Bob Leonard - Memorialized

The 9/11 Memorial is a now a top New York City tourist destination. Over many months, I observed visitors taking photos of each other using conventional cameras and cell phones. Portraits. Family group shots. And selfies, one-handed and using the reviled selfie stick. All posted on Facebook for the gang back home.
The memorial is a failure as a contemplative, introspective space.
It’s a spectacle.

Robert Kalman - Dogs Among Us

These photographs aren’t really about dogs. They’re really about relationships. Deep ones.
So deep a man inked his deceased dog’s likeness onto his chest. So deep another man admitted his dog feels closer at times than his wife and kids. So deep that one woman responded to my question, “What would your life be like without her?” with the stark reply, “I would have no life without her.”
As Gertrude Stein noted, it is a relationship tied to identity:
“I am I,” she wrote, “because my little dog knows me.” It is a tethered proposition; two halves, one whole, umbilically linked by the ends of a cord commonly known as a leash.
This collection of dual portraits, with one exception, was made in and around New York City’s Tompkins Square Park during 2016.

Ronaldo Aguiar - The Collector

My inspiration comes from films, music, and literature.
I want to blur the lines between dreams and reality, between what is there and what is not, what you see and want I want you to see. My eyes and my mind are restless.

Jady Bates - Transgender Beautiful

TRANSGENDER BEAUTIFUL presents an overview perspective on the transgender life experience of self-actualization beyond the perceivable constraints of the global community. In fact, the distortion and conflict may arise from the historically trained and embedded constraints of the societal definition and identification of what normality is. This is timely subject matter.
The series begins with the transgender person emerging with their true identity, against a black background. The transgender person comes to terms with their true identity and is totally emerged in the world, as presented against a white background. Throughout this self-realization, there exists tentativeness, strength, society's own conflict with this person's emerged identity and, finally complete comfort ("I AM-ness") within their own body and the world, whatever the world's reaction may be.
RE: the use of Holga:
I used a Holga camera in this concept shoot: TRANSGENDER BEAUTIFUL because it adds a layer of mystery I feel the public-at-large holds about this subject. There is an inscrutable or an elliptical element to its pictures and I wanted to convey this element along with the staggering beauty of the concept and subject - for a photograph speaks without words and the mystery within Holga pictures can shake the soul.
RE: the use of black and white:
As humans, within our current culture, it is often easier to understand ideas between extremes. The contrasting and conceptual nature of black and white photography adds a heightened level of distinction. This is not a specific/true story of a transgender person; rather, it is a concept leading to a progression of ideas and actualization. There is disparity between the concept's subject, and society - as can be said of black and white photography. For most, our experiences of reality take place in color, yet black and white photography reveals certain truths or focus through the contrast and monochrome tonalities that might otherwise be lost in the cacophony of color. Thus unveiling the 61underlying simplicity of the truth at hand, a purity made more readily apparent when artistically rendered in the emerging gradients of black and white.

Bruce Wodder - Newark After Dark

Every city has two personalities: one in daylight, another after dark. In this series of photographs I explore the nocturnal stillness of Newark, NJ, when the subtle shadows of darkness play out against the streets and buildings. Once daylight has disappeared and ambient light creates the city’s aura, a simple street is transformed with shades of gray. These eight black & white photos are inspired by film noir, where the nonexistence of light is the strongest element in the frame.

Lawrence Gottesman - Thirteen Asymmetries

Visual information is mostly asymmetrical. The perfectly symmetrical image tells us almost nothing; it is, at most, an empty tautology. A small detail – a shading or shadow, a texture, a seemingly random line or boundary – changes everything. Without this, then nothing. And if not nothing, then at least not this.
What else could you want to know?