David R. Banta says of his work, "I have been shooting photographs since I was a boy.  The camera as always been a wonderful ticket to travel to new places and into the lives of people whom I would never otherwise know…a reason to look, to see, to capture, once on film…now in digital imagery.  I have moved into the privileged position of shooting what I want to photograph, rather that being motivated primarily by monetary considerations.  This has freed me, liberated me…it gives me great joy. 

My wife and I moved from the urban environment, the environment I photographed for many years to the country eleven years ago.  We live near the tiny town of Luther, Michigan, but our mailing address is Reed City…our hometown has become the backroads near our home, the tiny towns all around.  Country folk are difficult to photograph…less accustomed to the intrusion of strangers.  I spent a couple years getting to know an old gentleman who lived alone, in his 70’s.  The old farmhouse he lived in all his life hadn’t changed since he was a child…it was exquisitely spartan.  When I finally arrived at his place with camera in hand, hoping to begin photograph, he said he was not interested.  Case closed.  But it is in this fascinating environment that I find myself spending my last days, documenting these country folks.

I started as a child with painting & drawing, and then moved into photography at sixteen with an East German Praktika camera. My draw to photography was fueled by my father's Polaroid albums and by Life Magazine. I acquired a degree in Arts and Media from William James College in 1974. After 5 years in the working world, I met with legendary photographer Arthur Siegel in Chicago. After reviewing my portfolio, Siegel said "I don't believe in photography as therapy", and then admitted me to the Illinois Institute of Technology: Institute of Design in 1979. There I studied under black & white photographer David Plowden. I worked as a weekly newspaper photographer and as a hospital photographer.

I also studied under Magnum photographer Alex Webb at Maine Photographic Workshops. I spent 18 years making a living from photography and twelve years driving big truck to pay off the debt! I am now doing what I love to do with a passion...sharing my personal vision through photography."
 
CV-
 
Venice Art Biennale 2015 —Venice, Italy — Photograph traveled with the Biennial Roadshow
 
2015 —Certificate of Excellence —Charlevoix Photography Club Annual Fine Art Photography Exhibition — Charlevoix, Michigan, USA
 
2015 — Raccord Group International Exhibition of Modern Photography —Yerevan, Armenia
 
2016 — Boston Biennial 4 —Boston, Massachusetts
 
2016 — Les Ascencionelles Photography Exhibition — Corsica, France
 
www.davidrbanta.com

Harry Longstreet says of his work, "No one just takes up space. The human condition is an entire canvas of thoughts, emotions and reactions to circumstances.

In my photography I try to capture the truth about diverse people and how they live… and how they reflect their respective spaces.

My subjects never know they’ve been photographed. I don’t set-up or pose any shot and never employ anything but available light."

Harry Longstreet is retired after twenty-five years as a writer, producer and director of filmed entertainment, primarily for television. When he’s not busy with his wife, children and grandchildren, he keeps the creative juices flowing with his still photography.
 
He’s always looking for images that speak to the human condition and the world around him. He favors ambient light and unposed, unaware subjects. In the last nine years, he’s had a number of one-man shows, and his work has appeared in more than two hundred national and international juried exhibitions.
 
Longstreet is twice a Single Image Merit Award recipient from Black & White Magazine and twice a Single Image Merit Award winner from Color Magazine.  In 2013, he was awarded the Gold Medal (monochrome) in the International Varna Salon, and in 2014, he took Best in Show in the annual CVG Washington State competition.

www.harrylongstreet.com

Horia Manolache says of his work, "I'm a Photography MFA student at Academy of Art University in San Francisco, I earned my degree in film making in Romania. I won the Book proposal category winner at Prix de la Photographie Paris in 2014, I won a honourable mention at Rayko's "Perimeter of the world" exhibition, won the first place at IPA awards for editorial portraits, nominated for Felix Shoeller Award, exhibited also at Corden Potts Gallery ( 49 Geary ), 4x5 Gallery, Espace Beaurepaire , Magasin de Jouets Galerie, Arles Photo Festival, Streit House Space, featured in Rangefinder Magazine, Forbes Life, Forbes Up, Lenscratch, Fotorelevance, Huffington Post and others.

Selected as one of Forbes 30 under 30 ( Romania ) and I was also nominated for PDN's 30 in 2016 with the project "The Prince and The Pauper."
 
