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FINAL CALL TO ENTER AAP MAGAZINE SHAPES: PUBLICATION AND $1,000 CASH PRIZES
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Jon Kolkin
Jon Kolkin
Jon Kolkin

Jon Kolkin

Country: United States

Jon Kolkin has rapidly drawn the attention of the art world due to his ability to look at his subject matter from a very fresh, original and unique vantage point. He is known for his minimalist style, stripping away all distractions and focusing on the sole of his subject matter. Each body of work typically contains numerous plots and subplots, often with a socially relevant underlying theme. Like many artists before him, Jon has had a love affair with both the arts and the sciences. He was first introduced to photography as a young boy working in his father’s darkroom. He expanded his artistic horizons, becoming a nationally recognized clarinetist who toured Europe with the National Youth Symphony. These passions, combined with his fascination with the sciences, resulted in Jon’s decision to pursue a major in chemistry at Emory University with a minor in the Arts. After college he received a degree in Medicine. However, he never abandoned his love for the arts, taking photography courses at night while simultaneously completing his residency in Orthopedics. He is the only professional photographer from the Southeastern United States to serve on the faculty of both the Santa Fe and Maine Media Workshops. Jon is also a trained health coach who is nationally recognized as a guest speaker and educator on topics related to finding wisdom and a healthy balance within our lives.
 

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Francesco Zizola
Since the 1980's Francesco Zizola (Italy, 1962) has documented the world's major conflicts and their hidden crisis, focusing on the social and humanitarian issues that define life in the developing world as well as in western countries. A strong ethical commitment and a distinctive aesthetic eye are specific features of his pictures. His assignments and personal projects have taken him around the world, giving him the opportunity to carefully portray forgotten crises and relevant issues often disregarded by the mainstream media. He received several awards over the years, including ten awards in World Press Photo contests and six Picture of the Year International awards (POYi). Francesco published seven books, among which Uno Sguardo Inadeguato (Collana Grandi Autori, FIAF, 2013), Iraq (Ega/Amnesty International, 2007) and Born Somewhere (Delpire/Fusi Orari, 2004), extensive work on the living conditions of children from 27 different countries. In 2003 Henri Cartier Bresson included one of Francesco's pictures among his 100 favorites. This collection was made into an exhibition - Les Choix d'Henri Cartier Bresson - and a book. In 2007 Francesco founded with a group of colleagues Noor photo agency, based in Amsterdam. In 2008 he founded 10b Photography (Rome, Italy), a multipurpose centre for digital photography promoting photography culture through exhibitions, workshops, and lectures. In 2014 he was a jury member of the World Press Photo Contest. In 2016 Francesco has been awarded 2nd prize in the Contemporary Issues category of World Press Photo for his series In the Same Boat. In 2018 he was awarded the SIAE Prize for Creative Talent at the Venice Film Festival for his movie 'As if we were tuna', selected for 'Giornate degli autori', the autonomous review inside the Festival' Francesco lives in Rome, Italy. About Hybris Hybris, the last great work by Francesco, is a project that aims to tell, through a complex and articulate photographic language, how much man has exceeded the limits concerning the four elements of nature. Everyday Water, Fire, Earth and Air, are attacked and depleted of their organic and inorganic richness and diversity, of their vital energy so essential even for human life. At the time of writing this text, the chapter Hybris Water is in its final stage. The section of Hybrs Water wants to be a testimony of what is fast disappearing into the sea. The millennial balance that regulated the relationship between the need for human livelihood and the ability of the sea to bestow it, is suffering a crisis. Thanks to advanced technology and hunger for profit, contemporary man has forgotten the limit inherent to nature. Ignoring the cycles of reproduction and destroying the environment where biological diversity should always abound, the great fishing industry is drastically eliminating life in the sea. Those who still practice sustainable fishing today should be considered as the last witnesses of a possible symbiotic relationship with the sea and its life. The last witnesses with a knowledge that, once forgotten, can no longer be passed down to future generations. The fishermen live together with the fish from which their life depends, portrayed with the same dignity of the fishermen who have captured them, they are exposed among them, at the same height of their eyes, of their faces. The fishing scenes are taken with a careful look to make justice of that old relationship of respect towards the sea shown by those who practice a traditional way of fishing year after year, a sustainable fishing indeed. Francesco tries to give voice to different points of view. That of men, but also that of the nature that surrounds us and on which we depend.
