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Deborah Bay
Deborah Bay
Deborah Bay

Deborah Bay

Country: United States

Deborah Bay is a Houston artist who specializes in constructed studio photography. She has exhibited most recently at Photo London Digital 2020, Foto Relevance (Houston), Texas Contemporary 2018 and 2019 and Photoville Brooklyn. Her work is in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson and Dorsky Museum of Art at State University of New York at New Paltz. LensCulture and the Griffin Museum of Photography highlighted images from her Traveling Light series in on-line features earlier this year, and the British Journal of Photography has published her work on its cover. Her work was recognized in the Texas National 2018, and she was a finalist for Artadia Houston 2015. An active member of the Houston arts community, she has served on the board of the Houston Center for Photography and its Advisory Council. She holds graduate and undergraduate degrees from The University of Texas at Austin.

Statement:
My work explores the beauty of light and color. It builds on a studio practice that has focused for the past 15 years on constructed, macro photography. The images in the work presented here bring together an eclectic set of influences, ranging from geometric constructivism to color field. After collecting an assortment of prisms and lenses, I became interested in capturing how light and color interact with optical materials - seeming to bounce nonchalantly across surfaces, yet strictly bound by the laws of physics. Lenses and prisms were layered and stacked at angles to capture light wrapping around form. Chromatic geometries emerged from the planes and lines of color created using film gels. In my practice the camera often is a tool for highlighting details of physical phenomena that are overlooked or not easily observed. Particularly intriguing is the mystery created by the juxtaposition of scale - making close-up images of small objects and showing them as prints at many times their actual size. The images were produced in-camera and follow in the lineage of experimental studies exploring the most elemental components of photographic processes: light and lenses.

Gallery

fotorelevance.com

Website

deborahbay.com

 

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Todd Webb
Todd Webb
United States
1905 | † 2000
Todd Webb (September 5, 1905 – April 15, 2000) was an American photographer notable for documenting everyday life and architecture in cities such as New York City, Paris as well as from the American west. His photography has been compared with Harry Callahan, Berenice Abbott, Walker Evans, and the French photographer Eugène Atget. He traveled extensively during his long life and had important friendships with artists such as Georgia O'Keeffe, Ansel Adams and Harry Callahan. He photographed famous people including Dorothea Lange. His life was like his photos in the sense of being seemingly simple, straightforward, but revealing complexity and depth upon a closer examination. Capturing history, his pictures often transcend the boundary between photography and artistic expression. Webb was born in Detroit in 1905 and grew up there and in a Quaker community in Ontario. From 1924 to 1929 he worked as a bank teller and clerk at a brokerage firm in Detroit; in another account, he was a successful stockbroker during the 1920s but lost his earnings during the Crash before the Depression. During the Depression beginning in 1929, he moved to California and worked as a prospector and earned a meager living. During these years he also worked as a fire ranger for the United States Forestry Service. Webb reportedly wrote short stories which were unpublished. After 1934, Webb returned to Detroit and worked for the automobile manufacturer Chrysler in their export division. In 1937, he visited a friend in Panama in search of gold, but had little success. But in Panama, he brought along a camera donated by his former employer, Chrysler. Webb returned to Detroit and studied at the Detroit Camera Club. He met photographer Harry Callahan. In 1940, he completed a ten‑day workshop with Ansel Adams as his teacher. In 1941, he visited Rocky Mountain State Park with Harry Callahan, and realized during this trip that he was drawn more to the urban cityscape, and although he found Adams to be an inspiration, he would not make photographs like his teacher. During World War II, Webb was a photographer for