Education-
 
Post Secondary Education
ACADEMY OF ART UNIVERSITY SAN FRANCISCO, California, USA
MFA Photography
2014 – 2016

Hyperion Art University Bucharest, Romania
BFA Film director
2009 – 2013

Advanced or Professional Courses
Dalles University Bucharest, Romania
Photography Course
2007-2008
 
Solo Exhibitions-
 
“The Chairs” - Corden Potts Gallery , 49 Geary San Francisco, Artist Reception: September 8th

“The Chairs” - 625 Sutter Gallery San Francisco, Artist Reception: June 2nd
“The Prince and the Pauper” - Cannery Gallery San Francisco, Artist Reception: May 5th

“The Prince and the Pauper”, The Red Victorian Hotel, San Francisco, Artist Reception: April 2015

Group Exhibitions-
 
Streit House Space - “Time” group exhibition - June 2015

Streit House Space - “Nude” group exhibition - April 2015

Group Exhibition - “On the street that you live” - Photoplace Gallery April 7 - May 1, 2015

7-28 February 2015 , Chiangmai, Thailand
“Snow” Lenscratch exhibition

Lectures-
 
“Academia de Creativitate Socială sprijină persoane și comunități să își transforme Ideile în Fapte” -
September 4th 2016 at Campulung, Romania
 
www.horiamanolache.com

Jonathan David Smyth (b. Belfast, UK, 1987) is an artist working with photography, video, performance, and incorporated text.  He received his MFA from Parsons School of Design in 2014, and his BA with Honors from Edinburgh Napier University in 2010.  His work has been exhibited in the United States and abroad.  He lives in New York City.
 
Smyth says of this work, "House Hold is an ongoing series about my adoptive family in Northern Ireland. Growing up, I wasn't allowed to talk about my adoption, so I left home at sixteen and tried to move on. A few years later, I began to photograph my family to create some sort of a personal archive.
 
I see this work as a well-balanced document of the people I grew up with. By well balanced, I mean they are attractive images, but they are not the kind of photographs you would find in the family album. For instance, my mother isn’t so keen of the portrait of her eating ice cream, and certainly does not consider it a good photograph. For me, I see beyond the ice cream smear on her lip, and my dad’s glare at the camera. I see a moment that only I, as their son, could have captured."

EDUCATION-

PARSONS SCHOOL OF DESIGN, New York, NY, Master of Fine Arts, 2014

EDINBURGH NAPIER UNIVERSITY, Scotland, UK, Bachelor with Honors, 2010
 
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS AND SCREENINGS-

2016
FAILURE, Float Photo Magazine, New York, NY (online)

BEAUTY, Openings Collective, Church of St. Paul the Apostle, New York, NY

LOVE, Float Photo Magazine, New York, NY (online)

2015 
ME AND MY SELFIE, Photographic Center Northwest, Seattle, WA

VITAPHONE NO MORE!, Vinyl Deptford, London, UK (collaboration w/ Steven Smith)

www.jonathandavidsmyth.com

Kelley Bennett says of her work, "These images are taken from an ongoing, untitled series about my hometown of Gainesville, Florida. This work began in the fall of 2010, as an attempt to find something new and inspiring in a place I'd grown bored and frustrated with. I started out exclusively using a Holga for this project, since it was the only medium format camera I could afford as an unemployed 18-year-old. Over time, the camera's infamous soft focus and vignetting made it an interesting tool for romantically capturing a place I began to view as devoid of romance.
 
Local flavor and natural scenery being swallowed whole by corporate interests seemingly overnight is hardly a narrative unique to Gainesville. This series serves not as an outright condemnation of these changes, but rather a visual contemplation, an increasingly difficult hunt for the remnants of a town I once loved, tucked away in the shadows of generic apartment complexes, chain restaurants, and a perplexing number of ill-fated mattress stores."
 
Bennett is a freelance photographer from Gainesville, Florida. In 2014, she graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute with a BFA she'll be paying off for the rest of her life. She is a former contributing photographer and writer for The Owl Mag, Gainesville's Our Town Magazine, and Thrillcall San Francisco. Her work has been featured by REAX Magazine, KQED Arts, China Daily, and INSite Magazine.
 
In addition to photographing her hometown, she is currently producing a photo series about Girls Rock NC, a feminist music camp for girls and transgender youth in central North Carolina.
 
