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Win a Solo Exhibition in April 2026 + An Exclusive Interview!
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Solmaz Daryani
Photo © Jacob Moscovitch
Solmaz Daryani
Solmaz Daryani

Solmaz Daryani

Country: Iran
Birth: 1989

Solmaz Daryani is an Iranian photographer and photojournalist, based between the UK and Iran. Her work is particularly known for exploring the themes of climate security, climate change, water crisis, human identity and environment. Daryani has worked internationally, covering social and environmental documentary stories in Iran, Afghanistan, Turkey and the United Kingdom. Her work has been published by international magazines and newspapers such as National Geographic Magazine, L'OBS Magazine, Foreign Policy Magazine, Polka Magazine, Zenith Magazine among others.

The Eyes of Earth (THE DEATH OF LAKE URMIA)
"A lake is earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature." Henry David Thoreau

Lake Urmia is located in the northwest of Iran. It was once the biggest salt lake in the Middle East and sixth biggest salt lake on earth situated between two neighboring provinces (East-Azerbaijan and West-Azerbaijan) in Iran. Lake Urmia was home to many birds like ducks, pelicans, and flamingoes.10 years ago; the lake was still a popular destination for vacationers. Bathers immersed themselves in the saline water and smeared their bodies with its legendary black mud, which helped to treat skin disease.

My extended family on my mother's side born and lived in Sharafkhaneh port. The town used to be one of the heavily traveled touristic villages on the north coast of Lake Urmia. My grandfather had built a motel beside the lake, and my uncles were sailors. Less than a decade ago, my grandfather hosted dozens of tourists a day in the summers, with his two sons taking them on boat tours.

During the past 20 years, approximately 80% of this lake dried due to climatic changes, excessive development in the agriculture sector, lack of correct management of water consumption, and excessive dams constructed on the lake's basin river in this area. At the moment, hopes for the salt lake's survival have been revived after 2018 torrential rain has boosted a government program aimed at preserving it before it dries up.

The desiccation is one of the most unfortunate environmental disasters of Iran in recent years. It will increase the frequency of salt storms that sweep across the exposed lakebed, diminishing the productivity of surrounding land and encouraging farmers to move away. More than 4 million people live in two neighboring provinces (East-Azerbaijan and West Azerbaijan) around the lake and agriculture, animal husbandry, and handicraft making play a significant role in the region.

As the lake dried up, agriculture waned which caused my grandparent's garden dry and deserted. Lake's ducks; flamingos and pelicans have vanished, too. My childhood in Sharafkhaneh seems like a long time ago. The motel abandoned, and the almond trees have withered. The port today is a sparsely populated village where most people are old, and it no longer resembles the place where I left my childhood memories.

The project investigates the impacts of drying of Urmia Lake on people and the environment around it and to demonstrate environmental, economic, physical, and social changes that happened after lake shrinking. (the Year 2014-ongoing)
 

