Eric Smith says of his work, "I see these 3 images as illustrations of concept that it all returns to where it began - the "Root" of it all. The images show abandoned residential land in the inner city of Detroit, MI in this process. of returning to its original state in nature.
 
In general my work today is in the photo documentary genre. I strive for socially relevant images of the American experience and our American Culture.
 
I currently reside in Dayton Beach Fl.
I attended the College for Creative Studies, College of Art and Design, Detroit, MI in the fine arts photography program.

Prior to pursuing fine art photography I attended the University of Michigan - Chemical engineering. Since 1972 my work has been exhibited in various regional shows and galleries including Meadowbrook Art Gallery, Rochester, MI, Cranbrook Museum of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI and the Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI. My work has also been published in numerous books featuring fine art photography of the midwest."

Representation:

Monroe Gallery, Santa Fe, NM (2007-Present)
 
Permanent Collections:

Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, IL

Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN
Numerous private collections
 
Recent Exhibitions:
 
2015
Five Detroit Photographers, Galerie Camile, Detroit, MI

2014
All Media Show, Detroit Artist Market, Detroit, MI

Digital Images, Marygrove College, Detroit, MI

Detroit Photography, Marygrove College, Detroit, MI

Alumni Show, College for Creative Studies, Detroit, MI

2013
Winter Solstice Show, Griffin Museum of Photography, Winchester, MA

www.ericsmithphotography.com
 

Gilles Nicolet says of this work, "I have a special interest in anthropology and ethnography, something that has helped me capture the essence of my subjects. In the past most of my stories where about rare traditions that somehow linked man and wildlife or nature, but Africa has changed a lot in the last 30 years and now most of these traditions have disappeared. My recent work has therefore been more personal and contemplative and less focused on picture stories. I have also moved away from color photography and now only shoot in black and white.

At present I am working on a book on the Swahili Coast, a unique historical, cultural and geographical entity along the western shores of the Indian Ocean. If you wish to see some of this ongoing project please visit https://www.lensculture.com/gilles-nicolet-2?modal=project-332919
ARTIST STATEMENT: I spend a lot of time walking empty shores, often confronted by the raw and unintended beauty of nature, so I chose to interpret the theme literally through my visual rendition of `’root`’. 

When i look at roots, they remind me of the strength of what lies beneath the surface. All the toil and hardships that people hide underneath their outer persona. Roots are the enablers, the anchorage to something solid - be it spiritual belief, a search for truth, a longing for a better life or human resilience. Roots speak of the travails of life, full of twists and turns, their gnarls a testimony to the scars people bear from battles, their knots similar to the binding relationships which strengthen us, their patina a reminder of the age-acquired beauty.

When i walk along these stretches of desolate shores, these roots remain, their trees having long withered away. It shows me: our bodies may go, our faces may be forgotten one day but the legacy of our roots - our stories, our character, will remain.

I am a self-taught photographer who has been living and working in Africa for nearly 35 years now, including long stays in Somalia, Mali, Benin, Cameroon, Ghana, and Tanzania. I became a full-time professional in 1992, shooting numerous picture stories for all sorts of magazines worldwide. 

Website: under construction. To see some of my current work on the Swahili Coast please see 
www.lensculture.com/gilles-nicolet-2?modal=project-332919

 

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 ten 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

Heidi Clapp -Temple says of her work, "I have chosen three images for the “Root Exhibition” from my “Vivid Dreaming” and “Until Then Is Now” series. They represent root in regards to life and loss.
 
The first image is titled “Life Lines” from my “Vivid Dreaming” series. “Life Lines” describe what roots provide to a plant in order for it to grow and stay alive. I shot this from a low angle as if I was in the same space as the roots. My work is influenced by natural world, everyday there is something that I see outside that moves me. I can never tire of nature’s light, shadows, and color. I tried to portray that magical feeling with “Life Lines”.
 
