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August Sander - 137 Artworks, Bio & Shows on Artsy

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Find the latest shows, biography, and artworks for sale by August Sander. Declaring "let me speak the truth in all honesty about our age," foremost 20th-cent...

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August Sander (17 November 1876 - 20 April 1964) was a German portrait and documentary photographer. Sander's first book Face of our Time (German: Antlitz der Zeit) was published in 1929. Sander has been described as "the most important German portrait photographer of the early twentieth century."

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August Sander (17 November 1876 - 20 April 1964) was a German portrait and documentary photographer. Sander's first book Face of our Time (German: Antlitz der Zeit) was published in 1929. Sander has been described as "the most important German portrait photographer of the early twentieth century."

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Lewis Khan is a London-based photographer and filmmaker specialising in social documentary. Since graduating from UWE in Bristol, where he studied photography, he has won the 2014 Shuffle Film Festival Short Film Prize for his moving portrayal of George, a man living on the fringes of South London. He has also worked on commissions for a number of well-respected publications, including the FT Weekend Magazine.

Khan's photograph that was selected for Portrait of Britain 2017 depicts his subject, Gina, in an operating theatre after performing surgery. The portrait was taken during Khan's time as Artist in Residence at the Chelsea & Westminster Hospital. During this residency, he produced a series called 'Our NHS', which documented the experiences of staff and patients at the hospital. The images seek to capture the emotional impact of a life spent working in the NHS, particularly during this time of difficulty within the service. Gina's portrait is a compelling insight into the experiences of the doctors and nurses striving to keep the NHS on its feet.
How did you create the selected portrait that you entered into Portrait of Britain, and what is the story behind it?
The selected portrait was taken in an operating theatre at the Chelsea & Westminster Hospital just after an operation had finished and the staff had cleaned and prepped the room for the next patient. Gina gave me a few precious minutes and sat for this portrait in the corner of the theatre.
Was the portrait part of a wider project? If so, can you tell me about the project? How has it developed since your photograph was selected for Portrait of Britain?
The portrait is from a series produced during an artist residency at The Chelsea & Westminster Hospital. I worked on a commission for the hospital arts charity CW+, creating some artwork for the hospital walls. Following that they invited me to work on a more long term self-initiated project within the hospital itself. I spent 18 months on and off embedding myself into clinical situations within the hospital, producing a series that explores ideas around strength and fragility.
How do you think you have benefited from being selected?
Being selected for Portrait of Britain was great, it provided a platform for my work to be seen by a new audience both inside and outside of the photographic community. The visual landscape of the public domain is so clogged up with advertising, the idea of appropriating those spaces for the dissemination of artwork I thought was really strong.
Can you tell us a bit about the new project you've been working on?
I've been working on a project recently that takes as its starting point the experience of loss, and subsequently belonging. The work is a web of associations, bringing together new and past images that were originally taken for a mix of intents and purposes.
How do you choose and work with subjects to achieve your final image?
This really depends on lots of varying factors, I don't have a set practical formula that I work to. Generally a portrait will be the result of some kind of relationship or interaction, so it's more that initial or sustained engagement with a person that I am looking for rather than the picture itself.
What do you think makes for a compelling portrait?
I feel like you can't show too much, there has to be a balance of what you can read into the image and what you don't know.
Do you have any advice for future entrants about selecting a portrait to submit and, more generally, about getting into portrait photography to begin with?
Portrait photography is a very particular way of experiencing the people and environment around you. The photographs that result are the product of the relationship between yourself and your subject. The strength that the relationship gives your images shouldn't be overlooked in a rush to take pictures.
Future generations will look to Portrait of Britain 2019 to see the face of the nation in a historic moment. What will it look like? Enter your work today!

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A Portrait of our National Health Service | 1854 Photography

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Reading Time: 4 minutes Lewis Khan is a London-based photographer and filmmaker specialising in social documentary. Since graduating from UWE in Bristol, where he studied photography, he has won the 2014 Shuffle Film Festival Short Film Prize for his moving portrayal of George, a man living on the fringes of South London.

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"He said that holding hands in public was something special, like being visible to everyone but hiding something," says Marc Ohrem-Leclef. "A man I interviewed told me that. I thought it summed things up a lot."

When the New York-based photographer first travelled to India eight years ago he was struck by the "small, shared moments of intimacy" that he saw men displaying towards one another in public - admiring the openness with which they made what he first assumed were public displays of romantic love. "As a gay man, I was quite excited by what I thought was romantic freedom," he says. "Men would be holding hands or leaning against each other in public. There was a connectivity that I thought was really beautiful."

He quickly learnt that things were not as he had first thought, that the men he saw were not necessarily romantically involved at all and were often just expressing friendship. But for Ohrem-Leclef, this discovery only made their closeness more interesting.

Digging still deeper, he realised that it was also incorrect to assume that there was no sexual dimension - that there is a "grey space" in male relationships in India, in which friendship is displayed physically but in which same sex love is also free to be acted upon, as long as it "remains unspoken".

Intrigued, he returned to India early this year to explore more, creating a project which is still ongoing but which is currently titled Jugaad/Of Intimacy and Love [Jugaad is a colloquial Hindi word which means something like 'hack' or 'workaround' but which holds numerous meanings depending on context]. Celebrating connectivity and camaraderie in male relationships in India, it also serves as a testament to them at a time when the simple urge for human contact is taking on new meanings.

As Western notions of sexuality and gender binaries become more entrenched in Indian society, physical closeness between men is acquiring different implications - implications which may mean that friends no longer feel free to be physically intimate, but which may also help gay men openly acknowledge their orientation. "Identity politics are changing in India," says Ohrem-Leclef. "And identities are being ascribed that were never necessarily verbalised before.

"When I had the opportunity to go back to this project, I wasn't sure if it would be as relevant as I thought it was eight years ago," he continues. "When I spoke to Indian friends though, they said the opposite was true because of the current political situation.

"For example, when I arrived in Uttar Pradesh, there had just been a very conservative, right wing Hindu priest elected as Chief Minister [Yogi Adityanath of the Bharatiya Janata Party]. Two weeks after he was elected though, they had their first ever gay pride march in Lucknow, the state's capital. This is the moment in India right now.

"There's a growing self-confidence of a young queer crowd in the urban centres that is set to the backdrop of a Modi government which is rather divisive and repressive in many ways."

Travelling across India, photographing and interviewing people from as many backgrounds, castes, ages and positions as possible, Ohrem-Leclef hopes to capture the beauties and challenges of that moment - and show the positive side to it, in showing male closeness. The images are a mix of black-and-white and colour, and are shot using a medium format camera.

"It's a bit of a pain to carry around," he admits. "You're constantly messing around with film and everything. But they work out really beautifully . I hope it will eventually be a book. I'm just working out how photography and the text from the interviews can be combined most successfully."

The interviews are compelling, picking out the challenges of the "grey space" that Ohrem-Leclef has found. While the beauty and openness of friendship and the potential for physical intimacy is there, there are real limitations on what can be openly acknowledged, and that's reflected by the men he spoke with. One interviewee says he can never tell his father, a pastor, about his sexuality, for example, because his family would disown him.

"For men who want to lead a fuller life identifying as a gay man there are concrete limits in these grey spaces," explains Ohrem-Leclef. "Colonialism had a big impact on these traditions too, as did the importing of Western ideas of sexuality. Colonialism brought a penal code that criminalised homosexuality, which to this day has left the door open for harassment.

"This contributed to the fact that older queer men were very tentative and hesitant when it came to speaking to me and being photographed. But at the same time, there is a young queer crowd who can see on the horizon that things are changing."

It's a complex issue playing out in a huge country, and Ohrem-Leclef is well aware that he's exploring them as an outsider and is determined to get it right. He picks out places he needs to spend more time, such as the south of India, and points out how different things looked in Punjab, as a way of warning against sweeping generalisation.

"When I went to Punjab I could barely find the gestures that sparked the project at all because it's simply not done as much," he says. "Punjabi men have a very distinct sense of hyper-masculinity in a more binary sense."

"Though I did find one of my most compelling collaborators there," he is quick to add. "Akhtar, a barber who is very intimate with his best male friend, while being married to a his wife Bushra with whom he has four children - It's a beautiful example of the fluidity my work talks about as well."

He was happy to find that the project was well-received when he showed it at the Clark House Initiative Project Room in Mumbai, and he's already received requests to show it elsewhere in India. "At the end of the day these photographs are showing expressions of love, however you choose to qualify it," he says.

"For me, the excitement is in bringing all the voices together, creating some kind of map and spectrum that talks about anything from love and friendship to intimacy and homosexuality."
You can follow the progress of Marc Ohrem-Leclef's work on his website www.marcleclef.net, and Instagram (www.instagram.com/marcleclef/)

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Marc Ohrem-Leclef's new series explores male intimacy in India | 1854 Photography

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Reading Time: 5 minutes When New York-based photographer Marc Ohrem-Leclef first travelled to India eight years ago he was struck by the "small, shared moments of intimacy" that he saw men displaying towards one another in public - admiring the openness with which they made what he assumed were public displays of romantic love.

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The impact of photography amidst the extinction of the mass media

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A few years ago I began making screenshots of my friends' posts on Facebook. Rarely did the photos, videos, or memes from any of these respective worlds overlap; I couldn't even find a point of...

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Harry Flook is a Bristol-based writer and photographer, whose photographic work is rooted in his personal experiences. Having left his own religious faith, he embarked on 'Apostate', a project photographing those who had done the same, and he stumbled across a vast community of ex-religious individuals while doing so. Making this work then culminated in another project, 'Beyond What is Written', set in the heart of 'bible belt' America and addressing the subject from a different perspective. Both series explore the concept of community outside religion, for people whose sense of community was once constructed by the religious groups they were a part of.

Harry entered a portrait from 'Apostate' into Portrait of Britain 2017, and it was displayed across the country as part of our nationwide exhibition. We spoke to Harry about the value of awkwardness, choosing the perfect subject, and creating a compelling portrait.
How did you create your selected portrait, and what was the story behind it?
This portrait was shot as a test for a project I'm still working on, 'Apostate'. The image was shot outside using natural light and a reflector against a portable backdrop. I was trying to find a visual style that I could use consistently for the project, and this was one of the images that came together as a standalone portrait.
The portrait was a test for your ongoing series, 'Apostate'. How has that project developed since your photograph was selected for Portrait of Britain?
'Apostate' is about my experience leaving the religious faith I grew up with, explored through conversations with others who had done the same. I found a whole community of ex-religious individuals in the UK from various faiths, many with similar and far more difficult stories than my own. Since this portrait, I have realised that apostasy, as it's known, is more common than I'd thought. Many people go through it silently. The project led me to shoot another body of work based in Tennessee, a state known as 'the Heart of the Bible Belt', where I spent a month photographing the non-religious community who are ostracised from the wider culture. That project is called 'Beyond What is Written'.
How do you think you have benefited from being selected?
I was selected during my final year at university, and it was the first real affirmation I'd had from the world of contemporary photography, beyond my tutors and friends. So aside from the obvious exposure, to be selected by British Journal of Photography really gave me the confidence to value my work, to knock on the doors of editors, and to get my graduate project published.
How do you choose and work with subjects to achieve your final image?
Choosing subjects really depends on the project I'm shooting. But when making standalone portraits, I'm certainly drawn to people who have striking features or an interesting story to tell.

