Kirsten Schultz says of her work, "Before I had access to a camera, I would wander around and take photographs in my mind, hoping to return one day and capture those places, even if I couldn't capture the moment that inspired that wish.

Four years ago I finally bought a camera, and have spent as much time as possible capturing the little moments and places that I longed to capture for so many years.

Photography has been a way for me to connect with the world around me in a way that feels "in the moment" as well as preserved for the future."

The topic of this series - Water and Light - examines the fundamental building blocks of life, their raw power, beautiful symmetry, and variety of textures.
 
In this new series of triptychs, natural elements serve as the pallet for abstract expressionist compositions.
 
These pieces consist of transitory moments captured in various remote locations throughout Iceland.
 
The focus is on the minuté, the most basic aspects of life, rather than on the grand vistas surrounding these moments.
 
From hundreds of frames captured in each location, the artist carefully selects and manipulates individual frames into a unified whole, which showcase the subtly beauty of natural form.
 
The compositions operate in the same fashion as the canvases of Abstract Expressionist painters of the 1970s, seemingly drawing order out of chaos.
 
While the finished compositions operate in an expressionistic style, they are profoundly modern in their approach to the subject."
 
The artist was inspired by the work of Harold Edgartons' early explorations of freezing motion. Each still frame is a high speed capture at a thousandth of a second, fixing formations and patterns of water normally not visible to the human eye.
 
Alex was raised in Germany and moved to the United States at the age of 11. He received his BFA from the Art Institute of Boston with a focus on alternative photographic process.

After working in the New England art world and having several exhibitions, he moved to Los Angeles to work as gallery director at Gallery Luisotti, in Los Angeles.

His work there with American New Topographics photographers and European students of Bernd and Hilda Becher would go on to inform his own future works.

Returning to New York to pursue commercial photography he worked with clients ranging from MoMA to top restaurants, boutique hotels, and emerging musicians. He would eventually take a position as Steve Aoki's tour photographer, traveling the world with the famous Dj and documenting his exploits.

His travels eventually brought him to Iceland where he fell in love with the dramatic beauty of its volcanic landscape.

The abstract photographic series, Water / / Light was born during this time, influenced by the drastic fluctuation of light in the far northern latitude, as well as the abundance of drastic and diverse water sources.

Since then he has been pursuing this series throughout his travels and turning his focus to more political landscapes of water.

His work was recently included in Saatchi Arts The Other Art Fair in NYC, with upcoming shows in Berlin, Miami and Los Angeles in 2018.

malexanderweber.com
saatchiart.com/malexanderweber
 

Maureen Haldeman's series, 'Liquid Light', a body of work consisting of sixteen panels printed on aluminum explores the transformational, spiritual and physical qualities of the ocean.

Haldeman says, "The images reflect not only my psychological state while capturing the work but the imagery allows for an intimacy with the intangible state of liquid.

The constant motion and singularity of each wave echo time at its most fleeting, the ebb and flow a constant reminder never to waste precious elements such as time or to lay waste to our planet's essential waters.

Printing these photographs on metal unifies the visual theme of my work; enhancing the surface reflections of the sun, the images are literally illuminated and the sea becomes a mirror of the world surrounding it. 

Each wave, each movement and gesture of the water is unique, transitory, and momentary … and through this luminous visual statement, Liquid Light allows me to transform a split second of captured beauty into yet anther state of being.

My work strives to interpret what I photograph in a new and innovate way. As a photographer I choose to capture a wide range of subject matter, spanning all realms of nature as well as the urban landscape … and as an artist I do not merely want to duplicate what is in front of my lens. I do not want to create mirror images.

Few of my photographs are random; their purpose is to challenge the viewer to contemplate the scene and to think beyond it.

I am by nature drawn to details, and have always focused my interest and my camera on the parts that make up the whole. My photographs represent emotions rather than actual depictions; the familiar is often absent. My main intention is to convey a mood that will cause the viewer to pause, contemplate the mosaic that makes up the image and connect his or her personal feelings to it.”

Maureen Haldeman was born in Holland, raised in Montreal and now resides in Malibu, California.

After settling in Los Angeles, she established MJH Photography in Malibu, specializing in portraiture and then expanding her photographic horizons to include architectural and street photography.

