All about photo.com: photo contests, photography exhibitions, galleries, photographers, books, schools and venues.
Win the First Solo Exhibition of 2026! Submit your best project now. Open Theme
Win the First Solo Exhibition of 2026! Submit your best project now. Open Theme
  1. Home
  2. All Photographers
  3. Rising Photographers
  4. Cally Whitham
Cally Whitham
Cally Whitham
Cally Whitham

Cally Whitham

Country: New Zealand

Taking an idealistic view of the world, Cally Whitham records the ordinary, transforming it into a surreal image, reflecting the way things are perceived and altered through nostalgia and memory. Driven by a desire to remember, Whitham uses her camera to collect images, which allows her to preserve her surroundings forever.

At the age of 11, she spent Christmas using her first roll of film shooting her favourite things, including her aunt's farm, an old house she wanted to live in and a big tree at the beach. As an adult she returns to similar subjects recaptured in shadows of times past.

Based in New Zealand, Whitham finds the subtle, forgotten and overlooked in these locations, which are touched with beauty through their ordinariness and familiarity. Layering her photographs with emotion, the works explore the ways in which personal milieus are captured.

Source: www.cally.co.nz


The New Zealand photographer Cally Whitham focuses her artistic research on the depiction of everyday life She began photography at 11 years old when accompanying her father who was a painter. He roamed the countryside to do sketches of forests and farms. From an early age she therefore had painting as an artistic reference and mastered the techniques of the Beaux Arts.

Source: Yellow Korner



Interview With Cally Whitham:

AAP: When did you realize you wanted to be a photographer?
"When I was about 16 I think. I took a class at school and was hooked."

AAP: Where did you study photography?
"I studied at the Design School, which has since become Unitech."

AAP: How long have you been a photographer?
"21 years, with a few years break in the middle."

AAP: Do you remember your first shot? What was it?
"The first photo I ever took was of my grandparents and brother at a beach. I couldn't believe I was allowed to take a photo!"

AAP: What or who inspires you?
"Light inspires me. When the quality of light is just right anything seems possible; the unworthy becomes photogenic."

AAP: How could you describe your style?
"Pictorialism"

AAP: Do you have a favorite photograph or series?
"Wow, too hard to choose!"

AAP: Do you spend a lot of time editing your images?
"Yes I do. The initial photo is just a part of the process in creating an image. Post production is the place where the image and the vision I had come together. I don't photograph reality but rather create a potential or ideal reality and that potential is added in post production."

AAP: Favorite(s) photographer(s)?
"Alfred steiglitz in his early days and Julia Margaret Cameron."

AAP: What advice would you give a young photographer?
"Have a back job to pay the bills - it's a tough industry now to try to pay a mortgage on."

AAP: What mistake should a young photographer avoid?
"Not understanding the business, tax and admin side of being a photographer."

AAP: Your best memory has a photographer?
"The moments I have realized I was on to something during a shoot."

Gallery

Yellow Korner

Website

www.cally.co.nz

 

Cally Whitham's Video

Inspiring Portfolios

Thomas Vijayan
© Thomas Vijayan
Julie Wang
© Julie Wang
Pedro Jarque Krebs
© Pedro Jarque Krebs
Call for Entries
Solo Exhibition January 2026
Get International Exposure and Connect with Industry Insiders
© Benita Mayo
 
Stay up-to-date  with call for entries, deadlines and other news about exhibitions, galleries, publications, & special events.

