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Bharat Patel
Bharat Patel
Bharat Patel

Bharat Patel

Country: United Kingdom
Birth: 1949

Bharat is an Indian born photographer living in Oxford, UK. At first embracing many genres of photography but since the last ten years he has been mainly involved in travel and documentary photography, some of these in collaboration with NGOs. Underlying influence in his photography is his upbringing in the British colonies and his exposure to different cultures and social structures. He has lived and experienced life in four different continents with vastly different life styles. From a young age his inclination to connect everything has had an influence on his photography. Mixed with this is his formal education as Electronic Engineer which exposed him to world of sub-atomic matter where order and hierarchy exist amongst the chaos, just like his experiences in real life.

Bharat considers his work as “Photography for a Purpose”. This can be seen in his long-term project on “Nomadic Tribes of India”, “Brick Workers” and “Women Workers in the Informal Sector”. Always looking to preserve these as documentaries to retain the importance of what is present and that which may inform the future.

Bharat uses both black and white and colour images depending on what he wants to portray. Without the distracting colours, his black and white images lay bare the subjects and show their inner selves.

In his words everything is waiting to be photographed and to be remembered, it is how you photograph it that counts.

Bharat is a member of the Royal Photographic Society.
 

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Arnold Odermatt
Switzerland
1925 | † 2021
Arnold Odermatt was a Swiss police photographer whose work spanned more than 40 years. Originally trained as a baker, he was a photographer for the Nidwalden cantonal police from 1948 until his retirement in 1990. He is best known for his eerily beautiful black and white photographs of the aftermath of motor vehicle accidents. Odermatt joined the police in 1948 and rose to become a lieutenant, chief of the transport police, and deputy chief inspector of the Nidwalden Police before he retired. At the beginning of the 1990s, Odermatt's photography was discovered by his son, Urs Odermatt during research for his film Wachtmeister Zumbühl, and this work became a central theme in the film's plot. Urs brought his father's works together in the working groups entitled Meine Welt, Karambolage, Im Dienst, and In zivil and has published Odermatt's work ever since, working in collaboration with the Frankfurt art historian Beate Kemfert and a gallery in Berlin - Galerie Springer & Winckler. In 2001, Odermatt's photography was selected by Harald Szeemann to be exhibited at the 49th Venice Biennale. In 2002 James Rondeau exhibited Odermatt's work in its own right at the Art Institute of Chicago, as did Urs Stahel at the Fotomuseum Winterthur in 2004. Odermatt was born in Oberdorf, canton Nidwalden, Switzerland. He joined the Nidwalden Police in 1948. He was forced to give up his original career as a bakery and pastry chef on health grounds. As the policeman Odermatt first appeared with his Rolleiflex at the scene of an accident - to provide photos to complement the police report, people found this rather disconcerting. At that time, photography was anything other than an independent means of providing the police with evidence. A colleague observed Odermatt as he took pictures for the force and was suspicious. He was ordered to report to his commander immediately. Odermatt managed to convince his superiors of the pioneering work he was doing. They allowed him to convert an old toilet in an observation post in Stans into a makeshift darkroom. When the observation post was moved into another building several years later, Switzerland’s first police photographer was given his own laboratory. Odermatt's biggest role model was the famous Magnum photographer Werner Bischof. He met him once by chance, as he was on security duty on the Bürgenstock and wanted to photograph Charlie Chaplin. Odermatt's own style was characterized by sobriety and authenticity. The spartan linguistic expression of his police reports can also be found in Odermatt’s images. His craftsmanship is beyond question, nothing of note is missed by his photographic eye. In Karambolage, his most famous series of work, you can’t see the maimed victims but you do see the ethereal, surreal sculptures of scrap metal. With the softness and melancholy of Jacques Tati, he looks at the consequences of speed and the hectic nature of modern times. For 40 years, Odermatt captured the daily work of the Nidwalden police force. It was only rarely that the local press, the court or an insurance company were interested in his photos. It was only when his son, the film and theatre director Urs Odermatt, showed the photos for the first time at a solo exhibition in Frankfurt am Main that the art scene first became interested in his work. After the inspiring exhibition, the photo book Meine Welt followed. Suddenly the everyday observations from the central Swiss province had gained the same status as those of his well-traveled predecessor, Werner Bischof. At an early stage in his police career, when Arnold used the camera to catalog traffic accidents, this was a revolutionary innovation in the Swiss police. If Odermatt were to turn up at a crime scene with his camera today, he could expect to be told that photography was not for him, but was instead the job of a specially trained police photographer.Source: Wikipedia
