Masters of photography
A photograph is a subjective impression. It is what the photographer sees. No matter how hard we try to get into the skin, into the feeling of the subject or situation, however much we empathize, it is still what we see that comes out in the images, it is our reaction to the subject and in the end, the whole corpus of our work becomes a portrait of ourselves
Margaret Michaelis-Sachs was an Austrian-Australian photographer of Polish-Jewish origin. In addition to her many portraits, her architectural scenes of Barcelona and her images of the Jewish quarter in Kraków in the 1930s are of lasting historical interest.
Born in Dzieditz near Bielsko in southern Poland (then Austria-Hungary) on April 6, 1902, she was the daughter of Heinrich Gross, a well-to-do Jewish doctor. She studied photography at Vienna’s Graphische Lehr-und Versuchsanstalt from 1918 to 1921
In 1922, still in Vienna, she first worked for a period at the Sudio d’Ora before spending a number of years at the Atelier für Porträt Photographie. She went on to work for Binder Photographie in Berlin and Fotostyle in Prague, and finally returned to Berlin in 1929 to work intermittently for a variety of studios during the hard times of the Depression.
In October 1933, she married Rudolf Michaelis who, as an anarcho-syndicalist, was almost immediately arrested and imprisoned by the Nazis. In December 1933, after Rudolf’s release, the couple moved to Spain but they separated shortly afterwards. In Barcelona, Michaelis opened her own studio, Foto-elis. Collaborating with a group of architects, she produced documentary images of progressive architecture which were published in Catalan journals such as D’Ací i d’Allà and, after the start of the civil war, Nova Iberia.
After returning to Poland in 1937, she obtained a German passport, went to London and, in September 1939, emigrated to Australia, first working as a house maid in Sydney. In 1940, she opened her “Photo-studio”, becoming one of the few women photographers in Sydney. She specialized in portraits, especially of Europeans, Jews and people in the arts, many published in Australia and Australian Photography. A member of the photographers’ associations of New South Wales and Australia, in 1941 she was the only woman to join the Institute of Photographic Illustrators.
Margaret Michaelis’ photographic career came to an end in 1952 as a result of poor eyesight. In 1960, she married Albert George Sachs, a glass merchant. She died on 10 October 1985 in Melbourne.
In her early life, Michaelis used the sharp focus and sometimes unusual vantage points of modernist photography while her portraits sought to reveal the psychological essence of her sitters. Her portraits were primarily focused on capturing the lives of Jewish immigrants. Of particular significance is the small set of scenes from the Jewish market in Kraków taken in the 1930s. Helen Ennis of the National Gallery of Australia stated the images “carry the weight of history, offering a visual trace of a way of life that was destroyed by fascism”.
Lisa Lesourd is a freelance Parisian Photographer.
She graduated from the CE3P school in Paris, where she studied the arf of photography.
She has a taste for portraits and impromptu snapshots of every day life.
Lu Nan is given the name “the most legendary photographer in China”. His legend comes from his unique characteristic and his mysterious creative experience. During fifteen years’ of his photography career, Lu has been a preacher of imagery. For many people in the Chinese photography world, he seems to be even more famous in the “art” circle. One of his early pieces Add One Meter to a Nameless Hill has become one of the classic images in the Chinese contemporary art history. Lu is the first Chinese photographer who’s recognized by the well-known Magnum Photos. He is also the only Chinese photographer that had been featured in the APERTURE magazine. Lu is constantly invited to participate in numerous exhibitions; however, he is extremely selective about the exhibitions he is involved with. Lu also refused to have his portrait taken by others, so it’s very rare to see any photo documentations of him. For fifteen years, Lu has been leading a life that’s almost like a monk, spending his time working and studying. Lu believes in that “good stuff comes out of reticence.”
