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Marco Castelli
Marco Castelli
Marco Castelli

Marco Castelli

Country: Italian
Birth: 1991

Marco Castelli lives and works in Firenze, Italy. Both his personal and documentary research move through a deep interest in human environment and life, looking for different approaches to visual art and creative communication. His works have been awarded, published and displayed internationally.

Italian Lockdown - The Forbidden Photographs
2020. Coronavirus is spreading worldwide. Italy is the first european country to enter lockdown. People are forbidden to go outside except for necessity reasons. For the first time, we are facing an historical time during which visual documentation is explicitly compromised, moving in the shadow line of imposed prohibitions. What legitimates the photographer's role, apart from a press pass? Is the narrative eye able to reclaim its right to a conscious analysis, without relying on law interpretations and self-employment bureaucracy? Moreover, what draws the line between the duty of documentation and the possibility of it? This and other thoughts, together with the overwhelming need to visually describe an unprecedented historical phase, give birth to the series "Italian Lockdown - The Forbidden Photographs".
 

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Anka Zhuravleva
Russia
1980
Anka (born Anna Belova) was born on December 4, 1980. She spent her childhood with books on art and her mothers’ drawing tools, covering acres of paper with her drawings. In 1997 she entered the Moscow Architectural Institute deciding to follow in her mothers’ footsteps. But at the end of 1997 her mother was diagnosed with cancer and died in less that a year. Then her father died in 1999. After that Anka’s life changed dramatically. In attempt to keep sane, she plunged into an alternative lifestyle – working as a tattoo artist, singing in a rock-band, sometimes looking for escape in alcohol. In order to make a living while studying, Anka worked at several modeling agencies. Thanks to the drawing lessons she wasn’t afraid to pose nude, and her photos appeared in the Playboy and XXL magazines and at the Playboy 1999 photo exhibition. But she was not looking for a modeling career – it was just a way to make some money. In 2001 Anka was working in the post-production department at the Mosfilm StudiosThat same winter one of her colleagues invited her to spend a weekend in Saint-Petersburg with his friend, composer and musician Alexander Zhuravlev. In less than a month Anka said farewell to Moscow, her friends, her Mosfilm career and moved in with Alexander in Saint-Petersburg. Living with her loved one healed her soul, and she regained the urge for painting. She made several graphic works and ventured into other areas of visual arts. In 2002 Gavriil Lubnin, the famous painter and her husband’s friend, showed her the oil painting technique, which she experimented with for the following several years. During that period she made just a few works because each one required unleashing of a serious emotional charge. All those paintings are different as if created by different people. Anka’s first exhibition took place on a local TV channel live on the air - the studio was decorated with her works. Several exhibitions followed. Private collections in Russia and abroad feature her paintings and sketches. In 2006 Anka noticed that her inspiration often came from photos and decided to take up photography. Since that time Anka took part in numerous projects - magazine publications and covers, book and CD covers, exhibitions. She is engage in digital photo art and analog film photography as well. In 2013 Anka with her husband moves to live in Porto, Portugal. Source: anka-zhuravleva.com Interview With Anka Zhuravleva All About Photo: When did you realize you wanted to be a photographer? Anka Zhuravleva: "I always was about visual arts so I can't name exact date or year.. But I turned to photography completely in 2010." AAP: Where did you study photography? AZ: "I am self-educated. I took some individual workshops dedicated to analog processes but it was technical things." AAP:Do you have a mentor? AZ: "No." AAP: Do you remember your first shot? What was it? AZ: "I was 6 years.. I shot horses with small film lomo-camera." AAP: What or who inspires you? AZ: "Life, everything I got around me, my dreams, interesting people, my husband's music." AAP: How could you describe your style? AZ: "I have no special style. Different series in different styles." AAP:Do you have a favorite photograph or series? AZ: "No, I love them all!" AAP: What kind of gear do you use? Camera, lens, digital, film? AZ: "A lot... And they are changing all the time. Digital 35mm, film medium format, vintage cameras and cameras made by my husband. About 20 different lens, modern ones and vintage brass ones as well." AAP: Do you spend a lot of time editing your images? For what purpose? AZ: "It depends. I always edit digital a lot to reach exactly that tone and mood wich I need. And I also do analog process in darkroom without any computer at all." AAP: Favorite(s) photographer(s)? AZ: "This is a difficult question..." AAP: What advice would you give a young photographer? AZ: "To keep eyes wide open." AAP: What mistake should a young photographer avoid? AZ: "I don't know... Everybody make mistakes. I suppose it's important not "not making" mistakes, but learn after doing mistakes." AAP: The compliment that touched you most? AZ: "When people telling me that my pictures bring their mind, fantasy and soul to childhood or let them think about miracles.. Or making a good mood..." AAP: If you were someone else who would it be? AZ: "Hum... Maybe a baker? Just joking, I don't know..."