I often feel slightly awkward shooting people's portraits, and I sort of invite that feeling to begin with. I won't direct the subject much initially, I'll just get them to sit or stand, and take a few frames. Then I'll begin to direct more heavily, ask the subject to look this way or that, maybe do something different with the light, and shoot slightly more posed frames, so I have a good variety to choose from.
What do you think makes for a compelling portrait?
It's hard to say what makes a good portrait. I find that once a formula is established, they can become trite and uninteresting. I was recently looking at people on a bus that had stopped at traffic lights. I wanted to stare but I felt awkward as people caught my gaze. It got me thinking about why we find portraits so compelling generally. I think it's because they allow us a longer glance than social norms allow. Beyond that, it comes down to the way portraits are crafted visually, and the relationship between photographer and subject is always an interesting one; it has a huge influence on the outcome of a portrait.
Do you have any advice for future entrants about selecting a portrait to submit and, more generally, about getting into portrait photography to begin with?
Try to throw out your own attachment to images when submitting, and pay attention to which get the biggest reaction instead. I'm not saying to ignore your own taste completely, but you will be bias toward certain portraits because of your experience taking them, and your knowledge of where they sit in context to other work. When you're submitting a portrait to be displayed on a billboard without any context other than being a Portrait of Britain, you want something with broader appeal. Social media is a great place to test for it.

When getting into portrait photography to begin with, make sure you shoot lots of portraits and try different approaches. It will help you find your niche. At first, I shot portraits without worrying about the work fitting into a project. I tried different cameras, formats, backdrops, lighting etc. The only way you'll find your bag of tricks is to shoot lots and get lots of feedback.
Future generations will look to Portrait of Britain 2019 to see the face of the nation in a historic moment. What will it look like? Enter your work today!

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Harry Flook on shooting a compelling portrait | 1854 Photography

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Reading Time: 4 minutes Harry Flook is a Bristol-based writer and photographer, whose photographic work is rooted in his personal experiences. Having left his own religious faith, he embarked on 'Apostate', a project photographing those who had done the same, and he stumbled across a vast community of ex-religious individuals while doing so.

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Her first commission for the Observer was a portrait of philosopher Bertrand Russell in 1949. From then, Bown photographed the great and the good, the rich and the poor, the ordinary and extraordinary with a compassionate and gentle eye

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Jane Bown: a life in photography - in pictures

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Her first commission for the Observer was a portrait of philosopher Bertrand Russell in 1949. From then, Bown photographed the great and the good, the rich and the poor, the ordinary and extraordinary with a compassionate and gentle eye

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Photographs by Wilfred Thesiger at the Pitt Rivers Museum | Thesiger's Photo Albums

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Digital reproductions of Wilfred Thesiger's photo albums which contain photographs of his travels in Arabia are available here in pdf format. Please note that each pdf may be up to 10MB in size.

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A new biography of Diane Arbus.

In 1969, the Metropolitan Museum of Art agreed to buy three photographs by Diane Arbus, for seventy-five dollars each. Wiser counsels prevailed, however, and a few months later the museum decided to take only two. Why splurge? The Museum of Modern Art was more daring; in 1964, it had acquired seven Arbus photos, including "Child with a toy hand grenade in Central Park, N.Y.C." Not until the aftermath of Arbus's death, however, in 1971, and the retrospective of her work at moma the following year, did public fascination start to seethe, swelling far beyond the bounds of her profession. The swell has never slowed, and prices have followed suit. At Christie's, in 2007, "Child with a toy hand grenade" sold for two hundred and twenty-nine thousand dollars. Last year, another print of it, this one signed by the artist, fetched seven hundred and eighty-five thousand dollars. That's quite a hike.

Who is this kid, and what is he doing with a weapon, even a fake one, in Central Park? Well, his name is Colin Wood, and Arbus met him there in early 1962, when he was seven. We have a contact sheet of the pictures that she took that day. (It is reprinted in "Revelations," a hefty and absorbing volume published in 2003 to accompany an Arbus retrospective.) Colin is dressed in shorts and suspenders which lend him a Teutonic air, and he is happy to strike a pose. There are eleven images, and in six of them he stands with hands on hips. Most of the time, he looks jaunty and self-possessed, and you can count the missing teeth in his grin. So why did Arbus pick the shot in which he tightens his mouth into a stretched-out grimace, cupping one hand into an upturned claw while the other grips a grenade? Isn't he just making sport, or doing an impersonation of someone-an actor in a monster movie, say-consumed by sudden dread? Might Arbus, in short, be guilty of rigging the evidence to fit a mood, making fear out of fun?

That was what I had always suspected, until I read "Diane Arbus: Portrait of a Photographer," by Arthur Lubow (Ecco). One coup, in this new biography, is an interview with Colin Wood, conducted by Lubow in 2012. We learn that Wood was a Park Avenue kid, stranded at the time with nannies while his parents were busy divorcing, and "living primarily on powdered Junket straight from the box." He brought his toy guns to school. Wood says of Arbus, "She saw in me the frustration, the anger at my surroundings, the kid wanting to explode but can't because he's constrained by his background." If she did see all that, it was by instinct, with a touch of fellow-feeling; she had started out much like Colin, and continued that way. Now she found a boy preparing to pull the pin, and snapped. "Giving a camera to Diane," Norman Mailer said, after sitting for her, "is like putting a live grenade in the hands of a child."

Arbus was born into wealth, and you could, if inclined, construe the life that followed as one long struggle to get away from wealth-to crawl free of it, like someone seeking the exit from a treasure-stacked cave. "The outside world was so far from us," Arbus said. She was a Russek, which to anyone who suddenly needed a mink stole, in the depths of the Great Depression, was a name to reach for. Russeks, founded by her maternal grandfather, was originally a furrier's; by 1924, it was a department store on Fifth Avenue, selling not only furs but also gowns, coats, and, as an advertisement put it that year, "smart accessories for the correctly dressed woman." In 1919, Diane's mother, Gertrude, married a young window dresser at the store named David Nemerov. Their son, Howard, who grew up to become poet laureate, was born twenty-one weeks after the wedding. Diane was born in 1923, and her sister, Renee, in 1928.

No woman was more correctly dressed than Gertrude. She sailed to Paris with her husband whenever he went to survey the new couture collections. Her pleasure was to be chauffeured to Russeks and to parade through its rooms, past bowing and smiling staff, accompanied by her older daughter, who, in white gloves and patent-leather slippers, saw herself as "a princess in some loathsome movie." One thing Arbus claimed to have suffered from, as a child, was that "I never felt adversity."

There are two responses to this. One is: Give me some of that suffering. If you had asked any of the Dust Bowl farmers photographed in their thin clothes by Dorothea Lange whether they would mind getting dressed up, after a fancy breakfast, and going to a workplace where everyone was nice to them, they would have said that, all things considered, they could handle it. Was there, in Arbus, a lingering whiff of the poor little rich girl? To say that she slummed would be unfair, but she revelled in settings that money couldn't touch, or in surfaces where it had left its scratch marks: Brenda Frazier, pictured in 1966, twenty-eight years after she had been crowned "débutante of the year," appears to be held together by powder, paint, and pearls.

Regular politics, and the calls of social responsibility, certainly meant little to Arbus. She stepped aside from the notion that a photograph might, in addition to its aesthetic shape and shock, harbor some documentary worth, especially in an era of deprivation or unrest. Not many Jews would go, willingly and uncritically, to listen to Nazis in Yorkville. If she was a pilgrim on the fringes of society, it was fascination rather than compassion that drove her there, and many of the outcasts she discovered, far from being ground down, had elected to cast themselves out. The balding and shirtless figure who glares at us in "Tattooed man at a carnival, Md." (1970) requests not an atom of our pity. Indeed, he puts our undistinguished bodies to scorn, brandishing the art work of his torso as though to holler, "Get a load of me."

On the other hand, we may choose to take Arbus at her word. If all that privilege brought her a world of pain, so be it. And it's hard to think of a more frangible instance of motherhood than Gertrude, who, according to Lubow, "typically stayed in bed in the morning past eleven o'clock, smoking cigarettes, talking on the telephone, and applying cold cream and cosmetics to her face." At one point, she fell into a ravine of depression and got stuck, sitting wordlessly at the family dinner table. "I stopped functioning. I was like a zombie," she recalled later. Her husband, meanwhile, presented an alternative-and no less daunting-role model. Though Gertrude's parents had believed that she was marrying down, David, smooth and frictionless, rose through the ranks of Russeks as if stepping into the elevator. By 1947, he had arrived at the position of president.

Arbus inherited both strains: the urge to follow your star, plus the rage to cut yourself off and plunge into personal lockdown. One further twist in her upbringing was that she did not endure it alone, for her brother, Howard, was close to her, although whether that closeness offered aggravation or relief is open to debate. Both were precocious students, and they shared other talents, too. Diane masturbated in the bathroom with the blinds up, to insure that people across the street could watch her, and as an adult she sat next to the patrons of porno cinemas, in the dark, and gave them a helping hand. (This charitable deed was observed by a friend, Buck Henry, the screenwriter of "The Graduate.") Not to be outdone in these vigorous stakes was her brother, who later, in a book called "Journal of the Fictive Life," defined his self-abuse as "worship." He added, "My father once caught me at it, and said he would kill me if it ever happened again." A friend of Gertrude's once told Howard that reading Freud would make you sick. On the contrary, it would be like a day in the life of the Nemerovs.

The summit of this weirdness comes before Lubow has reached page twenty, with the disclosure, from Arbus, that "the sexual relationship with Howard that began in adolescence had never ended. She said that she last went to bed with him when he visited New York in July 1971. That was only a couple of weeks before her death." The source for this is a psychiatrist named Helen Boigon, who treated Arbus in the last two years of her life, and who was interviewed-though not named-by Patricia Bosworth for her 1984 biography of Arbus. (The results are in an archive at Boston University.) William Todd Schultz, too, communicated with Boigon for "An Emergency in Slow Motion" (2011), his unblushing psychological portrait of Arbus. He, like Bosworth, is more circumspect than Lubow, proposing that "something did happen between the two siblings" but "what exactly, and with what results, is impossible to say."

Are we dealing with verifiable facts here, or with a yarn entwined with myth and spun by a woman in distress? Either way, what stands out is the tone of Arbus's telling. The intimate rapport of brother and sister was apparently recounted to the psychiatrist in a casual manner, as though incest were no big deal-just a family habit that you kept up, like charades. And that otherworldly coolness drifts into Arbus's art. What her admirers respond to is not so much the gallery of grotesques as her reluctance to be wowed or cowed by them, still less to censure them or to set them up for mockery. She makes Fellini, a more urbane soul, look a little hot in the blood. Freaks may abound in her art, but not once do they freak her out.

