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Final Chance to Win a Solo Exhibition this March! Deadline: February 18, 2025
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Marci Lindsay
Marci Lindsay
Marci Lindsay

Marci Lindsay

Country: United States
Birth: 1961

Marci Lindsay is a street photographer living in Washington, DC. Briefly a city planner, she has always been a people watcher and street photography lover. She is part of the DC Street Photography Collective (in her city) and the Optic Nerve Street Photography Collective (international). She has been shooting street photography for about five years. Marci Lindsay also loves curating (Street Macadam on Instagram, Women in Street on Instagram and Facebook, and Photographers Under Confinement on Facebook). Her photos have been exhibited in New York, Miami, DC, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Brisbane, Cyprus, Trieste, and Paris.

Statement
I’ve had a love for street photography since I was a child, long before I knew it had a name. Not until a few years ago, once my kids were grown, did I take up the challenge of photographing in the streets myself. I am drawn to ordinary people doing ordinary things. To me, it’s all extra-ordinary—motion, gesture, connection, and humor. We humans are so much more the same than we are different, and hopefully my photos remind people of that. “Every man beareth the whole stamp of the human condition.” ~ Montaigne

Websites

marcislindsay.com

@marcislindsay

 

Inspiring Portfolios

Tariq Zaidi
© Tariq Zaidi
Marco Gualazzini
© Marco Gualazzini
Mustafa Hassona
© Mustafa Hassona
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Lalla Essaydi
Lalla Essaydi
Morocco
1956
Lalla Essaydi (Lalla A. Essaydi) is a Moroccan-born photographer known for her staged photographs of Arab women in contemporary art. She currently works in Boston, Massachusetts, and Morocco. Her current residence is in New York. Essaydi was born in Marrakesh, Morocco in 1956. She left to attend high school in Paris at 16. She married after returning to Morocco and moved to Saudi Arabia where she had two children and divorced. Essaydi returned to Paris in the early 1990s to attend the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts. She moved to Boston in 1996 and earned her BFA from Tufts University in 1999 and her MFA in painting and photography from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in 2003. Influenced by her experiences growing up in Morocco and Saudi Arabia, Essaydi explores the ways that gender and power are inscribed on Muslim women's bodies and the spaces they inhabit. She has stated that her work is autobiographical and that she was inspired by the differences she perceived in women's lives in the United States versus in Morocco, in terms of freedom and identity. She explores a wide range of perspectives, including issues of diaspora, identity, and expected location through her studio practice in Boston. She also looks at the ways of viewing reality while questioning limits of other cultures and challenging Orientalist art, engaging tradition, history, art, and technology. Her Grand Odalisque from the series Les Femmes du Maroc (2008), for example, cites the French painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres' painting La Grande Odalisque (1814), although her model is dressed. She also presents the resistance of stereotypes maintained by Western and Eastern societies. The inspiration for many of her works came from her childhood, in the physical space where she, as a young woman, was sent when she disobeyed. She stepped outside the permissible behavioral space, as defined by Moroccan culture. Essaydi said her works will become haunted by spaces she inhabited as a child. Several pieces of her work (including Converging Territories) combine henna, which is traditionally used to decorate the hands and feet of brides, with Arabic calligraphy, a predominantly male practice. While she uses henna to apply calligraphy to her female subjects' bodies, the words are indecipherable in an attempt to question authority and meaning. According to Essaydi, "Although it is calligraphy that is usually associated with 'meaning' (as opposed to 'mere' decoration), in the visual medium of my photographs, the 'veil' of henna, in fact, enhances the expressivity of the images. Yet, by the same token, the male art of calligraphy has been brought into a world of female experience from which it has traditionally been excluded." The women depicted in her exhibition of photographs, Les Femmes du Maroc, are represented as decorative and confined by the art of henna. Essaydi thus poses her subjects in a way that exemplifies society's views of women as primarily destined for mere beauty. Henna, however, is extremely symbolic, especially to Moroccan women. It is an association with familial celebrations of a young girl reaching puberty and transitioning into a mature woman. The use of henna in her work creates a silent atmosphere of the women "speaking" to each other through a quality of femininity. It is predominantly a painting process where women who are discouraged to work outside the home find a profitable work in applying a tattoo-like material. Beyond creating powerful pieces revolving around the art of henna, Essaydi includes interpretations of traditional Moroccan elements, including draped folds of cloths adorning women's bodies, mosaic, tiles, and Islamic architecture. Lalla Essaydi’s photo series, Les Femmes du Maroc comments on contemporary social structures, as well as acknowledges