Anna Hayat and Slava Pirsky
We are Anna Hayat (born 1974) and Slava Pirsky (born 1965), originally from the Soviet Union. Each of us decided to start a new life in Israel in the early 90s, in search of new horizons. Fate brought us to Jerusalem through different paths, where we lived for over 20 years and now find joy in a small town nearby. We met in 1999 and instantly felt a special connection, as if our shared passion for photography brought us closer. In 2000, we became proud parents of an exquisite daughter whom we started photographing from her very birth. Since then, we have become an inseparable team and partners in the world of photography and art. For over 20 years, we have actively collaborated on joint photography projects. Our creative process revolves around analog photography, primarily using old Polaroid large-format black and white negative plates. Despite the discontinuation of production of these films in 2008, we use expired films to create unique and emotive works of art. We capture images using both a large studio camera and small field Polaroid cameras. The slow shooting process is of utmost importance to us, as it imparts a special depth to our works. In a way, the negative itself becomes another partner in our process. We appreciate the unpredictability of old negatives, which gives our photographs a distinct character, a touch of poetry, and a timeless feeling that is crucial to our work. Our latest project reflects our emotions and pain caused by Russia's treacherous aggression. For this series, we ventured into a mixed technique for the first time, tearing and cutting our works, stitching them anew, adding patches and seams. The project was showcased at the Ramlah Museum and immediately after at the KyotoGraphie International Photography Festival in Japan.
Davide Bertuccio
Davide was born in Messina in 1991. He is a photojournalist based in Milan. He graduated with honors in 2016 at IED (Istituto Europeo di Design) at the school of visual arts in photography. Since the end of 2016, he focused on the theme of globalization, looking for stories that would give voice to the small realities crushed by that indefatigable desire for equality. In 2019 He decided to follow his passion for science and environmental problems with the realization of a work about the problem of plastic pollution in the Mediterranean Sea. Davide, inserted in 2014 among the 10 best under 25 Italian talents and nominated in 2019 by 6X6 World Press Photo Global Talent Program, has been published by National Geographic USA, National Geographic Italia, Il Reportage and his works received national and international awards. Accross the River's Flow Saxons are a community with German roots. Since XI century, together with Hungarians and Romanians, they’ve been living in the green heart of Romania. From this very land, a major migration is now taking place which marks the decline of centuries of history. Saxons are disappearing and their culture, their tongue and traditions along with them. “Across the river’s flow” aims to be a work about the disappearing of ethnic minorities, overwhelmed by the pace of modern life and by an ever-growing globalization. Saxons are an example of how authenticity is wiped out to make room for a fictitious daily routine and how entire ethnic groups and populations must surrender to outside forces such as racism.
