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Pierre Baëlen
Pierre Baëlen
Pierre Baëlen

Pierre Baëlen

Country: France
Birth: 1981

Pierre Baëlen was born in 1981 in South of France. His interest in photography began when his best friend promised him to have good fun in jumping in devastated buldings during photography courses when he was 14 years old. Surprising by the discover of the The 6x6 camera, his first love quickly became the darkroom where he began experimenting with printing and developing in the family's bathroom.He attended Orthez's photography School for Performing & Visual Arts and, from there, went on to attend photography report and experimental in illustration work. He moved to Paris in 2001. In October 2001, he began shooting small assignments as freelance photographer. Next winter he met a car advertising photographer, with wich one he spent about 8 years working and traveling all arround the world as first freelance assistant. During the evolution from large format and digital shooting experimentation in assignement works as first assistant gave him the priceless experience in comptempory photography. Summer 2011, he became a full time photographer. The main theme of his work revolves arround imaginary landscapes, a journey between onirism and comtempory reality.

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More Great Photographers To Discover

Jim Goldberg
United States
1953
Jim Goldberg (born 1953) is an American artist and photographer, whose work reflects long-term, in-depth collaborations with neglected, ignored, or otherwise outside-the-mainstream populations. Among the many awards Goldberg has received are three National Endowment of the Arts Fellowships in Photography, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Henri Cartier-Bresson Award, and the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize. His works have been exhibited, published, and collected internationally. Goldberg is Professor Emeritus at the California College of the Arts, and has been a member of the Magnum Photos agency since 2002. He currently lives and works in the greater Bay Area. Goldberg is best known for his photography books, multi-media exhibitions, and video installations, among them: Rich and Poor (1985), Nursing Home, Raised by Wolves (1995), Hospice, and Open See (2009). His work often examines the lives of neglected, ignored, or otherwise outside-the-mainstream populations through long-term, in depth collaborations that investigate the nature of American myths about class, power, and happiness. Goldberg is part of an experimental documentary movement in photography, using a straightforward, cinéma vérité approach, based on a fundamentally narrative understanding of photography. The individuality of the subjects emerges in his works, "forming a context within which the viewer may integrate the unthinkable into the concept of self. Thus portrayed, this terrifying other is restored as a universal." Goldberg's work was featured with that of Robert Adams and Joel Sternfeld in a 1984 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art entitled "Three Americans"; the exhibition was described as "a show of politically charged and socially conscious images." His 1985 book Rich and Poor, re-released by Steidl in an expanded edition in 2014, includes photographs of people in their homes along with handwritten comments by them about their lives. For example, the handwriting under the photograph reproduced on the front cover reads "I keep thinking where we went wrong. We have no one to talk to now, however, I will not allow this loneliness to destroy me,— I STILL HAVE MY DREAMS. I would like an elegant home, a loving husband and the wealth I am used to. Countess Vivianna de Bronville." Although the book received one mixed review shortly after publication, other reviews were positive, and it was later selected as one of the greatest photobooks of the 20th century. The photographs in a 1986 exhibition of Goldberg's The Nursing Home Series were accompanied by handwritten text by the nursing home residents who were the subjects of the photographs. A review of a 1990 exhibition Shooting Back: Photography by and About the Homeless at the Washington Project for the Arts characterized the exhibition as "Issue Art" and characterized Goldberg as "a superior Issue Artist because he's a superior artist." A major mixed-media exhibition by Goldberg concerning at risk and homeless youth in California entitled Raised by Wolves began traveling in 1995 and was accompanied by a book of the same title. A review of the exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art noted that Goldberg made reference to other artists and photographers; used photographs, videos, objects, and texts to convey meaning; and "let his viewers feel, in some corner of their psyches, the lure of abject lowliness, the siren call of pain." Although the accompanying book received one mixed review shortly after publication, it was described as "a heartbreaking novel with pictures", and in The Photobook: A History, Martin Parr and Gerry Badger praised it as "complex and thoughtful." A 1999 mixed media installation at the San Francisco Arts Commission gallery entitled "57/78/97" explored race relations in the United States, including the Little Rock Crisis of 1957, the 1978 Regents of the University of California v. Bakke decision, and the year following the passage of California Proposition 209 (1996) concerning affirmative action. Selected photographs from a series by Goldberg called "Open See," concerning refugees, immigrants, and trafficked people, were first exhibited in San Francisco in 2007. One review stated that the photographs may leave the viewer "paralyzed by uncertainty about what might alleviate the injustices" depicted. Part of the series came to be known as "Open See", and Goldberg's book of that title was published in 2009 by Steidl. In 2013 Goldberg was an artist in residence at Yale University Art Gallery with Donovan Wylie. They each created