The magazine of the photo-essay
December 2016 issue
Dror Garti
To commission him or to request prints of his work: www.drorgarti.com
Dror Garti, photo-journalist, born in 1971 in Jerusalem, Israel. Dror started his career
on a long photographic journey to New-Zealand and Australia. When he returned he
decided to focus on the documentary genre as his main passion. He started his
career working for local newspapers in the Reshet Shoken network and then moved
to work for various magazines. He is involved in documenting diverse communities in
Israel - the Samaritans, Ultra-Orthodox Jews in the Hassidic courts, Asylum Seekers
and more. Dror is based today in Israel and works for few photo agencies including
Israel’s leading agency – Flash90, Hoogte Hollandse (Holland), COSMOS (France)
and INA (Sweden).
Danny Lyon
Web: www.bleakbeauty.com
Danny Lyon is a photo-journalist, writer and filmmaker.
Among his many books are The Bikeriders, Conversations with the Dead, and Knave
of Hearts. His latest non-fiction book is Like A Thief’s Dream, PowerHouse Books.
Daniel Joseph Lyon was born in Brooklyn , New York on March 16, 1942. Roosevelt
was President. World War Two was on going in Europe, Africa and Asia. Segregation
was the law of the land in 13 southern states. Native Americans were not allowed to
purchase alcohol in New Mexico. Most blacks could not or did not vote in the deep
south. Lyon attended NYC public schools in Kew Gardens and Forest Hills, Queens,
and in 1959 bought his first camera, an Exa SLR in Munich, Germany during a
summer trip, then entered the University of Chicago, where he eventually majored in
philosophy and ancient history. In 1963 he became The Student Non-violent
Coordinating Committee’s (SNCC) first photographer . Danny Lyon’s photographs
are in Museums and collections through out the world. His most recent one man show
Damian Bird
To commission him or to request prints of his work: www.damianbirdphotography.com
Damian Bird, is a photographer and photojournalist with many years of experience,
working in war zones and trouble spots around the globe. He was educated in
Photography at the Surrey College of Art and Design and at the London College of
Communication where he studied for a post graduate degree in Photojournalism.
In 2011 he founded Life Force magazine with his business partner and wife of 13 years,
Alice. As well as Editing Life Force magazine, he is currently engaged in photographing
a series of photo-essays on English culture and has recently returned to Afghanistan
(Aug 2013).
He continues to have his work published in national and international newspapers and
magazines including The Times, the Telegraph, the Express, the Observer, GQ, Esquire,
Dazed & Confused,The Face, Country Life and Geographical magazine.
He lives with his wife and four children in Devon, England.
“A free, really high quality photo-essay magazine. Fabulous!”
Stephen Fry. British actor, writer and film & documentary maker
Rafal Milach
To commission him or to request prints of his work: www.rafalmilach.com
Photographer and book artist based in Warsaw, Poland. He graduated from Academy
of Fine Arts in Katowice, Poland and Institute for Creative Photography in Opava,
Czech Republic where he currently lectures. For over a decade he has been working
on transition issues in former soviet and east block countries. This work resulted with
the monographs “The Winners” (GOST 2014), “7 Rooms” (Kehrer 2011) and “Black
Sea of Concrete” (self-published 2013). In 2012 Czytelnia Sztuki Gallery published the
book “In the Car with R” the record of Rafal’s travel with writer Huldar Breidfjord
around Iceland. Rafal’s work has been exhibited in C/O Berlin, Zacheta National
Gallery of Art and MoCA Shanghai. He received grants from Polish Ministry of Culture,
Magnum Foundation and European Cultural Foundation. His pictures and books
have been awarded with World Press Photo and Pictures of the Year International.
Works in collections of Center for Contemporary Art in Warsaw, Kiyosato Museum of
Photographic Arts in Japan, Brandts Museum for Kunst & Visuel Kultur and CO Berlin.
Rafal is a founding member of Sputnik Photos collective.
