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Rasel Chowdhury
Rasel Chowdhury
Rasel Chowdhury

Rasel Chowdhury

Country: Bangladesh
Birth: 1988

Rasel Chowdhury is a documentary photographer. Rasel started photography without a conscious plan, eventually became addicted and decided to document spaces in and around his birth place, Bangladesh. He obtained his graduation in photography from Pathshala, South Asian Media Institute, and in due course, he found the changing landscapes and environmental issues as two extremely important subjects to document in his generation. Rasel started documenting a dyeing river Buriganga, a dying city Sonargaon and newly transformed spaces around Bangladesh railway to explore the change of the environment, unplanned urban structures and the new form of landscapes. During the same time, he started developing his own visual expression as a landscape photographer to address his subjects with a distinctive look.


All about Rasel Chowdhury:

AAP: When did you realize you wanted to be a photographer?
In 2007, when I dropped my moot study (ACCA). Before that Photography was my hobby.

AAP: Where did you study photography?
I studied photography at Pathshala, South Asian Media Institute.

AAP:Do you have a mentor or role model?
Yes, Munem Wasif is my mentor who works in Agency VU. And Jemie Penney was my one of mentor from Getty Image when I was selected for the Getty Image Emerging Talent Award in 2012.

AAP: Do you remember your first shot? What was it?
Yes, I was 6-7 years old. I got a Yashick Auto camera from my father and I took my teacher’s photo by first click. Still I’ve that film in my archive.

AAP: What or who inspires you?
So many people specially my Family member and friends.

AAP: How could you describe your style?
I always like calm and quite frame with special faded tone and less contrast.

AAP: Do you have a favorite photograph or series?
Many, like The Ballad of Sexual Dependence by Nan Goldin, The Americans by Robert Frank and so on.

AAP: What kind of gear do you use? Camera, lens, digital, film?
Mostly, I shoot on 35mm film camera and then I crop as 6X7.

AAP: Do you spend a lot of time editing your images? For what purpose?
Not so much.

AAP: What are your projects?
Desperate Urbanization, Railway Longing, Life on Water and No Money, No Deal.

AAP: Favorite(s) photographer(s)?
Lot of photographers like Richard Avedon, Alec Soth, Nadav Kander, Dayanita Singh, Munem Wasif, Antoine D’Agata and so many.

AAP: What advice would you give a young photographer?
Find your strength and believe in it.

AAP: What mistake should a young photographer avoid?
Don’t be hurry. Be honest.

AAP: An idea, a sentence, a project you would like to share?
Desperate Urbanization- a story about dying river.

AAP: Your best memory as a photographer?
When I shot at Old People Home in Niort, France.

AAP: Your favorite photo book?
Lots of photo books like Under The Banyan Tree, Belongings, Anticrops and so on.

AAP: Anything else you would like to share?
Twelve significant photographs in any one-year is a good crop - Ansel Adams.

Agency

MoST Photo Agency

Website

www.raselchowdhury.com

 

