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FINAL DAYS TO WIN A SOLO EXHIBITION IN MAY 2026
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Laurent Chéhère
Laurent Chéhère
Laurent Chéhère

Laurent Chéhère

Country: France

This Parisian by birth is a former award-winning advertising for his campaign Road Safety. Audi or Nike. One day he decides to leave the advertising to go around the world. Upon his return he chose to live his two passions, travel and photography. From Shanghai to Valparaiso, frome Srinagar to Ushuais, from La Paz to Lhasa, from Bamako to Bogota. He will feed his imagination and give us his view of the world and others. He loves exploring the cities, suburbs, country, as he likes to explore all fields of photography from reportage to conceptual image. Its particular interest in architecture and offset ideas will be born the series of "Flying Houses". Real house? Imaginary house? He tries to show us their hidden beauty pulling them out of their anonymity and perhaps invites us to leave. Laurent Chéhère exposed the series "Flying Houses" at Dock en Seine City of Fashion and Design in June 2012 where he won the Prix Special. He is represented by the gallery "Paris-Beijing" where he will exibit this series in October 2012. The "Flying Houses" will be shown in China at the 2012 Pingyao Internation Photography Festival and the Internation Fair "Paris Photo 2012"
Source www.parisbeijingphotogallery.com
 

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Leo Touchet
United States
1939
Leo Touchet is an American photographer, Born in Abbeville, Louisiana, in 1939. Throughout his 50-plus year career, photographer Leo Touchet’s work has captured the essence of people and cultures all across the world. In July 1965, inspired by the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson on view at MoMA, Touchet purchased a Leica M2 and began photographing the streets of New York. Soon after, his work drew the eye of a Life Magazine photo editor. That chance encounter led him on assignment for UNICEF to war-torn Vietnam, the first stop on a career that led Touchet through fifty countries across the world. Touchet’s fascination with photography began after pouring through photos an uncle had taken while deployed during World War II. In college, Touchet studied architecture where he was introduced to the principles of composition, form, light, and perspective. This architectural training deeply informed his later photographic work. Upon meeting Henri Cartier-Bresson in 1972, the man whose work inspired Touchet’s career suggested he return home and photograph the people and culture. Touchet took the advice and turned his lens upon his birth state of Louisiana, a sample of which was beautifully collected in the monograph Rejoice When You Die - The New Orleans Jazz Funerals. In total, six monographs of Touchet’s work have been published. Additionally, his work has been featured in numerous publications including Time, Life, National Geographic, and New York Times. Numerous museums and private collections hold Touchet’s work, including the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Everson Museum of Art, Hofstra University Museum, the Sir Elton John Photography Collection, Chase Manhattan Collection, and the United States National Park Service. Touchet’s work has been exhibited internationally numerous times notably including solo exhibitions at the Acadiana Center for the Arts, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Miami Art Center and the Mint Museum.Source: Jackson Fine Art Artist Statement "My earliest memory of photography was at the age of six in my hometown of Abbeville, Louisiana when an uncle returned from World War II with boxes of photographs he had taken, and I have since wanted to travel. While in high school, I was selected to be the high school photographer. My equipment then was an old 4x5 Crown Graphic Camera with screw in flash bulbs. After high school and a stint in the Army, I enrolled in Architecture school at the University of Southwest Louisiana (now the University of Louisiana Lafayette). There I was introduced to composition, form, light and perspective. My photography has since used all of these elements. Most of my photos are full-frame images, cropped in the camera. I later worked in Cleveland and New York as a draftsman and later as an industrial designer. Eventually I became bored with working in an office on a drawing board. In July 1965, on a visit to the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), I was captivated by the photos of Henri Cartier-Bresson. The next day, I bought a used Leica M2 camera and began photographing on the streets of New York. The photography archives at MOMA were open to the public and most of my photography education resulted from my many hours studying photos of Cartier-Bresson, Paul Strand, Eugene Smith, Edward Steichen, Gordon Parks and many other photographers in the collection. Later that year, I bought a ticket to Vietnam to become a photographer." -- Leo TouchetSource: leotouchet.com
Karine Coll
France
1973
