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