mina

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Margaret Durow

When Margaret was 5, they discovered a tumor in her lumbar spine that caused it to curve over time, resulting in severe scoliosis. After complications in a later surgery, went long periods of time where she was unable to stand or leave the house, and had more surgery which lead to more impairments. She turned to photography in this difficult time.

“Photography allows me to express how I feel, and transform the pain and isolation of my deformed and disabled body into beauty and strength,” she writes. “I try to mirror what I feel inside when I capture the subtle changes in light, mood, and landscapes around me. I take pictures to remember how I feel, and I hope they make you feel something personal for yourself.”

https://www.featureshoot.com/2020/11/beauty-pain-and-the-therapeutic-power-of-photography/

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Hayleigh Longman 

“Hayleigh Longman uses photography to open a dialogue, to collect stories tied to people and place which explore the duality of human strength and fragility. Longman uncovers ways to visually approach subjects of a sensitive personal nature, considering elements of play and performance within human existence.”

https://hayleighlongman.com/Selected-Work

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Midhat Poturovic

“Midhat Poturovic is an award-winning Bosnian photojournalist. His work mainly focuses on stories in Southeast Europe. His interest in photography started during his student days and his initial interest was in documentary photography. In the following years, this curiosity and desire to depict the truth manifested themselves in his career. The influence to recognize photojournalism as a career was partly due to a childhood spent in besieged Sarajevo during the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia. The war dramatically changed the physical, economic and social environment. He had a need to document and show the changes in post-conflict society and surroundings, social topics, as well as daily events and everyday life. In particular, he places a special emphasis on human rights, social justice stories, life and emotions of the most vulnerable groups in society.”

https://www.midhatpoturovic.com/singles

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Luo Yang

“GIRLS began in 2007 as a deeply personal series, for in her subjects, Luo observed emotions and questions very similar to her own. The intimate photographs that constitute GIRLS alternate between carefully staged portraits depicting an emerging Chinese subculture that defies our expectations, and snapshots that favour a raw, blurred aesthetic. The photographer simultaneously manages to convey the girls’ defiance and ultra-cool composure, alongside their vulnerability, shyness and insecurities. Luo elaborates: “I can’t say that they represent a whole new generation of women in China, but they are absolutely a group of women who represent independence and freedom”.”

https://www.featureshoot.com/2016/07/intimate-and-defiant-portraits-of-girls-in-present-day-china-nsfw/

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Maureen Drennan

“Years ago, when her husband Paul fell into a depression, Maureen Drennan connected with him by taking pictures. The resulting body of work, titled The Sea That Surrounds Us, combines portraits of Paul at home and sweeping landscapes taken at Block Island, where the artist spent a part of her childhood. “The intimacy of making the photographs together during a challenging time was restorative,” she told me. “Where words failed us, the pictures filled in the blanks.”

https://www.featureshoot.com/2016/08/photographer-copes-with-her-husbands-depression-through-self-portraits/

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Mafalda Rakoš

“I want to disappear – Approaching Eating Disorders is the result of a collaboration between the photographer and the women who trusted her to tell their stories.

Rakos met most of her protagonists— she does not call them “subjects”— through a self-help group for those in the midst of or in recovery from eating disorders. Some were friends before the book project even started. Everyone included had a say on how much or how little she wanted to participate; if someone wanted to stay anonymous, the photographer abided by her wishes.

For the most part, the women were eager to share this part of their lives with the photographer. The mainstream media, Rakos says, represents eating disorders in ways that aren’t always fair or accurate, and the women in I want to disappear were thankful for the chance to be honest about what they endured.”

https://www.featureshoot.com/2017/02/one-photographers-fearless-look-eating-disorders/

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Allie Tsubota

“Allie Tsubota is a lens-based artist living and working between Providence, RI and central Massachusetts. Her work explores psychic landscapes of migration, assimilation, and racialization, as well as questions of national belonging and postmemory within Asian Americans and those of the Asian diaspora. She is currently pursuing a Masters of Fine Arts at Rhode Island School of Design.”

https://www.allietsubota.com/about

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Felicia Simion

Felicia is a 27-year-old “visual artist and freelance photographer interested in Visual Anthropology and Storytelling, constantly looking for new ways to nurture self-expression.” Graduated from the Bucharest National University of Arts, Photography and Video department in 2016, and completed an MA degree in Ethnology, Cultural Anthropology and Folklore at the University of Bucharest in 2018.

“My artistic roots can be found during my childhood and adolescence, when I engaged with painting, music and writing. At the age of 13 I came across the works of Magnum photographers, which later became a representative moment in my evolution as a visual artist. As a photographer, I tend to pursue a fine art approach to each genre I focus on at a specific time. I situate my work somewhere near the thin line between reality and fiction, easily floating from one side to another. In the last couple of years, I have withdrawn inspiration from Cultural Anthropology, exploring themes such as family, identity, dynamics of tradition or body.”

https://www.instagram.com/feliciasimion.photographer/

https://feliciasimionphotography.com/wp/about/

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Lissa Rivera -- Article: “One Photographer’s Abiding Love Letter to Her Genderqueer Partner”

