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Brian Oldham
Brian Oldham
Brian Oldham

Brian Oldham

Country: United States
Birth: 1992

Brian was born in April of 1993 in Orange, CA, USA. He grew up as an only child with a thriving imagination, playing elaborate games of fiction and fairytales. Now 19, Brian works as a freelance photographer, specializing in fashion and fine art photography. He began taking photographs at the age of sixteen, and as he experimented with self portraiture and surrealism, his love of photography blossomed as he taught himself how to create freely. Brian keeps his passion of all things beautiful and strange ever present in his work, creating surreal, conceptual images that transport the viewer to new worlds. Brian is currently living and working in the Los Angeles area, and is available for commissioned work internationally.
 

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Anna Atkins
United Kingdom
1799 | † 1871
Anna Atkins (1799-1871) was an English botanist and photographer best known for her early work in photography. She is widely regarded as the first female photographer and one of the art form's pioneers. Anna Atkins was born on March 16, 1799, in Tonbridge, Kent, England, into a family with a strong interest in science and botany. Her father, John George Children, was a well-known chemist and mineralogist, which may have influenced her early interest in science. Anna was educated in science, art, and natural history, which was unusual for a woman of her time. She developed a particular interest in botany and was well-versed in plant classification and study. Anna Atkins worked with her father's close friend, Sir John Herschel, an astronomer and mathematician who had also made significant contributions to the early development of photography, in 1841. She adopted the cyanotype process, an early photographic technique that produces blue-toned images, after being inspired by Herschel's work. Botanical specimens, such as ferns and seaweeds, were placed on light-sensitized paper and then exposed to sunlight as part of the cyanotype process. The areas that were not covered by the specimens turned blue, while the areas that were covered by the plants remained white. Anna Atkins used this technique to create a series of stunning and scientifically accurate photograms. In October 1843, Anna released her most famous work, "Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions." This three-volume collaboration with Anne Dixon featured over 400 cyanotype images of various algae species found along the British coast. It was the first book to be entirely illustrated with photographs. Only a few copies of the book are known to exist today, as each copy was hand-assembled. Anna Atkins' work was not only artistic; it was also scientifically significant. The cyanotype images were a valuable resource for botanical documentation and classification, as well as an early example of photographic scientific illustration. Despite her contributions to photography and botany, Anna Atkins received little recognition during her lifetime. Photography was still a new medium at the time, and her work was relatively unknown until recently. Anna Atkins died on June 9, 1871, in Halstead, Kent, leaving behind a legacy as a pioneering female photographer and a prominent figure in photography and botany history. Her innovative use of the cyanotype process, as well as her dedication to scientific documentation through photography, are still admired and recognized by the art and science communities.
Asako Naruto
Japan
1974
Asako Naruto is a Japanese photographer living in Madrid since 2005. After obtaining a BA of Science of Design in Tokyo, she studied Art History, specializing in El Greco until she completed doctoral studies. Although she has been taking photographs for some time, it was around 2020 that she began to rediscover and immerse herself in photography as a personal creative activity. Her photographic style is characterized by a sense of introspection while using a street snapshot approach. In 2022, she won the annual Grand Prix of Digital Camera Magazine (Impress, Japan). Since then, she has received numerous awards from various international photography competitions including VIEPA, PISPA, IPA, BIFA, TIFA and many more. Recently, she has been working on a series of fantastical urban fragments using prismatic filters, one of which, "Reverve+Graphy", won the Gold Medal at the Paris International Street Photography Awards (2023). Statement: Press the shutter button to take a picture. I like the simplicity of it. For me, the real pleasure of photography lies in this physicality of moving my hands and feet and feeling the connection between sight and brain. For me, photographic expression may be an attempt to translate my inner thoughts, which are difficult to verbalize, while capturing fragments of my daily life with a camera. I feel that I want to be a storyteller more than an observer. I try to reveal or represent the scenes I collect in the city by overlaying them with the stories that unfold in my mind. Nevertheless, I carefully avoid encouraging the viewer to have a fixed interpretation of my work by explaining in detail the message it may contain. I want my work to be open to gradations of interpretation and to stimulate the viewer's personal emotional recall.
