Articles / Photographers

Curiouser and Curiouser is a conceptual series of photographs influenced by the story Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I was inspired to create this series from personally identifying with the theme of not belonging that features prominently in Alice's narrative. Immersed in a world of make-believe, Alice shows her courage and strength by being able to successfully navigate through a fantasy land, appearing more at home in this wonderland than that of Victorian society. In my series, the modern-day Wonderland of Las Vegas provides the backdrop for the protagonist to discover, struggle with, and eventually come to terms with her own feelings of not fitting in.

Dichotomia, with its Greek origin, means two equal contradictory parts, as in public/private; hot/cold; or subjective/objective. It also is: opposition, incongruity, conflict, antagonism, disunion and disagreement. Herakleitos (540-480BC), the Ephesian philosopher, had postulated on universal dichotomia, his claim: the symbiosis of all things opposite.

Shot across Mumbai and Delhi in urban and rural areas... this story is an exploration of education in times of Corona, in a country where literacy is a challenge even in the best of times. My story spotlights kids from marginalised socio-economic backgrounds - slum kids in the cities and village kids on the outskirts of the cities - many of whom were confronted with migration, starvation and loss due to the current pandemic.

The 10th Carmignac Photojournalism Award is dedicated to the Amazon and the issues related to its deforestation. It is chaired by Yolanda Kakabadse, Minister of the Environment of Ecuador between 1998 and 2000 and President of WWF from 2010 to 2017. The Award was awarded to Tommaso Protti.

One of a Kind (Hatje Cantz, 2021) is the first comprehensive monograph by internationally renowned photographer Donald Graham bringing together over 100 of his stunning portraits spanning a wide cultural and social spectrum. Made in India, Tibet, Jamaica, Mali, Europe and throughout the United States, there is a unique story in every face, punctuated by combinations of strength and vulnerability. Graham writes: "These portraits come from a desire to honor the beauty of uniqueness, character, and imperfection while remaining sensitive to the pain of the human experience. Every life is one of a kind, never to be repeated. These are tough stories told with grace."

My photographic work is presented through a generic title entitled "URBAN SPRAWL, EMPTINESS". This title was imposed by the seriality and the repetition of my subjects of predilections: the deserts of the American West and their poetic and chaotic processions of motorway interchanges, cities without centers, residential zones without inhabitants.

All About Photo is pleased to present Since Seeing You by Ruth Lauer-Manenti. Part of the exclusive online showroom developed by All About Photo, this exhibition is on view for the entire month of June 2021 and includes twenty photographs from the series Since Seeing You.

This self-portrait series aims to explore the themes of brokenness, the struggles of loss and grief, the regrets of past decisions and my personal experiences with generational trauma and mental health struggles. I was raised in Germany by parents who were born in the 1930s and both experienced significant trauma as children and young adults due to World War II.

FIFTY ONE TOO is pleased to present a series of 9 platinum prints by the influential American photographer, filmmaker, graphic designer and painter William Klein (born in 1928 in the US, lives and works in Paris, France). The exhibition features some of the most well known images that this 'enfant terrible of photography' made in commission for Vogue magazine in the 1950s and 60s and that are now considered a milestone in fashion photography. The platinum printing process - known for its exceptional quality, durability and beauty - gives these legendary photographs an unprecedented depth, sharpness and tonal range, spectacular to discover in person.

Showing us things in our psyche - my project, World Around, is constructed within my home during this global pandemic, using my own children as case study subjects. The narrative is built from my own parental reality, something with uncertain outcome, the anxiety and apprehension of navigating through this invisible thing, coronavirus. This body of work explores the terrifying uncertainty of raising children with my partner, a clinical psychologist, through the strange times of COVID-19.

During the isolation resulting from the pandemic, family has taken on a new centrality. Our connections to our ancestors and our descendants often feel stronger than connections to those around us. I often wish my children knew my grandparents. These are portraits of my children as the product of a history of lives lived and intertwined, each effecting and shaping the other.

All About Photo is pleased to present The Black Stories Project by Madison Casagranda. Part of the exclusive online showroom developed by All About Photo, this exhibition is on view for the entire month of May 2021 and includes twenty photographs from The Black Stories Project. Brooke Shaden, is the curator for this month's show.

In the aftermath of the Great War (WWI), several women embraced photography. And Paris, a key crossroads of the avant-garde, became a fundamental meeting place for many women artists who came from various backgrounds and countries.

Decay, is a process with no cessation, an unstoppable process that includes all organic life, as well as the inorganic. From the time you are delivered, you are absorbed into the process of decay, all the way through to your demise, at which point, whether you are buried, cremated, or mummified, you will return back to the base elements from which you were created. On our walks with our him, we used to observe the conquest of decay over an iron plate.

The first pool I remember was the one I fell into as a small child. It was at an apartment complex that my young parents lived in. I recall falling in, opening my eyes, and seeing the color of the water and the reflection of sunlight shimmering in my field of vision. My mother pulled me out. I was around four years old. Eventually I became a good enough swimmer and spent the summers of my childhood and adolescence in any pool I could find.

Connections between earth and woman can be found in the language commonly used in reference to each (fertile, virgin, bearing fruit, barren, rape, pillage, drill), which focus solely on either's ability to reproduce or sustain life. The two are also held to unrealistic expectations and standards while their worth is contingent upon the ways they satisfy our specific needs at any given time.

photo-eye Gallery is pleased to announce Michael Kenna: Il Fiume Po (The River Po), an online solo exhibition by English photographer Michael Kenna. This exhibition corresponds with Kenna's recent photobook Il Fiume Po, published by Corsiero Editore.

On their 25th and last expedition to Gabon, Uri was stabbed by a supposed poacher from Boko Haram on a local market. The next day he died for 2 minutes during heart surgery but luckily Uri survived as his will to live was obviously stronger than death and today he is still grateful for life even sitting in a wheelchair learning how to walk again. Helle is just as much of a fighter, standing by his side for the whole time, dedicating every minute of her life to Uri.

After seven years of documenting and exploring my relationships with and within my family of origin, in 2016 I self-published the work Sweetie & Hansom, and began the current series of self-portraits, Conversations with Myself, in which I dress and perform as a mid century woman, appropriating the garb and demeanor of my mother's generation.<

Mongolia is a landlocked country located between China and Russia. It is a vast emptiness that links land and sky and is one of the last few places on the planet where nomadic life is still a living tradition. Mongolia may have various geopolitical, cultural, and geographical meanings. Mongolia consists of historic Outer Mongolia. The province of Inner Mongolia is geographically and politically separate and located in the northern part of China, yet it borders Mongolia.

The American South has an essence that sparingly reveals itself, thus requiring unprecedented determination and patience to photograph all its splendor. Nevertheless, and despite its elusiveness, this essence I am chasing - permeates; it lingers in the air of North Carolina, and when discovered, puts on a magnificent display. This essence appears in the eyes of a jet-black cat within an abandoned barn: it agonizes within the face of an elderly Amish man; it breathes deep within the shadow of a stray dog crossing a back road; it flourishes within the wings of starlings above a farm after heavy rain; it shines on a dilapidated door in the middle of nowhere, and it tirelessly works in the tobacco fields without complaint.

Heritage Auctions' April 12 Photographs Auction will include 20 images by Leibovitz, the largest selection of her work ever offered at auction. The trove features a range of actors, musicians and athletes that includes Sting, Ella Fitzgerald, Carl Lewis, Mick Jagger, Greg Louganis and Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis.

2020 has presented the world with a myriad of challenges being met in succession. The events that continue to transpire are radically reshaping our societies and mindsets. People have been tasked with navigating the well-being of themselves, their livelihood, and conscious contribution to change. Our individual and collective ability to adapt is continually being pushed. With the future uncertain, we must be proactive in creating our reality. We must be the change we want to see. "Be The Change" is a multifaceted photo-journalistic design series highlighting some amazing people working to shape a better future through vast forms of social justice. I progress the second issue is focused on documenting the changes our society is going through from the frontline.

On my first trip to Doug's Gym in downtown Dallas, I climbed a sagging wooden staircase to find a rundown old gym with peeling paint, sagging tin ceiling, and ancient equipment. It was dilapidated to the point of beauty. I had avoided gyms for most of my life, but I joined this one for its themes of memory, loss, and mortality, which have preoccupied me in my photography.

This ongoing series of photos called Shard was made over the last 4 years during which time I was wanting to see whether I could place objects on a table as arrangements for unspoken emotions. In 2017-18 I was unwell. It wasn't mental illness but the line between that and trauma was sometimes hard to find. I stayed indoors and at home as much as possible.

I've walked the banks of this river for as long as I can remember, looking for something, looking for nothing, looking for her. This landscape forever changing with every tide, never knowing what it may bring, muddy salty paths never really going anywhere, no destination, no arriving, walk some and maybe more turn back towards home, refreshed, windswept, sun kissed, sore feet, dry mouth, made an image or two, sometimes none

I have been visiting Ethiopia and the Arbores for years. This situation, unfortunately, is not uncommon in the South of the country. In time, these individuals start to simply appear to be "the others." First, this happens very gradually, and then the process accelerates. The Arbore are being relocates.

Energy of the Earth, Amplified is the result of a collaboration between Obvious and Stas Bartnikas. This series of artworks has been created using AI algorithms, trained to learn to create new and unique visuals based on numerous exemples of pictures taken from the sky.

This exciting exhibition is the third in a series of major online shows & utilizes photo-eye's new Visual Server X website builder which allows the viewer to zoom into the already large-scale images.

This collection does not take sides. It does not pass judgment on a person or idea. Rather, it serves as a reflection of my emotions and thoughts and symbolizes the choices we make. It began with a fight, a simple argument in the car between me and my spouse at the beginning of a road trip. Over the course of a month, I photographed everything that happened between us at the various locations we traveled.

Deb Achak's Aquatic Street series documents life by the ocean as a silent observer. She swims within crowds of people, looking below the surface, both literally and figuratively.

Michael Joseph is one of the talented photographers who submitted his work to the Online Solo Exhibition competition. Discover his project Wild West of the East.

