Author: Suzanne Sease

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own.  I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before.  In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find.  Please DO NOT send me your work.  I do not take submissions.

 

Today’s featured artist:  Spencer Humphrey

The goal of my photography is to notify the observer of a world that exists outside of their microcosm. For me the ultimate compliment comes in the form of the question “where is that?” I am currently measuring success by my ability to subtly guide the reader into a world right under their nose that they did not know existed.

In keeping with my theme of awareness, I have currently dedicated a large amount of my focus to stories based in the south. In the words of the famous Andre 3000 quote “the South got something to say.” And I feel that message is often muted and relegated to white noise preventing the masses, even southerners, from realizing all the South has to say from a visual perspective.

Continuing with my goal to help observers discover the same beauty and inspiration in their own back yard that some travel across the world to find. I chose the rodeo as a back drop to alert my audience of the unique, overlooked imagery and culture right in our own backyard that is entertaining and inspiring, yet offers a glimpse of life’s disappointments and triumphs. My rodeo images ultimately serve as a reminder that despite our differences there are many common emotional highs and lows that weave us all together in the human experience.

To see more of this project, click here.

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s.  After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram

Success is more than a matter of your talent. It’s also a matter of doing a better job presenting it.  And that is what I do with decades of agency and in-house experience.

 

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own.  I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before.  In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find.  Please DO NOT send me your work.  I do not take submissions.

 

Today’s featured artist:  Max Hirshfeld

As many countries are reassessing their responses to mass immigration, Max Hirshfeld, one of the great American photographers working today, delves deep into the visual memory of the Holocaust—a subject difficult to grasp and almost impossible to document—to share the story of his parents’ enduring love in a time of war.

Max’s parents, Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust raised him in a small city in Alabama, where life in the South of the 1950s and 1960s was quiet and mostly idyllic. But lurking under the surface was a remarkable yet tension-filled history that fully revealed itself only after he had a family of his own. Max knew the outer perimeters of his parent’s story – the challenges of being Jewish in a place that increasingly alienated them, their individual trajectories as they moved through adulthood, and their chance meeting and secret romance in the Polish ghetto.

But it took a pilgrimage to Poland with his mother in 1993 (and the discovery of post-war letters between his parents) to more fully acquaint him with the depths of their tragedies and the exceptional love story that sustained them throughout separation until they were reunited in the USA in 1949.

Though Sweet Noise: Love in Wartime (Damiani – October 2019) features events that began seventy-five years ago, the material is eerily timely.  As Eastern Europe grapples with this horrific legacy, and many countries are reassessing their responses to mass immigration, those in a position to bear witness need a supportive environment wherein art and language serve to remind the world what can occur when hatred and the concept of ethnic cleansing are given free rein.

  

To see more of this project, click here.

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s.  After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram

Success is more than a matter of your talent. It’s also a matter of doing a better job presenting it.  And that is what I do with decades of agency and in-house experience.

 

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own.  I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before.  In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find.  Please DO NOT send me your work.  I do not take submissions.

 

Today’s featured artist: Kate Woodman 

When I was a kid, my mom told me I could be or do anything I imagined.

I underwent various phases of imagined identities—adventuring archaelogist a la Indiana Jones, and apprentice to Leonardo DaVinci, to name a few–but before long, reality struck and I found myself in an office crunching numbers. Not that being an engineer and designing buildings isn’t a fulfilling career—it often even requires imagination—but gone were the days of building medieval castles in my head, replaced with the very real tasks of writing field reports and running computer analyses for seismic strength.

At what point does our imagination give way to reality? When do we lose that childlike sense of wonder and resign ourselves to our inevitable fates? More importantly, what happens to us when it does?

When I transitioned to full time photographer three years ago, I approached my job as any pragmatic adult would. How would I work within the parameters of the real world? Was there a formula for creating the “right” image?    How could I fit into the industry mold, ensuring commercial success and financial stability?

But I realized one day that my love for photography was not predicated on career viability; rather it is rooted in the idea of limitless imagination. You see in photography, imagination is everything. Your creativity is not bound by the laws of the universe, and whatever you can imagine, you can (with a little creative problem solving and some Photoshop know-how) create.