After art history and fine art photography studies at UCLA she began shooting nature - primarily the ocean and its surrounding landscape.

Maureen has taught photography and darkroom skills at the College level, done freelance work for publications including The Los Angeles Times, and has been commissioned to do private photographic projects for the entertainment industry.

Her work is frequently used in set design for film, television and commercials and her photographs are exhibited in galleries nationally and abroad.

In addition to being part of private collections her photographs are also part of the City of Malibu’s public collection and The Bieneke Library at Yale University, New Haven, CT.

Haldeman was appointed to serve as a member of the Malibu Arts Task Force, to identify public art opportunities and implement a public arts policy for the city; she continues to be active in Los Angeles art-related events.

Solo Exhibitions

2014
Liquid Light, D’Andrea/Bieck Galley, Malibu, California

Photo Independent 2014, Raleigh Studios, Los Angeles, California

2012
Nature LA: Past Perfect, G2 Gallery, Venice, California

Exhibitions

2017
Shadow Stories, Sixteen Mile Arts, Ontario, Canada

Quadrivial, Gloria Delson Contemporary Arts, Los Angeles, California

Septime, Gloria Delson Contemporary Arts, Los Angeles, California

LA: Detailed, Annenberg, Beach House, Santa Monica, California

Surviving Trump: The Art of Resistance, Wow Gallery, Hollywood, California

SorenityRocksMalibu Gallery, Malibu, California

Los Angeles Art Show 2017 bG Gallery, Los Angeles California

Photo LA 2017 Los Angeles Center of Photography, The Reef, Los Angeles, California 

Photo Independent 2017, Los Angeles Center of Photography,
The Reef, Los Angeles, California


www.maureenhaldemanphotography.com

Maxwell Pena says of his work, "Timelessness surrounds itself with the idea that time doesn’t exist.

This same idea of time being nonexistent could translate into everything being connected on a much broader horizon than the average human mind could begin to comprehend.

Every photo chosen has a very tight correlation to something inside me from my past or even a guide of direction for the future. I only shoot with film as, which I believe is timeless in its own unique- not so complicated- way as well. Hell, it’s 2017 and I shoot with a Olympus OM-1 made in 1972. Time is merely comprehension of change.

'The Inner Child' was taken during a time in life where I was heavily dealing with killing off inner demons from my childhood that still creep up on me. And I believe there is a direct correlation between feeling this way at the time of capturing the random child in the park simultaneously as he stepped out of the light into my shadow. I believe it is a reflection of self, like most things that you end up surrounding yourself with. But most importantly, that moment was a connection from present to past that only my lens could truly ever capture.

Instagram - @mazwell
                                          

Pena says of this image, 'Goals' was a really beautiful day that I could have only hoped was an omen for my future. I saw the man running around with his children in the grass near the cliff side with a camera in his hand. I imagined this man as me in the future, finally being successful with kids enjoying our time. It was after a heavy rainfall season and, where there used to be dirt, was flourishing tall green grass swaying in the springtime breeze as the sun set. I set my camera to capture the moment shared with father and offspring. Right as I snapped the shutter a third child simultaneously sprung up from being the grass. Maybe when I’m having my second child one day, it will turn up to be twins, but who can really tell besides good ole clockwork."

 

Pena says of this image, 'Forever Right Now' is kind of bittersweet. The two lovers had been together for two years and had started to have falling outs as lovers often do. They were truly perfect for each other in a lot of ways, but I knew they were not going to last in the forever that we all try to hold onto so closely. I don’t know how I knew, but I did. Just intuition and feeling I suppose. But in between the hard times there was some beautiful love and happiness to experience. This is one of their last moments of bliss together holding each other in love, in the moment of forever that they could not hold on to. Smoking a spliff on the highest cliff of Palos Verdes, overlooking the Santa Monica Bay in Southern California. Such a small bay, such a vast universe. It’s in these small moments that accumulate into forever that something beautiful and meaningful could escape you, unless captured, and nurtured."

Peter Barnett is a photographer and multimedia artist exploring the constructed image and its function in contemporary culture. 