More Great Photographers To Discover

Olga Karlovac
Olga Karlovac
Croatia
1976
Olga Karlovac lives and works in Zagreb, Croatia. She has exhibited widely across Europe with recent solo shows in the UK and Belgium. Her photography has been featured in renowned publications including Black+White Photography and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Self-taught and inspired by abstract expressionists and poets rather than photographers, Olga Karlovac published her first photo book in 2017. Her subsequent trilogy encompassing 'before winter', 'the disarray' and 'escape' has been well received with the first edition now fully sold out. Olga captures the drama of the everyday in her work, intuitively releasing the shutter to hold on to the comfort derived from the interplay of shadow and light. Her subjects are never staged, fleeting moments seemingly captured in slow motion. Taken exclusively in black and white, often at night, through windows or in rainy conditions, the resulting images appear both abstract and painterly.
Lisa Thomas
Lisa Thomas
United States
1974
Lisa Thomas is a self-taught Atlanta-based photographer with a passion for creating unique, abstract images. Born in Virginia in 1974, she holds a degree in physical therapy from the University of Oklahoma and has spent over 20 years in the healthcare industry. She began studying photography in 2020 as a creative outlet to cope with stress and to connect with others during a time of social isolation. Initially drawn to representational imagery, her journey as an artist has been an evolution, leading her to embrace the enchanting realm of abstract photography. Thomas’s current work, Studies in Oil and Water, is a macro view of the interplay between oil and water set against a variety of backdrops. Thomas’s distinctive style combines vibrant colors, playful compositions, and the use of light to create images that are emotionally uplifting and encourage viewers to embark on a visual journey. Studies in Oil and Water My photographic work is an exploration of two seemingly incompatible elements, oil and water. Through my lens, I capture their intricate interactions giving rise to mesmerizing abstract compositions allowing viewers to immerse themselves in a realm of color and fluidity. In this chaos, I find harmony in the hues and patterns that emerge and an appreciation for the beauty in the everyday. From bold and intense to tranquil and serene, my photographs mirror the kaleidoscope of emotions that define our lives. My aim is not only to captivate the eye but also to inspire curiosity and contemplation in the viewer.
Sid Grossman
Sid Grossman
United States
1913 | † 1955
Sid Grossman was an American photographer, teacher, and social activist. He was the younger son of Morris and Ethel Grossman. Grossman attended the City College of New York and worked on a WPA street crew. In 1934, he started what would become the Photo League with co-founder Sol Libsohn. Grossman played numerous roles throughout the Photo League's existence (1936–1951) including educator, administrator, reviewer, editor of Photo Notes and founder of Chelsea Document (1938-1940), an indictment of obsolete buildings and substandard living conditions in a New York neighborhood. He enlisted on March 6, 1943 and served in the Sixth Army in Panama during World War II. Grossman's 1940 photographs of labor union activity led to FBI investigations and the blacklisting of the Photo League as a communist front in 1947. In 1949, he opened a photography school in Provincetown, Massachusetts, although he continued to live and teach in NYC part of every year. Grossman was married twice: to Marion Hille and then to Miriam Grossman. Grossman conducted workshops at the Photo League, the Henry St. Settlement, the Harlem Art Center, and privately in NYC and Provincetown, for almost twenty years. The photographers he taught were many – including Lou Bernstein, Lisette Model, Walter Rosenblum, Louis Stettner, Helen Gee, Arthur Leipzig (who is on record as calling Grossman “probably the most fantastic teacher I ever knew”) and Leon Levinstein. Yet Grossman himself said, “I am not an instructor in any classical sense.” He insisted that his students take on the responsibility for making something of themselves. According to Jewish Museum curator Mason Klein, “Grossman increasingly insisted on the idea of being in the world in a particular manner, engaging with a certain consciousness as a photographer, and connecting to the camera in ways that made photographers question who they were.” One had to “live for photography,” in effect transforming and liberating oneself – in order to become a good photographer. One description of Grossman's “impassioned, often aggressive workshop critiques” has been provided by one of his students, N. Jay Jaffee, who studied with him in 1948. On the one hand, “He was almost contemptuous; each of us got a taste of his anger and hostility during the course.” Yet, “His genius was in expounding a philosophy of photography that was unique. I had never heard anyone speak on a subject with such depth and enthusiasm. I still recall a phrase he repeated several times: 'The world is a picture.' This simple statement was a profound insight into the method and meaning of photography.” “To Sid, photography was serious, not sacred.” Grossman's first wife, Marion Hille, remarked that he “encouraged his students 'to enjoy themselves right away, to get a feel of taking pictures without technique getting in the way.'” Jaffee reflected that, “Perhaps, if Sid had lived long enough, he would have also mellowed. Hopefully, he would have received the honor and respect for his brilliance and his work that he so justly deserves.” Today, almost all of the important photographers and educators he influenced and who continued his legacy are also deceased. All that is left are the photographs he and they made – a considerable contribution.Source: Wikipedia An influential teacher and activist, Grossman was a founding member of the Photo League, a group of socially-minded photographers that used documentary photography to call attention to poverty and injustice in New York. Showing three ragtag kids, two of whom present their modest toys to the photographer, this image exemplifies Grossman’s humanistic artistic vision, which often testified to the endurance and survival of his subjects. Due to his participation in the Communist Party, the U.S. Government blacklisted Grossman and monitored his activities for several years.Source: The Met
