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Tomáš Neuwirth
Tomáš Neuwirth
Tomáš Neuwirth

Tomáš Neuwirth

Country: Czech Republic
Birth: 1972

Tomáš Neuwirth was born in Czech Republic in 1972. He is a freelance photographer specializing in drone photography. A major milestone in his life was the year 1995, when he began to devote himself to paragliding. As a pilot, he was fascinated by taking pictures of the bird's eye, then still on the 35mm film camera. The following year, he moved to the USA. His stay here after three and half years ended the paragliding incident and with serious injuries of the spine he returned to the Czech Republic. He then spent eight months in a sanatorium, learned not only to walk again, but also met his future wife Gabriela.

Capturing of aerial footage continued to attract him. And with the advent of unmanned systems, new possibilities were opened. His first drone he folded in 2011, it was a kit. However, the desired shots were made by commercially produced drones in the following years.

Today, Tomáš is involved in drone and classical photography professionally. By selecting extraordinary places and post-production processing, he is trying to shift drone photography to the next level. From capturing landscapes to a Fine Art expression. He received many awards from international competitions. In 2019 he succeeded to win with in the prestigious contest MIFA - Moscow International Fotography Awards (Nature Photographer of the Year). In the same year, The Independent Photographer Magazine included his image among the TOP 10 Most incredible landscapes from across the planet. And ranked him in the selection Talents of the Year 2018/2019. He was also nominated for a Personality of Czech Photography.

Statement
I generally regard art as a form of self-expression. An opportunity to share own opinion, own perception of the world, with others. Photography has become my means of expression. Its strength is in capturing a given moment - a unique, unrepeatable moment. Everything is different in a second.

I focus mainly on drone photography which, by its very nature, is predestined for landscape, long-distance views, great depth of field etc. From the perspective of the photographer, there are fewer possibilities for artistic expression. Therefore it depends very much on the choice of location and how to capture it. I, therefore, try to find unusual locations - often places that do not seem that interesting on the first impression. However, a bird's eye view gives them a whole new dimension.
 

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Pieter Hugo
South Africa
1976
Pieter Hugo was born 1976 and grew up in Cape Town, South Africa. He is a South African photographer who primarily works in portraiture and whose work engages with both documentary and art traditions with a focus on African communities. Hugo is self-taught, having picked up a camera aged 10. He remembers the first image he printed, which was a homeless person in Johannes. After working in the film industry in Cape Town, Pieter Hugo spent a two-year Residency at Fabrica, Treviso, Italy. Hugo has called himself a political-with-a-small-p photographer... it's hard not to be as soon as you pick up a camera in South Africa'. He believes that "the power of photography is inherently voyeuristic but I want that desire to look to be confronted." He also states that he is "deeply suspicious of the power of photography." Early on in his career he noticed that, "he often found himself being critically scrutinized by the subject he was photographing. It was then that he decided to switch to a larger and more cumbersome format of photography, one that would require negotiating consent and dialogue with the person being photographed - a more sedate and contemplative approach." He is known to use a Hasselblad camera and regularly shoots in the 4x5 format. His influences range from South African photojournalist David Goldblatt to Boris Mikhailov. However, his work reacts against 'the culture of realism that defined South African photography in the struggle years.' Hugo's first major photo collection Looking Aside consisted of a collection of portraits of people "whose appearance makes us look aside", his subjects including the blind, people with albinism, the aged, his family and himself. Explaining his interest in the marginal he has said, "My homeland is Africa, but I'm white. I feel African, whatever that means, but if you ask anyone in South Africa if I'm African, they will almost certainly say no. I don't fit into the social topography of my country and that certainly fuelled why I became a photographer." This was followed by Rwanda 2004: Vestiges of a Genocide which the Rwanda Genocide Institute describes as offering "a forensic