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Nicolas Tikhomiroff
France
1927 | † 2016
Nicolas Tikhomiroff (March 22, 1927 – April 17, 2016) was a French photographer, of Russian origin. He started working for Magnum Photos in 1959. Tikhomiroff was born in Paris to Russian parents. He received his education at a boarding school away from home with children of a similar background. He was trilingual with Russian as his primary language with French, and English as a secondary language. When he reached the age of seventeen, just following the Liberation of Paris, he joined the French army. After finishing his duties he found a job working for a fashion photographer processing prints. In 1956, Tikhomiroff was inspired by French journalist Michel Chevalier and struck out on his own as a freelance photographer. For the next few years, he spent his time traveling with Chevalier to the Middle East, Africa, among other places. In 1959 Tikhomiroff joined Magnum. Most of his work was on wars such as in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. Famous for his work on World Cinema, he also had a large portfolio of war photography. He was married to Shirley Lou Ritchie, by whom he had a daughter, Tamara Joan Tikhomiroff. He retired in 1987 and lived in Provence, France.Source: Wikipedia Nicolas Tikhomiroff was born in Paris to Russian ‘émigrés’ parents. He spent his school years in a special boarding school for children of a similar background: those with Russian as a first language, followed by French. He joined the army at the age of 17 following the Liberation of Paris, then spent several months in Germany, followed by three years in Indochina. After finishing his military service, Tikhomiroff found work in the darkroom of a fashion photographer. Using a Rolleiflex, he began to take photographs for many magazines, including Marie France. In 1956, a decisive encounter with French journalist Michel Chevalier led him to accompany Chevalier as a freelance photographer. This relationship resulted in long trips to the Soviet Union, Africa, and the Middle East. Tikhomiroff joined Magnum in 1959 and completed numerous photo stories on subjects such as the Algerian War, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. He also contributed to an important Magnum project on World Cinema, meeting Orson Welles, Fellini, Visconti, and many others. He developed a close friendship with Welles while photographing the filming of The Trial and Falstaff. Nicolas Tikhomiroff also undertook advertising and fashion assignments. Although he was never a full member of Magnum Photos, his earlier work is still distributed by the agency. Tikhomiroff retired from professional activities in 1987. He lived in Provence in the south of France, where he spent much of his time working on personal projects and essays.Source: Magnum Photos Magnum member Bruno Barbey says of Nicolas: “As well as a very important portraitist of the celebrities of the 60s (Brigitte Bardot, Jeanne Moreau or Edith Piaf, to name a few), Nicolas was also a concerned photographer, covering USSR in 1957 or De Gaulle’s historic visit to Algeria in 1960." “In a certain way, Nicolas epitomized Magnum’s long-standing tradition, producing both a significant personal work on film set photography and covering world news for the agency. To me, his name will always be linked to his iconic photographs of Orson Wells, notably in Spain on the set of Chimes at Midnight.”Source: British Journal of Photography
Mitch Epstein
United States
1952
Mitchell Epstein (born 1952) is an American fine-art photographer, among the first to make significant use of color. Epstein's books include Sunshine Hotel (2019), Rocks and Clouds (2018), New York Arbor, (2013) Berlin (2011); American Power (2009); Mitch Epstein: Work ( 2006); Recreation: American Photographs 1973-1988 (2005); and Family Business (2003), which won the 2004 Kraszna-Krausz Photography Book Award. Epstein's work has been exhibited and published extensively in the United States and Europe, and collected by numerous major museums, including New York's Museum of Modern Art and Whitney Museum of Art, The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Tate Modern in London. He has also worked as a director, cinematographer, and production designer on several films, including Dad, Salaam Bombay!, and Mississippi Masala. Epstein was born and raised in a Jewish family in Holyoke, Massachusetts. He graduated from Williston Academy, where he studied with artist and bookmaker Barry Moser. In the early 1970s he studied at Union College, New York; Rhode Island School of Design, Rhode Island, and the Cooper Union, New York, where he was a student of photographer Garry Winogrand. By the mid-1970s, Epstein had abandoned his academic studies and begun to travel, embarking on a photographic exploration of the United States. Ten of the photographs he made during this period were in a 1977 group exhibition at Light Gallery in New York. In 1978, he journeyed to India with his future wife, director Mira Nair, where he was a producer, set designer, and cinematographer on several films, including