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Martin Miklas
Martin Miklas
Martin Miklas

Martin Miklas

Country: Slovakia
Birth: 1982

Lisbon-based documentary photographer from Bratislava /Slovakia whose primary focus is on sociological changes in Eastern Europe and socioeconomical and ecological impact on the fishing industry in Portugal. Presently one of the alumni of the 2022-23 VII Photo Agency Masterclass, proud father and Visual Storytelling Masterclass by The Raw Society participant.

Dive into the Depths: Unveiling the Ocean's Soul
In the realm of the vast and ever-shifting oceans, where mystery and beauty intertwine, lies an industry of profound significance: the fishing industry. It is here, amidst the ebb and flow of tides, that I have embarked on a long-term photographic project, driven by a deep fascination and a sense of responsibility for the issues plaguing our oceans.

Like a deep-sea explorer, I navigate through layers of metaphor and reality, capturing the resilience of fishermen, the fragile ecosystems, and the pressing issues afflicting our waters. I aim to spark awareness and action, exposing the consequences of overfishing, climate change, pollution, and habitat destruction.

Through my lens, I strive to reveal the untold stories that unfold in the fishing communities, the fragile ecosystems, and the human-nature interplay intrinsic to the fishing industry. My intention is to shine a light on the multifaceted aspects of this complex web, delving into its triumphs, struggles, and the urgent need for awareness and action.

Oceanic ecosystems, fragile and exquisite, teem with life that sustains not only the fishing communities but also our entire planet. It is disheartening to witness the ecological imbalance and the ripple effect of overfishing, climate change, pollution, and habitat destruction. My photographs aim to depict these adversities, not only to evoke empathy but also to instigate conversations about the choices we make and the consequences we collectively bear.

I aspire to generate a profound emotional response that transcends mere aesthetics. Compositions seek to immerse viewers in the world beneath the surface, inviting them to explore the enigmatic beauty and the precarious state of our oceans. I aim to foster a deep sense of connection, nurturing a responsibility towards the marine environment and fostering a collective call for sustainable practices.

It is my hope that these visual narratives will inspire viewers to question, to engage, and to take meaningful action, for the wellbeing of our oceans, the communities that rely on them, and the future of our planet.

In the ever-evolving dialogue between art and environmental activism, I believe that images have the power to evoke change. Together, let us navigate the depths, expose the challenges, and illuminate a path towards a more harmonious relationship with the oceans that sustain us all.

