Pato Hebert: "In, If Not Always Of Is" a series of photographs in which a being or presence that I call, “The Oscillator,” appears in various landscapes. The Oscillator reflects its environment, without simply or always being of its context. This work is inspired by Buddhist notions of interconnectedness, the illusion of the self and the trappings of the ego. The Oscillator queries our relationship to place and space, and our limiting ideas that divide humans from nature.
 
In Ecology Without Nature, Timothy Morton reminds us that the West’s very conception of nature as being “over there” and separate from humans is part of our ecological challenge. Humans cannot simply see ourselves as exceptional and apart. We must consider what Richard Grusin and others have called the non-human turn. I have been exploring these ideas through the presencing of The Oscillator in parks and nature reserves, areas that have been demarcated by the state and private organizations as “nature,” or apart from the built, yet that are nonetheless shaped actively (if not wholly) by human hands.
 
The Oscillator can sometimes mirror its surrounding environment, but it is also encompassed and shaped by its landscape. It oscillates between belonging and alienation. Sometimes The Oscillator seems to announce its presence through contrast and difference. Other times it more seamlessly blends in, almost indistinguishable from its context. Still other times it appears to shape shift. Throughout these cumulative encounters, we might wonder what makes something or someone feel un/natural, in/accessible, in/vulnerable, in/coherent? In this body of work, I am playing with both dissonance and resonance, exploring how they might perhaps lead to deeper understandings of connection and synergy."

Pato Hebert is an artist, educator and cultural worker. His work explores the aesthetics, ethics and poetics of interconnectedness. He is particularly interested in space, spirituality, pedagogy and progressive praxis. Recent projects have been presented at Beton7 in Athens, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, the Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen, and The Glass Studio at The Chrysler Museum in Norfolk. In 2015 he was an artist-in-residence with the Neighborhood Time Exchange project in West Philadelphia.

Pato teaches as an Associate Arts Professor in the Art and Public Policy Department at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University.

www.patohebert.com

PAULA RAE GIBSON: "Originally from the UK, I am self-taught using the camera to capture all the feelings that come up in me along the way. My camera has saved me turning it on myself when I'm overwhelmed by life, as if it inself helps me purge, and comprehend. I wish to inspire others to feel deeply, look at their own lives and trust that feeling our way through whatever we go through takes us to a better place as opposed to turning numb which can happen easily. I explore the thems of death, what beauty really is and melancholy mostly and I like my work to carry the look of the past and the generations that are inside us."

Gibson was a 2015 a finalist for the Julia Margaret Cameron Woman's Photography Prize, (fine art category, and portrait and childrens portrait.)

In 2016 PRG's image 'LATE HUSBAND' was selected by Roger Ballen as a Melbourne Photo Award finalist 2016
PRG  is working on a new photography book with Eyemazing Editions which will be published in 2016.

Contact info: paularaegibosn@yahoo.com

Ralph Mercer: "This series “Myths” is a visual blending of the human figure with a natural organic subject, a meditation on spiritual integration and oneness of an individual with the comprehensive natural environment."

Ralph Mercer is a New England native and an alumnus of Rhode Island School of Design (BFA, photography) and University of Massachusetts (MFA, visual design) 
 
After a long career as a commercial photographer, he recently changed direction and began specializing in fine art photography with an emphasis on the figurative and the landscape. 
 
His photographs depict the human figure, nature, and the everyday environment, all interpreted with his sense of visual poetry, whether they be figure studies or abstractions of the visible world.

Recent awards include:
-Black and White Spider Awards, nominee, 2015
-Trierenberg Super Circuit, Gold Medal, Linz, Austria, 2015
-One Eyeland, 4 Silver awards, Chennai, India, 2015
-Black and White Spider Awards, nominee, 2014
-Master’s Cup, 4th annual, 2013
 
