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Darren Lewey
Darren Lewey
Darren Lewey

Darren Lewey

Country: British
Birth: 1968

Darren Lewey (b. 1968 in Hertfordshire, UK) is a photographer based in Morocco. Photography became his passion at school after which he graduated with a BA in Photographic Studies from Derby College in 1992. Drawn to Morocco as a student, he made careers in teaching and television directing before finally settling there in 2010.

Working in projects, his photographs of landscapes and people show a readiness to look for shapes and structures in the former and a quietness of character through his portraits. Focusing on the less spectacular locations, closer to where he lives, Darren is intrigued by offering another photographic vision of the country. One that runs counter to the exotic imagery more usually associated with Morocco.

He has been avidly developing personal projects since 2016 alongside running workshops for clients through his teaching site: Creative Camera.

His first completed project, Salinity, takes a 'topographic' look at the landscapes of small scale salt production. It's due to be published in late 2021.
 

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Scott M. Fincher
United States
1946
So what differentiates a portrait of a person from a picture of an object? Essentially nothing. A photographer's purpose is revelation. In the street or in the corporate suite the imperative is to take surfaces into the interior so that the viewer comes to understand something about what has been presented. This could be an aspect of personality or the structure of a design. In short, one can say no more than one can see. Early in my career, I used to fantasize that I could be a Beethoven of photography. The idea contradicts the central principle of the medium. What distinguishes photography from the other arts is time. Unlike music, which takes a single idea and expands it, photography interrupts the continuum and digests it into an exquisite moment where understanding, composition and action intersect. All this is expressed succinctly in poet e.e. cummings's introduction to his volume "Is Five": "I am abnormally fond of that precision which creates movement." In my eyes, photography also adheres to Francis Bacon's maxim, "The contemplation of things as they are without error, without confusion, without substitution or imposture is in itself a nobler thing than a whole harvest of inventions." That is why I love both nature and the street and quest for the image that sits on the cusp of the real and surreal. For the most part, I do not manipulate the images in the digital "darkroom" any more than I would have were I using techniques of the old "wet" darkrooms. Mostly, I adjust luminosity. My background is print journalism. I edited photography and foreign and national news for the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times for many years before deciding to rededicate myself to my passion. It has been, as the great Edward Steichen once said about the photographic act, "Incredibly easy and impossibly difficult." Nevertheless, the results have been good, and I have won national, international and art fair awards since my return to photography in 2006. My images are in collections all over the U.S. and in Germany, Poland, Denmark and Venezuela. I hold a bachelor's in English from Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill., and have studied photography in too many workshops to enumerate. I live in Chicago.
Buck Holzemer
United States
Buck Holzemer's photography career began at the young age of eight when he climbed onto a garage roof to capture images of his friends playing basketball below. This experience sparked a lifelong fascination with the magic little window of the camera. After an multi-year detour to study the unseen world through physics and mathematics, he returned to the “magic little window” in his late twenties and began a career in photography and soon expanded into filmmaking. Throughout his career, Buck has received numerous accolades, including the prestigious Clio award for television commercials, recognition in the Communication Arts Photography Annual, awards from Print magazine, and the Grand Prize for fine art work from PDN magazine. In 2013, he won a Best of Show award from the International Photography Awards, and in 2019, he received the People's Choice Award from National Geographic. Buck's versatility as an image maker is evident in his work across various photographic genres and his filmmaking projects in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, New York, Milan, and Guatemala. For the past decade, he has collaborated with producer Patti Petrich to create media for Common Hope, a St. Paul based non-profit organization that supports education for children in Guatemala. Through this partnership, he has produced numerous videos and portraits of over 800 Guatemalan children. In recent years, Buck has dedicated his time primarily to personal photographic projects. Awarded Photographer of the Week - Week 05
