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Ali MC
Ali MC
Ali MC

Ali MC

Country: Australia

A former touring musician and producer, Ali MC is a photographer, writer and lecturer in law and criminology.

He is also a regular contributor to Al Jazeera and has had his work featured extensively in a variety of publications internationally.

Recent photographic projects include Rohingya refugees in Burma and Bangladesh, Khasi stone labourers in India, marginalised groups in Timor-Lesteand street scenes in Iran.

In 2023 he launched H: A Love Story, a long form analogue ‘photographic audiobook’ and AV installation about homelessness and heroin addiction in his home city of Naarm (Melbourne, Australia).

His portrait of Indigenous singer Archie Roach was selected in the 2021 national Bowness prize and a portrait of esteemed Indigenous actor Jack Charles shortlisted in the 2022 Australian Photography Awards.

A collection of his protest photography was also recently acquired by the State Library of Victoria archives.

Working predominantly in 35mm and medium format, Ali's work is grounded in research and academic study, holding a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in History and a Masters in Human Rights Law.

Statement
Ali MC’s creative and academic practice aims to elevate the voices of marginalised and criminalised peoples globally and tackle social and political issues through extensive, long-term engagement.

Using a variety of film and camera combinations, Ali’s often-experimental practice seeks to push the boundaries of documentary photography and photojournalism, often exploring ways to evoke a mood, emotion or experience as much as documenting people and places.

Themes of trauma, marginalisation and criminalisation permeate his work, taking him deep into the darkness of the human psyche and experience.

Not content to remain an armchair narrator, Ali MC has travelled to countries such as Haiti, Ethiopia, Iraq, Rwanda and Syria (and many more) to meet people first-hand, build relationships and develop the close collaborations that drive his stories.

H: A Love Story
 

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More Great Photographers To Discover

