur's return. Mydans snapped the moment when General Douglas MacArthur purposefully strode ashore in the Philippines in 1945, The legendary officer had declared, when the Japanese came in 1942, "I shall return," and Mydans' photograph of the formidable general immortalized that claim for posterity. Some asserted that it must have been staged, but Mydans resolutely defended the photograph as entirely spontaneous, though he did admit that MacArthur was savvy about public-relations opportunities. The general had appeared in Mydans' other memorable image from that assignment, watching with other top U.S. brass as a Japanese delegation signed the official documents of surrender on an early September day in 1945. "No one I have ever known in public life had a better understanding of the drama and power of a picture," Mydans, said about MacArthur. Mydans also captured the signing of Japan's surrender aboard the U.S.S. Missouri. Some of Mydans's other famous pictures include the bombing of Chongqing, angry French citizens shaving the heads of women accused of sleeping with Germans during the occupation in 1944; a roomful of excited royal youngsters and their staid older relatives in 1954; and a 1950 portrait of Douglas MacArthur smoking a pipe. But he also photographed the war from the viewpoint of the ordinary soldier or sailor. "Resourceful and unruffled, Mr. Mydans sent back pictures of combat that even now define how some remember World War II, Korea, and other conflicts," noted The New York Times. Despite his two years in captivity, Mydans bore no ill will toward the Asian nation, and accepted an assignment to head Time-Life's Tokyo bureau with his wife. Time-Life was the publisher of Time, Life and other top magazines, which Mydans continued to provide with an array of visual stories. In 1948, he just happened to be in the city of Fukui when a destructive earthquake struck; some of his shots were taken on the street while buildings were collapsing around him. After covering the Korean War, Mydans traveled the globe for the next two decades for Life before the publication folded in 1972. When it was relaunched several years later, he was still listed as one of its contributing photographers. He died on August 16, 2004, of heart failure at his home in Larchmont, New York, at the age of 97. Widowed in 2002, Mydans was survived by his daughter, Misty, a California attorney; and his son, Seth, Asia correspondent for The New York Times.Source: Wikipedia Having started out as a newspaper reporter, Carl Mydans switched over to the camera and at the height of the Depression worked for the Farm Security Administration, documenting the travails of migrant farm families. After signing on with LIFE, he and his wife, Shelley, became the magazine’s first roaming photographer-reporter team. In 1941 they were sent to China to cover Japanese bombing raids there; late in the year they were trapped in Manila when the Japanese overran the Philippines, and they were held captive for nearly two years before being repatriated in a POW exchange. When the prison camp was about to be liberated, Douglas MacArthur sent Mydans in with the first tanks. Of course, Mydans’s picture of MacArthur “returning” to the Philippines is one of history’s most celebrated photographic images. Mydans was known also for his intriguing portraits of such as Pound and Faulkner. In the words of David Hume Kennerly, “Carl Mydans is a photographer’s photographer and a human’s human.” In the prison camp at Santo Tomas in the Philippines, said Shelley Mydans, “they didn’t feed us, so we were very hungry, and we were sick sometimes.” Rogers and Todd, at right, were among the three dozen men with whom Carl shared a room at the prison. Between them, the duo lost 131 pounds during their four years of internment.Source: LIFE