Tim Franco
France/Poland
Tim Franco is French-Polish freelance photographer based in Shanghai. Since he first came to China in 2005, Tim Franco got fascinated by the fast social and urban transformation that chinese cities where going through. He has spent some time documenting those growth through urban photography but also by studying social changes, such at the underground art world and the social problems related to the evolutions of the cities. Among his projects is a comprehensive depiction of the growth of the alternative music scene in China and particularly Shanghai. The project was synthesized and published in a book, “Shanghai Soundbites”, released in June 2008 in response to the attitude towards cultural expression manifested in the lead up to the Beijing Olympics. Subsequently, the pictures have been included in numerous news and lifestyle publications both in China and abroad. He now continues his work documenting the urban development of chinese cities and its social impact on the local people. He is also involved in local youth and underground movement both in China and greater asia. Tim Franco is a regular contributor to Le Monde ( newspaper and magazine ), but his work has also been published in the New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Bloomberg, Financial Times, Le Point, NRC, Wiwo, Global Journal, Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, The Fader, CNN online, Time Out, Urban. About the series Vertical Communism Vertical Communism is a long term project about the city of Chongqing. This city, one of the biggest in central china, went through one of the fastest development process in the country. The main reason is, located upstream of the three gorges dam, the government has welcomed all displaced population from submerged region into its main urban areas. The city is fascinating because of its accelerated development that produced high rises buildings on the side of rivers and mountains, taking away the traditional charms of the old Chang Kai Shek capital, but also because of its political and social history. Once at the hand of the biggest organized crime group in China, the city has been re manipulated into a neo communist style red propaganda machine, led by the highly controversial son of a famous revolutionary named Bo Xilai. With his wife now in prison for the murder of a British national, and his personal implication in corruptions and tortures, Bo Xilai has been quickly removed from any government places in China and the city is looking once again for a new direction. I personally see Chongqing as a macro representation of the whole China. With its tumultuous political history and its growing social pressure for managing farmers coming into urban areas for a better life, all of it pushed by a constant need of investments and fast modernization, I wanted to portray this view of a growing china, far away from the common views of eastern cities such as shanghai or Beijing. From a photographic point of view, I have decided to shoot the people in their environment. But i have decided to take a step back, using medium format film camera, I want to transmit the feeling of scales that the city and china in general is facing. Urban Scales, Social Scales, the country's biggest problem is now to find a way to link some extremes the highly rich to the very poor, the extravagant to the meaningful. Vertical Communism is a portrait of Chinese a megapolis full of contradiction, trying to keep up with its unpredictable modernization. Interview with Tim Franco All About Photo: When did you realize you wanted to be a photographer? Tim Franco: There is not a precise moment. When I was young, I loved writing stories, then my passion became music. I always wanted to share my ideas and vision of things through some mediums at the end it became photography. Where did you study photography? When I was a kid, my artist mother pushed me from one opening to the other, through museums and galleries. At first I hated it, and then became used to it and started to hang out more and more in her studio, until I took away her old cameras , I have learn through experience, other photographers and reading tutorials. How could you describe your style? Photographers tend to be classified, put into boxes, commercial photographer, photojournalists, artists, etc. I never really know how to classify my work. What I love is telling stories, document facts with an artistic esthetic to it. I also enjoy working on creative commercial assignments. I always try to stay simple in the esthetic and subtle about the story. What kind of gear do you use? Camera, lens, digital, film? For my personal work, I really enjoy medium format. When I see something, most of the time, I ideally want to frame it in square. I don't really like naming brands, they all have different feeling and esthetic and it really depends the look you want to give your image. To name a few I personally work with Hasselblad and old rolleiflex. For commercial work, I use Canon because of their price and availability in terms of lenses.