David Cade

David Cade

Dana Stirling

My quasi-documentary project delves into the community of male sex workers, exploring the lasting repercussions of male-on-male sexual abuse upon them. A survivor myself, I've staged scenes in the cramped quarters of a dive one hour hotel where I and others rehearse and reverse the power dynamics of abuse. Graphic and direct, these black-and-white photographs provide a compassionate yet unflinching portrait of the ways their subjects seek to work through past traumas.

Survivors of male on male sexual assault and abuse live in what I choose to refer to as a liminal state. One which is seen as transmuting between an external façade of survival and an internal schism of psychological flux as they battle an overt state of PTSD. There is the constant struggle to reincorporate their psychic identity post trauma allowing a functional “normative” daily existence. The schism between the external and internal presents a discordant lifestyle as the trauma of sexual assault/abuse continues to monopolize the victim. It is through an internalized scaring of the psychological mind that the victim is thrown into a chaotic state rendering a normative existence a furtive exercise.

Robert von Sternberg

Robert von Sternberg

Dana Stirling

From the earliest efforts to irrigate the desert, to the postwar population ex-plosion, to present-day suburban sprawl and conservation efforts, human enterprise has shaped the landscape of Los Angeles. It is perhaps appropriate that Robert von Sternberg, who has lived and worked most his life in Los Angeles County, identifies human incursions into the natural world as a recurring theme at the heart of his photographic practice.

Avid travelers, von Sternberg and his wife Patricia are especially fond of road trips, where the photographer delights in the offbeat side of the American touristic tradition. Far from focusing on the most canonical or scenic tourist destinations, the artist seizes on the visual possibilities of overlooked roadside attractions and chance conjunctions. The surreal artificial lighting that illuminates the American nighttime often provides the “definitive photographic images” that von Sternberg seeks in his travels: an incandescent gas station, the lurid red glow from a paper lantern, a grid of ceiling lights that mimic distant stars. Camera-toting fellow tourists also become subjects as they seek their own “definitive images”—which sometimes also include the photographer himself.

More often, though, von Sternberg captures scenes in which human figures are distant or absent. In this, his “decisive moments” are very unlike the densely populated ones pictured by Henri Cartier-Bresson. Still, von Sternberg’s roadside moments are crowded despite their ostensible vacancy. Through the roads, fences, signage, buildings, and all the other material structures of civilization, humanity marks the land; even in our bodily absence, we make our presence insistently known.

On Robert von Sternberg’s Photography by Caitlin Silberman Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California April 2015 www.robertvonsternberg.com

Nelson Morales

Nelson Morales

Dana Stirling

I Want to be a Queen | In the towns on the Isthmus of Oaxaca Mexico, festivals and balls are an important part of our culture. Almost every day, many festivals are celebrated. The Muxes are considered a third gender in Mexico and they are also considered a blessing for their families. For almost ten years I have photographed them since I am also part of that community.

For the Muxe community, it is very relevant to be part of the party because we participate in the design and construction of the balls, and we love to be part of all the celebrations.It is very common that at celebrations there is always a protagonist. The queen of the party; the dream for all of the girls.

The Muxes from childhood always look and admire the queen of the party, and it becomes an illusion, and when they grow up their highest dream is to become a queen. Currently, there are many exclusive festivities of the Muxes in all the towns of the isthmus in which they can wear their party dresses, dance, and share with all the people of the town.

Being a queen has become an obsession, no matter how much it costs to buy all the goods they need or how long they need to save money. The important thing is to be the queen of the town and feel like a woman.

This series portrays many details in the intimacy of the Queen Muxes; the accessories, the fabrics,wigs, their intimacy in their homes, there are also crowns and face shapes that show a more conceptual part of this project. All this universe of colors and fantasies is to achieve being the most beautiful of the night. www.nelsonmorales.com.mx

Larry Smukler

Larry Smukler

Dana Stirling

I make personal pictures that give a visual voice to my internal emotions and reflections. In the unquiet stillness of my photographs, I explore the ache of longing, the tenderness of intimacy, the foreboding of loss, the inevitable measure of time’s passage. Past, present and future fuse into an immediate whole.

