Photographer #094: Richard Mosse

Richard Mosse, Ireland, 1980, finds beauty in things that are broken and in a state of decay. He went to Iraq where he made his series Breach and Nomads. He approaches the objects as sculptures instead of acts of war and drama. He has done the same in his series The Fall, where he travelled across the globe to photograph crashed airplanes. In the project Infra, he left for Congo to take images with infrared film. The images are not digitally manipulated. The following images come from Infra, The Fall and Nomads.

Website: www.richardmosse.com
Video by Richard Mosse

Photographer #093: Alexander Gronsky

Alexander Gronsky, Estonia, 1980, started working as a professional photographer in 1998 and has done various projects since then. He has recently received the FOAM Paul Huf Award. In his series Pastoral he explores wastelands within Moscow City, areas that have no definition as they are not urban nor rural. For Endless Night he travelled to Murmansk which lies behind the Artic circle, where each year the sun disappears for two months. For an editorial story he left for Naftalan in Azerbaijan. They have a supply of oil that is considered medicinal, but one can't do anything else with it, therefore it is worthless and all they can do is bathe in it. The following images come from Pastoral, Endless Night and Naftalan.

Website: www.alexandergronsky.com

Photographer #092: Brian Finke

Brian Finke, USA, 1976, is a documentary photographer that also works in advertisement for clients such as Heineken and Nike and various editorials. In 2008 his book Flight Attendants came out. He documented the people that choose to work in the skies, before, during and after their trips. In 2003 he released the book 2-4-6-8. He followed American cheerleaders and football players from around 175 different high schools in the US. The following images come from Flight Attendants, 2-4-6-8 and Frat Boys.

Website: www.brianfinke.com
For commercial work: www.trishsouth.com

Photographer #086: Phillip Toledano

Phillip Toledano, Great-Britain, 1968, lives and works in New York. In 2010 he released his third book Days with my Father. It is an intimate view into the life of Toledano's father who had lost his short-term memory. In his series A New Kind of Beauty Phillip has taken portraits of people that have enhanced their physical appearance by undergoing surgical operations. Phillip put his subjects in real costumes in his series Hope & Fear, playing with internal desires and paranoia that are adrift in contemporary American society. The following images come from the three projects described above.

Website: www.mrtoledano.com

Photographer #081: Peter Bialobrzeski

Peter Bialobrzeski, 1961, is a German photographer with an impressive number of books published in the last several years. In 2009 two books were released. One of them was Paradise Now, which deals with how we treat nature in these times of urban growth. The other is Case Study Homes about urban structures in shantytowns. In 2007 his book Lost in Transition came out, where he examines the transformations of urban wastelands in 28 different cities all over the world. The following images come from these three books.

Website: www.bialobrzeski.de

Photographer #077: Ambroise Tezenas

French photographer Ambroise Tezenas, 1972, has won various awards for his photographic work. Currently he is working on a large series called Dark Tourism. He travels to places where as a tourist you can visit sites where disaster has taken place. Examples are; the Sichuan Wenchuan Earthquake Ruins tour, where you can visit the southwestern area of China where 90000 people were killed during the earthquake, or Prypiat, the town that became a ghosttown after the Chernobyl disaster.

In 2007 his book Beijing: Theatre of the People came out about the Hutongs of Beijing and their downfall. These traditional blocks of Beijing with small alleys had to move for new large buildings with giant boulevards.

Website: www.ambroisetezenas.com

Photographer #076: Reiner Riedler

Reiner Riedler, Austria, 1968, is a photographer who has published various books. In 2009 his book Fake Holidays came out, bizarre photographs of fake places that give people a sence of adventure or a way to escape their daily life. In his most recent series Between the Lines, Reiner is trying to simulate scenes from novels he reads, thus giving his visual interpretation through staged photographs. Riedler has also travelled extensively, amongst which are many trips to Eastern Europe. Several images have been combined in his series On the way. The following images come from Fake Holidays, Between the Lines and On the way.

Website: www.photography.at

Photographer #073: Ferit Kuyas

Ferit Kuyas', Turkey, 1955, latests book Chongqing, City of Ambition was released in 2009. It is a series of photographs on one of the largest cities in the world, Chongqing, China. It is the city where his parents-in-law live. He stayed in the city that counts 32 million inhabitants on various occasions where he focused on the periphery of the city where the enormity might not be seen but rather felt. There is a natural haze in his images (although intensified by pollution). He feels the city is a metaphor for the current developments in China. The following images come from the series City of Ambition, Chinese Smokers and Shanghai Memories.

Website: www.feritkuyas.com

Photographer #070: Hans van der Meer

Dutch photographer Hans van der Meer, 1955, has been a professional photographer since the 1970's. In 1995 he started taking pictures of low division amateur football games. This resulted in books as Keepers and Dutch Fields. After covering the Dutch football fields, he moved on to the rest of Europe. These images were released in the book European Fields which came out in several languages. It has become a large archive of landscape photographs.

