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Jean-Pierre Laffont
Photo © Sam Matamoros
Jean-Pierre Laffont
Jean-Pierre Laffont

Jean-Pierre Laffont

Country: Algeria
Birth: 1935

Jean-Pierre Laffont attended the School of Graphic Art in Vevey, Switzerland, where he graduated with a Master's Degree in Photography. He was a founding member of the Gamma USA and Sygma Photo News agencies. For more than five decades, Laffont traveled the globe, covering the news, the people, and the social and economic issues of his time. His photos were published in the world's leading news magazines, including Le Figaro, London Sunday Times, Newsweek, Paris Match, Stern, and Time. He was named one of the one hundred most important people in photography. Among the numerous awards Laffont has received are the Overseas Press Club of America's Madeline Dane Ross Award, the World Press Photo General Picture Award, University of Missouri's World Understanding Award and First Prize from the New York Newspaper Guild. In 1996 he was honored with the National French Order of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (a Knight in the National French Order of Arts and Letters). In 2016 Jean Pierre was named International Photographer of the Year of the Pingyao Photo Festival in China. In 2020 he received The Lucie Award for Achievement in Photojournalism and The Visa D'Or Award du Figaro Magazine for Lifetime Achievement.
Laffont resides in New York with his wife Eliane, his daughter and his two granddaughters.

Awards and Honors:
1962: Cross for Military Valor for his humanitarian acts during the Algerian War
1979: First Prize: New York Newspaper Guild, for "Child Labor"; Overseas Press Club: Madeline Dane Ross award, for originating the use of photography to raise awareness of child labor conditions around the world.
1980: World Press: First Prize, General Picture category; University of Missouri, School of Journalism: First Prize, World Understanding Award
1996: French National Order of Merit: named Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
2016: International Photographer of the year of The Pingyao Photo Festival; China.
2020: Lucie Award for Achievement in Photojournalism.
2020: Visa D'Or Award du Figaro Magazine for Lifetime Achievement.

Bibliography:
Contribution to the A Day in the Life Series (HarperCollins):
1983: A day in the life of Hawaii
1984: A day in the life of Canada
1985: A day in the life of Japan
1986: A day in the life of United States
1987: A day in the life of Spain
1987: A day in the life of USSR
1989: A day in the life of China
1990: A day in the life of Italy
1991: A day in the life of Ireland
1992: A day in the life of Hollywood

Other Selected Publications:
1986: The Long March (Intercontinental Press); in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Mao Zedong's historical Long March
1989: Trois Jour en France (Nathan/France)
1992: America Then and Now (Cohen/HarperCollins)
1999: Les 100 photos du Siècle (Editions du Chêne)
2003: America 24/7 in Manhattan (NY State)
2011: The New York Times Magazine: Photographs (Aperture Foundation)
2013: 40 ans de Photojournalisme: Generation Sygma (Editions de La Martinière/France)

Monographs:
1976: CB Bible, Porter Bibb (Doubleday)
1981: Women of Iron (Playboy)
2008: Jean-Pierre Laffont Foreign Correspondent (Editions C.D.P/France)
2014: Photographer's Paradise: Turbulent America 1960-1990: (Glitterati) named best picture book by The Lucie Awards
2017: New York City Up and Down: (Glitterati)
2019: Nos Stars en Amèrique Cartes postales de Jean Pierre Laffont: (Editions de La Martinière)

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Beverly  Conley
United States
Beverly Conley is a documentary photographer in Benicia, California. She has found true satisfaction in long-term self assigned projects that have focused on individuals and contemporary society. Her quest has allowed her to enter the private world of Gypsies in England, the Cherokee Nation in Northeastern Oklahoma, steelworkers in Weirton, West Virginia and the Cape Verdean Communities in Boston and the Cape Verde Islands. Solo exhibitions include the Fort Smith Regional Art Museum in Arkansas, the Black Arts Center in Kalamazoo, Michigan, the Museum of Native American History and Culture in Bentonville, Arkansas, the Boston Public Library and the George Meany Center for Labor. Her work has been featured in juried exhibitions and group shows such as the Festival of American Folklife at the Smithsonian Institution and the Cleveland Museum of Art. She is represented in numerous permanent collections including the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Toledo Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Museum of London, the New York Public Library, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Boston Public Library, the Museum of Native American History and Culture in Bentonville, Arkansas and the Cleveland Public Library. Beverly is the recipient of a 2002 Michigan Creative Artist