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Mark Citret
Mark Citret
Mark Citret

Mark Citret

Country: United States
Birth: 1949

Mark Citret was born in 1949 in Buffalo, New York, and grew up in San Francisco. He began photographing seriously in 1968 and received both his BA and MA in Art from San Francisco State University.

Most of Citret's work is not specific to any locale or subject matter. Still, he has worked on many photographic projects over the course of his career and continues to do so. From 1973 to 1975 he lived in and photographed Halcott Center, a farming valley in New York's Catskill Mountains. In the mid to late 1980s, he produced a large body of work with the working title of "Unnatural Wonders", which is his personal survey of architecture in the national parks. He spent four years, 1990 to 1993, photographing "Coastside Plant", a massive construction site in the southwest corner of San Francisco. Since he moved to his current home in 1986, he has been photographing the ever-changing play of ocean and sky from the cliff behind his house. Currently, he is in the midst of a multi-year commission from the University of California San Francisco, photographing the construction of their 43 acre Mission Bay life-sciences campus.

He has taught photography at the University of California Berkeley Extension since 1982 and the University of California Santa Cruz Extension since 1988, and for organizations such as the Center for Photography at Woodstock, the Ansel Adams Gallery, and Santa Fe Workshops. His work is represented by prominent photography galleries in the United States, and is in many museums, corporate, and private collections, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the University of Arizona's Center for Creative Photography, and the Monterey Museum of Art. A monograph of his photographs, Along the Way, was published by Custom & Limited Editions, San Francisco, in 1999. He lives in Daly City, California.

About Parallel Landscapes
Selected Books on Available on Amazon
Mark Citret: Signs Taken for Wonder
Mark Citret: Signs Taken for Wonder
Mark Citret
Mark Citret: Along the Way
Mark Citret: Along the Way
Mark Citret

Galleries

Weston Gallery

Howard Greenberg Gallery

Smith Anderson North

Website

www.mcitret.com

 

Selected Books

Mark Citret: Signs Taken for Wonder
Mark Citret: Signs Taken for Wonder
Mark Citret
Mark Citret: Along the Way
Mark Citret: Along the Way
Mark Citret

Inspiring Portfolios

Mauro De Bettio
© Mauro De Bettio
Yulia Nevskaya
© Yulia Nevskaya
Mahendra Bakle
© Mahendra Bakle
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More Great Photographers To Discover

