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Win a Solo Exhibition in April 2026 + An Exclusive Interview!
Win a Solo Exhibition in April 2026 + An Exclusive Interview!
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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Consuelo Kanaga
United States
1894 | † 1978
Consuelo Kanaga (born Consuelo Delesseps Kanaga) was an American photographer and writer who became well known for her photographs of African-Americans. She is one of the pioneers of modern American photography, began her career as a photojournalist in 1915 in San Francisco. In the 1920s, Alfred Stieglitz inspired her to develop a more aesthetic approach, and a trip to Europe in 1928 awakened her lifelong preoccupation with European modernist painting and the ways in which that work was influenced by the sculpture of Africa. Kanaga successfully combined a Pictorialist aesthetic with a realist strategy, producing handsomely composed and carefully printed images. She was one of few white American photographers in the 1930s to make artistic portraits of African Americans.Source: The Brooklyn Museum Kanaga was born on May 25, 1894 in Astoria, Oregon, the second child of Amos Ream Kanaga and Mathilda Carolina Hartwig. Her father was a successful lawyer and judge in Ohio. After moving to Astoria he became the district attorney for the city, and he also traveled widely, often leaving his family behind with little notice. After they moved to California in 1915 her mother became a real estate broker, a highly unusual occupation for a woman at that time. The last name "Kanaga" is of Swiss origin, and a family genealogy traces its roots back at least 250 years. She spelled her first name "Consuela," at least in the 1920s and '30s, but it is generally listed now as Consuelo, a more common Spanish name. Her middle name "Delesseps" is said to have come from her mother's admiration for Ferdinand de Lesseps, the French diplomat and developer of the Suez Canal. In 1911 the family moved from Oregon to Larkspur in Marin County, California. In 1915 Kanaga got a job as a reporter, feature writer and part-time photographer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Dorothea Lange later said that Kanaga was the first female newspaper photographer she had ever encountered. It was there that she discovered Alfred Stieglitz's journal Camera Work and decided to become a photographer. Lange encouraged her to take up photography as a career and introduced her to the growing San Francisco Bay Area community of artistic photographers, notably Anne Brigman, Edward Weston, Francis Bruguière, and Louise Dahl-Wolf. In 1919 she married mining engineer Evans Davidson, but they separated within two years. In 1922 she moved to New York in order to work as a photojournalist for the New York American newspaper. While in New York a co-worker at the newspaper, Donald Litchfield, introduced her to Alfred Stieglitz. Stieglitz worked with Kanaga to help transform her vision from photojournalism to a more artistic photographic style. By March 1923 she was living with Litchfield, although at the time she had not yet divorced Davidson. In 1924 she and Litchfield moved to California, living at times near Santa Cruz, San Francisco and Los Angeles. By the end of the year she had finalized divorce proceedings against Davidson, and she became engaged to Litchfield. The engagement lasted only six months, however, and by the end of the year they were no longer a couple. In 1926 she met Tina Modotti, who was visiting San Francisco, and she put together a small exhibition of Modotti's photographs at the Kanaga Studio on Post Street. Aided by art patron Albert Bender, she began planning a prolonged "tour" of Europe, and in 1927 she spent the latter part of the year traveling and photographing in France, Germany, Hungary and Italy. While there she met up with Dahl, and the two of them spent many weeks traveling together. While traveling to Tunisia in January 1928, she met James Barry McCarthy, an Irish writer and ex-pilot, and by March they were married. In May they returned to New York City and took up residence there. Kanaga initially found work as a photographic retoucher, but within a few months she had her own darkroom and was printing the first of her many photos from Europe. In 1930 she and McCarthy moved to San Francisco, and soon she was re-established in the photographic community there. In 1931 she met and began to employ African-American Eluard Luchell McDaniels, a young "man-of-all-trades" who worked for her as a handyman and chauffeur. She began to photograph him around her home, and as they talked she became captivated by the plight of African-Americans and their continuing fight against racism. Soon she was devoting much of her photography to images of African-Americans, their homes and their culture. In 1932 she was invited by Weston and Ansel Adams to participate in the famous Group f/64 show at the M.H. de Young Museum, and she showed four prints. There is some confusion about whether Kanaga should actually be called