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Manfred Baumann
Manfred Baumann
Manfred Baumann

Manfred Baumann

Country: Austria
Birth: 1968

Manfred Baumann was born in Vienna in 1968. The Leica photographer has since presented his works worldwide in the form of exhibitions, books, and calendars. His photographs are displayed in museums as well as in international galleries. Over the past years, Baumann has taken his place among the most influential photographers of our time. Via social media his range is more than 1 million!

He lives and works in Europe and the USA, and has already photographed such greats as Kirk Douglas, Sandra Bullock, Olivia Newton John, Martin Sheen, Don Johnson, Danny Trejo, William Shatner, Jack Black, Natalie Portman, Tony Curtis, Paul Anka, Lionel Richie, Kathleen Turner, John Malkovich, Bruce Willis, Juliette Lewis, Angelina Jolie, Toni Garrn, Michelle Rodriguez, Leah Remini, Evander Holyfield, as well as many international top models.

For Manfred Baumann, the fascination of photography lies in departing from the familiar and capturing an impression of the moment. He loves to explore the world through the eyes of a photographer.

To make visible that which others have not seen has been the objective of Baumann's exhibitions, such as End Of Line, in which he documented the final journey of death row inmates in Texas; Alive, where he photographed homeless persons on the street for one year; and his current project Special, which showcases Baumann's portraits of intellectually disabled persons. His ambition is to break with tradition and the conventional perspective.

The viewer of my photographs should discover the soul and history they embody and recognize that photography is the only language that can be understood all over the world. As an ardent animal welfare activist, vegetarian, and goodwill ambassador for Jane Goodall, he also ventured into the world of animal photography for the first time with the project Mustangs. The project's works and exhibition were shown in the Natural History Museum Vienna and the Leica Gallery in Los Angeles.

He teaches for the Leica Academy worldwide and does worldwide lectures & workshops. Manfred Baumann was 2017 Testimonial for Huawei international alongside with Robert Lewandowski. His Book and exhibition Vienna were shown at the Grand Hotel Vienna.

From February 2019 to May 2019, Baumann exhibited for the first time in Australia (in Melbourne and Sydney). In 2020 two new books will appear, the Lipizzaner the white horses and a Best of book with the name a photographer's life. It is the 15 and 16 illustrated books which have been published worldwide. Among Manfreds role models are great Master of Photography such as Alfred Eisenstaedt, Helmut Newton, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Richard Avedon, Herb Ritts, and Ansel Adams.

Manfred Baumann also photographed the late Tony Curtis. This was the Hollywood star's last official photo shoot and did much to bolster Baumann's considerable fame in the USA.

For more than 25 years, Manfred has been drawn to the most distant places in the world, where his breathtaking landscape photographs are created, and it is only natural that since 2013, he has cooperated with and photographed for National Geographic.

He lives and works in Vienna with his wife and muse Nelly Baumann, although his sojourns to his second home, Los Angeles, have become increasingly frequent and of longer duration. His clientele, however, come from all over the world.

Statement
"I GIVE THE MOMENT DURATION"
"Photographs are like songs that you sing into the world."
"HEART AND MIND – THE TRUE LENS OF THE CAMERA"
"The truth is the best picture!"


 

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Anna Atkins
United Kingdom
1799 | † 1871
Anna Atkins (1799-1871) was an English botanist and photographer best known for her early work in photography. She is widely regarded as the first female photographer and one of the art form's pioneers. Anna Atkins was born on March 16, 1799, in Tonbridge, Kent, England, into a family with a strong interest in science and botany. Her father, John George Children, was a well-known chemist and mineralogist, which may have influenced her early interest in science. Anna was educated in science, art, and natural history, which was unusual for a woman of her time. She developed a particular interest in botany and was well-versed in plant classification and study. Anna Atkins worked with her father's close friend, Sir John Herschel, an astronomer and mathematician who had also made significant contributions to the early development of photography, in 1841. She adopted the cyanotype process, an early photographic technique that produces blue-toned images, after being inspired by Herschel's work. Botanical specimens, such as ferns and seaweeds, were placed on light-sensitized paper and then exposed to sunlight as part of the cyanotype process. The areas that were not covered by the specimens turned blue, while the areas that were covered by the plants remained white. Anna Atkins used this technique to create a series of stunning and scientifically accurate photograms. In October 1843, Anna released her most famous work, "Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions." This three-volume collaboration with Anne Dixon featured over 400 cyanotype images of various algae species found along the British coast. It was the first book to be entirely illustrated with photographs. Only a few copies of the book are known to exist today, as each copy was hand-assembled. Anna Atkins' work was not only artistic; it was also scientifically significant. The cyanotype images were a valuable resource for botanical documentation and classification, as well as an early example of photographic scientific illustration. Despite her contributions to photography and botany, Anna Atkins received little recognition during her lifetime. Photography was still a new medium at the time, and her work was relatively unknown until recently. Anna Atkins died on June 9, 1871, in Halstead, Kent, leaving behind a legacy as a pioneering female photographer and a prominent figure in photography and botany history. Her innovative use of the cyanotype process, as well as her dedication to scientific documentation through photography, are still admired and recognized by the art and science communities.
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Soumya Sankar Bose
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Australia
1992
Brad Walls is an Australian aerial photography based in Sydney. Best known for his use of close up top downs, Brad specialises in aerial portraiture and a minimalistic approach to aerial photography. Utilising one of the first consumer drones, Brad Walls stumbled across his passion for aerial content through stitching small video clips together taken during his extensive travels. 18 months on, Brad has refined his skillset, with a vision to strive and see the world from a different angle creating the perfect metaphor for his work. Pools From Above Pools From Above is an ode to the beauty found in the shapes, colours and textures of swimming pools. This unique and never-before-seen perspective uses Walls' clean, minimal aesthetic to visually showcase interesting pools from around the world. Inspired by his travels throughout Southeast Asia and within his own home country of Australia, Walls' journey initially began by capturing the bodies of water simply to document holiday memories. It wasn't until picking up the bestselling Annie Kelly coffee table book Splash: The Art of the Swimming Pool, however, that Walls would start investing time and passion into curating a series, stating that "As I turned each page of Kelly's book, a wave of childhood nostalgia washed over me, spending hours in the pool over summer." Paying powerful homage to Kelly, Walls' series chooses to keenly focus on pools' elements of composition from a bird's eye view. "I fell in love with the lines, curves and negative space of the pools, which - without alternate perspective from a drone - would have been lost." Pools From Above is also an integral part of a much larger project which is aimed at a book release in the not-too-distant future, as Walls says "The response from viewers has been positive, asking for the series to be amongst their coffee table books." Looking ahead, once the world finally re-opens, Walls has no plans of slowing down. He plans to capture even more world-renowned swimming pools across an array of idyllic locations, including Palm Springs, Mexico and the Mediterranean. Since bursting onto the photography scene in early 2019, Walls has gone on to produce award-winning photographs and garner worldwide media attention, with a primary focus on capturing aerial portraits of sportspeople like synchronized swimmers, gymnasts and ice skaters from unique perspectives and angles that audiences are normally unable to see.
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