Madly in love with the arts in the broad sense, greedy for words, stories, eager for esthetic experiences, passionate about theater, writing, full-time professor of letters, photographer-poet in my spare time, human being forever, Woman above all. For me, photography is the medium that allows me to get down to the essence of things, a three-step frenzied waltz in which scenography, esthetics and text all come together to create a powerful message. Driven by a desire to delve deep into the possible, i see the photo as responding to a need to go straight to the soul, with all its diversity of approaches, a way of looking at the body as a sculptured tool, a fragment of a human being, as a dreamlike narration, pictorial reality, the shots linked but not all alike, a perpetual exploration of the possible, malleable according to my desires, giving rise to sensation, to hypersensitivity. Fragments The hands, the hands as witnesses of a too long forgotten body, metonymic fragments of a neglected soul, given as food to the monster lurking in the shadows. The hands which twist in silence, those which counter blows, which protect themselves, those which heal wounds in the half-light without ever daring, cruel pantomime smothered in the hollow of a fist. A black and white, dark, realistic series featuring hands, in close-up, the body is erased, the hands alone carry the message. The image is soiled, a grain comes to invade the cliché, to soil it, drowning all humanity, all femininity. Silence, taboo, shut up! Suddenly, the hands are there, referees of the last chance, standing up timidly in a final attempt, the last ramparts against hatred ... do not lower your guard, stand up, the hands finally come together, ally because together they make sense. A glimmer of hope that seeps through clenched fingers, gradually the woman regains body, the fist crushes in an act of assumed resistance, an unexpected force at hand, carried by a desire to wake up the sorority of all . Peaux d'ombre Because the body is only a conception of the mind, a fantasy projection of our eye, erotic or plastic mass, the body dissolves in the image, becomes a play of curves, a chimera. It is in the shadow of time that the male body reveals its power, sublimating our shadow areas.
Emma Powell
United States
Emma Powell is an artist in residence and lecturer in photography at Iowa State University. Powell graduated from the College of Wooster in Ohio and received her MFA from Rochester Institute of Technology. Her work often examines photography's history while incorporating historic processes and or devices within the imagery. In her series In Search of Sleep, Powell uses the cyanotype process to create a visual lullaby in wish she explores personal narratives and metaphors.In Search of SleepFrom my earliest days I have had a difficult relationship with sleep. As a child I avoided it at all costs, especially at night. To get me back to bed, my father used to tell me stories. They were not traditional children’s bedtime stories, but invented tales that began on our quiet street and journeyed down open drains to a dream-world of caverns, forests, and oceans full of unexpected animals and dangers. The story would always find its way back to the real world and end where it had begun, hopefully but doubtfully with me that much closer to sleep.In Search of Sleep recreates this shadowy realm and allows me to explore my real-life questions, from personal dramas to romantic doubts. The cyanotype process, with its distinctive blue tones, visually traverses the distance between waking and sleeping. These images are also toned with tea and wine to both dull the blues and add warmth. Tea, wine, cyanide – all three of these substances relate to different levels of consciousness that often mirror the mental states evoked by my photographs. In Search of Sleep creates a visual lullaby that allows me to safely explore what I love, what I fear, what I remember, and what I imagine.
Laurent Delhourme
Laurent Delhourme was born in Bordeaux (France) in 1968. After studying visual media, he became a self-taught photographer. He spent five years as an assistant at ELLE and Daylight studios, as well as for various fashion photographers, before embarking on a career as a portrait photographer in 1998. His work has since appeared in various magazines, corporate projects and advertising campaigns. At the same time, he moved into film in 2001 and made numerous documentaries for France TV / Canal+. He has covered various topics, including the Moudawana law in Morocco for the protection of women, the Madrid train bombings, abandoned street children in Budapest, the Women on Waves pro-choice organisation in Portugal, Carlos Ghosn in Japan and cotton farming in South Africa... He has also worked with the press agency CAPA on reports and corporate videos for Aigle, Total, Renault, Orange, Alcatel and EDF. For almost 20 years, Laurent has roamed the streets of Paris, Leica in hand. He tries to capture the emotions and poetic dimension of people who cross his path. All of his photos are linked to a story, a narrative, a unique moment. Laurent draws inspiration from the work of Elliott Erwitt, Garry Winogrand and Henri Cartier-Bresson, taking his place in a long line of humanist photographers. He photographs people in the street and observes them without bias or judgement. Laurent seeks to capture what is invisible in their daily activities. Far from using a journalistic approach, he aims to document his times. In the press Observer and chronicler of modern life, Laurent Delhourme's approach is part of the lineage of 20th century humanist photography. Lovers of images of Erwitt, Frank, Davidson, Weiss, Franck, Cartier-Bresson, Mark, Ronis, Freed, Evans, Maltête, Winogrand, Meyerowitz ... His universe is inspired by the heritage of all those photographers who knew