IMAGE DESCRIPTION

During the breeding season in Florida, Great Egrets grow long, wavy plumes on their backs. A male great egret chooses a nesting site and builds a nest with sticks and twigs. The Great Egret in this photo was eager to start his courtship displays before completing his nest. He worked hard to find a mate by raising his lovely plumes, curving his neck into an S shape, and moving his body up and down. Sometimes he ducked his head low and then suddenly stretched his neck, pointing his bill to the sky. Photographing his moves felt like witnessing a fantastic show in nature.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Fenqiang Liu began studying drawing while attending middle school in China. During college, he took an interest in photography. After finishing his BA degree in Chinese literature,  Fenqiang worked at the Audio-visual Education Center of the college as a cameraman for geographic educational videos. He later came to the United States to obtain his MFA degree in Cinema and Photography at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. After graduation, Fenqiang worked as a computer animator and motion graphic designer. He and his wife later opened a business that provides behavior analysis services for children with autism.

 In recent years, Fenqiang has been devoting his time to Florida nature photography. While capturing the beautiful moments of wildlife, he also includes their living environment in the picture and uses the surrounding natural scenery to help him achieve better composition. After making countless trips to the location throughout two spring seasons, he finally finished his photography series “Secret Garden.” The images captured the most beautiful moments of Great Egrets during their nesting rituals in beautiful Central Florida.

 The photographs of the series have been awarded in multiple international photography contests, including the 1st Place at the 2021 Chromatic Awards, 1st Place at the 2021 Monochrome Awards, 1st Prize at the 2022 Fine Art Photography Awards, Category Winner of the Year, Platinum and Gold Winner at the 2022 Muse Photography Awards, Platinum and Gold Winner at the 2022 London Photography Awards, 2nd Place at the 2021 Int’l Photography Awards. Fenqiang is also one of the All About Photo Awards 2022 winners. His works were selected by the 2022 Chelsea International Photography Competition and will be shown in the Competition Exhibition in Agora Gallery in New York. He has been selected as a finalist for the 2022 Open Call: CARTE BLANCHE, B/W Category by Lucie Foundation. His work is one of the 10 Editor’s Picks at The Independent Photographer’s February 2022 Black & White Photo Award.

 Fenqiang’s cultural influence from both the East and the West, his artistic background, and his photography mastery allow him to express his thoughts and emotions in a unique style.

IMAGE DESCRIPTION

This is a portrait of my daughter, Grayson, with her pet corn snake, Shadow. This was the second portrait I took of the two of them and the plan was to take yearly portraits of them together to record them growing up together. But last year, Shadow escaped in our house and he has not been found.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Emily Neville Fisher is a photographer based in Westchester, New York. She received her bachelor’s degree in Fine Art at James Madison University, her master’s in Arts Administration from New York University and her certificate for the Track program at the International Center for Photography in New York City. She has worked in painting, drawing, jewelry and pottery but has been concentrating on photography for the past decade. Emily has been in  juried photography exhibitions in Colorado, Delaware, California, Florida and the HeadOn Photo Festival in Australia. She was a finalist in the Click Magazine 2018 VOICE competition that received over 48,000 entries. She was published in the December 2020 issue of Marie Claire Hungary for her award in the Unconventional Portrait category of the Documentary Family Awards. Emily was selected for the Soho Photo Gallery 2019 National Juried Competition. She has three pieces in the permanent collection of the Henry H. Ferguson Museum on Fishers Island, NY and was selected for “The Edge Effect”, a juried exhibition at the Katonah Museum of Art in 2019. In 2020, Emily was the winner of the Artists’ Choice Award in the Alleghany National Photography Competition & Exhibition as well as a semi-finalist in the Head On Photo Awards, Portrait category. Emily lives in Westchester, with her husband and three children.

IMAGE DESCRIPTION

Through a mise-en-scene self-portraiture series, Beyond Contemplation depicts a character in Mid Century Modern settings, mirroring an era that was aspiring for change. Despite this societal urge to create a new modern lifestyle, most women rapidly lost their independence gained during the war period and returned to domesticated environments to fulfill decades of gender role traditions.

