Photographer #434: Peter Hapak

Peter Hapak, 1973, Hungary, is a versatile photographer based in the US. He works for commercial and editorial clients, but his main focus lies on portraiture and the human body. For Time Magazine he has created impressive series, of which the latest is called The Protester. Time had named the Protester as person of the year 2011 and commisioned Hapak to travel to seven different countries to portray the protesters. In countries as Egypt, Spain, Greece and Tunesia he set up a makeshift studio in hotel rooms, anarchist headquarters and even in a temple in India. Peter also asked the portrayed to bring mementos of protest. Amongst the objects brought were Iphones, rubber pellets and Maalox, a substance used to counter the effects of tear gas. Another story he focused on were the Chilean miners that were trapped in  2010 which resulted in a strong series of black and white portraits. Peter has photographed a vast amount of celebrities as Robin Williams, Bono and Colin Firth. The following images come from the series The Protester, The Art of War: Honoring the Fallen for a Lifetime and Finding the Chilean Miners.

Website: www.phapak.net & lightbox.time.com

Photographer #433: Magdalena Wosinska

Magdalena Wosinska, 1983, Poland, moved to the USA in 1991 and is currently based in Los Angeles. She works on lifestyle, editorial and commercial photography with a very personal signature. For the large part it is shot in the same style as her personal work. In her photography Magdalena invites you to enter her world of which she is not only an secret observer, but an active player herself. She often appears in her own images. It's a snapshot representation of the American way of life, full of parties, tattoo's, beards, rock bands, alcohol and nudity, often set within the American landscape and bright sunlight. Her images are intimate and contain a very loose quality. For Magdalena the moment is much more important than using the most sofisticated technology. In 2010 she released the book Bite It You Scum. The following images come from various portfolios.

Website: www.magdalenawosinska.com 

Photographer #432: Eric Bouvet

Eric Bouvet, 1961, France, started his career in 1981 after studying Art and Graphic Industries in Paris. During the 80's he worked as a staff photographer at Gamma agency. In 1990 he launched his freelance career and has since been an independant photojournalist. He has traveled extensively to many conflict zones as Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, former Yugoslavia and very recently Libya. He has covered the gruesome war in Chechnya for a long period and has visited Afghanistan a dozen of times since 1986, witnissing the various wars the country has suffered. His images have an intimate and up-close character. His work has been published in numerous magazines as Time, Life, Newsweek, Stern and the New York Times magazine. He has worked with a variety of NGO's and charities as Medecins Sans Frontieres and the International Red Cross. His work has received several awards amongst which are five World Press Awards. The following images come from the series The Beginning (Libya), Uzbin Valley (Afghanistan) and Russian Commandos - Chechnya.

Website: www.ericbouvet.com

Photographer #431: Darcy Padilla

Darcy Padilla, 1965, USA, is a photojournalist and documentary photographer. Her career as a freelance photographer started after completing 12 internships at daily newspapers as The New York Times and The Washington Post. Since then she covered stories in Cuba and Haiti, on Aids in Prison and the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, just to name a few. Her most acclaimed body of work is The Julie Project. This long-term project is the story of a woman called Julie Baird. Eighteen years Darcy followed and photographed the story of AIDS, drug abuse, abusive relationships, poverty and death. Julie died on September 27th, 2010 at the age of 36, after having lived a turbulant life in which she gave birth to six children of whom the first five were taken away from her. It is an impressive, heartbreaking project with a dramatic, yet expected ending. The series rightfully received the W. Eugene Smith Award for Humanistic Photography in 2010. Amongst other awards for her work is the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for the work she did photographing residents of transient hotels in one of the poorest neighborhoods in San Francisco. All of the following images are from The Julie Project.

Website: www.darcypadilla.com

Photographer #430: Rinko Kawauchi

Rinko Kawauchi, 1972, Japan, is a fine art photographer based in Tokyo. She studied at the Seian University of Art and Design and graduated in 1993. She started as a photographer on a freelance basis from 1997. In 2001 she launched herself into the photographic world with the simultaneous release of 3 books, UTATANE, HANABI and HANAKO. Since then she has released a large number of monographs of which the latest addition is Illuminance. Her images seem simple, but they evoke primal emotions within the viewer. By paying attention to tiny gestures and incidental details within her environment she finds the extraordinary within the mundane. The editing within her books is crucial to her work and the stories she wishes to tell. The photographs show a large range of emotions and fundamentally adresses life itself, from the good all the way to the bad. Her work has been exhibited extensively in solo and group shows around the world and is in several public collections as the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Phtography and Huis Marseille in Amsterdam. The following images come from the books Illuminance, AILA and Cui Cui.