The other two images are from “Until Then Is Now”, which is a project about becoming middle aged. These two images specifically address the loss of fertility that happens when becoming a middle aged woman. Fertility is a lot like roots, as it’s the basis from which mankind is made. “In Retrospect” is about looking back on the choice to have, have more, or not have children. In the foreground there is a nest of eggs surrounded by roots waiting to hatch. But, is it too late to make the choice now?
 
The “Emptiest House” is about mourning the loss of fertility. When losing fertility a woman is no longer able to have a child take root, so to speak. With this comes complicated feelings about losing this ability. A debilitated and vacant home stands as a metaphor inside of what appears to be an ovary. Menopause is a called “The Change” for good reason. Losing fertility is one of the most profound changes in one’s life.

I am a photographically based artist with a BFA in Fine Art Photography from Syracuse University. I have a diverse background in fine arts that includes drawing, jewelry making, painting, and sculpture. My current art practice combines these mediums with photography.
 
The first part of my creative process is the creation of tabletops sets for the camera.  I make drawings that I cut from paper and then add multiple types of papers, glass, and various objects to the sets. In my studio I put a sheet of white paper in front of the sets and illuminate them from behind to create scenes seen through the white paper. Working with shadow, light, silhouettes, and reflections I create a final composition that I photograph.
 
My images are conceived through personal experiences and of those around me. I stage visual narratives depicting scenes full of emotion, with a particular focus on dreams, fantasy, and memory. My combination of various mediums with photography allows me to create a unique visual language full of symbolism, textures, and complex layers. This technique also provides me with a large degree of freedom that allows me to work more abstractly in rendering representation of the internal invisible world inside of our mind.
 
My work has been exhibited venues such as the Center for Fine Art Photography, Photo Place Gallery, LightBox Photographic Gallery, PH21 Gallery, the Dark Room Gallery, SE Center for Photography, and the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts. Publications include Art Ascent Magazine, ARTiculaction Magazine, F-Stop Magazine, Lenscratch Magazine, Light Leaked Blog (and related exhibition), and featured in the "Lemniscate of Diffusion: Vol. VIII 2016”, published by Blue Mitchell. I have received numerous juror awards and was recently awarded a 2016 Individual Artist's Grant from the Tampa Bay Arts Council."

www.HeidiClappTemple.com

Jamie Templeton says of this work, "An ongoing project, this body of work explores a substitute for my experience of family. Without much detail about my extended family history, I’ve turned toward the property where I now live for evidence of the people who have lived here before me. My home and the surrounding land have been occupied continuously since the mid 1850’s. Exploring the grounds carefully, one can uncover objects lost, discarded or assimilated around the property.
 
The process of documenting the found and assimilated objects on the property has, in the oddest way, served as a pleasant substitute for making a family album."

Jamie Templeton (º1958, Los Angeles, CA) is an artist and photographer now living in Redding Connecticut. He received a Master of Fine Art in 1996 – but only recently turned to photography as his preferred medium. Working with a digital camera, he produces silver gelatin prints, exhibiting rich, fine grained images consistent with traditional black and white film photography. He is a member of several fine art photography organizations, has been published in print and online, and widely exhibits his work.
 
http://jamie-templeton.com/
 

Jerry Takigawa says of his work, "Growing up in a post-internment Japanese American household, I was exposed to opposing cultural values, viewpoints and social customs. This project, Balancing Cultures, seeks to consider the shame and subsequent resolve for acceptance into a western culture that my family sought after the war and its ultimate impact on my story.
 
As an artist who works in photography, I make art so that I might know myself better. Balancing Cultures is a project that I was compelled to do. Through this project, I felt that I was expressing things that my family couldn’t or wouldn’t say. How does one forgive such a grave social offense and make things right again? The Japanese have a word for this—shikata ga nai—it cannot be helped.

Peace, harmony and beauty do not simply befall us but come into being through the very act of seeking them. It’s part of the Japanese story to hold the group above the individual; accordingly, a resolve to be American prevailed. Still, there were unspoken resentments along side the obligation to be a good citizen. Mine was an upbringing steeped in subtle paradox.
 