a "member" of Group f/64. The announcement for the show at the de Young Museum listed seven photographers in Group f/64 and said "From time to time various other photographers will be asked to display their work with Group f/64. Those invited for the first showing are: Preston Holder, Consuela Kanaga, Alma Lavenson, Brett Weston." However, in 1934 the group posted a notice in Camera Craft magazine that said "The F:64 group includes in its membership such well known names as Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, Willard Van Dyke, John Paul Edwards, Imogene [sic] Cunningham, Consuela Kanaga and several others." In an interview later in her life, Kanaga herself said "I was in that f/64 show with Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham, Willard Van Dyke and Ansel Adams, but I wasn't in a group, nor did I belong to anything ever. I wasn't a belonger." In 1935 she moved back to New York without McCarthy, and the two apparently were divorced sometime that year. She began plans for a portfolio of African Americans and interviewed several families in Harlem with whom she hoped to live while documenting their lives. While there she encountered painter Wallace Putnam, whom she had met the last time she lived in New York. Within three months they were married. They spent part of their honeymoon visiting Alfred Stieglitz at his home at Lake George. In 1938 she joined the Photo League, where she lectured a new generation of artistic photographers and became the leader of the Documentary Group projects, including Neighborhoods of New York. Her photographs were printed in progressive publications of the time, including New Masses, Labor Defender, and Sunday Worker. By 1940 she found teaching too restrictive, and she returned to taking photographs full time. She was actively photographing and exhibiting throughout the 1940s, 50s and 60s. In the latter decade she became very active in civil rights, and she took part in and photographed many demonstrations and marches. In 1963 she was arrested in Albany, Georgia during the Walk for Peace. She finally seemed to have found the right romantic and creative partner in Putnam, and the two of them remained together for the rest of her life. They traveled frequently and spent the last half of the 1960s going back and forth to France. A review published in New York Times described that "She continued to work into her 70s, despite suffering from emphysema and cancer, which were probably caused by the chemicals used in creating her prints. Her body of work, though comparatively small, is consistently exceptional. Consuelo Kanaga died virtually unknown on February 28, 1978, but her talent endures." Her entire estate amounted to $1,345 in photographic equipment, almost 2,500 negatives and 375 prints. Everything else she had given away to friends.Source: Wikipedia
Bieke Depoorter
Belgium
1986
Bieke Depoorter (born 1986) is a Belgian photographer. She is a member of Magnum Photos and has published four books: Ou Menya, I am About to Call it a Day, As it May Be, and Sète#15. Depoorter received a master's degree in photography at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent in 2009. The relationships Depoorter establishes with the subjects of her photographs lie at the foundation of her artistic practice. Accidental encounters are the starting point, and how these interactions naturally develop dictate the nature of Depoorter’s work. Many of her self-initiated projects are about intimate situations in families and in peoples' homes. For her graduation project and her first book, Ou Menya (2011), she made three trips to Russia, photographing people in their homes that she met whilst travelling around. The series won the 2009 Magnum Expression Award. Bieke Depoorter made the work for her second book, I am About to Call it a Day (2014) in a similar way whilst hitchhiking and driving around the U.S. However several recent projects have been the result of Depoorter questioning the medium. In As it May Be, she gradually became more aware of her status as an outsider, both culturally and as a photographer. So, in 2017, she revisited Egypt with the first draft of the book, inviting people to write comments directly onto the photographs. In Sète#15, and also Dvalemodus, a short film she co-directed together with Mattias De Craene, she began to see her subjects as actors. Although she portrayed them in their true environments, she tried to project her own story onto the scenes, fictionalizing the realities of her subjects in a way that blurred the lines between their world and hers. In the ongoing project Agata, a project about a young woman Depoorter met at a striptease bar in Paris in October 2017, she explores her interest in collaborative portraiture. It’s an example of Depoorter’s interest in finding people that can work with her in telling a story. These stories are always partially hers, and partially theirs. In her latest project Michael, she investigates the disappearance and life of a man she met on the streets of Portland in 2015. After giving her