With that in mind, I embarked on a project in an attempt to honor that creative reawakening that photography has inspired—and continues to inspire—in me. “Imaginarium” is a photo series that explores the surreal creativity of children, untainted by the burden of reality. Accompanied by text from my supremely talented friend and author Nicole McKeon, this series serves as reminder to us all that those with their heads in the clouds rise above the rest.

To see more of this project, click here.

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s.  After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram

Success is more than a matter of your talent. It’s also a matter of doing a better job presenting it.  And that is what I do with decades of agency and in-house experience.

 

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own.  I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before.  In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find.  Please DO NOT send me your work.  I do not take submissions.

 

Today’s featured artist:  Fritz Liedtke

SACRED sā-krəd

2b: entitled to reverence and respect

In America’s current climate of divisiveness and moral outrage, how does one respond with something better than a tweet?  How do we stand up for the powerless? How might we reverence, honor, and dignify those who are often vilified and marginalized in 45’s America?

Perhaps it’s time to answer these questions with something other than words.  In my own quiet way, these images are my response.

I spent several months listening to and learning from the friends depicted here. I had to ask myself: what do I, a hetero, cis-gender, middle-class, white male, have to say about transgender people, Muslim women, Latina farm workers, young black men, or Native Americans? The answer: that we are one.  That each person has a rightful place as part of the beloved community.  I wanted to show that love trumps divisiveness, apathy, race, gender, politics, class, ignorance, fear, and hate. That when we take the time to know one another, to listen and learn, we become more.

So we collaborated to create images that celebrate their history, identity, humanity, and courage through traditional symbolism.  In spite of its religious undertones, iconography remains a valid way of speaking about that which is holy–that which we care deeply about, hold dear, consider beautiful and sacred.  This type of language is deeply needed today.

This set of 5 large photo-encaustic panels together create one body of work.  They are crafted of layers of wax and metal, wood and paper, ink and paint: many different elements that create a whole.  E pluribus unum. 

These people are my brother, sister, mother, father.  And they glow from the inside out. As Michael Golz explains, “The subject of the icon is a person transfigured by…love.”

Each of these pieces is a 24×36″ photo-encaustic assemblage.  They are composed of metal leaf, gold leaf, paint, ink, and paper, on a cradled 1.5″ wood panel.  Each piece is unique, requiring many days to create.

Many thanks to the Pine Meadow Ranch Residency program for their part in bringing this project to life.

To see more of this project, click here.

Or Instagram, click here

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s.  After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram

Success is more than a matter of your talent. It’s also a matter of doing a better job presenting it.  And that is what I do with decades of agency and in-house experience.

 

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own.  I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before.  In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find.  Please DO NOT send me your work.  I do not take submissions.

Today’s featured artist: Reginald Campbell

“I think for me this project started in the back of my head a long time ago. Being a young black boy with no pops at home you become a stereotype. No father son day for you… no pops at your football games cheering you on. Then the questions of “is your dad still alive” always were around.

When you are young you only believe what you see and to me, at that time (5-18 years of age).

I didn’t see black fathers… mainly because mine wasn’t around. Fortunately like people say… the older you get the wiser you get. I’ve learned that stereotypes aren’t always true and that even our government perpetuated most of the so-called absent black father myth (welfare, Vietnam and drugs). This project shows that black fathers are present in droves and are here for our youth just as abundantly as any other ethnicity or race.”

Also the link to the gallery is http://www.regcampbellphoto.com/a-false-narrative

 

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s.  After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram

Success is more than a matter of your talent. It’s also a matter of doing a better job presenting it.  And that is what I do with decades of agency and in-house experience.

 

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own.  I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before.  In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find.

NOTE: if you have a personal project that feature people in cities doing good for others in their city, please send them to suzanne@suzannesease.com for consideration. Thanks!

 

Today’s featured artist:  Christ  Chavez

How to hold the power of light in a dark time in my binational bicultural region?

For the past 20 years I’ve been photographing tender moments in my beloved frontera as they fade away.

Beyond the politics, strong woman figure, activist, the rituals that Fronterizos still embrace-I try not to force the gentlest moment of an image.