how to document their time. He photographs the daily life of his contemporaries, of these anonymous people whom he meets over time in the working-class districts of Paris, on the sidewalks of Fifth Avenue or among the effervescence of Piccadilly Circus, the emotion remains always intact, lively. by this tireless and visceral desire to freeze unique moments. Born in Bordeaux (France), he has lived in Paris for over 25 years. At the age of 18, he discovered photography through a friend and it was at the age of 21 that he understood that his passion would make it his profession. People are the key word in his work, recognized for his portraits, he is the author of numerous advertising campaigns, his photos have been published in various French and international magazines. When he's not in the studio he continues to develop his art on the streets. He seeks to capture the invisible in the daily lives of the people he meets. Each of his photos is connected to a story, a story, a unique moment. These photographs concentrate humor, burlesque situations and everyday incongruities. If the photographer takes care of his framing, by choice, he never conceives a staging. He is sure that the behaviors of passers-by are interesting enough to let them express themselves in their entirety. He captures his images on the fly. Immediacy is his motto. In his early days, a book changed his view of the world in a book by Elliott Erwitt (Photographs 1946/1988), I was young and had never seen anything like it. For me it was a revelation! I discovered through Erwitt's work a true philosophy of life that has always fascinated me Laurent confides. This book, which he consults regularly, is still his bible today. Unlike his work as a portrait painter which requires mastering all the parameters of the shooting, for Laurent street photography is a moment of freedom, he lets himself be carried away by the people he meets and the emotions he meets. He feels. He walks instinctively, feels, he likes to be surprised, he captures the mundane in his daily life as discreetly as possible with his Leica M or his Leica Q. Working mainly at 28 and 50 mm he makes sure never to disturb the scene he photographs "I try to make myself transparent so as not to interfere with my environment". Laurent Delhourme has exhibited on numerous occasions, notably at the Paris photo fair (Grand Palais in Paris) and at the art photography festival in Arles (France). He released his first book Macadam Paname in October 2020 at Editions Hemeria, a black and white book on Paris. He is currently in preparation for a second book.
Constant Puyo
France
1857 | † 1933
Constant Puyo, born in France on August 10, 1857, was a pioneering photographer who made significant contributions to the art of photography in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. He was instrumental in the growth of Pictorialism, an artistic movement that aspired to raise photography to the realm of fine art through creative techniques and an emphasis on aesthetic expression. Puyo began his artistic career as a painter, where he studied under great artists such as William-Adolphe Bouguereau and Tony Robert-Fleury. His exploration of photography, however, was what truly released his creative potential. Puyo joined the Photo-Club de Paris in the 1890s and began experimenting with the Pictorialist style, which aspired to move photography beyond basic documentation and into a medium for artistic expression. Puyo's images had a dreamlike aspect to them, with soft focus and diffused lighting. To produce a painterly impression in his photos, he used a variety of processes, including gum bichromate printing. His pictures, in particular, were admired for capturing the inner essence of his subjects, showing their emotions and personalities. Puyo's work in the invention of autochrome photography was one of his noteworthy contributions to the Pictorialist movement. He investigated the possibilities of color photography with the Lumière brothers at a period when the medium was largely black and white. His mastery of color and ability to create ethereal, atmospheric images distinguishes him as a top figure in the area. Puyo's themes frequently centred around beauty, femininity, and the natural world. He used female models frequently, photographing them in poetic settings filled with flowers, textiles, and delicate objects. His images radiated nostalgia and romanticism, closely fitting with the ideas of the Art Nouveau movement. Puyo exhibited frequently throughout his career and received acclaim for his contributions to the art world. His images have been shown at prestigious exhibitions such as the Salon de la Société Française de Photographie and the Exposition Universelle in Paris. Puyo's photographs have also appeared in prestigious journals such as Camera Notes and Photo-Gazette. Puyo's influence also expanded beyond his personal photographic practice. He taught and mentored prospective photographers, passing on his knowledge and techniques to the next generation. He co-founded the Pictorial Photographic Society of France in 1909, cementing his status as a pivotal participant in the Pictorialist movement. Constant Puyo's legacy as a pioneer of Pictorialist photography goes on, reminding us of the power of artistic expression in the field of photography. His ability to capture the fleeting and provoke emotions through his photos continues to inspire photographers and artists all around the world.