three suitcases full of scrapbooks, notes and books, everyone lost sight of him. Bieke Depoorter became a nominee member of Magnum Photos in 2012, an associate member in 2014, and a full member in 2016. She is the fourth Belgian member of the agency, after Carl De Keyzer, Martine Franck, Harry Gruyaert... Depoorter has won the Magnum Expression Award, The Larry Sultan Award and the Prix Levallois.Source: Wikipedia For the past six years, Bieke Depoorter has spent countless nights photographing perfect strangers—people that she encounters on the street who are willing to open their homes to Depoorter and her camera. The project began when she was travelling on the Trans-Siberian Railway, in 2008. She didn’t speak the language, so photography became her mode of communication. (She carried a letter that a friend wrote in Russian that explained her intent.) After publishing the work as a book, called Ou Menya, Depoorter headed to the United States, in 2010, where she hitchhiked and drove around the country, creating the collection found in her latest book, I Am About to Call It a Day. The project, both intimate and removed, hinges upon Depoorter’s ability to build trust within a tight timeframe. In many of the photographs, she seems to go unnoticed, capturing the unguarded moments found only in the privacy of one’s own home. “I like the atmosphere of the night,” Depoorter told me. “When people go to sleep, I think it’s most real. No one is looking at them, and they become their true selves.” She told me that her process is intrinsic to the success of her images. “I try to not hope for a picture,” she said. “I am there as a person first, and a photographer second.”Source: The New Yorker
Marina Lauar
Brazil
1993
Marina Lauar is a Brazilian visual artist. She develops her artwork in Fine Art Photography, where she uses a pictorial language to construct of her narratives. As a plural artist she appropriates elements that expand formal photography and allow the mix of printed photography with other gestures and techniques. She finds in the portrait an appropriate field for her discussions and critical reflection, which she builds through minimalist and potent images. Her research currently circulates between the deconstruction of already rooted stereotypes and her own self-perception. About Plastic Portraits The project was born during my renaissance as an artist. After some time feeling completely blocked, hands, feet, head, and heart tied, I found myself in a huge need to express my concerns through photography. Fine Art Photography is a fertile field that allows the cultivation of reflections and dialogues, so I chose it as language, to be the home of my yearnings. I create portraits aiming to deconstruct beliefs, sometimes using satire, sometimes critical reflections and their depths, sometimes pure intimacy, things that will never be said. The atmosphere is reaffirmed by the way I work with the light. I seek minimalism so that only a key element fulfils its role as a critical factor in the image. My principal goal with this project is to traverse. Conceive feelings, make the feeling palpable. Build next to portrayed the script that will guide us in the production of the pictures, in the choice of the element, so that everything there in that image has great strength and meaning to the portrayed. To emanate with my eyes feelings that overflow in the other.
Terry Richardson
United States
1965
Terry Richardson is an American fashion and portrait photographer. He was born in New York City, the son of Norma Kessler, an actress, and Bob Richardson, a fashion photographer who struggled with schizophrenia and drug abuse. Richardson's father was Irish Catholic and his mother is Jewish. Following the divorce of his parents, Richardson moved to Woodstock, New York, with his mother and stepfather, English guitarist Jackie Lomax. Richardson later moved to the Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles, where he attended Hollywood High School. He moved with his mother to Ojai, California, where he attended Nordhoff High School when he was 16. Richardson originally wanted to be a punk rock musician rather than a photographer. He played bass guitar in the punk rock band The Invisible Government for four years. Terrence Richardson played bass for a variety of other punk bands in Southern California including Signal Street Alcoholics, Doggy Style, Baby Fist, and Middle Finger. Richardson's mother reportedly gave him his first snapshot camera in 1982, which he used to document his life and the punk rock scene in Ojai. In 1992, Richardson quit music and moved to the East Village neighborhood of New York City, where he began photographing young people partying and other nightlife. It was in New York City that he had his first "big break." His first published fashion photos appeared in Vibe in 1994. His Vibe spread was shown at Paris' International Festival de la Mode later that year. Following the showing, Richardson shot an advertising campaign for fashion designer Katharine Hamnett's spring 1995 collection. The campaign