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FINAL CALL TO ENTER AAP MAGAZINE PORTRAIT: PUBLICATION AND $1,000 CASH PRIZES
FINAL CALL TO ENTER AAP MAGAZINE PORTRAIT: PUBLICATION AND $1,000 CASH PRIZES
James Hayman
James Hayman
James Hayman

James Hayman

Country: United States

After attending The American University for photojournalism, Hayman's first photography assignment was to photograph Nixon and Brezhnev at the 1973 Washington Summit in the White House Rose Garden. Disenchanted with the paparazzi-like frenzy, Hayman went on to study film at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and post-graduate work at New York University, though his photojournalistic roots still inform his practice today. Both his photojournalism and film education led him to travel around the world. He notably traveled to Central America, working for the UN's disaster relief efforts after the 1976 earthquake in Guatemala. This led to several series of photographic work in the region. In the 1980s, Hayman began shooting various independent films in New York City, gaining recognition as the cinematographer for An Autumn's Tale, starring Chow Yun-Fat, which swept the Hong Kong Film Awards in 1987. This led to several years of Hayman working as a cinematographer in China, Japan, and more series of photographic work documenting Asia in the 1980s.

As indie film production in New York City began to end in 1989, he moved to Los Angeles, where he went on to direct and produce multiple television shows and films. Since then, he has directed numerous pilots, including Dangerous Minds and Drop Dead Diva, as well as episodes of The Sopranos, ER, Law & Order, House, Desperate Housewives, and others. Hayman has also worked as an executive producer, most notably on Ugly Betty, which led to winning a Golden Globe Award. He has also been nominated for two Emmy Awards, and a Director's Guild Award.

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More Great Photographers To Discover

