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Yasser Alaa Mobarak
Yasser Alaa Mobarak
Yasser Alaa Mobarak

Yasser Alaa Mobarak

Country: Egypt
Birth: 1993

Yasser Alaa Mobarak is a 24-year-old, Egyptian award-winning photographer based in Delhi, India. He has won photography prizes from National Geographic Traveler India, National Geographic Egypt, International Federation of Photographic Art, Photographic Society of America and Prix De La Photographie Paris. Yasser's works have been featured in Digital Camera World Magazine, Amateur Photographer Magazine, Smart Photography Magazine, Silvershotz Magazine, Adobe Blog, PBS NewsHour and Xinhua News Agency.

He is holder of AFIAP distinction from the International Federation of Photographic Art and holder of Associateship from Image Colleague Society International. He was judge at Adobe Youth Voices Awards, Romania's National Creativity Contest and The Photographic Angle.
 

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Sonia Melnikova-Raich
Russia/United States
1947
Sonia Melnikova-Raich was born in Moscow in 1947 and has been living in San Francisco since 1987. She was trained as an artist and architect, with a Master's degree from the prestigious Moscow Architectural Institute. Her approach to photography is shaped by her background in painting and architecture. Influenced by the vision of Russian Constructivists of the 1920s and the photography of the Bauhaus movement, she is interested in exploring the abstract in the material world, drawing the viewer's attention to the inner geometry of the photograph and its compositional structure. Her Light+Shadows series, which revolves around the mystery of perspective and geometry created by light and darkness in the architectural image, was inspired by the words of the famous American architect Louis Kahn: "The sun never knew how great it was until it hit the side of a building." Distinct from her high-contrast architectural photography, many of Sonia's other works (Within My Sight, Råbjerg Mile Dunes, Waking Dreams, and other series) explore the poetry and mystique of low-light environments, capturing fleeting moments, barely visible, ambiguous or disappearing things. She feels a strong affinity with the Japanese philosophy and aesthetic of wabi sabi, with its reverence for the subtle beauty in old and simple things, and focus on transience and impermanence. She believes that photography is the best medium to express these concepts, as each photograph is inherently an image of disappearance, a reflective connection to the past forever stamped by time. Since 2005, Sonia's photography has been exhibited locally, nationally, and internationally. In addition to three solo gallery shows in San Francisco, her photographs have been exhibited at LoosenArt Gallery in Rome, Fotogalerie Friedrichshain in Berlin, and various venues in the USA, with some of her works in the permanent collection of the Lafayette Public Library in California. She has been among the winners in many juried competitions, had her works featured in professional photography journals, and was listed in 100 Hot Photographers of 2022 and 2023 by YourDailyPhotograph.com, the project by Duncan Miller Gallery in Los Angeles, an internationally recognized gallery specializing in 20th and 21st Century fine art photography. Winner AAP Magazine #30 Shadows
Kenro Izu
Japan
1949
Kenro Izu (b. 1949) was born in Osaka, Japan. During his studies at Nippon University, college of art, Izu visited New York in 1970 to study photography, and subsequently decided to stay and work. In 1975, after working as an assistant to other photographers, Izu established Kenro Izu Studio in New York City, to specialize in still life photography, both commercial and fine art. In 1979, Izu made his first trip to Egypt, which inspired him to begin his series Sacred Places, an exploration that is still in progress. In 1983, a platinum print by Paul Strand inspired Izu to take a step toward developing his own contact-printing process using Platinum/Palladium, using a super large format camera. Since then, all of Izu's work is produced by the same technique, mostly in a 14x20 inch format. Izu's still-life images include floral and anatomical subjects. In 2000, Izu started experimenting with a technique of Cyano over Platinum to achieve deep blue-black. The body of work entitled, Blue, was completed in 2004. As Izu continues his series, Sacred Places, he has traveled to Egypt, Syria, Jordan, England, Scotland, Mexico, France and Easter Island (Chile). More recently, he has focused on Buddhist and Hindu monuments in South East Asia: Cambodia, Burma, Indonesia, Vietnam and, most recently Bhutan and India. Izu's work has been exhibited in numerous museums including the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of Smithsonian Institution, Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, Peabody/Essex Museum, Museum of Photographic Art, Rubin Museum of Art, among others. He has published several books of his work including: Sacred Places, Kenro Izu Still Life, Passage to Angkor, and Eternal Light. In 1985, after a several visit to Cambodia to photograph the Angkor Wat, Izu decided to build and operate a free pediatric hospital, and founded a not-for-profit organization, Friends Withou A Border, to help children of Cambodia who suffer from lack of medical facilities and severe poverty. The Angkor Hospital for Children, which opened in 1999 in Siem Reap , Cambodia is now an official medical education center. Izu has been the recipient of the Catskill Center for Photography Fellowship in 1992, a NEA grant in 1984, the New York Foundation for Arts grant in 1985, the Lou Stouman Award in 1999, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2001, the Vision Award from the Center for Photography at Woodstock in 2005 and a Lucie Award in 2007. Source: Howard Greenberg Gallery
