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Ed Sievers
Untitled (Self portrait in mirror), Venice Beach, CA, 1976
Ed Sievers
Ed Sievers

Ed Sievers

Country: United States
Birth: 1932 | Death: † 2002

Ed Sievers was born in 1932 in St. Louis, MO, the son of a family doctor that made house calls and an aspiring opera singer. He attended Grinnell College, graduating with a degree in Speech in 1954. His first job was as a creative writer for Hallmark Cards. The slogans he penned were notable for the wry wit and wisdom with which he commented on the human condition. At the same time, his interest in the arts was expanding from the literary to the visual, and would ultimately lead him in a new direction.

In 1966 he was accepted into the MFA program at the Rhode Island School of Design to study photography with Harry Callahan. Upon graduation in 1968 he joined the faculty of California State University, Northridge, as a specialist in fine art photography. He took up residence in the Carlton Hotel in Venice Beach and soon realized he had walked into a street photographer's dream.

Originally designed as a resort community modeled after its Italian namesake, Venice had fallen on hard times. Buildings were in disrepair and rents were cheap. Influenced by the Bohemian lifestyle of its poets, artists, students and a struggling lower class, the boardwalk suddenly sprang to life. There were musicians, dancers, jugglers, mimes, magicians, comedians, roller skaters, fortune tellers, gritty street people and colorful hippies. And, of course, there was the sprawling nude beach. Throngs of gapers flocked from throughout Southern California to enjoy the expressive spirit of the moment.

But that was only on weekends. A quieter, more sensitive mood prevailed during the week. The gentle gestures of holocaust survivors at the Israel Levin Center. The recovering alcoholics quietly heading home after Al-Anon meetings. The homeless searching for food and drink. The once cheerful cottages longing for attention. The iconic murals. The myopic murals. The motions of a people not sure of what lay ahead.

Within a decade the Venice that Ed knew had been swallowed up by rampant commercialism and the inexorable influx of the nouveau riche. Upon his death in 2002, the Edwin R. Sievers Memorial Award was established to share his vision with future students; "His approach to photography was straight forward: use the nuances of available light to enhance the subject, whatever that may be: ordinary, quirky, or sublime."

Source: Robert Mann Gallery

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Robert Mann Gallery

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www.robertmann.com/ed-sievers

 

