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Final Chance to Win a Solo Exhibition this April! Deadline: March 18, 2025
Final Chance to Win a Solo Exhibition this April! Deadline: March 18, 2025
Benita Suchodrev
Benita Suchodrev
Benita Suchodrev

Benita Suchodrev

Country: United States
Birth: 1975

Benita Suchodrev was born in the former Soviet Union and immigrated to the United States where she received her Bachelor's degree in Liberal Arts with a focus on Art History from SUNY Purchase, New York, continuing to a Master of Arts in English Literature, graduating with high honors. It was in the university darkroom where Benita developed and produced her first black and white prints.

In 2008 Benita relocated to Berlin where she began an extensive documentation of the cosmopolitan city's multifaceted art scene while working on diverse photographic projects. Later she studied at the Neue Schule für Fotografie in the class of Eva Bertram. Her portrait and documentary work has been exhibited in solo and group shows nationally and internationally and is part of the Rafael Tous Foundation for Contemporary Art in Barcelona, the Michael Horbach Stiftung in Cologne as well as private collections in Moscow, Berlin and New York.

She has published Of Lions and Lambs (2019) and 48 Hours Blackpool (2018) with KEHRER Verlag. Her photographs have appeared in NACHTLEBEN BERLIN 1974 – BIS HEUTE (Metrolit Verlag, 2013), BERLIN NOW (teNeues Verlag, 2009) and have been covered by various media including ARTE, THE GUARDIAN, ZEIT ONLINE, ARD, RBB24 Kulturradio, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Berliner Zeitung, STERN.DE, AMICA Italy, ART, MARE Magazine, Neues Deutschland, Die Tageszeitung, Tagesspiegel, MIND China, The Moscow Times, Искусство – The Art Magazine Russia, among others.

Benita currently lives and works in Berlin.

Artist Statement

"I am attracted to the poetic and the bizarre, the bold and the vulnerable. But of all things I am interested in the transitional moment between states, between blinks; that elusive split of a second between what was, what is to come, and the traces it leaves behind. The drama and ambiguity of human expression and gesture during this transitional moment is what fascinates me the most."
 

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More Great Photographers To Discover