was noted for images of young women wearing short skirts with their pubic hair showing. Throughout his career, Richardson has shot the campaigns of fashion brands and designers such as: Marc Jacobs, Aldo, Supreme, Sisley, Tom Ford, and Yves Saint Laurent. He has also worked for magazines such as Rolling Stone, GQ, Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Harper's Bazaar. Richardson has produced several campaigns for Diesel, including the 'Global Warming Ready' which won a Silver Lion for Print at Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival in 2007. He has produced several private portraits for the company's founder, Renzo Rosso. In September 2011, they hosted a mutual book launch together with fashion editor Carine Roitfeld, at Colette in Paris. In 2012 Richardson embarked on his first solo exhibition at Los Angeles's OHWOW Gallery, titled Terrywood. In May 2012, a video of model Kate Upton performing the Cat Daddy dance for Richardson in his studio went viral. In December 2012, Lady Gaga announced that Richardson was filming a documentary about her life. Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes defended Richardson in 2004, saying his work was criticized by "first-year feminist" types. There are several repeating themes in Richardson's work, notably that of putting high-profile celebrities in mundane situations and photographing them using traditionally pedestrian methods, such as the use of an instant camera. His work also explores ideas of sexuality, with many of the pieces featured in his books Kibosh and Terryworld depicting full-frontal nudity and both simulated and actual sexual acts. Initially, many of Richardson's subjects would be shot before a white background but he eventually expanded to other backdrops. He is also known for posing with his subjects, often giving them his trademark glasses so they may "pretend to be him" or, in the case of actress Chloë Sevigny, posing them in makeup and costume so that they look like him. Richardson counts Larry Clark, Nan Goldin, Diane Arbus and Robert Frank as early influences on his artistic style. His work has been praised by Helmut Newton. Richardson described his style as, "Trying to capture those unpremeditated moments when people's sexualities come up to the surface." Richardson is also known for his nonsexual portraiture. He has taken portraits of a wide variety of celebrities and politicians. Since 2001, Richardson has been accused by multiple models of sexual misconduct. In 2017, brands and magazines that had worked with Richardson in the past began distancing themselves from him, and said they would no longer employ him. He has not actively worked as a photographer since 2018. Source: Wikipedia
Zhou HanShun
Singapore
1975
Born 1975, and raised in Singapore, Zhou HanShun is a Photographic Artist, Printmaker and Art Director.After graduating from Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts Singapore and RMIT University, he went on to make a living as an art director, and continues to pursue his passion as a visual storyteller and photographer.He uses photography as a way to explore, investigate and document the culture and people in the cities he lived in.HanShun has exhibited at the Tumbas Cultural Center in Thessaloniki, Greece for Photoeidolo (2017), the Molekyl Gallery in Sweden, for the Malmo Fotobiennal (2017), the Gallery under Theater in Bratislava, Slovakia for The Month of Photography Bratislava(2017), the Czech China Contemporary Museum in Beijing for the SongZhuang International Photo Biennale(2017), the PhotoMetria "Parallel Voices" exhibition in Greece (2016), the Addis FotoFest in Ethiopia (2016), among others.HanShun was awarded a Special Mention at the Balkan Photo Festival (2016), Shortlisted for the Hariban Award (2017) and was a finalist of Photolucida Critical Mass (2016), among others.About Frenetic City To say life moves fast in a city is an understatement. People go through life in an uncompromising, chaotic pace, overcoming and absorbing anything in their path. Time in the city seem to flow quicker, memories in the city tend to fade away faster. Nothing seems to stand still in a city. I use photography as a way to explore, investigate and document the culture, society and people in the cities that I have lived in. Using Hong Kong as a starting point, this project aims to be a documentation of our increasingly overpopulated world. When I first landed, I was immediately confronted by a society that is in fierce competition for physical and mental space. I decided to capture and re-create the tension and chaos that I experienced in photographic form, using multiple exposures on B&W negatives. The creation of each photograph requires me to be fixed at a specific location from between 5 to 7 hours per session. Through the viewfinder of an old Hasselblad, I created each photograph by overlapping selected individuals or groups of people within the 6 x 6 frame. The resulting photograph is not of a singular moment in time, but a multitude of moments in time captured in a single frame.