Website: www.hansvandermeer.nl
(Video on various projects throughout his carreer, in Dutch)

Photographer #064: Michal Chelbin

Photographer Michal Chelbin, Israel, 1974, just released her second monograph called The Black Eye. In 2008 she released the book Strangely Familiar, human stories somewhere between the odd and the ordinary. It is a series of portraits of often small-town performers, kids and dwarfs. The images are private moments in which Michal tries to address everyday questions of life. The following images are from Strangely Familiar.

The following images come from the series The Chapels.

Website: www.michalchelbin.com

Photographer #061: Simon Roberts

British photographer Simon Roberts, 1974, uses a 4x5 inch large format camera. Recently he was chosen to document the British elections. In 2009 his monograph We English was released. Photographs of the people of Britain at leisure. Themes of belonging, memory and identity play an important role in his work. This was also visible in his earlier monograph Motherland, about contemporary Russia. In Russia he also made a series called Polyarnye Nochi, pictures taken in the dusk of Northern Russia.

Website: www.simoncroberts.com

Photographer #056: Lana Slezic

Lana Slezic, Canada, 1973, comes from a Croatian family. Until the war in 1991 she went to Croatia every summer. After the war she went been back to Dubrovnik, a Unesco world heritage site where her roots lie. The following images come from her series Dubrovnik.

In Afghanistan she focused on the women of the country that is at war. Even though people may claim that women are finally free with the Taliban (partly) defeated, Slezic claims that the Afghan women are still subject to abuse, forced marriages and are in rural places mostly illiterate. Basically not a lot has changed since the war. These images come from her book Forsaken.

Another project by Lana is about Mennonites, a movement that finds it's roots in the 1500's.

Website: www.lanaslezic.com

Photographer #054: Dave Anderson

Dave Anderson, USA, 1970, is a photographer that sees beauty in the less pretty sides of life. Poverty, disaster and racism. His believe that there is something beautiful in everyone made him go to Vidor, Texas many times. Vidor is known as a stronghold of the Klu Klux Klan. He photographed the people in this town and his book Rough Beauty was released in 2006. Make sure to watch this video about Rough Beauty by pressing here.

This year his book One Block is coming out. A non linear story on the rebuilding after the Katrina disaster in New Orleans.

Following images come from his travels to Mali.

Website: www.dbanderson.com

Photographer #053: Tony Fouhse

Tony Fouhse, Canada, 1954, might be an editorial and commercial photographer, it's his personal work that is getting international attention. Since 2007 Fouhse has focused on drug addicts in his hometown Ottawa. In 2007 he made the series USER night, in 2008 USER Women and in 2009 USER Men. Even though the portrayed are evidently addicts, the portraits show people with strength and a drive for survival. Below are shot from User Men and USER Night.

On various trips Fouhse photographs what he sees. This results in series such as Christmas in the Delta.

Website: www.tonyfoto.com

Photographer #052: Ari Versluis

Dutch photographer Arie Versluis, 1961, has been working on a series called Exactitudes together with profiler Ellie Uyttenbroek, 1965, since 1994. They have worked mainly in Rotterdam, but also in various other places. Drawn by the theme of social groups and dress codes they photograph people in the similar poses. The people are chosen on the streets by how they look and what they wear. After 16 years an archive has been build. The photographs have been published in a book, that every few years is revised and reprinted.

Website: www.exactitudes.com

Photographer #049: Andrew Hetherington

Irish photographer Andrew Hetherington, 1969, photographs nearly everything. When he is on a trip you can follow him with pictures on his blog. This leads to archives of images that become an important body of work. For four years he had been taking pictures of the hotels he visited and of the views from his window, consistent, therefore also if there was nothing more than a wall. Due to the consistency in his work it is a true archive. These pictures were published in the book A Room with a View.

Andrew also concentrates on various stories. The following images come from East Bay Rats, a motorcycle club that also boxes, and Tall Paul, the tallest college basketball player ever.

Website: www.ahetherington.com

 

Photographer #038: Vanessa Winship

Vanessa Winship, Great-Britain, 1960, is a documentary photographer. In her series Sweet Nothings she has been taking photographs of schoolgirls from the borderlands of Eastern Anatolia. She continues to take all photographs in the same way; frontal and with enough distance to capture them from head to toe and still include the surroundings.

Winship now lives in Turkey and focuses on stories on countries around the black sea. The following photographs come from the series Imagened States and Desires: A Balkan Journey 1.

Website: www.vanessawinship.com

Photographer #035: Nadav Kander

Nadav Kander, Israel, 1961, lives and works in London. He is a photographer with a vast amount of projects behind his name. In a three year period he has gone upstream the Yangtze River in China documenting the development and economic rise of China and it's concequences. He was awarded the Prix Pictet in 2009 for this series.

Nadav has also photographed the entire administration of Barack Obama. The New York Times published the photographs, making it the largest collection of photographs ever published in the Times by one single photographer.

Website: www.nadavkander.com