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Hana Peskova
Hana Peskova
Hana Peskova

Hana Peskova

Country: Czech Republic
Birth: 1967

Hanka Peskova - passionate self-taught photographer whose journey began at the renowned Skola Kreativni Fotografie in Prague. In 2021, she was honored with the prestigious International Title of Excellence FIAP (EFIAP) by the FIAP (Artiste de la Fédération Internationale de l'Art Photographique), a testament to her artistic prowess and dedication to the craft.

Nestled in the picturesque town of Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic, she has turned the globe into her canvas, capturing the ephemeral beauty and indescribable energy of moments and people. Her work transcends the mere act of memory preservation to unveil the essence of life itself, through the eye of her camera. As a freelance photographer, her lens has intimately explored the vibrancy of street and documentary photography for years. With a focus on the tapestry of social life, her work dives deep into the heart of ordinary life, cultural narratives, and contemporary issues. She possesses a unique attraction to the narratives of old, the allure of isolated places, and the stories of people living beyond the limelight.

Her photography is not just a window to the world but an invitation to view it through her unique perspective. Capturing not only the bustling life on the streets and the untouched facets of nature, she also ventures into the realm of creative photography. Each frame is a story, a whisper of the past or a shout of the present, always aiming to evoke emotion and provoke thought.

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www.hanapeskova.com

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More Great Photographers To Discover

Michael Wolf
Michael Wolf
Germany/United States
1954 | † 2019
The focus of the German photographer Michael Wolf’s work is life in megacities. many of his projects document the architecture and the vernacular culture of metropolises. Wolf grew up in Canada, Europe, and the United States, studying at UC Berkeley and at the Folkwang School with Otto Steinert in Essen, Germany. He moved to Hong Kong in 1994 where he worked for 8 years as a contract photographer for Stern Magazine. Since 2001, Wolf has been focusing on his own projects, many of which have been published as books. Wolf’s work has been exhibited in numerous locations, including the Venice Bienniale for Architecture, Aperture Gallery, New York; Museum Centre Vapriikki, Tempere, Finland, the Museum for Work in Hamburg, Germany, Hong Kong Shenzhen Biennial, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago. His work is held in many permanent collections, including the metropolitan museum of art in New York the Brooklyn Museum, the San Jose Museum of Art, California; the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; the Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany and the German Museum for Architecture, Frankfurt, Germany. He has won first prize in the World Press Photo Award competition on two occasions (2005 & 2010) and an honorable mention (2011) In 2010, Wolf was shortlisted for the Prix Pictet photography prize. He has published more than 13 photo books including Bottrop Ebel 1976 (Peperoni Press, 2012), Tokyo Compression Three (Peperoni Press / Asia One, 2012), Architecture of Density (Peperoni Press / Asia One, 2012), Hong Kong Corner Houses (Hong Kong University Press, 2011), Portraits (Superlabo, Japan, 2011), Tokyo Compression Revisited (Peperoni Press / Asia One, 2011), Real Fake Art (Peperoni Press / Asia One, 2011), FY (Peperoni Press, 2010), A Series of Unfortunate Events (Peperoni Press, 2010), Tokyo Compression (Peperoni Press / Asia One, 2010), Hong Kong Inside-Outside (Peperoni Press / Asia One, 2009), The Transparent City (Aperture, 2008) and Sitting in China (Steidl, 2002). Source: photomichaelwolf.com Michael Wolf’s work examines life in the layered urban landscape, addressing juxtapositions of public and private space, anonymity and individuality, history, and modern development. In a diverse array of photographic projects, from street views appropriated from Google Earth, to portraits capturing the crush of the Tokyo Subway, and dizzying architectural landscapes, Wolf explores the density of city life. Wolf currently lives and works in Hong Kong and Paris. His photographs are in the permanent collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Folkwang Museum, Essen, Germany; The Brooklyn Museum; the Cleveland Museum of Art; the Nelson-Atkins Art Museum, Kansas City; and the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago among others, and have been exhibited at the Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego (2011), Goethe Institute in Hong Kong (2010), Fotographie Museum, Amsterdam (2010), Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago (2008), Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2008), and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (2008), among others. Wolf was awarded First Place in the 2010 World Press Photo Award contest in the Daily Life category, and was shortlisted for the 2010 Prix Pictet. Wolf's numerous monographs include Tokyo Compression Revisited (Peperoni Books, 2011), Real Fake Art (Peperoni Books, 2011), Tokyo Compression (Peperoni Books, 2010), Hong Kong: Inside/Outside (Peperoni Books, 2009), The Transparent City (Aperture and MoCP, 2008), Hong Kong: Front Door/Back Door, (Thames & Hudson, 2005), and Sitting in China (Steidl, 2002). Source: Robert Koch Gallery Michael Wolf was born in 1954 in Munich, Germany. He grew up in the United States, Europe, and Canada, and studied at UC Berkeley and at the Folkwang School in Essen, Germany. In 1994, Wolf moved to Hong Kong and worked for eight years as a contract photographer for Stern magazine, until he left to pursue his own projects. Wolf's photographic work in Asia focuses on the city and its architectural structures and follows on from his interest in people and human interaction. He has published seven photobooks to date. Wolf's work has been exhibited extensively in galleries and art fairs throughout the world since 2005 and is held in permanent collections across the US and Germany. Wolf has won previously won a World Press Photo award, the first prize in Contemporary Issues stories in 2005. Source: World Press Photo
Barbara Crane
Barbara Crane
United States
1928 | † 2019
Barbara Crane (March 19, 1928 – August 7, 2019) was an American artist photographer born in Chicago, IL. Crane worked with a variety of materials including Polaroid, gelatin silver, and platinum prints among others. She was known for her experimental and innovative work that challenges the straight photograph by incorporating sequencing, layered negatives, and repeated frames. Naomi Rosenblum notes that Crane "pioneered the use of repetition to convey the mechanical character of much of contemporary life, even in its recreational aspects." Crane began her studies in art history at Mills College in Oakland, California in 1945. She transferred to New York University in 1948. In 1950, she received her BA in art history from New York University. After recommencing her career in photography, Barbara Crane showed a portfolio of her work to Aaron Siskind in 1964 and was admitted to the Graduate Program in Photography at the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Crane then studied under Siskind at the Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology, and received her MS from the Institute in 1966. Crane’s master’s degree thesis focused on “sculptural patterns through abstractions of the human body.” The images for this series depict bodies against white or black backgrounds – the overexposed, overdeveloped nature of the film turns these bodies into abstract outlines. John Rohrbach states, “each body almost dissolves, becoming a sinuous river flowing across a snowy landscape. This unnerving disconnect between what is seen and what is known would become a central theme of her career.” In 1971, Crane visited Ansel Adams at his home to show him a selection of her work. Adams told an assistant “See I told you photographers could still do something different” upon viewing her Repeats series. After this encounter, Adams hired Crane to teach workshops at Yosemite between 1977-1980. During Crane’s Guggenheim Fellowship (1979), she collaborated with the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona to create a career retrospective of her work. During her time in Boston, she formed a relationship with the Polaroid Corporation and through the Polaroid Artist Support Program she experimented with Polaroid black & white and color photographic materials in numerous series. In 1995, Crane became Professor Emeritus at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Barbara Crane's work is represented in numerous public collections including the International Center of Photography, New York City; the George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY; the Art Institute of Chicago; The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the WestLicht Museum of Photography, Vienna, Austria. Crane's archive resides at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson, AZ.Source: Wikipedia
Karl Struss
Karl Struss
United States
1886 | † 1921