Tabita Pietsch is one of the talented photographers who submitted her work to the Online Solo Exhibition competition. Her series was noticed by the curator and is featured here.

Today is about one year after Government announced officially the COVID-19 cases in Iran and death still is everywhere. I could see patients who were infected by the new coronavirus in COVID-19 wards of hospitals who were breathing and after two hours they were died. In fact, life seems gone, time were stoped and people were looking for an empty hospital bed for their relatives. Sense of death is covered the daily life of people who have to fight with a new invisible enemy, and it will be getting worse when a country is under International sanctions.

Wonder Woman represents the American idealized image of justice, idealism, perfection and power. The character was created by William Moulton Marston in 1941, in the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, which caused America to join the Second World War. The first comic was a piece of flag-waving propaganda. The American flag is Wonder Woman's costume.

Hundred Heroines, the pioneering charitable organisation that promotes and celebrates the diversity of women working globally in photography today, announced on Monday 14th December 2020 the names of an additional 50 inspiring women photographers to join its ever growing vital list, found at hundredheroines.org.

For this installation of Quinn presented at Oriel Colwyn, North Wales (22 January - 10 April 2021), British photographer, artist, and writer, Lottie Davies, who herself possesses strong familial ties to North Wales, has created a large-scale multimedia project that extends far beyond the gallery walls into the seaside town and community of Colwyn Bay itself. Using a variety of media and installations, Quinn: Until the Land Runs Out is a meditation on grief, loss, loneliness, the human search for meaning, and the possibility of redemption through time and landscape. It recounts the eponymous fictional story of a young man, William Henry Quinn, who embarks on an epic and symbolic walk from south-westEngland to the far north of Scotland, taking in the length of Wales in between, in post-Second World War Britain.

For a limited time only, famed wildlife photographers David Yarrow and Adrian Steirn are teaming up with Space for Giants to release two limited-run, never-before-seen wildlife photographs to raise critical funding for Space for Giants' work to end the illegal wildlife trade.

Sous Les Etoiles Gallery is pleased to present a collection of twenty-five photographs from photojournalist Jean Pierre Laffont, represented exclusively in United States by the gallery.

Nikkei National Geographic, Jadite Galleries and Photographers Associates Tokyo Present: The Essence of Work, Photographs by Masahi Mitsui; Nikkei National Geographic Photo Award Grand Prize WinnerA tribute to the unwavering spirit of working people -- 20 years of reportage inside Asia.

Discover the project Monotony by the Iranian photographer Sara Sasani who testifies about the difficult life conditions of women in her country.

A Gallery for Fine Photography is pleased to present THOSE WHO DANCE, a new collection of twenty-one 25 x 19" hand-pulled photogravures printed on Japanese kozo by contemporary artist Josephine Sacabo. THOSE WHO DANCE tells the story of Nahui Olin, an incomparable woman born into and later expelled from Mexico's high society in the early 20th century, who was both artist and muse to the likes of Diego Rivera and Edward Weston. Sacabo's images embody the mystery and otherworldly quality of their subject, a woman who refused to capitulate to the boundaries of her societal milieu and was punished severely for it. Sacabo recasts this injustice as a moment of triumph - her photographs express the beautiful, joyful abandon in dancing to the music of one's own soul.

The winner of the Solo Exhibition for the month of October 2020 is Yukari Chikura with her project Zaido. Discover her project.

The Isolation Diary is a gentle meditation on mental health and the value of human companionship amid the COVID-19 crisis. The final project is presented in the form of a visual diary, combining photography and text as if the viewer were reading a very intimate, private journal. Returning in March from a six-month commission in London to isolate with my girlfriend Rosie, I faced almost no employment or income, and like many across the country, this crisis hit hard, causing feelings of worry, fear, isolation and loneliness.

The Municipality of Ravenna, the Department of Culture, and the MAR Museum of Art of Ravenna present the exhibition Paolo Roversi - Studio Luce, dedicated to the Ravenna photographer.

Gallery FIFTY ONE is excited to announce its new show 'Irish Summers' by the renowned Belgian photographer Harry Gruyaert (1941). This exhibition brings together a selection of images the artist made on trips to Ireland over the period 1983-84. While some of these photographs are included in a number of Gruyaert's previous projects and books (e.g. 'Rivages'/'Edges'), this is the first time that they are presented as a series. An eponymous new FIFTY ONE Publication will be launched for the occasion of this exhibition.

The following article will reference Beirut explosion and how this unfortunate turn of events elicited an analysis of the ethics behind photojournalism and documentary photography. I am primarily concerned in discussing how the notion of 'morality' plays a part in the practice of a photojournalist and documentary photographer. The boundaries between what can be considered 'good practice' and 'bad practice', summarising this article with an analysis of Richard Mosse's 'Enclave' series.'

Photography has always occupied an important place in my artistic career. It's not just about correctly framing the subject and getting a nice picture. It's the concept itself of capturing a unique moment in the fabric of time and space that attracted me the most, since the beginning of my journey into this creative media.

We don't load cameras much anymore but we still aim them and shoot pictures. With that in mind, I have fun describing my pursuit of portraits as a predatory sport: hunting big game. I don't stalk my prey but get close enough for a good clean shot - close enough for rapport as much as proximity - to avoid inflicting gratuitous wounds. I bag my quarry with a lens instead of looking down the barrel of a gun but I still hang their heads on a wall to admire like trophies.

In the last few weeks, since Italy has been affected by this Coronavirus emergency, I have chosen to continue working by photographing and interviewing (together with my friend Gea Scancarello) people who are locked in their homes in Milano in compliance with the quarantine imposed by the government to fight COVID-19. I left lights outside their windows, disinfecting them first. The subjects then brought them into the house and I gave them directions on how to position them by talking from outside. To take these photos, we've complied with all the necessary safety instructions.

The Amazon is the world's largest rainforest and the largest river basin on the planet. More species are found here than anywhere else. But it is dying. Brazilian photographer Victor Moriyama is a first hand witness.

Time stands still for most of us. It is a sensitive time, we all feel vulnerable and anxious. During the days prior to the pandemic I was ultra-busy planning a photographic shoot with a large team of people, assistants, stylists, hair and make-up team, prop stylists, set designers etc. and was in-line for a couple of jobs, suddenly everything stopped. The assignments were cancelled and I had to postpone my project two days before the shoot as the risk appeared too great.

A new exhibition of Paul Hart's compelling photographic work opens this Autumn in Cambridge (UK) to coincide with the release of his latest book RECLAIMED (Dewi Lewis Publishing)

The Fondation d’entreprise Hermès, the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) present a solo exhibition by Gregory Halpern, the fourth laureate of Immersion, a French-American Photography Commission: 'Soleil cou coupé'

Photographic essay of about education in Ecuador during the COVID-19 emergency

"Barbie around the World" is a photography project born out from my long distance relationship with my girlfriend: at that time I was living in India while she was in Italy, and we were planning a trip to meet "halfway" in Israel.

Looking at the protests the first night in Minneapolis I realized that a generational movement was taking place, all the anger I saw online for years was manifesting itself physically. On that first night, I found myself wondering the same thing I often wondered looking at old war or protest pictures: how did these events shape their lives, and more importantly, how did their lives shape these events?

See, listen and speak clearly with powerful multimedia art addressing equality and the power of joy. Cincinnati Art Museum will present Hank Willis Thomas: All Things Being Equal... the first comprehensive mid-career survey of the work of this influential artist from Sept. 4 through Nov. 8.

Humans face new parts of their spirit throughout each crisis in their lives; aspects which may not have that much of a chance to express themselves throughout routine life. During a crisis, a person having lost normalcy, imagines that they have lost the light by which they create an image of the world around and recognize it, so they see themselves in the darkness. Although not all humans stay in the darkness. They search within themselves instead of depending on the source of light which lights up their life, the world and path.

Borderline is a work carried out during hiking trips along the northern French coast. Paul D'Haese focuses on the border between the built-up country and the wide sea.

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.

I remember the first time I looked at the works of street photographers like as Bruce Gilden, Martin Parr and Nick Turpin and strangely remembered how images under this documentary style of photography drew me further into this artform, making me appreciate a photograph as something more than an object in a frame, but rather an expression of an individual in that moment of time. In the coming years I focused solely on documentary photography and gradually became more fascinated about the relationships between the photographer and his subjects. To this day Bruce Gilden's work is central to my photographic practice, not so much in viewing his images as final pieces but rather in the process of capturing them. I'd like to believe that he himself is far more concerned with staying in those moments of pure photographic expression, with the images being only an intervention in time.

The 11th Carmignac Photojournalism Award on the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)-was granted to Canadian-British photographer Finbarr O'Reilly.

As the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic continues to cause major disruptions to our daily lives with more than two billion people worldwide isolated in their homes, we asked renowned photographers what impact the current situation has on their life and work. Here are their personal and heartfelt answers as well as a sample of their work.

As artists, we expend a lot of our emotional energy and other resources into building our resumes, seeking relationships with peers and influentials, and working on series and portfolios.

Belgium is currently in lock down. We can only go outside to get food and some people are allowed to go to their work. We can go outside for a walk and once a day around 6:30 pm, Stephan Vanfleteren leaves with his camera to the sea, forest, fields... He named his walks: Corona walks.

Natalie Obermaier's gaze is honest and sympathetic. Absent of pretense, shyness, or posturing, nothing comes between Obermaier and her subjects. Every image expresses the subtle context of his unfettered access. When they gaze directly into the camera, her subjects seem to be looking directly at us. The conjecture of photography is shaped with contradictions... ambiguously-specific, empowered-vulnerability, truthfully-inaccurate. The nuances of these paradoxes are burned into the silver halide crystals of Obermaier's film.

Global climate change is real and has observable effects on the environment. It affects all regions of the world. The polar ice caps are melting and the level of the oceans is rising. In some regions, extreme weather events and precipitation are becoming more frequent, while others are facing increasingly extreme heat waves and droughts. Many plants and animal species are endangered. Some terrestrial, freshwater and marine species have already moved to new territories. Plants and animals will be in serious danger of extinction if the average temperature of the planet continues to rise uncontrollably.