Inspiring Portfolios

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Lydia Panas
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Randall Romano
Randall Romano
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Randall has been making photographs for over 45 years, initially in the nature/landscape genre, eventually evolving to run a commercial photography business focused on interior and exterior architectural clients. Since 2015, after closing the business, he focused solely on photographing subjects and projects that are of personal interest. These consist largely of street and documentary subjects. He has also been active in lecturing about photography, to a wide variety of Ontario camera groups. These presentations sought to stir up and challenge traditional notions on photography, bringing to light the work and importance of master photographers. A recent book publication: Reaching a Higher Level in Photography (2023) has come out of these presentations. I believe the camera’s strength is its ability to capture fleeting moments, to stop time and create a sense of curiosity in the viewer. If a still image is to be successful it has to illustrate something missed and something fleeting. Chasing this fleeting moment of uniqueness allows me to better saviour life. A father of four children, Randall and his wife Catherine live on a rural property near Peterborough, Ontario, Canada. Statement Photography represents much more to me than only exploring the world. It is the ability to capture a moment of time, to rip a unique page from the book of life. Photographs at their best tell a story or reveal a penetrating statement, not only through an individual picture but also through groups of photographs. The camera provides a means to document and freeze a passing juncture, perhaps capturing an important instant, a blink of vision that without the camera would be gone forever. The simple act of making a photograph encourages the photographer to stop and carefully look at the complexity of life. This uncomplicated act opens up details of the world lost to others. At its true essence, the camera is a persistent companion documenting a unique view of the world and travelling along through our life journeys. The techniques I use to capture these moments of life and narratives are not based on technological prowess, because to me the camera is only a tool to be harnessed. Photographs reflect and document the real world and are a contemplation of things as they are. Technology is only a means to capture this reality. The ultimate success of the process is the strength and validity of the final product, and the need it creates in the viewer to linger and explore. Winner AAP Magazine #30 Shadows
Florian Kriechbaumer
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Florian is an award-winning photographer who likes to combine the artistic and technical aspects of the domain. He enjoys applying his creativity across a broad spectrum of ideas and styles, always looking to capture compositions and places not yet seen before. His clients include companies such as Expedia and National Geographic, his work has been used by global media firms such as CNN, and exhibited in galleries from NYC to London. He published several photography books, regularly holds workshops and talks, and enjoys sharing his experience and insights with others. ''The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.'' Dorothea Lange AAP Magazine AAP Magazine 49 B&W AAP Magazine 50 Shapes
Elisabeth Hase
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Elisabeth Hase (December 16, 1905 – October 9, 1991) was a German commercial and documentary photographer active in Frankfurt from 1932 until her death in 1991, at the age of 85 Hase was born in Döhlen bei Leipzig, Germany. She studied typography and commercial art from 1924 to 1929 at the School of Applied Arts, and later at the Städelschule, under, among other teachers, Paul Renner and Willi Baumeister. Hase was active as a photographer during the time of the transition from the Weimar Republic to the Third Reich and through post-WWII Germany. She was able to avoid government oversight of her work by establishing her own photographic studio in 1933. Hase's work included surreal photography, such as close-up photographs of dolls. She received several awards, several for paper designs and collages. During a two-year collaboration in the studio of Paul Wolff [de] and Alfred Tritschler [de], Hase took architectural photographs in New Objectivity style for the magazine Das Neue Frankfurt (The New Frankfurt) and documentary photographs of modern housing projects, including those of Ferdinand Kramer. In 1932, Hase started her own business. It focused on timeless designs like still life, structures, plants, dolls, people, especially self-portraits. Often she used herself as a model in her photographic “picture stories.” Cooperation with agencies like Holland Press Service and the Agency Schostal[2] enabled her to publish her photographs internationally. Despite the bombing of Frankfurt in 1944 by the Allies, Hare's photographic archive survived the war without major damage. Many of those works are now part of the collections held by the Folkwang Museum in Essen, Germany, in the Albertina (Vienna) in Vienna, and in the Walter Gropius estate in the Bauhaus Archive in Berlin, as well as in private collections in Germany and abroad. Despite loss of her cameras and other technical equipment in the chaos of war, Hase was able to resume taking photographs in 1946 by the help of emigre friends who provided her with film and cameras to use. Among others subjects Hase documented was the reconstruction of St. Paul's Church in Frankfurt. From 1949, her work focused on advertising, consisting mostly of plant portraits. Hase died at the age of 85 in 1991 in Frankfurt am Main. Source: Wikipedia