Peter Lindbergh
Germany
1944 | † 2019
Peter Lindbergh was a German fashion photographer and film director known for his evocative black and white images and his distinctive, naturalistic style. He was born in Lissa, Germany (now Leszno, Poland) and grew up in Duisburg, Germany. He studied photography in Munich and worked as a photographer's assistant in Dusseldorf before moving to Paris in 1978 to start his career as a fashion photographer. Once upon a time, the photographer had to have an idea, not just click the shutter. -- Peter Lindbergh Lindbergh's photographs appeared in numerous international fashion magazines, including Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and Elle. He also worked with many of the world's leading fashion houses, including Chanel, Dior, and Armani. His images are known for their timeless quality and for the way they capture the spirit and personality of his subjects. In addition to his work in fashion, Peter Lindbergh also directed several films and documentaries, including the documentary Models, which explored the world of fashion modeling, and the film Pollution, which examined environmental issues. Peter Lindbergh was also active in humanitarian causes, using his talent and influence to raise awareness about social and political issues. He was a member of the American Association of Physicians for Human Rights and worked with Amnesty International on a campaign against the death penalty. When you do portrait photography it really can be quite insane. It’s crazy what is possible today. Photoshop is a huge tragedy in that respect as well, no question! -- Peter Lindbergh Lindbergh was the recipient of numerous awards and honors throughout his career, including the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and the German Bambi award. He was also inducted into the German Photography Hall of Fame in 2003. Peter Lindbergh passed away on September 3, 2019 at the age of 74. His work continues to be exhibited and celebrated around the world.
Christian Werner
Germany
1987
Christian Werner is a freelance multimedia/photojournalist based in Boitzum, Germany. As a teenager he developed his interest in photography while traveling to foreign countries. In 2014 he graduated the photojournalism & documentary photography course at the University of Applied Sciences in Hannover. His main interests are social diversity and global political issues. The areas of interest is mainly the arabic world and culture. Chris worked in various countries in Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe and South America. His work has been exhibited internationally. He welcomes assignments local and overseas. Since 2012, Christian is represented by Agency Laif. Source: World Press Photo Chris, born in 1987, studied from 2009 to 2014 photojournalism and documentary photography at the University of Hanover. He works as a freelance photojournalist and published his photos and stories, among others, in Der Spiegel, Die Zeit, TIME Magazine, The Washington Post and many more. From 2012 -2016 Christian Werner was represented by the German reportage agency laif. In late 2016 Chris is represented by Zeitenspiegel. His photographic focus is the processing of social injustice, conflicts and geopolitical issues. His work has been awarded several times and frequently exhibited internationally. In 2015 Chris participated at the World Press Joop Swart Mastercalss in Amsterdam. 2016 Chris has been chosen in the 30 under 30 Europe Forbes List in the Media category. In late summer 2016 he begins working with MOAS (Migrant Offshore Aid Station). Chris worked in various countries in Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe and South America. Artist Statement "Rubble and Delusion - A Journey Through Assad's Syria With the fall of Aleppo, the regime of Bashar Assad once again controls the country's second-largest city. But is reconciliation possible in the country? A journey through the dictator's rump state. Our journey leads us to the three largest cities in northern and western Syria: Aleppo, Latakia and Homs. Aleppo has become symbolic of the brutal bombing campaign. Latakia, the regime stronghold on the Mediterranean, was largely untouched by the war and is still a popular vacation spot in the summer. And Homs, once the center of the uprising, was destroyed and is now slated to become a model of reconstruction."
Nieves Mingueza
Nieves Mingueza is a lens-based, mixed media artist working with experimental photography, collage and text. Born in Spain, based in London. The often-cinematic themes in her projects have in common her fascination with old books, film stills, vintage cameras, poetry and minimal drawings. Ultimately, Nieves' work is about the foggy relationship between fiction and reality. In addition, she is currently exploring about immigration, mental health and human conflicts. Nieves' work has been exhibited widely, including Copeland Gallery -Peckham 24-, les Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie d'Arles, Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Retina Scottish International Photography Festival, The Royal Academy of Arts, PhotoEspaña, Saatchi Gallery and Tate Britain. Publications that have featured her work include Editorial 8mm, Fisheye magazine, Der Greif magazine, Low Light Magazine, Shots magazine, Eyemazing, Sarmad Magazine, YET Magazine and L'oeil de la photographie, among others. Lens Culture also featured a selection of her works. Recently, in July 2019, her first monograph book was released by IIKKI Books Editorial. About The malady of Suzanne "A few months ago, I moved to my new flat in South London. Once settled in my new home, I realised that the building had previously been a mental health hospital. In this hospital, people with mental health issues were treated and helped to reintegrate into society. One night, I was relaxing, reading in my living room. There was a sepulchral silence, and suddenly I heard a noise coming from the ceiling. I was scared and I noticed that there was a small loft. The next day, a neighbour helped me open the loft. Unexpectedly, we found a suitcase that contained photos, letters and documents that had belonged to a woman named Suzanne. Reading her letters, I learned that she was a Vietnamese woman who had been a teacher in her home country. There, she fell in love with an Englishman, and finally they decided to move to London together. This happened in 70s. Apparently she began to experience signs of a rare disease: loss of speech and isolation behaviour. I also found out from her documents that she had changed her name in London, because her real name was very difficult to pronounce for English people. She called herself Suzanne in honour of Leonard Cohen's song. By combining found archives with my documentary photography work, I am exploring the story of a Vietnamese female with mental issues in 70's London. This is an on-going project about the complex relationship between memory, immigration, mental health and human conflicts. Additionally, is there any reciprocation between Suzanne and myself? We have both lived in the same space. I am an immigrant in London, I work in a school, and I have modified my name because it was difficult for my students to pronounce. I also love silence. " -- Nieves Mingueza
