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Gavin Libotte
Gavin Libotte
Gavin Libotte

Gavin Libotte

Country: United Kingdom/Australia
Birth: 1969

Gavin Rene Libotte is an Australian photographer born in Kent Sussex England in 1969 and is currently based in Sydney. He studied Graphic Design, Fine Art, and Jazz Guitar in Perth Western Australia. He started photography as a teenager using film while studying graphic design. After a long break he started using iPhones to make images and then went on to use Fuji and Ricoh cameras on the streets. He became a full-time musician and educator and has recently started working as a commercial photographer part-time and spending the rest of his time working on his fine art street photography. Gavin is influenced by painters such as Gorgio De Chirico, Jeffery Smart, and Caravaggio. His photographic influences include Ray K Metzker and Alex Webb. He discovered that the practice of photography is in alignment with his meditation routine and can be used to help focus the mind and live in the present moment. Gavin is currently working on some street photography projects and is showing his work in several International Group exhibitions.

Artist Statement
I like to explore the human condition and our relationship with the world around us. The world is multidimensional and we exist not just in a physical space. My images explore our relationship with the physical and spiritual layers of the world. The fragile human condition is at play within many layers of existence. Something we don't understand but we a committed to moving through the unseen challenges that lay ahead. I am attracted to strong compositions, hard light, faces/figures and have recently started exploring flash, ICM ( intentional camera movement ) and reflections. I like to work in black and white and colour.

Websites

@gavinlibottestreets

www.gavinlibottephotography.com

 

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More Great Photographers To Discover

Ludovic Viévard
Ludovic Viévard
France
1969
Ludovic Viévard has been dedicated to street photography since 2023. He approaches street photography as a way to immerse himself in the present moment and the urban environment. As a distinct form of attentiveness to the world, the photographic act involves capturing scenes from everyday life—whether mundane or extraordinary—to create an image that sits somewhere between artistic production and documentary material. His style leans toward a dark aesthetic, with raw images, strong contrasts, blur... and questions. A central focus of his work is navigating the "in-between" moment. The in-between photographic moment (i.e., Candid > In-between > Posed) explores people's reactions at the precise instant they realize a photo is being taken. Neither fully posed nor entirely candid, this fleeting moment—when the presence of the camera disrupts and reshapes interaction—is charged with a wide range of emotions: surprise, joy, indignation, anger… This project encourages both participants and viewers to reflect on their relationship with self-image in an era where smartphones and social media have fundamentally reshaped social norms and behaviors. All About Photo Competitions Photographer of the Week 21 AAP Magazine 56 Shadows
Lisette Model
Lisette Model
Austria/United States
1901 | † 1983
Lisette Model was an Austrian-born American photographer. She began her creative life as a student of music. Through avant-garde composer Arnold Schönberg, with whom she studied piano, she became exposed to the Expressionist painters of early twentieth-century Vienna. She never formally studied photography but took it up in the 1930s while living in Paris. An early piece of advice received from a colleague "Never photograph anything you are not passionately interested in", became her motto. Model's images can be categorized as "street photography," a style which developed after the invention of the hand-held camera, which made quick, candid shots possible. Through her own complicated personal history, she found intensely empathetic connections with her disparate subjects. Model eventually settled in New York, where she met with quick success as a commercial photographer for Harper's Bazaar magazine and as an artist with her work exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art. For thirty years she taught photography in New York, where she instructed and befriended Diane Arbus.Source: J.Paul Getty Museum Lisette Model was born Elise Amelie Felicie Stern in the family home in the 8th district of Vienna, Austria-Hungary. Her father, Victor, was an Italian/Austrian doctor of Jewish descent attached to the Austro-Hungarian Imperial and Royal Army and, later, to the International Red Cross; her mother Felicie was French and Catholic, and Model was baptized into her mother's faith. She had a brother, Salvatór, who was older by one year. Due to growing anti-Semitism in Austria and her father's struggle with his Jewish-Austrian identity, he had their last name changed to Seybert in February 1903, and six years later, her younger sister Olga was born. According to interview testimony from her older brother, she was sexually molested by her father, though the full extent of his abuse remains unclear. She had a bourgeois upbringing, was primarily educated by a series of private tutors, achieving fluency in Italian, German, and French. Her private education even when the family suffered financial strain after WWI. Despite her privileged upbringing, she frequently recalled her childhood as difficult. At age 19, she began