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Win a Solo Exhibition in June 2026 + An Exclusive Interview!
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Souichi Furusho
Souichi Furusho
Souichi Furusho

Souichi Furusho

Country: Japan
Birth: 1977

I live in Kumamoto-Japan, and work as a graphic designer in the field of advertising media. I discovered iPhoneography on Facebook and Flickr a couple of years ago, about the same time I bought my iPhone. That was followed by a variety of delightful encounters with people online. I have since participated in exhibitions in "Spain, The Netherlands, and California" along with iPhonegraphers from various countries. Although I had no prior experience whatsoever as a photographer, I was familiar with working with photographs as part of my career in graphics. My style is what I call "freedom & simple", and I approach it from many different angles. This style is the result of pursuing my own vision, which is represented by my works. iPhoneography has provided interesting opportunities for my new form of representation.

The umbrella has become a symbol essential to my work. For me, the umbrella embodies the thoughts and dreams of people. This is a series of images using the umbrella as “a vehicle which carries a dream.

Websites

www.flickr.com

@sfurusho

 

Inspiring Portfolios

Marjolein Martinot
© Marjolein Martinot
Jackson Patterson
© Jackson Patterson
Nanda Hagenaars
© Nanda Hagenaars
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More Great Photographers To Discover

Rinko Kawauchi
Rinko Kawauchi
Japan
1972
Rinko Kawauchi is a Japanese photographer. Her work is characterized by a serene, poetic style, depicting the ordinary moments in life. Since she began her photographic career, Kawauchi's photographs contained a unique aesthetic and mood, capturing intimate, poetic, and beautiful moments of the world around her. They often have brilliant and radiant light that gives them a dream-like quality. The sublimity of her photographs is further enhanced by her use of soft colors as well as her awareness of the beauty in even the most average moments. There is not one specific theme or concept that Kawauchi chooses to explore with her image creation; rather, she does it spontaneously, observing and reacting to everything that is around her before doing any sort of editing. She focuses on just shooting, and photographing everything that attracts her eyes before looking back and thinking about why she was interested in those subjects. Another subject that she explored in her book, Ametsuchi, was the practice of religious ceremonies and rituals that hinted at an earthly cycle involving the concepts of time and impermanence. In the book, she depicts Japan's Mount Aso, a sacred site for a Shinto ritual called yakihata, and its volcanic landscape. The ritual is a long-standing tradition dating back about 1,300 years in which farmland is burned yearly to maintain its sustainability for new crops as opposed to using chemicals, and the communities at Aso are among the few that continue this tradition. Ironically, witnessing essentially the rebirth of farmland take place, Kawauchi claims that she burned away her old self and was reborn herself. In her book Halo, she continues to explore that theme with different rituals at other locations. She traveled to Izumo, Japan to witness a ritual that involves the lighting of sacred flames to welcome the gods. She also went to the Hebei province of China to see new year celebrations, including a 500-year-old tradition of throwing molten iron at the city walls to make their own fireworks. Kawauchi became interested in photography while studying graphic design and photography at Seian University of Art and Design where she graduated in 1993. She first worked in commercial photography for an advertising agency for several years before embarking on a career as a fine art photographer. She has mentioned that she continues to work the advertising job. Her background and experience with design have influenced the edits and arrangements of photos in her series. Kawauchi often thinks about new ways to see her photographs, allowing her to continue to find new meaning and significance in her work. There is little known about her personal life and family, but through her photo book Cui Cui she portrays the memories of her family, which she has said to have been shooting for over a decade. The photos in the said book capture all the ordinaries and emotions of life, ranging from the happiness of childbirth to the heartbreak of death. At age 19, she began making prints of her first black-and-white photographs, and it wasn't until five years later that she started printing color photographs. After experimenting with different cameras, she decided to stay with the Rolleiflex, which she still uses. In 2001, three of her photo books were published: Hanako (a Japanese girl's name), Utatane ("catnap"), and Hanabi ("fireworks"). In the following years she won prizes for two of the books in Japan. In 2004 Kawauchi published Aila; in 2010, Murmuration, and in 2011 Illuminance. Kawauchi's art is rooted in Shinto, the ethnic religion of the people of Japan. According to Shinto, all things on earth have a spirit, hence no subject is too small or mundane for Kawauchi's work; she also photographs "small events glimpsed in passing," conveying a sense of the transient. Kawauchi sees her images as parts of series that allow the viewer to juxtapose images in the imagination, thereby making the photograph a work of art and allowing a whole to emerge at the end; she likes working in photo books because they allow the viewer to engage intimately with her images. Her photographs are mostly in 6×6 format. However, upon being invited to the Brighton Photo Biennial in 2010, Kawauchi first photographed digitally and began taking photos that were not square. Kawauchi also composes haiku poems. She lived for many years in Tokyo and in 2018 moved to the countryside on the outskirts of the city.