a body of work based in New Haven. In Candy, Jim Goldberg, a New Haven native, creates a multilayered photo-novel of aspiration and disillusionment, interspersing Super 8 film stills, images of New Haven’s urban landscape, annotated Polaroid portraits, and collaged archival materials to explicate the rise and fall of American cities in the 20th century. Goldberg considers New Haven’s quest to become a “model city” of America, contrasting its civic aspirations with its citizens’ lived realities.Source: Wikipedia Jim Goldberg’s innovative use of image and text make him a landmark photographer of our times. He has been working with experimental storytelling for over forty years, and his major projects and books include Rich and Poor (1977-85), Raised by Wolves (1985-95), Nursing Home (1986), Coming and Going (1996-present), Open See (2003-2009), The Last Son (2016), Ruby Every Fall (2016), Candy (2013-2017), Darrell & Patricia (2018), and Gene (2018). His work is in numerous private and public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Getty, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He is the recipient of numerous awards including three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship (1985), the Henri Cartier-Bresson Award (2007), and the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize (2011). Goldberg is Professor Emeritus at the California College of the Arts and is a member of Magnum Photos.Source: Magnum Photos An heir to such social documentarians as Walker Evans and Robert Frank, Goldberg is inspired and informed by his ongoing interest in people and their positions in society as a function of broader cultural policies and practices. His work is the aesthetic embodiment of Frank’s opinion that “the truth is somewhere between the documentary and the fictional.”Source: Pace/MacGill Gallery
JB Russell
France/United States
1961
Born in Long Beach, California in 1961, J.B. Russell is a Paris-based documentary photographer, filmmaker and educator. After receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in Geology and Geography and working for two years as a geologist, J.B. decided to take a year or two off to pursue a passion for photography and to satisfy a genetic predisposition for wanderlust. Once on the road however, he never looked back. He has worked extensively throughout Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America focusing on current events, the human consequences of conflict, human rights, the environment and development issues. His work appears regularly in major print and on-line publications worldwide, including: Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, French GEO, Paris Match, Le Monde, Stern, Der Spiegel, Corriere della Sera magazine, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, El Mondo magazine and many more. J.B. collaborates frequently with international humanitarian organizations such as Doctors Without Borders, Save The Children, Mines Advisory Group, The Global Fund and others to produce images, video and written material on critical humanitarian issues for their communication needs. His work has received numerous accolades, including the Public Prize at the Bayeux War Correspondents Competition, 1st place in the News Picture Story category of the POYi competition, his images have been selected on multiple occasions for the American Photography anthology, he received the Saint Brieuc Photoreporter Grant and his work has been exhibited and frequently featured at Visa Pour L'Image in Perpignan, France, among many other festivals and venues. J.B.'s career has spanned the transition from analogue to digital photography and the profound changes that the Internet and Social Media have had on journalism and the press. He believes that honest, engaged journalism remains crucial to public information in today's media landscape. J.B produces independent documentary photography and video projects, embracing diverse story-telling forms and platforms. He is a dedicated teacher of photography, teaching and speaking regularly in diverse university programs, workshops and photography courses. J.B. Russell is member of the Panos Pictures Agency and a core member of the Instagram collective #EverydayClimateChange.
Isabeau De Rouffignac
I followed an artistic career path with a drawing baccalaureate, 2 years of preparatory classes at the Met de Penninghen studio, then I entered the graphic art school. This was followed by a long experience in design agencies (Design Strategy Orchestra), communication agencies (CPP) and manufacturing agencies (Vision Prod) as an employee and then as a freelancer since 1999. It is this status that will allow me to devote myself to photography, which I discovered in the 2000s. It was a revelation, and soon became obvious. Since then, I have been photographing worlds far and near, between a documentary approach and a resolutely artistic approach. A line of conduct, like a thread that runs through my work and gives it coherence: approaching the other, taming them, taking the time, learning their language, being forgotten, with a gaze that is always curious and fundamentally empathetic. Four photographic editions were born from this work. Since 2017, I devote all my time to photography. And although I have an initial training that integrates the work of the image and a long-standing photographic practice, I felt the need to go further, to question my writing, and I have therefore attended several workshops and training courses. (Arles, Cifap, Gobelins) In 2018, I became a member of Studio Hans Lucas Today, the more I advance in my artistic practice, the more I approach my projects from a documentary point of view, but with an aesthetic or even plastic approach from the start. By mixing these different ways of working on my subject, I leave the imposed categories (documentary, plastic photography, etc.) to invent my own language that allows me to convey a message (environmental, social, humanitarian, political, etc.). This is the case in my