Recent Exhibitions include:
-The Photographic Nude, LightBox Photographic Gallery, Astoria, OR, 2016
-Body and Soul, Solo Show, Galatea Fine Art, Boston, MA, 2015
-Alternative Cameras, PhotoPlace Gallery, Middlebury, VT 2016
-Beyond The Book, Boston Public Library, Boston, MA, 2016
-Griffin Museum’s 21st Juried Show, Griffin Museum of Photography, Winchester, MA, 2015
-Black and White, PhotoPlace Gallery, Middlebury, VT 2015
-Think Small, Panopticon Photographic Gallery, Boston, MA 2015
-21st Annual Juried Exhibition, Zullo Gallery, Medfield, MA, 2015

www.ralphmercer.com

Sarah Elise Abramson:  "There is an enigmatic and mystifying place that every person that's ever lived has visited.  We do so with an obscure regularity that we take for granted as conscious beings.  The realm of our dreams is one with which we are all familiar.  Where elucidation occurs as we are suddenly granted access to our innermost thoughts and where reality seems as distant from us as resolves to the things that eat at us from within.  These answers lay dormant in our subconscious, and these inherent truths are granted to us only though the effort of not overlooking this place we all frequent. "Parallels" is a visual, non linear timeline that explores the sensation of confusing dreams with reality and the altered reflection it shows us into ourselves.
   
Nature plays its vital role in this, as a messenger between humans and veracity from its magical and consummate place embedded in our souls.  Through the boxes in which society stores us away and labels accordingly, and onto the grey areas- that is where humanity dwells, in the wealth of things beyond our understanding.  There are indisputable truths in the reflections on a glassy body of water and harsh sun light through a leaf, veins exposed and vulnerable.  These are experiences or occurrences that escape the logic of empirical materialism and our subconsciouses have carried these truths down through generations, passing the symbols along to us, a parallel realm of ethereal narrative.

When we confuse our dreams with actuality, there is a reason for it.  Like the spaces in between the silence, if something only takes place in our mind does that mean it's not reality? This series reflects my time spent in this place- in the parallel dreamworld."
 
Abramson writes a monthly column piece for American Art Collector magazine as well as Culture magazine. She has curated numerous shows in Los Angeles while studying her craft as a photographer under the likes of Susan Worsham, Taso Papadakis, and David LaChapelle. She continues to study under and work with LaChapelle with exciting future collaborations in the works. After a three year residency at Angel Gates Cultural center, her accomplishments have been featured in multiple publications including the Huffington Post, Monster Children, Beautiful Bizarre magazine, Coachella magazine, and The Photographic Journal. She has exhibited at The Louvre, SOMArts, The Vex, The Egan Gallery, Gregorio Escalante Gallery, BG Gallery, The Arsenal of Venice in Italy, Jamie Brooks Gallery, and The Eventi Hotel Big Screen Plaza in New York City, to name a few.  Abramson is additionally the creator and editor-in-chief of Slow Toast, an annual independent art publication.
www.sarahelisephotography.com

Honorable Mention

Shana Einhorn: "Only occasionally do I accept commissioned work. This is mostly due to the enormous energy output required & since stamina is not my strong suit, it forces me to be rather selective. I do however, love being enticed by interesting projects and was fortunate enough to have another one come my way. Lucinda is an emerging artist who connected with me through social media. Although I had never photographed someone I hadn’t met before I did have a strong hunch based on our virtual conversations to do so. The experience was such an inspired creative collaboration and fell right in line with my responsive and spontaneous approach that permeates my personal work. My art explores one’s connection to self, each other and the natural world and this was no exception. 

I am a fine art photographer from Huntington, NY. My art is not about image, it's about essence and as such I think of my work as a spiritual photography. The images explore one’s connection to self, each other and the natural world, using mostly old manual cameras with black & white film and lately mobile photography. I came to photography two years after a cancer diagnosis back in 2003 when a friend loaned me a camera. While struggling with questions regarding despair vs. life the camera became my lifeline.  It soon became apparent that photography was to become my life’s endeavor as a connection to the medium quickly deepened. One can say that I used this new opportunity as a way to re-shape my world. My intention was to connect and make good pictures; not to theorize about them – that came much later. The constraints and ramifications of living with chronic illness inform much of my art, as themes of connection and isolation permeate much of the work. Ultimately it is an inquiry about belonging, significance and connection. My work has been in 23 group exhibitions both juried and otherwise, and currently is in 3 private collections."

 www.shanaphotography.com

"While shooting self-portraiture one afternoon, on a whim I phoned my mother to ask if she'd like to come over and be
my subject. This image was made as I transitioned the focus from myself to my mother. This became an active meditation on personal empowerment. As such, it speaks to the universal archetype of feminine power incorporating freedom, integration, reclamation and re-birth.  
 