Karl Struss, was a notable figure in American visual arts, renowned for his contributions as both a photographer and a cinematographer spanning from the early 1900s to the 1950s. Notably, he played a significant role in the advancement of 3-D filmmaking techniques during his career. His portfolio boasts a diverse range of projects, including iconic films like F.W. Murnau's Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans and Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator and Limelight. Beyond his cinematic endeavors, Struss also lent his expertise to television productions, notably serving as a cinematographer for the series Broken Arrow and capturing the essence of 19 episodes of My Friend Flicka through his lens. Born in New York City in 1886, Karl Struss's early life took an unexpected turn when an illness sidelined him from high school. His father, Henry, made the decision to withdraw him from formal education, placing him as a labor operator at Seybel & Struss bonnet wire factory. However, this diversion ignited a passion within Karl for photography. He delved into the craft, experimenting with an 8x10 camera and immersing himself in the art through Clarence H. White's evening photography course at Teachers College, Columbia University, starting in 1908 and concluding in 1912. During his formative years of study, Struss's fascination with camera lenses led him to invent the Struss Pictorial Lens in 1909, which he aimed to patent as a soft-focus lens. This innovation garnered attention and popularity among pictorial photographers of the era, ultimately becoming the first soft-focus lens embraced by the motion picture industry in 1916. Struss's breakthrough in the world of photography came when Alfred Stieglitz selected 12 of his pictorial works for the Albright Art Gallery International Exhibition of Pictorial Photography in 1910, marking the culmination of the Photo-Secession movement. His reputation continued to flourish, as evidenced by his inclusion in the prestigious exhibition "What the Camera Does in the Hand of the Artist" at the Newark Art Museum in April 1911. This success led to an invitation from Teacher's College for Struss to curate a solo exhibition showcasing his depictions of New York City and to temporarily assume teaching responsibilities for White's course during the summer of 1912. Further recognition came when Stieglitz invited Struss to join the Photo-Secession in 1912, facilitating the publication of his work in the group's magazine, Camera Work. In 1913, Struss collaborated with Edward Dickson, Clarence White, Alvin Langdon Coburn, and Paul Anderson to establish Platinum Print, a publication aimed at promoting photographic artistry. By 1914, Struss fully embraced his identity as a professional photographer, resigning from the family business and taking over Clarence White's former studio space, marking a pivotal moment in his career trajectory. At the suggestion of Coburn, Struss took the initiative to submit prints to the American Invitational Section of the Royal Photographic Society's annual exhibition in London, marking the beginning of a recurring practice that would extend well into the 1920s. Alongside this, he actively participated in various exhibitions organized by photography clubs and associations, such as the Pittsburgh Salon of National Photographic Art and the annual photography showcase hosted by the Philadelphia department store Wanamaker's. While engaging in these exhibitions and handling specialized commissions, Struss concurrently pursued commercial photography for esteemed magazines like Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Harper's Bazaar. It's noteworthy that he maintained a distinction, adamantly asserting that his work didn't fall under the category of fashion photography. However, the trajectory of his photographic career was interrupted by the outbreak of World War I. In 1917, he fulfilled his patriotic duty by registering for the draft and subsequently enlisting with the intention of serving his country through photography. Initially trained for aerial photography instruction, Struss encountered complications when his German connections came under scrutiny by the Military Intelligence Department. This led to his demotion from sergeant to private and a period of confinement in Ithaca, New York, where he was originally stationed to teach at the School of Military Aeronautics. Eventually, he was transferred to Fort Leavenworth, where his duties shifted to serving as a prison guard and later as a file clerk. In this latter role, he reignited his passion for photography, documenting the lives of the prisoners. Towards the end of the war, in a bid to dispel any lingering suspicions of anti-American sentiment, Struss sought to clear his name by applying and being accepted into Officer's Training Camp, attaining the rank of corporal. Despite receiving an honorable discharge eventually, the fallout from the military investigation likely left him hesitant to resume his previous endeavors in New York, as many of his professional