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Peter Devenyi
Photo © Francisca Filleul
Peter Devenyi
Peter Devenyi

Peter Devenyi

Country: Canada

My experience with art began in childhood, studying the art in the many books in our house, and looking long at the art of my ancestors on the walls. As my mother was a visual artist, I would also witness the creative process from early on within her studio. I also grew up always close to nature, and would so observe the cycle of renewal therein—and be influenced by the formal perfection which somehow arises out of necessity. Later taking a bachelor's degree in studio art from the University of Ottawa, Canada, I have since pursued further studies including art history, philosophy of art and aesthetics, as well as the sciences in parallel with my experimental photographic and digital artistic activity.

Statement:
While I have long admired the imagery of classical photography, I further believe that I have no less been influenced by the pictorial nature of images which prove to be no less common to the history of painting. The introspective nature of light as it appears within Netherlandish painting might somehow connote the immediacy of photographic realism, whereas the diffusive quality of British watercolour similarly remains a formative influence even within the most experimental of my lens-based artwork.
 

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Paul Brouns
The Netherlands
I am a Dutch photographing artist that lives and works in Almere (near Amsterdam). I was born in 1967 in a small village in the South of the Netherlands. In 1990 I graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Tilburg (NL) in painting, drawing and photography. In the 1990's photography was still an analogue process and not having a darkroom of my own, in those early decades I was busy painting, because I wanted to work with colours and that was the most direct way to do this. However after the development of digital photography all of this started to change. By now my camera and the computer have gradually become my main tools for creation. Rhythm, color and geometry have always been important in my work and for this architecture has proven to be an ideal subject. As a photographer I am attracted by the abstract, rhythmic expression of buildings. It is my aim to captivate the viewers by feasts of dancing shadows, sunlit reflections or colour combinations. I hope that through my work they will learn to appreciate and enjoy the visual music that surrounds us. The Music of Architecture My motto "the music of architecture" stands for the artistic desire to communicate the abstract beauty of buildings. In the abstraction I see an important parallel with instrumental music. Terms like rhythm, composition, texture, scale and colour can be used to describe the feeling of my work, but it also can be applied to describe music. I try to visualise the sensation of a building as purely as possible: many images show façades that are completely frontal and fill the entire composition, so the rhythm and shallow depth of the building surface plays the main role. This ongoing series is called "Urban Tapestries". In other works the perspective depth and its converging lines play an important role. A third element is using my photographic elements to create a new reality. What unites these different elements is my desire to express myself through images that are all about the fascination with colour and rhythm.
Debe Arlook
United States
Debe Arlook is an award-winning American artist working in photography. Since her first camera at 8 years old, she has been a curious observer of her surroundings. Degrees in filmmaking and psychology inform her narratives involving the landscape, relationships, personal growth, and existential inquiry. At the end of a 20-year marriage with three teenagers to raise, Arlook's spiritual awareness practice deepened. Still photography became an expressive outlet and tool for self-discovery. In addition to her studio practice, Arlook is an educator, contributing editor, and digital printer for fine art photographers. Based in Santa Monica, California, U.S.A., her work is exhibited and published globally Statement I've often described myself as having grown up from behind the lens. During my 40s and 50s, my role as a parent and spouse dwindled as my kids became teenagers and my marriage fell apart. As painful as these petites morts were, they were catalysts for self-discovery and rebirth. My mind quieted and the curious child I once was returned. My senses magnified and I could now see what had been overlooked. I became introspective and so did the work. It took time to understand the underlying messages each photograph held for me. I didn't realize they reflected my deep-seated thoughts and emotions. I had to step outside my ego in order to see I was photographing aspects of myself. And this was street photography! I had no idea each photograph is in some way a self-portrait and still, I often forget. Photography is the conduit in my attempt to understand human nature, my surroundings, and the big existential questions. With each project, I alter the visual language using diverse photographic processes specific to each narrative. In Foreseeable Cache, I create alternate worlds using sublime southwestern landscapes to evoke transcendent feelings of meditation. My latest body of work and first documentary, one, one thousand…, is a different kind of love story. It exposes the hidden impact a rare brain disorder has on the lives of a mother and son, focusing on their individual and shared experiences of life-long care. I continue to massage this work and watch it reveal itself to me, as my work does at some point. ARTICLES Exclusive Interview with Debe Arlook All About Photo Presents 'one, one thousand' by Debe Arlook
Gregory Heisler
United States
1954