I am drawn to the light and the shadows—a burst of sun through a doorway, a beckoning window in a nighttime storm, a woman fading in the fog. The light does not illuminate the rich black background; rather, it is the subject itself, allowing me to create an emotional space poised on the edge of bursting. Ordinary moments become extraordinary as they are transformed into photographs where time and memory pulse in an endless now. www.larrysmukler.com

Rebecca Sexton Larson

Rebecca Sexton Larson

Dana Stirling

Book of Fears | The Book of Fears evolved from an ongoing curiosity of people's aversions and obsessions. What makes a person afraid? When does that fear become a phobia? And why am I so scared of clowns?

Included in the series are some well-known fears that a lot of people face on a day-to-day basis, such as achluophobia (fear of darkness), hydrophobia (fear of water), and then some not so well-known worries as in somniphobia (fear of sleep).

According to Psychology Today, the difference between fears and phobias is simple. "Fears are common reactions to events or objects. The fear becomes a phobia when it interferes with your ability to function and maintain a consistent quality of life." Phobias are considered one of the most common mental disorders in the U.S. with approximately 10% of the population stating they have a specific phobia.

This project was created during the coronavirus pandemic which has caused significant fear amongst many. Since I did not have the luxury of shooing on location with models, I chose to use characters found on 19th-century cabinet cards as my models, placing them in fictional settings. The challenge became revitalizing these anonymous historical figures in staged environments that would showcase the desired fear, while at the same time ask the viewer to examine their own anxieties and fears.

Working with psychological subject matter, I gained awareness of illustrating feelings that are both real and imaginative. For those with the fear, it is a very palpable situation, for the observer on the outside it sometimes presents more as an emotional response. My personal fear of clowns, comes down to two possible speculations. One is that I am uneasy because I can't see the clown's true face under the makeup. Facial expressions help us to understand another person's emotions and motivations. The second theory, clowns are always joyous, laughing and playing around and as a rule we tend to distrust people who are always happy. www.sextonlarson.com

Sabrina Giacomaggio

Sabrina Giacomaggio

Dana Stirling

Sending Thoughts and Prayers | Sending Thoughts and Prayers is a long form documentary series, telling the story of my mother’s last few years. Initially, in January 2019, the series was created out of necessity for me, a defense mechanism to the realities of my declining mother. Eventually, the series continued out of collaboration with her. Her speech and mobility were limited, but she clung to the idea that we were still able to do something, anything together. Through a number of health complications, we created the contents of Sending Thoughts and Prayers. The images primarily highlight our relationship, our navigation through life’s process, and an overarching fear of death.

In June 2020, my mother passed away while in isolation due to the pandemic. I will continue to work on the series we created together, with hopes of publishing the images into a book. www.sabrinagiacomaggio.com

Erika Nina Suarez

Erika Nina Suarez

Dana Stirling

Család | In order to explore the ever-changing dynamic between individuals that are in complex and multi-layered relationships, Erika Nina Suarez is focusing on those closest to her. She first began this project by studying her relationships with her parents, siblings, and grandmother, who visits when the weather changes. She executed these images by examining recognizable behaviors and traits that were of interest to her.

As the project evolved, she soon began to notice through a severe lens, that she’d become estranged from her family. Each weekend trip to see them felt shorter and colder than the last. By allowing her experiences to dictate the perspective, Suarez found herself doing more selfexploration. In this ongoing body of work, Suarez continuously highlights themes that examine her point of view as a voyeur within her own family, endearment towards “found” family, and the spaces within the home that continue to serve as places of emotional attachment to her subjects. www.erikaninasuarez.com

Ronojoy Sinha

Ronojoy Sinha

Dana Stirling

Delving Deep | Delving Deep, a monochromatic self-portrait series was born out of a void. A void that engulfed all sense and sensibilities and left me reeling with nothingness. I started this series as a way to overcome my creative lull. Despite working as a video producer professionally, I hadn't worked on personal projects in a long time and had even lost the will to make pictures- something I couldn't have imagined a couple of years back. My constant self-doubt only made matters worse. Hence, Honestly came into existence. This project was supposed to rekindle my passion for photography, but it achieved more than what I had anticipated. Initially, it started as a series of posed self-portraits with no real depth, but soon I began journaling how I felt every day, and that's when it started to excite me. I started basing my portraits off my journal entries, and they got intimately abstract. I made the conscious decision to photograph the project in monochrome as I felt colors would distract from the essence of the story.

