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Enter AAP Magazine 54 Nature: Landscape, Wildlife, Flora & Fauna
Enter AAP Magazine 54 Nature: Landscape, Wildlife, Flora & Fauna
Kay Erickson
Kay Erickson
Kay Erickson

Kay Erickson

Country: United States
Birth: 1949

I have been a photographer since I received my first camera at age 7.
After receiving a BFA in photography from the University of Minnesota, Summa cum Laude, I went on to earn a MS degree.
I received a Mayoral Proclamation for a project I worked on with the Santa Monica/Malibu School System, teaching educational standards through photography. I also worked with the Boys and Girls Club in Long Beach, California, teaching photography through a grant with the Los Angeles Center of Photography.
I started out photographing images using black & white film, then hand-tinting the prints with photo oils.
As I combined my love of travel with my passion for photography, I transitioned into digital color photography, making images of diverse cultures and environments around the world.
I have worked with several NGOs, including Calcutta Rescue, and the SWIC (Society for the Welfare of Indian Children), both in Calcutta, India.
Currently I'm working on a project with the Ojibwe, a Native American tribe in Minnesota, to capture portraits of the elders, and record their spoken word stories for future generations.
My work has been exhibited globally, including Los Angeles, New York, Minneapolis, Colorado, Washington, Amsterdam, Turkey, Paris, Berlin, and Spain.
 

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More Great Photographers To Discover