“Punch the Bed” – from an on-going series about defiance, alienation, fury and bravado.
 

Tina Rowe: "My work is currently concerned with portraiture and these three images are part of a piece called 'The Suitcase'.  I am exploring the way that skin colour is interpreted and the weight it gives to the way people make judgements about each other.  This exploration came about
because of my own rather fractious relationship with my ethnic background growing up trans-racially adopted in Malvern, a rural town in England, in the 1970s.

The title comes from my personal beef with the use of suitcases in films and theatre because they are frequently empty props that are used to flesh out characters.  When someone strides across the stage or screen with a clearly empty suitcase that is supposed to contain things, it bugs me. The content of a suitcase matters.  Nobody takes an empty suitcase on a journey.

The locations are important as is the fact that I have collaborators in the two photographs taken in London. I feel at home here in ways I never did in Malvern.

The images are taken with a wide angle pinhole camera which allows a long exposure that captures what is in effect a performance in a public space.  The light is stronger in Malvern because I stood out so much there.

www.tinarowe.co.uk

Vanessa Wiggins: "As a photographic artist I aspire to create bodies of work that engage a diverse range of conceptual frameworks through documentary & fine arts photography. My visual arts practice combines digital and historic photographic processes that explore through both the image and the medium the concepts of sonder- the realisation that we each have an inner life as vivid and as complex as our own, and the sublime- the yearning to transcend the everyday through both the natural and constructed environment. I incorporate objects within environmental experiences as a methodology to represent the meeting of the subjective-internal (emotional) and the objective-external (world). I use psychological and social experiences as a contextual framework to explore how we connect internally to our external environment. My visual investigations include objects & immediate space as symbols & archetypes that reinforce or distort social collective memory, & the social impact of visual imagery that builds or deconstructs place & identity.
 
I specialise in historic and alternative printing processes such as gum bichromate, cyanotype, ziatype and salt printing to name a few and have studied in both the USA and Australia. I continue to combine digital imagery with historical print out processes as a way of keeping alive the old through the new. I focus on exploring early alternative photographic processes as a means of combining creative expression with 19th century print out processes in particular. I hold a Graduate Diploma in Art History, a Masters of Documentary Photography, a Masters of Business Administration (MBA), and a Bachelor of Adult Education (BAE). I recently left a full time corporate executive career to pursue my artistic passion and devote my time to developing a comprehensive  arts practice and career.
 
While I continue to develop my technical and creative skills in photography through formal studies and research, I also work across educational and volunteer initiatives developing programs to assist young adults to develop a passion for making pictures and realising their potential through the visual arts. 
 
I am passionate about the re-imagining of national identity through the arts, arts education, and a diverse and inclusive arts culture in Australia that actively embraces all nationalities through artistic communities."
www.vanessawiggins.com

Ville Kansanen: "I was born in Finland in 1984 and have been working with photography for about ten years. The majority of my work is self-portraiture. I live and work in California. I am self-taught.

LANDSCAPE. I work in vast landscapes to study the human condition and the emergence of self. The act of being in them unlocks an emotional connection between humans and nature, initiating self-discovery. The landscape reveals the human being; the human being reveals the landscape. I prefer open spaces because of their sense of the infinite and because they facilitate an introspective focus, drawing from action and movement. The vast natural scene does not care if we are in it, if we are swallowed, lost or found. It is a vessel to analyze my connection to all living things as equals.

The landscapes I work in, the seamless, endless deserts and waterscapes, inform my sense of loneliness in the world. Personally, the feeling of being alone has been a constant in my life, a source of power as well as desperation. This desperation becomes silent and palpable when I enter these landscapes where being alone is all too real. Then, it no longer feels like a burden. There is comfort in the melancholy of loneliness when framed in a surrounding that permits almost no life and certainly no noise.

