Bianca and riel Sturchio

Bianca and riel Sturchio

Dana Stirling

Chasing Light | Chasing Light is an ongoing (circa 2011) collaborative medium format color film photography project between twin siblings Bianca and riel Sturchio. Chasing Light embodies the belief that representation, visibility, autonomy, and truth-telling can promote personal empowerment, and open up access to spaces that foster meaningful dialogue and community. Bianca and riel utilize photography as a means to delve into the complications of their respective non-normative identities and health-related challenges. Bianca and riel were both born premature with severely delayed developmental milestones, which doctors later diagnosed as cerebral palsy (CP). With the help of rigorous physical therapy and medical interventions, riel and Bianca learned how to adapt to their bodies. riel’s body endured less trauma and therefore responded more rapidly to therapy, however, riel lives with the consequences of invisible chronic illness related to prematurity. Currently, riel’s CP remains nearly undetectable, while Bianca lives with the physical and social consequences of her visible disabilities.

The photographs included in Chasing Light capture activities of daily living, intimate partners, personal spaces, family, and moments of joy, pain, and frustration. Bianca and riel both identify as non-normative in body and identity, but in different ways. riel is non-binary, queer, and someone who lives with invisible chronic illness, and Bianca lives in the intersection of physically disability and queerness. Bianca and riel strive to reject the 'disability-as-inferior' narrative and invite a perspective that considers disability and non-normativity as an extension of human body-variance, which possesses unique potential for creativity, growth, and adaptability.

The project offers raw and unfiltered moments to illuminate the more challenging aspects of identity and disability, which contain many moving parts. Chasing Light serves as a conduit to consider riel's position as lead photographer or observer, and how riel's gaze both filters and complicates the narrative. The project also makes space for an ongoing dialogue, where riel strives to make sense of the complex dynamics between her identity, body, and environment--namely the privilege and guilt associated with recognizing her ability to access particular social opportunities and pass as non-disabled. Bianca similarly aims to re-frame how she and others imagine the human body and strives to challenge society's narrow perception of what constitutes as valuable, worthy, and deserving of visibility.

riel and Bianca intentionally photograph in natural light for its ability to show detail, provoke emotionality, and reveal the authenticity of aging and the fragility of skin. Moreover, they employ the metaphorical dichotomy of light and dark, representing the uncertainty in seeking physical, mental, and emotional stasis.

Bianca and riel unanimously maintain that social connections create the foundation for community, and that knowledge is a source of power. Thus, they intend to use Chasing Light as a platform for and by disabled artists, as well as allies who share a desire to challenge dominant narratives of health, (dis)ability, illness, LGBTQ+, and non-binary identities. www.chasinglightproject.com

Dan Moga

Dan Moga

Dana Stirling

Simple Angles | My first camera I found it in my Grandmother’s closet, in a tin box, where she kept the old family photos and letters. Maybe that’s why, ever since I found myself holding a camera in my hand, my grandmother Cornelia, for me Buni, was always the favorite subject of my photography.

When I was a child, Grandma’s universe felt limited and monotonous, but today, I recall the fragments of the past through a different lens: “Simplicity of her daily life fills the well-being of my universe”.

The traditional and colorful house of Cornelia, with a style that tries to integrate modern perceptions, is the place where light and time speak differently every time you go in. That’s why, when I come back from that place, I have a worldly feeling and I look at new angles and perspectives of approaching my life and work.

These fragments from my grandmother’s daily life are a modest tribute to elderly people, which for me, time didn’t make them old, but made them more simple, balanced and nourishing human beings. www.danmoga.com

Zuzanna Szarek

Zuzanna Szarek

Dana Stirling

Humans Do Not Rule This Land | Traveling through the empty space we move in slow motion. The monumental landscape scales us in a way that even if we move abruptly we look as though we just woke up from the deepest dream. Time passage is inscribed within the accretions of lava, the never-ending deluge of water and decay of man-made structures scattered throughout the land.