relationships had been strained or fractured as a result. In 1919, following his military discharge, he relocated to Los Angeles, where he secured a position as a cameraman under Cecil B. DeMille's direction. His first assignment was on the set of the film For Better, For Worse, featuring Gloria Swanson, which paved the way for subsequent collaborations on projects like Male and Female. This successful partnership led to a lucrative two-year contract with the studio. Early in 1921, Struss tied the knot with Ethel Wall, whose support enabled him to pursue independent photographic ventures alongside his studio obligations, notably capturing scenic views across California. Throughout the 1920s, his cinematic expertise graced notable productions including Ben-Hur and F.W. Murnau's Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans. By 1927, he transitioned to United Artists, collaborating with luminaries such as D.W. Griffith on projects like Drums of Love and pioneering Mary Pickford's inaugural sound film, Coquette. Continuously innovative, Struss delved into experimental camera technology, inventing the "Lupe Light" and devising a novel bracket system for the Bell & Howell camera. From 1931 to 1945, Struss contributed his talents as a cameraman to Paramount, engaging in diverse projects featuring prominent figures like Mae West, Bing Crosby, and Dorothy Lamour. He also made significant contributions to the field through his written work, exemplified by his 1934 article "Photographic Modernism and the Cinematographer" published in American Cinematographer. Recognized for his expertise, he gained membership in esteemed organizations such as the American Society of Cinematographers and played a pivotal role as a founding member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts. In 1949, while working independently, Struss embarked on pioneering endeavors in stereo cinematography, positioning himself as a trailblazer in this emerging art form. Regrettably, most of his 3-D film ventures took place overseas in Italy, with none of his productions receiving 3-D releases in the United States. In addition to his illustrious career in photography and cinematography, Struss pursued a passion for philately, particularly focusing on the inaugural transpacific airmail flights. He meticulously crafted commemorative covers for significant events such as the first San Francisco to Honolulu flight in November 1935, showcasing his dedication to this specialized hobby. His personal collection, including exhibition prints, film stills, negatives, and papers, is housed at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas.
René Burri
René Burri
Switzerland
1933 | † 2014
René Burri is a Swiss photographer known for his photos of major political, historical and cultural events and key figures of the second half of the 20th century. Burri worked for Magnum Photos and has been photographing political, military and artistic figures and scenes since 1946. He has made portraits of Che Guevara and Pablo Picasso as well as iconic pictures of São Paulo and Brasília. Burri studied in Zurich, Switzerland at the School of Applied Arts from 1949 to 1953, where he worked under Hans Finsler, Alfred Willimann and Johannes Itten. From 1953 to 1955 he began working as a documentary filmmaker while completing military service. During this time he also began working with Leica cameras. Then he worked for Disney as a cameraman until 1955. From 1956 to 1959 he traveled extensively to places including Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Italy, France, Spain, Greece, Brazil, and Japan, which led to publications in Life, Look, Stern, Paris-Match, Epoca, and New York Times, as well as a photographic essay "El Gaucho" which appeared in Du. Burri first began working with Magnum Photos in 1955 through Werner Bischof, becoming a full member in 1959 and being elected chair of Magnum France in 1982. His first report "Touch of Music for the Deaf" on deaf-mute children was published by Life. In 1965 he assisted with the creation of Magnum Films which lead to his work on the Magnum-BBC joint production of, The Two Faces of China. In 1967 he produced a documentary on the Six-Day War in Jerusalem for German television. He produced the film Jean Tinguely in 1972. In 1963 Burri was working in Cuba when he was able to photograph the revolutionary Che Guevara; these images of Guevara smoking a cigar have become iconic. Notably, after taking the photos, Burri remembers Guevara "scaring the hell out of him". Describing a situation where an angry Che was pacing his tiny office like "a caged tiger", while being interviewed by an American woman from Look. While "hectoring" the reporter and "chomping on his cigar", Che suddenly looked Burri straight in the eye and told him "if I catch