Robert Polidori
Canada/United States
1951
Robert Polidori is a Canadian-American photographer known for his large-scale color images of architecture, urban environments, and interiors. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, Martin-Gropius-Bau museum (Berlin), and Instituto Moreira Salles (São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro). His photographs are also included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art (New York), New Orleans Museum of Art, The J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles), Victoria and Albert Museum (London), Château de Versailles, Centre Pompidou (Paris), and Bibliothèque Nationale de France (Paris), as well as many private collections. Described as one of "most esteemed practitioners of large-scale photography," Polidori has photographed the restoration of the Château de Versailles since the early 1980s. He has also recorded the architecture and interiors of Havana, the inner-city habitats of Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, and Amman, the post-Hurricane Katrina devastation of New Orleans, buildings emptied by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and shelled structures in Beirut. At the time of the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal retrospective exhibition in 2009, curator Paulette Gagnon described his work as a "photographic account that invites us to share the historical moments it portrays, making them part of the collective memory." Where you point the camera is the question and the picture you get is the answer to decipher. -- Robert Polidori Robert Polidori was born in 1951 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, to a French-Canadian mother and a Corsican father. At age 9, Polidori’s family moved to the United States where his father worked as an engineer at Air Force bases and NASA installations. He grew up in Seattle, southern California, New Orleans, and Cocoa Beach, and first attended university in Florida in 1969. During his freshman year, Polidori saw Michael Snow's film Wavelength (1967 film) and, inspired to study filmmaking, moved to New York City. The following year, he was hired by the legendary Jonas Mekas and worked as the theatre manager of the Anthology Film Archives. During this time, Polidori worked on four experimental films, exhibited in 1975 at the Whitney Museum of American Art. In 1980 he graduated with a Masters of Arts in film from State University of New York (Buffalo). Polidori became interested in still photography while editing film frame-by-frame. Inspired by Frances Yates' description in The Art of Memory of mnemonic systems requiring the memorization of empty rooms, he purchased a large-format camera in 1982 and photographed abandoned and apartments on New York's Lower East Side. In 1983 he moved to Paris and, interested in how empty spaces revealed history, began to document the restoration of Château de Versailles as a symbol of "society’s superego". In the late 1990s, Polidori was engaged by The New Yorker to photograph Havana’s decaying architectural heritage and joined the magazine as a staff photographer in 1998. Images from his Cuban series were later published in Havana (2001) by Steidl Verlag. Also interested in inner-city habitats or "auto-constructed" growth, Polidori recorded the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, the urban sprawl of Brasilia, the construction boom in Dubai, and the slums of Mumbai. In May 2001, he photographed the closed Chernobyl nuclear power plant and nearby ghost town of Pripyat, Ukraine, and these images were later published as Zones of Exclusion – Pripyat and Chernobyl (2003). In 2002 Polidori was commissioned to photograph Detroit's Michigan Central Station for Metropolis (architecture magazine). Described by editor Martin C. Pedersen as "a keen observer of the built world", the magazine later published his urban images as Robert Polidori's Metropolis (2005). In the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Polidori photographed the damaged homes and buildings of New Orleans, and documented the city's early restoration in 2006. Published as After the Flood (2006) by Steidl Verlag, many of these images were also exhibited at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art as New Orleans after the Flood, a popular and well-attended exhibition. Exhibitions of After the Flood were also mounted in London, Venice, and Toronto, as well as in New Orleans. During this time, Polidori continued to document the restoration of Château de Versailles and these photographs, published in the three-volume Parcours Muséologique Revisité (2009), were included in his retrospective exhibition at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal. Polidori returned to Beirut in 2010 where he photographed the damaged rooms of the famous Hotel Petra, abandoned during Lebanon’s civil war. The following year, he traveled to Paris to photograph the stored art collection of Yves Saint Laurent (designer), and to Venice to photograph the fashion label Bottega Veneta's fall 2011 campaign at the Palazzo Papadopoli. From 2011 to 2015 Polidori also revisited and rephotographed Rio as well as Mumbai, including Dharavi's industrial street facade in a series of tracking shots. Exhibited as composite panoramic murals at Paul Kasmin Gallery (New York) in September 2016, these images were also published in the accompanying volume 60 Feet Road by Steidl Verlag. Since 2015, Polidori and his family live in Ojai, California.Source: Wikipedia My photos are physical graphic records. A lot of the places I’ve photographed simply won’t exist – many have already ceased to exist in the state that they were photographed in. They’ve been bulldozed over. Photography is collective memory – that’s its nature... -- Robert Polidori
