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Pedro Luis Saiz Ajuriaguerra
Pedro Luis Saiz Ajuriaguerra
Pedro Luis Saiz Ajuriaguerra

Pedro Luis Saiz Ajuriaguerra

Country: Spain
Birth: 1974

Pedro Luis Saiz Ajuriaguerra (Bilbao, Bizkaia, Spain, 1974). self-taught photographer, began his career back in 2011 discovering a passion that was unknown, the beginning do little more than encourage their concerns are increasing making try almost all disciplines of photography, highlighting mainly in sports photography, and architectural photography.

It has the distinctions MCEF / o (Gold Master of the Spanish Confederation of Photography) and EFIAP / g (Gold Excellence of the International Federation of Photographic Art).

He is currently collaborating with magazines such as BAO Bilbao Magazine, Bilbao Tourism, Bilbao Bizkaia Tour Magazine and for different sports promoters such as MGZ Promotions, Euskobox etc.

Judge in more than 20 international competitions.

He has participated in numerous International competition and has managed numerous medals of FIAP, PSA, GPU, IUP, DPA, UPI, CVB, ISF, PCA (50 FIAP Gold Medals and around 70 PSA Gold Medals), just over 400 awards and more than 5000 acceptances by various international photographic salons in the last years.

The predator of instants
He is shy, thin, with white skin and very large, green, expressive eyes. They are eyes that capture everything; Suddenly, they focus on a sheet of time and begin to create a painting.

The camera is just the harpoon that he catches that moment. Before, Pedro Luís has studied the hunting area. And then he will catch the moment before showing the trophy.

He is a predator. "I'm not obsessed with light, or color, or movement. I am very attracted to various disciplines such as sports, architecture and extreme macro. I am looking for a place, event or object and I begin my research on what can be photographed, which can last for weeks. Then I let myself go, "he explains. "It is essential to tell stories with photos. A good photograph must relate something. A photo is a story, a short story. Of course, it is not always possible. But the most impressive photos always have a story inside ".

He insists that passion is the descriptive element of his photographic style. "It is my strong point, it forces me to go further." That passion is transmitted to the photo "with a lot of contrast, sharpness and blacks pushed to the limit; with marked shadows, the light is there. It is a style close to the comic ".

The photo does not exist although the moment already feels that it carries the harpoon on its back. "It is necessary to complement two processes: a good photograph and a good edition. He did a lot of editing work ", "A photo, once you have taken it, you have worked on it, you have it finished, it loses part of its value for me. It is tremendous. It may be something subconscious, but once the process is complete, it loses its charm. And I do not stop finding defects. It also happens to me that the more I see a photo, it becomes devalued, it comes off the ability to surprise me. It is the essence of the predator. He needs new blood. A recent trail. The stimulus to capture prey that he has not yet seen.
 

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More Great Photographers To Discover