Gary Beeber
United States
1951
Gary Beeber is an award-winning American photographer/filmmaker who has exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the United States and Europe. His documentary films have screened at over 75 film festivals. Solo (photography) exhibitions include two at Generous Miracles Gallery (NYC), the Griffin Museum of Photography (Wincester, MA), and upcoming exhibitions at PRAXIS Photo Arts Center, and the Rhode Island Center for Photographic Arts. Beeber’s work has also been included in juried exhibitions throughout the world. Among Fortune 500 companies who collect his work are Pfizer Pharmaceutical, Goldman Sachs and Chase Bank. Sylvester Manor, Shelter Island As an artist I am drawn to subjects I find to be incongruous, and always like to experiment with composition, lighting and perspective. As I'm taking pictures I think a lot about the passage of time and how things evolve over the decades. When living in Sag Harbor, NY one of my great pleasures was taking the 10 minute ferry trip to Shelter Island (whose sleepy beauty starkly contrasts with the glitz and glamor of the Hamptons) and exploring/documenting Sylvester Manor. The island was originally inhabited by indigenous peoples, but was officially established as a slave holding provisioning plantation in 1652 by Nathaniel Sylvester, a sugar merchant from Barbados, who purchased the entire island for 1600 pounds of sugar. Sylvester Manor has been in the Sylvester family for 11 generations. Descendants of Nathaniel Sylvester used slaves to work the plantation until early in the 19th century when slavery was abolished in the north. People relate to this series because of Sylvester Manor's history and mystery. I was drawn to it for those same reasons, and of course it's sad, dark haunting beauty.
Dorothea Lange
United States
1895 | † 1965
Dorothea Lange was an American documentary photographer, who studied photography at Columbia University and worked as an assistant to Arnold Genthe before beginning a photographic trip around the world in 1918. When she ran out of funds in San Francisco, she remained, opened a photographic studio, and during the early 1930s began photographing homeless rural people flooding into the city from the Dust Bowl exodus. Her photographs brought her to the attention of Paul Taylor, an economist at California University, who hired her to create a documentary record to accompany his report on agricultural conditions for the California State Relief Administration, and subsequently married her. When Roy Stryker saw these images, he hired her as a staff photographer for the Farm Security Administration (FSA), for which she worked sporadically as Stryker's budget allowed 1935-9. During this period, she made many of her best-known photographs, including the image known as Migrant Mother (1936). She later also photographed for the San Francisco branch of the Office of War Information, 1943-5, recording the internment of Japanese-Americans and the founding of the United Nations. In 1954-5 she was a photographer for Life magazine, afterward travelling extensively and producing photographic essays on Ireland, Egypt, and Asia.Source: The Oxford Companion to the Photograph In 1945, Ansel Adams invited Lange to teach at the first fine art photography department at the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA), now known as San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI). Imogen Cunningham and Minor White also joined the faculty. In 1952, Lange co-founded the photography magazine Aperture. In the mid-1950s, Life magazine commissioned Lange and Pirkle Jones to shoot a documentary about the death of the town of Monticello, California, and the subsequent displacement of its residents by the damming of Putah Creek to form Lake Berryessa. After Life decided not run the piece, Lange devoted an entire issue of Aperture to the work. The collection was shown at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1960. Another series for Life, begun in 1954 and featuring the attorney Martin Pulich, grew out of Lange's interest in how poor people were defended in the court system, which by one account, grew out of personal experience associated with her brother's arrest and trial. Lange's health declined in the last decade of her life. Among other ailments she suffered from was what later was identified as post-polio syndrome. She died of esophageal cancer on October 11, 1965, in San Francisco, at age seventy. She was survived by her second husband, Paul Taylor, two children, three stepchildren, and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Three months after her death, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City mounted a retrospective of her work that Lange had helped to curate. It was MoMA's first retrospective solo exhibition of the works of a female photographer. In February 2020, MoMA exhibited her work again, with the title Dorothea Lange: Words and Pictures, prompting critic Jackson Arn to write that "the first thing" this exhibition "needs to do—and does quite well—is free her from the history textbooks where she’s long been jailed." Contrasting her work with that of other twentieth-century photographers such as Eugène Atget and André Kertész whose images "were in some sense context-proof, Lange’s images tend to cry out for further information. Their aesthetic power is obviously bound up in the historical importance of their subjects, and usually that historical importance has had to be communicated through words." That characteristic has caused "art purists" and "political purists" alike to criticize Lange's work, which Arn argues is unfair: "The relationship between image and story," Arn notes, was often altered by Lange's employers as well as by government forces when her work did not suit their commercial purposes or undermined their political purposes. In his review of this exhibition, critic Brian Wallis also stressed the distortions in the "afterlife of photographs" that often went contrary to Lange's intentions. Finally, Jackson Arn situates Lange's work alongside other Depression-era artists such as Pearl Buck, Margaret Mitchell, Thornton Wilder, John Steinbeck, Frank Capra, Thomas Hart Benton, and Grant Wood in terms of their role creating a sense of the national "We". In 2003, Lange was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. In 2006, an elementary school was named in her honor in Nipomo, California, near the site where she had photographed Migrant Mother. In 2008, she was inducted into the California Hall of Fame, located at The California Museum for History, Women and the Arts. Her son, Daniel Dixon, accepted the honor in her place. In October 2018, Lange's hometown of Hoboken, New Jersey honored her with a mural depicting Lange and two other prominent women from Hoboken's history, Maria Pepe and Dorothy McNeil. In 2019, Rafael Blanco (artist) painted a mural of Lange outside of a photography building in Roseville, California.