The nature that surrounds us is changing rapidly, unpredictably and beyond anyone's control. From time to time there is a house or a car looking like an abandoned toy. A road sign warns about stones lurking on the steep slopes. Finally, in the middle of nowhere, a spill of concrete next to a piece of a metal bridge which was destroyed during the flood a few years back. Humans do not rule this land. Raindrops ferociously hit the rooftop, and the wind swings the metal tin. It’s dark outside. We stop for the night. www.zuzannaszarek.com

Gianluca Morini

Gianluca Morini

Dana Stirling

A LONG JOURNEY THROUGH NOTHING NEW | Twenty-five years ago, my parents decided to leave Brazil. I was born in a land that should have welcomed me as a native but kept its distance instead. I was born in a land that relegated me to the position of the perpetual tourist, that never let me understand why I was linked to it, or how to have an active interaction with. That saudade sentiment, of something lost – that perhaps was never owned – so nuanced and inexplicable, often revealed itself while I tried to connect to my everyday life there.

Starting in 2018, I decided to cross the boundaries of my homeland, Lombardy, one of the most Northern Italian region, looking for analogies.

In an attempt to dialogue with a land that I never felt belonging to, trying to shape the involved relation with my routine, I collected the fragments of visual experience, familiar or not, that I felt could contribute to the forming of a genuine perception of reality, no longer distant and idealized, but present and in continuous change, of everything that falls within the normality of my daily and that for many, is nothing new. www.gianlucamorini.com

Salman Sam Daliri

Salman Sam Daliri

Dana Stirling

Caspian Sea | Lake Caspian is one of the largest lakes in the world which is jointly located in Golestan, Mazandaran and Gilan provinces. The lake, which is one of the most important habitats for birds and other animals, in recent years due to the drying up of wetlands and a lot of construction on these beaches has experienced many problems in its environment, which has caused the destruction of a large number of habitats.

Birds and other animals whose lives depended on these wetlands and habitats were forced to migrate. On the other hand, the existence of ports and residential buildings has polluted the water entering the lake. The discharge of sewage and toxins into the lake has had detrimental consequences for the environment and for the natives.

The presence of humans in these habitats has increased the production of plastic waste by building industrial and residential towns, which is one of the worst damage to the environment. Thousands of tons of plastic and garbage are collected from these habitats every year.

The most important reason for the destruction of wetlands and the settlement of these areas is the transfer of people from the capital and from the southeast of Iran to the Caspian Sea. In this series, I tried to investigate the devastating effects of this migration to north of Iran and the destruction of the lake's habitats.

Sebastian Alten

Sebastian Alten

Dana Stirling

LANDSCHAFT | LANDSCHAFT collects photos of landscapes that have been shot all across Europe, from the south of Sicily to the north of Norway. Even though they are only loosely interconnected, in my view they share a rather existential approach of grasping the world around us. Looking at nature always makes me feel small. It changes the perception of time and puts our human existence and sorrows into perspective.

The poem that concludes the series has been stolen from the cycle Feberdikte (Fever Poems) by Norwegian author Knut Hamsun. Since I couldn’t find an English translation, I made one up myself:

I called and asked the foam of the sea,
And screamed to forests and moor,
To stone and storm, to the heaven’s space:
The life into which I was born -
Have I ever craved it or chosen?
Yet mute remained stone
and the storm
and the space.

My translation might not be perfect, but I do hope that the images will be able to do justice to the existential reflection that was addressed. All of these photos have been taken with a Hasselblad 500C/M analog medium format camera and an 80mm f2.8 T* Zeiss Planar lens on black & white negative film. www.zum-quadrat.com

Alice Zilberberg

Alice Zilberberg

Dana Stirling

Meditations | In this series, Zilberberg creates animal montages as an expression of self-therapy. As an urbanite, functioning day-to-day in a fast-paced, built environment can be emotionally unsettling. The artist regrounds herself in the sense of calm issued by these animals. These creatures reinstate a presence, a tranquility, and a grander perspective.

The works are an amalgam of many photographs from different locations around the world, put together seamlessly by the artist in post-production. Their minimal aesthetic is metaphorical of striving for simplicity. Rather than ruminating on the past, or hypothesizing the future, Zilberberg’s works invite a meditative state, encouraging the viewer to stay still and find happiness in the moment. alicezilberberg.com

Dennis Schnieber

Dennis Schnieber

Dana Stirling

The following selection is part of an ongoing body of work, in which I try to find modest compositions, that exceed the sheer representation of the objects within, but rather emphasize a somewhat offbeat interplay amongst, uncover inconspicuous shapes or study the fusion of light and surface.