This dichotomous worldview led me to develop my own story—a story in which opposing elements can coexist in harmony and beauty—a visual testament to a new model of being. Balancing Cultures is a work about synergies—the interaction of the past, the present, and trust in a positive future. It speaks to the elegance and beauty of “both/and” as opposed to “either/or” when it comes to solving human problems—and the importance of sustaining hope and imagination in the face of great challenge."

Photographer and graphic designer Jerry Takigawa has been a social and environmental advocate since 1969. Takigawa received a BFA, with an emphasis in painting, from San Francisco State University in 1967. He studied photography under Don Worth. While living in the San Francisco Bay Area, he utilized his art and design skills to help develop a pilot VISTA program (Volunteers in Service to America) in Oakland, California. In 1982, he became the first photographer to receive the Imogen Cunningham Award for color photography. Takigawa is a former president of People in Communications Arts, a former trustee of the Monterey Museum of Art, and a former president and trustee of the Center for Photographic Art. Takigawa lives and works in Carmel Valley, California.
 
takigawaphoto.com

Jessica Paullus says of her work, "Water is the root of all life as we know it. Without water, everything withers and dies. The three photos I placed together to illustrate this concept were all taken on a recent road trip out to the Western United States where water scarcity is a real concern.

Driving through miles of open oftentimes arid landscapes I began to notice even small signs of life like the patch of wildflowers growing in the concrete in the image Unlikely Flowers. These flowers took what little soil and water was available and blossomed. When we were at the Grand Canyon, plants and scrub trees clung to the rocks, grabbing hold wherever they found the tiniest amount of soil to allow their germination. The tree in the image Hanger On shows the determination of Nature to blossom even in a somewhat hostile environment. The canyon was also created over time by the movement of the water in the Colorado River, making water the impetus of one of the most fantastic geological features on our planet. In the final image I submitted, On Shore, a strand of kelp rests on the sand, having been taken from its Pacific ocean bed and deposited on the shore by the tide. The first creatures to emerge from the ocean led to the evolution of our species. Water makes up the majority of our bodies and is where we come from. Water is the impetus behind so many of the wonders of our world.
 
I have been creating photographic images since the age of 10 when I received my first 110 film camera, later progressing to 35mm photography and eventually finding my way to DSLR photography. My work invites the viewer to contemplate the texture, emotion or movement of the subject
whether it is a landscape image or a photograph of people or objects.

My goal as an artist is to create images that have an immediacy, drawing the viewer in and making them feel as though they are standing next to me at the time the photograph was taken.

www.jessicapaullus.com

Karen Klinedinst says of her work, "All of us have a deep connection to places and landscapes from our past. Through our memories, we see these places not as they are, but through the filter of emotion. My recent work explores the emotional qualities of landscapes where I feel a deep connection.
 
I photograph and express these landscapes using my iPhone and iPad. Using the iPhone gives me the ability to capture what I see unencumbered by a heavy camera. The image capture is then processed and manipulated on my iPhone and iPad to express my emotional response to the landscape. My work is not about capturing reality, but creating a neo-Romantic world reflective of my imagination."

Karen Klinedinst is a landscape photographer based in Baltimore, Maryland. She graduated with a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). Since 2011, she has been using her iPhone and iPad exclusively to photograph and express the landscape. She creates landscapes influenced by 19th century Romanticism with 21st century technology. Her landscape iPhoneography has been exhibited widely, including: Massoni Art Gallery, Adkins Arboretum, Maryland Art Place, Soho Photo Gallery, The Center for Fine Art Photography, Griffin Museum of Photogtaphy and the Biggs Museum of American Art. In 2015, she was awarded an Individual Artist Award from the Maryland State Arts Council. She teaches iPhone Photography workshops at Baltimore’s Creative Alliance, Chestertown RiverArts Gallery, Adkins Arboretum and at her Baltimore studio.

www.karenklinedinst.com
 

Kim Gottlieb-Walker (b. 1947 Philadelphia, PA) is an American photographer living and working in Los Angeles, CA. Over the past 50 years, she has built a distinctive portfolio that includes some of the most notable musicians and personalities of the '60s and '70s. Her mother, an assistant to a portrait photographer, gave Kim her first 35mm camera and taught Kim the basics of light and photography from early on.