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
Shuwei Liu
China
1985
Shuwei Liu (b.1985) was born in Tangshan and currently lives in Shanghai, China. He received his Bachelor of Engineering in Guangdong University of Technology in 2009, then he decided to do what he really love such as photography, design and writing. He's a finalist of LensCulture Portrait Awards 2016. His works got exhibited internationally include Power Station of Art, the State Hermitage Museum, Artefiera Bologna, JIMEI × ARLES Photo Festival Three Shadows Photography Art Centre, Vu Photo. He was an residency artist in Vermont Studio Center, Red Gate residency and granted by them, and was awarded Fine Art "First Place" by PDN, and he was a finalist of LensCulture Portrait Awards, Three Shadows Photography Awards, Barcelona International Photography Awards, British Journal of Photography, described as "Ones to Watch" talents and Photovogue Festival.All about Childhood Revisited"Childhood is a human water, a water which comes out of the shadows. This childhood in the mists and glimmers, this life in the slowness of limbo gives us a certain layer of birth... " Gaston Bachelard "Childhood is not a thing which dies within us and dries up as soon as it has completed its cycle. It is not a memory. It is the most living of treasures, and it continues to enrich us without our knowing it." Franz Hellens All about Visible Darkness "Visible darkness" is a part of my "Blue" trilogy. When I discovered 4 moon-like crescents at the base of my corneas, I thought I was going to lose sight. The anxiety reminded me of Derek Jarman's "Blue is darkness made visible." , blue was the only thing he could see before he went blind. Meanwhile I was hiding in my own corner, chasing the color blue, turned out to be adjusting the distance between the world and me. Blue itself is just like distance, not reachable.
Shay Lari-Hosain
United States/Pakistan/United Kingdom
1998
Shay Lari-Hosain is a Bay Area-based artist whose work spans photography, video art, mixed media, graphic design, and writing. Their studio work explores how personal experiences of creativity and family history intersect with the politics of contemporary foreign policy, reflects on the shifting histories of the built environment, and investigates the ways time and memory shape perception in the photographic image. As a visual designer, Lari-Hosain crafts intentional experiences in both print and motion, and their music background influences their artistic practice. Their art is currently or previously on view in juried and institutional group exhibitions across the United States, including at SF Camerawork where they were invited to participate in both the annual benefit auction and a landmark members' exhibition, the Triton Museum of Art, New Museum Los Gatos (NUMU), Colorado Photographic Arts Center and more, and in Europe at PH21 Gallery. Their writing has appeared in the San Jose Mercury News and Pakistani English-language dailies like the Express Tribune and DAWN. They have won juror recognitions at Triton and NUMU and recognition by YoungArts, and given art talks at New Museum Los Gatos and PH21 Gallery. Recent design clients include Yvette Young’s Covet, SF Camerawork, and San José City College. Silence in B-Flat: Silence in B-Flat critiques the individualistic surveillance-centric natures of the built environment, investigates localized histories through dreamlike layering and sequencing, and plays with time by blurring the boundaries of verisimilitude in a photograph. In Silence in B-Flat I, by making hundreds of exposures and selectively averaging frames of my choosing, I assume editorial control—toggling the positions of stoplights, illuminated windows, cars, and pedestrians. Some scenes may resemble a single frame, while others are effectively "staged" from events that transpired over hours. The resulting scenes reconstruct time nonlinearly, creating new narratives. This process creates a surreal rendering of the scene that appears simultaneously authentic and unreal (almost painterly, as the process removes nearly all photographic noise, heightening the radiance of color gradients through no other manipulation), raising instinctive questions in the viewer about the veracity of the scene. This ambiguity impacts the trust the viewer may place in the images as a photographic record. AAP Magazine: AAP Magazine 52 Street
Dean West
Australia
1983
Dean West “one of the world’s best emerging photographers” (AFTER CAPTURE MAGAZINE), has a highly conceptual and thought-provoking style of contemporary portraiture. His body of work has been featured in top photography magazines, art galleries, and received numerous international awards.Born in small-town rural Australia in 1983, Dean’s love for photography began in his high school’s darkroom- one of the largest darkrooms in the country at the time- and blossomed at the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. After graduating in 2007 with a Bachelor of Photography with majors in visual culture and advertising, Dean formed a partnership, Berg+West, which won nationwide acclaim as a high-end photography and post-production studio. Through clients like the QLD Government and SONY, Dean quickly learned to transform stick figure sketches into intricate composited photographs with immense detail and clarity.In 2008, Dean was included in Saatchi & Saatchi’s collection of the world’s top 100 emerging photographers and went on to win Advertising Photographer of the Year at the International Aperture Awards. With success in advertising and a growing list of collectors- Dean decided to dedicate more of his time to the world of art. In the following years, his series ‘Fabricate’ received worldwide recognition from top photography competitions, including: the International Colour Awards, the Lucie Awards, the Loupe Awards, and in 2009, Dean was the winner of the IV International Arte Laguna Prize, Venice, Italy. This final award being the most prestigious for emerging artists with over 5,000 applicants gunning for the top prize in photography, sculpture and painting. Zoom Magazine quickly nominated Dean in the ‘New Talent’ issue of 2010 and the Magenta Foundation awarded Dean an emerging Photographer of Canada.
Dotan Saguy
Israel
1970
Dotan Saguy was born in a small kibbutz five miles south of Israel's Lebanese border. He grew up in a diverse working-class Parisian suburb, lived in Lower Manhattan during 9/11, and moved to Los Angeles in 2003. In 2015, Saguy decided to focus on his lifelong passion for photography after a successful career as a high-tech entrepreneur. Since then Saguy attended the prestigious Eddie Adams Workshop, Missouri Photo Workshop and studied photojournalism at Santa Monica College. Saguy's award-winning photographs have been published by National Geographic, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, among many other publications. Saguy teaches street photography and documentary workshops for Leica Akademie and Momenta Workshops. In 2018 Saguy's first monograph about the endangered culture of Venice Beach, CA was published by Kehrer Verlag and received a Bronze award by the prestigious Deutscher Fotobuchpreis 2018-19. Saguy lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children. Statement I met the Reis, a Mormon family from Brazil, the day they arrived in Los Angeles in October 2018 in the yellow school bus they call home. They had come to the United States two years prior to chase the American Dream and although they had quickly found financial success, happiness proved much more elusive with long work hours and material acquisitions leaving them unsatisfied. This body of work documents the trials and tribulations of the Reis family over their 10-month stay in the City of Angels while they struggle as vehicle dwellers, improvised mechanics, unconventional parents, experimenting breadwinners while seeking happiness as a family. The interviews conducted as part of the project also raise subjects such as immigrants chasing the American dream, modern parenting, the growing urban phenomenon of people living in vehicles and rebelling against a strong religious identity in the Internet era. Articles About Nowhere to go but Everywhere Dogtown
Bruce Weber
United States
1946
Bruce Weber (born March 29, 1946) is an American fashion photographer and occasional filmmaker. He is most widely known for his ad campaigns for Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Pirelli, Abercrombie & Fitch, Revlon, and Gianni Versace, as well as his work for Vogue, GQ, Vanity Fair, Elle, Life, Interview, and Rolling Stone magazines. Weber was born in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, to a Jewish family. His fashion photography first appeared in the late 1970s in GQ magazine, where he had frequent cover photos. Nan Bush, his longtime companion and agent, was able to secure a contract with Federated Department Stores to shoot the 1978 Bloomingdales mail catalog. He came to the attention of the general public in the late 1980s and early 1990s with his advertising images for Calvin Klein, and his portrait of the then young actor Richard Gere. His straightforward black-and-white shots, featuring an unclothed heterosexual couple on a swing facing each other, two clothed men in bed, and model Marcus Schenkenberg barely holding jeans in front of himself in a shower, catapulted him into the national spotlight. His photograph for Calvin Klein of Olympic athlete Tom Hintnaus in white briefs is an iconic image. He photographed the winter 2006 Ralph Lauren Collection. Some of Weber's other earliest fashion photography appeared in the SoHo Weekly News and featured a spread of men wearing only their underwear. The photos became the center of controversy and Weber was told by some that he would never find work as a fashion photographer again. This reputation stuck with him, as he says: "I don't really work editorially in a large number of magazines because a lot of magazines don't want my kind of photographs. It's too risky for them". After doing photo shoots for and of famous people (many of whom were featured in Andy Warhol's Interview magazine), Weber made short films of teenage boxers (Broken Noses), his beloved pet dogs, and later, a longer film entitled Chop Suey. He directed Let's Get Lost, a 1988 documentary about jazz trumpeter Chet Baker. Weber's photographs are occasionally in color; however, most are in black and white or toned shades. They are gathered in limited edition books, including A House is Not a Home and Bear Pond, an early work that shows Eric Nies from MTV's The Real World series, among other models. Weber began collaborating with crooner Chris Isaak in the mid-1980s, photographing Isaak in 1986 for his second album, Chris Isaak. In 1988, Weber photographed a shirtless Isaak in bed for a fashion spread in Rolling Stone. Isaak appeared in Let's Get Lost and Weber has directed a music video for Isaak. Weber photographed Harry Connick, Jr. for his 1991 album Blue Light, Red Light. In 1993, Weber photographed singer-songwriter Jackson Browne for his 1993 album I'm Alive.Source: Wikipedia
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