Dunes by Jonas Kalvelis

Jonas Kalvelis (1925-1987) is one of the most important representatives of the “Lithuanian School of Photography”. Various exhibitions and publications established his reputation in Soviet Union`s photography. Due to the political changes at the beginning of the nineties, the interest in forms of artistic expression also changed. After his death in 1987 the interest in photography concentrated on newer forms of expression, developed by younger generations. He concentrated on two main themes: “Dunes” and “Forest”, in which he combines technical perfection with a deep sensitiveness for the impressions of nature. High demanded on manufacturing and perfection of the prints the “Dunes” of Kalvelis with their rich contrasts are similar to Old Master Drawings and their finely tuned shades.  (more…)

Case history by Boris Mikhailov

Boris Mikhailov was born in 1938 in Kharkov, Ukraine lives and works in the Ukraine and in Berlin. He is one of the leading photographers from the former Soviet Union. For over 30 years, he has explored the position of the individual within the historical mechanisms of public ideology, touching on such subjects as Ukraine under Soviet rule, the living conditions in post-communist Eastern Europe, and the fallen ideals of the Soviet Union. Although deeply rooted in a historical context, Mikhailov’s work also incorporates profoundly engaging and personal narratives of humor, lust, vulnerability, aging, and death. Case History documents Mikhailov’s perception of social disintegration ensuing from the break-up of the Soviet Union – both in terms of social structures and the resulting human condition, the social oppression, the devastating poverty, the harshness and helplessness of everyday life for the homeless. Mikhailov’s photography is a personal protest that doesn’t lead to the victory of social justice or any resolutions, for that matter; the homeless and orphans remain in the same condition they were pictured: abandonded by the country’s social safety net and, in most instances, with no positive prospects for the future. (more…)

Women Lightscape by Herve All

Herve All born in 1976, Lyon, France. Graduated from the Academy of fine art, Perpignan (France) and residing and work in New York. Herve All works on perception and consciousness through new narratives and focuses on the thin line between dream and reality. He, a lucid dreamer, doesn’t feel like a photographer: through he works with medium of photography, each picture is the result of a performance where he uses a torch. His thin beam of light not only focuses on details but goes beyong the surface, exciting the body’s cells and giving a new glimpse into reality. He uses light not just as a tool or for aesthetical effect, but to explore the fine line between light and dark, flesh and soul, body and space, conscious and inconscious perception.

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Akos Major

Akos Major is Hungarian landscape photographer, born in 1974. He studied classic graphic design in the Secondary School of Arts, in Pécs, Hungary. Graduated in 2001 from Moholy-Nagy University of Arts and Design (MOME) in Budapest, Hungary  with a degree of Visual Communications. After working for ten years in an Ad-Agency, left the industry in 2010 to work as a freelance designer.  Akos is currently living in Vienna, Austria. Most of Akos’ photographs are taken during long walks in Iceland, Hungary, and Austria. He has always been drawn to wide open spaces void of people and tend to shoot when there’s no one around, when the places are bare and lonely, and like to do it without much set-up. He always shoot alone and like to work slowly, in silent places, where he can get lost in the ambience. His photographic work is the essence of what he see, how he feel  when he’s around with hies gear. Photography is the way to his zen mind…  (more…)

Wonderland by Jason Eskenazi

Jason Eskenazi is an American photographer, born 1960 in Queens, New York. The fall of the Berlin Wall led him out of Queens into the big world. After trips to Germany and Romania for their first democratic elections Jason traveled to Russia in 1991, just before the August coup that marked the end of the USSR, and have returned many times since culminating in a photography book project called “Wonderland: A Fairytale of the Soviet Monolith”, exhibited at Visa pour L’Image in Perpignan, France and at the Leica Gallery in New York and winner of Best Photography Book 2008 by Pictures of the Year International. Eskenazi spent more than a decade photographing life in the former Soviet Union. He says that USSR is a gloomy utopian nightmare . He believes that it’s a tragedy that people of the ruined empire, who are not ready for a new life, who don’t see their place in future,  feel nostalgic about the communistic past. Jason says his photographs are about the difficulty of losing what you always thought would be there. Wonderland is about nostalgia, choices, missed chances, the search for life… the finding of love and the loss of love. For him it is the metaphor of the Soviet Union. (more…)

