Giacomo Alberico

Giacomo Alberico

Dana Stirling

After the Gold Rush | The Visigoth king Alarico I in 410 AD carried out the famous 'Sack of Rome' with his army. By conquering the city of Rome he plundered a huge amount of gold, silver and rare relics. During the journey to reach the African coast, Alarico and his army are hit by a strong storm at sea, which destroying the fleet will force them to stop on the coast of Calabria and then take refuge in Cosenza.

The king, according to legend, died shortly afterwards of an illness and was buried with the famous treasure in the riverbed of the Busento river that passes through the historical centre of the city. In the years to come, well-known personalities, german nazis, researchers and simple amateurs will try in vain to find this unknown place.

The project illustrates the traces left over the years by people, by nature itself and by imaginary events that the fictitious presence of gold may have triggered in Calabria. Using the story in question as a background, I explored a naturalistically unique land, with ancient popular traditions, but difficult on the socio-economic side due to the presence of powerful local organized crime and lack of funds to truly renew itself. www.giacomoalberico.com

Gian Marco Sanna

Gian Marco Sanna

Dana Stirling

AGARTHI | When walking along the shores of Lake Bolsena one is made aware of its distinctive and particular ambience.The water with its many colors and sounds, all of which play a crucial part in the natural cycle of the lake, its flora and fauna. The lake, a fascinating and mysterious place, over which many myths and legends hover. There are several stories about people going missing on the lake, and never found.

The most recent was in 2007, when a man and his young children simply disappeared, and were never found. Widely held beliefs take us back to the legend of “The Gate of Agarthi” a mythical place located on Bisentina Island, one of only two islands on the lake. Bisentina is believed to be the point of contact between “terra firma” and its mythical parallel - the legendary inner - earth kingdom of Agarthi - described in the work of the author Willis George Emerson (1856 - 1918).

Emerson’s conceptualization was linked to the theory of “Terra Cava” (Hollow Earth), a very popular subject in the field of esotericism and literature, as expounded by Dante Alighieri, who allegedly descended amongst the chosen-few, in order to explore the underground kingdom, and receive its energy called VRYL. I have worked on the mystery of Bolsena and on its legends, investigating among reality and fantasy.

The work is based on the territory of Etruria that could be a point of passage, the "Door, of passage" towards something of indefinite and mysterious. The Etruscans considered the Bisentina island (situated in the middle of the lake) the spiritual heart of the entire Etruscan nation that guard their secrets. www.gianmarcosanna.com

Silvia De Giorgi

Silvia De Giorgi

Dana Stirling

Places of Passage (Isolation Diary) | This ongoing series is a personal record of real and imagined journeys undertaken since the COVID-19 outbreak in Winter/Spring 2020. It is composed of manipulated images from my photographic archive and pictures shot during a time of solitude and self-isolation spent between Norway, Sweden and Italy.

Images from my past photographic archive served as a starting point for imaginative journeys through my memories in a time of lock-down, becoming windows to distant places and landscapes. These photographs are combined with pictures of the surroundings I encountered during various periods of quarantine spent in different countries. Places of Passage examines opposed subjects such as stillness and movement, the inside and outside, and the domestic space as opposed to the wild and open environment. It is a poetic reflection on solitude, the rhythms of nature and the passage of time. silvia-degiorgi.com

Peter Basden

Peter Basden

Dana Stirling

A Glancing Blow - From the Streets of the Medway Towns | A series of black and white photographs from the streets of the Medway towns. All of the images are from a project that I have been working on for around the last five years or so.

The work reveals a glimpse into the coarse underbelly of British society, highlighting little moments of unseen drama, flickers of humour and an eclectic mix of characters from a library of fleeting interactions caught on film. The photographs come from a dubious period of time in the United Kingdom, with a standing national divide over Brexit, widespread political turmoil and an unprecedented global pandemic looming in the background, optimism feels sparse.

As a collective, the work forms a dissection of uncontrolled, unposed life in Britain, presented through a plethora of snapshots and glancing blows.

For those unfamiliar with the Medway towns, the area is a conurbationin the region of South East England, in the United Kingdom. The towns surround the the mouth of the River Medway just before it empties into the Thames Estuary. Considered by some to be a deprived area in the garden of England, it sits just thirty miles away from the capital, sandwiched between London and some of Kent’s many famous coastal towns. The area celebrates its heritage through the naval dockyard in Chatham and as the historical home of Charles Dickens.

From the opposing ends of a single mile stretched between the towns of Rochester and Chatham, an interesting juxtaposition can be observed, with a medieval castle and a gothic cathedral partnered with quaint Dickensian themed boutiques at one end in Rochester, to the deteriorating remains of a once vibrant high street, now littered with boarded up shops and a sense of desperation in the contrasting area of Chatham.