the United States Navy and was deployed to the South Pacific theater of operations. After World War II, in 1945, Webb moved to New York City and began his career as a professional photographer. He made key friendships with Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O'Keeffe as well as Beaumont Newhall, Berenice Abbott, Helen Levitt, and Minor White. Webb began a remarkable project of walking the streets of New York City with his heavy camera and tripod and photographing people and buildings he encountered. What set these photos apart was their "straightforward, descriptive clarity" even though they were often of familiar views. One large 10-foot–long panorama photograph which was critically acclaimed showed a section of Sixth Avenue from 43rd–44th streets which, in 1991, was seen as a "visual time capsule of the city" and was described as a "stunner." Webb's photos reflected the photographer's sense of discovery and captured the times, such as photos of hand-painted banners over apartment house doors saying "Welcome Home, G.I.s". In one photograph, Webb went to the top of the RCA Building and shot south using a backlit technique, which captured the Empire State Building at night. The best photographs, according to New York Times art critic Charles Hagen, contained the "simple geometries of urban architecture" in a "simple elegance"; Hagen thought Webb's New York City photographs were his best. In 1946, he had the first solo exhibition of his photographs at the Museum of the City of New York. In 1947, Webb was hired by Fortune magazine and he worked with professional photographers funded by the Standard Oil Company led by Roy Stryker and the group included notable photographers such as Sol Libsohn. According to the New York Times, the team of professional photographers was "given amazingly free rein by its corporate sponsor" to produce a documentary about oil. One of these photographs, Webb's Pittsburgh Panorama (ca. 1950) shows a grim industrial view towards Pittsburgh from a hill near Westinghouse Bridge that takes in a bare river valley across which snake highways and railways and a row of tall smokestacks in the distance. Curator Edward Steichen selected it for the 1955 Museum of Modern Art exhibition The Family of Man, seen by 9 million visitors on its world tour. However, in his memoir, Webb records his disappointment with the way images were "over-enlarged to billboard size" losing "all the qualities that make photographs unique." Webb traveled to Paris in 1949 and married fellow American Lucille Minqueau. In Paris, Webb produced a "vivid record" of the city which earned him recognition. Then, Webbs moved back to New York City to live in Greenwich Village in 1952. In 1955, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to photographically record pioneer trails of early settlers of the western United States. He was hired in 1957 by the United Nations to photograph its General Assembly. He won a contract to photograph Sub–Saharan Africa in 1958. The Webbs moved to Santa Fe in New Mexico around 1961. Webb's photos of his friend Georgia O'Keeffe suggested not only a "loner, severe figure and self-made person" but that there was an "intense connection" between Webb and O'Keeffe. While O'Keeffe was known to have a "prickly personality", Webb's photographs portray her with a kind of "quietness and calm" suggesting a relaxed friendship, and revealing new contours of O'Keeffe's character. Webb's landscape photographs as well as photos of the artist walking among the sagebrush bring O'Keeffe to life "even in pictures where she doesn't appear", according to Chicago Tribune art critic Abigail Foerstner. His photos suggest an "ageless spirit" which was "weathered and indomitable" like desert rock formations. These photos were done using matte finish paper and appear in a book entitled Georgia O'Keeffe: The Artist's Landscape. The Webbs lived in the Provence region of France, around 1970, and he continued to photograph regularly, and later lived, for a period, in Bath, England. The Webbs finally settled in the state of Maine, living in the city of Portland, based on the suggestion of a friend. In 1978, Webb won a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and continued to live and work in Maine. Source: Wikipedia Up until the 1980's, Todd Webb photographed and produced a unique body of work, which has attained an important place in the annals of American photographic history. Frequently referred to as "an historian with a camera," Webb's rich images document life all over the world. