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FINAL CALL TO ENTER AAP MAGAZINE PORTRAIT: PUBLICATION AND $1,000 CASH PRIZES
FINAL CALL TO ENTER AAP MAGAZINE PORTRAIT: PUBLICATION AND $1,000 CASH PRIZES

Rising Photographers

We have selected some of the most promising photographers. Select a letter to discover our A to Z list of rising photographers:
Stay up-to-date  with call for entries, deadlines and other news about exhibitions, galleries, publications, & special events.
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Inspiring Portfolios

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Our 10 Latest Rising Stars

Nina Nelson
© Nina Nelson
© © Nina Nelson

Born in London, England and raised on a 1,000-acre farm in Missouri, I’ve had a camera in my hands since I was ten. My path eventually led me to New York City, where I spent time on the other side of the lens as a model and actress. While pregnant, I didn’t look pregnant enough to book any modeling jobs, and I was just pregnant enough that I couldn’t book non-pregnant jobs, so I turned to another love—writing. My manuscript won the Ursula Nordstrom Fiction Contest and was published by HarperCollins under the name N.A. Nelson. While struggling with my second book, I enrolled in VCFA and earned an MFA in Creative Writing for Children and Young Adults. Writing is still hard. I now use my fancy Master’s degree to write imagined backstories for each item in my neglected Etsy...

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Beth Stahn
© Beth Stahn
© © Beth Stahn

Beth is an award-winning conceptual portrait artist based in Minnesota. A mother of six, her work is deeply personal and ever-evolving. Her love for art began in childhood through drawing, later expanding into photography after receiving a film camera from her father and taking high school film classes. After stepping away from photography for a time, motherhood reignited her creativity as she documented her children’s lives. In recent years, she has focused on conceptual work and self-portraiture, occasionally collaborating with her children to create images that blend personal narrative with imaginative storytelling. Artist Statement: Beth Stahn's work explores surrealism, the uncanny, and the tension beneath nostalgia. Through character-driven, staged photographs, she...

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Leonor Benito de la Lastra
© Leonor Benito de la Lastra
© © Leonor Benito de la Lastra

I was born in Barcelona. Yet my definitive connection to art and photography comes from Salamanca, where I studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts at its university until 1992. In 1997, I created a space entirely devoted to this medium, “El Fotógrafo,” which remained active until 2015. There I began to study the history of photography, the noble processes, optical devices… a way of seeing through photography. I have chosen analogue technique, black-and-white, the chemical process. These are my field of expansion. This attentive observation of the life of images is simultaneously an investigation into their nature, an attempt to delve into the invisible interiors of the photographic. Statement It is difficult to explain my work because it is difficult to explain oneself....

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Marina Dego
© Marina Dego
© © Marina Dego

Born by the lake but marine by name and by nature, she spends half her life in London, rushing from one end of the city to the other, in perpetual motion. One day she wakes up, drops everything and takes the plunge without a safety net, but with a burning desire to change her perspective. From a career in the fashion world to a new path made up of images and words, she explores the inner and outer worlds guided by her heart, driven by a restless curiosity. She constantly wonders what she’ll do when she grows up, even though she’s been an adult for quite some time. She believes in human connections, genuine exchange and kindness. She loves listening to stories and giving them a voice. Perhaps the world can be saved this way, one story at a time. Statement Driven by a restless...

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Oscar González
© Oscar González
© © Oscar González

Oscar González is a Costa Rican documentary photographer who began his photographic practice in 2022. His work focuses on observing everyday life across diverse cultural and social contexts. He has explored the relationship between culture and social context in Asia, Europe, and Latin America, focusing on cultural expressions, social realities, and moments of human intimacy that often unfold beyond the obvious. His images do not seek spectacle, but presence: the act of observing with sensitivity and respect. Through a restrained approach, his work observes and documents everyday life with sensitivity, distancing itself from spectacle. AAP Magazine AAP Magazine 55...

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Nadide Goksun
© Nadide Goksun
© © Nadide Goksun

Nadide Goksun (b. 1967) is a Turkish/American artist working primarily with photography and ceramics. She is a graduate of the Bogazici University in Istanbul, the Sungshin Women's University in Seoul and participates on the ICP Continuing Education Program in New York. Goksun's work has been exhibited in several group exhibitions including Foley Gallery’s Exhibition Lab in NYC, Griffin Museum of Photography, Soho Photo Gallery’s National competition, Photo Review’s 36th Annual International Photography Competition, Head On Photo Festival, Sydney-Australia, Julia Margaret Cameron Awards, Barcelona-Spain, Lens Culture’s 250 New Examples of the 21st Century Street Photography among others. Her first solo show “Swimmers” was exhibited in Bondi Beach, Sydney at the...

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Rémy Pinaton
© Rémy Pinaton
© © Rémy Pinaton

A traveling photographer, Rémy Pinaton defines himself as a visual ethnographer. His images, often centered on people, reflect his deep affinity for street photography and for the unfolding theater of life. In each frame, Rémy emerges as a visual storyteller—a poet of light and shadow. His gaze opens a window onto fragments of life captured in their raw truth, yet elevated through his unique perspective. Through his photographic language, he weaves a dialogue between the visible and the invisible, between the simple gestures of everyday life and the evocative power of human presence. Rémy also organizes photography trips to Madagascar, Vietnam, Cuba, and Sri Lanka with the agency “Photographe du Monde.” Awarded Photographer of the Week - Week 16,...