Roger Grasas
Roger Grasas
Spain
1970
Roger Grasas (Barcelona, 1970) begins his professional career as a photographer in 1998 documenting cooperation projects for national and international foundations and NGOs as well as for UNESCO. Since then, traveling becomes the core of his artistic work, translating his experiences and reflections into visual arts. Between 2005 and 2009 he is the director of the BisouFoto communication studio and co-founder of the phototroupe Studio agency. In both projects he is in charge of the commissions related to travel photography, editorial portrait and social report. Regular contributor to several Spanish and international publications. In 2009 he moves to Riyadh (Saudi Arabia) where he leads the foundation of the photography department at Imagine Communication, a high end quality agency for social photography and events. During his stay in Saudi Arabia and later on until 2016 he develops the project 'Inshallah', a personal project about the extreme transformation of Middle eastern societies through the urban contemporary landscape in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Emirates, Oman etc. His body of work approaches the role and importance that technology reveals within the post-modern digital society, the state of strangeness and confusion that human being suffers in the contemporary landscape and the increasingly connections between art and science. Sociopolitical issues such as globalization and philosophical concepts such as the 'difference', 'hyperreality' and 'alienation' generated by the postcapitalist society and the accelerated implementation of new technologies are also common places of their work. Since 1997 he has combined his professional activity with teaching in photography. Between 1997 and 2004 he teaches Photography and Landscape Production courses at the UPC's Image and Multimedia Technology Center. He also works as an academic at the Groc School of Plastic Arts (Barcelona), at the Communication Faculty of the National Autonomous University of Mexico and at the Mamori Art Lab Foundation in Brazil. He has also given various workshops and seminars related to travel anthropology and contemporary society such as "The Art of Travel: Photography and Travel" and "Why Travel? Ethics and Aesthetics of Leisure and Tourism". His His works have been exhibited on galleries of Spain, France, Netherlands, Germany, U.S.A., El Salvador, Saudi Arabia and Mexico. About 'Min Turab' In the space of a few decades, the landscapes of the Arab Gulf region have undergone a wholesale mutation driven by increased income from the oil, globalization and mass tourism. These countries have seen so a huge transformation, moving from the nomadic lifestyle of the bedouin tribes to a hi-tech urban society. The work takes the title from an arabic expression meaning “from the land”, and is an observation of this process oscillation between these two poles: an austere, traditional civilization on one extreme, and a postmodern culture under the powerful influence of capitalism and consumerism on the other. Founded on the idea of travel as an artistic method, these photographs hold up a mirror to the dyad of nature and technology in a place where the old and the new come together and the lines between them blur. This tension is evident both in the vast desert landscapes and in the images of cities, where the past and the future are compressed into the close quarters of the present. These representations of the landscapes of Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates and Qatar throw into sharp relief the binary opposition of the natural and the constructed. This sense of dislocation feeds into this idea of travel as an artistic dérive, drifting with no particular destination in mind, in search of new situations and experiences. In these dreamlike images, the author reflects on the concepts of the real and the unreal, with viewers left uncertain as to what is really going on. Almost completely lacking in human presence, these photographs show the mark left upon the landscape by consumer society at the same time as they seek out the beauty in strangeness. With a dry wit, the artist focuses his gaze on the idea of the simulacrum. The visual and conceptual glimpses of this world documents the colonization of contemporary landscapes by technology and the alienation of human beings in the digital societies of the Arabian Gulf countries. These images of silent architecture do not offer viewers any conclusions, but rather invite them to reflect and leave the way clear for a multiplicity of interpretations that connect with viewers' own imaginary.