Gregory Heisler is a professional photographer known for his evocative portrait work often found on the cover of magazines, such as Time, for which he has produced a number of Man, Person, and People of the Year covers. Heisler once had his White House photographer privileges revoked after taking a photograph of President George H.W. Bush for Time magazine in which Heisler used in-camera techniques of double exposure to show what the cover labeled the two faces of Bush. The president was unaware of this photographic technique being used at the time of the shot. Bush press secretary Marlin Fitzwater later wrote about his own anger over this incident in his memoir Call the Briefing! Heisler's trade group protested the ban because it was based on an editorial opinion that was expressed. Heisler has since taken photographs of President George W. Bush. Among the awards, Heisler has received are: 1986 ASMP Corporate Photographer of the Year, 1988 Leica Medal of Excellence, 1991 World Image Award, 2000 Alfred Eisenstaedt Award. In September 2009 Gregory Heisler took a position as Artist-in-Residence at the Hallmark Institute of Photography in Turners Falls, Massachusetts. He acted as a teacher and liaison between the students and world of professional photography, expanding their present curriculum, and providing the students with necessary skills and techniques the school did not previously teach. Heisler has now joined the Multimedia Photography & Design program at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University as a distinguished professor of photography, according to an announcement by the NPPA on April 25, 2014.
Eric Kunsman
United States
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Eric T. Kunsman (b. 1975) was born and raised in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. While in high school, he was heavily influenced by the death of the steel industry and its place in American history. The exposure to the work of Walker Evans during this time hooked Eric onto photography. Eric had the privilege to study under Lou Draper, who became Eric’s most formative mentor. He credits Lou with influencing his approach as an educator, photographer, and contributing human being. Eric holds his MFA in Book Arts/Printmaking from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia and holds an MS in Electronic Publishing/Graphic Arts Media, BS in Biomedical Photography, BFA in Fine Art photography, all from the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York. Currently, he is a photographer and book artist based out of Rochester, New York. Eric works at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) as an Assistant Professor in the Visual Communications Studies Department at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf and is an adjunct professor for the School of Photographic Arts & Sciences. In addition to lectures, he provides workshops on topics including his artistic practice, digital printing, and digital workflow processes. He provided industry seminars for the highly regarded Printing Applications Lab at RIT. His photographs and books are exhibited internationally and are in several collections. He currently owns Booksmart Studio, which is a fine art digital printing studio specializing in numerous techniques and services for photographers and book artists on a collaborative basis. Eric’s work has been exhibited in over 35 solo exhibitions at such venues as Nicolaysen Art Museum, Hoyt Institute of Fine Art, Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, and numerous university galleries. His work has also been a part of over 150 group exhibitions over the past four years, including exhibitions at the Center for Photography, A. Smith Gallery, SPIVA, San Luis Obispo Museum of Art, Spartanburg Museum of Art, Atlanta Photography Group, CEPA Gallery, Site: Brooklyn, Colorado Photographic Arts Center, Philadelphia Photo Arts Center, and many more. Eric was named one of 10 B&W photographers to watch of 2018 by BWGallerist; B&W Best Photographers of the Year 2019 by Dodho Magazine; won the Association of Photography (UK) Gold Award for Open Series in 2019; Finalist, Top 200 Critical Mass 2019, 2020, 2021; Top 15 Photographers for the Rust Belt Biennial; and Lensculture B&W Jurors’ Pick 2021. His Project Felicific Calculus was also awarded a Warhol Foundations Grant through CEPA Gallery in Buffalo, NY. Eric’s work has also been published in magazines such as; Bloomberg Businessweek, LensWork, Dodho, B&W Photography, Analog Explorations, All About Photo, Black+White Photography (UK), Dek Unu, along with online articles by Analog Forever Magazine, Catalyst: Interview, Texas Photo Society, and others. There's no “given,” formula for what demands Eric’s focus as a photographer. Eric is as drawn to the landscapes and neglected towns of the American southwest as he is to the tensions of struggling rustbelt cities in the U.S. northeast. Eric is attracted to objects left behind, especially those that hint at a unique human narrative, a story waiting to be told. Eric’s current work explores one of those relics: working payphones hidden in plain sight throughout the neighborhood near his studio in Rochester, NY. Associates suggested they signified a high crime area. This project's shown Eric something very different. Felicific Calculus: Technology as a Social Marker of Class, Race, & Economics in Rochester, NY The felicific calculus is an algorithm formulated by jurist and reformer Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) for calculating the moral rightness of an action by balancing the probable pleasures and pains that it would produce. Bentham, a utilitarian philosopher, believed this calculus could, in principle, help determine the moral status of any considered act. In 2017, I relocated my studio to a different part of Rochester, NY. Colleagues immediately started making comments along the lines of: "...that area's a war zone." My experience with the new neighborhood was positive, so I wanted to discover what visual cues others might be seeing as indicators of a dangerous environment. Several people had mentioned the number of payphones in the area, inferring that only criminals use payphones these days. There really were a lot of payphones in my neighborhood. 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Witnessing that type of reflexive judgement from my colleagues drove me to educate myself. I photographed payphones and mapped their locations, then overlaid them with census maps showing economic status, ethnicity, age and sex, and the city crime map. There was an immediate, direct correlation between the poverty level and location of the payphones. Areas with the most payphones coincided with Rochester neighborhoods where the average family incomes are lower than $20,000 annually. There was also no correlation with high crime neighborhoods. Through Felicific Calculus I hope to challenge negative perceptions of social markers that conflate poverty with crime. Though they are relics to most of us, payphones remain important for residents trapped in lower economic circumstances. 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Erwin Olaf
