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Charlie Lieberman
Charlie Lieberman
Charlie Lieberman

Charlie Lieberman

Country: United States
Birth: 1945

Charlie Lieberman is a photographer and cinematographer based in Southern California. Best known for his work on the TV show, Heroes, Lieberman has also been developing a body of photographic work since the 1960s. His current practice seeks out humble landscapes, avoiding the iconic in an effort to impart a sense of memory, contemplation, and awe. Lieberman is currently an Active Member of The American Society of Cinematographers. He has been represented by Freed Gallery since 2014 in Lincoln City, Oregon.

Statement
Whenever I take a photograph, I want you to feel like you are there with me. Whether it is looking through a windshield blurred by rain or standing beside a stretch of weathered, empty highway, I want to impart a sense of memory, even if you have never been to that particular place before.

Photographs, like memories, have an elusive power to document experiences that approach each of us in different ways. My work is an attempt to reconsider the preconceptions one might have about landscapes and how we move through them, to direct your eye to experiences that often go unnoticed or taken for granted. By avoiding the iconic, I try to reconnect with a past beyond my own, to a kind of humble, primordial existence where one can converse with the world in solitude. When I do enter the urban landscape, it is always through the impact of light and weather, reminding us of the nature we all inhabit.

I document what I consider to be a shy world, a world where stillness and contemplation enable us to walk together and share a common experience imprinted upon the landscape even if the human figure is absent in these photographs. It is this absence I hope to capture with my photography, to allow room for our memories-both real and imagined—to inhabit us with renewed appreciation and awe.

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More Great Photographers To Discover