up with your friend Andy, I'll cut his throat" (while slowly drawing his finger across his neck). Andy was Andrew St. George, a fellow Magnum photographer, who had travelled with Che in the Sierra Maestra, and then later filed reports for American intelligence. Source: Wikipedia René Burri studied at the School of Applied Arts in his native city of Zurich, Switzerland. From 1953 to 1955 he worked as a documentary film-maker and began to use a Leica while doing his military service. Burri became an associate of Magnum in 1955 and received international attention for one of his first reportages, on deaf-mute children, Touch of Music for the Deaf, published in LIFE magazine. In 1956, he traveled throughout Europe and the Middle East and then went to Latin America, where he made a series on the Gauchos that was published by Du magazine in 1959. It was also for this Swiss periodical that he photographed artists such as Picasso, Giacometti, and Le Corbusier. He became a full member of Magnum in 1959, and started work on his book Die Deutschen, published in Switzerland in 1962, and by Robert Delpire the following year with the title Les Allemands. In 1963, while working in Cuba, he photographed Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara during an interview with an American journalist. His images of the famous revolutionary with his cigar appeared around the world. Burri participated in the creation of Magnum Films in 1965 and afterwards spent six months in China, where he made the film The Two Faces of China produced by the BBC. He opened the Magnum Gallery in Paris in 1962, while continuing his activities as a photographer; at the same time, he made collages and drawings. In 1998, Burri won the Dr. Erich Salomon Prize from the German Association of Photography. A big retrospective of his work was held in 2004-2005 at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris and toured many other European museums. René Burri passed away at the age of 81 on October 20, 2014. Source: Magnum Photos
Carl Mydans
Carl Mydans
United States
1907 | † 2004
Carl Mydans was an American photographer who worked for the Farm Security Administration and Life magazine. Mydans grew up playing on the Mystic River near Medford, near Boston, Massachusetts. His father was an oboist. Mydans became devoted to photography while in college at Boston University. While working on the Boston University News he abandoned childhood dreams of being a surgeon or a boat builder in favor of journalism. His first reporting jobs were for The Boston Globe and the Boston Herald. After college, he went to New York as a writer for American Banker and then in 1935 to Washington to join a group of photographers in the Farm Security Administration. There he worked with other photographers like Dorothea Lange and Ben Shahn to document the conditions of the American rural workers. In 1935, he traveled throughout New England and America's South, documenting the end of a rural-based economy, and gained a measure of renown for his images of bedraggled Arkansas farmers and their families. It was the Great Depression, and the poorest of America's poor were devastated by the economic downturn. "One picture, of a Tennessee family living in a hut built on an abandoned truck chassis, portrays the misery of the times," noted Mydans' Times of London obituary, "as starkly as any photographs by his more celebrated contemporaries." In 1936, he joined Life as one of its earliest staff photographers (Alfred Eisenstaedt, Margaret Bourke-White, Thomas McAvoy and Peter Stackpole were the original staff photographers) and a pioneering photojournalist. Mydans recorded photographic images of life and death throughout Europe and Asia during World War II traveling over 45,000 miles (72,000 km). In 1941, the photographer and Shelley Mydans were the first husband and wife team on the magazine's staff. Shelley and Carl were captured by the invading Japanese forces in the Philippines and interned for nearly a year in Manila, then for another year in Shanghai, China, before they were released as part of a prisoner-of-war exchange in December 1943. After their release, Mydans was sent back into Europe for pivotal battles in Italy and France. By 1944, Mydans was back in the Philippines to cover MacArthur's return. Mydans snapped the moment when General Douglas MacArthur purposefully strode ashore in the Philippines in 1945, The legendary officer had declared, when the Japanese came in 1942, "I shall return," and Mydans' photograph of the formidable general immortalized that claim for posterity. Some asserted that it must have been staged, but Mydans resolutely defended the photograph as entirely spontaneous, though he did admit that MacArthur was savvy about public-relations opportunities. The general had appeared in