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Marion Post Wolcott
Marion Post Wolcott
United States
1910 | † 1990
Marion Post (later Marion Post Wolcott) (June 7, 1910 - November 24, 1990) was a noted American photographer who worked for the Farm Security Administration during the Great Depression documenting poverty and deprivation. She was born in New Jersey. Her parents split up and she was sent to boarding school, spending time at home with her mother in Greenwich Village when not at school. Here she met many artists and musicians and became interested in dance. She studied at The New School. She trained as a teacher and went to work in a small town in Massachusetts. Here she saw the reality of the Depression and the problems of the poor. When the school closed she went to Europe to study with her sister Helen. Helen was studying with Trude Fleischmann, a Viennese photographer. Marion showed Fleischmann some of her photographs and was told to stick to photography. While in Vienna she saw some of the Nazi attacks on the Jewish population and was horrified. Soon she and her sister had to return to America for safety. She went back to teaching but also continued her photography and became involved in the anti-fascist movement. At the New York Photo League, she met Ralph Steiner and Paul Strand who encouraged her. When she found that the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin kept sending her to do "ladies' stories," Ralph Steiner took her portfolio to show Roy Stryker, head of the Farm Security Administration, and Paul Strand wrote a letter of recommendation. Stryker was impressed by her work and hired her immediately. Her photographs for the FSA often explore the political aspects of poverty and deprivation. They also often find humor in the situations she encountered. In 1941 she met Lee Wolcott. When she had finished her assignments for the FSA she married him, and later had to fit in her photography around raising a family and a great deal of traveling and living overseas. Source: Wikipedia A biographical sketch by Linda Wolcott-Moore "As an FSA documentary photographer, I was committed to changing the attitudes of people by familiarizing America with the plight of the underprivileged, especially in rural America... FSA photographs shocked and aroused public opinion to increase support for the New Deal policies and projects, and played an important part in the social revolution of the 30s", said Marion Post Wolcott. Beginning in September of 1938, Wolcott spent three and a half years photographing in New England, Kentucky, North Carolina, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi. A photographic pioneer on America's ragged economic frontier, Wolcottt survived illness, bad weather, rattlesnakes, skepticism about a woman traveling alone and the sometimes hostile reaction of her subjects in order to fulfill her assignments from the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Unique among FSA photographers, Wolcott showed the extremes of the country's rich and poor in the late 30's, its race relations, and the fertile land formed with government assistance, which revealed the benefits of federal subsidies. Her work has a formal control, emotional reticence and keen wit.(...) Marion Post entered the 20th Century on June 7, 1910, one of two daughters of Marion (Nan) Hoyt Post and Dr. Walter Post. The Posts were a prominent family in Montclair, New Jersey where Dr. Post was the local physician, a homeopathist, in those days, the leading type of medicine. The Posts ended their marriage when Marion was a young teenager, and she and sister Helen were packed off to boarding school. At Edgewood School in Greenwich, Connecticut, removed from the trials of her parents’ bitter and heart-rending divorce, Marion thrived in a progressive atmosphere which fostered open inquiry, flexibility and individuality. Throughout those early years, she also had a very close, loving relationship with the Post’s black housekeeper, Reasie, a relationship that gave Marion an ease and empathy with the blacks she would later photograph in the fields and juke joints of the deep South. On weekends and in the summer--whenever possible--she spent time with her mother, Nan, in her tiny Greenwich Village apartment in New York City. Nan was working with Margaret Sanger helping to set up health and birth control clinics around the country, a pioneer in her own right and an inspiration to Marion. In "The Village," mother and daughter hung out with musicians, artists, writers and members of the theatrical crowd, went to art exhibits, lectures and concerts, and after graduation from Edgewood, Marion fell in love with, and began studying, modern dance. At the same time she was working her way through school as a teacher of young children, pursuing her interest in early childhood education at the New School for Social Research, and then at New York University. As the Great Depression began to impact the working people around her, she witnessed dramatic class differences among those living in the small Massachusetts town where she was then teaching.