Tianhu Yuan
China
1986
Tianhu Yuan (Tales Yuan) is a self-taught Chinese visual artist based in Chengdu and Chongqing. He has a long-standing interest in ACG-related generalized Nijigen subcultural community, and aims to build a dialogue between mainstream society and subculture through his work. He also focuses on the progress of society to explore the relationship between current technology and future developments. His work has been exhibited at China 29th National Photographic Art Exhibition, RPS IPE165, Galerie Huit Arles, PHOTO IS:RAEL International Photo Festival, Jakarta International Photo Festival, PhEST Festival, Head On Photo Festival and Lishui Art Museum. He was also awarded or shortlisted from Sony World Photography Awards, Fine Art Photography Awards, BJP OpenWalls Arles, BJP Portrait of Humanity, Lucie Foundation Scholarships, PhMuseum Photography Grant, the Meitar Award for Excellence in photography and Head On Photo Awards. Self Iterating of Chongqing A traditional neighbourhood is demolished to make way for bustling shopping districts. People are digging tunnels and building bridges to build railways, leaving behind the mountains and rivers that once defined the city's character. Citizens cope with the extremes of summer in the city known as the furnace of China. It is a city of tradition, but it is also a city looking to the future. In choosing to develop, human beings leave something behind and gain something new. People believe in moving towards a better future at the moment of choice. By capturing these moments of transition and transformation, I aim to highlight the complexities of urban development and the challenges that societies face when balancing progress with environmental preservation. I try to contemplate the role of human beings in shaping our cities and the environment, and to consider the choices we make as we look towards the future. AAP Competitions All About Photo Awards 2025
Ed Sievers
United States
1932 | † 2002
Ed Sievers was born in 1932 in St. Louis, MO, the son of a family doctor that made house calls and an aspiring opera singer. He attended Grinnell College, graduating with a degree in Speech in 1954. His first job was as a creative writer for Hallmark Cards. The slogans he penned were notable for the wry wit and wisdom with which he commented on the human condition. At the same time, his interest in the arts was expanding from the literary to the visual, and would ultimately lead him in a new direction. In 1966 he was accepted into the MFA program at the Rhode Island School of Design to study photography with Harry Callahan. Upon graduation in 1968 he joined the faculty of California State University, Northridge, as a specialist in fine art photography. He took up residence in the Carlton Hotel in Venice Beach and soon realized he had walked into a street photographer's dream. Originally designed as a resort community modeled after its Italian namesake, Venice had fallen on hard times. Buildings were in disrepair and rents were cheap. Influenced by the Bohemian lifestyle of its poets, artists, students and a struggling lower class, the boardwalk suddenly sprang to life. There were musicians, dancers, jugglers, mimes, magicians, comedians, roller skaters, fortune tellers, gritty street people and colorful hippies. And, of course, there was the sprawling nude beach. Throngs of gapers flocked from throughout Southern California to enjoy the expressive spirit of the moment. But that was only on weekends. A quieter, more sensitive mood prevailed during the week. The gentle gestures of holocaust survivors at the Israel Levin Center. The recovering alcoholics quietly heading home after Al-Anon meetings. The homeless searching for food and drink. The once cheerful cottages longing for attention. The iconic murals. The myopic murals. The motions of a people not sure of what lay ahead. Within a decade the Venice that Ed knew had been swallowed up by rampant commercialism and the inexorable influx of the nouveau riche. Upon his death in 2002, the Edwin R. Sievers Memorial Award was established to share his vision with future students; "His approach to photography was straight forward: use the nuances of available light to enhance the subject, whatever that may be: ordinary, quirky, or sublime." Source: Robert Mann Gallery