Shomei Tomatsu
Japan
1930 | † 2012
Shomei Tomatsu (東松 照明, Tōmatsu Shōmei) was a Japanese photographer, primarily known for his images that depict the impact of World War II on Japan and the subsequent occupation of U.S. forces. As one of the leading postwar photographers, Tomatsu is attributed with influencing the younger generations of photographers including those associated with the magazine Provoke (Takuma Nakahira and Daido Moriyama). Tomatsu was born in Nagoya in 1930. As an adolescent during World War II, he was mobilized to support Japan's war effort. Like many Japanese students his age, he was sent to work at a steel factory and underwent incessant conditioning intended to instill fear and hatred towards the British and Americans. Once the war ended and Allied troops took over numerous Japanese cities, Tomatsu interacted with Americans firsthand and found that his preconceptions of them were not entirely salient. At the time Tomatsu's contempt for the violence and crimes committed by these soldiers was complicated by individual acts of kindness he received from them – he simultaneously loved and hated their presence. These interactions, which he later described as among the most formative memories of his childhood, initiated his long-standing fixation on and feelings of ambivalence towards the subject of American soldiers. If I had seven lives, I’d be a photographer in every one. -- Shomei Tomatsu Tomatsu embraced photography while an economics student at Aichi University. While still in university, his photographs were shown frequently in monthly amateur competitions by Camera magazine and received recognition from Ihei Kimura and Ken Domon. After graduating in 1954, he joined Iwanami Shashin Bunko, through an introduction made by Aichi University professor Mataroku Kumaza. Tomatsu contributed photographs to the issues Floods and the Japanese (1954) and Pottery Town, Seto Aichi (1954). He stayed at Iwanami for two years before leaving to pursue freelance work. In 1957, Tomatsu participated in the exhibition Eyes of Ten where he displayed his series Barde Children’s School; he was featured in the exhibit twice more when it was held again in 1958 and 1959. After his third showing, Tomatsu established the short-lived photography collective VIVO with fellow Eyes of Ten exhibitors; these other members included Eikoh Hosoe, Kikuji Kawada, Ikkō Narahara, Akira Satō, and Akira Tanno. Towards the end of the 1950s, Tomatsu began photographing Japanese towns with major American bases, a project that would span over 10 years. Tomatsu's artistic output and renown grew significantly during the 1960s, exemplified by his prolific engagements with many prominent Japanese photography magazines. He began the decade by publishing his images of U.S. bases in the magazines Asahi Camera and Camera Mainichi and his series Home in Photo Art. In contrast to his earlier style which resembled traditional photojournalism, Tomatsu was beginning to develop a highly expressionistic form of image-taking that emphasized the photographer's own subjectivity. In response to this emergence, a dispute arose when Iwanami Shashin Bunko founder Yonosuke Natori wrote that Tomatsu had betrayed his foundations as a photojournalist by neglecting the responsibility to present reality in a truthful and legible manner. He rejected the claim that he was ever a photojournalist, and admonished journalistic thinking as an impediment to photography. Both essays were published in Asahi Camera. In addition to Asahi Camera and Photo Art, Tomatsu worked for magazines Gendai no me and Camera Mainichi. For Gendai no me, he edited a monthly series titled I am King (1964); for Camera Mainichi, he printed multiple collaborations made with Yasuhiro Ishimoto and Shigeichi Nagano in 1965 and his own series, The Sea Around Us in 1966. Tomatsu first went to Okinawa to photograph the American bases under the auspices of Asahi Camera in 1969. The images he captured formed the book Okinawa, Okinawa Okinawa which served as an explicit critique of the American air force. On the cover, an anti-base slogan verbalizing his disdain with the overwhelming U.S. presence in Okinawa reads: "The bases are not in Okinawa; Okinawa is in the bases". This sentiment was foreshadowed in Tomatsu's earlier writings, like his 1964 essay for Camera Manichi in which he stated "it would not be strange to call [Japan] the State of Japan