I consider myself a somewhat unusual breed of photographer. While I once was an aspiring photographer with a passion for taking my own photos, about a decade ago I transitioned to the other side of the lens (so to speak) and founded Feature Shoot as a way to showcase the amazing work of other photographers I was coming across.

These days, the act of taking photos is almost like therapy for me. It’s a meditative state. It represents a time and place where I can stop and smell the roses. I mean that literally: most of my own work revolves around flowers – perhaps a bee buzzing around a flower, or even a reflection of a bee and a flower. Not very original – I know – but that’s not my point.

If you like music, it’s very likely that you’ve seen the work of Kerstin Rodgers, one of the prime documentarians of the punk scene in London and one of the most influential rock’n’roll photographers of all time.

That classic image of a young and coy Morrisey wearing an oversized knit sweater, those scenes of The Cramps ferociously blasting on stage as if their lives depended on it, or Madness doing their trademark “nutty train” … that’s all Kerstin. She’s one of the many unsung lens warriors who one beer-stained night at a time, helped define the iconography of rock in the late 70s and early 80s.

She got her photos published in New Musical Express as a teenager, and since then her work has been printed on the pages of almost every prestigious musical and news outlet under the sun. She’s exhibited in galleries in Paris and London, and was included in the Getty Image Library exhibition, ‘Beat Positive’.

Madness, January 1st 1980. © Kerstin Rodgers

But her story is as weird, fascinating and unique as they come. Although Rodger’s impact in the music industry is immense, over the last decade she has become an Internet celebrity for very different reasons.

Brooklyn-based photographer Winnie Au makes dogs catwalk-ready (pun intended) with fashion pieces inspired by their greatest enemy: the dreaded cone of shame.

The portrait series, simply called Cone of Shame, features the amusing reactions of different dogs to wearing the conical contraptions. The cones were reimagined by costume designer Marie-Yan Morvan as functional sculptures, eschewing stiff plastic for other materials like feathers and eggshells, and turning them into designs inspired by cotton candy and sea urchin, to name a few.

Created by Robert Graves-Morris (@__rgm__), photography by Catherine Losing (@catherinelosing), design by Oreoluwa Ayoade (@o_ayoade), retouching by Paulina Teller (@PTretouch).

Created by Robert Graves-Morris (@__rgm__), photography by Catherine Losing (@catherinelosing), design by Oreoluwa Ayoade (@o_ayoade), retouching by Paulina Teller (@PTretouch).

Catherine Losing and Robert Graves-Morris reveal a side of flowers you have never seen before in their sensual series cleverly titled Pornosynthesis.

The project is a visual journey into the sexuality of plants, giving us a close-up view of the inside parts of flowers. Influenced by vintage 70’s pornography magazines and driven by their passion and concern for bee populations and environmental issues, Losing and Graves-Morris combine their creativity and vision to form stunning glamour shots of lush flora.

Each plant is glazed to the point of dripping, exuding a sexuality that we would normally never think to attribute to a plant.

When asked about how they achieved this glossy, dewy effect, Losing said that she loves to “use light to add texture and form to still life subjects. We also used a fair bit of a still life staple—glycerine—to add some juices.”

Robert Giard. Storme Webber, New York City, 1990. 15 x 15”, gelatin silver print.
Webber is a poet, playwright, educator and artist. Her collections of poetry include “Diaspora”, “Blues Divine” and “Noirish Lesbiana”.

Robert Giard. John Giorno, New York City, 1993. 15 x 15”, gelatin silver print.

On July 16, 2002, American photographer Robert Giard died doing what he loved best — traveling across the country to make portraits of LGBTQ+ writers. In total, Giard photographed some 600 writers from all walks of life, creating a visual record during the height of the AIDS crisis.

Giard’s inclusive spirit lead him to create a veritable catalogue that encompasses not only a broad swath of enthographic communities, but a diverse array of literary practitioners, be it novelists, playwrights, and poets or journalists, historians, and activists including Stonewall rebels Sylvia Rivera and Storme De Laverie.

The photographs were first published in the landmark book Particular Voices: Portraits of Gay and Lesbian Writers (MIT Press, 1997), and in 2004, the renowned Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University acquired Robert Giard’s complete archive as part of the Yale Collection of American Literature.

Now a selection of 53 portraits are on view in Particular Voices: Photographs of LGBTQ Writers, Artists and Activists, 1980’s – 90’s at Daniel Cooney Fine Art, New York, now through July 26, 2019. Here, we get first-person accounts of Giard through the eyes of those who sat for him as well as Jonathan Sillin, Giard’s life partner, co-president of the Robert Giard Foundation, and executor of the Robert Giard Estate.

