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FINAL CHANCE to enter All About Photo Awards: $5,000 Cash Prizes - Juror Steve McCurry
FINAL CHANCE to enter All About Photo Awards: $5,000 Cash Prizes - Juror Steve McCurry
Gianluca Mortarotti
Gianluca Mortarotti
Gianluca Mortarotti

Gianluca Mortarotti

Country: Italy
Birth: 1990

My name is Gianluca Mortarotti, and I'm a self-taught photographer from Rome currently based in London, UK. My passion for photography started at a young age, thanks in part to my father's work as a wedding photographer. However, it wasn't until after my studies that I decided to take photography more seriously.

I'm fascinated by the energy of cities and the candid moments that tell a story and I've always been drawn to the contrasts of urban life and the connections between people that can seem strange and unusual. Through my work, I try to explore these themes with a fresh and unexpected approach, creating a consistent and attractive aesthetic that is both narrative and metaphorical in its meaning. I believe that the world around us is full of hidden beauty that often goes unnoticed, and I like to create tension in my images by juxtaposing contrasting elements and highlighting the unusual connections between them, aiming to create a sense of intrigue and encourage the viewer to look closer and engage with the image on a deeper level. For me, photography is not just about documenting reality but using it as a means of expression to shed light on life beyond mere appearances.

Statement:
More than a camera, I have a tool for storytelling. My goal is to use photography as a means to reveal the unseen and to present a fresh, intriguing, and personal view of the world.

Winner AAP Magazine #30 Shadows
 

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More Great Photographers To Discover