Gabriele Galimberti
Gabriele Galimberti, born in 1977, is an Italian photographer who frequently lives on airplanes, and occasionally in Val di Chiana (Tuscany), where he was born and raised. He has spent the last few years working on long-term documentary photography projects around the world, some of which have become books, such as Toy Stories, In Her Kitchen, My Couch Is Your Couch and The Heavens. Gabriele's job consists mainly of telling the stories, through portraits and short stories, of people around the world, recounting their peculiarities and differences, the things they are proud of and the belongings with which they surround themselves; social media, in all its forms, is a fundamental part of the research needed to get in touch, discover and produce those stories. Gabriele committed to documentary photography after starting out as a commercial photographer, and after joining the artistic collective Riverboom, best known for its work entitled Switzerland Versus The World, successfully exhibited in festivals, magazines and art shows around the world. Gabriele is currently traveling around the globe, working on both solo and shared projects, as well as on assignments for international magazines and newspapers such as National Geographic, The Sunday Times, Stern, Geo, Le Monde, La Repubblica and Marie Claire. His pictures have been exhibited in shows worldwide, such as the well known Festival Images in Vevey, Switzerland, Le Rencontres de la Photographie (Arles) and the renowned V&A museum in London; they have won the Fotoleggendo Festival award in Rome and the Best In Show prize at the New York Photography Festival. Gabriele recently became a National Geographic photographer and he regularly works for the magazine. Publications Gabriele Galimberti, Paolo Woods, "The Heavens", Delpire/Dewi Lewis, Paris-London 2015 Gabriele Galimberti, "My Couch Is Your Couch", Clarkson Potter, New York 2015 Gabriele Galimberti, "In Her Kitchen", Clarkson Potter, New York 2014 (also translated in French, Chinese and Korean) Gabriele Galimberti, "Toy Stories", Abrams Book, New York 2014 Gabriele Galimberti is the Second Place Winner of All About Photo Awards 2020 with his work The Ameriguns
Caterina Bernardi
I was born in a town called Orkanger on the north-west coast of Norway, the land of the northern lights and long winters. This is where I draw a lot of my inspiration from, with its incredibly dramatic scenery and landscapes, and fairytales I grew up with; stories of moody and mystical Nordic environments brimming with depictions of trolls, princesses and nature.My connection with photography first blossomed in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil where I lived in the very early 1990’s. There, I learned Portuguese, encountered very passionate people and discovered my own passion for photography. A friend had found a producer to make her first CD, and I took pictures of her recording music with famous Brazilian artists in the studio. It was an incredible experience that compelled me to pursue photography, which eventually led me to San Francisco, a magnificent city to go to live and work. There, I got my Bachelors of Fine Arts and ventured out on my own to shoot.In the past decade I have created images for clients such as Merck, Genentech, Reebok, The Times of London, Pasolivo, Gilead, Bristol-Myers Squibb, KQED TV., Yoga Journal, Vodafone, and Warner Bros, while my work has appeared in photo publications such as Communication Arts, PDN, Graphis, APA Shows, and Graphic Design USA. Currently I am located in San Francisco, CA, but once a year the northern winds call upon me and I go back home and visit Norway, to feel the breeze and see the midnight sun. Artist StatementI think artists in general have an innate appetite for life, and speaking for myself, I find that curiosity and passion drive me to explore and create, to be mesmerized by life and it’s constant flux of magical encounters, fears and achievements; my vehicle of expression is the art and craft of photography. In this process I aim to intimately connect the subject and me and ultimately the viewer to a dialogue and to linger, to inspire and to create, and to preserve intense moments of emotion and beauty and mystery.What I strive for in an image is to get genuine emotion and expressions from the subject. Sometimes it happens very naturally, and sometimes it is a real challenge to put a person at ease, to make them feel comfortable and enjoy having a camera pointed at them. It is a sensitive moment I share with my subjects while photographing, and establishing a connection with the talent is very important in order to capture striking images, and I work hard to make them comfortable and excited so they give their best. With great collaborations everyone wins and walks away with a sense of achievement.Photography gives my life a purpose and a meaning, to further explore and discover myself, the arts and science, and our mysterious existence.
