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Nanda Hagenaars
Nanda Hagenaars
Nanda Hagenaars

Nanda Hagenaars

Country: Netherlands

''El Duende'' is a word used by the Spanish people to describe it is what moves you, what drives you. It comes from inside you. El duende is a bodily reaction to art or artistic perfomance such as Flamenco. It comes from the soles of the feet and flows free throughout the body till the top of your head. El duende is the spirit of evocation. An emotional and physical reaction. It can make you smile or cry or both. This mysterious power which everyone can sense and no philosopher can explain is in sum the spirith of the earth. It touches you in such a magical way that you are moved instantly.

Nanda Hagenaars was born in the Netherlands in 1988 and is currently living in Amsterdam. She studied International Business and Languages in Sevilla. This is where she felt the spirit of el Duende in such a strong way that this place instantly became like a harbour for her.

Back in the Netherlands, Nanda started working in the advertising industry and after nearly 4 years left her office job and crashed fully into photography and art. After studying languages, she discovered a new kind of language; through photography.

Between 2007 and 2017, Nanda traveled frequently back to south Spain where she somehow always felt touched by culture and the simple vibe of the magnificent gypsy city. In 2016, Nanda made her first documentary photography project in Sevilla, where she won a price for New Dutch Photo talent 2017.

Nanda’s captivating black and white style blends poetry and intuition, delving into the eternal essence of life. Through her lens, Nanda captures stories and forges a profound connection with the portrayed. At times, she surrenders to the unknown, creating intuïtively and spontaneously. Through her art she aims to touch others, offering solace and unity through shared emotions.

So.. to Nanda, photography is a way to translate, meditate, and communicate.

A universal language.

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More Great Photographers To Discover