STRUCTURES. I create visual confines —frames— as a stage to execute different concepts, allowing for performativity. The structure relies on spontaneous stages and physical objects that move in an invisible choreography with my body and are assembled into still images. Presence is important to me; I want my work to look like something you could see in the world. My primary ethic is never to introduce elements that were not there during the act of capturing and structuring the frame. The light that falls on my body, objects, and the landscape affirms authenticity; all are present together when the images are captured.

SELF. As a practicing self-portrait artist; the added dimension of performance is exhilarating and revealing; allowing complete immersion. Using physical conditioning to increase awareness through diet, meditative restoration, running and yoga; my body is capable of informing my ideas and emotional space keeping careful equilibrium in my mind. The relationship is nuanced and intuitive. Given the technical difficulties and risks involved, along with immersion into painful feelings it often manifests as a full psychological and physical experience. The emotions elicited are often very hard, and lingering with them is as much a release, as it is a torture.

SILENCE. My themes emerge from silence; isolation, melancholy, grief, relief, introspection, gratitude, loneliness, peacefulness, regret, surrender, and even fear. Silence is traditionally considered a virtue in Finnish culture and a part of Finnish stoicism. When I work, I am reaching into an internal reservoir, which informs a visual and spiritual direction. I free associate with ideas until an impression surfaces. My goal is to maintain the purity of my unconscious and intuition until something, one can apply a rational measure of thinking to, emerges. The hope is to find raw honesty within and softly release it."

Awards include:
-2015 Lucie Awards. Discovery of the Year.
-2015 International Photography Awards. Fine Art Photographer of the Year.
-2015 The Exposure Awards. Part of the Body Collection.
-2014 International Kontinent Awards. Fine Art Photographer of the Year.
-2008 Adobe Achievement Awards. Photography Finalist.

Solo Exhibitions include:
-Berlin, Germany. March, 2016 Galerie Hiltawsky.
-Sibiu, Romania. July, 2008 Artmania Festival (EU Culture Capital Celebration 2008).

www.villekansanen.com

William Frej has been photographing indigenous people for over 40 years, while living in Indonesia, Poland, Kazakhstan, and Afghanistan, as well as other remote mountainous regions of Asia, documenting the changing lifestyles of many of the world’s unique cultures. 

In 2014, his one-person photographic exhibition Enduring Cultures was featured at Galeria La Eskalera in Merida, Mexico as part of a citywide arts festival. It included recent black and white and color photography from Afghanistan, Upper Mustang, Nepal, and San Agustin Etla, Oaxaca, Mexico.  His photography was featured in a major exhibition which opened June 2015 at the Museum of Spanish Colonial Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, entitled Tradicion, Devocion Y Vida: 80 years of Black and White Photography in New Mexico and Mexico.  His photography on Day of the Dead in Oaxaca, Mexico was exhibited in October/November/December 2015 in a one-person show at PETERS PROJECTS GALLERY(petersprojects.com) in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  A number of his photographs are now being exhibited at the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art in a new exhibition entitled Chimayó: A Pilgrimage through Two Centuries, through April 2017.
 
Frej’s photographs were also featured in one-person exhibitions, The Nomads of Kyrgyzstan, in Almaty, Kazakhstan in 2008 and Himalayan Pilgrimage, at the Museum of Asia and the Pacific in Warsaw, Poland in 1998.  His photographic work, Taninbar to Tibet, was featured in a one-person show at the Duta Fine Arts Museum and Gallery in Jakarta, Indonesia in 1991.  Mr. Frej’s other exhibitions include the Tucson Art Center in 1972, The Eye Gallery in San Francisco in 1977, and the San Francisco Arts Festival in 1976 and 1977.  His photographs of Peru received purchase awards from the San Francisco Arts Commission and the San Francisco Arts Festival in the 1970s. 
 