Loretta Lux
Germany
1969
Loretta Lux was born in Dresden, East Germany and is a fine art photographer known for her surreal portraits of young children. She currently lives and works in Monaco. Lux graduated from the Academy of Visual Arts in Munich in the 1990s, and debuted at the Yossi Milo gallery, New York in 2004. The show put both Yossi Milo and Loretta Lux on the map, selling out and setting prices never before seen from a new gallery. In 2005, Lux received the Infinity Award for Art from the International Center of Photography. Her work has since been exhibited extensively abroad, including solo exhibitions in 2006 at the Fotomuseum Den Haag, The Netherlands, and the Sixth Moscow Photobiennale. Her work is included in numerous museums collections worldwide, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; J.Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Art Institute of Chicago; Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Fotomuseum, den Haag; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid and Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland, and National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan. She has had portfolios featured in numerous fine art magazines. The artist executes her compositions using a combination of photography, painting and digital manipulation. Lux's work usually features young children and is influenced by a variety of sources. She originally trained as a painter at Munich Academy of Art, and is influenced by painters such as Agnolo Bronzino, Diego Velázquez, Phillip Otto Runge. Lux also owes a debt to the famous Victorian photographic portraitists of childhood such as Julia Margaret Cameron and Lewis Carroll. Source: Wikipedia Loretta Lux was born in Dresden, Germany, in 1969. In 1989 she left East Germany for Munich, a few months before the fall of the Berlin Wall. From 1990–96, she studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich. Trained as a painter, Lux began taking photographs in 1999. Although Lux first experimented with self-portraits in works like The Hush (1999) and Self-Portrait (2000), she soon transitioned to images of children and adolescents, typically the offspring of friends who she often used as models. Her subjects, with gazes ambiguously empty yet psychologically activated, assume formal poses and appear in calculated garb and hairstyles. Employing photography, painting, and computer manipulation, Lux alters the images, extracting extraneous details, distorting proportions, and setting the children against mediated backgrounds that exist somewhere between Old Master paintings and cheesy studio-portrait backdrops. Lux's earliest works set children against icy blue skies, for example in Troll (2000), Lois (2000), and Isabella (2001). In 2001, while the skies continued to serve as backdrops in some works, Lux began to increasingly stage her images within barren pale pink interiors; such images include Hidden Rooms (2001) and Study of a Girl (2002). In several works including The Book (2003), Lux borrowed poses from Balthus, endowing those works with the rigidity and sense of perversion that characterized the French artist's oeuvre. Lux moved to Ireland in 2004 and increasingly depicted pairs of children rather than the solitary figures that occupied her earlier work. In her images of siblings like The Walk (2004), The Irish Girls (2005), and Hugo and Dylan (2006), the figures are psychologically isolated and physically interact quite gingerly with minimal and half-hearted gestures, perhaps an arm around a shoulder. Lux photographed the twins Sasha and Ruby (2005), girls who again sat for multiple images the artist produced in 2008. In 2007 Lux created her first self-portrait in seven years, this time occupying the pale blue and pink world of the children and bearing their ambiguous, confounding expression. Solo exhibitions of Lux's work have been organized by Stadtmuseum in Muenster (2003), Fotomuseum den Haag in The Hague (2005), Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Monterrey (2008), and Kulturhuset in Stockholm (2009), among others. Lux's work has also been included in major exhibitions such as Arbeit an der Wirklichkeit, German Contemporary Photography at the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo (2005–06), Global Feminisms at the Brooklyn Museum (2007), Family Pictures at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York (2007), and the Havana Biennale (2009). In 2005 she received the Infinity Award for Art from The International Center of Photography in New York. Lux lives and works in Monaco. Source: Guggenheim
Fabian Muir
Australia
Fabian Muir is an award-winning Australian photographer based in Sydney. The principal motivation behind his projects and practice is visual storytelling with a focus on humanist issues. He is an Eddie Adams alumnus (USA) and represented by Michael Reid in Sydney and Berlin. He speaks fluent German, French and Spanish, while his Russian sputters with the determination of a Lada on a rather steep incline. His images have featured in major solo and group exhibitions and festivals around the world and have been acquired by numerous significant collections. His fine art series addressing social challenges and injustice confronting refugees, entitled 'Blue Burqa in a Sunburnt Country' (2014) and 'Urban Burqa' (2017), as well as his two-year survey of daily life in the DPRK (North Korea) have attracted global press, television and radio coverage. He has also spent years surveying the legacy of the Soviet Union in the aftermath of its