Website: www.foiltokyo.com & www.rinkokawauchi.com

Photographer #429: Christoph Bangert

Christoph Bangert, 1978, Germany, is a photojournalist based in Switzerland who studied photography at the Fachhochschule in Dortmund and at the International Center of Photography in New York. He has traveled extensively to countries as Japan, Chad, Lebanon, Nigeria and Palestine for his photography. In Pakistan he covered the story of the cold winter after the earthquake hit in 2005. In 2007 he released two monographs. Travel Notes contains images from a 22,000 mile car trip he made from Argentina to New York in 2002. IRAQ: The Space Between shows the work he did in 2005 and 2006 in Iraq on assignment for the New York Times. In the same year he was also chosen for the Joop Swart Masterclass. His images have appeared in numerous publications as Stern, Time, Newsweek and GEO. Currently Christoph is working on a book that will show the images of a 14 month trip in 2007 and 2008 through 36 African countries with a Land Rover. He was exhausted from all the things he in the years before and needed a break to become "a human being again." The following images come from journeys to Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Website: www.christophbangert.com

Photographer #428: Eric T. White

Eric T. White, 1982, USA, is a photographer based in New York City. When he started art school he did not have a clear idea what he should study. When Eric's uncle died he inherited all of his cameras. This lead him to professionally persue a career in photography. He spent four years learning from photographer Christopher Griffith's technical expertise as his first assistant. His primary focus lies on portraiture and landscape photography. He describes his work as being "about capturing fleeting moments... specific moods and feelings." For his series National Defense, which consists of two chapters, he documented a fake arabic town in California and the border between the US and Mexico. Currently he is simultaneously working on a portrait series based on the Lower East Side, a black and white landscape series and his first book. The following images come from the series Least Likely To, Lake Harmony and National Defense.

Website: www.mrwhite.co & www.whiteblackwhite.com

Photographer #427: Nicol Vizioli

Nicol Vizioli, 1982, Italy, is a fine-art photographer based in London. She received a BA in Cinema at La Sapienze University in Rome and only recently an MA in Fashion Photography at London College of Fashion, University of the Arts. Her graduation project is called Shadows on Parade, a series of bizarre and mythical portraits. "They are declinations of my imagery, desires, waits, silent attempts of redemption. Sometimes they are dreams, more often they are prayers."..."The casting was very instinctive but precise: twins, elderly, albinos or bald people." She has been painting and drawing before she started photography and this strongly influences her work today. Her work has been exhibited in Italy and in the UK. The following images come from the series Shadows on Parade, AntiFashionManifesto and Hildegard Von Bingen.

Website: www.nicolvizioli.com

Photographer #426: Chen Wei

Chen Wei, 1980, is a Chinese fine-art and conceptual photographer based in Beijing. He builds large installations to photograph. His narrative images show bizarre spaces, scenes and objects that leave the viewer wondering. Chen uses his personal memories, childhood fantasies and combines this with realities found in modern China. He assembles all the required objects in his studio and starts building his scenes. "Chen Wei illustrates an intricate imagination fascinated with the eccentric and fanciful pursuits of early science, mathematics, alchemy, philosophers and madmen." (M97 Gallery) His work has been shown in several solo exhibitions and in a vast number of group exhibitions throughout the world. The following images come from the series Everyday, Scenery and Props, House of Recovery and The Augur's Game.

Website: www.chen-wei.org & www.m97gallery.com

Photographer #425: Bohnchang Koo

Bohnchang Koo, 1953, South-Korea, is a fine-art and conceptual photographer based in Seoul. He first studied Business Administration at Yonsei University before studying photography in Hamburg. His work is often about impermanence, the passing of time, the disappearance and heritage. For his series Vessel he photographed rare porcelain ceramics of the Korean Joseon dynasty. He traveled to museums around the world to find and document the white objects against a white backdrop in soft light. As an "old family album" he tries to bring the objects together and retrieve the lost Korean heritage. Koo has been called "one of Korea's most influential photographers." Not only due to his photographic art, but also as an educator and exhibition planner he helped shape and promote Korean photography to a wider audience. He released a large number of monographs and his work has been exhibited extensively throughout the world and is found in public collections as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. The following images come from the series Interiors, Vessel and In the Beginning.

Website: www.bckoo.com

Photographer #424: RES

Raúl Eduardo Stolkiner, better known as RES, 1957, Argentina, is a conceptual and fine-art photographer based in Buenos Aires. He studied photography at the Spilimbergo Art School and at Casa del Lago, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. His series Conatus was produced in collaboration with Constanza Piaggio. The photographs are recreations of iconic paintings by artists as da Vinci and Picasso. The images are not exact copies, RES made alterations to the original works that reinterpret and recontextualize the subject through contemporary perspectives on philosophy, politics and spirituality. One of his first bodies of work, Donde están e imanes, was the result of his return to Argentina after he had been exiled in 1978 to Mexico. His work has been shown in numerous exhibitions worldwide and has been published in a vast amount of publications. In the past nine years he also released his work in four different monographs. The following images come from the series Conatus, Plantas Vestidas and Donde están e imanes.