the history that has aided in constructing representations of Arab female identity. Les Femmes du Maroc is one of her three major photographic series, which is influenced by nineteenth-century European and American Orientalist art. However, Essaydi appropriates Orientalist paintings by incorporating a new subject & style derived from her own personal history and experiences to emancipate Arabian women and to demonstrate a tradition that is misunderstood by a Western audience. The title of the series is an appropriation of a painting by the French Romantic Artist Eugène Delacroix. Therefore, each photo in the series is influenced by Orientalist art that is then appropriated. Essaydi's photographic series include Converging Territories (2003–2004), Les Femmes du Maroc (2005–2006), Harem (2009), Harem Revisited (2012–2013), Bullets, and Bullets Revisited (2012–2013). Her work has been exhibited around the world, including at the National Museum of African Art, and is represented in a number of collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago; the Museum Fünf Kontinente Munich/ Germany; the San Diego Museum of Art; the Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Winter Park, Florida; the Fries Museum in Leeuwarden, The Netherlands; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Williams College Museum of Art in Williamstown, Massachusetts. She was named as #18 in Charchub's "Top 20 Contemporary Middle Eastern Artists in 2012-2014". In 2015, the San Diego Museum of Art mounted the exhibition, Lalla Essaydi: Photographs. Source: Wikipedia Lalla A. Essaydi grew up in Morocco and now lives in USA where she received her MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts/TUFTS University in May 2003. Essaydi’s work is represented by Howard Yezerski Gallery in Boston and Edwynn Houk Gallery in New York City. Her work has been exhibited in many major international locales, including Boston, Chicago, Minneapolis, Texas, Buffalo, Colorado, New York, Syria, Ireland, England, France, the Netherlands, Sharjah, U.A.E., and Japan and is represented in a number of collections, including the Williams College Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, the Fries Museum, the Netherlands, and The Kodak Museum of Art. Her art, which often combines Islamic calligraphy with representations of the female body, addresses the complex reality of Arab female identity from the unique perspective of personal experience. In much of her work, she returns to her Moroccan girlhood, looking back on it as an adult woman caught somewhere between past and present, and as an artist, exploring the language in which to “speak” from this uncertain space. Her paintings often appropriate Orientalist imagery from the Western painting tradition, thereby inviting viewers to reconsider the Orientalist mythology. She has worked in numerous media, including painting, video, film, installation, and analog photography. "In my art, I wish to present myself through multiple lenses -- as artist, as Moroccan, as traditionalist, as Liberal, as Muslim. In short, I invite viewers to resist stereotypes."Source: lallaessaydi.com
Alan Henriksen
Alan Henriksen
United States
1949
Alan Henriksen was born in 1949 in Richmond Hill, Queens, New York, and has lived his entire life on Long Island. He became interested in photography as a hobby in 1958, and began making contact prints in late 1959. His interest became serious following a chance discovery of the work of Edward Weston and Ansel Adams at the local library. Henriksen holds college degrees in Psychology and Computer Science and is now retired from a long career in software engineering. Beginning in the mid-1970?s he worked for nearly ten years at Agfa-Gevaert’s photo paper manufacturing plant on Long Island as a sensitometrist and software engineer. In the late 1980?s he authored a Zone System software program named ZoneCalc, which was marketed by the Maine Photographic Resource. In 1968 he and his wife Mary made their first visit to the Maine coast, starting a photographic project that continues to this day. They now divide their time between their homes in Smithtown, Long Island and Southwest Harbor, Maine. All about Alan Henriksen:AAP: When did you realize you wanted to be a photographer?Although I had already been photographing as a hobbyist for six years, my interest became more serious in 1964 when, during a library visit, I chanced upon Peter Pollack's book, "A Picture History of Photography," and opened it to the section devoted to the work of Edward Weston.AAP: Where did you study photography?My formal photographic education was limited to the 1970 Ansel Adams Workshop in Yosemite National Park.AAP:Do you have a mentor?In 1967 I composed a letter and sent it, along with some prints, to Ansel Adams in Carmel. Toward the close of his two-page single-spaced typewritten reply he wrote, "I want to follow your work and see more of your prints." This began a correspondence, soon supplemented with phone calls, that lasted until 1970, at which time I attended his Ansel Adams Workshop in Yosemite National Park.AAP: How long have you been a photographer?I began photographing in 1958, purely as a hobby, and began printing in 1959.AAP: Do you remember your first shot? What was it?The first photograph I remember taking was made in 1958. I photographed my neighbor while she was leaning into a baby carriage to tend to her child.AAP: What or who inspires you?I do not believe in inspiration; I believe in simply working, and working simply. When photographing, my ideas