I wanted it to be a visual representation of my mind- raw, gritty, and dark like my thoughts. As I got more comfortable in front of the camera, the clothes peeled away and with it the insecurities and vulnerabilities I had held onto for so long. The project evolved from a collection of chic self-portraits to a visual journal of a perturbed mind. The handwritten notes that accompanied the photographs had a life of their own. It covered a myriad of mixed emotions- anxiety, depression, inadequacy, so on, and so forth, and to my surprise, quite a lot of people related to my thoughts, mostly women. That itself spoke volumes about the culture we've built around masculinity in our society—a culture where emotive men are considered weak and unstable.

This project allowed me to confront numerous preconceived notions and beliefs that controlled me, which only acted as hurdles. I grew with the project, but it took me a pandemic and severe loneliness to turn introspection into catharsis and realize that there is no better time to start working on yourself than now. Despite being in the middle of the pandemic, there is no better time than this to start living and not just exist. www.ronojoysinha.com

Jay Patel

Jay Patel

Dana Stirling

Diving Into The Unknown | When I step into water it gives me a primal sense of being alive. Anything other than that flows away. Water influences my existence and personality. This project is a journey and exploration of how I interact with the “fuzzy blue” in different ways. I ask myself, why do I have such a deep connection? I record every feeling and interaction by making photographs some with a camera and some without.

My ongoing project about water is based on a childhood trauma in which I was thrown into a pool by my swimming coach. Afterwards, I did not swim for 8 years. I became a self-taught swimmer, spending more time in pools, lakes and rivers. Swimming eventually became a favorite mode of recreation for me.The experience of isolation and contemplation in swimming made me feel more alive and is quite therapeutic. www.jaypatelphoto.com

Jiatong Zoe Lu

Jiatong Zoe Lu

Dana Stirling

The Secret Place With Nowhere To Hide | As a child, when I was beaten and scolded severely by my family at home, a place I could not escape from, I would instinctively dissociate myself from that combat situation. I would imagine myself in another shadowy space far away, where I could float or sink without gravity. My body would become numb instantaneously and I could not feel any pain. Whenever I was overwhelmed with emotions of helplessness or alienation, I would fantasize about escaping to an unknown place, a forest or an island, where no one knows me, and I do not exist for any purpose. That process would bring me calm and peace temporarily.

Growing up, the language people used around me had always been negative and violent, However, my experiences with photography felt completely different. Just like how it was in my childhood, photography would take me to other worlds, which could not be reached in reality. Since children are too young to fight back, or change their terrible situation directly, I am curious about how they would create an imaginary “safe haven” for their own “self-redemption”, and to internalize the trauma that they had been through. In this work The Secret Place With Nowhere To Hide, follows the fragmented feelings of my childhood, I am trying to internalize my inescapable traumatic memories, the broken relationships, and the feelings of being alienated. This project explores the relationships between self and other, intimacy and isolation, as well as the body memories and internal emotions, and attempts to show how photography can conceptually reconstruct the inter-relationships among them. jiatongzoelu.com

Nikita Svertilov

Nikita Svertilov

Dana Stirling

Curving the Horizon | The flourish of post-truth politics movement eventually leads to people loosing trust in the official sources of information. This is also one of the main reasons why nowadays we can see the development of various conspiracy theories.

I was particularly fascinated with one of them - the flat earth theory. Its supporters try to empirically refute the current state of knowledge about the shape of our planet by entering into a debate with scientific community.

In “Curving the horizon” I encompass images that appeal to both sides of the dispute in order to find a unique feature that distinguishes scientific methods from their appropriation by the flat earth community. www.nsvertilov.com

Gai Shtienberg

Gai Shtienberg

Dana Stirling

Hard Land | "Between the natural borders of the Mediterranean sea and the Jordan river the distance is not far. Between the sea and the River artificial lines of green and purple. Red line crosses the valley, pale blue seam in to the mountains. A big wall of greyish concrete and a ruined landscape agonizingly sighs..."

Inspired by what Israeli poet Yaakov Rotblit wrote in his song "The Big story" (Hasipur Hagadol) Hard Land collects together 5 years worth of exploration within the Israeli landscape, Bounded by the Jordan river on the east and the Mediterranean Sea on the west.

Equipped with a medium format 6X7 analog camera I've traveled to marginal areas of the country aiming to capture the influences of the relationship between humans and their surroundings and those among themselves. The impact of these relationships is what created the unique scarred landscape of this land.

Jesse Egner

Jesse Egner

Dana Stirling

Disidentifications | “Disidentifications” is a series of absurd, unusual, and playful portraits of queer individuals meant to evoke the uncanny, humor, and curiosity. Inspired by the theory of disidentification as described by queer theorist José Muñoz, this series examines the liminality of disidentities that neither identify or counter-identify with a dominant ideology.