Anastasia Egonyan
Ukraine/Armenia
1987
Anastasia Egonyan (b.1987, Kharkiv, Ukraine) is an international artist of Armenian descent based in Berlin. Her practice is driven by emotional fluctuations and psychological experiences that are deeply rooted in her introspective life experiences. She continues to balance a longstanding practice in photography with evolving focus on painting and textile. Frequent engagement with family narratives, Armenian ancestry, and the exploration of female fragility are closely integrated into the evolving sense of self, as she continues to expand her approach across diverse mediums. Anastasia integrates textiles and predominantly natural materials into her artistic practice, delving into the tactile and symbolic dimensions of her heritage. Her work includes manual photo transfer techniques, traditional Armenian sheep wool, and the delicate use of pearls. By incorporating Armenian words and common phrases into her creations, she preserves and celebrates her cultural identity. Anastasia finds profound symbolism in the simplicity of everyday life while honouring the strength and resilience of women through historical and cultural lenses. Egonyan’s artistic practice is grounded in psychological self-reflection, where themes of ancestral heritage and identity gradually unfold. Her use of oil paint, textile, photography collages, and mixed media often employs layering techniques to shield the vulnerable aspects of emotional and personal experience. These layers, whether of paint or fabric, serve to shield the intimacy of these personal explorations, preserving a sense of privacy while concealing the raw intensity of the truth. The act of layering thus becomes an allegory, creating a barrier between the deeply personal and the viewer, who may not yet be prepared for such exposure. ցավդ տանեմ - I take your pain mixed media (textile, wool, photography transfer) 220 x 320 cm With love for the people of Artsakh who lost their homes. My family heritage originates from the village of Togh (Տող) in the Hadrut region, Artsakh. The great ancestor wrote at the entrance of his chamber “I did not allow that people from Armenia be taken captive.” In September 2023, history took a different course as the indigenous people of Artsakh were forcibly displaced. Over 100,000 individuals lost their homes, and the land now falls under the control and administration of occupying forces, with the region being transformed into a nature reserve. I take your pain is an object that represents the traditional Armenian way of making wool blankets. With the use of sheep wool and cotton fabric it is quilted in the original manner, following the rectangular shape. It is common for every Armenian family to own several of these blankets and mattresses, which are typically crafted by the women of the household. The object is composed of multiple layers of textile and wool, forming a mosaic of fabrics sourced from my collection of vintage scraps and family garments. It connects to my family, my current residence, my place of birth, and the lost land that forever holds my heart and soul.
Steeve Luncker
Switzerland
1969
Born in 1969 in Switzerland, Steeve Iuncker lives and works in Geneva. He studied at the Photography School in Vevey and is Agence VU' member since 2000.“Press photographer (he works part-time for a daily newspaper), Steeve Iunker tirelessly questions the role(s) of photography and of the image in the fields of information and documentary today in a radical and political way…[his work] aims to get close to the taboos relating to the body, to death and to the standard social conception of big issues that affect human thought. Either he stays with an Aids patient in the terminal phase, he represents the professional life of an old prostitute, he confronts himself with the crisis in Gaza, he stores images of celebrities adorned with diamonds at Cannes Festival, discovers the backstage area of a fashion show, follows the police while investigating on crimes, or reveals the astounding world of plastic surgery, Steeve Iunker doesn’t chase icons. He shows. In a realistic, free and salutary way. Even if it might seem provocative or shocking. He only wants us to agree to see. To be responsible and clear-sighted.”Christian Caujolle.He has recently finished the first phase of a project dealing with the subject of death. He wishes to expose to Geneva the realities that its police department, University Institute of Legal Medicine and the Murith Funeral Services must face regularly. The second ongoing phase of the project consists of photographing the places and traces behind individual deaths in order to reveal an often unknown reality that is tossed into the realm of fiction by Hollywood movies. Source: Agence VU
Jeff Wall
Canada
1946
Jeff Wall's artistic technique mixes the fundamentals of photography with influences from other art forms such as painting, film, and literature. This synthesis takes place within a complex framework that he refers to as "cinematography." His wide body of work ranges from classical reporting to sophisticated constructions and montages, which are frequently performed on bigger scales typically associated with painting. Wall, who was born in 1946 in Vancouver, Canada, and still lives there, became interested in photography in the 1960s, a time when Conceptual art was popular. By the mid-1970s, he had incorporated the spirit of experimentation inherent in Conceptualism into his own style of pictorial photography. Wall's photos, created as backlit color transparencies, a method more commonly associated with advertising than fine art photography at the time, made a huge effect when displayed in galleries and museums. They had a critical influence in establishing color as an important part of photographic composition. In his early works, Wall explicitly references other artworks, creating linkages to the history of image creation. "The Destroyed Room" (1978) is inspired by Eugène Delacroix's enormous picture "The Death of Sardanapalus" (1827), which explores themes of violence and sensuality. "Picture for Women" (1979) resembles Édouard Manet's "A Bar at the Folies-Bergère" (1882) while contextualizing the painting's implications within late-'70s cultural politics. These works exhibit Wall's concept of "blatant artifice," which emphasizes the theatricality of both the subject and the production. One important part of Wall's body of work is "near documentary," which are pictures that mimic documentary style but are made in conjunction with the people they include. Wall's method of using nonprofessional models, which captures ordinary moments with complex meanings, is reminiscent of the neorealism of Italian cinema in the 1950s and 1960s. Wall explores formal and dramatic possibilities, delving into the meanings and affects of documentary photography by depicting events that were seen but not captured on camera at the time. Since the mid-1990s, Wall has expanded his artistic repertoire, incorporating traditional black-and-white prints and, more recently, inkjet color prints into his evolving body of work.
Nikos Economopoulos