A graduate of UCLA with honors in Motion Picture Production, Kim worked as a teaching assistant in the film department and began photographing at concerts while her professor, Bill Kerby, conducted interviews. This led to her classic portrait of Jimi Hendrix during Kerby's 1967 interview with him, a photo Kim took when she was only twenty years old.

Kim worked as a photo editor in the LA underground scene of the early '70s, accompanying journalists on assignments and often shooting at the Beverly Hills Hotel Polo Lounge where she photographed Andy Warhol and author Howard Fast.

She moved to London for a year shooting Pink Floyd in the recording studio and Rod Stewart and Joni Mitchell on stage during 1970's Isle of Wight music festival.  She then returned to Los Angeles and photographed recording artists including Gram Parsons before his untimely death in 1973.

Kim's ability to photograph candidly in natural light has produced some of her most iconic photographs in “Bob Marley and the Golden Age of Reggae,” her first book which documents many never-before-seen photographs of reggae legends including Bob Marley, Bunny Wailer, Lee "Scratch" Perry and Peter Tosh with commentary from Cameron Crowe, Roger Steffens and former Island Records head of Publicity, Jeff Walker.  She went on to shoot film stills for John Carpenter's Halloween, The Fog, Christine and Escape from New York and also worked at Paramount as unit photographer for Cheers and Family Ties.

In 1980, Kim was one of the first women admitted to the International Cinematographers Guild, IATSE Local 600 and served as an elected representative for still photographers on their National Executive Board for nearly three decades. Currently, she devotes much of her time to assisting photographers in the Guild by organizing seminars in new digital technologies.

Kim Gottlieb Walker's work has been exhibited in solo shows at the Jamaican Consulate in New York, Proud Gallery in Camden, London, Sugarmynt Gallery in S. Pasadena and KM Fine Arts in West Hollywood.  She has been published in MOJO, Rolling Stone, Time, People, The Free Press, LA Weekly, Time Out, Feature Magazine, Music World and Crawdaddy.  Her photos have appeared in several books including "Classic Hendrix" published by Genesis Press. Kim's High Times cover photo of Bob Marley remains the magazine's most popular cover to date.

Her coffeetable photo book “On Set with John Carpenter” (Titan Books/Random House USA) is available at any book or genre store or through Amazon or Barnes & Noble. 

www.lenswoman.com

Kuzma Vostrikov says of his work, "If we were to look for a definition of sentimentality, we might quickly find ourselves on the slippery path of the established opinion which states that sentimentality is the other side of evil, that it borders on cruelty, that it is a manifestation of the ego, etc. These hackneyed ideas stem from famous philosophers’ discussions taken from stories of illnesses of leaders, tyrants, and revolutionaries.

You don’t hear many people say that sentimentality can be an expression of peaceful emotions, a precursor to the need for real love. The idea of a nuclear reaction is more interesting to society in its destructive incarnation than discussing the neutral atom.

If you are permeated with feelings for an object, when you get down to the bottom of that emotion you’ll find pity. It is exactly this pity that is the first step to true feeling. Sentimentality, a mixture of emotion with reason, is the more correct and non-judgmental approach to the object.

Literature, besides solving artistic problems, exposes the unifying properties of compassion and allows a non-involved observer to take in someone else’s story. Artistic actions, exhibits of paintings, and theatrical performances dedicated to love – all of these artistic occurrences are replete with personal content that opens up a unifying feeling with regard to a personal one.

In this project, sentimentality is directed at a large number of objects of pity at the same time. In essence, it is a personal sentimental feeling with respect to the biosphere, society, and its history.