Liu Zheng
China
1969
Liu Zheng was born in 1969 in the Hebei Province, China. His signature graytone photographs have for years starkly framed, in political and provocative situations, his human subjects. When he works in colour, the tones are awash in sepia or a doctored saturation that comments on the nostalgic nature of his topics – his Peking Opera series in particular reflects this. Liu's background is not rooted in arts . After majoring in optical engineering at the Beijing Institute of Technology, he joined a local paper as a photojournalist, where he covered the coal mining industry. This laid the foundation for his interest in the lives of the countrymen that toil endlessly; one of his first series as an artistic practitioner explored the lives of ethnic minorities and our perception of them. He continues to eke out of the histories and stories of his subjects and topics in photography, and has published several volumes of his series. Liu Zheng's work has been exhibited in solo shows including Dream Shock, Three Shadows Photography Art Center, Beijing, China (2013); Dream Shock, Zen Foto Gallery, Tokyo, Japan (2009); Liu Zheng: The Chinese, Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA (2008); Liu Zheng: Survians, SOHO New Town, Beijing, China (2005); Liu Zheng: The Chinese, Yossi Milo Gallery, New York, NY (2005); Liu Zheng, Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie, Arles, France (2003); The Chinese, Central Academy of Fine Arts Museum, Beijing, China (2001); and Three Realms and The Chinese, Taipei Photo Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan (1998). His works have also featured in group shows including the Minsheng Art Museum in Shanghai, China; Smart Museum of Art in Chicago, IL; The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, LA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan; Asia Society and Museum, New York, NY; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England; and Chambers Fine Art, Beijing, China. He has also participated in the 50th Biennale di Venezia in Venice, Italy and the International Center of Photography Triennale, New York. His work is in the collections of the Guy and Miriam Ullens Foundation, Geneva, Switzerland; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Uli Sigg Collection, Mauensee, Switzerland; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA. He currently lives and works in Beijing, China.
Ayumi Tanaka
Carolyn Drake
United States
Carolyn Drake works on long term photo-based projects seeking to interrogate dominant historical narratives and imagine alternatives to them. Her work explores community and the interactions within it, as well as the barriers and connections between people, between places and between ways of perceiving. Her practice has embraced collaboration, and through this, collage, drawing, sewing, text, and found images have been integrated into her work. She is interested in collapsing the traditional divide between author and subject, the real and the imaginary, challenging entrenched binaries. Drake was born in California and studied Media/Culture and History in the early 1990s at Brown University. Following her graduation from Brown, in 1994, Drake moved to New York and worked as a interactive concept designer for many years before departing to engage with the physical world through photography. Between 2007 and 2013, Drake traveled frequently to Central Asia from her base in Istanbul to work on two long term projects which became acclaimed bodies of work. Wild Pigeon (2014) is an amalgam of photographs, drawings, and embroideries made in collaboration with Uyghurs in western China. In 2018, the SFMOMA acquired the body of work and opened a six month solo exhibition of Wild Pigeon. Two Rivers (2013) explores the connections between ecology, culture and political power along the Amu Dary and Syr Darya rivers and was exhibited at The Pitt Rivers Museum, the Soros Foundation, the Third Floor Gallery, and the Photo Book Museum, among other venues. In Internat (2014-17), Drake worked with young women in an ex Soviet orphanage to create photographs and paintings that point beyond the walls of the institution and its gender expectations. The work was exhibited at the Houston Center for Photography in the US, and at Si Fest and Officine Fotografiche Roma in Italy. Drake returned to the US in 2014 and is now based in Vallejo, California, from where she is currently making work that upends perceptions of gender, community, and safety in her own community. Drake is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, the Lange-Taylor Prize, the Anamorphosis prize, an HCP fellowship, a Lightwork residency, and a Fulbright fellowship to Ukraine, among other awards. Her work has been published widely, in publications such as The New Yorker, Aperture, The New York Review of Books, Harpers, The New York Times Magazine, Prix Pictet, IMA, the British Journal of Photography, The Guardian, and Paris Review. She became a member of Magnum Photos in 2019. Source: carolyndrake.com
Tim Franco
France/Poland
Tim Franco is French-Polish freelance photographer based in Shanghai. Since he first came to China in 2005, Tim Franco got fascinated by the fast social and urban transformation that chinese cities where going through. He has spent some time documenting those growth through urban photography but also by studying social changes, such at the underground art world and the social problems related to the evolutions of the cities. Among his projects is a comprehensive depiction of the growth of the alternative music scene in China and particularly Shanghai. The project was synthesized and published in a book, “Shanghai Soundbites”, released in June 2008 in response to the attitude towards cultural expression manifested in the lead up to the Beijing Olympics. Subsequently, the pictures have been included in numerous news and lifestyle publications both in China and abroad. He now continues his work documenting the urban development of chinese cities and its social impact on the local people. He is also involved in local youth and underground movement both in China and greater asia. Tim Franco is a regular contributor to Le Monde ( newspaper and magazine ), but his work has also been published in the New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Bloomberg, Financial Times, Le Point, NRC, Wiwo, Global Journal, Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, The Fader, CNN online, Time Out, Urban. About the series Vertical Communism Vertical Communism is a long term project about the city of