latest work in India, pleas. In Bhopal, they point out the consequences of the worst chemical disaster the world has ever known, and in Rajsamand, they tell of the difficult working conditions of the miners. Statement An intuition, a call following the reading of an article or a book, moves me from my daily life in the metropolis and I set off to meet the other. The country is always far away, the situation speaks of a reprieve. Through photography I seek an encounter with the other, the other in what is different about him, his way of life, his language, which I try as much as possible to learn in order to be in touch with him. I am looking for an encounter with a place that also has its own language that often says the impalpable, what does not always appear at first sight, a place to be deciphered. In these encounters, I also seek an encounter with myself, because the other person questions me, challenges me, shakes up my preconceptions, pushes me to question myself. In my last work on the miners of Rajasthan, I sought to pay tribute to men in pain, working in sandstone or marble quarries, working without safety clothing, for a ridiculous salary, without a work contract, and more than half of whom suffer from silicosis because they work without masks. In most of my other photographic works, I try to bear witness but also to show a cultural heritage that is on the verge of disappearing, and to talk about those who keep it alive and often fight against a progressive assimilation. Of course, the time needed for these encounters, for this acceptance by the communities in which I immerse myself, implies taking time. A lot of time. It is the only way to establish the links that open doors, give access to knowledge, beliefs, and sometimes even confidences. Learning the Hindi language has helped me to better understand the personal stories of all the men and women I have photographed, to understand the distress that lies behind their dignity. I try to document the issues through personal stories that are each unique and singular. This is what I have done here with the miners of Rajasthan, or previously with the women of Bhopal, the postmen of Rajasthan, or the Akhas of Thailand. I offer you my view, nourished by what my encounters have revealed to me, my way of documenting it, as close as possible or with distance when necessary. A view that I hope will open up the possibility of better understanding, or at least of trying. That's already a lot.
Mike Brodie
United States
1985
Claiming inspiration from “old-school American values mixed with a little punk-rock idealism,” Mike Brodie, aka The Polaroid Kidd, hopped trains across the U.S. for seven years, documenting his friends, lovers, and travels with a Polaroid and a 35-millimeter camera and amassing a critically acclaimed body of images. Like a 21st-century Jack Kerouac, replacing pen with pictures, Brodie rode the railways with a motley crew. In 2004, two years into his journeying, he acquired a camera and began photographing this gritty youth subculture. His intimate portraits, saturated with color and often set against moving backgrounds, capture the reality of this life in raw detail—its dirt-encrusted bodies, sickness and exhilaration, dangers and comforts. After traveling more than 50,000 miles through 46 states, Brodie has since become an itinerant mechanic. He says he has abandoned photography—at least for now. Source: Artsy Mike Brodie, best known by his pseudonym "Polaroid Kidd", is a self-trained American photographer from Pensacola, Florida. In 2003 Brodie left home at 18 to travel the rails across America. A friend gave him a camera and he found himself spending three years photographing the friends and companions he encountered with the Polaroid SX-70. Polaroid discontinued SX-70 film, so now he shoots on 35mm on a Nikon F3. His photographs have been featured in exhibits in Milwaukee, at Get This! Gallery in Atlanta and in Los Angeles at M+B Gallery. His work was also selected to appear in the 2006 edition of the Paris International Photo Fair at the Louvre. In November 2007 he collaborated with Swoon and Chris Stain to mount an installation at Gallery LJ Beaubourg in Paris. He also has had collaborative shows with artist Monica Canilao. His photographs largely depict what he refers to as "travel culture", train-hoppers, vagabonds, squatters and hobos. Critic Vince Aletti of artsandantiques.net says of Brodie's work: "Even if you're not intrigued by Brodie’s ragtag bohemian cohort—a band of outsiders with an unerring sense of post-punk style—the intimate size and warm, slightly faded color of his prints are seductive. His portraits... have a tender incisiveness that is rare at any age." Source: Wikipedia Born in 1985, Mike Brodie began photographing when he was given a Polaroid camera in 2004. Working under the moniker 'The Polaroid Kidd,' Brodie spent the next four years circumambulating the United States, amassing an archive of photographs that make up one of the few, true collections of American travel photography. Brodie made work in the tradition of photographers like Robert Frank, William Eggleston and Stephen Shore, but due to never having undergone any formal training he always remained untethered to the pressures and expectations of art market. Brodie compulsively documented his exploration of the tumultuous world of transient subcultures without regard to how the photographs would exist beyond him. After feeling as though he documented all that he could of his subject, his insatiable wanderlust found a new passion, and as quickly as he began making photographs, he has left the medium to continue in his constant pursuit of new adventures. In 2008, Brodie received the Baum Award for American Emerging Artists and has a forthcoming book to be published by Steidl, as well as numerous international shows. Brodie recently graduated from the Nashville Auto Diesel College (NADC) and is now working as a diesel mechanic. Although Brodie has stopped making photographs, the body of work he made in only four short years has left a huge impact on the photo world, and is now being made available to the public. Source: M+B