Ray K. Metzker
United States
1931 | † 2014
Ray K. Metzker (10 September 1931 – 9 October 2014) was an American photographer known chiefly for his bold, experimental B&W cityscapes and for his large "composites", assemblages of printed film strips and single frames. His work is held in various major public collections and is the subject of eight monographs. He received awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts and Royal Photographic Society. Metzker was born in Milwaukee and lived in Philadelphia from the 1960s until his death. He was married to the photographer Ruth Thorne-Thomsen. He was a student of Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind at the Institute of Design in Chicago. He taught for many years at the Philadelphia College of Art and also taught at the University of New Mexico. After graduate studies at the Institute of Design in Chicago, Metzker travelled extensively throughout Europe in 1960-61, where he had two epiphanies: that "light" would be his primary subject, and that he would seek synthesis and complexity over simplicity. Metzker often said the artist begins his explorations by embracing what he doesn't know.Source: Wikipedia After a career that spanned five decades and saw him pioneer a new and singular visual idiom, Ray K. Metzker has been recognized as one of the great masters of American photography. Characterized by composites, multiple-exposures, solarization, the superimposition of negatives, and the juxtaposition of images, Metzker’s work pushed the boundaries of what seemed formally possible in black and white photography. Metzker enrolled at the Institute of Design, Chicago in 1956, a school which at that time was being referred to as the New Bauhaus, where he studied with fellow modernist photographers Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind. After obtaining a master’s degree from the Institute in 1959, Metzker’s work began to garner increasing attention and critical regard, first and foremost from Edward Steichen, who, at that time, was the curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Metzker’s first solo show would happen at the Museum of Modern Art in 1967. Retrospectives of his work were organized in 1978 by the International Center of Photography in New York and in 1984 by the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, a show which then traveled to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, the International Museum of Photography, Rochester, and the National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC. In 2011 a major career retrospective of Metzker’s work was organized by the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, which traveled to the The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the Henry Art Museum in Seattle. Ray K. Metzker died in October of 2014, at 83 years of age, in the city of Philadelphia.Source: Howard Greenberg Gallery Metzker has dedicated his career to exploring the formal potentials of black-and-white photography, but they are not his exclusive concern. "When you look at the multiples, you are aware of patterning and so forth," he says, "but there is still identifiable subject matter; frequently there are people there; there is a rhythm to those people." Metzker's 1959 thesis project, My Camera and I in the Loop, takes downtown Chicago as its subject, but renders it in experiments that tell more about photography than they do about the city. The pictures from this project were exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago (1959-1960), and included in the issue of Aperture devoted to the students and professors of the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago (1961). Ray Metzker's images question the nature of the photograph and photographic "reality." Through cropping, multiple imagery, and other formal inventions, his work explores options for transforming the vocabulary of the photograph. Untitled from 1969 illustrates the simple method of manipulating objective information through juxtaposition: two distinct women on the beach enter into a yin-yang relationship of line and gesture. The photograph is part of a series of pictures made from 1968 to 1975 of beach-goers in New Jersey. "The more fashion conscious probably go to other beaches, but what Atlantic City has – and what attracted me to it – is diversity," Metzker said. Of the content of the pictures and his working method, Metzker added, "What appears in the pictures was the subject's decision, not mine. I took what they presented – delicate moments – unadorned and unglamorous, yet tender and exquisite." Metzker used a 1975 National Endowment for the Arts fellowship to pull the series together as Sand Creatures, later published as a book in 1979. There are no diptychs in the book, though the woman in sunglasses at the bottom of Untitled (1969) is included as a solo picture. In a July 1992 letter, Metzker wrote the following about two untitled Sand Creatures pictures from 1969: "The photograph of the double image is from the series entitled Couplets and predates the single image by a number of years. Both pictures were made at beaches along the New Jersey coast: the couplet at Atlantic City, the single frame at Cape May. With both, my camera was an Olympus half-frame, a small amateurish piece of equipment that let me move about freely. The choice of the camera was essential to the development of the series."Source: Museum of Contemporary Photography