in the United States of America. That's how far America has penetrated inside Japan, how deeply it has plumbed our daily lives." Tomatsu visited Okinawa three more times before finally moving to Naha in 1972. While in Okinawa, he traveled to various remote islands including Iriomote and Hateruma; he spent seven months on Miyakojima where he organized a study group called “Miyako University” aimed at mentoring young Miyako residents. Combined with his images taken in Southeast Asia, Tomatsu's photographs of Okinawa from the 1970s were shown in his prizewinning Pencil of the Sun (1975). Although he had come to Okinawa in order to witness its return to Japanese territory, Pencil of the Sun revealed a considerable shift away from the subject of military bases that he pursued throughout 1960s. He credited a diminishing interest in the American armed forces, in addition to the allure of Okinawa's brilliantly colored landscapes, for his adoption of color photography. In 1974, Tomatsu returned to Tokyo where he set up Workshop Photo School, an alternative two-year-long workshop (1974–76), with Eikoh Hosoe, Nobuyoshi Araki, Masahisa Fukase, Daidō Moriyama, and Noriaki Yokosuka; the school published the photo magazine Workshop. Tomatsu's dedication to nurturing the photography community in Japan was also evidenced in his role as a juror for the Southern Japan Photography Exhibition and his membership in the Photographic Society of Japan's committee to create a national museum of photography. The efforts of this group led to the establishment of photography departments at major national museums, such as Yokohama Museum of Art and the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, as well as the first photography museum in Japan, Tokyo Photographic Art Museum. In this, photography is the same thing as love. When my gaze, diving into the sea as my subject, converges with the act of photography, hot sparks fly at the point of intersection. -- Shomei Tomatsu Tomatsu took part in his first major international show, New Japanese Photography (1974) at MoMA New York, alongside workshop members Hosoe, Moriyama, Fukase, and 11 other photographers. New Japanese Photography was the first survey of contemporary Japanese photographers undertaken outside of Japan. It traveled to eight other locations in the United States including the Denver Art Museum, San Francisco Museum of Art, and Portland Art Museum. By 1980, Tomatsu published three more books: Scarlet Dappled Flower (1976) and The Shining Wind (1979) were composed of his images from Okinawa; and Kingdom of Mud (1978) featured his Afghanistan series printed earlier in Assalamu Alaykum. In the early 1980s, Tomatsu had his first international solo exhibition, Shomei Tomatsu: Japan 1952-1981 shown at thirty venues over three years. He was also included in notable international group exhibitions regarding Japanese art: in 1985, he was one of the main artists in Black Sun: The Eyes of Four first shown at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford; in 1994, he was featured in the seminal show Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky at the Yokohama Museum of Art, Guggenheim Museum and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In the last decade of his career, Tomatsu embarked on a new and comprehensive series of retrospectives, dividing his oeuvre into five "mandalas" of place. Each mandala was named after the area it was exhibited: Nagasaki Mandala (Nagasaki Prefectural Art Museum, 2000); Okinawa Mandala (Urasoe Art Museum, 2002); Kyoto Mandala (Kyoto National Museum of Modern Art, 2003); Aichi Mandala (Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, 2006); and Tokyo Mandala (Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, 2007). Tomatsu also had a separate retrospective, Shomei Tomatsu: Skin of the Nation, for the international museum circuit. Skin of the Nation was organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and curated by Sandra S. Phillips and the photographer and writer Leo Rubinfien. The exhibition toured three countries and five venues from 2004 through 2006: Japan Society (New York); National Gallery of Canada, Corcoran Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and Fotomuseum Winterthur. In 2010 Tomatsu moved to Okinawa permanently, where he held the final exhibition during his lifetime, Tomatsu Shomei and Okinawa - Love Letter to the Sun (2011). He succumbed to pneumonia on 14 December 2012 (although this was not publicly announced until January 2013).Source: Wikipedia
Rémi Chapeaublanc