Mydans' other memorable image from that assignment, watching with other top U.S. brass as a Japanese delegation signed the official documents of surrender on an early September day in 1945. "No one I have ever known in public life had a better understanding of the drama and power of a picture," Mydans, said about MacArthur. Mydans also captured the signing of Japan's surrender aboard the U.S.S. Missouri. Some of Mydans's other famous pictures include the bombing of Chongqing, angry French citizens shaving the heads of women accused of sleeping with Germans during the occupation in 1944; a roomful of excited royal youngsters and their staid older relatives in 1954; and a 1950 portrait of Douglas MacArthur smoking a pipe. But he also photographed the war from the viewpoint of the ordinary soldier or sailor. "Resourceful and unruffled, Mr. Mydans sent back pictures of combat that even now define how some remember World War II, Korea, and other conflicts," noted The New York Times. Despite his two years in captivity, Mydans bore no ill will toward the Asian nation, and accepted an assignment to head Time-Life's Tokyo bureau with his wife. Time-Life was the publisher of Time, Life and other top magazines, which Mydans continued to provide with an array of visual stories. In 1948, he just happened to be in the city of Fukui when a destructive earthquake struck; some of his shots were taken on the street while buildings were collapsing around him. After covering the Korean War, Mydans traveled the globe for the next two decades for Life before the publication folded in 1972. When it was relaunched several years later, he was still listed as one of its contributing photographers. He died on August 16, 2004, of heart failure at his home in Larchmont, New York, at the age of 97. Widowed in 2002, Mydans was survived by his daughter, Misty, a California attorney; and his son, Seth, Asia correspondent for The New York Times.Source: Wikipedia Having started out as a newspaper reporter, Carl Mydans switched over to the camera and at the height of the Depression worked for the Farm Security Administration, documenting the travails of migrant farm families. After signing on with LIFE, he and his wife, Shelley, became the magazine’s first roaming photographer-reporter team. In 1941 they were sent to China to cover Japanese bombing raids there; late in the year they were trapped in Manila when the Japanese overran the Philippines, and they were held captive for nearly two years before being repatriated in a POW exchange. When the prison camp was about to be liberated, Douglas MacArthur sent Mydans in with the first tanks. Of course, Mydans’s picture of MacArthur “returning” to the Philippines is one of history’s most celebrated photographic images. Mydans was known also for his intriguing portraits of such as Pound and Faulkner. In the words of David Hume Kennerly, “Carl Mydans is a photographer’s photographer and a human’s human.” In the prison camp at Santo Tomas in the Philippines, said Shelley Mydans, “they didn’t feed us, so we were very hungry, and we were sick sometimes.” Rogers and Todd, at right, were among the three dozen men with whom Carl shared a room at the prison. Between them, the duo lost 131 pounds during their four years of internment.Source: LIFE
R.J. Kern
R.J. Kern
United States
1978
R. J. Kern is a photographer whose work explores animal portraiture as it relates to ideas of home, ancestry, and a sense of place. He majored in Art & Art History and Environmental Geography from Colgate University and holds a Master's Degree from the University of Colorado in Boulder. R. J. is the recipient of a 2016 Artist Initiative Grant awarded by the Minnesota State Arts Board. His work received critical acclaim through the 2015 Review Santa Fe, a finalist for Critical Mass 2016, and is apart of the public exhibition series, The FENCE, on display in Boston, Brooklyn, Atlanta, Houston, and Santa Fe in 2016. His work has been featured by National Geographic, PBS, and the World Photography Organization. His work is represented by Gallery 360 in Minneapolis, Minnesota and Ecce Gallery in Fargo, North Dakota. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife, two kids, and goldendoodle, Willy. Project Statement: The Unchosen Ones The Unchosen Ones takes place on the sidelines of county fair animal contests in Minnesota in 2016. One isn't born a winner or loser, but a chooser. This theme I explore in this series. As we look at them, they look back, allowing us to think about how we choose winners and the repercussions for the ones not chosen. The project consists of over 60 portraits made at 10 Minnesota county fairs in 2016. The photographs showcase the subject facing the camera, allowing the viewer to decide what connects and distinguishes these subjects.