Sylwia Makris
Sylwia Makris
Poland
1973
There is a spark within everything. A living light in the eyes of a person, a memory that flares up, the glow of a passion that was never declared. A face always tells more than it knows, wich is why photography is never a mere reproduction of what is. A good photo tells what was, why might have been or what is waiting painfully beneath the surface. Sylwia Makris has been in pursuit of these sparks since she first held a camera. Her quest produces images that may delight or disturb but always move the beholder. She photographs people. People who are strong or delicate, broken or dynamic. She photographs faces of our time-and in doing so gives a face to our time. Nakedness is the most natural state. And in our day the most intrusive and common-every-where naked bodies are used to tempt, advertise and sell. Nakedness can only say as much as it is allowed to say. Sylwia Makris respects the nude body as part of a story that must be told. As part of a story that tels of people, nakedness regains its original magic, its archaic power and its complexity of expression in Makris' photos. Until the viewer sometimes feels more naked than the model in the image. Sylwia Makris was born in 1973 in Gdynia, Poland. She worked as a sculptor before finding her way to photography in 2007. Today she lives in Munich as freelance photographer.
Ebru Sidar
Ebru Sidar
Turkey
1975
Ebru Sidar was born on 13 January 1975 in Trabzon. Since her parents were bankers, she traveled to many cities in Turkey and then moved to Ankara. She is now living between France and Turkey. She graduated from Ankara University as a Geology Engineer. She thinks that all types of art affect and are connected to each other. Capturing “the good” in thoughts and the physical world, she believes that any work on which someone focuses mentally, emotionally and physically is meant to be good.Considering photography as a common property and language of humanity, she believes that it should always promote and contribute to sustainable peace. She has been actively working on photography since February 2005. While continuously developing her skills and knowledge, she never wants to give up her amateur spirit.
Zhang Jingna
Zhang Jingna
China
1988
Zhang Jingna born May 4, 1988 in Beijing, China is a photographer known widely on DeviantART as zemotion.Born in the suburbs of Beijing to a sporting family, Jingna moved to Singapore at the age of eight, where she attended Haig Girls' School. At the age of fourteen, nine months after picking up air rifle, Jingna broke a national record, and subsequently joined the national air rifle team. She was active in the team for six years, notable achievements include breaking a record in the 10m Air Rifle event at the Commonwealth Shooting Championships 2005 in Melbourne, and a bronze in the same event at the Commonwealth Games in 2006, awarding her the title of Sports Girl of the Year for 2006 by the Singapore National Olympic Council. She left the Raffles Girls' School at sixteen to pursue a degree in fashion design in Lasalle College of the Arts. At eighteen, Jingna picked up a camera. Probably due to her keen interest and achievements in photography, she left Lasalle in October 2007, and the rifle team in January 2008, to pursue photography full time. Jingna's clientele includes companies such as Mercedes Benz, Canon, Pond's, Ogilvy & Mather Advertising and Wacom. She also produced fashion editorials for magazines such as Harper's Bazaar, Elle and Flare. In September 2008, Jingna held her first solo exhibition, "Something Beautiful", at The Arts House in Singapore. In April 2010, 50 of her works were showcased along Orchard Road during Singapore's fashion festival - Fashion Seasons @ Orchard. The showcase was Singapore’s first large scale street exhibition featuring fashion photography. The street exhibition was followed immediately by her second gallery show, "Angel Dreams", at Japan Creative Centre, Singapore, supported by the Embassy of Japan. The show was noted for her photographs of Japanese musician Sugizo (Luna Sea, X Japan). She's influenced by people such as Peter Lindbergh, John William Waterhouse, Yoshitaka Amano and Zdzislaw Beksinski. Jingna also cites her friend Kuang Hong, a fellow artist whom she had managed since the age of fifteen, in numerous interviews, as one of the influences and foundations of her artistic development. She manages a professional Starcraft 2 team called Infinity Seven. Source: Wikipedia Born in Beijing and