studying music with composer (and father of her childhood friend Gertrude Arnold Schönberg, and was familiar to members of his circle. "If ever in my life I had one teacher and one great influence, it was Schönberg", she said. There is little known about her art education, but her connection with Schönberg exposed her to the contemporary art scene and leading avant-garde artists such as Gustav Klimt. Early exposure to Expressionism was what perhaps influenced her interest in observing people, and subsequently, photography. Model left Vienna with Olga and Felicie for Paris after her father died of cancer in 1924 to study voice with Polish soprano Marya Freund in 1926. Felicie and Olga moved on to Nice, but Lisette stayed in Paris, the new cultural hub after WWI, to continue studying music. It was during this period that she met her future husband, the Jewish, Russian-born painter Evsa Model (1901-1976), whom she went on to marry in September 1937. In 1933, she gave up music and recommitted herself to studying visual art, at first taking up painting as a student of Andre Lhote (whose other students included Henri Cartier-Bresson and George Hoyningen-Huene). From 1926 to 1933 she underwent psychoanalysis for childhood trauma, but little is known about what exact issues to she went for other than that it is believed she was molested by her father in her childhood. These years were referred to as her lonely period, as she frequented cafés alone and struggled to immerse herself into a radically different social group than the bourgeoisie class she had grown up surrounded by. Model bought her first enlarger and camera when she went to Italy. She had little training or interest in photography initially; it was Olga who taught her the basics of photographic technique. Model was most interested in the darkroom process, and wanted to become a darkroom technician. She used her sister as a subject to start her photography. Model claimed that "I just picked up a camera without any kind of ambition to be good or bad", but her friends from Vienna and Paris would go on to say that she had high standards for herself and a strong desire to excel at whatever she did. She also stated that the only lesson she ever got in photography, other than from her sister, was from Rogi André, who told her "Never photograph anything you are not passionately interested in", a quote she would rework later and become well-known for in her teaching career: "Shoot from the gut". André showed Model how to use the Rolleiflex, expanding her practice. Her decision to become a professional photographer came from a conversation in late 1933 or early 1934 with a fellow Viennese émigré and former student of Schönberg, Hanns Eisler (who had previously fled Germany once Hitler came into power). He warned her about the need to survive during a time of high political tension, pushing her to earn a living by photographing. Visiting her mother in Nice in 1934, Model took her camera out on the Promenade des Anglais and made a series of portraits - published in 1935 in the leftist magazine Regards - which are still among her most widely reproduced and exhibited images. These close-cropped, often clandestine portraits of the local privileged class already bore what would become her signature style: close-up, unsentimental and unretouched expositions of vanity, insecurity and loneliness. Model's compositions and closeness to her subjects were achieved by enlarging and cropping her negatives in the darkroom. Additionally, her use of a 2+1⁄4 inch square negative and larger print size were stylistic choices considered unique at a time when a proliferation of street photographers were embracing what was called the minicam. Later examination of her negatives by archivists reveals that the uncropped images include much of the subjects' physical surroundings. Model's edits in the darkroom eliminate those distractions, tightening the focus on the person and excluding extraneous background information. After the publication of the Promenade des Anglais images, or the Riviera series, Model resumed her Paris street photography practice, this time focusing on the poor. Neither Evsa nor Lisette was in possession of French citizenship, and they were well aware of building political tension in Europe, so they emigrated to Manhattan in 1938. Their first home was the Art Deco Master Apartments, but it soon became too expensive and they moved several times in their first few years in New York. The couple, especially Evsa, were known to be very social, frequenting cafés, and especially places with performers that Lisette liked to photograph. Model claimed that she did not take any photographs in the first 18 months she lived in New York, but an envelope dated 1939 contained many negatives of Battery Park, Wall Street, Delancey Street, and the Lower East Side depicting ordinary American people. She quickly became a prominent photographer, and by 1941, she had published her work in Cue, PM's Weekly, and U.S. Camera. She was captivated by the energy of New York City, which she expressed through her separate series Reflections and Running Legs. Interested in American consumerism and a culture very different from her own, Model began photographing Reflections, a series that explored manufactured images, and products or consumers in window reflections. She was recognized for her radical deviation from traditional viewpoint, and preoccupation with notions of glamour and anti-glamour. This series along with her work Running Legs attracted the attention of editors Carmel Snow and Alexey