 The carefully staged scene attempts to challenge female stereotypes. The image offers a powerful lens through which the viewer contemplates this woman in a non-objectified way and reconfigures her essence. The absence of context gives this character the power

 to be architects, scientists, musicians, engineers, doctors, etc.; roles often identified as being fulfilled by men.

 Through a female gaze, the work questions how society shapes human beliefs and ideologies, and overall, reinforces the importance to continue the action for gender equality in an era informed by #MeToo and #Time’s up movements.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Chloe Meynier is a San Francisco based photographer. Born and raised in France, she received her Bachelor in Science degree from Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour (France), her Master’s degree and PhD in Cognitive Psychology from Université de Poitiers (France) and her Master of Fine Arts in Photography from Academy of Art University, San Francisco.  Chloe’s practice focuses primarily on gender identity and women’s roles. Drawn from personal experience and through her own female gaze, the highly narrative photographs challenge female stereotypes, gender equality and societal norms. Her work has received critical acclaim, won multiple awards, has been widely exhibited and resides in several permanent and private collections in the United States and in Europe.

IMAGE DESCRIPTION

 This image is from the series gravity locked her in rotation, about three generations of female artists in my family, my mother’s memory surrounding her abusive childhood with a mentally ill mother, and her experience breaking the cycle of generational trauma. Repeating matrilineal strains, interrupted artistic practices, and a history of mental illness deeply affected my ability to imagine my future as an artist and mother simultaneously. I began this project as an opportunity to examine the trauma and fate of the women in my family and the conflicting fear and desire their legacy has instilled in me. My images reject cliché tropes of motherhood and mental illness, refusing the systems that fuel internalized sexism and gendered binaries. Instead, this work expands the complicated and nuanced understanding my mother and I have of ourselves as women and artists as we navigate our relationship, breaking cycles of trauma. 

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Allison DeBritz (b. 1993) is an artist and educator whose work intimately considers the gendered paradigms of domestic spaces and relationships through an interdisciplinary feminist lens. She uses photography, collage, video, and installation as part of a ritualist process, engaging with the psychological narratives woven throughout her work. DeBritz holds an MFA in Art Photography from Syracuse University and a BFA in Photography from SUNY New Paltz.

IMAGE DESCRIPTION

 In my ongoing series Salt Pond Restoration 2010 – 2021 I use a vivid, yet abstract visual language to cultivate awareness about dramatic changes in the environment relevant to inhabitants of the Silicon Valley. Salt Ponds have existed in the San Francisco Bay since the 1800s and are characterized by environmentalists as having taken away the lungs of the Bay. Currently they are a part of the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project, the largest wetland restoration program in the United States. During the pandemic, I began photographing the Ravenswood salt ponds bordering the Facebook campus in Menlo Park, CA where technology workers look out over these ponds from slick glass buildings. Many of them are not aware that this miraculous transformation is taking place in their own backyard. Nature reclaiming its territory is a potent theme for me and one that I explore further in other photographic series.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

 Barbara Boissevain is a visual artist and photographer from Silicon Valley who explores and documents environmental and social justice issues. In her ongoing project, Big Dirty Secrets, she highlights issues of toxicity with the intent of fostering meaningful discourse about environmental stewardship.

 Boissevain studied painting at Parsons School of Design in New York, and then went on to receive her B.F.A in Photography from the San Francisco Art Institute and an M.F.A. in Photography at San Jose State University. In 2009, she was awarded the Best of ASMP from the American Society of Media Photographers.

 Her work has been exhibited internationally in solo and group exhibitions in the USA and Europe. These include: Memoire De L’Avenir, Paris, France; Photographic Center Northwest, Seattle, WA; the Institute of Contemporary Art, San Jose, CA; Currents 826, Santa Fe, NM; Galerie Numero Cinq, Arles, France; and the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, Poland. Her work has been published in numerous publications including Lenscratch and The American Scholar. Her work was featured on NPR and the PBS show “Something Beautiful.” She published Children of the Rainbow in 2009, a book and traveling exhibition that documents humanitarian problems due to climate change, facing Quechua communities in Peru.

