Photographer #420: Jo�l Tettamanti

Jo�l 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 Jo�l 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 #382: C�dric Gerbehaye

C�dric Gerbehaye, 1977, Belgium, was trained as a journalist who chose photography as his medium to tell his stories. In 2002 he started to follow the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a long-term project. He created several bodies of work in the conflict area about Hebron, Gaza and on the economic crisis in Israel, showing that a large number of Israelis today live below the poverty line due to war and the fact that the occupation of Palestinian territories costs a lot of money to the Israeli government who are therefore spending much less on social programs. Since 2007 he has been focused on the Democratic Republic of Congo. This is where he created the images for his book Congo in Limbo, telling the story of the armed conflict that killed nearly four million people. In the eastern regions of Congo, filled with mineral resources, the situation is still very tense. One of his latest series is Land of Cush. He went to the Nuba Mounts, to the north of the demarcation line that now separates the South Sudan state and Sudan. The inhabitants, who used to fight with the southern separatists soldiers for 20 years, are now victims of aerial bombardments from the Khartoum regime as retaliation. The following images come from the stories Land of Cush - South Sudan, Congo in Limbo and Gaza: Summer Rains.

Direct link to Cedric's work: www.agencevu.com

Photographer #353: Benjamin Goss

Benjamin Goss, 1977, USA, is a portrait, documentary and fine art photographer who has been living and working in Sweden for the last nine years. He completed several workshops given by Mary Ellen Mark, worked as one of her assistants for a short period and attended a three-semester fine art photography program at Broby Grafiska in Sweden. His project Breathe began as a protest against the current digital image consumption for which he uses a Kodak 8x10" view camera from 1904 with silver gelatin paper. The strong black and white portraits are made with exposure times that last from several seconds to one or two minutes. V�rmland is an ongoing project focusing on his environment in the countryside of V�rmland, Sweden. Benjamin was fascinated by the contrast of the US and Sweden and photographs the people and things from an outsiders perspective. The following images come from his portfolio New Work and the series Breathe and V�rmland.

Website: www.benjamingossphotography.com

Photographer #350: Jessica Hilltout

Jessica Hilltout, 1977, Belgium, is a documentary photographer who studied at the Art College in Blackpool, England. She has completed various overland travels for her photography. One of the first trips which resulted in the series Faces and Places was from Brussels to Mongolia and home via Africa (80.000km) in an old Jeep. In 2008 she started the project called AMEN. She visiting countries as Mozambique, Burkina Faso, Benin, Malawi and Ghana amongst others. She wanted to take a different look at the meaning of football to this continent and capture the soul of African football. She focused on the players and their clothing, their hand-made balls and the improvised goals. Along with her rolls of film she also took new footballs with her to exchange with their hand-made balls. She self-published the project as a coffee table book in 2010 and exhibited the series in South Africa and Belgium. The following images come from the series AMEN, Imperfection and Faces.

Website: www.jessicahilltout.com

Photographer #323: GMB Akash

GMB Akash, 1977, Bangladesh, is a socially-engaged documentary photographer focusing on people at the edges of society, often photographed in bright colors. Many of his stories have been made in his home country, but he travels extensively throughout Asia to document various tales of socially isolated groups. He has covered prostitution in Nepal, child labour in Bangladesh, the high suicide rate amongst cotton farmers in India, seasonal workers in Pakistan amongst many other confronting stories. GMB has won numerous awards and his work has been published in countless magazines throughout the world as the National Geographic, Time and Stern. In 2002 he was selected for the World Press Photo Joop Swart Masterclass. His work is important and confronting, however it also shows the strength and resilience of the human being. The following images come from the series Stone Scavengers of Jaflong, Survivors and Nothing To Hold On To.

Website: www.gmb-akash.com

Photographer #259: Nathalie Daoust

Nathalie Daoust, 1977, Canada, concentrates in her photographic work on unveiling the secrets hidden beneath the apparent stability of life. Daoust first got recognized in 1997 with her project New York Hotel Story which was published as a book. Since then she traveled the world to Japan, Brazil and Switzerland amongst other places to create conceptual projects. In her series Tokyo Hotel Story she explores female sexuality and subversion of gender stereotypes. She spend several months in one of the biggest S&M 'love hotels' in order to show the "universal desire to escape reality and create fantasy worlds that often oscillate between dream, reality and perversion." The following images come from the series Tokyo Hotel Story, Frozen in Time, Switzerland and Entre Quatre Murs, Berlin.

Website: www.daoustnathalie.com
(Video in French)

Photographer #237: Michael Donovan

Michael Donovan, 1977, USA, is a self-taught, highly productive, New York based fashion photographer. Even though photography was always somehow in Michaels life, whether it was shooting for the yearbook in highschool or working for the college newspaper, it wasn't until 2009 that he decided to try to succeed as a fashion photographer in New York. After spending 15 months working on his portfolio he felt the time was right to market himself in 2010. He wants to show people in their most smart, involved, sexiest, real, fun, raw and strongest moments of their personality. The following images come from his portfolio's Give and Take, Free to be Human and Facts of Life.