Hannah Villiger
Switzerland
1951 | † 1997
Capturing the essence of self, frequently in sensual sequences, Hannah Villiger employed her own body as both material and subject. She played a pivotal role in the artistic emancipation of women in the 1980s. Born in 1951 in Cham, near Zug, Villiger earned a diploma in sculpture from Lucerne’s Schule für Gestaltung at the age of twenty-three. Her early work swiftly garnered attention from critics, including Jean-Christophe Ammann, whose support catapulted her to recognition. Seeking her own artistic language, Villiger gradually transitioned to exclusive work in photography. Initially using a reflex camera and producing black-and-white images, her early work retained the influence of Land Art and Arte Povera. In 1980, she exclusively embraced Polaroid film, shaping her photography around a singular subject—her own body. Over a period of seventeen years, Villiger approached her body in a novel way, avoiding personal anecdotes and the allure of the flesh. Shamelessly and without narcissism, she focused solely on the volume and forms of her anatomy, manipulating and contorting it as one would with clay or a sculptor's chisel. The considerable size of these Polaroids, enlarged to be larger than life, imbued the images with a commanding physical presence. Yet, unlike some of her contemporaries associated with the Body Art movement, Villiger imposed no voyeurism on the viewer. In 1986, she settled in Paris, participating in the Venice Biennale in 1991 and the São Paulo Biennial in 1994, where she exhibited alongside Pipilotti Rist. Despite her premature death at the age of forty-six, Villiger left behind a bold and distinctive body of work, featured in public and private collections in Switzerland and abroad, notably in the United States. Institutional exhibitions featuring Hannah Villiger's work have been held at various venues, including the Centre culturel suisse, Paris (1986); Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel (1988); Kunstverein Frankfurt (1991); and the 22nd Bienal de São Paulo (1994), where she showcased her art in the Swiss Pavilion alongside Pipilotti Rist. Posthumous solo exhibitions have been organized at Kunsthalle Basel (2001); Kunsthalle Bonn (2001); nGbK Neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst, Berlin (2002); MAMCO Musée d'art moderne et contemporain, Geneva (2007); Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel (2008); and Centre culturel suisse, Paris (2012). Additionally, in 2020 and 2021, Villiger's work was featured in group exhibitions at Kolumba, Cologne, and the Museum zu Allerheiligen, Schaffhausen.
Bill Owens
United States
1938
Bill Owens, born in 1938, is a well-known American photographer who documented suburban life in the 1970s. His photography provides a unique and deep look into the everyday lives of average Americans, capturing both the commonplace and remarkable features of suburbia life. Owens began his photographic career in the late 1960s as a staff photographer for a local newspaper in Livermore, California. During this period, he began his most noteworthy project, "Suburbia," which would become a major body of work in American documentary photography. "Suburbia" was published as a book in 1973, featuring Owens' images and conversations with suburban dwellers. The project's goal was to investigate the goals, aspirations, and inconsistencies of suburbia life, offering a critical yet sympathetic study of the American Dream. Owens' images depicted scenes of backyard barbecues, family gatherings, children at play, and the myriad rituals and social interactions that constituted suburban areas. He highlighted both the humor and the underlying intricacies of suburban life through his good observation and direct attitude. What distinguished Owens' work was his ability to see past the surface and capture the soul of his subjects. His images conveyed a sense of realism by portraying suburbanites in their natural settings and enabling their tales to flow through genuine moments captured in time. Owens' art struck a chord with a large audience because it highlighted a huge societal transition in America during the 1970s. Owens' images challenged the idealized image of suburban life by exposing the hardships, wants, and inconsistencies inherent in the pursuit of the American Dream. Throughout his career, Owens continued to explore various topics and subjects in addition to his "Suburbia" series. He documented the California wine industry, capturing the agricultural process as well as the people that make it happen. He also covered countercultural trends of the 1960s and 1970s, such as the rise of the hippie and biker subcultures. Bill Owens' contributions to documentary photography will be remembered. His ability to depict the everyday lives of regular people in suburbia America with honesty and empathy earned him a place in American photographic history. His work is still being shown and researched, providing important insights into the social and cultural fabric of a specific period and place.
Ruth Bernhard
Germany / United States
1905 | † 2006
