Nathalia Roman says, "This ongoing series quickly became a collection of these tiny detailed portraits of Montreal. As I kept romanticizing the details in these brief moments, admiring the physical wear of textures, the colours and the way the light affected these spaces, I came to realize I was collecting them in an almost obsessive way. Walking on the same streets over and over again and uncovering new colours, new things to torment over has become a ritual for this never ending work. 

I am a photographer born and based in Montreal Canada. I am currently working on my BFA in photography at Concordia University. My work has been highly influenced by Johan G. Herder’s text “Scultpure: Some Observations on Shape and Form from Pygmalion’s Creative Dream” and his concept of surface art transcending its medium to urge the sense of tactility in the viewer. Most of my photographs try to seek this sensation while on the other hand my work in installation has tried to mimic the sensation of brief moments of tactility and spaces that my photographs capture. 
 

Ross Brimberry says, "Light’s stimulation affects us humans just as it affects any organism with photon sensitive cells or organelles. This series explores our use of artificial lights and suggests reasons why we’re so drawn to light. These images are layered with light sources suggesting an overabundance as well as covering photographs of the night sky to visualize the lowered star visibility caused by light pollution. Through pairing the night sky against artificial light I also implore viewers to hypothesize why we as a species are so attracted to light, and to question how our shared biology influences our culture. 

I started taking photos when I was 12 and through over a decade of shooting, printing, and learning my hobby has become my life's passion. With nearly just as an extensive background in science (historically ecology, currently neurology-focused medical research) I center most of my work around the natural world, visualizing concepts which are fundamental to the world around us. I aim to have a scientifically backed conceptual foundation to my work as well as use novel approaches in order to find my own personal artistic voice, and display scientific truths in ways that will draw a wider, more visual audience.

Career Highlights:
Azalea Festival 2013 honorable mention
Heart of Illinois Fair Black and White first prize 2014
Show at Peoria Public Library, 2016
MONOVISION 2018 Black and White landscape honorable mention
Currently showing at Serai Restaurant, Chicago IL

Rusty Weston says of the series, Unrealized, "The interplay of light and movement can distort our perception and our awareness at night. Things may not always add up. Did the person you saw on a bus or walking by you on the street really want to be recognized or understood? Or did they just want to be left alone? This series explores urban anxieties and misconceptions we experience in a distorted or altered field of vision — false impressions that can happen in the blink of a shutter."

Rusty Weston is a fine arts photographer in San Francisco, Calif. His conceptual work has been described as “abstract realism.” A professional writer, editor, and storyteller, Weston serves on the board of the Bay Area Photographers Collective (BAPC). Weston's main photography influences include Cindy Sherman, Todd Hido and Saul Leiter. 

Highlights: Work from Rusty Weston's series Unrealized has been selected in 2018 juried competitions by Black Box Gallery in Portland, Oregon, and The Photo Review, a publication. The series is also featured in his photo book entitled “Not Knowing”. In the spring of 2019, his work will appear in a BAPC group show at KYOTOGRAPHIE in Japan.

Image titles: Hesitation; Reconsidered; Resistance
Captions: a) I felt anxious and watchful, wary of everyone around me. b) I could hear their voices but didn't stop to listen to their words. c) A little uncertainty is what I've come to expect. 

info@rustyweston.com
rustyweston.com

SameSource is a photographic artist with over two decades of professional experience recording images.  SameSource fine art photography spans both landscape and bodyscape, often exploring human sexuality and its relationship with art. 

With recent showings from the Musée du Louvre, Paris, France, to Art Basel, Miami Beach, SameSource was recognized in the international Lumiere Award for 2017.  

Coagula Gallery in Los Angeles included SameSource in its Ten Top Artists exhibition for 2016 in a show curated by Tulsa Kinney of Artillery Magazine. 

SameSource work has been featured in The Huffington Post and American Photo magazine, and SameSource has twice been profiled by Silvershotz International Magazine of Contemporary Photography for the Apples and Apples Reinterpreted series, and is one of 25 international artists featured in the magazine’s 2017 Folio of Fine Art Photography (ISBN: 9781642049985). 