Kelley lives and works in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

www.kelleybennett.com

Lara Atallah is a photographer and visual artist interested in migration, dispossession, and geopolitics in the Middle East. Her ongoing project "Tales of a Non-Country" consists of different bodies of work that look into the complex history of the Levant, from the Sykes-Picot accords of 1916 till modern times. Over the years, the project has become more focused on the themes of nationhood and borders.

Atallah says of her work, "the following images,"Stories from Home" (2013-ongoing) is a photo series that is part of "Tales of a Non-Country" and documents current day-to-day life in Lebanon. The body of work focuses on  my acquired expat gaze as I document my yearly trips back home, in an attempt to assimilate to a place where I have become an insider-outsider."

www.lara-atallah.com

Mehves Lelic says of her work, "My photography work from the city of my birth, Istanbul, Turkey, explores modernity and heritage. I look for intimate, minimalist and fleeting moments that manifest the dynamics of the onset of modernity and its discourse with traditional Turkish culture, which in itself is heterogeneous and varied. Such discourse is especially apparent in efforts of upward mobility in society, as modernity is seen as purchasing power and for certain segments of society, Westernization. My images often feature spaces that facilitate Westernization, such as clubs and gatherings, as well as domestic environments where different cultures meet heritage.

The three images I have submitted provide examples from all these spaces. The first one, called Freedom, Crazy Kings, is a shot of the side of the highway at night, neon lights of clubs spelling their name. The second, An Intimate Gathering, is a self-portrait at a small gathering in a business-casual space that has been modeled after its Western peers. Indirectly, it becomes commentary on one’s self-image as it depends on societal factors and mobility. The third, hold, is of a family gathering at home, where the conservatively dressed members of my family hold my daughter against a table with an inlaid illustration of muses on it.

The clash between cultural streams has always been a major harbinger of change in Turkey. Through my photographs, I try to interpret the many ways in which these changes occur in personal life, as well as in the memory of society."

Mehves Lelic (b.1990) is an Istanbul-born photographer currently living and working in
Chicago. Her work explores modernity, heritage, femininity and maternality, especially as it relates to domestic and exterior space. She received her BA from the University of Chicago in 2013. She attended a Magnum Photos workshop with Abbas with support from a school grant in March 2013. She was awarded a National Geographic Young Explorers Fellowship in the same year to complete a long-term photography project on a Sufi order in the Balkans.

Over 2013 and 2014 her work was published in National Geographic Adventure Blogs. In 2015 she was named a Turkish Cultural Foundation Cultural Exchange Fellow. She attended the Fourwinds Artist Residency in France on the fellowship, producing work that was shortlisted for Dubai International Emerging Artist Award, the Luminarts Fellowship, and Odeabank O’Art Award.

Her photography has been exhibited in Institute Des Cultures D’Islam, the National Geographic, GEO, Lenscratch, Odeabank Gallery, and the Photographers’ Gallery Istanbul. She is a member of the Chicago Project of Catherine Edelman Gallery. Her latest work focuses on femininity, immigration and maternality using composites of domestic space and exterior landscapes.

info@mehveslelic.com


 

Melanie Metz, a visual artist born in 1992, resides in the South. She is primarily a film-based photographer who makes her own c-prints out of a traditional darkroom. Melanie’s work has been featured in publications such as Juxtapoz, Broadly, Lenscratch, and many more. She considers herself to be a story-teller, in that each of her images present narratives surrounding themes of childhood, mysticism, and the natural cycle of life.
 
Metz says of her work, "These images are from a work-in-progress titled after my hometown, “Davie”. The series exploits my relationship with the place in which I spent my childhood.  I think I am investigating the glue that pulls folks together or in other words, what a culture represents.  I seek out clues to these questions within the unmediated movements of the people around me in their most comfortable settings."
 
EDUCATION
Bachelor of Arts, Florida International University, Miami, FL

Broward College, Associate of Arts, Davie, FL
 
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS-

2017 All-Media Juried Biennial, Juror: Kathrine Pill, Art & Culture Center, Hollywood, FL

2016 The Enviornmental Portrait, Juror: Shana Nys Dambrot, Darkroom Gallery, Essex Jct., VT

2016 National Photo Contest: Connect, Juror: Angela Cejda, Woody Gaddis Gallery, Edmond, OK

2016 With Our Own Eyes, Jurors: Judy Walgren & Ann Jastrab, RayKo Photo Center, San Francisco, CA

2016 You Are Here, Galerie Schuster, Berlin, Germany

2016 Photo 16, Juror: Bruce Katsiff, Berkley Arts Council Gallery, Martinsburg, WV

2016 Annual Interest: No.4, YAA Museum, Fort Lauderdale, FL

2016 Step Right Up, Juror: Tami Katz-Frieman, Rosemary Duffy Larson Gallery, Broward, FL

2015 You Are Here, Spokojna Gallery, Academy of Fine Arts, Warsaw, Poland

WORK EXPERIENCE-

Nice Day for a Weed Wedding: We Went to Colorado's First Cannabis Wedding Expo, January 2016

