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Win a Solo Exhibition in June 2026 + An Exclusive Interview!
Win a Solo Exhibition in June 2026 + An Exclusive Interview!
Melissa Lazuka
Melissa Lazuka
Melissa Lazuka

Melissa Lazuka

Country: United States
Birth: 1977

I am an artist and mother living in rural Ohio with my three teenage sons, 8 year old daughter, and husband. I always thought I would be a writer and studied English Literature at Ohio State University, but at the age of 30 I discovered the art of photography when my husband gifted me a camera. My earliest inspiration came from literature and my work has been described as "emotional, full of stories, and feminine." I am also inspired by the simple beauty of nature which is woven into my images. I am acutely aware of how time is passing and my children are growing up and from that awareness stems much of my work. I use techniques such as free lensing and multiple exposures to give my work a dreamlike, layered feeling, much the way the years passing in our lives feels. My series "Fly Away" and "Song of the Cicadas" have been exhibited nationally and I am now making handmade artist books of this work.
 

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More Great Photographers To Discover

Wolfgang Bohusch
Austria
1985
Bohusch decided to become photographer at the early age of 13. He began experimenting with old darkroom equipment of his grandmother and shooting with a 35mm camera. After studying photography for 5 years at die Graphische, Vienna he started working as freelance Production Manager, Location Scout and later Photographer or D.o.P and Director for advertising film production companies. On extensive travels he is working on his personal projects. Street- photography in India, Miami or Tokyo, landscape and aerial photography in various places as well as fashion films, music videos in London or Paris. In January 2017 Wolfgang Bohusch stayed in a tent for two weeks in Maroccos Sahara desert. Under very special conditions during his work for the series 'silicon based creatures' Bohusch experienced a period of intense meditation. Details and blurred outlines make it difficult to recognize the shape of the image at once. Pattern recognition takes place only through the perception of the seemingly random forms and structures. The viewer is encouraged to look more closely in order to get lost in the work and to let the subconscious mind wander - in order to finally be able to find his own associations. silicon based creatures With his series 'silicon based creatures' Wolfgang Bohusch invites the viewer to stand in front of his photographs, mediate, and let the mind wander into subconsciousness. Each and every work tells a different story, your own story. There are no titles, no hints for interpretation, no directions to look. Like in a Rorschach test, Bohusch wants you to find your own associations and recognize patterns that are not pregiven and therefore renders every photograph an individual experience. A millisecond is the time span for Wolfgang Bohusch's sculptures to be created but the artist allows us to ponder these millisecond sculptures calmly. The “silicone based creatures” series of 21 photographs presented at OSME Gallery is the outcome of his stay in the Sahara desert for weeks and experimenting with its elements like sand, wind, light, and chance. What you see on the photographs is thus the fusion of elements which serendipitously form into sculptures and are randomly captured on paper. The process behind these snapshots therefore resembles the behaviour patterns of bird or fish swarms. What is more, when we see them crowding together in the sky or in the water, our minds automatically associate certain forms or figures with the sudden patterns they create. As soon as we have caught one image within the crowd, it is already gone again. We get the opportunity to slowly make our own interpretations, though, and to try and find a piece of ourselves in them. So, when you have invented your creatures, where do they come from? And what do they want to tell us? If you think of them as signs, maybe even add a little bit of superstition, can they be hints to the future? Like popular customs or shamanic rituals to predict the future, Bohusch's creatures could also be prophetic figures. Or do they come from the past as mythical beings? Wolfgang Bohusch confronts us with a range of topics and questions in this series which he does not want or cannot answer himself. Lastly, he gives us another little hint with which he introduces one more existential quest. Silicone, which is a constituent of sand, is also the material used for microelectronics, like computer chips, and the basis for what creates the tools for producing the photographs in the first place. Finally, this aspect could trigger another question, or rather “the mother of all questions”: what came first? www.juliahartmann.at
Slim Aarons
United States
1916 | † 2006
Slim Aarons was an American photographer noted for his images of socialites, jet-setters, and celebrities. At 18 years old, Aarons enlisted in the United States Army, worked as a photographer at the United States Military Academy, and later served as a combat photographer in World War II and earned a Purple Heart. Aarons said combat had taught him the only beach worth landing on was "decorated with beautiful, seminude girls tanning in a tranquil sun." After the war, Aarons moved to California and began photographing celebrities. In California, he shot his most praised photo, Kings of Hollywood, a 1957 New's Year's Eve photograph depicting Clark Gable, Van Heflin, Gary Cooper, and James Stewart relaxing at a bar in full formal wear. Aaron's work appeared in Life, Town & Country, and Holiday magazines. Aarons never used a stylist, or a makeup artist. He made his career out of what he called "photographing attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places." An oft-cited example of this approach is his 1970 Poolside Gossip shot at the Kaufmann Desert House