SameSource was one of thirty international photographers in the Los Angeles Festival of Photography’s 2017 exhibition on street photography at Fathom Gallery.  In addition to being featured in numerous photography books, SameSource is the author of four fine art photography books, Objects of Ruin (ISBN: 9781320134194), Apples (ISBN: 9781366155986), Apples Reinterpreted (ISBN: 9781366155856), and The Green Dress (ISBN: 9781388795016). 

SameSource has origins in the rural Midwest. After studying music and philosophy in a liberal arts education, the artist went to Italy and became immersed in the works of the Renaissance.

A return to the US brought the pursuit of graduate work in music and cinema, with an eventual arrival on the west coast via the USC film school. In addition to the full-time pursuit of photographic fine art, SameSource output has included notable works as a recording artist, writer, and filmmaker. 

SameSource is represented by Fabrik Projects.  For art inquiries, visit FabrikProjects.com.  Learn more at SameSourceFineArt.com and follow SameSource on Facebook, Instagram, & Vero; SameSourcePhoto on Twitter.

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS

SameSource has been named an Artist in Residency for 2019 by GilsfjordurArts at Gilsfjarðarbrekka in Gilsfjordur, Westfjords, Iceland.

Solo Shows:
Reinterpreted, June – July, 2019 (Fabrik Projects Gallery, Los Angeles)
Reinterpreted, FotoFever Paris, November 2018 (Carrousel du Louvre, Paris, France)
Bodyscapes: The Fine Art of SameSource, October 2017 (Pure Pleasure Gallery, Santa Cruz, California)
SameSource Works at LA Emerging Designers, October 2015 (LA Fashion Week at the Dream Factory, Los Angeles)
Objects of Ruin, November 2014 – January 2015 (Main Street Gallery, Kansas City)
Objects of Ruin, September – October 2014 (Hamilton Galleries, Santa Monica)

Recent Group Shows:
Full Bodied, March 2019 (Los Angeles Art Association Gallery 825, Los Angeles)
Detroit Dirty Show, February 2019 (Russell Exhibition Center, Detroit)
Los Angeles Art Show, January 2019 (BG Gallery Art Booth, Los Angeles)
Use Other Door, January – March 2019 (Core Contemporary Gallery of Fine Art, Las Vegas, Nevada)
The Creative Portrait, December 2018 – February 2019 (Los Angeles Center of Photography, Los Angeles)
Holiday Show, December 2018, (Fabrik Projects Gallery, Los Angeles)
Photo Independent International Exposition of Contemporary Photography, October 2018 (The Reef, Los Angeles)
FANFARE-LA, October 2018, (The Reef, Los Angeles)
Open Source, August – September 2018 (Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, Los Angeles)
Los Angeles Art Association Benefit Exhibition, July – August 2018 (Gallery 825, Los Angeles)
Electron Salon, July – August 2018 (Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, Los Angeles)
Spectrum-Gestalt 5, June – July 2018 (BG Gallery, Santa Monica)
12” of Sin Obscura, May 2018 (Sin City Gallery, Las Vegas)
SEAF, April 2018 (Seattle Center Exhibition Hall, Seattle)
Detroit Dirty Show, February 2018 (Russell Exhibition Center, Detroit)
Round Hole, Square Peg, January – March 2018 (Long Hall Gallery, West Hollywood, California)
Grayscale Wonderland, January – February 2018 (BG Gallery at FM Fine Art Gallery, Los Angeles)
Los Angeles Art Show, January 2018 (Bert Green Fine Art Booth, Los Angeles)
Los Angeles Art Show, January 2018 (BG Gallery Art Booth, Los Angeles)


SameSourceFineArt.com
Follow SameSource on Vero, Facebook, & Instagram.  SameSourcePhoto on Twitter. 

Sarah Manriquez is a photographer and filmmaker. An overarching theme that ties her work together is the resilience of the human spirit. Sarah explores the concept of resilience through the human body and the female form. Through the body, she is able to explore familiar issues we all encounter that echo our own vulnerabilities. The body is the ideal vessel to discuss resilience.