Josh Aronson
Josh Aronson
United States/Canada
1994
Josh Aronson (b. 1994, Toronto, Canada) is a Florida-based artist whose work explores masculinity and landscape in the American South. He was raised in Florida by Iraqi and Polish parents who immigrated to the United States from Canada when he was 3. Aronson’s photographs have appeared in The New York Times, The Paris Review, The Financial Times, Frieze, Teen Vogue, Italian Vogue, Dazed, i-D, British Journal of Photography, Document Journal, The Guardian, and Apartamento. His first book, Tropicana (2020), is held in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Library of Congress. In 2024, he became the only artist to win both the People’s Choice Award and the Juror’s Prize for No Vacancy, the City of Miami Beach’s public art commission. Aronson’s work has been exhibited internationally by institutions including The Bass Museum of Art, Florida; Ogden Museum of Southern Art, Louisiana; and Nizhniy Tagil Museum of Fine Arts, Russia. He is the founder of Photo Book Speed Date, an artist-led public program held at Pérez Art Museum Miami and Vizcaya Museum & Gardens, among others, and designed to foster engagement with photo books through fast-paced, rotating conversations. Awarded Photographer of the Week - Week 43, 2025
Ming Smith
Ming Smith
United States
1973
Ming Smith is an American photographer. She was the first African-American female photographer whose work was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Smith was born in Detroit, Michigan, and raised in Columbus, Ohio. After graduating from Howard University in 1973, she moved to New York City, where she found work modeling. While in New York she met photographer Anthony Barboza, who was an early influence. Smith's approach to photography has included in-camera techniques such as playing with focus, darkroom techniques like double exposure, collage techniques and paint on prints. Her work is less engaged with documentation of events than with expression of experience. It has been described as surreal and ethereal, as the New York Times observed: "Her work, personal and expressive, draws from a number of artistic sources, preeminently surrealism. She has employed a range of surrealist techniques: photographing her subjects from oblique angles, shooting out of focus or through such atmospheric effects as fog and shadow, playing on unusual juxtapositions, even altering or painting over prints." Smith's early work was composed of photos that were shot quickly to produce elaborate scenes, and due to this process many of her photos have double dates. She has used the technique of hand-tinting in some of her work, notably her Transcendence series. Ming Smith has photographed many important black cultural figures during her career, including Alvin Ailey and Nina Simone. In 1973 Smith was featured in the first volume of the Black Photographers Annual, a publication closely affiliated with the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and early 1970s. Smith had her first exhibition at Cinandre, a hairdressing salon, in 1973 as well. At Cinandre, she met Grace Jones, whom she photographed wearing a black and white tutu on occasion. Smith recalls that she and Jones would talk about surviving as black artists. Smith reflects on the memories by saying: "We came out of Jim Crow. And so just coming to New York and trying to be a model or anything was new." Two years later (1975), Smith became the first female member of the Harlem-based photography collective Kamoinge, under director Roy DeCarava. The Kamoinge Workshop was founded in New York in 1963 to support the work of black photographers in a field then dominated by white men. The collective, which still exists today, has undertaken a range of initiatives, including exhibitions, lectures, workshops, and the publishing of portfolios for distribution to museums. Smith participated with Kamoinge in three groups shows in New York and Guyana. Smith dropped off a portfolio at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), where the receptionist mistook her for a messenger. When she returned, she was taken into the curator's office. Susan Kismaric named a price for Smith's work, which Smith declined due to the price not paying off her bills. Kismaric asked Smith to reconsider, which she eventually did. Shortly after, she became the first Black woman photographer to be included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City. In addition to the MOMA, Smith's art has been featured at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Smithsonian Anacostia Museum & Center for African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. Smith has twice exhibited at the Bellevue Hospital Centre in Morristown, New Jersey, through their Art in the Atrium exhibitions. The first was in 1995, for Cultural Images: Sweet Potato Pie, an exhibit curated by Russell A. Murray. In 2008 she contributed as part of the exhibition New York City: In Focus, part of Creative Destinations 2008 Exhibition of African American Art. Smith's photographs are included in the 2004 Ntozake Shange book The Sweet Breath of Life: A Poetic Narrative of the African-American Family and Life. In 2010, her work was included in MOMA's exhibition Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography. This exhibition recontextualized Smith's work alongside that of Diane Arbus and marked a growing interest in Smith's work. Organized by curator Roxana Marcoci, it was curated by Sarah Meister through the Department of Photography. In 2017, a major survey exhibition of Smith's work was held at the Steven Kasher Gallery in New York. The exhibition featured 75 vintage black-and-white prints that represented Smith's career. Smith has collaborated with