Grant and she has received awards from the Utah Press Association, the International Regional Magazine Association and an excellence award by Black and White Magazine for their 2017 Special Issue. She is a member of the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP). Life in the Ozarks: An Arkansas Portrait My ongoing project began in 2003 with a drive down a rural country road. I had recently moved to Fayetteville and was anxious to explore my new surroundings. The resulting images tell the stories of people, events and everyday life in and around small towns in the rugged Ozark Mountains. They represent different aspects of these communities – young and old, recent immigrants, preachers, cowboys, farmers and those whose families have lived in the Ozarks for generations. I am interested in documenting the vestiges of an older Ozarks. There is a sense of timelessness that I want to convey in my work. I am drawn to the less travelled back roads where catfish are caught bare-handed, folks gather on porches to play bluegrass and subsistence farming is still in existence. Living and photographing in the same place gave me the opportunity to observe the changes of a region in transition. Northwest Arkansas experienced tremendous growth in the last decade with rural communities inching closer and closer to cities. I really imagined this unique Arkansas heritage would be lost. What I have since discovered is the resilience and self- sufficiency of a complex culture that stands with one foot in the present and the other in the past. An individual might have a day job at a Walmart but returns to a hand built home and the traditions of the 'holler' at night. Through these photographs and words it is my intention to preserve and share the richness of this Southern way of life with a broader audience. Life in the Ozarks: An Arkansas Portrait Appleby Horse Fair: The Annual Gathering of Gypsies & Travellers Smithfield Market
Louis Stettner
United States
1922 | † 2016
Louis Stettner was an American photographer of the 20th century whose work included streetscapes, portraits and architectural images of New York and Paris. His work has been highly regarded because of its humanity and capturing the life and reality of the people and streets. Starting in 1947, Stettner photographed the changes in the people, culture, and architecture of both cities. He continued to photograph New York and Paris up until his death. My way of life, my very being is based on images capable of engraving themselves indelibly in our inner soul’s eye. -- Louis Stettner Louis Stettner was born in Brooklyn, New York, where he was one of four children. His father was a cabinet maker, and Louis learned the trade when young, using the money he earned to support his growing love of photography. He was given a box camera as a child, and his love affair with photography began. His family went on trips to Manhattan and visited museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where his love of art began. At 18, in 1940, Stettner enlisted in the United States army and became a combat photographer in Europe for the Signal Corps. After a brief stint in Europe he was sent to New Guinea, the Philippines, and Japan. Back from the war Stettner joined the Photo League in New York. Stettner visited Paris in 1946 and in 1947 moved there. From 1947 to 1949 he studied at the Institut des Hautes Études Cinématographiques in Paris and received a Bachelor of Arts in Photography & Cinema. He went back and forth between New York and Paris for almost two decades and finally settled permanently in Saint-Ouen, near Paris, in 1990. Stettner still frequently returned to New York. Stettner's professional work in Paris began with capturing life in the post-war recovery. He captured the everyday lives of his subjects. In the tradition of the Photo League, he wanted to investigate the bonds that connect people to one another. In 1947 he was asked by the same Photo League to organize an exhibition of French photographers in New York. He gathered the works of some of the greatest photographers of the era, including Robert Doisneau, George Brassaï, Edouard Boubat, Izis, and Willy Ronis. The show was a big success and was largely reviewed in the annual issue of U.S. Camera. Stettner had begun a series of regular meetings with Brassaï who was a great mentor and had a significant influence on his work. In 1949, Stettner had his first exhibition at the Salon des Indépendants at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris. Brassaï showed me that it was possible to find something significant in photographing subjects in everyday life doing ordinary things by interpreting them in your own way and with your own personal vision. -- Louis Stettner In 1951 his work was included in the famous Subjektive Fotografie exhibition in Germany. During the 1950s he freelanced for Time Magazine, Life, Fortune, and Du (Germany). While in Paris he reconnected with Paul Strand, who had also left New York because of the