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Trailer Guatephoto Festival 2012

500 Photographers will be showing a projection at the Guatephoto festival. I have carefully selected 20 Photographers to be shown at the [DOT]COM exhibition.
Together with Bart Dykstra (motion design & guitars) I have created a small teaser / trailer for the exhibit, just to get you in the mood.
I will be in Guatemala City between November 7 and 12, so don't hesitate to say hi if you are in the neighborhood.

Four websites have been asked to create a projection, including Flakphoto, Lenscratch and FotoVisura.
You can visit the [DOT]COM exhibit between November 7 and 25, 2012, at Avenida Las Américas 16-76, Zona 13, Guatemala City, Tuesdays to Sundays, 10 to 18h.
For more information on the [DOT]COM exhibit and all the other exhibitions and events at Guatephoto visit: guatephoto.org

Do you want a tailor-made 500 Photographers projection at your photography event or are you interested in creating an exhibition? Do you need a curator or editor for a magazine, book or any other publication? Do not hesitate to contact me. I am also available for lectures and portfolio reviews. Is there any other way you think we can work together, let me know!

Update on 500 Photographers

Dear readers & followers,

After a silent period I thought it was time to let you know what is going on at 500 Photographers so you know what to expect the coming months and ofcourse to let you know when the remaining 45 photographers will be posted.
500 Photographers has been asked by Guatephoto, a photo festival in Guatemala city in November, to create a projection that will be shown at the new gallery of La Fototeca. In the converted movie theatre they will be placing four large screens projecting the work of this website and three other well respected and known websites simultaneously. Currently I am curating and producing the projection to make something that should make some jaws drop. Throughout the city there will be exhibitions including work from acclaimed photographers as Roger Ballen, Maleonn and Erwin Olaf.

At the same time I'm looking for the remaining 45 photographers that will be featured on this website to complete the list as well as creating things to be done after the website is completed. If you still want to suggest yourself or someone else you believe should be included: now is the time. Check the suggestions page and send me an e-mail. Make sure the photographers you suggest are truly special image makers with a clear signature.
As quality has been my highest priority throughout the process of creating this website, I'm not yet going to pinpoint the exact moment when the photographers will be posted on here, however, it should not be too long from now. I'm excited about the festival in Guatemala, and excited to be finishing 500 Photographers.

To make sure you don't miss the moment when 500 continues you can subscribe to the rss feed above or like the facebook page.
For those people going to Guatephoto: it would be wonderful to meet you.

Friendly greetings, Pieter Wisse

NOW AVAILABLE: 2nd Limited Edition T-shirt

This is your chance to own the second limited edition 500 Photographers T-shirt and support the 500 Photographers project.
What do you get?
If you decide to buy one of the hundred T-shirts you'll be getting a unique, quality silk-screen printed, BLACK Fruit of the Loom Heavy Pocket T-shirt. It contains a small pocket on the left front side with the small front design and a large design on the backside. The securely send package comes with a 'Certificate of Authenticity' which includes the exact number of your T-shirt. This is on a 'first come first serve' basis. The first buyer will get number 1 of 100 and the last will be getting number 100 of 100. Also included is a variety of 500 Photographers stickers.
How can I purchase my T-shirt?
Below this message is a PayPal "Buy Now" button. Using your Paypal Account or credit card you can purchase your copy. Make sure to choose the correct destination (Outside Europe, Europe or The Netherlands) and the correct T-shirt size (Small all the way through XXL). Also check whether the address given on your PayPal account is still correct.
How much does it cost?
The T-shirt is €29,95 incl. VAT. Depending on your destination shipping costs are added.