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Alfred Stieglitz
United States
1864 | † 1946
Through his activities as a photographer, critic, dealer, and theorist, Alfred Stieglitz had a decisive influence on the development of modern art in America during the early twentieth century. Born in 1864 in New Jersey, Stieglitz moved with his family to Manhattan in 1871 and to Germany in 1881. Enrolled in 1882 as a student of mechanical engineering in the Technische Hochschule (technical high school) in Berlin, he was first exposed to photography when he took a photochemistry course in 1883. From then on he was involved with photography, first as a technical and scientific challenge, later as an artistic one. Returning with his family to America in 1890, he became a member of and advocate for the school of pictorial photography in which photography was considered to be a legitimate form of artistic expression. In 1896 he joined the Camera Club in New York and managed and edited Camera Notes, its quarterly journal. Leaving the club six years later, Stieglitz established the Photo-Secession group in 1902 and the influential periodical Camera Work in 1903. In 1905, to provide exhibition space for the group, he founded the first of his three New York galleries, The Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession, which came to be known as Gallery 291. In 1907 he began to exhibit the work of other artists, both European and American, making the gallery a fulcrum of modernism. As a gallery director, Stieglitz provided emotional and intellectual sustenance to young modernists, both photographers and artists. His Gallery 291 became a locus for the exchange of critical opinions and theoretical and philosophical views in the arts, while his periodical Camera Work became a forum for the introduction of new aesthetic theories by American and European artists, critics, and writers. After Stieglitz closed Gallery 291 in 1917, he photographed extensively, and in 1922 he began his series of cloud photographs, which represented the culmination of his theories on modernism and photography. In 1924 Stieglitz married Georgia O'Keeffe, with whom he had shared spiritual and intellectual companionship since 1916. In December of 1925 he opened the Intimate Gallery; a month later Duncan Phillips purchased his first works from Stieglitz’s gallery, paintings by Dove, Marin, and O'Keeffe. In 1929 Stieglitz opened a gallery called An American Place, which he was to operate until his death. During the thirties, Stieglitz photographed less, stopping altogether in 1937 due to failing health. He died in 1946, in New York. The Collection contains nineteen gelatin-silver photographs of clouds by Stieglitz.Source: The Phillips Collection My photographs are a picture of the chaos in the world, and of my relationship to that chaos. My prints show the world’s constant upsetting of man’s equilibrium, and his eternal battle to reestablish it. -- Alfred Stieglitz In early June 1918, O'Keeffe moved to New York from Texas after Stieglitz promised he would provide her with a quiet studio where she could paint. Within a month he took the first of many nude photographs of her at his family's apartment while his wife Emmy was away, but she returned while their session was still in progress. She had suspected something was going on between the two for a while, and told him to stop seeing her or get out. Stieglitz left and immediately found a place in the city where he and O'Keeffe could live together. They slept separately for more than two weeks, but by the end of July they were in the same bed together. Once he was out of their apartment Emmy had a change of heart. Due to the legal delays caused by Emmy and her brothers, it would be six more years before the divorce was finalized. During this period Stieglitz and O'Keeffe continued to live together, although she would go off on her own from time to time to create art. Stieglitz used their times apart to concentrate on his photography and promotion of modern art. O'Keeffe was the muse Stieglitz had always wanted. He photographed O'Keeffe obsessively between 1918 and 1925 in what was the most prolific period in his entire life. During this period he produced more than 350 mounted prints of O'Keeffe that portrayed a wide range of her character, moods and beauty. He shot many close-up studies of parts of her body, especially her hands either isolated by themselves or near her face or hair. O'Keeffe biographer Roxanna Robinson states that her "personality was crucial to these photographs; it was this, as much as her body, that Stieglitz was recording." In 1920, Stieglitz was invited by Mitchell Kennerly of the Anderson Galleries in New York to put together a major exhibition of his photographs. In early 1921, he hung the first one-man exhibit of his photographs since 1913. Of the 146 prints he put on view, only 17 had been seen before. Forty-six were of O'Keeffe, including many nudes, but she was not identified as the model on any of the prints. In 1922, Stieglitz organized a large show of John Marin's paintings and etching at the Anderson Galleries, followed by a huge auction of nearly two hundred paintings by more than forty American artists, including O'Keeffe. Energized by this activity, he began one of his most