Richard Misrach

United States
1949

Richard Misrach (born 1949) is an American photographer "firmly identified with the introduction of color to 'fine' [art] photography in the 1970s, and with the use of large-format traditional cameras" (Nancy Princenthal, Art in America). David Littlejohn of the Wall Street Journal calls Misrach "the most interesting and original American photographer of his generation," describing his work as running "parallel to that of Thomas Struth and Andreas Gursky, two German contemporaries." Littlejohn notes that all three used a large scale color format that defied the expectations of fine art photography at the time. Misrach is widely recognized as "one of this century’s most internationally acclaimed photographers." He is perhaps best known for his depictions of the deserts of the American west, and for his series documenting the changes brought to bear on the environment by various man-made factors such as urban sprawl, tourism, industrialization, floods, fires, petrochemical manufacturing, and the testing of explosives and nuclear weapons by the military. Curator Anne Wilkes Tucker writes that Misrach's practice has been "driven [by] issues of aesthetics, politics, ecology, and sociology." In a 2011 interview, Misrach noted: "My career, in a way, has been about navigating these two extremes - the political and the aesthetic." Describing his philosophy, Tracey Taylor of the New York Times writes that "[Misrach's] images are for the historical record, not reportage." Misrach has been married since 1989 to writer Myriam Weisang and has a son, Jake, from his first marriage to Debra Bloomfield. Misrach's book Desert Cantos received the 1988 Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography, and his Bravo 20: The Bombing of the American West, co-authored with Myriam Weisang Misrach, was awarded the 1991 PEN Center West Award for a nonfiction book. His Katrina monograph Destroy This Memory won Best Photobook of the Year 2011 at PhotoEspaña. He has received numerous awards including four National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an International Center of Photography Infinity Award for a Publication, and the Distinguished Career in Photography Award from the Los Angeles Center for Photographic Studies. In 2002 he was given the Kulturpreis for Lifetime Achievement in Photography by the German Society for Photography, and in 2008 he received the Lucie Award for Outstanding Achievement in Fine Art Photography. In 2010, Apple licensed Misrach's 2004 image Pyramid Lake (at Night) as the inaugural wallpaper for the first iPad. The opening credits of the 2014 HBO series True Detective featured a montage of images from Misrach's Petrochemical America. In 2016, the AIGA selected Border Cantos for its "50 Books | 50 Covers" competition, a "survey of the best in book design represent[ing] perhaps the longest-standing legacy in American graphic design." Source: Wikipedia Richard Misrach is one of the most influential photographers of his generation. In the 1970s, he helped pioneer the renaissance of color photography and large-scale presentation that are in widespread practice today. Best known for his ongoing series, Desert Cantos, a multi-faceted approach to the study of place and man’s complex relationship to it, he has worked in the landscape for over 40 years. A recent chapter of the series, Border Cantos, made in collaboration with the experimental composer Guillermo Galindo, explores the unseen realities of the US-Mexico borderlands. This work was exhibited at the Amon Carter Museum of Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and San Jose Museum of Art in 2016-17. In the most recent chapters, Premonitions and The Writing on the Wall, Misrach documents graffiti on abandoned buildings throughout the Southwest and Southern California, finding an angry and ominous response to the highly charged political climate before and after the 2016 election. Both series premiered at Fraenkel Gallery in 2017. Other notable bodies of work include his documentation of the industrial corridor along the Mississippi River known as Cancer Alley, the study of weather, time, color and light in his serial photographs of the Golden Gate Bridge, and On The Beach, an aerial perspective of human interaction and isolation. Recent projects mark departures from his work to date. In one series, he has experimented with new advances in digital capture and printing, foregrounding the negative as an end in itself and digitally creating images with astonishing detail and color spectrum. In another, he built a powerful narrative out of images of graffiti produced in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, made with a 4-megapixel pocket camera. In fall 2012, in collaboration with landscape architect Kate Orff, Misrach launched a major book and exhibition entitled Petrochemical America, which addresses the health and environmental issues associated with our dependency on oil. Source: Fraenkel Gallery

