FALL 2019
A Letter From The Editor
Editor’s Letter
When does a photographer go from being a new photographer to an “emerging” talent? There is a tendency to link that advancement with a photographer’s age. But reaching career milestones—solo exhibitions, awards or assignments for major publications or brands—depends on the work. When people who love photography stop and take notice of a photographer, follow them, share their work, hire them or curate them into an exhibition, it is first and foremost a reaction to their vision and images. Perhaps they tell a personal story that draws viewers in to their intimate lives, as Riel Sturchio does with her photographs of her and her twin sister’s struggles with cerebral palsy. Or they document a subculture in a way that sparks the viewers’ imaginations, as Rory Doyle does with his series on Mississippi Delta Cowboys. Or they find a new technique for making images, as Elzbieta Kurowska does with her use of organic gels to create pictures that allude to the evolution of life on Earth. Or maybe they help us understand the way people are living half a world away, as Andrea Alai does with his project about youth in Buenos Aires. Within these pages and in the Emerging gallery (emergingphotographer.com), you will find these and other compelling bodies of work that stood out to jurors from more than 300 submissions. This work grabbed our attention, and we are excited to share it—and to follow along and see what is next from these photographers.
Conor Risch Senior Editor, PDN
Thank You!
Fall ’19
Cover Kai Wai Wong
08
Dylan Johnston Elder Island
14 Rory Doyle Delta Hill Riders
18 Kai Wai Wong Under the Surface, Portraits
25 Jo Ann Chaus Conversations with Myself
28 Elzbieta Kurowska Light Forms
1
03
Matthew Portch Lost America
11 Jake Mein Six for Gold
22
31
Andrea Alai Si se Puede
Riel Sturchio Chasing Light
Table of Contents
06 Enze Wang Cohabitation
Letter from the Editor Conor Risch
Emerging I S S U E 2 V O L . 11 F A L L 2 0 19
SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, CONFERENCE DEVELOPMENT AND CREATIVE GROUP Johanna P. Morse
CEO AND PRESIDENT Sally Shankland CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER Brian Fields
DIRECTOR, CREATIVE SERVICES Moneer Masih-Tehrani
CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER Philip Evans
SENIOR EDITOR Katelyn Peters
CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER Bill Charles
DESIGN Selina Leung
SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, GENERAL COUNSEL AND SECRETARY David Gosling
GROUP PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Daniel Ryan PRODUCTION MANAGER Gennie Kiuchi
SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, FINANCE Dave Sunderland SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, MARKETING SERVICES Joanne Wheatley
JURY Moneer Masih-Tehrani Katelyn Peters Libby Peterson (Senior Editor, Rangefinder) Conor Risch (Senior Editor, PDN)
EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, PEOPLE & CULTURE Angelique Carbo VICE PRESIDENT AND CONTROLLER Kate Elder
GROUP SHOW DIRECTOR Colin King SENIOR ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE Joseph Kowalsky
A PUBLICATION OF
PHOTO © KAI WAI WONG
Masthead
CIRCULATION Lori Golczewski
ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE Dennis Tyhacz VICE PRESIDENT, MARKETING Erin O’Donnell MARKETING MANAGERS Shanna Allen Lynne Schreur EMERGING PHOTOGRAPHER 100 BROADWAY FLOOR 14, NEW YORK, NY 10005
On the Cover Image photographed by photographer Kai Wai Wong. Learn more about Wong's photo essay "Under the Surface, Portraits" on page 18.
Emerging Photographer is brought to you by Photo+, home to PDN and Rangefinder
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Fall ’19
Matthew Portch Lost America
Matthew Portch / Little America
As a child, television and movies were my favorite distraction, especially any media from the United States. Compared to the humdrum of the suburbs and countryside of England, where I was born and raised, the scenery felt like an exotic antidote. My fascination with imagery and details was expressed through illustration first; I always wanted my drawings to feel as photorealistic as possible.
3
Emerging
Later in life, I was inspired by several well-known, large-format film photographers of North America. Their retro street scenes and landscapes reminded me of the American movies and television shows I watched as a child. Soon, photography became the outlet for my creativity. I was drawn to large- format cameras because the detail was fastidious.