raised in Singapore, Jingna Zhang is a fine art photographer and art director in New York, Los Angeles, and Seattle. Inspired by the Pre-Raphaelites and anime, Jingna’s work interweaves Asian aesthetics with western art styles, bringing unique visions of painterly images to fashion and fine art photography. Jingna’s works have appeared on Vogue China, Vogue Japan, Harper’s Bazaar China, and Elle Singapore. She has exhibited with PhotoVogue at Leica Gallery Milan, Cle de Peau Beaute in Hong Kong, and Profoto at Tsinghua University. Her clients include brands like Mercedes Benz, Lancome, Canon, and Team Liquid. She has been a speaker and mentor at Square Enix Japan, Trojan Horse is a Unicorn, School of Visual Arts, Laguna College of Art and Design, and Monterrey Institute of Technology. Prior to her work behind the camera, Jingna was a national athlete on Team Singapore, and founder of an esports team in StarCraft 2. She was an agent for concept artists and illustrators, with clients such as LucasArts, Amazon Publishing, and Sony Music Japan. Jingna was named on Forbes Asia’s 30 Under 30 list for Art & Style in 2018. She is an alumna of Stanford Ignite. Jingna is currently working on Cara, a social network and artist platform that filters AI-generated media for the entertainment industry. Her ongoing projects include a course on artistic portrait photography, Motherland Chronicles, and an upcoming photobook inspired by anime and manga. Source: www.zhangjingna.com
Sandrine Hermand-Grisel
Sandrine Hermand-Grisel
France
1973
Sandrine Hermand-Grisel grew up in Paris, France and in London, UK. She studied International Law before deciding to dedicate her life to photography in 1997. Influenced by her late mother's sculptures and her husbands paintings and films, she worked on several personal projects before her series Nocturnes was recognized in 2005 by Harry Gruyaert, Bertrand Despres and John Batho for the Prix Kodak de la Critique Photographique. In 2006 she moved with her family to the United States and began experimenting landscape photography with her series Somewhere and On the road. Despite the diversity of her projects she has a unique, very intimate, relationship with her subjects. Photography provides her with a way to express her feelings, like in the series ''Nocturnes'' where she photographed only close friends and family members peacefully abandoning themselves in front of her camera. ''Somewhere'' is her dream of America, a road trip through her adopted country. And ''Waterlilies'' is full of joy and love for her two children as she watched them jumping and playing in pools over and over again. Sandrine Hermand-Grisel not only photographs what she loves, she breaks free from her own reality in her poetic vision of the world. In 2013, she created the acclaimed website All About Photo and now spends most of her time discovering new talents while still working on personal projects. All about Sea Sketches Since I was a little girl my parents insisted that my brother and I accompany them almost every weekend to see an exhibition, a museum or an historic house. What was excruciating at first slowly became a real pleasure. Thanks to them, I had the privilege to see incredible exhibitions both in Paris and London where I grew up. Depending on my age and moods at the time, I favored a century, a movement, a painter... It was love at first sight when I discovered "Wanderer above the Sea of Fog" by Caspar David Friedrich. In the foreground, a young man stands upon a rocky precipice with his back to the viewer. He overlooks a landscape covered in a thick sea of fog. I was overwhelmed by the beauty of nature, the subtle colors, the calm and yet the movement that came from the wind. I perceived the character as content and in harmony with nature and I wondered if one day I would find my perfect place... and many years later, I did. On the west coast of Florida lies Anna Maria, a quaint barrier island nestled in the Gulf of Mexico. The water is warm and turquoise, the sand is white. Well preserved, the birds and turtles come here to nest while the respectful tourists lie on the sand every night to witness the incredible sunsets. Time is suspended. With the romantic painters Turner and Friedrich in mind, I captured a glimpse of Anna Maria, its light, its beaches, its movement, its unleashed elements... I hope you will immerse yourself in my Sea Sketches "paintings" and escape with me, even for the length of a sigh, from the harsh realities of life and share my happy place.
