Michelle Ford (born 1984) grew up in Montreal. In 2008 Michelle graduated from Emily Carr University with a degree in photography. She now lives in Vancouver. Her work deals with the idea of nostalgia and the mysticism of what once-was and what will-be.
Sam Hessamian must be some kind of genius. Not only is he an incredibly talented photographer, he also directs wonderful videos on which he creates the music. Go have a look for yourself HERE.
Tony Kelly is a Dublin born photographer. He started his career covering the civil war in Rwanda and the war in Afghanistan. After a while he turned his lenses onto something quite less dramatic. He is certainly not afraid to show some flesh and he sure likes derision, vivid colors and everything that is beautiful and ugly, at the same time.
Ali Bosworth is photographer from Victoria, BC. He recently released a book with Gottlung Verlag, certainly of the most interesting publishing house out there.
« Look at his photographs, look at them carefully, then look at yourselves – not critically or with self-depreciation, or any sense of inferiority. You might discover, through Edward Weston’s work, how basically good you are, or might become. This is the way Edward would want it to be. »
Ansel Adams
Edward Weston, 1886 – 1958, was an American photographer. His work transcend the medium of photography and I believe that he is one of the most important figure that helped photography to reach the status of a form of art, not only a simple tool for documentation and representation. He created images that blurred, and at the same time melted the distinction between landscapes and body. He was incredibly gifted with an eye that was able to capture pure beauty and sensuality in his simplest forms.
John Ernest Joseph Bellocq was an american photographer who lived in Storville, New Orleans. He dedicated a big part of his work and life documenting the darker side of his town notably the prostitutes and the opium dens. Most of these portraits dates from around 1912, a period when the bordellos were legal in Storyville. These photographs would have disappeared if it wasn’t for Lee Friedlander. Apparently the 8 x 10 glass plates were found in Bellocq drawers after he died. These were purchased by a collector named Larry Borenstein who showed them to Friedlander. He decided that these were too beautiful not to be preserved and seen so he printed the glass plates and this resulted in a major touring show and publication, Storyville Portraits organized by the Museum of Modern Art, in 1970-71. There is a lot of speculation about why the faces are scratched on some of the photograph. Some believe that they were done by his brother of was a Priest. One plausible explanation is that it was done by Bellocq himself to protect the identity of the girl, and the fact that they were probably scratched when the emulsion was wet. Still it has kept a very mystical aspect to his work that inspired a lot of others artists.
Matthew Tammaro currently lives and works in Toronto, Canada.
He recieved his BFA in Photography from Ryerson University,
and has exhibited and been published internationally.He also participate on a very interesting reciprocal exchange of photographs with Alberta based artist Chelsee Ivan on a site called one over x.
Jacques Cousteau was a French ecologist, explorer, scientist, author, photographer, filmmaker, and the list goes on and on. In 1956, he co-directed with Louis Malle a documentary, The Silent World (Le Monde du Silence) Largely based on his 1956 book A Story of Undersea Discovery and Adventure. The movie is now famous and recognized as one of the first feature film to use underwater imagery and also won an Academy Award for the best documentary and was the first and only documentary to have win an Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival before Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. You might also have noticed that Jacques Cousteau is a huge influence for Wes Anderson’s Life Aquatic.
