Photographer #435: Bharat Sikka

Bharat Sikka, 1973, India, is a documentary photographer who also concentrates on editorial and advertising work. He moved to New York to study at the Parsons School of Design where he earned a BFA in photography. His personal work concentrates on contemporary visions of India. His recent series Matter blends studio, street, landscape and portrait photography. Combined they form a portrait of the "new" India. It is Bharat's vision of a fast changing country. His narrative editorial work often show females in film-like settings, photographed in a unique, documentary style. Amongst his numerous editorial clients are Vogue India, Another magazine, Time, ID and Wallpaper. His work has been exhibited throughout the world as the Rencontres d'Arles photography festival and the Helsinki Art Museum. He works and lives between India and Europe. The following images come from the series Matter, Salvador do Mundo and various Fiction portfolios.

Website: www.bharatsikka.com

Photographer #434: Peter Hapak

Peter Hapak, 1973, Hungary, is a versatile photographer based in the US. He works for commercial and editorial clients, but his main focus lies on portraiture and the human body. For Time Magazine he has created impressive series, of which the latest is called The Protester. Time had named the Protester as person of the year 2011 and commisioned Hapak to travel to seven different countries to portray the protesters. In countries as Egypt, Spain, Greece and Tunesia he set up a makeshift studio in hotel rooms, anarchist headquarters and even in a temple in India. Peter also asked the portrayed to bring mementos of protest. Amongst the objects brought were Iphones, rubber pellets and Maalox, a substance used to counter the effects of tear gas. Another story he focused on were the Chilean miners that were trapped in  2010 which resulted in a strong series of black and white portraits. Peter has photographed a vast amount of celebrities as Robin Williams, Bono and Colin Firth. The following images come from the series The Protester, The Art of War: Honoring the Fallen for a Lifetime and Finding the Chilean Miners.

Website: www.phapak.net & lightbox.time.com

Photographer #393: Marco Vernaschi

Marco Vernaschi, 1973, Italy, is a photojournalist with a very distinct signature. He has covered various intense stories around the globe. Child Sacrifice deals with the fraudulent phenomenon of child witches, organ trafficking and child sacrifice. The motive for the killing, mutilation and torture of these children however is merely economical. In Guinea Bissau he focused on narco trafficking and the criminal networks. Latin American drug cartels and the Lebanese Islamist group Hezbollah use the region for illegal trade of cocaine, oil and human trafficking amongst other things. This has resulted in organized crime, prostitution, an aids epidemic and the assasination of its president, army chief and two leading politicians. One of his latest bodies of work is Placebo, which is an inward journey of Marco himself. It focuses on sex, death and his own sexual-related experiences. It is a conceptual project in which he has tried to understand his life better and to heal from his scars and memories. The images are a combination of direct experiences, visions and fragments of dreams. It is a strong, direct and intense project that includes a poetic layer. The following images come from the series Placebo, Child Sacrifice and West Africa's New Achilles' Heel.

Website: www.marcovernaschi.com

Photographer #370: Liu Bolin

Liu Bolin, 1973, China, is a sculptor and conceptual photographer. He received a B.A. from Shandong University of Arts in Jinan and an M.F.A. in sculpture at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. When in 2005 the Chinese government ordered the demolition of the Beijing International Art Camp which housed Liu's studio he created an image as a response. He painted his body against the rubble of the demolished building. It was the first image of the extended body of work entitled Hiding in the City. His entire body is painted to create an effect that makes him fade away into the background. Due to this body of work he is also called "The Invisible Man". Some of his work is a protest against the actions of the Chinese government and other pieces deal with other social issues as the process of urbanization in contemporary China. His photographs always possess a clear thought and statement. He also created images in Milan, Venice and New York. The images have been exhibited throughout the world. The following works come from the series Hiding in the City and Dragon Series.

Unfortunately Liu does not have a website. To see a large selection of his work please visit: www.ekfineart.com & www.boxartgallery.com

Photographer #363: Phil Poynter

Phil Poynter, 1973, UK, is a fashion photographer working in the photography markets of London, New York, Paris and Milan. He started his career as a creative director of Dazed & Confused. During the five years of collaboration with the magazine he became a regular contributor as a photographer. He focuses on fashion and advertising photography as well as celebrity portraiture. His work has appeared in large and influential magazines as Vogue, Numero, L'uomo Vogue and GQ Style. He has done large production photoshoots for commercial clients as Lacoste, Louis Vuitton and Thomas Pink. For Prada he shot large groups of people creating fashionable images that remind us of the North Korean Mass Games. The following images come from Ponystep Monotone Symphony and from his archive.