Global climate change is real and has observable effects on the environment. It affects all regions of the world. The polar ice caps are melting and the level of the oceans is rising. In some regions, extreme weather events and precipitation are becoming more frequent, while others are facing increasingly extreme heat waves and droughts. Many plants and animal species are endangered. Some terrestrial, freshwater and marine species have already moved to new territories. Plants and animals will be in serious danger of extinction if the average temperature of the planet continues to rise uncontrollably.

Photographer Nick Brandt's most recent works -- "This Empty World" and "Inherit the Dust" -- remind us of the grandeur and fragility of the disappearing natural world. The series calls attention to the degradation of East African landscapes as runaway development threatens both the animals and people who live there. The cinematic and emotional images are an important and timely call to conservation. The exhibition, open April 2 through June 21 at Fotografiska New York, places Brandt's most recent series alongside behind-the-scenes images of his unique process.

Extradition bill gave birth to a new Hong Kong political awakening. It is powerful, resilient, and it seems here to stay. It is a leaderless movement, fighting for democracy and against Chinese mainland-style authoritarian rule spilling into Hong Kong.

Photographer Dan Hall exhibits Eternal Youth at JM Gallery in London from Friday 6 to Sunday 8 March 2020. Profits from prints and an accompanying photo-book will be in aid of Young Minds and Age UK.

The Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography presents a retrospective exhibition of Guy Bourdin, one of the most influential photographers of the second half of the 20th century, the French artist, innovator and revolutionary of fashion photography. The exhibition will feature more than 50 of the photographer's most recognizable works from variousyears, from the 1950s to the mid-1980s. For forty years, Guy Bourdin surprised and shocked readers of glossy magazines with provocative images, pushing the boundaries of commercial photography and changing the viewer's perception of fashion photography.

British photographer, artist, and writer, Lottie Davies has created a large-scale multimedia project, Quinn - a meditation on grief, loss, loneliness, the human search for meaning, and the possibility of redemption through time and landscape. Using a variety of media and installations, it recounts the eponymous fictional story of a young man, William Henry Quinn, who is walking from the south-west of England to the far north of Scotland in post-Second World War Britain. This new, major iteration of Quinn will premiere at the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum as an exhibition running from 14 February - 31 May 2020.

Geoffrey Valentine marks a dramatic shift in subject matter for the acclaimed British photographer David Stewart (b.1958) and his second solo exhibition at photography gallery Wren London (14 February - 09 April 2020). Documenting a persistently taboo subject matter in Geoffrey Valentine, Stewart presents unflinching portraits of his dead father lying in a coffin in a chapel of rest. While a deeply personal topic, Stewart's rendering of it signifies a continuation of his desire to reflect the events taking place in the world around him. Here Stewart has incorporated no lighting or staging to manipulate the imagery other than that already set up by the funeral parlour and so it appears exactly how it appeared to Stewart at the time.

The show, "Survivors - Faces of Life after the Holocaust," in Essen, Germany, includes 75 recent photographs by the German-born artist Martin Schoeller

Across the globe, more and more species are in peril. According to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, over 19,000 species are facing extinction. The ice-covered waters, savannahs and rainforests that they have called home for generations are steadily swallowed by human-dominated areas.

The Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography presents an exhibition of photographs by the outstanding Russian avant-garde artist Alexander Rodchenko from the collection of the Still Art Foundation, established by Elena and Mikhail Karisalov. The exhibition will include Rodchenko's works of different years, from the first photographic experiments of the 1920s to the end of the 1930s.

In the first its kind, Rankin's first solo exhibition in Milan since his 2016 Fashion Week project Outside In, Rankin: From Portraiture to Fashion allows the iconic photographer to experiment with one of his most complex gallery productions to date. Showcasing Rankin's picks of his favourite images - including those of his best known subjects and his more conceptual work. Rankin: From Portraiture to Fashion is an archival tour through Rankin's best known work and introduces this industry-leading photographer to a new generation of photography collectors. Taking place across four months this show will rotate work, constantly evolving in time with Milan's cultural calendar - celebrating, amongst others, Vogue Photo Festival (November), Fashion Film Festival (November) and Women's Fashion Week (February). Allowing the photographer to explore not only his own work but the cultural appetites and changing moods of a leading European city.

Niki Cryan Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of two photographic series; e wá wo mi and Are We Good Enough from acclaimed Nigerian artist Lakin Ogunbanwo. His interest in expanding the contemporary African visual archive began in 2012 with his acclaimed ongoing project, Are We Good Enough. In this series, he documents hats worn as cultural signifiers by various ethnic groups in Nigeria.

After recent exhibitions featuring emerging photographers, RAW Streetphoto Gallery is opening its new season on September 13th with a solo exhibition of internationally known Italian/American photographer John R. Pepper with an exhibition of his early analogue photography award winning series 'Rome 1969: An Homage to Italian Neo-Realism' taken when he was 12 years old.

On Tuesday, October 8, North Dakotan wet plate collodion artist Shane Balkowitsch had the chance to make several portraits of Swedish environmental activist and 2019 Nobel Peace Prize nominee Greta Thunberg during her visit to North Dakota in support of indigenous groups fighting Dakota Access oil pipeline. Many in the Standing Rock tribe consider the pipeline a threat to the region's clean water and to ancient burial grounds. The shoot took place at Standing Rock, ND where Thunberg was being honored by tribal leaders for her work to fight climate change. During the closing ceremony, Thunberg was bestowed with a Lakota Native American name "Maphiyata echiyatan his win" which translates as "woman who came from the heavens."

Barry Salzman is an award-winning contemporary artist who currently works in photography, video and mixed media and whose projects have been shown widely around the world. His photographic work in particular, began with a fascination for the practice as a teenager, during a time when it served as a way for him to grapple with the racial segregation in Apartheid South Africa.

It's really strange to return to a city that I first knew at half of the age I am today. We are afraid to find it unchanged, intact, which, by contrast, would accentuate the awareness of one's own aging. But we are equally afraid of no longer recognizing it, which would mean that time has erased our memories, which we will not find traces anywhere. Returning to Saint Louis in Senegal, 26 years after going there for the first time, I felt threatened by these two perils.

Do not miss the beautiful exhibition "Joe Vitone: Family Records" at the Akron Art Museum until October 27, 2019. Family Records is an ongoing series of portraits of photographer Joe Vitone's relatives living in and around Akron, Ohio. Begun in 1998, this body of work documents evolving interpersonal connections between parents and children, siblings, spouses, cousins and other relations within working class communities of the Rust Belt region.

The christian religion had a flock of 2.19 billion believers at the year of 2010. 14 thousands of them (0.0005% of the world population) were living around the area of Jerusalem during that time. The city of Jerusalem is known to share a pivotal point in each story of the three monotheistic religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Over the course of thousands of years, Jews, Christians, and Muslims look up to Jerusalem as it has been dedicated to each of these three religions. Each religion by its believers share with the city an unbreakable bond that was kept for thousands of years.

British photographer Jack Latham and his Sugar Paper Theories photography project documents one of the most controversial murder cases in Iceland's history where those charged had no recollection of the murder taking place. It happened 45 years ago but still has the country transfixed due to the wrongful prosecution of six people who were subject to extremely dubious interrogation methods and after a number of years in prison were acquitted leaving the case unsolved and conspiracy theories about the Icelandic government rife. Using his own photography and archival images from the original investigation it's a fascinating project which I thought would be of interest.

Bermondsey Project Space is delighted to announce its forthcoming exhibition, titled "Eclectic", curated by Mara Alves. It consists of a series of analogue double exposure film photographs by the Caracas-born photographer Alexandro Pelaez documenting a derivative inspiration from a diverse range of sources, be they different locations or people - embracing diversity, multicultural roots and gazes from different countries.

Emily Garthwaite has achieved what most of us could only dream of. At age 26, she has gained global recognition for her innovative photojournalism, having been twice named a finalist in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year award. Outside of the industry, she has featured on Forbes 30 Under 30 list, which identifies leading international creatives from across the globe.

Marco Sanges, an Italian Fine Art photographer based in London, will showcase a selection of his Silver Gelatine prints from his project "Wunderkamera" at the Chateau de Dampierre in France.

The J. Paul Getty Museum announces an exhibition of photographs by celebrated artist Gordon Parks (American, 1912-2006). On view July 9-November 10, 2019 at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center, Gordon Parks: The Flávio Story explores one of the most important photo essays Parks produced for Life magazine and traces how its publication prompted an extraordinary sequence of events over several decades. The exhibition is co-organized by the Getty and the Ryerson Image Centre in Toronto, Canada in partnership with Instituto Moreira Salles, Brazil, and The Gordon Parks Foundation, New York.

I first met Paula Riff in 2015 at the Medium Festival of Photography in San Diego. Her mother had just died or maybe I'm making that up because my brother had recently died, but she had a number of photographs, straight photographs (well, as straight as hand-colored gelatin silver prints can be), and then she had a small box of cyanotypes and she said, "Well, I wasn't going to show these..." Which, of course, meant I had to see them. They were small enough to fit in my hand and they at first looked like constellations against a deep blue sky...and then I thought, no...dust...and then Paula said, no...ashes...and bones. Her mother's ashes and bone fragments from when she was cremated. Wow. Just when I thought I couldn't be surprised anymore at a portfolio review, there I was. And speechless too. And more than a little impressed.

To mark the forty years of Erwin Olaf's career, Galerie Rabouan Moussion is presenting a French exclusive of his latest series: Palm Springs. This exhibition of photographs and videos also celebrates fifteen years of collaboration between the Dutch photographer and the Paris gallery.

Harvey Stein's fascination with Mexico began when he was a teenager. Compared to the ordinary surroundings of his youth in Pittsburgh, Mexico seemed a mysterious, extraordinary place that was nearby, yet so far away. When he became a professional photographer, Stein knew his photography was the perfect way to immerse himself in Mexico -- to partake in ceremonies, meet the people, and express his interest and love of the country. During fourteen trips between 1993 and 2010, he photographed in Mexico, primarily in small towns and villages and mostly during festivals (Day of the Dead, Easter, Independence Day) that highlight the country's unique relationship with death, myth, ritual and religion. Mexico Between Life and Death (Kehrer Verlag) is the definitive expression of the photographer's intimate relationship with the people and culture of Mexico.

