Agalma is a word that harks back to the original meaning of a precious little gift: a little thing, in its customary use value, is invested with the sense of an elegant and rare choice, and is thus charged with those valences, affective and even intrusive, that gifts have. It is readable in this direction ALdiLà and it moves toward a twofold adventure, visual and symbolic. Here on earth, in our iridescent layers, in the constant oxymoron of joyful weeping, of shared loneliness, lies our beyond, made of desire in search of its golden objects that give meaning to life. The photos then show, as in a game of metamorphosis of the gaze, their symbolic reverse: having accepted the inescapable otherness of all that surrounds us, the embraces accomodate emotions that do not know.....and love.

Turned into a grotesque, deformed caricature, it must suffer the pain of metamorphosis, tearing off the stigmata from itself until it finds, sailing in the sea of ​​its own emotions, of its battered feelings, of the disturbance that terrifies its senses, the simple purity of nature until it becomes air, earth, water, fire. Dance is the body and the body contains all dance, there is no need for colours, nor more costumes than the skin, and the spirit must move 10 cm and 7 cm from the body. In those minutes of dance, the dancer can be a flower, a stone, a chair, or a word. She jumps, rolls on the floor, gets into a fetal position, stands up and opens her arms as if she were on the edge of a cliff, about to fall.

This world is full of various things. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes cruel, sometimes strange, sometimes sad.... But the world in which I live is very small. The number of people I can meet and talk with during my lifetime is only a handful in the world.
Please enjoy the world of “LILY PHOTOGRAPHY” created by fusing the personalities and atmosphere of the subjects I have miraculously met in this small world with my own sense of “LOVE” that I have spent a lifetime learning, admiring, and nurturing.
Now, it's show time!

Because all life comes from the same source, when we feel the powerful, at times selfless, yet fleeting brilliance of creatures’ stories of life, we may unexpectedly recall stories that were once etched in our memories.

Throughout the vast history in which countless life forms have woven themselves, at this very moment, you, I, and the stories of the creatures featured in the exhibition all exist simultaneously.
This encounter may have been a mere coincidence, but I would like to believe it is an irreplaceable miracle.

Well then, for a little while, why not surrender to this coincidental encounter, embarking on a small journey with them—one that traces the stories engraved in your memories?

From megaliths to Cistercian abbeys to the pyramids of Egypt, man has always known how to use stone to serve his imagination. Since the beginning, he has built to give shape to his visions, to celebrate the gods he invented, to honor his dead, to impress his rivals, to protect himself from the elements and aggression.

In his hands, the heavy rock can be transformed into an aerial dream, express the invisible, exalt the lightness of the soul. Deep in his thoughts, there is also the desire to last, to prolong his ephemeral existence through his buildings, to transmit to future generations a spirituality or an understanding of the world.

My passion for abstract images led me to art photography. My father, who had an extraordinary flair for expressive motifs, inspired me. I started with analogue photography in my youth. However, education, work, and family put this hobby on the back burner for a few years.

The digital possibilities finally brought back my forgotten enthusiasm. They opened up new ways for me to use my photos as a canvas to express the depth of my experiences and feelings. My imagination is limitless.

When I come across the scenery of the European countryside or the remains of medieval forts, I feel a feeling similar to nostalgia, as it must have been the same scenery since the Middle Ages. And when I see the old staircase, the ruins of the garden, I imagine that someone used to spend time here, or just sit or read a book.

Feeling such nostalgia, I tried to create such a world by layering photos and express that time and space. It is a fictional place in a fictional time, neither modern nor ancient.

I first fell in love with Art Nude photography around 2013. I found that I could create a piece of art that was all mine by using light and shapes of the human body.
Clothing brings a time stamp to your work and also the input from another creative form the Fashion designer. Of course the model has a large input of what you achieve and I have had the pleasure of working with some great models.

Over time I found I wanted to go further and start to be more creative. First by using movement and then using props, masks and materials.

