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Win a Solo Exhibition this May: Extended Deadline: April 25, 2025
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Giacomo Brunelli
Giacomo Brunelli
Giacomo Brunelli

Giacomo Brunelli

Country: Italy
Birth: 1977

Giacomo Brunelli (b. Perugia, Italy, 1977) graduated with a degree in International Communications in 2002. His work has been exhibited at The Photographers’Gallery (Uk), The New Art Gallery Walsall (Uk), The Barbican Centre (Uk), BlueSky Gallery, Portland (Usa), Format Festival, Derby (Uk), Triennial of Photography Hamburg (Germany), Nordic Light Festival (Norway), Noorderlicht Photofestival (The Netherlands), StreetLevel Glasgow (Uk), Photofusion, London (Uk), Delhi PhotoFestival (India), Fotofestiwal Lodz (Poland), Athens Photo Festival (Greece), Daegu PhotoBiennal (South Korea), Angkor PhotoFestival (Cambodia), Tabernacle (London, Uk), Griffin Museum (Boston, Usa) and at commercial galleries such as Peter Fetterman Gallery (Santa Monica, Usa), Robert Morat Galerie (Berlin, Germany), Galerie Camera Obscura, (Paris, France), Arden & Anstruther (Petworth, Uk), Galleria Belvedere (Milan, Italy).

He has won the Sony World Photography Award, the Gran Prix Lodz, Poland and the Magenta Foundation “Flash Forward 2009”. He has also been featured widely in the art and photography press including BBC (Uk), The Guardian (Uk), The Telegraph (Uk), Eyemazing (Holland), European Photography (Germany), B&W Magazine (Usa), Creative Review (Uk), Foto+Video (Russia).

His work is in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston (Usa), The New Art Gallery Walsall, Uk Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts (Japan) and Portland Art Museum (Usa).

Brunelli has published “The Animals” (2008) and “Eternal London” (2014) by Dewi Lewis Publishing, “Self Portraits” (2017) and "Hamburg" (2021) by Editions Bessard, “New York” (2020) by Skinnerboox and "Venice" has been self-published by TantoPress in 2022.

In 2012, he was commissioned by The Photographers’Gallery to do the “Eternal London” series and in 2015 by the Deichtorhallen to produce “Hamburg".

Interview with Giacomo Brunelli:

All About Photo: When did you realize you wanted to be a photographer?
I remember when more that 10 years ago, I found my father's camera in a drawer and immediately wanted to be able to use it. Did't know exactly to do what but since then I have been using it to shoot my ideas."

Where did you study photography?
"I graduated in Communications in 2002 and attended a six month course in photojournalism in Rome."

Do you remember your first shot? What was it?
"I don't remember my first shot but I started shooting people, lanscapes and animals since the beginning. I have been soon fascinated by the idea of being outside taking pictures of what you like."

What or who inspires you?
I take inspiration from exhibitions, books, walks, stories and music."

How could you describe your style?
Street Photography."

What kind of gear do you use? Camera, lens, digital, film?
"Since the very beginning, I have been using a Miranda Sensomat 35mm, a japanese film camera from the '60. Although I have tried the 28mm and 135mm when I started, I use the 50mm lens only and 1.8 1/500 as combination diaphragm/shutter speed. For a recent commission I got from The Photographers'Gallery two years ago on London, I started using 1/1000 also. Regarding the film, I like Kodak Tri-x 400 and I print the images myself in my darkroom on Agfa Fiber Based paper."

Do you spend a lot of time editing your images? For what purpose?
"Editing is crucial and I love spending time looking at my images as a body of work and select the ones I feel are the strongest to communicate my vision."

AFavorite(s) photographer(s)?
"I grew up looking at the great masters such as Lartigue, Muybridge, Giacomelli, Frank, Klein and Winogrand so I think I have been deeply influenced by the way they managed to express their own ideas through photography."

What advice would you give a young photographer?
"Developing a coherent body of work takes time and energy; I would say just be prepared to work hard."

What mistake should a young photographer avoid?
"Not to be patient."

Your best memory as a photographer?
Publishing "The Animals" (Dewi Lewis Publishing, 2008) has been great, seeing your pictures taking the form of a book is fantastic."

Your worst souvenir as a photographer?
"In 2005 I left my camera and my own things in a taxi in Bratislava."
 

