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Ada Trillo
Ada Trillo
Ada Trillo

Ada Trillo

Country: United States
Birth: 1976

Ada Trillo is a photographer based in Philadelphia, PA, and Juarez, Mexico. Trillo holds degrees from the Istituto Marangoni in Milan and Drexel University in Philadelphia. Trillo's work is concerned with human rights issues facing Latin America. Trillo has documented forced prostitution in Juarez, Mexico, the infamous La Bestia train, the migrant caravans of 2018 and 2020, and the struggles of asylum seekers directly affected by Trump's Remain in Mexico policy. Trillo has exhibited internationally at Saint Josephs University in Philadelphia, The Photo Meetings in Luxembourg, The Passion for Freedom Art Festival in London, Festival Internazionale di Fotografia in Cortona Italy and at the Anya and Andrew Shiva Gallery at the John Jay College in New, York. In 2017, Trillo received a Leeway Foundation Art and Change Grant. Her work has been featured in The British Journal of Photography, The Guardian, and Smithsonian Magazine. Trillo was recently awarded a CFEVA Fellowship by The Center For Emerging Visual Artists and was named the Visual Artist-in-Residence for Fleisher Art Memorial in Philadelphia. Her work is included in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and The West Collection. Trillo was awarded First Place in Editorial Photos with the Tokyo International Foto Awards. She was recently awarded the ME&Eve grant with the Center of photographic arts in Santa Fe.

Statement
I was born in El Paso, Texas but I was raised in Juarez, Mexico. As a teenager, I traveled back and forth between the two cities so I could attend school in the states. Witnessing life on the border as a young adult had a strong influence on my worldview and art practice. After years of working as a painter, I picked up a camera and started making pictures.

For the past four years, I've been documenting the journey migrants take to reach the US-Mexico border. In 2017, I photographed aboard the infamous La Bestia, a dangerous journey by a freight train that migrants from Mexico and Central America ride every year to reach the border. In 2018 & 2019 I photographed overpopulated migrant shelters in Juarez and Tijuana. I also traveled with the migrant caravans of 2018 and 2020, from Honduras, through Guatemala, and into Mexico. In 2019, I photographed asylum seekers who were barred entry into the US under Trump's, Remain in Mexico Policy.

While the media often covers what is happening at the border, they all too often overlook the individual trials, struggles, and humanity of those seeking to escape violence in pursuit of a better life. Spending countless days and nights living alongside those I photograph, I hope to present an honest, unadulterated view of migrant life. I photograph exclusively with a 35mm camera and fixed lenses. My process of making pictures is about creating real connections with my subjects in search of depth and intimacy in my work. My goal is to humanize their struggle and share their stories with the world.

Galleries

Art Mine

James Oliver Gallery

Website

adatrillo.com

 

Inspiring Portfolios

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Marcus Yam
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All About Photo Awards 2026
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More Great Photographers To Discover