When Diane Nemerov was thirteen, she fell in love with Allan Arbus, who worked in the advertising department at Russeks and described himself as "Mister Nobody." The romance bore a startling resemblance to that of her parents. Diane and Allan married in 1941, once she had turned eighteen; in 1944, just after he was shipped off to India on war service as a photographer, she found that she was pregnant, and their daughter, Doon, was born the next year. Allan had given his wife a camera after their honeymoon, and she had taken a course with the photographer Berenice Abbott, at the New School. When the war ended, Allan and Diane, with the encouragement (and the financial assistance) of David Nemerov, went into business together. Their apartment was on West Seventieth Street, and their studio on West Fifty-fourth. They shot fashion spreads for Glamour, which hailed them as a professional couple in a piece called "Mr. and Mrs. Inc." With the article went a self-portrait: their heads are touching, but they look at different things. His eyes, dark and wide, stare straight ahead; hers are lowered, with the modesty of a Madonna. The thumb on the shutter release is his.

How and when did Arbus, as it were, turn into Arbus? What spurred her to forge images-identical twins in identical dresses, in New Jersey, or "Jewish giant at home with his parents in the Bronx, N.Y.," looming over his loved ones-that we realize, instantly and indisputably, could have been made by nobody else? Such is the conundrum that greets her biographers, and Lubow begins his book with a dramatic solution: an occasion, in the middle of the nineteen-fifties, when Diane announced, at the butt end of a day in which she and Allan had toiled on a shoot for Vogue, that she was done with fashion photography. From now on, she would set her own course. In a letter from 1957, she wrote, "I am full of a sense of promise, like I often have, the feeling of always being at the beginning."

Her first move was to study with Lisette Model, who steered her away from the hazy ("I used to make very grainy things," Arbus recalled) and toward a clarity that would specify rather than blur-confronting us with this person, in this place, wearing this outfit, or no outfit at all. Other developments ensued: in August, 1959, Arbus moved out, taking with her the couple's daughters, Doon and Amy (born in 1954). They found a house on Charles Street, in the West Village, while Allan decamped to Washington Place; she regularly went there to use his darkroom, and he came over for Sunday breakfasts. In keeping with the rules of concealment by which she had been raised, Arbus didn't tell her parents about the split. It took them three years to find out.

Set against that is an air of artistic haste and a quickening appetite-of the photographer's eye beginning to gorge on the world around her, and on its panoply of goods. Arbus was a chronic lister, and you get swept up and along by the host of things that she hoped to seize on film, as noted in her appointment book: "diaper derby palisades, walkathon st. louis, chess champ, miss appetite, miss fluidless contact lens, yeast raised donut queen." In 1963, she applied, successfully, for a grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation*. "I want to photograph the considerable ceremonies of our present," she wrote. "I want to gather them, like somebody's grandmother putting up preserves, because they will have been so beautiful." Never was the future perfect put to better use.

The document delves into detail: "the Testimonial Dinner, the Seance, the Gymnasium and the Picnic," and so on. This is the most appealing side of Arbus: you feel a gust of Whitman, or of her near-contemporary Allen Ginsberg, in her sallying forth to compile such tumultuous chronicles of America. She was a wonderful writer, and we deserve an anthology of her prose; no one else but her would report, of a trip to Florida, "There is kind of a bad smell here like God cooking chicken soup in the sky. And the language is full of money." All the while, though, this frail adventurer could be pulled inward and downward, into a whirlpool of old woes. It was as if "Leaves of Grass," in need of an update, had been handed to Sylvia Plath.

The early nineteen-sixties saw a change of tools. Having worked principally in 35mm., Arbus turned to a Rolleiflex: a twin-lens reflex, with one lens placed above the other. You hold it, hang it around your neck, or fix it on a tripod, at waist level, then peer down into the viewfinder. The image you perceive there is reversed, with left becoming right, but there are compensations. One, if you like to take pictures of your fellow-beings, as Arbus did, and to nourish an unbroken rapport with them, the Rolleiflex is ideal; in contrast to most cameras, then as now, you don't raise it to your eye and block your face. Two, there is increased sharpness, because of the area of film-or, in Arbus's words, "whatever the heck that stuff on film is"-that gets exposed on the negative. And three, that area is two and a quarter inches square: a blessed change from the landscape format that governs our visual experience, starting with the majority of paintings, proceeding to movie and TV screens, and ending, these days, with laptops. Arbus moved in some pretty far-out circles, but she knew the value of squares.

When we think of an Arbus photograph, it will probably have been taken with a Rolleiflex, or else with a Mamiya C33, to which she upgraded in the mid-sixties, and which also adopts the square format. This meant a lot of baggage. Arbus was as slight as a pixie, but one acquaintance recalled her lugging around "two Mamiya cameras, two flashes, sometimes a Rollei, a tripod, all sorts of lenses, light meters, film." The flash was often used to stark effect; detractors of Arbus, who find her cruel, might plausibly point to her photographs of babies-most of them howling or drooling and utterly bare of joy. Their faces get in your face. Young or old, people tend to dominate the frame, with no idle space next to them. Even when they get shunted off to the edges, as in her 1963 shot of a retired couple-the man seated on the left, his wife on the right-the center doesn't go to waste, for there, like an altar, stands a television, topped with a lamp, two photographs, and a clock. These pleasant folk, apart from their Biblical nakedness (for we are in a nudist camp), could be welcoming us into any well-kept American home.

If I could afford to buy an Arbus, I would pick a landscape, or a roomscape-one of those unpeopled places where our fellow-citizens have been, and will come again. Her 1962 photograph of a castle in Disneyland, after hours, makes you tremble for any prince who goes in search of Sleeping Beauty; who knows what fevered brand of dreams might come true? And her shot of a Christmas tree, dripping with tinsel, next to a lamp whose shade is still wrapped in cellophane, is an ill omen for the festive season-not cynical, I think, but humming with a furtive trepidation. Such is the sign of Arbus: all her vacancies are full.

The singularity of Arbus came to the fore in 1967, at the Museum of Modern Art, in a show entitled "New Documents." Three photographers were represented: Garry Winogrand, Lee Friedlander, and, in a room of her own, Arbus, who was greeted with yellow roses, by Richard Avedon, as she arrived on opening night. According to one friend, "The press was all about Diane, it was as if Garry and Lee didn't exist." That sounds partial, but it's easy to imagine a visitor wandering into the Arbus space and being struck by the brunt of the impact. Winogrand and Friedlander were, in their different ways, trapping life on the hop-sometimes on the slant, too, in Winogrand's case. If the American throng approached him down the avenue at full tilt, well, he would tilt right back: anything not to miss a trick. Friedlander paid his own homage to such multiplicity, doubling his subjects in windows, wing mirrors, and storefront glass. With Arbus, though, the hopping had to stop. The men of "New Documents" dealt in the glimpse and the glance; the woman chose to stare, and she specialized in tracking down those who would plant themselves, on center stage, and return the look with interest-midgets, musclemen, twins, transvestites, hermaphrodites, bathers, strippers, and a woman with a monkey, swaddled like an infant, on her lap.

When it came to nudists, Arbus went unclothed. Her job was to join them, not beat them. We presume that artists, whatever their medium, take care to keep their distance, and Arbus was scrupulous about the legality of her ventures, obtaining permission from her subjects to photograph them and to reproduce the results. Time and again, though, she crossed into their territory-as a guest, a pal, a playmate, or an invader, according to your point of view. "How does she do it?" Irving Penn reportedly asked. "She puts a camera between those bare breasts and photographs those nudists." That was nothing. She once said that she had sex with any man who asked for it, and described a pool party at which she worked through the various men, one after the next, as if they were canapés. The courteous Lubow calls her "multivalent."

What's remarkable is that such liberty extended to her pictures. An orgy counted as work and leisure alike. Look at a contact sheet of young lovers, a black man and a white woman, from 1966, and you notice that the naked figure sprawled across him, in frame five, is Arbus. Even Eddie Carmel, the Jewish giant, said that she "came on" to him, and he was at least eight feet nine. At the other end of the scale was Lauro Morales, the Mexican dwarf, whom Arbus photographed over many years; in one bedroom shot, from 1970, he radiates what Lubow calls "a look of postcoital languor." All creatures great and small: nothing was foreign to Arbus, as she roamed the human zoo.

The Morales portrait is a case in point. He is naked except for a tilted hat on his head and a towel across his lap. His smile, beneath a dapper mustache, is collaborative and conspiratorial. As Arbus said, "A photograph is a secret about a secret." Compare Morales to Sebastian de Morra, a dwarf at the court of Philip IV, who was painted by Velázquez around 1645. De Morra is robed, seated, and foreshortened, with his legs sticking out: a generous pose, for we can't tell how tall he is, and that's the point. His expression is grave, steady, and inquiring, as though we were in a police station or a principal's office, being held to account for our activities. Both images exert a formidable grip, but De Morra is examining us. Morales has eyes only for Arbus. Freaks, as she called them, "don't have to go through life dreading what may happen, it's already happened. They've passed their test. They're aristocrats."

Lubow is entering a crowded arena, for the Arbus industry is hardly a place of repose. Yet the author fights for his spot, and earns it. His research is unflagging and his timing is good, for Arbus could scarcely be more fashionable, with her thrill at the fluidity of genders, and her trafficking with anonymity and fame. Bosworth may have a keener nose for detail (from her we learn that at one moma show, an assistant had to go around each morning and wipe the Arbus photographs where people had spat on them), whereas Lubow is more intent upon the shifts in Arbus's work. He is rightly amused, too, by the clash of her professional ardor with her domestic duties, highlighting a note from her appointment book, from 1959: "Buy Amy's birthday present, go to the morgue."

Readers of Lubow's biography may feel not just the heft of the thing, over seven hundred pages and twice as long as Bosworth's, but a nagging suspicion that it dreams of being a novel: "Insistently, incessantly, the notes throbbed in doleful cadence on the clarinet." When a mosquito lands on his subject, Lubow is right there: "Changing its strategy, the insect whined upward and then landed on the nipple of her right breast. This time, it sank its feeder deep into her flesh and drank." Even Boswell never got that close. Then, there are Arbus's friends, each of them allotted a lengthy character sketch, and all of them jumping onto the sexual carousel:

She didn't realize it might be making Allan angry to think that his wife was yearning sexually for Alex, any more than she sensed that Jane might be alarmed and antagonized to learn that Allan thought Diane just wanted to go to bed with Jane's fiancé.

I have read that sentence several times, and I still don't get who is bunking down with whom. It might have been simpler if Lubow had drawn a Venn diagram instead. Yet even these scenes have a purpose, for they remind us of the atmosphere in which Arbus thrived, and they compel the toughest questions: Did she carry the hothouse of the Nemerovs around with her forever, and, if so, did it heighten or stunt her art? Can you be honest to a fault, and does that fault lure you not merely into wild indiscretion but right to the brink of ferocity? Was there a mote of meanness in her eye, or did it just see more than our lazy gaze can ever hope to do? Arbus photographed her own father, at his funeral, in his coffin, and confessed to being jealous of her younger sister, Renee, for having been raped as a teen-ager. Diane was said to radiate "aggressive vulnerability," and some people were worn down by posing for her, hour upon hour, until they were frazzled and frayed; only then would she get the shot she required. In 1971, writing from London to a friend, Arbus complained that "nobody seems miserable, drunk, crippled, mad, or desperate. I finally found a few vulgar things in the suburb, but nothing sordid yet."