Manuel Carrillo nació en la Ciudad de México en 1906. A la edad de 16 años, en 1922, Carrillo fue de México a Nueva York donde realizó varios trabajos antes de convertirse en campeón de vals y tango con Arthur Murray. Durante este período, en Nueva York, se puso a trabajar para la firma de Wall Street Neuss Hesslein, pero en 1930 regresó a su pais. Allí comenzó a trabajar para uno de los pioneros de la industria turística mexicana Albert L. Bravo. Carrillo luego abandonó esa posición para convertirse en el agente general de la oficina del Ferrocarril Central de Illinois en la ciudad de México, donde permaneció durante treinta y seis años, hasta su retiro. A la edad de 49 años, se unió al Club Fotográfico de México y la Sociedad Fotográfica de América. Su primera exposición internacional, titulada, Mi Pueblo, se llevó a cabo en 1960 en la Biblioteca Pública de Chicago y representa la vida cotidiana en el México rural. Desde 1975, el trabajo de Carrillo se ha visto en 209 exposiciones individuales y 27 exposiciones grupales en México, los Estados Unidos, y en todo el mundo. En 1980, la Sociedad Fotográfica de América nombro a Carrillo Ciudadano de Honor de El Paso, Texas, donde su archivo fotográfico esta en la Biblioteca Pública de El Paso. Su trabajo ha sido publicado en una variedad de antologías fotográficas y revistas. Carrillo murió en la Ciudad de México en 1989 a la edad de 83 años.
I am a photographer living in Romania. Oddball of the family and art lover since I was a weeping little girl.
I have received different awards in international competitions such as: PDN Faces, International Photography Awards (IPA), Paris Prix de la Photographie, Sony World Photography Awards, Travel Photographer of the Year, The Irish Times Photography Awards, and the Moscow International Photo Award.
Jindřich Štreit is a Czech photographer and pedagogue known for his documentary photography. He concentrates on documenting the rural life and people of Czech villages. He is considered one of the most important exponents of Czech documentary photography.
Tamara Merino is an independent documentary photographer and photojournalist based in Chile focusing on social and cultural issues, identity and migration. She has projects on female migration in Chile, opal mining in Australia, LGBT community in Mexico and local communities in Brasil, among others. Her work has appeared in multiple online and print publications worldwide including National Geographic, The Washington Post, Der Spiegel, Wired, Fish Eye Magazine, Joia Magazine, Folha de Sao Paulo, Roads and Kingdoms and Sydney Morning Herald, among others.
Tamara was selected to participate in the 2015 World Press Photo Latin America Masterclass and her work is currently exhibited in Washington D.C. as part of the 2017 World Press Photo side exhibition. She was finalist for the Magnum Foundation’s and Inge Morath Award 2016 and her work is part of the Photographic Museum of Humanity PHMuseum. Tamara was awardee for the Foundry Photojournalism scholarship 2017, was selected to participate in the “FIFV” Internacional Festival of Photography in Valparaiso 2017 and was selected for the Portfolio Review of ERRANTE International Photography Festival 2017.
Tamara has a degree in photography at the Universidad del Pacífico of Santiago, Chile and a residency of photography at the School of Visual Arts in New York. She is part of Women Photograph and Ladera Sur.
Kryn Taconis (b. Rotterdam, 1918) was the only Dutchman who has ever been a member of the legendary Magnum photo agency. He made his first photographs during the Second World War, in the course of producing false documents for the resistance. He also worked for the Underground Camera, a group of Dutch photographers who secretly recorded the German occupation. After joining Magnum in 1950, he want to Algeria in 1957 to photograph the activities of the FLN (Front de Liberation National) there. For two weeks the recorded the guerrilla war that the Algerian resistance movement conducted from the woods against the French colonialists.The FLN fought with weapons captured from the French. Good contacts in the countryside provided for sufficient food and clothing. During the time he was with them, the resistance group attacked a French convoy. According to the French radio eight guerrillas were killed in the action, while in reality no one was even wounded.
Born in Townsville, Australia in 1972, Christopher’s fascination for photography and art started at a very young age through the influence of his Italian father, Peter Tovo. Peter was a photographer who trained in Italy under Fornasa Tarcisiso before migrating to Australia.