Self-taught photographer, Rémi Chapeaublanc was destined for a scientific career in bioinformatics. He continued to use the Cartesian approach from this training adding a sensitive, people-centred dimension the day he decided to be a photographer. For his series Gods & Beasts (2011), he crossed Europe and Asia reaching Mongolia. Inside the yurt or outside, at nightfall, he produced portraits of Kazakh nomadic herders and their animals without ever resorting to retouching, despite working in digital. For this most recent series The Last Tsaatan, Rémi Chapeaublanc has chosen to portray a nomadic people again: the Tsaatans, sharing their everyday life, happiness and desire to transmit their skills. About Gods & Beasts A solitary voyage through Europe and Asia, led Rémi Chapeaublanc to Mongolia. The discovery of this country, where Man has not yet desecrated Nature, fed his thinking to create the photographic series Gods & Beasts. In these lands, men and animals depend on ancestral ties that are both sacred and necessary. It is an archaic and visceral relationship in which equivocal domination games are put into questioning. Which are the gods, and which are the beasts? Or rather to whom are they the Gods and for whom are they Beasts? Gods & Beasts consists of raw portraits. While there is an ambiguous hierarchy between men and animals, this series - created outside of a studio, in the original environment - overcomes this cultural order. This work of bringing into the light these relationships - in an almost ceremonial manner - places these Gods and Beasts for once on equal footing. The viewer is thus left the sole judge of the boundary between animal and divine. About The Last Tsaatan What will become of the Tsaatan people? In 2011, Rémi Chapeaublanc set off to find the Tsaatan people, nomadic reindeer herders, straddling the border of Northern Mongolia. Amounting to no more than 282 people in the world, this tribe's way of life has been disrupted by the transformation of its ancestral land into a national park. Hunting, passage and woodcutting are now prohibited there; total bans contradict their centuries-old traditions. Since his first encounter, Rémi Chapeaublanc has continued to go back there, sharing their customs and everyday life for several weeks at a time. With this new photo series, he raises concerns about the future of the Tsaatan people, dealing with the tide of modernity in Mongolia, each year distancing them a little further from their traditional way of life. If the tribe accepts and even laughs at technological progress, it flatly rejects urban life, and opinion is divided regarding tourism. Their life in the Taiga represented absolute freedom. Now it is complex and in particular threatened. Both humane and engaged, this series of photographs is nevertheless graphic with a particularly aesthetical and simple approach. This medium format work, produced traditionally with black and white film and then digitally enhanced, demonstrates the artist's desire to adapt their anachronistic way of life. Rémi Chapeaublanc, who befriended a number of them, now takes the public to task asking: what will be left of the Tsaatan people?
George Brassaï
Hungary/France
1899 | † 1984
George Brassaï, the pseudonym of Gyula Halász, emerged as a Hungarian photographer, sculptor, and filmmaker who gained international recognition in 20th-century France. He was part of the vibrant community of Hungarian artists flourishing in Paris during the interwar period. In the early 21st century, the unearthing of over 200 letters and numerous drawings and artifacts from the years 1940–1984 has offered scholars valuable insights into his later life and career. Gyula (Jules) Halasz, in the Western order of his name, was born in Brassó, Transylvania, Kingdom of Hungary (known as Brasov, Romania, since 1920), to an Armenian mother and a Hungarian father. He grew up with Hungarian as his primary language. At the age of three, his family resided in Paris for a year, during which his father, a professor of French literature, taught at the Sorbonne. During his youth, Gyula Halász pursued studies in painting and sculpture at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts (Magyar Képzomuvészeti Egyetem) in Budapest. Subsequently, he enlisted in a cavalry regiment of the Austro-Hungarian army and served until the conclusion of the First World War. In 1920, Halász relocated to Berlin, where he took on the role of a journalist for the Hungarian newspapers Keleti and Napkelet. Simultaneously, he commenced his studies at the Berlin-Charlottenburg Academy of Fine Arts (Hochschule für Bildende Künste), now known as Universität der Künste Berlin. During this time, he formed connections with several older Hungarian artists and writers, such as painters Lajos Tihanyi and Bertalan Pór, and writer Gyorgy Boloni. These individuals, who later moved to Paris, became part of the Hungarian artistic circle. In 1924, Halász made the decisive move to Paris, where he would reside for the remainder of his life. In an effort to learn the French language, he embarked on a self-taught journey by immersing himself in the works of Marcel Proust. Living among the burgeoning community of young artists in the Montparnasse quarter, he took on a job as a journalist. It wasn't long before he forged friendships with notable figures such as the American writer Henry Miller, and the French writers Leon-Paul Fargue and Jacques Prévert. During the late 1920s, he shared the same hotel with Tihanyi. Halász's profession and his love for the city, where he often wandered the streets late at night, eventually led him to photography. Initially using photography as a means to supplement his articles for additional income, he