Reza
Reza
Iran/France
1952
A philanthropist, idealist, humanist, Reza's career began with studies in architecture. He has gone on to become a renowned photojournalist who, for the last three decades, has worked all over the world, notably for National Geographic. His assignments have taken him to over a hundred countries as a witness to humanity's conflicts and catastrophes. His work is featured in the international media (National Geographic, Time Magazine, Stern, Newsweek, El País, Paris Match, Geo...), as well as a series of books, exhibitions and documentaries made for the National Geographic Channel. Along with his work as a photographer, since 1983 Reza has been a volunteer committed to the training of youths and women from conflict-ridden societies in the language of images, to help them strive for a better world. In 2001, he founded Ainaworld in Afghanistan, a new generation NGO which trains populations in information and communications through the development of educational tools and adapted media. While pursuing his reportages for international media outlets, Reza has continued to conduct workshops on the language of images in a variety through his association Reza Visual Academy. He works with refugees, urban youths in Europe and others from disadvantaged backgrounds. After his work, Mémoires d'Exil ("Memories of Exile") shown at the Louvre Carrousel in 1998, he has shared his humanitarian vision through a series of monumental installations: Crossing Destinies, shown on the grilles of the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris, One World, One Tribe in Washington DC, and the Parc de la Villette in Paris, War + Peace at the Caen Memorial and on the banks of the Garonne in Toulouse, Hope in Doha (Qatar), Windows of the Soul in Corsica, Soul of Coffee, 250 photographic exhibitions throughout the world, including major installations on the banks of the Seine, or at Kew Gardens in London, Land of Tolerance at the UN Headquarters in New York, the European Parliament in Brussels, as well as UNESCO in Paris. In 2014, Azerbaijan: the Elegance of Fire, presented at the Petit Palais revealed a little-known people with an ancestral culture, turned towards modernity. Finally, the giant panorama A Dream of Humanity was featured along the banks of the Seine during the summer of 2015, showing portraits of refugees around the world taken by Reza and photographs taken by refugee children in Iraqi Kurdestan who were trained as "camp reporters" at the workshops organized by Reza Visual Academy. Author of thirty books, and a recipient of many awards over the course of his career, Reza is a Fellow and Explorer of the National Geographic Society, and a Senior Fellow of the Ashoka Foundation. His work has been recognized by World Press Photo; he has also received the Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography, the Lucy Award, an honorary medal from the University of Missouri and the honorary degree of Doctor Honoris Causa from the American University of Paris. France has also appointed him a Chevalier of the National Order of Merit.
Eugene Ellenberg
Eugene Ellenberg
United States
1983
I'm an interdisciplinary artist and writer based in the southeast. My practice navigates acceptance, contention, and failure with what it means to be present. I shift between using a large-format view camera for documentary style storytelling and a wooden pinhole box camera exposing film for the duration of a gesture, ritual, or natural occurrence. My non-photographic media sometimes incorporates ready-made, labor related objects such as parachutes, flashlights, and reflectors to explore parallels of search and rescue with mental illness and recovery. As someone who has lost loved ones to substance abuse, and who is personally now on my own path of recovery, I embrace my art practice as a means of self inquiry, healing, and reconciling with the human condition. When I’m not making new work, or spending time with my animals, I split my days between teaching, volunteering at recovery treatment centers, and working on a second masters degree in Art Therapy. These days I’m grateful for good rest, the light that finds us, and shared time with others. In My Father’s House: While visiting my parents during my college years, I photographed a napkin on which my father had written two Elvis song titles, ‘In My Father’s House’ and ‘I Was the One.’ This small note along with others gave me insight to the private introspections of my father, the intimacy of which motivated me to investigate our relationship through the medium of photography. I expounded upon this by documenting various elements of our home and eventually asking others in my family to sit for portraits and to participate in constructed narratives. The majority of these images were captured using a large-format camera, requiring a slower, more meditative process of photographing my family members while also conveying the quiet tone of our relationships at that time. I had unknowingly started a project with an ending already in motion. Three years later, my father would be diagnosed with terminal cancer of the liver and lungs which had already spread to his bones. He was with us for seven days after the diagnosis. In his last days of consciousness, my father began to lose touch with the world and as a family we leaned into a rare embrace of vulnerability and affection. We played his favorite songs on the radio and whispered words in his ear we hadn’t said in such close proximity before. In those final hours, I grappled with my own disconnect as I slipped between the roles of active participant and documentarian. These images blur the lines of what I recall, what I want to admit and perhaps what I wanted to see.