designed by Richard Neutra, with owner Nelda Linsk as one of the models in the photo. "I knew everyone," he said in an interview with The (London) Independent in 2002. "They would invite me to one of their parties because they knew I wouldn't hurt them. I was one of them." Alfred Hitchcock's film, Rear Window (1954), whose main character is a photographer played by Jimmy Stewart, is set in an apartment reputed to be based on Aarons' apartment. When you photograph a lot of women, you get to know things. -- Slim Aarons In 1997, Mark Getty, the co-founder of Getty Images, visited Aarons in his home and bought Aarons' entire archive. In 2017, filmmaker Fritz Mitchell released a documentary about Aarons, called Slim Aarons: The High Life. In the documentary, it is revealed that Aarons was Jewish and grew up in conditions that were in complete contrast to what he told friends and family of his childhood. Aarons claimed that he was raised in New Hampshire, was an orphan, and had no living relations. After his death in 2006, his widow and daughter learned the truth that Aarons had grown up in a poor immigrant Yiddish-speaking family on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. As a boy his mother was diagnosed with mental health issues and admitted to a psychiatric hospital, which caused him to be passed around among relatives. He resented and had no relationship with his father and had a brother, Harry, who would later commit suicide. Several documentary interviewees postulate that if Aarons's true origins had been known, his career would have been unlikely to succeed within the restricted world of celebrity and WASP privilege his photography glamorized.Source: Wikipedia Slim Aarons was a celebrated American photographer who chronicled the leisurely lifestyle of the rich and famous in his captivating shots of beguiling figures in luxurious environments. The glamorous world of his photographs, in which effortlessly beautiful and wealthy people lounge poolside, became an iconic series that allowed Aarons access to shoot some of the most candid portraiture of the 20th century. We love how Aarons worked without any need for stylists or elaborate lighting, instead preferring to photograph celebrities just as they were, creating alluring scenes that are a window into a different lifestyle. In presenting glimpses of the rich and famous engrossed in leisurely pursuits, the artist exposes elements of a life that would otherwise not be on view, allowing his audience to live the high life - vicariously. Born and raised in New York, Aarons began taking pictures at the age of eighteen, after enlisting in the US Army, where he served as an official combat photographer during WWII. In a career that spanned six decades, Aarons’ camera lens moved from soldiers to stars and celebrities, and the self-proclaimed realisation that the only beaches worth photographing were "decorated with beautiful, seminude girls tanning in a tranquil sun." Over the course of his 50 year career, Aarons was a regular contributor to magazines such as Life, Town & Country, Vogue and Holiday and received an exclusive look into the lives of figures such as the Kennedys, Marilyn Monroe and Grace Kelly. In 1997, Mark Getty of Getty Images bought Aarons’ entire archive of photographs, and published a book of his work Poolside with Slim Aarons a decade later. Aarons’ intimately candid scenes have given him an era-defining legacy as one of the most influential photographers of his generation. Source: Art Republic
Da Miane
Georgia
1995
Da Miane (Nika Pailodze) is a Georgian street photographer based in Tbilisi. Born in 1995, he has been captivated by visual storytelling from an early age. Even when 0.3-megapixel phone cameras were standard, he began experimenting with photography, initially capturing nature before turning his lens toward the human and urban landscape around him. With an academic background in literary studies, Da Miane brings a nuanced narrative approach to his photography. This foundation has sharpened his eye for storytelling, composition, and emotional depth. He sees the world as a stage, where fleeting moments become lasting impressions through his camera. Since 2014, Da Miane has documented the streets of Tbilisi almost daily. His work focuses on spontaneous human interactions, environmental contrasts, and the often-overlooked poetry of everyday life. Favoring observation over orchestration, he rarely works on commercial assignments or structured projects. Instead, his approach is intuitive, shaped by constant movement and awareness of his surroundings. While not centered around formal series, his body of work includes standout projects such as Highland Adjara, in which his street photography sensibilities guided him to document remote communities with empathy and instinct rather than direction. His ability to connect with strangers and earn their trust has become a hallmark of his visual language. The people in Da Miane’s photographs are anonymous yet deeply familiar—sellers, buyers, passersby—captured repeatedly over the years as they shift through the same streets. He doesn’t seek to know their names or stories; what matters is the impression they leave in a split second, preserved forever through his lens. He works primarily in color but is equally drawn to black and white when it serves the emotional weight of an image. For Da Miane, color is not just aesthetic—it is a carrier of information, mood, and narrative clarity. Da Miane has participated in numerous photography competitions, receiving recognition both locally and internationally. His work is driven not by the pursuit of uniqueness, but by a personal connection to the scenes he witnesses. Influenced by cinema, literature, and music, he views photography not as documentation but as a way to express the subtle drama of the everyday. Awarded Photographer of the Week - Week 23
Piotr Zbierski