If, in the end, any biography of her becomes exhausting, that is because she is exhausting. If her genius both astounds and tires, it is because, whatever the courage and the tolerance with which she sought out the eccentric, she always seems to remain at the center, while others revolve around her. Of the triplets whom she photographed in Jersey City, in 1966, she said, "They remind me of myself." Though a friend of Walker Evans, she found his pictures "insanely unconflictive," which tells you more about her than about him. Since her quest for conflict was a natural reflex, bred in the bone, even her most outlandish pictures come to seem like self-portraits: windows transmuted into mirrors. As her marriage to Allan failed, for instance, she was, like her mother before her, dragged into depression and sucked down, declaring, "The thing that sticks most in the throat and hurts the most is how easy it is. The joy and terror are both in the swallowing." A decade later, outside a circus tent, she photographed an albino woman swallowing a sword.

Diane Arbus took her own life in 1971, with barbiturates and a blade. She had complained of "lacking the confidence even to cross the street," and a final entry in her appointment book read, "Last Supper." In those late years, however, there had been grace notes of a surprising kind: photographs of mentally disabled women, many of them in an institution in Vineland, New Jersey, not far from Atlantic City. The residents were, she found, "the strangest combination of grownup and child"-as she herself was often said to be. "Some of the ladies are my age and they look like they are 12," she reported to her daughter Amy. And yet, for once, the images do not feel steeped in Arbus's presence, or in the tidal pull of her needs. The women exist in and unto themselves, and the images, frequently misted with blurs, are more tender than anything Arbus had done before-" finally what I've been searching for," she wrote to her ex-husband, Allan. Imprecision, like mercy, did not make them less true. Many of the subjects were photographed at play, masked for Halloween, and Arbus did not hesitate to register their joy. Others, she saw, were more wretched, and one of them was heard to say, over and over, "Was I the only one born?" ♦

An earlier version misstated the Guggenheim foundation from which Arbus won a grant in 1963.

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A new biography looks into how the photographer's tumultuous chronicles of the country became unmistakably her own.

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Diane Arbus - 109 Artworks, Bio & Shows on Artsy

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Find the latest shows, biography, and artworks for sale by Diane Arbus. American photographer Diane Arbus is famous for her poignant portraits of individuals...

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"Child with a toy Hand Grenade in Central Park" N.Y.C. 1962
Many of Diane Arbus's work shows the uniqueness of society and of the normal scale. Though with the photograph above called Boy with a toy hand Grenade is not a picture of someone that would be labeled as different. When I say different there is a fine line but the American society has created the definition of different and many of Arbus's subjects in her work fall into that such as the dwarfs, midgets, homosexuals, nudist, and transvestites. In this photograph there is a young boy that is in Central Park in New York City. The boy is a petite young child with a crooked smile on his face. By seeing his face you can tell that he knew that there was going to be a picture taken. Seeing this you know that Arbus has become involved with her subject, which is what she usually does. Though you see what is in his right hand. The object that is in his right hand is why Arbus photographed him. It is the reason for controversy in the photograph.

Diane Arbus firmly believed that the more the subjects actively participate in the process the better the image will be. The young boy had a toy hand grenade in his hand. Arbus chose the boy because the irony of a lethal weapon being a toy. It may seem okay when you first view the photograph but Arbus wants you to look deeper into the picture, find the meaning. The boy being in New York Cities, Central Park is important "Each subject is photographed in an environment that is deliberate and expressive of the place in which the subjects are in" (Arbus 56). He being in such a big city is symbolic. The big city atmosphere has influenced the child. Also she is challenging how the world is turning, whether it is in a good direction or not. By viewing this photograph the society seems to be going into the wrong direction. A deadly weapon is being used lightly. A child is playing with a toy that symbolizes death and violence. Arbus disagrees with how the world going and is documenting it. Her work can relate to how society has moved to the worse. Violence is becoming acceptable "I want to show my viewers a powerful photograph and an experience; I want them to think about themselves and the world around us all" (Arbus 62). Arbus wants the viewer to question the boys life and theirs. She is acknowledging the crumble of society.

I chose this photograph because I think it is one of her most powerful photographs that she has ever taken. It is not as shocking to the eye at first but I believe the meaning behind it is very shocking. I found it interesting that Arbus could see how the world was going to a negative way of life. I myself can see that violence is much more acceptable to be viewed than it was 50 years ago with such things as movies and television. Having a young child playing with even a fake hand grenade is poisoning the young society from the beginning. During her time as an artist in the 1960's it was a time of peace and freedom. Though seeing this challenges if things really are moving towards the better. Arbus see's that we need to change out young society first before we can move forward to a better lifestyle for all.

Arbus, Diane. Diane Arbus: Revelations. New York City: Random House, 2003.

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"Child with a toy Hand Grenade in Central Park" N.Y.C. 1962Many of Diane Arbus's work shows the uniqueness of society and of the normal scale. Though with the photograph above called Boy with a toy hand Grenade is not a picture of someone that would be labeled as different.

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Josh Adam Jones is a Photography student at UWE in Bristol. Last year, his ongoing series, '99 Peace Walls', was published on BJP. The project was made up of portraits of young people living in Belfast, a city that is still healing its old political and religious wounds.

Josh's interest in social documentary has developed in his last two years of studying. His People's Choice portrait of his younger sister was taken as a test for an upcoming trip to Muscat, Oman, where Josh will be shooting expatriate communities. Josh has always considered community and family dynamics when shooting, and the portrait of his sister reflects both his pride in her, and a sibling spat; his sister Leah hates the portrait.
Can you tell me about the portrait you entered into Portrait of Britain 2018? What is the story behind it?
I entered a number of portraits into Portrait of Britain this year - a selection of stand alone images as well as work from my ongoing series '99 Peace Walls' which was published on BJP in 2017. The portrait that was chosen as an Editor's Pick is of my younger sister Leah, who actually turned eighteen on the day it was chosen. Leah really dislikes the image so it was quite an amusing addition to her birthday present.

Family dynamics really intrigue me as a photographer. My course leader, Jim Campbell, says photographers can usually be categorised by the direction they point their lens; towards home and their own 'back yard', or towards other people and unfamiliar places. I would say that I am usually the latter. I took this image while working on smaller test projects to prepare for my upcoming trip to Muscat, Oman.

Leah has always been fairly studious, and the photograph shows her in the midst of A-Level revision on a bright Sunday morning. I'm incredibly proud of my sister. Photographing her journey through adolescence has been a rewarding experience for both of us, and even though she doesn't like her portrait, I feel as though it records something a little more potent than all the selfies that clog up her iPhone.
The portrait was taken as a test for your upcoming trip to Oman. What are the aims for that series?
I am going to Oman to document expat communities there. I have been speaking with the people I will be photographing online, and that has been really positive. This final major project will be exhibited in our graduate degree show at UWE Bristol, and also at The Truman Brewery in London.

It has only been in the last couple of years of my degree that I have worked in the realm of social documentary, mainly through environmental portraiture. This probably has a lot to do with my confidence improving, making the social interaction when photographing people easier.
Why did you choose to enter Portrait of Britain?
Portrait of Britain has long been on the radar for me, and I have followed it for the last two years. I particularly like the variety of work that is selected, and also the number of winners who benefit from the competition. Being in partnership with and Hoxton Mini Press is really fantastic and means the final work is displayed to the best of its potential. It would be such an honour to have a photograph in the final judges' selection, but even being part of People's Choice has been really rewarding.

I think the main reason for entering this competition is the potentially high number of people who will see the work - who wouldn't want to have their photograph exhibited on a giant screen?
What do you think makes a compelling portrait?
With the amount of imagery that people are subjected to on a daily basis, I think it can be difficult to produce work people will really engage with. Portrait photography must have something that resonates with the viewer. For a portrait to be compelling, the person or people within the photograph should communicate with the viewer on a human level.

What I mean by this is that portrait photography is namely about the human form, and should therefore operate on some level to elicit an emotional response.
Do you have any advice for future entrants about selecting a portrait to submit and, more generally, about getting into portrait photography to begin with?
This is the second year I have entered this competition, but the only time I have had some success with it. I know that's because I've been making more interesting work and practising photographing people more. To be a portrait photographer, as with any form of photography, takes a great deal of time. To some extent, it also takes failure, and I find myself really learning from my failings. I would tell people not to be afraid of photographing things close to home, but also to look out into the world at the weird and wonderful people who inhabit it.
Future generations will look to Portrait of Britain 2019 to see the face of the nation in a historic moment. What will it look like? Enter your work today!

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My portrait records something more potent than all the selfies that clog up my sister's iPhone | 1854 Photography

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Reading Time: 4 minutes Josh Adam Jones is a Photography student at UWE in Bristol. Last year, his ongoing series, '99 Peace Walls', was published on BJP. The project was made up of portraits of young people living in Belfast, a city that is still healing its old political and religious wounds.

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Henri Cartier-Bresson: Photoportraits • Magnum Photos Magnum Photos

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A compelling selection of photoportraits capturing icons of the twentieth-century including Samuel Beckett, Albert Camus, and Jean-Paul Sartre

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Father and Son Watching a Parade, West End, Newcastle; UK, 1980 © Chris Killip

"History is what's written, my pictures are what happened. It's like a people's history - the people who history happened to." Chris Killip on making his seminal photobook, In Flagrante

"The working class get it in the neck basically, they're the bottom of the pile," says Chris Killip. "I wanted to record people's lives because I valued them. I wanted them to be remembered. If you take a photograph of someone they are immortalised, they're there forever. For me that was important, that you're acknowledging people's lives, and also contextualising people's lives."

We're discussing his work in England's North East from 1973-1985, images from which made up his seminal photobook In Flagrante. Released in 1988 and showing communities reeling from the effects of de-industrialisation, it was immediately hailed as a classic - and read as a statement against Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister most identified with the process of de-industrialisation. In fact Killip has long been at pains to reject that reading, pointing out in In Flagrante Two, published in 2016, that he actually shot his images under four Prime Ministers, "Edward Heath, Conservative (1970-1974), Harold Wilson, Labour (1974-1976), James Callaghan, Labour (1976-1979), Margaret Thatcher, Conservative (1979-1990)".

"Sarah Kent in a review said of the Youth on Wall, Jarrow, Tyneside, 1976, 'This image personifies Thatcher's Britain'," he tells me. "I wasn't worried about that, Harold Wilson was Prime Minister when I took that picture. Thatcher had nothing to do with it! Everyone then stared to refer to Thatcher, though there were four prime ministers while I was photographing. Rather than trying to pin all the blame on Mrs Thatcher, I was trying to pin the blame on all politicians, if that was what I was trying to do. And I wasn't. I was just trying to say that these people are part of history, these [events] are historical facts."