While sometimes the images might concentrate on an abstract detail or texture, I often look for a wider assemblage, as an aesthetic atmosphere pulling it all together, thus keeping the objects recognizable as what they are. This method leads to a documentation of the familiar with components of irritation or surrealness.

Even though the scenes are devoid of people, they never seem to me to be lifeless, as every piece in it transforms itself over time and is influenced or even designed by humans, adding an implicit, sometimes even visible social sediment to it.

Ultimately I understand the process as working on some sort of exhibition catalogue, gathering aesthetic by-products, occasionally short-lived or entirely dissolving in their down- to-earth embedment. www.instagram.com/dennisschnieber

Alexia Villard

Alexia Villard

Dana Stirling

HOME STORIES | These images were taken in Berlin during the recent Covid- 19 lockdown. During 3 months we have isolated ourselves with my young daughter and partner. Our apartment has only two separate rooms: our daughter's room and an open space including a kitchen, living space and bedroom.

Throughout this period of time personal space was substantially altered and while we were pressured to mainly stay inside, our behavior changed — the way our bodies circulate, move and connect shifted; By contact, we were compiled to realize our human being texture and feel ; To be read as an archive of human resilience. www.alexiavillard.com

Hugo Henry

Hugo Henry

Dana Stirling

Becoming a Man | The body changes, so do the desires. The body becomes more robust and above all it becomes an asset of seduction. Becoming a man is a series that I did for a few months with my little brother who becomes more and more adult as soon as I see him again.

Adolescence is the age of confrontation, it's the age of rebellion. Tom, only wishes to become an adventurer. Lulled by the novels of Jules Vernes and more recently by the expeditions of Mike Horn, he never stops wanting to sculpt a body and an image that his heroes send back to him.

At a time of identification and loss of certain points of reference, nature and adventure remain for Tom an escape route, an environment where he can be himself, without feeling out of step with people his own age. To be 16 today is to seek digital socialization, to debate digitally, to stay hours behind a screen to live shared adventures live on the networks. Testimony of a pivotal period, the identity path of a young man in the making. www.hugohenry.work

Sutapa Roy

Sutapa Roy

Dana Stirling

Wish My Butterfly Would Live Forever | The more I started to feel losing control of my outer world, the more I started to hold inside me the person whom I love the most. I started taking picture of her – my daughter. During the Corona pandemic and lockdown thereof, I got perfect opportunity to spend lot more time with her, who has just stepped into teenage life. I got a chance to observe and understand her even more deeply. Initially the purpose of my image making was just to nourish my curiosity and seeing her adapting (or not) the new lifestyle away from school in the tough hours of social distancing. As I started to spend more time with her and being around her every moment, I started to explore her visions, so sublime and pre-eminent. “I would be a protector of the nature to safeguard forests, seas and sky. I would have my own place way far from these concrete jungle, under the blue and starry sky; butterflies will be my friends and flowers my finery” – she said. My initial thought of images took a new direction from here onwards. The new path I chose was an attempt to represent the girl and her thoughts visually; the images went back and forth between the person and her vision and the story made its trail somewhere in between accordingly.

The improvement of global health and seeking for a better earth is an emergency now and it is not possible for one or two to make any change which is so badly needed in the present global health situation. And from a different stand point, we are facing the ultimate question – what are we leaving for our future generation? Who is responsible for all these chaos and who is going to heal it? Eventually “Wish my butterfly would live forever” develops to be more like a fantasy of the girl that questions all our concern and desire to act for healing of mother Earth. Conceivably the story is an attempt to picture the girl lost in her imagined world. Images are fusion of organic and staging moments, along with lines written by her, taken only at my home in Kolkata during pandemic lockdown.

I believe apart from the perspective of a mother daughter relationship this story has the potential to give us a realization that we can certainly heal our world if we earnestly want to, and for that, we have to have a dream to achieve or to protect our own planet, just like maintaining safety of our homes during the pandemic. I hope this journey has helped me to grow as a person and has allowed me to explore different ideas to implement my feelings.