Nikos Economopoulos (b.1953) is a Greek photographer known for his photography of the Balkans and of Greece in particular. Born in Kalamata, Economopoulos studied law at university and worked as a journalist. He only started taking photographs at 25 when a friend in Italy showed him a book of the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson, which had an impact that was both instant and lasting. Cartier-Bresson "showed me a new way to see things... What I saw in his work was not only geometry and composition, but a kind of ambiguity." Economopoulos recalls that even then he did not start photography for over two years but instead bought photography books. Then he started photography: "I never photographed sunrises or made souvenir pictures of my children. For about eight or nine years I photographed at weekends and during my holidays, always in a serious way, working from morning to night." As early as 1984, Economopoulos says, "it bothered me ideologically that Greeks and Turks were enemies", and he visited Turkey to take photographs. "No Greek at that time would go to Turkey on holiday", he writes, and his Greek friends were incredulous; but Economopoulos quickly felt at home in Turkey, where the atmosphere "was exactly the same as when I was a kid in the 1960s." (Much later, he would add that Greece and western Turkey had replaced tavernas with McDonald's, while east Turkey still preserved the values of the past.) In 1988, Economopoulos finished work as a journalist and set off on a two-year photographic survey of Greece and Turkey. Nikos Economopoulos was encouraged to join Magnum Photos by the Greek-American photographer Costa Manos, and became an associate member in 1990 and, after his work in Albania, Bulgaria, Romania and the former Yugoslavia, a full member in 1994. His early work won him the 1992 Mother Jones Award for Documentary Photography. In 1993, Frank Viviano, who had first met Economopoulos in Timișoara just after the fall of Nicolae Ceauşescu, wrote that: "Economopoulos says his intention is to document the existence of what he calls the 'Balkan Man': to knit together the skeins of a collective identity in a region whose historical convulsions have made its name a synonym for implacable differences. It would appear to be a fool's errand. But almost anyone who has crossed the madman's web of frontiers and borders that stretches over the Balkans, from Istanbul to the Italian border, is likely to agree with Economopoulos's premise — and to recognize, in his work, the contradictions that sum up Balkan truth." With support from the Little Brothers of the Poor, in 1994 Economopoulos photographed gypsies in Greece, and in 1995–96 lignite miners and Muslims in Greece. In 1997–98 he concentrated on people living on the "Green Line" separating Northern Cyprus, illegal migration across the Albanian–Greek border, and young people in Tokyo; and for the next two years Albanians fleeing Kosovo. He also worked on a commission from the University of the Aegean on storytelling in the region. Economopoulos was dissatisfied with the assignment in Japan, as he felt unable to communicate with people and was just as estranged after three weeks of work as he had been on his arrival. By contrast, he writes that "I prefer to spend my time in my corner of the world, south Europe and west Asia, where I understand the codes and can make connections." This does not mean that the Balkans are an open book to him: Economopoulos has also written of the paradoxes apparent in Albania; and also across the Balkans, where faces can be sad even in wedding parties. Economopoulos's photography of Turkey won him the 2001 Abdi İpekçi Award for promoting friendship between Turkey and Greece. Painfully aware of the bitterness often encouraged in both Greece and Turkey toward the other, he has written appreciatively of the personal welcome given to him by the Turks that he meets. "There are no real differences [between Greeks and Turks]. I love Turkey and I can live there. I can't live in Paris or in London. But Istanbul — I can live there." Economopoulos's photographs have been published in The Guardian, The Independent, Le Monde, Libération, The New York Times, El País, and Die Zeit. He feels that there is no future in photojournalism. There is a loss of quality in photographs in newspapers, and Robert Capa would not take photographs if he were living today. But he concedes that Abbas and James Nachtwey would be among those who disagree.Source: Wikipedia In the mid-1990s, he started photographing the Roma and other minorities. In 2000, he completed a book project on the Aegean islands storytellers, commissioned by the University of the Aegean. A retrospective of his work titled Economopoulos, Photographer was published in 2002 and later exhibited at the Benaki Museum, Athens. Returning to Turkey, he pursued his long-term personal project, where he received the Abdi Ipektsi award (2001), for peace and friendship between Greek and Turkish people. He has recently turned to the use of color. Currently, he is spending most of his time away from Greece, traveling, teaching and photographing around the world, in the context of his long-term On The Road project.Source: Magnum Photos
Laura Berson
France
1987
Laura Gwenaëlle Berson was born in Paris in 1987. She studies Applied Arts, then comedy,script-wrinting and cinema. It is a few years later that she is moving towards a more intuitive photographic, plastic and writing work, enabling her to express everything she doesn't know just as much as the others, with the aim of finding the essence of something. Her conceptualized artistic practice allows her to play on forms, bodies whatever they are, by diving into the heart of the infinitely large and the infinitely small, to try to connect the sensitive but not palpable part that binds the two . Her work oscillates between everything and nothing, here and there, where she moves, like an atom (or electron it depends) free, among others. It is through her raw and spontaneous hypersensitivity that she directs her work towards an intimate questioning, playing on the different strata of reality that accompany it to identify a multi-variable essence. She exhibited solo in 2015 at the Maison de la Mixité in Paris and was present at Fotofever Emerging Talent in November 2016. She got an honorable mention for the Chromatics Photography awards in the landscape section. In 2018, she appeared publicly in a Science Shakers - Mixology session - around the imaging of science, organized by the Institute of Complex Systems in partnership with the CNRS, and won the Moscow Foto awards silver price for her serie Some Seeds. In her series The Intolerante, she tries to highlight the effect of food intolerance on the body, its destructuring of the body see its modification, via its own body damaged and tired by daily pain. Through the Myth of the Endometrium, she traces the course of the disease of endometriosis from which it is reached, passing painful menstruation and infertility to the possibilities of operations in order to be able to transmit life. In her series Silentium, she tries to transcribe relationships to others, difficult, tempestuous, whose links fade or weave over time, in a carnal and organic way.
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All About Photo Awards 2026
$5,000 Cash Prizes! Juror: Steve McCurry