Nearly 30 years later, speaking just ahead of his show at the Getty Museum, Now Then: Chris Killip and the Making of In Flagrante, that sense of history is stronger than ever. Refreshingly, the Getty show is not a straight exhibition of the well-known images in the book; instead it digs deeper, including the various book dummies Killip made as he worked on it, the contact prints and working prints, and also the whole series that he shot but didn't include, or from which he selected just a couple of images - photographs of punk gigs at a local venue, of people scavenging in the sea for coal, of a fiercely independent fishing village called Skinningrove. In Flagrante could have been made differently, the show suggests, and Killip's achievement was much more than the book alone.

For Killip it's the latest step in an ongoing process that kicked off in 2012, when he was given a major retrospective at Essen's Museum Folkwang. Going back to his archive to prepare, he found prints he hadn't looked at in 30 years, he explains - even images he'd never printed. "With me, nobody ever asks for any images except for those in In Flagrante," he laughs. "Nobody ever came to see me and said 'What else have you got?' But doing a retrospective, I actually went back and looked at everything again."

Doing so, he was thrilled to see how accurately he had recorded the time and place - how specific his images were, and therefore how historically valuable. His shots of ship building look like they're from another century but they also show the sheer skill of the people involved, he says, in an industry that's now completely vanished from the region. "Children that have grown up there will have heard about it, but not seen it," he says. "[But the images show] this is what it was like, these ships were made here, this is how they made them - this place has a history, a big history."

Similarly, his images of the seacoal beach - where people scavenged for coal washed up from a nearby power station and mine - show a landscape and a community that have now vanished. "I went back three years ago to where the beach was and it's so shocking because it's not there," says Killip. "It's all been landscaped so it looks like a golf course. The power station and the coal mine have been demolished.

"It's very disconcerting because it's like 'Did this happen?'" he adds. "If you went there you would have no clue that this is where all this happened. But then I have the evidence. It's kind of fascinating."

It seems a dry take on images that were once interpreted as deeply political, but Killip doesn't see it that way. First, he never believed his images could make a difference, he says, as he's never believed that photographs alone can be a tool for change. And second, he's always believed that simply recording peoples' lives has value - so that they're acknowledged in the here and now, and so that future generations can understand what they did and who they were.

Killip sees his photography as a kind of "people's history", and tells a great story to illustrate it, which starts with visiting an American friend. "He grew up in a square in the centre of Boston, it's been demolished, it's now where the civic centre stands and all the municipal buildings, but he was standing there pointing out imaginary streets and who had lived there, who had gone on to make a lot of money, who ended up in jail, who ended up in the mob, who ended up in politics," he says.

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Now Then: Chris Killip and the Making of In Flagrante

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"The working class get it in the neck basically, they're the bottom of the pile," says Chris Killip. "I wanted to record people's lives because I valued them. I wanted them to be remembered. If you take a photograph of someone they are immortalised, they're there forever.

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Dorothea Lange: Grab A Hunk of Lightning

Premiere date: July 13, 2011 | 0:04:30

On March 11, 1936, Dorthea Lange's iconic image, Migrant Mother, was published in the San Francisco News. Since that first publication, the iconic photo has come to represent America's Great Depression and the strain of poverty in rural America.

Migrant Mother is part of the body of work Dorothea Lange created while working for the Farm Security Administration. Many of Lange's photographs of migrant farmers, sharecroppers and Dust Bowl farmers from that period are held today at the Library of Congress. While researching the film American Masters - Dorothea Lange: Grab a Hunk of Lightning, director Dyanna Taylor - Lange's granddaughter - visited the Library of Congress to discuss Lange's photos with a curator at the library.

Migrant Mother is just one of a series of photos Lange shot at a pea pickers' camp in California. It was a stop she almost didn't make. She had passed the sign for the camp while driving home from another assignment, and after some miles of thinking about it, turned her car around to visit the camp. The story of the photo is discussed in Taylor's very first visit to the Lange collection at the Library of Congress, which was filmed for Picturing America (July 2011), a program of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Learn about the life of the woman depicted in the famous photograph, in this Antiques Roadshow article on Florence Thompson. Antiques Roadshow appraises the Migrant Mother photograph in a web exclusive video.

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Dorothea Lange | "Migrant Mother" Photo Series at the Library of Congress | American Masters | PBS

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On March 11, 1936, Dorthea Lange's iconic image, Migrant Mother, was published in the San Francisco News. Since that first publication, the iconic photo has come to represent America's Great Depression and the strain of poverty in rural America. Migrant Mother is part of the body of work Dorothea Lange created while working for the Farm ...

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Diane Arbus was an American photographer best known for her intimate black-and-white portraits. View Diane Arbus's 1,785 artworks on artnet. Find an in-depth biography, exhibitions, original artworks for sale, the latest news, and sold auction prices. See available photographs, prints and multiples, and paintings for sale and learn about the artist.

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Frederic Aranda is a photographer specializing in group portraiture. His work has twice been selected for Portrait of Britain, with both his winning images standing out for their dramatic feel and quirky composure. Aranda works against the grain. His images shirk traditionally hierarchical, staid forms of group portraiture, and aim for naturalism and diversity. Aranda was born in Switzerland but moved to the UK twenty years ago, initially to study Japanese at Oxford. A completely self-taught photographer, Aranda has since worked for a number of high-profile publications, including Vanity Fair and Vogue. He has also been shortlisted by The Times as Young Photographer of the Year, and his first photobook, Electric Fashion, was published by Skira in 2015, and launched at the V&A. Since being selected for Portrait of Britain, Aranda has won first prize for editorial in the Swiss Photo Award, for his portfolio of group projects. How did you create the selected portraits that you entered into Portrait of Britain 2016, and what are the stories behind them?
I had two images selected: a young family at home in London and a group portrait of the chefs and sous-chefs working at Harrods. Both were commissions, one private and one an editorial for Harrods Magazine. For the private commission, instead of taking a conventional family portrait, I photographed the family with the mess their children had made while playing at home. So many people who see that image tell me how their home looks like that on a daily basis. To me, that's a true family portrait.

For the photograph of the chefs at Harrods, I composed the group in their top floor restaurant. The aim was to bring them all together for the first time, to show customers who the people are behind the scenes. On the day, we decided to ignore hierarchies and to mix all of them up by placing some of the sous-chefs in more prominent positions than their bosses. Sous-chefs are the next generation and need to be pushed into the spotlight more. When some of them struggled, I told them: "Imagine you're George Clooney. How would he sit in that chair?"
Were the portraits part of wider series? If so, can you tell me about those series?
All of my group portraits are part of an ongoing project spanning fifteen years. The aim of that project is to explore the power of groups to present social realities. Certain things about us only become clear once we are placed in a group dynamic; there are lots of things that portraits of individuals cannot convey.

Portrait of Britain made me look at and assess my work more objectively. I noticed that in cases where I had control over the casting of my groups, the images were diverse, but in cases where I has no control over the casting of my groups, I'd been confronted with the lack of diversity in certain industries.

I have realised that diversity and representation is essential in order to shake things up, and by contrast, the lack of diversity in some spaces can feel incredibly stuck in the past. It is the job of the photographer to show diversity, or a lack of it. For example, at British Vogue in the last few months, my group portrait of the previous editorial team created a public outcry. The lack of diversity at British Vogue has now thankfully changed with Edward Enninful as the new editor in chief.
How do you think you have benefited from being selected for Portrait of Britain?
Portrait of Britain gave me the chance to discuss my portraiture with people who had never paid attention to it before. For a whole month, the portraits were omnipresent in the streets so people had more time to contemplate them, instead of consuming them quickly on social media.

Portrait of Britain also helped me to think more about what I was doing with my group portraits, and after submitting a small portfolio of 8 images on this theme to the Swiss Photo Award this year, I won first prize in the Editorial category, which is wonderful!
Are you working on any new projects?
I'm working on my next portraiture book on the theme of California, which will be published next year, together with my co-author Christine Suppes. In the current political climate, California is a beacon of hope, but it is not without its own troubles.
What do you think makes for a compelling portrait?
I often find that some of the most compelling images are iconic in their simplicity, for example, Vanessa Paradis' ad campaign for Coco Chanel in 1992 by Jean-Paul Goude. The portraits of her in a birdcage or spilling a giant bottle of perfume over her shoulder are deceptively simple, but their simplicity makes them iconic because of all the things that the photographer has decided not to show.

A portrait is also compelling if it appears to reveal something truthful, or provokes your imagination without giving you all the answers. I often find myself looking at Henri Cartier Bresson's images and I forget that I am looking at a photograph at all, because I'm imagining these people's lives and what they were preoccupied by at the time. The fact that he doesn't give those answers is truly fascinating.
Do you have any advice for future entrants about selecting a portrait to submit and, more generally, about getting into portrait photography to begin with?
Shoot things that interest you and make you respond emotionally, and the rest will follow. Make sure you don't try and second-guess what you think others will want to see.

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Portrait of Britain: Diversifying the Traditional Group Portrait

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Frederic Aranda is a photographer specializing in group portraiture. His work has twice been selected for Portrait of Britain, with both his winning images standing out for their dramatic feel and quirky composure. Aranda works against the grain. His images shirk traditionally hierarchical, staid fo

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Vikram Kushwah's winning Portrait of Britain People's Choice portrait was taken as part of a series called Regrowth, documenting the resilience of a friend's teenage daughter during her cancer treatment

Vikram Kushwah's portrait is of his friend's teenage daughter, Jasmine, who is in her second year of cancer treatment. Inspired by his wife, who also had cancer in her teens and lost her hair, Kushwah's aim for the image and wider series was to give Jasmine a sense of empowerment.

Indian-born Kushwah initially studied fashion at University, before taking a photography module that got him hooked on taking pictures. Kushwah decided from there that he wanted to be a photographer. His work encompasses both art and fashion photography, and he has been featured in several high-profile exhibitions, such as Vogue Italia's Best of PhotoVogue, and the recent Association of Photographers AOP50: Images that Defined an Age. He also received bronze at the Young Lions' Award in the Best Photography category at Cannes.
Can you tell me about the portrait you entered into Portrait of Britain 2018? What is the story behind it?
Jasmine, my subject for the photograph, is the 14-year-old daughter of a friend. She is in her second year of cancer treatment. Prior to the illness, she had long, cascading hair, which was sacred to her, and was the subject of one of my earlier photography projects. Chemotherapy has now reduced her hair considerably and she does not step out without a wig. With all the complexities that come with teenage life, something as severe as this illness and its repercussions has made adolescence doubly challenging for Jasmine. These photographs show her will to move on, and her tenderness and innocence. The series is about acceptance, grace, embracing the new, and celebrating life as it presents itself. Jasmine showed great courage confronting the camera with her new hair and her new identity.
Why did you select this image to enter into Portrait of Britain?
I find Jasmine's gaze very powerful here. I asked her to look away from the camera for this one, and it's the slight disengagement that I find interesting. We will never know what was going on in her mind in this moment but to me it tells the story of her perseverance, and her calm demeanour during what, at times, were arduous cancer treatments.

