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Evgeny Matveev: Portraits of young women

Evgeny Matveev: Portraits of young women

A series of portraits in which the attempt is made to see and convey the elusive beauty of the young woman. All photos shot in St. Petersburg, Russia. ‘Portraits of young women’ was the Black & White Portrait Series of the Year 3rd place Winner in the MonoVisions Photography Awards 2017 ‘Portraits of young women’ was the Black & White…
Biography: 19th Century pioneer Czech photographer Alexander Seik

Biography: 19th Century pioneer Czech photographer Alexander Seik

Alexander Seik (1824 – 1905), also known as Alex Sejk was a pioneer of Czech photography, one of foremost exponents of chromophotography, painter and mayor of city Tábor. In 1855, he moved to Tábor. His studio, where the Hotel Palcát now stands, became very popular. Most of his work was making portraits, mostly in Carte de visite format. He also…
Joachim Schmeisser: Elephants in Heaven

Joachim Schmeisser: Elephants in Heaven

Because elephants are pachyderms, a combination of two Greek roots meaning “thick skin,” one might think that nothing bothers them and that they lead quiet, safe lives. Nothing could be further from the truth: elephants have been hunted and killed for their ivory tusks since antiquity. And people often ignore the calves left behind, who must now live out their…
Vintage: The Ovitz Family – Seven Dwarfs of Auschwitz (1940s)

Vintage: The Ovitz Family – Seven Dwarfs of Auschwitz (1940s)

The Ovitz family originated from Maramureş County, Romania. They were descended from Shimson Eizik Ovitz (1868–1923), a badchen entertainer, itinerant rabbi and himself a dwarf. He fathered ten children in total, seven of them dwarfs (afflicted with pseudoachondroplasia), from two marriages. The children founded their own ensemble, the Lilliput Troupe. They sang and played music using small instruments and performed…
The UWLF Project: Underwater Large Format – Back to the Future

The UWLF Project: Underwater Large Format – Back to the Future

The photographs made with the film large format cameras still remain popular nowadays. Herewith the story of the underwater large format seems to be unrevealed. After the works of Louis Boutan, Jacob Reighard and other researchers in the late XIX – early XX centuries the use of large format cameras for underwater shooting has stopped. Since that times almost nobody…
Vintage: Portraits of Auschwitz Guards During World War II (1940s)

Vintage: Portraits of Auschwitz Guards During World War II (1940s)

In January 2017, Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance published a massive online record of the Auschwitz staff. The searchable database of the 8,502 overwhelmingly German personnel was created in part to dispel claims that the camp was staffed by many Polish guards. The list shows that most names are predominantly German. Guards and SS Commanders’ pre-conflict occupations are also listed,…
Lee Friedlander: Chain Link

Lee Friedlander: Chain Link

Lee Friedlander is celebrated for his ability to weave disparate elements from ordinary life into uncanny images of great formal complexity and visual wit. And few things have attracted his attention―or been more unpredictable in their effect―than the humble chain link fence. Erected to delineate space, form protective barriers and bring order to chaos, the fences in Friedlander’s pictures catch…
Vintage: 19th Century Sexual Revolution by Sexologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing

Vintage: 19th Century Sexual Revolution by Sexologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing

Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s (1840 – 1902) principal work is Psychopathia Sexualis: eine Klinisch-Forensische Studie (Sexual Psychopathy: A Clinical-Forensic Study), which was first published in 1886 and expanded in subsequent editions. The last edition from the hand of the author (the twelfth) contained a total of 238 case histories of human sexual behaviour. This book popularized the terms sadism (derived from…
Debiprasad Mukherjee: God Never Talks. But the Devil Keeps Advertising

Debiprasad Mukherjee: God Never Talks. But the Devil Keeps Advertising

On the banks of Sipra River, Ujjain (India), ‘exorcism’ took a greater height, where in the name of religion, people were being beaten up ruthlessly during Kumbh Mela. Thousands of pilgrims had accumulated here in the name of pilgrimage. They had brought their relatives and friends to free them from evil spirits and the exorcists were violently beating up and…
Biography: 19th Century photographic studio Šechtl and Voseček