political intolerance of the McCarthy era—Strand had been a founder of the Photo League that would be blacklisted and then banned during those years. In the 1970s Stettner spent more time in New York City, where he taught at Brooklyn College, Queens College, and Cooper Union. In his own work, Stettner focused on documenting the lives of the working class in both Paris and New York. He felt that the cities belong to the people who live there, not to tourists or visitors. His upbringing caused him to take great care in capturing the simple human dignity of the working class. He also captured noteworthy architectural images of both cities, including bridges, buildings, and monuments. Stettner produced well-known images, including: Aubervilliers, Brooklyn Promenade, Twin Towers with Sea Gull, Penn Station, and the Statue of Liberty, Battery Park. In his nineties, Stettner turned to a large format camera of the dimensions used by his hero, Paul Strand; an 8×10 Deardorff in order to photograph details of the landscape of Les Alpilles in Provence where Van Gogh often painted, assisted by his wife Janet. Stettner received numerous honors, and in 1950 he was named Life's top new photographer. In 1975 he won First Prize in the Pravda World Contest. Louis Stettner’s works are posthumously managed by the Louis Stettner Estate.Source: Wikipedia
Mark Power
United Kingdom
1959
Mark Power is a British photographer. He is a member of Magnum Photos and Professor of Photography in The Faculty of Arts and Architecture at the University of Brighton. Power has been awarded the Terence Donovan Award and an Honorary Fellowship from the Royal Photographic Society. Power was born in Harpenden, England, in 1959. He studied Fine Art at Brighton Polytechnic (1978–1981), and then travelled extensively, discovering a love for photography along the way. Upon his return, he worked as a freelance for several UK publications and charities. Power happened to be in Berlin on 9 November 1989 and photographed the fall of the Berlin Wall. He later published the photographs in the book Die Mauer ist Weg! (2014). Between 1992 and 1996, he embarked on The Shipping Forecast — a project that involved travelling to and photographing all 31 areas covered by the Shipping Forecast broadcast on BBC Radio 4. This project was published as a book and was a touring exhibition across the UK and France. He used a Volkswagen campervan as his mode of transport for the project, echoing the late Tony Ray-Jones, whose work has similarities in style and meaning to Power's. Between 1997 and 2000, Power was commissioned to document the Millennium Dome in London, a project that resulted in another touring exhibition and the accompanying book, Superstructure. Around this time his technical methods changed and he began to use colour film and a large format camera. This was followed by The Treasury Project, published in 2002, which recorded the renovation of the UK government's treasury building on Whitehall, London. In 2003, he undertook another personal project, using the London A–Z map as inspiration. The work, titled 26 Different Endings, is a collection of images examining the areas on the outer boundaries of the map. The project was exhibited at the Centre of Visual Art at the University of Brighton, and was published as a book in 2007. Between 1988 and 2002 Power was a member of Network Photographers. In 2002 he became a nominee of Magnum Photos, an associate in 2005 and a full member in 2007. Between 1992 and 2004 he was Senior Lecturer in Photography at the University of Brighton, becoming Professor of Photography in 2004, until the present. From 2004, he spent five years working on The Sound of Two Songs, on Poland's first five years as a member of the European Union. Between 2006 and 2010 Mark Power collaborated with poet Daniel Cockrill to document the rise in English nationalism. The pair undertook a series of road trips around England, culminating in the book Destroying the Laboratory for the Sake of the Experiment. In 2011 he undertook a commission from Multistory to make work that explored the social landscape of the Black Country through photography and film. He made urban landscapes; a series of photographs of elegant footwear; and a series of short films made in beauty salons, tattoo parlours and nightclubs. In 2014 Power began a self-publishing imprint, Globtik Books, with the publication of his book Die Mauer ist Weg!. Power primarily uses a digital medium format view camera, after he worked with large format film for many years. More recently he diversified into short film making.Source: Wikipedia As a child, Mark Power discovered his father's home-made enlarger in the family attic, a contraption consisting of an upturned flowerpot, a domestic light bulb and a simple camera lens. His interest in photography probably began at this moment, though he later went to art college to study life-drawing and painting instead. After graduating, he travelled for two years around South-East Asia and Australia. To support himself Power tried a number jobs (he was an English teacher, a television actor and a fish farm attendant in Hong Kong; he painted cinema murals in Bangkok; produced large numbers of identical paintings for others to sell as their own in the Australian outback (very questionable, this one!) and ended up running the camera department of a large chemist in Bankstown, in the Western Suburbs of Sydney). While travelling Power began to realise he enjoyed using a camera more than a pencil and decided to 'become a photographer' on his return to England, two years later, in 1983.Source: www.markpower.co.uk