> Do you spend a lot of time editing your images? When shooting film, I usually spend very little time editing, just cleaning dust on films and other small details. When shooting commercial work on digital its another story. Clients are very specific about what they want and color out of raw files needs to go through extensive treatment. My photo agency works with a retouching studio for most of our commercial projects. What advice would you give a young photographer? Those days, its very easy to call yourself a photographer, grab a camera , a couple of nice prime lenses and you can get some good images. But I think young photographers should really focus on what are they trying to say with their images. What makes a great photo is not the instant esthetic of it but the impact that image will have on its viewer. An idea, a sentence, a project you would like to share? One of the main project I worked on for the past year is about one particular city in China called Chongqing. Since 2009, I am going there quite frequently, at the beginning for some press assignments since the city have seen lot of interesting political stories and turmoils but also because it fascinates me. Both from an esthetic point of view and from its stories. This giant megapolis has been forcly populated with countryside people and has now a very hard time to deal its urbanization. "I personally see Chongqing as a macro representation of the whole China. With its tumultuous political history and its growing social pressure for managing farmers coming into urban areas for a better life, all of it pushed by a constant need of investments and fast modernization, I wanted to portray this view of a growing china, far away from the common views of eastern cities such as shanghai or beijing. From a photographic point of view, I have decided to shoot the people in their environment. But I have decided to take a step back, using medium format film camera, I want to transmit the feeling of scales that the city and china in general is facing. Urban Scales, Social Scales, the country's biggest problem is now to find a way to link some extremes the highly rich to the very poor, the extravagant to the meaningful. Vertical Communism is a portrait of chinese a megapolis full of contradiction, trying to keep up with its unpredictable modernization." Your best and worst memory as a photographer? Being a professional photographers gives you a chance to go to many great places and meet amazing people. Sometimes the best memory is all the instants that led you to take a particular photo, the untold stories. What happened in the discussion you had with the person you were about to portray, how did you get to this fantastic point of view etc. For worst memory there is always issues of dealing with authorities, this large gap of misunderstanding between the photographer wanting to tell a story and a person not allowing you to shoot. This is always very annoying. More about METAMORPOLIS More about UNPERSON
Dora Maar
France
1907 | † 1997
Henriette Theodora Markovitch, also known as Dora Maar, was a French photographer, painter, and poet who lived from November 22, 1907 until July 16, 1997. Dora Maar had an important role in the life of the famed artist Pablo Picasso, serving as his love partner. Picasso featured her in various paintings, including Portrait of Dora Maar and Dora Maar au Chat. She was the only daughter of Croatian architect Josip Marković, also known as Joseph Markovitch, who studied at Zagreb and Vienna before arriving in Paris in 1896. Her mother was Louise-Julie Voisin (1877–1942), a Cognac native raised in the Catholic religion. The family moved to Buenos Aires in 1910, where the father earned many commissions, including one for Austria-Hungary's embassy. Despite his success, he was "the only architect who did not make a fortune in Buenos Aires." Nonetheless, his accomplishments were recognized, and Emperor Francis Joseph I awarded him a decoration. In 1926, the family went back to Paris. Under the alias Dora Maar, she studied at the Central Union of Decorative Arts and the School of Photography. She also registered at the École des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Julian, both of which provide equal instruction to men and women. Dora Maar actively engaged in André Lhote's workshop, where she met Henri Cartier-Bresson. During her time at the École des Beaux-Arts, Maar encountered the fellow female surrealist Jacqueline Lamba. Reflecting on their connection, Maar expressed, "I was closely linked with Jacqueline. She asked me, 'where are those famous surrealists?' and I told her about cafe de la Place Blanche." Subsequently, Jacqueline started frequenting the café, eventually leading to her meeting André Breton, whom she would later marry. Dora Maar left the workshop and traveled alone from Paris to