In 2002 I began photographing New Yorkers of mixed heritage. Since my own children and many members of my family are of mixed heritage I was drawn to mixed ethnicities as a subject for my photographs. It is this portfolio that morphed into the series ALL AMERICAN, some of which are published here. I widened my interest from mixed heritage people to all immigrants to New York who had come from cultures worldwide and adopted New York and America as their home.

British wildlife photographer, Will Burrard-Lucas, in partnership with Tsavo Trust and Kenya Wildlife Service, has photographed a remarkable female elephant in Kenya. Her tusks were so long that they scraped the ground in front of her as she walked. If there were a Queen of Elephants, it would surely have been her. These are amongst the last images ever captured of her, for shortly after they were taken, she died of natural causes.

Allowed to Grow Old is a dignified and affectionate portrait series of elderly animals living on farm sanctuaries. Prompted by an event in Leshko's personal life, Allowed to Grow Old is a treatise on mortality through the lens of animal rights. Images of Teresa, a thirteen-year-old Yorkshire Pig, or Melvin, an eleven-year-old Angora Goat, make us aware of just how rare it is to see a farm animal reach advanced age. Rescued from abuse and neglect, the animals are circumspect of strangers, and Leshko often spends hours attuning with each animal ensuring they feel safe and comfortable before she makes even a single image. The effect is charming, challenging, and ultimately unforgettable.

MiamiPhotoFest Presents CODEX and White Noise by French photographer Antoine d'Agata. It will be his first U.S. exhibition for these two projects that will be on display at MiamiPhotoFest 2019 - Feb 27th - Mar 3rd at the Moore Building in Miami.

There are so many incredible photographers...Choosing just a few for this article was a difficult task but here is a list of 10 modern photographers that you should know.

Faces of Addiction is a photography-based art project which presents addicted people as real individuals - just like you or me. Only then does compassion become a possibility. Accordingly, the work has to be accessible and to be most effective, it will need to be experienced by many thousands of people.

Do not miss Denis Dailleux who will be at Paris Photo in the stand of Galerie 127 to show his latest work from Ghana and sign his photo book "Persan Beaumont" edited by Le Bec en l'air.

Oculus is the second solo exhibition by Yusuf Sevinçli at the Galerie des Filles du Calvaire. Five years separate it from Post, the solo show which revealed him to Parisian art lovers in 2013. Five years in which Yusuf, born in Turkey in 1980, has never stopped tracking, no matter where in the world, a single and same black light - colour is yet to penetrate his gaze.

Archisable is a photographic project of sand architecture designed by Tina Dassault, author and curator, and directed by Michel Tréhet, photographer.

The Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography is presenting the work of the British animal photographer Tim Flach, known all over the world for his unusual shots of wild and domestic animals

Since 2010, Pernod Ricard has chosen contemporary photography for its annual artistic campaign. This year, the work of Canadian Kourtney Roy complements a vast and rich collection of international photography.

On the night of October 8th, 2017, at 11:00pm, I received a call from a friend who told us that she could see a wildfire spreading on the hills behind our house. Unaware that we were in harm's way, my husband and I walked up to a fire road behind our home and saw a bright glow in the distance.

Photographer Norma I. Quintana will present her new series Forage From Fire, documenting the remains of her home and studio destroyed in the Atlas Fire in Napa California in October 2017. A solo exhibition of her work will be on view at SF Camerawork in San Francisco October 4 – 20, 2018

Galería CURRO presented in August 2018 his exciting series of self-conscious photographic images highlighting the process and labor of their own production. Fascinated by the subtle truthfulness that can be obtained within a highly artificial and controlled environment, the artist focused his practice on studio photography. He particularly likes playing with very established ways of photographic representation disregarding the context they should belong to.

My path in photography began some time ago, and went through the most varied challenges, from the search of my own (photographic) identity to the perception of how that same identity could be used in concrete and realistic terms

An exhibition of women photographers making work about the West featuring images by Christa Blackwood, Mercedes Dorame, Ingeborg Gerdes, Tomiko Jones, Kathya Landeros, Jennifer Little, Mimi Plumb, Kari Orvik and Donna J. Wan

At a time when many a photographer's reliance on equipment and software is incessant and endemic, Art Shay maintained his curmudgeonly simplicity, as if saying "fuck you!" by toting around a rangefinder Leica

Vanishing Vernacular features a selection of color works by photographer Steve Fitch focusing primarily on the distinctive, idiosyncratic, and evolving features of the western roadside landscape including topologies of neon motel signs, drive-in movie theaters, radio towers, and ancient rock pictographs.

The International Collaboration Project founded by Francisco Diaz (USA) and Deb Young (New Zealand) bring global artists together in a virtual collaboration in the photographic medium.

I receive a lot of portfolios throughout the year at All About Photo. Most of the time, I put them aside, overwhelmed by the quantity of things to do, hoping I will be able to take the time later in the day or the week to give a proper answer to each project.

It's my favorite time of year...no, not the holidays, but Critical Mass. And no, that's not a massive bike ride where some of the people are riding naked, even in San Francisco in the wet fog.

I first saw Shannon Johnstone's photographs when I was jurying PhotoLucida's Critical Mass back in 2010. RayKo Photo Center happened to be hosting the traveling Critical Mass Top 50 exhibition and it was a year in which the images ranged from triumphant to beautiful to majestic to heartbreaking to challenging.

When I was jurying The Creative Portrait show for the Los Angeles Center for Photography a few weeks ago, I saw the picture of a woman's black and white portrait being sewn with a thick red yarn.

I reviewed Krugh's latest portfolio at PhotoLucida this year and here were objects and images that piqued my curiosity. Here were all my favorite cameras (and some I'd never heard of) captured with x-rays.

In the spring of my junior year of college, I took a course called, "Southern Contemporary Fiction." Haunting works by William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Thomas Wolfe, Tennessee Williams, Peter Taylor, Pinckney Benedict...there were others, of course, but perhaps most important to mention here is Flannery O'Connor.

I first met Norm Diamond at the PhotoLucida portfolio reviews in Portland, Oregon, in 2015. He had a number of prints of beautiful still lifes and interiors, the color palette perfect, the spaces familiar, the objects loved and worn.

While jurying PhotoLucida's Critical Mass, I found some images that had the energy of Ernst Haas' photographs of motion, but these weren't color and they weren't bull fights or galloping horses.

Takayuki Narita's project, "Rose Garden," at first reminded me of Martin Parr's "Last Resort" for a moment in the way he used the flash in the sun, but here these people are not clad in bathing suits or waiting in ice cream parlors or clamoring across rocky beaches.

Nicolò Sertorio in his portfolio 'DisConnected' explores different aspects of landscapes in a counterpoint of bridging the gap between opposites in our life. 'DisConnected' is Sertorio's fine art photography that reached the conceptual level of the essential idea of Sartrean Existentialism and philosophical principles of the New Escapism of contemporary art.

When I lived in Maine and I would travel the 3,000+ miles to Los Angeles, I would often head straight to Venice Beach from the airport. It seemed like such a foreign place compared to the rocky, deep harbored coastline where there was literally no one on the cliffs but me (and maybe Paul Caponigro catching some fleeting rays if the weather was warm enough).

I don't usually find myself drawn to pictures of children. Actually, it's become a bit of tendency when I'm jurying or critiquing and I see those photographs, I almost involuntarily announce, "No cute kids." (Kids that aren't adorable are OK. Give me Diane Arbus' grenade boy anytime. Or a host of other images of fierce or far out youngsters.)

Sometimes I forget, when I'm looking through thousands of images, why I love photography and what attracted me to it in the first place. The light. It's the photographer's basic tool and yet I think often image-makers forget that this is what creates the mood and the tone of the picture.

I first met Maureen Drennan at Review Santa Fe in 2010. She had a secret project about a pot farm back when marijuana was illegal in California and was an even more taboo subject.

While looking through the nearly 800 portfolio submissions for Aint-Bad Magazine's curator's issue, I discovered British photographer Simon Martin's images of young cadets.

My work on this project began on On December 22nd 2008, the failure of a containment pond dyke spilled 5.4 million cubic yards of coal ash belonging to the Tennessee Valley Authority's (TVA) Kingston Fossil Plant into the Emory River and the surrounding landscape. Coal ash is a waste product of burning coal for power production, collected and stored in these massive ponds, much like our solid waste is collected in landfills.

Using the Voyager Space Probes as a metaphor, Transit of Venus is an exploration of the human desire to search beyond one's self. While embracing the quiet solitude of the search, perception of time slows. Days fold into moments, while moments transform and mix with longings. Once beyond the obvious realm, the exploration becomes an act of looking inward while embracing that which is beyond. To explore, is to drift through time.

My first trip to Zanzibar was in 1993, I had just spent three months traveling overland through Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania and only intended to stay in Zanzibar a few days. Instead I got stuck waiting an additional seven weeks for my visa to India. As I meandered through the labyrinthine streets of Stone Town, it was only a matter of days until the locals sitting in front of their homes began engaging me in conversation: "You have walked by me for several days now, sit down and tell me who you are and why you are here." A sparked mutual curiosity led to daily conversations and deeper connections, soon I began to feel like I belonged. My unexpected ‘holding-tank' time in Zanzibar ended up being more meaningful than I could have imagined.

In 1998, I found myself in New Zealand, a world away from coastal Maine where I had been living. Glaciers extending to the road, fjords and mountains and deserts, sandy beaches where I could dig a hole and they would fill with hot water to soak in, thermal activity like Iceland, the Bay of Islands with its green hills, the pancake rocks, the glow worm tunnels, kiwi birds and kakapos, Stewart Island with the surprise of the Aurora Australis, the Otego peninsula with those round boulders, but also with those tiny sapphire blue penguins that are only a foot tall (where did they come from?) and down somewhere near Bluff, the world's 8th largest aluminium smelter where I could take a free tour and walk across a magnetic field that not only made all the nails I was holding in my hands stand up on their metal points, but which probably changed my body forever...