MD Tanveer Rohan
Bangladesh
1982
Md. Tanveer Hassan Rohan was born and brought up in Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh. He has an utter passion for photography and photography has been his passion for a very long time. Growing up in Dhaka, he has realized that beauty manifests in many forms. This city is a manifestation of the contrast of nature and urbanization. As a photographer, his essential aim is to capture the moments of life and give them significance by making them static in time. He loves to travel and be in different places, meet new people, and enjoy the experience that photography offers, which is to capture Earth's beautiful and awe-inspiring moments. He also loves to experiment with his photography. He has finished his Basic Photography course From Prism . He has taken part in many National and International Photography contest and till now he has won many national and more than 200 international photography awards, including IPA 2015 (2nd Place in General News Category and 7 Honorable mentions in different categories), MIFA 2015 (1st Place In General News Category and 3 Honorable mentions in different categories), Grand Winner in "Photo for Tolerance +" International Youth Photography Contest 2015. 1st prize in Sony World Photography Awards 2016, National Award ,2nd Prize in Photojournalism category from Xposure International Photography Competition 2016, 9 (3 Gold, 1 Silver, 1 Bronze , 3 Honorable mentions and also 2nd Place in People category) awards from Tokyo International Photography awards 2016. 2 Awards (1st Place in Reportage and 2nd Place in People category) from VIAP 2016, Bulgaria. He has been selected as a best Authors three times in FIAP patronage Photography Contest in France, Czech Republic and Bangladesh. His photographs exhibited in more than 45 countries.He has been awarded AFIAP distinction from Fédération Internationale de l'Art Photographique (FIAP) in early 2016, and BEPSS Distinction From The Photographic Society of Singapore (PSS) in November 2016 and PPSA Distinction FromPhotographic Society Of America in December 2016. It is with utmost diligent and inspiration that he is willing to carry on this passion throughout his life.
Robert Farber
United States
1944
Robert Farber’s style has influenced generations of photographers. His painterly, impressionistic style captures the essence of composition in every genre, including nudes, still life, landscapes and architecture. His ten photo art books have sold over half a million copies. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis brought Farber into Doubleday for the publication of his book “By The Sea,” which won the Art Director’s Award for color photography. Aside from numerous creative awards, Robert Farber also received the Photographer of the Year from PMA (Photographic Manufacturers Association), ASP International Award from the PPA (Professional Photographers of America) and The American Society of Photographers. This award was given to those who’ve made a significant contribution to the science and art of photography. Some previous recipients of this award include Dr. Edwin Land (inventor of the Polaroid), George Hurrell, and National Geographic. Farber’s work with nudes in fine art as well as in the commercial realm is known and respected. He has lectured for Ogilvy & Mather on the “Nude in Advertising.” ASMP requested to use Farber’s nudes as an examples of the artistic application in support of the National Endowment of Arts, after its backing of the controversial Mapplethorpe/Serrano exhibit. His book, “Farber Nudes,” was also included the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis estate collection. Farber’s fine-art photographs have been published in virtually every form. Farber has exhibited in galleries and museums world-wide. He’s lectured at the Smithsonian Institute, The George Eastman House, as well as Universities and professional groups throughout the United States, Japan, Australia and Europe. Aside from his fine art photography, Robert Farber’s work encompasses major campaigns for fashion, beauty and advertising, as well as directing for TV and film. A documentary highlighting Farber’s life and career, is in development for PBS.Source: www.farber.com Robert Farber has become renown for his depictions of the female form, although his painterly, impressionistic photographic style captures the essence of composition in many genres. Farber’s unique compositions allow the viewer to see the subject from a different perspective and in his words, “to evoke a feeling of romance. That the viewer wants to be there, be a part of it, get lost in it, whether it is a still life or landscape.” A pioneer in many ways, Robert Farber has been a leading force in the world of photography, particularly in his treatment of the subject of the nude. His work has paved the way for the female form to be shown in fine art, publishing, and advertising in a way that he describes only as “respectfully.” Delighting the viewer with his natural approach and fully embracing the female form with a fine art approach, Farber began introducing nudes in his advertising work in the 1970s. He brings the romance depicted in his fine art photographs to his renowned commercial work that has been celebrated over for their captivatingly composed settings. Robert Farber is a New York City native whose artistic career began with art shows in 1970 just after college. At the start of his career, his most moving memory was when he was forced to leave an art show since photography was not widely accepted as an art form at that time. Persisting with his passion, he was eventually discovered at an Upper East Side art show. Both a publishing company and an advertising agency approached him, allowing his fine art career and fashion photography career to take off simultaneously. Farber also brings his romantic style to landscapes through his Americana series. By forcing the viewer to look at the images in a different way the artist hopes to show the heart and soul of America; a perspective he also applies to his New York Series. He hopes that his unique take on composition and style allow the viewer to experience the excitement, nostalgia, the grit and the elegance of the city. Aside from numerous other creative awards, Robert Farber has received the distinctive Photographer of the Year award from the Photographic Manufacturers Association. He has also received the ASP International Award from the Professional Photographers of America and The American Society of Photographers. Farber has lectured at the Smithsonian Institute, The George Eastman House, as well as universities and professional groups throughout the United States, Japan, Australia and Europe. Jackie Kennedy Onassis recruited Farber during her time working for the publisher Doubleday that resulted in the publication of his notable book By the Sea which would be the first of many others. Recently, Canon presented Farber's work in a solo exhibition at Art Miami in 2013, while a documentary highlighting the artist is currently in development for PBS and will air in September of 2014 chronicling this artist’s amazingly elegant work over the past four decades.Source: Holden Luntz Gallery