Jerry Takigawa
Jerry Takigawa
United States
1945
Jerry Takigawa studied photography with Don Worth at San Francisco State University and received a degree in art with an emphasis in painting. He has been the recipient of a variety of photographic honors and awards including the Imogen Cunningham Award (1982); nominated for the Santa Fe Prize (2007); nominated for the Prix Pictet (2013, 2016); Critical Mass Top 50 (2017, 2020); The Clarence John Laughlin Award (2017); LensCulture, Fine Art Photography Awards Finalist (2018); New York Center for Photographic Art, Humans, First Place (2018); CENTER Awards, Curator's Choice-First Place (2018); the Rhonda Wilson Award (2020); and the Foto Forum Santa Fe Award, Santa Fe NM (2021). Internationally exhibited, his work is included in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Crocker Art Museum, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the Library of Congress, and the Monterey Museum of Art. Takigawa lives and works in Carmel Valley, California. False Food False Food underscores a plastic pollution epidemic that we now know is universally destructive and, tragically, man-made. False Food portrays pieces of plastic waste, recovered from the stomachs of dead albatross, placed in surprising and unfamiliar contexts. Presenting the problem in a different light can promote new ways to think about (and act on) it. Negative images trigger our reptilian brain where clear, ethical thinking is lacking. In this way, warnings about terror can become acts of terror themselves-amplifying fear and blinding us to answers. I believe aesthetically recontextualizing environmental threat opens the heart to not turn away. In this way I wanted to make something transformative-something that didn't terrorize consciousness, but elevated it. Balancing Cultures In Balancing Cultures, I am working with layers of meaning, memory, family, and- centrally-the actions and consequences of Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066. Issued in 1942, it caused the incarceration of 120,000 American citizens and legal residents of Japanese ancestry. My recent discovery of family photographs, taken in the WWII American concentration camps, compelled me to examine my family's unspoken feelings of shame and loss. I wanted to give voice to those feelings, which they had kept concealed for fear of retribution.
Heinrich Kühn
Heinrich Kühn
Austria / Germany
1866 | † 1944
Carl Christian Heinrich Kühn (25 February 1866 in Dresden – 14 September 1944 in Birgitz) was an Austrian–German photographer and photography pioneer. Heinrich Kühn is regarded as one of the forefathers of fine art photography, which helped photography establish itself as an art on its own. His photographs closely resemble impressionist paintings, with their frequent use of soft lighting and focus. Kühn was part of the pictorialist photographic movement. Kühn mainly used the gum bichromate technique, applied in several layers, and thus allowing for previously unseen color tonalities. In 1911, Kühn invented the Gummigravüre technique, a combination of photogravure and Gum bichromate. In 1915 he developed the Leimdruck technique, which uses Animal glue as Colloid and produces pictures similar to gum prints. He also invented the Syngraphie, a forgotten technique that uses two negatives of different sensitivity to obtain a larger tonal spectrum. Kühn used Autochrome from its appearance in 1907; his Autochromes have been called "ethereal dreams of childhood, full of vaulted sunny skies and giddy perspectives, as gloriously cathartic as they are emotionally charged".Source: Wikipedia Heinrich Kühn, originally Carl Christian Heinrich Kühn was born on February 25th, 1866 in Dresden, Germany. Kühn was one of the central figures of international art photography at the beginning of the twentieth century. His lifelong goal was to establish the photographic image as a medium for rendering an artistic vision as precisely and creatively as in painting and drawing. Along with Alfred Stieglitz and other friends, Kühn made the stylized photographic an element of the gesamtkunstwerk, which translates to "ideal work of art", which the Secessionists aspired to create. The most important tool for this was the gum bichromate process that he had perfected and the free choice of paper and pigment, which made the picture look more like a print than a conventional photograph. This allowed him to deliberately alter the brightness contrasts to fit his notion of the image and dissolve its sharpness. Too much sharpness was considered "non-artistic" because it veered away from painting, thus eliminating it where he saw fit. Kühn reduced the romantic cosmos of "Pictorialism" to the point of abstraction, thus exhibiting a sense of timelessness and balance. Kühn's work is represented in many collections, including Eastman House Rochester (New York), Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), Museum of Modern Art (New York), Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), Kupferstich-Kabinett (Dresden), Hanmburgische Lichtbildstelle (Hamburg), Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), and Musée d'Orsay (Paris).Source: Peter Fetterman Gallery