Website: www.resh.com.ar

Photographer #423: Kahn & Selesnick

Nicholas Kahn and Richard Selesnick, both 1964, UK, are two photographers / installation artists based in the US who have been working together since 1988. They met at Washington University in St. Louis. In 1995 they started using photography as the way of telling their stories. Together they have created a large number of series that can best be described as "complex narrative photo-novellas." The fantastical and extremely wide panoramic images are accompanied by texts. They conceive an alternate reality, use costumed actors, construct detailed three-dimensional miniatures and combine all these elements into their compelling and mythical photographs. Even the website takes the viewer on a journey through the world of Kahn and Selesnick. Their work has been released as books on numerous occasions and has been exhibited throughout the world extensively. The following images come from the series Mars: Adrift on the Hourglass Sea, Apollo Prophecies, City of Salt and Scotlandfuturebog.

Website: www.kahnselesnick.com

Photographer #422: Cathleen Naundorf

Cathleen Naundorf, 1968, Germany, is a fashion and fine-art photographer. Her career started as a photo assistant in New York, Singapore and Paris. In 1993 she started traveling to countries as Mongolia, Siberia and Brazil. The pictures made over the years had been published in eight publications of large publishers. In 1997 she started photographing for the Süddeutsche Zeitung with a fashion page of her own. Seven years ago she visited Jean-Paul Gaultier to ask him to lend one or two dresses to photograph. He was so impressed by the work that he gave her access to his entire collection. Since then she has been shooting for Gaultier, Dior, Lacroix, Chanel, Elle Saab and Valentino. She exclusively works on large format camera's (4x5" and 8x10") using polaroid films. She is also granted free choice of models, locations and hair and make-up designers. A publication of her haute couture series is scheduled in 2012. Her work has been exhibited at several venues in Europe and the USA. The following images come from her portfolio's Fashion - B&W, Fashion - Color and Vs- Magazine - 2011.

Website: www.cathleennaundorf.com

Photographer #421: Luo Dan

Luo Dan, 1968, China, is a documentary photographer based in Chengdu. He graduated from the Sichuan Fine Art Institute in 1992. He works as a freelance photographer after having been employed as a photojournalist between 1997 and 2005. For his latest series Simple Song he traveled to the mountains of the Yunnan province. Using the collodion wet plate process he captured the people of this region where the way of life has remained intact for hundreds of years. His series North, South is the result of extensive travelling throughout China. The large body of work raises questions about the large economic changes in China. On various levels the images show the effects on the Chinese population, from the new wealth, consumerism to extreme poverty. Two years earlier he also traveled across China for his series China Route 318. All three projects have been released as monographs. His work has been exhibited extensively, mainly in China. The following images come from the series Simple Song, North, South and China Route 318.

Website: www.luodanphoto.com

Photographer #420: Joël Tettamanti

Joël Tettamanti, 1977, Switzerland, is a photographer who travels to remote places around the world for his photographic art. His work is a mixture of documentary, architectural, landscape and travel photography. He has traveled to places as Togo, Kuweit, Japan, Azerbaijan, India and Greenland. His photographs are a reflection of a traveling observer who sees ordinary objects, landscapes and buildings that others would pass without noticing. In his images the ordinary becomes the extraordinary and tell the story of man and its environment. In 2006 Joël released the book Local Studies in which his work from various series is combined with texts of 6 different authors. He studied graphic design and photography at the Ecole Cantonale d'Art de Lausanne. Since 2009 he is also a photography teacher at ECAL. His work has been exhibited extensively, mainly in Switzerland and France. The following images come from the series Ayome, Qaqortoq and Harajuku.

Website: www.tettamanti.ch & www.tettamanti.li

Photographer #419: Regina DeLuise

Regina DeLuise, 1959, USA, is a fine art photographer based in Baltimore. She received a BFA at State University of New York and an MA at the Rosary College Graduate School of Fine Arts in Italy. Her poetic images contain a large range of tones and a lot of texture. To achieve this she makes platinum / palladium contact prints from 8x10" film negatives. 100% rag paper is coated with a light-sensitive chemical and the metals onto which the negative is placed. The large contact prints are soft, dreamy yet strong in expression. Regina has been teaching at Maryland Institute College of Art since 1998. Her work is in various public collections as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Houston Museum of Fine Art and the Art Institute of Chicago. The Photographs have also been shown in numerous exhibitions, mainly in the USA. The following images come from the series Cortona, The Phenomenal World and Guggenheim.

Website: www.reginadeluise.com

Photographer #418: Jamie Nelson

Jamie Nelson, 1983, USA, is a fashion and beauty photographer based in New York. She studied Advertising Photography at the Brooks Institute of Photography. She graduated in 2005 and has since been productive while specializing in editorial and advertising photography. In 2011 she photographed Dinara Chetyrova for the July issue of Elle Vietnam. The series is colorful, strong and empowering. Her work has been published in numerous publications as Harper's Bazaar, Elle, Vogue and the Cosmopolitan. Amongst her advertising clients are companies as Olay, Sunban Eyewear and Carlos Campos. The following images come from the series for Elle Vietnam and from various other beauty and fashion shoots.

Website: www.jamienelson.com