This new discovery is a rich body of work by a female artist who was photographing during the time of the transition from the Weimar Republic to the Third Reich and through post-WWII Germany. Hase's photographic compositions are comparable to a number of her avant-garde contemporaries such as Florence Henri, Ilse Bing, and Germain Krull. Elisabeth Hase (1905-1991) was born in Germany and began her artistic studies in 1924 at the Art Academy in Frankfurt. During World War II Hase was able to avoid the politicization of her work by retreating to her studio. This however would not prevent her work from being wholly untouched by the war. During the air raid on Frankurt in 1944 her cameras and other equipment were lost however, quite remarkably, her archives of glass and film negatives survived. Most intriguing are Hase's self-portraits which experiment with identity and perceived reality. In one self-portrait she has photographed herself in the reflection of a silver sphere, she and the room are warped on the convex surface of the globe. In another image she is sprawled over a staircase as if fallen, with shoes and purse strewn likewise over the stairs. This practice of role-playing and adopting different personas is seen throughout Hase's portraiture. Hase's work has been shown in museums across Germany including; the Folkwang Museum, Essen; the Historical Museum, Frankfurt; and the Museum of Photography, Braunschweig. Hase's work was exhibited in the show "Who is Afraid of Women Photographers?" at the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France. Her work in found in prominent museum collections internationally, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The National Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Ackland Art Museum, the Chrysler Museum of Art, Folkwang Museum in Essen, The Albertina Museum in Vienna and The Bauhaus Museum of Design in Berlin. Source: Robert Mann Gallery
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Thirty years of work on the African continent have carried Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher across 270,000 miles and through remote corners of 40 countries in exploration of more than 150 African cultures. In the process, this team of world-renowned photographers has produced fourteen widely acclaimed books and made four films about traditional Africa. They have been granted unprecedented access to African tribal rites and rituals and continue to be honored worldwide for their powerful photographs documenting the traditional ceremonies of cultures thousands of years old. As an intrepid team of explorers, they are committed to preserving sacred tribal ceremonies and African cultural traditions all too vulnerable to the trends of modernity. The Beckwith-Fisher images are the result of a long, enduring and deeply respectful relationship with African tribal peoples. This, combined with their photographic skills, creates an intimate portrayal of ceremonies long held secret that might have never been recorded. Their work preserves and presents the power, complexity and celebration found within the rituals of African tribal life. Their extraordinary photographs are recorded in fourteen best-selling books and in their films. Their new book “Painted Bodies” (2012) follows “Maasai” (1980), “Nomads of Niger” (1983), “Africa Adorned” (1984), “African Ark” (1990), “African Ceremonies” (1999), “Passages” (2000), “Faces of Africa” (2004), “Lamu: Kenya’s Enchanted Island” (2009), and “Dinka” (2010). The special limited-edition books, hand printed in Santiago, Chile, are titled “Surma,” “Karo,” “Maasai,” and “Dinka.” “African Ceremonies,” their defining body of work, is a double volume, pan-African study of rituals and rites of passage from birth to death, covering 93 ceremonies from 26 countries. This book won the United Nations Award for Excellence for “vision and understanding of the role of cultural traditions in the pursuit of world peace.” Honored twice with the Annisfield-Wolf Book Award in race relations for “outstanding contributions to the understanding of cultural diversity and prejudice,” Angela and Carol are also winners of the Royal Geographical Society of London’s Cherry Kearton Medal for their contribution to the photographic recording of African ethnography and ritual. The photographers have made four films about traditional Africa, including Way of the Wodaabe (1986), The Painter and the Fighter, and two programs for the Millennium Series Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World. Numerous exhibitions of their photography and films have been shown in museums and galleries around the world. In 2000 their Passages exhibition opened at the Brooklyn Museum of Art featuring 97 mural photographs, six video films and a selection of African masks, sculpture and jewelry. This exhibition has traveled to seven museums on three continents. Aware that traditional cultures in Africa are fast disappearing, Carol and Angela are working with an urgency to complete the third volume of their ongoing study of African Ceremonies with the goal of covering the remaining traditional ceremonies in the 13 African cultures in which they have not yet worked. Source: carolbeckwith-angelafisher.com