Gisèle Freund
Gisèle Freund
France / Germany
1908 | † 2000
Gisèle Freund was a German-born French photographer and photojournalist, famous for her documentary photography and portraits of writers and artists. Her best-known book, Photographie et société (1974), is about the uses and abuses of the photographic medium in the age of technological reproduction. In 1977, she became President of the French Association of Photographers, and in 1981, she took the official portrait of French President François Mitterrand. She was made Officier des Arts et Lettres in 1982 and Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur, the highest decoration in France, in 1983. In 1991, she became the first photographer to be honored with a retrospective at the Musée National d’art Moderne in Paris (Centre Georges Pompidou). Freund's major contributions to photography include using the Leica Camera (with its ability to house one film roll with 36 frames) for documentary reportage and her early experimentation with Kodachrome and 35 mm Agfacolor, which allowed her to develop a "uniquely candid portraiture style" that distinguishes her in 20th century photography. She is buried at the Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris, France near her home and studio at 12 rue Lalande. Freund was born into a textile merchant family on 19 December 1908 to Julius and Clara (nee Dressel) Freund, a wealthy Jewish couple in the Schöneberg district of Berlin. Her father, Julius Freund, was a keen art collector with an interest in the work of photographer Karl Blossfeldt, whose close-up studies explored the forms of natural objects. Freund's father bought Gisèle her first camera, a Voigtländer 6x9 in 1925 and a Leica camera as a present for her graduation in 1929. In 1931, Freund studied sociology and art history at Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Breisgau, Germany; and from 1932-33 she studied at the Institute for Social, Sciences, University of Frankfurt under Theodor W. Adorno, Karl Mannheim and Norbert Elias (also known as the Frankfurt School). At university, she became an active member of a student socialist group and was determined to use photography as an integral part of her socialist practice. One of her first stories, shot on May 1, 1932, "shows a recent march of anti-fascist students" who had been "regularly attacked by Nazi groups." The photos show Walter Benjamin, a good friend of Freund, and Bertolt Brecht. In March 1933, a month after Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany, Walter Benjamin fled to Paris on May 30, Gisèle followed him since she was both a socialist activist and a Jew. She escaped to Paris with her negatives strapped around her body to get them past the border guards. Gisèle and Walter Benjamin would continue their friendship in Paris, where Freund would famously photograph him reading at the National Library. They both studied and wrote about art in the 19th and 20th centuries as Freund continued her studies at the Sorbonne. In 1935, Andre Malraux invited Freund to document First International Congress in Defense of Culture in Paris, where she was introduced to and subsequently photographed many of the notable French artists of her day. Freund befriended the famed literary partners, Sylvia Beach of Shakespeare and Company, and Adrienne Monnier of Maison des Amis des Livres. In 1935, Monnier arranged a marriage of convenience for Freund with Pierre Blum so that Freund could obtain a visa to remain in France legally (they officially divorced after the war in 1948). In 1936, while Sylvia Beach was visiting the United States, Freund moved into Monnier and Beach's shared apartment and they became intimates. When Beach returned, she ended her intimate relationship with Monnier yet maintained a strong friendship with both Monnier and Freund. Freund finished her Ph.D. in Sociology and Art at the Sorbonne in 1936, and Monnier published the doctoral dissertation as "La photographie en France au dix-neuvieme siècle," under the La Maison des Amis des Livres imprint by Monnier. Monnier introduced Gisèle Freund to the artists and writers who would prove her most captivating subjects. Later that year, Freund became internationally famous with her photojournalistic piece, Northern England, which was published in Life magazine on December 14, 1936 and showed the effects of the depression in England. No magazine in France could publish color photographs at that time, so Freund's work with Life—one of the first color mass magazines—would start a lifelong relationship between the photographer and magazine. In 1938, Monnier suggested that Freund photograph