creative and unusual undertakings – photographing a series of cloud studies simply for their form and beauty. He said: "I wanted to photograph clouds to find out what I had learned in forty years about photography. Through clouds to put down my philosophy of life – to show that (the success of) my photographs (was) not due to subject matter – not to special trees or faces, or interiors, to special privileges – clouds were there for everyone…" By late summer he had created a series he called "Music – A Sequence of Ten Cloud Photographs". Over the next twelve years he would take hundreds of photographs of clouds without any reference points of location or direction. These are generally recognized as the first intentionally abstract photographs, and they remain some of his most powerful photographs. He would come refer to these photographs as Equivalents. Stieglitz's mother Hedwig died in November 1922, and as he did with his father he buried his grief in his work. He spent time with Paul Strand and his new wife Rebecca (Beck), reviewed the work of another newcomer named Edward Weston and began organizing a new show of O'Keeffe's work. Her show opened in early 1923, and Stieglitz spent much of the spring marketing her work. Eventually, twenty of her paintings sold for more than $3,000. In the summer, O'Keeffe once again took off for the seclusion of the Southwest, and for a while Stieglitz was alone with Beck Strand at Lake George. He took a series of nude photos of her, and soon he became infatuated with her. They had a brief physical affair before O'Keeffe returned in the fall. O'Keeffe could tell what had happened, but since she did not see Stieglitz's new lover as a serious threat to their relationship she let things pass. Six years later she would have her own affair with Beck Strand in New Mexico. In 1924, Stieglitz's divorce was finally approved by a judge, and within four months he and O'Keeffe married in a small, private ceremony at Marin's house. They went home without a reception or honeymoon. O'Keeffe said later that they married in order to help soothe the troubles of Stieglitz's daughter Kitty, who at that time was being treated in a sanatorium for depression and hallucinations. For the rest of their lives together, their relationship was, as biographer Benita Eisler characterized it, "a collusion ... a system of deals and trade-offs, tacitly agreed to and carried out, for the most part, without the exchange of a word. Preferring avoidance to confrontation on most issues, O'Keeffe was the principal agent of collusion in their union." In the coming years O'Keeffe would spend much of her time painting in New Mexico, while Stieglitz rarely left New York except for summers at his father's family estate in Lake George in the Adirondacks, his favorite vacation place. O'Keeffe later said "Stieglitz was a hypochondriac and couldn't be more than 50 miles from a doctor." The great geniuses are those who have kept their childlike spirit and have added to it breadth of vision and experience. -- Alfred Stieglitz At the end of 1924, Stieglitz donated 27 photographs to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. It was the first time a major museum included photographs in its permanent collection. In the same year he was awarded the Royal Photographic Society's Progress Medal for advancing photography and received an Honorary Fellowship of the Society. In 1925, Stieglitz was invited by the Anderson Galleries to put together one of the largest exhibitions of American art, entitled Alfred Stieglitz Presents Seven Americans: 159 Paintings, Photographs, and Things, Recent and Never Before Publicly Shown by Arthur G. Dove, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Charles Demuth, Paul Strand, Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Only one small painting by O'Keeffe was sold during the three-week exhibit. Soon after, Stieglitz was offered the continued use of one of the rooms at the Anderson Galleries, which he used for a series of exhibitions by some of the same artists in the Seven Americans show. In December 1925, he opened his new gallery, The Intimate Gallery, which he nicknamed The Room because of its small size. Over the next four years, he put together sixteen shows of works by Marin, Dove, Hartley, O'Keeffe and Strand, along with individual exhibits by Gaston Lachaise, Oscar Bluemner and Francis Picabia. During this time, Stieglitz cultivated a relationship with influential new art collector Duncan Phillips, who purchased several works through The Intimate Gallery. In 1927, Stieglitz became infatuated with the 22-year-old Dorothy Norman, who was then volunteering at the gallery, and they fell in love. Norman was married and had a child, but she came to the gallery almost every day. O'Keeffe accepted an offer by Mabel Dodge to go to New Mexico for the summer. Stieglitz took advantage of her time away to begin photographing Norman, and he began teaching her the technical aspects of printing as well. When Norman had a second child, she was absent from the gallery for about two months before returning on a regular basis. Within a short time, they became lovers, but even after their physical affair diminished a few years later, they continued to work together whenever O'Keeffe was not around until