Website: www.michaeldonovanphotography.com

Photographer #232: Edgar Martins

Edgar Martins, 1977, Portugal, is more than just a landscape photographer. He is known for his stunning images of mostly non-beautiful places. In 2008 he released the book Topologies, containing work from several of his series. He has photographed forests that have suffered from fire, minimalist nighttime beaches with a pitch-black sky, airport runways that resemble runways from another planet and the landscapes of Iceland. Edgar has released several monographs, exhibited throughout the world, won numerous awards and his work is in various public and private collections. The following images come from the series A Metaphysical Survey of British Dwellings, When Lights Casts No Shadow and The Accidental Theorist.

Website: www.edgarmartins.com

Photographer #181: Rune Guneriussen

Rune Guneriussen, 1977, Norway, is a conceptual photographer. He started to work with objects as chairs, lamps and tables in 2005. He makes installations, most of them in nature and photographs them. Rune searches for his locations all over Norway. "It is an approach to the balance between nature and culture, but also a multiple reading of stories." He has been in various European solo and group exhibitions. The following images come from his portfolio's Wall No.1, Wall No.2 and Wall No.4.

Website: www.runeguneriussen.no

Photographer #179: Aaron Hobson

Aaron Hobson, 1977, USA, is also known as the Cinemascapist. He grew up in one of the poorest city neighborhoods of Pittsburgh. Today he lives in a small town in the remote Adirondack Mountains near the Canadian border. Since four years he has started taking images. He calls his photography Cinemascapes. They are semi-autobiographical, dealing with old memories together with his current living situation. His panoramic self-portraits are intentionally cinematic to reflect our modern technologically driven culture. His stories are open-ended, but do have an underlying purpose. Writer John Wood wrote about Aaron's work; "that his imagery exudes sexuality and danger, those two narcotics we never seem to be able to get out of our systems." The following images come from his portfolio.

Website: www.aaronhobson.com

Photographer #174: Jeremy Kost

Jeremy Kost, 1977, USA, is also known in New York as "the Polaroid Artist". He is an editorial and celebrity photographer. His polaroids are unstaged images of celebrities in their relaxed environments. He does the same in his series New York, where he dives into the underground scenes of East Village and the Lower East Side. In his editorial work Jeremy often combines several polaroids to make a single image. He has had various solo and group exhibitions. The following images come from his series Celebrity, New York, NY and from his editorial portfolio.

Website: www.jeremykost.com & www.jedroot.com

Photographer #160: Alejandro Cartagena

Alejandro Cartagena, 1977, Dominican Republic, works and lives in monterrey, Mexico. His photographic works focuses on the urban, social and environmental issues of Latin America. In his series Between Borders he has photographed the people living between two borders, the one that devides USA and Mexico, the other of drug trafficking cartels in nearby ranchos. The three series below deal with the issue of urbanization and the effects on the environment, landscapes and it's inhabitants. The following images come from the series People of Suburbia, Fragmented Cities and Lost Rivers.

Website: www.alejandrocartagena.com
Video on Lost Rivers: www.podcast.tv

Photographer #129: J Bennett Fitts

John Bennett Fitts, 1977, USA, is a photographer with a focus on emptiness. In his series No Lifeguard On Duty he made large color photographs of empti, 1960's-era motel swimming pools. Most of the abandoned and cracked pools are shot at sundown. In his series Industrial Landscape[ing] Fitts focuses on strangely manicured and manifactured environments. The urban environments, although familiar, get an outer worldly quality. Fitts has exhibited around the world and received various awards. The following images come from the series No Lifeguard On Duty, Industrial Landscape[ing] and Images from the center of the contigious United States.

Website: www.jbennettfitts.com

Photographer #107: Sarah Sudhoff

Sarah Sudhoff, USA, 1977, is currently working on a series called At the Hour of our Death and 2217. 2217 features four individuals with Neurofibromatosis. It causes tumors to grow throughout the body and she hopes to raise awareness and compassion when the viewer studies the nearly life size images. In her series Repository, which she also self-published as a book in 2009, she took photographs of herself and the surroundings of hospitals, morgues, medical museums and her doctor's offices. Sarah started this project after her surgery for cervical cancer. In the series At the Hour of our Death, she takes pictures of textiles that show the signs of someone passing away. The following images come from At the Hour of  our Death, Hysteria and Repository.

Website: www.sarahsudhoff.com

Photographer #062: Alejandro Chaskielberg

Alejandro Chaskielberg, Argentina, 1977, started as a photojournalist. After completing his photographic studies he worked on various documentaries as a director for television. By using fictional scenarios and playing with sharpness he has developed his own style in photography. He searches for the limits of documentary photography and water is a recurring theme in his projects. The following photographs come from the projects The High Tide, Nocturama and Borders.

Website: www.chaskielberg.com

Photographer #043: Jan von Holleben

When opening the website of German photographer Jan von Holleben, 1977, a sentence by someone greets you, one of them is: "What work I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn't have done it" by Mark Twain. This phrase symbolises the body of work by von Holleben. Throughout his photographs we see a joy of life, a personal approach and a fascination for the imagination. The following photographs come from the series Dreams of Flying, Snowbed and Cyborg Pets.

Website: www.janvonholleben.com

Photographer #014: Jonas Bendiksen

Jonas Bendiksen, 1977, is a Norwegian photographer living in New York. He is a photojournalist, but he is more than that. Represented by Magnum he travels around the globe extensively to the most remote places one could find. In 2008 his book The Places we Live was released. A three year project on poverty all over the world. Two years earlier his book Satellites was presented. He worked seven years in various remote places of the former Soviet Union. The following images come from the series The Places we Live and Satellites.

Website: www.jonasbendiksen.com