As I look back at my work, I have come to understand that to stay grounded and out of this darkness we must remain in search of the light.

To see more of this collection, click here

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s.  After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram

Success is more than a matter of your talent. It’s also a matter of doing a better job presenting it.  And that is what I do with decades of agency and in-house experience.

 

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own.  I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before.  In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find.  Please DO NOT send me your work.  I do not take submissions.

Today’s featured artist:  John Huet

Last year Phil Johnson at @agencypja reached out to ask if I’d be interested in working on a pro-bono project for College Bound Dorchester, a nonprofit dedicated to reducing systemic, generational urban poverty and violence by helping formerly gang-involved individuals go to college and start a new life. I had the honor of meeting many of these students and capturing their resilience as part of College Bound’s “Uncornered Photo Documentary” project. The project reveals the power of choosing something different and the universal experience of what it means to be Uncornered, whether you’re a powerful public figure, an athlete, a business leader, a celebrity or gang involved.

Now through August 25, my portraits and the stories of these students and many of Boston’s prominent public figures, including Mayor Marty Walsh, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, State Street’s Chief Diversity Officer Paul Francisco, Emmy-winning journalist Andrea Kremer, and Boston Police Commissioner William Gross, to name a few, will be on display at the Boston Common.

WHERE: Boston Common, adjacent to the Little League Field. Enter through the Charles Street entrance, midway between the corners of Boylston St. and Beacon St.

WHEN: August 13-25, 2019

To see more of this project, click here.

WHO:  Photographer John Huet donated his time to photograph more than two dozen people including the following public figures:

• Martin J. Walsh, Mayor of Boston
• Rep. Ayanna Pressley, (D) Massachusetts
• William Gross, Boston Police Commissioner
• Steven Tompkins, Sherriff Suffolk County
• Andrea Kremer, NFL Hall of Fame sports broadcaster
• Miceal Chamberlain, Massachusetts President of Bank of America
• Linda Dorcena Forry, Vice President of Diversity, Inclusion and Community Relations, Suffolk Construction
• Jim Rooney, President and CEO Boston Chamber of Commerce

• Paul Francisco, Chief Diversity Officer, State Street Corporation.
• Karen Kaplan, Hill Holiday Chair and CEO
• Callie Crossley, WGBH Host
• Claude Dielna, Portland Timbers

Photographs of several Boston Uncornered students, staff and leaders will also be part of the exhibit:

• Mark Culliton, College Bound Dorchester CEO
• Michelle Caldeira, College Bound Dorchester Senior Vice President
• Conan Harris, College Bound Dorchester Vice President of Policy and External Affairs

• Raul Morales, Boston Uncornered student
• Irvin Woods, Boston Uncornered student
• Paul Burns, Boston Uncornered student
• Alex Diaz, Boston Uncornered student
• Kismauri Pena, Boston Uncornered student
• Brittany Baldwin, Boston Uncornered student
• Quaknesha Garvin Johnson, College Bound Dorchester
• Elias Perea, College Readiness Advisor
• Will Dunn, College Readiness Advisor
• Francisco DePina, College Readiness Advisor
• Luis Rodrigues, College Readiness Advisor
• Lealah Fulton, College Bound Dorchester staff

WHY: The journey Boston Uncornered students make from the corner to college has the power to transform Boston, where the one percent of young people (those who are gang involved) occupy the five percent of city’s street corners where nearly 75 percent of the city’s shootings take place. Those with the charisma, influence and ingenuity necessary to form and run gangs are natural leaders. They know how to get others to follow. Boston Uncornered is turning these leaders of gangs into respected members of the city who will lead others toward education and well-paying jobs rather than lives of crime.

To donate to this organization, chick here

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s.  After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram

Success is more than a matter of your talent. It’s also a matter of doing a better job presenting it.  And that is what I do with decades of agency and in-house experience.

 

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own.  I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before.  In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find.  Please DO NOT send me your work.  I do not take submissions.