Stieglitz died in 1946. In early 1929, Stieglitz was told that the building that housed The Room would be torn down later in the year. After a final show of Demuth's work in May, he retreated to Lake George for the summer, exhausted and depressed. The Strands raised nearly sixteen thousand dollars for a new gallery for Stieglitz, who reacted harshly, saying it was time for "young ones" to do some of the work he had been shouldering for so many years. Although Stieglitz eventually apologized and accepted their generosity, the incident marked the beginning of the end of their long and close relationship. In the late fall, Stieglitz returned to New York. On December 15, two weeks before his sixty-fifth birthday, he opened An American Place, the largest gallery he had ever managed. It had the first darkroom he had ever had in the city. Previously, he had borrowed other darkrooms or worked only when he was at Lake George. He continued showing group or individual shows of his friends Marin, Demuth, Hartley, Dove and Strand for the next sixteen years. O'Keeffe received at least one major exhibition each year. He fiercely controlled access to her works and incessantly promoted her even when critics gave her less than favorable reviews. Often during this time, they would only see each other during the summer, when it was too hot in her New Mexico home, but they wrote to each other almost weekly with the fervor of soul mates. In 1932, Stieglitz mounted a forty-year retrospective of 127 of his works at The Place. He included all of his most famous photographs, but he also purposely chose to include recent photos of O'Keeffe, who, because of her years in the Southwest sun, looked older than her forty-five years, in comparison to Stieglitz's portraits of his young lover Norman. It was one of the few times he acted spitefully to O'Keeffe in public, and it might have been as a result of their increasingly intense arguments in private about his control over her art. Later that year, he mounted a show of O'Keeffe's works next to some amateurish paintings on glass by Becky Strand. He did not publish a catalog of the show, which the Strands took as an insult. Paul Strand never forgave Stieglitz for that. He said, "The day I walked into the Photo-Secession 291 [sic] in 1907 was a great moment in my life… but the day I walked out of An American Place in 1932 was not less good. It was fresh air and personal liberation from something that had become, for me at least, second-rate, corrupt and meaningless." In 1936, Stieglitz returned briefly to his photographic roots by mounting one of the first exhibitions of photos by Ansel Adams in New York City. The show was successful and David McAlpin bought eight Adams photos. He also put on one of the first shows of Eliot Porter's work two years later. Stieglitz, considered the "godfather of modern photography", encouraged Todd Webb to develop his own style and immerse himself in the medium. The next year, the Cleveland Museum of Art mounted the first major exhibition of Stieglitz's work outside of his own galleries. In the course of making sure that each print was perfect, he worked himself into exhaustion. O'Keeffe spent most of that year in New Mexico. In early 1938, Stieglitz suffered a serious heart attack, one of six coronary or angina attacks that would strike him over the next eight years, each of which left him increasingly weakened. During his absences, Dorothy Norman managed the gallery. O'Keeffe remained in her Southwest home from spring to fall of this period. In the summer of 1946, Stieglitz suffered a fatal stroke and went into a coma. O'Keeffe returned to New York and found Dorothy Norman was in his hospital room. She left and O'Keeffe was with him when he died. According to his wishes, a simple funeral was attended by twenty of his closest friends and family members. Stieglitz was cremated, and, with his niece Elizabeth Davidson, O'Keeffe took his ashes to Lake George and "put him where he could hear the water." The day after the funeral, O'Keeffe took control of An American Place.Source: Wikipedia Image:All images © Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, The Alfred Stieglitz Collection, Gift of Georgia O'Keeffe
Harry Benson
Scotland
1929
Scottish born photojournalist Harry Benson arrived in America with the Beatles in 1964. Harry has photographed every U.S. president from Eisenhower to Barack H. Obama; was just feet away from Bobby Kennedy the night he was assassinated; in the room with Richard Nixon when he resigned; on the Meredith march with Martin Luther King, Jr., next to Coretta Scott King at her husband's funeral; on maneuvers with the IRA; was there when the Berlin Wall went up and when it came down; and covered the aftermath of Katrina in New Orleans. In 2013 Harry received an Honorary Doctor of Letters from The University of St. Andrews, Scotland. On January 1, 2009, Harry was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and received his honor at Buckingham Palace in March. In London in November 2009 Harry received an Honorary Fellowship in the Royal Photographic Society. Harry was honored with a Doctor of Letters from the Glasgow School of Art and Glasgow University in 2007. Twice named NPPA Magazine Photographer of the Year, Harry received the 2005 LUCIE