Ruth Bernhard (October 14, 1905 – December 18, 2006) was a German-born American photographer. She was born in Berlin to Lucian Bernhard and Gertrude Hoffmann. Lucian Bernhard was known for his poster and typeface design, many of which bear his name and are still in use. Bernhard's parents divorced when she was 2 years old and she only met her mother twice after the divorce. She was raised by two schoolteacher sisters and their mother. Bernhard's father Lucian was a major proponent of Ruth's work, and advised her frequently. Bernhard studied art history and typography at the Berlin Academy of Art from 1925 to 1927 before moving to New York City to join her father. She worked as an assistant to Ralph Steiner in Delineator magazine, but he terminated her employment for indifferent performance. Using the severance pay, Bernhard bought her own camera equipment. By the late-1920s, while living in Manhattan, Bernhard was heavily involved in the lesbian sub-culture of the artistic community, becoming friends with photographer Berenice Abbott and her lover, critic Elizabeth McCausland. Her first realization that she was attracted to other women occurred on New Year's Eve 1928 when she met the painter Patti Light. She wrote about her "bisexual escapades" in her memoir. In 1934 Bernhard began photographing women in the nude. It would be this art form for which she would eventually become best known. In 1935, she chanced to meet Edward Weston on the beach in Santa Monica. She would later say: "I was unprepared for the experience of seeing his pictures for the first time. It was overwhelming. It was lightning in the darkness ... here before me was indisputable evidence of what I had thought possible—an intensely vital artist whose medium was photography." Bernhard was so inspired by Weston's work that, after meeting him in 1935, she moved to California (where he lived). In 1939, Bernhard moved back to New York for eight years, during which time she met photographer Alfred Stieglitz. Bernhard was inspired by the small things in her life. In an interview from 1999 with Photographers Forum, Ruth states, "I’m most interested in—the little things that nobody observes, that nobody thinks are of any value". In the same interview she stated that, "Everything is universal" and that she was "very much aware of that". This idea of minimalism drove her passion for photography. In 1934 Ruth received a commission from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) to photograph works for the Machine Art exhibition catalog. Her father Lucian Bernhard set up the meeting with MoMA for her. By 1944 she had met and became involved with artist and designer Eveline (Evelyn) Phimister. The two moved in together, and remained together for the next ten years in Carmel, California. Here, Bernhard worked with Group f/64. Soon, finding Carmel a difficult place in which to earn a living, they moved to Hollywood where she fashioned a career as a commercial photographer. In 1953, they moved to San Francisco where she became a colleague of photographers such as Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Minor White, and Wynn Bullock. Most of Bernhard's work is studio-based, ranging from simple still lifes to complex nudes. In the 1940s she worked with the conchologist Jean Schwengel. She worked almost exclusively in black-and-white, though there are rumors that she had done some color work as well. She also is known for her lesbian themed works, most notably Two Forms (1962). In that work, a black woman and a white woman who were real-life lovers are featured with their nude bodies pressed against one another. In 1967, Bernhard began a teaching career. This same year, Bernhard met United States Air Force Colonel Price Rice, an African American man ten years younger than her, and the two became lovers. They would remain together until his death in 1999. In her 90s, Bernhard cooperated with biographer Margaretta K. Mitchell in the book Ruth Bernhard, Between Art and Life, publicly revealing her many affairs with women and men throughout her lifetime. A departure was a collaboration with Melvin Van Peebles (as "Melvin Van"), then a young cable car gripman (driver) in San Francisco. Van Peebles wrote the text and Bernhard took the unposed photographs for The Big Heart, a book about life on the cable cars. In the early 1980s, Bernhard started to work with Carol Williams, owner of Photography West Gallery in Carmel, California. Bernhard told Williams that she knew there would be a book of her photography after her death, but hoped one could be published during her lifetime. Williams approached New York Graphics Society, and several other photographic book publishers, but was advised that "only Ansel Adams could sell black-and-white photography books." Bernhard and Williams decided to sell five limited edition prints to raise the necessary funds to publish a superior quality book of Ruth Bernhard nudes. The ensuing edition was produced by David Gray Gardner of Gardner Lithograph, (also the printer of Adams's books) and was called The Eternal Body. It won Photography Book of the Year in 1986 from Friends of Photography. This book was often credited by Ruth Bernhard as being an immeasurable help to her future career and public recognition. The Eternal Body was reprinted by Chronicle Books and later as a deluxe limited Centennial Edition in celebration of Ruth Bernhard's 100th birthday in October 2005. Carol Williams credited Ruth Bernhard with