Brett Weston’s work would ultimately became one of the defining poles of contemporary photography with its technical precision, bold design and extremes of abstraction and private imagination. The excitement and tension in his prints were Brett’s unique response to pure form: the vocabulary of line, volume, pattern and light and dark. It was this sensual response to form that defines his more classical European landscapes, taken in the 1960’s and 1970’s. A world away from the endless California horizons and soaring cliffs, these scenes from abroad feature beautifully modulated light and confined landscapes born from Weston’s expert technical command of the West Coast tradition of photography.

In Weston’s concluding photographs taken during the 1980’s, the abstract was resurrected but this time the playful and less orderly images of writhing reflections in skyscraper windows and the electrifying patterns of light on underwater figures captured his imagination. A final series of plant forms in Hawaii revealed a more mature language; as a sense of mortality and introspection entered the frame. It was as if Weston had begun to contemplate the limits of the ego, or of reason, still affirming the self, but with more awareness of death and chaos. But true to only himself, these images are often punctuated with elements of humor, and more irrational elements of design.

Brett Weston’s lifetime of devotion and total involvement with the medium produced a body of work and contribution to photography that ultimately surpassed his renowned father in sophisticated visual scope. Brett worked quietly more than three decades after Edward Weston’s death to “take the work as far as I can” and brilliantly conclude the remarkable 90-year Weston Legacy (1903-1993). Brett Weston’s intuitive visual genius has virtually no equal in the history of contemporary photography.

Brett Weston’s portfolio:

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Official site: www.brettwestonarchive.com

Andrey Pavlov’s ants:

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Born 1964 in Sweden, Jens Olof Lasthein grew up in Denmark and now lives in Stockholm, Sweden. Freelance photographer working primarily with reportages and portraits for magazines and newspapers as well as self initiated projects. Even working as a lecture and a workshop leader in Sweden as well as abroad/His book Moments in Between – Pictures from Former Yugoslavia (Journal 2000) was selected by Martin Parr and Gerry Badger for The Photobook: A History, Volume II (Phaidon 2006).

Jens Olof Lasthein’s White Sea Black Sea:

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Official site: www.lasthein.se

Harry Gruyaert

Gruyaert studied at the School for Photo and Cinema in Brussels from 1959 to 1962. He then began freelance fashion and advertising work in Paris, while working as a director of photography for Flemish television.

In 1969 Gruyaert made the first of many trips to Morocco. His total immersion in its colors and landscapes won him the Kodak Prize in 1976 and culminated in the publication of the book Morocco in 1990. He traveled to India for the first time in 1976 and to Egypt in 1987. Far from indulging in stereotypical exoticism, Gruyaert has a vision of faraway countries that locates the viewer within peculiar and somewhat impenetrable atmospheres.

In a different sphere he covered the Olympic Games in Munich in 1972. In the same year he photographed some of the first Apollo flights as they were shown on a crazy television set. This project, which exploits the colors of the screen, appeared under the title ‘TV Shots’ in Zoom. It was shown at the Delpire Gallery in 1974 and at Phillips de Pury & Co. in New York.

In his later work Gruyaert has abandoned the Cibachrome process in favor of digital print. Better suited to revealing the rich shades found in his films, digital print opens new possibilities for his work, bringing it one step closer to his original intention, namely to give color the means to assert its true existence.

Harry Gruyaert portfolio:

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Alex Glickman

Alex Glickman portfolio:

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Herbert List

“The pictures I took spontaneously – with a bliss-like sensation, as if they had long inhabited my unconscious – were often more powerful than those I had painstakingly composed. I grasped their magic as in passing. “

In 1930, his artistic leanings and connections to the European avant-garde bring him together with Andreas Feininger. Feininger introduces him to the Rolleiflex, a more sophisticated camera facilitating deliberate composition of his images. Under the binary influence of the surrealist movement on one side and Bauhaus artists on the other, List starts to develop his own style by photographing still life images and friends. He describes his images as being composed visions where his arrangements try to capture the magical essence inhabiting and animating the world of appearances.

After leaving Germany in 1936 for political and personal reasons, he turned his hobby into a profession. Working in Paris and London, he met George Hoyningen-Huene, who referred him to “Harper’s Bazaar”. Dissastisfied with the challenges of fashion photography, List instead focused on composing still lifes in his studio. The images produced there would later be compared to the paintings of Max Ernst and Giorgio de Chirico, and paved the way for List’s role as the most prominent photographer of the Fotografia Metafisica style.

Greece is List’s main interest from 1937 to 1939. After his first visit to the antique temples, sculptures and landscapes, his first solo show in Paris opens in the summer of 1937. Publications in Life, Photographie, Verve and Harpers Bazaar followed and List works on his first book called “Licht Ueber Hellas”, which won’t be published until 1953. During his work in Athens, List hopes to escape the war but is forced by the invading troops to return to Germany in 1941. Some of his work, which is stored in a hotel in Paris, is lost forever. Because of his Jewish family descent, List is not allowed to publish or work officially in Germany.

In 1951 Herbert List meets Robert Capa, who convinces him to work as a contributor to Magnum. List turns his interest towards Italy from 1950 to 1961: from street scenes to contemplative photoessays – from architectual views to portraits of international artists living in Italy. In 1953 he discovers the 35 mm camera with the telephoto lens. His work is now more spontanous and is influenced by his Magnum colleague Henri Cartier Bresson and the Italian Neo Realism film mouvement. List completes several book projects in the following years: Licht Ueber Hellas (1953), Rome (1955), Caribia (1958), Nigeria (1961) and Napoli (1962) in collaboration with Vittorio de Sica.

