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FINAL DAYS TO ENTER AAP MAGAZINE SHADOWS: GET PUBLISHED AND WIN $1,000
FINAL DAYS TO ENTER AAP MAGAZINE SHADOWS: GET PUBLISHED AND WIN $1,000
Maren Elize Klemp
Maren Elize Klemp
Maren Elize Klemp

Maren Elize Klemp

Country: Norway

"I grew up in a small town outside of Oslo, and started photography when I was a teenager. My father bought me my first camera when I was seventeen, and I immediately knew that I wanted to become a photographer. Writing was one of my passions in this period of my life, but I also was searching for a way to express myself visually. I had no talent for either painting and drawing, so photography naturally became the right medium for me.

Unfortunately I dropped out of high school, but was lucky enough to be offered an internship as a photographer in the local newspaper. I learned a lot during this period, but I quickly discovered that I was most drawn to the field of fine art photography rather than photo journalism.

After about six moths in the newspaper I started to study fine art photography under professor Robert Meyer at Robert Meyer Kunsthøgskole in Oslo, and I have been a fine art photographer ever since.

In 2014 I traveled to Charleston, South Carolina to work on my first book together with photographer and professor, Jose' Escobar. He discovered my work on Flickr, and asked if I wanted to collaborate on a book project. The book is called 'Between Intervals' and is a visual representation of conditions people suffering from mental illness can experience. My work has also been shown both in solo and group exhibitions in Oslo, Norway."
 

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More Great Photographers To Discover

