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Stéphane Garnavault
Stéphane Garnavault
Stéphane Garnavault

Stéphane Garnavault

Country: France
Birth: 1971

As a graduate of the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, I found my passion blossoming through studies in graphic design, painting, drawing, printmaking, silkscreen, and photography.

However, upon receiving my diploma, I suppressed my artist's soul and embarked on a career as a designer. For nearly 25 years, I worked tirelessly, forgetting my initial artistic loves.

Swiftly, I achieved success as a designer, thanks to my keen sensitivity. Yet, this success became a bittersweet gift that drained me. Emotions washed over me so intensely that at times, I felt overly attuned to the world around me.

Five years ago, a book opened my eyes and shook me to the core. It was a revelation. I realised I needed to respond. Gradually, my artist's heart reawakened. I purchased the camera of my student dreams—a Leica.

I started wandering, and it did wonders for my soul. Out in nature, I found my place. The landscapes I traversed became as significant as the landscapes within. I observed the world and delved deep within myself, seeking to translate into images how I perceived my surroundings.

My photographic work reveals my distinct sensitivity and attraction to sleek design. My flower portraits, akin to self-portraits, blend blurriness with interplays of light. My urban landscapes capture the sensations of climate catastrophe, depicted in simplified, even abstract compositions.
 

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More Great Photographers To Discover

