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Jean-Mathieu Saponaro
Jean-Mathieu Saponaro
Jean-Mathieu Saponaro

Jean-Mathieu Saponaro

Country: France
Birth: 1990

Born and raised in Provence, Southern France, Jean-Mathieu Saponaro is living between Paris and New York. Being a software engineer, photography is his way of freeing his mind out of lines of code.
Color plays a main role in his work. Like painters gradually create their own unique palette, J.M. steals colors in fragments of life around him, found in streets he wanders, on the roads he drives on. He's on a quest to find aesthetics on the most common scenes or objects encountered that other wouldn't notice.
His work has been exhibited in Paris, Aix-en-Provence, and featured in many magazines.
 

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Hiroshi Sugimoto
Hiroshi Sugimoto was born in Tokyo, Japan, in 1948, and lives and works in New York and Tokyo. His interest in art began early. His reading of André Breton’s writings led to his discovery of Surrealism and Dada and a lifelong connection to the work and philosophy of Marcel Duchamp. Central to Sugimoto’s work is the idea that photography is a time machine, a method of preserving and picturing memory and time. This theme provides the defining principle of his ongoing series, including "Dioramas" (1976–), "Theaters" (1978–), and "Seascapes" (1980–). Sugimoto sees with the eye of the sculptor, painter, architect, and philosopher. He uses his camera in a myriad of ways to create images that seem to convey his subjects’ essence, whether architectural, sculptural, painterly, or of the natural world. He places extraordinary value on craftsmanship, printing his photographs with meticulous attention and a keen understanding of the nuances of the silver print and its potential for tonal richness—in his seemingly infinite palette of blacks, whites, and grays. Recent projects include an architectural commission at Naoshima Contemporary Art Center in Japan, for which Sugimoto designed and built a Shinto shrine, and the photographic series, "Conceptual Forms," inspired by Duchamp’s "Large Glass: The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even." Sugimoto has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts; in 2001, he received Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography. He has had one-person exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; among others. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC, and Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, were joint organizers of a 2005 Sugimoto retrospective. Source: PBS Hiroshi Sugimoto was born in Japan in 1948. A photographer since the 1970s, his work deals with history and temporal existence by investigating themes of time, empiricism, and metaphysics. His primary series include: Seascapes, Theaters, Dioramas, Portraits (of Madame Tussaud’s wax figures), Architecture, Colors of Shadow, Conceptual Forms and Lightning Fields. Sugimoto has received a number of grants and fellowships, and his work is held in the collections of the Tate Gallery, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and the Metropolitan Museum of New York, among many others. Portraits, initially created for the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin, traveled to the Guggenheim New York in March 2001. Sugimoto received the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography in 2001. In 2006, a mid career retrospective was organized by the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C. and the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo. A monograph entitled Hiroshi Sugimoto was produced in conjunction with the exhibition. He received the Photo España prize, also in 2006, and in 2009 was the recipient of the Paemium Imperiale, Painting Award from the Japan Arts Association. During the 2014 Venice Biennale, Sugimoto unveiled his “Glass Tea House Mondrian” at Le Stanze del Vetro on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore. Source: Fraenkel Gallery
Robert Hecht
United States
1941
For over fifty years, Robert Hecht has been a dedicated fine art photographer. He is largely self-taught, having learned his craft primarily by studying the prints and books of many of the medium's greats, and then by attempting to apply what he absorbed from them in the darkroom (and later in the digital darkroom). In addition, he studied briefly with photographer and teacher Ruth Bernhard in the 1970's, and considers that experience meaningful for giving him direct contact and exchange of ideas with a master. His work has been exhibited internationally, purchased for both private and public collections, and showcased in many of the leading photography periodicals. Professionally, he has worked primarily as a producer-director of educational film and video programs, first at Stanford University and then in his own video production business for the past several decades. He and his wife live in Portland, Oregon. Statement I consider photography a way, if you will, to bring my experience of the visual world into clearer focus. Practicing the art of photography, which I consider a way of life in and of itself, has heightened my awareness of how in our everyday lives we are constantly surrounded by interesting subject matter. In contrast, during my early years of doing this work, I looked mainly to the classic landscape for inspiration, often pursuing dramatic vistas with large-format cameras. However, over time I came to see that I do not necessarily have to "go out shooting" or travel to impressive locales to find subjects—rather, I merely have to keep my eyes open to what is right here around me in my immediate environment and, without actually searching for a picture, simply be prepared should a picture jump out of the random visual chaos and present itself to me. This shift in focus has led me to a more spontaneous approach to making images, often enabling me to find great beauty in the most mundane materials at hand.