 Her art has been acquired by numerous public and private collections around the world, including the Google corporate collection. For the past seven years, she was an artist in residence with the City of Palo Alto’s Cubberley Artist Studio Program in Palo Alto, California.  In 2018 she was awarded an artist-in-residence in France at Galerie Huit in Arles  in conjunction with the Les Rencontres de la Photographie Festival.

IMAGE DESCRIPTION

Pink salt lake, Kherson region, Ukraine. The first time you see the pink salt lakes of the Kherson region in Ukraine it feels as though you are looking at another planet. During the summer months, microscopic algae causes the water to turn pink and red.The view from above is literally out of this world, which is why I chose to use a drone to convey the atmosphere of this unusual place. Unfortunately these places are ocupied by Russian invaders now.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Ukrainian based professional travel photographer. Winner of biggest world photo contests, including Travel Photographer of the Year, HIPA, etc. Artworks published in the biggest worlds media, including, The Times, Guardians, National Geographic Traveller print magazine. Exhibited across the globe, 8 museums exhibitions, including London Science Museum. Focusing primarily on the nature, my work is a study in subtlety and constantly shifting relationship between man and nature. With my works i want to show the fragile beauty of our planet and the possibility of dialogue in the interaction of man with Nature

IMAGE DESCRIPTION

There were layers of solitude, layers of meaning, and layers of secrets obscured; the paper listened to the secrets so there was a little less weight. The imperfections of my memories and my fleeting dreams confused me. Were these just feelings from my past or was this reality? I always worry about forgetting the moment, but it was gone before I had the chance to imprint it to my memory. At first glance the images appear representational but then you notice it’s two disparate images colliding to form a new narrative. The landscapes shifted and faded away, so quickly moved beyond. I told stories about what used to be; the monumental beauty that no longer had any bearing on what we see before us. The desolate land could no longer sustain life, ravaged beyond repair.I take medium format film-based images, develop the film myself, make and print large format negatives, and finally hand coat platinum palladium emulsion onto paper in the darkroom and print the images on delicate but resilient handmade Japanese Gampi paper and platinum rag paper. The Gampi paper is incredibly thin but holds a luminous quality that gives the prints a subtle long-range tonality and depth. Platinum printing gives me the tone and complexity needed to adequately represent these haunting places

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Fiona Howarth is a film based photographer who specializes in historic and alternative processes. Through working in the darkroom for over two decades she has proven to be a master printer and expert in traditional photographic practises. Her work focuses on memories, liminality, and environmental changes; looking to develop a new understanding of our impact on the fragile world. She is seeking to look beyond the sublime landscape and find beauty in the details and banality of the overlooked ordinary.Howarth has exhibited her photography in solo and group exhibitions across Canada, U.S.A, and internationally and been published internationally. She utilizes platinum palladium printing for most of her work to create tactile luminescent prints with rich tonality and presence.”

IMAGE DESCRIPTION

During the breeding season in Florida, Great Egrets grow long, wavy plumes on their backs. A male great egret chooses a nesting site and builds a nest with sticks and twigs. The Great Egret in this photo was eager to start his courtship displays before completing his nest. He worked hard to find a mate by raising his lovely plumes, curving his neck into an S shape, and moving his body up and down. Sometimes he ducked his head low and then suddenly stretched his neck, pointing his bill to the sky. Photographing his moves felt like witnessing a fantastic show in nature.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Fenqiang Liu began studying drawing while attending middle school in China. During college, he took an interest in photography. After finishing his BA degree in Chinese literature,  Fenqiang worked at the Audio-visual Education Center of the college as a cameraman for geographic educational videos. He later came to the United States to obtain his MFA degree in Cinema and Photography at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. After graduation, Fenqiang worked as a computer animator and motion graphic designer. He and his wife later opened a business that provides behavior analysis services for children with autism.

 In recent years, Fenqiang has been devoting his time to Florida nature photography. While capturing the beautiful moments of wildlife, he also includes their living environment in the picture and uses the surrounding natural scenery to help him achieve better composition. After making countless trips to the location throughout two spring seasons, he finally finished his photography series “Secret Garden.” The images captured the most beautiful moments of Great Egrets during their nesting rituals in beautiful Central Florida.