Brodovitch from Harper's Bazaar, a magazine she went on to work for from 1941 through 1955. One of her first assignments was to photograph Coney Island, in which she took some of her most recognized works such as Coney Island Bather". Her vision was of great interest to the editors at Harper's Bazaar, but by the 1950s, her involvement decreased dramatically, and she only published two assignments: A Note on Blindness and Pagan Rome. In 1944, she and Evsa became naturalized U.S citizens. Letters dated that same year revealed Model's family was financially struggling in Europe, and that her mother had died of cancer on October 21. Model eventually became a prominent member of the New York Photo League and studied with Sid Grossman. Despite the League's effort to maintain that it was a cultural, photographic organization, political pressure led to the League's demise in 1951. During its existence, Model was an active League member and served as a judge in membership print competitions. In 1941, the League hosted her first solo exhibition. From 1941 to 1953, she was a freelance photographer and contributed to many publications including Harper's Bazaar, Look, and Ladies' Home Journal. Model's involvement with the New York Photo League became the cause of much strife for her during the McCarthy Era of the 1950s, when the organization came under scrutiny by the House Un-American Activities Committee for suspected connections to the Communist Party. Though the League was not officially a political organization, many of its members used photography as a means for social awareness and change, but Model did not identify herself as a political or documentary photographer. The League was eventually classified as a communist organization by the FBI, who interviewed Model personally in 1954 and attempted to recruit her as an informant. She refused to cooperate with the Bureau, leading to her name being placed on the National Security Watchlist. Because many clients were reluctant to hire somebody who was under FBI suspicion, Model encountered increased difficulty finding opportunities to work, which played a role in her focus shift towards teaching. In 1949, she taught photography at the San Francisco Institute of Fine Arts. She left for California to teach in part for economic reasons and due to her friendship with Ansel Adams, who extended an informal invitation to a teaching position. She stayed from August until at least November of that year as a "Special instructor in documentary photography" in the Department of Photography. She did not produce much of her own work at that time, possibly because of her failure to receive the Guggenheim Fellowship the previous year. In spring 1951, Model was invited to teach at the New School for Social Research in New York City, where her longtime friend Berenice Abbott was also teaching photography. The New School had a liberal, humanistic approach to education and a high number of European refugees on staff. Known for her straightforward way of addressing her students, and unorthodox teaching style, Model realized she had a talent for teaching. Her teaching notebooks make frequent references to using children's art as example to show that art was an exploration of the world, and not a replication of what was already in place. She strongly focused on challenging her students to strive for the subjective experience and the utmost creativity, sometimes inspiring students, but alienating others. She did not tolerate lukewarm effort, and was ruthlessly critical of students' work that lacked passion. She also offered private workshops with Evsa from their apartment. Model's best known pupil was Diane Arbus, who studied under her in 1957, and Arbus owed much of her early technique to Model. Arbus's husband Allan was quoted attributing her development as an artist to Model: "That was Lisette. Three sessions and Diane was a photographer." Larry Fink, Helen Gee, John Gossage, Charles Pratt, Eva Rubinstein and Rosalind Solomon were also students of Model's. For twenty years she taught the program with little variation and routinely followed the same principles. She continued to teach in New York after the passing of her husband Evsa in 1976, both at the New School and at the International Center of Photography. In 1981 she was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts by the New School. In 1964, Model once again applied for the Guggenheim Fellowship, and in 1965 she was awarded the fellowship of $5,000 for a period of one year. In 1966 she went to Los Angeles and Las Vegas, with the intention to photograph anti-glamour of American culture. She also went to photograph in Italy, but due to ill health she returned to New York earlier than anticipated, and was diagnosed and successfully treated for uterine cancer. In the 1970s, Model developed rheumatism in her hands, but continued to diligently teach and photograph. The first book of Model's photographs was published in 1979 by Aperture and included a preface by Berenice Abbott. Marvin Israel designed the book. Fifty-two photographs made from 1937 to 1970 were reproduced at a large enough scale to correspond with her preferred dimension of 16 × 20 inches. In early 1970 she applied to the Ingram Merrill Foundation and was awarded $2,500, and in March 1973 she received a Creative Artists Public Service Program award for $2,500. In the later half of her career, Model's work underwent a steep drop in print production. She hadn't stopped shooting photographs; she had simply stopped printing them. Much like some of the hazier details of