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Win a Solo Exhibition in April 2026 + An Exclusive Interview!
Win a Solo Exhibition in April 2026 + An Exclusive Interview!
Mital Patel
Mital Patel
Mital Patel

Mital Patel

Country: United States

Mital Patel is an internationally recognized nature and wildlife photographer who focuses on capturing beauty in all its forms—whether natural or manmade. From architecture and landscapes to the creatures of the wild, Patel has a distinct passion for capturing the most remarkable elements of life through his visual representation of movement, emotion and mood. From behind the lens, he strives to bring viewers his very unique view of nature, telling a story without words and conveying a feeling in the abstract. He challenges his audience to let their imaginations run free, taking the journey with him on his travels and opening their minds beyond the confines of static photography.

In each of his pieces, Patel hopes to offer his audience a way to view the world around them a bit differently – to appreciate the beauty of moments and places that are often overlooked. An intrepid traveler and lover of adventure, Patel’s passion for creative and imaginative photography is a great asset to his exploration of the world, which spans six out of the seven continents. His work is admired worldwide for its unique and artistic perspective.

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More Great Photographers To Discover

Abelardo Morell
Abelardo (Abe) Morell (born 1948 in Havana, Cuba) is a Boston-based photographer. Morell and his family fled Cuba in 1962, moving to New York City. Morell earned a Bachelor of Arts from Bowdoin College in 1977, and a Master of Fine Arts from Yale University School of Art in 1981. He received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from Bowdoin in 1997. Morell is well known in the photographic community for creating camera obscura images in various places around the world and photographing these. Morell was awarded the Cintas Foundation fellowship in 1992 and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 1993. Morell is currently a professor of photography at the Massachusetts College of Art. He is represented by Bonni Benrubi Gallery, NYC. A documentary on elements of Morell's life and work, Shadow of the House, was released in 2007. Source: Wikipedia He has received a num­ber of awards and grants, which include a Cin­tas grant in 1992 a Guggen­heim fel­low­ship in 1994 a Rap­pa­port Prize in 2006 and an Alturas Foun­da­tion grant in 2009 to pho­to­graph the land­scape of West Texas. He was the recip­i­ent of the International Center of Photography 2011 Infin­ity award in Art. His work has been col­lected and shown in many gal­leries, insti­tu­tions and muse­ums, includ­ing the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Hous­ton Museum of Art, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Victoria and Albert Museum and over sev­enty other muse­ums in the United States and abroad. A ret­ro­spec­tive of his work orga­nized jointly by the Art Insti­tute of Chicago, The J. Paul Getty Museum and the High Museum in Atlanta will be on view start­ing in the sum­mer of 2013. His pub­li­ca­tions include a pho­to­graphic illus­tra­tion of Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land (1998) by Dut­ton Children’s Books, A Cam­era in a Room (1995) by Smith­son­ian Press, A Book of Books (2002) and Cam­era Obscura (2004) by Bulfinch Press and Abelardo Morell (2005), pub­lished by Phaidon Press. Recent pub­li­ca­tions include a lim­ited edi­tion book by the Museum of Mod­ern Art in New York of his Cliché Verre images with a text by Oliver Sacks. He lives with his wife, Lisa McE­laney, a film­maker, and his chil­dren Brady and Laura in Brook­line, Massachusetts. Film­maker Allie Humenuk has made a film enti­tled Shadow of the House, an in-depth doc­u­men­tary about Morell’s work and expe­ri­ence as an artist. Source: www.abelardomorell.net
 Atom
Japan
1980
ATOM is a Japanese photographer, born in 1980, based in Tokyo. ATOM spent years travelling around the world to take pictures; he visited 64 countries in total and encountered many cultures and many people. The experience gained from the trip raised many questions for himself. What does it mean to life, coexistence with nature, happiness and purpose of living for? And the fundamental question is, "Why am I born in Japan in this age?" By leaving Japan, he reconsidered his homeland and pondered about living as a Japanese and a modern people. Conscious of his identity as a Japanese, he uses the motifs of symbols that symbolize Japan, takes a photo of the present age, and prints it on the most precious handmade Japanese paper in Japan. Using these media, ATOM decided to deliver the message to the world. In today's diverse world, ATOM hope that you will face yourself and think about the future through the work of ATOM. ATOM has been active as a photographer in the world. His works have been published internationally in publication such as Washington Post(USA), My Modern Met(USA), Weather Channel(USA), 20minutos(Spain), incredibilia(Italy), Hong Kong and others. He also won many international awards. ATOM will continue to experience many things, and explore and express the meaning of living in the present age as a Japanese. HINOMARU, KIMONO and TORII HINOMARU is an alias name of the Japanese flag. KIMONO is a Japanese