(...) Soon after, in 1932, Marion traveled to Europe to study dance in Paris, and later, child psychology at the University of Vienna. There she met Trude Fleischmann, a Viennese photographer with whom her sister Helen was studying. Upon seeing Marion's first photographic images, Trude encouraged her to continue. "Sis," you've got a good eye," she exclaimed, a line Marion Post would never forget, although she was quite reticent about encroaching upon the territory of her sister, Helen, long considered the artist in the family. Meanwhile, a horrified young Marion and Helen were witnessing the rise of Nazism and Fascism in Europe. Of their friends, again many were musicians, artists, and young intellectuals. Many also were Jewish, and Marion watched as swastikas burned in front of the homes of her anti-Nazi friends, and their fields and fences were set ablaze. She was further rocked by the assassination, during the winter of 1933-34, of Austrian Chancelor Dolfuss and the bombing of apartments of socialist workers near Vienna. Lending a hand, she spent several months working in the local schools with the children of Austrian workers. It was too dangerous, however, for her to stay; the University of Vienna had been closed, and Marion was told either to return home or give up her small allowance. Back in the States, she took a teaching position at the progressive Hessian Hills School at Croton-on-Hudson. Here she began taking more photographs and making her first prints. Close to New York, she also became active in the League Against War and Fascism, and, together with Helen, helped Jews, including Trude Fleischmann, leave Europe and immigrate to the United States. She had friends in the socially and politically concerned Group Theatre who became both subjects and clients, and she published her first work in Stage Magazine. Encouraged by her progress, a year later, at twenty-five, Marion moved to New York and began freelancing, even landing a picture on the cover of the New York Times Magazine. She also began attending meetings of the New York Photo League, an important organization that was influencing many of the country's best young photographers. There Marion met Ralph Steiner and Paul Strand who, upon seeing her work, asked her to join a group of serious young photographers who met at Steiner's apartment to discuss and critique each other's photography.(...) Needing more certain wages, Marion accepted a position as a staff photographer for the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. As a young woman, however, she was required to do stories on the latest fashion and events for the ladies' page, hardly compelling assignments for a young woman of 25 with her background and experiences! Mentioning her frustrations to Ralph Steiner one day, he took her portfolio with him to Washington, to Roy Stryker, head of the Farm Security Administration. Stryker was impressed, asked to meet her. So, armed with letters of recommendation from no less than Paul Strand and Ralph Steiner, Marion Post set off for Washington. She was hired immediately, and joined the ranks of the other FSA photographers, Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Russell Lee, and Arthur Rothstein, among them. From 1938 through 1941, Marion produced many of the most vividly moving of the more than 100,000 images in the FSA archives, reflecting her many years of social and political involvement, her strength and independence, and her deep sensitivity to the children and families of the less fortunate. The Farm Security Administration had been mandated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to assist American farmers who had suffered grievously during the Depression. Families were stranded and starving; soil was worn out, unfit for production.(...) Segregation and discrimination; humiliation and condescension; labor movements; eroded, worn-out land; dirty, sick, malnourished children; overcrowded schools. She traveled primarily alone, got tired and lonely and sick and burned out. She had to wrap her camera in hot water bottles to keep the shutters from freezing; write captions at night in flimsy motel rooms while fending off the men trying to enter through the transoms; deal with southern social workers, suspicious cops, chiggers and mosquitoes; mud, heat, and humidity.(...) In 1941, Marion met the man she wanted to marry--Lee Wolcott, a handsome, bright assistant to Henry Wallace, Secretary of Agriculture under President Roosevelt. Marion completed her assignments and left the FSA in order to raise a family, tend their farms, and later to live and travel extensively overseas. Both passionate, eager, curious, intellectual, they developed interesting modern art and music collections; had interesting, involved friends; were deeply committed to the raising and educating of four accomplished children, and with mentoring their grandchildren. Although she did not again work as a "professional," largely due to the demands of family and overseas living and traveling, she captured numerous serious images of farming in rural Virginia, and later in Iran, Egypt, Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan. Upon returning to the States, she taught and photographed American Indian children in New Mexico, did a series on the ‘70’s counter-culture in Isla Vista, California, and in Mendocino, California. She also was actively involved with the photography communities in both San Francisco and Santa Barbara where she helped, encouraged, and inspired, and was loved by many younger artists, worked with museum and gallery curators, and, in the 80’s, at the urging of the same, undertook a massive project to produce an archive of fine prints of her work of both the FSA and later years.(...) Letter from Paul Strand "Dear RoyIt gives me pleasure to give this note of introduction to Marion Post because I know her work well. She is a young photographer of considerable experience who has made a number of very good photographs on social themes in the South and elsewhere... I feel that if you have any place for a conscientious and talented photographer, you will do well to give her an opportunity."--Paul Strand 6-20-38 Marion's favorite image "I guess if I had to pick one, just one, favorite image, it would be the Negro Man Going Up the Stairs of the Movie Theatre. I think it says the most about me, about what I was trying to do and trying to say." (Conversation with her daughter, Linda)
Pierre Faure
Pierre Faure
France
1972
Pierre Faure was born in 1972 in Nice and lives in Paris. He studied economics. He produces at first a work in which abstraction and organic evocations occupy a central place (series Rhizomes, Plis, Palimpsests); series which question the look of the spectator and play with the notions of scales and perspective. He also approaches the social question by realizing a work of dumping within a community Roma of Ile-de-France (2011-2012). In 2013 he is interested in the life of people in big precariousness welcomed in emergency reception center and tries to seize in this everyday life the figures of a wounded humanity. In parallel in these works he pursues since 2010 a series on the urban trees, questioning the place of the vegetable in urban zones.