Today’s featured artist:  Zach Anderson

Bobbi Wendt has been consulting with Photographer /Director Zach Anderson for several years and they collaborated on a personal project using Bobbi’s oversized vintage flag.  Bobbi mailed Zach her flag and suggested that he pack it with his gear so when an opportunity presented, he could make photos utilizing this beautiful prop so we could use the images to promote Voter Registration and Voting in future elections…everything from City Council to President.

Bobbi came up with the headline  “Vote like your life depends on it.  Because it does.”

John Kehe designed the layouts for the social media campaign and the project continues to evolve.

Everybody please make sure you’re registered and Vote.  A thriving Democracy requires the participation of We the People.

  

To make sure you are registered to vote, click here

Or if you need to register, click here

To see more of Zach’s work, click here.

 

Zach Anderson is represented by Candace Gelman Associates.

 

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s.  After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram

Success is more than a matter of your talent. It’s also a matter of doing a better job presenting it.  And that is what I do with decades of agency and in-house experience.

 

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own.  I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before.  In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find.  Please DO NOT send me your work.  I do not take submissions.

Today’s featured artist:  Ryan Dearth

“Whenever possible, I’m a huge proponent of shooting personal work while on a project to make the images work towards my own personal goals (important note: this is great so long as nothing interferes with the project goals). Sometimes that means an extra setup of my design, or when I’m traveling, getting out before call time to shoot for myself. I use it as a time to take creative risks, and I’ve noticed that this practice can help inspire me for the rest of the day, week, or longer, and occasionally ends up working in my portfolio. This work came out of one of those cases.

I spent a week this summer shooting on a ranch in Montana for a job. Like most working ranches, the ranch hands bring in the horses from pasture early every morning to prep for the day. I made it a point each morning to get up early with the wranglers and shoot for myself before I started my client-oriented work. To be clear, I had no preconceived notions to make this into a full project. I noticed that every day the crew was made up almost entirely of women, which struck me as very cool and inspiring, and lent itself to a great narrative.

I love the idea of the badass cowgirls wrangling horses in Montana because I love the idea of flipping societal scripts. Women horse wranglers are not a new or unusual concept by any means, but I do think it goes against the grain of how many of us visualize ranch culture and who works physically-intense jobs. These women work their asses off to do what they love, and I certainly think it’s pretty cool.”

To see more of this project, click here.

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s.  After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram

Success is more than a matter of your talent. It’s also a matter of doing a better job presenting it.  And that is what I do with decades of agency and in-house experience.

 

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own.  I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before.  In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find.  Please DO NOT send me your work.  I do not take submissions.

Today’s featured artist: Kremer /Johnson

The paintings of Rene Magritte have influenced generations of creatives, designers, and advertisers.  As fans of his work, and as an homage to the impact he has had on the world of visual arts, we’ve reimagined some of his most iconic paintings.  Each photo in this series was created with utmost fidelity to the original painting in mind.  In honoring Magritte’s ability to turn existing norms on their head, we’ve placed additional contemporary elements in each that speak to the realities of life in the modern world.

To see more of this project, click here.

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s.  After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram

Success is more than a matter of your talent. It’s also a matter of doing a better job presenting it.  And that is what I do with decades of agency and in-house experience.

 

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own.  I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before.  In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find.  Please DO NOT send me your work.  I do not take submissions.

“A new documentary about photographer Jay Maisel is opening soon, so I thought I would share this anecdote about Jay. Don’t miss JAY MYSELF, directed by Stephen Wilkes, when it opens in theaters July 31st!”

I was sent to NYC to train as an art buyer at Scali, McCabe and Sloves with the amazing Linda Marso.

During my first week, Susan Froomer came in to show the work of her husband, Brett Froomer.  The next day, a guy came in and showed us some mediocre at best portraits and when he could tell we were not impressed, he pulled out several sheets of slides (yes, I am showing my age).  When he left, I told Amy Schuster (Art Buyer with Linda Marso) that some of the work was not his as I had seen it the day before with Susan.  We called the work back pretending it was for an assignment for Nikon.  Linda noticed the work was Brett, Bob Krist and Jay Maisel.  Linda called the photographer in to the agency and sat him down telling him the work was not his and in walks Brett, Jay and Bob’s agent.  The photographer was in shock and Linda required him to sign a document stating that he would never show the work again or he would face legal charges.