This has moved on again by incorporating my non art nude work in the form of composites.

I have found now that the creative side of me dormant for most of my life is now the very being of me and an all consuming part of me. I love to create and must say that 1X has played a huge role in this with the inspirational work I see he every day.

HUMAN is part of my journey on the unseen side of my moon, a process of validating and integrating my shadows, sometimes painful but always rewarding.

Vulnerability is not comfortable but it exists in everyone and we learn to live with it.

With the acceptance of my vulnerability, I was able to express myself authentically, to create images that gave meaning to my journey.

Let us embark on a journey into a world beyond reality, interwinning experiences and observations from different places and times. Using light and shadows an the technique of multiple exposures and montages, surreal visual stories has been created. They are intended to catch the viewer`s eye and stimulate their imagination, allowing them to perceive our world from a different perspective.

Still life appears to be static, but it can possess vitality, capture a fleeting moment, or hold symbolic meaning. Through still life photography, I aim to use my lens to convey this vitality and strength, embracing this significance with emotion, and expressing the flow of feelings. By directly capturing what I feel and the various relationships formed through interactions with the world, I strive to create a rich, vibrant, and wondrous inner world.

Creativity has been in our family for generations. My great-grandfather was an art painter by profession. At home we had a dark room, the development process was exciting. For as long as I can remember, I have owned a camera. When I had children of my own they became my beloved models. After quite a busy working life, I intensified my photography passion. I always want to improve my skills by attending courses, reading about photography and experimenting. Eventually I came into contact with model photography and I knew for sure that this is what I wanted to do. It makes me so happy to work with a team, to connect to people, to find new friendships and share feelings and emotions.

I strive to turn the impossible into the possible, using my own visual language to convey the theme of my work. It might be satirical, it might be praiseworthy, it might defy the laws of nature, it might tell a story, or it might personify something. In short, if my work resonates with the viewer, then it is a success. Creating a successful work requires inspiration. Sometimes I draw inspiration from reading books, discovering, connecting, and reorganizing, which are essential.

I approach photography intuitively, often without a clear intention, focusing on close-up portraits to capture the pure emotions and essence of the individual, aiming to reveal the soul of the portrayed. Freckled models inspire me for their unique beauty, encouraging me to explore unusual perspectives. My inspiration comes from everyday life, the objects I encounter, and the work of fellow photographers and artists. I analyze other artworks to understand what draws me in, aiming to incorporate similar elements in a new way into my own work.

My name is Melanie Haberkorn and I love staging women to visualize psycological issues. The intention is to create images that contain fractures beneath a beautiful surface, probably with a touch of humor to make the seriousness of the subject more accessible. Therefore I use props and choose locations that give the pictures a whimsical touch or I manipulate my photos in post-processing to achieve a surreal result.

Shapeable - Eat Slim
Body image disorders have reached epidemic proportions in modern societies where a distorted ideal of the female body prevails. Unchanged, it seems to be nothing more than raw material that needs to be shaped in order to be socially accepted. The series Shapeable employs various mental illnesses as a consequence of our beauty-dominated times.

This project is currently exhibited in Barcelona, (Mediterranean House Of Photography, April 5 to April 21, 2024).

You and I mistakenly believe that Man is the pinnacle of divine creation, and the whole world around him stands immeasurably below him. Yes, thanks to the presence of reason, a person has the opportunity to learn the laws of nature that gave birth to him. Understanding these laws gives him power over nature, and he implements this power.

But does nature need what is so necessary for man? Humanity builds factories and plants, turns rivers back, cuts down forests, extracts oil, has been fighting among themselves for many centuries, everything that we have created destroys or cripples (kills) nature. Everything that people have done for themselves is completely useless for nature!

A person's mind is directed against the world that was created for him, a person breaks this world, trying to create an artificial world. Man is a kind of vestige on planet Earth, remove man and life in the natural world will change for the better.