In April, I was reviewing portfolios at PhotoLucida in Portland, Oregon, and there at my table was an unassuming young woman who I initially thought was French and who had 2 things with her: a mock-up of a book as well as a huge stack of prints, all diptychs. I found myself flipping through the pages of the book and then pausing to look through a substantial number of prints and then back to the book and then back to the prints and back again to the book. The photographer was looking at me like I was a bit crazy and I actually don't think I've ever viewed anything in quite that way, but there was so much to see and there were also moments in the book that I didn't want to miss and pairings in the prints that were different than the book. The 20-minute review went by much too quickly and I found myself wondering how it all ended. Well, luckily for me, Michal Greenboim sent me a copy of her book, ''Orchard Trail.''

My artwork is intrinsically tied to my own family's photographic legacy. At age 18, I moved from India to the United States, a couple of years after my parents passed away. Before I emigrated, my sister and I split our photographic inheritance arbitrarily and irreparably in half - one part to remain in India with her and the other to be displaced along with me, here in America. For the past decade, my archive of family photographs has been one of my main source materials in creating bodies of work, which explore the genre of personal narrative.

In 1972 I was watching the Fellini film, Roma, and was captivated by splashes of light involving sparks from a street car at night. That scene with its dark nature and surreal quality motivated me to emulate a specific photographic style. It seems strange to me (almost absurd) that such a momentary scene became a motivation for an entire body of work that is interwoven throughout my artistic career. I call these images Evidence and Inhabitants. They are the evidence of places and people I have never been able to fully remember, but manifest themselves in the photographs I make.

Not Waving But Drowning is a look inside an Evangelical marriage. These images show the truth of a life lived in the confines of oppressive gender roles, cult-like manipulation, and the isolation of Fundamentalism.

Sur La Route (French for "On The Road") is a series of portraits taken outside the house where I live along the narrow dirt path that stretches from Bereba to the small family farms that surround the village. Around sunset the inhabitants return to their homes carrying firewood or items that have been harvested during the day. I make the photographs using the simple landscape as my studio, employing a fill flash to illuminate the farmers against the darkening sky. The fleeting light lasts only about 45 minutes. Because I return to the village every year I am able to give away the images from the previous year. These photographs have become prized possessions and are proudly displayed throughout the village.

I first met Ben Huff in 2011 in China of all places. There was an international photography festival there, through the lush valleys and surreal mountains on a 13-hour train ride (I'll mention briefly that I was standing for this entire ride) straight west from Shanghai, in the small city (3 million people) of Lishui. This place was picturesque and humid and a mix of ancient and brand new (they were still building the hotel we were staying in). The festival unfortunately no longer exists, but I remember walking into the "American Pavilion" (for lack of a better description for the amazing abandoned factory building that housed our photography) and seeing Ben's photographs from his documentary project, ''The Last Road North.'' It was as if I was transported straight out of steamy China to the desolate Dalton Highway and a barren stretch of tundra in Alaska. I spent a lot of my time in that corner of the exhibition hall in Lishui, thinking about distances traveled and about how Ben photographed the land and the people.

The quick capture of an image and the passage of time over its manipulation is combined in my series "The Accidental Photograph." With the photographic image, a Polaroid print as the foundation, slowly over days, weeks, or months I have a dialog with a variety of casually collected items. The techniques and materials of collage become the possibilities for what I see in the final piece. The images ask to be deciphered by a viewer's own internal logic and are not suggestive of any one particular notion of mine. It seems the nature of collage to be in flux through process and as likely through interpretations over time.

One of my favorite things about jurying an international competition is discovering photographers that I would never encountered otherwise. I've finally finished looking at the last portfolio (#780) in the jurying process for Issue 12, the curators' issue, of Aint-Bad Magazine and was miraculously transported to a place that at first I didn't recognize as being real. It looked like a movie set, the clouds parting to reveal an old building that could be an abandoned factory or an asylum (and when I say clouds parting, it's like that moment at the Sun Gate when the clouds descend into the valleys of Peruvian Andes and the mountaintop city of Machu Picchu is unveiled.

Every Breath We Drew explores the power of identity, desire, and connection through portraits of myself and others. Working within the framework of queer experience and from my actively constructed sense of masculinity, my portraits examine the intersection between private, individual identity and the search for intimate connection with others. I photograph people in their homes, often in their bedrooms, using medium and large format cameras to create a deep, sustained engagement, resulting in an intimate and detailed portrait.

The once romantic notion of travelling the ocean to distant and exotic lands has become an accessible and affordable way to vacation thanks to cruise tourism. About 10 million Americans take to the sea aboard cruise ships every year, and cruising is one of the fastest-growing sectors of the tourism industry worldwide. My ongoing project At Sea is a light-hearted exploration of the leisurely world of cruise culture.

Being housebound means enduring an ongoing shift between reality and the surreal. The safety of objects; plants, books, television, the internet, wrap around us and we are home. The outside world becomes irrelevant and fades away. Moments that are constructed bear resemblance to ones that are spontaneous and both serve as representations of living. These are the photographs that make up Homelife.

Throughout every stage of photography exists the act of encountering. As a photographer I'm confronted by my vision, or particular desire to photograph a specific subject amongst a crowd. I'm confronted by obfuscation; am I capturing the subject's truth, or mine- does it matter? In many ways, the act of engaging with photography is like stepping in front of a mirror and encountering some version of the self. And I wonder how it is to have a physical reflection of the self with a twin: some person that is within and apart. This ongoing series documents the annual twins festival in Twinsburg, OH; the same fair that Mary Ellen Mark attended while producing her body of work, Twins.

In the American West, vast areas of remote, arid terrain were disregarded by early settlers and described as "the lands nobody wanted." In the Upper Snake River Valley of Eastern Idaho, parts of these sagebrush desert expanses, now overseen by the Federal Bureau of Land Management, are regularly used by local gun-owners for target shooting. My work is an examination of this culture and tradition, which is rooted in the concept of rugged individualism, the myth of the frontier, and a strict championing of the Second Amendment. Through the documentation of landscapes, artifacts, and individuals, I am considering the social, political, and ecological issues that intersect and complicate this once undesirable frontier.

These photographs were made while roaming the American West in search of true solitude. It's a search that's becoming more of a challenge as civilization spreads, so these dreamlike moments are reminders of how quiet the wilderness can be.

It might be close to a decade ago that Jacqueline Walters walked into RayKo Photo Center. At the time, she had a small box of prints tucked under her arm (as the years passed I noted that the dimensions of the portfolio box grew and grew). These first prints were images of a misty landscape buried in dense fog, but this wasn't San Francisco, her most recent home. This was a flat land with a creek like glass running through fields of lush grass with animals and rounded trees emerging from the mist. It's not only that the air is diffused and I have to squint my eyes to see better through the vapors. No, no, it's not just that holds me spellbound. It's also not that I can feel how the air cloaks itself around me, around the photographer, around the trees, how it sits on the ground, because despite its visual appearance, it's not heavy.

Hair Pieces explores the fickle relationship most have with their body hair. We consider some hair very desirable and grow and groom it with care, while we treat other hair as shameful and cover or remove it. Once hair has become disconnected from our bodies, we treat it with disgust, yet it has an archival, lasting presence that outlives the body and defies death and decay.

I first saw Laura Parker's work at Review LA. This was a portfolio review run by the great folks at Center who also organize Review Santa Fe. Review LA, which unfortunately no longer exists, happened concurrently with Photo LA, so it felt the entire city was submerged in photography. It may have been 9 years ago now that I saw Laura's work and yet it still resounds with me. Back then she showed images of horses and water printed through circles or what appeared to be lenses on large sheets of chromogenic paper, unfurling like scrolls with looking-glass glimpses of equine legs and chests appearing on the black paper. Laura had photographs of pot bottoms too (wonderfully textured and rusted and showing a life lived). She also did things with c-prints that I'd never seen done: she made rubbings of different objects.

The Los Angeles Center of Photography just opened its doors to the Second Annual Fine Art Exhibition, aka "Singular point of view 2017". From May 19th to June 23rd, LACP will showcase an impressive collection of fine art photography, accurately selected by Crista Dix, and embracing 50 shoots from the work of 39 artists, plus 52 additional images, virtually exhibited on an online gallery.

Cromwell Schubarth was one of the first photographers to submit Polaroid images to the show. I had noted each time I saw him that he was wearing a different Polaroid camera around his neck.

Photographer Pamela Gentile first began photographing at local San Francisco music venues, including the Warfield and the Fillmore, and on tour with Chris Isaak. She soon becoming staff photographer and photo editor for the newspaper, SF Weekly. Gentile then focused her camera on her first love, the world of cinema.

As I grew older and began to question my religious teachings, I became more and more fascinated by the idea of Jesus and Christianity as a sociological or anthropological idea rather than a purely religious one based on faith.

Fauxliage documents the prolific disguised cell towers in the American West. I was initially drawn to their peculiar appearance; I then found it disconcerting how technology was clandestinely modifying our environment.

The moon drawings are a byproduct of my process of working on the moon alphabet. The latter I started while waiting for my visa. Originally, I was so preoccupied with validating my existence to this state, that I could not think about art or creating it.

The toy camera is a simple recording device with an emphasis on fun and imperfection. It allows me to be deeply absorbed in a far away place and time where creating new scenarios for the overlooked and insignificant becomes possible.

Stephen's painstakingly created dioramas take me into his world, just far enough, and then I am left to discover what has happened. Each artist has a way to express themselves and to translate their experience.

Peter Wiklund from Sweden started with photography in the mid 80's and has ever since experimented with a lot of techniques and cameras. Nowadays, he mainly uses different plastic and pinhole cameras. These tools add a moment of chance into his photography, something that is very important to him.