I also find this image aesthetically pleasing and quite gentle on the eye. I created a little daylight studio in Jasmine's bedroom, using the window as a softbox. The whole set-up appeared like a tent - the ones you find in children's playrooms. Jasmine's little brother loved it.
This image is part of a wider series called Regrowth. What were the aims for that series?
Regrowth focuses on Jasmine renegotiating identity, both as a teenager and as a cancer patient. In 2015, when I needed a young person for another series, Twins and the Green Car, Jasmine's mother suggested she might be interested. Jasmine was thrilled by the opportunity to be a 'model'. A year later, when Jasmine's diagnosis was revealed after a blood test, my wife felt a particular empathy for the situation as she also had cancer as a young woman. My wife had intensely curly hair (which I've only ever seen in photographs), but after cancer treatments, her hair came back lighter, thinner and completely straight. She has noted that it took years for her to come to terms with her identity without curly hair, something for which everyone knew her.

When Jasmine began losing her hair, my wife suggested that I do another photo shoot with her. Shortly before the first Twins and the Green Car shoot, Jasmine had been complaining about her body: "My legs are too skinny," "I'm too tall," etc. After the shoot, she stopped saying these things and seemed more confident. We hoped that a series about Jasmine might help again.

It was another year before the shoot took place. After intensive treatments, Jasmine bravely said she would go ahead with the shoot when her hair finally started to grow back. The shoot was initially intended to include her wigs, but even more bravely, Jasmine decided to forgo the wigs on shoot day.
Why did you choose to enter Portrait of Britain?
I think Portrait of Britain is a brilliant concept on a grand scale. It shows the many facets that make up the fabric of British life, and even just human life in general. Using public spaces throughout the country as an exhibition space-breaking away from the traditional closed gallery walls- makes it easily publicly accessible. One does not need to set aside time outside of work to see this exhibition; this exhibition is on the way to work. The kind of exposure it gives to photographers is phenomenal.
What do you think makes a compelling portrait?
There are a number of things that contribute to the making of a compelling portrait. There are always fleeting moments when a face, light and/or colour can create magic, but compelling stories can also add weight to a simple shot. Then again, sometimes you cannot put a finger on why certain portraits are so compelling. They just are. You can't explain it and that's beautiful.
Do you have any advice for future entrants about selecting a portrait to submit and, more generally, about getting into portrait photography to begin with?
In my opinion, honest work is the strongest. If a story or a person truly moves you, photograph them. Don't think too much about technicality; that will come in time, with practice and experience. I see a lot of photographers being overwhelmed by technology and even overusing it, and sometimes the story gets lost. The camera and the equipment are merely tools.

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A Portrait of Resilience: This Week's People's Choice Winning portrait

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Vikram Kushwah's portrait is of his friend's teenage daughter, Jasmine, who is in her second year of cancer treatment. Inspired by his wife, who also had cancer in her teens and lost her hair, Kushwah's aim for the image and wider series was to give Jasmine a sense of empowerment.

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Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian society has gone through major changes-from being the society of the proletariat to a present-day world of newly established classes and social difference. The 90s saw the wild, uncontrolled rise of capitalism and a deepening gap between the rich and the poor. Moscow-based photographer Lilia Li-Mi-Yan is interested in how these roles continue shifting even today. Her photographic series Masters and Servants explores the relationship between Russia's rich and their servants, the complex social hierarchy of today's Russia, and the paradoxical situation in which society's most economically vulnerable can find themselves working side by side with its most wealthy.

"I am a very compassionate person and I'm most interested in people's relationships," Li-Mi-Yan told Broadly. "I couldn't stop thinking of the fact that in the Soviet time, everyone was on an equal social level and then suddenly everything changed in a blink." Masters and Servants was shot in Moscow; most of "masters" belonged to a circle of wealthy people Li-Mi-Yan knew. She photographed them with their staff-butlers, housekeepers, au pairs, nannies, drivers, and bodyguards-in their houses, a rare glimpse into the private lives of the wealthy.

Surprisingly, access was not an issue. "A lot of of people happily agreed to be photographed without questioning the concept of the project much," she recalled. "Although there were of course people who refused for various reasons, the main being publicity. After the first few publications in the media, a few people asked to remove them from the project."

Its archaic and old-fashioned title hints that the project-apart from being a study of certain elite professions-goes deeper into analyzing human relationships through the prism of power structures like money and social privilege. The work of domestic staff is often stigmatised in Russia, and the lines between personal and professional in their jobs are often blurred.
Read more: Photos of Women in Nepal Exiled for Being on Their Period
"In Russia, working in service industry has always been perceived as a job of lower rank, [though it] has to be mentioned that all the employers think that they treat their workers with the most care and respect-in a way, they feel like patrons," Li-Mi-Yan explained. "At the same time, all the service workers, regardless of how warm [their] relationship with the employer, dream of saving up some money and finding a different job. Most of them have university degrees and very interesting professions, and [see] doing the service industry jobs as a detour on the way to the happy future. Some housekeepers refused to be photographed as they saw it as something which would put a tag on them."

Li-Mi-Yan photographed both male and female servants while working on the project. She pointed out that the jobs are almost always gender specific: "Most of housekeepers, au pairs, governesses are women; most of drivers, gardeners and securities are men." She has always been interested in the social portrayal of women; she once documented life inside Armenia's only female prison, produced a photographic study on how makeup was used as a tool of daily transformation, and created portraits exploring the bodies of middle-aged women. You can see the social framework that imposes a certain look and type of behaviour on women present in Masters and Servants too-visible in the differences in clothes, facial expression, and poses between female employers and their employees.

Domestic work often serves as a way out for the economically vulnerable, which only adds to the picture. "There is a recurring story among the home personnel I photographed," Li-Mi-Yan said. "They studied, got married, worked, got kids, and then suddenly at some point their settled life fell apart. They found themselves in a position when they couldn't find a decently paid job. Working in this industry gives them an opportunity to survive and help their closest relatives. From all of my characters, only one women of retirement age has chosen this profession [and was] not being forced by circumstances."

tells the stories of real people, although its aim is to make the viewer question the social structures depicted and fill in the gaps in their own narrative. "In the text for my project, I deliberately provided very formal information about the characters. I wanted the viewer to have freedom of thinking into the stories," Li-Mi-Yan says. "But I realized the whole depth of the influence these images had on the viewer only when I posted the project online. In various unpredictable reviews and reactions, the amount of second guessing was unbelievably high. I am happy about this result. It's like the project keeps developing and growing by itself."
Read more: Exploring a Vodou Priestess's Spirited World, in Photos

Masters and Servants is a valuable documentation of a specific post-Soviet social order, but it also works as a visual riddle for the viewer. The images-very still and carefully composed-leaves enough space for you to get lost in examining the relationship between its subjects, till the distinction between master and servant dissolves completely. "My goal was to create a kind of psychological portrait in which nothing would distract the viewer from studying different types," Li-Mi-Yan added. "Behind the seemingly neutral nature of images, there is a trap which leads the viewer into losing understanding [of] where is the master and where is the servant."

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Filthy Rich: Photos of Russia's Wealthy Elite and Their Hired Help

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Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian society has gone through major changes-from being the society of the proletariat to a present-day world of newly established classes and social difference. The 90s saw the wild, uncontrolled rise of capitalism and a deepening gap between the rich and the poor.

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shaun bloodworth portraits - Google Search

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Giulia Marchi Photo - The Muslim Sisterhood

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Work by Giulia Marchi - photographer based in Beijing, China specializing in portrait and documentary photographs.

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Portraits shot on assignment and for personal projects, by Giulia Marchi

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"Inge Morath's early color photographs, made in the 1950s and 1960s, show all the humor and keen perception that distinguishes her more familiar work in black and white. In addition, these images reveal a great degree of skill and sensitivity to the unique demands of working with color film. Morath exerts exquisite control at moments where a less disciplined artist might succumb to sentiment. In image after image, she finds the essential colorful detail that transforms an ordinary view into a lyrical metaphor"

Exert from Mary Panzer's introductory essay.

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First Color * Inge Morath * Magnum Photos

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"Inge Morath's early color photographs, made in the 1950s and 1960s, show all the humor and keen perception that distinguishes her more familiar work in black and white. In addition, these images reveal a great degree of skill and sensitivity to the unique demands of working with color film.

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Annie Leibovitz - 49 Artworks, Bio & Shows on Artsy

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Find the latest shows, biography, and artworks for sale by Annie Leibovitz. Annie Leibovitz is heralded as one of the greatest portrait photographers of her ...

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Richard Avedon - 97 Artworks, Bio & Shows on Artsy

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Find the latest shows, biography, and artworks for sale by Richard Avedon. Although Richard Avedon's celebrated fashion photographs have graced the pages of ...

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The subjects of Tim Hetherington's Inner Light: Portraits of the Blind, photographed between 1999 and 2003 in Sierra Leone's Milton Margai School for the Blind, were mostly born with the ability to see. At Chelsea's Yossi Milo Gallery, where the images were recently on view, one was confronted not only with casualties of a civil war but also with the price of their suffering, the images endowing us with sights taken from them.

Whether their eyes have been cut out by rebel groups like the Revolutionary Front or have rotted from a lack of medical care, Hetherington frames the blind in a visual purgatory between extremes: posed or disturbed, drenched in light or enshrouded in darkness. His portraits sizzle like the spooky deserts of Anton Corbijn, but they are embedded with real, omnipresent danger.

In one photo, a child lies arched in the foreground, his face to the sky. In the background a battered piano emerges from the shadows, its keys stuck in playing position, some of them like broken teeth. The passion here is simple and direct, the composition orderly and poignant, the feeling deranged and endless-its underlying chaos born of the distressing push-and-pull between the power of torment and the powerlessness of its tortured subject. One is reminded of a wolf's chilling howl at the moon.

In another peculiar image, a young woman-faced forward with eyes glazed over-combs the hair of a child, perhaps her daughter. Pretty and primped, the woman is a heartbreaking reminder of the persistence of routine in the face of tragedy. It has been argued that blindness leads to the heightened memory of remaining senses, particularly for those who lose their sight at a young age. (Thérèse-Adèle Husson, the French children's author who went blind as a child, famously dictated the entirety of her landmark nineteenth century autobiography Reflections.) Here, a woman attends to hygienic details as if in a trance, every move memorized and recited. We may be quick to notice and sympathize with her physical ailment, but perhaps we miss the attention and affection with which she grooms the girl. Was there someone to help this woman with her own hairstyle?

Eyeglasses frame the cruelest of Hetherington's cruel photographs as children glare impatiently through their round lenses. This image both unifies us with, and separates us from, its subjects. "We are going blind," we are reminded by the photo's blurred edges. We are looking at those who can only appear to look back at us.

This sense of loss and displacement grew only stronger in Hetherington's work after this series and prior to his untimely death in Libya two years ago. As he became notable for both photojournalism and filmmaking, co-directing the Oscar-nominated Afghanistan War doc Restrepo (2010), and then his own experimental short film Diary (2010), the sadness of his travels seemed to increasingly rattle his convictions.