Francesca Woodman
United States
1958 | † 1981
Francesca Woodman was an American photographer best known for her black and white pictures featuring herself and female models. Many of her photographs show young women who are nude, blurred (due to movement and long exposure times), merging with their surroundings, or whose faces are obscured. Woodman attended public school in Boulder, Colorado, between 1963 and 1971 except for second grade, which she attended in Italy. She began high school in 1972 at the private Massachusetts boarding school Abbot Academy, where she began to develop her photographic skills and became interested in the art form. Abbot Academy merged with Phillips Academy in 1973; Woodman graduated from the public Boulder High School in 1975. Through 1975, she spent summers with her family in Italy. She spent her time in Italy in the Florentine countryside, where she lived on an old farm with her parents. Beginning in 1975, Woodman attended the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in Providence, Rhode Island. She studied in Rome between 1977 and 1978 in a RISD honors program. As she spoke fluent Italian, she was able to befriend Italian intellectuals and artists. She went back to Rhode Island in late 1978 to graduate from RISD. Woodman moved to New York City in 1979. After spending the summer of 1979 in Stanwood, Seattle whilst visiting her boyfriend at Pilchuck Glass School, she returned to New York "to make a career in photography." She sent portfolios of her work to fashion photographers, but "her solicitations did not lead anywhere. In the summer of 1980 she was an artist-in-residence at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire. In late 1980 Woodman became depressed due to the failure of her work to attract attention and to a broken relationship. She survived a suicide attempt, after which she lived with her parents in Manhattan. On January 19, 1981, she committed suicide by jumping out a loft window in New York. An acquaintance wrote, "things had been bad, there had been therapy, things had gotten better, guard had been let down." Her father has suggested that Woodman's suicide was related to an unsuccessful application for funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.Source: Wikipedia Francesca Woodman photographed herself, often nude, in empty interiors. But her pictures are not traditional self-portraits. She is usually half-hidden by objects or furniture or appears as a blur. The images convey an underlying sense of human fragility. This fragility is exaggerated by the fact that the photographs are printed on a very small scale – they seem personal and intimate. Most of the photographs in the ARTIST ROOMS collection come from Francesca’s former boyfriend Benjamin P. Moore. She gave him the photographs, and many of them include intimate messages written in their margins. The messages become part of the artwork. Woodman continuously explored and tested what she could do with photography. She challenged the idea that the camera fixes time and space – something that had always been seen as one of the fundamentals of photography. She playfully manipulated light, movement and photographic effects, and used carefully selected props, vintage clothing and decaying interiors to add a mysterious gothic atmosphere to the work. Her importance as an innovator is significant, particularly in the context of the 1970s when the status of photography was still regarded as less important than painting and sculpture. She led the way for later American artists who used photography to explore themes relating to identity such as Cindy Sherman and Nan Goldin. Francesca Woodman’s entire body of work was produced as a young person and created over just eight short years. Her photographs explore many themes that affect young people such as relationships, sexuality, questions of self, body image, alienation, isolation and confusion or ambiguity about personal identity.Source: Tate
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
Anna Hayat and Slava Pirsky
We are Anna Hayat (born 1974) and Slava Pirsky (born 1965), originally from the Soviet Union. Each of us decided to start a new life in Israel in the early 90s, in search of new horizons. Fate brought us to Jerusalem through different paths, where we lived for over 20 years and now find joy in a small town nearby. We met in 1999 and instantly felt a special connection, as if our shared passion for photography brought us closer. In 2000, we became proud parents of an exquisite daughter whom we started photographing from her very birth. Since then, we have become an inseparable team and partners in the world of photography and art. For over 20 years, we have actively collaborated on joint photography projects. Our creative process revolves around analog photography, primarily using old Polaroid large-format black and white negative plates. Despite the discontinuation of production of these films in 2008, we use expired films to create unique and emotive works of art. We capture images using both a large studio camera and small field Polaroid cameras. The slow shooting process is of utmost importance to us, as it imparts a special depth to our works. In a way, the negative itself becomes another partner in our process. We appreciate the unpredictability of old negatives, which gives our photographs a distinct character, a touch of poetry, and a timeless feeling that is crucial to our work. Our latest project reflects our emotions and pain caused by Russia's treacherous aggression. For this series, we ventured into a mixed technique for the first time, tearing and cutting our works, stitching them anew, adding patches and seams. The project was showcased at the Ramlah Museum and immediately after at the KyotoGraphie International Photography Festival in Japan.
Ralf Peters
Germany
1960