filmmaker Arthur Jafa in the Serpentine Sackler Gallery's 2017 show, Arthur Jafa: A Series of Utterly Improbable, yet Extraordinary Renditions (Featuring Ming Smith, Frida Orupabo and Missylanyus). That same year, she was featured in the Tate Modern group exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, curated by Mark Godfrey and Zoé Whitley. The show received international acclaim before traveling to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, The Brooklyn Museum, The Broad, the de Young Museum of San Francisco and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Since then, Smith's work was featured in solo presentations by Jenkins Johnson Gallery both at Frieze New York and Frieze Masters in 2019, the former of which receiving the Frieze Stand Prize. In 2020, Ming's work will be included in the group exhibition Working Together: Louis Draper and the Kamoinge Workshop at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, VA. From there, the exhibition will travel to The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, CA, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY.[19] Smith's work is in museum collections including the National Gallery of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Detroit Institute of Arts, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Some of Smith's work displayed in the Museum of Modern Art depicts motherhood in Harlem. These photos are taken using a documentary style way of photographing these subjects. Ming Smith lives and works in New York City.Source: Wikipedia Ming Smith is known for her informal, in-action portraits of black cultural figures, from Alvin Ailey to Nina Simone and a wide range of jazz musicians. Ming’s career emerged formally with the publication of the Black Photographer’s Annual in 1973. She was an early member of the Kamoinge Workshop, an association of several generations of black photographers. Ming has traveled extensively, showing her viewers a cosmopolitan world filled with famous landmarks and extraordinary landscapes. People continue to be her most treasured subjects. This is most apparent in her series depicting African American life. Ming’s early style was to shoot fast and produce complicated and elaborate images in the developing and post-printing processes, so that many of her pictures carry double dates. She experimented with hand-tinting in My Father’s Tears, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico (1977/1979). Ming continues to expand the role of photography with her exploration of image and paint in the more recent, large-scale Transcendence series. Ming’s place in photography’s 175-year history was recognized by her inclusion in the Museum of Modern Art’s groundbreaking exhibition Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography in 2010. Ming Smith's photography is held in collections in the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York; the Smithsonian Anacostia Museum & Center for African American History and Culture, Washington, DC and the AT&T Corporation.Source: Steven Kasher Gallery
Gulnara Samoilova
Gulnara Samoilova
United States
1964
Gulnara Samoilova is a Russia-born American photographer, living in New York City. Her work in New York City after the September 11 attacks won a World Press Photo award and is held in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Samoilova is the founder of the website, social media platform and travelling exhibition Women Street Photographers, and edited a book of the same name. Samoilova was born and grew up in Ufa, Bashkortostan, Russia. After school she worked in a photo lab, then became a portrait photographer, and later a photojournalist for a local newspaper. She gained a diploma in photography from Moscow Polytech College. In 1992 Samoilova moved to New York City and studied at the International Center of Photography. She worked for the Associated Press and photographed the aftermath of the September 11 attacks in New York City in 2001. In 2017 Samoilova launched the website, social media platform, and travelling exhibition Women Street Photographers, to show street photography by women. In 2021 a book of the same name was published, which she edited, containing the work of 100 photographers.Source: Wikipedia
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Henri Cartier-Bresson
France
1908 | † 2004
Born in Chanteloup, Seine-et-Marne, Henri Cartier-Bresson developed a strong fascination with painting early on, and particularly with Surrealism. In 1932, after spending a year in the Ivory Coast, he discovered the Leica - his camera of choice thereafter - and began a life-long passion for photography. In 1933 he had his first exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York. He later made films with Jean Renoir. Taken prisoner of war in 1940, he escaped on his third attempt in 1943 and subsequently joined an underground organization to assist prisoners and escapees. In 1945 he photographed the liberation of Paris with a group of professional journalists and then filmed the documentary Le Retour (The Return). In 1947, with Robert Capa, George Rodger, David 'Chim' Seymour and William Vandivert, he founded Magnum Photos. After three years spent travelling in the East, in 1952 he returned to Europe, where he published his first book, Images à la Sauvette (published in English as The Decisive Moment). He explained his approach to photography in these terms, "For me the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which, in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously. It is by economy of means that one arrives at simplicity of expression." From 1968 he began to curtail his photographic activities, preferring to concentrate on drawing and painting. In 