Dawoud Bey
United States
1953
Dawoud Bey (born David Edward Smikle; 1953) is an American photographer and educator known for his large-scale art photography and street photography portraits, including American adolescents in relation to their community, and other often marginalized subjects. In 2017, Bey was named a fellow and the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and is regarded as one of the "most innovative and influential photographers of his generation". Bey is a professor and Distinguished Artist at Columbia College Chicago.] According to The New York Times, "in the seemingly simple gesture of photographing Black subjects in everyday life, [Bey, an African-American,] helped to introduce Blackness in the context of fine art long before it was trendy, or even accepted" Born David Edward Smikle in New York City's Jamaica, Queens neighborhood, he changed his name to Dawoud Bey in the early 1970s. Bey graduated from Benjamin N. Cardozo High School. He studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York from 1977 to 1978, and spent the next two years as part of the CETA-funded Cultural Council Foundation Artists Project. In 1990, he graduated with a BFA in Photography from Empire State College, and received his MFA from Yale University School of Art in 1993. Bey didn't receive his first camera until he was 15, and has stated until that point he wanted to become a musician. Early musical inspirations included John Coltrane and early photography inspirations were James Van Der Zee and Roy Decarava. In his youth, Bey joined the Black Panthers Party and sold their newspaper on street corners. He does not consider his work to be traditional documentary. He'll pose subjects, remind them of gestures and sometimes give them accessories. Over the course of his career, Bey has participated in more than 20 artist residencies, which have allowed him to work directly with the adolescent subjects of his most recent work. A product of the 1960s, Bey said both he and his work are products of the attitude, "if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem." This philosophy significantly influenced his artistic practice and resulted in a way of working that is both community-focused and collaborative in nature. Bey's earliest photographs, in the style of street photography, evolved into a seminal five-year project documenting the everyday life and people of Harlem in Harlem USA (1975-1979) that was exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1979. In 2012, the Art Institute of Chicago mounted the first complete showing of the "Harlem, USA" photographs since that original exhibition, adding several never before printed photographs to the original group of twenty-five vintage prints. The complete group of photographs were acquired at that time by the AIC. During the 1980s, Bey collaborated with the artist David Hammons, documenting the latter's performance pieces - Bliz-aard Ball Sale and Pissed Off. Over time Bey proves that he develops a bond with his subjects with being more political. The article "Exhibits Challenge Us Not to Look Away Photographers Focus on Pain, Reality in the City" by Carolyn Cohen from the Boston Globe, identifies Bey's work as having a "definite political edge" to it according to Roy DeCarava. He writes more about the aesthetics of Beys work and how it is associated with documentary photography and how his work shows empathy for his subjects. This article also mentions Bey exhibiting his work at the Walker Art Center, where Kelly Jones identifies the strength of his work and his relationship with his subjects once again. Of his work with teenagers Bey has said, "My interest in young people has to do with the fact that they are the arbiters of style in the community; their appearance speaks most strongly of how a community of people defines themselves at a particular historical moment." During a residency at the Addison Gallery of American Art in 1992, Bey began photographing students from a variety of high schools both public and private, in an effort to "reach across lines of presumed differences" among the students and communities. This new direction in his work guided Bey for the next fifteen years, including two additional residencies at the Addison, an ample number of similar projects across the country, and culminated in a major 2007 exhibition and publication of portraits of teenagers organized by Aperture and entitled Class Pictures.] Alongside each of the photographs in Class Pictures, is a personal statement written by each subject. "[Bey] manages to capture all the complicated feelings of being young — the angst, the weight of enormous expectations, the hope for the future - with a single look." Bey's "The Birmingham Project" was inspired, in part, by a 1960s Civil Rights era photograph by Frank Dandridge of 16th Street Baptist Church bombing victim, Sarah Jean Collins. The Project includes a series of diptychs of an older person, alive when the bombing occurred, paired with a child the age of the victims, portraying "an almost unbearable sense of absence and loss." In 2018, his project Night Coming Tenderly, Black, consists of a series of photographs evoking the imagined experience of escaped slaves moving northward along the Underground Railroad. This work involves not portraits but landscapes, portrayed at night through the means a little used silver-gelatin process. The work seeks to evoke both terror and hope in a "land of fugitives". Bey has lived in Chicago, Illinois since 1998. He is a professor of art and Distinguished College Artist at Columbia College Chicago. Source: Wikipedia
Mariana Basurto
Mexico
1976
My name is Mariana Basurto. I was born in Mexico City and I'm passionate about exploring the world with my camera in hand. My photography seeks to invade the intimacy of the streets, to extract and represent the magic that is perceived in everyday life and show the world from my eyes. Through my lens I seek to capture the unique and different everyday life with a personal stamp. With every click of my camera I connect with people through a smile or conversation where I have achieved spontaneity, intimacy and respect. There are three people and a country that triggered my passion for street photography at various times in my life. My grandfather and my father taught me to never stop being surprised in life and this fueled the action of exploring the planet. Today, I have visited more than seventy-five countries in the world and I have had the opportunity to live in five of them. My sister inspired me to photography when we traveled together and she captured moments with her Kodak camera from the 1980’s. Finally, having lived in a city like Shanghai motivated me to tell with my lens the fascinating stories that are lived every day in a country as special as China. I hold an Industrial Engineering degree and Professional Cook but abandoned both careers to focus on photography. I’m a