Nakaji Yasui
Japan
1903 | † 1942
Nakaji Yasui was one of the most prominent photographers in the first half of the 20th century in Japan. Yasui was born in Osaka and became a member of the Naniwa Photography Club in 1920s and also became a member of the Tampei Photography Club in 1930. His photographs cover a wide range from pictorialism to straight photography, including photomontages. He appreciated every type and kind of photograph without any prejudice and tried not to reject any of them even during wartime. Source: Wikipedia Nakaji Yasui was born in 1903 in Osaka and passed away in 1942. From the 1920s on, Yasui was an active photographer in the Kansai region of Japan; he is now seen as one of the most prominent Japanese photographers of the prewar period. At the very beginning of an era in which Japanese photography would express itself in a way that was both more international and more in step with the times, Yasui produced his photographs while enthusiastically incorporating many new theories of art into his work—and thinking extremely carefully about how these theories might impact his own development within the context of that time in Japan. Although Yasui’s career was short, his work has influenced Daido Moriyama and many other important contemporary Japanese photographers. In 2010, His major photography publications include the essay Landscape Photography in Practice (1938) and the photography book Nakaji Yasui photographer 1903-1942 (2004). Taka Ishii Gallery produced “Nakaji Yasui Portfolio” (a set of 30 modern prints in a limited edition of 15). Source: Taka Ishii Gallery
Oksana Omelchuk
Ukraine
1983
Oksana Omelchuk is a Kyiv-based visual artist and fine-art photographer whose practice moves between photography, scanography, and digital art. Her journey began with fine art: she studied painting, drawing, sculpture, and applied arts for six years at an art school before pursuing a degree in economics. Photography came later, almost by accident: she first appeared in front of the camera as a model for a friend studying at the Kyiv School of Photography. Curious to learn how to see through the lens herself, she joined the school in 2021, just to take pictures for pleasure. But soon, photography became her main artistic language. She continues her studies at Form, an international educational platform for photographic education, based in France. Through experimentation, she discovered that her true signature lies in drawing: in the imaginative world she had as a child, now translated into contemporary visual form. Her works are not about the moment, but about emotion - each object, whether a flower, an X-ray, or a fragment of furniture, becomes a character carrying a feeling. Oksana creates intuitively, following emotion more than perfection, balancing analysis and spontaneity. Her process is like opening a piano lid before improvisation: uncertain, yet full of discovery. Inspired by music and Renaissance painting, she builds delicate color harmonies that reflect both control and freedom. Her recurring themes explore the anatomy of feelings and the dreamlike dialogue between tenderness and strength. Statement: Art has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. What began with painting in childhood has evolved into a visual language that moves between photography and digital art. I am drawn to the moment where reality dissolves into imagination. Instead of brushes, I use light, scans, and digital tools - painting emotions rather than objects, reinterpreting the visible world through the colors of my inner states. My process is intuitive, experimental, and deeply emotional. I often begin with a photograph and then layer it with digital textures, hand-drawn traces, or scanned materials, allowing the image to transform organically: from documentation into a state of feeling. I explore memory, transformation, and perception - how fragility and strength coexist in a single gesture. For me, art is a quiet dialogue with the world: a way to speak without words, to hold tenderness and truth in the same breath. Articles: AAP Magazine 51 Colors The Garden of My Tenderness
Aaron Blum
United States
1983
Aaron Blum is an eighth generation West Virginian, and creates art deeply linked to his home. Most of his work centers around a single question, what does it mean to be Appalachian? Through this question he address many different artistic concepts from idealized memory vs. stereotypes to ideas of folk taxonomy. His creation process is a diversified approach of image-based media to create a glimpse into his own concepts of Appalachia, and the social fabric of a very large and misrepresented people and place. He pays close attention to the quality of light and the landscape as well as cultural markers to produce a unique version of life in the hills. After graduating with degrees in photography from West Virginia University and Syracuse University, Aaron immediately began receiving recognition for his work including Center of Santa Fe, Silvereye Center for photography, Critical Mass, and FOAM. About The Prevailing Winds of Hills and Heritage Appalachia pulls at me like a haunted memory. There is an ineffable force that compels me to suspend reality and embrace superstition and myth. It is a longing to hold on to my culture and history in spite of the modern world. The nebulous forests, enveloping moss and dark corners seem to tell a purer truth. Storytelling in Appalachia has a long-standing tradition, and it infuses the region with mystery. Using lore, pseudo-scientific study, and personal experiences as a compass I see this place through idealized eyes of wonder, and these images become my personal folklore. They bring to life the fantasies and memories I carry with me. This is a place where you can wash away sin in cool stream waters, where corpse birds come to ferry away souls to the next life, rocks burn and kudzu conceals. This is the place where the prevailing winds whisper old stories to those who know how to listen.
Gueorgui Pinkhassov
France / Russia
1953
