September 2011

Along with being an art and documentary photographer, Mahesh Shantaram also photographs weddings. He writes, ‘Wasting away in a cubicle in Washington, DC, I decided enough is enough, and went to Paris to study photography. When I returned to India in 2006, it was immediately apparent to me that the Indian wedding photography market needed some ventilation. I took it upon myself to breathe fresh air into the art of documenting Indian weddings’.

‘I’m not very much into overly romantic imagery. Shooting at Indian weddings is like war photography meets street photography. I believe what I’m really hired for is the cerebral act of making keen and positive observations in telling the story of the day. Rather than industry trends, I draw inspiration from the rich traditions of documentary photography. My influences lie in the work of several Magnum photographers whom I’ve had the pleasure of meeting, like Martin Parr and Bruce Gilden’.

Read an interview with Mahesh on WeddingSutra.com.

Mahesh Shantaram is an independent art-documentary photographer based in Bangalore, India. His main area of interest lies in visual representations of modern India minus all the nostalgic fluff, often celebrating the everyday, the mundane, and the leftovers when all the exotic has been consumed or left to dry.

This series, Matrimania, takes a look at the mess that people leave behind at weddings. Shantaram writes, ‘We in India take our weddings very seriously. Sometimes, a wedding set is designed for impact — it needs to strike an everlasting impression with guests who might arrive in the thousands, sending out a clear message of the family’s social standing. At other times, the sets are traditional containers within which a marriage takes place.

‘I have been documenting wedding sets and little associated details at weddings because I find them to be fascinating metaphors of my country’s penchant for order and chaos; colour and noise; and the peculiar sense of taste and design or the lack thereof’.

Binh Danh received his MFA from Stanford University in 2004 and has emerged as an artist of national importance with work that investigates his Vietnamese heritage and our collective memory of war, both in Viet Nam and Cambodia—work that, in his own words, deals with ‘mortality, memory, history, landscape, justice, evidence, and spirituality.’ His technique incorporates his invention of the chlorophyll printing process, in which photographic images appear embedded in leaves through the action of photosynthesis.

Danh has been included in important exhibitions at museums across the country, as well as the collections of the Corcoran Art Gallery, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, the deYoung Museum, and the George Eastman House, among many others. He received the 2010 Eureka Fellowship from the Fleishhacker Foundation and is represented by Haines Gallery in San Francisco, CA and Lisa Sette Gallery in Scottsdale, AZ. He is based in San Jose, California.

via designboom

Ashley Adams is a San Francisco-based landscape, abstract, and outdoor adventure photographer who received her BFA from the Academy of Art University. Her work has been featured in publications such as Photo Induced, Art Acts, and the North American Nature Photography Association’s Expressions Magazine. Most recently Adams was awarded first prize in the Scenes of the Natural World category of PDN Magazine’s The Great Outdoors contest with her stunning image of Ruth Glacier in Alaska. This selection of work is from her ‘Abstract’ series.

Brendan George Ko graduated from The Ontario College of Art & Design, where he studied photography and sculpture. Currently he recents in Toronto, where he is represented. His practice is split between staged studio work to documentary.

Paris-based Gregoire Vieille discovered photography at fourteen years old, while he was living with his parents in Rome’s international artist residency Villa Medicis. He later studied in Paris and developed a preference for studio and still life work. He has worked for clients such as Balenciaga, Montblanc, Givenchy, Cartier, Louis Vuitton, William Lawson’s, Bombay and Grey Goose. His work appeared in magazines such as Wallpaper, Libération, Le Figaro, Glass magazine, Amusement magazine and Marie Claire Maison. He was awarded  PDN’s First Prize in the Still Life category in the Look contest 2010 and recently had a solo exhibition at the Design Milano Week 2011 in the Balenciaga store.

This work, Daily bread, daily net, was shot for Amusement magazine. Vieille wries, ‘On today’s menu (much like every other meal): web browsers, search engines, social networks, Yummy!’

Wesley Mann is a New York City-based portrait photographer known for his ability to draw a range of expressions from his subjects. In his early childhood, Wesley spent much of his time playing with his My Little Ponies. He also enjoyed tying his mother’s dish towels around his head to pretend he had long, voluminous hair. He has since suppressed such urges and instead focuses his creativity on his photographic works. He considers himself to be a great sucker for beauty. Some of Wesley’s most recent subjects (among others) have included Robyn Williams, Keith Olbermann, Susan Sarandon, Jimmy Kimmel, Mark Ruffalo and James Earl Jones.

These images are selects from Wesley’s recent photo session with the singer-songwriter, Marissa Nadler, an exclusive for Feature Shoot.

Shaw & Shaw photographers, Joanna and Christoph Shaw, have been working together for over a decade. Their shots of wig shops, pies on shelves and empty cafes went on to define their style. Whether on the streets of New York, in the Austrian alps or at the Huddersfield indoor market Shaw & Shaw seek out the quaint, unusual and mundane. Their first project together was an award-winning self published book called Where Are You? which documented the charming and tawdry details of Northern British life.

Indonesian-based designer, Jordan Marzuki is a man of many talents: photography, video, t-shirt and clever package design to name a few. ‘Family Picture Perfect‘, a story about a happy and delightful conservative family with their own definition of perfection, is his latest video promoting his new line of Balletcats products, which can be found in the Lost At E Minor store.