Photographer #434: Peter Hapak

Peter Hapak, 1973, Hungary, is a versatile photographer based in the US. He works for commercial and editorial clients, but his main focus lies on portraiture and the human body. For Time Magazine he has created impressive series, of which the latest is called The Protester. Time had named the Protester as person of the year 2011 and commisioned Hapak to travel to seven different countries to portray the protesters. In countries as Egypt, Spain, Greece and Tunesia he set up a makeshift studio in hotel rooms, anarchist headquarters and even in a temple in India. Peter also asked the portrayed to bring mementos of protest. Amongst the objects brought were Iphones, rubber pellets and Maalox, a substance used to counter the effects of tear gas. Another story he focused on were the Chilean miners that were trapped in  2010 which resulted in a strong series of black and white portraits. Peter has photographed a vast amount of celebrities as Robin Williams, Bono and Colin Firth. The following images come from the series The Protester, The Art of War: Honoring the Fallen for a Lifetime and Finding the Chilean Miners.

Website: www.phapak.net & lightbox.time.com

Photographer #217: Peter Granser

Austrian photographer Peter Granser, 1971, lives and works in Germany. He will release his book J'ai perdu ma tête at the end of 2011. It will contain images of a psychiatric institute in France. Granser was not interested in the outer manifestations of insanity, he approached the subject from an interior perspective. It will be his sixth book if one does not include his special editions. Amongst his earlier books have been Signs, landscape images taken in Texas that give us an insight into the contemporary US identity through words, signs and other expressions. His earliest book is Sun City, about a retirement colony in the American southwest. The following images come from J'ai perdu ma tête, Signs and Sun City.

Website: www.granser.de

Photographer #088: Peter Beste

Peter Beste, USA, 1978, spent seven years photographing an insulated and secretive community. He documented the world of Norwegian Black Metal. His photographs have been combined into the book True Norwegian Black Metal. For many years Beste also worked on a project in Houston, where he documented the outskirts of this city and the people living there, a community of "fiercely independent and often misrepresented individuals." The following images come from the series: Black Metal, Houston I and After Hours.

Website: www.peterbeste.com
(Video in English, but contains some Norwegian parts)

Photographer #081: Peter Bialobrzeski

Peter Bialobrzeski, 1961, is a German photographer with an impressive number of books published in the last several years. In 2009 two books were released. One of them was Paradise Now, which deals with how we treat nature in these times of urban growth. The other is Case Study Homes about urban structures in shantytowns. In 2007 his book Lost in Transition came out, where he examines the transformations of urban wastelands in 28 different cities all over the world. The following images come from these three books.

Website: www.bialobrzeski.de

Photographer #025: Peter Funch

Peter Funch, Denmark, 1974, has already done a vast amount of projects. He is currently representing Danmark at the world expo Shanghai. Amongst his long list of projects is Babeltales. At first glance they might seem like ordinary street pictures, but at second glance you see that he has carefully composed his images and the subjects in it.

Website: www.peterfunch.com
(Video starts in Dutch, but interview with Peter Funch is in English)