Salaam Bombay! and India Cabaret. His book In Pursuit of India is a compilation of his Indian photographs from this period. From 1992 to 1995, Epstein photographed in Vietnam, which resulted in an exhibition of this work at Wooster Gardens in New York, along with a book titled Vietnam: A Book of Changes. “I don’t know that Mitch Epstein’s glorious photographs record all of what is salient in end-of-the-twentieth century Vietnam,” wrote Susan Sontag for his book jacket, “for it’s been more than two decades since my two stays there. I can testify that his images confirm what moved and troubled me then… and offer shrewd and poignant glimpses into the costs of imposing a certain modernity. This is beautiful, authoritative work by an extremely intelligent and gifted photographer.” Reviewing an exhibition of the Vietnam pictures for Art in America, Peter Von Ziegesar writes, “In a show full of small pleasures, little prepares one for the stunning epiphany contained in Perfume Pagoda… Few photographers have managed to make an image so loaded and so beautiful at once.” Having lived and traveled beyond the United States for over a decade, Epstein began to spend more time in his adopted home of New York City. His 1999 series The City investigated the relationship between public and private life in New York. Reviewing The City exhibition at Sikkema Jenkins in New York, Vince Aletti wrote that the pictures “[are] as assured as they are ambitious.” In 1999, Epstein returned to his hometown of Holyoke, Massachusetts, to record the demise of his father's two businesses—a retail furniture store and a low-rent real estate empire. The resulting project assembled large-format photographs, video, archival materials, interviews and writing by the artist. The book Family Business, which combined all of these elements, won the 2004 Krazna-Kraus Best Photography Book of the Year award. In 2004, his work was exhibited during evening screenings at Rencontres d'Arles festival, France. From 2004 to 2009, Epstein investigated energy production and consumption in the United States, photographing in and around various energy production sites. This series, titled American Power, questions the meaning and make-up of power—electrical and political. Epstein made a monograph of the American Power pictures (2009), in which he wrote that he was often stopped by corporate security guards and once interrogated by the FBI for standing on public streets and pointing his camera at energy infrastructure. The large-scale prints from this series have been exhibited worldwide. In his Art in America review, Dave Coggins wrote that Epstein “grounds his images… in the human condition, combining empathy with sharp social observation, politics with sheer beauty.” In the New York Times, Martha Schwendener wrote: “What is interesting, beyond the haunting, complicated beauty and precision of these images, is Mr. Epstein's ability to merge what have long been considered opposing terms: photo-conceptualism and so-called documentary photography. He utilizes the supersize scale and saturated color of conceptualism, and his odd, implied narratives strongly recall the work of artists like Jeff Wall.” In 2008, Epstein won the Berlin Prize in Arts and Letters from the American Academy in Berlin. Awarded a 6-month residency, he moved to Berlin with his wife and daughter from January to June 2008. The photographs he made of significant historical sites were published in the monograph Berlin (Steidl and The American Academy in Berlin, 2011).Source: Wikipedia In 2013, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis commissioned and premiered a theatrical rendition of Epstein’s American Power photographic series. A collaboration between Epstein and cellist Eric Friedlander, the performance combined original live music, storytelling, video, and projected photographs and archival material. Epstein and Friedlander also performed at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio (2014), and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2015). His new series, Property Rights, was exhibited at Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York and Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne in the fall of 2019 and at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas in 2020-2021. Recent solo exhibitions include: Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow (2020), Museum Helmond, Netherlands (2019), Andreas Murkudis, Berlin; Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York; Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire, Paris (2016-17); as well as Fondation A Stichting in Brussels (2013); Sikkema Jenkins & Co., NY (2012); Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne (2012); Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris (2011); Kunstmuseum Bonn (2011); and Musee de l'Elysee in Lausanne (2011). In 2020, Mitch Epstein was inducted as an Academician to the National Academy of Design. In 2011, Epstein won the Prix Pictet for American Power. Among his other awards are the Berlin Prize in Arts and Letters from the American Academy in Berlin (2008), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2003).Source: mitchepstein.net At Cooper Union, Epstein was a student of photographer Garry Winogrand and was influenced both by Winogrand and William Eggleston's use of color. Epstein helped pioneer the redefinition of color photography as art form, as he was one of the earlier practitioners of fine-art color photography. He is well known for documenting his projects as books, which he feels allows him to form a narrative structure for his photographs. Epstein shoots film, as he believes he would not get the tonal rendering and detail for his large prints if he were to use digital.Source: International Center of Photography
