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FINAL CALL TO ENTER AAP MAGAZINE WOMEN: GET PUBLISHED AND WIN $1,000
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Antoine D'Agata
INDIA. Madras. 1988
Antoine D'Agata
Antoine D'Agata

Antoine D'Agata

Country: France
Birth: 1961

Born in Marseilles, Antoine d'Agata left France in 1983 and remained overseas for the next ten years. Finding himself in New York in 1990, he pursued an interest in photography by taking courses at the International Center of Photography, where his teachers included Larry Clark and Nan Goldin.

During his time in New York , in 1991-92, D'Agata worked as an intern in the editorial department of Magnum, but despite his experiences and training in the US, after his return to France in 1993 he took a four-year break from photography. His first books of photographs, De Mala Muerte and Mala Noche, were published in 1998, and the following year Galerie Vu began distributing his work. In 2001 he published Hometown, and won the Niépce Prize for young photographers. He continued to publish regularly: Vortex and Insomnia appeared in 2003, accompanying his exhibition 1001 Nuits, which opened in Paris in September; Stigma was published in 2004, and Manifeste in 2005.

In 2004 D'Agata joined Magnum Photos and in the same year, shot his first short film, Le Ventre du Monde (The World's Belly); this experiment led to his long feature film Aka Ana, shot in 2006 in Tokyo.

Since 2005 Antoine d'Agata has had no settled place of residence but has worked around the world.

Source: Magnum Photos

 

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More Great Photographers To Discover

Jeff Schewe
United States
Jeff Schewe is a renowned, award-winning photographer based in Chicago, Illinois, with nearly 50 years of experience in commercial and fine art photography. Originally trained as a painter, Schewe transitioned to photography, bringing a painterly sensibility to his images and making significant contributions to digital imaging and fine art printing. A pioneer in the use and development of Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom, Schewe has influenced the field through both technical innovation and artistic vision, serving as a longtime alpha and beta tester and earning multiple credits in Photoshop. He has been recognized as an Epson Stylus Pro, an Apple Master of the Medium, and was inducted into the Photoshop Hall of Fame in 2006. Schewe is the author of two seminal books, The Digital Negative and The Digital Print (Peachpit Press). Though retired from commercial work, he continues to share his expertise through writing, workshops, and exhibitions, with recent acclaim for his Black and White in Antarctica series, featured in Communication Arts Photography Annual, Rfotofolio Selections, and as a Critical Mass finalist. Schewe holds degrees from Rochester Institute of Technology, including a B.S. with Highest Honors in Professional Photography. Statement I am a photographer with a painter’s eye, creating images that transform fleeting moments into lasting visual experiences. My work is about revealing the extraordinary in the ordinary, capturing overlooked details and quiet gestures that often go unnoticed. Through careful attention to light, and composition, I strive to see the unseen—moments made visible—and invite viewers to pause, reflect, and connect with the world around them. Whether in familiar spaces or distant places, my practice balances authenticity and artistic vision, translating real-life encounters into photographs that illuminate the hidden beauty within everyday life. AAP Magazine 50 Shapes
Sebastian Sardi
Sweden
1983
Sebastian Sardi was born in 1983 in Stockholm, Sweden. At the age of 22 he started taking classes in analog photography at the Peoples University in Stockholm. In 2009 he moved to Denmark to study photography at Fatamorgana the Danish school of art and photography. In 2011 he received a Bachelor’s degree in Art History and Visual Studies. He published his first photobook “A Cirkusz” in 2012. Sebastian began his work on photographing mines in 2008 after reading an article on how mining related injuries and deaths are systematically covered up by many authorities. 2019 his second book “Black Diamond” was published on Kehrer Verlag. Today Sebastian Sardi lives and works in Malmö and Copenhagen. Black Diamond It is an apocalyptic landscape. There are huge man-made craters everywhere that make up the visible landscape, the ground is burning, and a vast area is oozing with toxic gases, fire and smoke. Amongst all of this, there are men, woman and children digging in the soil with their bare hands. Coal is mined everywhere in Jharkhand, India, and large parts of it is sorted by hand. The locals call it; Kalaheera; or ”Black Diamond”.
Energy produced by the burning of coal is the single biggest contributor to the man-generated carbon dioxide emissions on this planet. Coal is a major part in the issue of global warming. In Jharkhand many people have been forced away from their lands when companies and authorities recognised the richness that hides in the ground. Underground fires force people to relocate. The mining companies claim they are unable to put out the fires, while the locals blame the companies for letting the fires burn so the coal can be reached and excavated from underneath their villages.