quickly delved into exploring the city through this medium. His fellow Hungarian, André Kertész, served as his mentor in photography. Using the name of his birthplace, Gyula Halász adopted the pseudonym "Brassaï," meaning "from Brasso." Under this name, he captured the essence of the city in his photographs, culminating in the publication of his first collection in 1933 titled "Paris de nuit" (Paris by Night). The book achieved significant success, earning him the moniker "the eye of Paris" in an essay by his friend Henry Miller. In addition to capturing the more gritty aspects of Paris, Brassaï documented scenes from the city's high society, intellectuals, ballet performances, and grand operas. He formed a connection with a French family who granted him access to the upper echelons of society. Within these circles, Brassaï photographed many of his artist acquaintances, including Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Alberto Giacometti, as well as prominent writers of his era such as Jean Genet and Henri Michaux. Throughout the 1930s, a continuous stream of young Hungarian artists arrived in Paris, and the Hungarian circle welcomed most of them. André Kertèsz, a fellow Hungarian, emigrated to New York in 1936. Brassaï extended his friendships to the newcomers, including Ervin Marton, a nephew of Tihanyi, with whom he had been acquainted since 1920. Marton later gained recognition in street photography during the 1940s and 1950s. While Brassaï sustained himself through commercial work, he also contributed photographs to the U.S. magazine Harper's Bazaar. As a founding member of the Rapho agency, established in Paris by Charles Rado in 1933, Brassaï played a pivotal role. His photographs brought him international acclaim. In 1948, he held a solo exhibition in the United States at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City, subsequently traveling to the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, and the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois. MOMA featured more of Brassaï's works in 1953, 1956, and 1968. He was showcased at the Rencontres d'Arles festival in France in 1970, 1972, and 1974 as the guest of honor. In 1948, Brassaï married Gilberte Boyer, a French woman who collaborated with him in supporting his photographic endeavors.
Matteo Bastianelli
Matteo Bastianelli (b. 1985) is a documentary photographer and filmmaker based in the Metropolitan City of Rome, Italy. He is a National Geographic Magazine contributor and a member of Italy's National Order of Journalists. Above all he works on personal projects and commissions related to social, environmental and human rights issues with a keen interest in the themes of memory, identity, inclusion and sustainability. His photographic and film projects have been regularly published and commissioned by Al Jazeera, CNN, Internazionale, The New York Times, National Geographic, Newsweek, The Guardian, Voice of America, Washington Post, among others. Since 2016 he has also been working on commission for NGOs such as Amnesty International, AVSI, Doctors Without Borders/MSF, Human Rights Watch and International Committee of the Red Cross. His projects have been widely shown in group and solo exhibitions and screenings around the world. A selection of Bastianelli’s accolades includes National Geographic Society’s Covid-19 Emergency Fund for Journalists, Emerging Talent Award at Reportage by Getty Images, AP32- American Photography Awards, PDN’s Photo Annual, Canon Young Photographers’ Award, Italian Doc Screenings Development Award for best documentary film and "Vittorio de Seta" prize for the director of the best documentary film at BIF&ST. He spent almost five years working in the former Yugoslavia, where he produced his early series. In 2012 was released his first monograph and documentary film, "The Bosnian Identity". In 2013 he started working on "Souls of Syrians", an ongoing project which stems from the concern to document the personal story of a Syrian youth who fled his country in search of salvation in Europe. In 2018 Bastianelli documented the world’s worst humanitarian disaster caused by the ongoing civil war in Yemen, focusing his attention on the resilience of civilians trapped in a life of violence and disease. His documentary film "Yemen Unveiled" was screened during the 2019 Human Rights Film Festival in Berlin, Germany and has been included in the Official Selection of the Health for All Film Festival 2020, organized by the World Health Organization in Geneva. In recent years, he has been continuing his research work on personal and small stories that, by synecdoche, represent a mosaic of contemporary history: from immigration to climate change, from social inclusion to the metamorphosis of the contemporary landscape. Movies:The Bosnian IdentityMal di Mare
Jamie Johnson
United States
1968