When I returned to Richmond, Jay sent me one of his books inscribed with “Great detective work, Jay”.   And of course, I still have the book that I fondly treasure.

He got the work of Jay’s when he worked there and almost burned down his studio.  The other work came from another lab he had worked.

 

Today’s featured artist:  Stephen Wilkes on Jay Maisel

Stephen’s film, Jay Myself, is opening at the Film Forum in NYC on July 31. Stephen & I will do a Q&A on Wednesday July 31, Thursday Aug 1 , Friday Aug 2 at the 7: 45 PM show. On Saturday and Sunday the Q & A will be at the 4:10 PM show.

Q&As with JAY MYSELF Subject Jay Maisel and Filmmaker Stephen Wilkes

Wednesday, July 31, 7:45 show

Thursday, August 1, 7:45 show

Friday, August 2, 7:45 show

Saturday, August 3, 6:00 show (Wilkes only)

Sunday, August 4, 4:10 show (Wilkes only)

how to get tickets for Film Forum in NYC show, click here

click here for LA showing at the Laemmle Royal theater for tickets

To see more of this project and the full schedule of showings, click here.

Trailer for the film click here

Instagram: @oscopelabs and hashtag  #JayMyself

 

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s.  After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram

Success is more than a matter of your talent. It’s also a matter of doing a better job presenting it.  And that is what I do with decades of agency and in-house experience.

 

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own.  I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before.  In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find.  Please DO NOT send me your work.  I do not take submissions.

Today’s featured artist: Jonathan Beller

 

A photograph can take on many meanings once it’s viewed, but as I point the camera, my aim is to explore the subject in order to learn something more. I may not have any connection at the start, but once I begin, something essential starts to emerge, and it may not be what I expected. That discovery process fuels my work. Learning and especially exploring new environments are a huge draw for me.

I was hired to do stills and B-roll for a documentary film, “Leh Wi Tok” (Let Us Talk, 2011) examining the role of radio broadcasting in the post-war rebuilding of Sierra Leone, west Africa. The subjects of the portraits seen here existed far from my known experience at the time. Across the world, a different culture, and one shredded by an 11-year civil war. That war left over 50,000 dead, and countless wounded and traumatized. What would I see in these people?

Every chance I got between responsibilities to the filming, I gravitated toward making these images as a more complete way to connect and understand the people around me, even through the language and cultural differences. And they were willing to connect. I became more and more fascinated as the people revealed themselves to me in unmasked moments. Plus, I learned better through this project that I put people at ease naturally, and allow their essence to come through.
The way this personal project went down was definitely an evolution from my earlier work. I picked up the camera as a skateboarding teenager. It was fun to participate in the action as a skater and at the same time be an observer with a bit of distance. From those early days of more action, still life scenes and commercial/still work, I’d say I’ve come a long way in embracing the personal connection I can make with people.

Giving voice to the voiceless is what the radio journalists of Sierra Leone do. We try to understand war, factions, killing, and what Sierra Leone went through, and still do, all these years on, but on the ground, the real power for me was in the strength and resilience of the people I met. For instance, one man had been a member of a specialized military group (the Kamajor were a bit like the Jedi, who believed they had mystical powers and that the bullets would go around them). Now he turns his skill to empowering the citizens through broadcasting, which he finds is still a dangerous business, equally powerful. Another man lost his arm to a combatant who had been his neighbor before the war. But he truly found forgiveness, and they are living side by side again.

These are not uncommon stories. Everywhere I looked, the people weren’t revealing devastation, even the ones with missing limbs and missing families. There was a rich sense that each person contained the breadth of human experience within them. As we all do. Love, peace, forgiveness, humanity and connection. I am grateful the people allowed me to reflect that immense spirit and share it with others.

 

To see more of this project, click here.

Award winning film can be seen here.

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s.  After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram

Success is more than a matter of your talent. It’s also a matter of doing a better job presenting it.  And that is what I do with decades of agency and in-house experience.

 

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own.  I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before.  In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find.  Please DO NOT send me your work.  I do not take submissions.