view of some of the sites of mass execution and graves that stand as lingering memorials to the many thousands of people slaughtered." His most recognized work is the series called The Hyena & Other Men and which was published as a monograph. It has received a great deal of attention. Hugo won first prize in the Portraits section of the World Press Photo 2005 for a portrait of a man with a hyena. In 2007, Hugo received the Standard Bank Young Artist Award 07. Hugo was also working on a series of photographs called Messina/Mussina that were taken in the town of Musina on the border between Zimbabwe and South Africa and which was published as a monograph. At the time Colors magazine asked Hugo to work on an AIDS story and he was fascinated by the marginal aspect of the town. This was followed by a return to Nigeria with Nollywood, which consists of pictures of the Nigerian film industry. Permanent Error followed in 2011 where Hugo photographed the people and landscape of an expansive dump of obsolete technology in Ghana. Sean O'Toole writes "if Nollywood was playfully over-the-top, a smart riposte to accusations of freakishness and racism leveled at his photography..., Permanent Error marks Hugo’s return to a less self-reflexive mode of practice." In 2011 Hugo collaborated with Michel Cleary and co-directed the video of South African producer/DJ Spoek Mathambo's cover version of Joy Division's She's Lost Control, the fourth single from his album Mshini Wam. Commissioned by Italian luxury label Bottega Veneta, Hugo photographed models Amanda Murphy and Mark Cox for the brand’s spring/summer 2014 campaign, with the images shot in a wood in New Jersey. In the Spring of 2014, Hugo was commissioned by Creative Court to go to Rwanda and capture stories of forgiveness as a part of Creative Court's project Rwanda 20 Years: Portraits of Forgiveness. The project was displayed in The Hague in the Atrium of The Hague City Hall for the 20th commemoration of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. A selection of the photos have also been displayed in New York at the exhibition Post-Conflict which was curated by Bradley McCallum, Artist in Residence for the Coalition for the International Criminal Court. Flat Noodle Soup (2016) chronicles Hugo's lengthy engagement with the city of Beijing, exploring how concerns with expressing personal identity within societal norms and pressures are universal and transnational. La Cucaracha is a 2019 body of work made during four trips to Mexico over a two-year period. The photographic series explores Hugo's perception of the flamboyant and violent environment of Mexico with overt art historical references to the nation's visual canon of pre-colonial customs and revolutionary ideology.Source: Wikipedia Between 2006 and 2013, Pieter Hugo worked on a project that he called Kin. This deals with home, proximity, identification and a sense of belonging – something that, in South Africa, he has always experienced as being critical and riddled with conflict: How can one live in this country, which only shed its colonial heritage relatively recently, and which is plagued by racism and a growing chasm between rich and poor? Hugo shot photos at home, in townships and at historical sites, taking portraits of his pregnant wife, of domestic servants and of homeless people. The calm and clearly composed shots show beauty and ugliness, wealth and poverty, private and public, historical and topical. Without either idealising or dramatizing the subject matter, they paint a portrait of the complex society in South Africa today. This is because any notion of harmony in the “Rainbow Nation” is wishful thinking. Even twenty years after the end of apartheid, black and white South Africans are still very much divided. In the series of 94 platinum prints There Is A Place in Hell for Me and My Friends (2011-2012), Pieter Hugo explores the supposed differences between skin colours. To do so, he took portraits of himself and South African friends. The close-ups, generally in the form of frontal head and shoulder portraits, were digitally processed afterwards. The image manipulation, whereby the colour channels were translated into grey tones, emphasise the pigmentation of the skin, using UV irradiation to render visible skin damage and small blood vessels directly beneath the skin. The results are quite astounding: on these photographs, all people are coloured. There is no longer a difference between “white” and “black” skin, but rather a variety of individual shades. The portraits show the powerful presence of each individual and, at the same time, the fragility of all people and the softness and utter vulnerability of their outer shell. With his various photo series, Pieter Hugo has put together an impressive body of work in the space of just a few years. Through this intense perception of corporeality, he captures the complexity and inconsistency of society. Constants in his work include seriousness, neutrality and an underlying respect for his protagonists, whose dignity always remains intact. In this regard, his works are comparable with the monumental portrait works of August Sanders, who created a contemporary picture of the Weimar Republic with his large-scale cycle “Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts” (People of the 20th Century).Source: Priska Pasquer