Nazanin Alipour Jeddi
Iran/United States
Nazanin Alipour Jeddi, known as Sitaaj, is a self-taught freelance photographer and translator born in Tehran, Iran, and currently residing in the United States. She specializes in capturing the nuanced experiences of women, exploring themes of gender, identity, and cultural dynamics. Sitaaj's photography has been exhibited internationally and recognized with multiple awards. Her work highlights the profound interplay between women's experiences and the cultural systems surrounding them, fostering dialogue and understanding through her art. In addition to her photography, Sitaaj is an accomplished translator. Her fifth translated book, Howto Be an Artist, was recently published in Tehran. Through her creative work and translations, Sitaaj seeks to inspire and empower individuals to pursue their passions, regardless of their backgrounds or circumstances. Photography remains her true passion, providing a medium to tell compelling and meaningful stories. Lingering Shadows The photography series "Lingering Shadows" is an attempt to capture the simple yet complex and hidden moments that women experience in their everyday lives. These images use the color blue to emphasize the often invisible fatigue—an endless cycle of tasks that, despite their importance, sometimes feel futile and unproductive. The dominant presence of blue conveys a deep sense of coldness and isolation. The goal of this series is to invite viewers to rethink the aspects of women's lives that often go unnoticed. Simple moments, such as drinking tea, preparing food, or a brief pause amid the daily chaos, take on new meaning in these images, representing the emptiness, futility, and underlying complexities in these seemingly ordinary experiences. These photos are not only a personal narrative but also a reflection of the collective experience of women around the world.
Evelyn Bencicova
Slovakia
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Evelyn Bencicova is a visual creative specialising in photography and art direction. Informed by her background in fine art and new media studies (University for Applied Arts, Vienna), Evelyn's practice combines her interest in contemporary culture with academic research to create a unique aesthetic space in which the conceptual meets the visual. Evelyn's work is never quite what first appears to be. Her photographs depict meticulously-controlled compositions characterised by an aesthetic sterility, tinged with poetic undertones of timeless desire and longing. Evelyn constructs compelling narrative scenarios that blur the lines between reality, memory and imagination — "fictions based on truth". Depicting multifaceted representations as illusions, Evelyn plays with the viewer's perception to entice them into the secret labyrinth of her imagination. Her disturbingly beautiful visual language and washed-out colour palette, set within curiously symbolic environments, allow for a deep exploration of the themes that take her images far beyond what they reveal at first glance. Evelyn's client repertoire includes fashion and luxury brands such as Gucci, Cartier and Nehera, as well as cultural institutions such as Frieze, Berghain, Kunsthalle Basel, Royal Opera House, Slovak National Theatre and Ballet and Museums Quartier Vienna. In 2018, Bencicova was invited to create visuals for the Institute of Molecular Biology in Austria, and to perform at the closing ceremony for Atonal Berlin. Evelyn's commercial and artistic projects have been featured in the likes of Vogue Portugal, Vogue Czechoslovakia, ZEIT Magazine, ELLE, Dazed & Confused, GUP, HANT and Metal Magazine. Her work has been published in prestigious international photography books and on several online platforms (Juxtapoz, iGNANT.com, Fubiz media) and she has participated in solo and group exhibitions across Stockholm, London, Tokyo, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Milan, Amsterdam, Brussels, Prague and Rome to mention few. In 2016, Bencicova received the prestigious Hasselblad Masters and Broncolor GenNext awards. She was shortlisted and awarded by Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize, LensCulture, Independent Photographer, Gomma Grant, Life Framer, Photo IS:RAEL, Young Guns 17, Tokyo International Photo Award and Photo Vogue and OFF Festival. Her fashion film "Asymptote" (2016), co-created with Adam Csoka Keller, received the "Best New Fashion Film" award at the Fashion Film Festival Milano 2017, and was featured at SHOWstudio Fashion Film Awards, the Austrian American Short Film Festival and at Diane Pernet's A Shaded View on Fashion. Evelyn was selected as one of 30 under 30 Female photographers by Artpil.
Ralph Eugene Meatyard
United States
1925 | † 1972
Ralph Eugene Meatyard (May 15, 1925 – May 7, 1972) was an American photographer from Normal, Illinois, U.S. Meatyard was born in Normal, Illinois and raised in the nearby town of Bloomington. When he turned 18 during World War II, he joined the United States Navy, though he did not serve overseas before the war ended. After leaving the force he briefly studied pre-dentistry, before training to become an optician. He moved with his new wife Madelyn to Lexington, Kentucky to continue working as an optician for Tinder-Krausse-Tinder, a company which also sold photographic equipment. The owners of the company were active members of the Lexington Camera Club, for which the Art Department of the University of Kentucky provided exhibition space. Meatyard purchased his first camera in 1950 to photograph his newborn first child, and subsequently worked primarily with a Rolleiflex medium-format camera. He joined the Lexington Camera club and the Photographic Society of America in 1954. At the Lexington Camera Club he met Van Deren Coke, who exhibited