I’m often very sentimental and nostalgic about Medway as it was the place where I was born and raised. In some ways, my work from this series is the result of me reevaluating the area as an adult. www.peterbasden.com

Peter Essick

Peter Essick

Dana Stirling

Construction Sites | Three years ago, I was photographing an urban, old-growth forest near my home in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. I learned to use a drone during that commission to photograph the forest canopy and to show the close location of the forest to the downtown skyscrapers. The genesis of the Construction Sites series came on the half-hour drive to and from my home to the forest.

Along the drive, I saw many construction sites where neighborhoods were being converted to larger mixed-use developments. I thought that the low altitude aerial perspective from a drone would be a new way to document this change. I started by photographing the sites early in the morning or late in the afternoon when there was no work going on. This was mostly for safety reasons, but the light is also more to my liking at these times. I also wanted to emphasis the construction landscape without the workers.

At the start of the project, I noticed that construction sites change very rapidly. If I returned to a site one week later there were new visual opportunities as a result of the construction progress. Using a drone where flight time is limited by battery life, there are many quick visual decisions to be made. A small change in the angle can turn a straightforward workplace documentation into an Abstract Expressionist field of color. I enjoy this challenge and am drawn to the near-abstract qualities of the movement of soil and equipment as well as the technological side of how the concrete, steel and wood come together to create a structure.

Throughout my career, I have focused on nature and environmental subjects. I believe that construction sites are a good indicator for how a society views development, progress and the treatment of the environment. Many of the major environmental issues of our day - climate change, population and economic growth, forever chemicals and sustainability – are incorporated in the design of residential and commercial buildings. I see these temporary construction landscapes as visual metaphors for how we are choosing to create our future. www.peteressick.com

Valeria Laureano

Valeria Laureano

Dana Stirling

APICE | The photographic research reconstructs, through a mixture of archival portraits and current places, the story of the old town of Apice, partially evicted due to the earthquake in Irpinia in 1962 and then completely destroyed and abandoned after the second earthquake, in 1980.

Today what remains of Apice is the journey in images that the artist proposes, giving new life to spaces, once occupied by daily gestures and now full of memories. The work was elaborated from an archive of images found on site, consisting of a large number of negatives and glass sheets found on the back of a coffin shop, buried from the damp ground.

The photo archive offers a faithful portrait of the inhabitants of the village and alongside the current images of places and landscapes, gives identity to the village again.

The protagonists of Apice and their stories are imagined by the author in a very personal way. This means that the viewer can ideally and freely interpret them in a subjective way. So, the identity of Apice takes shape from the memory of its inhabitants.

A story in which time is no longer synonymous with destruction and abandonment but with creation and rebirth. Check out the Apice video | www.valerialaureano.com

Yasmine Hatimi

Yasmine Hatimi

Dana Stirling

The New Romantics | It’s been some time now that i’ve wanted to talk about youth, and more specifically moroccan youth. The morocco of tomorrow will depend on the youth of today.

I started my project with a series I called “The New Romantics”. In this series of photographs, I present portraits of young men whom I ask to pose with flowers of their own choosing, and so, in a completely symbolic manner, I try to invoke sensitivity and romanticism where one would think it would not exist.

In realizing these portraits, I came to know a certain youth—a youth that thirsts for freedom and love, with a great sense of humor, a unique sense of style, and solidarity, but also a youth in distress. We are all subject to etiquette, to roles others have chosen for us, determined by our gender/sex, origins, culture or religion.

My idea to present men with flowers was also a way to address the stereotypes that imprison us, as woman or man and in certain societies more than others…I wanted to address this with a lot of levity, in a manner marked by playfulness and naivete.

It was important to me to reveal faces far from the clichés and the stereotypes , to discover a masculine youth that was diverse , not one with a single facet. The softness is there, one just has to look for it . www.yasminehatimi.com

Anton Talashka

Anton Talashka

Dana Stirling

Voice of the Belarusian Village | In the 21st century, globalization processes are moving at an incredibly fast pace. The problem of the extinction of villages worries the government not only of Belarus, but also of other developing countries. The population of the Belarusian village is declining: at the beginning of 1996, more than 3.2 million villagers lived in our country, then in 2016 - about 2.1 million. This problem is in many countries, but these processes in our country exacerbate economic problems in the villages.