Jamie Johnson is a Los Angeles photographer specializing in children and alternative processes. Winner of the Julia Margaret Cameron Portfolio Award and Spider Black and White Photography Award. Her work has been published in many photography magazines and is exhibiting in galleries worldwide. Jamie's work is in the permanent collection of the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles and Archaelogy Museum in Alabama and currently has a show at the Norton Museum of Fine Art in Palm Beach Florida. As a mother and fine art photographer whose bread and butter comes from photography, my passion for faces of the next generation has been a life long focus. I travel the world capturing images children and childhood around the globe. From Laos to Cuba, from the Amazon to India, I have found a universality in the world of children. I have always been particularly interested in observing how girls are raised, examining the morals, values, and education of the next generation of young women. My work has been exhibited Internationally in galleries and museums from New York thru London and Paris, and has been published in dozens of magazines. My Journey with the Irish Travellers I have spent my entire career photographing children all over the world. The last five years I have focused my eyes on the Irish Traveller that live in caravans on the side of the road or in open fields throughout Ireland. The Traveller community are an Irish nomadic indigenous ethnic minority. There is no recorded date as to when Travellers first came to Ireland. This is lost to history but Travellers have been recorded to exist in Ireland as far back as history is recorded. Even with their great history they live as outsiders to society and face unbelievable racism growing up. As a mother of two daughters I became so interested in the culture and traditions and lives of these children. The experience I had photographing the grit and beauty, that is the everyday life of a Traveller child, is one that inspires me everyday. Their deep respect for family and cultural values is refreshing, one that can be quite difficult to find in an age with the convince of social media. Not always immediately accepting of an outsider holding a large camera, I took my time getting to know and understand these faces that represent the new generation. My ever growing fascination with the children of today has lead my all over the world, capturing their innocence or in some cases loss of, in its most raw form. Unlike most children they are unable to refer to a history book to learn about their ancestors, a part of this journey was being able to document an era that is so different to any other I have shot. It is one that is and will always be rapidly changing, everytime I visit it is a whole different world yet with the relationships I have been lucky enough to make, it seems to feel like I never left. I am exponentially grateful the young people documented and that I have come in contact with over my years of visiting are able to call me their friend and I can happily say the same. It is with an honest heart I hope to show that these beautiful children who have great hopes and goals and work everyday to reach their dreams no matter how hard they have to fight racisms and stereotypes placed on them for centuries. A child is an innocent, happy, precious part of the world that should be loved and accepted and encouraged no matter where or how they live. More about The Irish Travellers Order the book
Larry Clark
United States
1943
Lawrence Donald Clark (born January 19, 1943) is an American film director, photographer, writer and film producer who is best known for his controversial teen film Kids (1995) and his photography book Tulsa (1971). His work focuses primarily on youth who casually engage in illegal drug use, underage sex, and violence, and who are part of a specific subculture, such as surfing, punk rock, or skateboarding. Larry Clark was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He learned photography at an early age. His mother was an itinerant baby photographer, and he was enlisted in the family business from the age of 13. His father was a traveling sales manager for the Reader Service Bureau, selling books and magazines door-to-door, and was rarely home. In 1959, Clark began injecting amphetamines with his friends. He attended the Layton School of Art in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he studied under Walter Sheffer and Gerhard Bakker. In 1964, he moved to New York City to freelance, but was drafted within two months into the United States Army. From 1964 to 1965, he served in the Vietnam War in a unit that supplied ammunition to units fighting in the north. His experiences there led him to publish the 1971 book Tulsa, a photo documentary illustrating his young friends' drug use in black and white. Routinely carrying a camera, from 1963 to 1971 Clark produced pictures of his drug-shooting coterie that have been described by critics as "exposing the reality of American suburban life at the fringe and ... shattering long-held mythical conventions that drugs and violence were an experience solely indicative of the urban landscape." His follow-up was Teenage Lust (1983), an "autobiography" of his teen past through the images of others. It included his family photos, more teenage drug use, graphic pictures of teenage sexual activity, and young male hustlers in Times Square, New