He has shot for Rolling Stone and exhibited work in New York, Los Angeles and Prague. Barnett is Head Curator AOPO Collective, Los Angeles/New York aopocollective.com as well as
Resident Artist Golden Belt Studios, Durham, NC, 2015.

Barnett says of this work, "The Blue Hour Series": "It occurs over the course of a few seconds… a vivid recollection of a night in a room… she’s on the foot of the bed talking, her hands clasped together in front of her.  In the window behind her, a red neon sign.

The Blue Hour is a series of 6 photographs inspired by the visual aesthetic of David Lynch’s 1986 drama "Blue Velvet" and specifically by the character Dorothy Vallens."

Barnett says of his practice: "My artistic practice is concerned with the function and power of images and image-making in contemporary society.  Although I work primarily in photography, I avoid describing my individual pieces as “photographs” but prefer instead to call them “images”. 

Although it’s only a semantical difference, I find that there is a noticeable difference between how we define “photographs” and how we might think of “images”.  When discussing a Cartier-Bresson photograph for example, we might invoke such vocabulary as tonal contrast, composition or mood.  In my own practice I’m much more interested in the concept of imagery as a product of the mind’s eye, whether its a vivid memory or a phantasmagoric scene conceived within our subconscious. 

I’m also very curious about the intersection between conceptual photography and the advertising imagery we see everyday.  Does our experience with the constructed image alter our perception of reality?  Have these images changed our understanding of who or what we are?

With my own images, I seek to confuse the psychological mechanism within us that attempts to parse reality from fabrication.  I want to provoke the viewer to ask “what am I looking at?”.  Does this image represent a real or imagined experience?  Is it an intersection between the two? 

Often, I utilize studio lighting and set design to decontextualize my subjects and remove them from their typical environments.  Representing the subject this way delays the viewer’s ability to immediately read the photograph as “real” and thus provokes further investigation.  By dispensing with the subject’s perceived natural surroundings, the image itself becomes something other than a classic two-dimensional window into a scene.  For instance, if the central subject is isolated within a void of color, the entire image is then pushed to the foreground and becomes itself a conceptual object. 

Much of my work, both theoretically and technically, engages the concept of construction.  Each of my photographs is carefully constructed and meticulously lit. 

But the techniques I use to produce the images are only a means to an end — the theme of construction extends to the content of my photographs as well.  Commercial photography, namely advertising imagery, has one central goal: to elicit desire from the viewer.  But before constructing a desirable image, the image-maker must first construct desire itself.  This conceptual moment is the bedrock of much of my intellectual curiosity. 

I’m interested in the ways in which we conceive of desire, beauty and in a broader sense, self-expression.  In my multi-channel video installation Frontman, I present multiple solo guitarists all playing at the same time and in the same small space. 

The cacophonous sound of ricocheting guitar riffs is intended to speak to the problem of self-expression.  We often choose to express ourselves in similar ways to others and end up only fading into the background of the noisy admixture of our collective consciousness.  Although a slight departure from the purely photographic aspect of image-making, this installation is concerned with the image as cultural icon (think Johnny Rotten) and how we engage with our own personal brand of image-making — self-expression.

In the age of Donald Trump and “alternative facts”, propaganda has risen anew and at an alarming rate. 

Misinformation has quietly burrowed itself into our collective consciousness. My latest work questions what role do images play in the facilitation of these alternative realities?  How do humans experience images and how are we affected by them?  Informed by Baudrillard’s concept of simulacra, I’m interested in how contemporary society has replaced “reality” with the idea of “reality” and how this is expressed through and informed by images and image-making."

Education

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC

MFA Studio Art (Photography and Video), 2015

Teesside University, Prague College, Prague, Czech Republic
BA in Interactive Media, 2012

Selected Exhibitions

2017    Alternative Reality, Float Magazine, floatmagazine.us

Leave a Message, Slayer Gallery, slayergallery.com

The Pictures Got Smaller, Online Juried Exhibition, Vimeo.com

Crossing The Blue Hour, Guest Room Projects, Chapel Hill, NC

RadeoFlyer: Artists Re-Imagine the Flyer, DAC Gallery, Los Angeles, NC

Faculty Meeting, DAC Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

2016    RadeoFlyer: Artists Re-Imagine the Flyer, Public Installation,New York, NY/Los Angeles, CA

www.peterfrancisbarnett.com
 

Robin Apple says of her work, "As a single woman with no children, I crave experiences of family.