Matthew Portch / Little America
@matt_portch
I like to capture everything across the frame in complete focus to give the effect of a heightened sense of reality. The scenes I choose are simple and intentionally mundane. I try to capture a calm and melancholic feeling in my landscapes, and through their simplicity, evoke an emotional response in the viewer.
4
5 Matthew Portch / Little America
What photographer, living or not, would you ask to get a drink? Richard Misrach
Fall ’19
Emerging
Enze Wang Cohabitation
Enze Wang / Cohabitation
Photographs of romantic love are often used to encourage consumption, but love is not a product. This ongoing series, called “Cohabitation,� focuses on the relationship between me and my lover. Our relationship is depicted through products: the daily supplies of life. I am exploring what love is in my life. Desire and need, vulnerability and acceptance, satisfaction and fatigue, uneasiness and reliance all co-exist. I think these banal objects describe our love and our relationship in the most honest way, and they construct a psychological image of the relationship.
6
Photographer / Project
2
What photographer, living or not, would you ask to get a drink? Wolfgang Tillmans
Fall ’19
@wangenze888
Emerging
Dylan Johnston
Dylan Johnston / Elder Island
Elder Island
What photographer, living or not, would you ask to get a drink? Bryan Schutmaat 8
Fall ’19
Photographer / Project
9
Photographer / Project
Emerging
Photography allows me to share my story with others. It doesn’t matter if I’m making a portrait with just one person or I’m in a foreign place shooting a landscape at sunrise. My end goal is to share what I see. Growing up in Florida, I spent most weekends fishing 100 miles off the coast. I developed my style of image-making on the ocean. Living in New York, I try to translate the lessons I learned there. This project started with the frustration I felt
@capt_johnston
about not making any personal work. A friend of mine told me about his family’s farm, located on a remote island north of Iceland. The tradition that his family continues goes back 1,000 years. I spent a week photographing his family. Shooting film shaped my style of image-making in the beginning. Now that I shoot digitally, my biggest struggle is to slow down and shoot only a few images, keeping the best light as the priority.
10
Fall ’19
Jake Mein Six for Gold
Photographer / Project
What photographer, living or not, would you ask to get a drink? Dana Lixenberg 11
Jake Mein / Six for Gold
Emerging
12
Fall ’19
Even when it isn’t my intention to delve into the same themes in my work, I find that they come through on their own—the feeling of belonging, a sense of home and the deterioration of familiar places. I like working with one camera for the duration of a project because I think that also lends the work a certain cohesion. I think it is a privilege to get the opportunity to show anyone your work, and I hope that people both enjoy my photographs and are challenged by them. My greatest sources of inspiration are my talented friends in different creative fields. Jake Mein / Six for Gold
@jakemein 13
Rory Doyle / Delta Hill Riders
Emerging
Fall ’19
Rory Doyle
This ongoing project, called “Delta Hill Riders,” shines
Delta Hill Riders
and cowgirls in the Mississippi Delta.
light on the subculture of African-American cowboys
Just after the Civil War, one in four cowboys was African-American, but this population is underrepresented in popular images and stories, even though the cowboy identity retains a strong presence in many contemporary black communities.
This series includes images of black heritage rodeos, horse shows, trail rides, “Cowboy Night” at black
@rorydoylephoto
homes of my subjects. I wanted to capture the love between riders and their horses and fellow cowboys.
15
Rory Doyle / Delta Hill Riders
nightclubs, as well as photographs I made inside the
Photographer / Project
Emerging
What photographer, living or not, would you ask to get a drink? Gordon Parks
16
Fall ’19
Rory Doyle / Delta Hill Riders
17
Kai Wai Wong Under the Surface, Portraits
Fall ’19
Although photography was
subject, there are a lot of my
originally considered a tool
photographs in which faces
to objectively represent
are either hidden or they have
reality, I believe the power
an ambiguous expression.
of photography is actually
I often apply physical
that it carries the illusion of
effects on prints to create
“realness.”
abstract images and then rephotograph the result. There is a fascinating contradiction
“understand” a portrait by
between what is “real” and
looking at the face of the
“unreal” in the final image.
19
Kai Wai Wong / Under the Surface, Portraits
Since viewers tend to try to
Emerging
Kai Wai Wong / Under the Surface, Portraits
@ kaiphotos
What photographer, living or not, would you ask to get a drink? Wolfgang Tillmans 20
Fall ’19
Photographer / Project
20
Photographer / Project
Emerging
Andrea Alai Si se Puede
22
Fall ’19
Photography is a tool to explore life. I think of the camera as a magic box that has taken me so many places that I would have never gone without it: to explore, to know more, to tell stories. As a medium, it gives me the chance to be in touch with my emotions and all of my senses at once.