Bill Gekas
Australia
Australia-based photographer Bill Gekas has a real knack for portraiture, particularly the kind that results in an homage to many Old Masters of classic paintings, including artists like Vemeer and Rembrandt. Using his five-year-old daughter as the model, Gekas recreates many mid-18th century settings that are inspired by portraits of adults from famous paintings. He styles the environment and his daughter to fit the time period, and uses strobe lights to maintain the appearance of soft, natural lighting. The self-taught photographer learned on 35mm and has since turned to digital techniques. He uses post-processing to put the final touches on each of his photographs. Through hard work, experimentation, and a grand vision, the talented artist has successfully produced an extensive collection—a tribute to both the well-known artists as well as to his young daughter. As Gekas has evolved as a photographer, so has his unique style. He says "Don’t be scared of taking certain elements from different works and molding them into something to call your own. You might like the lighting from a photo you saw somewhere, a prop from another photo, colors from another. The key is not to limit yourself with the excuse, ‘It’s all been done before.’ Yes, many things have been done before, but with some careful thought you can adjust a concept to give it your signature. Experiment!”From www.billgekas.comMy name is Bill Gekas and I was born and live in Melbourne, Australia. A self taught photographer that learnt the technicals of photography using a 35mm film slr camera from the mid 90's and switched to digital in 2005, practicing the art of photography and constantly refining my style. Source: My Modern Met
Sara Markese
United States
1975
Sara Markese is a child psychologist by day and a photographer in every spare moment in between. A long hiatus from creative work began anew as she returned to photography, and macro photography especially. With a background in psychoanalytic clinical psychology training at the CUNY Graduate Center, NYC, research in microanalysis of mother-infant communication at Columbia University NYSPI, and study of mother-infant howler monkeys in Nicaragua, as well as a decade as a play therapist in NYC and fifteen more years in play therapy since, she has always been a keen observer of behavior, nuance, affect and detail. She approaches photography as she did cherished treasure walks as a child, letting her eye be caught and emotion and visual wonder guide the image. She uses simple elements of nature, daily life and common objects, and childhood themes of wonder, hiding, seeking and peeking to create feeling mementos in each photograph. With a focus on bringing elements of color, light and simple detail to center stage, her photographs encourage the viewer to see things as they would look if you just got on your knees and peered carefully. Champion of the tiny, wanderer with purpose, she is drawn to the things out of place, the slivers of light and gleams of color. In her work, she seeks to show the world in its infinitesimal detail and beauty, to convey the majesty of the miniscule and the extraordinary nature of the ordinary things that go unnoticed in our bustling world. She is often a quiet observer, always with camera in hand, moving through the many busy places she has lived. Raised in suburban Chicago, she has lived in NYC, Boston, and now lives in suburban Washington DC. Amidst the busy pace of life as a therapist, photographer and mother to a dynamic 9-year-old daughter, she strives to be in complete stillness and silence when she is with her camera, known to spend hours on a square foot of grass in the “wild” of her backyard or a local park or trail where most of her work is focused. She teaches creative photography for children with an emphasis on the development of their unique artistic perspective alongside basic photography skills, composition and exploration of different photographic styles. She has had her work exhibited at Praxis Gallery, PhotoPlace Gallery, SE Center for Photography, Black Box Gallery, and LoosenArt Gallery in Rome as well as featured in ArtDoc Magazine online and several issues of F-Stop