Sean Du
United States
1987
Sean Du is a landscape photographer whose work aims to reconnect us with nature. Born and raised in Taiwan, he developed a fondness for nature at an early age thanks to his family upbringing. He later relocated to the United States and earned a BFA in photography at ArtCenter College of Design. Sean combines his artistic practice and a passion for the wilderness to create many award-winning imageries. His works have been exhibited across the United States, in Canada, and overseas. Statement: Above the Treeline is an ongoing study that seeks to capture, by way of hiking and climbing, seldom-seen views of North America's mountain wildernesses. Where trees give way to tundra, snow, ice and rock, the power of the Earth-shaping forces becomes evident – as seen in the tilt and fold of the rocks and the remnants of valley-carving glaciers. The physical contact with million-year-old rocks puts the briefness of humans' existence into perspective, but at the same time, establishes an intimate connection between the climber and the Earth. From here, it becomes apparent why the mountains are often referred to as the “beginning places” when one sees trickles of water gaining volume downstream to support complex ecosystems below. What the mountains have returned to me is a renewed capacity for wonder, but more importantly, I hope my passion for the mountains will inspire a greater sense of connection to the land, for it is key to the protection of the places and things we depend on. AAP Magazine AAP Magazine 54 Nature
Richard Dweck
United States
Photography has been Richard Dweck's vehicle for expressing what he sees and feels when he moves through the world. He has been through some extraordinarily difficult experiences in life but has been able to use them to see and feel the world more acutely. For him there is no greater pleasure than having someone who is looking at his photograph understand the feelings that he felt when he took that photograph. He also enjoys hearing them express very different feelings and show him things in his own photographs that he might never have seen or felt. The Old City of Jerusalem Last year, for the first time, I photographed at the Western Wall and other sites in the Old City of Jerusalem. The impetus for my travel to this area to photograph was the interplay between my Arabian and Jewish roots combined with my own deep self-reflection following a tragic family loss. When I found that so many people were dressed in black and white it only seemed natural that my photographs should be B&W as well. I shot my pictures from the same level as my subjects (or even from below when that was possible) giving me the sense that I could look into them more deeply and imagine their thoughts. The Gaze shows both the deep reflection of the elder along with the reverence of the child. The child's focus and that of my camera are on the elder. The backdrop is the historic 2000+-year old wall. My landscape and architectural photographs tend to the more abstract, while my portraits are more representational. Nonetheless, geometry and textures still play a big part in portraits. The main focus for me is the emotions that I can capture that can resonate deeply within me and very hopefully with the viewers of my work. I definitely look forward to returning for another emotional and introspective journey there one day.
Sam Heydt
United States
1986
Sam Heydt (born April 20, 1986) is an American social practice and recycled media artist born/raised in New York City. She has lived/worked in Paris, Venice, Amsterdam, Athens, Buenos Aires, Sydney, Reykjavík, Udaipur and Vienna [current]. As a published author, producer and lifelong social activist and environmentalist, Heydt has undertaken a range of altruistic, non­-profit work and anchors her practice in advocacy. Through her unique manner of expression, she illustrates a world exploited beyond use and increasingly reduced to a bottom line. Esteemed as one of the pioneers of the recycled media movement, she works across different media- film, video, installation, photography, sculpture, sound and text and employs a range of materials, often reinventing and trespassing their associative use. Marrying images of destruction with portrayals of the American Dream, her work confronts the disillusionment of our time with the ecological and existential nightmare it is responsible for. Heydt's work has been shown in galleries, museums, art fairs and film festivals worldwide. Statement The edge is closer than we think, but illusion won't free us from reality, even as the sustained narrative of tabloids becomes history and the myth of progress continues to perpetuate inequality. As the natural world is liquidated and substituted with an artificial one, public discourse is being defined by even narrower bandwidths Our time is marked by mass extinction, product fetishism, diminishing resources, and patented seeds. The skeletons of old factories serve as caveats for a world exploited beyond use, a world increasingly reduced to a bottom line. Dissidence is drowned out by the white noise of the media, which holds the social psyche captive in with the empty promises it proposes for the future it truncates. Working across different media- film, video, installation, photography, sculpture, sound and text, Heydt presents an abstract proposition for a world on the periphery of history, one that not only appears haunted by the ghosts of the past, but built on it. Conflating time and place, her layered imagery collides, merges and disrupts logical relationships between occurrences. Through adding and subtracting meaning by combining images of destruction with portrayals of the virtues born from the American Dream, Heydt confronts the disillusionment of our time with the ecological and existential nightmare it is responsible for.
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