Madoka Ikegami
To commission her or to request prints of her work: www.madokaikegami.com
I am a Beijing-based freelance photographer. After completing a master's degree in
media arts in Perth, Australia, I began my career as a news and commercial shooter
before relocating my base to Japan (my home country).
I also write and have covered news features including a natural disaster and an
international murder scandal. Having a passion for portraits, I travel with my strobe
along with my usual camera gear to anywhere from Brazil's favelas to remote parts of
Mongolia, accessible only by horse. I have won a series of international photo
contents in the past two years.
Cassandra Klos
To commission her or to request prints of her work: www.cassandraklos.com
Cassandra Klos (b. 1991) is a Boston based artist. Born and raised in New Hampshire,
she earned my Bachelors of Fine Arts from SMFA in 2014. Her photographs explore
the intersection of science fiction and art in her two recent projects The Abductees
(2014) and Mars on Earth (ongoing). These projects focus on negotiating truth from
fiction; as well as the psychological ties that bind memories to imagery.
Her photographs have been featured in group exhibitions across the United States
and in solo exhibitions at the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester,
Massachusetts and the Piano Craft Gallery in Boston, Massachusetts. Her work has
been published in the The Atlantic and Boston Globe and her photojournalism
reporting has been published in TIME Magazine. She received a Yousuf Karsh Prize in
Photography (2014), an United States Emerging Photographer Award from the
Magenta Foundation (2015), and a Traveling Fellowship from the SMFA (2017). She is
the current artist-in-residence at the Mars Desert Research Station.
Martin Elkort
To request prints of his work: www.martinelkort.com
Archive contact: Stefani Twyford (photo@martinelkort.com)
Martin Elkort (1929 - 2016) was born in New York and grew up amidst the Great
Depression. He took his first professional photograph at the age of 10 while on a car
trip with his family in Baltimore. The Baltimore Sun purchased his photographs of
submerged cars during a flood and at that point, he was hooked on photography. At the
age of 15 Martin came down with polio and spent 4 months in the hospital. When he
returned home, his parents bought him his first Ciroflex, a twin-lens reflex camera, that
cost them about a week's salary at the time. After his recovery, he set out around
Manhattan taking pictures of whatever interested him.
While studying painting at Cooper Union in New York City, Martin joined the New York
Photo League, an organization of photographers that served as the center of the
documentary movement in American photography. There he studied under masters
and learned to become adept at what he refers to as 'stealth photography.' With his
camera strapped around his neck, he would walk peering down into the 2x2 inch
ground glass of the camera. He developed the skill of walking right up to a person and
Claude le Gall
To commission him or to request prints of his work: www.clgp.fr
1947 . Born in a little village on the north coast of Brittany.
1962. First photographs taken with a bakelite camera ( 6x9 cm)
1970s. Becomes a teacher of English and, at the same time, develops a deep interest
in photography. Documents his environment, in particular the life of local kelp-
gatherers whose activity will come to an end a few years later.
1981. Exhibition on Brittany at the Canon gallery in Paris.
1982. Starts work on Ireland. The project will be concluded in 1994. Some of this
work will be shown in France and in Poland.
1986. Starts a project on Galicia, the so-called Celtic part of Spain. This work is still in
progress and part of it was exhibited at Museo do Pobo Galego in Santiago de
Compostela in 2012.
1993-2013. Work distributed by Agence VU in Paris.
Has become a free-lance again and is currently organizing the work he has done over
the past 46 years.
Markku Lahdesmaki
To commission him or to request prints of his work: www.markkuphoto.com
Finnish photographer, Markku Lahdesmaki, developed an interest in photography at
an early age and by 21 he had a studio in his then hometown of Tampere. Soon after
Markku moved to London, upon which he garnered his first award: Honorary
Mention/Warsaw Poster Biennale. A career as a commercial photographer became
the new reality that would eventually lead him to California.
Devoted to his profession, Markku explores the soul of an idea across a variety of
subject matter. His photography ranges from pure painterly to complex technical
composites, manifesting itself within a steady style of adoration for the moment and
joyfulness in the opportunity to engage in a profession that seamlessly weaves its way
into his life. Calm and confident in his approach, he has educated understanding of
client objectives and the delivery of final artwork that exceeds expectations.
