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/

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

Photographer #419: Regina DeLuise

Regina DeLuise, 1959, USA, is a fine art photographer based in Baltimore. She received a BFA at State University of New York and an MA at the Rosary College Graduate School of Fine Arts in Italy. Her poetic images contain a large range of tones and a lot of texture. To achieve this she makes platinum / palladium contact prints from 8x10" film negatives. 100% rag paper is coated with a light-sensitive chemical and the metals onto which the negative is placed. The large contact prints are soft, dreamy yet strong in expression. Regina has been teaching at Maryland Institute College of Art since 1998. Her work is in various public collections as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Houston Museum of Fine Art and the Art Institute of Chicago. The Photographs have also been shown in numerous exhibitions, mainly in the USA. The following images come from the series Cortona, The Phenomenal World and Guggenheim.

Website: www.reginadeluise.com

Photographer #321: Ruven Afanador

Ruven Afanador, 1959, Colombia, is a fashion and portrait photographer who also focuses on personal projects. In 2009 he released the book Mil Besos, a collection of images of Flamenco dansers from Southern Spain. Strong, fearless and fierce women of various generations are portrayed in high-contrast black and white photographs, twisting pre-conceived notions of beauty. The book Sombra contains images using nineteenth century techniques of erotic male nudes in poses inspired by classical ballet. Ruven has seen a vast amount of celebrities in front of his lens, from Britney Spears to Al Pacino. His fashion shoots are larger than life, creating fantastical, dreamy, classy and powerful imagery. The following images come from the book Mil Besos, his portfolio Celebrity and the book Sombra.

Website: www.ruvenafanador.com

Photographer #155: Eric Tabuchi

Eric Tabuchi, 1959, France, is a true collector. He has released several books amongst which are Alphabet Truck and Twentysix Abandoned Gasoline Stations. He has made two series of the trucks and three with gasoline stations. In his works that he calls Typologies he shoots photographs of, for example, smalltown Chinese restaurants, French countryside skateparks or bizarre road signs. He makes an impressive amount of these images and thus creates an archive of the various subjects. The following images come from his editions Alphabet Truck vol.2, Twentysix Recycled Gasoline Stations and Twentysix Abandoned Gasoline Stations and from various of his Typologies.

Website: www.erictabuchi.fr

Photographer #106: Dominic Rouse

Dominic Rouse, Great-Britain, 1959, is a photographer who has to take several steps before he has his final prints. Dominic shoots his images on colour transparancy material, which then get scanned into the computer with a drum scanner in order to manipulate and add several components in a programm called Imaginator. When finished the file is then exposed to black and white negative material (basically scanning in reverse) using a film recorder. With this final negative his detailed, mysterious and story-telling images are made into prints.

Webste: www.dominicrouse.com

Photographer #091: Alexei Vassiliev

Alexei Vassiliev, Russia, 1959, is a photographer with a unique style. His photographs are almost always unsharp and blurry or they contain movement. He uses his photographic technique to create images that often feel like paintings. Vassiliev started with photography in 1995, after being two years in France. In Russia he had worked in television, radio, various factories and construction sites. The following images come from the series Troubled Moments, Quo Vaditis ? and Z-31(10/12).

Website: www.vassiliev.fr

Photographer #058: Jan Koster

Dutch photographer Jan Koster, 1959, mainly focuses on the Dutch landscapes and has done so since the early 1990's. He first got recognised with his series Riverscapes. He presents his projects as books, which he publishes himself only to revise and improve them. The projects keep growing and thus becomes a vast archive of the variety, similarity and uniqueness of the Dutch landscapes.

Dutchscapes is a project that shows the coastal landscapes of the Netherlands with aesthetic images and was published as a book by Episode publishers in 2009.

Apart from the landscapes for which Koster is known, he has also focused on other parts of the world. The following images come from his series Havana.

Website: www.jankoster.info & www.dutchscapes.info

Photographer #041: Brian Smith

Brian Smith, USA, 1959, is most known for his celebrity portrait photography. When looking at his collection we see a vast number of Hollywood stars portrayed by Smith. Recently he has been working on a project called Art & Soul. Portraits of celebrities with personal notes on how exposure to arts positively impacted their lives. These photographs will be collected in a coffee table book and was already presented to the White House to lobby for more funding for the arts and art education.

On his website we find a large number of portraits in the category Fine Art, displaying once again the large number of people that have worked with Brian.

Website: www.briansmith.com

Photographer #011: Bert Teunissen

Bert Teunissen, 1959, is a Dutch photographer who has been working on the project Domestic Landscapes for the last thirteen years. 
"This project is about light - natural daylight. The photos show how daylight illuminates the domestic interior, and how it dictated the way the interior was build, used and decorated. This specific light and the atmosphere it creates have their origins in the architecture of the pre-electricity era, when daylight was the main source of light. This kind of light started to disappear from European homes after World War II when the old way of building was abandoned. At this moment few of these homes remain."
Teunissen spend ten years documenting the homes in Europe. A large selection came together in his book Domestic Landscapes, A portrait of Europeans at home. Currently he is expanding his archive of homes in the Eastern European countries. He has also documented homes in Japan. His archive grows with other books such as On the Road, A domestic landscapes travelog. For the entire archive, check out his website.

Website: www.bertteunissen.com