Shomei Tomatsu
Japan
1930 | † 2012
Shomei Tomatsu (東松 照明, Tōmatsu Shōmei) was a Japanese photographer, primarily known for his images that depict the impact of World War II on Japan and the subsequent occupation of U.S. forces. As one of the leading postwar photographers, Tomatsu is attributed with influencing the younger generations of photographers including those associated with the magazine Provoke (Takuma Nakahira and Daido Moriyama). Tomatsu was born in Nagoya in 1930. As an adolescent during World War II, he was mobilized to support Japan's war effort. Like many Japanese students his age, he was sent to work at a steel factory and underwent incessant conditioning intended to instill fear and hatred towards the British and Americans. Once the war ended and Allied troops took over numerous Japanese cities, Tomatsu interacted with Americans firsthand and found that his preconceptions of them were not entirely salient. At the time Tomatsu's contempt for the violence and crimes committed by these soldiers was complicated by individual acts of kindness he received from them – he simultaneously loved and hated their presence. These interactions, which he later described as among the most formative memories of his childhood, initiated his long-standing fixation on and feelings of ambivalence towards the subject of American soldiers. If I had seven lives, I’d be a photographer in every one. -- Shomei Tomatsu Tomatsu embraced photography while an economics student at Aichi University. While still in university, his photographs were shown frequently in monthly amateur competitions by Camera magazine and received recognition from Ihei Kimura and Ken Domon. After graduating in 1954, he joined Iwanami Shashin Bunko, through an introduction made by Aichi University professor Mataroku Kumaza. Tomatsu contributed photographs to the issues Floods and the Japanese (1954) and Pottery Town, Seto Aichi (1954). He stayed at Iwanami for two years before leaving to pursue freelance work. In 1957, Tomatsu participated in the exhibition Eyes of Ten where he displayed his series Barde Children’s School; he was featured in the exhibit twice more when it was held again in 1958 and 1959. After his third showing, Tomatsu established the short-lived photography collective VIVO with fellow Eyes of Ten exhibitors; these other members included Eikoh Hosoe, Kikuji Kawada, Ikkō Narahara, Akira Satō, and Akira Tanno. Towards the end of the 1950s, Tomatsu began photographing Japanese towns with major American bases, a project that would span over 10 years. Tomatsu's artistic output and renown grew significantly during the 1960s, exemplified by his prolific engagements with many prominent Japanese photography magazines. He began the decade by publishing his images of U.S. bases in the magazines Asahi Camera and Camera Mainichi and his series Home in Photo Art. In contrast to his earlier style which resembled traditional photojournalism, Tomatsu was beginning to develop a highly expressionistic form of image-taking that emphasized the photographer's own subjectivity. In response to this emergence, a dispute arose when Iwanami Shashin Bunko founder Yonosuke Natori wrote that Tomatsu had betrayed his foundations as a photojournalist by neglecting the responsibility to present reality in a truthful and legible manner. He rejected the claim that he was ever a photojournalist, and admonished journalistic thinking as an impediment to photography. Both essays were published in Asahi Camera. In addition to Asahi Camera and Photo Art, Tomatsu worked for magazines Gendai no me and Camera Mainichi. For Gendai no me, he edited a monthly series titled I am King (1964); for Camera Mainichi, he printed multiple collaborations made with Yasuhiro Ishimoto and Shigeichi Nagano in 1965 and his own series, The Sea Around Us in 1966. Tomatsu first went to Okinawa to photograph the American bases under the auspices of Asahi Camera in 1969. The images he captured formed the book Okinawa, Okinawa Okinawa which served as an explicit critique of the American air force. On the cover, an anti-base slogan verbalizing his disdain with the overwhelming U.S. presence in Okinawa reads: "The bases are not in Okinawa; Okinawa is in the bases". This sentiment was foreshadowed in Tomatsu's earlier writings, like his 1964 essay for Camera Manichi in which he stated "it would not be strange to call [Japan] the State of Japan in the United States of America. That's how far America has penetrated inside Japan, how deeply it has plumbed our daily lives." Tomatsu visited Okinawa three more times before finally moving to Naha in 1972. While in Okinawa, he traveled to various remote islands including Iriomote