Lise Sarfati
France
1958
Lise Sarfati has lived and worked in the United States since 2003. She has realized six important series of photographs there. They have been followed by exhibitions and publications. Each of her works makes clear the identity of an approach focused on the intensity of the rapport established with the person photographed, and of that person with the context. A vision in which the individual is environment, a map outlining a perilous cultural geography. The richness of perception is constructed without effects. The compositions are flawless in the simplicity and unity of the image – the style tends to be elementary and clean, avoiding all qualifications, but the traits of each thing and each person trace a hundred thousand folds. The dimension of the interplay of postures is that of a solemn immaturity: the scenery formed by the people and places is the silent crumpling of a dream in which each risks his or her skin. A feminine seduction tinged with fateful coincidences; the beauty of the adolescents looks like a magic spell. Their solitude and strangeness in the world turn the image into an echo chamber inhabited by the photographer, her subject and the viewer. The earlier period of a photographic work carried out in Russia (continuously from 1989 to 1999) confirms the tendency of this research. She identifies a very precise and endless psychological spectrum. The projections, the ambitions associated with the immense space, the way in which they compose these figures, play an essential role: the supporting roles are incandescent. A determinism of the heroic, inevitably tragic figure, as if not even we really have another choice.
Ave Pildas
United States
1939
Thank God I had a really good education. - Ave Pildas Ave Pildas began his arts education as an architecture student, designing department stores, government and medical buildings. Before long, this path felt too conservative and constricting, so he changed majors to design. Creating products, packaging and graphics provided enough diversity, to seem like "complete freedom" at the time. Concurrently, Ave was designing exhibits, displays, graphics and publications for the Cincinnati Public Library. After studying at the University of Cincinnati and graduating from the Cincinnati Art Academy inn 1962, Ave headed east to Pittsburgh, where he worked designing collateral for U.S. Steel, Alcoa, Pittsburgh Plate Glass, Koppers, and Westinghouse. At Westinghouse he met renowned graphic designer Paul Rand. With encouragement from Rand and well-known typographer Noel Martin, Ave traveled to Switzerland and enrolled at the Kunstgewerbeshule, studying typography and graphic design during the Cold War. As a student, he visited every country in Europe and parts of North Africa, often by car. It was at this time that Ave set the lofty goal of "raising the visual conscience" of the world, and, at the conclusion of his studies, accepted a position as assistant professor at Philadelphia College of Art, now the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Since then, he has taught at Layton School of Art, Leicester Polytechnic in Britain, Cal Arts, Art Center College of Design, UCLA, USC, as well as Otis College of Art and Design, where he served as Chair of the Communication Arts Department. He is currently Professor Emeritus at Otis. "Although Pildas was formally trained in Swiss design, he developed an early love for photography in the '60s when he photographed jazz legends like Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane and Dizzy Gillespie for Downbeat Magazine," writes Mae Ryan of Southern California Public Radio/KPCC. For over 50 years, Ave's been taking pictures of diverse subject matter. Many of his images of Hollywood Boulevard from the 1970s reside in the permanent collections of museums and libraries including LACMA and the New York Public Library. He has published three books: Art Deco LA, Movie Palaces, and Bijou, which was released in December 2016 by Nazraeli Press. Ave Pildas provides a fascinating glimpse into how, over the span of four decades, the streets and people of Hollywood Boulevard have both changed and remained curiously the same, writes Haley Evans for Beautiful Decay Magazine. In the studio, Ave is working on a still-life series based on circles, squares, and triangles, substituting geometric objects like pyramids, cubes, and spheres for the typical vase of flowers or table setting. Outside the studio, Ave shoots "Paper Movies". These collages of multiple images are shot in public spaces and allow him to interact with passers by, encouraging them to participate with the photographer and the background. After collecting hundreds of photos, he edits them to tell a visual story, combining them into a single piece. He is also producing short, stop-action videos using still images from "Paper Movies" to promote the series. One of the videos, "Stairway to Heaven," assembled from images of a staircase at The Getty Museum, garnered 40,000 views in a week. Galleries Joseph Bellows Gallery Richard Moore Photographs Tufenkian Fine Arts Rock Photography Museum Small Books & Small Prints
Ian van Coller
South Africa
1970
Ian van Coller was born in 1970, in Johannesburg, South Africa, and grew up in the country during a time of great political turmoil. These formative years became integral to the subject matter van Coller has pursued throughout his artistic career. His work has addressed complex cultural issues of both the apartheid and post-apartheid eras, especially with regards to cultural identity in the face of globalization, and the economic realities of every day life. Van Coller received a National Diploma in Photography from Technikon Natal in Durban, and in 1992 he moved to the United States to pursue his studies where he received a BFA from Arizona State University, and an MFA from The University of New Mexico. He currently lives in Bozeman, Montana with his wife, children, and three dogs, and is a Professor of Photography at Montana State University. His work has been widely exhibited nationally and internationally and is held in many significant museum collections, including The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Getty Research Institute, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Library of Congress, and The South African National Gallery. Van Coller's first monograph, Interior Relations, was published by Charles Lane Press (New York) in 2011. He is a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow and a member of the Piece of Cake collective. Van Coller's most recent work focuses on environmental issues related to climate change and deep time. These projects have centered on the production of large scale artist books, as well as direct collaborations with paleo-climatologists. About Naturalists of the Long Now Climate change has compressed and conflated human and geologic time scales, making it essential to find ways to conceptualize “deep time.” My project, Naturalists of the Long Now, seeks to make notions of deep time comprehensible through visual exploration of glacier ice, as well as other earthly archives. Initially inspired by the 10,000 Year Clock Project of the Long Now Foundation, I have begun collaborating with scientists to make art that challenges viewers to think about the vast scales of geologic time-both past and future-that are recorded not only in the earth’s ice bodies, but in trees, sediments, corals and fossils. Photography is a unique and powerful visual language. However, what that language sometimes lacks is the information needed to bring about understanding of what is represented in the photograph itself. In 2015, I was able to accompany a team of geoscientists who specialize in climate science related to Quelccaya Glacier in Peru. I was astonished at the endurance of these men and women. Every day they would climb to the summit of the glacier at 18,600ft, and then work over 10 hours straight, drilling ice cores, digging snow pits, and collecting data. It would be exhausting work at sea level, let alone at altitude. I realized I really had a lack of understanding of what the scientists were trying to do. Where the symbolic conversations in my ice portraits ended, the deep knowledge of ice possessed by the scientists would sustain and expand it. When I was a young person, I was fascinated by the annotated drawings and paintings of Victorian era naturalists, botanists and ornithologists. These brought together the two things I loved most in the world-art and nature. Since that expedition to Peru, I have started intimate collaborations with scientists by having them annotate directly onto my photographic prints-a contemporary taxonomy of ice and climate-thus re-inventing a genre of naturalist imagery. Naturalists of the Long Now breaks down barriers between art and science, and creates a dialogue between text and image, landscape and viewer, expert and novice, past, present and future. My intention is that Naturalists of the Long Now is to encourage people to think in terms of longer spans of time, and consider what humanity will look like in 100 or even 10,000 years-instead of just considering our personal and immediate desires. Article Photography and Climate Change Awareness
Melissa Stewart
Australia
1963
Born in Melbourne, Australian Photographer Melissa Stewart currently resides between the Victorian country regions of the Macedon Ranges and the Mornington Peninsula. She has an affinity with the Australian landscape, nature and its wilderness. It is through her raw, true Australian aesthetic, she draws awareness towards the environment and the landscape we inhibit to protect it. Living in the country with horses has helped shape her awareness and interest in connecting and belonging. After graduating in 1980, she studied Art and Design and then Interior design in 2006 which has only enhanced her focus for detail, shape, line and form, this reflects in her Photography. Melissa returned to study Professional Photography in 2016 at Photography Studies College in Melbourne, studying part time, she has her final year to complete after deferment in 2019. She has been awarded finalist in Click 17, SE Centre for Contemporary Photography, Brunswick Street Gallery and exhibited in several group shows. A Finalist in the Australian Photography Awards awarded top 5, Student category and third place student category in the Australian Photography Awards exhibition, 2019. Statement Being in nature has always allayed my anxiety; it's my form of meditation. We can so easily forget about those simple needs and pleasure in life. Isolation has enabled me to reconnect, being at home creates a security a protection and comfort, and it brings me to a peaceful and happier state of mind. More so now it's imperative to connect with parts of yourself that you haven't before and reconnect with the things that you love. Given this time to slow down; I have been able to be inspired by books and music, long walks and observing the natural world in a different perspective. I have had wonderful moments where I have really be in awe and wonder with nature, the sea, the trees, and the silence. It is exactly in these moments that we can assess what matters, and what we want our life to mean. My interest in drawing awareness towards our environment and the landscape motivates my belief that it is essential to our quality and balance of life.
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