encouraging her to venture into book publishing, and later published several other photographic monographs. In the 1980s Bernhard also started to work with Joe Folberg. Folberg bought Vision Gallery from Douglas Elliott (who founded it in 1979) in San Francisco in 1982. Bernhard and Folberg worked together until Folberg's death. The gallery split with Debra Heimerdinger taking over operations in North America and Folberg's son Neil moving the "Vision Gallery" to Jerusalem. In 1984 Ruth worked with filmmaker Robert Burrill on her autobiographic film entitled, Illuminations: Ruth Bernhard, Photographer. The film premièred in 1989 at the Kabuki Theater in San Francisco and on local PBS station KQED in 1991. Bernhard was inducted into the Women's Caucus for Art in 1981. Bernhard was hailed by Ansel Adams as "the greatest photographer of the nude". Bernhard died in San Francisco at age 101.Source: Wikipedia
Christopher Anderson
Christopher Anderson (b.1970, Canada), a member of Magnum Photos for over ten years, has covered an innumerable list of political and social issues around the world. Whilst he is widely known for his moving photographs of fleeing Haitian immigrants aboard a sinking handmade boat named 'Believe in God', Anderson has also made pictures of Barack Obama, Al Gore and David Letterman amongst countless other people and places. Contrary to the often-unforgiving frontiers Anderson places himself in, his photographs are always imbued with palpable emotion. In a society in which a torrent of photographs from the mass media drive an apathetic view of such narratives, Anderson instead offers an alternative, poetic and intimate practice that that speaks of his own experience, whilst constructing a frame for us to experience it with him. In 2000, Christopher Anderson received the Robert Capa Gold Medal for his series on the crossing made by boat by Haitian refugees to the United States. He has also been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Anderson has worked for Newsweek Magazine and National Geographic Magazine and in 2011 he became the first Photographer in Residence at New York Magazine. Numerous books have been published on his work: Nonfiction (2003), Capitolio (2009), Son (2013), Stump (2014) and his latest book Approximate Joy (2018). Anderson lives and works in both New York and Barcelona.Source: The Ravestijn Gallery Christopher Anderson is known for his emotionally charged, artfully drawn images that explore themes of truth and subjectivity. He is one of today’s most influential photographers, whose origins began in war reporting and later transformed into something more intimate, blending the worlds of commercial, art and fashion work, but always with a foundation in documentary. Anderson was born in 1970 in Canada and grew up in west Texas. His photographic career began working for local newspapers. In 2000, on assignment for the New York Times Magazine , he boarded a small wooden boat with 44 Haitians trying to sail to America. The boat sank in the Caribbean. The photographs received the Robert Capa Gold Medal and marked the beginning of a ten-year period as a contract photographer for Newsweek Magazine and National Geographic Magazine. In 2011 he became New York Magazine’s first ever Photographer in Residence; a notable collaboration that would also mark Anderson’s shift into portraiture and fashion, making images of significant figures including Barack Obama, Spike Lee and Debby Harry. In 2008, after the birth of his first child, Anderson moved further away from journalistic magazine work to subjects more immediate to his personal experience. In 2012, his book, SON, was published, defining a visual direction that has come characterize to his work. Other projects created within this intensely intimate approach include Capitolio, Stump and Approximate JOY.
Bunny Yeager
United States
1929 | † 2014
Linnea Eleanor "Bunny" Yeager was an American photographer and pin-up model. She was born in the Pittsburgh suburb of Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, to Raymond Conrad and Linnea (née Sherlin) Yeager on March 13, 1929. Her family moved to Florida when she was 17. She adopted the nickname "Bunny" from Lana Turner's character Bunny Smith in the 1945 movie Week-End at the Waldorf. The nickname has also been attributed to her portrayal of the Easter Bunny in a high school play. Bunny Yeager graduated from Miami Edison High School and afterward enrolled at the Coronet Modeling School and Agency. She won numerous local beauty pageants including in rapid succession Queen of Miami, Florida Orchid Queen, Miss Trailercoach of Dade County, Miss Army & Air Force, Miss Personality of Miami Beach, Queen of the Sports Carnival and Cheesecake Queen of 1951. Yeager became one of the most photographed models in Miami. Photos of Yeager appeared in over 300 newspapers and magazines. She also designed and sewed many of the outfits she and her models wore, at one time boasting that she never wore the same outfit twice while modeling. She designed and produced hundreds of bikinis when the two-piece swimsuit was a new fashion item and is credited with its popularity in America. Bruno Banani, the German fashion company, has developed a line of swimwear based on Yeager's designs from the 1950s. Yeager entered