arise directly from my exploration of the subject matter at hand. But I cannot say why I find a certain bit of the world, seen from just such an angle, in a certain light, interesting.AAP: How could you describe your style?I do not consciously try to apply a style to my photographs. I believe in the maxim, "Style does not precede; it results." Although there is a kind of consistency to my photographs over the years, and more so during any particular period, that is presumably because I have remained roughly the same person.AAP: What kind of gear do you use? Camera, lens, digital, film?I currently work with a Canon 5D Mark II and various Canon lenses.AAP: Do you spend a lot of time editing your images?I take an iterative approach to image editing, generally performing several editing passes. I like to leave some time between each pass in order to help me see the image with fresh eyes during each session. I consider an image completed (for the time being) when I view the image and it seems to "work" as is. For some images the editing process is completed within a few sessions, while others take much longer.
Olivia Arthur
Olivia Arthur
United Kingdom
1980
Olivia Arthur is a British documentary photographer. She co-founded Fishbar, a publisher and space for photography in London, with Philipp Ebeling in 2010. Arthur is a member of the Magnum Photos agency and has produced the books Jeddah Diary (2012) and Stranger (2015). Originally studying mathematics at Oxford University, Arthur later studied photojournalism at London College of Printing. She became a nominee member of Magnum Photos in 2008, an associate member in 2011, and a full member in 2013. In 2010 Arthur co-founded Fishbar, a publisher and space for photography in East London, with her husband Philipp Ebeling. Her first book Jeddah Diary (2012) is about the lives of young women in Saudi Arabia. Her second book Stranger (2015) views Dubai through the eyes of the survivor of a shipwreck.Source: Wikipedia Olivia Arthur is known for her in-depth photography examining people and their personal and cultural identities. Much of her work has illuminated the daily lives of women living in countries as varied as Saudi Arabia, India and across Europe. A more recent focus on large format portraiture has brought her work back to the UK. “For me, part of the power of still photography is the ambiguousness of pictures, the ability to give a hint about a scene or event without being too absolute,” says Arthur of her work. Arthur was born in London and grew up in the UK. She studied mathematics at Oxford University and photojournalism at the London College of Printing. She began working as a photographer in 2003 after moving to Delhi and was based in India for two and a half years. In 2006, she left for Italy to take up a one-year residency with Fabrica, during which she began working on a series about women and cultural divides. Representation and the way we see ourselves are also areas of interest for Arthur. She explored these themes in her project In Private/Mumbai (2016-2018) about sexuality in India and through her ‘Portrait of a City’ commission about young people for Hull, City of Culture (2017). Arthur’s work has been shown in publications including The New Yorker, Vogue and TIME Magazine among others and selected commercial clients include British Airways, Capeb and BNP Paribas. She has received support from the Inge Morath Award, the National Media Museum, OjodePez-PhotoEspana Award for Human Values. Arthur continues to return to India and to work in London where she lives. She became a full member of Magnum Photos in 2013.Source: Magnum Photos
Sherrie Nickol
Sherrie Nickol
United States
Sherrie Nickol is a fine art photographer who captures moments in time - and in life - with an almost tangible warmth and energy. She was grew up in Osceola, Arkansas and has lived her adult life in New York City. Nickol studied photography at the University of Cincinnati and later at the International Center of Photography in New York City. Her photographs are in the permanent collection of the Bibliotheque Nationale de France in Paris, and in numerous private collections in the United States. She has mounted one-person exhibitions at Temple University and The National Arts Club in New York City. In recent years, Nickol has focused especially on exploring the relationships between people and their environments. She is interested in families as they come together to share experiences and in individuals as they navigate their space alone. Her work examines the different ways to experience public and private spaces, and she brings a sincerity to her approach that breaks down barriers and allows her to connect deeply with her subjects - a connection which is evident in the photographs themselves. Les étés en bretagne Les étés en Bretagne (Summers in Brittany) is part of my larger series By the Water which is a meditatation on the carefree days of summer. When my son turned six our family began spending a part of each summer near the seaside town of Dinard, on the north coast of Brittany, and I began a project documenting the lives of French families as they vacationed on various beaches. We always rented the same home near the seaside, a short car ride from our relatives, who lived in an old stone house on a working farm. The scenes spoke of another era, with seaside picnics and striped cabanas dotting the beaches. The photographs in this series show the intimacy among families, friends, and lovers as they break from their routines and come together at the water.
