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Aurore Valade
Aurore Valade
Aurore Valade

Aurore Valade

Country: France
Birth: 1981

Aurore Valade is a French photographer born in 1981. She creates images that play with the iconic register of scenography. In these elaborate stagings, we are often confronted with clichés, meaningful reflections of a social, economic, or cultural situation in contemporary life.


In 2008, she won the HSBC Prize for Photography for a series in which she photographs people who perform their own roles, in their interiors. From there, his work evolved into a political approach to the image. In 2015, she was an artist member of the Casa de Velázquez (Académie de France in Madrid), where she initiated research on indignation which gave rise to the Digo yo and Se manifester series, for which she obtained the Photo Folio Prize. Review of the Rencontres d'Arles1 Festival in 2017. Very elaborate, the staging of his photographs can be considered as "significant reflections of a social, economic or cultural situation of our time but also certain values ​​which question the limits of privacy."

Source: Wikipedia

It has been said that intimacy is connected to the art of talking about life. That art is precisely what Aurore Valade’s project summons. Her starting point is the art of conversation: con-verse means to go with another, to walk along the same road together, and that is what gives rise to the collaboration between the artist and those she photographs. Aurore Valade explores an “intimacy liberated” by the desire to share the voice and listen to other voices of those who recognize that every life is exceptional, for, each time, that life is always the only one that can be lived.

Each of these photographs shows a shared space that concentrates and exudes that irreducible, excessive vitality. That is why Aurore Valade wanted to explore the specific space in which there is a constant tension between the intimate and the political, where its liberation is always transgressive and inhabits the very heart of revolt.

Source: Arles - Les Rencontres de la Photographie

 