Lindokuhle Sobekwa
Lindokuhle Sobekwa
South Africa
1995
Lindokuhle Sobekwa (born 1995) is a South African documentary photographer. He is a Nominee member of Magnum Photos and based in Johannesburg. Sobekwa was born in Katlehong, a township, 35 km from Johannesburg, South Africa. He learned photography in 2012 through participation in the first Of Soul and Joy Project, an educational program for young people run in the township of Thokoza; the workshop was given by Bieke Depoorter and Cyprien Clément-Delmas. His photo essay, Nyaope, about people who use the drug Nyaope in the township in which he lived and beyond, was published by the South African newspaper Mail & Guardian in 2014 and by Vice Magazine and De Standaard in 2015. Source: Wikipedia In 2015, Sobekwa received a scholarship to study at the Market Photo Workshop where he completed his foundation course. His Series Nyaope was exhibited in the ensuing group show, Free From My Happiness, organized by Rubis Mecenat at the International Photo Festival of Ghent in Belgium. In 2016, he left South Africa for a Residency in Tehran, Iran, with the No Man’s Art Gallery. The same year his work was displayed in the traveling iteration of Free from my Happiness. His work features in the book Free from my Happiness edited by Bieke Depoorter and Tjorven Bruyneel . He also took part in the group show Fresh Produce, organized by Assemblages and VANSA at the Turbine Art Fair in Johannesburg. Lindokuhle Sobekwa is also an assistant manager to the Of Soul and Joy Project, as well as a trainee at Mikhael Subotzky Studio. In 2017, Sobekwa was selected by the Magnum Foundation for Photography and Social Justice to develop the project I Carry Her Photo With Me. In 2018, he received the Magnum Foundation Fund to continue with his longterm project Nyaope, and has been selected for the residency Cité des Arts Réunion. Sobekwa became a Magnum nominee member in 2018.Source: Magnum Photos About I Carry Her Photo With Me The day his older sister Ziyanda disappeared, Lindokuhle Sobekwa was hit by a car. The two were walking together along a road in the Johannesburg suburb of Thokoza when Ziyanda began to chase the seven-year-old Sobekwa. Out of fear, he began to run, and then he was hit. Above him, he recalled before blacking out, was the blurry silhouette of a woman or girl. His sister vanished in the ensuing scramble, with no word as to why. “She was in a period of being a very secretive person,” Sobekwa remembers. She was thirteen years old. Sobekwa would not see Ziyanda again for a dozen years. Then one day, he returned from school, and Ziyanda was at home. She was reunited with the family for a couple of weeks. At the time, in 2014, Sobekwa was coming into his own as a photographer. He was in his final year of high school and working under the mentorship of Magnum photographer Bieke Depoorter and filmmaker Cyprien Clément-Delmas through the Of Soul and Joy project, an artistic initiative based in Thokoza. He remembers walking into Ziyanda’s room one day; in that moment, he saw his favorite would-be portrait of his sister: “She was lying in bed, there was a beautiful light. She said, ‘If you take a photo, I’m going to kill you.’ A few days after that, she passed away.” Disappearances are not rare in South Africa, Sobekwa says. Most Black South African families are familiar with the trauma of disappearances, which date back to the late 1980s and early ’90s, the height of the apartheid crisis. During this time, an ethnopolitical war between two rival parties, the African National Congress (ANC) and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), suffused the townships with panic, as residents along the factional line were routinely vanished by violence. In Sobekwa’s family, the cycle began with his grandfather, who was the first of the line to come to Johannesburg, in the 1960s. He never returned to the countryside; his fate is still unknown. In 2017, the Magnum Foundation named Sobekwa a Photography and Social Justice Fellow. Suddenly, he had the resources to expand his search for his sister and develop his personal journal into a full-fledged series, I carry Her photo with Me (2017–ongoing). “I had my own unanswered questions, maybe guilt of some sort,” says Sobekwa. “I felt the need to go into these spaces and make the camera my excuse. I realized that going alone, it would be difficult.” With his camera in hand, he slipped once more into the role of documentarian.Source: Aperture
Miguel Blázquez
Miguel Blázquez
Spain
2001
Miguel Bláquez was born in 2001 in Ávila, Spain. He is a prominent video artist with a strong academic background in the visual arts. He earned a Bachelor of Arts from the Escuela de Arte y Superior de Conservación y Restauración de Bienes Culturales de Ávila. Later, he pursued a Degree in Fine Arts at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Salamanca. During his time at university, Blázquez actively participated in projects such as the Audiovisual Art Exhibition by the 4th Year Fine Arts students at the Juan del Enzina Theater in Salamanca. His talent was recognized when he won the XXVII edition of the San Marcos Awards in the “Audiovisual” category, with his work exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Salamanca (DA2) in 2024. Additionally, his piece “El vídeo más grande del mundo” was showcased at the (S8) XV Mostra Internacional de Cinema Periférico in A Coruña. Another of his works, “Vídeo ensayo”, was exhibited at the Condeduque Contemporary Culture Center in Madrid in 2023. Blázquez continues to establish himself as a talented video artist, constantly exploring and contributing to the world of art. Statement My photographic work often captures spectacular scenes that pay humble homage to the world around us. As a documentary artist, I prioritize exploring the depth and meaning within images over adhering to formal conventions. I am particularly drawn to both human and natural landscapes. As a photographer and videographer, I believe in the power of visual storytelling to ignite conversations, challenge perspectives, and foster empathy. My work serves as an invitation to explore and connect with the world in meaningful ways. My primary photographic influences include Tavepong Pratoomwong (Thailand), Victor Galeano (Colombia), Freddy Rodríguez Robles (Peru), Javier Arcenillas (Spain), Óscar Corral (Spain), Graciela Iturbide (Mexico), Leo Matiz Espinoza (Colombia), and Santiago Botero (Colombia). ARTICLE El cañón del Río Melcocho