Bob Willoughby
United States
1927 | † 2009
Bob Willoughby, whose photographs transformed the images of Hollywood’s biggest stars, is a true pioneer of 20th century photography. He was the first “outside” photographer hired by the major studios to create photographs for the magazines, and was the link between the filmmakers and major magazines of the time, such as Life and Look. Born June 30th, 1927 in Los Angeles, his parents were divorced by the time he was born and he was raised by his mother. Bob was given an Argus C-3 camera for his twelfth birthday, providing the catalyst for what would become the key to his future. After high school, he studied cinema at night at the USC Cinema Department and design with Saul Bass at the Kahn Institute of Art. At the same time he apprenticed with a number of Hollywood photographers; Wallace Seawell, Paul Hesse, and Glenn Embree, gleaning technical and business know-how. His first magazine assignments were for Harper's Bazaar in the early ’50s when famed art director Alexey Brodovitch became aware of his work. His career took off in 1954 when Warner Bros. asked him to photograph Judy Garland’s final scene on the set of A Star Is Born. His portrait of the freckle-faced star became his first Life cover. From then on his production was phenomenal. His images were in print literally every week for the next twenty years. As the first “special” he covered the making of over 100 films, including the 1960s movies The Graduate, My Fair Lady, Rosemary’s Baby and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. His body of work, documenting this historic era of filmmaking, is unsurpassed. He captured with wonderful perception the most famous actors and directors of the time on and off the set, in unguarded moments of repose, vulnerability and high drama. He had a unique ability to capture what was essential to each film. Bob also had a remarkable understanding of the needs of each individual magazine; he could be shooting for seven different publications and know exactly what each one needed in terms of editorial content and design layout. While Willoughby is most famous as the great chronicler of Hollywood, before he began covering film production he had already made an astonishing series of images of jazz musicians. Willoughby had a huge appreciation of jazz both in its technical aspects and its ability to raise the roof in performance. He had a masterful feel for the character of the artists, and he was able to convey it even in the difficult lighting conditions of recording studios and stage. He was responsible for a number of technical innovations, including the silent blimp for 35mm still cameras, which became common on film sets. He was the only photographer working on films at the time to use radio-controlled cameras, allowing him unprecedented coverage in otherwise impossible situations, and he had special brackets built to hold his still cameras on or over the Panavision cameras. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Hollywood honored Willoughby with a major retrospective exhibition of his work. He was awarded the Lucie Award for Outstanding Achievement in Still Photography in New York in 2004. His photographs are in the permanent collections of the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.; the National Portrait Gallery, London; the National Museum of Photography, Bradford, UK; Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris; the Museum of Modern Art, Film Department, New York; the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Tate Gallery Collection, London; Théâtre de la Photographie et de l’Image, Nice; and Musée de la Photographie, Charleroi, Belgium. In December 2009, Bob passed away at his home in Vence in the South of France, surrounded by his wife Dorothy and four children.Source: willoughbyphotos.com
Edwin Carungay
United States
1969
Vivian Maier
United States
1926 | † 2009
Vivian Dorothea Maier was an American amateur street photographer, who was born in New York City but grew up in France. After returning to the United States, she worked for about forty years as a nanny in Chicago, IL. During those years, she took about 100,000 photographs, primarily of people and cityscapes in Chicago, although she traveled and photographed worldwide. Her photographs remained unknown and mostly undeveloped until they were discovered by a local Chicago historian and collector, John Maloof, in 2007. Following Maier's death, her work began to receive critical acclaim. Her photographs have been exhibited in the US, England, Germany, Denmark, and Norway, and have appeared in newspapers and magazines in the US, England, Germany, Italy, France and other countries. A book of her photography titled Vivian Maier: Street Photographer was published in 2011. Many of the details of Maier's life are still being uncovered. Initial impressions about her life indicated that she was born in France, but further researching revealed that she was born in New York, the daughter of Maria Jaussaud and Charles Maier, French and Austrian respectively. Vivian moved between the U.S. and