Cayetano GonzÁlez

Spain
1986

My grandparents met during their studies in the University of Fine Arts in Valencia. Most of my close relatives work in the field of visual arts. On my behalf, I've always wanted to be a painter, and was fascinated by many artists: Sorolla, Velázquez, Rembrandt, Delacroix... During High School I had the opportunity to work on a short film for one of the courses, I then realised I wanted to work in the film industry. In 2006 I started my adventure. I studied Film in Valencia, and afterwards worked as a freelancer in a television production company for a year. At that time everything we did was recorded on tapes, and the cinematography quality I was searching for was unattainable. Fortunately, my grandfather lent me his Leica and everything changed. I slowly began learning how to use different cameras and I knew I had found my calling. Before even realising it I was already working as a photographer. I knew (or at least I thought I knew) how to use a camera, but not what to express with it, I needed to expand my knowledge of Art and extend my perspective. I began my studies in Fine Arts, and it was one of the best decisions I have ever made. I still don't know the meaning of Art, fully, but I was able to learn what people could achieve thanks to having artistic values. During the last two years of my Arts studies I concentrated on Contemporary Art, Film and Photography. When I finished I wanted to specialise in Cinematography and decided to move to Barcelona to study a Masters in Cinematography in ESCAC (Superior School of Cinema of Catalonia). Since then I'm based in Barcelona and my work is focused mainly on Photography and Cinematography. I also teach workshops specialised in natural light and try to direct my work towards a more natural feel, creating atmospheres that recall the painters I've always admired. About Light In 2016, after years of studying arts and photography I decided I wanted to specialise in natural light. I wanted to learn everything I could about it, so I began to research and practice, studying from artists starting from the 15th century until today. This research evolved in a personal project called "aboutlight", shot with natural light, about beauty, femininity, loneliness, melancholy and any type of feeling you can transmit while in a state of calm. I'm currently teaching and learning constantly, improving and making others improve. It's this combination that's helping me grow and develop my skills day to day. Find out more in his exclusive interview

