Portrait Color photo
Nan Goldin is an acclaimed American photographer renowned for her profound visual narratives that delve into her personal world, marked by themes of addiction, sexuality, and intimate relationships. Born in Washington, D.C., in 1953, Goldin's journey into photography began in the early 1970s, capturing the lives of those around her, forming a "substitute family" amid a backdrop of drugs, sex, and violence.
One of Goldin's most celebrated works, "The Ballad of Sexual Dependency" (1986), is a raw and intimate portrayal of her "tribe," documenting their lives through the late 70s and early 80s in New York City. This work, initially presented as a slideshow, captures moments of love, sexuality, and domestic life, transcending into a poignant narrative of the era's challenges, particularly the AIDS crisis.
Throughout her career, Goldin's photography has continued to evolve, exploring various themes and mediums, including film. Her work, deeply personal and often autobiographical, challenges conventional perceptions of beauty, identity, and relationships, offering a window into the complexities of human connection and the essence of her subjects.
Goldin's influence extends beyond the art world, with her activism, particularly against the opioid crisis, marking another significant chapter in her journey. Her profound empathy and commitment to portraying the raw, unfiltered realities of life resonate through her extensive body of work, which continues to be celebrated in exhibitions and collections globally.
For art collectors and enthusiasts, Goldin's work offers not just aesthetic value but also deep emotional and historical resonance. To stay informed about Nan Goldin's works and related updates, signing up for newsletters from prominent galleries or her exhibitions could provide valuable insights and opportunities for engagement with her art.
Elisabeth Hölzl is an Italian artist, sculptor and photographer who lives and works in Merano.
She studied art history in Innsbruck and then sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna. In the 1990s Elisabeth presented minimalist sculptures and installations to the public, later her work moved away from matter and turned to other media such as glass and light. In these works the focus is no longer on volumes, but on what makes them visible: light. In recent years, photography has become the artist's preferred medium of expression, and has accompanied his work from the beginning.
Angela Lo Priore is an Italian portrait photographer living and working in Rome and Milan.
Women are one of the main subjects of Angela's photographs, but scenic design plays an important role here, helping to create surrealistic subjects.
Having experimented with different forms of photography in architecture, advertising and fashion, Angela Lo Priore has found her true artistic expression in portraiture. The portraits of stars and divas of Italian and world cinema are her most famous works. The result of this work is the book "One Hundred Portraits", a gallery of one hundred stunning photographic portraits of famous actors, actresses and directors.
Vera Mercer is a German-born photographer who lives and works in France and the United States.
In the early 1960s she became part of the artistic avant-garde in Paris, which later became known as the "New Realists" (Nouveau Réaliste), photographing movie stars and avant-garde artists of the time. Later she found a new inspiration.
Mercer creates extraordinary large-scale photographic still lifes of food. With the right lighting and carefully chosen compositions of china, cutlery, fruit, seafood and game, Mercer's photographs resemble still lifes in the Dutch Baroque style. With burning candles and artful arrangements, the paintings, flooded with mystical light, are also a reinterpretation of classic vanitas motifs.
Joel Meyerowitz is an American street, portrait and landscape photographer and a pioneer of color photography. He lives and works in New York and London.
Meyerowitz became interested in color photography in 1962, when color photography was not yet considered serious art. There have been documentaries about him, and he is the author of 43 books, including one on the art of photography. Meyerowitz was the only photographer who received official permission to photograph the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York.
Meyerowitz continues to be an inspiration and a leader in photography today.
Youssef Nabil is an Egyptian photographer and artist living and working in Paris and New York. His work includes photography, painting, video and installations.
Nabil grew up in Cairo on films made during the golden age of Egyptian cinema, which strongly influenced his tastes. Nabil's distinctive technique of hand-colored silver-gelatin prints erases the stains of reality. Nabil shatters common notions of color photography and painting, as well as notions of the aesthetic sensibilities associated with art and pop culture.
Nabil is known for his photographs of Egyptian and international celebrities: Catherine Deneuve, Omar Sharif, Tracey Emin, Zaha Hadid, Robert De Niro and Marina Abramovic are just some of the many icons of the art and film world that Nabil has captured. Like all of his photographs, each portrait is made in the characteristic technique of hand-colored silver-gelatin prints. Nabil's numerous self-portraits reflect his feelings of loneliness, exile and longing. They also play with the notion of time. There is no time in Nabil's work; he lives and dwells in some other world of dreams.
Helmut Newton (born Helmut Neustädter) was a German-Australian photographer. The New York Times described him as a "prolific, widely imitated fashion photographer whose provocative, erotically charged black-and-white photos were a mainstay of Vogue and other publications."
Bert Stern, real name Bertram Stern, is an American fashion photographer and documentary filmmaker.
His career began with the iconic and legendary Smirnoff Vodka advertising campaign in 1955. Using a well-equipped studio, Stern experimented with many of the latest techniques, including videotaping, screen printing, photo offset combinations and computer prints. His brilliant work made him a star in the advertising world, photographing advertising campaigns for Canon, Dupont, Pepsi-Cola, US Steel and Volkswagen brands. One of the high points of Bert Stern's career was working for Vogue in the 1960s.
Despite his drug addiction, the fashion photographer was sought after by Madison Avenue, Hollywood and the international fashion scene for decades.
Stern was one of the last photographers to shoot Marilyn Monroe in June and July 1962, six months before her death. Some of these photographs were published in Vogue magazine. In 1982, Bert Stern published The Last Sitting, a book that includes many of his more than 2,500 images, including those that Monroe did not like and were crossed out.
Stern directed and cinematographed the films Jazz on a Summer's Day (1959), A Date with an Angel (1987), and The Unknown Marilyn (2012).
Nichole Velasquez is an American photographic artist.
He explores the detachment of color and form from their descriptive functions on analog film. His goal is to allow the emotional experience to take center stage in interpreting the work. Velázquez works with analog film, exploring emotional memories through the technique of multiple exposures. He worked with material scientists at the Technical University of Berlin to create silver plates, using mirrors as mediators for human color perception.
Chris von Wangenheim is a German fashion photographer and one of the most avant-garde image-makers of the 20th century.
In his relatively short career (1968 to 1981) Chris von Wangenheim created legendary images for all the leading fashion publications of the 70's including Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and Interview. He also created unforgettable ad campaigns for Valentino, Dior, Calvin Klein and Revlon.
At the height of his success, Chris died in a car accident in 1981 at the age of 39, leaving behind a tremendous legacy.