Mette Lampcov
Denmark
1968
Mette Lampcov is a freelance documentary photographer from Denmark, based in Los Angeles. She studied fine art in London, England and after moving to the United States 13 years ago. Her personal work includes projects about gender based violence and undocumented migrant workers in California. She is currently concentrating on a long term project "Water to Dust" documenting how climate change is affecting people and the environment around them in California. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, The Sydney Morning Herald, Open Society Foundation , BuzzFeed News, The Guardian, The Phoblographer She is a regular contributor to @everydayclimatechange and @everydaycalifornia Exhibitions: Docudays UA, International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival, Kiev. Noorderlicht Fotogalerie in Groningen Anderson Ranch - 15 stories ICP - projection "talk in images" Part of 15 Stories of Hope, Change & Justice exhibition at Johns Hopkins university Street level photoworks Glasgow with @everydayclimatechange ImagOrbetello exhibition with @everydayclimatechange Water to Dust Water to Dust : a photographic account of how climate change is affecting the people and environment of California. The project includes stories about how 149 million trees have died in the Sierra Nevada mountains, how water contamination is affecting rural communities as demand for water increases, and how California is seeing an increase in more aggressive, larger and faster moving wildfires that are devastating communities and forests. We are facing an existential threat to ourselves and our environment, she believe with a better educated and more informed public we can make better decisions for our future.
Peter Sekaer
Denmark
1901 | † 1950
Peter Sekaer was a Danish photographer and artist. Born in Copenhagen, Denmark, Sekaer came to New York in 1918 to seek freedom and opportunity. By 1922 he had a reputation as a master sign painter and had his own successful business producing posters. Several years later he began to take classes at The Art Student's League. Sekaer soon became acquainted with Ben Shahn, who may have been the one to introduce him to photography and who later introduced him to Walker Evans. After 1933, he devoted himself exclusively to photography, studying with Berenice Abbott at the New School for Social Research, and assisting Walker Evans on the project of photographing the Museum of Modern Art's African sculpture collection. In 1936 Sekaer accompanied Evans, who was hired by the Resettlement Administration (RA, later to become the FSA) on a photographic journey throughout the South, often shooting the same subject. Like many of his contemporaries, Sekaer sought to capture the real world with photographs that combined artistic expression with a personal commitment to social change. From 1936 to 1942 Sekaer became a professional photographer and was hired by the federal government agency, the Rural Electrification Administration (REA), and later became the head of the REA's graphic department. In 1938 the REA sent Sekaer to the United States Housing Authority (USHA). The photographs Sekaer made for the USHA, an agency primarily concerned with the removal of city slums and sponsorship of public urban housing, reveal his continued interest in the richness of human experience and environment. Transferred again in 1940 Sekaer photographed Navajo and Pueblo Indians for the Office of Indian Affairs. That same year, he worked as photographic researcher and still photographer for the REA film Power and the Land. After 1942 he continued working for other federal agencies photographing briefly for the Office of War Information (OWI), and the American Red Cross-agencies whose agendas conflicted with his own, and limited his freedom in artistic expression. Continually frustrated by this, Sekaer left Washington, DC for New York where he freelanced for several years, doing fashion and editorial assignments until he died of a heart attack at the age of 49 in 1950. Although Sekaer's photographs were widely published and exhibited during his lifetime, his work largely became forgotten after his death until an exhibition held in 1980 at the Witkin Gallery in New York and later in 1990 at the Royal Library in Copenhagen for which a catalog was published. Many of Sekaer's photographic prints can be seen in the public collection of the Royal Library in Copenhagen. The High Museum of Art in Atlanta acquired a trove of more than seventy rare vintage prints by Sekaer, the largest holding of its kind in any American art museum. Many of these works have never been on public view. From June 2010 until January 2011, the museum staged an exhibition of Sekaer's work titled Signs of Life.Source: Wikipedia