Chongqing. This city, one of the biggest in central china, went through one of the fastest development process in the country. The main reason is, located upstream of the three gorges dam, the government has welcomed all displaced population from submerged region into its main urban areas. The city is fascinating because of its accelerated development that produced high rises buildings on the side of rivers and mountains, taking away the traditional charms of the old Chang Kai Shek capital, but also because of its political and social history. Once at the hand of the biggest organized crime group in China, the city has been re manipulated into a neo communist style red propaganda machine, led by the highly controversial son of a famous revolutionary named Bo Xilai. With his wife now in prison for the murder of a British national, and his personal implication in corruptions and tortures, Bo Xilai has been quickly removed from any government places in China and the city is looking once again for a new direction. I personally see Chongqing as a macro representation of the whole China. With its tumultuous political history and its growing social pressure for managing farmers coming into urban areas for a better life, all of it pushed by a constant need of investments and fast modernization, I wanted to portray this view of a growing china, far away from the common views of eastern cities such as shanghai or Beijing. From a photographic point of view, I have decided to shoot the people in their environment. But i have decided to take a step back, using medium format film camera, I want to transmit the feeling of scales that the city and china in general is facing. Urban Scales, Social Scales, the country's biggest problem is now to find a way to link some extremes the highly rich to the very poor, the extravagant to the meaningful. Vertical Communism is a portrait of Chinese a megapolis full of contradiction, trying to keep up with its unpredictable modernization. Interview with Tim Franco All About Photo: When did you realize you wanted to be a photographer? Tim Franco: There is not a precise moment. When I was young, I loved writing stories, then my passion became music. I always wanted to share my ideas and vision of things through some mediums at the end it became photography. Where did you study photography? When I was a kid, my artist mother pushed me from one opening to the other, through museums and galleries. At first I hated it, and then became used to it and started to hang out more and more in her studio, until I took away her old cameras , I have learn through experience, other photographers and reading tutorials. How could you describe your style? Photographers tend to be classified, put into boxes, commercial photographer, photojournalists, artists, etc. I never really know how to classify my work. What I love is telling stories, document facts with an artistic esthetic to it. I also enjoy working on creative commercial assignments. I always try to stay simple in the esthetic and subtle about the story. What kind of gear do you use? Camera, lens, digital, film? For my personal work, I really enjoy medium format. When I see something, most of the time, I ideally want to frame it in square. I don't really like naming brands, they all have different feeling and esthetic and it really depends the look you want to give your image. To name a few I personally work with Hasselblad and old rolleiflex. For commercial work, I use Canon because of their price and availability in terms of lenses.> Do you spend a lot of time editing your images? When shooting film, I usually spend very little time editing, just cleaning dust on films and other small details. When shooting commercial work on digital its another story. Clients are very specific about what they want and color out of raw files needs to go through extensive treatment. My photo agency works with a retouching studio for most of our commercial projects. What advice would you give a young photographer? Those days, its very easy to call yourself a photographer, grab a camera , a couple of nice prime lenses and you can get some good images. But I think young photographers should really focus on what are they trying to say with their images. What makes a great photo is not the instant esthetic of it but the impact that image will have on its viewer. An idea, a sentence, a project you would like to share? One of the main project I worked on for the past year is about one particular city in China called Chongqing. Since 2009, I am going there quite frequently, at the beginning for some press assignments since the city have seen lot of interesting political stories and turmoils but also because it fascinates me. Both from an esthetic point of view and from its stories. This giant megapolis has been forcly populated with countryside people and has now a very hard time to deal its urbanization. "I personally see Chongqing as a macro representation of the whole China. With its tumultuous political history and its growing social pressure for managing farmers coming into urban areas for a better life, all of it pushed by a constant need of investments and fast modernization, I wanted to portray this view of a growing china, far away from the common views of eastern cities such as shanghai or beijing. From a photographic point of view, I have decided to shoot the people in their environment. But I have decided to take a step back, using medium format film camera, I want to transmit the feeling of scales that the city and china in general is facing. Urban Scales, Social Scales, the country's biggest problem is now to find a way to link some extremes the highly rich to the very poor, the extravagant to the meaningful. Vertical Communism is a portrait of chinese a megapolis full of contradiction, trying to keep up with its unpredictable modernization." Your best and worst memory as a photographer? Being a professional photographers gives you a chance to go to many great places and meet amazing people. Sometimes the best memory is all the instants that led you to take a particular photo, the untold stories. What happened in the discussion you had with the person you were about to portray, how did you get to this fantastic point of view etc. For worst memory there is always issues of dealing with authorities, this large gap of misunderstanding between the photographer wanting to tell a story and a person not allowing you to shoot. This is always very annoying. More about METAMORPOLIS More about UNPERSON
Jan Enkelmann
Germany
1970
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