Hetherington speaks just once in Diary. "I make pictures to try to understand what is happening there for myself," he says. "If you think by looking at the pictures that there's no hope, then I'm..." He finishes his film at a loss for words.

Diary, composed of b-footage and reminiscent of the avant-garde shorts of Jonas Mekas, marries scenes of Africa and the West, but only through a bewildering daze of images. Armed youths, nomadic journalists, and wide-open skies spill over into one another. African and American military forces are presented without context; bombs and fireworks, too. We hear screaming coming from behind a closed hotel door-Is Hetherington at home or abroad?

Repeatedly, Hetherington seems to ask himself the question posed to us by Inner Light: What is the function of images that cannot be seen? He considers this question literally and figuratively, perhaps hoping to create a common understanding through his photographs. Surely, Westerners benefit from the experience of Sierra Leone in hindsight. Not only are these photos brimming with haunted beauty but the world within spurs our imaginations. Still, we do not forget that these subjects are, by nature, indifferent to Hetherington's camera, and that their dark reality is indifferent to our perception.

One photo in Inner Light fully considers both Hetherington's visual medium and subject matter: in it, there is no man, woman, or child. A Margai school bell simply sits atop a table, not handled nor ringing out. Here is a portrait of the blind that forces us not only to imagine the past and present-and all the beauty and savagery they entail-but also our own inability to see beyond ourselves, to alter the past, present, or future with certainty. The bell exists in this moment without anyone to notice it, endowed with a history and life beyond Hetherington's recognition of it or ours now.

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Tim Hetherington: Inner Light: Portraits of the Blind, Sierra Leone 1999-2003 was on view at Yossi Milo Gallery, April 11-May 18, 2013. The documentary film Which Way Is The Front Line From Here: The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington, directed by Sebastian Junger, is currently streaming via HBO GO.

Joseph Klarl is Art21's Editorial-Education Intern. He contributes to the Brooklyn Rail and Interview Magazine.

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Sight Unseen: Tim Hetherington's Portraits of the Blind | Art21 Magazine

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The subjects of Tim Hetherington's Inner Light: Portraits of the Blind , photographed between 1999 and 2003 in Sierra Leone's Milton Margai School for the Blind, were mostly born with the ability to see.

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"I have a passion for making work that addresses injustice," says photographer Thom Pierce, whose latest project, Postcards from Xolobeni, transformed his portraits of a community threatened by a proposed titanium mine into powerful letters of protest. "I want to take important stories and make them something that can't ignore be ignored," Thom continues. "I want to go further and think more broadly to find ways that engage large audiences in a subject that they might not ever know about and then give them a means to engage, participate and join the fight."

Born in Jersey but now based in Cape Town, Thom's work often focuses on social injustice - 2015's The Price of Gold, for example, drew attention to the exploitative working conditions in gold mines in South Africa. He regularly works with NGOs, academic institutions, public interest law firms and media organisations to draw attention to the human side of a story, with the intention of shaking an audience out of its complacency and compelling them to take action.

The people of Xolobeni are a self-sufficient community that lives off the land and sea in a very rural part of South Africa's rugged Eastern Coast. The nearest shop, for example, is a two-hour journey, with most only travelling there once a month to buy essentials like sugar and oil. This resilient community had been fighting against plans for a titanium mine - currently proposed by Australia's Mineral Resources Limited and its South African subsidiary - for more than 20 years. If successful, the mine would scoop up more than 20km of the mineral-rich coast, displacing hundreds of people from their ancestral land, cutting off their access to the sea, destroying grassland, estuarine and marine ecosystems and requiring the relocation of ancestral graves.

"After my first visit to the area I felt passionate about the fact that the people needed a voice," says Thom. "It is a beautiful part of South Africa where people genuinely live off the land and sea. In a world where there is a shift towards living more responsibly, creating less waste and less pollution, it stands of an example of how people live harmoniously in their environment. Then a large foreign corporation wants to destroy all of that for personal profit. It's David against Goliath and David deserves some support."

Thom's striking portraits show the importance of the land and sea in the community's lives. "I wanted them to be engaging and beautiful, to grab the attention of the viewer but to also tell a story. Each one needed to take in the environment whilst also drawing the viewer towards the individual," says Thom. The photos show a proud and happy community, defiantly standing up for their way of life. "I genuinely got the sense that people loved the way they lived," says Thom. "They were not enticed by the money that mining could bring, they didn't want the shops. They understood that the quality of their lives didn't come from money, but from their freedom to live the way that they wanted to."

The next step was to transform the portraits into postcards of protest, inscribing messages from the participants onto the reverse of each. After much deliberation with the community, it was decided to translate those messages written in the local language of Xhosa into English - to make them harder to ignore by the mining company and the international press. "We talked at length and helped them to reduce the message to something that was able to fit on the postcard," says Thom. Each inscription was then written out in English and then translated back to Xhosa for people to decide if it correctly represented what they wanted to say. "It was a long but important process to get right," he adds.

On 23 April the Amadiba Crisis Committee took the Department of Mineral Resources to court, requesting a ruling that no license could be granted for a mine without the community's consent. The judge is yet to rule on the outcome but, thanks to Thom's project there's plenty more eyes and ears awaiting the decision. "Great photography is not about the mechanics of photography, the camera is merely a conduit," adds Thom. "Great photography is about what is in front of the lens and the reasons for creating it. Being a photographer is not about being interested in photography, it's about being interested in the world."

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Thom Pierce on using photography to amplify the protests of a rural South African community

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"I have a passion for making work that addresses injustice," says photographer Thom Pierce, whose latest project, _Postcards from Xolobeni_, transformed his portraits of a community threatened by a proposed titanium mine into powerful letters of protest. "I want to take important stories and make them something that can't ignore be ignored," Thom continues.

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From alt beauty Harry Charlesworth strutting his stuff in a cornfield to a modern-day Cinderella with a towering blonde wig and party frock gaffer-taped to her bare skin, the portfolio of photographer Alessandro Merlo is packed with fierce individuals living their best lives. Alessandro's work perfectly captures the feeling that his subjects are utterly themselves, even if trying on outlandish outfits and even more outrageous personalities.

"I came to the realisation that what you decide to put in front of your lens says a lot more about your own character than it does about the subject," the 22-year-old Italian photographer tells us from his West London darkroom. Alessandro shuns fashion industry standards of beauty, which he doesn't share or intend to perpetrate. "I am much more interested in individuals who express themselves freely and challenge said beauty standards. I think this rebellious nature comes from my own inherent queerness and the fact that I always had to fight the status quo to assert my own vision. My photography does not seek mainstream approval; it rejects the very idea that anyone has authority over anyone else."

Alessandro began this trajectory while studying for his BA at UAL. His final major project, 21, explored unconventional queer identity and the way that it manifests itself through make-up and clothing. Featuring a diverse range of subjects, from radical faeries to pagan matriarchs, the series was Alessandro's attempt to open up further possibilities for queer identity and visibility - something still integral to his output. "21 presented a variety of imagery that unknowingly became the basis of my visual language," explains Alessandro. "I now look at it for inspiration and I find myself referencing and expanding concepts that were already present in the original set of pictures."

After "three glorious years of partying, making friends and taking photos" at UAL, Alessandro graduated last year, with post-gradation life playing out in equally stressful and liberating measures. Taking some time to regroup and reevaluate in Italy, New York and San Francisco (see his cheeky snaps of nude sunbathers by the Golden Gate bridge), he's now back in the UK shooting editorial illustrations and assisting legendary Buffalo photographer Jamie Morgan. "I consistently admired and referenced Jamie throughout my university years," enthuses Alessandro. "I even wrote a chapter of my dissertation about him before I even met him in person. I feel extremely lucky to be able to work alongside such a pivotal figure in the history of photography and I am eternally grateful to be taken under his wing."

One of Alessandro's favourite editorial shoots to date is Sheep 'n' Chic, art directed by Leo Carlton and starring queer legends Sussi, Salvia and the aforementioned Harry Charlesworth. Shot on a farm in Oxfordshire last October, the series is equal parts hot and nightmarish. The three are lavished with over-the-top styling, custom couture headwear and designer clothes and even befriend a gang of alpacas. Alessandro says, "We made our country glamour fantasies come to life."

Considering film an integral part of his process, Alessandro enjoys the tactility and intimacy of processing his own rolls. "I always try to incorporate an air of fantasy in my photographs," Alessandro says. "As much as I love documentary photographers, what really intrigues me about taking pictures is the ability to create an image that seemingly uses the same visual codes of our reality, making it possible for everyone to understand, but is completely staged from start to finish and only exists in relation to itself." Presenting locations and sets that are so deliberately set-like (as well as over-the-top fashion) allows Alessandro to create a parallel universe, blurring the line between reality and fiction.

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Introducing the fabulous and fantastical worlds of photographer Alessandro Merlo

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From alt beauty Harry Charlesworth strutting his stuff in a cornfield to a modern-day Cinderella with a towering blonde wig and party frock gaffer-taped to her bare skin, the portfolio of photographer Alessandro Merlo is packed with fierce individuals living their best lives.

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Muscle mass and material success may have been markers of manhood fifty years ago but, over the past few decades, we have seen the face of masculinity undergo significant changes. Photographer Rosie Matheson has spent the past three years documenting young men to better understand what modern masculinity looks like. "I was surrounded by photography from a young age; my grandad worked at Kodak and photographer Zed Nelson is a close friend of my parents. I've been comfortable with a camera in my hands since I can remember, and it's always been my main form of expressing how I feel and of navigating the world around me," the photographer tells It's Nice That.

Rosie's series Boys is made up of dozens of thoughtful and sensitive portraits of young men from all walks of life. "I felt way more relaxed photographing boys. It suited my preference for quick shooting and I liked that they never requested styling or make-up, which made each shoot super casual. It also took the pressure off initially as I was still finding my way," she says. Rosie's images are effortless in their dreamy, soft aesthetic as she manages to capture the delicate complexities and nuances, strengths and vulnerabilities of each character she photographs.

Rosie often finds herself turning to a quote spoken by the legendary photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson: "In a portrait, I'm searching for the silence in somebody". Subtlety is at the heart of Rosie's body of work; each sitter is evidently confident in front of the camera's lens, allowing the photographer to extract honest moments of expression. "I try not to interrupt who a person is. Instead, I try to capture an instance or movement that reveals something about who they are. I try to achieve this through conversation and observation, particularly how they move and react as we walk through the streets and chat," she says. Boys is, in this way, a study of the multi-faceted and nuanced nature of modern masculine identity.

"Photography is about educating, it's about offering a new perspective, about putting forward an opinion and about challenging preconceptions. That's what I hope Boys does. I've been shooting it on and off since 2015 and it's really my interpretation of 21st-century men and how I perceive them. Reflecting on the series so far, I'd say the project focuses on people who don't realise how special and interesting they are, and whose faces reveal their stories."

