Photographer #150: Taryn Simon

Taryn Simon, 1975, USA, won the discovery award this summer at the Rencontres d'Arles with her series The Innocents, portraits of people that have served time in prison for violent crimes they did not commit. Her Contraband series consists of 1075 images taken within 4 days at JFK airport of items seized or detained from passengers and express mail entering the US from abroad while she was on site. Taryn has received several awards, had a large amount of solo and group exhibitions and her work is in numerous public collections. The following images come from Contraband, The Innocents and An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar.

Website: www.tarynsimon.com

Photographer #149: Jeongmee Yoon

Jeongmee Yoon, 1969, South-Korea, has been working on a series called The Pink & Blue Project since 2005. She photographs children, boys and girls in their rooms with their possessions. She noticed that her daughter wanted everything in Pink and found out that she was not unusual. The work raises several issues as, for example, the relationship between gender and consumerism. Yoon's work is often inspired by human behaviour, social structures and consumerism. The following images come from the series The Pink & Blue Project, Space-Man-Space and Zoo.

Website: www.jeongmeeyoon.com

Photographer #148: Thom Kerr

Thom Kerr, 1984, Australia, is a fashion and commercial photographer. He started out in production design and wardrobe before getting behind the camera in 2005. Since then he has appeared in various magazines and worked for a large number of clients. His photography reminds us of fairy-tales and fantasy stories, but also the new wave era. Thom has exhibited in several places around the world and appeared on Germany's next top model as a guest photographer. The following images come from his portfolio's Fantasy, Classic and Beauty.

Website: www.thomkerr.com

Photographer #147: Ryan Pfluger

Ryan Pfluger, 1983, USA, is a portrait and fashion photographer who also concentrates on personal projects. As he states on his website; "his personal work has concentrated on ideas surrounding the representation of man, and more specifically of young gay man." In his project Not Without My Father he creates and re-creates memories from his relatively fatherless childhood. The project About a Boy focuses on growing up as a gay teenager in Suburbia. In both projects he uses self-portraiture. The following images come from Celebrity, Not Without My Father and About a Boy.

Website: www.ryanpfluger.com

Photographer #146: Mark Peckmezian

Mark Peckmezian, 1985, Canada, recently completed his BFA at the Ryerson University in Toronto. His book Photographs & Pictures was released in June of this year by Pogobooks. Mark focuses on portraits and most of his photography is black & white. He has been featured in several magazines and was selected for the traveling Flash Forward exhibition. The first two rows of images come from his portfolio Photographs and the last row from his portfolio Pictures.

Website: www.markpeckmezian.com

Photographer #145: Ivo Mayr

Ivo Mayr, 1975, is a German photographer that plays with gravity and angles. In 2007 he made an artistic portrait of the city of Koblenz. He took the two most important things, the architecture and the people that live in it and combined the two together. He found the people in the streets and portrayed them detached from the ground, hanging and floating. He named the images Passanten, which means "Passers-Bye". In the series Leichtkraft he played with optical illusions and carefully chose his angles to make it seem that the portrayed are in impossible positions. The following images come from the series Passanten, Stadt Land Flucht and Leichtkraft.

Website: www.ivomayr.com

Photographer #144: Carlos Alvarez Montero

Carlos Alvarez Montero, 1974, Mexico, is a photographer that focuses on identity, indiviuality and appearances. After 12 years of working in Mexico City as a photographer he decided to go to New York to complete a two year MFA program at the School of Visual Arts. For his series Scars he made 20 portraits of people from Mexico City that decided to engrave ink marks on their neck or face as a statement of their life experiences. Throughout his projects the theme of identity is apparent. The following images come from his projects Scars, Covers (Adopt & Adapt) and M (De Michoacán).

Website: www.alvarezmontero.com

Photographer #143: Renan Cepeda

Renan Cepeda, 1966, Brazil, has been doing research with infrared film since 1991, making especially landscape photography essays using this technique. More recently Renan has worked with Tungsten film making images at night. Using a flashlight, long exposures and color filters he has created stunning and surreal images of people and abandoned houses. The following images come from his series Night Paintings, Vão de Almas and Corações ao Alto.

Website: www.renancepeda.com

Photographer #142: Chris Jordan

Chris Jordan, 1963, USA, focuses on mass-consumption in his work. He has made a series of images called Running the Numbers. The images look normal at first, but one can zoom in and see that the pictures are made up of thousands of barbies or cigarette packs. (see website) Chris hopes to visualize the amount of goods we consume. In his series Midway: Message from the Gyre he has photographed Albatross chicks that have died because they were being fed waste caused by humans by their parents. Chris has not moved or added anything to the corpses. The following images come from Midway, Intolerable Beauty and In Katrina's Wake.