Why did I choose to photograph a person? Because in order to photograph a landscape really well, the well-known proverb "to be in the right place at the right time" is very suitable. A good shot in nature depends on a lot of circumstances, which are sometimes impossible to control or predict, starting from weather conditions to lighting, and often you need to get up early. So I decided that photographing a person in a studio is much simpler... and I started portraits. Only later did I realize that this seemingly "easier way" turned out to be much more complicated in order to find ways to present a person in an interesting, non-boring and creative way.

Creating self-portraits was very developmental, exciting and, most importantly, safe for me! Why? Since when publishing portraits on social media, any criticism of a person was completely ignored by me, I only gained from comments or messages what was most important to me, i.e. improving my photographic skills. I received many tips regarding the frame, color saturation, etc. These comments were my priority.

Today, my self-portraits are my business card. Thanks to photography, I gained more self-confidence, it allowed me to overcome my fear and I started photographing other people. My distance has increased and I know more about the value of my photos and myself. For me, photography is still a form of therapy, a passion or a break from reality.

About two years ago, I began my first attempts at a photographic project with the guiding idea: nature meets technics. The concept of juxtaposing delicate and small creatures or elements e.g. snail shell from nature with industrially manufactured pieces of e.g., steel was at first a harsh contrast, almost a provocation. In the end, however, an aesthetically harmonious unity emerged from each composition. Perhaps one can even say: the effect of nature and human-made technical components, which are so different in their sensation, merge here into a kind of photographic symbiosis.

My name is Eric Davidove. When I’m not teaching yoga, walking other people’s dogs, or making dinner, I am exploring the city streets with my camera. All of the photos in this exhibition were shot in San Francisco or Los Angeles California. I tend to create quirky and humorous photos, using different angles and framing sizes, incorporating different lighting conditions, building layers, and filling up the frame. For the past 3 years I have been using a full frame digital camera and 35mm prime lens. My current camera, since January 2023, is the Leica M11.

A few years ago, the magic of composites was exciting me and still captivates me till today. I wanted to do more than just taking pictures. My goal was to amaze, to make think, smile and surprise the viewer. In my world everything is possible. The only limits are those of my imagination.

So, I started to learn the techniques of image processing. Over the years my skills have gotten better and better. Many photographers have the opinion that composites don't have anything to do with photography. But nowadays every photographer uses programs to develop and push up their RAW files in the drafting process. The photo manipulation begins with the punching of unwanted lines to the removal of disturbing parts of the image. But I agree. Composites have nearly nothing to do with photography, it is an artistic processing of photos and is therefore called art photography. I therefore feel like an artist and not a craftsman.

In 2009, I was compelled to retire from my daily work due to depression. Since then, photography has taken on a profound role in my life as a therapeutic outlet. Through my photographs, I've found a powerful means of expressing and processing my emotions, offering much-needed solace and healing. My art frequently delves into the depths of life's darker aspects, presenting images that are often moody, surreal, and evocatively distressing.

Children in front of the camera are always a challenge.
I'm lucky that the children in my neighborhood have no fear of contact with the camera.

If we went out together to take pictures, the camera was usually forgotten after a few minutes and the kids played with each other. I never gave any instructions, because I didn't want to disturb this spontaneity.

This resulted in lots of natural portraits that I could use for my composings at a later date.

My love for photography is blind, it satisfies my ego and ambitions, heals like a psychotherapist and intoxicates like an ordinary wine. Thousands of frames shooting ballet both in performances and at gala concerts in servo from prompters and sound direction rooms and many hours spent at the computer selecting pictures. However, in the end, this resulted in around ten pictures approved for publication. Ballet has its own rules. So has photography. Movements and poses must be precisely fixed. Everything has to look perfect. That’s what ballet is - perfectly precise in choreography and music, the athleticism of dancers and mind blowing realization of movements. The spring of 2020 was the time when exhibition halls and performance stages were closed. Culture was paralyzed, as a result, many professionals and also aspiring artists were left without work, training opportunities and without the attention of audiences. They trained in apartments, parks, and by the seaside. Away from people. During this quiet and inactive time, an idea emerged to invite ballet artists to collaborate, using abandoned factories, old manors, and castle spaces as the stage, which would contrast with the model, but at the same time highlighting the depressing mood of the pandemic.