Francesco Luongo
Francesco Luongo
Italy
1982
"I was born in 1982 and my passion for photography only started in 2018. Self-taught, I never attended courses, but I studied and deepened photography by myself and visiting many exhibitions throughout Europe. Little by little I focused my style on street photography: shadows, contrasts, framing, layering, juxtaposition, and in general to the people daily life, but without ever ceasing to experiment in many other genres and styles."
Alon Goldsmith
Alon Goldsmith
South Africa/United States
1961
Dubbed “LA’s iPhoneography Wizard” by Forbes magazine, Alon Goldsmith is an award-winning photographer who has been featured extensively across media and exhibited in galleries around the globe. Alon’s achievements include overall winner of the MIRA Mobile Prize in 2022, 3rd place in the Los Angeles Center of Photography’s Street Photography Around the World Competition, winner of Santa Monica College’s Curriculum Cover Contest and runner up in the journalism category in the prestigious Mobile Photography Awards. Alon was a jury member for the 2018 and 2019 MPAs. His work has also been published in Street Photography Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, Reader's Digest, the Forward, the Argonaut and the App Whisperer, and has been extensively featured in Snap and Mobiography magazines. In 2020, Alon published In Place | Portraits of a Pandemic, a book documenting people isolating during lockdown. In 2025 he published 366 Days in the Life of an iPhone Wizard featuring a photo taken every day during 2024. ARTIST STATEMENT: I am a photographer and storyteller drawn to the intersections of people, place, and perception. My work explores how we inhabit the world together — how identity, environment, and chance encounters shape our shared experience of being alive. Whether photographing a stranger on a busy street or creating large-scale composite portraits, I seek to reveal the quiet connections that exist beneath the surface of ordinary life. Photography, for me, is an act of attention. It asks me to slow down, to notice, and to honor the presence of others. Much of my work begins in public space — sidewalks, markets, transit stops, festivals — places where humanity unfolds in its most spontaneous and diverse form. I am fascinated by how these encounters, however brief, can become profound when framed through care and curiosity. The camera becomes less a tool of documentation and more a bridge — a means of acknowledging another person’s existence. Over the years, my projects have consistently examined how art can restore connection in a fragmented world. During the pandemic, my series In Place | Portraits of a Pandemic became both archive and lifeline — documenting resilience and loneliness while reaffirming the human capacity for hope. That experience crystallized my belief that photography can serve as a form of care, a way of holding space for others. My current series, Going Places, continues this pursuit on a global scale. Each collage is built from dozens of environmental portraits taken within the same setting — city squares, beaches, villages — then woven together into a single composition. Some subjects engage directly with the camera; others remain absorbed in their own rhythm. The result is a visual chorus that speaks to the tension between individuality and belonging. In expanding this series across continents, I aim to create a planetary portrait — a reflection of how people live, adapt, and coexist within their ecological and cultural environments. Ultimately, I see my practice as a dialogue between seeing and being seen. The work invites viewers to slow their gaze, to recognize themselves in others, and to sense the invisible threads that bind us all. Photography, at its best, is an act of empathy — a quiet reminder that we are, each of us, part of something larger, fragile, and profoundly connected. AAP Magazine: AAP Magazine 52 Street
Hannah Price
Hannah Price
United States
1986
Raised in Fort Collins, Colorado, Hannah Price (b. 1986) is a photographic artist and filmmaker primarily interested in documenting relationships, race politics, social perception and misperception. Price is internationally known for her project City of Brotherly Love (2009-2012), a series of photographs of the men who catcalled her on the streets of Philadelphia. In 2014, Price graduated from the Yale School of Art MFA Photography program, receiving the Richard Benson Prize for excellence in photography. Over the past eight years, Price's photos have been displayed in several cities across the United States, with a few residing in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Currently, Ms. Price lives and works in Philadelphia, PA.Source: www.hannahcprice.com Born in Annapolis, Maryland; raised in Fort Collins, Colorado; and