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and is included in numerous museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Minneapolis Art Institute, and the Chicago Art Institute. Todd Webb died in May, 2000 at the age of 94 in Central Maine. His life was like his photographs; at first they seem very simple, without obvious tricks or manipulation, but upon closer examination, they are increasingly complex and marvellously subtle.Source: Todd Webb Archive Todd Webb used documentary photography to convey a sense of intimacy and curiosity in the relationship between history, place, and people. Although Webb initially pursued photography to augment his writing, by 1940 he saw it as his central passion. In his hometown of Detroit, Webb attended camera club meetings where he took up with fellow novice Harry Callahan, and the more experienced Arthur Siegel. In 1941, Ansel Adams led a workshop for the camera club that profoundly influenced the ambitions of both Webb and Callahan. Todd Webb’s humanistic approach to documentation allowed him to create a compelling narrative whether he was working in the great cities of the world or within the vast American landscape. The Todd Webb Archive contains personal papers and photographic materials related to his long career as a photographer, including correspondence, biographical files, exhibition documentation, manuscripts, journals, extensive files of negatives, contact sheets, and over 1,400 fine prints.Source: Center for Creative Photography
Maurice Pellosh
Maurice Pellosh
Congo
1951 | † 2023
Maurice Bidilou was born on August 15, 1951, in Bouansa (formerly Le Briz). At the age of 16, he moved to Pointe-Noire to live with his brother. After taking on a few odd jobs, his uncle encouraged him to learn a trade. This led Maurice to a 19-month apprenticeship at "Studio Jeanot Père," which he began in exchange for a bunch of bananas, a demijohn of wine, a chicken, and 20,000 CFA francs. During this time, he mastered the art of being a portrait photographer, a craft that would become his lifelong passion. At the time, it was fashionable to have a nickname. Maurice explained that around the age of 11, he played with letters and came up with the word "Pellosh," giving it an American-sounding ending. Long before becoming a photographer, his friends and family were already calling him Pellosh—a name that seemed to foreshadow his destiny. [NB: In French, the word péloche (which sounds the same as Pellosh) means "film."] In December 1973, Maurice Bidilou opened his own photo studio, "Studio Pellosh," near the main market in a bustling neighborhood. The studio remained open until 2016. It quickly became a success. In addition to offering traditional ID photos, "Studio Pellosh" gained a reputation as the go-to place for families, couples, friends, and "sapeurs" eager to immortalize their happiness and symbols of success on film. In the evenings, Pellosh frequented bars, dance halls, and concerts, mingling with the Congolese youth reveling in their newfound independence. Across from Studio Pellosh, the bar-dancing club "Chez Fofo" became his favorite weekend hangout. During the 1970s, the Sape movement—The Society of Ambiance-Makers and Elegant People—was in full swing. The clientele of Pointe-Noire sought carefully crafted souvenir portraits to share with loved ones, often ordering enlargements. These photos became elaborate compositions featuring symbolic accessories of wealth (transistor radios, mopeds, books, cigarettes) and beauty (bags, sunglasses, hats, suits). Artificial lighting allowed for photography at any time of day or night. Starting in 1985, the disappearance of black-and-white development products in Congo forced Pellosh to transition to color photography. A decade later, the rise of digital photography signaled the inevitable end of his studio. Maurice passed away on May 25, 2023, surrounded by decor from his former studio, dozens of Kodak boxes filled with negatives, and photographic equipment. His death, at the age of 71, was caused by severe malaria and a hip fracture. He leaves behind his wife, Jackie, and their six daughters—Mauricette, Aude, Inès, Alida, Ghéraude, and Carmelle—as well as 17 grandchildren, all of whom are proud and dedicated to preserving Maurice’s legacy. Since 2020, this work has been championed by Emmanuèle Béthery, who has brought new recognition to Maurice's artistry.