Man Ray
Man Ray
United States
1890 | † 1976
Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky) was an American visual artist who spent most of his career in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal. He produced major works in a variety of media but considered himself a painter above all. He was best known for his pioneering photography, and was a renowned fashion and portrait photographer. He is also noted for his work with photograms, which he called "rayographs" in reference to himself. During his career, Man Ray allowed few details of his early life or family background to be known to the public. He even refused to acknowledge that he ever had a name other than Man Ray. Man Ray's birth name was Emmanuel Radnitzky. He was born in South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on August 27, 1890. He was the eldest child of Russian Jewish immigrants Melach "Max" Radnitzky, a tailor, and Manya "Minnie" Radnitzky (née Lourie or Luria). He had a brother, Sam, and two sisters, Dorothy "Dora" and Essie (or Elsie), the youngest born in 1897 shortly after they settled at 372 Debevoise St. in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. In early 1912, the Radnitzky family changed their surname to Ray. Man Ray's brother chose the surname in reaction to the ethnic discrimination and antisemitism prevalent at the time. Emmanuel, who was called "Manny" as a nickname, changed his first name to Man and gradually began to use Man Ray as his name. I photograph what I do not wish to paint and I paint what I cannot photograph. -- Man Ray Man Ray's father worked in a garment factory and ran a small tailoring business out of the family home. He enlisted his children to assist him from an early age. Man Ray's mother enjoyed designing the family's clothes and inventing patchwork items from scraps of fabric. Man Ray wished to disassociate himself from his family background, but their tailoring left an enduring mark on his art. Mannequins, flat irons, sewing machines, needles, pins, threads, swatches of fabric, and other items related to tailoring appear in almost every medium of his work. Art historians have noted similarities between Ray's collage and painting techniques and styles used for tailoring. His education at Brooklyn's Boys' High School from 1904 to 1909 provided him with solid grounding in drafting and other basic art techniques. While he attended school, he educated himself with frequent visits to the local art museums, where he studied the works of the Old Masters. After his graduation, Ray was offered a scholarship to study architecture but chose to pursue a career as an artist. Man Ray's parents were disappointed by their son's decision to pursue art, but they agreed to rearrange the family's modest living quarters so that Ray's room could be his studio. The artist remained in the family home over the next four years. During this time, he worked steadily towards becoming a professional painter. Man Ray earned money as a commercial artist and was a technical illustrator at several Manhattan companies. The surviving examples of his work from this period indicate that he attempted mostly paintings and drawings in 19th-century styles. He was already an avid admirer of contemporary avant-garde art, such as the European modernists he saw at Alfred Stieglitz's "291" gallery and works by the Ashcan School. However, with a few exceptions, he was not yet able to integrate these trends into his own work. The art classes he sporadically attended, including stints at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League, were of little apparent benefit to him. When he enrolled in the Ferrer School in the autumn of 1912, he began a period of intense and rapid artistic development. While living in New York City, Man Ray was influenced by the avant-garde practices of European contemporary artists he was introduced to at the 1913 Armory Show and in visits to Alfred Stieglitz's "291" art gallery. His early paintings display facets of cubism. After befriending Marcel Duchamp, who was interested in showing movement in static paintings, his works began to depict movement of the figures. An example is the repetitive positions of the dancer's skirts in The Rope Dancer Accompanies Herself with Her Shadows (1916). In 1915, Man Ray had his first solo show of paintings and drawings after he had taken up residence at an art colony in Grantwood, New Jersey, across the Hudson River from New York City. His first proto-Dada object, an assemblage titled Self-Portrait, was exhibited the following year. He produced his first significant photographs in 1918, after initially picking up the camera to document his own artwork. Man Ray abandoned conventional painting to involve himself with Dada, a radical anti-art movement. He published two Dadaist periodicals, and each only had one issue, The Ridgefield Gazook (1915) and TNT (1919), the latter co-edited by Adolf Wolff and Mitchell Dawson. He started making objects and developed unique mechanical and photographic methods of making images. For the 1918 version of Rope Dancer, he combined a spray-gun technique with a pen drawing. Like Duchamp, he worked with readymade—ordinary objects that are selected and modified. His Gift readymade (1921) is a flatiron with metal tacks attached to the bottom, and Enigma of Isidore Ducasse is an unseen object (a sewing machine) wrapped in cloth and tied with cord. Aerograph (1919), another work from this period, was done with airbrush on glass. In 1920, Man Ray helped Duchamp make the Rotary Glass Plates, one of the earliest examples of kinetic art. It was