If you decide to buy a T-shirt, I'd like to thank you in advance for your support of the 500 Photographers website.
Design is by Kristiaan Passchier (www.behance.net/SlinkyStyles/frame)

T-shirt plus postage & packaging

Outside Europe secure shipping & packaging€45,00 EUR Europe secure shipping & packaging€42,80 EUR The Netherlands normal shipping & packaging€35,07 EUR

Size

Small Medium Large Extra-Large XXL

Photographer #455: Neil Krug

Neil Krug, 1983, USA, is a photographer and director based in Los Angeles. Together with his girlfriend, now wife, Joni Harbeck, he founded Pulp Art Book, a collection of photography and commercial work in limited edition prints, books and films. In 2011 he released the LP-sized Pulp Art Book: Volume One with images of Joni shot with polaroid film years past its sell-by date. The narrative photographs remind us of spaghetti westerns and the artistic expressions of the 60s and 70s in B-movies and on LP covers. Pulp Art Book: Volume Two is expected to be released in June of 2012. This time the Poliziotteschi films were a major influence. Neil has created a vast amount of CD / LP covers for bands as My Chemical Romance, Scissor Sisters, Ladytron and The Pierces. Among his commercial clients are Warner Bros. Records, Warp Records and Burton Snowboards. The following images come from the portfolios Ladytron - Gravity the Seducer, Pulp Art Book: Volume One and My Chemical Romance.

Website: www.neilkrug.com

Photographer #454: Manabu Yamanaka

Manabu Yamanaka, 1959, Japan, is a photographer who focuses mainly on societal outcasts. In 2009 he released a monograph entitled Gyahtei which shows the six major series he has created during a period of 25 years, all with titles that originate from Buddhism. One of those series is Jyoudo; a collection of photographs portraying physically deformed human beings, including some of the worst kind of deformation imaginable. Manabu noticed that even in this state "I saw how truly natural each one of their lives really were." Amongst his other subjects are elderly photographed in the nude, street children and homeless people. His images are strong, powerful, (un)comforting and might sometimes be hard to digest. His latest body of work is a series of images that show unborn and deformed embryos. His work has been exhibited extensively throughout the world and has appeared in numerous publications. The following images come from the series Jyoudo, Gyahtei and Fujohkan.

Website: www.ask.ne.jp/~yamanaka/

Photographer #453: Deborah Luster

Deborah Luster, 1951, USA, is a photographer based in New Orleans, USA and Galway, Ireland. In 1988 her mother was murdered by a hired killer. In 1998 it led her to start the project entitled One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana in which she photographed inmates of three Louisiana prisons. The photographs were published in a monograph in 2003 together with texts from poet C.D. Wright. She photographed each person as they presented their very own selves. The entire archive consisted of tens of thousands of portraits and she has given +/- 25.000 wallet-sized prints back to the portrayed. Her recent body of work, Tooth for an Eye: A Chorography of Violence in Orleans Parish, was released as a monograph in 2011. It consists of images that function as an archive of historical and contemporary homicide sites in New Orleans. She researched city police homicide reports and photographed the exact locations of the murders. "By approaching cityscapes through the disorienting context of homicide, the work disturbs the deep crust of stereotypical visual interpretations of New Orleans." Her work has been exhibited on numerous occasions, mainly in the USA. The following images come from the series Tooth for an Eye, One Big Self and Rosesucker Retablos.

Website: www.deborahluster.com

Photographer #452: Julio Bittencourt

Julio Bittencourt, 1980, Brazil, started his photographic career in 2000 as a photographer and assistant photo editor for the newspaper Valor Economico in Sao Paulo. Since 2006 he has been working as an independant photographer. In his series In a Window of Prestes Maia 911 Building he documented the residents of possibly the largest squat in the world. The building had been vacant for over a decade. In 2003 the 'Movement of the Homeless' had moved in hundreds of homeless families. They created a new community who drove out the vermin and drug dealers and created workshops and a library. In 2006 the new residents were told that they would be evicted. The project was released as a book in 2008. For his project Citizen X he focused on the housing problem in Brazil again. He shows abandoned spaces that represent "both a testament to the magnitude of the problemas well as a source of potential hope for change."  His personal project Ramos focuses on an artificial salt water lake surrounded by 15 favelas run by drug-trafficking gangs. Even though violence plagues the favelas, the park has been mostly free of problems. It is a crowded and polluted place where people enjoy the beach, sun and Brazilian rum. His work has been exhibited on numerous occasions worldwide and published in prestigious magazines as Time, Stern and GEO. The following images come from the series Ramos, Citizen X and In a Window of Prestes Maia 911 Building.