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Lola Álvarez Bravo was a Mexican photographer. She was a key figure (along with Tina Modotti, Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and her husband Manuel Álvarez Bravo) in Mexico's post-revolution renaissance. She was born Dolores Martinez de Anda to wealthy parents in the state of Jalisco. She moved to Mexico City as a young child, after her mother left the family under mysterious circumstances. Her father died when she was a young teenager, and she was then sent to live with the family of her half brother, living nearby in Mexico City. It was here that she met the young Manuel Álvarez Bravo, a neighbor. They married in 1925 and moved to Oaxaca where Manuel was an accountant for the federal government. Lola Álvarez Bravo became pregnant but before she gave birth, they returned to Mexico City. Manuel had taken up photography as an adolescent; he taught Lola and they took pictures together in Oaxaca. Manuel also taught her to develop film and make prints in the darkroom. As he became more serious about pursuing a career in photography, she acted as his assistant, although she also harbored a desire to become a photographer in her own right. The Álvarez Bravo's separated in 1934 but she decided to maintain the Álvarez Bravo name. Lola Álvarez Bravo needed to support herself and taught as well as worked in a government archives. She also continued to experiment with photography and in 1936 received her first real commission photographing the colonial choir stalls of a former church. She also worked in commercial photography, including advertising and fashion. She was the director of photography at the National Institute of Fine Arts. She opened an art gallery in 1951 and was the first person to exhibit the work of Frida Kahlo in Mexico City. She also taught photography at the Academia de San Carlos in Mexico City. Inspired by such photographers as Edward Weston and Tina Modotti, Álvarez Bravo established her own independent career. For 50 years, she photographed a wide variety of subjects, making documentary images of daily life in Mexico's villages and city streets and portraits of great leaders from various countries. She also experimented with photomontage.Source: Wikipedia Born Dolores Martínez in Jalisco, Mexico, Lola Álvarez Bravo was one of Mexico’s most important photographers. Like other women artists linked with famous male counterparts, her work has often been overshadowed by that of her husband, renowned photographer Manuel Álvarez Bravo. They married in Mexico City in 1925 just as Manuel’s photography practice began to develop. Manuel introduced Lola to the camera, the darkroom, and photography techniques, and she assisted him with developing and printing his images. They shared equipment when Lola began taking her own photographs, although Lola recalled Manuel’s impatience when she wanted to use the camera. In 1927 their son Manuel was born and they opened a photography gallery in their Mexico City home. The couple played a vital role in the cultural circle that included artists Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Rufino Tamayo, Maria Izquierdo, and David Alfaro Siquerios. Lola continued to take photographs but her work always came second to Manuel’s development as an artist. They separated in 1934 and Lola turned to photography to support herself and her seven-year-old son. Stubbornly independent, her camera became both her livelihood and her means of portraying what she explained as “the life I found before me.” She traveled throughout Mexico photographing people in everyday circumstances with honesty and respect. Her assured formal aesthetic, which often bordered on the abstract, included strong compositional elements, crisp details, and the play of light and shadow on surfaces. Most often Lola Álvarez Bravo eschewed posing subjects or staging situations. Instead, she moved amongst the people along cluttered streets, observing them at work, in the marketplace, and at leisure, waiting for opportunities to capture informal moments in carefully composed scenes. Her keen eye produced stirring and expressive images of Mexican life with a contemporary sensibility that places her among the renowned photographic interpreters of that country in the modern period: Edward Weston, Paul Strand, Tina Modotti, and Manual Álvarez Bravo. During her long career, Lola Álvarez Bravo worked as a photojournalist, commercial photographer, professional portraitist, political artist, teacher, and gallery curator. Despite her professional success, it is her personal photography that marks her most significant contribution to the history of the medium. While working professionally she culled a small, core group of photographs she would refer to as her personal work, “mis fotos, mi arte.” The photographs in the Center’s collection are among those she most valued and are in the spirit of that distinction. Her direct, uncompromising, and impassioned studies of the Mexican people offer an important chapter to the history of photography, both as creative force and indelible subject matter. The Center acquired the Lola Álvarez Bravo Archive in 1996. It includes her negatives and nearly 200 gelatin silver photographs, 100 of which were selected by Lola Álvarez Bravo in 1993. An additional 100 photographs were selected by the Center in consultation with the artist. © Artists Rights Society (ARS)Source: Center for Creative Photography
Dawoud Bey
Dawoud Bey
United States
1953
Dawoud Bey (born David Edward Smikle; 1953) is an American photographer and educator known for his large-scale art photography and street photography portraits, including American adolescents in relation to their community, and other often marginalized subjects. In 2017, Bey was named a fellow and the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and is regarded as one of the "most innovative and influential photographers of his generation". Bey is a professor and Distinguished Artist at Columbia College Chicago.] According to The New York Times, "in the seemingly simple gesture of photographing Black subjects in everyday life, [Bey, an African-American,] helped to introduce Blackness in the context of fine art long before it was trendy, or even accepted" Born David Edward Smikle in New York City's Jamaica, Queens neighborhood, he changed his name to Dawoud Bey in the early 1970s. Bey graduated from Benjamin N. Cardozo High School. He studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York