Anders Petersen
Sweden
1944
Anders Petersen was born 1944 in Stockholm, Sweden. 14 years old his family moved to Karlstad in Värmland, where he met the artists ?Karin Bodland and Lars Sjögren.In 1961 he stayed for some time in Hamburg in order to learn German and trying to write and paint. He didn’t take any pictures. Five years later he met Christer Strömholm and became a student at his School of Photography in Stockholm. Strömholm was not just his teacher but also a close friend. Their friendship influenced him for life. In 1967 he starts photographing a bar called Café Lehmitz in Hamburg, close to Zeughausmarkt. He was photographing there for a period of almost three years and in 1970 he had his first soloexhibition over the bar in Café Lehmitz with 350 photographs nailed to the wall. In 1973 he published his first book ”Gröna Lund”, about people in an amusementpark in Stockholm. In 1974 he graduated from the Swedish Filmschool,Dramatiska Institutet, in Stockholm. In 1978 he published ”Café Lehmitz ” in Germany. In 1984 the first book in a trilogy about locked instituations was published. The three books were about people in a prison, a nursing house, and a mental hospital. After photographing the mental hospital for three years he oriented himself towards a more free approach in a kind of diarylike photography. During 2003 and 2004 Anders Petersen was appointed Professor of Photography in the School of Photography and Film at the University of Göteborg, Sweden. He regularly has workshops and exhibitions throughout Europe, Asia and in the USA. He has received numerous grants and rewards since the seventies. In 2003 Anders Petersen was elected the ”Photographer of the Year” by the International Photofestival in Arles.In 2006 he was shortlisted as one of four for the ”Deutsche Börse Photography Prize”. In 2007 he received the ”Special Prize of the Jury” for his exhibition ”Exaltation of Humanity” by the third International Photofestival in Lianzhou, China. In 2008 he received the ”Dr. Erich Salomon Award” by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie, Germany. ”The Arles Contemporary Book Award for 2009? went to JH Engström and ?Anders Petersen’s collaborative book ”From Back Home” by Max Ström.?The book was nominated to ”The Best Photographic Book in Sweden, ?year 2009? and also Winner of Design Bronze Lion in Cannes. In 2010, he was in the jury for the BMW Prize at Paris Photo. In 2012, nominated to the Swedish Photo Book Prize in Stockholm for ”SOHO”, and PhotoBook of the Year award for "City Diary" Paris Photo and the Aperture Foundation. Anders Petersen has his darkroom in Stockholm, Sweden. Source: www.anderspetersen.se Anders Petersen, one of Sweden’s most influential auteur photographers, sensitively blurs the boundaries between madness and normality in his artwork “Mental Hospital”. Petersen, who won international renown with his Hamburg Café Lehmitz series (1967-1970), spent several years photographing patients at a psychiatric hospital just south of Stockholm. His gaze is one of raw tenderness, conveying naked emotions with insightful poetry. Carried by a deep integrity, he takes the viewer to the limits of normality. "It is the naked encounter, the raw, piercing confrontation with the Other and therefore with myself," Petersen said, describing his intention. "I photograph people with whom I can identify and I feel attracted by people who live outside society. In all my photographs, I try, essentially, to create self-portraits." He is neither sentimental nor sensational. Instead, his images show a great respect for that which is enigmatic in people, for that which is hidden under the surface. Petersen’s works have marked the history of photography. In 2003, he won the award “Photographer of the Year” at the festival "Rencontres de la Photographie" in Arles, and he was honored with the German Photography Society’s Dr.-Erich-Salomon prize in 2008 for his life’s work. Source: Grundemark Nilsson Gallery
F. Bessma Rhea
United States
2002
F. Bessma Rhea is her father’s second-born daughter (first-born son), her mother’s last line of defense at the dinner table, and her sister’s favorite fun house mirror. She is the first person to speak in a crowded elevator and the last person to get a word in edgewise. Bessma has always been a big talker, but her preferred method of communication is using the visual language of photography. F. Bessma Rhea graduated from Montana State University in 2025, achieving a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Integrated Lens Based Media from the School of Film and Photography. Although Bessma spent the last four and a half years in Bozeman, Montana, Bessma was born, raised, and is now currently residing in San Diego, California. Her photographic journey has encompassed an exploration of various mediums, ranging from silver gelatin prints and digital flash photography, to alternative process and chromogenic printing in the color darkroom. From this exploration she learned to cultivate her aesthetic, her relationship to photography, and to refine and utilize her voice. In her own reflection, she sees herself as a detective and a scientist, but to the outside world, she is an artist and a photographer. With her camera she will continue to investigate and theorize about the world she’s a part of, and where she fits in. But in the moments she’s not photographing, she enjoys filthy explicit music – and classic literature. Gutter Dutchess: I organize my environment in the frame and listen to when the world tells me I am a woman. I consider questions like, “How do I photograph a homewrecker?” and “What is inherently aggressive about a haircut?”. I desperately follow curiosity like the north star. GUTTER DUCHESS is a punk portrait series represented by twenty color film images of friends, best friends, my sister, my mother, myself, and moments in between. From doctor’s appointments to dumpster diving, I comprehend a women’s world through a lens that is candid, impulsive, crude, jovial, contrite, and desperate to reject assimilation to any one characteristic. As I photograph, I find myself constantly fighting with my images because I am a pessimistic, hotheaded, angry little person. However, in these photographs, I am continuously confronted with an abundance of love from the women in my life, who are proof of the untamable female spirit. This work is messy, unglamorous, and a raw exploration of womanhood. Favoring emotional truth over aesthetic polish, my series sprinkles clues of the fallacy of attempting feminine definition. Artist Philosophy Photography is a method of comprehension, I want to understand what is here. I have always been intrigued by the surreal but perhaps that comes from a bigger desire to turn the psyche outward, to make the invisible visible. I am driven by the ability to push the boundaries of sensation through the uncanny, visceral, and provocative. Visual arts is my language to answer life’s biggest questions. Every series is a conversation and if photography is to speak then a camera is the tongue. I have completely fallen in love with the medium, and without the tongue there is no voice.