now based in Philadelphia, photographer and documentary filmmaker Hannah Price has spent years capturing the nuances of racial identities and societal perceptions. Her work is a critique of the negative and destructive powers of visual representation in determining the realities of black people and other racialized groups. For Price, image-making also offers a strategy of recuperating different ways of relating to other people and the world around us. To date, her projects have included: the internationally-renowned City of Brotherly Love— a visual survey of catcallers she encountered in Philadelphia; Resemblance— a series of portraits of inner-city high schoolers in Rochester New York; Cursed By Night, made in 2012-2013, on the perceived threat of black masculinity; and 2018’s Semaphore, exploring how individuals signal their identities. Price’s photos evince a rare attention to the subjectivities of those she photographs, even as she probes the validity and significance of the social constructs that operate around them. She has previously exhibited in several cities across the United States, with solo shows at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, Philadelphia Photo Arts Center, and the Silver Eye Center for Photography, Pittsburgh, while several of her photographs reside in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Now, as a 2020 Magnum nominee, Price discusses the political and aesthetic concerns that inform her work, as well as some of the problems and possibilities to be found in using visual communication as a means of fighting racism.Source: Magnum Photos Price moved to Philadelphia in 2009 from Colorado and noticed for the first time that she was getting catcalled. The photographer, who's currently working toward an MFA in photography at Yale, decided to turn the camera on the people who approached her on the Philly streets. This resulted in the series City of Brotherly Love (Philly's nickname). Ambiguity might be one of this project's most prevalent themes. It's been mistakenly referred to as "My Harassers" on some blogs, which Price does not like. Her series doesn't take an aggressive stance on catcalling; it's not meant to incite social action, she says. Rather, it's an observation, a way to react behind the camera lens. Price's portraits leave much to interpretation. Not only do we not know the situations in which she crossed paths with these men, but we also have no idea of their relationship. The photos are framed in a variety of ways; the lighting, composition and even positioning of the subjects themselves vary so much that viewers have plenty of freedom to interpret them.Source: npr
Mary Ellen Mark
Mary Ellen Mark
United States
1940 | † 2015
Mary Ellen Mark is an American photographer known for her photojournalism, portraiture, and advertising photography. She has had 16 collections of her work published and has been exhibited at galleries and museums worldwide. She has received numerous accolades, including three Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards and three fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. Mary Ellen Mark was born in suburban Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and began photographing with a Box Brownie camera at age nine. She attended Cheltenham High School, where she was head cheerleader and exhibited a knack for painting and drawing. She received a BFA degree in painting and art history from the University of Pennsylvania in 1962, and a Masters Degree in photojournalism from that university's Annenberg School for Communication in 1964. The following year, Mark received a Fulbright Scholarship to photograph in Turkey for a year. While there, she also traveled to photograph England, Germany, Greece, Italy, and Spain. In 1966 or 1967, she moved to New York City, where over the next several years she photographed Vietnam War demonstrations, the women's liberation movement, transvestite culture, and Times Square, developing a sensibility, according to one writer, "away from mainstream society and toward its more interesting, often troubled fringes". As Mark explained in 1987, "I'm just interested in people on the edges. I feel an affinity for people who haven't had the best breaks in society. What I want to do more than anything is acknowledge their existence". Her shooting style ranges from a 2 ¼ inch format, 35 mm, and 4x5 inch view camera. She also uses a Leica 4 for most photographs and Nikons for long-range shooting. Mark loves shooting with a Hasselblad for square format and she shoots primarily in black-and-white, using classic Kodak Tri-X film. Source: Wikipedia Mary Ellen Mark achieved worldwide visibility through her numerous books, exhibitions and editorial magazine work. She published photo essays and portraits in such publications as Life, New York Times, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and Vanity Fair. For over five decades, she traveled extensively to make pictures that reflect a high degree of