As Christopher grew, so did his curiosity for his father’s camera collection. One day, to his father’s dismay, Christopher decided to dismantle one of the cameras, to ‘find out what happens inside’. Peter sent Christopher to the library with a list of three names. Richard Avedon, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa were the subjects of his homework and they proved to have an everlasting effect, along with many years of mentoring from his father.
Christopher attended photography school, albeit briefly. Traditional scholastic methods weren’t to his liking. Instead he took to apprenticing, which gave him a well-rounded education in photography and showed him how to apply his knowledge in the real world. He hasn’t looked back since.
Christopher’s scope as a photographer is both broad and deep. His uncomplicated, ‘gut instinct’ approach to his work exposes a subtle appreciation for life in all its diversity. A classicist at heart, Tovo subconsciously seeks out the timelessness in any given situation presented to him.
Tovo’s strengths lie in Portraiture and Reportage. He was a finalist in the 2006 Archibald Prize and has been commissioned by the Vatican, in conjunction with the Mary MacKillop Foundation, to photograph Pope John Paul II. Merely casting a quick glance over the many people and locations he has documented display his talent for engaging with his subjects and their environments, no matter how foreign.
Christopher has had a highly successful career as a commercial photographer, proving his ability to meld the worlds of art and commerce. His extensive client list includes: Rolling Stone, Nike, The Australian Ballet; Coca-Cola; Fosters; Crown Lager; Foxtel; The Sydney Morning Herald; Universal Records; Myer; Levi’s; Vodafone; Jack Daniels; The Australian Defence Force; Canon; The National Australia Bank; The Commonwealth Bank; Tennis Australia; Ford Motors; The Australian Football League; Schweppes; Qantas; Holden; and Adidas, to name a few.
A retrospect of Christopher’s career has appeared in Australian Photography Magazine. He has also been invited to speak at schools, universities and photography colleges in both Sydney and Melbourne. In 2010 Christopher’s famous “Leopard on Toilet” shot earned him two honourable mentions in the 2010 International Photography Awards. In 2011 Capture Magazine named him fashion photographer of the year.
Christopher’s debut as director and cinematographer for “The Tradesman Series” saw him as a finalist in the prestigious One Show Awards in NYC, a screening at the New York Surf Film Festival, Byron Bay surf film festival and finalist in both Best Director and Best Cinematographer at The Melbourne Advertising and Design Club Awards. In 2013 Christopher received an honourable mention at the International Photography Awards for his ‘Corona’ series as well as Capture Magazine placing him in the top 5 travel photographers in Australia and New Zealand. In 2014 “Mark of a Champion” featuring Rod Laver earn’t a Grand Clio (the award show’s highest honour). Plus three New York Festival finalists and a highly commended in ADMA Print category in Australia. That same year Christopher also won a Gold Lion at Cannes for his print contribution to the RSL “Minute of Silence” campaign.
Roger Corbeau, born November 20, 1908, in Haguenau, Alsace, was drawn to the cinema from a very young age. He moved to Paris in 1932 and began helping with props on film sets, first for Roger Richebé, then for Marcel Pagnol.
Who hired Corbeau as a movie stills photographer in 1933. They worked together for six years. With his demanding work ethic and talent, Corbeau quickly became a force in the French cinema. His photographs serve as a fervent tribute to the actors who left their mark on the medium from the 1930s to the 1980s. Corbeau took pictures on the sets of 160 films.
Corbeau is not a stills photographer in the usual sense of the term. He quickly decided to break out of the promotional limits of his role, imposing his own vision on the actors and the film, going so far as to arrange the performers himself. Fascinated by the human face, Corbeau developed an art combining a keen dramatic sense with a search for an ideal beauty. Mostly shot with a Rolleiflex on 6 x 6 cm film, the photographs were cropped by Corbeau himself.
He attached enormous importance to the printing process. His prints were often dense, and he would create a blurred effect by placing a silk stocking under the enlarger lens. These characteristics are what make Corbeau’s visual universe unique and immediately recognizable.