Markku enjoys working and traveling for both American and European clients such as:
GE, Nike, Adidas, Apple, Nokia, Microsoft, Toyota, Honda, Sony, Gillette among others.
Suzanne Stein
To commission her or to request prints of her work: suzannesteinphoto@gmail.com
I am a documentary/street photographer based in Southern California. My goals are
always to record moments and capture narratives, sometimes very fleeting, that
display emotions and outline circumstances that can reveal a truth that can be both
highly personal to the subject and, hopefully, understood as a reality or an experience
that resonates universally. I have a special interest in Downtown Los Angeles and
Skid Row, although I photograph many subjects and themes ranging from humorous
and lighthearted moments at county fairs in Southern California to social folkways at
the horse races and ironic juxtapositions I may find at the beach. My interest in
documenting daily life in Skid Row, however, is very important to me as I feel that by
doing so I am able to reveal larger truths about the deeply flawed social system that
defines life for many people and is the root cause for the plagues of drug addiction,
homelessness, violence and poverty that characterize life in this area, as well as many
others in the world today.
I went to The University Of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA and I studied fine art at
The Pennsylvania Academy Of Fine Arts and at The Art Students’ League in New York
Arka Dutta
To commission him or to request prints of his work: www.arkadutta.com
I am a Mechanical Engineer by profession, living in Kolkata and an amateur
photographer who loves to engage in social and cultural documentary related
photography. Two of my great passions in life is travel and photography. I believe that
travel broadens one's view of the world and photography is my continuous lesson of
living in the moment. I love to experience other cultures, meet different people from
diverse communities. Through my photography I seek to document my own personal
experience, and to capture the scenes and events as I see them and share them.
Living in the moment and capturing it, is my way of sharing with the world how I see
things; whether it be humorous, sad, serious, playful, profound or just plain.
Photography helps me to express my personality and how I view this world we all live
in.
Julia Gunther
To commission her or to request prints of her work: www.juliagunther.com
Julia Gunther is a Berlin born photographer who specialises in documentary projects.
She likes to explore the lives of her subjects and allow them to tell their own stories,
giving her audience a personal context in which to view her work. Her photography
series often consist of a combination of portraits and investigative images.
Julia’s photography has been exhibited in New York, London, Cape Town, South
Korea, Sydney, Amsterdam and selected by exhibitions and festivals around the globe.
Most recently, Julia’s work has been selected for the Taylor Wessing Photographic
Portrait Prize Exhibition 2016, and has won awards at The New York Photo Festival’s
The Last Picture Show 2015 and the Moscow International Foto Awards 2015.
Her work has been featured in international publications such as the New York Times
Magazine, TIME, The Independent, Marie Claire, Dazed, WIRED and the National
Geographic. Since January 2016 she has also been a regular blogger for The
Huffington Post.
was at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. He regularly shows at the Edwynn Houk Gallery in NYC.
Thomas de Wouters
To commission him or to request prints of her work: www.thomasdewouters.com
Thomas de Wouters is a Belgian photographer born in 1969. Former engineer, he is
a self taught photographer. He started photography at over 40. The choice of film
photography for his work, more than a technical choice, is connected to its relation to
time. With a film limited to 36 views, every image is dear. Taking time becomes his
ally, even in the instantaneousness of photojournalism or streetphotography. His
photographic writing is inscribed in a social, as much as artistic, research.
After stays in Lebanon, Algeria, Morocco, Cuba, he took back his camera from the
attic and it is Maïdan’s revolutionary engagement, in February 2014, which leads him
to his first real reportage which will be published later on in La Libre Belgique. Three
exhibitions of this work will be organized this same year in Brussels and Paris. He is
44 by then.