Jean-François Block
Jean-François Block
France
1953
A specialist physician, Jean-François Block's (aka Jourdan Mondrial) contribution to health and culture is highly significant, making him a key figure in the medical–literary scene. He has been involved in the conception of several specialized works, including Pygodynia, Gluteal Pain, for which he established an international, multidisciplinary editorial committee. He is the author and illustrator of Le Mal de Dos, designed for nursing education institutions, and of La Lettre Médicale de Vittel, a periodical providing medical information to the general public. He has developed a prolific publishing career, with works such as the Petit Dictionnaire Encyclopédique de Vittel, a one-of-a-kind volume celebrating the 150th anniversary of the spa town, as well as several portrait books: Commemoration of the Liberation of a Vosges Village, Sérocourt; Toxic, Visual Artist; Visit of the Indian Ambassador to Vittel; Ludivine, Model; Fashion According to Maud; and Gvandsa’. A laureate of numerous photography competitions, he was notably recognized for a project on the theme of Vintage, which was featured on the cover of a highly respected photography magazine. By inviting promising young photographers, he also organizes photographic gatherings complemented by classical music concerts. His distinctive creativity across multiple disciplines consistently makes a strong impression. Statement "Drawn to the duality of photography—reflecting both humanity and creation—addicted to the sublimation of the ordinary, far from resistant to the pseudo-nonsensical, a fan of spontaneity, and always in search of relevance as a mark of credibility, I navigate multiple realms, gladly losing myself in them only to find myself again through a decisive spark. The camera is a magic wand. It is up to the photographer to perform the tricks that transcend the world." Awarded Photographer of the Week - Week 1, 2026
Sid Avery
Sid Avery
United States
1918 | † 2002
Sid Avery (October 12, 1918 – July 1, 2002) was an American photographer and director who was best known for capturing the private moments of legendary Hollywood celebrities like Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, James Dean, Marlon Brando, Humphrey Bogart and Audrey Hepburn as showcased in his book Hollywood at Home. Avery was born in Akron, Ohio on October 12, 1918. He was only nine months old when they decided to move out to Los Angeles, California, which is where he grew up. Sid Avery received his high school education at the institution of Roosevelt High School. He discovered his love and talent of photography when he was young due to the fact that he was able to work with his uncle, Max Tatch, who was a landscape and architectural photographer. His uncle was able to teach him the skills required to use cameras, film, and darkrooms. After he graduated from high school, Sid Avery worked in a camera store on Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood where he further gained love and inspiration for photography. While working in the shop, he had opportunities to meet many famous photographers. This also encouraged him to take more photography classes. He also gained the experience of being a darkroom assistant. He served in the Army in World War II. When he returned from the war, he began his work of photographing celebrities. Sid Avery eventually became one of the top advertising photographers in Los Angeles. He was also a director of television commercials. Sid Avery was married to Diana Avery. Together they had three children named Sandra Guttman, Marc Avery, and Ron Avery. Sid Avery also had three grandchildren. He founded the Hollywood Photographer's Archive (HPA) and which is known today as mptvimages.com in an effort to preserve the work of the early Hollywood photographers. Sid Avery's work was commonly featured in publications such as Life, Look, Colliers and The Saturday Evening Post. There is a collection of his work, Hollywood at Home: A Family Album 1950-1965, that was published by Crown in the year of 1990. He is most famous for his work of photography that captured the home life of famous celebrities at the time. He captured the celebrities in their own element aside from the glamour of fame. Sid Avery died at the age of 83 on July 1, 2002, in Los Angeles, California.Source: Wikipedia One of six children, Sid Avery was born in 1918 in Ohio and moved to Los Angeles at a young age. Avery repaired a broken brownie box camera that he had found, and with the tutelage of his architectural photographer uncle he began to learn the basics of the photographic profession. By the time he entered Roosevelt High School, Avery’s talent in photography won him numerous prizes and after graduation he landed a job at Morgan’s Camera store on Sunset Boulevard. Avery was pursuing various odd photography jobs when World War II intervened. He was drafted into the Army, assigned to the Signal Corps, and selected to receive six months of training at Life magazine in New York before being sent overseas. Avery was stationed in London and was placed in charge of the Army Pictorial Service Laboratory, where all the stills and combat footage that came out of the European Theater of Operations passed through his hands. This included the detailed, highly classified photomontages of the French coast which were produced for the Normandy invasion. In order to handle this special material, Avery was granted an immediate commission by General Eisenhower himself. Photojournalism publications proliferated during the post-war years, and interest in film stars and their private lives grew to an all time high. During the 1950’s and early 