Magazine. Wayward Summer - Project Statement: Summer can be like a Sunday. Too long, lonely and quiet in all the wrong places. A respite awaited and longed for, only to arrive with an aura of loss before it starts. Summers growing up in suburban Chicago felt that way, oppressively humid, stretching, and filled with unease as I wandered the micro world of my backyard dreading the end of the season. At night, to the contrary, everything seemed to come to life on my block. Then I was missing out, peering out my window while the sounds of neighborhood games rang from the street. I was inside looking out, like I was in another world. Since then, I’ve been in many other worlds, only to find myself back as I approach my fiftieth year as a wife and mother in the suburbs of Washington DC. Back in a suburban summer and back in that old feeling. Lost. It started as I followed my daughter, my lovely, brilliant, precociously independent daughter, Elodie, who I have been following for nine years, since she was able to walk and always way ahead of me. It was different this summer, though. Admittedly, something in me was unsettled already. I had always followed her and then joined, but now she spent her time in the deep end, doing things that just didn’t involve me and suddenly I was not following or joining. I was sitting alone. And there was that familiar disconnected feeling –sitting with time, with loneliness, with space, with thoughts – she will grow up, I will miss her – sitting with sadness, with self. Summer is long, and so there is July, like I just described, and there is August. I have tried to remedy my August malaise with an end of summer trip. My daughter and I always leave my husband at home to go on a road trip. I look forward to our trip as a gift from rushing through our days, time to spend freely exploring, roaming, adventuring, being as we wish, together. We have done this since she was very small, and she has always been beyond her years in her ability to roll with the long stretches and unknowns a road trip can bring even with the best planning. We usually know where we are going, but not this year, I didn’t know where to go and didn’t have it in me to plan. No direction, and now she is older, even farther ahead, leaving me to watch from further away. I found myself left with time - to sit and be still, to look at what was near, to gaze at my own hands, the poolside, the light reflecting off the table, the sand on my feet - and then she would return to show me what she created, often bringing me a gift to see or photograph. The gift of a memory shared. We were very often together too, in laughter, joy, closeness, and when she was still and we were together, that was a gift too, and those photos are rare but treasured. “Wayward Summer” is about loss and its depths, but also about turning “lost” into finding a way forward. As much as the feeling of too much space has always been disquieting, I also love to be lost. Wandering is and has always been my strength and my joy. From my childhood lost in the world of grass, bugs and dirt in the backyard, to driving blindly through the Chesapeake on an August trip with my 9-year-old daughter this summer, loss and “lost” are entwined in all my most deeply meaningful experiences. “Wayward Summer” is a project about all the moments that make a summer, the bright, the quiet and calm, the lonely and lost ones, and the turning of feeling lost into wandering. I found that unleashing purpose from the equation and accepting disconnection led me back to one of my greatest joys – untethered wandering. It allowed me to find beauty in the tiny details that stillness allows and a way to see moments that won’t last or stay still because they cannot and should not. The pictures in this series are all memory mementos – each contains elements of the mood evoked, sensory recollections and traces of the thoughts and feelings I was having as I watched my daughter play, learn, leave. Summers have a life of their own and can feel like a lifetime. In that, they can generate enormous unease, but also have room for so much growth. Children come back and they have changed, grown taller, sound different, want different, need less. Summers allow us a burst of freedom, a chance for joy, connection and change before we return to our lives overcome by time demands, structure, separation and parallel movement. They are a treasure veined with the knowing that they will end, but the memories glimpsed as they unfold when we are forced to let go are mementos of the magic that filled them. Awarded Photographer of the Week - Week 42
Lenka Klicperová
Czech Republic
1976