After a serious brain operation in January 2015, his second report ''Luhansk, the
Forgotten'' in April was published in the New York Times and Life Force and chosen
Homer Sykes
To commission him or to request prints of his work: www.homersykes.com
I am a professional magazine and observational documentary photographer. My
principal commissions in Britain were for what used to be called the "weekend colour
supplements" such as The Telegraph, The Sunday Times, The Observer, You and
the Sunday Express magazines. I covered weekly news for Newsweek, Time, and the
former Now! magazine, covering conflicts in Israel, Lebanon, and Northern Ireland, as
well as general news in the UK. Over the last forty-five years I have shot numerous
magazine portraits of the famous and not so famous - at home, at work and at play. I
have always worked on personal photographic documentary projects along side
commercial magazine assignments. In the 1970s I started on what has become a life
time on going project documenting traditional British folklore customs. In 1977 my
first book was published Once a Year, Some Traditional British Customs (Gordon
Fraser). In 2016 Dewi Lewis Publishing re-published this volume with over 50 'new'
images from my archive. I am the author, and co-author-photographer of nine books
about Britain as well as Shanghai Odyssey (Dewi Lewis Publishing) and On the
Road Again (Mansion Editions). The latter, an American project, was started in 1969,
while I was at college. The photographic road trip was repeated in 1971, the work was then put away for thirty years, and in
1999 and 2001 I travelled once again by Greyhound bus criss-crossing America documenting the ‘down home’ idiosyncrasy
of everyday middle America. In 2002 I set up my one-man band self-publishing concern Mansion Editions. To date Mansion
Editions has published On the Road Again and Hunting with Hounds. More recently Cafe Royal Books have published 19
zines of my work, other CRB are in the pipeline.
As an award-winning photographer I have never been busier, managing his extensive archive, working on personal
projects, and shooting new material.
My work is owned by many private collectors and national collections. I have been a Visiting Lecturer at the London
College of Communication (University of the Arts London) for over ten years. Taking group and one to one tutorials with
both MA and BA students studying Photojournalism and Documentary photography.
My vintage prints are represented by the James Hyman Gallery in London and by Francoise Morin at Les Douches La
Galerie in Paris.
City.
I was born in Kalkaska, Michigan and have lived abroad in France, Israel and Italy and travelled throughout much of
Europe.
taking their photo without them even realizing it. During this period he worked at Wildenstein & Company Gallery where he
further enhanced his photographic knowledge and technique.
After marrying in 1953, he realized he would have to support his family by means other than photography. He moved to
New Mexico where he was an art critic and staff photographer for New Mexico Magazine for several years. His family
moved to Los Angeles in the early 1960s and they spent some time in Alaska and then back to New York working in the
travel industry. After retiring in 1996, Martin wrote several books, worked as a food critic and re-ignited his interest in
photography. He currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife where he continues to enjoy his street photography. He also
writes articles about photography for Rangefinder and Black & White Magazine.
Martin Elkort's work is widely exhibited and can be found in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, The
Getty Museum, The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, The US Holocaust Memorial Museum, The Jewish Museum in
Brooklyn, The Columbus Museum of Art as well as many corporate and private collections.
Jay Seldin
To commission him or to request prints of his work: www.jayseldinphotos.com
Jay Seldin is a professional photographer, teacher, adventurer and world citizen. He
is a serious student of observation. In addition to studying with Ansel Adams and
George Tice, he has over thirty years experience as a professional exhibiting
photographer and teacher of photography in high school and colleges in the NYC
Metro area. Canson-Infinity digital papers sponsor Seldin as a Canson Artist and
Digital Printmaking expert through there Photo Ambassador program. Seldin is the
principal photographer at Jay Seldin Photography Studios in Montclair, NJ and also
owns and operates CPE Photo Workshops LLC, an international photography
workshop company. His awards and honors include Canson Infinity Artist International
program, 2010 Present, Artist-in-Residence at the Montclair Art Museum, Montclair,
NJ, 2009-2012, Artist-in-Residence at the Newark Art Museum, Newark,
NJ 2006-2011, Fellowship awards from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation,
2000-2006, Adobe PhotoShop Photo Competition, Winner 2007, Summer Artist
Residence Fellowship Grant, Provincetown Fine Arts Center-2001, and
Distinguished Educators Award from Rochester Institute of Technology 2003. His
photographs are collected by business corporations, museums and private collectors.