composed of glass plates turned by a motor. That same year, Man Ray, Katherine Dreier, and Duchamp founded the Société Anonyme, an itinerant collection that was the first museum of modern art in the U.S. In 1941 the collection was donated to Yale University Art Gallery. Man Ray teamed up with Duchamp to publish one issue of New York Dada in 1920. For Man Ray, Dada's experimentation was no match for the wild and chaotic streets of New York. He wrote that "Dada cannot live in New York. All New York is dada, and will not tolerate a rival." In 1913, Man Ray met his first wife, the Belgian poet Adon Lacroix (Donna Lecoeur) (1887–1975), in New York. They married in 1914, separated in 1919, and formally divorced in 1937. In July 1921, Man Ray went to live and work in Paris, France. He soon settled in the Montparnasse quarter favored by many artists. His accidental rediscovery of the cameraless photogram, which he called "rayographs", resulted in mysterious images hailed by Tristan Tzara as "pure Dada creations". Shortly after arriving in Paris, he met and fell in love with Kiki de Montparnasse (Alice Prin), an artists' model and celebrated character in Paris bohemian circles. Kiki was Man Ray's companion for most of the 1920s. She became the subject of some of his most famous photographic images, and starred in his experimental films Le Retour à la Raison and L'Étoile de mer. In 1929, he began a love affair with the Surrealist photographer Lee Miller. She also was his photographic assistant and together, they reinvented the photographic technique of solarization. Miller left him in 1932. From late 1934 until August 1940, Man Ray was in a relationship with Adrienne Fidelin. She was a Guadeloupean dancer and model and she appears in many of his photographs. When Ray fled the Nazi occupation in France, Adrienne chose to stay behind to care for her family. Unlike the artist's other significant muses, until 2022, Fidelin had largely been written out of his life story. Man Ray was a pioneering photographer in Paris for two decades between the wars. Significant members of the art world, such as Pablo Picasso, Tristan Tzara, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Jean Cocteau, Salvador Dalí, Peggy Guggenheim, Bridget Bate Tichenor, Luisa Casati, and Antonin Artaud, posed for his camera. Man Ray's international fame as a portrait photographer is reflected in a series of photographs of Maharajah Yashwant Rao Holkar II and his wife Sanyogita Devi from their visit to Europe in 1927. In the winter of 1933, surrealist artist Méret Oppenheim, known for her fur-covered teacup, posed nude for Man Ray in a well-known series of photographs depicting her standing next to a printing press. His practice of photographing African objects in the Paris collections of Paul Guillaume and Charles Ratton and others led to several iconic photographs, including Noire et blanche. As Man Ray scholar Wendy A. Grossman has illustrated, "no one was more influential in translating the vogue for African art into a Modernist photographic aesthetic than Man Ray." Man Ray was represented in the first Surrealist exhibition with Jean Arp, Max Ernst, André Masson, Joan Miró, and Pablo Picasso at the Galerie Pierre in Paris in 1925. Important works from this time were a metronome with an eye, originally titled Object to Be Destroyed, and the Violon d'Ingres, a stunning photograph of Kiki de Montparnasse, styled after the painter/musician Ingres. Violon d'Ingres is a popular example of how Man Ray could juxtapose disparate elements in his photography to generate meaning. Man Ray directed a number of influential avant-garde short films, known as Cinéma Pur. He directed Le Retour à la Raison (2 mins, 1923); Emak-Bakia (16 mins, 1926); L'Étoile de Mer (15 mins, 1928); and Les Mystères du Château de Dé (27 mins, 1929). Man Ray also assisted Marcel Duchamp with the cinematography of his film Anemic Cinema (1926), and Ray personally manned the camera on Fernand Léger's Ballet Mécanique (1924). In René Clair's film Entr'acte (1924), Man Ray appeared in a brief scene playing chess with Duchamp. Duchamp, Man Ray, and Francis Picabia were all friends and collaborators, connected by their experimental, entertaining, and innovative art. The Second World War forced Man Ray to return from Paris to the United States. He lived in Los Angeles from 1940 to 1951 where he focused his creative energy on painting. A few days after arriving in Los Angeles, he met Juliet Browner, a first-generation American of Romanian-Jewish lineage. She was a trained dancer who studied dance with Martha Graham, and an experienced artists' model. They married in 1946 in a double wedding with their friends Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning. In 1948 Ray had a solo exhibition at the Copley Galleries in Beverly Hills, which brought together a wide array of work and featured his newly painted canvases of the Shakespearean Equations series. Man Ray returned to Paris in 1951, and settled with Juliet into a studio at 2 bis rue Férou near the Luxembourg Gardens in St. Germain-des-Prés, where he continued his creative practice across mediums. During the last quarter century of his life, he returned to a number of his iconic earlier works, recreating them in new form. He also directed the production of limited-edition replicas of several of his objects, working first with Marcel Zerbib and later Arturo Schwarz. In 1963, he published his autobiography, Self-Portrait (republished in 1999). Ray continued to work on new paintings, photographs, collages and art objects till his death. Retrieved August 19, 2022. He died in Paris on November 18, 1976, from a lung infection. He was interred in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris. His epitaph reads "Unconcerned, but not indifferent". When Juliet died in 1991, she was interred in the same tomb. Her epitaph reads "Together again". Juliet organized a trust for Ray's work and donated much of his work to museums. Her plans to restore the studio as a public museum proved too expensive; such was the structure's disrepair. Most of