The question of unrequited love of society in the individual begins in childhood. Feeling oneself to be an outsider with respect to society, a person climbs the rungs of the ladder with a feeling that he is always too late. Around him exuberantly swirls so-called progress. There’s always a president, there are always oil and gas magnates. Moreover, only the chosen get to explore space. Overall, society perpetuates success and lives on a rung above you. There will always be people more nimble, braver, stronger, etc.
Philosophy says that the common man has gotten used to this lag and inertia. He seems to be in the same state as a static point, feeling only the time behind him, and is in no way aware of the present.

Philosophical practice and training can create an escape from these metrics, into a new scale of time in which consciousness is actualized and permanently catches up to the present, bypassing the past and cooled and hardened feelings. At that point the supersonic barrier forever separates the philosopher from society.  

The task of this art project, bypassing analytical philosophical experiments, is to approach cognizance of the present and shorten the distance between the perception of time and the actual, real point in time through aesthetics and social experiment.

The current computer society is crushing the centuries-old traditions of communication and socializing. Instead of a feeling of physicality, bodies in a small kitchen, a sealed envelope with a letter from a loved one, the lapping of waves, hot sand, and a wet salty towel on a southern night, we have a computer with wires and swarms of pictures.

Communication, just as the method of expressing feelings itself, has also completely changed. Pigeons lost their jobs when the telegraph became the first bar code sensor, moving us into a new interface.

All types of communication quickly get old to modern people, and beg for installation of “software updates”. In the whole scope of feelings for society, personal space resembles notes taken by a student, the trigonometry of which is subordinate to the space limitations of social networks: the technology of transmitting feelings must be visual. 

The new photographic sensor allows us to not only observe, but also to change the appearance of what we are observing. It permits the transformation of space, moving the chain of events in time. And the implantation into the past creates in the observer an irreversible process of her own improvement, erasing the past, now replaced by an artist’s existential piece.
The artistic method of “The Orange Fertilization” creates a new decorative connection between the neurons of social ethics, and serves the not-yet-established tradition of transmitting emotions over a significant distance through an electronic network. It also enriches the mundane collection it sits next to, gratuitously giving friends the gift of all the sensual and emotional material of life experience, providing new content in between their posts of leisure.

This, literally, is the search for reciprocity and combining of emotions: in updating the reality of my Facebook friends, I am protecting them from anxiety using a tried-and-true aesthetic practice. I call them to the path of serenity, nirvana, Zen, and eternal values.
True love is active, since feeling identifies with the person and object of desire. The one you love transforms into you. This is why love sometimes borders on awkwardness, and sometimes on violence. My object of simultaneous desire and suffering is society.

In my artistic works, I consider matters of love for society, as for an indivisible object, and here sentimentality allows me to stay in the saddle even longer, away from the passion and tumult of true unrequited love that caused young Werther to proceed from that suffering to his obligatory and tragic end."
 
Kuzma Vostrikov was born in 1977 in New York.
 
He started his art career as an editor and writer in 1996.
 
Since 2007 he has been working as a producer and director in art cinematography field. In 2008 he founded an independent film company named Kuzmacinema:
www.kuzmacinema.com
 
Between 2008-2011 the company has produced four art movies that participated more than 50 film festivals around the world.
www.imdb.me/kuzma.vostrikov
 
Since 2011 Kuzma Vostrikov has been working in experimental
photography, connected with social networks and psychology.
 
His long-term art project called "One thousand photos in which I have never been" is studying social connections through aesthetics and mass media psychology on Facebook.
 
Since 2015 Vostrikov creates the second part of the orange project.
In 2016 he started two new projects:
"Moods of New York" and "If only to fly to Tokyo".
 
Today Kuzma Vostrikov works and lives in New York.
 
 www.kuzmavnutriva.com

Maggie Meiners says of her work, "I find myself thinking a lot about my own personal history.   Moving back to my hometown as an adult has really enabled me to be introspective and look at my origins in a new light. As I stop to look, I see that my observations have a new slant, be it political, social, environmental, or from more of a community perspective.