As a gay man who is fat and has an invisible disability, I have experienced constant rejection from members of my fellow gay community, forcing me into a precarious relationship with myself. The playful and performative acts and symbols in these photographs reflect this relationship, while the fragmented narratives and uncertainty that exist in a space between reality and fantasy reflect the liminal space of queer identity. www.jesseegner.com

Mariia Ermolenko

Mariia Ermolenko

Dana Stirling

Flow |
Often, when my eyes are closed, memories pop up in my head.
A person becomes a memoryless person.
Memories are like a mosaic that constitutes man. As long as I remember,
I am who I am.
I'm afraid of losing memories.
To forget is to die.

Time is alive and indifferent.
We are so small in relation to time.
And I get scared when I think about it. www.mariiaermolenko.com

Maria Siorba

Maria Siorba

Dana Stirling

You Can’t Stand Outside Looking In | In this series we are gazing at a staged world where femininity is prominent and disarming in its tireless commitment to detail. A space is born, brought in and shared by young women, made up of their elegant and discreet complicity. Here, the encounter with the outer world is constantly postponed, replaced by a safeguarded area which is established indoors. This domestic boundary creates in its turn a love for attentiveness and direction praising the analog way of thinking. Ballrooms, cutlery and billowing skirts, secret flings, wallpapers and windows left half-open, sleepovers and journals are all part of this distinctive universe where the past has been embedded portraying a sentient emotional world.

The girls, who are having a getaway from everything, seem to be focusing on an endless process of contemplation and discovery; as if they are envisioning their own dream operation to change the world.

Just like them, while working on this project, at a safe distance from reality, I enjoyed escaping also from the sense of time, turning it into something beyond the principle of

measuring. This allowed those much needed feelings of safety and freedom to emerge and lead the way of the creative process. www.mariasiorba.com

Greg Jundanian

Greg Jundanian

Dana Stirling

In Their Footsteps…an Identity Fractured by Genocide | “In the Footsteps…” is the beginning of a personal exploration into my connection to Armenia, its history, and how genocide can fracture identity for generations to come. This visual journey focuses on the people and places surrounding Gyumri, Armenia’s westernmost city bordering Turkey, and Stepanakert, the capital of the Armenian breakaway republic of Artsakh.

As a second-generation Armenian-American I grew up unmoored from my ancestral history. It was filled with killings, suicides and grief. My ancestors had all but vanished beginning with a series of pogroms under Turkey’s Sultan Hamid in the 1890’s. This was followed by a genocide executed by the Young Turks that endured from 1915 through 1922. At this time more than a million and a half Armenians were systematically slaughtered. Entire villages and family lines were completely wiped out. For years afterward, Armenians found a homeland in the diaspora, or as William Saroyan put it, anywhere in the world when two Armenians met.

Beginning with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Armenians have only recently regained independence, though at a cost. Over the last thirty years Armenians have had to recover from the trauma of a devastating earthquake, suffered from fuel embargos and are still embroiled in an ongoing conflict with Azerbaijan...a conflict that is a natural outgrowth of a genocide that has never been acknowledged by Turkey.

I grew up in a small town in central Massachusetts filled with elderly refugees from this genocide. The sense of loss was pervasive. These neighbors and relations that somehow survived passed down their indelible memories, demonstrating to me how courage and grace can prevail over hate and fear.

Travelling to Armenia and Artsakh provided me with a fresh look at my identity, the damage that continues, how things have emerged, and some perspective as to what the future may hold. www.jundanianphotography.com

Mikhail Palinchak

Mikhail Palinchak

Dana Stirling

“The impossibility of rediscovering an absolute level of the real is of the same order as the impossibility of staging illusion.” - Jean Baudrillard

Bilateral Rooms | Bilateral Rooms series visualizes changeability and delusiveness of political systems symbolized by temporary architectural forms. It recreates dualism of reality through two-days makeshift rooms recreated in a completely identical manner, again and again.

Mikhail Palinchak has been working for a number of years as the official photographer of the President of Ukraine. Following the President in official missions, at the summits of international organizations such as NATO, the EU or the United Nations, he has often found himself in the premises where important decisions are made regarding the peace, future and prosperity of small and big countries.