traditional costume. TORII is a gate commonly found at the shrine. In the photos, ATOM use the Japanese flag, traditional costume and shrine to symbolize money (economic power), declining birthrate and dilution of community. For some, they may seem to represent Japanese religion (Buddhism, Christianity, and Shinto). For others, they may associate the "red circle" with harmony, coins (money), countries or peace; the "red kimono" with their lover, health or cross (religion); the "red torii" with home or relationship with their family. This minimalistic photo is two colors red and white. The colors of red and white represent Japan's national color. And in this photo, he shoot it so that it looks like a Japanese painting without a shadow. This minimalistic photography series raises questions to the modern society, makes the viewer face and think about the present age as well as imagine the future. Today, we live in a rational, material world; we have too much information, and too much stuff. We can get almost anything with a single click. In exchange, however, there are things we have lost: health, appreciation for things we are given, time to spend with our families, time to think and question ourselves, the definition of happiness... Get promoted. Be rich. Become famous. Are you not bound by these stereotypes? How long will you keep pretending to be something you are not, just to gratify your vanity? What is happiness to you? What does abundance mean to you? What is it that you really need? From the age of materialism to the age of mind. Look at these minimal photos. How do they look to you?
Paul Brouns
The Netherlands
I am a Dutch photographing artist that lives and works in Almere (near Amsterdam). I was born in 1967 in a small village in the South of the Netherlands. In 1990 I graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Tilburg (NL) in painting, drawing and photography. In the 1990's photography was still an analogue process and not having a darkroom of my own, in those early decades I was busy painting, because I wanted to work with colours and that was the most direct way to do this. However after the development of digital photography all of this started to change. By now my camera and the computer have gradually become my main tools for creation. Rhythm, color and geometry have always been important in my work and for this architecture has proven to be an ideal subject. As a photographer I am attracted by the abstract, rhythmic expression of buildings. It is my aim to captivate the viewers by feasts of dancing shadows, sunlit reflections or colour combinations. I hope that through my work they will learn to appreciate and enjoy the visual music that surrounds us. The Music of Architecture My motto "the music of architecture" stands for the artistic desire to communicate the abstract beauty of buildings. In the abstraction I see an important parallel with instrumental music. Terms like rhythm, composition, texture, scale and colour can be used to describe the feeling of my work, but it also can be applied to describe music. I try to visualise the sensation of a building as purely as possible: many images show façades that are completely frontal and fill the entire composition, so the rhythm and shallow depth of the building surface plays the main role. This ongoing series is called "Urban Tapestries". In other works the perspective depth and its converging lines play an important role. A third element is using my photographic elements to create a new reality. What unites these different elements is my desire to express myself through images that are all about the fascination with colour and rhythm.
Erich Hartmann
Germany / United States
1922 | † 1999
Erich Hartmann was a German-born American photographer. Hartmann was born July 29, 1922 in Munich, Germany, the eldest child of Max and Irma Hartmann who lived in Passau, a small city on the Danube near the Austrian border in which they were one of a five Jewish families. Erich Hartmann's family belonged to the middle class, and his father, a social-democrat who served during World War I and been imprisoned by the British, was highly respected. In 1930, only eight years old, Erich took his first photographs. Life became increasingly difficult after the Nazi takeover in 1933, including personal, financial, business, and family restrictions and the beginning of deportations of Jews to the first so-called 'labor camp' in the village of Dachau. The Hartmann family moved to Munich that year, in search of a more tolerant and cosmopolitan environment. The situation only worsened, however, and the family determined that they had to leave Germany. In August 1938, they accepted the opportunity to emigrate to the United States, having received the necessary affidavit of support from distant relatives there. They sailed from Hamburg to New York, staying initially in Washington Heights, before settling outside Albany, New York. The only English speaker in the family, Erich Hartmann worked in a textile mill in Albany, New York, attending evening high school and later taking night courses at Siena College. On December 8, 1941, the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the US entered the war, and Erich enlisted in the US Army. Trained in Virginia and at Ohio State University, he had to wait until 1943 before serving in England, Belgium (Battle of the Bulge) and France, and with the liberating forces as a court