Yousuf Karsh
Canada
1908 | † 2002
Yousuf Karsh is the most renowned portrait photographer of our time. He has perceptively photographed the statesmen, artists, and literary and scientific figures that have shaped our lives in the 20th century. Known for his ability to transform "the human face into legend," many of the portraits that he created have become virtually the image of the great man or woman they portray, whether Winston Churchill, Ernest Hemingway, Albert Einstein, Georgia O'Keefe or Helen Keller. In other words, "to experience a Karsh photograph is to feel in the presence of history itself." His photographs are in major private and public collections throughout the world, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston holding the largest collection in the US.Source: Weston Gallery Yousuf Karsh was an Armenian-Canadian photographer and one of the most famous and accomplished portrait photographers of all time. ousuf or Josuf (his given Armenian name was Hovsep)[citation needed] Karsh was born in Mardin, a city in the eastern Ottoman Empire (present Turkey). He grew up during the Armenian Genocide where he wrote, "I saw relatives massacred; my sister died of starvation as we were driven from village to village." At the age of 16, his parents sent Yousuf to live with his uncle George Nakash, a photographer in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada. Karsh briefly attended school there and assisted in his uncle’s studio. Nakash saw great potential in his nephew and in 1928 arranged for Karsh to apprentice with portrait photographer John Garo in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. His brother, Malak Karsh, was also a photographer famous for the image of logs floating down the river on the Canadian one dollar bill. Karsh returned to Canada four years later, eager to make his mark. In 1931 he started working with another photographer, John Powls, in his studio on the second floor of the Hardy Arcade at 130 Sparks Street in Ottawa, Ontario, close to Parliament Hill. When Powls retired in 1933, Karsh took over the studio. Karsh's first solo exhibition was in 1936 in the Drawing Room of the Château Laurier hotel. He moved his studio into the hotel in 1973, and it remained there until he retired in 1992. Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King discovered Karsh and arranged introductions with visiting dignitaries for portrait sittings. Karsh's work attracted the attention of varied celebrities, but his place in history was sealed on 30 December 1941 when he photographed Winston Churchill, after Churchill gave a speech to Canadian House of Commons in Ottawa. The image of Churchill brought Karsh international prominence and is claimed to be the most reproduced photographic portrait in history. In 1967, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and in 1990 was promoted to Companion. Of the 100 most notable people of the century, named by the International Who's Who [2000], Karsh had photographed 51. Karsh was also the only Canadian to make the list. Karsh was a master of studio lights. One of Karsh's distinctive practices was lighting the subject's hands separately. He photographed many of the great and celebrated personalities of his generation. Throughout most of his career he used the 8×10 bellows Calumet (1997.0319) camera, made circa 1940 in Chicago. Journalist George Perry wrote in the British paper The Sunday Timesthat "when the famous start thinking of immortality, they call for Karsh of Ottawa." Karsh had a gift for capturing the essence of his subject in the instant of his portrait. As Karsh wrote of his own work in Karsh Portfolio in 1967, "Within every man and woman a secret is hidden, and as a photographer, it is my task to reveal it if I can. The revelation, if it comes at all, will come in a small fraction of a second with an unconscious gesture, a gleam of the eye, a brief lifting of the mask that all humans wear to conceal their innermost selves from the world. In that fleeting interval of opportunity the photographer must act or lose his prize." Karsh said "My chief joy is to photograph the great in heart, in mind, and in spirit, whether they be famous or humble." His work is in permanent collections of the National Gallery of Canada, New York's Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art, George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the