photography to save money by copying her modeling photographs, enrolling in a night class at a vocational school in 1953. Her career as a professional photographer began when a picture of Maria Stinger, taken for her first school assignment, was sold to Eye magazine for the cover of the March 1954 issue. She became a technically skilled photographer noted for, among other things, her early use of the fill flash technique to lighten dark shadows when shooting in bright sun. Yeager was one of the first photographers to photograph her models outdoors with natural light. Matt Schudel wrote in the Washington Post that her images were vivid and dynamic, going on to say, "She favored active poses and a direct gaze at the camera lens, in what could be interpreted alternately as playful innocence or pure lust." She met Bettie Page in 1954, and took most of the photographs of her that year. During their brief collaboration, she took over 1,000 pictures of Page. Along with photographer Irving Klaw, Yeager played a role in helping to make Page famous, particularly with her photos in Playboy magazine. American Photo magazine described Yeager's work with Page as "a body of imagery that remains some of the most memorable — and endearing — erotica on record" in a 1993 article. The most famous images of Page by Yeager include the January 1955 Playboy centerfold in which she kneels wearing only a Santa hat while hanging a silver ornament on a Christmas tree and a series of photographs with a pair of live cheetahs. Yeager was a very prolific and successful pinup photographer in the 1950s and 1960s, so much so, that her work was described as ubiquitous in that era. She continued to work extensively with Playboy shooting eight centerfolds in addition to covers and pictorial spreads. She discovered Lisa Winters, the first Playmate of the Year. Yeager also appeared in the magazine as a model five times. One appearance with the headline, "Queen of the Playboy Centerfolds", was photographed by Hugh Hefner. Her work was also published in mainstream magazines including Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Pageant, Redbook and Women's Wear Daily. The famous still images she took of Ursula Andress emerging from the water on the beach in Jamaica for the 1962 James Bond film Dr. No are probably her best-known bikini photographs. She discovered many notable models. In the 1970s as men's magazines became more anatomically graphic Yeager largely stopped photographing for them, saying they were somewhat "smutty" and that, "They had girls showing more than they should." In 1998 she stated, "The kind of photographs they wanted was something I wasn't prepared to do." An exhibition titled Beach Babes Bash in the early 1990s at the Center for Visual Communication (at that time located in Coral Gables, Florida) featured photographs by Yeager of models from Miami on the beach from the 1950s. Another exhibit at the same gallery featuring Yeager's work was titled Sex Sirens of the Sixties. In 1992 Playboy published a retrospective of her work titled The Bettie Boom. Since 2002, Yeager's work has been exhibited in contemporary art galleries. In early 2010, The Andy Warhol Museum held the first major museum exhibition of Yeager's work. The exhibit, The Legendary Queen of the Pin Up, featured her self-portraits, some from her book How I Photograph Myself published by A.S. Barnes & Co. in 1964. The Fabulous Bunny Yeager an exhibit in 2011 at the Harold Golen Gallery in Miami also featuring self-portraits by Yeager was of photographs that had not been exhibited previously. Also in 2011 Helmut Schuster curated an exhibition for Art Basel at the Dezer Schauhalle in Miami titled Bunny Yeager: Retrospective to the Future featuring over 200 of Yeager's photos. Included were some images that had not been shown before of models including Bettie Page. In 2012 Bunny Yeager had two exhibitions in Germany, Funland at Gallery Schuster Potsdam and Femme Fatale in December 2012 at Gallery Schuster Berlin. The Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale held a 2013 exhibit, Bunny Yeager: Both Sides of the Camera featuring her photographs of herself, Page, and model Paz de la Huerta. The exhibit also included some of Yeager's first new pictures in twenty years. Yeager had a show at the Sofia Vault in Sofia, Bulgaria in October 2013. The Gavlak Gallery in Palm Beach, Florida put on an exhibit, Bunny Yeager: Selections from How I Photograph Myself in 2014. The Sin City Gallery in Las Vegas held a posthumous exhibit, Bunny's Bombshells, from June 5 to July 20 2014. She had her own studio in the Wynwood Art District of Miami, part of the Center for Visual Communication. There is a "Bunny Yeager Lounge" in Berlin which is open to the public and shows photos, memorabilia and movies. Yeager was also founding editor and publisher of a trade magazine for entertainment professionals, Florida Stage & Screen. As of 1998 her 24 books had sold over 1 million copies. Bunny Yeager was married twice, first to Arthur Irwin who died in 1977 and then to Harry Schaefer who died in 2000.[5] She had two daughters, Lisa and Cherilu. Yeager died on May 25, 2014 of congestive heart failure at age 85 in North Miami, Florida.Source: Wikipedia
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