2003, with his wife and daughter, he created the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris for the preservation of his work. Cartier-Bresson received an extraordinary number of prizes, awards and honorary doctorates. He died at his home in Provence on 3 August 2004, a few weeks short of his 96th birthday.Source: Magnum Photos His technique: Henri Cartier-Bresson almost exclusively used Leica 35 mm rangefinder cameras equipped with normal 50 mm lenses or occasionally a wide-angle for landscapes. He often wrapped black tape around the camera's chrome body to make it less conspicuous. With fast black and white films and sharp lenses, he was able to photograph almost by stealth to capture the events. No longer bound by a huge 4×5 press camera or an awkward medium format twin-lens reflex camera, miniature-format cameras gave Cartier-Bresson what he called "the velvet hand [and] the hawk's eye." He never photographed with flash, a practice he saw as "Impolite...like coming to a concert with a pistol in your hand." He believed in composing his photographs in the viewfinder, not in the darkroom. He showcased this belief by having nearly all his photographs printed only at full-frame and completely free of any cropping or other darkroom manipulation. Indeed, he emphasized that his prints were not cropped by insisting they include the first millimetre or so of the unexposed clear negative around the image area resulting, after printing, in a black border around the positive image. Henri Cartier-Bresson worked exclusively in black and white, other than a few unsuccessful attempts in color. He disliked developing or making his own prints and showed a considerable lack of interest in the process of photography in general, likening photography with the small camera to an "instant drawing". Technical aspects of photography were valid for him only where they allowed him to express what he saw: "Constant new discoveries in chemistry and optics are widening considerably our field of action. It is up to us to apply them to our technique, to improve ourselves, but there is a whole group of fetishes which have developed on the subject of technique. Technique is important only insofar as you must master it in order to communicate what you see... The camera for us is a tool, not a pretty mechanical toy. In the precise functioning of the mechanical object perhaps there is an unconscious compensation for the anxieties and uncertainties of daily endeavor. In any case, people think far too much about techniques and not enough about seeing." He started a tradition of testing new camera lenses by taking photographs of ducks in urban parks. He never published the images but referred to them as "my only superstition" as he considered it a 'baptism' of the lens. Henri Cartier-Bresson is regarded as one of the art world's most unassuming personalities. He disliked publicity and exhibited a ferocious shyness since his days in hiding from the Nazis during World War II. Although he took many famous portraits, his own face was little known to the world at large (which presumably had the advantage of allowing him to work on the street in peace). He dismissed others' applications of the term "art" to his photographs, which he thought were merely his gut reactions to moments in time that he had happened upon. "In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject. The little human detail can become a leitmotiv."Source: Wikipedia Henri Cartier-Bresson has intuitively chronicled decisive moments of human life around the world with poetic documentary style. His photographs impart spontaneous instances with meaning, mystery, and humor in terms of precise visual organization, and his work, although tremendously difficult to imitate, has influenced many other photographers. His photographs may be summed up through a phrase of his own: "the decisive moment," the magical instant when the world falls into apparent order and meaning, and may be apprehended by a gifted photographer.Source: International Center of Photography
Robert Capa
Robert Capa
United States
1913 | † 1954
Robert Capa (born Endre Friedmann; October 22, 1913 – May 25, 1954) was a Hungarian war photographer and photojournalist as well as the companion and professional partner of photographer Gerda Taro. He is considered by some to be the greatest combat and adventure photographer in history. Capa fled political repression in Hungary when he was a teenager, moving to Berlin, where he enrolled in college. He witnessed the rise of Hitler, which led him to move to Paris, where he met and began to work with Gerta Pohorylle. Together they worked under the alias Robert Capa and became photojournalists. Though she contributed to much of the early work, she quickly created her own alias 'Gerda Taro' and they began to publish their work separately. He subsequently covered five wars: the Spanish Civil War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, World War II across Europe, the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and the First Indochina War, with his photos published in major magazines and newspapers. During his career he risked his life numerous times, most dramatically as the only civilian photographer landing on Omaha Beach on D-Day. He documented the course of World War II in London, North Africa, Italy, and the liberation of Paris. His friends and colleagues included Ernest Hemingway, Irwin Shaw, John Steinbeck and director John Huston. In 1947, for his work recording World War II in pictures, U.S. general Dwight D. Eisenhower awarded Capa the Medal of Freedom. That same year, Capa co-founded Magnum Photos in Paris. The organization was the first cooperative agency for worldwide freelance photographers. Hungary has issued a