Website: www.chrisjordan.com

Photographer #141: Olaf Heine

Olaf Heine, 1968, Germany, is a portrait and celebrity photographer. His images have been used on numerous album covers. This September his book I love you but I've chosen Rock was released and in 2008 he released a book called Leaving the Comfort Zone. Next to being a photographer Olaf has also directed music video's, commercials and a short film. Sting, Iggy Pop, Rammstein and many others have been in front of his camera. The following images come from his portfolio's Celebrities, 15 Minutes and The Heart has Reasons.

Website: www.olafheine.com

Photographer #140: Song Chao

Song Chao, 1979, China, is a photographer with an interesting story. He started working in 1997 at a coal mine. While working there he started taking pictures of his fellow workers in 2001. He was uneducated and an amateur. His series Miners has been compared to the photographs of Richard Avedon, but Song was unaware of these images or any western photography at the time when he started taking the portraits. His photography focuses not only on the miners, but also the community that surrounds the miners, their families and the landscapes. His photographs have been exibited around the globe. The following images come from the series Miners I, Miners II and Coal-Mine Community.

Website: www.songchao.cn

Photographer #139: Christian Kettiger

Christian Kettiger, 1962, Switzerland, is a beauty and portrait photographer. Christian got into photography after seeing the work of Guy Bourdin in Zoom Magazine. He has worked for clients as La Roche-Posay and Pantene. Besides his commercial work he also makes personal work. He went to  Gibsonton, a town in Florida that is known for the circus people or "freaks" that spend the off-season there. The following images come from his portfolio's Beauty, Celebrities and Personnel.

Website: www.kettiger.com

Photographer #138: Paolo Woods

Paolo Woods, 1970, The Netherlands, grew up in Italy and currently works and lives in Paris. He has published various books together with journalist Serge Michel. Paolo concentrates on long-term projects that are news related, but not "hard news." He travels the world, from Afghanistan to Algeria and from China to Nigeria for his in-depth stories. In his series Chinafrica or China Safari he focused on Chinese workers and investers in Africa. These Chinese businessmen go to some of the most dangerous places to set up their business and to make money. The following images come from the stories Walk on my Eyes,  Chinafrica and Oil / A Crude World.

Website: www.paolowoods.net

Photographer #137: Manit Sriwanichpoom

Manit Sriwanichpoom, 1961, Thailand, is a photographer as much as an activist. He got international recognition for his series This Bloodless War in 1997. Iconic images were re-enacted and the issue of consumerism was added. In 1997 Manit also invented the Pink Man and has since then never stopped making series about the Pink Man. This man in a pink suit has become the icon for consumerism, walking around as a robot with a shopping cart. It is impressive to see the entire body of work of the Pink Man. The following images come from Horror in Pink 2001, Ordinary Extraordinary and Thailand, Masters.

Websites: www.rama9art.org & www.agencevu.com

Photographer #136: Tamara Dean

Tamara Dean, 1976, is an Australian photographer. She is part of the Oculi photographic collective (devoted to illuminating the real lives and stories often overlooked by mainstream media) and works as a staff photographer for the Sydney Morning Herald. Her most recent series of images is This too shall pass, Australia. About the project she says: "These pictures come from the hem of life. From a city broken down. Subjects un-grown-up. I feel as though I am conjuring something in these photographs." Her work has been exhibited at leading galleries in Australia. The following images come from the series This too shall pass, Australia, Divine Rites and Ritualisms.

Website: www.oculi.com.au  & www.agencevu.com

Photographer #135: Xing Danwen

Xing Danwen, 1967, China, currently lives and works in Beijing. She has been taking photographs of maquettes since 2004. Xing then takes pictures of herself playing various characters to add them to the image of the maquette. The prints are more than two meters wide, that's when the viewer can see the stories that unfold on the photograph. To see detail examples go to her website. The following images come from the series Urban Fiction, Duplication and Disconnexion.

Website: www.danwen.com

Photographer #134: Myoung Ho Lee

South-Korean photographer Myoung Ho Lee, 1975, photographs trees. He frames the trees against white canvas backdrops, seperating the tree from it's original surrounding. Although the images might seem simple, to get his result requires a production crew and heavy cranes to install the canvases. Afterwards he removes the ropes or bars that might still be visible by minimal digital retouching. The trees are photographed using a large-format camera. The following images are all from the Tree series.

Unfortunately Myoung Ho Lee does not have a website, for more information go to: www.yossimilo.com/artists/myou_ho_lee/