Journalist and photographer. She obtained a master's degree at the University of Hradec Králové and immediately after that started working as a journalist. From 2004 to 2018 she was the editor-in-chief of the leading Czech travel magazine Lidé a Země. Since 2018 she has been working as a freelance reporter and photographer focused on war zones. She has worked in a number of African countries, including conflict zones of Democratic Republic of Congo. She visited Afghanistan several times, as well as Somalia, plagued by several decades of war. Since 2014, she has focused on the issue of the war with the ISIS in Iraq and Syria. She is the co-author of several documentaries (Tears of the Congo, Latim – the Circumcised, Iraqui Women, Women in the Land of Taliban, Unbroken) and a number of television reports. She has won a number of prizes and nominations in the Czech Press Photo competition - both for photography and video. In 2020 she was included in the prestigious Women Photograph database, she was shortlisted for the International Women In Photo Association Award. She is the co-author of nine books about Africa and about the wars in the Middle East and Nagorno Karabakh. Her work from Syria resulted in two books entitled In Sight of the Islamic State I and In Sight of the Islamic State II, which were co-authored by Markéta Kutilová. Together with Kutilová she also wrote other books on the wars in Syria and Iraq: In the War (2018) and War is My Fate (2020). In 2019, a book called AK47 was published, which depicts the dramatic life of the world-famous Czech war photographer Antonín Kratochvíl. Klicperová wrote the text of the book based on Kratochvíl's narration. In September 2020, war broke out in Nagorno Karabakh. Lenka Klicperová and Markéta Kutilová quickly moved to the center of events. The war in the Caucasus was captured by both reporters in many reports, but also in a book The Last One Sets the Village on Fire (2021). Klicperová cooperates with a number of Czech media. She also lectures at the University of Hradec Králové. Statement Twelve years ago I first came to a war zone, to the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. My goal was to document the drastic effects of the protracted war on women. The local militias are committing mass rape of women and children; rape is a weapon of war. It was my first encounter with war. I understood that I wanted to bear witness to the injustices of this world, the way they fall on innocent victims who have nothing to do with them. I returned to the Congo several times and started working in Afghanistan. Then the war in Syria and Iraq started. I spent six years traveling to these areas watching and documenting how the Islamic State terrifies the world. And how it is gradually being defeated with the generous contribution of the Syrian Kurds. The city of Kobani, the center of the Kurds, has been indelibly engraved in my heart, defending itself against the enormous superiority of the Islamists. At the cost of high casualties. I have been on the front lines, in refugee camps, documenting the lives of the wives of ISIS fighters and their children. I managed to get in the prison where ISIS fighters who survived the fighting are being held. When the war broke out in Nagorno Karabakh, I knew I had to go there immediately. I followed the war to the end and documented the lives of civilians sentenced to live suddenly in a war zone. I saw their exodus. War zones have thus become a part of my life... Lost War
Bruce Weber
United States
1946
Bruce Weber (born March 29, 1946) is an American fashion photographer and occasional filmmaker. He is most widely known for his ad campaigns for Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Pirelli, Abercrombie & Fitch, Revlon, and Gianni Versace, as well as his work for Vogue, GQ, Vanity Fair, Elle, Life, Interview, and Rolling Stone magazines. Weber was born in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, to a Jewish family. His fashion photography first appeared in the late 1970s in GQ magazine, where he had frequent cover photos. Nan Bush, his longtime companion and agent, was able to secure a contract with Federated Department Stores to shoot the 1978 Bloomingdales mail catalog. He came to the attention of the general public in the late 1980s and early 1990s with his advertising images for Calvin Klein, and his portrait of the then young actor Richard Gere. His straightforward black-and-white shots, featuring an unclothed heterosexual couple on a swing facing each other, two clothed men in bed, and model Marcus Schenkenberg barely holding jeans in front of himself in a shower, catapulted him into the national spotlight. His photograph for Calvin Klein of Olympic athlete Tom Hintnaus in white briefs is an iconic image. He photographed the winter 2006 Ralph Lauren Collection. Some of Weber's other earliest fashion photography appeared in the SoHo Weekly News