 The photographs of the series have been awarded in multiple international photography contests, including the 1st Place at the 2021 Chromatic Awards, 1st Place at the 2021 Monochrome Awards, 1st Prize at the 2022 Fine Art Photography Awards, Category Winner of the Year, Platinum and Gold Winner at the 2022 Muse Photography Awards, Platinum and Gold Winner at the 2022 London Photography Awards, 2nd Place at the 2021 Int’l Photography Awards. Fenqiang is also one of the All About Photo Awards 2022 winners. His works were selected by the 2022 Chelsea International Photography Competition and will be shown in the Competition Exhibition in Agora Gallery in New York. He has been selected as a finalist for the 2022 Open Call: CARTE BLANCHE, B/W Category by Lucie Foundation. His work is one of the 10 Editor’s Picks at The Independent Photographer’s February 2022 Black & White Photo Award.

IMAGE DESCRIPTION

Photo Assemblage, Pigmented Ink Print

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Jason DeMarte is an established artist best known for his highly detailed and seductive flora and fauna photo assemblages. His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums, both nationally and internationally. DeMarte has been featured in journals, textbooks and publications including; the British Journal of Photography, Huffington Post, Feature Shoot, Hi-Fructose, Oxford American, The Elements of Photography, Manifest, Photo Review, and Black Warrior Review. Some notable exhibitions include: Exposure International Photo Festival, Contemporary Calgary, The Museum of Un-natural History at Clamp Art, New York City; Context at Filter Photo Space, Chicago; and The National: Best Contemporary Photography 2015, Ft Wayne Museum of Art. DeMarte’s solo exhibitions include shows at: Ibis Contemporary in New Orleans, Rule Gallery in Denver and Marfa, Denver Botanical Gardens, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Wessell Synman Gallery in Cape Town, Detroit Center for Contemporary Photography, and Gallery Kayafas in Boston. His series Confected is also part of Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Photography Midwest Photographers Project and his series Adorned was selected as one of Photo Lucida Critical Mass top 50 series. Jason is a tenured professor of art at Eastern Michigan University. He received his B.F.A. in Photography from Colorado State University and his M.F.A in Photography from the University of Oregon.

IMAGE DESCRIPTION

Floating through iridescent fragments of glacial ice at Jökulsárlón Lagoon, I am struck with the poignance of what its existence means: ancient, cold history, some of which is more than thousand of years in the making. This lagoon is the product of a receding glacier called Breiðamerkurjökull, a dying son of Vatnajökull Glacier.  Vatnajökull, too, is suffering the same fate — a body in atrophy. Think of the cultural remains of an ancient civilization, their pottery eroding out of the escarpment, falling into the violent hands of a silent sea. Breiðamerkurjökull’s story is written in the cerulean grooves and sharp edges, some smooth, sculpted faces and rugged cheeks, deep orbits and translucent noses. Jökulsárlón, born in the early 20th century, is now the deepest lake in Iceland. Since the 1970’s, in the face of its ailing parent, it has doubled in size, a growing child born of tragic love. As I revel in this beauty, the grandeur of it all, a combustion engine carries us through emerald troughs and gold glitter crests. Therein lies the irony of documenting a frozen paradise that may not exist 200 years from now. If we don’t see it, our conviction to save it may not be as strong. Looking upon it, with our own eyes, are we not in some small way an accomplice to the crime? The opalescent icebergs speak of a narrative intimately tied to this land…and to me. To witness the falling notes of what is likely our ancestor’s swan song is devastatingly beautiful. At once, I am torn. To my death, I will be deeply moved.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

 Awakening from a campsite in the early morning, darkness preceding a Canadian sunrise, I moved into the wilderness with my mother, a small set of binoculars in hand, tracking the calls of birds on high, hidden amongst the forest canopy. Seeing life through a lens became an extension of how I viewed the world: In frames.

 I’m an academically trained photographer and have purposefully put myself in situations that bring light to the myriad ways in which the world can be seen. Traveling through the highest human settlements in India, framing the striking urbanity of New York, studying the wild areas of my home in St. Petersburg, or channeling the raw humanity that is exposed from my work as a First Responder, I use the camera as a means to capture the complex and dynamic stories that exist on our pale blue dot. I feel humbled to live such an experientially rewarding life. I feel lucky for the perspectives I’ve had access to and feel indebted to share them through provocative imagery and narrative accounts. I weave portraits left in the moss coated walls of historic walkways, frost crested peaks, or in the eyes a child swarmed by a violent sea of cars and tuk-tuks, her life bobbing amongst the horns. 

