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FINAL CALL TO ENTER AAP MAGAZINE SHAPES: PUBLICATION AND $1,000 CASH PRIZES
FINAL CALL TO ENTER AAP MAGAZINE SHAPES: PUBLICATION AND $1,000 CASH PRIZES
Lauren Murphy
Lauren Murphy
Lauren Murphy

Lauren Murphy

Country: United KIngdom
Birth: 2000

Lauren is a still life photographer based in South East England, recently graduated from BA Photography at Middlesex University. A lot of her work stems from an interest in perception and how something recognisable or ordinary can be altered and viewed in a completely different way. She experiments with more abstract styles of working and is influenced by both colour and shape.

Statement
"Lockdown has felt very isolating. Being confined to our homes, normally places we know well, has felt increasingly surreal through over-familiarity. I have explored this concept by taking everyday, mundane objects from around the house and using them to construct something more abstract. I have specifically focussed on colour and shape to alter our perception of how they would normally be viewed. This body of work is made up of multiple mini-projects. Each one has used household materials to explore themes such as shape, geology, texture and abstraction." -- Lauren Murphy
 

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More Great Photographers To Discover

Argus Paul Estabrook
South Korea/United States
1977
I'm a biracial Korean-American photographer who works in both South Korea and the USA. Frequent travel between these two countries has provided me a unique perspective of Korean identity and its relationship to both global and regional communities. As an artist, I'm interested in creating work that gives voice to others and I often volunteer my efforts to marginalized communities. My work has been awarded by the Magnum Photography Awards, Sony World Photography Awards, LensCulture, IPA, MIFA, TIFA, as well as exhibited at the Aperture Summer Open: On Freedom. I've also been twice selected as a Critical Mass Top 50 artist by Photolucida and a three-time recipient of PDN's Annual Exposure Award. Additionally, I am an alumnus of the prestigious Eddie Adams Workshop and was named the 2017 Dorothy Liskey Wampler Eminent Professor in the School of Art, Design and Art History at James Madison University. Losing Face "Losing Face," documents the energy and emotions surrounding the impeachment protests of South Korean President Park Geun-hye. In October 2016, her relationship with a shadowy advisor from a shaman-esque cult was revealed to extend to acts of extortion. Protests were then held every weekend until Park was formally removed from office in early March 2017. This is what it looks like when the South Korean President loses face. This Is Not an Exit "This Is Not an Exit," bears witness to my father's unexpected struggle with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer as well as documents my mother's grief after his passing. Tying my photography to my mother's narration of events, we weave an intimate family record- one of vision and voice. Bound together through a personal process of grief, I hope "This Is Not an Exit" creates an emotional map, one that reveals our connectedness to each other while also furthering an understanding for all those navigating the loss of a loved one. More about Losing Face
Adam Neuba
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Natural scientist, photographer, artist. Adam's artistic style and photographic sensibility have emerged from his inquisitive and exploratory creative process, whereby the medium of light and its effect on the motif is always at the focus of his artistic work. Through hours of planning and manual work, with the greatest care and attention to detail, he creates macroscopic artworks of living creatures in unity with technical components, of motifs from inanimate nature and, for some time now, he has been interested in compositions of metals with their unusual interplay with the medium of light. Numerous of his pictures have been published in national and international magazines in recent years, presented at festivals and awarded photography prizes worldwide. When nature meets technics - A macroworld beyond everyday experience This seemingly insurmountable contrast between nature and human technology has occupied me as a photographer for several years. Especially the mutual influence of stainless steel and other materials on small creatures fascinates me. With my photography i try to present this ‘nature versus technology’ contrast to the beholder and dissolve it photographically at the same time, so that the ultimate result of every composition is an aesthetically harmonious unity. With every image the beholder steps into a visionary space, in which a short story about a living being from our engineered environment is told and where, in the end, the two worlds merge into a unique entity. During this process, images arise which possess an aesthetic and a manner of expression of a novel kind, and thereby enable the beholder to partake in a novel emotional experience. Awarded Photographer of the Week - Week 26
Sumit Gupta
India
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While a software engineer by profession, Sumit has been capturing and sharing the stories of cities and cultures since 2013. He finds the experience of walking around the city streets with a camera almost therapeutic and meditative. Inspired by the human condition, Sumit has photographed mostly in India and Europe. Sumit's photographs are inspired by a personal desire to find meaning in the world around us and attempt to draw attention to the poetic and inspirational nature of human life all around us. All about the project 'The River' The Kumbh Mela is the largest religious gathering of humans on our planet. Over the two month period that this festival happens, once every 12 years in 4 Indian cities, millions of people come from all over the country (and outside of it) to take an auspicious bath in the holy waters of the river Ganga. I'm interested in portraying how the contemporary experience of the Kumbh Mela is influenced by aspects such as globalization, consumption and current trends of social behavior. People from all over India come to this event as a pilgrimage to wash away their sins, but they're also cohabiting with people that see this as a cultural attraction, as a possibility to experience a foreign culture and filter it through social media. What's the impact of hyper-communication and advertising in the collective atmosphere of this spiritual gathering? The project tries to reflect on those ideas by working through the psychological climate of the different people that are present in the event. The images evidence the paradoxical and complex nature of a spiritual event that feeds on tradition when young people seem to drift away from old collective habits. The river, the sacred area where people transcend their humanity, is the perfect metaphor for the current situation; affected by mass production and consumerism, the polluted river is still worshipped as a place for cleansing; time will tell if the memory that holds this identity will keep flowing through the divine water, or if it will drown to the mirage of pleasures that float in the immediacy of today's world.
