Photographer #445: Michael von Graffenried

Michael von Graffenried, 1957, Switzerland, started his career as a photojournalist in 1978. Today he lives in Paris and works on long term projects often dealing with themes of ethnology. He uses a panoramic analog camera using 35mm film yet creating impressive large-scale photographs. For Michael content comes before technology and his choice for the panoramic format came somewhat by accident. He was in Algeria during the 1990's when tension was high documenting the daily life during and after the civil war. The panoramic camera proved usefull as one can keep it on the chest while taking images. People can see the camera yet do not know that an image has been taken. Once Michael saw the results he realised the aesthetic part of this format and decided to use it. His socially engaged stories and narrative images are strong, daring and sometimes provocative. He has been in numerous exhibitions and released an enormous amount of monographs between 1980 and today. The following images come from the series Eye on Africa, Cocainelove and War without Images.

Website: www.mvgphoto.com

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 #233: Michael Light

Michael Light, 1963, USA, focuses on aerial photography. He looks at settled and unsettled areas across the USA and explores themes of mapping, human impact on land and environmental issues. He uses a handheld large format camera to make his photographs. He flies the aeroplane himself. He combines the images of each serie into a  narrative sequence and hand-makes mammoth artist's books out of them. Besides his own photography he makes books. Full Moon contains images from NASA's Apollo photographic archive and 100 Suns has images of visible nuclear testing in New Mexico. The following images come from the series White Ranch/Table Mountain/Rooney Valley, Salt River/Deadman Wash/Paradise Valley and Bingham Mine/Garfield Stack.

Website: www.michaellight.net

Photographer #199: Michael Ackerman

American photographer Michael Ackerman, 1967, Israel, works and lives in Berlin. Recently his third book Half Life came out. It contains images that focus on Poland and Berlin. Michael shows us his view of the world, made up of feelings as love, anxiety and obsessions. His photography is easily recognized due to his very dark and gritty images. His photography is a reflection of his personal malaise, his doubts and anguish. The following images come from the story Half Life, his Portrait portfolio and the story Smoke.

Website: www.agencevu.com

Photographer #102: Michael Najjar

German photographer Michael Najjar, 1966, focuses in his photography on the notion of our society being "driven and controlled by computers and information technology." He made many impressive series throughout his career. In his most recent series, High Altitude, he went to 7000 meters altitude in the Andes to photograph mountains, only to combine them with the statistics of the Nasdaq or the Dow Jones and thus visualizing the development of the leading global stock market. The series Bionic Angel deals with the technological control of human evolution. Netropolis is about the development of cities in the future. These images are a combination of twelve hybrid photographies, one videowork and one image sculpture. Following images come from the three series described above.

Website: www.michaelnajjar.com

Photographer #017: Michael Wolf

German photographer Michael Wolf, 1954 has a long list of projects behind his name. Currently he is working on a project using google streetview as his camera. The photographs of architecture in projects like Architecture in Density in Hongkong (2006) and Transparent City in Chicago (2008) are most known.

In 2009 he did a project called Tokyo Subway Dreams. As in his architectural photography, the horizon is nowhere to be found in his pictures.

Website: www.photomichaelwolf.com