Website: www.juliobittencourt.com

Photographer #451: Bela Borsodi

Bela Borsodi, 1966, Austria, studied graphic design and fine art before moving to New York in 1992. His work often incorporated photography but it wasn't until 1999 that he started to fully focus on still life photography, which is still the main direction of his work. He concentrates on editorial and advertising photography and is strongly influenced by his graphic background. He combines ordinary objects and puts them in an unusual context. In his much acclaimed series Foot Fetish for V Magazine he put images of naked bodies of women in awkward positions inside women shoes. For Yalook he created a series of photographs and videos in which clothing was folded to resemble a face that spoke. Amongst his advertising clients are Galeries Lafayette, Hermes, Nike and Puma. He has also created images for editorial clients and magazines as The New York Times Magazine, Another Magazine and Stern. The following images come from the editorial series Livraison #2: Hidden Objects, Tatler #19: Seperation and Stern #36: Aus dem Schatten Getreten.

Website: www.belaborsodi.com

SPECIAL OFFER DURING THE LAST 50 OF 500

450 of 500 Photographers have been featured on this website. 9/10th completed and 1/10th still to come.
To celebrate this milestone I would like to make you an offer you can't refuse. During the period of the next 50 photographers up until the completion of this website I'm offering my personal and signed photography book 'I believe in 88' at a 38% discount; it's an opportunity to support this website. Update 27-04: The package includes some cool 500 Photographers stickers.

Short project statement: "After a violent encounter with a group of neo-nazis at the age of 14 where Pieter Wisse was stabbed in the stomach, he decided to take a closer look at the daily life of the people who call themselves neo-nazis in former East Germany, a group of people at the edge of our society."

Introduction by Klaus Farin | 24x32cm | Hardcover | 96 Pages | Edition of 1000 copies Shipping Options (incl. book & packaging) The Netherlands €18,50 EUR Europe €28,00 EUR Outside Europe €34,00 EUR

A tribute to: Lauren E. Simonutti (1968-2012)

Lauren E. Simonutti, 1968, USA, passed away last week due to complications from her illness. On March 28th, 2006 she started hearing voices and was diagnosed with "rapid cycling, mixed state bipolar with schizoaffective disorder". She felt she was going mad and spent her last years almost in isolation. She turned the camera on herself and the space she was living in. She has left us with an impressive, honest and strong body of work. With her photographs she gave a voice to those that suffer in isolation.
"Over (five) years I have spent alone amidst these 8 rooms, 7 mirrors, 6 clocks, 2 minds and 199 panes of glass. And this is what I saw here. This is what I learned. I figure it could go one of two ways - I will either capture my ascension from madness to as much a level of sanity for which one of my composition could hope, or I will leave a document of it all, in the case that I should lose." - Lauren E. Simonutti
The following images come from the series The Devil's Alphabet and 8 Rooms, 7 Mirrors, 6 Clocks, 2 Minds & 199 Panes of Glass.

Website: www.edelmangallery.com & www.lauren-rabbit.blogspot.com

Photographer #450: Sølve Sundsbø

Sølve Sundsbø, 1970, Norway, is a fashion photographer and director based in London since 1995 where he studied at the London College of Printing. While studying he assisted world renowned photographer Nick Knight, who became an important mentor to him. Today Sølve is one of the leading photographers in his genre. Among his clients are big names as Yves Saint Laurent, Louis Vuitton, Cartier and Gucci. He created editorials for the Italian Vogue, i-D and Interview. His series 14 Actors Acting, made for The New York Times, received an Emmy Award in 2011 for New Approaches to News & Documentary Programming: Arts, Lifestyle and Culture. Solve has an experimental approach to his photography, using a vast amount of techniques and styles, creating larger-than-life, sophisticated and innovative images. He is not afraid to tread uncommon paths. For an YSL fragrance campaign he convinced them to create and use an image of a full-frontal male nude, causing some controversy. The following images come from Interview Magazine: Scarlett Johansson, Vogue Japan: The Virgin Spring and W Magazine: The Everchanging Face of Beauty.