Tebani Slade
Australia
1966
Tebani Slade is a fine art, street and documentary photographer based between Australia and Barcelona. Her approach to photography involves storytelling and seeking the truth in her observations. She prefers to venture to unfamiliar destinations with an open mind, devoid of preconceived notions or generic perspectives. Armed only with her camera, Tebani allows events to unfold naturally, following the path that each location leads her on. A former graduate of the Queensland College of Art, Australia she also holds a Master of Distinction with the NZIPP (New Zealand Institute of Professional Photography). She has received recognition and awards for her photography, which has been exhibited both nationally and internationally. Her work has been showcased in group exhibitions such as Women Street Photographers in Kuala Lumpur and the Indian Photo Festival, as well as the Women Street Photographers annual exhibition in New York and the MIA Photo Fair in Milan. She was a finalist in the Australian Head On Photo Awards 2021 and 2022 and took first place in the 2022 Australian Mono Awards. In 2023 she was a finalist in the Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize and was awarded Australian Documentary Photography of the Year with the NZIPP. Her work has been featured in numerous publications including Australian Photography Magazine, Aust Capture Magazine, Aust Commercial Photography, Black & White Photography (UK edition), B&W (US edition), Nikon UK, The Guardian Australia, Loud & Luminous Book 2020 (a Celebration of Australian Women Photographers).
Elisabeth Hase
Germany
1905 | † 1991
Elisabeth Hase (December 16, 1905 – October 9, 1991) was a German commercial and documentary photographer active in Frankfurt from 1932 until her death in 1991, at the age of 85 Hase was born in Döhlen bei Leipzig, Germany. She studied typography and commercial art from 1924 to 1929 at the School of Applied Arts, and later at the Städelschule, under, among other teachers, Paul Renner and Willi Baumeister. Hase was active as a photographer during the time of the transition from the Weimar Republic to the Third Reich and through post-WWII Germany. She was able to avoid government oversight of her work by establishing her own photographic studio in 1933. Hase's work included surreal photography, such as close-up photographs of dolls. She received several awards, several for paper designs and collages. During a two-year collaboration in the studio of Paul Wolff [de] and Alfred Tritschler [de], Hase took architectural photographs in New Objectivity style for the magazine Das Neue Frankfurt (The New Frankfurt) and documentary photographs of modern housing projects, including those of Ferdinand Kramer. In 1932, Hase started her own business. It focused on timeless designs like still life, structures, plants, dolls, people, especially self-portraits. Often she used herself as a model in her photographic “picture stories.” Cooperation with agencies like Holland Press Service and the Agency Schostal[2] enabled her to publish her photographs internationally. Despite the bombing of Frankfurt in 1944 by the Allies, Hare's photographic archive survived the war without major damage. Many of those works are now part of the collections held by the Folkwang Museum in Essen, Germany, in the Albertina (Vienna) in Vienna, and in the Walter Gropius estate in the Bauhaus Archive in Berlin, as well as in private collections in Germany and abroad. Despite loss of her cameras and other technical equipment in the chaos of war, Hase was able to resume taking photographs in 1946 by the help of emigre friends who provided her with film and cameras to use. Among others subjects Hase documented was the reconstruction of St. Paul's Church in Frankfurt. From 1949, her work focused on advertising, consisting mostly of plant portraits. Hase died at the age of 85 in 1991 in Frankfurt am Main. Source: Wikipedia This new discovery is a rich body of work by a female artist who was photographing during the time of the transition from the Weimar Republic to the Third Reich and through post-WWII Germany. Hase's photographic compositions are comparable to a number of her avant-garde contemporaries such as Florence Henri, Ilse Bing, and Germain Krull. Elisabeth Hase (1905-1991) was born in Germany and began her artistic studies in 1924 at the Art Academy in Frankfurt. During World War II Hase was able to avoid the politicization of her work by retreating to her studio. This however would not prevent her work from being wholly untouched by the war. During the air raid on Frankurt in 1944 her cameras and other equipment were lost however, quite remarkably, her archives of glass and film negatives survived. Most intriguing are Hase's self-portraits which experiment