Christian Werner
Christian Werner
Germany
1987
Christian Werner is a freelance multimedia/photojournalist based in Boitzum, Germany. As a teenager he developed his interest in photography while traveling to foreign countries. In 2014 he graduated the photojournalism & documentary photography course at the University of Applied Sciences in Hannover. His main interests are social diversity and global political issues. The areas of interest is mainly the arabic world and culture. Chris worked in various countries in Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe and South America. His work has been exhibited internationally. He welcomes assignments local and overseas. Since 2012, Christian is represented by Agency Laif. Source: World Press Photo Chris, born in 1987, studied from 2009 to 2014 photojournalism and documentary photography at the University of Hanover. He works as a freelance photojournalist and published his photos and stories, among others, in Der Spiegel, Die Zeit, TIME Magazine, The Washington Post and many more. From 2012 -2016 Christian Werner was represented by the German reportage agency laif. In late 2016 Chris is represented by Zeitenspiegel. His photographic focus is the processing of social injustice, conflicts and geopolitical issues. His work has been awarded several times and frequently exhibited internationally. In 2015 Chris participated at the World Press Joop Swart Mastercalss in Amsterdam. 2016 Chris has been chosen in the 30 under 30 Europe Forbes List in the Media category. In late summer 2016 he begins working with MOAS (Migrant Offshore Aid Station). Chris worked in various countries in Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe and South America. Artist Statement "Rubble and Delusion - A Journey Through Assad's Syria With the fall of Aleppo, the regime of Bashar Assad once again controls the country's second-largest city. But is reconciliation possible in the country? A journey through the dictator's rump state. Our journey leads us to the three largest cities in northern and western Syria: Aleppo, Latakia and Homs. Aleppo has become symbolic of the brutal bombing campaign. Latakia, the regime stronghold on the Mediterranean, was largely untouched by the war and is still a popular vacation spot in the summer. And Homs, once the center of the uprising, was destroyed and is now slated to become a model of reconstruction."
Robert Polidori
Robert Polidori
Canada/United States
1951
Robert Polidori is a Canadian-American photographer known for his large-scale color images of architecture, urban environments, and interiors. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, Martin-Gropius-Bau museum (Berlin), and Instituto Moreira Salles (São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro). His photographs are also included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art (New York), New Orleans Museum of Art, The J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles), Victoria and Albert Museum (London), Château de Versailles, Centre Pompidou (Paris), and Bibliothèque Nationale de France (Paris), as well as many private collections. Described as one of "most esteemed practitioners of large-scale photography," Polidori has photographed the restoration of the Château de Versailles since the early 1980s. He has also recorded the architecture and interiors of Havana, the inner-city habitats of Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, and Amman, the post-Hurricane Katrina devastation of New Orleans, buildings emptied by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and shelled structures in Beirut. At the time of the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal retrospective exhibition in 2009, curator Paulette Gagnon described his work as a "photographic account that invites us to share the historical moments it portrays, making them part of the collective memory." Where you point the camera is the question and the picture you get is the answer to decipher. -- Robert Polidori Robert Polidori was born in 1951 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, to a French-Canadian mother and a Corsican father. At age 9, Polidori’s family moved to the United States where his father worked as an engineer at Air Force bases and NASA installations. He grew up in Seattle, southern California, New Orleans, and Cocoa Beach, and first attended university in Florida in 1969. During his freshman year, Polidori saw Michael Snow's film Wavelength (1967 film) and, inspired to study filmmaking, moved to New York City. The following year, he was hired by the legendary Jonas Mekas and worked as the theatre manager of the Anthology Film Archives. During this time, Polidori worked on four experimental films, exhibited in 1975 at the Whitney Museum of American Art. In 1980 he graduated with a Masters of Arts in film from State University of New York (Buffalo). Polidori became interested in still photography while editing film frame-by-frame. Inspired by Frances Yates' description in The Art of Memory of mnemonic systems requiring the memorization of empty rooms, he purchased a large-format camera in 1982 and photographed abandoned and apartments on New York's Lower East Side. In 1983 he moved to Paris and, interested in how empty spaces revealed history, began to document the restoration of Château de Versailles as a symbol of "society’s superego". In the late 1990s, Polidori was engaged by The New Yorker to photograph