James Joyce for his upcoming book, Finnegans Wake. Joyce, who disliked being photographed, invited Gisèle Freund to his Paris flat for a private screening of her previous work. He was impressed enough by Freund's work to allow her to photograph him, and over a period of three days, she captured the most intimate portraits of Joyce during his time in Paris. In 1939, after being "twice refused admission to Tavistock Square," Freund gained the confidence of Virginia Woolf and captured the iconic color photographs of the Woolfs on display in the English National Portrait Gallery. Woolf even "agreed to change her clothes to see which best suited the colour harmony and insisted on being photographed with Leonard (and their spaniel Pinka). In some of the prints, Woolf is pale and lined, in others smiling a little and more youthful. The background of fabrics and mural panels by Bell and Grant adds to the value of the images; this was the inner sanctum of the queen of Bloomsbury where parties were given and friends came to tea. Just over a year later the house was destroyed in The Blitz." On June 10, 1940, with the Nazi invasion of Paris looming, Freund escaped Paris to Free France in the Dordogne. Her husband by convenience, Pierre, had been captured by the Nazis and sent to a prison camp. He was able to escape and met with Freund before going back to Paris to fight in the Resistance. As the wife of an escaped prisoner, a Jew, and a Socialist, Freund "feared for her life." In 1942, with the help of André Malraux, who told his friends, "we must save Gisèle!," Freund fled to Buenos Aires, Argentina "at the invitation of Victoria Ocampo, director of the periodical Sur. Ocampo was at the center of the Argentinean intellectual elite, and through her, Freund met and photographed many great writers and artists, such as Jorge Luis Borges and Pablo Neruda." While living in Argentina, Freund started a publishing venture called Ediciones Victoria. She writes, "In reality, I started this for the De Gaulle government in exile where I was working in the Information ministry, volontairement without payment." She also founds a relief action committee for French artists and becomes a spokesperson for Free France. In 1947, Freund signed a contract with Magnum Photos as a Latin America contributor, but by 1954, she was declared persona non grata by the U.S. Government at the height of the Red Scare for her socialist views, and Robert Capa forced her to break ties with Magnum. In 1950, her photo coverage of a bejeweled Eva Peron for Life magazine caused a diplomatic stir between the United States and Argentina and upset many of Peron's supporters—the ostentatious photographs went against the official party line of austerity; Life Magazine was blacklisted in Argentina, and once again, Freund had to escape a country with her negatives. She moved to Mexico and became friends with Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Alfaro Siqueiros, and José Clemente Orozco. In 1953, she moved back to Paris permanently. Over the life of her career, she went on over 80 photojournalism assignments, primarily for Life and Time, but also Du, The Sunday Times (London), Vu, Picture Post, Weekly Illustrated, and Paris Match, among others. From the 1960s onward, Freund continued to write, and her reputation as an important portrait photographer grew with each successive exhibition. Gisèle Freund is now celebrated as one of the best portrait photographers of the twentieth century: Upon her death, "President Jacques Chirac praised her as 'one of the world's greatest photographers."Source: Wikipedia Ms. Freund was one of Europe's most prominent photographers and a pillar among French feminist intellectuals after settling in Paris in the 1930s. Born to a wealthy Jewish family, she became a student activist who battled the rise of Hitler's national socialism. She studied sociology in Frankfurt but was forced to flee in 1933, escaping as police were about to arrest her. In Paris, Gisèle Freund pursued doctoral studies at the Sorbonne, where her enthusiasm for photography was met with skepticism. She met militant feminist writer Adrienne Monnier while browsing at La Maison des Amis du Livre, Monnier's book shop on the Left Bank. The shop was frequented by the likes of Simone de Beauvoir, Andre Gide, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Jean-Paul Sartre and Paul Valery. Monnier became her lifelong mentor and companion, introducing her to the Parisian intellectual set and encouraging her to pursue photography. In 1935, Ms. Freund executed a widely acclaimed series of photographs, documenting the misery of British coal