humanism. She is recognized as one of our most respected and influential photographers. Her images of our world's diverse cultures have become landmarks in the field of documentary photography. Her portrayals of Mother Teresa, Indian circuses, and brothels in Bombay were the product of many years of work in India. A photo essay on runaway children in Seattle became the basis of the academy award-nominated film Streetwise, directed and photographed by her husband, Martin Bell. Mary Ellen received the 2014 Lifetime Achievement in Photography Award from the George Eastman House as well as the Outstanding Contribution Photography Award from the World Photography Organisation. She has also received the Infinity Award for Journalism, an Erna & Victor Hasselblad Foundation Grant, and a Walter Annenberg Grant for her book and exhibition project on America. Among her other awards are the Cornell Capa Award from the International Center of Photography, the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, the Matrix Award for outstanding woman in the field of film/photography, and the Dr. Erich Salomon Award for outstanding merits in the field of journalistic photography. She was also presented with honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degrees from her Alma Mater, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of the Arts; three fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts; the Photographer of the Year Award from the Friends of Photography; the World Press Award for Outstanding Body of Work Throughout the Years; the Victor Hasselblad Cover Award; two Robert F. Kennedy Awards; and the Creative Arts Award Citation for Photography at Brandeis University. She published twenty books including Passport (Lustrum Press, 1974), Ward 81 (Simon & Schuster, 1979), Falkland Road (Knopf, 1981), Mother Teresa's Mission of Charity in Calcutta (Friends of Photography, 1985), The Photo Essay: Photographers at work (A Smithsonian series), Streetwise (second printing, Aperture, 1992), Mary Ellen Mark: 25 Years (Bulfinch, 1991), Indian Circus (Chronicle, 1993 and Takarajimasha Inc., 1993), Portraits (Motta Fotografica, 1995 and Smithsonian, 1997), a Cry for Help (Simon & Schuster, 1996), Mary Ellen Mark: American Odyssey (Aperture, 1999), Mary Ellen Mark 55s (Phaidon, 2001), Photo Poche: Mary Ellen Mark (Nathan, 2002), Twins (Aperture, 2003), Exposure (Phaidon, 2005), Extraordinary Child (The National Museum of Iceland, 2007), Seen Behind the Scene (Phaidon, 2009), Prom (Getty, 2012,) Man and Beast (University of Texas Press, 2014,) Tiny: Streetwise revisited (Aperture, 2015,) and Mary Ellen Mark on the Portrait and the Moment (Aperture, 2015.) Mark's photographs have been exhibited worldwide. She also acted as the associate producer of the major motion picture, American Heart (1992), directed by, Martin Bell. Her last book Tiny: Streetwise Revisited is a culmination of 32 years documenting Erin Blackwell, who she first met in 1983 on assignment for Life Magazine. Erin was the subject of both the book and film Streetwise. Martin also made an updated film, Tiny: The Life of Erin Blackwell. Aside from her book and magazine work, Mark photographed advertising campaigns among which are Barnes and Noble, British Levis, Coach Bags, Eileen Fisher, Hasselblad, Heineken, Keds, Mass Mutual, Nissan, and Patek Philippe.Source: www.maryellenmark.com
Tamas Dezso
Tamas Dezso
Hungary
1978
Tamas Dezso (b.1978) is a documentary fine art photographer working on long-term projects focusing on the margins of society in Hungary, Romania, and other parts of Eastern Europe. His work has been exhibited worldwide, with solo exhibitions in 2011 in Poland, Bangladesh, Budapest, New Mexico, and at the Robert Koch Gallery in San Francisco, and recent exhibitions at the New York Photo Festival, Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art, and FOAM Photo Museum in Amsterdam. He was twice Hungarian Press Photo’s Photographer of the Year (2005 and 2006), and has received awards from organizations such as World Press Photo, Pictures of the Year International, NPPA’s Best of Photojournalism, and PDN. His photographs have appeared in TIME magazine, The New York Times, National Geographic, GEO, Le Monde magazine, and many others. Dezso has recently been nominated for the 2012 Prix Pictet. Tamas Dezso's series 'Here, Anywhere' offers a desolate yet beautiful look at the people and places left behind during the post-communist transition in Hungary. Begun in 2009, the series explores the unique atmosphere of the country's now 20-year-long transition, and changing notions of Eastern European identity. With the introduction of democracy in the 1990s came euphoria and promise, but unrealized expectations of quickly catching up with the West have led to widespread disappointment and frustration, compounded by the current serious economic difficulties have fanned the popularity of far right politics, as well as an anachronistic nostalgia for the stability of communism. Presently