Sarah is pursuing a bachelor of fine arts with a concentration in photography and film at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Born in Carson City, NV and raised in Honduras on the island of Roatán- traveling, culture and language have been a large part of her life. 

Career Highlights: 
Over the past year, Sarah has exhibited her photography work in over 14 exhibitions across the nation and exhibited in her first international juried exhibit in Budapest. She was published in three publications including Dark Beauty Magazine, Scribendi Magazine, and ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal as a distinguished artist. She co-curated and coordinated two successful multimedia interdisciplinary art exhibitions showcasing artists from the Fairbanks community.

Additionally, she is scheduled to present her first solo exhibition for her documentary photography work on homelessness in the Arctic in December 2019 at the International Gallery of Art in Anchorage, AK and was just accepted into Bear Gallery to show the same work in February 2020. She will be the Iditarod Digital Photo Assistant to Official Iditarod Photographer, Jeff Schultz on the trail for the 2019 International Iditarod Sled Dog Race. Starting on March 1st, they will cover 1,000 miles of remote Alaska wilderness in the winter in small planes and snow machine over the course of two weeks. She will be responsible for creating all the behind the scene content of Jeff on the trail as well as processing images after they have been captured.

www.sarahmanriquez.com

Sonia Melnikova-Raich was born and received her education in Moscow, where she earned a Master's degree in architecture. She has been living in San Francisco since 1987.

She exhibits locally and nationally, has been featured in art and photography magazines, had several solo shows, and has been a winner and finalist in many juried photography exhibits.

She says, "I was trained and worked as an artist and architect. Later in life I turned to photography, but schooling in painting, graphic arts and architecture remains present in my work. I am strongly influenced by the work of Russian Constructivists of the 1920s and am interested in exploring the abstract in the material world, experimenting with depth of field and flattened perspectives, and in bringing the viewer's attention to the physical surface and inner geometry of the photograph, its pictorial aspects and compositional structure.

In creating my recent portfolio “Light+Shadows,” I was inspired by the words of a great American architect Louis Kahn, who said: "The sun never knew how great it was until it hit the side of a building.… Even a room which must be dark needs at least a crack of light to know how dark it is."

www.art.soniamelnikova.com

William Major says, "Stages become places for isolated performances – traditional prosceniums, road houses, and arenas, which are all site specific to an extent, but what I am interested in is not commercial brick and mortar theatre; rather, smaller spaces where the stage blurs fantasy and reality. The stakes are different when watching karaoke at a smoky bar – someone belting their voice in the most earnest way, sometimes polished, sometimes not technically great, but at least they were in love with the moment and willing to be vulnerable in a room full of strangers.

The stakes are different when you are on a music tour and you are playing to an empty room, but you still give it your all. I am looking for utilitarian stages – where the untrained, nonprofessional, can get up and tell their story. Independent sports are where I ended up documenting this type of theatre – specifically wrestling and most recently boxing and mixed martial arts.

Sports stages have their role – the fans watching and athletes becoming the actors. Sports is full of tension, suspense, reversal of fortune, reveals who we are as human beings, aligns nations, fans, or politics (or sometimes destroys them in solidarity). What you are watching is a battle for dominance ultimately dependent on strength, skill, and judicious timing.

The main difference between sports and traditional theatre is the outcome is not always predictable. The critic Bryan Cowgill once said, “My problem is that if I go and see a production of Hamlet, unlike a soccer game, I know the results in advance.”

The role of a traditional actor is supposed to convince the audience that even though they know the play that maybe this time Hamlet will not be slain by Laertes at the end. In independent wrestling, you have a plotted story line, there is a fixed outcome, and the wrestlers have specific roles. These players gather in their locker room, adorn their costumes, have their entrance, say their soliloquy, and fight to be seen. Fight for recognition and validation. Like a good actor and athlete one is never sure of the outcome."