Planning Your Perfect Day While Stoned as Shit, January 2016

Dear Florida Moms: How Do I Tell if My Boyfriend Is Talking to His Ex?, June 2016
​
What It's Like Being the Momager of a Two-Year-Old Instagram Celeb, February 2016

Bostick & Sullivan, Studio Assistant, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Summer 2016
Preparing chemicals for platinum and palladium and other photographic processes, assist in experiments for new alternative printing methods. 

Broadly/ VICE Media, Editorial Photo Contributor

Rhinestones in the Suburbs: Photos of Florida’s Rodeo Girls, November 2015

How a Juggalo Commune Saved Christmas, December 2015

More Photos of Juggalos Saving Christmas, December 2015

Broward College, Photo Editor of P'an Ku, award-winning student literary/arts magazine

FEATURES-

Ain't-Bad 
Broadly/Vice
Booooooom!
Juxtapoz
LENSCRATCH
 
RESIDENCIES -

Lacawac Artists' Residency, Pocono Mountains, PA, 2016
 
OTHER EDUCATION-

Maine Media Workshop, Digital Filmmaking, Rockport, ME
California College of the Arts, Color Photography, Oakland, CA

studio@melanie-metz.com
www.melanie-metz.com

Nadia Stone says of her work, "My photography has always been turned around childhood. What I love where we live is that the people we know here are always close by. We live a lot outside even in winter. The life is oriented around the beach, skating and bike. We live in a Summer holidays destination, with large “French “camping areas. These camping are privately owned business and so, we triple our population in Summer time. But when school starts again, everything shuts; shops, camping, waterslides… Everything is quiet, but we are all still here. It’s at this moment that our kids, kids who live here, have their land of Freedom back. They can enjoy their beach, they bike ride without any worries, in the forest, they have their skate park and their pumtrack for themselves.  I started this series few years ago trying to catch some moments of my kids and their friends being free in their environment. What also I think is important, is to incorporate the beach/dune.  
Using natural lighting and creating a timeless feeling are the focus of my shots. I love to capture the mood with my black and white processing, searching for new depths in the absence of color."
 
Nadia is a French lifestyle photographer who lives with her Australian husband and their two kids in the South West of France.

Natural lighting and timeless feeling have been the focus of all her shots.

www.nadiastonephotography.com ( I am rebranding so right now it s under construction)


Facebook: www.facebook.com/nadiastonephotography

Instagram: Nadia Stone Photography
 

Hometown can be where you heart is. This picture makes my heart jump. My two daughters sitting and laughing in their great grand mother armchair .

Born in Paris in 1964, Pascaline Doucin-Dahlke is contemporary painter and digital artist who lives and works in Los Angeles. She is licensed as an architect in France who has pursued in parallel an art education in both France and the United States. Being in this city and region of constant visual interaction, she has enjoyed developing in parallel two distinct forms of artistic expression which are primarily painting and digital art.

For each new series, she develops a fresh pictorial vocabulary with different techniques that conveys the singularity of a particular environment.

Her artistic research focuses on the definition of space, light, and graphic limits within a nonconventional approach through vibrant colors and textures that resonate through the photographs and paintings. Overall, my paintings and digital artworks remain within a classic aesthetic harmony.
 As her personal conviction, she considers art, for both the artist and the viewer, an uplifting and challenging experience filled with emotions.”

Doucin-Dahlke says of this work, "While parking on the top of a roof before walking to L.A. Artshare gallery to see my painting in a group exhibition in Los Angeles, I spotted by chance this young couple walking by the gallery building ready for a photoshoot. I was surprised that they chose an urban mural as a background instead of sitting in a pretty conventional garden. It is so L.A., everything is unpredictable. I enjoy spontaneously taking photos of brides and grooms when they do not know that I am there since they are too busy with their own photographer. It was my first time taking newlyweds on the go in Los Angeles, my hometown, as a French American. I added a more digitally manipulated triptych to the 2 other pictures since it provides a very different perspective to the subject."