National Portrait Gallery in London, the National Portrait Gallery of Australia and many others. Library and Archives Canada holds his complete collection, including negatives, prints and documents. His photographic equipment was donated to the Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa. Karsh published 15 books of his photographs, which include brief descriptions of the sessions, during which he would ask questions and talk with his subjects to relax them as he composed the portrait. Some famous subjects photographed by Karsh were Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, Muhammad Ali, Marian Anderson, W. H. Auden, Joan Baez, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Humphrey Bogart, Alexander Calder, Pablo Casals, Fidel Castro, Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, Joan Crawford, Ruth Draper, Albert Einstein, Dwight Eisenhower, Princess Elizabeth, Robert Frost, Clark Gable, Indira Gandhi, Grey Owl, Ernest Hemingway, Audrey Hepburn, Pope John Paul II, Chuck Jones, Carl Jung, Helen Keller and Polly Thompson, Grace Kelly, Jacqueline Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, Peter Lorre, Pandit Nehru, Georgia O'Keeffe, Laurence Olivier, General Pershing, Pablo Picasso, Pope Pius XII, Prince Rainier of Monaco, Paul Robeson, the rock band Rush, Albert Schweitzer, George Bernard Shaw, Jean Sibelius, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Andy Warhol, Frank Lloyd Wright, and, arguably his most famous portrait subject, Winston Churchill. The story is often told of how Karsh created his famous portrait of Churchill during the early years of World War II. Churchill, the British prime minister, had just addressed the Canadian Parliament and Karsh was there to record one of the century's great leaders. "He was in no mood for portraiture and two minutes were all that he would allow me as he passed from the House of Commons chamber to an anteroom," Karsh wrote in Faces of Our Time. "Two niggardly minutes in which I must try to put on film a man who had already written or inspired a library of books, baffled all his biographers, filled the world with his fame, and me, on this occasion, with dread." Churchill marched into the room scowling, "regarding my camera as he might regard the German enemy." His expression suited Karsh perfectly, but the cigar stuck between his teeth seemed incompatible with such a solemn and formal occasion. "Instinctively, I removed the cigar. At this the Churchillian scowl deepened, the head was thrust forward belligerently, and the hand placed on the hip in an attitude of anger." The image captured Churchill and the Britain of the time perfectly — defiant and unconquerable. Churchill later said to him, "You can even make a roaring lion stand still to be photographed." As such, Karsh titled the photograph, The Roaring Lion. However, Karsh's favourite photograph was the one taken immediately after this one where Churchill's mood had lightened considerably and is shown much in the same pose, but smiling. In the late 1990s Karsh moved to Boston and on July 13, 2002, aged 93, he died at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital after complications following surgery. He was interred in Notre Dame Cemetery in Ottawa. Source: Wikipedia
Patricia Lagarde
Patricia Lagarde was born in Mexico City, where she currently lives and works. Studies in Communication and Graphic Design. She develops in the middle of photography from an early age. Her work revolves around three fundamental axes; the object as a symbol, the construction of memory and the poetics of space. Her images and artist books have been shown in Museums, Galleries and Fairs in various countries around the world. In Mexico it is represented by Patricia Conde Galería, in San Francisco by The Jack Fischer Gallery. Statement Patricia Lagarde's work is akin to that imaginary construction of an excessive, circular notion of time found in the most conspicuous narratives of magical realism. She grabs such epic dimension of time and submits it to an intimate experience. The signs she works with have no great scenarios of history as spatial references but rather much more discrete enclosures, such as the alchemist's laboratory, a cabinet of curiosities or an antiques collection. Objects that have been touched, used or abandoned are the most recurring personal motives throughout her career. Or perhaps we should say the “aura” of such objects, resulting from the way time has noticed them. Insects, toys, maps and spheres, ancient instruments, clothes, reproductions of works of art, other photographs and other texts are then taken to a ranking ground where the colossal and the tiny are confused, where the distinction between the own and the alien is no longer important, the imaginary and the real hierarchies are reversed and the meaning of usefulness loses relevance. (Author_Juan Antonio Molina)
David Katzenstein
United States