miners, and met Andre Malraux. Her portrait of the author of Man's Fate--wrapped in a trench coat with a cigarette dangling from his mouth--is among her most well-known photographs. Her use of color clashed with the prevailing style of retouched black-and-white studio portraits, but she persevered, saying color "was closer to life." Gisèle Freund specialized in conveying attitudes. She focused on hands, posture and clothing. Some of her most famous photographs appeared in Life and Time magazines. The Nazi invasion of France in 1940 interrupted her career. Gisèle Freund fled again, to southern France and later Argentina, where she worked until the war's end in 1945. She returned to France, where she earned an international reputation as the photographer of Jean Cocteau, De Beauvoir, Joyce, and Sartre, among others. Her works include Three Days With Joyce, a collection of black-and-white photographs showing the Irish writer with friends and family, and correcting proofs of his novel Finnegan's Wake. "Freund was involved in the lives of the artists and writers she photographed," said art critic Ann Cremin, who knew Ms. Freund. "She was more of a witness than a reporter." In later years, Gisèle Freund became well-known in her adopted country, winning the National Grand Prize for Photography in 1980. She took the official photograph at the presidential inauguration of Socialist Francois Mitterrand in 1981. She gave up photography in the mid-1980s.Source: Washington Post
Yusheng Jiang
Yusheng Jiang
China
1999
Born in Shanghai, Yusheng Jiang was deeply captivated by the allure of photography from a young age. His father, a photojournalist from the 1990s, left him with precious visual records, igniting his profound interest in photography, especially the transformation of cities and the vibrant rhythms within. Yusheng's academic journey began at the Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts, where he majored in photography and uniquely explored human desires through 3D software. Subsequently, he pursued his MFA at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York, specializing in photography, video, and related media. He further expanded his artistic horizons there, particularly delving deep into the relationship between cities and their inhabitants through interdisciplinary studies. To Yusheng, photography is not merely about capturing images but represents a unique perception and understanding of the world. He believes that behind the mechanical and alienating modern urban life lies a deeper spiritual sanctuary for people. Through installations, animation, and sculptures, he unveils every nook and cranny of urban transformations. What stands out is Yusheng's aspiration to fuse technology and art, offering audiences an entirely fresh aesthetic experience. He hopes that viewers are not just recipients but active participants in his works, interacting and crafting their distinct artistic expressions. ARTIST STATEMENT "The series of documentary photography focuses on the giant development of Shanghai after ‘The Open Door Policy’ in 1979. As time goes by, it is slowly surrounded by the bustling business district and finally disappears into the river of urban construction. The exposed bricks and crisscrossing scaffolding reached Shanghai at the peak of development by the working class. Long Tang is a unique form of residential house in Shanghai. It is also the place where I grew up in childhood. With the demolition and reconstruction, the memory of my life has been sealed up by the metropolis. In this series of photos, I present the process of urban evolution and think about the link between me, space, history, and Shanghai." Awarded Photographer of the Week - Week 35, 2025
Pentti Sammallahti
Pentti Sammallahti
Finland
1950
Pentti Sammallahti was born in 1950 in Helsinki, Finland. Growing up, he was surrounded by the works of his grandmother, Hildur Larsson (1882-1952), a Swedish-born photographer, who worked for the Helsinki newspaper Kaiku in the early 1900s. After visiting The Family of Man exhibition at Helsinki Art Hall (1961) Sammallahti made his first photographs at age eleven. Pentti joined the Helsinki Camera Club in 1964. His first solo exhibition was in 1971. Sammallahti has travelled widely as a photographer, from his native Scandinavia, across the Soviet Republics through Siberia, to Japan, India, Nepal, Morocco, Turkey, across Europe and Great Britain, and even to South Africa. Sammallahti’s travels and interest in fine printing and lithography has led him to publish numerous portfolios of which the largest and most well known is “The Russian Way” (1996). As a benchmark