May 2010

Tim Flach, a professional photographer for 25 years, lives and works in London. He is known for his conceptual images of animals, and his book project about horses, Equus, was published in 2008.  Of his work he writes, ‘I was introduced to animal photography on a trip to the zoo with my art class. Years later, when shooting for annual reports, prospectuses, and architectural magazines, I returned to animal subjects by way of an ad project that involved a 20-foot python and a vulture. The animal handler mentioned that he also kept big cats, so I thought, “Why not get them into the studio.” That was the first photography project I initiated. What I have found most exciting about working with animal subjects since then is the sense of mixing order and chaos, structure with ungovernable elements’.

Photo by Annalaura Masciave

Photo by Jeremy Blincoe

Photo by Liam Aylott

Photo by Jamie Nimmo and Alex Fry

Photo by Lucia O’Connor McCarthy

Photo by Max Sher

Photo by Peden and Munk

Kate Bernauer lives and works in Brisbane, Australia. Predominantly a photographic and video artist, she has also worked as a Cinematic Designer and Layout artist for the video games industry. Of her work she writes, ‘My work is embedded with implied narratives that are inspired by dreams, myths and tall stories. The use of theatrical lighting and props on location creates a stage where poetic metaphors address the contradictions and absurdities of everyday life. The work has been inspired by dreams and ‘strange, but true’ columns – the weird and absurd true stories often found in the back pages of newspapers. The series ‘Long Way Home’ and ‘Notes on Trying to be a Fish’ depict the Gold Coast and Brisbane night-time cityscapes’.

Ross Mantle is a freelance photographer based in Pittsburgh, Pa. He holds a degree in Visual Communication from Ohio University and has worked for newspapers and on projects throughout the United States and abroad. His work has been featured in publications worldwide, including The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, among others. Mantle’s personal work often focuses on the quirks of American life and the unique relationship between person and place. He enjoys riding bikes, eating cheap burritos and making iced tea.

How did you come across this migration of immigrants from the South into Appalachia and how did you establish a relationship with this community?
‘The owner of an agricultural supply company mentioned the migrant community in Meigs County, about a half hour south of where I was living at the time. I didn’t look into it until the following Spring when I was looking for a story for class. I made a bunch of calls and mostly ran into dead ends. Someone eventually suggested going to the Ash Wednesday mass the following week.

‘I met two women there and spoke to them about what I hoped to do. They were very kind and willing to let me spend some time with them. Their boss was open to letting me photograph at his greenhouse. I started the project photographing there and a lot of contacts developed from that.

‘I kept showing up every day or two and the relationship with the community grew from there. I would spend time with one household and they would introduce me to another family at a party, or I would visit another couple on the suggestion of their friends. Over a few months, I built a good relationship with the whole community’.

Along with southern Ohio, you also shot in Oaxaca, Mexico for this series, Between Lives. What was the idea behind shooting in Mexico?
‘I wanted to explore the idea of immigrants living in a state of limbo. Their lives are taking place directly and indirectly in both Ohio and Oaxaca, but they are not fully attached to either. In going to Oaxaca, I wanted to photograph the other side of this life in which they are not present, but where their income is sent, where their loved ones are living, and their support is being felt’.

How big is this community that you photographed and what is the nature of their relationship?
‘There are about 30 to 40 full-time residents between southeastern Ohio and a neighboring West Virginia community. In the summer, the number rises as migrant workers follow the crop up from the south, and then returns to normal when the growing season ends in the fall.

‘It’s tight knit, as most of the people are related in some way — whether siblings, cousins or through marriage. They have a good relationship with many of the Americans. They work for, or with, many of them and have at least built an understanding and respect, if not a friendship.

‘It’s very isolated, though. The towns they live in are tucked away in the hills along the banks of the Ohio river. It makes it more difficult to find consistent help from organizations and groups that are based in larger urban areas with bigger migrant populations’.

This work is extremely intimate. How long did you spend photographing this community and were any of the shots pre-meditated?
‘I spent a couple years, on and off, with the community during the time I was in school. I was away from Ohio for a portion of that time, so lot of the work came in the last 6 or 8 months that I was focused on the project.

‘I had a number of topics and ideas that I wanted to photograph and I tried to put myself in the situations to make those images, but it was all un-posed for, with the exception of a couple of portraits. Even those were made in the scene that I saw them’.

The quest for the American Dream seems to be a re-occurring theme in your work. Would you say that this community is in search of the American Dream?
‘They’re in search of a better life and more opportunities for their families, children and themselves. They came to America to find these, but I’m not sure that they are in search of the American Dream as we understand it in the US.

‘In this project, and my other work, I try to explore the different facets of the American Dream and contemporary American life. It’s complex and changing.

‘The American Dream takes on a different meaning from person to person and place to place. The idea played an important part in my personal understanding of this community and its place in America, but it’s impossible for me to say if the American Dream applies directly to the individuals in the Between Lives series’.

Brian Shumway is a New York City based photographer whose work blurs the line between portraiture, documentary and fine art photography. He has worked for the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Time, XXL and the New York Times, among others. Of this series he writes, ‘Black Girl is an ongoing portrait series about young black women in the New York City area who aspire to be models of all types. It grew out of a perceived need to expand my work beyond just documentary and into portraiture and ‘fashion.’ So, I began to shoot models, contacting them through a modeling website. As I did, I noticed something. We all realize, at least in some way, that the mainstream fashion world is white-washed, especially at the high-fashion end, and successful black models are very rare by comparison. What I found was that even though there are so few black professional models, literally thousands and thousands of young black women (just within 50 miles of my zip code) are striving to attain that dream, or at least their interpretation of it’.

Fulvio Bonavia is an award-winning Italian photographer. In 2010, he was selected Photographer of the Year by the Mobius Awards. He has shot ad campaigns for a wide range of international clients, such as Adidas, Heineken, Swatch, Jaguar, BMW and Audi. Prior to establishing himself as a photographer, Bonavia worked as a graphic designer and movie-poster illustrator. In 2008, Hachette Australia published A Matter of Taste, a book featuring Bonavia’s conceptual photos of food as fashion. A French edition of A Matter of Taste was published in 2009, and a selection of images from the book was exhibited at the La Grande Epicerie in Paris. Bonavia is represented by Stockland Martel.

Boru O’Brien O’Connell is a graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and is currently based in upstate New York. He moved from Paris, where he spent a year as an artist-in-residence and grant recipient with CitéCulture. He has also received a Traveling Scholars Fellowship from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Oscar Ciutat lives and works in Barcelona, Spain. These images are part of a series called ‘Caged’. Of this work he says, ‘It is said that the eyes are the windows to the soul. In 2008, I took a series of trips to the local zoo to photograph the eyes of animals held in captivity. I was intrigued by whether the lack of freedom would be apparent in the images’. Oscar also has an excellent blog (en Español).

Since he picked up photography in 2003, Bryan Schutmaat’s work has been exhibited and published in the United States, Europe, Asia and Australia. Bryan is a member of Young Photographers United, and last year he was featured in the Humble Arts Foundation’s Collectors’ Guide to Emerging Art Photography. He holds a degree in history from the University of Houston and will pursue an MFA in photography in the fall of 2010 at the University of Hartford. This work is from his series, Western Frieze.