Website: www.philpoynter.com

Photographer #346: Tiane Doan Na Champassak

Tiane Doan Na Champassak, 1973, France, started his photographic career with documentary photography. Now he focuses on fine art photography, however still concentrating on the human being as his subject. His work revolving around acts of faith and questions of identity become close to abstracts photographs. He has released various monographs for which he has traveled to many places around the world as India, Ethiopia, Burma, The Netherlands and others. His project Kolkata is scheduled to be released as a book in 2011. In the city of Calcutta he focused on the extremes; quiet and loud, clean and dirty, modern and old. The continuous duality became his leitmotiv and the reason to concentrate on street life to best represent the chaos of the huge city. The following works come from the series Spleen and Ideal, No Photo and Kolkata.

Website: www.champassak.com

Photographer #340: Xavier Delory

Xavier Delory, 1973, Belgium, is a conceptual photographer with a focus on architecture. He studied Interior Architecture, Computer Graphics / 3D and Photography. He is currently working on his series Formes Urbaines. He studies the recurrent characteristics of modern cities, with Brussels as his first field of research. The series consists of three chapters, Bare d'ilôt, Dom-ino and Façade Libre. In his series Fermé le Dimanche he questions whether commercial centres are the new temples of our society. He combined religious architectural forms with supermarkets and other stores. In Habitat he focused on the recognizable style of Belgian houses which he uses to explore the concept of protection. By eliminating windows, doors and any other openings in usual houses he pushes this to its extremes. Xavier has exhibited his work on numerous occasions throughout Belgium and France. The following images come from the series Formes Urbaines (Dom-ino), Fermé le Dimanche and Habitat.

Website: www.xavierdelory.be

Photographer #328: Finlay MacKay

Finlay MacKay, 1973, UK, is a Scottish commercial and editorial photographer. He studied Fine Art photography at the Glasgow School of Art. In 2002, after having assisted various photographers in London, he began working for himself. He has done commercial shoots for a large number of major brands as Diesel, Virgin Atlantic and Absolut. Finlay also works with athletes and does photo shootings for Nike, Adidas and Umbro. He has done a lot of editorial work for the New York Times Magazine and in 2009 he became a lead photographer for Time Magazine. The following images come from campaigns for Lavazza and Adidas and from his portfolio Celebrities & Musicians.

Website: www.finlaymackay.com

Photographer #326: Lynsey Addario

Lynsey Addario, 1973, USA, is a photojournalist who has traveled to many conflict zones. She has been to numerous countries in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. She often focuses on the situations of women in these places, where violence or poverty are part of daily life. Since 2000, while still under the Taliban rule, she has been to Afghanistan on many occasions. A recent body of work is Veiled Rebellion, a photo essay exploring the lives of women in Afghanistan. The series was featured in the December issue of the National Geographic. She has received numerous awards. Lynsey is a self-taught photographer. While covering the unrest in Lybia she was captured by the troops of Ghaddafi for six days. The following images come from the series Veiled Rebellion, Women at War and Darfur.

Website: www.lynseyaddario.com

Photographer #290: Diego Levy

Diego Levy, 1973, Argentina, is a documentary photographer. In his series Choques, he photographed crashed cars. His intention was not to sensationalize the crash itself, but to show the violence and intensity of these impacts caused by negligence, lack of driver skills and the lack of respect for life of themselves and others. The cars that become broken sculptures in Buenos Aires function as a metaphor of the widespread violence. The images in his series Sangres, taken in Argentine, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico show gritty scenes of violence. The photographs of injuries and deaths show the reality of what has become almost a daily scenario for the inhabitants of these cities. Sangres was released as a book in 2006. Golpes is a series of portraits accompanied by a video production of old boxers that have given their lives to the sport. The faces show the scars from the beatings, referring to their dark past and the sacrifices they have made. The following images come from the series Choques, Sangres and Golpes.

