Best Rising Photographers of July 2026
Posted on July 20, 2026
Every month, we discover incredible work from photographers living and traveling around the world through our open calls for entries.
Shulan Wang
China
Shulan Wang is a fine art photographer hailing from Hangzhou, China. She holds an M.A. in Photography from Spéos International School of Photography, an M.A. from the University of Westminster, and a B.A. from the China Academy of Art. Employing innovative creative approaches, she integrates a variety of techniques—digital darkroom processing, the soft immediacy of Polaroid, paper textures, visual installation, and the emerging language of artificial intelligence photography —each medium a thread in her visual tapestry. Rooted in the timeless motifs of time and nature, she turns her lens into a translator, rendering the quiet tension and profound resonance of life visible through every frame.
Hendrik Wolf
Germany
Born in 1984 in Malchin, Germany, I’m married and have two children, aged 9 and 6. We love to travel, and many of my photos are taken around the world—exploring both vibrant cities and quiet rural places. After spending over 20 years in a white-collar job, photography was always my creative outlet in my free time. In 2024, I decided to go all in—leaving my job to pursue my dream career as a photographer. Today, I work on a wide range of projects. I’m passionate about fashion shoots as much as I am about street photography—and I deliberately refuse to limit myself to just one niche.
Alfredo Diano
Italy
Alfredo Diano (Aosta, Italy, 1960) is an amateur photographer with a background in art, photography, and fashion. His artistic production develops primarily during his travels, directing his visual research toward the creation of evocative images while maintaining a rigorous respect for the reality observed. He favors the use of natural light, aiming to capture the spontaneity of his subjects in their everyday context. The valorization of his subjects and compositional simplicity are the cornerstones of his creative process, elements that also distinguish his aesthetic signature in portraiture. His work has received recognition in industry publications and platforms, including Photo Vogue, Visualpoetry Journal, Aurea Photogallery, Independent Photo, Sguardo Art. He has also collaborated with several Milanese fashion agencies, creating portraits for emerging profiles. He currently participates in photography trips and workshops.
Margo Ryan
United Kingdom
I was born in London in 1959 but was brought up in the Sussex countryside and have always loved the great outdoors. When I was younger I was passionate about the natural world and it’s diverse cultures, I studied zoology and this was the start of my journey and love of travel, along the way I picked up a camera. I’m a self taught travel photographer who likes to focus on people their cultures and environments. I have won a few International awards and had two solo exhibitions one in Paris entitled “Wanderlust” the second in matera Italy entitled “Illuminating Travels”. One of my photos was shown in The Photobook cafe London in a group exhibition in 2024. My approach to travel is to do it slowly and stay in places for longer periods of time, even when on the surface there is not much to see, there can be magic in the everyday mundane fleeting moments. I feel the longer you stay in a place the more you observe and get to know the peoples routines, were and when the dawn/dusk light falls best. People get used to seeing you wandering around, you start to make connections and people open up, I love exploring a place. I travel light so I don’t have to lug a lot of gear around. I love photographing life in full colour always seeking the perfect light and atmosphere. I’m especially lured back to Madagascar and Burma (Myanmar) for the peoples resilience, natural beauty, humour, grace and culture.
Fabiana Mc Mullan
Brazil
Between journeys, paths, and landscapes crossed around the world, her gaze has been shaped less by the extraordinary and more by the details that escape haste: light passing through fog, the unlikely glow of night, the delicacy of organic forms, reflections, blurs, silences, colours and the suspended moment between the real and the dream. Her images are born from the texture of light and from everything that exists for only a few seconds before disappearing. In her photographs, the landscape never appears merely as landscape. Everything seems permeated by state of mind, memory, and perception. The focus is often not on the photographed object itself, but on the feeling it leaves behind once it is no longer there. More than photographing places or objects, Fabiana builds emotional atmospheres. Her images seem less interested in explaining the world and more in feeling it. Perhaps because, over the years, Fabiana has chosen to speak through light—finding in it a more precise form of language, a way of saying what words do not always manage to reach.
Agniva Kolay
India
Agniva Kolay is a photographer based in Bangalore whose work spans wildlife, travel, aerial, street, and underwater photography. A self-taught photographer, he is drawn to moments where simplicity, geometry, and emotion come together through minimalist compositions and the use of negative space. Through extensive travel and exploration, Agniva documents both natural and human environments with a focus on form, relationships, and scale. Influenced by both painting and documentary photography, he approaches his images as an intersection of art and observation, using photography not just to document a scene, but to reinterpret it through form, atmosphere, and perspective.
Matthew Garbutt
United KIngdom
Based between Brighton and Wiltshire, I am an urban landscape photographer dedicated to the ‘unloved’ corners of the city. Since 2021, my practice has focused on the dialogue between urban dynamism and decay, documenting the grit and character of spaces often left behind. By finding beauty in the overlooked, my work invites viewers to reconsider the mundane. My photographs have been exhibited throughout the UK and the US and featured in a range of international publications.
Emily Neville-Fisher
United States
Emily Neville Fisher is an award-winning photographer based in New York. She holds a BFA in Fine Art from James Madison University, a master’s degree in Arts Administration from New York University, and completed the Track program at the International Center of Photography. She lives in Westchester, New York, with her husband, three children, and ever-growing menagerie of animals.
Laura Tomé
Spain
Laura Tomé is a photographer from Barcelona whose passion for photography began in childhood. Her work focuses on documenting abandoned and uninhabited places—spaces rich in history that may one day be transformed and given a new purpose. Through her lens, she explores the relationship between memory, absence, and transformation, capturing details that often go unnoticed while preserving the unique atmosphere of each location. Rather than simply photographing spaces, she seeks to reveal the invisible stories they hold and invite viewers to reflect on the passage of time and the possibilities these places may offer in the future.
Tristan Olphe
France
Tristan Olphe is a French photographer based in Paris. Raised by the sea in Brittany, he works across two parallel practices: a commercial one, specialising in wine, gastronomy and event photography, and a personal one built around long-form documentary series. His work is guided by instinctive composition, existing light, and an acute sense of place — whether along a shoreline, behind a bistro counter, or in the lit margins of a Vietnamese street at night. He is currently developing a long-term book project on French winemakers, combining portrait photography with an experimental printing process. His work has been recognised at the Refocus Awards (Portrait category).
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