Akira Seo was born in Tokyo, Japan. After working as a director for a satellite broadcasting station for 4 years in Japan, he moved to the U.S.A. in 1997. He graduated with a Masters degree from the Brooks Institute of Photography in 2002. His fascination with art was cultivated from a young age as he grew up in a family of artists.

The soft focus and timeless quality is the perfect tool to reclaim his past and also to document the passing landscape as he traveled to and from his ailing father.

Becoming is a continuum of Rania Matar's work from the past several years, and it's a feast to view her multiple projects together. Through this collection of portraits, Matar leads us through many stages in the life of a woman. She photographs girls and young women from the US and from Lebanon, her country of origin. Matar notes, "These are not meant to be a comparison, on the contrary, as the lines blur quickly. Regardless of place, background and religion, girls that age everywhere seem united by similar feelings, aspirations and attitudes."

There's this picture of a woman enveloped in steam, standing in a yard where just visible in the mist are big white chickens and a distant paddock and weeds taller than the woman who is earnestly plucking a dead chicken that is strung up by its feet. It's an image I can't stop looking at, its mysteries manifold. It has a force of its own, outside of the rest of the Beverly Conley's powerful documentary project about the Ozarks. There is something about this woman, age indeterminate, place almost mystical, ritual vague until told. Having lived all over the world, I thought perhaps this was the beginning of some ceremony, but no, it is life. Life in the Ozarks. I had the honor of including this image in a recent exhibition of documentary photography at RayKo Photo Center in San Francisco.

My favorite image to this day is one of a pair of intertwined greasy onions rings that look like the cosmos. Transformed. That's what these items are. Truly transformed. I keep peeking into the print viewing area to see what giant surprise may be unfurled from the processor and put up on the wall next...the possibilities are limitless and luckily, so is Johnna Arnold's imagination.

Growing up in various different locations and cultures, Ashley learned to use the camera as a way to explore undiscovered places or to build her own. Inspired by the outdoors and science fiction novels, she seeks to portray the world around us in a way that questions our belief in the physical truth of things as they appear to be.

These gritty black and white photographs of methamphetamine users in rural Alabama stopped us. There is a grace to these images, like the boy in the pool with his shirt pulled over his face and the tilted figure walking in the middle of the double yellow line on the crest of the hill into the sun.

Legendary night photographer and Educator, Steve Harper passed away this summer in Colorado, at age 85. Steve was a pioneer in the study of Night Photography and the first to teach college-level courses (Night Light I and II) in the genre. He painstakingly researched and documented various films, developing protocols, lighting techniques, etc.,

Tonight I stood under a shower of hundreds of thousands of red paper hearts that flew up into the sky like an unpredictable swarm of birds and then they fell to the rain slicked streets of the Place de la Republique in Paris. It's the one year anniversary of the Paris shootings today and it is also that time of year when Paris Photo and Fotofever happen simultaneously. Somehow, with the climate feeling very heavy from the recent presidential election in the United States and then this day of remembering last year's tragedy, it doesn't seem like the moment to be thinking about art. But yet, really now more than ever, it is the time for artists to be creating and dreaming and striving and making new realities and unleashing new visions.

Sometimes there are pictures that stay in your mind's eye. Long after you've experienced them. There is one by Marcus Haydock, an image of a girl lying on the lip of an empty pool at night. It is like a scene from my adolescence. It is also like Ralph Gibson meets Daido Moriyama. It's sexy and dark and has an edge. A very sharp edge. All of Marcus' work from his book, "Insurrection" has this charge. I was fortunate enough to meet the photographer at Fotofest this spring. He had both this riveting black and white work from Insurrection that made my heart beat faster, the pauses, the pacing, it was like a story from a dream, sometimes a nightmare, surreal and compelling. Stark. Really stark. I liked the rhythm of it as I flipped through the pages, pausing to witness scenes like the girl with her legs dangling in the night into that empty pool, a vast blackness beyond her reclining body as if she and I are really the last people here. Another of a tangle of barbed wire followed by a jumble of bedding preceded by a naked girl's back with a knot of long hair against her white skin. It's his use of flash and his confrontation of the subject matter that stops me cold. A caged surveillance camera, a ticker tape parade frozen (again in the black night), a shopping cart full to the brim with bottles and debris, spray painted cars, spray painted walls... is this England or is this the apocalypse?

There's something about that image of the schooner, fully rigged, sailing across the sea behind a shingled house. I've looked at this picture a hundred times and still I like to believe it's real, a rectangle cut into a wall that reveals a view into another world. Is this the Voyage of the Dawn Treader or is this a David Carol photograph? Option B. There's a rhythm to David's pictures. I flip through them: the frozen fish, real or not real? The white head of a ghost horse peering from the perfect corner of the fence with a black storm sky swirling behind him. It's a dream, no wait, it's a David Carol photograph. The speed is picking up. I can sense it, the more I look. The hands emerging or submerging in an otherwise perfectly still lake; it feels like northern Maine at the end of the summer.

Yesterday I met with Takeshi Moro. It was a different day and it wasn't just the rain in the midst of the drought in California. I've looked at Takeshi's work before: large color photographs of Finnish saunas, actually three unfolding stories of Finnish saunas with a black and white chapter in the middle. That's something else though. This time, the photographer opened a giant box and unveiled something I had never seen before: cyanotypes on large canvases. Now, I know what you're thinking: canvas? Blasphemy. (That's usually how I react to canvas anyway). But these prints were gorgeous continuous tone cyanotypes of the richest blue, with all the mid-tones on soft, not quite limp, large canvases with slightly frayed edges like jeans that have been washed too much. As he picked them up and turned them and laid them down again, they just seemed perfect. Canvas? How could it be? Well, there was a lot of technical explaining to do including a lot of geeking out over a process invented in 1842 and the discussion of a new cyanotype process recently developed by Mike Ware... and then not learning how Takeshi had changed it (never give away your secrets), but knowing that he had to amend the formula and then seeing the results of his experimentation. As a historical process nerd, I was intrigued and impressed to say the least.

Maybe it's this: the silver chill of the cold, bleak winters of my childhood that lasted for months and months on end. Maybe that's what made me stop and stare at this particular image of a small valley, an indentation in the land, covered with the thinnest layer of snow, barely covering the ground underneath.

Beautiful Boy is an ongoing project that began as a confession between two friends. On the subway one evening, my friend shared that he had worn women's clothing almost exclusively in college, but after graduation struggled to navigate a world that seemed both newly accepting and yet inherently reviling of male displays of femininity.

I was inspired to explore this "city" and bring my street photography to the wilderness. I shot 150 rolls of black and white film during nineteen visits to the Park from January 2014 through May 2016. I defined Yosemite People as anyone within the formal boundaries of the Park and limited myself to this area without special access or privileges.

Tariq Zaidi has spent the last 10 years photographing tribal and indigenous people in over 30 countries in Africa. He has just returned from South Sudan, the newest and arguably most unstable nation in the world, where he photographed the little-documented Mundari tribe.

To walk into a big factory space turned into a massive gallery in an ancient walled city in China is one thing. To walk in and see an artist's work whom I had shown back in 2010 is another. I had met Lucia Ganieva back in 2008 at Fotofest in Houston. She had several portfolios, each more compelling than the last. One about "iron mules" (motorbikes with side cars), one about women who guard the art at the Russian museums, and one about factories. I exhibited all three projects at RayKo Photo Center nearly 7 years ago now. But here at the Pingyao International Photo Festival (PIP for short), the curator and artist, Thomas Kellner wisely selected Lucia's factory pictures to be exhibited in the old diesel factory. Perfect.

I'm in China right now, roaming the streets of the ancient walled city of Pingyao while attending the Pingyao International Photo Festival (the oldest and biggest photography festival in China). Sitting in front of shops on back streets are these mechanical rides, sometimes a monkey, sometimes a bear, sometimes an octopus or a cat or a fox (never with a child on board, by the way)... seeing these made me think of Ernie Button's images of the same types of kiddie rides that he photographed when he was in Lishui and other parts of China. I first saw his photographs of China at Photolucida in Portland. At the time, he had his plastic camera images of the rides as well as the wilds of rural China. They were beautiful and mesmerizing. I ended up featuring his work in RayKo's 8th Annual International Plastic Camera Show, I liked them so much.

Earlier this year, I met Michael Joseph at Fotofest in Houston, Texas. He had big, haunting portraits of young people who were wandering the country, mostly by rail. Most of them looked as if they had been through something or were on the run: a girl with face abrasions and a Band-Aid above her eye, another girl with the tattoo "trust no 1" across her clasped knuckles, a beautiful boy with a furrowed brow and the saddest expression looking back at the camera. I had lots of questions about these pictures. Why were they wearing bandanas? What was the symbolism of the face tattoos (many had dots of ink under their eyes)? What was the story of the woman who looked like she came straight out of a Mad Max movie and yet was carrying a giant happy baby? Why was she hopping trains? It didn't strike me as a William Kennedy novel, but a modern day story that I struggled to understand. Why this life choice? And how long would these lives last?

My story explores modern Ukraine in turmoil with the Dnieper river as a metaphor of present split in the country. It documents how the mixed ethnic and historical legacies of Ukraine brought people their present realities. Making the Dnieper river a symbolic line of reference allows me to talk about the most important issues in wider political, historical and geographical context of the whole country.

Photography is the closest thing we have to a time machine. Film imprints moments from a past time. Our memories are created from imprints of these moments, like film. But, currently, we cannot visualize these memory imprints unless we capture them on film.

December and Everything After is a project about my aging parents, and more recently, about the steady decline in my mother's health since she was diagnosed with a slow growing abdominal sarcoma in 2014. After her cancer diagnosis and her extreme mental and physical decline, I had conflicting feelings trying to photograph my mother.

Unarmed features a community of amateur fighters in northern California. The photographs give reverence to the primal humanness of this pursuit. These photographs explore the tactical choreography of training, the pomp and circumstance of the performance, and portraits of fighters before, during, and after fights.