Fortunately after adopting a puppy nearly 2 years ago, I've created and rekindled relationships with dog-owning and dog-loving neighbors and friends including their kids.

I'm submitting 3 images each from the series: "At the Park” that depict this content and represent one of the iPhonographic styles that I gravitate towards: colorized, nostalgic, sentimental fine art photography. All images were captured and processed on my iPhone7plus in 2017, in and around my Palo Alto, CA neighborhood."

Ms. Robin Apple is an iPhone photographer who lives in Palo Alto, CA. She fell in love with photography as an important creative outlet and vehicle for self-expression.

Trained as a psychologist her work is often emotion-based and she values balance, integration, experimentation, expression, humor, and movement.

She favors incorporating unique angles, blends, blur, color, contrast and motion consistent with her view that people and experiences are contradictory and nuanced. These days she uses an iPhone7plus and finds it freeing; it's accessible, inconspicuous, lightweight, and small and also makes for an easily rechargeable, fun, responsive and quiet travel companion.

EDUCATION:
University of California, Los Angeles. Ph.D.

C.V./ EXHIBITION RECORD:
Representation: Represented by: Blink Art Resource, January 2017; Contemporary Art Curator Magazine, July 2016.

AWARDS, HONORS, MENTIONS:
2016. Tokyo International Foto Awards. Fine Art Series, "Soar", Honorable Mention.
2016. IPA- International Photography Awards. Family of Man- Professional, "Sisters". Honorable Mention.
2016 Featured Artist: Contemporary Art Curator. July.www.contemporaryartcurator.com/robin-apple-photography/
2016 Art and Beyond Print Magazine, Summer Edition, Front Cover.
2016 Art Daily News International Magazine; Featured Artist, February.
2015 8th Edition of the Julia Margaret Cameron Award for Women Photographers, online international competition, Finalist, "Landscapes", "Fine Art".
2015 8th Edition of the Pollux Awards, online international competition, Finalist, "Fine Art".
2015 7th Edition of the Pollux Awards, online international competition, Finalist, Categories "Fine Art", "People".
2015 7th Edition of the Julia Margaret Cameron Award for Women Photographers, online international competition, Finalist, "Fine Art", "People".
2015 New York Center for Photographic Arts (NYC4PA), "Rural Impressions 2015", international juried Show, Juror's Selection, Jadite Gallery, September.
2014 Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition, Brooklyn, NY, "Imagine This", international juried smart device group show, Honorable Mention Sept 27-Oct 26.
2015 PH21 Gallery, Budapest, Hungary, "Motion", international juried group show, Honorable Mention, May 28-June 17.
2014 Artist Guild San Diego Museum of Art, "Illuminations", international juried group show, Honorable Mention, October 31-November 25.

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS:
Solo Shows:
2016 Marin Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Novato, CA. "Emerging Artists of Northern California". Series- "Soar". Dates: Sept 10- Oct 23.
2015 Pacific Art League, Palo Alto, CA, Solo Exhibition, "Life Abstracted", Corridor Gallery, July 1- July 31.
2015 North Tahoe Arts, Truckee, CA, Solo Exhibition, "Figures and Abstractions", national juried solo show, Feb 24-March 30.
2014 Pacific Grove Art Center, Boyer Gallery, Pacific Grove, CA, "Out of My Office", national juried solo show October 24-Dec 18.

Charity Auctions:
2017 Bonnet House Museum and Gardens, Ft. Lauderdale, FL, Making New Impressions: 17th Annual" Fun-Raiser", juried group show, March 9-April 30.
2017 ArtExpo New York, "Rebirth" series curated by Blink Art Resource & ADC, New York, NY, April 21-24.
2017 Kelwood Contemporary Art, Ft. Lauderdale, FL, "Reflections on 2016", juried group show, Mar 4- April 13.
2017 Fabulon Center for Art and Education, West Ashley, SC, "We The People", juried group show, March 1-30.
2017 Sebastopol Center for the Arts, Sebastopol, CA, "Reflections and Shadows", international juried group show, Feb 17-March 26.
2017 Arc Gallery, San Francisco, CA, "Snap" juried group show, January 28-29.
2017 Art Palm Beach, Palm Beach, FL, group show with Contemporary Art Projects, USA January 18-23rd.
2017 Sol Taplin Gallery, Miami Country Day School, Miami, FL, "The Four Elements" group show with Contemporary Art Projects USA, Jan 9- Feb 17.

www.robinapplepeopleshots.com

Rusty Weston says of his work, "These images from my "In a Haze" series present abstract, impressionistic interpretations of the nebulous impact of time on our lives.