Life Circus is a journey without return into the depths of feeling, a project about my intimate attempt to find a sense of life. The whole circus is a frenetic chaos of pressing emotions, disillusioned glances, mocking smiles and enigmas to be interpreted. The circus lives and loses itself within itself, telling intertwining stories, chasing an applause, a smile, a hug.Each character comes to terms with his role, with the emotions he feels and represents, with the body he animates, the vice he indulges or the virtue he profanes. Fragments of bodies, improbable postures, transactional objects, all tell the everyday: happiness and regret, resignation and euphoria, seasons, life elements, night and day, all this is life circus. A surreal show that is dramatic and ironic, tragic and funny, a place where everyone, looking into each other's eyes, searches for a meaning that is not there. We are all part of a circus, and this is mine.

This collection showcases model bodies sculpted with light, creating striking and dynamic compositions. The monochromatic palette of black and white amplifies the interplay of light and shadow, drawing the viewer's attention to the curves and angles of the human forms and shapes. The result is a series of captivating and powerful images that celebrate the beauty and grace of the human body.

A mix of feelings and sensations. This is how I develop my work through lenses, lights, bodies, shapes and points of view that are mine. A constant quest to be impactful, stealthy with the intention of attracting the eye of those who observe my art, and also to be unpredictable and at the same time sensitive and dedicated to what I do.

A creative photo essay of young Matilda stepping out into the world under the watchful eyes of her grandfather. The works are presented in chronological order so we can watch her grow from a 3-year-old to a grown up 7-year-old.

The series is presented in the style of an Enid Blyton book cover, and tell stories of mystery, intrigue, or just pure whimsey.

Photography, this vain and indispensable attempt to stop time, to infuse the image with a little of our anxiety and wonder. A way to resist by putting into it the best of ourselves. And, from the shooting to the final print, to make sure that these images restore a little of the beauty of the origins.

To establish this dialogue is to be nourished by the essential. It is not only the eye and the mind that are solicited but the whole body. We then have the feeling of accompanying the movement of the world, of being accepted in sacred territories, our photographs celebrate this privilege.

We come back with a precious gift and the hope of having been able to put into the shooting all the components of the lived experience; they can be deployed again during post-production, whether they are visual, sensory or emotional.

In the hope of leaving a trace, we slip our images into the uninterrupted digital flow, take part in exhibitions, sometimes publish books. These ephemeral satisfactions never satisfy the desire within us, the thirst for new creations that constantly calls us. Even if we know that one day they will fade away.

My photography, together with travel, have become two of my life’s passions. My photography focuses predominantly on culture and landscapes; images which reflect a spatial and temporal journey through life and which try to convey a need to live in a more sustainable world. I seek the moment and the light in whatever context I find myself and endeavour to use my photographic acumen to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary.

Since my journey in photography really started back in 2010 I have always been drawn to Black and White in the light sense and the extreme contrast. Hence why I am drawn to art nude photography and especially black and white. Here you have the power to create art from the beauty of the human body shape/curves/angles and with the power of Chiaroscuro

Olympus has fallen and precipitated in reality, up there or down there, where it has always been. A back and forth journey towards the others marks the naked man. Olympus provides a material full of narrative and symbolic discontinuities to express this other from which the human being comes out with its conscious and civil dimension and to which it goes back in the desire full of excesses and waste of the comfortable civilization. The divine is inside us, surreal and conceptual, and we can find it every day, see it everywhere, in every moment of our daily lives. A particular thanks to all the members of my family and friends that have made possible this project, supporting my passion and posing for my photography