 There is a fragile balance between nature and mankind. A sense of discomfort is felt in the slow but seemingly unavoidable struggle towards the collapse of nature. The human inability to break patterns is painstakingly visible in these photographs, as we knowingly keep on extracting the ground beneath our own feet. Black Diamond is a close (self-)portrait of the people who work with extracting coal from the ground to supply the ever growing demands.


Mark Cohen
United States
1943
Mark Cohen (born August 24, 1943) is an American photographer best known for his innovative close-up street photography. Cohen was born and lived in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania until 2013. He attended Penn State University and Wilkes College between 1961 and 1965, and opened a commercial photo studio in 1966. The majority of the photography for which Mark Cohen is known is shot in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre metropolitan area (also known as the Wyoming Valley), a historic industrialized region of northeastern Pennsylvania. Characteristically Cohen photographs people close-up, using a wide-angle lens and a flash, mostly in black and white, frequently cropping their heads from the frame, concentrating on small details. He has used 21 mm, 28 mm, and 35 mm focal length, wide-angle, lenses and later on 50 mm. Cohen has described his method as "intrusive." Discussing his influences with Thomas Southall in 2004 he cites "... so many photographers who followed Cartier-Bresson, like Frank, Koudelka, Winogrand, Friedlander." He also recognizes the influence of Diane Arbus. Whilst acknowledging these influences he says: "I knew about art photography... Then I did these outside the context of any other photographer." Cohen's major books of photography are Grim Street (2005), True Color (2007), and Mexico (2016). His work was first exhibited in a group exhibition at George Eastman House in 1969 and he had his first solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1973. He was awarded Guggenheim Fellowships in 1971 and 1976 and received a National Endowment for the Arts grant in 1975. In 2013 Cohen moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.Source: Wikipedia Mark Cohen was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania where he lived and photographed for most of his life. (He now lives in Philadelphia.) His work was first exhibited in 1969 at the George Eastman House but came to prominence with his first solo exhibition at MoMA in 1973. Known primarily for his black and white images, Cohen was also a pioneer of the 1970s color movement that changed American photography. Shooting in the gritty environs of working class Pennsylvania, Cohen brought to street photography a literal and innovative closeness that came from his style of holding the camera at arm's length without looking through the viewfinder while using an unusually wide-angle lens. Intrusive but elegant, by turns brutal and sensuous, Cohen’s cropped bodies and faces and gritty still lives and landscapes reveal a finely tuned aesthetic and consistency. No background behind the looming foreground figures is without interest. No random object is observed without purpose. "They're not easy pictures. But I guess that's why they're mine." Says Cohen. Cohen is the recipient of two Guggenheim Grants and his work is in the collections of major museums from the U.S. to Japan. His most recent retrospective in 2013 at Le Bal in Paris and the accompanying publication Dark Knees were singled out by critics around the world as outstanding achievements in photography. Source: Danziger Gallery In many of the images, the points of attraction are clear: a giant football eclipsing the skinny torso of a young boy; the shining eyes of a black cat; a woman_’_s bare midriff beneath a pair of high-waisted cutoff shorts. We can imagine glancing or even staring at these subjects ourselves, taking in their rough-hewn idiosyncrasies. But it is in the moment that follows, when most of us would avert our eyes and move on, that the American street photographer Mark Cohen makes his work, moving forward, toward children, young women, dirty and shirtless strangers, until his wide-angle lens is close enough to bump bellies. In the nineteen-seventies, shooting in and around his native Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, a small industrial city far outside the urban centers where street photography was born, Cohen pioneered an aggressive, if not invasive, approach to his craft, shortening the distance between photographer and subject until heads were lost to the frame’s edge and only collar bones and clipped limbs remained. “I have been pushed and shoved and screamed at, but nothing serious,” he has said. “I am always aware of the edge.”Source: The New Yorker “Cohen’s black-and-white photos… are deliberately disconcerting, almost vulgar… Heads are cropped out of the frame; truncated hands, legs and arms loom monstrously into view; perspective warps. Cohen wasn’t alone in his harsh, comic view of down-home America, but his in-your-face take and fragmentary results were jarringly unique, and much imitated.” -- Vince AlettiSource: The Village Voice
Erik Johansson
Sweden
1985