Time is an inexorable force that through photography we can try to harness or at least learn to soften its edges."          

Rusty Weston is an editor and photographer in San Francisco, California.

Rusty’s writing has appeared in Forbes.com, the Financial Times, Wired, Fast Company, and Yahoo!, where he served as an editor for several years.

Rusty began studying photography as a teen and had a photo published in a San Francisco newspaper before he graduated from journalism school.

He’s created content his entire career; in recent years, he’s pursued a dream to explore fine arts photography, transitioning from a macro style into more abstract explorations of time and movement. A lifelong fan of abstract expressionism, his photography influences include Ernst Haas, Todd Hido, and Saul Leiter.

rustyweston.com

Sonia Melnikova-Raich was trained and worked as an architect and artist in Moscow, Russia, and has  been living in San Francisco since 1987.

When she turned to photography, her schooling in painting and design remained noticeably present in her works. Rather than treating a photograph as an illusionary “window” into a three-dimensional world, she approaches it as a canvas with its own material presence and brings the viewer’s attention to the physical surface of the photograph, geometry and structure of the composition, and pictorial aspects.

As to her objects, she looks for grace, poetry and mystique in the most common of things. In that respect she feels strong affinity with the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi, with its preference for muted colors and reverence for the subtle beauty in old and simple things.

She exhibits locally and nationally and has been a finalist and winner in many competitions, juried, among others, by Phil Linhares, Chief Curator of Art, The Oakland Museum of California, Rene de Guzman, Senior Curator of Art, Oakland Museum of California, Linda Connor, Professor of Photography, San Francisco Art Institute, and Kenneth Baker, Art Critic for the San Francisco Chronicle.

She had several solo exhibits and has been featured in professional art and photography journals.

Featured:
FLOAT Photo Magazine (2017)
CAGO Media: AN ARTIST SPEAKS (2016)
SHADOW & LIGHT MAGAZINE (2014)(2016)
YOUR DAILY PHOTOGRAPH by Duncan Miller Gallery (2016)

http://art.soniamelnikova.com
 

Steven Bowers says of his work, "Was it just a dream? A flock of pigeons roosts quietly on the roof of a cathedral in Munich. 

Suddenly, the cathedral bells sound on the hour; startled, the pigeons take flight.  Like a school of fish, the pigeons move as one, tacking and shifting direction as a collective. 

Frazzled nerves settled, the pigeons return to their stations and resume their slumber on the cathedral roof. 

For another 59 minutes.  Was it just a dream?

My “Soar Winners” series of images use motion blur technique to convey a ghostly or ethereal quality to its subjects.  I deliberately chose to render these images in black and white, to accentuate contrast and texture and to distill the kinetic motion of the birds into their most basic recognizable elements."

Steven Bowers is a self-taught photographer with no formal photography training. 

He relies on an inquisitive eye, quick shutter-release finger, patience, practice, and the generous mentorship of more experienced photographers to deliver distinctive content and emotional heft through his images. 

He was introduced to photography at age 7, spending frequent evenings alongside his father (photographer David Bowers), dodging, burning, and developing images projected by the Beseler enlarger in their home basement darkroom.

Born and raised in New Jersey, at various times Steven has lived in Ithaca, New York, Pasadena, California, Washington, DC, and Vienna, Austria. 

He studied mechanical engineering at Cornell University, aeronautics at the California Institute of Technology, and law at George Washington University. 

Steven resides currently in Portland, Oregon.