The Cubans is available at select bookstores and online at www.thecubansphotobook.com.
Find Seldin on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, his book website www.thecubansphotobook.com,
To travel with Jay Seldin see his website, www.cpe-photo-workshops.com
Akis Detsis
To commission him or to request prints of his work: www.akisdetsis.com
Akis Detsis was born in Athens, Greece in 1963. He studied mathematics at the
University of Athens. He has been involved with photography since 1991.
Detsis has completed three solo exhibitions (1998, 2000, 2008) and has participated
in various group shows. His work has been published in photographic magazines and
exhibited in photographic events.
Publications:
•
Spaces, 1998
•
Time In-Between, 2008
•
Athens 2001–Photographic aspects and views, 2001, Benaki museum
editions (participation)
•
Photography circle 1988-2014, 2014, (participation)
books
His love of photography also inspires a constant stream of personal work that is largely inspired by the values he holds
dear: joy of life, peace of mind and sense of humor.
With kind appreciations, both Markku’s personal projects and commissions from advertising agencies have been
recognized internationally and placed in the following awards competitions: Clio, Epica, Cannes Lions, AOP Awards, New
York Festival, CA, APA and PX3. With a nod to his native country, The Grafia Platinum Award was given to him for his
influence on Finnish Advertising.
Nick St.Oegger
To commission him or to request prints of his work: www.stoeggerphotography.com
Nick St.Oegger (b. 1988) is a documentary photographer from California, whose work
explores people and societies in limbo, dealing with themes of identity, memory and
the clash of tradition against modernity. Initially working as a news photographer for
publications in California, he has spent several years living in Albania documenting a
country in the midst of an ongoing transition from one of Europe's harshest
communist regimes. He most recently completed a multimedia project looking at the
effects of the M4 motorway on the physical and psychological space in the industrial
town of Port Talbot, Wales. This work has been exhibited at the “Altered States”
exhibition at the Ambika P3 gallery in London and “In the Winds’ Wakes” exhibition in
Port Talbot, Wales. Clients have included: Reuters, Le Monde, De Standaard, Kosovo
2.0, and the Justice and Peace Commission of Albania. Nick currently lives in London,
where he recently completed a Master’s program in documentary photography at the
University of Westminster. He is represented by Zuma Press.
Twitter: @NickStOegger Instagram: @aquietamerican
Vesselina Nikolaeva
To commission her or to request prints of her work: www.vesselinanikolaeva.com
Vesselina Nikolaeva (1976, Sofia) majors in Photography at the Art Academy of
Utrecht (the Netherlands) in 2001. In 2005 she receives The Award for Young
Photographer (in the framework of ‘De Zilveren Camera 2004 the Netherlands)
followed by the Grand Prix of the 4th International Festival of Photography 2005 in
Poland and the ‘Descubrimientos’ at Photoespana 2005 in Spain. Her work has been
exhibited in numerous galleries and museums in Bulgaria and The Netherlands and
has been a part of many international festivals in Germany, Spain, France,Poland,
Slovakia, Portugal, Greece, Belgium, Finland, Australia and the USA.
Vesselina Nikolaeva has five individual book publications; Baba (2004) , School nr.7
(2006), Simply a Line (2009) ,I’m Good I’m Great I’m Wonderful (2013) and
Yesterday when I was little (2014)
In her work, Vesselina Nikolaeva examines the socio-cultural relations in contemporary
Europe in the context of a diverse and struggling for unification political and economic
entity. Her projects represent the metamorphosis of a historically marginalized society into a main-stream European nation-
state partaking in the cultural transfer of globalization and modernization.
by 6MOIS for “Les dessous de l’image”. One of the photos is also displayed within the framework of the collective exhibition
organized by the Fournier-Majoie Foundation at the Bozar in Brussels in October, together with Magnum photographers
Max Pinckers and John Vinck.
Thomas is currently working on the notion of migration and his third report, as a trilogy – the Rush – the Wait – the
Newborn Europeans -, will be published by the Washington Post and Dysturb.