Netherlands
1959 | † 2023
Erwin Olaf (b. 1959) is an internationally exhibiting artist with works in the collections of museums and galleries around the world. Olaf has received numerous highly prestigious commissions and awards. Olaf emerged onto the international art scene when his series ‘Chessmen’ won the Young European Photographer of the Year award in 1988. This was followed by an exhibition at the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, with subsequent solo and group shows at major museums and galleries around the world, including Centro de Arte Contemporaneo de Málaga, Museum of Image and Sound in São Paulo, Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, SECCA in North Carolina and Santiago Museum of Contemporary Art. In 2018 the Rijksmuseum has accuired 500 key artworks from his fourty-year oeuvre for their collection. This follows recent official portraits for the Dutch royal family and the design of the new Euro coin for King Willem Alexander. Rutger Pontzen, art critic for Dutch newspaper the Volkskrant said, ‘Controversial or not, Erwin Olaf does give a picture of the Netherlands’.. ‘and that makes him distinctive in Dutch photography’.. ‘In other words, his oeuvre belongs to the cultural heritage’. Starting his career as a photojournalist documenting the gay scene of the 1980s, Olaf increasingly sought and defined his own subjects, often explored in series of works in black and white (Squares, Chessmen and Blacks) and colour (Mind of their Own, Rain, Hope, Grief, Dusk, and Dawn). In recent years he has developed his themes through the form of monumental tableaux, for which he adopts the role of director as well as photographer. Olaf is a master of this craft, a virtuoso in the fine and subtle arts of photography and drama suffused with stillness, contemplation and dreamlike mystery. He is also a true picture maker, showing a close affinity with Old Masters and contemporary artists alike, from Rembrandt to Mapplethorpe, and in that sense his work emphatically bridges the gap between historical and contemporary picture-making. Now internationally renowned, Erwin Olaf’s photography remains an essential part of the Netherlands’ cultural heritage. Taco Dibbits, Rijksmuseum director, says, ‘his work is deeply rooted in the visual traditions of Dutch art and history’ and that consequently Olaf is ‘one of the most important photographers of the final quarter of the 20th century’. From progression to decay, notions of transformation are prevalent throughout Olaf’s work with a multitude of projects proving his fascination for society’s ever-changing demands, its simultaneous development and devolution of our moral compass, and its cultivated sense of anticipation for an almost-achievable contentment. These are the preoccupations that add a fascinating dimension to ‘Skin Deep’ and ‘Tamed and Anger’, but also colour the tension in ‘Separation’ which explores the artist’s relationship with his mother, the controversial ‘Royal Blood’, the pressures of ageing in ‘Mature’ and the self-portrait series ‘I Wish, I Am, I Will Be’. All these projects reveal the friction of an imperfect reality hidden beneath a perfectly curated façade. His most recent work sees the conclusion of the three-part project ‘Shifting Metropolises’ [working title] - a series of artworks looking at internationally renowned cities undergoing seismic change in the modern world. Rather than fabricating a controlled studio environment, this trilogy is the only time the artist has shot on location, retaining his characteristic cinematic associations to produce a body of work wrought with the genuine emotions and neuroses of these places and their inhabitants. A bold approach to his work has earned Olaf a number of commissions from institutions including Louis Vuitton, Vogue, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, and the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, for which he designed the 2016 ‘Catwalk’ exhibition, including a promotional video and photographic campaign. He has been awarded Photographer of the Year in the International Colour Awards 2006 and Kunstbeeld magazine’s Dutch Artist of the Year 2007 as well as the Netherlands’ prestigious Johannes Vermeer Prize. Additional international awards include the Infinity Award from the International Centre of Photography, the Silver Lion at the Cannes Lions Festival for Advertising, and a Lucie Award from the United States for his whole oeuvre. In 2013 he won the commission to redesign the Dutch Euro coins, which have been in circulation since 2014. Olaf has screened video work at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Museum at FIT in New York, and at Nuit Blanche in Toronto with a live score commissioned for his series ‘Waiting’. He has also projected his 30 channel video installation ‘L’Éveil' onto the Hôtel de Ville for Nuit Blanche in Paris, curated by Jean de Loisy (Director, Palais de Tokyo). In March 2018 the Museu da Imagem e do Som in São Paulo hosted a retrospective of his work. In 2019 Shanghai Center of Photography (SCôP) will host a solo exhibition. The Gemeentemuseum The Hague and The Hague Museum of Photography will host an anniversary solo exhibition for Erwin Olaf his 60th birthday, and to celebrate 40 years of photography. In 2019 there will be a new retrospective monograph released, published by Hannibal, Aperture, Xavier Barral and Prestel. Erwin Olaf (born 1959, Hilversum, the Netherlands) lives and works in Amsterdam. Source: www.erwinolaf.com
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