and Hateruma; he spent seven months on Miyakojima where he organized a study group called “Miyako University” aimed at mentoring young Miyako residents. Combined with his images taken in Southeast Asia, Tomatsu's photographs of Okinawa from the 1970s were shown in his prizewinning Pencil of the Sun (1975). Although he had come to Okinawa in order to witness its return to Japanese territory, Pencil of the Sun revealed a considerable shift away from the subject of military bases that he pursued throughout 1960s. He credited a diminishing interest in the American armed forces, in addition to the allure of Okinawa's brilliantly colored landscapes, for his adoption of color photography. In 1974, Tomatsu returned to Tokyo where he set up Workshop Photo School, an alternative two-year-long workshop (1974–76), with Eikoh Hosoe, Nobuyoshi Araki, Masahisa Fukase, Daidō Moriyama, and Noriaki Yokosuka; the school published the photo magazine Workshop. Tomatsu's dedication to nurturing the photography community in Japan was also evidenced in his role as a juror for the Southern Japan Photography Exhibition and his membership in the Photographic Society of Japan's committee to create a national museum of photography. The efforts of this group led to the establishment of photography departments at major national museums, such as Yokohama Museum of Art and the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, as well as the first photography museum in Japan, Tokyo Photographic Art Museum. In this, photography is the same thing as love. When my gaze, diving into the sea as my subject, converges with the act of photography, hot sparks fly at the point of intersection. -- Shomei Tomatsu Tomatsu took part in his first major international show, New Japanese Photography (1974) at MoMA New York, alongside workshop members Hosoe, Moriyama, Fukase, and 11 other photographers. New Japanese Photography was the first survey of contemporary Japanese photographers undertaken outside of Japan. It traveled to eight other locations in the United States including the Denver Art Museum, San Francisco Museum of Art, and Portland Art Museum. By 1980, Tomatsu published three more books: Scarlet Dappled Flower (1976) and The Shining Wind (1979) were composed of his images from Okinawa; and Kingdom of Mud (1978) featured his Afghanistan series printed earlier in Assalamu Alaykum. In the early 1980s, Tomatsu had his first international solo exhibition, Shomei Tomatsu: Japan 1952-1981 shown at thirty venues over three years. He was also included in notable international group exhibitions regarding Japanese art: in 1985, he was one of the main artists in Black Sun: The Eyes of Four first shown at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford; in 1994, he was featured in the seminal show Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky at the Yokohama Museum of Art, Guggenheim Museum and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In the last decade of his career, Tomatsu embarked on a new and comprehensive series of retrospectives, dividing his oeuvre into five "mandalas" of place. Each mandala was named after the area it was exhibited: Nagasaki Mandala (Nagasaki Prefectural Art Museum, 2000); Okinawa Mandala (Urasoe Art Museum, 2002); Kyoto Mandala (Kyoto National Museum of Modern Art, 2003); Aichi Mandala (Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, 2006); and Tokyo Mandala (Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, 2007). Tomatsu also had a separate retrospective, Shomei Tomatsu: Skin of the Nation, for the international museum circuit. Skin of the Nation was organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and curated by Sandra S. Phillips and the photographer and writer Leo Rubinfien. The exhibition toured three countries and five venues from 2004 through 2006: Japan Society (New York); National Gallery of Canada, Corcoran Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and Fotomuseum Winterthur. In 2010 Tomatsu moved to Okinawa permanently, where he held the final exhibition during his lifetime, Tomatsu Shomei and Okinawa - Love Letter to the Sun (2011). He succumbed to pneumonia on 14 December 2012 (although this was not publicly announced until January 2013).Source: Wikipedia
Alex Prager
United States
1979
Alex Prager (b. 1979, Los Angeles; lives and works in Los Angeles) is a photographer and filmmaker who creates elaborately staged scenes that draw inspiration from a wide range of influences and references, including Hollywood cinema, experimental films, popular culture, and street photography. She deliberately casts and stages all of her works, merging past and contemporary sources to create a sense of ambiguity. Her familiar yet uncanny images depict worlds that synthesize fiction and reality and evoke a sense of nostalgia. Prager cultivates the surreal in her photographs and films, creating moments that feel like a fabricated memory or dream. Each photograph captures a moment frozen in time, inviting the viewer to “complete the story” and speculate about its narrative context. Prager's work often makes the viewer aware of the voyeuristic nature of photography and film, establishing the uneasy feeling of intruding upon a potentially private moment. The