Havana’s decaying architectural heritage and joined the magazine as a staff photographer in 1998. Images from his Cuban series were later published in Havana (2001) by Steidl Verlag. Also interested in inner-city habitats or "auto-constructed" growth, Polidori recorded the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, the urban sprawl of Brasilia, the construction boom in Dubai, and the slums of Mumbai. In May 2001, he photographed the closed Chernobyl nuclear power plant and nearby ghost town of Pripyat, Ukraine, and these images were later published as Zones of Exclusion – Pripyat and Chernobyl (2003). In 2002 Polidori was commissioned to photograph Detroit's Michigan Central Station for Metropolis (architecture magazine). Described by editor Martin C. Pedersen as "a keen observer of the built world", the magazine later published his urban images as Robert Polidori's Metropolis (2005). In the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Polidori photographed the damaged homes and buildings of New Orleans, and documented the city's early restoration in 2006. Published as After the Flood (2006) by Steidl Verlag, many of these images were also exhibited at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art as New Orleans after the Flood, a popular and well-attended exhibition. Exhibitions of After the Flood were also mounted in London, Venice, and Toronto, as well as in New Orleans. During this time, Polidori continued to document the restoration of Château de Versailles and these photographs, published in the three-volume Parcours Muséologique Revisité (2009), were included in his retrospective exhibition at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal. Polidori returned to Beirut in 2010 where he photographed the damaged rooms of the famous Hotel Petra, abandoned during Lebanon’s civil war. The following year, he traveled to Paris to photograph the stored art collection of Yves Saint Laurent (designer), and to Venice to photograph the fashion label Bottega Veneta's fall 2011 campaign at the Palazzo Papadopoli. From 2011 to 2015 Polidori also revisited and rephotographed Rio as well as Mumbai, including Dharavi's industrial street facade in a series of tracking shots. Exhibited as composite panoramic murals at Paul Kasmin Gallery (New York) in September 2016, these images were also published in the accompanying volume 60 Feet Road by Steidl Verlag. Since 2015, Polidori and his family live in Ojai, California.Source: Wikipedia My photos are physical graphic records. A lot of the places I’ve photographed simply won’t exist – many have already ceased to exist in the state that they were photographed in. They’ve been bulldozed over. Photography is collective memory – that’s its nature... -- Robert Polidori
Leigh Ann Edmonds
Leigh Ann Edmonds
United States
1980
Leigh Ann is a freelance photographer located in a small town just north of Birmingham, Alabama. Her freelance career spans over 20 years as a professional with portrait, commercial and documentary/editorial work for publications and the entertainment industry. Her work has been in ROLLING STONE, VINTAGE GUITAR and B&W MAGAZINE. She is also an award-winning photographer for her portrait titled 'RODEO'. She is an avid trail runner married to a full-time working musician and her work often reflects that of her lifestyle, showcasing her love of adventure, people and the great outdoors. She received a BA in Studio Art and minor in Journalism from the University of Alabama in 2004 and considers photography more about her visual journey than a professional destination. STATEMENT Over the years I have noticed a pattern with my personal works. I often seek out the road less traveled rather it be within my living environment and community or during my travels. The isolation feels comforting and safe for me, as it allows me to slow down, it is here in these moments, when photography becomes my therapy. I've always been intrigued by the unplanned photograph and my work never is pre-conceptualized. I typically don't know what I will end up photographing and often feed off the energy I am given within that moment when I decide to take the image. The act of shooting is more important to me than the image I capture because it is about the connection I have found with the individual or space I come across. I tend to shoot more on sporadic intuition than thinking the shot through. If I feel something, I don't hesitate and click the shutter only to discover the image later, which can add to the excitement of this experience with my camera. The days I find myself inspired to shoot are days that I long for a connection, rather it be connection with others or the space I am in. I have found that over the years, my photography has become more about a glimpse into who I am more than a means to make a living as a professional. The pattern of my work tends to primarily focus on portraits of locals and the environment of small towns documented in black and white. This approach is to give the sense of isolation and nostalgia of small-town living. I don't want my work to feel 'dated' as I hope those viewing my work will also connect them to that place or person without feeling dated or current. I want my work to gather a sense of timelessness to the viewer and to me. I consider my personal works a journal of my life, my adventures, and a sense of belonging somewhere as I hope others will stumble across and 'read' my photographs when I am gone.
