portrait photography

Photo by Valerie Belin

Martin Schoeller is a New York based photographer whose style is distinguished by similar treatment of all subjects whether they are celebrities or unknown.  Martin traveled to the annual “Twins Days Festival” in Twinsburg, Ohio, to shoot pairs of identical twins for National Geographic Magazine.  By using his signature Close-Up style, the portraits allow the viewer to explore the physical similarities between the pairs, complementing the story, which covered their psychological similarities.

Danish photographer Thilde Jensen came to New York City in 1997. Six years later her life and career was cut short by a sudden development of severe Multiple Chemical Sensitivities (MCS). The urban life she had previously navigated with ease transformed into a toxic war zone. Her immune system crashed, forcing her unto a survivalistic journey, unravelling the comfort and construct of her previous life. The ensuing years were a lesson in basic survival – camping in the woods, while wearing a respirator when entering supermarkets, doctors’ offices, and banks. To her surprise an otherwise invisible subculture of people emerged who shared this isolated existence. Her photographs are a personal account of life on the edge of modern civilization as one of the human canaries, the first casualties to a ubiquitous synthetic chemical culture. Of her series ‘Canaries’ Thilde writes:

‘Since World War II the production and use of synthetic chemicals has exploded. During the course of an average day, people come in contact with a host of chemicals – Just walking into a supermarket one might be breathing as many as 20,000 different synthetic compounds. As a result of the prevalence of these synthetic chemicals, it is believed that more than ten million Americans have developed a disabling condition called Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, (MCS).

MCS is a condition where our immune and central nervous system goes into extreme reactions when exposed to small amounts of daily chemicals like perfume, cleaning products, car exhaust, construction materials and pesticides. In addition, some people also react to light, fabrics, food and electromagnetic fields as emitted by computers, phones, cell towers, cars and florescent lights – making life a near impossibility. Many people with MCS are forced to live in remote areas in tents, cars, or trailers. Others are prisoners of their homes, with advanced air filter systems to keep outside air from contaminating their breathing space’.

Rania Matar currently works full-time as a photographer and teaches documentary photography at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Of her series, A Girl and Her Room, she writes:

‘As a mother of a teenage daughter, I watch her passage from girlhood into adulthood, fascinated with the transformation taking place, the adult personality shaping up and a self-consciousness now replacing the carefree world she had known and lived in so far. I started photographing her and her girlfriends, and quickly realized that they were very aware of each other’s presence, and that their being in a group affected very much whom they were portraying to the world. From there, emerged the idea of photographing each girl alone in her personal space.’

Over the past decade Jasper James, currently based in Beijing, has lived and worked in New York and London covering assignments around the globe for some of the world’s leading magazines, design and advertising clients. Of this series, City Silhouettes, he writes:

‘These photos are part of an ongoing project that I have been shooting for the past few years in various cities around Asia. Sometime in 2008, the number of people living in urban areas outnumbered those living in rural areas for the first time in history. I thought it would be interesting to shoot portraits of these city dwellers combined with the image of a cityscape.

‘The images are made in camera with just a basic adjustment in contrast and colours but no retouching. I’m currently planning exhibitions of the images and looking for an interested publisher.’

Photo by Miharu Matsunaga

Andrew Querner is a photographer based in Canmore, Alberta. About his series ‘The Bread With Honey’ he writes:

In former times, the Stan Terg mine located in Trepca, Kosovo was the jewel of a giant Yugoslavian mining conglomerate. Two thousand miners supplied factories and smelters throughout what is now independent Kosovo with lead, zinc, and gold, among many other metals. Power struggles in the 1990s which resulted in the break-up of Yugoslavia and culminated in Kosovo’s civil war of 1999, crippled the mining operation. Since the end of the war Stan Terg has little more than survived, the victim of fallout from tensions between Kosovo’s Serbian and Albanian population, political tensions between Kosovo and Serbia, and post-independence growing pains.

Today, an anemic crew of aging Albanian miners ensures a modest production schedule. With little to no economic activity in the region, miners in their 50s and 60s bare the burden of providing for their extended families. As such, the idea of retirement and the collection of a meager pension worries many. What is more, a multi-million dollar private investment is required to bring the mine and its network of processing facilities in line with modern standards. Whether the current economic and political climate can be navigated by a would-be investor remains to be seen. Privately, workers still harbor concern over the wholesale sell-off of the mine to international interests, a move that could threaten the few remaining jobs as well as export the bulk of any future wealth out of the country.

Through the lens of the miners, their children, and the tired town at the mine’s threshold, these pictures are my attempt to better understand the complexities of the Kosovar experience shaped, in large measure, by the challenge of new independence.

Brooke Shaden is a twenty-three-year-old fine art photographer living and working in the Los Angeles area. Her passion lies in creating new worlds through photographs. Her vision extends beyond the realm of the camera, creating images that resemble paintings and speak of an era that is not our own.