from 1977 to 1978, and spent the next two years as part of the CETA-funded Cultural Council Foundation Artists Project. In 1990, he graduated with a BFA in Photography from Empire State College, and received his MFA from Yale University School of Art in 1993. Bey didn't receive his first camera until he was 15, and has stated until that point he wanted to become a musician. Early musical inspirations included John Coltrane and early photography inspirations were James Van Der Zee and Roy Decarava. In his youth, Bey joined the Black Panthers Party and sold their newspaper on street corners. He does not consider his work to be traditional documentary. He'll pose subjects, remind them of gestures and sometimes give them accessories. Over the course of his career, Bey has participated in more than 20 artist residencies, which have allowed him to work directly with the adolescent subjects of his most recent work. A product of the 1960s, Bey said both he and his work are products of the attitude, "if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem." This philosophy significantly influenced his artistic practice and resulted in a way of working that is both community-focused and collaborative in nature. Bey's earliest photographs, in the style of street photography, evolved into a seminal five-year project documenting the everyday life and people of Harlem in Harlem USA (1975-1979) that was exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1979. In 2012, the Art Institute of Chicago mounted the first complete showing of the "Harlem, USA" photographs since that original exhibition, adding several never before printed photographs to the original group of twenty-five vintage prints. The complete group of photographs were acquired at that time by the AIC. During the 1980s, Bey collaborated with the artist David Hammons, documenting the latter's performance pieces - Bliz-aard Ball Sale and Pissed Off. Over time Bey proves that he develops a bond with his subjects with being more political. The article "Exhibits Challenge Us Not to Look Away Photographers Focus on Pain, Reality in the City" by Carolyn Cohen from the Boston Globe, identifies Bey's work as having a "definite political edge" to it according to Roy DeCarava. He writes more about the aesthetics of Beys work and how it is associated with documentary photography and how his work shows empathy for his subjects. This article also mentions Bey exhibiting his work at the Walker Art Center, where Kelly Jones identifies the strength of his work and his relationship with his subjects once again. Of his work with teenagers Bey has said, "My interest in young people has to do with the fact that they are the arbiters of style in the community; their appearance speaks most strongly of how a community of people defines themselves at a particular historical moment." During a residency at the Addison Gallery of American Art in 1992, Bey began photographing students from a variety of high schools both public and private, in an effort to "reach across lines of presumed differences" among the students and communities. This new direction in his work guided Bey for the next fifteen years, including two additional residencies at the Addison, an ample number of similar projects across the country, and culminated in a major 2007 exhibition and publication of portraits of teenagers organized by Aperture and entitled Class Pictures.] Alongside each of the photographs in Class Pictures, is a personal statement written by each subject. "[Bey] manages to capture all the complicated feelings of being young — the angst, the weight of enormous expectations, the hope for the future - with a single look." Bey's "The Birmingham Project" was inspired, in part, by a 1960s Civil Rights era photograph by Frank Dandridge of 16th Street Baptist Church bombing victim, Sarah Jean Collins. The Project includes a series of diptychs of an older person, alive when the bombing occurred, paired with a child the age of the victims, portraying "an almost unbearable sense of absence and loss." In 2018, his project Night Coming Tenderly, Black, consists of a series of photographs evoking the imagined experience of escaped slaves moving northward along the Underground Railroad. This work involves not portraits but landscapes, portrayed at night through the means a little used silver-gelatin process. The work seeks to evoke both terror and hope in a "land of fugitives". Bey has lived in Chicago, Illinois since 1998. He is a professor of art and Distinguished College Artist at Columbia College Chicago. Source: Wikipedia
Jaclyn Cori
Jaclyn Cori
United States
1968
Cori is a lens-based storyteller. With a B.A. in English and an M.F.A. in Photography she combines the two specializations to create visual narratives. Fact, fiction and poetry intermix to address the evolving nature of self and family. Dreams and nightmares coexist. As the participant observer she balances on the tightrope between seeing and being. Living and working in Savannah, Georgia, she is the mother of fraternal twin daughters and a Professor of Photography at The Savannah College of Art and Design. Cori teaches Lightroom, Darkroom, Portfolio Building and Book Making. She is included in Who's Who Among American Teachers and quoted in ''Teaching Photography: Tools for the Imaging Educator''. Selected publications include ''The View Project'', F-Stop magazine, Art Ascent, Art Square New York, and ''Eye Mama: Poetic Truths of Home and Motherhood''. Born on the Same Day Born on the Same Day reflects the separation and interdependence of fraternal twin girls. By the taking on and discarding of roles, it is the discovery of their world through free play and fantasy. They embrace the life-long process of understanding themselves and each other. Every morning they open their eyes and there is ''the other one'', their twin, their