Sometimes I feel like the world has lost the capacity for admiration, to experience the incredible, to revel in astonishment. Life is filled with grace, motion, color, texture and beauty. If we only pause to look, we can see and experience these qualities everywhere. This is what I attempt to accomplish with my photographs, to call attention to the wondrousness of the world, to share the extraordinary richness of existence with others, to capture the magnificence of expression and gesture, and highlight what is so often missed in ordinary observation. That is the purpose of my work. By carefully composing, lighting, choreographing and manipulating every minute aspect of every composition, I strive to transform the ordinary into perfection and to achieve, if only for brief instants, moments of pure utopia.

In Ambra's photos, there are many things she loves:
combining colours, shapes, materials,
using stylish props and clothes,
designing theatre sets and making fairy tales come true.

"If you feel like loosing your mind right now - you are absolutely sane. If you feel that everything is normal or even great - you are absolutely insane!"

This exhibition is the result of my reflections about the insane world in which we live today. On the offensive of totalitarism on freedom. About lies, brainwashing and propaganda. About illusions, pain, cruelty, indifference. About insecurity and fear. About broken dreams that the good is not always victorious over the evil.

And yet, against the extreme cruelty and callousness of ones, stands the incredible bravery, dignity and humanity of others.

I want to dedicate this exhibition to the brave people of Ukraine and wish them fortitude and strength in this bloody war.

When we (Ze Diogo & Diamantino Jesus) set up DDiArte in 1999, at that time it was a painting workshop where we brought together the best of both of us for the purposes of creation, painting on canvas. In 2003, after several experiences in the field or digital photography, we discovered the ideal means to express our creativity? Digital Photography artistically touched up. Within the context historiography of art, the use of photography, and more specifically, touching up photographs, is nothing new. We do however aim to innovate somewhat, in terms of the themes on which our work is based. Regardless of the fact that our main source of inspiration is mythology, up-to-date themes or others that are the simple fruit of our creativity, still remain full of details, of symbols, of images, an attempt to captivate, but mainly, as an attempt to stimulate critical thought in viewers. While some of our work can be seen as satirical in a globalized world, yet still full of differences, other examples can be seen as purely scenic, to be contemplated at will. If some shout out against discrimination, at the same time they pay indelible homage to beauty.

Oxford Circus is probably the busiest crossroad globally, with a constant and relentless flow of tourists, revelers, shoppers moving up and down the streets around the Circus. These pictures are a colorful and cheerful antidote against the daily bad news flooding the UK. After the hard times' consequence of Brexit and the pandemic, I hope that London can remain that wonderful, open, inclusive city that it has always been.

Anja Diabaté is an artist based in Hamburg, Germany. She uses Fine Art Photography to transform her concepts and ideas into unique artworks. Her strength and power is the transformation of her ideas and creativity into extremely expressive and soulful photos. Each of her photographs tells a unique story, her aim is always to inspire a viewer to get into depth and reflection.

Her highest self-requirement is to create multiple photos from a single original, but without ever losing the cohesion to the embedding series. Each artwork represents a definite concept and encourages the viewer starting to create his own story in his mind.

I graduated in Philosophy of Science at the Sorbonne University in Paris. How did I end up as a photographer? Well, I guess I was a photographer before I was a philosopher. I started photographing frogs when I was 15 years old.

My interest in philosophy and animal photography led me to the question: do animals have souls? And by soul I basically mean consciousness. The term "animal" covers all animals, from microscopic organisms to mammals, insects, reptiles, birds, and so on. Can we compare the degree of consciousness of a bacterium, if it has one, or even of a reptile with that of a mammal?

I decided to call my project Zoontology, because it combines my two great passions. This word is composed of two words, "zoo" which means animal and "ontology" which is the branch of philosophy that studies being, existence. There are many questions that are considered "ontological". One of them could be, is there a body-soul dualism? So for me, "Zoontology" would be a philosophical approach to animals.

