Posts by: Eva Clifford

The Arctic is melting faster than any other place in the world. NY City-based photographer Diane Tuft set out to document the area before the effects of global warming cause this landscape to vanish forever. During the summers of 2015 and 2016, Tuft travelled by plane, boat and helicopter to photograph the mountain glaciers of Svalbard, Norway, the Arctic Ocean’s sea ice and the ice bergs and ice sheet of Greenland witnessing for herself the incredible beauty and fragility of the region.

I set out to do something with meaning. Being fortunate enough to have met and photographed these remarkable people has certainly felt meaningful to me. – Harry Borden

Having spent most of his career photographing celebrities, celebrated portrait photographer Harry Borden decided it was time for a change. His project Survivor, which culminated into what would become his first-ever book containing over a hundred portraits of Holocaust survivors, was not only an attempt to create an important historical artifact, but also an exploration of his own cultural heritage.

Growing up with a Jewish father, Borden recalls his father telling him that the Nazis would have killed ‘people like us’. He also remembers the shock this statement roused in him. Describing his dad as “a resolute atheist Jew who derived nothing from his background except a fear of anti-Semitism,” Borden writes in the book’s introduction: “I think it was my dad’s ambivalence towards his heritage – and his disturbing revelation that it had once been deemed punishable by death – that really motivated me to create this body of work.”

As a continuation of his initial Flatland project, Istanbul-based photographer Aydin Büyüktas travelled to the USA at the end of 2016 to expand his collection of mind-bending images. Inspired by sci-fi writers, in particular Edwin Abbot’s 1884 novella Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, he uses digital manipulation to transcend the limits of human vision and create his own way of seeing the world, or in his words a “multidimensional romantic point of view.”

Following two months of research, Büyüktas spent a month capturing photos with an aerial drone, flying his drone a total distance of 10,000 miles. To make the resulting images, he spent the next two months creating composites combining between 18-20 images in each one. In this series, baseball courts and highways replace the Turkish markets and striking landmarks of his previous work, however we still view the world from Büyüktas’ warped rollercoaster-like vision, which plunges us directly into the landscapes from vertiginous heights.

Welcome to Flatland ll…

Amin, Los Angeles
“I find myself in the middle of two fronts – sometimes fighting within the Muslim community for more tolerance of LGBT people, and at other times fighting queer people and non-Muslims against the rampant Islamophobia in this country. I feel like I’m obligated to educate people on both sides. At the same time, I don’t feel the need to be validated by anyone. I don’t feel any great inner turmoil because of the various components of my identity. Like, I don’t necessarily feel excited by the prospect of a mosque for gay people. If there was a big mosque and people went and prayed together, I would still feel uncomfortable – gay or not. But I feel like people should have the right to do that. Is that weird? It sounds like I am in denial, doesn’t it?”

El-Farouk and his husband Troy, Toronto
“Where I am at today is not necessarily where I started. And I could tell you where I am now and it would sound rather a happy place. But the journey to that place has not been an easy one. I started with the notion that it was sinful [to be gay] and that those who practiced it were problematic at best. But that didn’t quite sort of seem right in the larger construct of the Quran and the Prophet that I believed to be true and actually had been taught. I don’t believe that homosexuality is a sin because sexuality in Islam is not a sin. Sexuality is something that God has given. And in verse 49.13. Allah says, ‘I created you to different nations and tribes and you may know and learn from each other.’ I just see queer folk as one of those nations or tribes.”

For her project ‘Being Queer, Feeling Muslim’, photographer Lia Darjes met with a number of individuals across Europe and North America who identify with being both Muslim and gay. Here, she shares their stories as they go about building their own progressive and inclusive communities in a society largely intolerant of homosexuality. In these defiant, pastel-hued portraits, Darjes captures them in a positive light treating them not as victims, but as courageous individuals striving for positive change.

akkedis, prince albert, karoo, south africa

fallen giraffe, somerset east, eastern cape, south africa – from the series ‘the fallen’

I once saw a box. Simply a Tupperware container actually, only slightly grander than that. It was indistinguishable from many other boxes of the same nature other than the fact it had a strip of white surgical tape on its lid. Written in ‘sharpie’ were the words ‘handle like eggs’. ‘What’s in there?’ I asked, ‘it’s a heart…and ice of course to keep it alive’.” – David Chancellor

Based between South Africa and the UK, David Chancellor has travelled extensively throughout his career as a documentary photographer. With a deep commitment to wildlife conservation, he has documented a wide range of pressing issues from the elephant poaching crisis in Africa to a mountain lion hunt in Utah to deer stalking in Scotland.

“It’s a sort of last frontier, a legend-filled land that people want to visit as a place where discoveries can be made,” says Ghent-based photographer Britt Vangenechten of the world’s southernmost inhabited place. Tierra del Fuego is an archipelago of islands located at the southern tip of South America and jointly owned by Chile and Argentina.

With only a few towns scattered across the land, most tourists flock to the major city Ushuaia, but Vangenechten wanted to strike out on a path of her own. Travelling only with a camera and a little money in her pocket, she discovered desolate roads, mysterious forests and lonely settlements, creating this beautiful and evocative photo series entitled El fin del mundo, the end of the earth.

Table-Tipping Workshop at Rev. Jane’s House, Erie, Pennsylvania, 2014

Lily Dale Auditorium, Lily Dale, New York, 2001

Shannon Taggart’s ventures into the world of Spiritualism began as a teenager. Since then, she’s been photographing the Spiritualist community of Lily Dale, New York for sixteen years. Her new book Séance: Spiritualism Ritual and the Search for Ectoplasm brings together ethnographic study, journalism and art, offering an in-depth insight into the essence of Spiritualism – showing us the uncanny encounters, sacred spots which have set the stage for Spiritualist gatherings for generations, and the elusive ectoplasm – a substance said to be both spiritual and material. The photographs put us in touch with another world, one that doesn’t seem so far off.

Ukrainian photographer Sergey Melnitchenko first arrived in China as a dancer. Performing in a nameless Chinese club he describes as being “more like a huge bar with a stage,” it wasn’t until he paid full attention to the surroundings that the singular atmosphere of the place struck him. “At one moment, I realized how many great things are going on here, and that’s how the series Behind the Scenes appeared,” says Melnitchenko.

For most of history. Anonymous was a woman. – Virginia Woolf

Chicago-based photographer Patty Carroll‘s most recent project Anonymous Women is made up of a series of staged photographs using models, drapery and household objects to address women and their complex relationship with domesticity.  Having grown up in mid-century suburban Chicago during an era where suburban living was idealized, Carroll has since developed a deep fascination with the idea of home. In these highly saturated theatrical scenes, anonymous figures appear draped in cocoon-like textiles and are accessorized with chandeliers and other household objects to comment on the role of women in the home.