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
Group Shows
Black Box Gallery, “Focus:  Light and Shadow,” Portland, OR, USA, April 1-20, 2016
Sixteen Mile Arts Photography Gallery, “Decisive:  New Currents in Street Photography,” Milton, ON, Canada, August16-September 17, 2016
Photo Independent 2017 (Fabrik Media), “On the Street,” Los Angeles, CA, USA, April 21-23, 2017
Fathom Gallery (Fabrik Media), “On the Street,” Los Angeles, CA, USA, April 29-May 6
PH21 Gallery, “MONO,” Budapest, Hungary, May 11-June 6, 2017
LoosenArt Gallery, “A Surreal Vision,” Rome, Italy, June 21-30, 2017
Black Box Gallery, “Shadows:  Darkness and Light,” Portland, OR, USA, May 1-20, 2017
PH21 Gallery, "MONO," Budapest, Hungary, May 11-June 6, 2017
Blank Wall Gallery, "Fine Art," Athens, Greece, May 26-June 8, 2017
LoosenArt Gallery, "A Surreal Vision," Rome, Italy, June 21-30, 2017
Darkroom Gallery, "Abstraction," Essex Junction, VT, USA, June 22-July 16, 2017
PhotoPlace Gallery, "Black and White," Middlebury, VT, USA, July 12-August 12, 2017

www.bowersimages.com

Trish Reschly says of her work, "Emotion is common to all human experience. I have always felt deeply, seeking understand why emotions interconnect experiences & how they develop us into the people we are and will become. 

In my work, I seek to express those deep-rooted emotions in the bodily form of children, my children. 

While my work is deeply personal, I hope it will also be very accessible to the whole of humanity.

I approach photography in both a fine art and documentary manner.  Allowing my subjects to follow the path before them without interruption in order to capture the essence of the moment within their frame and mine. 

While I watch and take in the moments played before my eyes, my mind and heart are working together with purpose to form an expressive work.  Much like a sculptor looking at marble or the craftsman assessing the wood before him, the surrounding world is my raw material to form and shape."

Born in small town Iowa, Trish was originally trained in the art of vocal music.  After a time living abroad, she has spent the last 15 years nurturing her family who are the influential core of her photographic endeavors.

Best known for going beyond portraiture to explore the deep emotions present in mankind, Trish seeks out expression through the physical form of children.  

Trish is married to a skilled carpenter currently based in Kansas City, MO.

She is the mother of five children who are often the subjects of her photographs

HONORABLE MENTION, Children/Portraiture, Prix de la Photographie, Paris (P×3) 2017

HONORABLE MENTION, Children/Portraiture, Prix de la Photographie, Paris (P×3) 2017

Reschly has studied with the following teachers:
Deb Schwedhelm, Fine Art & Project Development

Caroline Jenson, Communicating with Color & Light

Rebecca Coursey, Birth Unveiled
Allison French, Capture

www.sincerusphotography.com

Wen Hang Lin says of his series, 'Silence in Synesthisia', our conception of the reality around us is a continuous act of layering moments of experience.

Yet, our sense of “a moment” is a fluid concept. What we see as real is only defined by our belief structure. Have we ever wondered whether time can arbitrarily weave together many moments—and in that intertwining, change our perception of the moment? What sense (or senses) do we use when perceiving time?
 
Using synesthesia, a neurological term for the mixing of senses, as a metaphor, this project probes the other side of probability and provokes the visual senses. By combining two layers of time, it creates an ambiguous experience that strives to offer a venue to encourage viewers to perceive themselves in the act of perceiving.
 
To create this project, images are blindly overlapped by rewinding film after it has been exposed. Adopting coincidence as a tool, two separate events—with no apparent or planned connection—are fused together by their colors and open an abstract space.
 
Through an entangled web of intended actions and unintended instances, the act of photography is transformed into a theatrical encounter, playing with the present moment. Even more, the quest of searching for the unseen emerges as a meditative monologue.
 
The photographs reveal more than merely abstract images. Because the coincidental approach often leads to an unforeseen result, it echoes the mysteries of life, thereby limiting our ability to calculate, plan or control. Thus, it is a silent, improvisational performance between two realities. When the seen and unseen meet—and strangeness and beauty intertwine—the light and shadow are merged into an overwhelming experience of infinite possibilities."
 
Wen Hang Lin was born and raised in Taiwan. Inspired by Robert Frank's The Americans, he moved to the American Southwest and studied photography in his early twenties.