Paul Kessel
Paul Kessel
United States
1937
After a career in clinical psychology and university teaching, I began photography late in life. (one-month shy of my 70th birthday). I always owned a camera before this time but rarely used it. In 2008 I started photography courses at The International Center of Photography in NYC and never stopped until ten years later. Originally, I was interested in portrait photography but discovered street photography and became immersed in it. I have been in about 180 group exhibitions. Some are by invitation and most are from contests. In addition, I have had 5 solo shows at New York Galleries and one in Germany. I have been a Finalist in many street photography festivals, worldwide and have been the winner of a few. I treat street photography as a sport. It is the quest and the elusiveness of a truly good photograph that keeps me going.
Wynn Bullock
Wynn Bullock
United States
1902 | † 1975
Wynn Bullock (April 18, 1902 – November 16, 1975) was an American photographer whose work is included in over 90 major museum collections around the world. He received substantial critical acclaim during his lifetime, published numerous books and is mentioned in all the standard histories of modern photography. Bullock was born in Chicago and raised in South Pasadena, California. After high school graduation, he moved to New York to pursue a musical career and was hired as a chorus member in Irving Berlin’s Music Box Revue. He occasionally sang the primary tenor role when headliner John Steele was unable to appear and then was given a major role with the Music Box Review Road Company. During the mid-1920s, he furthered his career in Europe, studying voice and giving concerts in France, Germany and Italy. While living in Paris, Bullock became fascinated with the work of the Impressionists and post-Impressionists. He then discovered the work of Man Ray and László Moholy-Nagy and experienced an immediate affinity with photography, not only as an art form uniquely based on light, but also as a vehicle through which he could more creatively engage with the world. He bought his first camera and began taking pictures. During the Great Depression of the early 1930s, Bullock stopped his European travels and settled in West Virginia to manage his first wife's family business interests. He stopped singing professionally, completed some pre-law courses at the state university, and continued to take photographs as a hobby. In 1938, he moved his family back to Los Angeles and enrolled in law school at the University of Southern California where his mother Georgia Bullock (California's first woman jurist) had studied law. Completely dissatisfied after a few weeks, he left USC and became a student of photography at the nearby Art Center School. From 1938 to 1940, Bullock became deeply involved in exploring alternative processes such as solarization and bas relief. After graduation from Art Center, his experimental work was exhibited in one of Los Angeles County Museum of Art's early solo photographic exhibitions. During the early 40s, he worked as a commercial photographer and then enlisted in the Army. Released from the military to photograph for the aircraft industry, he was first employed at Lockheed and then headed the photographic department of Connors-Joyce until the end of the war. Remarried, and with a new daughter, Bullock traveled throughout California from 1945 to 1946, producing and selling postcard pictures while co-owning a commercial photographic business in Santa Maria. He also worked on developing a way to control the line effect of solarization for which he later was awarded two patents. In 1946, he settled with his family in Monterey, where he had obtained the photographic concession at the Fort Ord military base. He left the concession in 1959, but continued commercial free-lance work until 1968. A major turning point in Bullock's life as a creative photographer occurred in 1948, when he met