the contents were stored at the Centre Pompidou.Source: Wikipedia Speaking of nudes, I have always had a great fondness for this subject, both in my paintings and in my photos, and I must admit, not for purely artistic reasons. -- Man Ray “I have finally freed myself from the sticky medium of paint, and am working directly with light itself.” So enthused Man Ray in 1922, shortly after his first experiments with camera-less photography. He remains well known for these images, commonly called photograms but which he dubbed "rayographs" in a punning combination of his own name and the word “photograph.” Man Ray’s artistic beginnings came some years earlier, in the Dada movement. Shaped by the trauma of World War I and the emergence of a modern media culture—epitomized by advancements in communication technologies like radio and cinema—Dada artists shared a profound disillusionment with traditional modes of art making and often turned instead to experimentations with chance and spontaneity. In The Rope Dancer Accompanies Herself with Her Shadows, Man Ray based the large, color-block composition on the random arrangement of scraps of colored paper scattered on the floor. The painting evinces a number of interests that the artist would carry into his photographic work: negative space and shadows; the partial surrender of compositional decisions to accident; and, in its precise, hard-edged application of unmodulated color, the removal of traces of the artist’s hand. In 1922, six months after he arrived in Paris from New York, Man Ray made his first rayographs. To make them, he placed objects, materials, and sometimes parts of his own or a model's body onto a sheet of photosensitized paper and exposed them to light, creating negative images. This process was not new—camera-less photographic images had been produced since the 1830s—and his experimentation with it roughly coincided with similar trials by Lázló Moholy-Nagy. But in his photograms, Man Ray embraced the possibilities for irrational combinations and chance arrangements of objects, emphasizing the abstraction of images made in this way. He published a selection of these rayographs—including one centered around a comb, another containing a spiral of cut paper, and a third with an architect’s French curve template on its side—in a portfolio titled Champs délicieux in December 1922, with an introduction written by the Dada leader Tristan Tzara. In 1923, with his film Le Retour à la raison (Return to Reason), he extended the rayograph technique to moving images. Around the same time, Man Ray’s experiments with photography carried him to the center of the emergent Surrealist movement in Paris. Led by André Breton, Surrealism sought to reveal the uncanny coursing beneath familiar appearances in daily life. Man Ray proved well suited to this in works like Anatomies, in which, through framing and angled light, he transformed a woman’s neck into an unfamiliar, phallic form. He contributed photographs to the three major Surrealist journals throughout the 1920s and 1930s, and also constructed Surrealist objects like Gift, in which he altered a domestic tool (an iron) into an instrument of potential violence, and Indestructible Object (or Object to Be Destroyed), a metronome with a photograph of an eye affixed to its swinging arm, which was destroyed and remade several times.Source: The Museum of Modern Art
Jacob Aue Sobol
Jacob Aue Sobol
Denmark
1976
Jacob Aue Sobol (born 1976) is a Danish photographer. He has worked in East Greenland, Guatemala, Tokyo, Bangkok, Copenhagen, America and Russia. In 2007 Sobol became a nominee at Magnum Photos and a full member in 2012. Four monographs and many catalogues of his work have been published and widely exhibited including at Yossi Milo Gallery in New York and at the Diemar/Noble Photography Gallery in London. Born in Copenhagen, Sobol lived in Canada from 1994 to 1995. Back in Europe he first studied at the European Film College and from 1998 at Fatamorgana, the Danish School of Art Photography. In the autumn of 1999, he went to the remote East Greenland village of Tiniteqilaaq to photograph. The visit was only supposed to last a few weeks but after meeting a local girl, Sabine, he returned the following year and stayed there for the next two years, living the life of a fisherman and hunter. In 2004 Sobol published Sabine, which in photographs and narrative portrays Sabine and describes his encounter with Greenlandic culture. The pictures in the book express the photographic idiom he developed at Fatamorgana. In the summer of 2005, Sobol went with a film crew to Guatemala to make a documentary about a young Mayan girl's first trip to the ocean. The following year he returned to the mountains of Guatemala, this time by himself, to stay with an indigenous family for a month to document their everyday life. In 2006 he moved to Tokyo to spend 18 months photographing the city for his book I, Tokyo. Commenting on the book, Miranda Gavin appreciates how "the sensitivity of his approach shines through the work and sets him apart as one of a new generation of photographers with the ability to allow eroticism and danger to seep through his images without becoming sordid or clichéd." Sobol became a nominee of Magnum Photos in 2007 and a full member in 2012. In 2008, Sobol worked in Bangkok where he photographed children fighting for survival in the Sukhumvit slums, despite the country's growing economic prosperity. In 2009, he moved back to Copenhagen. Since then he has worked on projects at home as well as in America and Russia.Source: Wikipedia Following his time in Tokyo, Jacob worked extensively in Bangkok, resulting in the 2016 book By the River of Kings. In 2012 he began photographing along the Trans-Siberian Railroad and spent the next five winters photographing in the remote Russian province of Yakutia for his project Road of Bones. He has ongoing projects in Denmark (Home) and the United States (America).Source: www.jacobauesobol.com
Advertisement
All About Photo Awards 2026
Win a Solo Exhibition this January
All About Photo Awards 2026