New York fine arts photographer David Katzenstein has traveled throughout the world on his lifelong artistic journey as a visual chronicler of humanity. Using subject, light, and composition to create visual dynamism, he sets the stage for the viewer to be in the moment with him. His goal is to allow viewers to experience a scene through his eyes-as if they were standing there beside him. Steeped in the tradition of documentary photography, Katzenstein imbues his work with immediacy, emotional engagement, and a deep respect for his subjects. Out of his fascination with ritual, over the years Katzenstein has photographed pilgrimage as practiced in different cultures. While visiting Memphis in the spring of 2017, he was inspired to expand on this theme by embarking on the project OUTSIDE THE LORRAINE MOTEL: Journey to a Sacred Place. The artist was introduced to the Mid-South region in the late 1980s while on assignment for Rolling Stone, documenting the roots of the blues in rural communities of Mississippi and Arkansas. An archive of online exhibitions and projects can be viewed at www.davidkatzenstein.com. In 2018 Katzenstein formed a nonprofit organization whose mission is to create and mount exhibitions of photographs depicting the human experience (www.thehumanexperienceproject.net). Outside the Lorraine: A Photographic Journey to a Sacred Place The National Civil Rights Museum presents the fine art photography exhibition, Outside the Lorraine: A Photographic Journey to a Sacred Place featuring the work of David Katzenstein. The yearlong exhibition highlights the museum as mecca for peacemakers, a place of memory and connection during the museum’s 30th anniversary. The collection of over 90 photos in Outside the Lorraine helps visitors identify with social issues by using fine art photography to connect to the historic place, Dr. King, movement makers, and one another. Viewers are invited to see the sparkle that lies within each print that shimmers, vibrates, and introduces people to a richer experience with fine art photography by making each piece relatable. The National Civil Rights Museum welcomes thousands of visitors a year each carrying an identity influenced by self and society. They bring their assumptions about the Civil Rights Movement. The courtyard is the first place where they confront those assumptions and begin to reconcile them with an alternate perspective of history. A picture tells a thousand words. As a sacred place, the plaza holds the weight of our shared mourning. As a portal, the plaza offers each visitor a pathway to greater self-knowledge and agency.
Norman Parkinson
United Kingdom
1913 | † 1990
Sir Norman Parkinson, CBE (21 April 1913 – 15 February 1990) was a celebrated English portrait and fashion photographer.Parkinson (birth name Ronald William Parkinson Smith) was born in London, and educated at Westminster School. He began his career in 1931 as an apprentice to the court photographers Speaight and Sons Ltd. In 1934 he opened his own studio together with Norman Kibblewhite. From 1935 to 1940 he worked for Harper's Bazaar and The Bystander magazines. During the Second World War he served as a reconnaissance photographer over France for the Royal Air Force. In 1947 he married the actress and model Wenda Rogerson. From 1945 to 1960 he was employed as a portrait and fashion photographer for Vogue. From 1960 to 1964 he was an Associate Contributing Editor of Queen magazine. In 1963 he moved to Tobago, although frequently returned to London, and from 1964 until his death he worked as a freelance photographer.Parkinson always maintained he was a craftsman and not an artist. From his early days as a photographer up to his death he remained one of the foremost British portrait and fashion photographers. His work, following the lead of Martin Munkacsi at Harper's Bazaar, revolutionised the world of British fashion photography in the '40s by bringing his models from the rigid studio environment into a far more dynamic outdoor setting. Humour played a central role in many of his photographs which often included himself. As well as magazine work he also created celebrated calendars featuring glamorous young women.(Source: en.wikipedia.org)
Irving Penn
United States
1917 | † 2009
Irving Penn was born on June 16, 1917 in Plainfield, New Jersey, to Harry Penn and Sonia Greenberg. In 1922, Irving Penn's younger brother, Arthur Penn, was born, who would go on to become a film director and producer. Irving Penn attended the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art (now the University of the Arts) from 1934 to 1938, where he studied drawing, painting, graphics, and industrial arts under Alexey Brodovitch. While still a student, Penn worked under Brodovitch at Harper's Bazaar, where several of Penn's drawings were published. Irving Penn worked for two years as a freelance designer and making his first amateur photographs before taking Brodovitch's position as the art director at Saks Fifth Avenue in 1940. Penn remained at Saks Fifth Avenue for a year before leaving to spend a year