Edward Weston. Inspired by the power and beauty of Weston's prints, he began to explore "straight photography" for himself. Throughout the decade of the 1950s, he devoted himself to developing his own vision, establishing deep, direct connections with nature. A lifelong learner, he also read widely in the areas of physics, general semantics, philosophy, psychology, eastern religion and art. Studying the work of such people as Albert Einstein, Korzybski, Alfred North Whitehead, Bertrand Russell, LaoTzu and Klee, he kept evolving his own dynamic system of principles and concepts that both reflected and nurtured his creative journey.Source: Wikipedia Bullock came into the public spotlight when Museum of Modern Art curator Edward Steichen chose two of his photographs for the 1955 Family of Man exhibition. When the exhibition was shown at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., his photograph Let There Be Light, was voted most popular. The second, Child in Forest, became one of the exhibition’s most memorable images. By the end of that decade, his work was widely exhibited and published worldwide and in 1957, he was honored with a medal from the Salon of International Photography. During the early 1960s, Bullock departed from the black-and-white imagery for which he was known and produced a major body of work, Color Light Abstractions, which expressed his belief that light is a great force at the heart of all being. Further image-making innovation included alternative approaches including extended time exposures, photograms, and negative printing. During the 1960s and 1970s Bullock expanded his influence through other roles. In 1968, he became a trustee and chairman of the exhibition committee during formative years at Friends of Photography in Carmel, California. He taught advanced photography courses at Chicago’s Institute of Design during Aaron Siskind’s sabbatical and at San Francisco State College at John Gutmann’s invitation. In the last decades of his life, he lectured widely, participated in many photographic seminars and symposia, and was a guest instructor for the Ansel Adams Yosemite Workshops. Bullock died at the age of 73 in November 1975. Along with Ansel Adams, Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind, and Frederick Sommer, he was one of the founding photographers whose archives established the Center for Creative Photography in 1975. The Bullock collection consists of 223 prints and 90 linear feet of archival materials, including personal papers, diaries, correspondence, activity files, audio-visual and photographic materials. The archive offers significant information on the exhibition, publication, and sale of Bullock's photographs; his experiments with solarization; his involvement with the Friends of Photography; and his teaching activities. The collection offers insight into Bullock's attitudes toward his own work and the development of his philosophical approach to the medium.Source: Center for Creative Photography
Jeff Dunas
Jeff Dunas
United States
1954
Jeff Dunas is an American Photographer whose work spans five decades. His work has appeared in hundreds of magazines, album covers, books and calendars. Dunas' principal areas of work have included Nudes, Documentary, Celebrity & Portrait and Street Photography. He is the author is 8 monographs and 5 museum catalogues. As an entrepreneur, he founded Melrose Publishing Company, Collector's Editions, Ltd., launched, Edited and Published Collectors Photography magazine, published Darkroom Photography (later Camera & Darkroom). Dunas founded the Palm Springs Photo Festival in 2006 and the Official Portfolio Review at PhotoPlus Expo in 2010. In 2014, he produced & directed PhotoSynthesis, a photography & music festival in Los Angeles for the Annenberg Foundation. He work has been shown in twelve, one-person museum exhibitions and over 50 gallery exhibitions. Dunas has lived between Los Angeles and Paris, France since 1974.