stamp and a gold coin in his honor. Source: Wikipedia On 3 December 1938 Picture Post introduced 'The Greatest War Photographer in the World: Robert Capa' with a spread of 26 photographs taken during the Spanish Civil War. But the 'greatest war photographer' hated war. Born Andre Friedmann to Jewish parents in Budapest in 1913, he studied political science at the Deutsche Hochschule für Politik in Berlin. Driven out of the country by the threat of a Nazi regime, he settled in Paris in 1933. He was represented by Alliance Photo and met the journalist and photographer Gerda Taro. Together, they invented the 'famous' American photographer Robert Capa and began to sell his prints under that name. He met Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway, and formed friendships with fellow photographers David 'Chim' Seymour and Henri Cartier-Bresson. From 1936 onwards, Capa's coverage of the Spanish Civil War appeared regularly. His picture of a Loyalist soldier who had just been fatally wounded earned him his international reputation and became a powerful symbol of war. After his companion, Gerda Taro, was killed in Spain, Capa travelled to China in 1938 and emigrated to New York a year later. As a correspondent in Europe, he photographed the Second World War, covering the landing of American troops on Omaha beach on D-Day, the liberation of Paris and the Battle of the Bulge. In 1947 Capa founded Magnum Photos with Henri Cartier-Bresson, David Seymour, George Rodger and William Vandivert. On 25 May 1954 he was photographing for Life in Thai-Binh, Indochina, when he stepped on a landmine and was killed. The French army awarded him the Croix de Guerre with Palm post-humously. The Robert Capa Gold Medal Award was established in 1955 to reward exceptional professional merit. Source: Magnum Photos
Tommi Viitala
Tommi Viitala
Finland
1975
Helsinki based Tommi Viitala has started active street photography over four years ago. However, the camera is not a new device for him because he has been filming more and less actively throughout his life, starting with film cameras from the 90s. Since the camera is almost always with Tommi, he also goes around the world filming streets, most recently in Budapest, Hungary. Tommi's photos has been published also various street photography publications and exhibitions. Statement: My signature style includes precise composition, sharp contrasts, moody atmosphere and symmetry. Of these, the contrasts are the most what i'm chasing almost every day on the streets. The sunnier the day, the more i look for the shadows. Street photography has also taught me to look at the city in a different way, to look for exceptions and small glitches to pick up small beautiful details from those moments. What attracts me about street photography is that even if like ten different photographers take a picture of the same fleeting moment, each picture is different, i.e. the look of its taker. In addition, the different styles of street photography, such as juxtaposition, geometry and the play of light and shadows inspire me to the streets again and again. AAP Magazine AAP Magazine 36 Street AAP Magazine 39 Shadows AAP Magazine 42 Shapes AAP Magazine 44 Street AAP Magazine 50 Shapes
María Tuleda
María Tuleda
Spain
Nurse by profession, I discovered photography by chance a little over a decade ago and since then I have dedicated part of my free time to taking photos. Self-taught, I conceive photography as an instrument to create, tell and transmit, but above all to feel. I do not follow norms or rules, and I confess to being more interested in suggesting than in the photographic technique itself. There's something nostalgic and beautiful about decadence, and maybe that's why almost all of my shots end up having a certain decadent feel to them. I have no idea why I make the images I make, I guess we look with a camera as we are, or one day we were. My photos are simply a visual diary, they show what I see, and how I felt. Photography allows me to return to that childlike curiosity, which makes me want to explore not only in the world, but within myself. When they ask me what I want to express with my photos or my way of creating them, the answer is simple: Provoke, simply provoke some sensation. A few years ago I decided to show my images on social networks, opening up a range of opportunities to disseminate my work, but if I have to choose a medium where I can express myself through photography, it is the photobook. Being able to create a visual narrative, with a set of photos between sheets of paper inside a book, has been a wonderful experience, yes, I confess, photobooks have me fascinated. On many occasions I don't know why some of the images I make exist. And honestly, I don't care to know. The birds What do birds represent in artistic photography? It is a simple filler in the composition, with the purpose of making it more attractive and attracting the viewer, or for the author, it has a meaning. The answer may be a little of both. It is easy to find the presence of symbols in creative or artistic photography, including birds. Jennifer Ackerman, a bird scholar, after spending time observing them, came to the conclusion that birds remember, think, feel, give gifts and love. And they also fly, and that is what makes them so special, that is what arouses so much interest and at the same time envy: the ability to fly. The author of the wonderful novel "Rebecca", Daphne du Maurier, is also the author of the story about "The Birds" in the Alfred Hitchcock film. Horror story where roles are exchanged, giving way to the revolution of the birds, and they are the ones who keep humans locked up, imprisoned and caged in their homes. Leonardo da Vinci's obsession with understanding the