Beth Galton
United States
Beth Galton is a photo-based artist, with an educational background in the natural sciences and three decades of experience as a professional photographer in the editorial and commercial arena. These elements of her history are the lens through which she explores the world. Her work has been recognized by organizations including Graphis, Communication Arts, the Tokyo International Foto Awards, Julia Margaret Cameron Award, IPA Awards, AAP, and the PDN Taste Awards. The Cut Food series was exhibited in Montpellier Contemporain, Aperture, and Beth Urdang Gallery. It was part of ‘The Fence’, a 7-city, traveling outdoor exhibition, it was published in the Washington Post, and covered by NPR. Both Lenscratch and Rfotofolio picked up the Memory of Absence series. Additionally, A Vita Plantae, and Memory of Absence have been exhibited at Wave Hill, Soho Photographic Gallery, The Center for Fine Art Photography (CO), The Center for Photographic Art (CA), The Florida Museum of Photographic Arts, Griffin Museum of Photography, Praxis Gallery, and SE Center for Photography. The Washington Post recently published Beth’s work from her series Covid Diary, a document of her time in confinement. About Cut Food "What started as a ubiquitous burrito shot, turned into an exploration of iconic food through a fresh perspective. We chose subjects which we felt were symbols within our Western food culture, and sought to move past the normal “appetite appeal” to look deeply and with curiosity into them. My intention was to give the ordinary a sense of magic show quality. Real, but also astonishing." About A Vita Plantae "This collection explores the relationship between art and science in a three-part series of organic images: Roots, Potato Love, and Time Preserved. These images seek to reveal some of the long-hidden truths of plants: their movement and grace, the nature of time, and the almost unbearable fragility of life. " About Memory of Absence "In 2017, my mother and father—who had not lived together for 50 years, died within 3 days of each other. In this series, I sought to convey a sense of memory and loss through the composition of found ephemera and botanical matter. The volatile botanicals represent the ever-changing nature of memory —an unstable and profoundly unreliable process."
Natalya Saprunova
France/Russia
1986
Natalya Saprunova, originally from the Arctic region of Russia on the Kola Peninsula in Murmansk, is a documentary photographer based in Paris. During her higher studies to become a French teacher in Russia, she worked as a photojournalist for the daily newspaper Murmansk Messenger. After arriving in France in 2008, she studied and worked in marketing as part of her journey toward acquiring French citizenship. Eight years later, she left her permanent contract to fully return to photography. Graduated in Documentary Photojournalism from the EMI-CFD School in Paris in 2020, Natalya now pursues an ethnographic approach exploring contemporary issues such as identity, environment, climate change, youth, femininity, and spirituality. Passionate about knowledge sharing, she has been teaching photography since 2016 at Graine de Photographe school in Paris and has also led photo journeys in Russia, including in Saint-Petersburg and at Baikal Lake. She also speaks at conferences and works with young audiences to raise awareness about the environmental, cultural, and social issues she documents. Since 2019, Natalya has been retracing the Great North route of her childhood. As a teenager, she was fascinated by the legends and history of the Indigenous Saami reindeer herders. Today, she travels alone between Siberia, Mongolia, Canada and Europe, adopting local ways of life wherever she goes. Once in the field, she builds connections with communities who, moved by her project, welcome her and share with her their culture, their concerns, their hopes, and their daily lives. She works on long-term projects, regularly returning to these extreme environments, facing temperatures that can drop below –60°C or rise beyond +35°C.