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Ave Pildas
United States
1939
Thank God I had a really good education. - Ave Pildas Ave Pildas began his arts education as an architecture student, designing department stores, government and medical buildings. Before long, this path felt too conservative and constricting, so he changed majors to design. Creating products, packaging and graphics provided enough diversity, to seem like "complete freedom" at the time. Concurrently, Ave was designing exhibits, displays, graphics and publications for the Cincinnati Public Library. After studying at the University of Cincinnati and graduating from the Cincinnati Art Academy inn 1962, Ave headed east to Pittsburgh, where he worked designing collateral for U.S. Steel, Alcoa, Pittsburgh Plate Glass, Koppers, and Westinghouse. At Westinghouse he met renowned graphic designer Paul Rand. With encouragement from Rand and well-known typographer Noel Martin, Ave traveled to Switzerland and enrolled at the Kunstgewerbeshule, studying typography and graphic design during the Cold War. As a student, he visited every country in Europe and parts of North Africa, often by car. It was at this time that Ave set the lofty goal of "raising the visual conscience" of the world, and, at the conclusion of his studies, accepted a position as assistant professor at Philadelphia College of Art, now the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Since then, he has taught at Layton School of Art, Leicester Polytechnic in Britain, Cal Arts, Art Center College of Design, UCLA, USC, as well as Otis College of Art and Design, where he served as Chair of the Communication Arts Department. He is currently Professor Emeritus at Otis. "Although Pildas was formally trained in Swiss design, he developed an early love for photography in the '60s when he photographed jazz legends like Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane and Dizzy Gillespie for Downbeat Magazine," writes Mae Ryan of Southern California Public Radio/KPCC. For over 50 years, Ave's been taking pictures of diverse subject matter. Many of his images of Hollywood Boulevard from the 1970s reside in the permanent collections of museums and libraries including LACMA and the New York Public Library. He has published three books: Art Deco LA, Movie Palaces, and Bijou, which was released in December 2016 by Nazraeli Press. Ave Pildas provides a fascinating glimpse into how, over the span of four decades, the streets and people of Hollywood Boulevard have both changed and remained curiously the same, writes Haley Evans for Beautiful Decay Magazine. In the studio, Ave is working on a still-life series based on circles, squares, and triangles, substituting geometric objects like pyramids, cubes, and spheres for the typical vase of flowers or table setting. Outside the studio, Ave shoots "Paper Movies". These collages of multiple images are shot in public spaces and allow him to interact with passers by, encouraging them to participate with the photographer and the background. After collecting hundreds of photos, he edits them to tell a visual story, combining them into a single piece. He is also producing short, stop-action videos using still images from "Paper Movies" to promote the series. One of the videos, "Stairway to Heaven," assembled from images of a staircase at The Getty Museum, garnered 40,000 views in a week. Galleries Joseph Bellows Gallery Richard Moore Photographs Tufenkian Fine Arts Rock Photography Museum Small Books & Small Prints
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Alex Webb (born May 5, 1952) is a photographer known for his vibrant and complex color photographs. He has been a member of Magnum Photos since 1979. He's authored 16 books, including Hot Light/Half-Made Worlds (1986), Under a Grudging Sun (1989) From The Sunshine State (1996), Amazon (1997) Crossings (2003), Istanbul (2007), The Suffering of Light (2011), La Calle (2016), as well as five books with photographer Rebecca Norris Webb, his wife and creative partner—Violet Isle (2009), Memory City (2014), Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb on Street Photography and the Poetic Image (2014), Slant Rhymes (2017), and Brooklyn: The City Within (2019). He has exhibited at museums worldwide, including the Whitney Museum of Art, NYC, the Metropolitan Museum, NYC, and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2007. He has contributed to Geo, TIME Magazine, National Geographic, and The New York Times Magazine among others. Born in San Francisco, Webb was raised in New England. Webb first became interested in photography as a high school student and in 1972 attended the Apeiron Workshops in Millerton, New York, where he met Magnum photographers Bruce Davidson and Charles Harbutt. He went on to study history and literature at Harvard University (graduating in 1974), but also studied photography at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts. By 1974 he was working as a photojournalist and in 1976 he became an associate member of Magnum Photos. During this time he documented small-town life in the American South. He also did some work in the Caribbean and Mexico, which led him, in 1978, to begin working in color, which he has continued to do. Webb's work has been exhibited around the world, including at the Walker Art Center, the Museum of Photographic Arts, the International Center of Photography, the High Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. His work is in numerous collections. He has received commissions from the High Museum of Art as well as the Banesto Foundation in Spain. Webb now lives and works in Brooklyn, New York with his wife, Rebecca Norris Webb, who is also a photographer, and they have collaborated on a number of books.Source: Wikipedia Alex Webb is best known for his complex and vibrant color photographs of serendipitous or enigmatic moments, often in places with socio-political tensions. Over the past 45 years, Webb has worked in places as varied as the U.S.