flight of birds led him to make a study and treatise on flight while painting the Mona Lisa. Some of the discoveries he made anticipated the foundations of modern aeronautics. Hundreds of birds fly over the Prado Museum of various species, a recent study reveals that there are nearly 700 paintings that illustrate frozen birds through the brushes of artists such as Rubens, Hieronymus Bosch or Goya. It is evident that birds have always aroused a lot of interest throughout history, and without a doubt they have been and are sources of inspiration, not only in art. But really, in artistic photography, what do they symbolize? The Mexican photographer and lady of symbols, Graciela Iturbide, is clear: "Birds are the eyes that help me fly." She claims that she loves them and for her they represent freedom. I share Graciela's considerations about the concepts she attributes to birds for her creations. I have no idea why they are so present in my work, why I go out into the world with my camera, sometimes, even with the sole intention of looking for them and photographing them. When they ask me what I want to express with their presence, I feel perplexed for not having a clear answer. I wish I could give you an exact answer about the important message behind this work. Birds, above all for me, are symbols of vision and freedom perfectly outlined in the process of the concept of creation, and at the same time, a metaphor alluding to an infinite number of things. My photos are simply a visual diary. They show what I see or what I saw, and how I felt. Photography allows me to return to that childlike curiosity, which makes me want to explore not only in the world, but within myself. On many occasions I don't know why some of the images I make exist. And honestly, I don't care to know. For others, the presence of birds perhaps blurs the composition, or they are representations that are too disturbing or tedious, and therefore contrary to what I intend to provoke, but perhaps that disparate vision that photography provokes is not part of its magic.
Susi Belianska
Susi Belianska
Slovakia/Italy
1980
Susi Belianska is a photographer and artist with a passion for capturing visual stories, particularly through the art of portrait photography. Her fascination with the intricate details of the human face, the play of light and shadow that accentuates its contours, and the emotions it conveys drives her to create compelling and evocative portraits that tell unique narratives. With a background in the fashion industry, she transitioned into full-time photography in 2007, capturing diverse campaigns and catalogues for national and international brands. Her work has been featured in prominhotent publications like Condè Nast - Vogue Italia, GQ, Financial Times, Vrij Magazine, L’Officiel, D Repubblica, among others. She develops as well her personal projects within fine art. In 2013 she won the Nikon Talent Photo Contest presented and exhibited during the international contemporary art Artissima fair In 2012 she was in shortlist of the Sony World Photography Awards in fashion category. She actively participates in renowned photography festivals, including the Ancona Photo Festival 2021 and Grenze Photo Festival Verona 2022. Das Unheimliche: Das Unheimliche is a photographic project that explores the intersection between the human being and the artificial and invites us to reflect on the complex dynamics and emotional dilemmas that arise when confronted with the possibility that a man-made work can replace a living being. The photographs depict girls representing dolls, thus embodying the idea of the artificial figure hidden behind a human appearance. Each portrait captures the ambivalence of experience in front of these hybrid figures, who seem alive but lack genuine vitality. The expressions on the girls' faces convey a combination of fascination, unease and disquiet, inviting viewers to question the meaning and implications of this substitution. The idea that artificial creations can replace a person has ancient roots and can be traced across different cultures and historical periods. A significant example dates back to ancient Greece, where stories and myths have been documented involving statues or artifacts that come to life. Among these narratives, the myth of Pygmalion stands out, a famous sculptor who fell in love with his own creation: a statue of a woman. Through divine intervention, the statue came to life, highlighting the ability of artificial figures to enchant and involve human affections. Over the centuries, the idea of replacing an individual with an artificial figure has been explored in different forms of artistic expression such as in the film "Die Pupe" by Ernst Lubitsch or the short story "Sandman" by E.T.A. Hoffmann. In Lubitsch's film ,a shy young man decides to marry a mechanical doll to avoid a traditional marriage while in Hoffmann's story, a man becomes obsessed with a female automaton believing it to be alive.These works reflect on the tensions between desire, fear and the challenge of defining what is truly human. With the advent of modern technologies and artificial intelligence, the discussion around the possibility of replacing a human being has taken on a new meaning and relevance. Modern lifelike dolls and artificial intelligence interfaces, such as advanced chatbots, have become subjects of ethical and social debate. These creations raise profound questions about the nature of human relationships, affection and emotional connection, questioning our perceptions of what is authentic and genuine. Exploring the boundary between the human and the artificial has profound implications on a psychological level as well, as what approaches a living being but lacks vitality or completeness