interpreter at Nazi trials in Cologne, Germany. At the end of the war he moved to New York City where, in 1946, he married Ruth Bains; they had two children, Nicholas (born in 1952) and Celia (born in 1956). During these years, he worked as an assistant to portrait photographer George Feyer, and then as a freelancer. He studied at the New School for Social Research with Charles Leirens, Berenice Abbott, and Alexey Brodovitch. His portrait subjects over the years included architect Walter Gropius, writers Arthur Koestler and Rachel Carson, musicians Leonard Bernstein and Gidon Kremer, actor Marcel Marceau, fellow photographer Ed Feingersh, and many other literary and musical personalities. Music played a great role in his life and work: "Music captured me before photography did," he recalled. "In my parents' house there was not much music except for a hand-cranked gramophone on which I surreptitiously and repeatedly played a record of arias from Carmen. This was before I could read!″ In the 1950s Erich Hartmann first became known to the wider public for his poetic approach to science, industry and architecture in a series of photo essays for Fortune magazine, beginning with The Deep North, The Building of Saint Lawrence Seaway and Shapes of Sound. He later did similar essays on the poetics of science and technology for French, German and American Geo and other magazines. Throughout his life he traveled widely on assignments for the major magazines of the US, Europe and Japan and for many corporations such as AT&T, Boeing, Bowater, Citroën, Citibank, Corning Glass, DuPont, European Space Agency, Ford, IBM, Johns Hopkins University, Kimberly-Clark, Pillsbury Company, Nippon Airways, Schlumberger, TWA, and Woolworth, for all of which he used color. In 1952 he was invited to join Magnum Photos, the international photographers’ cooperative founded in 1947 by Robert Capa, David Seymour, George Rodger and Henri Cartier-Bresson, he served on the board of directors from 1967 to 1986, and as President in 1985–1986. For more than eight weeks in 1994, Erich and Ruth Hartmann undertook a winter journey to photograph the remains of the Nazi concentration and extermination camps, and places of deportation, throughout Europe. He was determined to take only black and white photographs and to capture only what he saw, immediately when arriving, no matter whether days looked like nights. He returned to New York with 120 rolls of film, from which he made a first edit of 300 photographs and a final selection of only 74 frames. These, together with text by Ruth Bains Hartmann, formed the book and exhibition In the Camps, published in 1995 in English, French, and German and exhibited in more than twenty venues in the US and Europe in the years since. In all of his travel, for work and pleasure, Hartmann carried a small camera with a few rolls of black and white film, prepared for every visual opportunity. He also deliberately pursued a series of imaginative projects including experiments with ink in water, stroboscopic light effects, beach pebbles constrained in boxes, and others. In the late 1990s, with an eye to a future retrospective exhibition, Hartmann began making a definitive selection from fifty years of this personal work in black and white. Just a few months before his death he began discussions with a gallery in Austria about organizing an exhibition called Where I Was. On February 4, 1999 Erich Hartmann died unexpectedly from a heart attack in New York. Source: Wikipedia In the late 1960s and 1970s he lived in London. He documented the construction of the Britannia aircraft for the Bristol Aeroplane Company and he photographed for the leading colour magazines: the Sunday Times, the Observer and the Telegraph, notably on such stories as Shakespeare's Warwickshire and The Norman Conquest Descendants. For the Weekend Telegraph he made sensitive colour pictures of Styles of English Architecture, in a series of photo-essays for which Sir John Betjeman wrote the words, and he also travelled with Betjeman to the Faeroe Islands. Later Hartmann returned to Germany where he had lived in the shadow of the Nazis until he was 16, and chose a project for himself: the death camps. He made an unforgettable book, In the Camps (1995). He said, "I simply felt obliged to stand in as many of the camps as I could reach, to fulfill a duty that I could not define and to pay a belated tribute with the tools of my profession." The book is a magnificent tribute. There is hardly a person in it. So solitary is it, so desolate, that we people the pages with our own ghosts, we bring to it our own fears and imagery. These imaginings have the feeling of poetry. We see a room full of broken shoes; another room of battered satchels; another of torn children's clothes; the windowless barracks in four tiers in which multitudes tried to survive; or a square in which a gallows hangs in the wind. The railway tracks which many took into the camp; a single gas chamber in Auschwitz. It is hard to go from examining the book to describe all Erich Hartmann did for the Magnum co-operative when he served on the board or was vice-president (1975 and 1979) or president (1985). Burt Glinn describes how he and Hartmann came to Magnum at the same time, almost 47 years ago: "We have photographed together and met together and consulted together about ethics and journalism, and we have attended 46 Magnum General Meetings, the first with only eight other photographers and the last with more than 50, but all of them passionate, contentious and personal." He goes on: "Through all these years Erich, more than anyone else, has been my moral compass. No matter how knotty the problem he never settled for the facile compromise. He was always wise, judicious, and ferocious to find the right answer rather than the easy one. When I suspected that I was pursuing my self-interest rather than the common good I would glance over at Erich and if I encountered his quizzically cocked eyebrow I would shut up."Source: Independent