Website: www.artandcommerce.com/ss & www.solvesundsbo.info

Photographer #449: Miti Ruangkritya

Miti Ruangkritya, 1981, Thailand, studied Photojournalism at the University of Westminster. His work is mainly documentary based yet he tries not to restrict himself in any way. He is currently working on an ongoing project that consists of a polaroid installation placed on the beach of Nongkhai in Thailand. A dining table displays the polaroids without placeholders, inviting the viewers to pick up the images and be involved. By adding mattresses and swimming rings he wants to create a relaxed atmosphere for the audience to enjoy the work outside of a typical gallery exhibition. In his series On the Edge he took a closer look at Siem Reap, a city he had visited in 1991 when there was only one hotel and one bar. Today the city has massively exploded in size consisting of 5 star hotels, restaurants and bars. Miti viewed the city from a distance "from the vantage point of someone approaching (or perhaps momentarily escaping) the city." His work has been exhibited in London, Paris and Thailand and his portfolio will be featured in the May 2012 edition of the British Journal of Photography. The following images come from the series Imagining Flood, Northern Route and On the Edge.

Website: www.mi-ti.com

Photographer #448: Rania Matar

Rania Matar, 1964, Lebanon/USA, is a documentary photographer who was born and raised in Lebanon and moved to the USA in 1984. Her career started as an architect before studying photography at the New England School of Photography. She concentrates mainly on women and women's issues as identity and religion both in the US as in the Middle East. In 2009 she released the book Ordinary Lives and this spring her second monograph, A Girl and her Room, will be coming out. This series, inspired by her eldest daughter, focuses on teenage girls within their own private spaces. Both the forthcoming book and her younger daughter were the inspirations for her latest body of work entitled L'Enfant-Femme (the Child-Women). She portrays young teens and pre-teens without giving them instructions apart from not smiling. Due to the freedom the girls have to pose in their own way; they portray an array of emotions and clues to their true self. The angst, confidence and/or body language reveal their sense of selfhood and the developing sense of womanhood. As the teenagers still fluctuate between being a child and a women, Rania asks herself whether "they are meant to see themselves as little girls, teenagers or as young women?" Since 2002 she has also been taking photographs of her four children showing the various stages of their lives. The following images come from the series L'Enfant-Femme, Christian Arabs and Family Moments.

Website: www.raniamatar.com

Photographer #447: Brent Stirton

Brent Stirton, 1969, South-Africa, is a photojournalist and documentary photographer who focuses on issues related to conflict, health and the environment. He has traveled extensively to places as Timbuktu, Yemen, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh and India. He is the official photographer for the Global Business Coalition against Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Twice he visited the Ukraine, a country with the highest concentration of HIV+ people in Europe, to document the victims of Aids and the social workers and doctors who improve the lives of the infected. His goal was to humanize the disease through his photography and to lessen fear and prejudice against those who live with the disease. His work has received numerous awards amongst which are five awards from the World Press Photo Foundation and six from the Lucie Foundation. His images have been shown in a vast amount of exhibits including one at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and has been published in leading magazines as the National Geographic Magazine, Time, Newsweek and Stern. The following images come from the stories Tuareg Rebels Niger, Aids, Drugs & Uncertainty: Ukraine and Narco-wars in Afghanistan.