can elicit complex emotional reactions. Sigmund Freud's "Das Unheimliche" theory and Masahiro Mori's "Uncanny valley" hypothesis offer perceptive insight into these challenges and ambiguities. According to Freud's "Das Unheimliche" theory, the experience of what is familiar yet strange and disturbing can trigger a variety of psychological reactions, such as disgust or fear. When we are faced with artificial figures that resemble human appearance but without being alive, a feeling of unease can arise that challenges our understanding of what is considered authentic and genuine. Mori's "Uncanny Valley" hypothesis focuses on the concept of an emotional curve that describes our psychological responses based on the level of similarity of an artificial figure to human appearance. The project aims to capture the essence of these reflections, highlighting the contradictions and tensions that emerge. The girls portrayed represent a fascinating duality: on the one hand, they seem to reflect the dolls' ideal of perfection and control, with their delicate features and impeccable poses; on the other, they convey a feeling of foreboding and dissonance, which underlines the lack of authenticity and vitality. Each photograph is intended as an invocation of the need for a deeper connection with our own humanity and the complex emotional dynamics that emerge when we are faced with an artificial creature that seeks to emulate human affection and vitality. The project challenges us to investigate the meaning of humanity and our ability to deal with the complexities of affection, intimacy and replacement in an age characterized by rapid technological advances. It prompts us to explore our relationship to artifice and to deepen our understanding of ourselves. Stars: he focus of this project is to elevate women to a central place in the universe, symbolizing their importance, and to emphasize the need for equal treatment in social and occupational settings. The project features surreal images of women situated in an infinite cosmos surrounded by stars, emphasizing the timeless relevance of the message.The women depicted are captured without clothing to avoid association with any particular historical period, as passing time has no bearing in this context. The stars radiate upon their bodies, symbolizing the brilliance that women should exude in today's contemporary society. This project aims to celebrate those women who break the mold and call for questioning of stereotypes in a society often dominated by male culture. It highlights the strength and resilience of women who have defied non gender equal societal norms.Additionally, the project seeks to ignite discussions and raise awareness about gender inequality, addressing not only men but also women who may unknowingly undervalue their own worth, urging individuals to recognize and appreciate their own intrinsic value.
John Coplans
John Coplans
United Kingdom
1920 | † 2003
John Rivers Coplans was a British artist, art writer, curator, and museum director. His father was Joseph Moses Coplans, a medical doctor and a man of many scientific and artistic talents. His father left England for Johannesburg while John was an infant. At the age of two, John was brought to his father in South Africa; from 1924-1927 the family was in flux between London and South Africa, settling in a seaside Cape Town suburb until 1930. Despite the instability of his early home life, Coplans developed an enormous admiration for his father, who took him to galleries at weekends and instilled within him a love for exploration, experimentation, and a fascination with the world. In 1937, John Coplans returned to England from South Africa. When eighteen, he was commissioned into the Royal Air Force as an Acting Pilot Officer. Due to his hearing being affected by a rugby match, two years later, he volunteered for the army. His childhood experience living in Africa led to his appointment to the King’s African Rifles in East Africa. He was active as a platoon commander (primarily in Ethiopia) until 1943, after which his unit was deployed to Burma. In 1945 Coplans returned to civilian life and decided to become an artist. After being demobilised, Coplans settled in London, rooming at the Abbey Art Centre; he wanted to become an artist. The British government was giving grants to veterans of the war, and he received one such grant to study art. He tried both Goldsmiths and Chelsea College of the Arts, but found that art school did not suit him. He painted part-time for clients including Cecil Beaton, Basil Deardon whilst running his business John Rivers Limited which specialised in interior decorating. In the mid-1950s, Coplans began attending lectures by Lawrence Alloway at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. Here he was introduced to the budding Pop Art movement, which he would become deeply involved in as both critic and curator. His experience viewing exhibitions such as the Hard-Edged Painting exhibition (ICA, 1959) and New American Painting (The Tate, 1959) helped to solidify his growing passion for not just Pop Art, but American art as well. During this period he struggled as a young artist to find his artistic voice, and developed an abstract painting practice which reflected trends of tachism and Abstract Expressionism pioneered by Americans Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. Coplans would later refer to this early painting work as "derivative"; these paintings were shown in exhibitions at the Royal Society of British Artists (1950) and later at the New Vision Center. In 1960, Coplans sold all of his belongings and moved to the United States, initially settling in San Francisco and taking a position at UC Berkeley as a visiting assistant design