Robert Kalman - I Am Here: The Lesbian Portraits

My late sister, Hillary, came out of the closet in 1976 when she was twenty-three, not exactly a cultural period conducive to acceptance of homosexuality, especially for lesbians.
A few days after Hillary announced that she was a lesbian I encouraged her to tell me how it was going: “What’s life like for you right now?” I asked. “You have no idea,” she answered sadly. “Like holy hell.” And then she showed me a note our mother had written to her: “Hillary I didn’t realize how much you hate me. Signed, Mother.”
Since her untimely death at the age of 52, I’ve sought a way to create a tribute to her memory and her personal struggle. In this series of photographs, I have made formal street portraits of lesbian community members using an 8x10 view camera and asking them the very same question: “What’s life like for you right now?” Their handwritten responses which are paired with their portraits, are generally upbeat and filled with optimism, although some express the need to cope with difficulties. Nevertheless, as one young woman wrote, “To be genuinely authentic and carry no shame is a beautiful thing.”
My sister would have appreciated knowing that.

Sarah Corbin - Crin Blanc (White Mane): Horses of the Camargue

Special moments are fleeting, especially when they involve animals such as the horses of the Camargue. My need is to capture these moments not only in my mind and heart, but photographically to share with others. In the past four years I have traveled three times to the Camargue in Southern France to photograph the beautiful white horses indigenous to that region. This group of images is the culmination of my photographic study of these horses and their environment. When I observed the horses with their “gardians” (caretakers of the horses), I caught a glimpse of the powerful and moving relationship these men and women have with these noble creatures.
Inspired by traditional landscape and wildlife photographers, my goal is to recreate the emotional atmosphere of a particular place and time. My choice of what to include or not include in the frame speaks to what I feel about a place, or, more likely, what I want the viewer to feel about a place. Coming from a darkroom background, I prefer to work in black and white and often intentionally blur the backgrounds so the total focus is on the horses – their eyes, their movements, their majesty. These photos become my interpretation of what I saw and felt the moment I clicked the shutter.

R. Wayne Parsons - Stepping Up – or Down

This conceptual work uses the vertical axis as a metaphor for value: higher is usually seen as better than lower across many dimensions. Ladders are used in the images as a way of symbolically conquering the vertical dimension. The series explores different societal issues.

Martin Rich - Almost Alive

Throughout history, man has replicated the form of the human body for religious, artistic and commercial purposes. So realistic are some that they can appear almost alive. Realistic or abstracted mannequins, surround us in shop windows, galleries, and museums. Intentionally or not they transmit messages triggering emotional responses. Feelings of desire, anxiety, and delight can be experienced. I am fascinated with mannequins and photograph the many ways they occur in our culture.

Hans Weiss - Thinking of

In spring 2015 I was browsing through my pictures and discovered, that over the years I had taken several portraits of people not face-to-face, but from behind – in very intimate or life-changing moments, joyous and sad ones. It was only after I realized that, I started actively looking for such situations.
In one picture, a mother remembers her daughter’s suicide ten years before. In another, a woman for the first time revisited the cloister where Catholic nuns had tortured and raped her during childhood. One portrait shows my ex-wife after she was diagnosed with Parkinson ́s disease at age 49.
There are also good moments: My stepdaughter ́s first day of high school in a foreign country; my mother after she fell in love when she was 94; my son celebrating his 13th birthday at the harbor of Rotterdam/Netherlands, very meaningful for him; my naked wife gazing at a sunny lake during our honeymoon. I almost always took the pictures on the very day when these things happened.
This series is all about life and reflection about it. When you look at the portraits they also make you think as a viewer - about your own life, your own special, intimate moments, good and bad. How was it? How would I feel or react in such a situation?

Jady Bates - You As Angel

This series depicts the process we all go through in learning to love oneself. It is an awkward, joyful, illuminating, humorous and messy affair. Rapprochement is a word I believe approaches this state. We each live with conflict inside due to a lifetime of internal struggle, even with the softening of the intensity. Through the journey to love oneself, we are fearful and angry as well as exalted and light. ‘As within, so without.’ This outer reflection of love impacts other people around us. This is the most direct way of changing the world. Find compassion. Be bold. Be revolutionary. Love yourself.

David Kutz - RETRO

Merriam-Webster : relating to, reviving, or being the styles and especially the fashions of the past : fashionably nostalgic or old-fashioned
The photographs in the series RETRO are similar in content, style and form to photographs made in the earliest days of the medium. The first photograph that didn’t fade in light was an abstracted cultural landscape of a courtyard by Nicéphore Niépce in 1826.
This work is informed by the New Topographics exhibition shown at the George Eastman House in 1975 and remounted in 2009 at the University of Arizona's Center for Creative Photography. Nine artists showed photographs of defunct factory buildings, suburban sprawl, industrial parks and vernacular buildings along America's roadways. These photographs revolutionized landscape art by making these vernacular structures acceptable artistic subjects.
Although the photographs of RETRO were shot in many different places around the world, they are unified by a focus on composition, color, form, line and texture. Looking at them, I wonder about the commonality of the built environment across cultures. Is it the way I see the world, or a result of globalization?