Paul Strand
Paul Strand
United States
1890 | † 1976
Paul Strand was born in New York City. As a teenager, he was a student of renowned documentary photographer Lewis Hine at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School. A visit to Gallery 291 (owned by Alfred Stieglitz) proved to be a strong influence on Strand, who began to take photographs of his own. He experimented with abstraction but also used his camera as a means to promote social reform. Alfred Stieglitz praised these early efforts and featured Strand's work in his gallery and in his magazine Camera Work. In the early 1920s, Strand began to work in motion pictures as well as still photography. In June 1949, Strand left the United States to present a film in Czechoslovakia, an event which marked the beginning of his self-imposed exile overseas due to the prevailing climate of McCarthyism in America. He settled in Orgeval, France and in the ensuing years photographed extensively, and also produced six book "portraits" of places: Time in New England (1950), La France de Profil (1952), Un Paese (1955), Tir a'Mhurain / Outer Hebrides (1962), Living Egypt (1969) and Ghana: An African Portrait (1976).Source: Robert Mann Gallery Strand married the painter Rebecca Salsbury on January 21, 1922. He photographed her frequently, sometimes in unusually intimate, closely cropped compositions. After divorcing Salsbury, Strand married Virginia Stevens in 1935. They divorced in 1949; he then married Hazel Kingsbury in 1951 and they remained married until his death in 1976. The timing of Strand's departure to France is coincident with the first libel trial of his friend Alger Hiss, with whom he maintained a correspondence until his death. Although he was never officially a member of the Communist Party, many of Strand's collaborators were either Party members (James Aldridge; Cesare Zavattini) or prominent socialist writers and activists (Basil Davidson). Many of his friends were also Communists or suspected of being so (Member of Parliament D. N. Pritt; film director Joseph Losey; Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid; actor Alex McCrindle). Strand was also closely involved with Frontier Films, one of more than 20 organizations that were identified as "subversive" and "un-American" by the US Attorney General. When he was asked by an interviewer why he decided to go to France, Strand began by noting that in America, at the time of his departure, "McCarthyism was becoming rife and poisoning the minds of an awful lot of people." During the 1950s, and owing to a printing process that was reportedly only available in that country at the time, Strand insisted that his books be printed in Leipzig, East Germany, even if it meant they were initially banned in the American market on account of their Communist provenance. Following Strand's move to Europe, it was later revealed in de-classified intelligence files, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and now preserved at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, that he was closely monitored by security services.Source: Wikipedia
Jesse Alexander
Jesse Alexander
United States
1929 | † 2021
Jesse Alexander is an American photographer that covers motorsports, portraits, birds and travel. He also published several books. One of his first photo expeditions was in 1953 to the Carrera Panamericana race in Mexico. Since 1954, he covered large European races such as 24 Hours of Le Mans in France, and the Mille Miglia and Targa Florio of Italy. While in Europe he also photographed culture celebrities for New York Times, and was the European editor for Car and Driver magazine. He has exhibited at the Birmingham Museum of Art, the Akron Art Museum, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.Source: Wikipedia Jesse Alexander has been involved in photography and especially motorsports photography since the early 1950s when he covered the original Mexican Road Race. He then spent many years in Europe covering Formula One and the famous long distance sports car races, the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Mille Miglia and Targa Florio. In that period of time he also photographed theater and music personalities for the New York Times. “As a young boy growing up during World War II, I was captivated by the imagery that came out of the war through the eyes of legendary photographers like Edward Steichen and W. Eugene Smith. My other heroes include Henri Cartier-Bresson, Jacques Henri Lartigue, Mary Ellen Mark, Bruce Davidson and Robert Capa”, he said. Jesse’s current body of work includes travel photographs of Iceland, the Galapagos Islands, and birds.Source: Fahey/Klein Gallery In the wake of World War II, a golden age of motor sports emerged in Europe, pitting competing countries against each other on the racetrack instead of