Michael Kenna

Michael Kenna was born 1953. He is an English photographer best known for his black & white landscapes. Kenna attended Upholland College in Lancashire, the Banbury School of Art in Oxfordshire, and the London College of Printing. In the 1980s, Kenna moved to San Francisco and worked asRuth Bernhard’s printer. Kenna’s photography focuses on unusual landscapes with ethereal light achieved by photographing at dawn or at night with exposures of up to 10 hours. Since about 1986 he has mainly used Hasselblad medium format cameras and this accounts for the square format of most of his photographs. The main exception was for the photographs in Monique’s Kindergarten for which a 5 x 4 large format camera was employed. His work has been shown in galleries and museum exhibitions in Asia, Australia, Europe and the United States. He also has photographs included in the collections of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Patrimoine photographique in Paris, the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. In 2000, the Ministry of Culture in France made Kenna a Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters. (more…)

Crying Men by Sam Taylor-Wood

Crying Men is a series of photographic portraits of famous film actors. Sam Taylor-Wood makes portraits of her subjects as actors; she shoots them in role, asking each to perform and cry for the camera and demands the actor’s investment in the process. These are no passive sitters. Each of the resulting images is distinct; one actor recalls the hieratic clarity of a Byzantine saint whose tears appear decorative. Other images are of heroic crying where stoic restraint has broken down, there are some that display the voluptuous crying of medieval saints, there are images of cathartic crying, quiet tears of regret and grief, and yet whilst being moved by these intimate revelatory images we simultaneously know that the emotional display is being play-acted. Sam Taylor-Wood’s film and photographic works are distinguished by their subversive creation of enigmatic situations full of latent but explosive energy. (more…)

Federico Bebber

For those who enjoy artistic digital manipulations of photographs: you will love the sensational works of Italian photographer, Federico Bebber. While working in either figurative or portrait photography, Bebber creates the most sensational collections of surreal and sometimes nightmarish vignettes of life and love. All elegantly and seamlessly done, with striking tonalities and compositions. In certain images, subtle hints of colorings can be found, adding dynamics to the digitally re-mastered black and white photograph. His galleries consist of a masterful group of photos and they are each and individually a pleasure to view. Click the link above to view more Bebber’s photos. (more…)

Photo of the Week #3

Canal Street ST
by Laurent Dequick

Aaron Hawks

Aaron Hawks presents over 15 years of photography, film and installation work that has been seen around the world in publications such as Taschen Books, Goliath and Juxtapoz Magazine. His films have also played around the world as well as in his local Colifornia Theaters like the Coppala theater, the Roxie and The Berkeley University Theater. Mister Hawks has also been in numerous shows and with his solo show at the shooting gallery that displayed a hanging piano, several hanging performance artists in nets, a installation of one of his sets and mechanical trap devisees that were remotely triggered by motion sensors. Now Aaron residing in Los Angeles, California. (more…)

Ralph Man

The photographer Ralph Man is self-tought and has occupied himself with photography from an early childhood. Even during his apprenticeship as a carpenter, his passion for photography always played a very important role. After completing his studies, he took up employment as a carpenter whilst still nurturing his talents and developing his photographic skills. Once confident and experienced enough to express his ideas throught this medium, Ralph Man turned his passion into a career. He has since been working for advertising, magazines and exhibits his work in galleries. (more…)

Michael Anderson

Michael Anderson is an award winning travel and landscape photographer who lives in Golden, Colorado with his wife, Cheri.

The following is an excerpt from an online interview he gave in the summer of 2008:

I was a backcountry ranger for several years in Yosemite National Park where I met Galen Rowell and spent the week of my 21st birthday at a remote ski cabin learning from Galen at one of his first workshops. He was a great story teller who lived through some extraordinary adventures and he lit a fire in my imagination that continues to this day. On the night of my birthday, Galen took me aside and we talked about how individual vision, seeing the unexpected, and an artist’s passion can combine to create great photographs, but also shape our view of the world and our goals in life. I wrote his words down on a piece of paper I keep in my copy of his famous book ‘Mountain Light’ which he signed that week. Since then, I’ve worked hard to find my own voice and I’ve incorporated a lot of his philosophy into my work. (more…)

Vincent Favre

Vincent Favre’s first view of the world was laid in May 1979 in Valencia, a city average of superb department of Drome, He still live. Somehow, his second thought was for the mountains that he learned to love with my father in his native Savoy. It is also he who has slipped for the first time a camera in his hands. An old Agfa excellent for landscape photography. Vincent likes to bring evidence of the beauty that nature offers us. He hopes to reach more skeptics and convince them to make the effort necessary ecological respect our beautiful environment. Since late 2007, He’s professional. He was fortunate to work with several large publishers or, as the firm’s International Canon Inc. for its 2009 calendar. These ice crystals are able to freeze a landscape, Vincent press the shutter button, and you … He freezes the moment. (more…)

Photo of the Week #2

The Sunny Side of the Anemonfish
by Alexandre Gries

This is a two-banded anemonefish “amphiprion bicinctus” in symbiosis with a magnificent anemone “Heteractis magnifica”.

Unlike the other species, the anemonfish (or clownfish) are not sensitive to the anemones tentacles urticant effects. These anemones, thus, offer to the clownfishes, who became very popular thanks to the cinema, an effective protection against the predators.

By a bright sunny day of August 2009, this anemofish is a proof that life can be a bed of (red) roses…

Photojournalism from Sergey Maximishin

Sergey Maximishin was born in 1964. Spent his childhood in Kerch, the Crimea (Ukraine). Moved to Leningrad in 1982. Served in the Soviet army as a photographer the Soviet Military Force Group on Cuba from 1985 to 1987. Graduated from Leningrad Politechnical Inctitute in 1991 with a B.A. in physics. Worked in the laboratory of scientific and technical expertise in the Hermitage Museum. Graduated from St-Petersburg Faculty of photojournalism in 1998. In 1999-2003 was a staff photographer for the “Izvestia” newspaper. Since 2003 Sergey works with a German agency “Focus”. (more…)