Award for Lifetime Achievement in Portrait Photography; the 2005 AMERICAN PHOTO Magazine Award for Achievement in Photography; the 2006 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Scottish Press Photographers Association; and has twice received the Leica Medal of Excellence. He has had 40 gallery solo exhibitions and fourteen books of his photographs have been published. His photographs are in the permanent collection of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh, and the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, both museums hosted his Harry Benson: Being There exhibition (2006-7). A major retrospective exhibition of Harry's photographs was at Kelvingrove Museum in Glasgow from June to September, 2008. Harry was under contract to LIFE Magazine from 1970 to 2000. His photographs appear in major magazines including Vanity Fair, Town & Country, Architectural Digest, Time, Newsweek, Vice, Paris Match, and The London Sunday Times Magazine. Harry lives in Wellington, Florida with his wife, Gigi, who works with him on his book and exhibit
Morteza Nikoubazl
I was born in Tehran, Iran in 1974 and studied art and photography there. I started work as a freelance photographer for Iranian daily and weekly newspapers. I began working with the Reuters team as Freelance photographer since 1999 till 2013. After Reuters I worked with the New York Times International magazine, Polaris Images, Zuma Press and SIPA PRESS photo agencies and now I am working with the NurPhoto press photo agency. I am also UNHCR trusted photographer in Iran. Sense of death amid the COVID-19 outbreak in Iran Today is about one year after Government announced officially the COVID-19 cases in Iran and death still is everywhere. I could see patients who were infected by the new coronavirus in COVID-19 wards of hospitals who were breathing and after two hours they were died. In fact, life seems gone, time were stoped and people were looking for an empty hospital bed for their relatives. Sense of death is covered the daily life of people who have to fight with a new invisible enemy, and it will be getting worse when a country is under International sanctions. I was in the city of Bam for covering the earthquake in 2002-2003 and could see a U.S. Military cargo airplane landed after about 25 years since the Victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran and I could see how the humanity could pass over the politic, but today I am witness how politic cover the humanity, sanctions still work and it pushed Iran to the end of the line of vaccine. People die left and right also medical personnel, But they hear about barriers to the import of the COVID-19 vaccines from western countries. When it comes to people's health, politics should be the last priority of countries, but it seems the politic is the first priority for the U.S., Iran and the European countries. On the other hand, Iranians cannot trust the China- Made, or Russian-Made vaccine and prefer the Iranian one, but they must wait until next year and try to be alive.
Carlo Naya
Italy
1816 | † 1882
Carlo Naya was an Italian photographer known for his pictures of Venice including its works of art and views of the city for a collaborative volume in 1866. He also documented the restoration of Giotto's frescoes at the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. Naya was born in Tronzano di Vercelli in 1816 and studied law at the University of Pisa. An inheritance allowed him to travel to major cities in Europe, Asia, and northern Africa. He was advertising his services as portrait photographer in Istanbul in 1845, and opened his studio in Venice in 1857. He sold his work through photographer and optician Carlo Ponti. Following Naya's death in 1882, his studio was run by his wife, then by her second husband. In 1918 it was closed and publisher Osvaldo Böhm bought most of Naya's archive.Source: Wikipedia Carlo Naya studied law in Pisa before becoming a diplomat according to his father’s wishes. After his father’s death Naya embarked on a tour through Europe and Asia with his brother. During his stay in Paris in 1839 he was taught the daguerreotype process, which fascinated him. Naya settled in Venice in 1857, where he set up a photographic studio. For several years he collaborated closely with photographer Carlo Ponti but in 1868 he founded his own studio. During his long career, Naya photographed every aspect of the city of Venice. His views of the palaces on the Grand Canal, and his panoramas of the city give a complete picture of Venice’s architecture in the mid-nineteenth century.Source: The National Galleries of Scotland Carlo Naya (1816-1882) was born Carlo Naja at Tronzano Vercellese near Turin. He studied law in Pisa, where he graduated in 1840. Until recently it was thought that for the next fifteen years, he and his brother Giovanni travelled widely throughout Europe, Asia and Africa, only photographing occasionally for pleasure. However, recent research has revealed that Carlo Naya worked as a professional daguerreotypist long before his move to Venice. He apparently operated briefly in Prague around 1845, before opening a daguerreotype studio in Constantinople the following year. When his brother died in 1857, Carlo returned to Italy and settled in Venice. Initially he worked with the established publisher Carlo Ponti, who distributed his prints. The two men soon quarrelled, however, and Naya opened his own studio. In 1868 he opened a larger photographic shop in the Piazza San Marco, his business soon growing to rival Ponti‘s. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, the two firms were considered the leading photographic concerns in the city. At the time of Naya‘s death in 1882, Edward Wilson, an experienced and knowledgeable writer on photography, described Naya‘s studio as ‘the largest establishment we think we ever saw devoted to photography, in an old palace on the other side of the grand canal‘. Ponti and Naya were both photographic chroniclers of the city‘s tourist sights. Greater ease of travel meant that tourists came in ever increasing numbers to see the splendours of Italy, and these visitors were eager to take away with them souvenirs to show their friends and family at home and to help them remember what they had seen. Thus a photographer with a large stock of negatives showing the buildings and monuments, canals and palaces, harbour views and gondolas of Venice was assured of a steady, reliable income for years to come.Source: Luminous-Lint
Ellen Cantor
United States
Nakaji Yasui
Japan
1903 | † 1942
Nakaji Yasui was one of the most prominent photographers in the first half of the 20th century in Japan. Yasui was born in Osaka and became a member of the Naniwa Photography Club in 1920s and also became a member of the Tampei Photography Club in 1930. His photographs cover a wide range from pictorialism to straight photography, including photomontages. He appreciated every type and kind of photograph without any prejudice and tried not to reject any of them even during wartime. Source: Wikipedia Nakaji Yasui was born in 1903 in Osaka and passed away in 1942. From the 1920s on, Yasui was an active photographer in the Kansai region of Japan; he is now seen as one of the most prominent Japanese photographers of the prewar period. At the very beginning of an era in which Japanese photography would express itself in a way that was both more international and more in step with the times, Yasui produced his photographs while enthusiastically incorporating many new theories of art into his work—and thinking extremely carefully about how these theories might impact his own development within the context of that time in Japan. Although Yasui’s career was short, his work has influenced Daido Moriyama and many other important contemporary Japanese photographers. In 2010, His major photography publications include the essay Landscape Photography in Practice (1938) and the photography book Nakaji Yasui photographer 1903-1942 (2004). Taka Ishii Gallery produced “Nakaji Yasui Portfolio” (a set of 30 modern prints in a limited edition of 15). Source: Taka Ishii Gallery
Luigi Ghirri
Italy
1943 | † 1992
Luigi Ghirri, born on January 5, 1943, in Scandiano, Emilia-Romagna, Italy, was a trailblazing photographer renowned for his innovative use of color. Ghirri's early life in this picturesque region profoundly influenced his artistic vision. Initially trained as a surveyor, he began experimenting with photography in the early 1970s, a time when the medium was predominantly monochrome and used mainly for documentation and advertising. Ghirri diverged from the norm by embracing color photography as a legitimate artistic form. His work delved into the social and cultural changes sweeping through Italy during the 1970s, particularly the infiltration of advertising and the rise of leisure activities. His images often feature everyday scenes, landscapes, and urban environments, infused with a sense of nostalgia and contemplation. He had an uncanny ability to find beauty in the mundane, transforming ordinary moments into profound visual narratives. One of Ghirri's most significant contributions was his ability to convey the evolving identity of post-war Italy. His photographs from this era provide a vivid chronicle of the shifting social landscape, marked by consumerism and modernity, yet always maintaining a deep connection to the region's history and traditions. In 1978, Ghirri published his first book, "Kodachrome," which became a seminal work in the field of color photography. This collection showcased his unique perspective and solidified his reputation as a visionary artist. He continued to produce influential works throughout the 1980s, including notable projects like "Il Profilo delle Nuvole" and "Viaggio in Italia," which further explored themes of travel, memory, and the passage of time. Ghirri's approach was both methodical and poetic. He meticulously composed his shots, paying close attention to light, color, and composition. His photographs often feature elements of surrealism and irony, inviting viewers to see the world through his distinctive lens. Despite his untimely death on February 14, 1992, Ghirri's legacy endures. His work has been celebrated in numerous exhibitions and retrospectives worldwide, influencing generations of photographers. Luigi Ghirri remains a pivotal figure in the history of photography, revered for his pioneering use of color and his profound ability to capture the essence of a changing Italy.
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