Amadeusz Swierk
Amadeusz Swierk
Poland
1995
Amadeusz Świerk (born in 1995) is a documentary photographer based in Wrocław, Poland. Amadeusz strives to be an honest witness of the world. His work is often oriented on minorities – social, ethnic, religious and based on genuine experience of other human and his culture. Interested in ethnicity and natural way of living, he has done projects about Iranian nomads and informal subculture of people escaping society grown around wooden hut located in Polish mountains. Currently he is working on projects about a (in)famous district in the small town of Legnica, opioid addicts and personal, about his family. The Miracle District The story starts in a middle-sized town of Legnica, located in the southwest of Poland. It should have been unremarkable, but after World War II it had the dubious pleasure of stationing some 60,000 Soviet soldiers, who more or less dictated the town's life. During these difficult times, which ended very late in 1993, a small district called Zakaczawie (named from the local river) incidentally became a refuge for Poles' native life. Among the families of Polish railwaymen and strong Romani community relocated into the district by Communists, small businesses, cafes, pubs and cultural venues thrived, despite the dark shadow of the Soviet garrison. When the Curtain fell and the Soviets finally went away, the town of Legnica finally breathed a sigh of relief. Zakaczawie district wasn't especially lucky though. It's being left out by dynamics of Polish capitalism, omitted by investments and falling into disrepair. The ''Miracle District'' nickname of Zakaczawie gained a bitter and ironic edge, but generations of its citizens still retain a strong sense of community. There's crime, poverty and turbulent biographies being written by commercial exclusion, but many people actively decide to stay there despite the challenges. Contemporary Zakaczawie is a living witness of the winds of change, the whims of history putting the social microcosm of its citizens to new tests. It's not easy for them, but they have to live with it, and they do, mostly by simply staying together. This project aims to show that among the very visual poverty and dilapidation of the Miracle District, there are humans - families, friends, neighbors - trying to live their best. The author spent two years between them to go deep beyond the grim appearances, to understand these people as fully as possible, to become a witness - and to show to the world - their everyday, colorful lives, giving them an outward voice. The Miracle District The Shack Hidden among the scenic Karkonosze mountains in southwestern Poland, deep in the woods and well away from the popular tourist trails, The Shack – as its dwellers tend to call it – is a secret meeting place for a special bunch of people. Despite the lack of electricity and internet, every weekend, regardless of the season, The Shack is brimming with trekkers from various walks of life, who typically don’t have the opportunity to meet or interact. They seek shelter from social conventions and develop their own, unique and intimate, small-scale society and culture. The Shack is a place with rich traditions. Located off the beaten Karkonosze tourist trails, since the 1970s it has been popular with various groups of non-conformists. Hippies flocked there to escape the oppression of the Communist authorities. During the political transformations of the 80s, some of them joined Fighting Solidarity (Polish anti-Soviet and anti-communist underground organization), and The Shack became a print-and-distribution center of subversive leaflets. Throughout the years, both political and non-political visitors created a rich set of rules, The Shack’s unwritten code that acts as a tool for introducing newcomers and keeping a low profile. Breaking the code is punished by a system of humorous tasks. Over time, regulars started families and made professional careers, but they handed over The Shack’s traditions to the younger generation of visitors. There is a position of Shack Keeper, who stays there permanently. He lives alone in the wild, taking care of the building and getting along with its guests. He’s the unofficial leader within The Shack. The Keeper usually changes every few years. The Shack somewhat changes too, as Keeper’s personality influences the atmosphere.Today most Shack visitors come on weekends to escape civilization and relax for a bit. The flock of guests increased significantly during the pandemic; people tried to compensate for the scarcity of face-to-face contacts. The sense of belonging is built by working and eating together, among strangers. Guests forage wood from the forest and chop it, prepare meals on the wood-fired stove, share them with others by candlelight, play guitar, sing and dance – all without modern disturbances of internet and smartphones. The Shack dwellers want to experience the traditional way of life and stay among nature. Most appear occasionally, but there are always some who visit it regularly and enjoy it together.
Jill Freedman
Jill Freedman
United States
1939 | † 2109