In the series "24 Hours" Peters reflects on the moment of simultaneousness. He dissolves the visual antagonism between the moment before and afterwards in each image. The works represent the light cycle of one day, starting from the left at night, passing daylight and ends again in the darkness of the night. The time states are not superimposed one upon the other but set side by side. In an extraordinary technique Ralf Peters obtains that the transition of the different daytimes is shown as in fast motion and is continued without any cuts, but can be noticed in the brightness and the illumination of the motif. Day and night are united in one image and at the same time, appearing invisible and visible. The variety of subjects going from exotic landscapes to cool architecture allows a reflection about our own world and foreign surroundings referring to a superior relationship of time and space. (Source: Diana Lowenstein Gallery) Ralf Peters is a conceptual photographer who creates visual studies of places and objects, often in thematic series. Playfully navigating between fantasy and reality, Peters manipulates digital images to challenge the viewer’s conception of traditional photography, raising the question as to whether something is a realistic rendering or a skillfully manipulated vision. Through the creation of portraits of everyday locations like supermarkets, gas stations, and swimming pools, Peters explores the possibilities for the photographic medium. Manipulating the focus, lighting, and composition of his images, Peters creates photographs that obscure the traditional notion of capturing an individual’s perspective on reality, favoring, instead, constructed works that comment on the aesthetic relationship we have to our surrounding environment. Peters’s works have been shown at notable institutions including the Hamburg Kunsthalle and Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo. (Source: Art Space) Represented by: Diana Lowenstein Gallery Galerie Kornfeld Galerie Bernhard Knaus Fine Art Galerie Martin Mertens Galerie Andres Thalmann
Deborah Bay
United States
Deborah Bay is a Houston artist who specializes in constructed studio photography. She has exhibited most recently at Photo London Digital 2020, Foto Relevance (Houston), Texas Contemporary 2018 and 2019 and Photoville Brooklyn. Her work is in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson and Dorsky Museum of Art at State University of New York at New Paltz. LensCulture and the Griffin Museum of Photography highlighted images from her Traveling Light series in on-line features earlier this year, and the British Journal of Photography has published her work on its cover. Her work was recognized in the Texas National 2018, and she was a finalist for Artadia Houston 2015. An active member of the Houston arts community, she has served on the board of the Houston Center for Photography and its Advisory Council. She holds graduate and undergraduate degrees from The University of Texas at Austin. Statement: My work explores the beauty of light and color. It builds on a studio practice that has focused for the past 15 years on constructed, macro photography. The images in the work presented here bring together an eclectic set of influences, ranging from geometric constructivism to color field. After collecting an assortment of prisms and lenses, I became interested in capturing how light and color interact with optical materials - seeming to bounce nonchalantly across surfaces, yet strictly bound by the laws of physics. Lenses and prisms were layered and stacked at angles to capture light wrapping around form. Chromatic geometries emerged from the planes and lines of color created using film gels. In my practice the camera often is a tool for highlighting details of physical phenomena that are overlooked or not easily observed. Particularly intriguing is the mystery created by the juxtaposition of scale - making close-up images of small objects and showing them as prints at many times their actual size. The images were produced in-camera and follow in the lineage of experimental studies exploring the most elemental components of photographic processes: light and lenses.
Joel Meyerowitz
United States
1938
Joel Meyerowitz is an award-winning photographer whose work has appeared in over 350 exhibitions in museums and galleries around the world. He was born in New York in 1938. He began photographing in 1962. He is a “street photographer” in the tradition of Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Frank, although he works exclusively in color. As an early advocate of color photography (mid-60s), Meyerowitz was instrumental in changing the attitude toward the use of color photography from one of resistance to nearly universal acceptance. His first book, Cape Light, is considered a classic work of color photography and has sold more than 100,000 copies during its 30-year life. He is the author of 17 other books, including the newly released book by Aperture, Legacy: The Preservation of Wilderness in New York City Parks. In 1998 he produced and directed his first film, POP, an intimate diary of a three-week road trip he made with his son, Sasha, and his father, Hy. This odyssey has as its central character an unpredictable, street-wise and witty 87-year-old with a failing memory. It is both an open-eyed look at aging and a meditation on the significance of memory. Within a few days of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, Meyerowitz began to create an archive of the destruction and recovery at Ground Zero and the immediate neighborhood. The World Trade Center Archive consists of over 8,000 images, and was created with the sponsorship of the Museum of the City of New York, to whom a set of digital files was donated for their archives and for exhibition. The Archive is an historic, photographic record of the immediate aftermath of the tragedy and the neighborhood as it evolved. The U.S. Department of State mounted 35 exhibitions of this work and they were shown around the globe from their inauguration by Colin Powell in Spring 2002 until 2005. Over 4 million people have seen these shows from Jerusalem to Islamabad, Rome, Paris, London, Kuwait, Moscow, Istanbul, and 200 other cities. Meyerowitz’s photographs from the World Trade Center Archives were also on view when he represented the United States at the 8th Venice Biennale for Architecture in 2002. Meyerowitz created a traveling exhibition of 117 vintage and modern prints entitled Out of the Ordinary 1970-1980, which premiered at the Jeu de paume in Paris, France. It has been exhibited at the Museum der Modern in Salzburg, Austria, and the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, the Musee de la Photographie in Charleroi, Belgium and the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography in Thessaloniki, Greece Meyerowitz completed the ambitious project of documenting and creating an archive of New York City’s 29,000 acres of parkland. It is the first long-term visual documentation of NYC parks since the 1930’s when they were photographed as part of Franklin Roosevelt’s WPA program. Adrian Benepe, Commissioner of Parks and Recreation, has invited Meyerowitz to produce a comprehensive database for future use by the Parks department and to share these images of the parks with communities in all 5 boroughs. Legacy: The Preservation of Wilderness in New York City Parks was published by Aperture in the fall of 2009, accompanied by a large-scale exhibition of the same name at the Museum of the City of New York. Meyerowitz is a two-time Guggenheim fellow, a recipient of both the NEA and NEH awards, as well as a recipient of the Deutscher Fotobuchpreis. His work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and many others. Source: Wikipedia
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AAP Magazine #55 Women
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