Simon Roberts
United Kingdom
1974
Simon Roberts is a British photographic artist based in Brighton, UK. Often employing expansive landscape photographs, his approach is one of creating wide-ranging surveys of our time, which communicate on important social, economic and political issues. Roberts has been exhibited widely with We English touring to over thirty national and international venues. He’s had solo shows at the National Media Museum, Bradford, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, and Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai, and been included in numerous group exhibitions. Recent shows include Observers: British Photography and the British Scene (From the 1920s to Now) at Galeria de Arte SESI, Brazil, and Landmark: The Fields of Photography at Somerset House, London. His photographs reside in major public and private collections, including the George Eastman House, Deutsche Börse Art Collection and Wilson Centre for Photography. In recognition for his work, Roberts has received several awards including the Vic Odden Award (2007) - offered for a notable achievement in the art of photography by a British photographer, along with bursaries from the National Media Museum (2007), John Kobal Foundation (2008) and grants from Arts Council England (2007, 2010, 2011, 2014). He was commissioned as the official Election Artist by the House of Commons Works of Art Committee to produce a record of the 2010 General Election on behalf of the UK Parliament. In 2012 he was granted access by the International Olympic Committee to photograph the London Olympics and most recently was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society, UK (2013). He has published three critically acclaimed monographs, Motherland (Chris Boot, 2007), We English (Chris Boot, 2009) - voted by Martin Parr as one of the best photography books of the past decade - and Pierdom (Dewi Lewis Publishing, 2013). One commentator has described his photographs as “subtle in their discovery and representation of forms of cultural character, which, upon closer inspection, reveal a richness of detail and meaning. They exhibit a disciplined compositional restraint, a richness of palette, and a wealth of narrative incident. Also represented by MC2 Gallery
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Latest Interviews

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Exclusive Interview with Carole Mills Noronha
Carole Mills Noronha is an Australian photographer whose deeply personal work explores memory, family, loss, and the fragile nature of identity. Living with epilepsy and a lifelong sensitivity to light, she has developed a distinctive photographic language rooted in observation, empathy, and emotional connection. Her images are shaped by lived experience, revealing intimate stories with remarkable honesty and tenderness.
Exclusive Interview with Trevor Cole: Pastoral Peoples and Practices
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Exclusive Interview with Frank Meo
In our latest exclusive feature for All About Photo, I speak with veteran photography representative Frank Meo about what it truly takes to build a sustainable creative career today. Frank brings decades of experience working with Fortune 500 companies, major agencies, and documentary photographers to the table. We dive into the critical business skills often left out of art school curriculums, the power of mentorship, and the inspiring evolution of PROJECTIONS—his international salon platform for visual storytellers. It’s an essential read for anyone navigating the commercial or editorial photography landscape today.
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For over seven years, Of Lilies and Remains has explored the depths of the goth and darkwave underground, unfolding in Leipzig—a city long associated with a vibrant and enduring subcultural scene. Moving between iconic gatherings such as Wave-Gotik-Treffen and more intimate moments on the fringes, the project offers a rare and immersive glimpse into a world often misunderstood, yet rich in expression and community. Created by Luca in collaboration with Laura Estelle Barmwoldt, the work embraces a cinematic and deeply personal approach. Rather than documenting from a distance, it moves within the scene itself, capturing its atmosphere, its codes, and its quiet contradictions. The title Of Lilies and Remains hints at this duality—where beauty and darkness, fragility and strength coexist. As the book prepares for its release, we spoke with both artists about the origins of the project, their process, and what it means to document a subculture that continues to evolve while remaining true to its spirit.
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Dutch photographer Jan Janssen explores universal human experiences through his long-term project It Matters, winner of the May 2025 Solo Exhibition. Begun in 2016, the series captures intimate moments of everyday life—love, loss, connection, and belonging—across Central and Eastern Europe. Working in countries such as Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia, Janssen spends extended time within communities, building relationships based on trust and respect. His approach allows him to move beyond observation, revealing deeply human and authentic moments. Rooted in travel and personal discovery, It Matters reflects Janssen’s search for what connects us all in an increasingly divided world. The project is ongoing and will culminate in a photobook scheduled for publication in 2026.
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German photographer Henk Kosche turns his lens toward the streets of Halle an der Saale, capturing everyday life in the late years of the former German Democratic Republic. At the time, Kosche was studying design and exploring the city with his camera, drawn to the atmosphere of its industrial landscape and the quiet rhythms of daily life. His series Street Photography at the End of the 80s, selected as the Solo Exhibition for July 2025, revisits a body of work created just before a period of profound change. Rediscovered decades later in a small box of 35mm negatives, these photographs offer glimpses of a city and its people at a moment suspended between the familiar and the unknown.
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AAP Magazine #59 Shapes
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