-Mexico border, Haiti, Istanbul, and, most recently, a number of U.S. cities. “My work is questioning and exploratory,” he says. “I believe in photographs that convey a certain level of ambiguity, that ask questions rather than provide answers.” In 1974, the 22-year-old Webb, a Magnum Photos nominee, began working as a professional photojournalist, going on to work for the New York Times Magazine, Geo, Life, National Geographic, among other magazines. Alex became a full member of Magnum Photos in 1979. Working mostly in Latin America and the Caribbean, he credits those cultures with inspiring his interest in color, when he transitioned from black-and-white photography in 1979. Webb has published 16 photography books, including The Suffering of Light, a survey of 30 years of his color photographs, and Memory City (with poet and photographer Rebecca Norris Webb, his wife and creative partner), a meditation about film, time, and the city of Rochester, NY, itself, the long-time home of Kodak, in the year following the company’s bankruptcy. His most recent books include La Calle: Photographs from Mexico and the collaboration Slant Rhymes with Rebecca. In fall 2019, Aperture will publish his seventeenth book—and fifth collaboration with Rebecca—Brooklyn: The City Within. He has received numerous awards and grants including a Hasselblad Foundation Grant in 1998, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2007, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1990, and the Leica Medal of Excellence in 2000.Source: Magnum Photos
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Ed Kashi is a photojournalist, filmmaker and educator dedicated to documenting the social and political issues that define our times. A sensitive eye and an intimate relationship to his subjects are signatures of his work. As a member of the prestigious photo agency VII, Kashi has been recognized for his complex imagery and its compelling rendering of the human condition. “I take on issues that stir my passions about the state of humanity and our world, and I deeply believe in the power of still images to change people’s minds. I’m driven by this fact; that the work of photojournalists and documentary photographers can have a positive impact on the world. The access people give to their lives is precious as well as imperative for this important work to get done. Their openness brings with it a tremendous sense of responsibility to tell the truth but to also honor their stories.” Kashi’s images have been published and exhibited worldwide. Another of Kashi’s innovative approaches to photography and filmmaking produced the Iraqi Kurdistan Flipbook with MediaStorm, which premiered on MSNBC.com in December 2006. Using stills in a moving image format, this creative and thought-provoking form of visual storytelling has been shown in many film festivals and as part of a series of exhibitions on the Iraq War at the George Eastman House. Also, an eight-year personal project completed in 2003, Aging in America: The Years Ahead, created a traveling exhibition, an award-winning documentary film, a website and a book which was named one of the best photo books of 2003 by American Photo. Along with numerous awards, including Second Prize Contemporary Issues Singles in the 2011 World Press Photo contest, UNICEF’s Photo of the Year 2010, a Prix Pictet 2010 Commission and honors from Pictures of the Year International, Communication Arts and American Photography, Kashi’s images have been published and exhibited worldwide, and his editorial assignments and personal projects have generated six books. In 2008, Curse of the Black Gold: 50 Years of Oil in the Niger Delta was published, and June 2009, saw the publication of Kashi’s latest book THREE, based on a series of triptychs culled from more than 20 years of image making. In 2002, Kashi and his wife, writer/filmmaker Julie Winokur, founded Talking Eyes Media. The non-profit company has produced numerous short films and multimedia pieces that explore significant social issues. The first project resulted in a book and traveling exhibition on uninsured Americans called, Denied: The Crisis of America’s Uninsured. “Ed Kashi is intelligent, brave and compassionate. He always understands the nuances of his subjects. He fearlessly goes where few would venture. And he sympathetically captures the soul of each situation. Ed is one of the best of a new breed of photojournalistic artists.” -- David Griffin, Visuals Editor, The Washington Post Ed Kashi talks about Climate Change Abandoned Moments
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