her biography, the reason for this change has not been conclusively identified. Speculation points toward declining health and self-efficacy, increased energy directed towards teaching, and precarious financial situation as some of the primary causes. Nevertheless, Model continued to shoot and teach until her death. She was especially inspired to photograph when away from home, such as her photographs of students in Berkeley in 1973, Lucerne in 1977, Venice in 1979, and so on. She even returned to Nice, France, for the first time in nearly thirty years. However, she did not find the same inspiration there that she once had when photographing her first influential series Promenade des Anglais. Model's image is included in the iconic 1972 poster Some Living American Women Artists by Mary Beth Edelson. In January 1976, Evsa suffered a heart attack, which required that he be constantly taken care of and monitored. His health continued to decline until his death later that same year. His death deeply affected Lisette, who continued to live in their basement apartment they had shared for many years. Even in her twilight hours, her work was exhibited in Germany, Japan, and the Netherlands, to name a few, and in 1982 she received the Medal of the City of Paris. On March 4, she gave her last lecture at Haverford college, and she died at New York Hospital on March 30, 1983 from heart and respiratory disease.Source: Wikipedia
Joan-Ramon Manchado
Joan-Ramon Manchado
Spain
1967
Joan-Ramon Manchado is a sculptor and photographer, based in Barcelona. In 2018 he began photographing people in public spaces of different cities around the world, sometimes including the urban context and other times avoiding it to give maximum prominence to human beings. Although he does not renounce digital photography, he is especially interested in the materiality of the photographic object and in traditional techniques that allow him to experiment in the different phases of the process. Passers-by is the first work that he publishes. It was awarded in the Portfolio Review of the Revela'T Festival 2021 and has been a finalist in the Lens Culture Black and White Photography Awards and in the Fotonostrum Portrait Award. Passers-by "No one pays heed to the apparently abstruse fact that other people are also living souls." - Fernando Pessoa (The book of Disquiet) "I usually photograph people in the street; passers-by I come across with when I’m walking in different cities around the world. Photography allows me to capture an underlying dimension that I could hardly perceive with the naked eye. It’s a hybrid process that begins with digital capture and ends with the completion of the blueprint, whose monochromatic tones and loss of detail contribute to emphasize the most essential of the images. This way, without imposture or context, Passersby’s faces are revealed to me in an unequivocally transcendent manner." -- Joan-Ramon Manchado
John Divola
John Divola
United States
1949
John Divola is an American contemporary visual artist born in 1949 in Los Angeles, CA. He received a B.A. from California State University, Northridge in 1971 and later received an M.F.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1974. He has held residencies at many institutions including the California Institute of the Arts. He has held the position of Professor in the art department at the University of California Riverside since 1988. His work has been featured in many solo exhibitions across the United States, Europe, Japan, and Australia. He participated in 1978, 1989, and 2000 Museum of Modern Art group exhibitions and in the 1981 Whitney Biennial. Divola received awards as Individual Artist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1973, 1976, 1979, 1990 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1986. He published four books: Continuity, Isolated Houses, Dogs Chasing My Car In The Desert, and Three Acts. In Zuma project, he has described being interested in the relationship between real artworks and representations of them, and the issues of the natural and the artificial. Divola said "I attempted ... to develop a practice in which there could be no distinction between the document and the original." In his series of photographs from 1977, he used deserted houses on Zuma Beach and covered their walls in graffiti. He photographed the ocean from the house's interior through windows and cracks. Divola states: "On initially arriving I would move through the house looking for areas or situations to photograph. If nothing seemed to interest me I would move things around or do some spray painting. The painting was done in much the same way that one might doodle on a piece of paper. At that point, I would return to the camera and explore whatever new potentials existed." These cyclical images skillfully juxtapose romantic skies and sunsets with a seaside structure that, frame by frame, deteriorates into ruin as it is vandalized by the artist and others who eventually set it on fire. Divola's works trace a schematic desire for escape, movement, and transcendence. "My acts, my painting, my photographing, my considering, are part of, not separate from, this process of evolution and change. These photographs are not so much about this process as they are remnants from it. My participation was not so much one of intellectual consideration as one of visceral involvement." Dogs Chasing My Car In The Desert are images of dogs in the desert captured in the midst of running wildly after the car. Emphasizing the grain of the image, these black and white