Newsha Tavakolian
http://www.newshatavakolian.com/
she is a self taught photographer and started working in Iran at the age of 16 as a photographer. At the age of 21 she started working internationally covering war, natural disasters and social issues.
Her main work focuses on women's issues in Iran.

from her "Mothers of Martyrs series





from her "Listen" series

I found her work interesting and compelling in that she is trying to draw attention to issues she believes in.  

As i read through an interview with her i found that she would love to create her images without censoring herself.
I did not find a lot of information on her other than she is a freelance photojournalist and she has had images published in time and news week as well as national geographic mag.

Here is a fascinating inside look at our SLR camera lenses

SLR Camera Lens Dismantled 

Carina Linge

   Carina Linge is a German contemporary photographer, still living and working out of Germany. She graduated with distinction from the Bauhaus University in 2006 and later went on to teach at the university, beginning in 2007. She has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions, received multiple grants, and also participated in several art fairs.
   Carina's work references the renaissance and baroque styles of painting, while dealing with the concept of relationships and whether individuals in our society are able to form truly intimate bonds with other people. She works mostly in portraiture, though sometimes her portraits are absent of a human figure while still creating a narrative about a certain person.  She typically spends several months getting to know her subject before even beginning to photograph them, and she effectively makes use of symbols to communicate something specific about her subject.  The symbols she chooses are subtle, which allows for her images to hold the viewer's attention for a more extended amount of time while they consider all the elements existing within the frame.
   This work interests me for several reasons, but especially how she uses her photos to tell a story about a person.  I've always been drawn to portraiture, both in my own work and also in the work of other artists I enjoy, and I think Carina's work shows a nice balance between obvious and subtle statements being made simultaneously.

Kara Walker

Kara Walker, daughter of artist Larry Walker was born in Stockton, California. At the age of 13 kara moved to Stone Mountain, Alabama. Some of her experiences growing up in the South as well as her views on the world inspires her art. The life size or larger tableaux are loaded with many themes. Her over all theme deals with power struggles, then the types of struggles within. Her work mimics the subtle beauty of the Antebellum South while speaking about ugly truths involving race, history, physicality, sex, and personal issues. For me, it reads like a dark satire. It is a sound balance between compelling, beautifully crafted work and heavy, pugnacious subject matter.

Steve McCurry

 

 Steve McCurry was born in a suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He studied film at Pennsylvania State University, while working at a local news paper. He made freelance images until his first trip to India. He has since traveled extensively and captures family's at their strongest and weakest moments.

His work is so home hitting it is almost shocking. I felt a strong connection with this particular series of images because they reflect very deeply on the frailness of life, and on the strength to go on. Age may cause you to become frail, but heart and mind can keep the will to push on. All of these images are taken in different parts of the globe which reminds us of our similarities, and our strengths.

Christina

Viviane Sassen

Viviane Sassen was born in 1972 in Amsterdam.  She won the Prix de Rome in 2007 for her colorful photographs from her travels in Africa and the ICP Infinity Award for Applied and Fashion Photography in 2011.  Her fashion photography, In and out of fashion, is exhibited at the Huis Marseille Museum for Photography in Amsterdam. 

Her fashion photography is surreal and abstract and has energy.  Viviane Sassen works with natural light like bright sunlight, shadows, and reflection.  As seen in this photo Hoover.  Which was for 'Pop' magazine in 2011. 

I choose this work because it caught my eye for looking strange and tangled with the limbs and shadows, and because it looks as if it is upside down or without gravity.  I choose this artist because she does artistic and comercial fashion photography.

Alejandro Cartagena

Alejandro Cartagena is a Hispanic photographer that works and lives in Monterrey, Mexico. His work is about the social issues in Mexico. He does landscapes and portraits. He has had his work shown all over the US from Chicago all the way to New Mexico, even out of the country.
 Mexico is a struggling country especially for the cities near the border. Some of these areas are very unsafe because of the drug cartel and the poor community. He is focusing his work on the environmental and social issues that are going on in Mexico, what the people wish they could have. His words are so wise and he is very committed to showing the world what is happening in Mexico.
He has one project based around the 'dream of owning a home in 21st century Mexico"
This series is called Landscape as Bureaucracy. I chose this series because it reminds me of my project. Owning a home is a dream that most people have. I also really enjoy this project because he does documentary work to capture something that is so precious to people especially to a place like Mexico. He is not trying to show only the good or the bad, but instead he just shows the natural aspect of this idea of having a home. I am also really interested in Alejandro because my family is from a very poor unsafe area in Mexico, I know the struggle that people deal with. I know that owning a home in Mexico is a big accomplishment especially in certain areas.
He also has a sub series to this that shows his family and how they are growing in the community and creating a home for their family.
All of Alejandro's work is very beautiful because he is so committed to working in this place he does a great job capturing special moments and his words speak very well for him in all his series.





'building dreams for $230 thousand pesos'

'inside my brother´s future housing complex, october 2010'

'man waiting for his paperwork to be checked at a real estate firm sales office'


 http://alejandrocartagena.com/