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Sima Bivolarska-Stoyanova
© Sima Bivolarska-Stoyanova
© © Sima Bivolarska-Stoyanova

Sima is a portrait photographer and retoucher based in Bulgaria, where she lives and works while continuously seeking inspiration through travel. With over a decade of experience in photography and more than five years working professionally, her practice is rooted in a deep interest in human presence and emotional nuance. Her work focuses on creating emotionally driven fine art portraits that exist between reality and abstraction. Guided by a strong sensitivity to light, texture, and subtle expression, she develops images that feel both intimate and cinematic. For Sima, retouching is not a corrective step but an integral part of the visual language—an extension of the image itself. Inspired primarily by people, her work explores the space between what is visible and what is felt....

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Filippo Poli
© Filippo Poli
© © Filippo Poli

Filippo Poli, an architect by training, is based in Milan and has worked as a photographer since 2008 with architecture studios, foundations, and publishers. His personal projects explore the cultural landscape and the evolving relationship between humans and nature, along with its consequences. His work appears in leading international magazines and publications. He received numerous accolades: 5th National New Photographic Vision León (2025), Enaire Foundation (2017, 2025), Architecture Photography Master Interior, PX3 Paris, ND Awards, Hopper Prize, Arles OFF (La Kabine), IPA Prize, Monochrome, FotoDoc, Arte Laguna, and PhotoEspaña Master Scholarship. Exhibitions include a solo show in León (2025), Dispara Gallery (collective Quatro Amigos), PhotoEspaña (2017, 2025), Venice...

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Erik Hadife
© Erik Hadife
© © Erik Hadife

Erik Hadife (b. 1998) is a Lebanese street photographer and filmmaker whose work explores the quiet strangeness of urban life at night. After studying at LSE and MIT, and working in strategy consulting in New York, he left the corporate world to focus fully on his practice. Hadife’s latest work responds to cities that move faster than our ability to notice them. In public spaces shaped by speed, his images slow the pace, drawing attention to fleeting interactions and unguarded moments caught in artificial light. His work has been exhibited internationally, including in New York, Venice, Athens, and Beirut. Statement Erik Hadife photographs cities at night, drawn to the quiet moments where something subtle shifts – where the ordinary starts to feel slightly off, and a glance or...

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Related Articles

Going Places by Alon Goldsmith
Going Places is a photographic series that explores individuality within the flow of public space. Each work is constructed from multiple photographs taken at the same location. Passersby are photographed individually against a fixed background and later assembled into a continuous strip, creating an invented procession of movement. Although the figures appear to share the same moment and direction, each person was captured separately—walking through their own private narrative.
Where Devotion Resides by Takeshi Yamamoto
This series observes the physical and quiet discipline of winter sake brewing. I focus not on the finished product, but on the gestures, processes, and sincerity behind them.
American Christmas by Clark James Mishler
For me, Christmas has always seemed like the time of the year when making photographic imagery takes a holiday. Perhaps it's the dark or just the over-the-top schmaltz that had put me off. It wasn't until I began to appreciate the humorous oddities of the season that I began to see what is so easy to overlook.
The Garden of My Tenderness by Oksana Omelchuk
''The Garden of My Tenderness'' is a personal reflection on vulnerability, inner growth, and the quiet strength that exists within sensitivity. The series was born in winter - a season when the world feels stripped back, and the longing for warmth, flowers, and tenderness becomes especially acute. It is within this contrast between external cold and inner need that the garden began to take shape.
My Father’s Toys by Nadide Goksun
As an artist, I am inspired by the memories and objects that connect me to my past. "My Father's Toys" is a deeply personal project that explores the cherished wind-up tin toys from my father's collection that played such a significant role in my childhood.
Through the Ice by Laurie Swope
The swimming hole only varies in size each season from about 20 to 40 square feet, but the range in human experience within this small area is remarkable. I have been photographing my fellow cold water plungers at the same swimming hole (a slightly different one each winter) since 2022. In this small space, there is both stillness and silliness. There is pain and joy and peace. The variety of human experience and expression I have captured in this limited area seems to expand beyond its boundaries.
The Tidal Block by Kerry Mansfield
The Intertidal Project delves into the concept that there’s a difference between what we see and what we are aware of. The work records the moments of impact when a person, time, and place intersect leaving an indelible imprint upon them both. With each recurring instance new layers of memory are forged like geological strata. By growing conscious of these cumulative memories, we can reveal the unfolding of time.
Nymphs 2.0 by Julia Wimmerlin
Over her fifteen-year photographic career, Julia has navigated seismic shifts in her artistic trajectory, moving from travel photography toward contemporary art. The upheavals of the early 2020s profoundly altered her creative path. What began as an outward gaze turned inward, catalyzing a transformation in both process and purpose, driven by a search for meaning within uncertainty. Her work examines identity, perception, and the shifting nature of reality and memory.
The Kings of the Cattle by Roberto Pazzi
This images are a part of a photographic reportage about the small ethnic group of Mundari. The Mundari are cattle herders of South Sudan, the world's youngest country, who dedicate their lives to the care of their Ankole Watusi cattle, characterized by their large horns. They live in symbiosis with their cattle and nothing is more important for them than their bovines. In a cattle camp, everyone plays their role.
Call for Entries
AAP Magazine #57 Portrait
Publish your work in our printed magazine and win $1,000 cash prizes