work by Meatyard in an exhibition for the university entitled Creative Photography in 1956. During the mid-1950s, Ralph Eugene Meatyard attended a series of summer workshops run by Henry Holmes Smith at Indiana University, and also with Minor White, who fostered Meatyard's interest in Zen Philosophy. An autodidact and voracious reader, Meatyard worked in productive bursts, often leaving his film undeveloped for long stretches, then working feverishly in the makeshift darkroom in his home. "His approach was somewhat improvisational and very heavily influenced by the jazz music of the time." He used his children in his work addressing the surreal "masks" of identity. Much of his work was made in abandoned farmhouses in the central Kentucky bluegrass region during family weekend outings and in derelict spaces around Lexington. Some of his earliest camera work was made in the traditionally African-American neighborhood around Lexington's Old Georgetown Street. Meatyard was a close acquaintance of several well-known writers in the Kentucky literary renaissance of the 1960s and 1970s, including his neighbor Guy Davenport, who later helped compile a posthumous edition of his photos. In 1971, Meatyard co-authored a book on Kentucky's Red River Gorge, The Unforeseen Wilderness, with writer Wendell Berry. The two frequently traveled into the Appalachian foothills. Berry and Meatyard's book contributed to saving the gorge from destruction by a proposed Army Corps of Engineers dam. Meatyard's ashes were scattered in the gorge after his death. Meatyard was also a friend and correspondent of Catholic monk and writer Thomas Merton, who lived at the Abbey of Gethsemani, a Trappist monastery just west of Bardstown, Kentucky. Merton appeared in a number of Meatyard's experimental photographs taken on the grounds of the monastery, and they shared an interest in literature, philosophy, and Eastern and Western spirituality. Meatyard wrote Merton's eulogy in the Kentucky Kernel shortly after his death in Bangkok, Thailand, in December 1968. Meatyard died four years later, in 1972, of cancer. Though Lexington was not a well-established center of photography, Meatyard did not consider himself a "Southern" or regional photographer. His work was beginning to be recognized nationally at the time of his death, shown and collected by some prominent museums and published in magazines. He exhibited with photographers including Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, Minor White, Aaron Siskind, Harry Callahan, Robert Frank, and Eikoh Hosoe. By the late 1970s, his photographs appeared mainly in exhibitions of 'southern' art, but have since attracted renewed interest. His best-known photography featured dolls and masks, or family, friends and neighbors pictured in abandoned buildings or in ordinary suburban backyards.Source: Wikipedia Ralph Eugene Meatyard lived in Lexington, Kentucky, where he made his living as an optician while creating an impressive and enigmatic body of photographs. Meatyard’s creative circle included mystics and poets, such as Thomas Merton and Guy Davenport, as well as the photographers Cranston Ritchie and Van Deren Coke, who were mentors and fellow members of the Lexington Camera Club. Meatyard’s work spanned many genres and experimented with new means of expression, from dreamlike portraits—often set in abandoned places—to multiple exposures, motion-blur, and other methods of photographic abstraction. He also collaborated with his friend Wendell Berry on the 1971 book The Unforeseen Wilderness, for which Meatyard contributed photographs of Kentucky’s Red River Gorge. Meatyard’s final series, The Family Album of Lucybelle Crater, are cryptic double portraits of friends and family members wearing masks and enacting symbolic dramas. Museum exhibitions of the artist’s work have recently been presented at Art Institute of Chicago; The Philadelphia Museum of Art; the de Young Museum, San Francisco; The International Center of Photography, New York; Cincinnati Museum of Art, Ohio; the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson; and Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas. His works are held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, J. Paul Getty Museum, The Eastman Museum, and Yale University Art Gallery, among others. Monographs include American Mystic, Dolls and Masks, A Fourfold Vision, and The Family Album of Lucybelle Crater and Other Figurative Photographs.Source: Fraenkel Gallery
Cardell Phillips
United States
1952
I'm a photographer living in Chicago. I discovered photography when I was in high school. My uncle was a photographer, and he showed me what the world looked like through a viewfinder. What I enjoyed the most about it was the freedom to explore the world and then show everyone what I found. When I got a job, I bought my first camera, an Olympus Trip 35, and learned how to use it by taking photographs of family and friends. Basically, anyone who would put up with me taking their picture when they weren't expecting it. When I was in grammar school, my two sisters and I spent our summer vacations at our grandparents' farm in Michigan. It was there that I experienced what it was like to live close to the land. So, when I thought about what kind of photography I wanted to specialize in, I chose landscape photography. Enchanted by the images taken by Ansel Adams and others, I traveled to the Canadian Rockies for a weeklong workshop where I learned some of the finer aspects of photography and gained confidence as a photographer. For years, I only shot portraits and landscapes. My interest in street photography began around 2008, when I came across the work of Walker Evans. His vision of the beauty in everyday life led me to other masters like Henri Cartier-Bresson, Vivian