The photojournalist Aitor Garmendia stands outside a farm in Italy, accompanied by investigators from the animal rights group Essere Animali. Inside, there are thousands of pigs, all bred and raised for meat. It’s the dead of night. All is silent. There are guards inside. “You have one minute,” the investigation coordinator tells Garmendia. He slips inside, turns on the light, and photographs what he sees.

This was just one of the twelve nights Garmendia spent with the team from Essere Animali. Each one posed new risks. In total, they investigated eleven farms.

Georgia O’Keefe, Ghost Ranch, New Mexico, 1968. Silver Gelatin Photograph, 12 15/16 x 8 3/4 inches. Stamped verso. Print Made Later

Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1947. Silver Gelatin Photograph. 9 3/16 x 12 1/2 inches. Stamped verso. Print Made Later

Diana Vreeland, 1974 . Vintage Silver Gelatin Photograph Mounted to Board, 13 5/8 x 10 5/8 inches. Signed, titled and dated in pencil on mount recto. Titled in pencil on mount verso. Print made c. 1974

Known as the “father of the environmental portrait,” American photographer Arnold Newman (1918–2006) transformed the way in which we consider the person we are gazing upon. By taking them out of the studio and restoring them to their rightful place, we see the subject as a product of their environment — and their environment as an extension of the inner self.

“You don’t take pictures with your camera. You take pictures with your mind and your heart,” Newman said, recognizing the underlying connection between the artist, their subject, and the work itself.

Hailing from New York, Newman had his first solo exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1945, garnering national attention for his revealing portraits collected for Artists Look Like This. It’s a subject that Newman revisited throughout his long, illustrious life, and the basis for the recent exhibition Arnold Newman, Artist Portraits at Fahey/Klein in Los Angeles.

Shutterstock is a creative marketplace populated by talented photographers, illustrators, musicians and videographers from around the world.

Now Shutterstock invites audiences to discover the stories behind the creativity through the new Shutterstock Presents: Artists Series a video series highlighting these inspiring contributors.

Shutterstock Presents: Artists Series provides a behind-the-scenes look at the creative artists across the network, offering insight into the lives of contributors who choose to share their art with Shutterstock’s global audience.

‘Tricked You’ © Erica Reade (@ericareadeimages), Brooklyn, New York

Girl playing with a tyre © Andrea Torrei (@andreatorrei), Bologna, Italy

‘Neither in Heaven nor on Earth’ © Rebeka Legovic (@rebekalegovic), Rijeka, Croatia

Feature Shoot’s worldwide project The Print Swap will return to Manhattan for our summer exhibition at the renowned FOLEY Gallery. Opening for one night only on July 23rd, this show features thirty photographs, each selected by the gallery owner Michael Foley himself. FOLEY Gallery is a perfect setting to showcase work from the global Print Swap community. The show will feature talented artists based in the United States, Brazil, England, Italy, Croatia, Spain, France, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Japan.

The show has no fixed theme, so we leave the images open to interpretation. Passageways and thresholds become recurring motifs, suggesting a hazy boundary line between the real and the imagined. On the beaches of New York, Erica Reade experiments with mirrors, transfiguring space and time. Rebeka Legovic photographs a dog walking steadily into the unknown. In Cape Coast, Ghana, Andrea Torrei watches a girl as she plays with a tire, creating what could be a portal to another world. Alison Schmitz drifts skyward a surreal cloudscape, while Jesus Domingo takes us an a journey by boat to the end of the world.

If you’re in New York this summer, be sure to see the show in person on the 23rd!

The Print Swap is an ongoing initiative launched by Feature Shoot. Here’s how it works: photographers can submit images for consideration by tagging them #theprintswap on Instagram or uploading them directly to our website. Our team of curators chooses outstanding images, and selected photographers are invited to participate in our international swap. It’s free to submit, and it costs just $40/image for selected photographers to take part.

All Print Swap participating photographers give a print and receive a print, and during our fixed judging periods, they are also considered for our offline exhibitions. Our next show will be at Photoville, and submissions are now open! As NYC’s largest annual photography event, Photoville draws more than 80,000 visitors to Brooklyn Bridge Park each September. Learn more at our website, and follow along on Instagram at @theprintswap for updates. We can’t wait to see your submissions!