Barcelona and then to London. In London, she took images portraying the effects of the economic crisis that followed the Wall Street Crash of 1929 in the United States. She returned to Paris and, with the help of her father, opened another factory at 29 rue d'Astorg in the 8th arrondissement. In 1935, she met Pablo Picasso and became his companion and muse. She photographed the last phases of Picasso's colossal masterpiece, Guernica, in his workshop at the Grands Augustins. She also acted as a model for his artwork Monument à Apollinaire, which pays respect to the late poet Guillaume Apollinaire. Maar's earliest known images were from the early 1920s, when she used a Rolleiflex camera on a cargo ship destined for the Cape Verde Islands. In the early 1930s, she opened a photographic studio on rue Campagne-Première in conjunction with Pierre Kefer, a photographer and designer best known for his work on Jean Epstein's 1928 film The Fall of the House of Usher. Maar and Kefer worked together at the studio, largely on commercial photography for ads and fashion magazines. During this time, her father gave financial assistance as she faced the obstacles of establishing herself and earning a living. The studio rose to prominence, displaying fashion, advertising, and nude photography, and achieved tremendous success. Within the studio, Maar crossed paths with the photographer Brassaï, with whom she shared the darkroom. Brassaï once remarked on her "bright eyes and an attentive gaze, a disturbing stare at times." Dora Maar's work in commercial and fashion photography was heavily influenced by Surrealism, as evidenced by her extensive use of mirrors and harsh play with shadows. She felt that art should transmit the essence of reality by connecting with intuitions or ideas, rather than simply copying the visual qualities of nature. Notably, Dora Maar met Louis-Victor Emmanuel Sougez, a photographer who worked in advertising, archeology, and as the artistic director of the daily L'Illustration. She saw Sougez as a mentor during this time. In 1932, she had an affair with filmmaker Louis Chavance. Dora Maar joined the "October group," which formed around Jacques Prévert and Max Morise following their expulsion from surrealism. Her first publication was in the magazine Art et Métiers Graphiques in 1932, and she had her first solo show at the Galerie Vanderberg in Paris. The gelatin silver pieces from Dora Maar's surrealist era remain highly coveted by enthusiasts, especially works like Portrait of Ubu (1936), located at 29 rue d'Astorg. These black and white compositions include collages, photomontages, and superimpositions. The photograph features the central character from Alfred Jarry's renowned series of plays, Ubu Roi. Initially showcased at the Exposition Surréaliste d'objets at the Galerie Charles Ratton in Paris and later at the International Surrealist Exhibition in London in 1936, the piece gained notable acclaim. Additionally, Dora Maar participated in Participates in Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism at the Museum of Modern Art in New York during the same year. During her surrealist phase, Dora Maar found resonance with the political ideologies of the left, leading her to actively engage in political activities. Following the fascist demonstrations on February 6, 1934, in Paris, she, along with René Lefeuvre and Jacques Soustelle, supported by Simone Weil and Georges Bataille, signed the tract "Appeal to the Struggle," initiated by André Breton. Much of her artistic output during this period was strongly influenced by the leftist politics of the time, often portraying individuals thrust into poverty by the Great Depression. Dora Maar was involved in various leftist groups, including the "Masses," an ultra-leftist association where she first encountered Georges Bataille, as well as the Union of Intellectuals Against Fascism, an anti-fascist organization. She also participated in a radical collective of left-wing actors and writers known as October. She actively engaged in various Surrealist circles, frequently joining demonstrations, convocations, and café discussions. Dora Maar was a signatory of numerous manifestos, among them "When Surrealists were Right," penned in August 1935, addressing the Congress of Paris that had convened in March of the same year. In 1935, she captured a photograph of the fashion illustrator and designer Christian Bérard. Described by writer and critic Michael Kimmelman as "wry and mischievous, with only his head perceived above the fountain, as if he were John the Baptist on a silver platter." During the 1980s, Dora Maar created several photograms. Her final years were spent in her apartment on Rue de Savoie, located on the Left Bank of Paris. She passed away on July 16, 1997, at the age of 89. She was laid to rest in the Bois-Tardieu cemetery in Clamart. Posthumously, her experiments with photograms and darkroom photography were discovered.
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