France several times during her childhood, although where in France she lived is unknown. Her father seems to have left the family for unknown reasons by 1930. In the census that year, the head of the household was listed as award-winning portrait photographer Jeanne Bertrand, who knew the founder of the Whitney Museum of American Art. In 1951, at 25, Maier moved from France to New York, where she worked for some time in a sweatshop. She made her way to the Chicago area's North Shore in 1956 and became a nanny on and off for about 40 years, staying with one family for 14 of them. She was, in the accounts of the families for whom she worked, very private, spending her days off walking the streets of Chicago and taking photographs, most often with a Rolleiflex camera. John Maloof, curator of Maier's collection of photographs, summarizes the way the children she nannied would later describe her: "She was a Socialist, a Feminist, a movie critic, and a tell-it-like-it-is type of person. She learned English by going to theaters, which she loved. She wore a men's jacket, men's shoes and a large hat most of the time. She was constantly taking pictures, which she didn't show anyone." Between 1959 and 1960, Maier traveled to and photographed in Los Angeles, Manila, Bangkok, Beijing, Egypt, Italy and the American Southwest. The trip was probably financed by the sale of a family farm in Alsace. For a brief period in the 1970s, Maier worked as a nanny for Phil Donahue's children. As she got older, she collected more boxes of belongings, taking them with her to each new post. At one employer's house, she stored 200 boxes of materials. Most were photographs or negatives, but Maier collected other objects, such as newspapers, and sometimes recorded audiotapes of conversations she had with people she photographed. Toward the end of her life, Maier may have been homeless for some time. She lived on Social Security and may have had another source of income, but the children she had taken care of in the early 1950s bought her an apartment in the Rogers Park area of Chicago and paid her bills. In 2008, she slipped on ice and hit her head. She did not fully recover and died in 2009, at 83.Source: Wikipedia Sometime in 1949, while still in France, Maier began making her first photographs with a modest Kodak Brownie– an amateur camera with only one shutter speed, no focus control, and no aperture dial. In 1951, she returned from France alone and purchased a Rolleiflex camera the following year. In 1956, she moved to the North Shore suburbs of Chicago, where a family employed her as a nanny for their three boys. She enjoyed the luxury of a darkroom as well as a private bathroom, enabling her to process prints and develop her own rolls of black and white film. As the children entered adulthood, Maier had to seek other employment, forcing her to abandon developing her own film. Moving from family to family thereafter, her rolls of undeveloped, unprinted work began to collect. It was around this time that Maier decided to switch to color photography. Her subject matter shifted away from people to found objects, newspapers, and graffiti. In the 1980s, financial stress and lack of stability once again put Maier’s processing on hold, and the undeveloped color rolls began to accumulate. Sometime between the late 1990s and the first years of the new millennium, Maier put down her camera and stored her belongings while she tried to stay afloat. She bounced from homelessness to a small studio apartment, which a family she used to work for helped pay the rent. With meager means, the photographs in storage became lost memories until 2007, when they were sold off due to non-payment of rent. In 2008, Maier’s health began to deteriorate after she fell on a patch of ice, forcing her into a nursing home. She never made a full recovery, leaving behind an immense archive of work when she died in 2009.Source: Howard Greenberg Gallery When John Maloof, a real-estate agent, amateur historian, and garage-sale obsessive, acquired a box of photographic materials and personal detritus at an auction in suburban Chicago in 2007, he quickly realized that he had stumbled upon an unknown master of street photography. But despite his vigorous snooping, he could find no record of Vivian Maier, the name scribbled on the scraps of paper that he found among the negatives, prints, and undeveloped rolls of film. He tracked down the rest of the boxes emptied from an abandoned storage garage, amassing a collection of hundreds of thousands of frames shot in New York, Chicago, France, South America, and Asia between the nineteen-fifties and the nineteen-seventies. Two years after he bought the first box, he Googled the name again and, to his surprise, found an obituary announcing that Vivian Maier had died only a few days before. The short text had just enough information for Maloof to deduce that Maier had worked as a nanny in suburban Chicago.Source: The New Yorker
John Dominis
United States
1921 | † 2013