Pieter Henket
The Netherland
1979
Pieter Henket is a Dutch photographer living and working in New York City. His notable work includes shooting the cover of Lady Gaga’s debut album The Fame, and photographing National Congolese acting out their mythologies in the Congo rainforest for the book Congo Tales published by Random House / Prestel Publishing in 2018. He is known for a photographic style that takes inspiration from the 17th-century Dutch Golden Age of painting. Henket was born in Geldrop, Netherlands. He is the son of the Dutch architect Hubert-Jan Henket and the nephew of the Dutch photographer Bertien van Manen. After high school in the Netherlands, Henket moved to the States to take a three-month film course at the New York Film Academy, followed by a documentary-film-making course at the NYU film school. Shortly after, Henket got his start by interning for director Joel Schumacher. In 1999, he worked on the set of the film Flawless, starring Robert De Niro and Philip Seymour Hoffman. He had a long-time collaboration with recording artist and producer Ryan Leslie. He has worked with celebrities such as Anjelica Huston, Mary-Kate Olsen, Sir Ben Kingsley, Kristen Stewart and Lady Gaga for whose debut album The Fame Henket shot. In 2010, the iconic image was presented at the American Woman exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In 2015 Henket was commissioned by Tales of Us in Berlin to photograph Congolese from the Mbomo District acting out their mythologies in the Odzala Kokoua National Park for the book Congo Tales. Source: Wikipedia About Congo Tales In the deep heart of Africa lies a tropical rainforest second only in size to the Amazon – the Congo Basin. It measures 500 million acres, spans 6 nations, and is home to some of the largest swaths of intact tropical rainforest in the world, with the pristine Odzala Kokoua National Park as the crown jewel. Known to ecologists as the world’s second lung, the Congo Basin is the Earth’s other Amazon – as vital to preventing runaway Climate Change as the Brazilian rainforest and as vulnerable to deforestation and abuse. Yet the Congo Basin falls far short of the Amazon when it comes to the world’s awareness of it as a major player in the global environment, a cathedral of nature’s treasures, and a stopgap against looming ecological catastrophe. Published in 2018 by Prestel, Congo Tales is intended to help solve this lack of awareness, and help create a conservation infrastructure for this critical pillar of the world’s fragile ecological balance. Upturning the traditional conventions of fear-based environmental messaging and the portrayal of Africa solely as a place of plague and war, Congo Tales takes a completely different approach to communicating the urgency of conservation efforts in this region. Channeling the primal heartbeat of one of the world’s most powerful ecosystems and the people who call it home, the mythological tales of the Congolese – of supernatural forces in control of life and death, of ritualistic initiations into adulthood, of the laws of nature that lie outside the laws of people – are revealed as a treasure trove of universal wisdom that is both existential and pragmatic, with the unspoiled Odzala Kokoua National Park as stage and actor.Source: The Independant Photographer
Lalla Essaydi
Morocco
1956
Lalla Essaydi (Lalla A. Essaydi) is a Moroccan-born photographer known for her staged photographs of Arab women in contemporary art. She currently works in Boston, Massachusetts, and Morocco. Her current residence is in New York. Essaydi was born in Marrakesh, Morocco in 1956. She left to attend high school in Paris at 16. She married after returning to Morocco and moved to Saudi Arabia where she had two children and divorced. Essaydi returned to Paris in the early 1990s to attend the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts. She moved to Boston in 1996 and earned her BFA from Tufts University in 1999 and her MFA in painting and photography from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in 2003. Influenced by her experiences growing up in Morocco and Saudi Arabia, Essaydi explores the ways that gender and power are inscribed on Muslim women's bodies and the spaces they inhabit. She has stated that her work is autobiographical and that she was inspired by the differences she perceived in women's lives in the United States versus in Morocco, in terms of freedom and identity. She explores a wide range of perspectives, including issues of diaspora, identity, and expected location through her studio practice in Boston. She also looks at the ways of viewing reality while questioning limits of other cultures and challenging Orientalist art, engaging tradition, history, art, and technology. Her Grand Odalisque from the series Les Femmes du Maroc (2008), for example, cites the French painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres' painting La Grande Odalisque (1814), although her model is dressed. She also presents the resistance of stereotypes maintained by Western and Eastern societies. The inspiration for many of her works came from her childhood, in the physical space where she, as a young woman, was sent when she disobeyed. She stepped outside the permissible behavioral space, as defined by Moroccan culture. Essaydi said her works will become haunted by spaces she inhabited as a child. Several pieces of her work (including Converging Territories) combine henna, which is traditionally used to decorate the hands and feet of brides, with Arabic calligraphy, a predominantly male practice. While she uses henna to apply calligraphy to her female subjects' bodies, the words are indecipherable in an attempt to question authority and meaning. According