the battlefield. A young photographer at the time, Jesse Alexander followed "the circus" and captured on film the adventure, glamour and innocence of this influential period in racing. In one image, Phil Hill waves after winning the 1960 Italian Grand Prix in his Ferrari; in another, Piero Taruffi celebrates his 1957 victory at the Mille Miglia in Brescia, Italy. Since then, Jesse Alexander has remained one of the most acclaimed and commercially successful racecar photographers in the history of the sport. Jesse Alexander's photographs have been exhibited in numerous museums and galleries in the United States, including the Birmingham Museum of Art, the Akron Art Museum, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Source: Robert Klein Gallery
Tanya Lunina
Tanya Lunina
Russia/United States
1973
Tanya Lunina (b. 1973, Russia) is a fine art photographer based in the Chicagoland area where she settled in 2006. Lunina's work is related to both the urban and its neighboring waterfront space in the city of Chicago. She always looks for a personal interpretation of a place and photographically strives to achieve order and balance in her works. Lunina's photographs have been exhibited at several galleries in Illinois, United States. Her work has been published in three juried publications by LensWork Publishing. She also was the first- place winner of the 13th & 14th International Julia Margaret Cameron Awards in the cityscape and landscape/seascape categories. Statement: Lake Michigan, Chicago... Although it is only a few steps from downtown, the city and its noise have been left behind. Located on the foot of Chicago, the lake is heavily affected by man; concrete and metal objects interrupt its shoreline. The altered urban lakefront seems imbalanced with the vast view of water and sky. But, in a big city, the interaction of man and nature is inevitable. These images convey quietness, yet the evidence of urban life. The content of the works binds together simple forms, created by man and nature itself, and gives a sense of presence on the Chicago lakefront.
Pieter Hugo
Pieter Hugo
South Africa
1976
Pieter Hugo was born 1976 and grew up in Cape Town, South Africa. He is a South African photographer who primarily works in portraiture and whose work engages with both documentary and art traditions with a focus on African communities. Hugo is self-taught, having picked up a camera aged 10. He remembers the first image he printed, which was a homeless person in Johannes. After working in the film industry in Cape Town, Pieter Hugo spent a two-year Residency at Fabrica, Treviso, Italy. Hugo has called himself a political-with-a-small-p photographer... it's hard not to be as soon as you pick up a camera in South Africa'. He believes that "the power of photography is inherently voyeuristic but I want that desire to look to be confronted." He also states that he is "deeply suspicious of the power of photography." Early on in his career he noticed that, "he often found himself being critically scrutinized by the subject he was photographing. It was then that he decided to switch to a larger and more cumbersome format of photography, one that would require negotiating consent and dialogue with the person being photographed - a more sedate and contemplative approach." He is known to use a Hasselblad camera and regularly shoots in the 4x5 format. His influences range from South African photojournalist David Goldblatt to Boris Mikhailov. However, his work reacts against 'the culture of realism that defined South African photography in the struggle years.' Hugo's first major photo collection Looking Aside consisted of a collection of portraits of people "whose appearance makes us look aside", his subjects including the blind, people with albinism, the aged, his family and himself. Explaining his interest in the marginal he has said, "My homeland is Africa, but I'm white. I feel African, whatever that means, but if you ask anyone in South Africa if I'm African, they will almost certainly say no. I don't fit into the social topography of my country and that certainly fuelled why I became a photographer." This was followed by Rwanda 2004: Vestiges of a Genocide which the Rwanda Genocide Institute describes as offering "a forensic view of some of the sites of mass execution and graves that stand as lingering memorials to the many thousands of people slaughtered." His most recognized work is the series called The Hyena & Other Men and which was published as a monograph. It has received a great deal of attention. Hugo won first prize in the Portraits section of the World Press Photo 2005 for a portrait of a man with a hyena. In 2007, Hugo received the Standard Bank Young Artist Award 07. Hugo was also working on a series of photographs called Messina/Mussina that were taken in the town of Musina on