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Contents Jan Banning 4 Lauren E. Simmonuti Lee Toundrow Julio Bittencourt Bernd Preiml Zoriah Miller
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Jan Banning
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Jan Banning, 1954, The Netherlands, was born from Dutch足East足Indies immigrant parents. He studied Social and Economic History at the University of Nijmegen. His work is a mixture of photojournalism, documentary and fine足 art photography. He has released an impressive amount of photography books. His most recent monograph is Comfort Women, a series of portraits of Indonesian women who were victims of forced sexual labor during the second World War. During the war the Japanese military set up a system for sex slavery, forcing women into prostitution in military brothels. Most of the women suffered physical and emotional consequences ever since. In 2008 he introduced the book Bureaucratics, showing offices of members of the executive in various services and levels. The offices have been photographed in eight different countries on five different continents. The project was done with a writer余 Will Tinnemans. As they would come by unannounced, Will would interview the employees, keeping them from tidying up the office. For the book Traces of War: Survivors of the Burma and Sumatra Railways he portrayed Dutch and Indonesian men who all worked as forced labor for the Japanese during World War II. They had to build the Burma or Sumatra railroads in miserable conditions leading to the death of many of them.
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Lauren E. Simonutti
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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 足 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." 足 Lauren E. Simonutti
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L e e T o w nd ro w
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Lee Towndrow has always forged his own path as an artist. He began as a graphic designer in 1998, but soon found himself shooting album covers and movie posters for the sheer joy of it. A fascination with the emergent world of sophisticated film post production led him to become a flame artist for 8 years, working on music promos, films, and tv spots.In a bid to reinvent himself, in 2004 he moved to buenos aires where he refused to speak english until he became fluent in spanish. He found work assisting conceptual artists and eventually went on to form his signature cinematic photography style. At ease on location and in the studio, towndrow brings an exuberant personality, deep technical ability and a passionate intellectual curiosity to all of his projects. He currently residesin new york.
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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
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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足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.
Bernd Preiml
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Bernd Preiml, Austria, 1973, makes photographs that look like dark and sinister fairy tales. His images contain both magic and mystery, they are haunting like a beautiful nightmare. He uses this in his own projects aswell as in fashion and editorial shoots. His style roots
from growing up in the mountanous region outside of Vienna where folk tales were told about ancient creatures who inhabit the forests. Next to photography Preiml is also working with video.
"I grew up in the rural parts of western and southern Austria. There was a lot of folklore, traditions and church. And surfaces…a lot of surfaces. Pretty decorated houses and beautiful mountains and forests and lakes and costumes and music and statues and praying and palaces and castles and the sun was shining. I grew up in a postcard. But there was something else. something that makes a man a coward something that makes people small something that makes people followers something that makes people ugly What is it? And where is the real beauty?"
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Zoriah Miller, 1976, USA, is a photojournalist with a large portfolio. He has covered many disaster zones, social issues and conflict zones in numerous countries. Besides his photographic career he worked as a Humanitarian Volunteer, Disaster Response Volunteer and Disaster Technology Specialist for many years. Between 2005 and 2008 he worked as an embedded military photographer and
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photojournalist with the US Marine Corps, US Army and the Afghan National Army. He has extensively covered the conflicts in the Gaza strip, Afghanistan and Iraq. Amongst his humanitarian clients are organizations as Unicef, The International Red Cross and Docters without Borders. His work has appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers as Newsweek, The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune. Zoriah's work is direct, socially engaged and full of emotion.
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Zoriah Miller
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Resources http://500photographers.blogspot.com / p/photographersbynumber.html http://google.com/ http://www.wikipedia.org/ http://www.janbanning.com/ https://www.lensculture.com/articles 17 /laurenesimonuttiphotographic notesfromamadhouse http://leetowndrow.com/ http://www.juliobittencourt.com/ http://www.berndpreiml.net/wp/ http://www.zoriah.com/