Jill Freedman was a highly respected New York City documentary photographer whose award-winning work is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the International Center of Photography, George Eastman House, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the New York Public Library, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, among others. She appeared in solo and group exhibitions throughout the world, and contributed to many prominent publications. Jill Freedman was best known for her street and documentary photography, recalling the work of André Kertész, W. Eugene Smith, Dorothea Lange, and Cartier-Bresson. She published seven books: Resurrection City; Circus Days; Firehouse; Street Cops; A Time That Was: Irish Moments; Jill’s Dogs; and Ireland Ever. Jill Freedman lived and worked on the Upper West Side of New York City. The Joy of Photography "When I was seven I found old Life Magazines in the attic. My parents had kept the ones from the war and for a year I used to go up there after school, look at the pictures, cry, then go play softball. When my parents realized that I had found them and how they affected me, they burned them, but it was too late, those pictures had burned into my brain. Outwardly I was normal, but those images were always with me, and in my dreams. Even now I can see them, the man who had tried to escape the burning barn, the concentration camp. I majored in Sociology in college, then spent a few years traveling around Europe singing for my supper. I’d spend the days wandering around, searching for adventure, meeting all kinds of eccentric characters and loving their stories. When I ran out of money I’d sing again. I settled in New York, got a job, tried to figure out what I wanted to do. Something meaningful, not just work. I was starting to worry. Then one day I woke up and wanted a camera. I borrowed one. I had never taken a picture before, and as soon as I held it in my hands it felt good. I never had the sense of holding a machine. I read the instructions, went out into the street, shot two rolls, had them developed. I was thunderstruck. It were as though I had been taking pictures for years, but in my head, without a camera. “That’s it,” I said. “I’m a photographer.” What a relief. Photojournalism was always it for me. Those pictures in the attic had set my course. Those, and all the characters I’d met. To tell a story in the blink of an eye, have it printed so that millions of people could see it and wrap their fish in it, to have my pictures reach people the way those Life magazines had reached me, now that was doing something. I am self taught. I got a copywriting job to support myself and I started learning, devouring books and looking at good work, walking a lot, and shooting. Those early years were fired with an intensity and passion I had never felt before. I was obsessed and driven. I thought about photography all of the time. And my pictures, if no one else had liked them, it wouldn’t have mattered, I loved them. Sometimes I’d look at them and think, What if I wake up one day and it’s gone? What if it goes away like it came? With each paycheck I bought equipment and built a darkroom and when I finally made my first print, I was hooked for good. It was the first time that I had ever finished something I had started. My father used to say, “You blow hot and cold.” But it was magic, watching it come up in the developer. I still feel it. I worked hard, learning my craft. I like to work two ways, either on a specific idea or just wandering around, getting lost, snapping. Eventually, all the wanderings go together, and then I find out what I’ve been doing. Photography is magic. You can stop time itself. Catch slivers of moments to savor and share time and again. Tell beautiful silver stories, one photo alone, or many playing together to form a book. A photograph is a sharing, it says “Hey, look at this!”, it’s a miracle, is what it is. And when you’re going good and you get a new picture you love, there’s nothing better. That’s the joy of photography, and the fun." -- Jill Freedman Source: www.jillfreedman.com Freedman was born in Pittsburgh in 1939 to a traveling salesman and a nurse. After college, she traveled to Israel and England before taking up copywriting jobs in New York to sustain herself. She had not grown up taking photographs, but she said in New York one day she “woke and wanted a camera,” according to an essay she published on her website. She wrote that she was inspired by copies of Life Magazine she had pored over as a child. Looking back on a photograph from the early years of her career in a 2017 interview with The Guardian, Freedman said activism and protests had been the catalysts for her photography: "I studied sociology and anthropology and now realise that what I’ve been doing with my camera all these years is documenting human behavior. But I was taking pictures in my head long before I became a photographer. It was the Vietnam war that changed everything for me. I was angry and wanted to photograph anti-war demonstrations, so got my first camera." After her stint in activism, Freedman joined the circus for several months, taking mesmerizing photographs of clowns, chained elephants, and beartamers. Freedman applied a similar level of vigor and rigor to documenting the lives of public servants, photographing intimate moments of firefighters’ and policemen’s work. She followed firefighters in Harlem and the South Bronx for two years at a time women tended to not be allowed in these environments, offering her an unguarded view of their lives. She also took a positive view of cops and thought they faced unfair criticism. “I set out to deglamorize violence,” Freedman told the New York Times in 2015. In the 1980s, Freedman started to work less due to health complications, receiving a breast cancer diagnosis in 1988 and breaking her pelvis later. She had hoped to create one last photobook before she died, to be titled Madhattan, and was featured in the street photography documentary Everybody Street (2013), alongside the likes of Bruce Davidson and Joel Meyerowitz. The Steven Kasher Gallery organized an exhibition spanning four decades of her career in 2015 and, in 2017, a show devoted to her Resurrection City photographs.Source: Artsy
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Exclusive Interview with Asiya Al Sharabi
Interview
Exclusive Interview with Asiya Al Sharabi
Asiya Al Sharabi is a Yemeni-American visual artist whose work has been recognized both nationally and internationally. She began her career as a journalist and photographer before shifting her focus to artistic photography, using her lens to explore the complexities of identity, culture, and migration. Now based in the U.S., her work is deeply rooted in the experiences of Middle Eastern women, young adults, and immigrants—themes that continue to shape her creative vision.