Maier, Roy DeCarava, and Wayne Miller. Their humanist approach to photography, to explore what it means to be human, inspired me. It's what I think about when I'm out with my camera and immersing myself in the flow of life, seeking to capture its disillusionment, solitude, and indigence but also the beauty, joy, and everyday wonders. In September 2021, the Praxis Gallery in Minneapolis chose one of my images for its "Shape of Things," exhibit. It was my first gallery showing. Statement One of the best places to take photographs in Chicago is the Lakefront. There, the beaches are strung out along Lake Michigan, from north to south, like pearls on a string, where there are many opportunities to photograph both people and landscapes. The 57th Street Beach is my favorite. It's a small beach with trees at the north and south ends that give it a touch of wilderness. As I photographed there, I noticed the people who came out to the lake in the early morning to engage in creative or spiritual work. As I began photographing them, I got the idea for a project about the power of the lake and the people who go there to resonate with the sky and water and to energize their hopes and dreams.
Matthew Pillsbury
United States / France
1973
Matthew Pillsbury is a French-born American photographer, living in New York City. The Screen Lives series, inspired by Sugimoto's movie theater photos, features black and white, long-exposure photographs of family and friends sitting in their apartments interacting with their computer and television screens. In 2004 The New York Times Magazine commissioned him to do a portfolio of photos of New York museums after hours. One such photo was taken at the Guggenheim Museum: An installation in progress in the Ronald O. Perelman Rotunda (Oct. 1, 2004.) In addition to New York, he continued to shoot within museums in both London and Paris, including the Musée du Louvre. At the Louvre he photographed the Mona Lisa. The New York Times and the Aperture Foundation published New York Times Photographs in the fall of 2011, featuring one of his photos of the American Museum of Natural History's Rose Center For Earth and Space. In the Dec 11, 2011 issue of New York Magazine, Pillsbury's works were published as part of their "Reasons to Love New York 2011" feature. The photos included four shots from City Stages, which included Occupy Wall Street protesters in Zuccotti Park, as well as Jing Fong dim sum, Fausto in Washington Square Park and High Line. His series, City Stages initially ran from February 23, 2012 to April 28, 2012 at the Bonni Bunrubi Gallery in New York City. The exhibition opened in Atlanta, GA on September 13, 2012 and ran until November 17, 2012 at The Jackson Fine Art gallery. In September 2013, the Aperture Foundation published a monograph that includes a retrospective of his works, titled, City Stages. The New York Times Magazine published one of Pillsbury's City Stages photos as part of their Manhattanhenge feature in July 2013. Art Relish conducted an interview in October 2012 with him discussing his City Stages works. In the Oct 1, 2012 edition of Time Magazine, High Line photo, featuring a park in Manhattan constructed of abandoned train tracks, was highlighted as part of his exhibit at the Jackson Fine Art gallery. The Screen Lives series, inspired by Sugimoto's movie theater photos, features black and white, long-exposure photographs of family and friends sitting in their apartments interacting with their computer and television screens. On the CNN Photos Blog, Pillsbury's Screen Lives series was featured in a post about the School of Visual Arts "Myths & Realities" show, which took at the Visual Arts Gallery in New York, Aug 29-Sept 29, 2012. On November 27, 2011, New York Times Magazine featured two of Pillsbury's photos of Jane's Carousel from "City Stages." In April 2014, Pillsbury was one of 11 photographers awarded with the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. Approximately 200 Fellowships are awarded each year through two annual competitions that receive between 3,500 and 4,000 applications. Guggenheim Fellowships are grants awarded to "advanced professionals in mid-career" who have demonstrated exceptional ability by publishing a significant body of work within the fields of natural sciences, social sciences, humanities and the creative arts, excluding the performing arts. In 2014, Pillsbury photographed various cities in Japan, with the focus being in and around Tokyo. Recent photographs from his work in Tokyo were revealed in a photo essay published on July 18, 2014 in The New York Times Magazine and include images from Tokyo Disneyland, Robot Restaurant and the CupNoodles Museum in Yokohama. In April 2014, The New York Times Magazine first ran a photo essay of Pillsbury's work that centered around the hanami parties that occur during the week when the cherry blossoms are at peak bloom. An exhibition of His new Tokyo work opened Sept 10, 2014 and closed November 15, 2014 in New York City at Benrubi Gallery. A portfolio of Pillsbury's new images was featured in The New Yorker in September 2015, and showcased locations that include the High Line, the American Museum of Natural History, Astoria Park Pool and the Coney Island Boardwalk. He has also widened the project's focus to include locations outside of Manhattan, after a move to Brooklyn in January 2015 that inspired him to shoot urban life in the outer boroughs. In a redesign and relaunch in the February 22, 2015 issue, The New York Times Magazine published a photograph Of his on its cover. The long exposure image featured an illuminated spinning globe, which he took in his basement. He is represented exclusively by Edwynn Houk Gallery in New York.Source: Wikipedia
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