Slim Aarons
United States
1916 | † 2006
Slim Aarons was an American photographer noted for his images of socialites, jet-setters, and celebrities. At 18 years old, Aarons enlisted in the United States Army, worked as a photographer at the United States Military Academy, and later served as a combat photographer in World War II and earned a Purple Heart. Aarons said combat had taught him the only beach worth landing on was "decorated with beautiful, seminude girls tanning in a tranquil sun." After the war, Aarons moved to California and began photographing celebrities. In California, he shot his most praised photo, Kings of Hollywood, a 1957 New's Year's Eve photograph depicting Clark Gable, Van Heflin, Gary Cooper, and James Stewart relaxing at a bar in full formal wear. Aaron's work appeared in Life, Town & Country, and Holiday magazines. Aarons never used a stylist, or a makeup artist. He made his career out of what he called "photographing attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places." An oft-cited example of this approach is his 1970 Poolside Gossip shot at the Kaufmann Desert House designed by Richard Neutra, with owner Nelda Linsk as one of the models in the photo. "I knew everyone," he said in an interview with The (London) Independent in 2002. "They would invite me to one of their parties because they knew I wouldn't hurt them. I was one of them." Alfred Hitchcock's film, Rear Window (1954), whose main character is a photographer played by Jimmy Stewart, is set in an apartment reputed to be based on Aarons' apartment. When you photograph a lot of women, you get to know things. -- Slim Aarons In 1997, Mark Getty, the co-founder of Getty Images, visited Aarons in his home and bought Aarons' entire archive. In 2017, filmmaker Fritz Mitchell released a documentary about Aarons, called Slim Aarons: The High Life. In the documentary, it is revealed that Aarons was Jewish and grew up in conditions that were in complete contrast to what he told friends and family of his childhood. Aarons claimed that he was raised in New Hampshire, was an orphan, and had no living relations. After his death in 2006, his widow and daughter learned the truth that Aarons had grown up in a poor immigrant Yiddish-speaking family on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. As a boy his mother was diagnosed with mental health issues and admitted to a psychiatric hospital, which caused him to be passed around among relatives. He resented and had no relationship with his father and had a brother, Harry, who would later commit suicide. Several documentary interviewees postulate that if Aarons's true origins had been known, his career would have been unlikely to succeed within the restricted world of celebrity and WASP privilege his photography glamorized.Source: Wikipedia Slim Aarons was a celebrated American photographer who chronicled the leisurely lifestyle of the rich and famous in his captivating shots of beguiling figures in luxurious environments. The glamorous world of his photographs, in which effortlessly beautiful and wealthy people lounge poolside, became an iconic series that allowed Aarons access to shoot some of the most candid portraiture of the 20th century. We love how Aarons worked without any need for stylists or elaborate lighting, instead preferring to photograph celebrities just as they were, creating alluring scenes that are a window into a different lifestyle. In presenting glimpses of the rich and famous engrossed in leisurely pursuits, the artist exposes elements of a life that would otherwise not be on view, allowing his audience to live the high life - vicariously. Born and raised in New York, Aarons began taking pictures at the age of eighteen, after enlisting in the US Army, where he served as an official combat photographer during WWII. In a career that spanned six decades, Aarons’ camera lens moved from soldiers to stars and celebrities, and the self-proclaimed realisation that the only beaches worth photographing were "decorated with beautiful, seminude girls tanning in a tranquil sun." Over the course of his 50 year career, Aarons was a regular contributor to magazines such as Life, Town & Country, Vogue and Holiday and received an exclusive look into the lives of figures such as the Kennedys, Marilyn Monroe and Grace Kelly. In 1997, Mark Getty of Getty Images bought Aarons’ entire archive of photographs, and published a book of his work Poolside with Slim Aarons a decade later. Aarons’ intimately candid scenes have given him an era-defining legacy as one of the most influential photographers of his generation. Source: Art Republic
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