Now we've all seen pictures from Cuba. Maybe some of us have seen so many that we're desensitized to images from that country. When we see an old car in front of an old building with peeling paint with a woman on the stoop smoking a cigar, we might even shudder. There are exceptions to this rule, as Judy Walgren and I found out while jurying the documentary competition, ''With Our Own Eyes.'' It was actually one of the subjects that we didn't argue about while in the throes of jurying: no Cuba pictures; jaded, we thought there was nothing new that we hadn't seen.

This quote is a perfect description of what we see in Lauren Welles' photographs of Coney Island. She recently entered a show called "With Our Own Eyes" that I juried with Judy Walgren, an exhibition of street photography and social documentary work. Out of the nearly 450 photographers who entered the competition, Welles was not only selected to be one of the 35 exhibitors, but she also had every picture that she submitted chosen by us. Oh, and she also got an honorable mention and sold a piece, but that's the icing on the cake. When Judy and I viewed her work, there was a layering and a lyricism to the pictures that we didn't see in many of the other very straightforward street shots. There were moments that can be described as poignant and perfect, like she channeled Henri Cartier-Bresson and his decisive moment.

The portrait was awful but an idea was born after seeing a white chair with a broken arm. What if this chair would be a woman? What age would she be? I wrote this idea down and I went back to my country of Romania.

We were both staring at this slice of mankind and thinking, well here is America and all we are and all we are not. This scene with this anonymous group of individuals gathered into the frame, connecting and not connecting, no one really even looking in the same direction or even watching whatever the unnamed event is.

My first hand experience of being excessively micro managed when I was an instructor at a certain college, and shock at how little funds my daughter's classroom was given for yearly supplies, motivated me to start photographing.

As a child of Filipino immigrants, I have had a long-abiding and deeply held interest in what makes people move from one place to another. Last year, I followed my curiosity as a Fulbright Scholar to the Philippines to photograph various aspects of the Filipino diaspora.

I first encountered Emma Powell's work when Todd Hido had selected an image from her series, "In Search of Sleep" for an exhibition he juried for RayKo Photo Center. The show was called "Voyeurism and Intimacy" and here was a cyanotype self-portrait of Emma, glancing back as she paused in a wall-papered hallway, looking both radiant and exhausted, and also a little frightened. It could be because the shadow cast upon the wall behind her isn't her own. I remember unwrapping this piece for installation and thinking that it was rare to see such a beautiful cyanotype with so many tones and also that it seemed like a movie still or a moment from a dream. I didn't realize until later when I saw more images from this series that they were about Powell's difficult relationship with sleep that stemmed back to her childhood:

Raising a device between oneself and a site of atrocity can be seen as distancing and reductive. However, an impulse to manage and diffuse what these places mean is understandable and perhaps necessary. The memorials themselves invite engagement but also obstruct it, depicting the appalling, chaotic events they represent with unwarranted coherence or with the blankness of preserved artifacts.

The series is called, "Where's My Happy Ending?" and intends to be as subjective as it is provocative, navigating and interpreting the world of medically assisted fertility treatments and the range of anticipation, promises, and disappointments experienced by prospective parents.

Lustron homes are among the most successful examples of the Modernist ideal of using industrial techniques to create affordable housing. When I was recently in Detroit, I went to the Henry Ford Museum and was delighted to see Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion House in the flesh.

I had been sick for a few months upon moving home to South Korea, having lived abroad for 5 years. After a long and slow recovery, I found that I lost some memories about the period in which I struggled against the illness. It is a kind of memory disorder which is called psychogenic amnesia.

Dave Jordano returned to his hometown of Detroit to document the people who still live in what has become one of the country's most economically challenging cities. Stricken with mass abandonment through years of white flight to the suburbs, unemployment hovering at almost three times the national average, city services cut to the bone, a real estate collapse of massive proportions that stripped the tax base bare, and ultimately filing the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S.

Back in 2009, I had the opportunity to exhibit a wonderful series of photographs by Sandrine Hermand-Grisel. At that time, she had recently moved to the United States from France and she and her family had embarked on a road trip like another famous European...Robert Frank. Her images from this journey were pulled together in a group titled, ''Somewhere...'' And I got it. Looking at them, the gritty road, the strange landscapes, the buildings of no architectural significance... but also the dream of America and what it could mean. Always the highway and the land. I loved those dark pictures, scratched and flawed and searching. I showed a selection of those shortly after the market crashed in 2008 in an exhibition called, ''The Great Disruption.'' There was a dialogue here between pictures; it was about what could be and what

In 2011, Tara Bogart visited the photo archives of the National Library of France. While everything was inspirational, one photograph haunted her for months following her visit. "Hair Study", by Felix Nadar depicts just a womanʼs back and her hair. Bogart couldnʼt stop thinking about what that same image would look like today.

'Outlook' is a series of photographs shot in Iceland in the fall of 2015 and early winter of 2016. Outside the bedroom window was a lush backyard that Hauksdóttir became inspired to photograph. There was a magnetic tablet next to the window with a small watercolor and the artist got the idea to hang pictures there, both press photos as well as images of relevance to her family.

Emma Jaubert Howell wasn't content just making traditional prints. She wanted to capture the landscape in a totally new and innovative way. Forget Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, she was coming west to California to see the land anew. And that she did.

Last year, Pier 24 had a massive exhibition of found photography called "Secondhand." Certain rooms were so brilliantly curated that I had to return and marvel at how simply pairing certain images could change their context. Which led me to think about what Kris Sanford could have done if given a wall to sequence with her latest series of pictures.

In her later teens and early 20s, Mimi Plumb went back to where she was from, suburbia. She photographed the landscape of her childhood: the mushrooming housing developments, suburban malls, the county fairs, the torn up swaths of land, and most importantly the people living there, the kids, the teenagers, the adults, all reminders of her youth... Throughout her childhood years, in the 1950s and 1960s, growing up beneath the shadow of Mt. Diablo in the California suburb of Walnut Creek, Plumb watched the rolling hills and green valleys be developed with tract homes and strip malls. To her and her teenage friends, they were the blandest, saddest homes in the world. Suburbia also stood in stark contrast to the cultural and violent upheavals taking place across the country, the shooting of John F. Kennedy, the ongoing threat of nuclear war, the civil rights movement, and the anti-war movement. Suburbia felt like a cultural wasteland, something of a purgatory to her. Mimi Plumb got out as quickly as she could upon graduating from high school.

A Million Suns is a story of one man's search for his future. His high-pressure existence comes crashing down one day when he encounters a fissure in the ground. This discovery triggers a chain of events that will send him to the ends of the earth and force him to face what his life may or may not be.

The women in this collection of portraits have chosen to own handguns for protection. The majority of them have been through training to obtain licenses to conceal and carry their guns in public. They are ready to face an attacker, take aim and pull the trigger.

There's something about the surprise of a portfolio review that never grows old. As a reviewer, I sit behind a table covered in a white tablecloth, waiting expectantly for the next artist to appear. Though I'm sent my schedule ahead of time, I rarely look at the artist list. I like the mystery of not knowing what work is about to be presented to me. I just returned from FotoFest in Houston; this is the granddaddy of all the portfolio reviews existing today. The first Biennial was held in 1986 and has expanded to include a year-round education program, a robust schedule of traveling photography shows, international exchange programs, and publications. The FotoFest Biennial and art programs are known as platforms for ideas and discovery.

This winter my son and I missed a connecting flight and were told that due to the holidays, there wouldn't be another flight available into my small, hometown airport (or anywhere near it) for 8 days. It was a moment to laugh or cry. I just looked at my 10-year-old and said, ''Let's find the closest train station and make our way the last 1,000 miles.'' We cuddled up in two seats and watched the land open up as the train veered away from the city into the wide river valley with the distant curving hills. Away from the road, everything was different, the trees denser, the birds more numerous, the light somehow crisper. I thought in this moment of McNair Evans' long term project, ''In Search of Great Men.'' I looked around the train car at the exhausted families, the business men with loosened ties, the couples with gigantic suitcases that seemed to hold everything they owned. I wondered about their stories and where they would alight and who would get on next and where everyone was going in these gently hurtling silver cars rolling with a rhythm into the darkness. McNair Evans' images and accompanying journal pages answered some of my questions, while others were aroused. This exhibition is a culmination of four years spent journeying the country, meeting the people and exploring a mode of transportation that is slowly disappearing.

I first met Cig Harvey when I had rolled back into Rockport, Maine, in 2000 after years abroad. She had the private darkroom next to mine at the Maine Photographic Workshops and while I was churning out what I considered to be somewhat tortured self-portraits, Cig was printing out even more beautiful self-portraits that spoke of something in an indirect way, subtle and dark, a moment, really a life, expressed in something as simple as the way a stocking clad foot met the floor. I have that image in my mind's eye sixteen years later and marvel at the beginning of the journey that would shape her as an image-maker. Cig, a talented and passionate photographer with numerous stories to tell, not just of her path, but those she encountered upon it. I had an inkling then, in the late nights in the darkroom in Coastal Maine, that this girl was going to be great. And I was right. Now on her second monograph, Cig is more of a supernova than a shooting star. For those that didn't get to see her struggle through a Maine winter or conversely, joyously swim in the brisk ocean off of Beauchamp Point in the too short summers, you get to see her now as a Phoenix.

Without pride or embarrassment, I can say that I find the rebar and concrete of a construction site every bit as beautiful as fir trees delicately outlined by freshly fallen snow, and the apparent solidity of an office building as lyrical and ephemeral as fog floating over a sunlit ocean.

I went back to Savannah, Georgia, on a midnight red eye flight a few weeks ago during a cold snap in the South where there was ice on the street in the morning and the frost coated grass crunched under my feet. This never happened when I lived there 23 years ago. There was something that was the same though. The light. The magic light of the winter in a place tucked up river from the sea, filtered by two-hundred-year-old trees and the thick air...