member the Women street photography and Mexican Street Photography Collectives. I’m interested in documentary, travel and street photography. My medium-long-term documentary projects are: • At their home – Show how people live around the world. Through my connection on the street I have managed to enter people's homes and they have shown me how they live. • Elder beauty portrait- Document the expressions, textures and stories of elderly men and women from different cultures who through their skin show a unique beauty • Quirks – Fun and unique things from everyday life that represent cultures, places or people I have recently participated in worldwide exhibitions in Hong Kong, New York, Iran, Mexico but my greatest reward is seeing people's expressions when I show them their photo. They feel happy, heard, and represented. I currently live in Charlotte, North Carolina, in the United States in constant search of new places to visit and stories that my lens can tell Statement My photography is a unique, personal dialogue between the images and viewer, crafted with the passion and privilege of capturing human connections and truths, often challenging prevailing narratives without compromise,. My main belief is that: “Never stop being amazed”
Jaroslav Rössler
Czech Republic
1902 | † 1990
Jaroslav Rössler was a pioneer of Czech avant-garde photography and a member of the association of Czech avant-garde artists Devětsil (Butterbur). He was born to the Czech-German father, Eduard Rössler, and a Czech mother, Adéla Nollová. From 1917 to 1920, Rössler studied in the atelier of the company owned by renowned Czech photographer František Drtikol. Subsequently, he worked with the company as a laboratory technician. At 21 years old, he began a collaboration with the art theorist Karel Teige, who assigned him to create a typographic layout for magazines Pásmo, Disk, Stavba and ReD (Revue Devětsilu). While working on these tasks, Rössler deepened his knowledge of photographic methods. In his works he utilized and combined the techniques of photogram, photomontage, collage and drawing. The beginnings of his photographic work were influenced by Cubism and Futurism, but he also attempted to create the first abstract photographs. In 1923, he became a member of the avant-garde association Devětsil. In 1925, he went on a six-month study visit to Paris. The same year he began working as a photographer in the Osvobozené divadlo in Prague. Before his second departure to Paris, he co-worked as a commercial photographer with the pictorial magazine Pestrý týden. In 1927, Rössler moved to Paris together with his wife, Gertruda Fischerová (1894–1976). Initially, he focused on commercial photography. He collaborated with the experimental studio of Lucien Lorell, and worked on commissions for notable companies such as Michelin and Shell. However, later he found an interest in the "street life" of Paris, which influenced his future stay in the city. During a demonstration, he encountered the protesters and took photographs of the event. Shortly after that he was arrested, and after a six-month imprisonment, he was expelled from the country, in 1935. The alleged reason for his expulsion was his German-sounding surname. After his return from Paris, Rössler and his wife resided in Prague, Žižkov. He opened a small photographic atelier, but difficulties associated with the management of the studio caused a significant gap in his artistic work, lasting for almost two decades. In the 1950s, he resumed his previous activities and again began experimenting with the camera and photographic techniques. He created so-called prizmata (prisms), photographs taken through a birefringent prism. Additionally, he experimented with solarisation and explored the possibilities of the Sabatier effect. Jaroslav Rössler, together with František Drtikol, Josef Sudek and Jaromír Funke, is today considered an important exponent of Czech modern photography and avant-garde art.Source: Wikipedia Jaroslav Rössler was one of the most distinctive artists of the Czech avant-garde, known for fusing disparate elements of Symbolism, Pictorialism, Expressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism, New Objectivity and abstract art. From 1917 to 1920, Rossler studied and worked as a lab technician under František Drtikol, but he quickly abandoned the pictorialist style of his famous teacher, turning instead to more avant-garde techniques and compositional approaches, including experiments with photograms, enlarged detail, diagonal composition, photomontage, double exposure, and experiments with color advertising photographs and still lifes produced with the carbro print process. Jaroslav Rössler often photographed objects against stark backgrounds, or used long exposures, to reduce subjects to their elementary lines and geometric shapes. In 1923 he became a member of the assocation of Czech avant- garde artists Devětsil. From 1927 to 1935, he lived and worked in Paris, producing work influenced by Constructivism and New Objectivity. After his return to Prague, he was relatively inactive until the late 1950s, when he renewed experimentations with solarization and photographing through a prism.Source: Robert Koch Gallery
Isabeau De Rouffignac
I followed an artistic career path with a drawing baccalaureate, 2 years of preparatory classes at the Met de Penninghen studio, then I entered the graphic art school. This was followed by a long experience in design agencies (Design Strategy Orchestra), communication agencies (CPP) and manufacturing agencies (Vision Prod) as an employee and then as a freelancer since 1999. It is this status that will allow me to devote myself to photography, which I discovered in the 2000s. It was a revelation, and soon became obvious. Since then, I have been photographing worlds far and near, between a documentary approach and a resolutely artistic approach. A line of conduct, like a thread that runs through my work and gives it coherence: approaching the other, taming them, taking the time, learning their language, being forgotten, with a gaze that is always curious and fundamentally empathetic. Four photographic editions were born from this work. Since 2017, I devote all my time to photography. And although I have an initial training that integrates the work of the image and a long-standing photographic practice, I felt the need to go further, to question my writing, and I have therefore attended several workshops and training courses. (Arles, Cifap, Gobelins) In 2018, I became a member of Studio Hans Lucas Today, the more I advance in my artistic practice, the more I approach my projects from a documentary point of view, but with an aesthetic or even plastic approach from the start. By mixing these different ways of working on my subject, I leave the imposed categories (documentary, plastic photography, etc.) to invent my own language that allows me to convey a message (environmental, social, humanitarian, political, etc.). This is the case in my latest work in India, pleas. In Bhopal, they point out the consequences of the worst chemical disaster the world has ever known, and in Rajsamand, they tell of the difficult working conditions of the miners. Statement An intuition, a call following the reading of an article or a book, moves me from my daily life in the metropolis and I set off to meet the other. The country is always far away, the situation speaks of a reprieve. Through photography I seek an encounter with the other, the other in what is different about him, his way of life, his language, which I try as much as possible to learn in order to be in touch with him. I am looking for an encounter with a place that also has its own language that often says the impalpable, what does not always appear at first sight, a place to be deciphered. In these encounters, I also seek an encounter with myself, because the other person questions me, challenges me, shakes up my preconceptions, pushes me to question myself. In my last work on the miners of Rajasthan, I sought to pay tribute to men in pain, working in sandstone or marble quarries, working without safety clothing, for a ridiculous salary, without a work contract, and more than half of whom suffer from silicosis because they work without masks. In most of my other photographic works, I try to bear witness but also to show a cultural heritage that is on the verge of disappearing, and to talk about those who keep it alive and often fight against a progressive assimilation. Of course, the time needed for these encounters, for this acceptance by the communities in which I immerse myself, implies taking time. A lot of time. It is the only way to establish the links that open doors, give access to knowledge, beliefs, and sometimes even confidences. Learning the Hindi language has helped me to better understand the personal stories of all the men and women I have photographed, to understand the distress that lies behind their dignity. I try to document the issues through personal stories that are each unique and singular. This is what I have done here with the miners of Rajasthan, or previously with the women of Bhopal, the postmen of Rajasthan, or the Akhas of Thailand. I offer you my view, nourished by what my encounters have revealed to me, my way of documenting it, as close as possible or with distance when necessary. A view that I hope will open up the possibility of better understanding, or at least of trying. That's already a lot.
Richard Nickel
Poland/United States
1928 | † 1972
Richard Nickel was an American architectural photographer and preservationist best known for documenting and preserving historic architecture, particularly the works of renowned architect Louis Sullivan. Nickel, who was born on May 31, 1928, in Chicago, Illinois, developed an early interest in photography and architecture. Nickel began documenting Chicago's architectural legacy in the 1950s and 1960s, focusing on buildings designed by Louis Sullivan, one of the forefathers of modern American architecture. His photographs captured Sullivan's buildings' intricate details, ornamental features, and craftsmanship, highlighting their beauty and significance. During the mid-twentieth century, Nickel became increasingly concerned about the destruction and neglect of historic buildings in Chicago. He understood the significance of architectural preservation and saw photography as a means of raising awareness about the need to protect these structures. Nickel actively advocated for the preservation of historic buildings in addition to his photography. He campaigned against the demolition of Sullivan's iconic Chicago Stock Exchange Building, which, despite his efforts, was demolished in 1972. Nickel's photographs of the building, as well as his writings on the subject, raised public awareness of the loss and inspired the Chicago preservation movement. On April 13, 1972, Richard Nickel was killed while photographing the ruins of the Chicago Stock Exchange Building, which was being demolished. Despite his untimely death, his legacy was preserved and exhibited posthumously through his photographs. Nickel's work had a significant impact on architectural preservation and historic building appreciation. His photographs captured not only the physical structures of the buildings, but also their spirit and essence, revealing their historical and cultural significance. His dedication to architectural preservation continues to inspire individuals and organizations working to protect our architectural heritage. Richard Nickel's contributions as a photographer and preservationist serve as a reminder of how important it is to document and cherish our architectural treasures so that future generations can appreciate and learn from them.
Anna Laza
Romania
"I started to be in photography about 15 years ago. At that time I used to model and participate in shootings. But quite quickly I got bored with posing and was becoming more curious to stand on the other side of the camera. So slowly, but certainly I started my own way in the big universe of photography. I have principles in my shootings and always keep in focus my own style. It’s very important for an artist to both keep his/her unique style and progress in it at the same time. When I shoot women I avoid sexualizing them and even photographing naked bodies there’ll be no sexual vision in the image, but sensual and sophisticated." Anna Laza is an influential visual artist working in Art and Fashion photography. Her projects are focused on finding new innovative styles both shooting and post-processing. Her work has been rewarded and been exhibited internationally, she has won in a number of famous photo contests, including LensCulture, MonoVisions and Minimalist Awards. She is often published in photography magazines and regularly appears on prestigious jury lists for photographic events. Besides her own photography, she is also a creator of the magazine FotoSlovo, which highlights every year new emerging talents in photography from Russia & CIS counties. Metaphysical Body Landscapes "My childhood I've spent at my grandmother's house in Romania, near the Carpathian Mountains. Seeing human's strong bond with the earth, observing nature, landscapes around influenced my understanding of earth beauty and men's connexion with it. All being is something whole, indivisible. Earth, sky, plants, fruits, mountains, rivers, men, women, day, night- all merged together and flow into each other. This process is infinite and harmonious. Men came from the earth, lives on earth and will return to earth. And landscapes of the earth are seen in body curves. Growing up I moved to live in big cities, my grandmother passed away and I felt the loss of spiritual connexion with nature. To reconnect, I start to search the Landscapes in body in my photography."
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