Biography: 19th Century photographic studio Šechtl and Voseček

The photographic studio Šechtl and Voseček was founded in Tábor (Bohemia) in 1888 by Ignác Šechtl, who accepted his assistant Jan Voseček as co-member of his photographic studio. The history of Šechtl & Voseček Studios goes back to 1863, when Ignác Schächtl (1840 – 1911) made the decision to leave his work as a clerk in Prague, to study the…
10 Iconic Beauties Who Defined 1930s Style

10 Iconic Beauties Who Defined 1930s Style

At the start of the decade, following the fallout from the Great Depression in America, 1930s fashion as well as all other aspects of normality were profoundly changed. Almost overnight the vivaciousness of the 1920s fashion flapper disappeared, with a sophisticated and more conservative style becoming de rigueur. Moving into the latter half of the decade, 1930s fashion was heavily…
Neal Preston: Exhilarated and Exhausted

Neal Preston: Exhilarated and Exhausted

“Shooting live music performances is something few photographers do really well. I just happened to discover one day that I was pretty good at it.” Neal Preston is one of the greatest rock photographers of all time. Exhilarated and Exhausted is a no-holds-barred complete retrospective of his more than 40-year career. Produced in collaboration with Neal, it is introduced by…
Vintage: Boston Public Schools (late 19th Century)

Vintage: Boston Public Schools (late 19th Century)

The Boston Pictorial Archive holds photographs documenting Boston-area adult and evening classes in the 19th century, with the bulk of the material covering the years between 1890 and 1893. These images offer interior views as well as adult students engaged in classroom work or other educational endeavors.
Lower East and Upper West: New York City Photographs 1957-1968

Lower East and Upper West: New York City Photographs 1957-1968

The vibrant street life and people of New York City’s Lower East Side and Upper West Side in the 1950s and 1960s are presented in this book of black-and-white photographs by Jonathan Brand. A census taker and later an advertising copywriter, Brand chronicled life as he encountered it on his walks through the city. The book offers 104 striking images…
The Shadow Archive An Investigation Into Vernacular Portrait Photography

The Shadow Archive An Investigation Into Vernacular Portrait Photography

The Walther Collection is pleased to present The Shadow Archive: An Investigation into Vernacular Portrait Photography, an exhibition that examines the uses of photography to document, record, and identify individuals from the 1850s to the present. The Shadow Archive inaugurates The Walther Collection’s multi-year series of exhibitions focused on the history of vernacular photography – utilitarian imagery made primarily for…
David Hurn: Arizona Trips

David Hurn: Arizona Trips

His documentary photographs are distinguished by their quiet observation and remarkable insight. “Life as it unfolds in front of the camera is full of so much complexity, wonder and surprise that I find it unnecessary to create new realities,” he writes. “There is more pleasure, for me, in things as they are.” Released to coincide with Magnum photo agency’s 70th…
Biography: 19th Century Landscape photographer Charles Roscoe Savage

Biography: 19th Century Landscape photographer Charles Roscoe Savage

Charles Roscoe Savage (1832 – 1909) was a British-born landscape photographer who produced images of the American West. He is best known for his 1869 photographs of the linking of the first transcontinental railroad. In the spring of 1860, he traveled to Salt Lake City, Utah Territory with his family, where he established a photography studio with a partner, Marsena…
Elizabeth Heyert: The Outsider

Elizabeth Heyert: The Outsider

Known for her unconventional approach to portrait photography, most notably her classic trilogy The Sleepers , The Travelers , and The Narcissists , Elizabeth Heyert again assumes her role as observer and voyeur in her latest book, The Outsider , photographed during four trips to China. Fascinated by the rituals of Chinese amateur photographers, who seem to shoot incessantly, often…
Borys Makary: They were

Borys Makary: They were

The “They were” project boils down to the “Man Rey-esque” form of negatives, on which signs and digits, symbolising the personality of the character in the picture, were painted by hand. The starting point was numerology, certain symbols which were to say something about the given person. Each photograph tells the story of a different woman. Symbols and numbers are…
Edvard Munch: The Experimental Self: Edvard Munch’s Photography

Edvard Munch: The Experimental Self: Edvard Munch’s Photography

Internationally celebrated for his paintings, prints, and watercolors, Norwegian artist Edvard Munch (1863–1944) also took photographs. This exhibition of photographs, films, and a small selection of prints by Edvard Munch emphasizes the artist’s experimentalism, examining his exploration of the camera as an expressive medium. By probing and exploiting the dynamics of “faulty” practice, such as distortion, blurred motion, eccentric camera…