photographs capture a haunting moment in which there is a duality between a sense of absence and presence. The behavior of the dogs suggests a lack of previous stimuli, and loneliness at the same time as an all-consuming reaction to the now, a presence. "It could be viewed as a visceral and kinetic dance. Here we have two vectors and velocities, that of a dog and that of a car and, seeing that a camera will never capture reality and that a dog will never catch a car, evidence of devotion to a hopeless enterprise". In the Dark Star series, dark circles have been painted on the walls of an abandoned house. Creation and destruction are held in a delicate equilibrium, the white rooms of the house, are tattered and derelict. The domestic ruins suggest social collapse, secret renditions of something darkly sinister illuminating our conflicted recent history, updating Zuma and Vandalism for our age of foreclosure. In the As Far As I Can Get project, he made photographs by pushing the self-timer button on his camera. An exposure is made in 10 seconds. John Divola currently lives and works in Riverside, CA. Divola works in photography, describing himself as exploring the landscape by looking for the edge between the abstract and the specific.Source: Wikipedia
Takeshi Yamamoto
Takeshi Yamamoto
Japan
Takeshi Yamamoto is a Japanese documentary photographer based in Yamanashi, Japan. His work focuses on long-term social and environmental issues, with particular attention to memory, landscape, and the traces left by disaster and policy. Since 2011, he has been documenting Fukushima and the long aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster. His project Silent Witnesses: Fukushima 2011–2026 examines how land, communities, and memory are transformed over time, and how absence, reconstruction, and normalization become visible in the landscape. His work has been recognized with the 9th Natori Younosuke Photography Award and has been exhibited and published internationally, including a solo exhibition at Sony Imaging Gallery and features on Social Documentary Network and All About Photo. All About Photo Competitions All About Photo Awards 2026 Article Where Devotion Resides
Roberto Cavazzuti
Roberto Cavazzuti
Italy
1965
Roberto Cavazzuti is an Italian visual artist whose practice is rooted in photography. Strongly influenced by the world of cinema—drawing inspiration from Kubrick, Wenders, and Kitano—his work moves fluidly between abstraction and still life. Working primarily under the pseudonym RedRumStudio, he showcases his vision through international platforms such as Saatchi Art and ArtMajeur. Awarded Photographer of the Week - Week 41, 2025
Francesco Gioia
Francesco Gioia
Italy
1991
Francesco Gioia is an artist working with photography and collage based in London, United Kingdom. His approach is like an intimate dialogue, a wordless communion where images seem to breathe, revealing their surreal realities. His work draws from diverse influences, spanning avant-garde experiments, surrealistic expression, film, collage, and Bauhaus studies. This fusion of styles and techniques shapes a visual language that is both introspective and personal. A recipient of numerous international awards, his work has been published in The Guardian, The Washington Post, and other major publications. He has exhibited across the UK, USA, Africa, and Europe and has published a monograph, 57, with Parallel Editions.
Anna Matysiak
Anna Matysiak
Poland
1978
Anna Matysiak, born in 1978, is an independent photographer working in the fine art style. With a keen eye for detail and an innate ability to convey emotion, she particularly enjoys capturing the essence of her subjects through portrait photography. Although her educational background is in economics, her passion for the arts led her to fully immerse herself in the world of photography, a journey she began in 2020. In addition to her striking portraits, Anna's portfolio showcases an impressive array of conceptual and nude photography, highlighting her versatility and creative vision. Her work has gained significant recognition, with photographs exhibited in prestigious venues across the globe, including Tucson in the United States, London in the United Kingdom, Vien in Austria, Siena in Italy and Szczecin in Poland. Through her lens, Anna invites viewers to explore the profound beauty and complexity of the human experience. Matysiak garnering recognition in numerous prestigious international competitions. These contests were judged by a jury panel of esteemed professionals, including gallery owners, publishers, editors, and acclaimed photographers, all of whom brought a wealth of experience and expertise to their evaluations. She has received numerous prestigious awards. In 2025, she won a bronze medal in the Tokyo International Foto Awards in the Fine Art (Other) category and a special award in the Vienna International Photography Award in the Free Subject category. In 2024, she won a bronze medal in the Fine Art category at the Chromatic Awards. In 2023, she received a gold medal in the Fine Art (Other) category at the ND Awards. Since 2021, her works have also been awarded distinctions in the Creative Photo Awards (Siena Awards), International Photography Awards, Fine Art Photography Awards, Annual Photography Awards, and Budapest International Foto Awards. Currently based in Szczecin, Poland. STATEMENT: "When I embarked on my journey into photography, my initial focus was primarily on portrait photography, capturing the essence of people as they were. However, deep down, I