Annette LeMay Burke
United States
1964
Annette LeMay Burke (b. 1964) is a photographic artist and Northern California native who lives in the heart of Silicon Valley. Numerous family road trips throughout California and the West honed her eye for observing the landscape. By eight years old, she had her own Instamatic camera and graduated to a Minolta X-700 as a teen. While earning a BA in Earth Science from the University of California at Berkeley, she took her first darkroom class. After a career in high-tech, and studying design, Annette has now merged her interests. Her artistic practice focuses on how we interact with the natural world and the landscapes constructed by the artifacts of technology. Annette's first book, Fauxliage (Daylight Books, Spring 2021), documents the proliferation of disguised cell phone towers in the American West and how new technologies are modifying our landscapes with idiosyncratic results. Her work has been exhibited at institutions such as Center for Photographic Arts, Colorado Photographic Arts Center, Griffin Museum of Photography, Texas Photographic Society, The Center for Fine Art Photography, and Photographic Center Northwest. In 2017, she was a finalist for Photolucida's Critical Mass. Fauxliage - Disguised Cell Phone Towers of the American West Fauxliage documents the proliferation of disguised cell phone towers in the American West. For me, the fake foliage of the trees draws more attention than camouflage. The often-farcical tower disguises belie the equipment's covert ability to collect all the phone calls and digital information passing through them, to be bought and sold by advertisers and stored by the NSA. From the very start, cell towers were considered eyesores. Plastic leaves were attached in an attempt to hide the visual pollution. Over time, the disguises have evolved from primitive palms and evergreens into more elaborate costumes. The towers now masquerade as flagpoles, crosses, water towers, and cacti. Over time, as our demand for five bars of connectivity has increased, the charade has remained. I was initially drawn to the towers' whimsical appearances. The more I photographed, the more disconcerted I felt that technology was clandestinely modifying our environment. I explore how this manufactured nature is imposing a contrived aesthetic in our neighborhoods. My photographs expose the towers' idiosyncratic disguises, highlight the variety of forms, and show how ubiquitous they are in our daily lives. Their appearance is now an inescapable part of the iconic western road trip and the eight states I visited for this project. As the fifth generation (5G) of cellular technology continues to roll out, the cell tower terrain will be changing. 5G utilizes smaller equipment that is easier to hide - think fat streetlight poles. Perhaps elaborately disguised 'fauxliage' towers will begin disappearing and be considered an anachronism of the early 21st century. The decorated towers could join drive-up photo kiosks, phone booths, news stands, and drive-in movie theaters as architectural relics of the past. More about Fauxliage More about Memory Building
Jared Ragland
United States
1977
Jared Ragland is a fine art and documentary photographer and former White House photo editor. He currently teaches and coordinates exhibitions and community programs in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and is at work on a long-term documentary on methamphetamine users living in northeast Alabama. He is the photo editor of National Geographic Books' "The President's Photographer: Fifty Years Inside the Oval Office," and has worked on assignment for NGOs in the Balkans, the former Soviet Bloc, East Africa and Haiti. His photographic work is rooted in his lifelong exposure to the landscapes, people, aesthetics, and storytelling traditions of the American South, and his work has been exhibited internationally and featured by The Oxford American, The New York Times, and TIME Magazine. Jared is an alumni of LaGrange College and a 2003 graduate of Tulane University with an MFA in Photography. He resides in his hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. Statement: The rise in use of methamphetamine across the United States over the last decade has led to increased cultural anxiety about the drug and those who use it, while the general perception of the meth-head is perpetuated by popular television programs and pervasive anti-meth campaigns. These limited representations typically paint one-dimensional, demonized characters whose chronic drug use is epitomized by obsessiveness, paranoia, and monstrous physical side effects. But while there are certainly deleterious consequences to meth use and stereotypes often ring too true, existing cultural narratives too often fall short of more complex, individually considered realities. Photographed over 18 months in collaboration with University of Alabama at Birmingham sociologist Heith Copes, Ph.D., GOOD BAD PEOPLE documents the tumultuous lives of meth users from Sand Mountain, a sandstone plateau in northeast Alabama infamous for extreme poverty, poultry processing plants, Pentecostal snake-handlers, and meth production. The images simultaneously reinforce and undermine assumptions of what it means to be a methamphetamine user and present an intimate look into the lives of those who struggle amidst drug use and diminished social status.
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Call for Entries
AAP Magazine #59 Shapes
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