Website: www.brentstirton.com

Photographer #446: Tomasz Gudzowaty

Tomasz Gudzowaty, 1971, Poland, studied law at the University of Warsaw before starting a career in photography. He started as a nature photographer, turned to social documentary work and is currently focusing on documentary sports photography. He concentrates mostly on non-commercial sports, sports that are not present in the media or those that are somehow different from the mainstream sports. Examples of these activities are pole dancing, sumo wrestling, wrestling and urban golf in India, Lucha Libre; a Mexican version of free wrestling, car racing in Mexico, freerunning, Mongolian horseracing, Chinese gymnasts and synchronized swimming. Tomasz tells his stories in the form of photo-essays. His strong and powerful black and white images are made with a large format analogue camera. His work, consisting of a vast amount of projects, has appeared in numerous exhibitions and magazines as Newsweek, Time and The Guardian and has won a large number of awards amongst which are the World Press Photo and NPPA Best of Photojournalism. The following images come from the essays Naadam Race, Lucha Libre and Pole Dancers' Families.

Website: www.gudzowaty.com

Photographer #445: Michael von Graffenried

Michael von Graffenried, 1957, Switzerland, started his career as a photojournalist in 1978. Today he lives in Paris and works on long term projects often dealing with themes of ethnology. He uses a panoramic analog camera using 35mm film yet creating impressive large-scale photographs. For Michael content comes before technology and his choice for the panoramic format came somewhat by accident. He was in Algeria during the 1990's when tension was high documenting the daily life during and after the civil war. The panoramic camera proved usefull as one can keep it on the chest while taking images. People can see the camera yet do not know that an image has been taken. Once Michael saw the results he realised the aesthetic part of this format and decided to use it. His socially engaged stories and narrative images are strong, daring and sometimes provocative. He has been in numerous exhibitions and released an enormous amount of monographs between 1980 and today. The following images come from the series Eye on Africa, Cocainelove and War without Images.

Website: www.mvgphoto.com

Photographer #444: Laurence Demaison

Laurence Demaison, 1965, France, studied at the School of Architecture of Strasbourg before she started making self-portraits in 1993. Her vast body of work is almost exclusively constituted of photographs of herself. She does not digitally manipulate the images nor does she manipulate the photographs after they have been shot with the exception of chemical inversion for some series. All the techniques she uses are analog and done by herself. The various series have a large array of emotions. They can be poetic, fragile and classical, yet sometimes they are quirky, haunting or even freaky. She is a photographer who seeks the bounderies of what can be done within analog photography and successfully crosses them with grace. Laurence has exhibited her work on numerous occasions, mainly in Western Europe and New York. The photographs have also been released in several monographs. The following images come from the series La Chambre Noire, La Poseuse and Les Bulles.

Website: www.laurencedemaison.com

Photographer #443: Myriam Abdelaziz

Myriam Abdelaziz, 1976, is a French photographer of Egyptian origins and born in Cairo. Her career started in the marketing field in which she worked for seven years after having studied Political Science and Journalism. She decided to pursue a career in photography and graduated from the International Center of Photography in New York in 2006. Since then her work has been published in prestigious magazines as Newsweek, Time Magazine and Eyemazing. She is mainly working on documentary and portraiture stories in the Middle East and Africa. Her work often focuses on current matters as the hardships of the people from Darfur living in Egypt and the revolution in Egypt. She concentrated on the horrific effects of the Rwandan genocide on its survivors who were merely children at the time they were mutilated. She heard the upsetting stories of the victims but was equally shocked by the lack of response from the world community as they are still not getting surgery or psychiatric help. The following images come from the series Egyptian Revolt, Portrait of a Genocide and Darfuris in Cairo.

Website: www.myriamabdelaziz.com

Special #005: Xavier Lucchesi

Photography without a lens? Xavier Lucchesi, 1959, France, uses X-rays and the most efficient scanners to create his bizarre images. He makes images while going through the matter of small and large objects, from animals, bodies, paintings of Picasso to entire trucks. Even though X-ray goes straight through matter it still shows various details of the objects, sometimes revealing secrets invisible to and hidden from the naked eye. Xavier shows us what we can only imagine but also creates a new reality, one that is based on solid objects becoming fantastical entities. His work has been exhibited on numerous occasions, mainly in Europe and Asia. The following images come from the series Radioportraits, Automates and Trafic.

Intrigued to see how he will approach his future projects and what they will reveal to us.
Website: www.x-lucchesi.com