yearned to express more than just a straightforward depiction. As time passed, my artistic vision evolved, heavily influenced by the remarkable artists I held in high regard— distinguished photographers and talented painters whose works stirred something within me. I increasingly felt compelled to illustrate people and places through my lens, revealing how I perceive their beauty and intricacies. My aim was to highlight my subjects' hidden depths, enabling them to resonate with viewers on a reflective level. In the present day, my creative process often revolves around symbolism. I cherish the notion that viewers can engage with my images, pondering their meanings and engaging in conversations about them. The nature of my work is significantly shaped by my surroundings. Every photograph I take is a product of the environment and the individuals I encounter throughout my journey. A distinct location may ignite a vision for an artistic photograph, while an intriguing individual might inspire a unique portrait. Even melodies in my surroundings can trigger the imagery I wish to convey and the narratives I long to tell. When approaching the creation of conceptual photography, I immerse myself in meticulous preparation. Each detail is carefully curated to ensure the final presentation aligns with my artistic intent. While the subject matter varies widely, a common thread runs through all my work: capturing the viewer's attention enough to provoke thought and facilitate the discovery of more profound messages. Photography is not just a pursuit for me - it is a rofound passion that fills my heart with joy. This joy magnifies with the reach of my audience. Each accolade, award, and exhibition serves as wings that propel me forward, motivating me to delve deeper into my art. I believe that every artist crafts their work with an audience in mind. As I maintain a critical eye on my creations, the praise and recognition I receive from esteemed figures in the photographic world inspire me to elevate my craft, embrace new challenges, and continue this exhilarating journey of self-expression."
Guy Bourdin
Guy Bourdin
France
1928 | † 1991
Guy Bourdin (1928-1991) was born in Paris. A painter his entire life and a self-taught photographer, he was working for magazines, such as Vogue as well as for brands such as Chanel, Ungaro and Charles Jourdan. He exhibited his first photographies at Galerie 29 in 1952. Nowadays his work has been exhibited in the most prestigious museums, such as The Victoria & Albert Museum, The Jeu de Paume, The National Art Museum of China, The Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography and The Moscow House of Photography. His oeuvres is part of the collection of many prestigious institutions such as the MoMA in New York, The Getty Museum in Los Angeles, SFMOMA in San Francisco and the collection of the V&A among others. Guy Bourdin's career spanned more than forty years during which time he worked for the world's leading fashion houses and magazines. With the eye of a painter, Guy Bourdin created images that contained fascinating stories, compositions, both in B&W and in colors. He was among the 1st to create images with narratives, telling stories and shows that the image is more important than the product which is displayed. Using fashion photography as his medium, he sent out his message, one that was difficult to decode, exploring the realms between the absurd and the sublime. Famed for his suggestive narratives and surreal aesthetics, he radically broke conventions of commercial photography with a relentless perfectionism and sharp humor. Guy Bourdin used the format of the double spread magazine page in the most inventive way. He tailored his compositions to the constraints of the printed page both conceptually and graphically, and the mirror motif so central in his work finds its formal counterpart in the doubleness of the magazine spread. Layout and design become powerful metaphors for the photographic medium, engaging the eye and with it, the mind. While on the one hand employing formal elements of composition, Guy Bourdin, on the other hand, sought to transcend the reality of the photographic medium with surreal twists to the apparent subject of his images and his unconventional manipulation of the picture plane. Given total creative freedom and with uncompromising artistic ethic, Guy Bourdin captured the imagination of a whole generation at the late 1970s, recognised as the highest note in his career. Guy Bourdin was an image maker, a perfectionist. He knew how to grab the attention of the viewer and left nothing to chance. He created impeccable sets, or when not shooting in his studio rue des Ecouffes in le Marais, in undistinguished bedrooms, on the beach, in nature, or in urban landscapes. The unusual dramas that unfold in these seemingly everyday scenes and ordinary encounters pique our subconscious and invite our imagination. Moreover, he developed a technic using hyper real colours, meticulous compositions of cropped elements such as low skies with high grounds and the interplay of light and shadows as well as the unique make-up of the models. Guy Bourdin irreverently swept away all the standards of beauty, conventional morals and product portrayals in one fell swoop. Around the female body he constructed visual disruptions, the outrageous, the hair-raising, the indiscreet, the ugly, the doomed, the fragmentary and the absent, torsos and death - all the tension and the entire gamut of what lies beyond the aesthetic and the moral,« explains the exhibition's curator Ingo