Going back then to the initial question, do animals have souls? I invite you to try to answer it by looking at these photographs.

Sergey Fett is a photographer and visual artist specializing in conceptual imagery and photomanipulation. His work is inextricably linked with the way he sees the world and himself part of it. He likes to show the ideal in the ordinary. He strives to create calm images with a sense of rigor and order in terms of visual representation. His work intentionally rarely shows a face as he wants the viewer to understand that there could be anyone behind the image so that each viewer percieves it differently and that is what Sergey find most interesting and exciting about photography.

Twin sisters photographers from Kiev, Ukraine, excelling in fashion, psychological portrait and artistic nude domains. Their unique style is remarkable through the cinematic representation of the feminine grace, thus creating their sophisticated visual stories where fashion and art imbricate sensually. Dasha and Mari were finalists of the Hasselblad Masters Awards in 2014, fashion nominees of the Photography Masters Cup 2014 and shortlisted photographers in the Fashion Category of the Sony World Photography Awards 2012 (London UK).

The Boyhood series is a narrative visual confession and maps personally experienced and mediated experiences. Emotions and rational create the inevitable surface of friction. People are present in their physical shells, with their thoughts detached from that place at the same time. The viewer is thus offered a view of the seemingly unfinished story. What led to this situation and what will happen next is the question I am looking for an answer to. Our unfinished and untold personal stories.

"My interest in photography began early, before I was 20 years old. I am self-taught, driven by a great passion for the art of photography, and have been in a constant learning process. I believe my strong drive and aim and the hunger to always do better and never give up has gotten me where I am today. I have never been afraid of criticism either; that has made me grow and learn. I have also been fortunate enough to have a mentor that really believed in me, who has pushed me to do better. I believe that made me see things in new ways." — Tina Signesdottir

Alexander Petrosyan's street photographs have a strong emotional and sentimental component. Often they are shocking and at the same time paradoxal.
He captures unique moments and his attempt to escape from the routine of predicting meanings and traditional stereotypes results into comparisons of the incongruous and a new perception of the habitual.

To him, street photography allows us to better understand the world in which most of our lives take place... Now, such photos remain unnoticed and undervalued, but after a while they will be judged by posterity. And not the sugary-minimising crafts, which many are so used to admire, not all these 'eye-caressing' pictures, which are dominated by rattling techniques, technologies etc. will remain. Formal frills will inevitably go to waste, because of the future technical possibilities, all this will turn out to be a trifling archaic value.

A generation’s sentiment of nature is portrayed in the imagery of Hansen and Daams. It reflects a longing for freedom, deceleration and devotion. This generation longs to perceive “true” nature and cares to harness it in a “native” way. People envision nature remote from industrialization, even though it is very much affected by it. On the one hand nature is emotionalized through one´s past. Otherwise - swayed by a sustainable and future oriented zeitgeist - Marketing and Design influences our idea of nature and vice versa. Thus, the composition of the images and their appealing romanticized aesthetics, produces a pretended feeling of depth and well-being. In opposition stands the shift of focus and perspective as well as a planar figurative language and impeccable, reiterating and reduced interior. This illuminates the fact of an industrial affected conception of nature. The result is a complex and self-contradictory image.

"My initial interest in photography was really inspired by the great actor Peter Sellers. He was a friend of my father and he came to the family home for Sunday lunch in the summer of 1958 when I was about twelve. Being a very enthusiastic photographer, he brought with him a full Hasselblad camera kit as well as an early 4×5 Polaroid 110A camera. Having just completed filming Tom Thumb he suggested taking a few Polaroids of me with my brother Jonathan apparently standing on my hand – like Tom Thumb ! I was completely blown away by this magic, and then he proceeded to show me the Hasselblad camera, meticulously explaining how this wonderful machine worked, but all the time speaking in a mad Swedish style voice – which made me laugh. From that moment on I was determined to become a photographer and own a Hasselblad." — Gered Mankowitz