and featured a spread of men wearing only their underwear. The photos became the center of controversy and Weber was told by some that he would never find work as a fashion photographer again. This reputation stuck with him, as he says: "I don't really work editorially in a large number of magazines because a lot of magazines don't want my kind of photographs. It's too risky for them". After doing photo shoots for and of famous people (many of whom were featured in Andy Warhol's Interview magazine), Weber made short films of teenage boxers (Broken Noses), his beloved pet dogs, and later, a longer film entitled Chop Suey. He directed Let's Get Lost, a 1988 documentary about jazz trumpeter Chet Baker. Weber's photographs are occasionally in color; however, most are in black and white or toned shades. They are gathered in limited edition books, including A House is Not a Home and Bear Pond, an early work that shows Eric Nies from MTV's The Real World series, among other models. Weber began collaborating with crooner Chris Isaak in the mid-1980s, photographing Isaak in 1986 for his second album, Chris Isaak. In 1988, Weber photographed a shirtless Isaak in bed for a fashion spread in Rolling Stone. Isaak appeared in Let's Get Lost and Weber has directed a music video for Isaak. Weber photographed Harry Connick, Jr. for his 1991 album Blue Light, Red Light. In 1993, Weber photographed singer-songwriter Jackson Browne for his 1993 album I'm Alive.Source: Wikipedia
Carolyn Moore
United States
Carolyn Moore is a fourth generation Californian, raised in a family of artists and outdoor enthusiasts. Her love of nature is evident in her artwork having spent much of her formative years hiking, swimming, backpacking and enjoying the vast diversity in nature. Equally adept at both music and art, her formal education fell to music. Degrees were completed at University of California Berkeley, University of Oslo and Conservatory of Music, Norway. After a fulfilling and successful career of performance and teaching of flute, percussion and special needs music, her focus since 2005 has turned to visual expression through photography. Artistic inspiration came early in life when presented with paint brushes and a brownie box camera by her artist father at the age of 7. Mostly self taught, Carolyn has experimented with many photographic techniques - everything from digital, to film based using plastic or pinhole cameras and handmade or lensless processes. Since 2007 Carolyn has received multiple photographic honors and awards and has been juried into several exhibits at the Soho Photo Gallery, New York. Carolyn has been published in Color Magazine and has participated in multiple solo and collective exhibits both in the United States and Europe. She is currently a member of the Center for Photographic Art and proudly serves as Steering Committee Chair for Image Makers Photographers of Monterey. My Heart Exposed Photography to me, represents a composite of my personal feelings, emotions, values and experiences expressed on a canvas. It is as if the artwork is an open window where artist and viewer peer one to the other in a silent exchange. Images from “My Heart Exposed”, Volume 1, are created in a process that includes entering a meditative state where feelings, intuition and curiosity drive choices made in an experimental photographic process. This process lends an element of unpredictability, and as a result parameters are set for embracing surprises and allowing the image to evolve. The decisions I make are influenced by my innermost feelings and thus, each image presents a visually poetic reflection of my unique story. My personal story is made all the more poignant by the recent loss of family and intense emotional turmoil of the past year. This chaotic and complicated year of love, loss and strife made maintaining a sense of self a major challenge. I am often reminded of time spent in nature with lost family members, and I cherish the thought of loved one’s hands guiding me in a shared love of nature and an expression that uses plants as an artistic voice. I invite viewers to draw on their own experiences and allow their hearts to embark on a journey of reflection and discovery within each image. “My Heart Exposed”, Volume 1 are sunshine exposed Lumens with hand painted cyanotype on expired photographic paper. While developing this technique, I have experimented with different types of photographic paper, timing of exposure and elements that change the chemical reaction between plants and paper. Images evolve and change during the development process and I present captures of those stages in unaltered true color. While some images are fixed and will remain stable, others will continue to evolve and eventually dissipate altogether.