Corbeau died in Paris in September 1995, followed a major retrospective of his work, organized by the French Ministry of Culture at the Hôtel de Sully, Paris.
Born on 16th August 1928, Ara Güler is a Turkish photojournalist, also known as Istanbul’s Eye. He studied at Getronagan Armenian High School. His father owned a pharmacy, but had many friends that belonged to the world of art. Ara came into contact with these people and they inspired him to opt for a career in films/cinema. He worked in film studios and joined courses of drama under Muhsin Ertuğrul. Later, he leaned towards journalism and abandoned cinema. In 1950 he joined Yeni Istanbul, a Turkish newspaper, as a photojournalist. During the same time, he studied economics from University of Istanbul. Then he started working for Hürriyet.
In 1958 when Time-Life, an American publication opened its Turkey branch, Ara Güler became its initial correspondent. Soon enough he started to get commissioned by other international magazines, such as Stern, Paris Match, and Sunday Times, London. In 1961, he was hired by Hayat magazine as the chief photographer.
In this time, he met Marc Riboud and Henri Cartier-Bresson, who recruited him to join Magnum Photos. Ara was presented in 1961 British Photography Yearbook. In the same year, the American Society of Magazine Photographers made him the first Turkish photographer to become the member of this organization.
In 1960s, Ara’s work was used in books by notable authors as a means of illustration and were shown at different exhibitions around the world. In 1968, his work was displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in a show called, Ten Masters of Color Photography. Moreover, his photographs were also shown in Cologne’s fair, Photokina in Germany. Two years later,Türkei, his photography album was published. His images related to art and its history were featured in magazines, like Horizon, Life, Time, and Newsweek.
Ara’s philosophy on photography is that he attaches great importance to the presence of humans in photography and considers himself as a visual historian. According to him, photography should provide people with memory of their suffering and their life. He feels that art can lie but photography only reflects the reality. He does not value art in photography so he prefers photojournalism.
He has won several awards for his work, including Turkey’s Photographer of the Century, 1999; Master of Leica, 1962; France’s Légion d’honneur; Lifetime Achievement Lucie Award, 2009; and Turkey’s Grand Prize of Culture and Arts, 2005. In 2004, he was give honorary fellowship by Istanbul’s Yıldız Technical University.
Avishek Das is an Indian born Photographer. Over the past 6 years he has been actively associated with this field of photography. He is the Chairman of Creative Art Solution – A Registered Photography Club of India under Federation of Indian Photography & Liason Officer of Master of Light Photographic Association for Asia & India.
His photographs and writings have already been published in different Websites & Photo competition in national & International level ( Italy , France , Argentina , Serbia, Romania , Wales , Greece , Canada , China , Bosnia , Malaysia , Bulgaria , Bosnia , Macedonia, Turkey , UK , Bangladesh , Slovakia , UAE , Indonesia ) , National Geographic India & US Edition (35 Times) , 1X .com , Vogue , Dodho Magazine , Asian Photography , Better Photography , 121 Clicks , Creativeimagemagazine and many more .He bagged more than 250+ Awards (National & International) including Bronze,Silver & Gold Medal from Royal Photographic Society , Photographic Society of America , International Association of Art Photographers , United Photographers International , Fédération Internationale de l’Art Photographique for his Photographic works .
His significant achievement like – Grand Winner of Ariano Film Festival – Italy (Digital Photo Category) , ICICI Bank Privilege Moments Zonal Category Winner (India) , Asian Photography Artistique Special Mention Award (India) , Metropolis Asia Runner Up Award – Street Photo Category , Finalist in HIPA Award & Siena International Photo Award , Silver Medal Winner in Px3 Paris Global Photo Award , National Award Winner- Sony World Photography Awards . He has also been Rated World No 1 Top Exhibitor in Photographic Society of America’s Who’s Who In Photography Book 2016 – Photo Jouranism Section.
