Ruth Grimes says, "Releasing the shutter is a mindful moment for me. In that instant, I appreciate the simple realities of my surroundings. But, taking the photo is only the first step.  I want to make that scene my own, I want to draw out the essence of what the image means to me. Very often the meaning is just an emotional response to a color, a shape, a place.  I use color intensity, texture, and lighting to create mood.

Focusing on color photography, Ruth's work spans myriad subjects from Americana to street photography to fantasy. She is a member of several photography groups in the Monterey/Carmel area, including ImageMakers and FotoSaga.  She holds a certificate in Professional Photography from the New York Institute of Photography and a certificate from Sotheby's Institute in Navigating Today’s Art World: From Studios to Art Fairs.  Ruth’s work has been exhibited in various galleries in California and Colorado."

www.ruthgrimes.photography
 

CLICK ON ARROW AT TOP OF PAGE TO CONTINUE

Sonia Melnikova-Raich says, "In the early days, photographic images were sometimes called “waking dreams.”

There seemed to be a certain magic involved, some even believed the camera was capable of capturing the soul of the subject.

When photography became more commonplace, people came to regard it as an accurate depiction of reality, with special appreciation for technically perfect pictures, “just like real.”

But in real life things are rarely still and perfectly arranged, and our visual experience is rarely as focused and precise as a “perfect” photograph might suggest. A moving object, bad weather, poor lighting or obstructed view can be a challenge or an opportunity to bring the magic back. In creating mysterious dreamlike images that do not necessarily reflect objective reality, I endeavor to capture fleeting moments, barely visible, ambiguous or disappearing things"

Sonia Melnikova-Raich grew up in Moscow, Russia, where she earned a Master's degree in architecture and fine art.

Based in San Francisco since 1987, she exhibits locally and nationally, including several solo shows, and has been a winner and a finalist in many juried photography exhibits.

Her works were featured in professional photography journals and magazines, including Shadow & Light Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle photography section, Creativity Quarterly & Diffusion: Journal of Unconventional Photograph.. 

http://art.soniamelnikova.com
 

CLICK ON ARROW AT TOP OF PAGE TO CONTINUE

Sylvia De Swaan says, "I‘m a fine art and documentary photographer, whose work has dealt primarily with issues of personal and collective memory and identity, the remnants of history that linger on the landscape and the lines of destiny that shape our lives.

I’m currently initiating a book project with the preliminary title “Intersecting Narratives: Life Stories,” about my personal trajectory from the post WWII era in Europe with my mother and sister, survivors of the Holocaust, being shuttled from one refugee camp to another while awaiting immigration to the United States; my life in New York City as an art student at the High School of Music & Art and Hunter College; my decision to venture on a six months visa to Mexico City where I knew no one, but easily connected with the culture and the people and ended up living for eleven years; a year in Amsterdam in 1970; five years in New Orleans and many experiences in Central New York where I’ve resided since 1976.

In Mexico I began my career as a painter, a maker of artist books, installations, Light Boxes and taught design at the University of Mexico. At a certain point, having come to the end of an extensive body of work, the photographer Rodrigo Moya invited me to go out “shooting” with him. It was great fun and felt liberating to step out of my studio into in the “real” world. I had an old Nikkormat, and Rodrigo traded me an enlarger for a transistor radio and helped me set up a darkroom, where through trial and error I learned to print.

I initiated my practice by taking pictures of urban street scenes and at a ranch in Veracruz belonging to the extended family of my first husband. In New Orleans I was involved with the music scene, made portraits of friends and was invited to be photographer in residence at the Madewood arts Festival.

In Knoxboro, NY I documented small town life and made portraits of my neighbors in their homes. Later, in the mid 1980s I began a series on crowd identity through political protests, that took me to the 1988 Democratic national Convention in Atlanta; a residency at the Washington Project for the Arts and the Women’s Peace encampment at Seneca Falls.

But it was the fall of communism that led me on the greatest adventure of all, a series of train travels through post communist Eastern Europe to witness history in the making and explore the almost forgotten terrain of my early childhood.

It was a journey of discovery into a dark and sometimes frightening terrain, that made me ask the question, “how does one photograph an absence?” and to break through the strictures of documentary photography by incorporating metaphor and symbolism in order to depict the bygone and the invisible and to mark my connection to the lands of my ancestry. My work seeks to explore the place where the personal and universal intertwine.