Peyman Naderi
Peyman Naderi is a Persian contemporary fine art and portrait photographer born in 1990. He is a self-taught photographer who started his first professional projects in the year 2013. As he began his career as a professional photographer, his first motto was to create original and creative photos through which his own perceptions of the world and art could be understood. Also, he is eager to represent a unique way of looking at various concepts in the world. "Concept" is one of the most important parts of his photography projects, and Peyman tries to spend enough time and energy on finding the right concept. To create and discover the right idea he usually listen to classical music during his free time or at nights. Such high-quality music can inspire him and help him to concentrate on finding ways to present the world in ways that he sees. Besides, the colors that he uses in his photos create the illusion of a painting, and, hence, most people usually mistake his works as paintings. Peyman has received several awards including Second Place In Portrait in Fine Art Photography Awards 2020, Particular Merit Mention in All About Photo Awards 2020, Bronze in Fine Portrait and Fine Art Other in One Eyeland Photography Awards 2019, 1st Place in Conceptual in Chromatic Awards 2019, 2nd Place in Fashion in Chromatic Awards 2019, Gold In Moscow International Foto Awards 2019 in Portfolio Category, Bronze In Fine Art Photography Awards 2019 In Fine Art Category, Bronze In PX3 2019 In Fine Art - People and Also Peyman has been chosen as a 100 Great Photographers of 2018 and also Took 2nd Place In Conceptual Photo In 35Awards 2018, and also he has been Winner in ND Awards, Tokyo International Foto Awards, PX3, and International Photography Awards and V Concurso International De Fotografía 'Alicante' 2019. His work has been published in international publications including Harper's Bazaar Magazine and The Exhibition was In Ontario, 2019 CONTACT Photography Festival and Also The Last Exhibition was in France, 2019 Voies Off, Galerie Des Arènes. Statement My name is Peyman Naderi, and I am a contemporary Persian fine art and portrait photographer. I am a self-taught photographer who started his first professional projects in the year 2013. As I began my career as a professional photographer, my first moto was to create original and creative photos through which my own perceptions of the world and art could be understood. Also, I am eager to represent a unique way of looking to various concepts in the world. My first experience as a subject of portrait photography was quite funny though. I remember that I was only six years old, and I was terrified by seeing various equipment and cameras. Trying to make me calmer, the photographer gave me a toy camera to play with while sitting on the chair. This memory, somehow, triggered my curiosity and interest in this art. I bought my first camera years later, in 2010, and started to take photos of my friends and family members. The more I got engaged in this art, the more I found out about my artistic talents and the passion I have for photography. I remember that I used to go to a burnt cotton factory located on the outskirt of Tehran, my hometown. Although the fire had ruined almost everything in the factory, a small hall with a high ceiling and golden walls was left intact. When I first entered this building, seeing this magnificent scenery inside a totally destroyed and abandoned building took my breath away and provoked my first fine art ideas inside me. As I started my first project, I used to go to this place every day to try different photography techniques and become master in them. Then, I started studio photography to learn about various lighting techniques. I tried to include my own ideas and perceptions here, and manipulate the lighting based on my perceptions and concepts. Winning the silver medal in the Victor Polynsky competition for one of my photos called Oblivion, further increased my self-confidence and my persistence in photography. In the years after that, I won several awards in many competitions like Moscow International Foto Awards, Chromatic Awards, ND Awards, Tokyo International Foto Awards, PX3 and IPA, and I had my works published in various international magazines. "Concept" is one of the most important parts of my photography projects, and I try to spend enough time and energy on finding the right concept. To create and discover the right idea I usually listen to classical music during my free time or at nights. Such high-quality music can inspire me and help me to concentrate on finding ways to present the world in ways that I see. Besides, the colors that I use in my photos create the illusion of a painting, and, hence, most people usually mistake my works as paintings. In this project, I tried to exhibit the mind and though barriers that humans face. To fully present my idea I decided to use handmade metals and natural flowers, and then I tried to expand my idea to show both emancipation and captivity at the same time. Also, I have been attempting to display my own viewpoint in all of my works and to enable the viewer to connect with the world that I see. I genuinely hope to create a permanent path in the art of photography inspire other talented and hardworking artists. AAP Competitions All About Photo Awards 2020 AAP Magazine 10 Portrait