Kurt Markus
United States
1947
Kurt Markus, self-taught American photographer, was born in rural Montana. Markus is a nationally and internationally published photographer of "unique vision." He has won major awards for his editorial, advertising, and personal work. His photographs demonstrate “extraordinary vision and focus” and are critically renowned. Markus’s personal work began with a focus on American West Cowboys, which is perhaps his most acclaimed subject to this day. "His timeless photographs explore the rugged yet romantic spirit of the cowboy... Markus reveals an era that is all but forgotten today. In his photography, Markus documents a life style of solitude and difficulty, yet to the viewers, a sense of romance; a hard life of plain food, plain surroundings, horses, and exposure to the elements, and yet a simple life free of inherent stress... [He is] a truly amazing photographer of the fashion and travel industry". Since then, he has lived various lives as a photographer, making his mark in landscape, figure study, celebrity, fashion, sports, travel, and more. "Whatever the theme, he is most known for his sense of realism and his decidedly direct and not the least bit artificial approach". Although most of his career has been devoted to photography, he has also created music videos and films. In 1994, Kurt Markus was one of five photographers to participate in a special 25th anniversary edition of Rolling Stone presenting the living legends of rock-n-roll. In 1999, Markus won a Life Magazine Alfred Eisenstaedt Photography Award for his Rolling Stone "Sports Hall of Fame" shots of triathlete, Peter Kotland. In 2003, Markus filmed a music video and photographed the album art for Tori Amos's Scarlet's Walk. "Tori felt that Kurt's love for America went hand-in-hand with the theme." In 2006, Markus filmed Jewel's music video Goodbye Alice in Wonderland spontaneously, after a photo shoot at her Texas ranch. "The homegrown clip beautifully reflects both the song's organic, intimate sound and its powerfully autobiographical story." Markus shot the video entirely with a classic Super 8 camera. The New Yorker praises Markus's photographs in the Staley-Wise exhibition America the Beautiful (March 6 - May 9, 2009). "If anyone steals the show, it’s Kurt Markus, whose six photographs (many of cowboys) are quietly, unfailingly artful". In 2009, David Roberts published The Last of His Kind a biography about famous mountaineer Bradford Washburn. The biography features Markus's portrait of Bradford Washburn at age 93. Roberts says, "Kurt Markus's deft profile of Brad in 'Outside' remains the definitive assessment of Washburn as a master photographer." On July 2, 2009, Kurt Markus again set out with the classic Super 8 camera, this time with his son, Ian Markus, to create a documentary of John Mellencamp's 2009 summer tour and recording, called It's About You. While Kurt shot in 8mm, His son and assisting cameraman, Ian Markus, filmed digitally and captured sound. In 2010, Kurt Markus wrote his screenplay Deep Six. It has gone on to win Los Angeles Cinema Awards' "Merit Award" and Los Angeles Movie Awards' "Honorable Mention." Kurt Markus lives in Kalispell, Montana with his wife Maria. His sons, Weston and Ian, have both assisted him on major shoots and are currently continuing along their own paths in film and photography. "Both of his sons are interested in the world of photography and are following in their father's footsteps."Source: Wikipedia In his book Buckaroo, Markus reflected on himself and his profession, saying this: "I was not born to ranching. I was born a daydreamer, and I know of no slot for one of those on any ranch. At times I am saddened that I am not what I photograph. Always the observer, seldom the participant, what I am made of remains unanswered. My distance protects me, physically and emotionally; from getting as busted up as I ought to sometimes. Which is why you're not going to get the whole truth from me. I have entered into an unspoken, unwritten and generally inscrutable pact with the people I have photographed and lived among: if I promise not to tell all I know about them, they will do the same for me. In most cases, I have more to hide. My consolation is a simple-heartedness I would not exchange. The greenest cowboy alive has my respect, and I have no problem whatsoever photographing people who are possessed with the determination to do what I cannot. The awful truth is that I love all of cowboying, even when everything has gone wrong and it's not looking to get any better. Sometimes I especially like it that way."
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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.
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.
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.
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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