Museum Exhibitions-

Palm Springs Art Museum/ Annenberg Theater, "Open Desert Music and Photographic Arts Showcase". California, May 7th, 2016

MOAH, " Smaller Foot prints", Lancaster, California, Jan,- April 2016

Group Shows-
 
Apero Gallery, "America the….”, Fullerton, October. 2016

LAMAG gallery, " PLAY" Open Call 2016, Los Angeles, Aug. Sept. 2016

BG Gallery, "Spectrum Gestalt 3”, Santa Monica, June. 2016

OpenShow L.A. #34 The Gallery Presents, Hawthorne, June. 2016

Martin Bruinsma's studio, “A Sense of Time", May 22nd, 2016

BG Gallery, " Grayscale Wonderland 2, Santa Monica, Feb. 2016

Altadena Main Library, "Space is a Doubt", Altadena, California, Dec.-January 2015-2016  

www.pascalinedoucindahlke.com  
 

Paul Braverman spent more than 25 years in New York City before his recent move to Santa Fe, much of that time as a journalist. Telling stories is his passion.
 
In recent years, Paul found that he was able to tell stories with a camera more powerfully than he was with the written word. So began an intense affair with photography.
 
Paul is something of a rarity on the current photographic scene. He is essentially self-taught. He shoots what interests him instead of what critical theory dictates as appropriate subject matter.
 
Often, that means spending time in overlooked corners of New York. That’s how he first arrived at Willets Point, a neighborhood in a far corner of Queens.
 
For Paul, like any visitor to Willets Point, smell and taste are the first senses to be assaulted. Chemical fumes hit like a punch in the face. Windblown grit fills the mouth. An early date with the shower and the laundry are assured.
 
No one lives in the area, which is a maze of streets whose potholes, like lunar craters, deserve their own name. Business is dominated by small auto repair shops and junkyards, as well as a waste processing facility and Laxmi’s House of Spices.
 
In an increasingly sanitized city, Willets Point is a throwback. Literally. The area is said to be the basis for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous “Valley of Ashes” passage in The Great Gatsby.
 
Like any throwback, Willets Point is under attack by the forces of modernization and gentrification, and has been since Fitzgerald’s day. Nearby Flushing is bursting at the seams and Willets Point is directly in the path of expansion. The first shoots of new building can already be seen and more--much more--is on the way. Malls, condos, and hotels worth $3 billion are slated to rise on land where corrugated steel shanties currently stand.
 
The development is tied up in court, but this underdog doesn’t have much of a chance. There are no cute brownstones or tree-lined streets in Willets Point. There’s nothing of architectural distinction. This is a tough neighborhood to love.
 
Still, many of these small businesses have been in operation for decades. Some of the people who work there--almost universally male and Latino--have done so all their lives. Some of their fathers did the same. 
 
These men radiate an air of pride and machismo. Willets Point may be hell, but it’s their slice of hell. The wind-defying pompadours, pressed overalls, and shiny name tags are acts of defiance to the insult that is the area. It’s the 21st century and this part of the metropolis isn’t even connected to the City sewage system. Flush toilets a precious commodity.
 
Hostility to outsiders is palpable. Trust is not easily given in a place where so many have troubles with the law, immigration often being the least of them.
 
Spend a little time on the grounds, though, and the workers start to open up. The first topics aren’t surprising--business sucks, the City is screwing them, the cops are harassing them. After a while, though, the attitude of stubborn defiance breaks down. Inevitably, the conversation turns to the end of Willets Point and what the workers will do next. Most of these backup plans have more than a hint of fantasy: I’ll go into my brother's real estate business in Florida. I’m a 12-year veteran of Delta Force; my comrades will help me out. I’ve got a plan to stop the developers.
 
Selected Exhibitions-

•2016: Gallery MC, New York
 Black Box Gallery, Portland, Oregon

 •2015: Louvre, Paris
  Art Through the Lens, Paducah, KY

 •2014: Kaunas Photo Festival, Vilnius, Lithuania

Awards-

 •2015: Exposure Award, Interiors Collection

 •2013: CBRE Urban Photographer of the Year

Studied At: School for Visual Arts, International Center of Photography, The New School

Studied Under: Shelby Lee Adams, Natan Dvir, Irina Rozovsky, Richard Schulman

paulbraverman.com