1960’s, Avery photographed screen legends such as Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Clark Gable, James Dean, Marlon Brando, James Stewart, and Alfred Hitchcock. His photographic essays appeared in the pages of The Saturday Evening Post, Look, Photoplay, Collier’s, Reader’s Digest, and many others. Avery’s characteristically low key, unobtrusive manner struck a sympathetic chord with reclusive and difficult personalities like Humphrey Bogart, who generally refused to be photographed. Bogart would eventually allow himself to be photographed by Avery with his pregnant wife Lauren Bacall and his son Stephen at their home. Sid Avery photographs have been exhibited and have been included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and San Francisco, the International Center of Photography in New York, the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in California.Source: Wikipedia
Philippe Marchand
Philippe Marchand
France
1961
Philippe Marchand was born in 1961, self-taught photographer. He lives in Nantes in the West of France. He collaborates with numerous advertising and illustration agencies where his photographies contribute to the promotion of renowned brands. He is also developing a personal work on the link between man and the sea. We find in the pictures he brings back from his hikes all the Power and the magic of the places he goes through. Its aesthetic approach, the technical constraints it imposes on itself contribute to the creation of a singular photographic universe and resolutely personal. This award-winning work is regularly published in the international press. About The Man and the Sea "The sea is present in everyone's imagination, it means dream and adventure, but also mystery and fear. What I am trying to develop through the link that unites man with the sea concerns the emotions that the ocean can arouse in each of us, through evocative images. Not the translation of reality. In the manner of the pictorialists whose movement originated at the end of the 19th century and for whom the image must go beyond the reality photographed. I try to capture the atmosphere of the place, the poetry and the mystery that surrounds it. The shooting is the first part of a process that also includes a long work in "darkroom" to try to recreate the 'Feeling' of the moment". Philippe Marchand, photographer of seafarers. Black, white, shadow, light, what can be seen and what can be guessed, the ocean and those who are close to it. Philippe Marchand opens the world of the sea to us in its most intimate and human aspects. His approach is sensitive, full of nuances and modesty. Philippe Marchand's photos are like fragments of history. He highlights the relationship between the sea and people: how they look at it, how they approach it and the intimacy they share with it through their activities and passions. Man's imprint on the seascape and the ocean's imprint on the lives of men, even in their attitudes and faces. The secret communion between people and the sea. The artist has opted for the panoramic format and black and white. Facing the ocean, the format imposed itself. The immensity of the sea is exalted, the fragility of men is highlighted. With black and white, more timeless than colour, Philippe shows us the permanence of the places and gestures of the unchanging world of the sea. We have the feeling that time stands still. There is no rush, no run. Life has always had the rhythm of the ocean. Through a subtle play of contrasts, greys and light, a real "paw stroke" of the photographer, the images are linked together, inseparable, part of a whole, of a universe where Philippe invites us to share his emotions. The grain, very present, attenuates, coats the real and reinforces the poetic side of the images. The characters are most often from the back or almost from the back, partly hidden by the play of shadows. The gaze is discreet, never really, never completely encompassing them. There is like a mystery in the air, which Philippe lets us "glimpse"...
Victor Kataev
Victor Kataev
Russia
1979
Victor Kataev was born and raised in Moscow, Russia. After an exchange program with Kiel University he finished his medical studies in Germany and has lived in Kiel for more than 20 years now. Changing perspectives, in a long-term project he explores life in the hospital via the camera. His photographs focus on the everyday and offer access to the grim in the usual. His latest project Dapio is about being the father of two. For this work he received the Jury Prize of the RFLXN 07. About Dapio "My daughter is 3. She came home once and told me about Dapio. Dapio appeared in her life about a year ago and has been with her ever since. My son, age 5, also seems to notice Dapio. Dapio plays with them on playgrounds, sits at the table or rides along on a bike with us. Only us adults do not see Dapio. Since I became a father, my permanent solitude and melancholia that had always accompanied me in my life seemed to have left me. With this project I tried finding not only solitude and melancholia but Dapio as well.”
Bruce Gilden
Bruce Gilden
United States
1946