disintegration. Outlets include The Guardian / The Atlantic / VICE / BBC World TV / CNN International TV / LensCulture / SPIEGEL / Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung / BBC Asian Network / BBC Digital / FotoEvidence / PDN / Vogue Entertaining + Travel / Sueddeutsche Zeitung / Channel 9 Australia / BuzzFeed / World Photography Organisation Blog / Leica Magazine / Vision (China) / ZEISS Lenspire / France Culture (Radio France) / Photographic Museum of Humanity (PHmuseum) / Marie Claire / CNU (China) / El Observador (Portugal) / The Sydney Morning Herald / Fotoblogia (Poland) / LIFO / Bird in Flight / FAHRENHEITº Magazine / MindFood Magazine / Ampersand Magazine / Studio Magazine / Bios Monthly (Taiwan) / La Repubblica / Lenta.ru / The Age / Black + White Magazine / Konbini / Capture Magazine / Photojournalink / Expert-Russkiy Reporter / Street Photography Magazine / Feature Shoot / Gulf News (UAE) / The National (UAE) / PhotogrVphy Magazine / Musée Magazine New York / Forbes Magazine / London Telegraph / Lenscratch / Aesthetica Magazine / Portrait of Humanity book published by Hoxton Mini Press, London / The Independent / London Times / Huck Magazine / British Journal of Photography
Steve McCurry
United States
1950
Steve McCurry has been one of the most iconic voices in contemporary photography for more than 30 years, with scores of magazine and book covers, over a dozen books, and countless exhibitions around the world to his name. Born in a suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; McCurry studied film at Pennsylvania State University, before going on to work for a local newspaper. After several years of freelance work, McCurry made his first of what would become many trips to India. Traveling with little more than a bag of clothes and another of film, he made his way across the subcontinent, exploring the country with his camera. It was after several months of travel that he found himself crossing the border into Pakistan. There, he met a group of refugees from Afghanistan, who smuggled him across the border into their country, just as the Russian Invasion was closing the country to all western journalists. Emerging in traditional dress, with full beard and weather-worn features after weeks embedded with the Mujahedeen, McCurry brought the world the first images of the conflict in Afghanistan, putting a human face to the issue on every masthead. Since then, McCurry has gone on to create stunning images on all seven continents and countless countries. His work spans conflicts, vanishing cultures, ancient traditions and contemporary culture alike - yet always retains the human element that made his celebrated image of the Afghan Girl such a powerful image. McCurry has been recognized with some of the most prestigious awards in the industry, including the Robert Capa Gold Medal, National Press Photographers Award, and an unprecedented four first prize awards from the World Press Photo contest. The Minister of French Culture has also appointed McCurry a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters and most recently, the Royal Photographic Society in London awarded McCurry the Centenary Medal for Lifetime Achievement. McCurry has published books including The Imperial Way (1985), Monsoon (1988), Portraits (1999 | 2013), South Southeast (2000), Sanctuary (2002), The Path to Buddha: A Tibetan Pilgrimage (2003), Steve McCurry (2005), Looking East (2006), In the Shadow of Mountains (2007), The Unguarded Moment, (2009), The Iconic Photographs (2011), Untold: The Stories Behind the Photographs (2013), From These Hands: A Journey Along the Coffee Trail (2015), India (2015), On Reading (2016), Afghanistan (2017), A Life in Pictures (2018), Animals (2019), In Search of Elsewhere: Unseen Images (2020). @stevemccurryofficial "What is important to my work is the individual picture. I photograph stories on assignment, and of course they have to be put together coherently. But what matters most is that each picture stands on its own, with its own place and feeling" -- Steve McCurry If the photographer's images have made the rounds of newspapers around the world, like the portrait of the young Afghan woman with piercing eyes, it is also due to their aesthetic impact. Steve McCurry spoke of the importance of colour in his photographs, the importance of post-production and retouching, and their ability to touch the viewer: "each single picture has its single story, and we put ours in it" (Steve McCurry). "Sometimes with pictures and photography, what is interesting is that the imagination can go off in different directions. Everything should not be explained" (Steve McCurry): the photographer stresses the importance of leaving their share of mystery to the photographs. Steve McCurry was confronted with the horror of war; his images bear witness to this. If Susan Sontag suggests in Regarding the Pain of Others that photography “beautifies” and “bleaches out a moral response to what is shown”, the photographer brings an entirely different perspective to the issue. He refers to the mission of war reporters to fight against the blindness and ineptitude of public opinion: "Should we be informed about what's happening in our world? Should we let our governments tell us ? I think that would be a very bad idea. [...] Somebody has to go and give us their impression. We need some person to go there and find the truth" (Steve McCurry).Source: www.sciencespo.fr
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Call for Entries
AAP Magazine #55 Women
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