Madame d’Ora
Austria
1881 | † 1963
Dora Philippine Kallmus, also known as Madame D'Ora or Madame d'Ora, was an Austrian fashion and portrait photographer. Born in Vienna, Austria, in 1881 to a Jewish family, into a privileged background and coming of age amidst the creative and intellectual atmosphere of fin-de-siècle Vienna, Kallmus was extremely well cultured. Her father was a lawyer. Her sister, Anna, was born in 1878 and deported in 1941 during the Holocaust. Although her mother, Malvine (née Sonnenberg), died when she was young, her family remained an important source of emotional and financial support throughout her career. At age 23 while on a trip to the Côte d’Azur, she purchased her first camera, a Kodak box camera. She became interested in the photography field while assisting the son of the painter Hans Makart, and in 1905 she was the first woman to be admitted to theory courses at the Graphische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt (Graphic Training Institute), which in 1908 granted women access to other courses in photography. That same year she became a member of the Association of Austrian photographers. She was the first woman photographer in Vienna to open her own studio and in May 1906, she was listed in the commercial register as a photographer for the first time. She established her studio called the Atelier d’Ora or Madame D'Ora-Benda with Arthur Benda. The name was based on the pseudonym "Madame d'Ora", which she used professionally. Self-styled simply as d’Ora, she initially took portraits of friends and members from her social circle. In the autumn of 1909, an exhibition of her work received a lively response from the press. Critics both praised the artistic style of her portraits and emphasized the prominent individuals who streamed in to view the show. Over the course of her lifetime, d’Ora turned her lens on many artists, including Josephine Baker, Colette, Gustav Klimt, Tamara de Lempicka, and Pablo Picasso, among others. Alongside these commissions, she also photographed members of the Habsburg family and Viennese aristocracy, the Rothschild family, and other prominent cultural figures and politicians. D’Ora had close ties to avant-garde artistic circles and captured members of the Expressionist dance movement with her lens, including Anita Berber and Sebastian Droste. Fashion and glamor subjects were another important mainstay of her business. She regularly photographed Wiener Werkstätte fashion models and the designer Emilie Flöge of the Schwestern Flöge salon wearing artistic reform dresses. When d’Ora moved to Paris in 1925, she shifted her focus to fashion, covering the couture scene and leading lights of the period until 1940. She befriended key figures, such as the French milliner Madame Agnès and the Spanish designer Cristóbal Balenciaga, as well as the top fashion magazine editors of the day. She also helped create and sustain glamorous images for a variety of celebrities, including Cecil Beaton, Maurice Chevalier, and Colette. When the Nazis seized control of Paris in 1940, she was forced to close her studio and flee. She spent the war years in a semi-underground existence living in Ardèche in the southeast of France. Her sister Anna Kallmus, along with other family and friends, died in the Chełmno concentration camp. After World War II, d’Ora returned to Paris, profoundly affected by personal losses. While she lacked an elegant studio in Paris, d’Ora’s lasting connections to wealthy clients remained and many of them returned to her. While she accepted portrait commissions, mostly for financial stability, she also pushed into new, sometimes darker directions. Around 1948, she embarked on an astonishing series of photographs in displaced persons or refugee camps, which was commissioned by the United Nations. From around 1949 to 1958, d’Ora worked on a project, which she called “my big final work.” She visited numerous slaughterhouses in Paris, and amid the pools of blood and deathly screams, she stood in an elegant suit and a hat photographing the butchered animals hundreds of times. She died on 28 October 1963. Four years prior, she had sustained injuries after being hit by a motorcycle in Paris, resulting in her returning to Vienna.Source: Wikipedia
Andrew Keedle
United Kingdom
1969
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