4 continents, 11 countries, and counting: There are stories in every direction that we look and I’m not afraid to tell them with thoughtful words and moving imagery.

IMAGE DESCRIPTION

Day #4 of shelter in place in San Francisco, CA. Ms. Gail Roberson mourns the loss of her son at a chapel at Duggan’s Funeral Service on Friday, March 20, 2020. When one loses loved ones, family and friends support is essential, but in an attempt to stop the further spread of COVID-19, Duggan’s Funeral Service in San Francisco has had to limit funeral services to less than 10 people, and only three visitors can come inside the funeral home at once to make arrangements and attend a wake.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Constanza Hevia H. is a Chilean photographer and filmmaker. She documents stories focused on social and cultural issues using an anthropological methodology. With her work, Constanza seeks to explore the complex relationship between memory, loss, and mortality. She uses photography, audio, and video as tools for social observation and as a language to communicate narratives that usually are not represented in mainstream media and society.

Constanza has exhibited her photographs at Head On Photo Festival in Australia, the Los Angeles Center of Photography, the PhotoPlace Gallery in Vermont, the Centro Cultural Estación Mapocho in Chile, and at Photoville in New York. Her work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, The Guardian, San Francisco Chronicle, STAT News, Quanta Magazine, Tages- Anzeiger, Museé Magazine, WOZ Die Wochenzeitung, among others. Constanza is a member of Women Photograph, Foto Féminas, and Diversify

Photo. She is based between Chile and San Francisco, CA.

IMAGE DESCRIPTION

The closely guarded and secret slaughterhouse for pigs is located in the middle of a residential neighbourhood on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. Because of the lack of modern equipment, the animals here are still traditionally killed in a gruesome manner, as are animals in most slaughterhouses in Cambodia. Although international organisations in recent years have repeatedly called for a reform of Cambodia’s virtually non-existent animal welfare laws, slaughtering conditions have remained unchanged. The abattoir workers bludgeon the pigs with heavy metal rods. They then slit the animals’ throats and leave them to bleed to death, sometimes while still conscious. The dying pigs are dragged across the blood-soaked concrete floor before being thrown into a vat of boiling water. Throughout this brutal procedure, live and dead animals remain in the same room; the noises and smells are unimaginable and subject the pigs to maximum levels of stress. This method is not without physical and psychological effects on the workers, who are employed on a piecework basis from eleven in the evening until five in the morning. Tellingly, their wages are based on the cruelty of the particular activity they are carrying out. Workers who slit the pigs’ throats receive the highest rate. Livestock production is being driven by a rapidly increasing demand for meat in Cambodia and attractive prospects of profit for employers. The photo story is part of the series VANISHING CAMBODIA, which photographer Steff Gruber has been working on for a number of years and which examines the social changes taking place in the country.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Steff Gruber (1953) is a Swiss photographer and filmmaker. He worked as a press photographer for Keystone Press and was one of the first filmmakers to explore the docudrama genre. He became internationally known with his documentary LOCATION AFRICA about the filming of COBRA VERDE, the last collaboration between Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski. His award-winning films have been shown at various international film festivals. Based on his interest in documentaries, Steff Gruber began shooting photo stories in various countries, focusing, in particular, on human interest subjects and humanist concerns. Visiting places and people on repeated occasions, many of his photo series were produced over a period of several years. In 2020 Steff Gruber opened the LUMIERE.GALLERY for digital photo exhibitions. Steff Gruber is a member of the Swiss Association of Journalists and Photographers IMPRESSUM.