Louise Dahl-Wolfe

United States
1895 | † 1989

Louise Dahl-Wolfe was an American photographer. She is known primarily for her work for Harper's Bazaar, in association with fashion editor Diana Vreeland. Louise Emma Augusta Dahl was born November 19, 1895 in San Francisco, California to Norwegian immigrant parents; she was the youngest of three daughters. In 1914, she began her studies at the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Institute of Art), where she studied design and color with Rudolph Schaeffer, and painting with Frank Van Sloan. She took courses in life drawing, anatomy, figure composition and other subjects over the next six years. After graduating, Dahl-Wolfe worked in designing electric signs and interiors. In 1921, Dahl-Wolfe met with photographer Anne Brigman, who inspired her to take up photography. Her first dark-room enlarger was a makeshift one she built herself, which used a tin can, an apple crate, and a part of a Ghirardelli chocolate box for a reflector. She studied design, decoration and architecture at Columbia University, New York in 1923. From 1927 to 1928, Dahl-Wolfe traveled with photographer Consuelo Kanaga, who furthered her interest in photography. Her first published photograph, titled Tennessee Mountain Woman, was published in Vanity Fair (U.S. magazine 1913–36). In 1928 she married the sculptor Meyer Wolfe, who constructed the backgrounds of many of her photos. Dahl-Wolfe was known for taking photographs outdoors, with natural light in distant locations from South America to Africa in what became known as "environmental" fashion photography. Compared to other photographers at the time who were using red undertones, Dahl-Wolfe opted for cooler hues and also corrected her own proofs, with one example of her pulling proofs repeatedly to change a sofa's color from green to a dark magenta. She preferred portraiture to fashion photography. Notable portraits include: Mae West, Cecil Beaton, Eudora Welty, W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, Orson Welles, Carson McCullers, Edward Hopper, Colette and Josephine Baker. She is known for her role in the discovery of a teenage Lauren Bacall whom she photographed for the March 1943 cover of Harper's Bazaar. One of her favorite subjects was the model Mary Jane Russell, who is estimated to have appeared in about thirty percent of Dahl-Wolfe's photographs. She was a great influence on photographers Irving Penn and Richard Avedon. One of her assistants was fashion and celebrity photographer, Milton H. Greene. From 1933 to 1960, Dahl-Wolfe operated a New York City photographic studio that was home to the freelance advertising and fashion work she made for stores including Bonwit Teller and Saks Fifth Avenue. From 1936 to 1958 Dahl-Wolfe was a staff fashion photographer at Harper’s Bazaar. She produced portrait and fashion photographs totaling 86 covers, 600 color pages and countless black-and-white shots. She worked with editor Carmel Snow, art director Alexey Brodovitch and fashion editor Diana Vreeland, and traveled widely. In 1950, she was selected for "America's Outstanding Woman Photographers" in the September issue of Foto. From 1958 until her retirement in 1960, Dahl-Wolfe worked as a freelance photographer for Vogue, Sports Illustrated, and other periodicals. Louise Dalhl-Wolfe lived many of her later years in Nashville, Tennessee. She died in New Jersey of pneumonia in 1989. The full archive of Dahl-Wolfe's work is located at the Center for Creative Photography (CCP) at the University of Arizona in Tucson, which also manages the copyright of her work. In 1999, her work was the subject of a documentary film entitled Louise Dahl-Wolfe: Painting with Light. The film featured the only surviving modern footage of Dahl-Wolfe, including extensive interviews. It was written and directed by Tom Neff, edited by Barry Rubinow and produced by Neff and Madeline Bell.Source: Wikipedia Born in Alameda, California, Dahl-Wolfe studied at the San Francisco Institute of Art. In 1921, while working as a sign painter, she discovered the photographs of Anne Brigman, a Pictorialist based in California and associated with the Stieglitz circle in New York. Although greatly impressed by Brigman's work, Dahl-Wolfe did not take up photography herself until the early 1930s. Travel with the photographer Consuelo Kanaga in Europe in 1927-28 piqued her interest in photography once again. In 1932, when she was living with her husband near the Great Smoky Mountains, she made her first published photograph, Tennessee Mountain Woman. After it was published in Vanity Fair in 1933, she moved to New York City and opened a photography studio, which she maintained until 1960. After a few years producing advertising and fashion photographs for Woman's Home Companion, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Bonwit Teller, she was hired by Carmel Snow as a staff fashion photographer for Harper's Bazaar in 1936. Dahl-Wolfe remained with the magazine until 1958, after which time she accepted freelance assignments from Vogue and Sports Illustrated until her retirement in 1960. Dahl-Wolfe was especially well-known during the infancy of color fashion photography for her exacting standards in reproducing her images. Her insistence on precision in the color transparencies made from her negatives resulted in stunning prints whose subtle hues and unusual gradations in color set the standard for elegance in the 1940s and 1950s. In addition, she pioneered the active yet sophisticated image of the "New Woman" through her incorporation of art historical themes and concepts into her photographs.Source: International Center of Photography "I believe that the camera is a medium of light, that one actually paints with light. In using the spotlights with reflecting lights, I could control the quality of the forms revealed to build a composition. Photography, to my mind, is not a fine art. It is splendid for recording a period of time, but it has definite limitations, and the photographer certainly hasn't the freedom of the painter. One can work with taste and emotion and create an exciting arrangement of significant form, a meaningful photograph, but a painter has the advantage of putting something in the picture that isn't there or taking something out that is there. I think this makes painting a more creative medium." — Louise Dahl-Wolf, 1984 Dahl-Wolfe preferred portraiture to fashion work, and while at Harper's she photographed cultural icons and celebrities including filmmaker Orson Wells, writer Carson McCullers, designer Christian Dior, photographer Cecil Beaton, writer Colette, and broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow. In addition to her Harper's responsibilities, Dahl-Wolfe was able to pursue her own vision in the studio and sometimes even while on assignment. For example, she asked a model to pose for the unpublished Nude in the Desert while on location in California's Mojave Desert shooting swimsuits that would appear in the May 1948 edition of Harper's. From 1958 until her retirement in 1960, Dahl-Wolfe worked as a freelance photographer for Vogue, Sports Illustrated, and other periodicals. Major exhibitions of her work include Women of Photography: An Historical Survey at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The History of Fashion Photography and Recollections: Ten Women of Photography at International Museum of Photography, George Eastman House, Rochester, New York; and Portraits at the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, Tucson. Retrospectives include shows at Grey Art Gallery, New York University; Cheekwood Fine Arts Center, Nashville, Tennessee; and Louise Dahl-Wolfe: A Ninetieth Birthday Salute at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago. Louise Dalh-Wolfe lived many of her later years in Nashville, Tennessee, though she died in New Jersey of pneumonia in 1989.Source: International Center of Photography