He has been Appointed as Jury Member from Russia , Bosnia , Serbia , India for different International Photography Competitions. For his Photographic Development & Achievement recently he has been Awarded with Distinction EFIAP (Excellence FIAP) from Fédération Internationale de l’Art Photographique (France) and Crown Level 2 by Global Photographic Union , SSS/Y by Sille Art Gallery , Turkey.
Larry Towell’s business card reads ‘Human Being’. Experience as a poet and a folk musician has done much to shape his personal style. The son of a car repairman, Towell grew up in a large family in rural Ontario. During studies in visual arts at Toronto’s York University, he was given a camera and taught how to process black and white film.
A stint of volunteer work in Calcutta in 1976 provoked Towell to photograph and write. Back in Canada, he taught folk music to support himself and his family. In 1984 he became a freelance photographer and writer focusing on the dispossessed, exile and peasant rebellion. He completed projects on the Nicaraguan Contra war, on the relatives of the disappeared in Guatemala, and on American Vietnam War veterans who had returned to Vietnam to rebuild the country. His first published magazine essay, ‘Paradise Lost’, exposed the ecological consequences of the catastrophic Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. He became a Magnum nominee in 1988, and a full member in 1993.
In 1996 Towell completed a project based on ten years of reportage in El Salvador, followed the next year by a major book on the Palestinians. His fascination with landlessness also led him to the Mennonite migrant workers of Mexico, an eleven-year project completed in 2000. With the help of the inaugural Henri Cartier-Bresson Award, he finished a second highly acclaimed book on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in 2005, and in 2008 released the award-winning The World From My Front Porch, a project on his own family in rural Ontario where he sharecrops a 75 acre farm.
Raota retrató gauchos, niños, obreros, ancianos, campesinos y familias. Lo hizo en la Pampa, en los Andes, en los países del Este de Europa, pero también se recreó con igual soltura ante paisajes de relevante teatralidad, ante imágenes de un fotoperiodismo de gran precisión o con creaciones cuya composición desafía la imaginación del espectador
Adelantándose a las técnicas digitales, Raota plasma retazos de una realidad que parecen sacados de un escenario teatral, cuyos protagonistas tienen una desgarradora fuerza en su mirada. Sólo la elegancia de los encuadres y el tamiz de la luz parecen poder competir con el magnetismo de los ojos, reclamo del alma de los seres que pueblan sus fotografías.
Deported in Germany, Mario de Biasi begins to take photographs in 1944 thanks to a camera found in the rubbles of Nuremberg. He becomes famous with his portraits of actresses such as Claudia Cardinale, Brigitte Bardot or Sophia Loren alongside the depiction of the Iran Shah’s wedding. Yet what earned the Italian photographer the nickname of the ‘Italiano pazzo’ (the mad Italian) was his reports of conflicts such as the Hungarian revolution of 1956 or extreme experiences such as his Siberian exploration, throughout the world. Uniting the glamour of actresses to social episodes, Mario de Biasi created one of his most iconic images thanks to a group of Italian men observing the curvaceous back of Moira Orfei.
I personally arrived slowly at photography. I studied languages at university, took some courses in journalism, worked first as a translator and then as an editor for the Information Services Branch of the occupying American Forces in Salzburg, later in Vienna. In my spare time I wrote playlets for the Red-White-Red network and articles for various illustrated magazines, among them the Wiener Illustrierte. I started to be asked to supply some suitable photographs with my stories, which left me at a loss. I had never seriously occupied myself with photography; I did not even know a photographer. I had always been passionately interested in painting and drawing, but the artistic poverty of the “Third Reich,” where our only chance to see the major achievements of contemporary art was in (from my side at least) eagerly awaited exhibitions hung in school corridors under the title Entartete Kunst (degenerate art, including Picasso, etc.), provided no possibility for an education in visual matters. So I started to buy LIFE Magazine and photographic books and in my search for photographers I met Lothar Rübelt and Franz Hubmann and Erich Lessing and Ernst Haas.