Hungary has a right wing populist government and the strongest opposition party is the neo-Nazi party with nearly 1/8th of the eligible voters and gaining popularity. Dezso's layered images present unsettling moments of stillness that poetically allude to this gritty reality. Motivated by the isolation he sees his country facing, Dezso photographs the people and places of Hungary as symbols, where "a certain out-dated, awkward, longed-to-be-forgotten Eastern Europeanness still lingers." This award-winning series has garnered international attention, earning Dezso First Place at the 2011 CENTER Project Competition in Santa Fe, the Daylight Magazine & Center for Documentary Studies Project Prize, and Grand Prize at the Jeune Création Européenne Biennal 2011/2013 in Paris-Montrouge.Source: Robert Koch Gallery Interview with Tamas Dezso All About Photo: When did you realize you wanted to be a photographer? Tamas Dezso: Soon after I left the University of Technology in Budapest in 2000. AAP: Where did you study photography? TD: I am self-taught. AAP: How long have you been a photographer? TD: I started as a photojournalist with a political daily in 2000. AAP: What or who inspires you? TD: Music. Beethoven, Bach and Mozart. AAP: How could you describe your style? TD: Documentary. AAP: Do you have a favorite photograph or series? TD: Richard Avedon 'Italy #9', 'Boy and Tree, Sicily, July 15, 1947' AAP: What kind of gear do you use? Camera, lens, digital, film? TD: Phase One cameras with various Schneider Kreuznach lenses. AAP: Favorite(s) photographer(s)? TD: Richard Avedon and Irving Penn AAP: What advice would you give a young photographer? TD: "Follow the advice of others only in the rarest cases." -- Beethoven AAP: What are your projects? TD: I am interested in the transitional period, the period after the fall of communism in Eastern Europe. AAP: Your best memory as a photographer? TD: My first trip to Romania. AAP:If you were someone else who would it be? TD: A pianist. AAP: Your favorite photo book? TD: Walter Niedermayr's Civil Operations.
Ruth Orkin
Ruth Orkin
United States
1921 | † 1985
Ruth Orkin was an American photographer, photojournalist, and filmmaker, with ties to New York City and Hollywood. Best known for her photograph An American Girl in Italy (1951), she photographed many celebrities and personalities including Lauren Bacall, Doris Day, Ava Gardner, Tennessee Williams, Marlon Brando, and Alfred Hitchcock. Ruth Orkin was born on September 3, 1921 in Boston, Massachusetts to Mary Ruby and Samuel Orkin. Ruth grew up in Hollywood, due to her mother's career as a silent film actress. In 1931, she received her first camera, a 39-cent Univex, and soon began experimenting by taking photographs of her friends and teachers at school. At the age of 17, she decided to bike across America, beginning in Los Angeles, and ending in New York City for the 1939 World's Fair. She completed the trip in three weeks' time, taking photographs along the way. She briefly attended Los Angeles City College for photojournalism in 1940, prior to becoming the first messenger girl at MGM Studios in 1941, citing a desire to become a cinematographer. She left the position after discovering the union's discriminatory practices that did not allow female members. She joined the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps during World War II, in 1941 in an attempt to gain filmmaking skills, as advertisements promoting the group promised. The attempt was not fruitful, however, and she was discharged in 1943 without any filmmaking training. In 1943, Orkin moved to New York City in pursuit of a career as a freelance photojournalist. She began working as a nightclub photographer and received her first assignment in 1945 from The New York Times to shoot Leonard Bernstein. Shortly after, her freelance career grew as she traveled internationally on assignments and contributed photographs to Life, Look, Ladies' Home Journal, and others. Orkin is credited with breaking into a heavily male field. Orkin's most celebrated image is An American Girl in Italy (1951). The subject of the now-iconic photograph was the 23-year-old Ninalee Craig (known at that time as Jinx Allen). The photograph was part of a series originally titled Don't Be Afraid to Travel Alone. The image depicted Craig as a young woman confidently walking past a group of ogling Italian men in Florence. In recent articles written about the pair, Craig claims that the image was not staged, and was one of many taken throughout the day, aiming to show the fun of traveling alone. In 1952 Orkin married photographer, filmmaker and fellow Photo League member Morris Engel. Orkin and Engel collaborated on two major independent feature films, Little Fugitive which was nominated for an Academy Award in 1953, and Lovers and Lollipops (1955). After the success of the two films, Orkin returned to photography, taking color shots of Central Park as seen through her apartment window. Ruth photographed