The next step for Boys, hopes Rosie, will be to turn her series into a short documentary that will give voice to the characters she has photographed. Shooting the doc on film, Rosie plans to deepen our understanding of the photogenic boys' individual stories in order to better comprehend how they might define masculinity today. "I'm sure people will look at my photographs, which are open to interpretation, and form an idea about who they think the person they see is. Then I want the viewer to watch the film and learn something more, or perhaps something completely different, about the boys, prompting them to reassess the original images," Rosie explains. The film, she says, will hopefully reveal what lies under the facade of social expectations. It is these assumptions and preconceptions that Rosie is challenging, one medium at a time.

You can support Rosie's upcoming documentary by clicking here.

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Rosie Matheson's series, Boys, explores the nuanced nature of modern masculinity

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Muscle mass and material success may have been markers of manhood fifty years ago but, over the past few decades, we have seen the face of masculinity undergo significant changes. Photographer Rosie Matheson has spent the past three years documenting young men to better understand what modern masculinity looks like.

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Since the release of his book Bowie, Texas earlier this year, Italian-born photographer Pierluigi Macor has stayed very busy. One particularly striking project, which was commissioned by SZ Magazin, saw Pierluigi travel to a small town near Naples popular with the local population's elderly citizens. "We didn't know anyone there so we simply decided to show up and see what might happen," Pierluigi tells It's Nice That.

Together with a small team of stylists and art director Alexis Zurflüh, Pierluigi went about exploring the town's local haunts for intriguing characters. "Initially we wanted to scout out some unique locations," the photographer explains. "However, we changed our minds and decided to look for interesting-looking pensioners and base the shoot around them. We ended up going to bars and cafés asking if anyone would pose for us, or alternatively, if they knew anyone who might be willing. Everyone was very helpful - we didn't encounter a single no." With no location checks necessary, Pierluigi and his team began meeting the people they were photographing in their houses, taking pictures straight away. It is this dimension of authenticity that renders the series both sensitive and personal.

Elderly women drink tea, snap pictures or go for a walk while the men drive cars or fix some fishing tackle; Pierluigi has managed to distill the small town's spirit into his series. "When I look at the images I see my grandmother - although I can't say she was quite so chic. I can imagine that, at least Italians, might look at these images and see our elderly relatives," he says. Despite it being a stylised fashion series, Pierluigi's intuition-driven, intimate series manages to sensitively capture the individual personalities of his sitters.

Despite the beautifully coherent series, Pierluigi's photographs weren't without their challenges. "The weather wasn't great - we were there for two days during which grey and rainy weather was prominent. That's why we decided to take most of the portraits inside the people's houses and it actually turned out much better, I think," he explains. Pierluigi made use of the natural light, lending the series its understated elegance. Without certain luxe details - head-to-toe Céline outfits aren't exactly commonplace on daily afternoon walks - the series could easily be a candid portrayal of everyday life in one of Italy's small coastal towns.

"I like photographing people who don't like cameras. Most of the time they are better to shoot because they can act natural in front of a lens. I try to put them at ease by doing something silly - you tell them a joke, make them smile and show them they're beautiful. They don't have to act like some famous film-star or model, I just tell them to be themselves."

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Photographer Pierluigi Macor travels to southern Italy to capture interesting characters

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Since the release of his book "_Bowie, Texas_":https://www.editionpatrickfrey.com/en/books/bowie-texas-pierluigi-macor earlier this year, Italian-born photographer Pierluigi Macor has stayed very busy. One particularly striking project, which was commissioned by _SZ Magazin,_ saw Pierluigi travel to a small town near Naples popular with the local population's elderly citizens.

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Odyssey is photographer Alexander Mourant's awe-inspiring series tracing a road-trip he took down the length of Africa, from Cairo to Cape Town. "Odyssey was born through an editorial assignment titled Cairo to Cape Town: Africa's Plastic Footprint with RAW Foundation. We set off to track and document Africa's plastic footprint," Alexander tells It's Nice That. Camera in hand, Alexander's aim was to shine a light on the enormous scale and wide-ranging reach of the plastic pollution problem while photographing the interesting individuals he met on the way. Once he returned home, the London-based photographer evaluated his shots, selecting and compiling his personal favourites into the final series.

Born on the small Channel Island, Alexander says his rural upbringing played an integral role in shaping his photographic language. "My family have lived and farmed in Jersey for generations so a relationship to landscape, space and experience, is embedded in my psychology. Whilst at school, my attraction to photography emerged naturally as a reference point for my ceramic sculptures. I wanted to pursue its practice and concepts further, which led to me to study photography at university," he says. Odyssey is exemplar of Alexander's intuitive photographic approach; his breathtaking river shots and photographs of fields stretching for miles are characteristic of his landscape-led visual language.

Alexander and the rest of the RAW Foundation team travelled by car for five months, documenting the plastic debris, cluttered wastelands and beach pollution they saw along their way. "We explored quite extensively; Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana and South Africa. I created my Odyssey series from a tight edit of personal photographs. My practice to date stems from the resonance of these photographs," the artist reveals. Shooting mainly on film, Alexander's photojournalistic images reveal a thought-provoking objectivity. Remarkable and expansive nature shots are compiled side-by-side with rubbish dumps; Odyssey's contrasting content is a poignant comment on the environment's current state.

The five month trip was, however, not without its challenges. Alexander recollects the difficulties they encountered when their camping equipment was to facilitate and host them during extreme changes in temperature and environment. "My work is imbued with the nomadic feeling that each town beckoned a differing attitude or way of seeing. At times my photographs represent an African idyll, disclosing tales of resonating moments, awe and seduction from an entirely varied and fascinating continent."

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Alexander Mourant's photographs trace a road-trip he took down the length of Africa

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Odyssey_ is photographer Alexander Mourant's awe-inspiring series tracing a road-trip he took down the length of Africa, from Cairo to Cape Town. _"Odyssey_ was born through an editorial assignment titled _Cairo to Cape Town: Africa's Plastic Footprint_ with "RAW Foundation":http://rawfoundation.org/making-waves/. We set off to track and document Africa's plastic footprint," Alexander tells It's Nice That.

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In his latest book Alpha and Omega, photographer David Kasnic turns his lens on a regional community church in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and presents striking portraits of the local neighbourhood. The Chicago-based photographer spent his time getting to know the local families, engaging in local church practices, and asking his sitters how they would want to be photographed. It is this thoughtful approach that renders Alpha and Omega a unique insight into an otherwise tightly-knit community.

David's interest in photography was sparked in high school and, as the years went by, he began to focus his craft on portraiture, capturing the quirks and eccentricities of intriguing characters. In 2016, French newspaper Libération commissioned David to document Milwaukee's social divisions. His photographs were then to be featured in a special issue titled Obama Blues. "I was brought to a small storefront church, Alpha and Omega Ministries, where I met some terrific people. The pastor, Martha Freeman, invited me to come back the next week to continue photographing outside of the perimeters of the commission. We formed a strong connection and I've kept going back ever since," David tells It's Nice That.

Alpha and Omega is populated by earnest and sincere shots of the local residents, whether it be a tattooed boy, a mother with her young son or an elderly man dynamically raising his hand in the air. David describes his photographs as collaborations and says, "each person brings a performance of themselves that they'd like to have represented in a photograph and I attempt to curate that into the most believable picture. After each encounter I bring small prints back, listen to thoughts and feedback, and we try again." Instead of projecting his own narratives onto his sitters, David's democratic mindset allows for an honest and authentic representation of the local Milwaukee community.

"I hate to think of this work as a 'series' because I consider many of the people from and around Alpha and Omega Ministries to be family. They came to my wedding, I've been to a lot of their homes and family events - so I really hate to call it that. There is the obvious though, that I am a photographer, making pictures in a small church, on a street, in a community that is not mine. I'm doing this with a purpose - so in that sense I will always be an outsider," the photographer says. Yet, David's personal relationship with and emotional investment in the residents around Alpha and Omega Ministries translates in his photographs; the close connection between photographer and sitter means that Alpha and Omega is made up of strong, dynamic characters with distinct personalities that shine through the images.

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David Kasnic sees photography as a collaboration between artist and sitter

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In his latest book _Alpha and Omega,_ photographer David Kasnic turns his lens on a regional community church in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and presents striking portraits of the local neighbourhood. The Chicago-based photographer spent his time getting to know the local families, engaging in local church practices, and asking his sitters how they would want to be photographed.

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Jules Moskovtchenko may split his time between four countries - France, Switzerland, Hong Kong and England - but his latest series, The Pearly Kings, captures a tradition unique to London. The Pearly Kings and Queens are characterised by their mother-of-pearl-embellished clothes and lifelong dedication to charitable organisations. They formed in the 19th century and have since passed on these practices through the generations. "Novembre's Georgia Pendlebury proposed I shoot a series about the pearlies. She got in contact with the Pearly Kings and Queens of Harrow, who showed an interest in posing for us. It was then up to me to find the right way to tell the story," Jules tells It's Nice That.

Jules' interest in photography was sparked by a frustration with the fashion world's predisposition for unvarying and often misleading photography. In response to the industry's homogeneity, Jules seeks to capture honest shots that depict both individuals and communities, traditions and cultures that may not otherwise appear in upscale fashion publications. "It was never a question of making a fashion story. I wanted to portray an English tradition that is passed on through generations, from parents to their children. I like taking pictures that aren't necessarily 'in fashion'. I always look for the same characteristics when I decide to take a portrait of someone; namely, kindness and an ease with standing before the camera," Jules explains. The Pearly Kings is a sensitive and sincere celebration of an age-old English tradition. Jules' sitters appear comfortable in front of the camera's lens as they allow the photographer to snap them in intimate situations inside their family homes.

"I based a lot of my research on family albums, from artistic to amateur photo books. My research led me to old classical paintings of families and to traditional photographic family portraits. This, in turn, got me interested in the formal composition of family members in such photographs. I also went through my parent's album; I found lots of fun snaps of my father, my brothers and I dressed up or sleeping in weird positions. It was these intimate settings we tried to recreate," Jules says. From parents sitting at the breakfast table with their children to a young couple exchanging telling looks, The Pearly Kings offers the viewer a truthful insight into the lives of this unique community.

The Pearly Kings took nearly a year to organise and coordinate. Georgia spent many months discussing the shoot with Harrow's Pearly Kings and Queens in order to ensure the families were represented in a genuine way. Despite initially receiving high levels of interest, when it came to the day of the shoot only a couple of families agreed to pose. Jules explains that he was careful to represent the sitters as they would want to be depicted, adding to it a intimate playfulness you might find in a personal photo book. "It was really about telling a story. I was inspired by my own family photographs, art history and personal experiences to tell the story of a more or less ordinary family."

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"It was never a question of making a fashion story": Jules Moskovtchenko's honest depiction of London's pearlies

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Jules Moskovtchenko may split his time between four countries - France, Switzerland, Hong Kong and England - but his latest series, _The Pearly Kings,_ captures a tradition unique to London. The Pearly Kings and Queens are characterised by their mother-of-pearl-embellished clothes and lifelong dedication to charitable organisations.

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1st Place, "Deep Land" by Roselena Giovanna Ramistella | World Photography Organisation

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Sony World Photography Awards " Winners Galleries " " "2018 Shortlisted & Commended Winners " Natural World2018 Professional Competition " 1st Place, "Deep Land" by Roselena Giovanna Ramistella