List more or less gave up photography in the early 1960s. Despite his earlier fame throughout Europe, his particular style was no longer fashionable. By the time he died in Munich in 1975, his work had been almost forgotten. Interest has revived recently, though, thanks to a fine monograph published by Monacelli Press, which features 250 of List’s photographs divided into five sections: Metaphysical Photography, Ruins and Fragments, Eros and Photography, Portraits, and Moments.

Herbert List died in Munich, April 4th 1975.

Herbert List portfolio:

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Official site: www.herbert-list.com

Anastasia Kichigina

When Anastasia Kichigina was 16 years old she broked grandfather’s camera – the camera that saw her growing up, when  parents were young. It saw many happy moments, and gave them to me. And from this time Anastasia madly wanted to start photography. So, it all started and, of course, with family, friends and classmates. She noticed that like to watch people, could spend many hours alone in a park or a walk and just look at people, light, emotions. She was comparing some scenes on the street with the one  studied at the Academy of paintings.

Somehow history of art and photography synthesized with love of street and She began to street photography. Then Anastasia met the “right” people, who gave the direction, opened her eyes to the fact that the photography goes together with music, art and literature. Appeared vast field of self-improvement and self-criticism.

As Anastasia told to us, when She is  shooting, She has no need or desire to remain “invisible.” And it is not always necessary. Sometimes the look of a man in the picture or gesture at the camera works very well. For the photographer almost always, but especially in street photography unpredictability and moment is the main. Person can’t in a split second before the shutter clicks  to control everything that happens in the frame, especially if the photo has a lot of plans and the elements are linked not only shapes and tones, but also color. Therefore, we must rely on their gut feel, perhaps, on the intuition.

And advice for all street shooters who read PhotoSlaves from Anastasia Kichigina:

Shoot a lot. Be strict with yourself. Try to understand that Art is one and draw inspiration not only in photography but also in music, poetry, literature and painting. And most important – love what you shoot.

Anastasia Kichigina’s portfolio:

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Daido Moriyama

The images he captures often show everyday people and everyday things in a manner not to be found in the average Tokyo tourist guidebook. Whether by using blur or cropping, Moriyama’s bleak and lonely black-and-white pictures have garnered him the reputation as one of Japan’s great modern photographers. The people of Moriyama’s work are often faceless, covered in shadow or obscured by blur. It is not unusual for a backside – a couple descending stairs, for example – to be the image’s main element. Unlike Araki, who generally uses color photography to target women in various settings, Moriyama’s focus is capturing Shinjuku’s blend of old, new, and unpredictable in monochrome.

Many of Moriyama’s images imply action of some kind has happened or is about to happen – even if that is truly not the case. The feeling is that of drifting in and out of a scene: a hostess draws a cigarette from her pack as two of her colleagues watch for customers near their club’s brightly lit entryway; a woman moving through a crowded street scene casts a glance over her right shoulder, the upper half of her bare backside showing a few tattoos with the rest obscured by shadow. Daido Moriyama was influenced at an early age by the work of American photographer William Klein known for its blurry images and the variety of angles and perspective used.

By using the curtain as a kind of screen, running interference on an otherwise straight-ahead subject, Moriyama reminds viewers that what they see is not the world as it exists but a highly stylized, filtered version of it. Indeed, looking through Moriyama’s very specific perspective, seeing through his hungry eyes, sets the mind wandering.

Portfolio of Daido Moriyama:

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Official site: www.moriyamadaido.com

Nuri Bilge Ceylan

After graduating from university with a BSC degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering,he went to London and Kathmandu to decide what he should do in life. Then he went to Ankara back to do military service. When he was in the army, he found out how to give shape to the rest of his life ‘cinema’.

He began by acting in a short film directed by his friend Mehmet Eryılmaz, but at the same time participating in the entire technical process from beginning to end, thus building on the knowledge he already had. He later bought the Arriflex 2B camera that had been used to shoot that film in order to make his own short film. In those days, video cameras were not yet an option.

Towards the end of 1993, he began shooting the short film KOZA (Cocoon), using a combination of negative he brought back in a suitcase from Russia and some stock long past its expiry date that he was given by the state broadcaster TRT. The film was screened at Cannes in May 1995 and became the first Turkish short to be selected for competition at the Cannes Film Festival.

Three full-length feature films followed that could be cast in terms of a sequel to KOZA; they have also been described by some as his ‘provincial trilogy’: KASABA (The Small Town, 1997), MAYIS SIKINTISI (Clouds of May, 1999) and UZAK (Distant, 2002). In all of these films, Ceylan enlisted his close friends, relatives and family as actors and took on just about every technical role himself: the cinematography, sound design, production, editing, writing and direction…

When UZAK, the final film of the trilogy, won the Grand Prix at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, Ceylan suddenly became an internationally recognized name. Continuing on the festival circuit after Cannes, UZAK scooped a total of 47 awards, 23 of them international, and so became the most award-winning film in the history of Turkish cinema.

Next to follow in 2006 was İKLİMLER (Climates), which again premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, this time scooping the FIPRESCI Prize. The lead roles in this film were shared by Nuri Bilge and his wife Ebru Ceylan.

Competing at the 61st Cannes Film Festival with his 2008 film ÜÇ MAYMUN (Three Monkeys), Nuri Bilge won the Best Director award. ÜÇ MAYMUN later went on to become the first Turkish film to make the Oscar shortlist in the Academy Awards Foreign Language Film category.

In 2009, the director returned to Cannes, this time as a member of the main competition jury.

At the end of 2003, in the course of location scouting for ‘Climates’, Nuri Bilge returned to photography for the first time since military service. From this point on, he began devoting his time to both cinema and photography.

Portfolio of Nuri Bilge Ceylan:

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Official site: www.nuribilgeceylan.com

Chris Friel 

Portfolio of Chris Friel:

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Official site: www.chrisfriel.co.uk