Christopher Burkett

Christopher Burkett was born in 1951 and was reared in the Pacific Northwest. In 1975, while he was a brother in a Christian order, he became interested in photography as a means of expressing the grace, light and beauty he saw present in the world of nature. Over the next twenty years, he gradually perfected his craft so photography could be the means through which he could express his innermost feelings and inspiration. Burkett has an extraordinary eye for framing nature, for making his rectangular windows onto it seem as if they were destined to be pictures. Today he works almost exclusively with color 8 x 10″ transparencies.  Christopher Burkett was honored to receive the 2004 Hasselblad Masters award. (more…)

Soviet Union by Henri Cartier-Bresson

Henri Cartier-Bresson visited the Soviet Union in 1954 to document daily life under communism, the first foreign photographer to photograph “freely” in the post-war since Stalin’s death a year earlier. The presentation combines photographs dating from that year with those from a journey in 1972, when he personally observed the development of a country that was still very inaccessible. After this first trip to Russia, a second one came 19 years later for Cartier-Bresson. He was looking forward to it with the expectation to see the changes. “There is nothing more revealing than comparing a country with itself by grasping its differences and trying to discover the thread of its continuity,” he said. In fact, there is an important difference between his ’54 and ’72-’73 pictures of the Soviet Union.  (more…)

Julien Legrand

Julien Legrand was born in France in 1979. He started as graphic designer. Passion to photography came to him later. On that time he was shooting everything: portraits, landcapes, travel photo e.t.c. Slowly Julien began to shoot only on the streets. Most of Julien Legrand’s pictures explore the chance moments of everyday life, with a focus on pedestrians. For him, streets and public spaces are inexhaustible sources of inspiration. He always has a camera with him and takes pictures almost every day, anywhere, at any time. He operates spontaneously, instinctively, creating a visual record that does not seek to relate or denounce anything; he prefers to let the imagination run free. The idea of being suffocated by a repetitive and impersonal daily life frightens him, so shooting on the street is his way of constantly keeping in touch with the world around him. Julien Legrand is a member of Street Photographers collective. (more…)

Alison McCauley

Alison McCauley is a Geneva-based street and documentary photographer. Was born in England in 1961 and has been living in Geneva for the past eight years. She has an undergraduate and a postgraduate degree in Visual Arts – Painting. Alison was a painter for over 20 years before realising that her passion for photography had overtaken her love of painting. She embarked on a degree in Creative Arts – Photography, which she completed in 2009. Since her final year of studies she has been an avid street photographer and has won numerous awards for her street photography. Alison has a parallel interest in documentary photography and she hopes to use her documentary work to highlight human injustices and suffering and generate understanding and positive action. Alison has a compulsion to photograph life as it happens, and aims to capture the moment in which she can best express her vision of the reality unfolding before her. Alison is a member of the Street Photographers collective and an Associate of the Royal Photographic Society.  (more…)

American color by Constantine Manos

Constantine Manos in American Color project has created a set of fascinating images that engage both the eye and mind in repeated viewings and contemplation. Photographing mostly in exotic locales and at public events within United States, such as Venice Beach and Atlantic City, Bike Week at Daytona Beach and at Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Manos presents a kaleidoscopic view of American culture. As a show case of the sundry layers of American society, the images are also a retrospective, presenting a man’s curiosity for his country’s kaleidoscopic diversity. On streets, beaches, crowded boardwalks, and at small-town carnivals, Manos has captured the varied spectrum pf contemporary life in all its offbeat and charming strangeness. These moments are elusive and varied. Ordinary people drift between technicolor landscapes and dark shadows, tumultuous city streets and stark ocean horizons. Manos’s lens is ti unleash a cacophony of brilliant colors often overlooked in day-to-day observation. Although the pictures were made in the United States, they do not pretend to constitute a general of definitive statment of the country or its people. They are instead specific moments which cannot be categorized and which exist for their own sake. American Color is a collection photographs which charms, humor, mystify, and astonish, while asking questions without giving ready answers.  (more…)