marathons, parades, concerts, demonstrations, and the beauty of the changing seasons. These photographs were the subject of two widely acclaimed books, A World Through My Window (1978) and More Pictures from My Window (1983). Orkin taught photography at the School of Visual Arts in the late 1970s, and at the International Center of Photography in 1980. After a long struggle with cancer, Orkin passed away in her apartment, surrounded by her wonderful legacy of photographs with the view of Central Park outside her window, on January 16, 1985.Source: Wikipedia Ruth Orkin was an award-winning photojournalist and filmmaker. Orkin was the only child of Mary Ruby, a silent-film actress, and Samuel Orkin, a manufacturer of toy boats called Orkin Craft. She grew up in Hollywood in the heyday of the 1920s and 1930s. At the age of 10, she received her first camera, a 39 cent Univex. She began by photographing her friends and teachers at school. At 17 years old she took a monumental bicycle trip across the United States from Los Angeles to New York City to see the 1939 World’s Fair, and she photographed along the way. Orkin moved to New York in 1943, where she worked as a nightclub photographer and shot baby pictures by day to buy her first professional camera. She worked for all the major magazines in 1940s, and also went to Tanglewood during the summers to shoot rehearsals. She ended up with many of the worlds’ greatest musicians of the time including Leonard Bernstein, Isaac Stern, Aaron Copland, Jascha Heifitz, Serge Koussevitzky and many others. In 1951, LIFE magazine sent her to Israel with the Israeli Philharmonic. Orkin then went to Italy, and it was in Florence where she met Nina Lee Craig, an art student and fellow American, who became the subject of American Girl in Italy. The photograph was part of a series originally titled Don’t Be Afraid to Travel Alone about what they encountered as women traveling alone in Europe after the war.Source: Ruth Orkin Photo Archive Boston-born Ruth Orkin grew up in Los Angeles, and the movie industry and music were both formative influences. She attended Los Angeles City College briefly in 1940 before becoming the first female studio messenger ever hired at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in the early 1940s; but with no hope for promotion, she joined the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps, tempted by the promise (empty, as it turned out) that she would be taught cinematography. After completing her service in 1943, she moved to New York and worked as a nightclub photographer. Orkin honed her skills in portraiture by spending the summer of 1946 documenting the Tanglewood Music Festival; later that year, LOOK published her first major photo essay, Jimmy, the Storyteller. She sent the series to Edward Steichen at the Museum of Modern Art in 1947, and he subsequently included her in every group photography show at the museum until his retirement, including the great 1955 exhibition, The Family of Man. Orkin married photographer Morris Engel in 1952, and the couple collaborated on a prize-winning film, Little Fugitive. Their filmmaking endeavors continued through the mid-1950s, and while Orkin continued to photograph, she admitted that still photography "held little interest" after her experience of making a film. Her views of Central Park, taken from her apartment, were published in the 1978 book A World Outside My Window. Orkin's photography is a celebration of fearlessness and vitality. While she accepted specific assignments from The New York Times and various magazines, she also had the freedom to work independently, creating photo essays and photographing famous people with the knowledge that she would be able to sell the resulting work. Like a film director, Orkin created images that appear to be private moments, and lends a Hollywood-style personality to her subjects and landscapes.Source: International Center of Photography
Maren Elize Klemp
Maren Elize Klemp
Norway
"I grew up in a small town outside of Oslo, and started photography when I was a teenager. My father bought me my first camera when I was seventeen, and I immediately knew that I wanted to become a photographer. Writing was one of my passions in this period of my life, but I also was searching for a way to express myself visually. I had no talent for either painting and drawing, so photography naturally became the right medium for me. Unfortunately I dropped out of high school, but was lucky enough to be offered an internship as a photographer in the local newspaper. I learned a lot during this period, but I quickly discovered that I was most drawn to the field of fine art photography rather than photo journalism. After about six moths in the newspaper I started to study fine art photography under professor Robert Meyer at Robert Meyer Kunsthøgskole in Oslo, and I have been a fine art photographer ever since. In 2014 I traveled to Charleston, South Carolina to work on my first book together with photographer and professor, Jose' Escobar. He discovered my work on Flickr, and asked if I wanted to collaborate on a book project. The book is called 'Between Intervals' and is a visual representation of conditions people suffering from mental illness can experience. My work has also been shown both in solo and group exhibitions in Oslo, Norway."