As another day just passed by and the sun touching the horizon, saying a warmth good bye for another bright morning. The wounded butterfly Suhani caught yesterday and treated it with all her care and tenderness, just flew away. She said, “Ma, wish my butterfly would live forever”. www.sutaparoy.com

Annemiek Hofer

Annemiek Hofer

Dana Stirling

Wild Rose | These photographs were taken while I was stuck in Canada during the pandemic. I went beginning March to visit my dad, and made it back to Belgium (where I live) early May. During my stay, we drove around the Alberta province. I was amazed at the ruins of the old farming towns. Being from Europe, it was completely different from anything I had ever seen before. And it all seemed very apocalyptic, especially considering the situation of the current event. Almost every day we went on long drives to observe the Albertan ladnscapes and «Landfills» of the western era. After several months I collected a lot of images that conveyed to me a lonely and ghost like atmosphere. It is a side to Canada that we don't see very much, but a very real side that is relevant to its history.

Vikesh Kapoor

Vikesh Kapoor

Dana Stirling

See You at Home​ | My ongoing project ​See You at Home​ (2017 - present) ​is a personal narrative that centers on family, memory and the myth and melancholy surrounding the American Dream.

My parents, Shailendra and Sarla Kapoor, immigrated from India in 1973, settling in a small town of 10,000 people in rural Pennsylvania. They are one of only a few immigrant families in the region. While they left India for a better life, the shift from a collectivist nation to an individualistic one led to isolation just as much as it led to freedom. As they grow old in Pennsylvania with​ ​my sister and I no longer living nearby, their isolation only becomes more apparent to me. ​

I began making work about my family during a trip to India with my father, fifteen years ago. I hadn’t visited since I was a child, and it was my father’s first time in sixteen years. It was important for both of us. Questions of family, identity and personal history were born out of that trip and continue to inform ​my work and this project today.

Se​e You at Home​ ​explores the dichotomy of home and homeland, freedom and isolation, collectivism and individualism, through images I make of my parents’ current life in America imbued with memories of their past.​ ​Although this personal narrative began as an examination of diaspora, aging and the unique duties that fall to the only son of Asian immigrants, my hope is that ​​See You at Home​​ will resonate with other first-generation Americans and those interested in the myth of the American identity, seeking to find place and purpose here. vikeshkapoor.com

Sandra Mickiewicz

Sandra Mickiewicz

Dana Stirling

Proud of the Origin | As the Gyps and Travellers community is a small minority in the hugely diverse British society, my intention was to portray them as sympathetic and sociable people as opposed to the typical stereotypes. I hope this project will contribute to changing the dominant point of view and our thinking about Gypsies and Travellers.

Most importantly, I want the audience to realise that the subjects I photograph are valuable members of society. This body of work is still in progress and my aim is capture the resolute, spirited nature of the people I have met and the pride they rightly feel towards their ancestry. I’ve always been interested in the community as I find their lifestyle very interesting. I am really inspired by their culture, clothes they wear and their faces. To me these people stand out from the crowd, even in our everyday life.

Because of their backgrounds and “typical stereotypes”, most Gypsies and Travellers had to face the racism and discrimination towards their culture and beliefs. Most of them are forced to hide their identity in order to attain employment or send their children to school. In this project, I want to explore their life traditions, and other aspects in their culture. www.sandramickiewicz.com

Svetlana Stankevich

Svetlana Stankevich

Dana Stirling

Luz silenciosa | It is believed that in the first half of life a human-being goes up and rolls down in the second. It explains the ambiguous perception of time: when time is watching out for us and when we are watching out for it. All 10-year-old Varvara’s days are long, do not include any plans and there is the obey to the adults family members.

Varvara is interested in the cost of land in front of her parents home where the shelter is built in the trees. “For what do you need it to know?”, “I wanna know in order to buy it and to live there with my husband or with dogs” – she has not decide yet.

The growth of a child can be observed as the creation of the universe. “Luz silenciosa” is Carlos Reygadas film where the silent celestial light is watching out for human aspirations and passions. Will the child rise in a new life up? Will the child build own world when will leave the parental home? In everyday fatalism and mysticism there is always the waiting for a miracle. This is the age of transition to another world, where the possession of responsibility and self- determination will take over. www.instagram.com/baranekbo

Stefano Semeraro

Stefano Semeraro

Dana Stirling

Mare Rurale | Mare Rurale tells, through images, of a little explored and known territory in which I lived part of my life. Specifically, it is about Specchiolla, a small seaside resort frequented mainly in summer, which stretches on the Brindisi coast. This area has been my reference point for many years as my parents owned a restaurant near its cliff. It is only when I stopped frequenting those places that I could really notice what was around me and its hidden beauty. My photographs show how architectural and natural elements coexist and interact with each other. I have already pictured the architecture-nature dualism in some of my previous projects as it is increasingly becoming my own signature when I capture the landscapes that I find myself in front of.