William Major hails from the mountains of northeastern Tennessee. Major attended the small liberal arts school, Milligan College, and graduated in 2015 with a bachelor of arts in photography and humanities. He currently lives in Athens, GA attending the University of Georgia seeking a Master of Fine Arts degree in photography. Major currently explores varying performances and unique talents through portraiture and video.

As a graduate student, he has worked with wrestlers, boxers, body builders, contortionists, circus performers, singers, dancers, and a host of other performers. He explores the motivation behind these performances - where validation, recognition, and exposure are generally key.

Spectacle is an important part to this research, as well as subverting its coded language. Major has also delved into Christian iconography in Appalachia and the greater southeast, family history, storytelling, and bringing his love for music into his artistic craft.  

Career Highlights: 

Major has shown his work across the southeastern United States as well as exhibiting in New York City, London, and Amsterdam. He has been featured in Ain't Bad Magazine, Southern Glossary, and is part of the collections Looking at Appalachia and the Archive of Documentary Arts at Duke University.

www.williammajorphotographs.com 

Zander Fieschko says, "I earned a second major in Sociology by accident. I just loved the unbiased world view Sociology gave me and just kept taking the classes until I had enough credits.

Ever since then, when faced with a problem; whether in design, with family, or coping with modern politics, Sociology helped me find the often misunderstood root. For example, my friend is considered a plus-size model. One day she discussed Buddhism with me in relation to her self image, specifically the illusion of reality.

Sociology has a similar idea; reality is just a sum of labels we set in place to recognize and divide it up. We decided that Flaw, the ever present obsession, is Illusion. I have set out to prove that Flaw is Illusion through my photography. Beauty and Strength are everywhere and everyone, if we let it be so."

Zander grew up in an Italian and Polish household in Pittsburgh, PA. With the help of his mother, Regina, he learned how to shoot 35mm and use a dark room at age 11. Zander attended film school in Boston, Amsterdam, and Prague, and followed friends and lovers to Los Angeles after graduation.

For the past six years, he has worked in film and television as part of the set decoration union, IATSE Local 44. His love of photography and sociology continued to shape his design sense, and his recent photo essay Dream Tourism received a curated gallery show in October 2017. This has inspired him to pursue a new career in fashion photography.

Career Highlight - "Dream Tourism," A solo exhibition of 15 photographs based on dreams at Salt Gallery in Downtown Los Angeles, October-November 2017

Image: Cacogen (2018) - Shot at the remains of the Paramount Ranch after the recent wildfire. We sank into the ash up to our knees in some parts of the ranch, but she still managed to fly. A warning to the future of the region, and a hope.



 

Image: Futakuchi Onna (2018) - People get grossed out by hair, especially in shower drains or in food. We wanted hair to be the clothing. 

 

Image: Jessica Atreides (2017) - Most of the Imperial Sand Dunes were occupied by dune buggies roaring around sporting Trump and Confederate flags. Her improvised dance and our place in the sand defied them.


-------------------------------------
L.A. PHOTO CURATOR HOME:
http://www.laphotocurator.com/

ABOUT LIGHTING HOME: 
http://www.laphotocurator.com/about-lighting-curator-paul-ivanushka

FIRST PLACE:
http://www.laphotocurator.com/about-lighting-curator-paul-ivanushka/first-place-dream-by-a-lowey/1

SECOND PLACE:
http://www.laphotocurator.com/about-lighting-curator-paul-ivanushka/second-place-blues-for-airom-by-samesource/1

HONORABLE MENTIONS:
http://www.laphotocurator.com/about-lighting-curator-paul-ivanushka/honorable-mentions-dennis-geller-night-central-maine-gauri-chopra-sketching-with-light-01-amina-amxn-black-swag-is-beautiful-2----/1

BEST SERIES:
http://www.laphotocurator.com/about-lighting-curator-paul-ivanushka/best-series-natasha-rudenko-abjectification----/1

EXHIBITION #1
http://www.laphotocurator.com/about-lighting-curator-paul-ivanushka/exhibition-1/1

EXHIBITION #2
http://www.laphotocurator.com/about-lighting-curator-paul-ivanushka/exhibition-2/1