professor. Here he met gallerist Phil Leider, the future editor of ArtForum. Leider connected Coplans to John Irwin, who wanted to start a magazine. Coplans convinced Irwin that the West Coast needed an art publication: one that gave voice to art that was important, but had not yet received critical attention. He further suggested that it should be published in square format so that both vertical and horizontal images would be viewed equally, thus giving birth to ArtForum's iconic shape—and to the successful foundation of ArtForum itself. Coplans was a regular writer for the magazine. His perspective on art writing was anti-elitist, using popular appeal and excitement over new work to “stimulate debate and awareness” especially for West Coast artists. Finding himself conflicted between his painting and writing careers, he chose the latter and devoted the next twenty years of his life to the magazine, as well as curatorial pursuits and a career as a museum director. It was not until 1981, at the age of 62, that he returned to his career as an artist.Source: Wikipedia John Coplans had a career in reverse. He was 60 by the time he established himself as a photographer, having already had a long and active life as a curator, editor, writer, artist and decorator. A pioneer of selfportraiture, he took large format black-and-white close-ups of his bare body that sent ripples of shock, recognition and frequent praise through the international art world. A major element in the fascination was an obsession with one of our few remaining taboos: the process of ageing and physical decrepitude. And with the anonymity of identity: in Coplans' words, "To remove all references to my current identity, I leave out my head." The blow-ups of sagging flesh, creased folds, odd protuberances and body hair of an old man become the documentary tale of the decline of Everyman. After a brief spell teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1962 Coplans co-founded Artforum magazine and, for the next two decades, his career was to be as artistically various as it was financially precarious. Artforum was intended to combat the anti-intellectualism Coplans felt he had encountered at Berkeley, and the notion that there was nothing to be said about art, since you either made it or looked at it. His whole background was in stimulating debate and awareness, at a popular rather than an elite level. Inevitably, as he later explained, "The thing was how to get the eastern establishment to read about west coast art". Within five years, the magazine was relocated to Manhattan, with Coplans acting as west coast editor. As a museum curator, he enjoyed similarly shifting fortunes. His first project was a pop art exhibition at the Oakland art museum, and, in 1963, he became director of the university gallery at Irvine, organising an important show by Frank Stella. From 1967 to 1971, he transferred to the Pasadena art museum. Alongside established artists like Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol and Donald Judd, he gave Robert Irwin, Richard Serra and James Turrell their first shows. In 1971, Coplans moved to New York to became editor of Artforum, and, in 1975, published his own version of events leading to the bankruptcy and takeover of the Pasadena art museum, “Diary Of A Disaster.” During his seven years at the helm, Artforum increasingly jettisoned the militant formalism with which it had been identified, and became a platform for the catholicity of Coplans' artistic tastes, including19th-century photography and contemporary European abstract art. In 1978, the publisher gave Coplans the choice of buying the magazine or quitting. Not being in a position to do the former, he became director of the Akron art museum in Ohio, where, again, he combined curatorial work with launching a new magazine, appropriately named Dialogue. He also published books on photographers, ranging from Weegee to Brancusi, and started his own photographic experiments. By 1980, Coplans was back in New York, and the following year had his first solo show at the Daniel Wolf Gallery. At last, he had found not only the medium but also the subject of his artistic expression. He called his works auto-portraits, and, created by means of a live-feedback video camera with an automatic shutter, they honed in on the physical landscapes of the body with all the sculptural focus - but without the distortions of the lens - of Bill Brandt's Perspective Of Nudes (1961). This was to become Coplans' constant subject matter. In 1986, he had his first show of self-portraits at the Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York. Sandra Phillips, the long-time photography curator at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, immediately saw the importance of the work. His first major museum exhibition followed at SF MoMA in 1988, and the exhibition traveled on to the Museum of Modern Art in New York that same year. The work was rapidly acquired and shown by the The J. Paul Getty Museum, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Whitney Museum of Art; in 1997 (the same year he remarried), a major retrospective was staged MoMA PS1 Contemporary Art Centre in Queens. He published books of the work, principally the anonymous-sounding A Body, Body Parts and A Self-Portrait, and finally Provocations, which includes his photo-essays and criticism. Coplans has a daughter, Barbara, and a son, Joseph; he has two granddaughters. He was married four times. His fourth wife, photographer Amanda Means, is the Trustee for the John Coplans Trust in Beacon, New York. John Coplans was born June 20, 1920 in London and died on August 21, 2003 in New York.Source: The John Coplans Trust
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