Galuh Tunggadewi Sahid
Navid Memar
Iran
1996
Navid Memar is a Tehran-based artist who has had experience as an director and designer. He is working on post-dramatic and space-making in art. His main interest in art is on illustrating base. Navid Memar is working in different tendencies such as architecture, visual arts like collage, sculpture, short film, video art, and theatre. He has had many influences from Romeo Castellucci, and he produces his own plays about the theatre ideology of Romeo Castellocci. Of course, in combination with Iranian elements and his personal ideology from "amata studio". He spent his childhood and youth in Kashan and has a special interest in Iran's history and native culture and Iranian writers. He is studying directing in Tehran University Fine arts. In 2015 he established a studio named Amata. Since then he starts his professional work. Statement " 'افلا تتفکرون' means 'Do you not think?' It is a part of a Quranic verse. This name invites the audience to think independently in each frame, regardless of the overall issue of the collection. And each audience can build their mental world according to the signs they see in the photo. 'افلا تتفکرون' collection is the narrative of creation through paintings related to each event in a historic men's public bath that has been turned into a museum. Baths are in direct contact with the body. My approach to the narrative of creation has been a combination of the views of Islam and Christianity in this regard. In this collection, a look is taken at the issue of women's absence in the first Qajar family photos, as an example of which I have addressed the issue of women's absence in public baths. The alternative was a baby girl instead of a wife / Eve. In most frames, the presence of paintings helps to narrate and emphasize the signs. And give us this It informs that the problem of creation has been repeated again and again and this process will continue." -- Navid Memar
MD Saiful Amin
Bangladesh
1969
I’m a street and documentary photographer from Dhaka. I began taking photos in the mid-90s, but it wasn’t until 2015 that I pursued photography seriously. My profession is in private service at a construction company. During the "Pilkhana Tragedy" on February 25, 2009, the armed border guards opened fire on civilians. I was taking pictures as they approached their gate, but suddenly, a bullet from a Chinese rifle hit me. My sciatic nerve was severely injured, and my leg was shattered into multiple pieces. From 2009 to 2011, I underwent seven major surgeries. I was bedridden for 4 ½ years. Unfortunately, during that time, my hard drive crashed, and I lost all my images from the 80s up to February 2009. It was an incredibly frustrating period for me. When I received my first DSLR camera in 2015, I picked up photography again. Despite the constant pain in my leg, I’ve never stopped. I never leave home without my camera, even for a single day. My work – Since 2016, I’ve focused on documenting the Bihari and Dalit communities, as well as homeless and street kids, urban slum communities, the tannery, and plastic industries, among other subjects. Achievements – I’ve participated in about 50 national exhibitions (winning 1st prize twice), and I’ve exhibited my work in Kolkata and Romania as a solo participant. I’ve received several FIAP honorable mentions and acceptances in salons worldwide. One of my photos was published in the 2018 edition of the 'Wisden' annual cricket book, often referred to as the Bible of Cricket. My work has also been featured in numerous international photography websites and magazines. In 2020, I won the FIAP Gold Medal and the "Photographer of the Year" trophy at the ABP Salon, a prestigious contest organized by the Bangladesh Photographic Society (BPS). Workshops – I’ve attended both short and long photography workshops with GMB Akash, the late Anwar Hossain Anu, M. R. Hasan, Prito Reja, Chanchal Mahmud, and Rafiqul Islam. Mentorship – I’ve also served as a judge for several national photography exhibitions between 2018 and 2019. Life in Bihari Camp, Dhaka, Bangladesh A young girl writes a poem in which she asks a simple yet profound question—one that no one can answer. She asks, Who am I? Her forefathers were born in India, they migrated to Pakistan, and she was born in Bangladesh. India abandoned them long ago, Bangladesh refuses to accept them as children of the land, and Pakistan won’t take them back. She says she has many names: Bihari, Maura, Muhajir, Non-Bangalee, Marwari, Urdu-speaker, Refugee, and Stranded Pakistani. But she desires only one identity: Human. This is the reality for the 160,000 camp-based Urdu-speaking community members in Bangladesh. In Geneva Camp alone, around 50,000 Urdu-speaking people of Indian and Pakistani origin live in difficult conditions. After the partition of India in 1947, amidst large-scale communal riots on both sides of the border, hundreds of thousands of Muslims from Bihar, Kolkata, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and as far as Hyderabad migrated to what was then East Pakistan. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of the All India Muslim League, promised them that Pakistan would be a "safe haven for all Muslims." As is typical of people migrating from a shared locality, the Biharis formed separate clusters from the Bengalis. Their communities became concentrated in areas like Mohammadpur, Mirpur, Khulna, Chittagong, and Santahar. The new generation, born after the war, now comprises the majority of camp residents. They have no affiliations with either India or Pakistan. They were born in Bangladesh and identify as Bangladeshis. Unfortunately, the state is reluctant to accept them as such. It is a complex issue, with the majority population skeptical of their loyalty to the country they wish to call home. The inhumane conditions in which they live and the societal effects of their marginalization make it imperative to resolve this painful issue. 365 Photography Library This is the largest photography library in Bangladesh, with around 2,000 books on photography. It’s free for everyone, and I created it for young photographers and the next generation. I plan to leave it to them as my legacy before I die. www.365photographylibrary.com
Randy Bacon
United States
Randy is an American photographer with an extensive history in portrait, commercial and documentary photography, both motion and still. Randy is also co-founder and artist behind all of the photography and cinematography of the nonprofit, people empowering story movement, 7 Billion Ones Randy has pursued photography professionally since 1984 and is in high demand with a client base extending worldwide. He travels to destinations across the United States, as well as numerous countries for projects. At the core of Randy's photography is the ability to present emotive visual stories with an underlying sense of narrative. His unique style reflects elements of influential film noir and old masters in painting and photography - Randy is especially influenced by photographers such as Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Diane Arbus, Ed Weston and others. Considering these influences, the connecting thread is the unending artistic mission to capture the art of people In their real, authentic, raw self. For Randy, this simple, yet complex, truth, "you were born an original", is still the creative seed that continues to grow his artistry for photography and film. In 2011, Randy expanded into the motion picture arena. Almost instantly he secured multiple commercial film projects. In 2012, his film career exploded with the release of his directorial and production debut, "The Last Days of Extraordinary Lives". The movie garnered a significant amount of coverage and awards, including having the film being broadcast on PBS to rave reviews. "The Last Days of Extraordinary Lives" ran the film festival circuit and accumulated an impressive fifteen film festival official selections and won fourteen awards, including Best Documentary, Best Picture and Best Director. Shortly thereafter, Randy released his second full-length documentary, "Man Up and Go" which received official selection to nine national/international film festivals. Both films are signed to Academy Award winning film company, Earthworks Films, and are distributed nationally by Filmrise. In 2015, Randy founded and launched the nonprofit humanitarian story movement, 7 Billion Ones, which documents lives, shares stories, connects community and empowers mankind. 7 Billion Ones is fully dedicated to using the art of photography, motion films, and written words to present people's unique stories in an artful, raw, impacting form, so that human transformation occurs exponentially. The story movement reaches a worldwide audience via sharing and connecting people through the enormous power of the world wide web. In consideration of Randycs ongoing work with 7 Billion Ones and other humanitarian projects, he was named as Presidential Social Change Artist in Residence at Saybrook University. In addition, Randy won the Award for Homeless Advocacy with the Alliance to End Homelessness. The Road I call Home For over 35 years I have explored the art of portraiture and I am still mesmerized by photography just like when I got my first camera at 15. It's a love affair that not only endured, but has grown as an essential part of my being. I am more in awe of photography as an art form each day. As a photographer and filmmaker, I have always been intrigued by the fact that each and every person is a one-of-a-kind original - a never before created miracle. This simple, yet complex truth, "we are ALL original miracles'' is the creative seed that flames my passion for photography and represents the connecting thread with all of my work. Over the years, I have photographed thousands upon thousands of people, across America and around the world, propelled by an infinite fascination and commitment as a photographic artist to capture the miracle of each person - the 'ones' on this planet of over 7 billion. I am finding that after all of these many years, of tending to my relationship between me and this thing called a camera that I am artistically driven more and more by people and their stories. With my photography, no