Manuel Álvarez Bravo

Mexico
1902 | † 2002

Manuel Álvarez Bravo was a Mexican artistic photographer and one of the most important figures in 20th century Latin American photography. He was born and raised in Mexico City. While he took art classes at the Academy of San Carlos, his photography is self-taught. His career spanned from the late 1920s to the 1990s with its artistic peak between the 1920s and 1950s. His hallmark as a photographer was to capture images of the ordinary but in ironic or Surrealistic ways. His early work was based on European influences, but he was soon influenced by the Mexican muralism movement and the general cultural and political push at the time to redefine Mexican identity. He rejected the picturesque, employing elements to avoid stereotyping. He had numerous exhibitions of his work, worked in the Mexican cinema and established Fondo Editorial de la Plástica Mexicana publishing house. He won numerous awards for his work, mostly after 1970. His work was recognized by the UNESCO Memory of the World registry in 2017.Source: Wikipedia Manuel Álvarez Bravo, one of the founders of modern photography, is considered the main representative of Latin American photography in the 20th century. His work extends from the late 1920s to the 1990s. Alvarez Bravo was born in downtown Mexico City on February 4, 1902. He left school at the age of twelve in order to begin making a contribution to his family's finances after his father's death. He worked at a textile factory for a time, and later at the National General Treasury. Both his grandfather (a painter) and his father were amateur photographers. His early discovery of the camera awakened in him an interest that he would continue to cultivate throughout his life. As a self-taught photographer, he would explore many different techniques, as well as graphic art. Influenced by his study of painting at the Academy of San Carlos, he embraced pictorialism at first. Then, with the discovery of cubism and all the possibilities offered by abstraction, he began to explore modern aesthetics. He had his initiation into documentary photography in 1930: when she was deported from Mexico, Tina Modotti left him her job at the magazine Mexican Folkways. He also worked for the muralists Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Álvarez Bravo is an emblematic figure from the period following the Mexican Revolution often called the Mexican Renaissance. It was a time of a creative fertility, owing to the happy though not always tranquil marriage between a desire for modernization and the search for an identity with Mexican roots, in which archaeology, history and ethnology played an important role, parallel to the arts. Alvarez Bravo embodied both tendencies in the field of visual arts. Between 1943 and 1959, he worked in the film industry doing still shots, which inspired him to realize some of his own experiments with cinema. While Manuel Álvarez Bravo was alive, he held over 150 individual exhibitions and participated in over 200 collective exhibitions. According to several critics, the work of this "poet of the lens" expresses the essence of Mexico. However, the humanist regard reflected in his work, the aesthetic, literary and musical references it contains, likewise endow with a truly universal dimension. He died on October 19, 2002, at the age of one hundred.Source: www.manuelalvarezbravo.org Manuel Álvarez Bravo was a teenager when he first picked up a camera and began taking pictures, before he enrolled in night classes in painting at the Academia San Carlos, in 1917, or sought instruction in the darkroom of local German photographer Hugo Brehme. Initially self-taught, Álvarez Bravo’s style developed through study of foreign and local photography journals. In these pages, he first encountered the work of Edward Weston and Tina Modotti, who came to Mexico in 1923; the latter became a close colleague and supporter, introducing Álvarez Bravo to the artists of Mexico’s avant-garde, including Diego Rivera, Frida Khalo, and Rufino Tamayo, as well as encouraging him to send photographs to Weston. In the 1930s, Álvarez Bravo met Paul Strand, traveling with him while he worked in Mexico, and Henri Cartier-Bresson. With Cartier-Bresson and Walker Evans he exhibited in a three-man show at the Julien Levy Gallery, New York, in 1935. Mexico was a cultural hub for many in the international avant-garde in these years; André Breton visited, including Álvarez Bravo in the Exposition of Surrealism he organized in 1940 in Mexico City. Although the artist never identified with Surrealism, it was a major theme in the analysis of his pictures throughout his career. Revealing the influence of his formative years following the Mexican Revolution of 1910, Álvarez Bravo would instead speak of his interest in representing the cultural heritage, peasant population, and indigenous roots of the Mexican people in the face of rapid modernization.Source: Museum of Modern Art

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