He uses the camera to express his curiosity and to explore the conceptual context of his daily life.

For him, photography has become a meditative monologue and a quest of seeing the unseen.

His works were in numerous exhibitions throughout the US.

Wen earned his B.F.A. at Arizona State University and M.F.A. at The Ohio State University. He currently works in the arts as a graphic designer in Phoenix, Ariz.
 
Exhibitions
2017       Good Bokeh, Dab Art/ H Gallery, Ventura, Calif.
2017       16th Annual Joyce Elaine Grant Photography Exhibition, Texas Woman’s University
East | West Galleries, Denton, Texas
2016       enLIGHTened, Central Michigan University Art Gallery, Mount Pleasant, Mich.
2016       Fine Art Exhibition, Los Angeles Center of Photography, Los Angeles, Calif.
2016       All Art Arizona 2016, Art Intersection,Gilbert, Ariz.
2016       Art Now: Photography, The Ann Arbor Art Center, Ann Arbor, Mich.
2016       Compé ’16, Project Basho Gallery, Philadelphia, Pa.
2016       The Abstract Image, The SE Center for Photography, Greenville, S.C.
2015       Nascent Site: Sight, Northlight Gallery, Phoenix, Ariz.
2015       Center Forward 2015, The Center for Fine Art Photography, Fort Collins, Colo.

Grants and Awards
2017       First Prize, Fine Art/Abstract, Prix de la Photographie Paris (Px3), Paris, France
2017       Third Prize, Fine Art Category, Prix de la Photographie Paris (Px3), Paris, France
2017       Runner-Up, Good Bokeh, Dab Art/ H Gallery, Ventura, Calif.
2017       Imaging Spectrum Award, 16th Annual Joyce Elaine Grant Photography Exhibition, Denton, Texas
2016       Finalist, The John Chervinsky Emerging Photographer Scholarship,
Griffin Museum of Photography, Winchester, Mass.
2016       Commendation Award, Silver Eye Center for Photography Fellowship 17, Pittsburgh, Pa.
2016       Honorable Mention, ONWARD Compé ’16, Philadelphia, Pa.
 
www.WensPhoto.com
FaceBook.com/WensPhoto

Yasmin Afrazeh says of her work, "From an early age, I had a very strong imagination.

As a child, I enjoyed imagining and telling stories about objects, people and events that I encountered in my surroundings.

Growing up, I developed an interest in philosophy and observing human behavior. Combining my passion for storytelling and philosophical concepts, I began my journey in experimenting with conceptual art, first by trying surreal painting as a teenager.

Later, I began writing plays and made some friends in the film industry, and so a flame for telling stories through the camera lens was ignited within me.

My educational and professional background is in finance. During my years as a college student and early on in my career, my desire to remain active as a visual artist grew stronger. Finally, in 2015 I decided to spend more time on creating art.

Today, I find inspiration in the nature, philosophy, and the human psyche to tell stories through  conceptual and fine art photography.

I enjoy using photography as my medium to express, engage, and educate."

About this series:

"Lately, I spend a great deal of my time pondering the concept of time— how quickly it is passing us by, and how difficult it is to make more time.

But more than anything, I think about how strange my relationship with time has become as a result of its passage.

How strange and interesting it is that memories of events from not long ago can seem as though they happened many years ago, and yet other memories about events that reside in the distant past can seem as fresh as something that happened just yesterday.

I think about how fluid our relationships can be with the concept of time.

Recently I read In Search of Lost Time, a classic novel by Marcel Proust. I was able to deeply relate with the following passage: "How different this way of experiencing the past, direct, is… You try to remember the past yourself... You try to force a memory... make yourself remember..and it's nothing.. just a review of ideas you've had a thousand times which we call memory..it is dead! Nothing is relived..

But I'm talking about something very different.. It renews us..because we've been there before and the only true paradises are the paradises we lost...

This is the essence of things when the past and the present are brought together in an instant.. by an association of a smell or a sound..

Now we are living in the present and the past.. Now at the same moment... and in this moment.. all time is defeated… and we are freed.. and without Time, death holds no fear for us.”

This series of photographs is my interpretation of this feeling.

instagram.com/yasmin.a.gallery/