Lewis Watts, a photographer based in Richmond, California, has been photographing in New Orleans since 1994. He was initially drawn to its history and culture, the patina of its building and the patina of the faces of the people. He was also interested in the connection between Louisiana and the West Coast because of the great migration during WWII and afterward. This was something Watts researched for his book, ''Harlem of the West, The San Francisco Fillmore Jazz Era'' (Chronicle Books 2006). Watts was able to return to New Orleans multiple times through the ensuing years and then was scheduled for an Artist Residency at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans in 2005. That was derailed by Hurricane Katrina. He did get into the city six weeks after the storm and the damage was much worse than what was shown in the news photographs Watts had been closely following. Watts was embedded with the National Guard in order to gain access to the Lower 9th Ward where the worst devastation had occurred. He was interested in photographing much of the unique nature of New Orleans and how the storm left its mark, not only with images of flood water levels stained on walls and occupancy markers of abandonment, but also resilient images of the people. This was problematic at first because there were so few people left, and it was the people that made New Orleans real for Watts. He then noticed the ways that the cultural workers (The Mardi Gras Indians, The Pleasure and Social Clubs, the Brass Bands and other residents) aspired to make sure that the traditions, unique to New Orleans, would endure and grow in the face of the threat of a reduced black population and the desire of some of the powers that be to commoditize the culture.

I'm very influenced by a whole bunch of dead people, and people who spoke languages I don't share, by the magic of the book. This is the only thing that has ideas trapped in it very literally. It's a big deal in my mind-more than just a job, more than just retail.

Dark Messengers is titled after a 1919 collection by the great Peruvian modernist poet César Vallejo. In Los Heraldos Negros, Vallejo's poetic attention is directed inward to the conflicts and wounds that characterize the modern psyche; as a photographer I turn my lens outward to the wounds and conflicts that characterize the modernity of the Americas.

I first encountered Mary Ramain's work when I was working on an exhibition that Jan Potts, of Corden Potts Gallery, and Beth Keintzle were putting together for RayKo Photo Center. These two women curated a show called "The Invisible Age" and it was full of powerful self-portraits from a variety of female artists from around the world. I met with Jan and Beth to discuss the imagery and also to decide which of these profound pictures we should select for the postcard. For me, there was one clear winner: Mary Riggs Ramain. A Polaroid, an imperfect Polaroid picture of a pair of hands gripping impossibly to the sheer face of a rock, the face of the owner of these hands obliterated by the failed film. This picture for me spoke of so much more than aging. It spoke of life, simply, desperately, poignantly. And perfectly, the image is titled, ''Perseverance.''

I met Minjin Kang at the Filter Photo Festival in Chicago in 2014, where I had the chance to review her work "Ham Radio." This moving series showcases her extraordinary ability to tell people's stories through her work. I revisited these pictures recently and wondered how Minjin found these individuals who use ham radios? Primarily they are older men living in rural settings, far removed from the campus life of an art student. We discussed this seeming anomaly and Minjin had this to say: ''Even though most users of Ham Radio are Caucasian old men, and I am a South Korean young woman, they are like me - trying to speak in a ''second language'' to get their ideas across. The risk of being misunderstood by someone who speaks a different language or comes from a different background makes us think harder as we converse. The distance we experience can draw out feelings of loneliness. I think it is important to capture this shared feeling of loneliness, which creates our inner drive to communicate and to be understood.''

I started a competition almost ten years ago that featured work from toy cameras (plastic cameras with plastic lenses like the Diana or the Holga) and while jurying this competition, I first encountered the work of Dennis Hodges. His graphic, dark images were somehow beautiful and ominous at the same time. I noted that the framed pieces came from Hungary, yet if they didn't sell during the exhibition, I shipped them back to Kansas. A mystery.

"Self & Others: Portrait as Autobiography" (Magenta Foundation) is an almost 20 year culmination of portrait photographs by the award-winning photographer Aline Smithson, who lives and works in Los Angeles, where she was born and raised near Hollywood and Vine.

In case you thought you missed Ethan Rafal's epic book tour that took him across the country multiple times in 2015, you're in luck. It seems that the road is calling to him and he'll be back on it. Join Ethan and Amber Hoy at SFCamerawork in San Francisco on January 28th from 7-9pm.

Leah started on a long journey that took her around the country, beginning at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, where she was granted permission to handle and photograph some of the 10,000 bird skins in its collection. Then in May 2008 she was awarded a residency at the Grand Canyon. She worked with the museum collection which included specimens of tiny birds, bleached bones, clipped ferns, and fragile butterflies housed in drawers of darkness.

I was in the Benson Hotel in Portland, Oregon, during the biennial PhotoLucida portfolio review (which, luckily for photographers everywhere, coincides with Portland Photo Month in April) and saw a crowd of people gathered around one table in the bar.

Yael Ben-Zion 's work stems from a very personal place, although the issues she engages with often have political or social implications. The images she creates are not straightforward portraiture or documentation but rather intimate moments and depictions that allude to our common experience as human beings.

Rubi Lebovitch brought his series, "Home Sweet Home" to PhotoLucida in Portland in 2013. There he met with resounding success, scoring a number of solo shows with the strength of his work. I was drawn by the images and their humor and outrageousness.

Clarke began this project, "Time As We Know It," five years ago. At first she thought she was simply chronicling the process of getting old. She didn't realize that she would end up embracing these images as a tribute not just to her life, but also to the ever more demanding task of aging with grace.

Every year, Gentry takes a group of photographers to Arles and beyond. This year is no different. Erika Gentry invites seven photography lovers to join her July 11-18 2016 for a photography workshop and tour titled Photography in France: A Photographic Journey. This special tour is designed for intermediate photographers and photography lovers. Photographic opportunities abound in the Roman city of Arles and its surrounds as well as the opportunity to experience one of the world's premiere photography festivals, the Recontres d'Arles, to inspire your own work. Experience guided visits of the festival and make your own photographs via excursions to surrounding Provencal towns seeing subjects explored by the likes of VanGogh, Gaugin and Koudelka (to name a few). Get one-on-one help in the photographic field and feedback from Gentry and special guests. Experience food, art, culture and camaraderie on this very special guided tour designed for serious photography enthusiasts. The Recontres d'Arles festival will take place July through September with exhibits, lectures and special workshops. The festival, with over 50 exhibitions of photography showcased at heritage sites (12th century churches and abbeys, 18th century townhouses, 19th century industrial buildings) throughout the ancient city of Arles, France, also includes a book pavilion and portfolio reviews by renowned reviewers should you choose to participate.

When discussing The North Fork project, Bailey describes the world that appears in his photographs as a place in his imagination and a valley in his home state of Colorado. He continues, "It is a land of mesas and plains sheltered by deep wilderness, precipitous canyons, sloping forests, and ragged peaks.

As an artist, Collins carefully considers how local farms and community agriculture has enjoyed an elevated status in contemporary life. In this lecture, she shares her thoughts on this subject, as well as how her ideas relate to art history and manifest themselves in her photographic series that portrays a compost pile as "wild, sprawling, and ever-changing."

I first saw Justyna Badach's bachelor portraits in the Critical Mass competition a few years ago. For those of you that don't know about this competition, Critical Mass is a chance to submit your photographic project to a large jury of photography professionals.

Paccarik Orue was an artist-in-residence at RayKo Photo Center in the spring of 2015 where he focused on his long term project, "El Muqui." Orue is originally from Peru though he currently resides in San Francisco. He has been traveling back and forth to his native country repeatedly, bringing his medium format Hasselblad camera and rolls and rolls of 120 film.

O'Brien's work is an alternative vision of Colombia-- alternative to the images of war, violence, and misery that dominate stories from the country in the international media. That kind of imagery, known as pornomiseria in Colombia, is not what interests O'Brien as a photographer.

Chinese artist Liu Bolin has painted himself to show his support of the United Nations Global Goals campaign - the sequel to the Millennium Development Goals.The artwork 'The Future' features Liu against the backdrop of 193 UN flags. This draws attention to the 17 Global Goals which aim to end extreme poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and tackle global climate change by 2030.

In TJ Norris' photographic series "Shooting Blanks" the title suggests a double meaning. The terse formulation may be understood as a declaration of what cannot be seen in these pictures due to its absence and at the same time makes a promise to render this absence visible. Thus the title not only plays with the notions of visibility and invisibility, presence and absence. It also comments on a fundamental feature of photography, its built-in imperative to represent all that is in front of the camera's lens - even a void being registered on sensitive photographic film by the agency of light according to the optical properties of the camera. Hence the series "Shooting Blanks" can be read as well on its iconic level as it can be considered a comment on the medium of photography within the medium of photography.

Dutch photography is no doubt influenced by Dutch painters, especially those who marked a turning point in the history of Art. For example, the influence of Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675), the master of lighting, is indisputable in many photography portraits that use chiaroscuro. But if Dutch photography has roots in the past, it is particularly dynamic and diverse. In this Top 10 we decided to show you major artists as well as new talents in no specific order.

We know it's not the camera that makes the photographer, it's the photographer that makes the camera. It got me thinking about all the famous photographers and the cameras they used to capture their iconic photos. Although most of them are gone now, I've compiled an exhaustive list of the top 25 most famous photographers and their cameras of choice. This is Part 1 (in no order particular order) of 3.

This is the second installment of the "Top 25 Famous Photographers and Their Cameras." The photographers here represent a variety of different disciplines: fashion, street, landscape, portraits, and still life's. The work contributed by these icons feature perfect black and whites, rich tonal colors, and portraits that have been burned into our collective consciousness.

We have reached the conclusion of the final 5 photographers on this list. The photographers were chosen because of their impressive bodies of work, and the impact they've left on the photographic medium. All of the photographers mentioned on this list have progressively moved photography forward, taking it from camera obscura to a respected fine art. What makes a photographer iconic or famous has to do with the powerful and moving photographs they create. When you think of Dorothea Lange you instantly recall 'Migrant Mother' or with Ansel Adams you think of 'The Tetons and the Snake River' or his work in Yosemite. That's what makes these photographers so special, because they make photographs that stay with us. Such powerful photographs have the power to move us in a spiritual and emotional way, and our proclivity to view them echoes our desire to be enriched by their aesthetic. Here are the last 5.

The incredible biography of Sabine Weiss in addition to her portfolio can be discovered here. We are very honored to count her as one of the jurors of All About Photo Awards 2017!