Gueorgui Pinkhassov is a photographer, born in Moscow in 1953. He is a member of Magnum Photos. Pinkhassov began his interest in photography in his teens, and enrolled at the Moscow Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) in 1969. Following college and two years in the army, he joined the film crew at Mosfilm. Continuing his interest in still photography he became a set photographer at the studio. His work was noticed by the film director Andrei Tarkovsky, who invited Pinkhassov to work on the set of his film Stalker. Being awarded independent artist status by the Moscow Union of Graphic Arts in 1978 allowed Pinkhassov far more freedom to travel, allowing him to exhibit his work internationally. In 1979 his work was noticed outside of Russia for the first time, in a group exhibition of Soviet photographers held in Paris. Previously, his work had mainly been seen in a number of Russian magazines, including L'artiste Sovietique. His acceptance by the Magnum Photos agency in 1988 opened up his work to a wider audience. He worked for the international media covering major events in Lithuania, Mongolia, Indonesia, and Africa. Returning to Moscow to cover the 1991 Coup, for the New York Times. In 1995, he received a photographic scholarship from the city, and in 1998, he published the book Sightwalk, photographs of Japan. Pinkhassov is now a French citizen, living in Paris.Source: Wikipedia Gueorgui Pinkhassov is known for his vivid art-reportage, which elevates the everyday to the extraordinary. His richly-colored images are absorbing, complex and poetic—sometimes bordering on an abstraction which embraces the visual complexity of contemporary life. As well as his global documentary work, Pinkhassov has photographed iconic cultural events from Cannes Film Festival to backstage at Paris Fashion Week. “It is foolish to change the vector of chaos. You shouldn’t try to control it, but fall into it” he says of his approach. Born in Moscow in 1952, Pinkhassov’s interest in photography began while he was still at school. After studying cinematography at the VGIK (The Moscow Institute of Cinematography), he went on to work at the Mosfilm studio as a cameraman and then as an on-set photographer. He joined the Moscow Union of Graphic Artists in 1978, which allowed him more freedom to travel and exhibit internationally. His work was soon noticed by the prominent Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, who invited him to make a reportage about his film Stalker (1979). Recent work includes his study of Blackpool Illuminations in 2018, an ongoing series of city portraits illuminating places as varied as Beirut, Lisbon, Venice, Moscow and Nancy, and his coverage of the clashes between Anti-government protesters and police in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv in 2014. Today, he works regularly for the international press, particularly for Geo, Actuel and The New York Times Magazine. He joined Magnum Photos in 1988.Source: Magnum Photos
Rajan Dosaj
United States
1958
Born and raised in the United States, I spent nearly 20 years in the theater world, first as a dancer and singer in Broadway musicals and later as an actor and director. Upon my retirement from theater, I settled into the business world but it wouldn't be long before I was in need of a creative outlet and the Sebastiao Salgado documentary, The Salt of the Earth, rekindled my brief high school interest in photography. Soon, the books of Alec Soth, Nancy Rexroth, Sally Mann, Joshua Jackson, and many more were on my selves and with a newly purchased camera in hand, I started out on my latest adventure. Naturally, I started with dance portraits and found it incredibly exciting and fulfilling but soon I ventured into other genres to improve my work. Whether it was wildlife, street, architecture, portrait, or fine art photography, I was either taking a class or teaching myself about the genre in order to become a better photographer. In my short time behind the camera, I have been fortunate enough to have some of my images appear in galleries across the country, including Photo Place Gallery, A Smith Gallery, Praxis Gallery, Black Box Gallery, SE Center for Photography, and the Decode Gallery. With my background in theater, I know that photography can be a frustrating art form where most of the time I end up kicking myself for the mistakes that I continuously make over and over. But every once in a while, those rare moments come along when my eyes through a camera are able to see and capture an extraordinary moment.
Jens Juul
Denmark
My name is Jens Juul, and I'm a photographer. I'm trained as both photographer and portrait painter and have also done graphic design for years. I recently won the portraiture category in The Sony World Photography Awards with my series Six Degrees.About my way of working with photography: Strong impressions form the motive power of my work. Behind a strong impression always lies an interesting and often untold story. Of course the strong impressions can be seen on the news, where we daily watch pictures from global hot spots or places hit by sudden disasters. These pictures any photographer can chase in competition with other photographers with access to the same news channels. But apart from the spectacular and crisis hit places I actually believe that strong impressions can be found around all of us. My morning bike ride to take my children to school is often cause of great inspiration. The story is right on your doorstep. It is just a matter of seeing it and of really seeing the people who are part of the tapestry of your daily life, and then of finding your angle and the courage to step across the boundary between yourself and other people formed by each person¹s privacy sphere even to those strangers who may at times seem dangerous and intimidating. of Copenhagen.About Six Degrees of Copenhagen: My photo series Six Degrees of Copenhagen is a textbook example of breaking this boundary. The way I work is that I approach someone I don't know, be it on the street, in a supermarket or at a social event. I ask if I can portray them in their homes and then I pay them a visit. The visit usually lasts a couple of hours or however long it takes to break the ice and get just the right shot of the subject. I then ask them to pass the torch so to speak and recommend someone in their own network that I can portray in the same way. I got the idea from the theory of six degrees of separation - the notion that all people on Earth are connected in the sixth degree. There is nothing scientific about my work, though, and I'm not trying to show the extent of human networks. It is a way of working that magically enables me to travel through a city and meeting its inhabitants. I've come across all walks of life, old and young, and I have seen many different ways of life. If you meet people without prejudice and with a lot of curiosity it really is amazing how willing they are to share their experiences and the insights they've gained. In that way my work is a journey into the minds and lives of other people.About Inmates: A third project I am working on is a book project about being an inmate in a prison. The Inmate project takes its point of departure in a profound curiosity regarding the consequences of being punished with long-term imprisonment to someone's life. The project focuses on the life conditions of long-term inmates in Danish prisons. What do inmates think about their own lives, their relationships with people both inside and out of prison, and what kinds of hopes and expectations do they have about the future? The project will be using a combination of interviews, portraits and picture documentation of the everyday life in Danish prisons to tell the story of inmates. The