Latest Interviews

Exclusive Interview with Peter Ydeen
Interview
Exclusive Interview with Peter Ydeen
Winner of AAP Magazine #45 Travels, his series reflects this unique vision—capturing the spirit of place through subtle layers of light, color, and emotion. Whether traveling abroad or observing the rhythms of his own surroundings, Ydeen creates images that feel both grounded and enchanted, inviting viewers into a world where reality and reverie meet.
Read the full interview
Exclusive Interview with Julie Wang
Interview
Exclusive Interview with Julie Wang
Chinese-born photographer Julie Wang brings a poetic, contemplative sensitivity to her visual exploration of the world. Having lived for nearly equal parts of her life in China, Europe, and the United States, she approaches her subjects with the nuanced perspective of someone shaped by many cultures. This blend of distance, curiosity, and emotional resonance infuses her work with a quiet depth, allowing her to reveal the fragile beauty and subtle tensions that often pass unnoticed.
Read the full interview
Exclusive Interview with Ghawam Kouchaki
Interview
Exclusive Interview with Ghawam Kouchaki
American photographer Ghawam Kouchaki brings a sharply observant and introspective gaze to the streets of Japan’s capital. Based in Los Angeles, he approaches Tokyo with the distance — and curiosity — of an outsider, allowing him to uncover the city’s subtle contradictions, quiet tensions, and fleeting gestures that often go unnoticed. His series Tokyo no no, selected as the Solo Exhibition for December 2024, explores the hidden undercurrents of urban life: the unspoken rules, the small ruptures in routine, the poetic strangeness found in everyday moments. Through muted tones, instinctive timing, and meticulous framing, Kouchaki reveals a Tokyo that exists somewhere between reality and imagination — both intimate and enigmatic. We asked him a few questions about his life and work.
Read the full interview
Exclusive Interview with Tommi Viitala
Interview
Exclusive Interview with Tommi Viitala
Tommi Viitala, winner of AAP Magazine #44: Street, is a Finnish photographer celebrated for his striking and cinematic street photography. With a keen eye for atmosphere and composition, he captures fleeting urban moments that reveal the poetry of everyday life. His work often explores the tension between solitude and connection within contemporary cityscapes, blending documentary realism with artistic sensibility. Viitala’s photographs have been exhibited internationally and recognized for their strong visual storytelling and emotional depth. We asked him a few questions about his life and work.
Read the full interview
Exclusive Interview with Robert Mack
Interview
Exclusive Interview with Robert Mack
Robert Mack is a California-based visual artist, photographer, and filmmaker. His fine art photography and films have been exhibited widely in the United States and Europe, with major shows at the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Reiss-Engelhorn Museum in Mannheim, Germany. Both institutions hold his work in their permanent collections. Working across different media, Mack has built a career exploring the complexities of human presence and representation. In 1981, while living in Baltimore, he produced The Perkins Project: Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity, a rare photographic and film study inside Maryland’s hospital for the criminally insane. These stark yet compassionate black-and-white portraits remain one of his most powerful and controversial bodies of work.
Read the full interview
Exclusive Interview with Alan Schaller About Irys
Interview
Exclusive Interview with Alan Schaller About Irys
Alan Schaller is a London-based photographer best known for his striking black-and-white street photography and as co-founder of Street Photography International, one of the largest online communities dedicated to the genre. With years of experience both behind the camera and in building platforms that give visibility to photographers, Schaller has now turned his focus to creating a new digital space for photography itself. His latest venture, Irys, is a photography app designed by photographers, for photographers, with the aim of offering a dedicated platform where images are respected as works of art rather than treated as disposable content.
Read the full interview
Exclusive Interview with Guillaume Bonn
Interview
Exclusive Interview with Guillaume Bonn
With his latest book Paradise, Inc., celebrated documentary photographer Guillaume Bonn takes us deep into the heart of East Africa, where the promises and failures of wildlife conservation collide. Far from offering a romanticized vision of nature, Bonn’s work confronts us with urgent realities: the tensions between local communities and conservation policies, the sacrifices of rangers on the frontlines, and the long-lasting impact of human activity on fragile ecosystems. Spanning more than two decades of fieldwork, the project blends powerful imagery with investigative depth, raising difficult but necessary questions about transparency, accountability, and the Western-led models that dominate conservation. Enriched by the voices of those too often left out of the conversation—including a preface by Maasai leader Ezekiel Ole Katato and an introduction by journalist Jon Lee Anderson—Paradise, Inc. is both a stunning visual journey and a call to action. In the following interview, Guillaume Bonn reflects on the making of Paradise, Inc., the ethical dilemmas at the heart of his work, and the urgent need to rethink our approach to conservation in East Africa and beyond.
Read the full interview
Exclusive Interview with Sander Vos
Interview
Exclusive Interview with Sander Vos
Sander Vos is a fine art photographer based in London whose work seamlessly blends elements of Surrealism with portraiture. Drawing inspiration from his background in design, Vos embraces light and contrast to sculpt striking, graphic compositions. His photographs invite the viewer into a world where revelation and concealment coexist, leaving space for imagination and interpretation.
Read the full interview
Exclusive Interview with Tomasz Trzebiatowski Editor-in-chief FRAMES Magazine
Interview
Exclusive Interview with Tomasz Trzebiatowski Editor-in-chief FRAMES Magazine
Founded in 2020 by photographer, publisher, and classical pianist Tomasz Trzebiatowski, FRAMES Magazine has quickly established itself as a thoughtful space for photography lovers who believe that powerful images deserve to live on paper. Known for its beautifully printed quarterly issues and dynamic international community, FRAMES bridges the gap between tradition and innovation in the photographic world. As editor-in-chief, Trzebiatowski has created not only a publication but a platform that celebrates diverse genres, nurtures dialogue, and champions the tactile experience of print in a digital age. In this interview, he reflects on the journey from founding FRAMES to building a global membership, the challenges of independent publishing, and the future of photography in both print and digital forms.
Read the full interview
Call for Entries
All About Photo Awards 2026
$5,000 Cash Prizes! Juror: Steve McCurry
© Patrick Enssler
Explore All About Photo
All About Photo
About Us
Contact Us
Link Back
Press
Blog
Newsletter
Terms of Use
Privacy Policy
Competitions
All About Photo Competitions
Our Jurors
All Photo Contests
Open Photo Contests
Amateur Photo Contests
Professional Photo Contests
Portfolio Reviews
Photo Competition News
Artists
Photographers A-Z
Masters of Photography
Modern Photographers
Rising Photographers
Articles
Interviews
Inspirational
Photography Exhibitions
Photography Festivals
Photo Fairs
Photo Museums
Galleries & Centers
Photographer Monographs
Technique Books
History of Photography
Miscellaneous
Paper Magazines
Online Magazines
Resources
Schools and Classes
Photography Agencies
Equipment Rentals
Studio Rentals
Photo Labs
Camera Repairs
Framing Stores
Photo Tips & Tools
Photo Gear
© 2025 © All-About-Photo.com, All Rights Reserved  •  Photographs © the Respective Artists, All Rights Reserved.