Erik Johansson (born 1985) is a photographer and visual artist from Sweden based in Prague, Czech Republic. His work can be described as surreal world created by combining different photographs. Erik works on both personal and commissioned projects with clients all around the world. In contrast to traditional photography he doesn't capture moments, he captures ideas with the help of his camera and imagination. The goal is to make it look as realistic as possible even if the scene itself contains impossible elements. In the end it all comes down to problem solving, finding a way to capture the impossible. To Erik it's always important with a high level of realism in his work. He want's the viewer to feel like they are part of the scene. Although his work consists of a lot of work in post-production and combining photogaphs he always tries to capture as much as possible in camera. "No one can tell you that it doesn’t look realistic if you actually captured it for real." Light and perspective are crucial parts when combining images in a realistic way and if some parts are not possible to shoot on location, a similar scene has to be built up in a controlled environment. Having an understanding of both photography and post production is very important to make everything come together seamlessly. Every photograph and part has its purpose. Erik always do all the post production himself to be in complete control of the end result. The idea, photography and post production are all connected. The final image doesn’t become better than the photographs used to capture it. Just like the photographs don’t become stronger than the idea. There are no computer generated-, illustrated- or stock photos in Erik's personal work, just complex combinations of his own photographs. It's a long process and he only creates 6-8 new images a year (excluding commissioned work). Artist Statement "My name is Erik Johansson, I was born in 1985 outside a small town called Götene in the middle of Sweden. I grew up on a farm with my parents and two younger sisters. For as long as I can remember I have liked drawing. Probably because of my grandmother who was a painter. Early I also got interested in computers, escaping to other worlds in computer games. At the age of 15 I got my first digital camera which opened up a new world. Being used to drawing it felt quite strange to be done after capturing a photo, it wasn’t the process of creating something in the same way. Having an interest in computers made it a quite natural step to start playing around with the photos and creating something that you couldn’t capture with the camera. It was a great way of learning, learning by trying. But I didn’t considered it as a profession until years later. In 2005 I moved to Gothenburg to study Computer engineering at Chalmers University of Technology. During my time studying I took up my interest for retouch once again. I had a lot of ideas that I wanted to realize and I saw it as problem solving trying to make it as realistic as possible. After publishing some of my images online I started to get requests about commissioned work from some local advertisement agencies. I started out freelancing in parallel with my studies while still working on personal projects. I got more and more jobs and at the time I finished my studies with a master in Interaction Design I felt like I rather wanted to try out the photography path. I moved to Norrköping in the eastern part of Sweden to start working full time as a freelance. I made new friends and got to work on interesting projects, both local and abroad. In early 2012 it was time for something new as I moved to Berlin, Germany. A very artistic city with lots of inspiration. Today I work with both personal and commissioned projects and I also started doing photography street illusions."Source: www.erikjo.com/
Gabrielle Duplantier
Gabrielle Duplantier studied painting and art history at the university of Bordeaux in France. Photography was a hobby on the side. After her university studies, she decided to dedicate herself to photography and she went to Paris where she worked as an assistant for several photographers. In 2002, she felt the need to come back home. Inspired by the rich and enigmatic Basque country, she started a series of photographs where landscapes, animals or humans are revealed as impressionist visions, this body of work contains some of her best images. She pursues her work on portraits of women, one of her favorite subjects, and on Portugal where she travels regularly. Gabrielle’s photographic world seems voluntarily detached from all temporal or social reality. So her subjects or not really thematic, she is seeking beautiful images that exist outside of any context, on their own. She has already published 3 books, works with press, edition, she collabore with musicians, writers. Her work is also regularly exhibited. In 2012, Gabrielle Duplantier appears in MONO, edited by Gomma books, monography of the best contemporary black and white photographers along with artists such as Michael Ackerman, Trent Parke, Anders Petersen, or Roger Ballen... FNAC's Collection and privates Collections. Finalist Grand Concours Agfa 2003. Coup de Cœur Bourse du Talent Portrait, Photographie.com 2005. Finalist Parole photographique, Actuphoto 2008. Published in Photos Nouvelles, Shots Magazine, Gente di fotografia, Le Festin, Pays basque magazine, Geokompakt, Philosophy magazine... Discover Gabrielle Duplantier's Interview
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