The name Mare Rurale (Rural Sea) refers to a specific characteristic of the Specchiolla area: the continuity between land and sea. In the collective imagination, these two ecosystems are quite distinct, while here they coexist harmonically. The inhabitants of this area take this rural landscape that touches the sea as ordinary sightseeing and do not realize of its interesting glimpses and amazing contrasts.
A good part of the inhabitants of the nearby villages, such as Carovigno and San Vito dei Normanni, are farmers or land owners that cultivate a variety of products and sell them in local and national markets. If you enter the narrow streets that cross these cultivated plots, you will come across large, rust-colored fields, mostly cultivated with tomatoes, wheat fields, fruit trees and local vegetables. These colorful fields create a sharp contrast with the strip of blue sea that overlaps in the distant background and welcomes and fascinates tourists. Dried stone walls and rock constructions alternate with newly constructed holiday homes and unfinished or abandoned works. All these constructions are in perfect harmony with huge fig trees, sea pines, coastal dunes and Mediterranean maquis.
These and other elements reveal an extraordinary corner of Apulian territory and tell us about this dualism between land and sea, all to be discovered. www.stefanogiosemeraro.it

Agne Rita Kucinskaite

Agne Rita Kucinskaite

Dana Stirling

River | River is a meditative journey through 150 miles of Thames Path, walked in eleven days. Taking inspiration from the history of landscape photography as well as documentary practices, I seek to question the concepts of success and failure, belonging and alienation. Images of recurrent natural elements are juxtaposed with overheard conversations and personal thoughts. I examine the arising tension between the outer and the inner to interrogate the collective unconscious and conduct an inquiry into the shadowed self.
This work is a personal reconciliation with the terra-incognita of the faraway which - in the words of Rebecca Solnit - one is deemed to never reach. www.agnerita.com

Claudia Ruiz Gustafson

Claudia Ruiz Gustafson

Dana Stirling

María | María is the inspiration for the third and last chapter of Historias fragmentadas, a photographic exercise of memory and imagination. While reflecting on my story, I noticed there was one important person missing; a live-in maid my parents hired when we moved to the suburbs of Lima when I was seven. She doesn’t appear in any family portrait and sadly, we don’t have record of her last name or her birthday. Domestic help in Perú is usually hired without written contracts, so attempts to locate her would be futile. Her name was María, and she eventually left us to start a family of her own. It was a sad departure for me because María had been my confidante, my friend, and my teacher, during a vulnerable time in my life. She sang to me in Quechua, the beautiful language of the Andes; she grew chamomile flowers for my anxiety; and she taught me simple games when I was lonely.

I created this series in my family home in Lima, Perú and in María’s home town of Villa El Salvador to photograph the streets where she might have walked. I worked with a Quechua woman whose name, coincidentally, was also María. For weeks we collaborated in the house where my parents still live today. Together we explored the same walls, the same floors, the same light that entered the same windows that my María experienced. The furniture and ornaments that she touched have remained unchanged over the years. Traveling to María’s hometown helped me connect with her memory. Through this project, I was able to honor an important woman in my life and the unconditional love that she gave me.

María is a conversation with the past, an intimate and personal revelation of connection and loss between where we come from and where we are. www.claudiafineart.com

Kevin Bennett Moore

Kevin Bennett Moore

Dana Stirling

Inspired by film of the 1950s and ’60s, my work is an exploration on the formation of character, narrative, and identity. These photographs are a world created to speak freely without interruption. By utilizing the past--both historic and cultural references--I am able to juxtapose queer existence with classic Americana. Although my work is made up predominantly of self-portraits, my goal is for viewers to consider their own responses to queerness as they see it. By applying my own identity and queer experience, I hope to engage the viewer in an unfamiliar set of circumstances.

Driven by emotion and intuition, I utilize melodrama to discuss ideas of visibility and invisibility, what is acknowledged and what is not-- questions that remain relevant in today’s politics. kevinbennettmoore.com

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