aim is to publish a book with ten interviews and approximately 75 pictures. I'm looking into crowd funding possibilities, and am also considering making an electronic version that would keep production costs down and provide a possibility of layering information. Through the Danish Prison and Probation Service I have been granted access to the Danish prisons. In some prisons I have only been allowed to take pictures of architectural details. In other prisons I have been escorted around by prison employees, who have opened and locked doors for me, and walked me through the different parts of the prison. In yet other places I have been permitted to move around freely, and take all the pictures I wanted, as long as I got permission from the inmates first. In total I have been granted a much higher degree of access than I had ever dreamt of when I made the first phone call in order to get into prison. But why on Earth, one might ask, am I giving criminals that have harmed fellow human beings a chance to express themselves? And why would I offer them to have their portraits and pictures of their everyday life grace the pages of a book, and even do so in a book looking all luxurious with big pictures? The answer is simple, really: Because their voices to a large extent are missing in the public debate. There are black holes, so to speak, in the public's map when it comes to the realities and consequences of incarceration. What is it like? Really? In Denmark, imprisonment is largely seen as punishment, but with an agenda of offering possibilities for resocialization, and only severely hardened or mentally ill inmates have little prospect of ever getting out. However, reality is that resocialization is difficult, even in a social-liberal welfare state like Denmark. The question then is: if prison breeds more criminals, how does society benefit from locking people away? It is my ambition to start a public debate about the relationship between justice, punishment, revenge and resocialization that will hopefully engage both the public and the politicians. Each year, so many families live with the consequences of crime. Children of criminals and victims alike are growing up with the effects of crime and punishment. So we'd better make it count! And to return to the relationship to our personal networks and the use of them, my work inside the prison walls has shown me that much crime is committed by individuals whose networks have been insufficiently present. A lack of care and love early in life, but also a lack of engagement from the personal circle of acquaintances. Instead of stepping in when people are in trouble, we turn our heads away to avoid becoming a part of the problem. A lot of human misery could be avoided if only we dared to get involved and show some interest in the lives of our fellow human beings!Awards:2013 Winner of the Sony World Photography Awards 2013 in the portraiture category2013 Finalist in KL International Photoawards 2013 in the Portrait Category.2013 Selected for a Spotlight Award in the Black & White Portfolio Contest 20132013 4th place for the Su-ture 1st Edition by Gomma, 2013
Cristina García Rodero
Cristina García Rodero (born 14 October 1949) is a Spanish photographer and member of Magnum Photos and Agence Vu photo agencies. García Rodero was born in Puertollano, Spain, in 1949, and studied painting at Complutense University of Madrid. She has worked as a teacher. Rodero photographs the persistence of rural traditions in modern times, such as religious rites and festivals in Spain. In Spain she is among the most celebrated documentary photographers. García Rodero joined Magnum Photos in 2005 and became a full member in 2009. The city of Puertollano, where she was born, inaugurated the Cristina García Rodero Museum in 2018. A large part of the photographer's work is exhibited there. The Cristina García Rodero Museum is located in the old municipal museum of Puertollano. There are more than 2,100 square meters distributed over three floors in which are displayed about 200 photographs of the artist.Source: Wikipedia Cristina García Rodero was born in Puertollano, Spain. She studied painting at the School of Fine Arts at the University of Madrid, before taking up photography. She then qualified as a teacher and worked full-time in education. For the next 16 years, she also dedicated her time to researching and photographing popular and traditional festivities – religious and pagan – principally in Spain but also across Mediterranean Europe. This project culminated in her book España Oculta published in 1989, which won the “Book of the Year Award” at the Arles Festival of Photography. The same year, García Rodero also won the prestigious W. Eugene Smith Foundation Prize. The documentary and ethnological value of her work are considerable, but the aesthetic quality of her photography makes it more than a simple visual record. In recent years, Cristina García Rodero has traveled around the world in search of other cultures with particular traditions. Over a period of four years, she went several times to Haiti, where she has documented voodoo rituals, producing a series of expressive portraits and moving scenes flanked by engaging documentary observations. Rituals in Haiti was shown for the first time in the 2001 Venice Biennale. Cristina García Rodero has received many prizes, including the Premio Nacional de Fotografía in 1996 in Spain. Her work has been widely published and exhibited internationally. She has published several books and has been a member of the Vu agency for more than 15 years. García Rodero joined Magnum in 2005 and became a full member in 2009.Source: Magnum Photos
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AAP Magazine #57 Portrait
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Latest Interviews

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Marijn Fidder is a Dutch documentary photographer whose work powerfully engages with current affairs and contemporary social issues. Driven by a deep sense of social justice, she uses photography to speak on behalf of the voiceless and to advocate for the rights of those who are most vulnerable. Her images have been widely published in major international outlets including National Geographic, CNN Style, NRC Handelsblad, Volkskrant, GUP New Talent, and ZEIT Magazin. Her long-term commitment to disability rights—particularly through years of work in Uganda—culminated in her acclaimed project Inclusive Nation, which earned her the title of Photographer of the Year 2025 at the All About Photo Awards. She is also the recipient of multiple prestigious honors, including awards from World Press Photo and the Global Peace Photo Award. We asked her a few questions about her life and work.
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Call for Entries
AAP Magazine #57 Portrait
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