IMAGE DESCRIPTION

Portrait of Yaya Yaya is how we call grandpa in Shanghainese (Chinese local dialect) and it is also the way how I call my grandpa in daily life. My grandpa was born in 1938 in China, and he has suffered from second-degree burns for 50 years due to the chemical plant explosion. This tragedy has become the scar and disability permanently imprinted on his body and hands. However, his tenacious vitality and positive attitude towards life have impressed me a lot. I live with my grandpa since I was born, so I spent most of my life with my grandpa than anyone else in my family. My grandpa was a pilot when he was young, and he was assigned to the chemical plant in 1970. And then the tragedy happened in 1971. His face and body have been changed since then.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

 A visual artist who is mainly engaged in Photography. Hailun was born and raised in Shanghai, China in 1997. She graduated from York University with a BFA degree in Toronto, Canada in 2021. Her works mainly contain the conceptual photography, street photography and documentary photography. The concepts in her works are mostly related to gender, life and death, family and memories.

IMAGE DESCRIPTION

 Blurry Joy 2 is a piece from my series entitled ” Psychological Landscapes “ , a body of work that  aims to bring to discussion the way we see things and how these images relate to the photography medium showing new possibilities for the viewer to observe the world.It all starts with a photograph of a landscape. A lake, a river, a mountain. Scenarios so common to our eyes. The images were captured between 2017 and 2020 at Yellowstone National Park and Grand Teton National Park, both in USA.

 After capture I worked on postproduction transforming the usual landscape photograph into a psychological landscape that represent our feelings and moods. Each piece of work has its name in reference to these sensations such as Blurry Calm, Blurry Joy, Blurry Serene.The work also assumes digital manipulation in contemporary photography to present it as a support for artistic expression, and not only as a record keeper. It also pays homage to the abstraction exercises of the Dutch artist Theo van Doesberg, the main leader of the De Stijl movement.

 Although they are simply photographs, they are also pure paintings, brushstrokes made through a lens, dubious colors and abstract shapes, vestiges of landscapes, which invite us to dive into their inner labyrinths. I am passionate about the variety of forms that can be explored in photography and I want to share these possibilities with a broader audience.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Born in Northeastern Brazil and based in São Paulo, Ana Leal is an artist who works primarily in pho-tography, considering it to be a tool for both depicting and escaping from reality.

Inspired by minimalist traditions as well as impressionist painters her images result simple, geometric, and often abstract. She considers her work as autobiographical and these abstractions can be seen as self-portraits. Shooting the majority of the time with 50mm lenses, she captures imagery she observes, stages, or edits to invite the viewers into her inner labyrinths. This is her use of the camera to engage, reflect, and share a feeling state, and is the best way she found to push the boundaries of photography to make it a visual journal.

Leal is a Gold Award winner on the 2020 Tokyo International Foto Awards and the 15th Julia  Margaret Cameron Award Winner both in the abstract category. She also received Bronze Star at the 2021 ND Awards, and Honorable Mention on IPA 2021, Rotterdam Photo 2021, Prix de la Photographie Paris 2019, and The 15th Pollux Awards. She completed her Master of Fine Arts at Miami International Uni-versity of Arts and Design (2018).

IMAGE DESCRIPTION

You would think that this image is a combination of the two photos: wave and sky. But that is exactly not the case. This upside-down underwater close-up picture was taken on a scuba dive during a storm.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Alexej was born in in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Inspired by photographs taken by his mother, Alexej started photographing from his childhood. But his real passion was the aircrafts: he obtained a diploma in engineering & information technologies. Alexej realized his creativity potential in building complex computer systems in the Ukraine, Russia and Germany. Alexej works for SIXT, one of the biggest and successful technology-driven mobility companies in the world. Alexej is a passionate diver, the challenges of underwater photography attracted him. He joined Kyiv school of photography which deals with courses and workshops. Alexej’s underwater photos were honored by diverse competitions and were exhibited in the US, UK, Germany and in Ukraine, where Alexej lives currently.

IMAGE DESCRIPTION

 IFM (Intentional Feet Movement) walking through the Cottonwoods along the Calf Creek Trail in Grand Staircase Escalante

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

 My photography is inspired by my training as a Texas Master Naturalist and by Rachel Carson’s book The Sense of Wonder. It’s about seeking and celebrating the wonders of nature with children. One passage in particular touched me:

 “…gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength”

 My photography explores my own sense of wonder and hopefully  can inspire others to find and nurture their sense of wonder as well.