castmate. Everything around them began the same, yet they are entirely unique. Snow White, draped in Rapunzel's hair, cascades down the stairs. The other child, who refuses to wear clothes, sits on a stool examining a wounded knee. Snow White, donning a veil like Mother Teresa's, twirls towards her twin to get a glance. Her gesture, the transition of separateness to closeness is her own, but also an empathic gift to her sister, and a serendipitous moment for her mother photographer. They weave a tale of drama, comedy, and tragedy. They dance together, push apart, run away and always return to dance together again. One moment they hate each other and the next they are giggling behind a closed bedroom door. Their story began with me soothing their booboos, providing costumes, and always being the safe haven. As princess costumes turned into gymnastics competitions and pointe shoes, simply kissed wounds have been replaced with the joys and sorrows of fantasy falling away. They sob, they scream, they triumph and fail, creating a space in a bigger world and turning to each other to be understood and accepted. Sometimes I cry. Often, I laugh. I console. I advise. I feel their suffering and strength, working to lessen the former and develop the latter. And all the while I make photographs, having also become the archivist of their childhood, creating a lyrical, vivid family album as unique as each twin.
Anna Hayat and Slava Pirsky
Anna Hayat and Slava Pirsky
Israel
We are Anna Hayat (born 1974) and Slava Pirsky (born 1965), originally from the Soviet Union. Each of us decided to start a new life in Israel in the early 90s, in search of new horizons. Fate brought us to Jerusalem through different paths, where we lived for over 20 years and now find joy in a small town nearby. We met in 1999 and instantly felt a special connection, as if our shared passion for photography brought us closer. In 2000, we became proud parents of an exquisite daughter whom we started photographing from her very birth. Since then, we have become an inseparable team and partners in the world of photography and art. For over 20 years, we have actively collaborated on joint photography projects. Our creative process revolves around analog photography, primarily using old Polaroid large-format black and white negative plates. Despite the discontinuation of production of these films in 2008, we use expired films to create unique and emotive works of art. We capture images using both a large studio camera and small field Polaroid cameras. The slow shooting process is of utmost importance to us, as it imparts a special depth to our works. In a way, the negative itself becomes another partner in our process. We appreciate the unpredictability of old negatives, which gives our photographs a distinct character, a touch of poetry, and a timeless feeling that is crucial to our work. Our latest project reflects our emotions and pain caused by Russia's treacherous aggression. For this series, we ventured into a mixed technique for the first time, tearing and cutting our works, stitching them anew, adding patches and seams. The project was showcased at the Ramlah Museum and immediately after at the KyotoGraphie International Photography Festival in Japan.
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Interview
Exclusive Interview with Ghawam Kouchaki
American photographer Ghawam Kouchaki brings a sharply observant and introspective gaze to the streets of Japan’s capital. Based in Los Angeles, he approaches Tokyo with the distance — and curiosity — of an outsider, allowing him to uncover the city’s subtle contradictions, quiet tensions, and fleeting gestures that often go unnoticed. His series Tokyo no no, selected as the Solo Exhibition for December 2024, explores the hidden undercurrents of urban life: the unspoken rules, the small ruptures in routine, the poetic strangeness found in everyday moments. Through muted tones, instinctive timing, and meticulous framing, Kouchaki reveals a Tokyo that exists somewhere between reality and imagination — both intimate and enigmatic. We asked him a few questions about his life and work.
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Exclusive Interview with Tommi Viitala
Interview
Exclusive Interview with Tommi Viitala
Tommi Viitala, winner of AAP Magazine #44: Street, is a Finnish photographer celebrated for his striking and cinematic street photography. With a keen eye for atmosphere and composition, he captures fleeting urban moments that reveal the poetry of everyday life. His work often explores the tension between solitude and connection within contemporary cityscapes, blending documentary realism with artistic sensibility. Viitala’s photographs have been exhibited internationally and recognized for their strong visual storytelling and emotional depth. We asked him a few questions about his life and work.
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Exclusive Interview with Robert Mack
Interview
Exclusive Interview with Robert Mack
Robert Mack is a California-based visual artist, photographer, and filmmaker. His fine art photography and films have been exhibited widely in the United States and Europe, with major shows at the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Reiss-Engelhorn Museum in Mannheim, Germany. Both institutions hold his work in their permanent collections. Working across different media, Mack has built a career exploring the complexities of human presence and representation. In 1981, while living in Baltimore, he produced The Perkins Project: Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity, a rare photographic and film study inside Maryland’s hospital for the criminally insane. These stark yet compassionate black-and-white portraits remain one of his most powerful and controversial bodies of work.
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