Andrea Alai / Si se Puede
This body of work, called “Si se puede,” was created in Buenos Aires. It’s an ongoing project where I’m attempting to understand how young people from my generation, who have lost faith in society and cannot see a future beyond the bleakness that is their everyday life, still finds a
@andreaalai
way to believe in the power of their dreams.
23
What photographer, living or not, would you ask to get a drink? W. Eugene Smith
Andrea Alai / Si se Puede
Emerging
24
Fall ’19
Jo Ann Chaus Conversations with Myself
Photographer / Project
25
Emerging
My daily practice of making photographs enhances the way I see and interact with the world so that I navigate every day with more intention and wideeyed awareness.
Jo Ann Chaus / Conversations with Myself
My current work
While preparing to
explores female identity,
move out of my home
drawing from my roles
of many years, I began
as a wife, mother and
photographing clothing,
individual, and my
objects and ephemera
personal and cultural
that were connected to
past growing up as a
my past, using my body
child in the 1950s.
as a mannequin. I felt an intimate connection with myself as I stood before the camera looking into the lens. The work evolved and I began dressing up as women of previous generations who were tied to their homes and their families but perhaps yearned for more.
@joannchaus
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27 Jo Ann Chaus / Conversations with Myself
What photographer, living or not, would you ask to get a drink? Sophie Calle
Fall ’19
Elzbieta Kurowska / Light Forms
Emerging
34
Fall ’19
Elzbieta Kurowska / Light Forms
Elzbieta Kurowska Light Forms Before I became a photographer, I worked for many years as a biochemist. Because of my science background, I was attracted to experimental photography. My exploration led me to organic gels—malleable, transparent materials commonly used as tools in research labs. Some organic gels have the ability to glow when subjected to deformation and viewed in crosspolarized light. These gels also naturally form graceful, biomorphic shapes. I started working with them, applying both my scientific and photographic expertise to the process; the results exceeded all my expectations. The images resembled otherworldly life forms, made of light and vivid colors, and emerging from dark space. I call this series “Light Forms.”
29
Emerging
@elzbietakurowska3876
When I was creating “Light Forms,” I felt close to the origins of life: the moment in the Earth’s history when amorphous organic matter transformed into the beautiful structures that we recognize as life. Through these photographs, I am attempting to depict the awe-inspiring, universal vitality unstoppable eagerness to evolve.
What photographer, living or not, would you ask to get a drink? Edward Burtynsky
Elzbieta Kurowska / Light Forms
of life, its unpredictability and its
16
Fall ’19
Riel Sturchio Chasing Light
Photographer / Project
31
31
Emerging
@rly_riel
What photographer, living or not, would you ask to get a drink? LaToya Ruby Frazier 32
Fall ’19
therapy. Currently, my CP remains nearly
collaborative photography project that I
undetectable, while Bianca lives with the
started with my twin sibling, Bianca, in
physical and social consequences of
2011. The series is an embodiment of the
having a visible disability.
belief that representation, visibility, autonomy and truth-telling can promote personal
The photographs in “Chasing
empowerment and open up access to
Light” capture the activities of daily living,
spaces that foster meaningful dialogue and
our intimate partners, family and the
community. Bianca and I utilize photography
moments of joy, pain and frustration that
to delve into the complications of our queer
we experience. Bianca and I unanimously
identities and health-related challenges. We
maintain that social connections create
were both born prematurely with severely
the foundation for community and
delayed developmental milestones, which
that knowledge is a source of power.
doctors later diagnosed as cerebral palsy
We are using “Chasing Light” as a
(CP). With the help of rigorous physical
platform for, and by, disabled artists
therapy and medical interventions, Bianca
as well as allies who share a desire to
and I learned how to adapt to our bodies.
challenge dominant narratives of health,
However, my body endured less trauma
(dis)ability, illness, LGBTQA+ and non-
and therefore responded more rapidly to
binary identities.
Riel Sturchio / Chasing Light
This series, “Chasing Light,” is an ongoing
News, techniques and inspiration for the photo professional
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