Whatever the case may be, I have found myself looking much more closely at things and have had an intense desire to photograph what is around me.
On my daily walks, I tend to not only notice the extraordinary light that shines through the trees and beams onto the bushes and perfectly manicured lawns, but I have also noticed how quickly a house is demolished and a new one put up in it’s place.  I consider the trees that have been taken down to make way for these new homes and have since been seeking out mature trees in the area.  As I sought out the trees, I noticed the roots and how gnarly they are. I got thinking about people’s roots, and my own and how they define us."
 
Maggie Meiners (b.1972, Chicago) is an artist and photographer whose work investigates connection with herself, others, and the world at large.  Born and raised outside of Chicago, she holds a BA in Cultural Anthropology from University of Colorado-Boulder and a Masters in Education from De Paul University in Chicago.
 
In 2016, Maggie received Best in Show for Photo Emerge 2016 at Center Gallery-The Midwest Photography Center, Wichita, KS.  Currently she has a solo exhibition featuring her series, Revisiting Rockwell, at The Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, OH and will also be exhibiting at The Garner Center at The New England School of Photography in 2017. Her work was featured at FotoFever in Paris in 2015 and she debuted, Revisiting Rockwell in a solo exhibition at Anne Loucks Gallery in May 2016. Her photographs have been widely exhibited and remain in the permanent collections of the Illinois Institute of Art, Wheaton College, Harrison Street Lofts, Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy, LLP and numerous private collections.  In addition, her work is on loan at the American Embassy in Uruguay.
 
She was the winner of the 2008 Multimedia Exhibition, Gallery 180, Illinois Institute of Art, Chicago, the 2009 Ragdale Prize and was part of the Official Selection 2011 PX3 Prix de la Photographie Paris.  Maggie had her first solo exhibition in 2005 at The Union League Club of Chicago-- one of the most esteemed private collectors of art in the country.
 
In addition to her personal projects, Maggie balances her art with client work where she specializes in brand narrative and storytelling.
 
Maggie’s work is represented by Anne Loucks Gallery in Glencoe, IL.
 
maggiemeiners.com

Mara Zaslove says of her work, "My photographs are entries to my soul, connecting the intangible to the tangible through light, time and memory.  Using natural light to capture what I feel in my heart and my eyes, taking photographs has become as essential to me as breathing air, and in some ways, has evolved into my sixth sense. I thrive on creating visual conversations that embrace the universality of aging, childhood, life on the street and how 'human beings' impact the natural world.

Growing up with a father who was a fine artist, I was surrounded by his work and sensibilities.  His influence made a profound imprint on me and I often find myself mirroring his visual style.  I innately respond to form, patterns, shapes and composition and find that this early exposure permeates my sense of balance and style.

As my photography has progressed, I have been drawn to capture the human stories set in natural environments.  Either candid or anticipated, I seek to convey a uniqueness particular to each individual that invites the viewer to explore their own life’s path with that of the subject documented."

Based in Santa Monica, Mara Zaslove is a fine art photographer who thrives on creating visual conversations. Taking pictures for her has become like ‘breathing air’.

Mara explores the depth of emotion within by capturing people in either spontaneous moments or semi choreographed ones.  As her work has evolved, she became drawn towards the human race within their environment, often struggling to emerge from the constraints of society.  Mara is fascinated by those who live on the street as well as youth who are glued to their phones.   She seeks to convey a uniqueness particular to each individual that will invite the viewer to explore their own life’s path with that of the subject documented.

Mara’s photographs have been featured in numerous group exhibitions, most recently being included in the 2016 California Open at the TAG Gallery; 2016 Art Classic exhibition “Oasis” at the Millard Sheets Art Center; “Monstr Reality” at Bleicher/Gorman Gallery at Bergamot Station, Santa Monica, CA. as well as a Finalist in the 8th Julia Margaret Cameron Award held in Berlin in 2016.

www.marazaslove.com


 

TO SEE GROUP EXHIBITION #3 CLICK HERE:
http://laphotocurator.com/root-curator-susan-spiritus/group-exhibition-3/1