Meanwhile I had become the Austrian editor of Heute magazine, published by the Americans in Munich, and started to work with Ernst Haas as a photography-writer team. Heute editor Warren Trabant forwarded a couple of our stories to Robert Capa, who summoned us to join the young Magnum Photos in Paris. Supplied with much food and a little money we boarded a train, left Vienna and stayed in Paris. Besides my work with Ernst, I started to write texts for the photographs sent to the Paris office by the then members of Magnum from all kinds of countries: Cartier-Bresson from the Orient, George Rodger from Africa, David Seymour from Greece, etc. I started to accompany different photographers on assignments for which also I had done the preparatory research, and later edited their contact sheets. I think that it is from this work that I learned the most.
A short marriage to an Englishman brought separation from Magnum and a move to London. I continued to write stories but found to my amazement that suddenly now that I was no longer accompanied by photographers the world around me seemed to be filled with things that wanted to be photographed. I had finally discovered my own way to express what interested or obsessed me in a way with which I could live. After the war I had often suffered from the fact that my native language, German, was for most of the world the language of the enemy, and although I was able to write stories in English or French it did not touch the roots. So turning to the image felt both like a relief and an inner necessity.
I took up a period of apprenticeship with Simon Guttmann, who had the reputation of a querulous genius of the picture magazine world; he had played a role in the early days of the Berliner Illustrierte under the Ullsteins. Somewhere along the way, Robert Capa had been one of his apprentices, too. Now Simon Guttmann worked as an adviser to Picture Post. I bought a used Leica, worked incessantly and, as I was known as the only non-photographing person in this milieu and knew I would not be taken seriously if I suddenly showed up with photographs, I turned my name around and, as Egni Tharom, started sending my picture stories to any magazine I thought might be interested. Sometimes I sold something, sometimes I got letters praising my eye but deploring my technique. I spent nights in the darkrooms of professionals, learning a lot as a free assistant. For Mr. Guttmann I stood in front of theatres to take pictures of arriving luminaries, and covered catastrophes like floods and fires.
As I was selling more pictures, my confidence grew. I went back to Paris and worked for three months on a story about the Prêtres Ouvriers (worker priests), the first militant Catholic priests who, as “missionaries within their own country” and with permission from their orders, lived the life of workers in factories and the poorest quarters of Paris. It was a difficult story, and when I finally was finished, pictures enlarged and text written, I decided to risk it. I showed it all to Capa, asking his opinion about the photographs which he liked. So I confessed that I had taken them and after the first shock he said, “Ok, show me the rest of your work; if it is as good we’ll take you.”
So I was invited to join Magnum, first for a year as an associate, then as a full member. There followed many years of constant travel, shooting stories in different parts of the world, as well as industrial work, stills for movies and theatre, fashion, works for art magazines shot with big cameras and, more and more, portraits. In 1956, my first book Fiesta in Pamplona appeared. And so it has really more or less been going on until today.
Hugo Gilberto Cifuentes Navarro, nacido en Otavalo, Ecuador, en 1923 fue un artista plastico y fotógrafo pionero latinoamericano. Cifuentes comenzó a estudiar dibujo y pintura en la década de 1940, antes de dedicarse a la fotografía. Recibió su primer premio de composición fotográfica en 1949. En la década de 1960, Cifuentes se unió a VAN, Vanguardia Artística Nacional, un grupo de artistas progresistas informales, fundado por Enrique Tábara, que rompió la tradición artística predominante y se inspiró en el Movimiento Constructivista, el Movimiento Surrealista y el arte precolombino. A medida que Cifuentes desarrollaba su propio vocabulario visual, los matices humorísticos se hicieron evidentes en su arte. Cifuentes respondió a conflictos internos y otras miserias que se apoderaron de Ecuador con humor. Al ver las cosas desde un ángulo diferente, Cifuentes agregó nuevas capas a las realidades a menudo difíciles. En 1983, Cifuentes ganó el Premio Casa de las Américas. Murio en Quito, Ecuador, en el año 2000