Piotr Zbierski studied photography at National Film School. Author of three individual exhibitions (White Elephants, Here, Love has to be reinvented), a participant in collective exhibitions and publications including Photokina and Lab East. He presented his works in many countries like Poland, Germany, Portugal, Russia, Slovakia. As well as magazines (Shots Magazine, Ninja Mag, Archivo Zine, Die Nacht, Gup Magazine). In 2012 he won the prestigious prize for young photographer Leica Oscar Barnack Newcomer Award. His work was nominated to Deutsche Börse Photography Prize and has been shortlisted in many other prizes (Les Nuits Photographiques 2012, Terry O’Neill Award) for his series Pass by me. His works has been shown at Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie in Arles 2012 and are in collection of Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts. He lives and works in Lodz. About Love has to be reinvented "The series 'Love has to be reinvented' began in 2012 and its starting point was not an image but my personal experience, which changed my view and redefined my opinion on many issues. At the same time, it is neither my diary nor any personal document; recently such a name is given to whatever cannot be named. Titles of my series are just mottos for my creative works at their particular stages. Words are created by letters in the alphabet, which is a matter of convention depending on the culture. I build my series out of emotions, which are a biological fact, they are unquestionable. The key objective I identify for myself is the availability of a feeling. I really want the person looking at my photographs to experience something more and not just say whether photographs are good or bad. Photography does not begin with an image, it does not end with an image, either; I put on authenticity, and not on originality. An image is a form of communication of a higher art form, which is life itself. I took the title from the French poet, Artur Rimbaud, who wrote these words and expressed criticism of France and times he lived in about a hundred years ago. I returned to these words because I think the world has not changed so much, and I criticize a contemporary world, which has gone in the wrong direction, in my opinion. And I do not mean people but structures built around the castle, which the book hero has never reached. A major objective of my work is to get through to the essence of human emotions, to their purest form with no additions, no gadgets. To show a man in the way he has been created, a man from a primeval village. In a contemporary world, such an image may be created using a certain type of imagination because we are very far away from such a status quo; therefore, my work is reality-based but it is not the reality itself. It is an attempt to invoke and depict certain human impulses with full acceptance of their inherent contradictions. Like love: it is as full of adoration as hatred; a day could not exist without a night. I will finish this three-year series in spring 2015 during the total solar eclipse, which can be observed in Iceland. It is a characteristic clamp for my creative work in which I start from a personal, private and single experience at the very beginning, and come through an image to a part, which is common for us all, and independent of me. A macro-scale has its reflection in a micro scale while a normal scale, in which we live in, is its pulsating reflection. To follow theories of contemporary scientists, only a ballet dancer may be smaller, and on a macro-scale - a multiple universe. Life is a film directed by the universe while the world is the largest accumulation of sensually available metaphors, a secret in secret or a metaphor in a metaphor. Rimbaud has also written that eternity is skies mixed with water; quite right: black and white, grey on grey; in a child's drawing huge blue and objectively sacred transparency. In my opinion, there is one reality and infinitely many visions. To sum it up as simple as I can: if the world is a tree growing more and more branches (metaphors), then life is the fruit. While love is the juice of various tastes in the same way as the resin is what a tree uses for weeping. All this happens in the surroundings of eternal gases where toxic ones come away leaving space to healthy ones. Rootstocks and roots grow expanding in the same way. Who are people then?Undoubtedly, they are savages from a primeval village who have learned what a real taste of love is: they adored each other at the expense of "god's" hatred, they are Adam and Eve. It is only owing to such a full image of love that new generations could come into existence. I also invite to see the video work titled "Lodz", in which I develop motifs I have earlier discussed. Another continuing video is in progress. The bottomless source is RGB without DNA." - Piotr Zbierski
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Latest Interviews

Exclusive Interview with Carolyn Moore
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
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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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Exclusive Interview with Marijn Fidder
Marijn Fidder is a Dutch documentary photographer whose work powerfully engages with current affairs and contemporary social issues. Driven by a deep sense of social justice, she uses photography to speak on behalf of the voiceless and to advocate for the rights of those who are most vulnerable. Her images have been widely published in major international outlets including National Geographic, CNN Style, NRC Handelsblad, Volkskrant, GUP New Talent, and ZEIT Magazin. Her long-term commitment to disability rights—particularly through years of work in Uganda—culminated in her acclaimed project Inclusive Nation, which earned her the title of Photographer of the Year 2025 at the All About Photo Awards. She is also the recipient of multiple prestigious honors, including awards from World Press Photo and the Global Peace Photo Award. We asked her a few questions about her life and work.
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