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André Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri
France
1819 | † 1889
André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri (French: 28 March 1819 - 4 October 1889) was a French photographer who started his photographic career as a daguerreotypist but gained greater fame for patenting his version of the carte de visite, a small photographic image which was mounted on a card. Disdéri, a brilliant showman, made this system of mass-production portraiture world famous. Disdéri began his working life in a number of occupations, while also studying art. He started as a daguerreotypist in Brest in 1848 or 1849 but in December 1852 or January 1853 he moved to Nîmes. There he received assistance from Édouard Boyer and Joseph Jean Pierre Laurent with his photography-related chemistry experiments. After a year in Nîmes he moved to Paris, enabling easy access to people who would be the subjects of his cartes de visite. Photographs had previously served as calling cards,[6] but Disdéri's invention of the paper carte de visite (i.e. "visiting card") photograph second enabled the mass production of photographs. On 27 November 1854 he patented the system of printing ten photographs on a single sheet (although there is no evidence that a system printing more than eight actually materialized). This was the first patent ever for a carte de visite. Disdéri's's cartes de visite were 6X9 cm, about the size of conventional (nonphotographic) visiting cards of the time, and were made by a camera with four lenses and a sliding plate holder; a design inspired by the stereoscopic cameras. The novelty quickly spread throughout the world. According to a German visitor, Disdéri's studio became "really the Temple of Photography - a place unique in its luxury and elegance. Daily he sells three to four thousand francs worth of portraits". The fact that these photos could be reproduced inexpensively and in great quantity brought about the decline of the daguerreotype and ushered in a carte de visite craze as they became enormously popular throughout Europe and the United States. So great was the publicity that all of Paris wanted portraits. Disdéri also invented the twin-lens reflex camera. The great French photographer Nadar, who was Disdéri's competitor, wrote about the new invention in his autobiographical "Quand j'étais photographe", "about the appearance of Disdéri and Carte de Visite... It spelled disaster. Either you had to succumb - that is to say, follow the trend - or resign." At the pinnacle of his career, Disdéri was extremely wealthy and renowned; but like another famous photographer, Mathew Brady, he is reported to have died in near poverty. By the end of his life, Disdéri had become penniless. He died on 4 October 1889 in the Hôpital Ste. Anne in Paris, "an institution for indigents, alcoholics, and the mentally ill". He was a victim of his own invention. The system which he invented and popularized was so easy to imitate that photographers all over the world took advantage of it.
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Arthur Elgort
United States
1940
Arthur Elgort (born June 8, 1940) is an American fashion photographer best known for his work with Vogue magazine. Elgort was born in Brooklyn, to Sophie (née Didimamoff) and Harry Elgort (April 10, 1908 – October 23, 1998), a restaurant owner. He is of Russian-Jewish heritage. Raised in New York City, he attended Stuyvesant High School and Hunter College, where he studied painting. He lives in New York City with his wife, Grethe Barrett Holby, who is a producer, stage director, choreographer, and dramaturge, and three children, including actor and singer Ansel Elgort. Elgort began his career working as a photo assistant to Gosta "Gus" Peterson. Elgort's 1971 debut in British Vogue created a sensation in the Fashion Photography world where his soon-to-be iconic "snapshot" style and emphasis on movement and natural light liberated the idea of fashion photography. In September 2008, he told Teen Vogue that he credited Mademoiselle for his big break: "They were really brave and gave me a chance. It was the first time I was shooting a cover instead of a half-page here or there." He worked for such magazines as International and American Vogue, Glamour, GQ, Rolling Stone, and Teen Vogue, and shooting advertising campaigns with fashion labels as Chanel, Valentino, and Yves Saint Laurent. He still works for fashion publications, as well as working on his most recent 2009 advertising campaigns with Via Spiga and Liz Claiborne with Isaac Mizrahi. His work is exhibited in the permanent collections of the International Center of Photography in New York, in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and in the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas. In 2011, Elgort won the CFDA Board of Directors' Award.Source: Wikipedia Much like photographers Martin Munkacsi and Richard Avedon before him, Arthur Elgort found inspiration working out of the studio— both in the city streets and in natural settings such as the countryside of upstate New York. Realizing that movement, humor, and natural light are all a part of the genuine photographic experience, Elgort took his models out into the world employing improvisation as a catalyst for the creative accidents to happen. As Elgort states in the Introduction to The Big Picture, “When my career was just beginning, I noticed that most of the magazines had plenty of studio photographers – All I saw were models standing still. So I decided to do something else. I took my models out on the streets of New York, Paris, or wherever I was, and the magazines liked it. It felt different.” Some of Elgort’s most recognizable photographs— candid shots of Fashion greats Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss, and Karlie Kloss— were taken when Elgort was not “working”, moments in between shoots, models getting ready behind the scenes, or unwinding after hours. It is Elgort’s photojournalist style of capturing these spontaneous, authentic moments that make his images so effortless, genuinely reflecting the periods he documented with an honesty allowing Elgort’s images to become more and more iconic as time passes.Source: Fahey / Klein Gallery Arthur was born in 1940 in New York City. As a teenager he attended Stuyvesant High School and then went on to study painting at Hunter College. Finding the medium too lonely, he decided to try his hand at photography and soon discovered it was a talent. Shortly thereafter he made his debut in British Vogue in 1971. With just one shoot he created not only a sensation but a permanent place in the world of fashion photography. Arthur's relaxed and easy snapshot style was a breath of fresh air in a world where staged and stiff studio shoots with mannequin-like models were the norm. Arthur encouraged his subjects to move freely in the frame. The models he chose were lively, wore less make-up, and were simply enhanced by the natural light that he favored. Taking his models outside into the “real world,” where the clothes he was being asked to photograph would be worn and put to the test, became a signature of his personal style. Arthur quickly became one of the best-known and most emulated photographers in the world. The risks that he took with his photographic style changed the idea of what a fashion photograph could be and pushed the entire industry forward. For over 50 years Arthur has been a major influence, from his Vogue covers to his luxury-brand ad campaigns, his work is an inspiration. His style and influence created infinite possibilities in the world of fashion photography which he continues to explore today from his base in New York City. Source: www.arthurelgort.com
Michael Knapstein
United States
1956
Michael Knapstein (born 1956, Stevens Point, Wisconsin, USA) is a fine-art photographer who has earned international recognition for his insightful and nuanced visual exploration of the American Midwest. He now lives in Middleton, Wisconsin. Michael's photographs began attracting national attention while still in high school. At the age of 17, his work earned its way into the permanent collection of the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, NY. After graduating from the College of Fine Arts and Communication at the University of Wisconsin, Knapstein began a 30+ year career in the world of advertising. He sold his ad agency in 2010 and returned to his first love of photography. Since this reemergence, Michael's work has been recognized with hundreds of awards in some of the world's most prestigious photography competitions. He is a four-time Critical Mass Finalist, Pollux Award Winner and was named International Landscape Photographer of the Year at the 5th Barcelona Foto Biennale in Barcelona, Spain. He was also named one of "14 Inspiring American Artists" by Skillshare and Feature Shoot. His work has been widely exhibited in museums and galleries around the world. The Unforgotten My photographic series “The Unforgotten” was created to honor and preserve the rapidly disappearing family farm and the rural agricultural tradition that helped build the American Midwest. During my lifetime, we have lost more than 105,000 family farms just in my home state of Wisconsin. While these traditional small farms are falling victim to corporate agriculture and urbanization, their legacy is still honored with events that celebrate the proud agricultural heritage of the Midwest. Often, these gatherings include antique agricultural equipment, sometimes dating back to the days of steam power. I explored this world for several years by attending more than 50 small agricultural fairs and rural festivals across the Midwest. I was drawn to this subject matter because these people and their farm equipment – both once symbols of progress and innovation – now stand as relics of a bygone era. The resulting images speak to themes of rural identity, memory, loss, history, heritage, pride, family, community and sense of place. To express the timeless nature of this material, I approached this project from a “straight photography” perspective in the spirit of Group f/64. My approach was informed by the iconic work of WPA artists and mid-century modernist photographers such as Adams, Weston, White, Strand, Parks and Evans. My work was also influenced by the American Regionalism movement and the work of artists including Wood, Benton, Curry, Wyeth and Hopper. These proud people and their farm machines may eventually fade into the mist of time. But perhaps through my images, their stories may forever remain Unforgotten.
Scott Bourne
United States
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