highly choreographed nature of her photographs and films exposes the way images are constructed and consumed in our media-saturated society. Solo exhibitions of Prager's work have been organized at Fotografiska, Tallinn (2020); Fotografiska Stockholm (2019); Fondazione Sozzani, Milan, Italy (2019); FOAM Fotografiemuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2019); Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow, Russia, (2019); Musée des Beaux-Arts Le Locle, Switzerland (2018); The Photographers' Gallery, London, United Kingdom (2018); Des Moines Art Center, IA (2017-2018); Saint Louis Art Museum, MO (2015); Galerie des Galeries, Paris, France (2015); Goss Michael Foundation, Dallas, TX (2015); National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia (2014); Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (2013); SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA (2013); and the FOAM Photography Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2012). Select group exhibitions featuring her work include Telling Tales: Contemporary Narrative Photography, McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX (2016-2014); Open Rhapsody, Beirut Exhibition Center, Lebanon (2015); The Noir Effect, Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles, CA (2014); No Fashion, Please: Photography Between Gender and Lifestyle, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria (2011); and New Photography, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2010). Her work is in numerous international public and private collections, including the Kunsthaus Zurich, Switzerland; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, Australia; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Prager has received numerous awards, including the FOAM Paul Huf Award (2012), The Vevey International Photography Award (2009), and the London Photographic Award (2006). Her editorial work has been featured in prominent publications, including Vogue, New York Magazine, and W, and her film series Touch of Evil, commissioned by The New York Times Magazine, won a 2012 Emmy award. Her first major public commission, Applause, for Times Square Arts: Midnight Moment, New York, took place in summer 2017. Source: www.lehmannmaupin.com
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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.
Exclusive Interview with Anastasia Samoylova
Anastasia Samoylova is an American artist whose photographic practice is shaped by close observation and a deep attentiveness to place. Working between documentary and formal exploration, she photographs landscapes, architecture, and everyday scenes with a sensitivity to light, structure, and atmosphere. Since relocating to Miami in 2016, her work has increasingly focused on how environments—both natural and built—carry social, cultural, and emotional traces. We asked her a few questions about her practice and her way of seeing, to better understand the thoughts and experiences that shape her work—while allowing the images themselves to remain open and speak in their own time.
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.
Exclusive Interview with Josh S. Rose
Josh S. Rose is a multidisciplinary artist working across photography, film, and writing. His practice bridges visual and performing arts, with a strong focus on movement, emotion, and the expressive potential of the image. Known for his long-standing collaborations with leading dance companies and performers, Rose brings together authenticity and precise composition—a balance he describes as “technical romanticism.” His work has been commissioned and exhibited internationally, appearing in outlets such as Vogue, at the Super Bowl, in film festivals, and most recently as a large-scale installation for Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. A sought-after collaborator, he has worked with major artists, cultural institutions, and brands, following a previous career as Chief Creative Officer at Interpublic Group and the founder of Humans Are Social. We asked him a few questions about his life and work.
Interview with Maureen Ruddy Burkhart
Photographer Maureen Ruddy Burkhart brings a quietly attentive and deeply human sensibility to her exploration of the world through images. Shaped by a life immersed in photography, film, and visual storytelling, her work is guided by intuition, observation, and an enduring interest in the emotional undercurrents of everyday life. With a practice rooted in both fine art traditions and documentary awareness, she approaches her subjects with sensitivity, allowing subtle moments to emerge naturally rather than be imposed. Her series Til Death, selected as the Solo Exhibition for February 2025, reflects this long-standing commitment to photography as a space for reflection rather than spectacle. Drawn to moments that exist just outside the expected frame, Burkhart’s images suggest narratives without resolving them, leaving room for ambiguity, humor, and quiet connection. We asked her a few questions about her life and work.
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.
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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