“In the beginning, Lissa Rivera says she and her partner BJ Lillis had “no money and no plans” for their portraits. They set up their photoshoots purely for the joy of it. Once, they went shopping at a discount fabric store on Flatbush Avenue in NYC, where they discovered a yellow polyester chiffon. Another time, BJ wore their Victoria’s Secret ‘Pink’ sweatpants for an impromptu session at home. “We were having fun with my crappy lens,” Rivera remembers. “It had terrible focus. Didn’t matter to us. Played dress-up all day in the kitchen on a warm Saturday afternoon.” Those warm afternoons since have grown into a years-long collaboration, beginning with their project Beautiful Boy (previously), comprising three chapters of photographs, each more sumptuous than the last. Five years ago, when the series was in its infancy, it was selected as one of the winners of the Feature Shoot Emerging Photography Awards, then in its second year.”

https://www.featureshoot.com/2021/08/one-photographers-abiding-love-letter-to-her-genderqueer-partner/

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Kimberly Witham -- The Gleaner Series

“Over the years, Kimberly Witham brought home the bodies of birds, foxes, squirrels, groundhogs, possums, voles, and raccoons, before finally laying them to rest in a patch of Earth close to her New Jersey home.

Before she buries them, Witham places the animals among fruits and flowers grown in her garden and old, beautiful objects found at yard sales. Then she photographs them, immortalizing them for a single instant in painterly tableaux. Inspired by Dutch painters, her work lives within that strange and murky netherworld that separates beauty from terror, fear from longing. Her photographs are an abundant memorial to all of the animals who’ve died–and a haunting reminder of the preciousness of life, meant for all of us who will someday follow them into the unknown.”

https://www.featureshoot.com/2021/08/memorializing-animals-whove-been-killed-on-the-road-in-photos/

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Ceres Henry -- AKA Diaja

“ “It’s said that Adam and Eve were Melanated beings.” Her ongoing Adam & Eve Series is a tribute to the people of the African diaspora, their beauty and divinity, during a time in our collective history where white supremacist violence continues to make national headlines. The vivid portraits, each featuring body paintings by Diaja herself, are the artist’s resounding response to harmful ideas and images reflected in the media for generations.”

“The inspiration for Adam & Eve came to Diaja by chance when she spotted a child with a flower painted on her face. “I put my own spin on it and painted the model all black so everything I painted on top would pop,” she remembers. “I decided to paint multiple flowers and incorporate real flowers into my imagery. That was the beginning of something major, yet at the time, it was just another creative day for me.””

https://www.featureshoot.com/2021/10/adam-eve-is-a-tribute-to-the-people-african-diaspora/

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Forrest Simmons

“Forrest Simmons is an artist working with photography, video, and sound. He is a faculty member at the International Center of Photography. He holds an MFA in Photography from Columbia College Chicago, where he was the recipient of a Graduate Fellowship as well as the John Mulvany and Bob Thall Scholarship in Photography. His most recent body of work, A Lush and Ferocious Wilderness, has been featured in exhibitions in Chicago, Houston, and Charlotte.”

http://forrestsimmons.com/

https://www.instagram.com/forrest_simmons/

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Foteini Zaglåra

“Fotini's relationship with photography began when she was 20 years old and she decided to experiment with self-portraits, as a new way of expression and creation. She now invites us to experience scenes of a different reality through her lens, presenting photos and images that look like a goth fairy tale. Through her instagram account (foteinizaglara) you can peek at some of the aspects of her inner world and be enchanted by images that combine imagination with a very clever concept, excellent setting and direction. The word "fairy tale" we used is not accidental. Themes from Alice in Wonderland are evident in several of her photos, while according to her sometimes we tend to underestimate fairy tales, but behind them are hidden truths and teachings, like that in life not everything is easy, but that does not mean we have to stop dreaming and hoping.”

https://www.instagram.com/foteinizaglara/

https://foteinizaglara.com/

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Jordyn Kelly Wild

(I personally know Jordyn so this bio is all I know about her career.) Jordyn was a local Atlanta photographer, but recently moved to Denver, Colorado. Her art encompasses weddings, elopements, portraits, landscape photography, etc. Her work has always spoke to me, so I wanted to be able to share her with my classmates. She travels often for work but also works as a producer at Boulder Media in Denver.

https://jordynkellyphoto.com/

https://www.instagram.com/jordyn.kelly/

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Valeria Cammareri

Valeria is an Italian photographer, residing in Milan where she works as a pediatrician. Her interest in photography began in 2021. Since then she’s been using “photography as [her] visual diary.” “Most of [her] shots have been taken in the street and recurrent themes are women and dreamlike aspects of a layered reality. The Pandemic gave [her] an opportunity to challenge myself with self portraits.”

https://www.instagram.com/_soulkitchen_/?hl=

https://www.lensculture.com/valeria-cammareri

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Meg Birnbaum -- Little Sorrow, Little Joys

“Meg Birnbaum lives and works in the Boston area. She is a photographer, graphic designer, and educator. Meg is a member of the Griffin exhibition committee and designs their catalogs, signage and website. Her work is held in the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Art, Houston, the Lishui Museum of Photography in China, the Meditech Corporation, and private collections.”

https://www.megbirnbaum.com/little-sorrow-little-joys

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Anna Heimkreiter

Born in Bad Tölz, Germany. Describes her life and work as “a combination of travel adventures, moments of stillness in nature, and magic.” Alongside her self-portraiture work, she is an illustrator as well. Her work is inspired by “the unique beauty of our existence on Mama Earth. Everything [she] make[s] is an invitation to connect deeply with yourself and the present moment.”

https://www.instagram.com/anna.heimkreiter/

https://www.wherewonderwaits.com/about-anna-heimkreiter/