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Interview
Exclusive Interview with Peter Ydeen
Winner of AAP Magazine #45 Travels, his series reflects this unique vision—capturing the spirit of place through subtle layers of light, color, and emotion. Whether traveling abroad or observing the rhythms of his own surroundings, Ydeen creates images that feel both grounded and enchanted, inviting viewers into a world where reality and reverie meet.
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Exclusive Interview with Julie Wang
Interview
Exclusive Interview with Julie Wang
Chinese-born photographer Julie Wang brings a poetic, contemplative sensitivity to her visual exploration of the world. Having lived for nearly equal parts of her life in China, Europe, and the United States, she approaches her subjects with the nuanced perspective of someone shaped by many cultures. This blend of distance, curiosity, and emotional resonance infuses her work with a quiet depth, allowing her to reveal the fragile beauty and subtle tensions that often pass unnoticed.
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Exclusive Interview with Ghawam Kouchaki
Interview
Exclusive Interview with Ghawam Kouchaki
American photographer Ghawam Kouchaki brings a sharply observant and introspective gaze to the streets of Japan’s capital. Based in Los Angeles, he approaches Tokyo with the distance — and curiosity — of an outsider, allowing him to uncover the city’s subtle contradictions, quiet tensions, and fleeting gestures that often go unnoticed. His series Tokyo no no, selected as the Solo Exhibition for December 2024, explores the hidden undercurrents of urban life: the unspoken rules, the small ruptures in routine, the poetic strangeness found in everyday moments. Through muted tones, instinctive timing, and meticulous framing, Kouchaki reveals a Tokyo that exists somewhere between reality and imagination — both intimate and enigmatic. We asked him a few questions about his life and work.
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Exclusive Interview with Tommi Viitala
Interview
Exclusive Interview with Tommi Viitala
Tommi Viitala, winner of AAP Magazine #44: Street, is a Finnish photographer celebrated for his striking and cinematic street photography. With a keen eye for atmosphere and composition, he captures fleeting urban moments that reveal the poetry of everyday life. His work often explores the tension between solitude and connection within contemporary cityscapes, blending documentary realism with artistic sensibility. Viitala’s photographs have been exhibited internationally and recognized for their strong visual storytelling and emotional depth. We asked him a few questions about his life and work.
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Exclusive Interview with Robert Mack
Interview
Exclusive Interview with Robert Mack
Robert Mack is a California-based visual artist, photographer, and filmmaker. His fine art photography and films have been exhibited widely in the United States and Europe, with major shows at the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Reiss-Engelhorn Museum in Mannheim, Germany. Both institutions hold his work in their permanent collections. Working across different media, Mack has built a career exploring the complexities of human presence and representation. In 1981, while living in Baltimore, he produced The Perkins Project: Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity, a rare photographic and film study inside Maryland’s hospital for the criminally insane. These stark yet compassionate black-and-white portraits remain one of his most powerful and controversial bodies of work.
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Exclusive Interview with Alan Schaller About Irys
Interview
Exclusive Interview with Alan Schaller About Irys
Alan Schaller is a London-based photographer best known for his striking black-and-white street photography and as co-founder of Street Photography International, one of the largest online communities dedicated to the genre. With years of experience both behind the camera and in building platforms that give visibility to photographers, Schaller has now turned his focus to creating a new digital space for photography itself. His latest venture, Irys, is a photography app designed by photographers, for photographers, with the aim of offering a dedicated platform where images are respected as works of art rather than treated as disposable content.
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All About Photo Awards 2026
$5,000 Cash Prizes! Juror: Steve McCurry
© Fernando Morales Roca
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