Taubhorn. Bourdin investigates in minute detail the variables of fashion photography, from brash posing to subtle performances and from complex settings to novel and disturbing notions of images. Guy Bourdin was among the first to imagine fashion photographies that contained fascinating narratives, dramatic effects with intense color saturation, hyper-realism and cropped compositions while he established the idea that the product is secondary to the image. A fan of Alfred Hitchcock's 'Macguffin' technique - an inanimate object catalyzing the plot - the photographer constructed 'crime scenes', getting rid of all usual standards of beauty and morals while his images demanded cerebral responses. When such photographers as David Bailey, in the 1960s, produced fantasy images of the girl-next-door, Guy Bourdin captured the atmosphere of the 1970s with sharp humor, erotism and outrageous femininity. Collaborating with Issey Miyake, Chanel or Emmanuel Ungaro, it was his work for the shoe label, Charles Jourdan, that brought him the attention of a wider public. With the campaign, Guy Bourdin dared to barely show the product and turned the shoe into a trivial element of a theatrical mise-en-scène that enhanced sex and bad taste. Guy Bourdin's imagery not only changed the course of fashion photography but influenced a host of contemporary artists, photographers and filmmakers. It is without question, that Guy Bourdin's work for Vogue and his highly acclaimed print advertising for Charles Jourdan in the 1970s are now being seen in the appropriate context of contemporary art.
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Interview
Exclusive Interview with Henk Kosche
German photographer Henk Kosche turns his lens toward the streets of Halle an der Saale, capturing everyday life in the late years of the former German Democratic Republic. At the time, Kosche was studying design and exploring the city with his camera, drawn to the atmosphere of its industrial landscape and the quiet rhythms of daily life. His series Street Photography at the End of the 80s, selected as the Solo Exhibition for July 2025, revisits a body of work created just before a period of profound change. Rediscovered decades later in a small box of 35mm negatives, these photographs offer glimpses of a city and its people at a moment suspended between the familiar and the unknown.
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Exclusive Interview with Anastasia Samoylova
Interview
Exclusive Interview with Anastasia Samoylova
Anastasia Samoylova is an American artist whose photographic practice is shaped by close observation and a deep attentiveness to place. Working between documentary and formal exploration, she photographs landscapes, architecture, and everyday scenes with a sensitivity to light, structure, and atmosphere. Since relocating to Miami in 2016, her work has increasingly focused on how environments—both natural and built—carry social, cultural, and emotional traces. We asked her a few questions about her practice and her way of seeing, to better understand the thoughts and experiences that shape her work—while allowing the images themselves to remain open and speak in their own time.
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Exclusive Interview with Marijn Fidder
Interview
Exclusive Interview with Marijn Fidder
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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Exclusive Interview with Josh S. Rose
Interview
Exclusive Interview with Josh S. Rose
Josh S. Rose is a multidisciplinary artist working across photography, film, and writing. His practice bridges visual and performing arts, with a strong focus on movement, emotion, and the expressive potential of the image. Known for his long-standing collaborations with leading dance companies and performers, Rose brings together authenticity and precise composition—a balance he describes as “technical romanticism.” His work has been commissioned and exhibited internationally, appearing in outlets such as Vogue, at the Super Bowl, in film festivals, and most recently as a large-scale installation for Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. A sought-after collaborator, he has worked with major artists, cultural institutions, and brands, following a previous career as Chief Creative Officer at Interpublic Group and the founder of Humans Are Social. We asked him a few questions about his life and work.
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Interview with Maureen Ruddy Burkhart
Interview
Interview with Maureen Ruddy Burkhart
Photographer Maureen Ruddy Burkhart brings a quietly attentive and deeply human sensibility to her exploration of the world through images. Shaped by a life immersed in photography, film, and visual storytelling, her work is guided by intuition, observation, and an enduring interest in the emotional undercurrents of everyday life. With a practice rooted in both fine art traditions and documentary awareness, she approaches her subjects with sensitivity, allowing subtle moments to emerge naturally rather than be imposed. Her series Til Death, selected as the Solo Exhibition for February 2025, reflects this long-standing commitment to photography as a space for reflection rather than spectacle. Drawn to moments that exist just outside the expected frame, Burkhart’s images suggest narratives without resolving them, leaving room for ambiguity, humor, and quiet connection. We asked her a few questions about her life and work.
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