His photographs of the Himalaya, India and Africa were featured in the Edwin Bernbaum book, Sacred Mountains of the World, and his photographs of India’s Tilwara camel fair were highlighted in Adventure Travel Magazine.   Mr. Frej’s photographic work is represented in numerous public and private collections throughout the United States, Europe and Asia.
 
www.williamfrejphotography.com
 

Yazon Lin: " The scene captured in the first image 'The Working Woman' gave me a very special spark of hope. In the Asian community, women are often not encouraged to be independent, but are expected to depend on men and fulfill family’s needs for men. As an Asian woman working at Chinatown in Los Angeles, she not only faces this social pressure from the Asian community, but also faces the racial discrimination against Asians in the American society. A lot of Asians are looked down upon in America because of their accents, inability to communicate in English fluently, gaps in cultural knowledge, and many other reasons. Therefore, this woman, holding her identity strong in her surrounding environment, absolutely inspired me.
I found a very different connection to the second photo People in Museum. I was walking around The Broad museum in Los Angeles. I saw all these people taking pictures in front of the artwork with typical “artistic” instagram poses, standing sideways, facing away from the camera as if they are not aware of it. I thought it was funny and at the same time shameful that the meaning of going to museums nowadays has become “to take good photos and get many likes on social media.” Like what Susan Sontang said in 'On Photography', photography has become a major part of tourism, rather than the place itself. In addition, popularity of a photo has become what defines the value of the photo.

Spending kindergarten in LA, growing up in Taiwan, transferring to international school during middle school, and finally coming to college in LA, I have always been struggling to find my identity and figure out where I really belong to. When I am in Taiwan, I tend to look for a more American social life, while when I am in LA, I tend to stick with the Asian community. This cultural conflict is reflected in a lot of my work, sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously. Apart from the cultural aspect, I am also a big fan of new topographics, deeply inspired by Lewis Baltz and Ed Ruscha. However, different from Lewis Batlz’s clean and plain photographs and Ed Ruscha’s documentary style of new topographics, I love to incorporate colors into my photographs. I believe in using colorful new topographics to show people that there is color in every corner of this world, even the mundane."

Instagram "the_basic_photography"

Shaun Martins:  "The Lone Wolf” - He sits and thinks of all he has left behind in order to find himself."

It's easy to see the formative cultural and environmental influences that encouraged Shaun Martins to become an artist. He was born and raised in Providence, Rhode Island at the same time the city was beginning to transform itself from an epicenter of industrial manufacturing into the art and creative capital it is becoming today. His parents were both of African/Portuguese descent, his mother born in Portuguese-occupied Angola and his father was of Cape Verdean descent. The juxtaposition of cultures and artistic backdrop provided a richness and color for him to internalize during his early development.
 
After graduating high school, Shaun attended the New England Institute of Technology where he studied graphic design and received a degree in Multimedia and Science in 2004. While he was still in college he began working as a freelance visual designer for the burgeoning, vibrant music scene. His work was primarily web design, creating promotional flyers for club promoters and mixtape covers for underground hip-hop stars and DJ's.
 
As with many artists, Shaun found working as a graphic designer to be an unsatisfying experience. He felt dissonance with his own creative vision and the result was a constant sense of conflict. He decided to seek work outside of the creative milieu and to develop an authentic creative voice as an artist in his own time.
 
In 2012, Shaun bought his first DSLR camera and turned his aesthetic eye to the viewfinder where he found that photography brings him into the present moment where he loses all sense of time in creative flow; "Holy Grail" for an artist.
 
Shaun is always in search of original creative inspiration but isn't afraid to take pictures of popular subjects like sunsets and lighthouses. He believes every artist brings his own perspective; the lens of the camera is an extension of the artist's creative eye and so no two artists will take the same picture of the same place. "I like to find the beauty in all things whether it is apparent or not and I feel like what I am really trying to do is frame a moment in time."
 
It's easy to trace his love of that surreal, almost fantasy quality in his photos back to his artistic inspirations; the fantasy-world of Grace Coddington's surreal fashion styling, gorgeous visual fantasies from Walt Disney and more recently, Peter Jackson's stunning imagery in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.
 
Looking to the future, Shaun wants to expand his photographic work to create visual fantasies mixing camera, post-production and multimedia.

For more about Martin's work go to the next page on computer. Scroll down if on mobile.
 
 

“Sole Wanderer” - Her heart swells like the sea and her footprints walk alone on the sand.

www.shaunmartins.com