Matej Michalik
Matej Michalik
Slovakia
1981
"My name is Matej Michalik. I was born in 1981 and live in Bratislava, Slovakia. I came in contact with photography in 2010. Apparently, I belong to the new wave of photographers who didn’t go through the analogue era and developing films in darkrooms but ended up in times of digital cameras instead. I am convinced that no matter how expensive your photography gear is, having a good imagination is essencial. From the beginning, my intuition was leading me towards black and white photos. I began observing the work of several fine art photographers whose work I enormously appreciate. I started communicating with them, sharing pieces of advice and experience. That‘s how it all started." -- Matej Michalik
Demetrio Jereissati
Demetrio Jereissati
Brazil
I started shooting in 2013, at age 53, on a family trip to Patagonia, Chile. Months later, one of the photos I took on this trip won the bronze medal in the international competition Brasília Photo Show.br> I am a civil engineer, and shapes, lights, and shadows seduce me sometimes more than the subject of the photo.br> Photography connects and expands the feelings of those who photograph and visualize the image, giving their own interpretation.br> The essay Machu Picchu (A Personal Journey) was done in two moments: morning and late afternoon, when, alone on the site, away from the morning crowds, I could perceive the energy of the place and feel transported to a past still so present in the buildings.
Attar Abbas
Attar Abbas
Iran/France
1944 | † 2018
Attar Abbas, better known as Abbas, was an Iranian photographer known for his photojournalism in Biafra, Vietnam and South Africa in the 1970s, and for his extensive essays on religions in later years. He was a member of Sipa Press from 1971 to 1973, a member of Gamma from 1974 to 1980, and joined Magnum Photos in 1981. Attar, an Iranian transplanted to Paris, dedicated his photographic work to the political and social coverage of the developing southern nations. Since 1970, his major works have been published in world magazines and include wars and revolutions in Biafra, Bangladesh, Ulster, Vietnam, the Middle East, Chile, Cuba, and South Africa with an essay on apartheid. From 1978 to 1980, he photographed the revolution in Iran, and returned in 1997 after a 17-year voluntary exile. His book Iran Diary: 1971– 2002 (2002) is a critical interpretation of its history, photographed and written as a personal diary. From 1983 to 1986, he travelled throughout Mexico, photographing the country as if he were writing a novel. An exhibition and a book, Return to Mexico: Journeys Beyond the Mask (1992), which includes his travel diaries, helped him define his aesthetics in photography. From 1987 to 1994, he photographed the resurgence of Islam from the Xinjiang to Morocco. His book and exhibition Allah O Akbar, a journey through militant Islam (1994) exposes the internal tensions within Muslim societies, torn between a mythical past and a desire for modernization and democracy. The book drew additional attention after the September 11 attacks in 2001. The choice was to think of oneself either as a photojournalist or an artist. It wasn’t out of humility that I called myself a photojournalist, but arrogance. I thought photojournalism was superior. -- Attar Abbas When the year 2000 became a landmark in the universal calendar, Christianity was the symbol of the strength of Western civilization. Faces of Christianity: A Photographic Journey (2000) and a touring exhibit, explored this religion as a political, a ritual and a spiritual phenomenon. From 2000 to 2002 he worked on Animism. In our world defined by science and technology, the work looked at why irrational rituals make a strong come-back. He abandoned this project on the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks. His book, In Whose Name? The Islamic World after 9/11 (2009), is a seven-year quest within 16 countries : opposed by governments who hunt them mercilessly, the jihadists lose many battles, but are they not winning the war to control the mind of the people, with the "creeping islamisation of all Muslim societies?" From 2008 to 2010 Abbas travelled the world of Buddhism, photographing with the same skeptical eye for his book Les Enfants du lotus, voyage chez les bouddhistes (2011). In 2013, he concluded a similar long-term project on Hinduism with the publication of Gods I've Seen: Travels Among Hindus (2016). Most recently, before his death, Abbas was working on documenting Judaism around the world. Before his death, Abbas was working on documenting Judaism around the world. He died in Paris on 25 April 2018, aged 74. About his photography Abbas wrote: "My photography is a reflection, which comes to life in action and leads to meditation. Spontaneity – the suspended moment – intervenes during action, in the viewfinder. A reflection on the subject precedes it. A meditation on finality follows it, and it is here, during this