with identity and perceived reality. In one self-portrait she has photographed herself in the reflection of a silver sphere, she and the room are warped on the convex surface of the globe. In another image she is sprawled over a staircase as if fallen, with shoes and purse strewn likewise over the stairs. This practice of role-playing and adopting different personas is seen throughout Hase's portraiture. Hase's work has been shown in museums across Germany including; the Folkwang Museum, Essen; the Historical Museum, Frankfurt; and the Museum of Photography, Braunschweig. Hase's work was exhibited in the show "Who is Afraid of Women Photographers?" at the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France. Her work in found in prominent museum collections internationally, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The National Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Ackland Art Museum, the Chrysler Museum of Art, Folkwang Museum in Essen, The Albertina Museum in Vienna and The Bauhaus Museum of Design in Berlin. Source: Robert Mann Gallery
Edouard Boubat
France
1923 | † 1999
Edouard Boubat (September 13, 1923, Paris, France – June 30, 1999, Paris) was a French art photographer. Boubat was born in Montmartre, Paris. He studied typography and graphic arts at the Ecole Estienne, and then worked for a printing company before becoming a photographer after WWII. He took his first photograph in 1946 and was awarded the Kodak Prize the following year. Afterwards he travelled the world for the magazine Réalités. The French poet Jacques Prévert called him a "Peace Correspondent." His son Bernard is also a photographer. Source: Wikipedia Edouard Boubat was born in Montmartre, Paris in 1923. He studied typography and graphic arts at the Ecole Estienne. Edouard Boubat's interest in photography began after World War II. Public collections that hold his work include Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and The Minneapolis Institute of Arts.Source: Jackson Fine Art Édouard Boubat, France’s most famous romantic photographer, was born in Paris on September 13, 1923. He grew up on the Rue Cyrano-de-Bergerac, Montmartre. As the son of an army chef, he heard many tales of the Great War, in which his father served as a cook on the front lines and was wounded three times. In 1938, Boubat attended the École Estienne, where he studied to become a photo-engraver, but in 1943, he was called up to serve two years of compulsory labour in a factory in Leipzig, Germany. Upon his return to Paris in 1946, Boubat sold his six-volume dictionary to fund the purchase of his first camera, a 6x6 Rolleicord. Boubat's approach to photography was deeply affected by World War II: "Because I know war… because I know the horror, I don’t want to add to it... After the war, we felt the need to celebrate life, and for me photography was the means to achieve this." Spanning a 50 year career, Boubat's photographs do just that. They celebrate the beauty, simplicity, and little things in life. His first professional photograph was taken in the Jardin du Luxembourg in 1946, “Little Girl with Dead Leaves,” a charming and magical shot. The following year, at the age of 24, Boubat exhibited the picture at the Salon International de la Photographie organized by the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and was awarded the Kodak Prize. It was an amazing start to his career. The same year that he bought the Rolleicord Boubat met his future wife, Lella, of whom he took some of the most beautiful and emblematic photographs of the 20th century. In 1950, Boubat’s work was initially published by the Swiss magazine Caméra. Soon after, he became acquainted with the artistic director of the French magazine Realités. From then on, Boubat traveled the world for the prestigious magazine. His assignments often took him to poor and desolate regions, but Boubat still managed to capture only love and beauty. His special gift as a photojournalist was finding the common thread that linked the everyday life of people everywhere. For Boubat, photography meant meeting his fellow man. He loved to photograph humanity; his images bear witness to the specific relationship he had with his subjects, on which he commented: "We are living photographs. Photography reveals the images within us." In 1968, Boubat left Realités magazine, but continued to work on an independent basis. He tirelessly sought to bring the emotion and beauty of life to our gaze. Considered an heir of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s “decisive moment” photography, Boubat had a rare talent for capturing those fleeting, magical moments that can only be immortalized by the confident eye of a true master. Boubat died in 1999 in Paris, leaving behind a remarkable collection of photography, on which he often philosophized: "Over a lifetime I have noticed that everything is woven together by chance encounters and special moments," he said. "A photograph gives you a deep insight into a moment, it recalls a whole world."Source: Duncan Miller Gallery
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