York City. Clark constructed a photographic essay titled The Perfect Childhood that examined the effect of media in youth culture. His photographs are part of public collections at several art museums including the Whitney Museum of Art, Museum of Photographic Arts, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. In 1993, Clark directed Chris Isaak's music video Solitary Man. This experience developed into an interest in film direction. After publishing other photographic collections, Clark met Harmony Korine in New York City and asked Korine to write the screenplay for his first feature film Kids, which was released to controversy and mixed critical reception in 1995. Clark continued directing, filming a handful of additional independent feature films in the several years after this. In 2001, Clark shot three features Bully, Ken Park, and Teenage Caveman over a span of nine months. As of 2017, they are his last films to feature professional actors. Ken Park is a more sexually and violently graphic film than Kids, including a scene of auto-erotic asphyxiation and ejaculation by an emotionally rattled high-school boy (portrayed by James Ransone, then in his early 20s). As of 2015, it has not been widely released or distributed in the United States. In 2002, Clark spent several hours in a police cell after punching and trying to strangle Hamish McAlpine, the head of Metro Tartan, the UK distributor for Clark's film Ken Park. According to McAlpine, who was left with a broken nose, the incident arose from an argument about Israel and the Middle East, and he claims that he did not provoke Clark. In a 2016 interview, Clark discussed his lifelong struggle with drug abuse, although stating he maintained total sobriety while filmmaking. He confessed that the only exception made to his practice of abstinence while filming was Marfa Girl. Clark explained that while filming that movie he used opiates for pain due to double knee replacement surgery. In 2015, Clark collaborated alongside notable skateboard and clothing brand, Supreme, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Kids with a collection of decks, T-shirts, and sweatshirts that feature stills from the iconic film. The collection was released on May 21, 2015 in Supreme's New York, Los Angeles, and London locations and on May 23 in their Japan location.Source: Wikipedia Larry Clark, born in Tulsa, worked in his family's commercial photographic portrait business before studying photography with Walter Sheffer at the Layton School of Art in Milwaukee, Wisconsin from 1961 to 1963. He served in the military during the Vietnam War and has been a freelance photographer based in New York since 1966. During the 1960s, Clark documented the culture of drug use and illicit activity of his friends in Tulsa, and his photographs from those years were published as Tulsa (1971). Considered shocking for its graphic portrayal of the intimate details of its subjects' risky lives, the book launched Clark's career. After Tulsa, he produced Teenage Lust (1983), a series of photographs depicting adolescent sexuality, Larry Clark (1992), and The Perfect Childhood (1993). His work has been included in group and solo exhibitions since the early 1970s, and he was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Photographers' Fellowship in 1973 and a Creative Arts Public Service photographers' grant in 1980. Clark has also produced films; Kids (1994), based on his experiences with New York City teenagers and their culture of drugs, alcohol, and sex, and Another Day in Paradise (1999). Larry Clark's photographs in Tulsa are unflinching portrayals of difficult and often unsightly circumstances viewed through a participant's eyes. Their first-hand intensity recollects the work of Danny Lyon and Bruce Davidson, but Clark's raw voyeurism and insistent exposure of detail results in a somberness that differentiates his work from that of others in the early 1970s. His recent photography addresses similar subjects, but with the distance of an observer, and a more prominent formal sensibility.Source: International Center of Photography
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American photographer Carolyn Moore explores the inner landscape of emotion, memory, and personal transformation through a deeply intuitive photographic practice. Her work unfolds as a quiet dialogue between artist and viewer, where images become a space for reflection, vulnerability, and connection.
Exclusive Interview with Luca Desienna and Laura Estelle Barmwoldt
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.
Exclusive Interview with Matthew Finley
American photographer Matthew Finley turns inward, using photography as a way to explore identity, memory, and emotional truth. Based in Los Angeles, his practice moves between performance, gesture, and found imagery, creating a visual language that is both intimate and deeply personal
Exclusive Interview with Jan Janssen
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.
Exclusive Interview with Henk Kosche
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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