exalting and fragile moment, that the real photographic writing develops, sequencing the images. For this reason a writer's spirit is necessary to this enterprise. Isn't photography "writing with light"? But with the difference that while the writer possesses his word, the photographer is himself possessed by his photo, by the limit of the real which he must transcend so as not to become its prisoner." Source: Wikipedia Abbas, as he referred to himself professionally, was known for dramatic black-and-white photographs delivered with a point of view, especially in his book Iran Diary: 1971– 2002 (2002), a collection of images and text presented as a sort of journal. When the events that resulted in the overthrow of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi in 1979 began, Abbas supported change, but he soon became disillusioned with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who took over the government. “When the revolution started, it was democratic,” The Toronto Star quoted him as saying in 2013. “It was my country, my people and my revolution. Then, slowly, it was being hijacked.” A turning point, he said, was the execution of four generals after a secret trial. He photographed their corpses in a morgue. “Something that we learned,” he said, “is that the extremists always win. That was my main lesson from the revolution. The extremists were prepared to kill, imprison, torture — everything. So they won.” Abbas was born in 1944 in a part of Iran near the Pakistan border. When he was a boy his family relocated to Algeria; he said that growing up during that country’s war of independence sparked his interest in documenting political events. He taught himself to use a camera, and among his earliest jobs was working for the International Olympic Committee at the 1968 Summer Games in Mexico. He would return to Mexico in the mid-1980s, taking pictures throughout the country over three years and producing the 1992 book Return to Mexico: Journeys Beyond the Mask (1992). In the 1970s he worked for the French agencies Sipa and Gamma. Early in that decade he was in Africa, covering the aftermath of the Biafran war in Nigeria and other events. He then found himself back in Iran. “My family is from Iran,” he told Vice in 2015, “but it isn’t as if I felt particularly Iranian back then. But I did feel that things had to change — you can’t just have some shah making all the important decisions for an entire country.” As the situation became more unstable and it became clear to him that the revolutionaries were no better than the regime they were replacing, he faced pressures from friends. “They urged me not to show the revolution’s negative side to the world,” he said. “The violence was supposed to come from the shah, not the protesters. I told them that it was my revolution as well, but I still needed to honor my duty as a journalist — or a historian, if you will.” He left the country in 1980 and did not return for 17 years. The revolution, though, had instilled in him an interest in what people throughout the world were doing in the name of God. “It was obvious after two years that the wave of Islamism was not going to stop at the borders of Iran,” he said in a video interview with The British Journal of Photography in 2009. “It was going much beyond the borders.” There are two ways to think about photography: one is writing with light, and the other is drawing with light. -- Attar Abbas He began by examining that phenomenon, resulting in the book Allah O Akbar: A Journey Through Militant Islam (1994), which recounted his travels through 29 Islamic countries. “When you’ve started with God you might as well stay with him,” he said, explaining why he went on to look at Christianity, paganism, Buddhism and more. It was an examination not of personal faith, he said, but of how faith can be deployed and twisted in other spheres. “What I’m interested in is the political, social, economic, even psychological aspects of religion,” he said, adding, “More and more, nations are defining their identities referring to religion.” If his work often put him in the middle of trouble spots, Abbas was not necessarily interested in images of blood and weaponry. “Most photographers, when they say they’re war photographers, they’re not really war photographers; they’re battle photographers,” he said in the video interview. “War does not limit itself to boom-boom, to the battle itself. Wars are very, very complex phenomenons, because they have a source, and it takes a while to come up, then it happens, and there are consequences. I’m more interested in the why and the afterwards of the wars.” He played down the part of his work that involved putting himself in harm’s way. “They say ‘courage’ — O.K., you have to be courageous,” he said. “But for me courage is a lack of imagination. You cannot imagine that it’s going to happen to you, therefore you go to the battle.”Source: New York Times
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