An Iconic street photographer with a unique style, Bruce Gilden was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1946. He first went to Penn State University but he found his sociology courses too boring for his temperament and he quit college. Gilden briefly toyed with the idea of being an actor but in 1967, he decided to buy a camera and to become a photographer. Although he did attend some evening classes at the School of Visual Arts in New York, Bruce Gilden is to be considered substantially a self-taught photographer. Right from childhood, he has always been fascinated by the life on thestreets and the complicated and fascinating motion it involves, and this was the spark that inspired his first long-term personal projects, photographing in Coney Island and then during theMardi Gras in New Orleans. Over the years he has produced long and detailed photographic projects in New York, Haiti, France, Ireland, India, Russia, Japan, England and now in America. Since the seventies his work has been exhibited in museum and art galleries all over the world and is part of many collections. The photographic style of Bruce Gilden is defined by the dynamic accent of his pictures, his special graphic qualities, and his original and direct manner of shooting the faces of passers-by with a flash. Gilden’s powerful images in black and white and now in color have brought the Magnum photographer worldwide fame.Gilden has received many awards and grants for his work, including National Endowments for the Arts fellowships (1980, 1984 and 1992), French ''Villa Medicis Hors les Murs'' grant (1995), grants from the New York State Foundation for the Arts (1979, 1992 and 2000), a Japan Foundation Artist Fellowship (1999) and in 2013 a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship.Bruce Gilden has published 23 monographs of his work, among them: Facing New York, 1992; Bleus, 1994; Haiti, 1996 (European Publishers Award for Photography); After The Off, 1999; Go, 2000; Coney Island, 2002; A Beautiful Catastrophe, 2004; Foreclosures, 2013; A complete Examination of Middlesex, 2014. In 2015, Gilden published Face, and Hey Mister Throw Me Some Beads! Un Nouveau Regard Sur la Mobilité Urbaine featuring the commission he did for the French transporation system RATP was released in April 2016. Only God Can Judge Me 2018, Lost And Found 2019, Palermo Gilden 2020, Cherry Blossom 2021.   Bruce Gilden joined Magnum Photos in 1998. He lives in Beacon, New York. Source: www.brucegilden.com Bruce Gilden is one of the most iconic street photographers of our time. Known for his graphic and often confrontational close-ups made using flash, his images have a degree of intimacy and directness that have become a signature in his work. Though he cut his teeth on the sidewalks of New York City where he grew up, he has since made significant bodies of work in Haiti, Japan, Moscow, France, Ireland and India. “I’m known for taking pictures very close,” says Gilden of his practice. “And the older I get, the closer I get.” Gilden was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1946. He studied sociology at Penn State University but didn’t complete the course. Although he briefly flirted with the idea of being an actor, Gilden decided to become a photographer in 1967, when he bought his first camera. He attended evening classes at the School of Visual Arts in New York, but largely considers himself to be self-taught. As well as his many acclaimed personal projects, Gilden has worked on commissions for Louis Vuitton, RATP Parisian transportation system, The Climate Group, and Mission Photographique Transmanche as well as publications including Wallpaper, New York Times Magazine. Gilden has received many awards and grants for his work, including National Endowments for the Arts fellowships (1980, 1984 and 1992), French “Villa Medicis Hors les Murs” grant (1995), grants from the New York State Foundation for the Arts (1979, 1992 and 2000), a Japan Foundation Artist Fellowship (1999) and in 2013 a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship. Since the seventies, his work has been exhibited in museums and galleries all over the world.Source: Magnum Photos
Tommy Ingberg
Tommy Ingberg
Sweden
1980
Tommy Ingberg is a self-taught photographer and visual artist, born 1980 in Sweden. He works with photography and digital image editing, creating minimalistic and self-reflecting surreal photo montages dealing with human nature, feelings and thoughts. Tommy leaves the interpretation of his work up to the viewer but says, "For me, surrealism is about trying to explain something abstract like a feeling or a thought, expressing the subconscious with a picture. The Reality Rearranged series is my first try at describing reality trough surrealism. During the two and a half years I have worked on the series I have used my own inner life, thoughts and feelings as seeds to my pictures. In that sense the work is very personal, almost like a visual diary. Despite this subjectiveness in the process I hope that the work can engage the viewer in her or his own terms. I want the viewers to produce their own questions and answers when looking at the pictures, my own interpretations are really irrelevant in this context." During the last couple of years he has received international recognition with his work shown in numerous publications and receiving awards and honorable mentions from many different competitions including International Photography Awards, Prix De La Photographie Paris and Sony World Photography Awards. In 2012 Tommy won the Lumen Prize with his picture “Torn”.
shesaidred
shesaidred
Mexico/United States
Norma Córdova, aka, shesaidred, is a Mexican-American photographer, filmmaker, and artist, known for her framed dream-like cinematic stills. She is based in Oakland, California where she still works traditionally, shooting film, polaroids, paper negatives, and making darkroom chromogenic prints, and occasionally incorporating mixed media. Her work explores moody narratives. Sex, sadness, death, and family illnesses are recurring subjects, subjects her family considered taboo. By simply photographing those subjects, she explores her feminine desires, and to come to terms with what her Mexican culture and family expected of her as a female. She creates illusions that conjure the realms of the imagination without presenting a factual reality. Her work is very personal to her, yet allows viewers to relate to it freely. She uses these subjects and memories to help her navigate the anxieties caused by her family's expectations of her (to wed and have children), and to fill the space left by her family's silence on those subjects.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Call for Entries
All About Photo Awards 2026
$5,000 Cash Prizes! Juror: Steve McCurry
© Fernando Morales Roca
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