John Dominis was an American documentary photographer, war photographer and photojournalist. Dominis was born 1921 in Los Angeles. He studied cinematography at the University of Southern California. In 1943 he enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces. After the war, he worked as a freelance photographer for several publications, such as Life magazine. In 1950 he went to Korea as a war photographer in the Korean War. Later he worked in Southeast Asia, in America, Africa and Europe, including President John F. Kennedy's 1963 West Berlin speech. Dominis went to six Olympic Games. One of his best-known pictures was shot during the 1968 Summer Olympics when Dominis pictured Tommie Smith and John Carlos during their Black Power salute. Dominis worked for Life magazine during the Vietnam war and later also went to Woodstock. In the 1970s he worked for People magazine. From 1978 to 1982 he was an editor for Sports Illustrated. He often pictured stars like Steve McQueen or Frank Sinatra, and these photo series were later published as illustrated books. Together with Giuliano Bugialli he published several books about Italian cuisine, with Dominis being responsible for the food photography. In John Loengard's book LIFE Photographers: What They Saw, Dominis reported about the staging of his picture A leopard about to kill a baboon. The picture was shot in 1966 in Botswana when a hunter had brought a captured leopard to a bunch of baboons. Most fled immediately but one faced the leopard and was killed subsequently. Dominis was heavily criticized after the staging became public and apologized for it. He mentioned that during the 1960s the staging of pictures was very popular and he wouldn't use this method today. Dominis died on December 30, 2013, in New York City of complications from a heart attack. He was 92.Source: Wikipedia After an Air Force tour in Japan, John Dominis wanted to remain in that country and work. Freelance work was illegal there in 1946, but his photographer colleagues helped him stay and get his start. He would return many times to Asia to cover wars. Back home, he shot sports (he had played end for USC in the 1944 Rose Bowl), politics, celebrities, even food. He spent three months trailing Sinatra to witness him in his element, among swank and boozy stars. That experience of tracking a subject helped the stalwart Dominis on his famous The Great Cats of Africa. The series won him an award even as he was still in the bush—and even though he orchestrated his famous baboon-leopard encounter (the feline was a rental dropped in among the simians)—Dominis had never suggested otherwise. “Frankly, it was set up,” he said. “In those days we were not against setting up some pictures that were impossible to get any other way.” On the occasion of Sinatra’s soth birthday, Dominis went to Florida, where he was performing. Dominis ended up spending three months with him, resulting in an unrivaled set of images of the entertainer. “Steve McQueen was really a nice guy, but he’s another of the ones who didn’t really want to have even one picture taken, even though he’d agreed to the story… I had done quite a lot of sports-car racing when I lived in Hong Kong, so for fun I rented a Jaguar. I knew he had a Jaguar, and I thought it would help a little bit… He drove my car and I drove his. I started shooting a few pictures. I didn’t hang around him a long time, maybe three weeks, and finally, he relaxed.”Source: Life
Milos Nejezchleb
Czech Republic
1978
The Czech photographer Miloš Nejezchleb was born in 1978. He lives in the Czech Republic and has got three children. He has only been involved in conceptual photography since 2016; however, he has already won several prestigious international awards. He is the absolute winner of the Fine Art Photography Award in London (2021), where he won the FINE ART PHOTOGRAHER OF THE YEAR title. He is the winner of the Malta International Photo Award (2020), two-time gold medalist in the Trierenberg Super Circuit competition in Linz and he is also, among others, silver medalist in IPA 2021 - International Photography Award. The most characteristic features of his photographs are noticeably colorful elements with a clear focus on the art of photography. Miloš often chooses current social topics, which he processes as stories using photographic series. These stories are narrated by people. He works on such series on his own and ensures the entire Art direction. He himself designs styling, looks for locations and carries out post-production. Besides conceptual art, where he points out currently discussed topics, Miloš has 2long-term thematic photographic cycles which document stories of real people. The most famous of them is photographic cycle "Stronger", in which Milos takes photos of people who have gone through hard times in their lives, and thanks to this experience they have become stronger personalities. Milos is at the beginning of his photographic career. He was fascinated by art photography when he bought his first camera. It happened before the birth of his first daughter. He is currently working on other production-intensive projects.
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