Belarusian villages are dying, and every year there are fewer “survivors”. Together with the villages, the cultural code of Belarus is dying out: language, folk customs and crafts. But there are no breaks in culture, and culture is combined with the culture of other countries. The Belarusian nationality is losing its identity. The village is a source of culture and with every deceased resident of the village we become poorer ... And this poverty is the poverty of the soul. www.instagram.com/talashka_ph

Emilie Poiret-Brown

Emilie Poiret-Brown

Dana Stirling

Facture (2019) | My work lies on the boundary between photography and painting, seeking to challenge the notions of what a photograph is and how it is created. With conventional photography, the artist’s intervention takes place off the surface. In contrast, painting is valued on the artist’s personal expression which takes place simultaneously with a physical interaction between artist and surface. Cameraless processes allow me to interact directly with the surface and attempt to bring painting’s values to photography.

I have been inspired by painters, such as Yves Klein and Kazuo Shiraga, who use the human body in a physical connection with the materials and this physical connection is central to my work. Unlike conventional photography where the photographer’s body is distanced, my body is active in the mark-making, interacting physically with the photographic materials. I treat the light-sensitive surface as a canvas, using my body as a paintbrush. For me, the act of mark-making is a meditative act, a form of catharsis. It is this meditative process which dictates my gesture, often resulting in bold and expressive mark-making.

Although my interaction is closer to a painter’s, my work is still based within photography. Instead of paint and canvas, I use analogue processes and photographic light-sensitive materials. However, where photography normally involves strong control of materials, I misuse them utilising the photographic materials as creative components, to be handled in shaping the work. Rather than capturing a decisive moment, time frozen in an image, my work is a trace of its own creation. The process is not hidden but is made apparent through the chemical marks left on the surface, allowing an insight into the process of creation. My interaction with the surface is a private performance in which the viewer only has access to the aftermath, the trace of my gesture.

Cristina Rizzi Guelfi

Cristina Rizzi Guelfi

Dana Stirling

We Need a Face [?] | Selfies have become a storytelling tool, simple and immediate, but full of meaning. In an increasingly frenetic and immersive communication space, it is no coincidence that selfies have an increasingly important relevance. It is a kind of return to origins, made up of a representative language that is easy to use. Through selfies, in fact, you have the opportunity to show yourself to the world exactly in the way you want to be seen, or to make you perceive the sensations of a given moment only from the expression of the face, selecting precisely the information to be communicated.

The series "we need a face [?]" Was born to make fun of the widespread practice of obsession with selfies, replacing faces with photographs that were purchased from a bank of images. Most come from the US archives from the 1950s and 1960s. The question mark between the brackets is intended because it asks two questions: 1) Is it necessary to photograph your face? On the one hand, no, because body dysmorphism is a psychological disorder, typical of our society based on appearance and self-image, which causes in some individuals a continuous dissatisfaction and creates in the individual a conviction of having imaginary defects, related to your physical appearance, so much so that it becomes an obsession. 2) But without photographing the face, how can you understand the expression? This is why Arthur Schopenhauer's phrase "A person's face as a rule says more, and more interesting things, than his mouth, for it is a compendium of everything his mouth will ever say, in that it is the monogram of all this person's thoughts and aspirations "


I’m reminded of a passage from Kate Zambreno’s novel, Green Girl: ‘Look at me / (don’t look at me) / Look at me / (don’t look at me) / Look at me don’t look at me look at me look at me don’t look at me don’t.’ It seems that however private we may be, we all struggle with a conflicted need for visibility, with a ‘being looked at’ we might both resent and crave. How do you negotiate your own need for privacy and solo practice versus public recognition?

Kevin Convery

Kevin Convery

Dana Stirling

A Bird Never Flew on One Wing | A bird never flew on one wing, a euphemism for ordering another drink, is a literal impossibility. Living with a substance abuse disorder while being employed as a bartender left me circling in a stasis asking the age old question, “Am I sad because I am drinking or am I drinking because I am sad?” I phoned my father to give him the news, “Sitting in the bar all day paid off. They offered me a job.” The following five years of perpetual nights I celebrated every birthday, holiday and milestone with a meter of wood and a wall of smoke between me and my loved ones. No matter good or bad there is always something to drink to. www.doorsareclosing.com

Lieh Sugai

Lieh Sugai

Dana Stirling

Below The Big Top | The Culpepper & Merriweather Great Combined Circus is a traditional, nomadic one-ring family circus that lives on the road eight months out of the year.

Following a route through small towns, from the West Coast to mid-America, the close-knit troupe continues the tradition of the traveling circus. Unlike today’s overproduced theatrical mega-circuses, Culpepper & Merriweather brings together small-town communities in village-style events that many families visit year after year. These photographs explore the lives of the performers and the circus community at large, “under the tent” and on the road.

As a Japanese photographer living in America, I am interested in interrogating the cores of both of my cultures – cores that are permanent, unchanging, nostalgic, and in a mysterious way, true. Against the backdrop of our digital age, Culpepper & Merriweather represents an unchanging core in American culture, occupying a nostalgic space that persists alongside the mainstream. www.liehsugai.com

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

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