the border between Zimbabwe and South Africa and which was published as a monograph. At the time Colors magazine asked Hugo to work on an AIDS story and he was fascinated by the marginal aspect of the town. This was followed by a return to Nigeria with Nollywood, which consists of pictures of the Nigerian film industry. Permanent Error followed in 2011 where Hugo photographed the people and landscape of an expansive dump of obsolete technology in Ghana. Sean O'Toole writes "if Nollywood was playfully over-the-top, a smart riposte to accusations of freakishness and racism leveled at his photography..., Permanent Error marks Hugo’s return to a less self-reflexive mode of practice." In 2011 Hugo collaborated with Michel Cleary and co-directed the video of South African producer/DJ Spoek Mathambo's cover version of Joy Division's She's Lost Control, the fourth single from his album Mshini Wam. Commissioned by Italian luxury label Bottega Veneta, Hugo photographed models Amanda Murphy and Mark Cox for the brand’s spring/summer 2014 campaign, with the images shot in a wood in New Jersey. In the Spring of 2014, Hugo was commissioned by Creative Court to go to Rwanda and capture stories of forgiveness as a part of Creative Court's project Rwanda 20 Years: Portraits of Forgiveness. The project was displayed in The Hague in the Atrium of The Hague City Hall for the 20th commemoration of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. A selection of the photos have also been displayed in New York at the exhibition Post-Conflict which was curated by Bradley McCallum, Artist in Residence for the Coalition for the International Criminal Court. Flat Noodle Soup (2016) chronicles Hugo's lengthy engagement with the city of Beijing, exploring how concerns with expressing personal identity within societal norms and pressures are universal and transnational. La Cucaracha is a 2019 body of work made during four trips to Mexico over a two-year period. The photographic series explores Hugo's perception of the flamboyant and violent environment of Mexico with overt art historical references to the nation's visual canon of pre-colonial customs and revolutionary ideology.Source: Wikipedia Between 2006 and 2013, Pieter Hugo worked on a project that he called Kin. This deals with home, proximity, identification and a sense of belonging – something that, in South Africa, he has always experienced as being critical and riddled with conflict: How can one live in this country, which only shed its colonial heritage relatively recently, and which is plagued by racism and a growing chasm between rich and poor? Hugo shot photos at home, in townships and at historical sites, taking portraits of his pregnant wife, of domestic servants and of homeless people. The calm and clearly composed shots show beauty and ugliness, wealth and poverty, private and public, historical and topical. Without either idealising or dramatizing the subject matter, they paint a portrait of the complex society in South Africa today. This is because any notion of harmony in the “Rainbow Nation” is wishful thinking. Even twenty years after the end of apartheid, black and white South Africans are still very much divided. In the series of 94 platinum prints There Is A Place in Hell for Me and My Friends (2011-2012), Pieter Hugo explores the supposed differences between skin colours. To do so, he took portraits of himself and South African friends. The close-ups, generally in the form of frontal head and shoulder portraits, were digitally processed afterwards. The image manipulation, whereby the colour channels were translated into grey tones, emphasise the pigmentation of the skin, using UV irradiation to render visible skin damage and small blood vessels directly beneath the skin. The results are quite astounding: on these photographs, all people are coloured. There is no longer a difference between “white” and “black” skin, but rather a variety of individual shades. The portraits show the powerful presence of each individual and, at the same time, the fragility of all people and the softness and utter vulnerability of their outer shell. With his various photo series, Pieter Hugo has put together an impressive body of work in the space of just a few years. Through this intense perception of corporeality, he captures the complexity and inconsistency of society. Constants in his work include seriousness, neutrality and an underlying respect for his protagonists, whose dignity always remains intact. In this regard, his works are comparable with the monumental portrait works of August Sanders, who created a contemporary picture of the Weimar Republic with his large-scale cycle “Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts” (People of the 20th Century).Source: Priska Pasquer
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