Website: www.diegolevy.com

Photographer #251: James Mollison

British photographer James Mollison, 1973, born in Kenya, published his latest book Disciples in 2008. For three years he photographed fans outside various concerts. He was fascinated by the different tribes of people and how they copied their favourite stars. In 2004 the book James & Other Apes came out. James was struck by the similarity of the human face to the faces of monkeys. He photographed the monkeys in various places on this planet using the aesthetic of the passport photograph. The following images come from the series The Disciples, James & Other Apes and Hunger.

Website: www.jamesmollison.com

Photographer #248: Percy Dean

Percy Dean, 1973, Great-Britain, started photographing at a young age around his love of skateboarding. In 1997 he founded Document Magazine, an internationally renowned skateboard / lifestyle magazine and held the position of editor and senior photographer for over a decade. In 2009 he was commissioned to shoot the 1966 Photo-Book for Vans footwear. Amongst his clients are various skateboarding brands and magazines. In 2008 he completed an MA in photojournalism and documentary photography. His series Clouds of Glory is about an Orthodox Jewish community on the outskirts of Manchester, documenting a society he had no prior knowledge of, wanting to show the struggle to maintain their culture within the wider community. Percy's photography style is very direct and without pretence. The following images come from the portfolio's Vans 1966 Photo-Book, People and Clouds of Glory.

Website: www.percydean.com

Photographer #243: Straulino

Alexander Straulino, 1973, Germany, better known just as Straulino, is a beauty photographer who lives and works in Berlin. In his images the models become sculptures with rich colours. He is open to experimentation and often closes in on body parts as the eyes or the lips. He adds a whiff of eroticism in his photographs. The women in Straulino's images become larger than life and have an outer-worldly quality to them. In 2006 he released the book Playtime and in 2011 his book Straulino N°2 came out. His images have been published in numerous magazines as Another Magazine, Russian and German Vogue and Harpers Bazaar. Amongst his clients are Douglas, Wella and Schweppes. The following images come from the portfolio's Beauty Three, Beauty Two and Beauty One.

Website: www.straulino.com

Photographer #238: Angelo Musco

Angelo Musco, 1973, Italy, makes larger than life photographs that consist of an uncountable number of bodies. As the photographs are made up of numerous images they are very sharp and invite the viewer to go on a quest of discovery. In his series Tehom, which in Hebrew means; the deep, and in Greek means Abyss, he created an unseen and mysterious underwater world in which he plays with reality. One of the photographs is called Hadal after the Hadopelagic Zone meaning the deepest trenches of the ocean. In reality this zone is found at 6000 meters depth, but there is still life in these harsh regions. As the people in his image, the life at this depth lack any pigmentation as coloration is useless in an environment with no light. His website shows details images of his work. The following works are Tehom, Tehom: Hadal and Aranea.

Website: www.angelomusco.com

 

Photographer #210: Jason Nocito

Jason Nocito, 1973, USA, is a rock, lifestyle and fashion photographer. At a young age he started taking pictures of bands and his friends hanging out at concerts. He studied photography at the Parsons School of Design and graduated in 1996. Nowadays Jason shoots campaigns for big clients as Apple, Nike and MTV. He has seen various celebrities and musicians in front of his camera as Emile Hirsch and Mary Kate Olsen. His photography is full of vibrance, youth and a sense of freedom. The following images come from I Heart Transylvania, the campaign Skins and various other portfolio's.

Website: www.jasonnocito.com

Photographer #206: Cig Harvey

British photographer Cig Harvey, 1973, lives in Boston and on the coast of Maine. She uses photography as a means to tell stories. Often her work is a reflection of her own life and the things she has experienced. This is why she often uses herself as the subject in her images. She is also fascinated by vintage dresses which often end up being used in her photographs. Cig has exhibited extensively throughout the USA and several European cities. The following images come from her portfolio's Thoughts Like Five Fingers Spread, An Archaeology of Distraction and The Impossible Tasks.

Website: www.cigharvey.com

Photographer #171: Asger Carlsen

Asger Carlsen, 1973, Denmark, released a monograph with the title Wrong. The images inside the book seem to be images that anyone could take. They are shot with the built-in flash of a simple camera resembling photographs that one can find in everyone's home. However, the images of Asger are "wrong", they contain elements that are impossible and it's is hard to see how the photographer has achieved this. Carlsen' photography is disturbing, humorous and well composed. The following images come from the book Wrong and the series Hester.

Website: www.asgercarlsen.com