My work has earned me numerous awards, including four NYFA photography fellowships, an Aaron Siskind Fellowship, travel grants to Eastern Europe and others. It has been exhibited national and internationally."

http://2015.odesa-biennale.org.ua/portfolio/sylvia-de-swaan/

http://www.sylviadeswaan.com/

https://www.worldphoto.org/blogs/20-09-16/make-meaningful-work-sylvia-de-swaan-visura

CLICK ON ARROW AT TOP OF PAGE TO CONTINUE

Traci Marie Lee says of her series, 'Landmarks', "My own journey follows no such linear narrative. It started the moment I found the photograph but has meandered ever since, through uncharted research and to no obvious destination.
 
In this body of work I am appropriating slivers of images, text, and artifacts from the familial archive. There is an obstructed rationale of what a photograph is and does, as well as a displacement of the contexts of photographic processes. Incorporating multiple image-making properties and practices, the process of how we contextualize a photograph's objectness and our associations in relationship to photographic material is exposed. The original content, the index, becomes secondary - taking its unaccustomed place on the peripheral of significance. Distinct passageways emerge and are found within the distillation of expectations and longings attached to any familial or institutional space.

Each individual work incorporates alternative processes, such as the kallitype and collodion, as well as various methods of collage. These mediums string together disparate images and artifacts to create an entirely new, complex image.

The success of the Archive represents only half of the material – the half that has survived. The matter lays somewhere in between what is present and what is missing. Perhaps these instances are the keys – the markers connecting bodies and identities, generations and histories; the physical indication of an unidentified connection."

Traci Marie Lee is a graduate of the Corcoran College of Art + Design in Washington, D.C., with a BFA in Fine Art Photography, as well as a Master in Fine Arts graduate with an MFA in Photography and Integrated Media from Lesley University College of Art & Design in Cambridge, MA.

In her work she is interested in the implications and consequences of the Snapshot and the Constructed Image on memory construction and preservation. The compulsion to excavate and curate leads to finding new methods of holding onto brief, constantly changing realities, as well as confronting her own tendencies and obsessive drive to collect, as a process of examining loss.

ARTIST CAREER HIGHLIGHTS - 

2017 - EXHIBITION OF ALTERNATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY, The Far Eastern Museum of Fine Art, Curated Group Exhibition, Khabarovsk, Russia

2016 - WITCHING HOUR: IMAGERY FROM DARKNESS, Photosynthesis, LLC, Juried Group Exhibition, Manchester, CT

2016 - BORDERLANDS, Lunder Arts Center, Group Exhibition, Cambridge, MA

2016 - PORTRAITS AND PORTRAYALS, Photosynthesis, LLC, Juried Group Exhibition, Manchester, CT

2014 - THE MIDDLE OF EVERYWHERE Burren College of Art 20th Anniversary Alumni Exhibition, Burren College of Art, Juried Group Exhibition, Ireland.

2013 - PETTY THIEVES THREE Projection Party Presented by Empty Stretch + Furthermore, Petworth Citizen & Reading Room, Washington, D.C.

2013 - ENTROPY, Metropolitan Art Project, Fairfax, VA

2013 - NEXT at the Corcoran: BFA Class of 2013, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. 

thread-photography.com tracimarielee.virb.com

---------------------------------------

The Pictorialist Photograph HOME:
http://www.laphotocurator.com/the-pictorialist-photograph-curator-bob-weil

First Place:
http://www.laphotocurator.com/the-pictorialist-photograph-curator-bob-weil/first-place-diane-kaye-relationship-issues----/1

Second Place:
http://www.laphotocurator.com/the-pictorialist-photograph-curator-bob-weil/second-place-ellen-jantzen-to-have-and-have-not----/1

Best Series:
http://www.laphotocurator.com/the-pictorialist-photograph-curator-bob-weil/best-series-rebecca-clark-civil-brutality-idyllic-repercussions-and-obsessive-reflection----/1

Honorable Mentions:
http://www.laphotocurator.com/the-pictorialist-photograph-curator-bob-weil/honorable-mentions-chelle-delany-mother-i-michael-jantzen-mobile-home-park-jane-schultz-the-unraveling-sonia-melnikova-raich-butterflies-of-memory-mykel-rose-study-for-a-beach-installation----/1

Exhibition #1:
http://www.laphotocurator.com/the-pictorialist-photograph-curator-bob-weil/exhibition-1/1

Exhibition #2:
http://www.laphotocurator.com/the-pictorialist-photograph-curator-bob-weil/exhibition-2/1

Exhibition #3:
http://www.laphotocurator.com/the-pictorialist-photograph-curator-bob-weil/exhibition-3/1