IMAGE DESCRIPTION

With fleeting motion, time passes quickly. This image notes the fragility of time and the loss that follows in its wake.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Beth Galton is a photo-based artist, with an educational background in the natural sciences and three decades of experience as a professional photographer in the editorial and commercial arena. These elements of her history are the lens through which she explores the world. Collecting objects, allowing time to affect botanical matter, these are the tools Beth uses to construct still life portraits. The stories speak to the cycles of nature, our connection to aging and mortality, and the fragility and resilience of the human experience. As a lifelong learner, Beth uses current technology to help articulate her message. She loves to harness natural light to capture the compositions by using a large format camera and digital back. Beth’s fine art and professional work have won numerous accolades and been exhibited extensively throughout her career. Several of her personal projects have gained national and international regard. Beth lives and works in New York City, where she is moved and inspired by the city every day

IMAGE DESCRIPTION

 That hand belongs to someone who was eating biscuits with honey, her fingers are smeared. And suddenly… Oh! A napkin! Just what I needed. The imminent catastrophe in which our friend will be involved when all the matches light is a topic for another photo, however, if she had sucked her fingers the situation may be different.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

When it comes to creativity, it is usually related to art, but I think there is much more in science. The difference is that in science it is applied to solve a specific problem, for example trying to make Mars habitable. Instead of solving something concrete, art causes a change in the mood or thought of those who observe it.

Aware of this, to achieve this change in the viewer, I try to apply creativity in the same way as a scientist would: valuing previous knowledge (the Martian atmosphere lacks certain essential gases for life, the temperature is extreme, etc…) and mixing it with other less related knowledge (comets can transport frozen gases), what if we send small asteroids loaded with the necessary gases to create a habitable Martian atmosphere? In my case, these previous knowledge are references, sometimes these references are artistic, sometimes journalistic, and others simply traditional, then I mix everything with new, more disparate ideas to create something unique enough to make an impact.

This mix is due to my extense background (I studied Industrial design Ingeniering, a master’s degree in art direction, scenography, coolhunting, graphic design, oil painting with Conchita de la Cueva…) and my variety of interests. All what I learned makes me think about intertwining things that seem unrelated, relocate a cactus as food or an octopus as a perfume. Take away its function and give it another one; relocate it. I know they are going to evoke something, for example anguish, laughter or total indifference, but it is certainly a fantasy.

IMAGE DESCRIPTION

High Tea, from the series Holding Arabesque is an inward reflection that investigates our relationship with food and nostalgia and how both are used as coping mechanisms for stability during times of crisis and stress. Inspired by the abrupt shifts brought on by the pandemic, the series captures an idyllic time in the past that is remembered as better than today. Created all in camera, I use keepsakes along with food, patterns, shapes, forms, and colors as whimsical, playful, and nostalgic tableaux, choreographed in disciplined arrangements as symbols for hope. These cheerful totems disrupt the frame with unrealistic ways in which we are normally accustomed to seeing food presented. Towering precariously, they question the delicate balance between stability and uncertainty – but most importantly, giving permission as an adult, that it’s still ok to play with your food.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

JP Terlizzi is a New York City photographer whose contemporary practice explores themes of memory, relationship, and identity. His images are rooted in the personal and heavily influenced around the notion of home, legacy, and family. He is curious how the past relates and intersects with the present and how the present enlivens the past, shaping one’s identity.

 Born and raised in the farmlands of Central New Jersey, JP earned a BFA in Communication Design at Kutztown University of PA with a background in graphic design and advertising. He has studied photography at both the International Center of Photography in New York and Maine Media College in Rockport, ME.

 JP’s highly acclaimed still life work is known for its distinctive use of style, pattern, texture, and color. He uses food and objects that serve as memory that link to a foundation in family tradition, history, and culture. His work has been exhibited extensively in galleries and museums across the United States and abroad including juried, invitational, and solo exhibitions. He has been recognized twice in Photolucida’s Critical Mass Top 50 and three times as a Finalist, his work has appeared in The Photoville Fence, and his portfolios have won notable awards of distinction with Klompching Gallery, Panopticon Gallery, Sohn Fine Art Gallery and Soho Photo Gallery.

 His work has been published in both online and print publications and is held in both permanent and private collections across the United States and Canada.