figure in contemporary Finnish photography, his work has a supernatural sense of a moment in time with the sensitivity and beauty of the world displayed through its animalistic existence. His particular use of dogs, which reflects the human existential experience, shows the shared nature of the earth with a gentle humor and fleeting attitude. Sammallahti describes himself as a wanderer who likes the nature of the great north, the silence, the cold, and the sea. He likes the people and the animals of far off places and he records the relationships between them and their environment. As a master craftsman, he meticulously tones his prints, which come in various formats, from 4 by 5 inches in image size to panoramas of 6 by 14 inches. In 2010 for his retrospective exhibition in Helsinki he created large format pigment prints, about 9 by 21 inches and 15 by 35.5 inches in size. As a passionate seeker of the perfect mechanical printing method, his own innovative printing techniques and reintroduction of the portfolio form have re-awakened broader interest in published photographic art. Influenced by the idea of ‘artist books’ – individual works in which the artist is responsible for the whole: photography, the making of prints, layout, design and typography, reproduction and often the actual printing process either with the offset or the gravure method. Since 1979, Pentti Sammallahti has published thirteen books and portfolios and has received awards such as the Samuli Paulaharju Prize of the Finnish Literature Society, State Prizes for Photography, Uusimaa Province Art Prize, Daniel Nyblin Prize, and the Finnish Critics Association Annual. From 1974 to 1991 Sammallahti taught at the University of Art and Design in Helsinki, retiring when he received a 15-year grant from the Finnish government, an unusually long endowment, which is no longer awarded. Both as a photographer and a teacher, he has had an enormous influence on a whole generation of documentary photographers in Scandinavia. Sammallahti had a solo exhibition at Paris' Mois de la Photographie in 1996 and another in 1998 at Houston Fotofest, Texas. In 2001 the Helsinki University of Art and Design awarded Pentti Sammallahti the title of Honorary Doctorate in Art. In 2004, the famous French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson ranked Sammallahti among his 100 favorite photographers for his Foundation's inaugural exhibition in Paris. The French Photo Poche book series published his book edited by Robert Delpire in 2005, and the same year, Sammallahti had a personal exhibition at the International Photography Festival in Arles. His second exhibition at Recontres d'Arles was a major retrospective in 2012 accompanied by the release of the first retrospective monograph Here Far Away, published in six languages (German, French, English, Italian, Spanish, and Finnish). Among museum collections Sammallahti’s work can be found at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, England; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, USA; Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, France; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, Germany; Moderna Museet / Fotografiska Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; and The Finnish State Collections and the Photographic Museum of Finland.Source: Nailya Alexander Gallery Sammallahti has been photographing the world around him with a poetic eye since the age of eleven. At the age of nine he visited "The Family of Man" exhibition at Helsinki Art Hall, confirming at a young age his photographic path in life. Featured in solo exhibitions by the age of 21, Sammallahti continued to exhibit and teach at the Helsinki University of Art and Design until receiving the Finnish State's 15-year artist grant in 1991. Sammallahti describes himself as a nomad who enjoys the nature of the great north: the darkness, the cold, and the sea. Sammallahti is a master craftsman, carefully toning his prints, to create a poetic atmosphere of desolate silence.

 Sammallahti was honored to be included among the 100 favorite photographs in the personal collection of Henri Cartier-Bresson, which was the inaugural exhibition for the Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson in 2003. Since 1979, Pentti Sammallahti has published thirteen books and portfolios and has received awards such as the Samuli Paulaharju Prize of the Finnish Literature Society, State Prizes for Photography, Uusimaa Province Art Prize, Daniel Nyblin Prize, and the Finnish Critics Association Annual.Source: Peter Fetterman Gallery
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