to Essaydi, "Although it is calligraphy that is usually associated with 'meaning' (as opposed to 'mere' decoration), in the visual medium of my photographs, the 'veil' of henna, in fact, enhances the expressivity of the images. Yet, by the same token, the male art of calligraphy has been brought into a world of female experience from which it has traditionally been excluded." The women depicted in her exhibition of photographs, Les Femmes du Maroc, are represented as decorative and confined by the art of henna. Essaydi thus poses her subjects in a way that exemplifies society's views of women as primarily destined for mere beauty. Henna, however, is extremely symbolic, especially to Moroccan women. It is an association with familial celebrations of a young girl reaching puberty and transitioning into a mature woman. The use of henna in her work creates a silent atmosphere of the women "speaking" to each other through a quality of femininity. It is predominantly a painting process where women who are discouraged to work outside the home find a profitable work in applying a tattoo-like material. Beyond creating powerful pieces revolving around the art of henna, Essaydi includes interpretations of traditional Moroccan elements, including draped folds of cloths adorning women's bodies, mosaic, tiles, and Islamic architecture. Lalla Essaydi’s photo series, Les Femmes du Maroc comments on contemporary social structures, as well as acknowledges the history that has aided in constructing representations of Arab female identity. Les Femmes du Maroc is one of her three major photographic series, which is influenced by nineteenth-century European and American Orientalist art. However, Essaydi appropriates Orientalist paintings by incorporating a new subject & style derived from her own personal history and experiences to emancipate Arabian women and to demonstrate a tradition that is misunderstood by a Western audience. The title of the series is an appropriation of a painting by the French Romantic Artist Eugène Delacroix. Therefore, each photo in the series is influenced by Orientalist art that is then appropriated. Essaydi's photographic series include Converging Territories (2003–2004), Les Femmes du Maroc (2005–2006), Harem (2009), Harem Revisited (2012–2013), Bullets, and Bullets Revisited (2012–2013). Her work has been exhibited around the world, including at the National Museum of African Art, and is represented in a number of collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago; the Museum Fünf Kontinente Munich/ Germany; the San Diego Museum of Art; the Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Winter Park, Florida; the Fries Museum in Leeuwarden, The Netherlands; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Williams College Museum of Art in Williamstown, Massachusetts. She was named as #18 in Charchub's "Top 20 Contemporary Middle Eastern Artists in 2012-2014". In 2015, the San Diego Museum of Art mounted the exhibition, Lalla Essaydi: Photographs. Source: Wikipedia Lalla A. Essaydi grew up in Morocco and now lives in USA where she received her MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts/TUFTS University in May 2003. Essaydi’s work is represented by Howard Yezerski Gallery in Boston and Edwynn Houk Gallery in New York City. Her work has been exhibited in many major international locales, including Boston, Chicago, Minneapolis, Texas, Buffalo, Colorado, New York, Syria, Ireland, England, France, the Netherlands, Sharjah, U.A.E., and Japan and is represented in a number of collections, including the Williams College Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, the Fries Museum, the Netherlands, and The Kodak Museum of Art. Her art, which often combines Islamic calligraphy with representations of the female body, addresses the complex reality of Arab female identity from the unique perspective of personal experience. In much of her work, she returns to her Moroccan girlhood, looking back on it as an adult woman caught somewhere between past and present, and as an artist, exploring the language in which to “speak” from this uncertain space. Her paintings often appropriate Orientalist imagery from the Western painting tradition, thereby inviting viewers to reconsider the Orientalist mythology. She has worked in numerous media, including painting, video, film, installation, and analog photography. "In my art, I wish to present myself through multiple lenses -- as artist, as Moroccan, as traditionalist, as Liberal, as Muslim. In short, I invite viewers to resist stereotypes."Source: lallaessaydi.com
Francis A. Willey
Francis A. Willey is part indigenous and is proud of his Cree Ancestors on his mother's side and respects the history, languages, and cultures of the First Nations, Métis, Inuit, and all First Peoples of Canada, whose presence continues to enrich his practice. Francis A. Willey acknowledges that he is located on the traditional territories of the people of the Treaty 7 region in Southern Alberta, which includes the Niitsitapi (inclusive of the Siksika, Piikani, and Kainai First Nations), the Tsuut’ina First Nation, and the Iyarhe Nakoda (including the Chiniki, Bearspaw, and Wesley First Nations). The City of Calgary is also home to the Métis Nation of Alberta, Region III. Francis A. Willey Canadian (Born, July 21st, 1969) Self-taught, 35mm film photographer. He is deeply fascinated by fabric and historical textiles and is a collector of rare books and antiquities. He writes poetry and also enjoys composing music on the piano in his spare time. All his images are created in-camera without post-production. He has been referred to as a portraitist or a neo-pictorialist in his photographic pursuits by the academic art world. He searches for depth in storytelling, continuity, and mystery to the narrative, and spirit of each individual, he has the pleasure of photographing. He received his first KODAK camera when he was 12 years old from his mother June. The first frame ever captured with the aperture of his camera was a portrait of his mother. He believes that a deeper, more compassionate culture can be created through the arts. As an outsider artist, he has always been questing for and seeking refuge in a higher beauty. Francis composes on the piano and also writes songs and poetry, creates collages, and draws from life's observations. His school was the value of nature and dreams, people, intuition, that one develops by sharing empathy.
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