painting and taking photographs in Mexico and across the US. When Irving Penn returned to New York, Alexander Liberman offered him a position as an associate in the Vogue magazine Art Department, where Penn worked on layout before Liberman asked him to try his hand at photography for the magazine. Irving Penn photographed his first cover for Vogue magazine in 1943 and continued to work at the magazine throughout his career, shooting covers, portraits, still lifes, fashion, and photographic essays. In the 1950s, Penn founded his own studio in New York and began making advertising photographs. Over the years, Penn's list of clients grew to include General Foods, De Beers, Issey Miyake, and Clinique. Irving Penn met fashion model Lisa Fonssagrives at a photo shoot in 1947. In 1950, the two married at Chelsea Register Office, and two years later Lisa gave birth to their son, Tom Penn, who would go on to become a metal designer. Lisa Fonssagrives died in 1992. Irving Penn died aged 92 on October 7, 2009 at his home in Manhattan. Source: Wikipedia
Diane Fenster
United States
1948
I view myself as an alchemist, using alternative process, toy camera and digital tools to delve into fundamental human conditions and issues. My work is literary and emotional, full of symbolism and multiple layers of meaning with a style that marries photography with evocative and fragmented imagery. I am currently exploring several antiquarian processes including lumen printing and photo-encaustic. My work (exhibited since 1990) first received notice during the era of early experimentations with digital imaging and has appeared in numerous publications. I have been a guest lecturer at many and various seminars and conferences. My work has been internationally exhibited and is part of museum, corporate and private collections. A Long History Of Dark Sleep: Anxiety and insomnia self-portraits during the pandemic of COVID-19 In this time of Covid-19, I sleep alone but fear is my lover. We embrace fretfully and stare at the ceiling. At this late hour, there is no one to call, all the lines are dead and the buses have stopped running. This is my chance to record anxiety, to photograph the noir that surrounds me and find some truth and perhaps beauty in the dead of night. The camera comes to bed with me and a flashlight is my light-source. I have never liked being photographed. A series based on self-portraits could not have happened until this moment in time. Coming face to face with potential death carried on the breeze by an invisible agent has the power to propel me to self-examination in spite of distress. My aim is fretful, the focus unsteady. It's all about chance, isn't it, what the lens captures, who gets the virus.
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Círculo Collective is a photography group dedicated to fostering unity and shared humanity during these challenging times. This exclusive collective brings together photographers from five countries: India, Tanzania, Iran, Brazil, and Poland. In a world increasingly defined by division and conflict, the mission of Círculo Collective holds profound significance. Through their work, they seek to remind us of the connections that bind us and the power of community in overcoming adversity. We reached out to them with a few questions to gain deeper insights into their project.
Exclusive Interview with Manuela Federl
Manuela Federl is a journalist and documentary filmmaker with over 15 years of experience. She studied languages, economics, and cultural studies, focusing on the Mapuche people in Chile, which became the subject of her published thesis. In 2016, she founded her company, bergjournalisten, and has since created award-winning documentaries like 100 Hours of Lesbos and THE GAME. Gambling Between Life and Death. For the past two years, she has traveled extensively, documenting social issues through photography and storytelling. Her series The Roma Princesses earned her the January 2024 Solo Exhibition.
Exclusive Interview with Dona Ann McAdams about ’Black Box’
Black Box, a memoir by award-winning American photographer Dona Ann McAdams, combines fifty years of black and white photography with the photographer’s own short lyric texts she calls “ditties.” The book brings together McAdams’ striking historical images with personal reflections that read like prose-poems. Her photographs, taken between 1974 and 2024, document astonishing moments and people across decades of American life.
Exclusive Interview with Grace Weston
Grace Weston’s staged photography transforms miniature vignettes into powerful narratives that explore psychological themes with a playful yet profound touch. Her meticulously crafted scenes invite viewers to delve into stories of power, identity, and human complexity. Weston’s innovative work has earned international recognition, including winning the November 2023 Solo Exhibition. We asked her a few questions about her life and work.
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