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Exclusive Interview with Members of Circulo Collective
Interview
Exclusive Interview with Members of Circulo Collective
Círculo Collective is a photography group dedicated to fostering unity and shared humanity during these challenging times. This exclusive collective brings together photographers from five countries: India, Tanzania, Iran, Brazil, and Poland. In a world increasingly defined by division and conflict, the mission of Círculo Collective holds profound significance. Through their work, they seek to remind us of the connections that bind us and the power of community in overcoming adversity. We reached out to them with a few questions to gain deeper insights into their project.
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Exclusive Interview with Manuela Federl
Interview
Exclusive Interview with Manuela Federl
Manuela Federl is a journalist and documentary filmmaker with over 15 years of experience. She studied languages, economics, and cultural studies, focusing on the Mapuche people in Chile, which became the subject of her published thesis. In 2016, she founded her company, bergjournalisten, and has since created award-winning documentaries like 100 Hours of Lesbos and THE GAME. Gambling Between Life and Death. For the past two years, she has traveled extensively, documenting social issues through photography and storytelling. Her series The Roma Princesses earned her the January 2024 Solo Exhibition.
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Exclusive Interview with Dona Ann McAdams about ’Black Box’
Interview
Exclusive Interview with Dona Ann McAdams about 'Black Box'
Black Box, a memoir by award-winning American photographer Dona Ann McAdams, combines fifty years of black and white photography with the photographer’s own short lyric texts she calls “ditties.” The book brings together McAdams’ striking historical images with personal reflections that read like prose-poems. Her photographs, taken between 1974 and 2024, document astonishing moments and people across decades of American life.
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Exclusive Interview with Grace Weston
Interview
Exclusive Interview with Grace Weston
Grace Weston’s staged photography transforms miniature vignettes into powerful narratives that explore psychological themes with a playful yet profound touch. Her meticulously crafted scenes invite viewers to delve into stories of power, identity, and human complexity. Weston’s innovative work has earned international recognition, including winning the November 2023 Solo Exhibition. We asked her a few questions about her life and work.
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Exclusive Interview with Tebani Slade
Interview
Exclusive Interview with Tebani Slade
Tebani Slade is a fine art, street, and documentary photographer whose work bridges continents, blending the raw authenticity of her Australian roots with the vibrant energy of her second home in Barcelona. Known for her thoughtful approach to storytelling, Tebani immerses herself in unfamiliar settings, capturing unscripted moments that reveal profound truths about the world around her.
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Exclusive Interview with Mital Patel
Interview
Exclusive Interview with Mital Patel
Mital Patel is an internationally recognized nature and wildlife photographer who focuses on capturing beauty in all its forms—whether natural or manmade. From architecture and landscapes to the creatures of the wild, Patel has a distinct passion for capturing the most remarkable elements of life through his visual representation of movement, emotion and mood. From behind the lens, he strives to bring viewers his very unique view of nature, telling a story without words and conveying a feeling in the abstract. He challenges his audience to let their imaginations run free, taking the journey with him on his travels and opening their minds beyond the confines of static photography. In each of his pieces, Patel hopes to offer his audience a way to view the world around them a bit differently – to appreciate the beauty of moments and places that are often overlooked. An intrepid traveler and lover of adventure, Patel’s passion for creative and imaginative photography is a great asset to his exploration of the world, which spans six out of the seven continents. His work is admired worldwide for its unique and artistic perspective.
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Exclusive Interview with Steff Gruber
Interview
Exclusive Interview with Steff Gruber
Steff Gruber, is a renowned Swiss photographer and filmmaker whose career spans decades of impactful storytelling. Having started as a press photographer for Keystone Press, Gruber was one of the pioneers of the docudrama genre, making his mark with the internationally acclaimed documentary LOCATION AFRICA. This film, which followed the intense dynamic between Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski during the making of COBRA VERDE, earned him international recognition and set the tone for his distinct filmmaking style. Gruber's passion for human interest stories has taken him to various countries, where he has documented diverse subjects through his compelling photo stories, often returning multiple times to deepen his understanding of the people and places he captures. His work is celebrated for its striking visual language and his bold approach to narrative, which continues to push boundaries in both photography and film. We asked him a few questions about his life and work.
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