matter the walk of life, I strive to present each 'one' in an authentic, no frills manner as to truly relay their inherent beauty, uniqueness and value. With the narratives, I provide the accepting, safe place, so each person can truthfully share their raw, unfiltered story. In the end, I hope the work will punch people in the heart and help create positive change, new understandings of humanity and connection within our world. This is my mission. The Road I Call Home is a powerfully direct extension of my mission - portraits that reveal their special qualities and dignity versus stereotypical attitudes and perceptions society commonly has of homelessness and often presented by the media. The impetus for this approach relates directly to my own life - I was guilty of being negative and uncompassionate towards the homeless. Yes, I judged the book by the cover; however as I opened the pages of each homeless person's life I saw the enlightening truth - homeless people are important 'ones' in this world of 7 billion and deserve love and compassion. The Road I Call Home represents my most ambitious single project to date. What began as a small idea to photograph a handful of homeless people now stands at over 170 homeless lives recorded via portraits, stories and short films. The Road I Call Home continues its path as we push forward chronicling more of our homeless friends' lives. The project has been exhibited at numerous museums and galleries, including several states, with more being planned. A corresponding coffee table art book for The Road I Call Home was published in 2021. Articles The Road I Call Home The Amazing Winning Images of AAP Magazine 17 Portrait
Lorenzo Meloni
Lorenzo Meloni (born 1983) is an Italian Photographer. He joined Magnum Photos as a nominee member in 2015. Meloni is known for his searing, artfully drawn photography covering conflicts in the Middle East. Though he is often working on the frontline—he has covered some of the most pivotal battles in the war against the Islamic State—he is also concerned with deeper themes, such as history and post-colonialism. In 2011, he finished his photography studies and immediately joined Contrasto, a major Italian photographic agency. He lived in Beirut from 2012 to 2014 and dedicated himself to long-term projects regarding the aftermath of the fall of Gaddafi in Libya, the conflict in Syria (specifically the area of Rojava) and its impact in Lebanon, between 2014 to 2016. His work currently focuses on the consequences of the Sykes-Picot agreement and the military and political intervention of the West in the Middle East. Meloni’s work has been exhibited in festivals worldwide including the Venice Biennale, Visa pour L’Image, Les Rencontres d’Arles, Boutographies and Fotoleggendo and has been featured in global publications including The Telegraph, TIME, Le Figaro, Vanity Fair, Internazionale, L’Espresso, La Repubblica.Source: Magnum Photos When proclaimed in June 2014 in Mosul, the Caliphate was then at the height of its power. The Jhiadists controlled a territory that was as big as the United Kingdom and were in charge of a significant arsenal captured from the Iraqis army, composed of volunteers coming from all over the world. Lorenzo Meloni has documented this conflict, getting the exclusive opportunity to cover the battles of Kobane, Palmyra, Sirte, Mosul and Ragga. Five major battles for the same war, a huge number of actors: locals, regional, international ones; a sole enemy: the Islamic State. Each of these five cities embodies a distinct symbolic aspect of this global war against the Islamic State. Kobane, a Kurdish-Syrian stronghold, pro-PKK, was the first great defeat for the Jihadists and the beginning of the intervention of the coalition led by the United States in Syria. The battle of Palmyra is representative of the destruction of archeological sites committed by the Islamic State. Meloni is one of the few photographers to travel there in April 2016 to record the liberation of the city by the Syrian regime and its alleys. Sirte, in Lybia, went from being Gadaffi’s birthplace to the African capital of the Islamic State. Mosul, the jewel in the crown of the Jihadists. The biggest urban battle after World War II and the capital of the Islamic State in Iraq. And ultimately Ragga, an important administrative headquarter and capital of the Islamic State in Syria, liberated by the Kurdish and Arab forces in Syria. Lorenzo Meloni, covering these five battles, offers a unique perspective of five echoes of the same war. He shows the fighting and the ruins, the fury and the silence. The silence of these places where war has estranged life.Source: IMP Festival
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Chinese-born photographer Julie Wang brings a poetic, contemplative sensitivity to her visual exploration of the world. Having lived for nearly equal parts of her life in China, Europe, and the United States, she approaches her subjects with the nuanced perspective of someone shaped by many cultures. This blend of distance, curiosity, and emotional resonance infuses her work with a quiet depth, allowing her to reveal the fragile beauty and subtle tensions that often pass unnoticed.
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.
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.
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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