Rising Photographers / I

Have a safe spring break, I said to my photo students at Furman University on a Wednesday in early March 2020. Then I said something like, Please don't bring that virus back into our classroom when you return, at which point most of us chuckled because it seemed so farfetched, even to me. One week later, I began to plan for my black and white film/darkroom class and digital photography to go online due to the Coronavirus; my students weren't returning to campus.

Indonesia's Sumatran orangutan is under severe threat from the incessant and ongoing depletion and fragmentation of the rainforest. As palm oil and rubber plantations, logging, road construction, mining, hunting and other development continue to proliferate, orangutans are being forced out of their natural rainforest habitat.

Jose Zurita was a photographer's photographer - he was more interested in making images than exhibiting his work or the attention that comes with publication. Originally from Bolivia, he settled in Greenville, SC, where he worked as a Rehabilitation Specialist for adults living with mental illness. Most days, when Jose left his job at 5 PM, he directly hit the streets with his camera making portraits of strangers he encountered along his path – poignant images of underserved populations. That's how Jose was – someone who wanted to validate others that frequently go unnoticed.

The common imagery of the prison life is fed by the photographic and cinematic depiction that nearly always represents the male population. In the era of the #MeToo movement and of a resurgence of the female voice I have decided to investigate what incarceration is like for a woman: the maternity, the relationship with family and partners, the harsh condition with other cell-mates of different countries and cultures

Photography is a powerful visual art medium. It can convey emotions, sensations, deep perception of the moment. Now, imagine that the photo is made from the air and shows an absolutely breathtaking view? Wouldn't it inspire and energize even more? Breathtaking, inspiring and energizing - that is exactly how our planet looks from above! And that is the kind of aerial images I look for, when I am on my photo trips.

The Rohingya Muslim minority of Myanmar, who are subjected to discrimination and human rights violations and have been stripped of all rights including citizenship, are now living in IDP or internally displaced person camps.

To capture this religious practice taking place under lockdown, Canon has partnered with Jordanian Canon Ambassador and two time Pulitzer prize winner, Muhammed Muheisen and Dubai-based photographer Reem Falaknaz

This photographic project has been inspired by the events that followed the rapid spreading of the COVID-19 among the Italian population, which started at the end of February 2020.

In a place called White Sands, New Mexico, you can get lost in no time on a cloudy, windy summer day as your footsteps are erased nearly as quickly as your bare feet make them. With no sun to guide you, it's like being on another planet. The pull of places like that might be the same as the emotional grip that the tip of Mt. Everest has on champion climbers, or in the photographs of Ivan Murzin, the magnetic pull of a national park in Siberia where multitudes flock in winter to tempt gravity off the surface of an infinite tabletop of ice.