Shelby Lee Adams
United States
1950
Shelby Lee Adams is an American environmental portrait photographer and artist best known for his images of Appalachian family life. Adams has photographed Appalachian families since the mid-1970s. He had first encountered the poor families of the Appalachian mountains as a child, travelling around the area with his uncle, who was a doctor. His work has been published in three monographs: Appalachian Portraits (1993), Appalachian Legacy (1998), and Appalachian Lives (2003). Adams was the subject of a documentary film by Jennifer Baichwal in 2002 - The True Meaning of Pictures: Shelby Lee Adams's Appalachia. This was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival, and at the Sundance Festival in 2003. The film critiques and defends Adams' method in photographing Appalachian people for his previously published books.Source: Wikipedia Born in Kentucky in the town of Hazard, and later living with his grandparents in Hot Spot, Shelby Lee Adams discovered photography and the arts in high school. It was during this time that the Peace Corps sent a film crew to his town to document the poverty of Appalachia, which sparked Adams' interest in the documentary style. He attended the Cleveland Institute of Art, where in his sophomore year he was exposed to the photographs of the Farm Security Administration. These pictures document the debilitating effects of the Depression in the South during the 1930s. Adams was able to relate to the images and the subjects, inspiring him to make the pictures for which he is now best known, his photographs of the people and culture of Appalachia. He began this project in 1973 and although he has done editorial work for publications like Fortune, GQ, New York Magazine, and the New York Times, he primarily focuses on portraits of the people of Appalachia. Shelby Lee Adams works primarily in black and white. He began with a 35mm camera and then switched to a 4x5. His crisp, poignant images show the people of Appalachia in their simple environments, revealing both the heroic and grotesque side to secluded mountain life. Adams photographs his subjects with an emphasis on the unpretty beauty of their immediate surroundings and their worn faces and clothes, their rudimentary living conditions starkly contrasted against the backdrop of a sublime landscape. But they are not depicted as victims; they confront the camera proudly and matter-of-factly. Shelby Lee Adams considers his subjects his friends, which no doubt lends a level of comfort to the shooting sessions, as they face his large camera. In his most recent work, Adams documents the infiltration of progress and media into the folkways of the Appalachian people, capturing the displacement of an agrarian economy. Drawn to the attractions of pop culture and modern life, the Appalachian people are losing interest in living off the land. Adams' work has received a great deal of recognition. He is the recipient of a survey grant and photography fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts (1978, 1992), along with an artist support grant four years running from the Polaroid Corporation (1989-92). His photographs are held in the permanent collections of many museums, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, both in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., the Harvard Fogg Museum in Cambridge, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.Source: International Center of Photography
Carl De Keyzer
Belgium
1958
Carl De Keyzer (27 December 1958) is a Belgian photographer. Major subjects in his work have included the collapse of Soviet Union and India. He became a full member of Magnum Photos in 1994. De Keyzer has exhibited his work in many European galleries and has received several awards, including the Book Award from Rencontres d'Arles, the W. Eugene Smith Award and the Kodak Award.Source: Wikipedia Carl de Keyzer started his career as a freelance photographer in 1982 while supporting himself as a photography instructor at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent, Belgium. At the same time, his interest in the work of other photographers led him to co-found and co-direct the XYZ-Photography Gallery. A Magnum nominee in 1990, he became a full member in 1994. De Keyzer likes to tackle large-scale projects and general themes. A basic premise in much of his work is that, in overpopulated communities everywhere, disaster has already struck and infrastructures are on the verge of collapse. His style is not dependent on isolated images; instead, he prefers an accumulation of images that interact with the text.Source: www.carldekeyzer.com Magnum photographer Carl de Keyzer was born in Kortrijk, Belgium, in 1958. In his early work he focused on social groups outside of the mainstream. The God, Inc. series explores the various sects of Christianity in the United States and the drastically different and often extreme ways in which people communicate with God. Currently de Keyzer is tackling large-scale projects and general themes relating to overpopulated communities, disasters, and infrastructures. He prefers to work with an accumulation of images that interact with text, and in a series of large tableaux he has covered India; the collapse of the Soviet Union; and modern-day power and politics. His photographs have been published in The Guardian, LIFE, El País and Le Monde, and de Keyzer’s works are held in collections including the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Fotomuseum in Belgium. He also is a recipient of the W. Eugene Smith Grant for Humanistic Photography.Source: International Center of Photography Carl De Keyzer tackles large-scale themes through an accumulative, expansive approach. He builds up narratives through collected images, which often interact with text (taken from his travel diaries). In a series of large-format prints, he has covered India, the collapse of the Soviet Union and – more recently – modern-day power and politics in North Korea. His seminal project, God, Inc., captured religious life on the margins of American society. A basic premise in much of his work is that, in overpopulated communities everywhere, disaster has already struck, and infrastructures are on the verge of collapse.Source: Magnum Photos
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