The series opens the closed door to the negotiation rooms: minimalist interior with only those things one really needs; colors that don’t draw attention to themselves; flowers that seem to remind about a parallel living universe; pragmatic infrastructure with cheap, mass-market furniture—it is in this kind of temporary space that representatives of all nations hold crucial conversations, shape the future of millions of people, and develop long-term political strategies.

The artworks reflect the paradox of our time - temporary rooms for long-term strategy planning. The paradox of values - minimalist spaces with artificial light sources where the destiny of all countries is shaped. The paradox of social relations - a tight deadline to reach consensus, when there’s only one hour for a meeting. In this location behind closed doors, reality and illusion are tightly intertwined, even though visual identity is lost and everything follows protocol rules and a clear-cut scenario, with no room left to improvise. www.palinchak.com.ua

Elena Liventseva

Elena Liventseva

Dana Stirling

Looking for my mother | My project is about closeness with mom. In my childhood, my mother almost never was near, then she completely disappeared. My childhood passed in an attempt to hide and protect myself from the label “orphan”. For 15 years I didn’t know about my mother, but I continued to look for her.

In my memory, she remained young. I didn’t recognize her when we met. Recognition of mother began with the recognition of her body. Everything changed when I found out about mom’s childhood trauma. At 12, she gave birth to a baby. But the girl drowned at the age of 6 months. It was a child’s sorrow over a child. Sorrow became family secret that couldn’t be mentioned. Mom didn’t forgive herself; harming herself was easier than forgiving. She hid her life in guilt, hopelessness, alcohol. Now our closeness with mom continues to grow, although the past still interfers us. www.elenaliventseva.com

Carolina Echeverri

Carolina Echeverri

Dana Stirling

Like Purity, Like Gravity | This series is a visual antonym to control. It’s a purity dance between paired images, yet not a “purity” related to immaculacy, but one related to innocence contained in natural attributes, in instinct. It is also a dance that hopes we could be born into this world and allowed not only to exist under these natural and free premises just by birth, but also for a continuous self-evolution that would allow us to be the most true and crude version of our human selves.

For example:
Why can't girls sit with their legs open? Why can't women go jogging at night? Why do I need to evaluate if my cleavage is too low? Why can't my daughter be a catholic priest? Power and authority have tried to domesticate females since the Neolithic. And why are apple trees bent and weaved? Why can't wolves roam free in Jutland? Why is my cucumber so straight? Why is the Dutch landscape almost entirely flat? And why on earth do pugs exist?
Power and authority have also tried to domesticate nature since the Neolithic.
How did we get here? Was Cauvin* right in proposing that it was the birth of religion that led humans to separate themselves from nature, thus domesticating it? Was it survival or was it ego. Or paradoxically, did the Gods need to create chaos and unbalance between us humans, and within the nature we are part of, in order for them to justify their existence?
Can we just sit in our couches and cancel religion? When one removes the natural chaos, the beautiful freedom we were born into, and then creates a fabricated, controlled and manipulated disorder, beings will not be able to realize that they are already in heaven as part of nature, as one with it. No, they will be blinded, self imprisoned, self destructing. Instead, they start to look for happiness externally, believing that through guilt and control you can earn a piece of a far away cloud-filled heaven. With time humans have stopped acknowledging, or even knowing, that heaven exists with our feet in the soil, muddy and raw. Instead, we have fictionalised it in the skies above, always looking up, yet unable to really see the big infernal hole we are slowly yet steadily stepping into. www.carolinaecheverri.com

Ryan Frigillana

Ryan Frigillana

Dana Stirling

Visions of Eden | Visions of Eden presents a historical account of a family’s journey as first-generation Filipino immigrants in America. Through the process of re-contextualization, the project weaves together original photography, archived materials, video stills, and illustrations, mimicking a narrative loosely structured on the Hebrew Bible—the artist’s response to a heavy religious upbringing.

Veiled illustrations appropriated from children’s Bible-story books serve as conflicting acts of preservation and erasure, holding on and letting go. The barely legible images—informing much of Frigillana’s childhood—personify dissociation, distance, and the perishing of memory. Paired with a repurposed family archive and laden scenes of domesticity, the resulting body of work evokes an Eden in decay, questioning the fallible notion of paradise upheld by the mythos of both the American Dream and Christian doctrine.

A meditation on familial identity, religion, death, and aging—this hybrid ‘portrait’ contemplates history while examining the values being fostered in the home today. ryanfrigillana.com

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