 

Today’s featured artist:  Ashton Ray Hansen

It’s been three years since I first discovered #vanlife and two years since my VanLife project was first featured on A Photo Editor. In those three years I have met some incredible humans and have heard some inspiring journeys. People from all over the world who have made the decision to down-size and simplify their lives while trying to minimize their footprint on this planet—finding more economical ways to live, creative ways to utilize space, and building a stronger, tighter-knit, community. This has become a lifestyle that fills them with love and purpose.

My fiancé and I have dabbled into the van life culture to experience it for ourselves and, although, this is not a lifestyle that fits our goals and needs, there is much we have adapted into our own rhythm. We’re more of Overlanding adventurists and have been able to incorporate the “tiny-living” mindset on our own adventures. We still dream of owning our own van someday, albeit, for shorter, less permanent travels. Until then, we’ll continue to admire and romanticize of those who are living “the dream.”

To see more of this project, click here.

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s.  After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram

Success is more than a matter of your talent. It’s also a matter of doing a better job presenting it.  And that is what I do with decades of agency and in-house experience.

 

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own.  I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before.  In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find.  Please DO NOT send me your work.  I do not take submissions.

 

Today’s featured artist:  Ryan Dearth

“Heartland is a project that actually started as a documentary news assignment for the Daily Telegraph UK. It was as an outside-in spotlight on Rural America shortly after the 2016 election and eventually turned into a personal project as I came back of my accord to build the project into a more in-depth piece. The photos take place primarily in and around Wallace County, Kansas, which has a population of fewer than 1,500 people and is consistently one of the most overwhelmingly Republican counties in the nation.

The project eventually took hold for me and became a personal exploration of external factors on internal notions. I wanted the images to consider the relationship between rural communities and their surroundings, as well as the juxtaposition of isolation vs. desolation. At times these areas feel nostalgic – like a world left behind. At other times, the community feels vibrant and completely relevant in today’s world.”

To see more of this project, click here.

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s.  After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram

Success is more than a matter of your talent. It’s also a matter of doing a better job presenting it.  And that is what I do with decades of agency and in-house experience.

 

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own.  I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before.  In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find.  Please DO NOT send me your work.  I do not take submissions.

Today’s featured artist:  Aldo Chacon

SHOE WIZ

A shoemaker once told me we have to take care of our shoes, they protect our feet, our feet carries our body that carries our head….

There was nothing else about his story, but he taught me the value of craftsmanship and dedicating a lifetime to making sure people protect their heads…

 

To see more of this project, click here.

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s.  After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram

Success is more than a matter of your talent. It’s also a matter of doing a better job presenting it.  And that is what I do with decades of agency and in-house experience.

 

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own.  I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before.  In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find.  Please DO NOT send me your work.  I do not take submissions.

 

Today’s featured artist:  Kate Woodman

Growing up as a kid in suburban New England, there was always something enchanting about the west. Stories of entrepreneurial pioneers leaving everything they knew and heading out into unchartered territory read like epic fairytales–the great American quest into the vast unknown, with trials and tests around every corner, and insurmountable obstacles overcome by singular resolve, spontaneous ingenuity and some good old fashioned luck.

I think like most Americans, I have a tendency to romanticize our history.  I am often confronted by a sense of nostalgia for times gone by—a compelling ache for experiences I did not experience and never will. This nostalgia has been an ever present theme in my life since childhood, and as an adult has manifested in my work—first as a historic preservationist and then as a photographer.  It inspires in me an insatiable need to preserve that which is lost, whether through the restoration of a house or the creation of a visual narrative—ensuring that its memory is honored and lives on.

But nostalgia is a funny thing. It is a non-experience, an artifice of memory, and like the great American fables of the west, and it glosses over the day-to-day minutia and trivializes the mundane.  But there is beauty in the quiet moments interspersed between the pivotal plot points. Beauty in the last rays of sun hitting your face as you pick fresh flowers for your table; in the dust filtering the light as you pull today’s laundry off the line; in the warped and weathered wood of the front porch railing; and in the cool night air settling in as you check your herd before turning in for the night.  This series seeks to marry the romantic idealism in my mind’s construct of the era with the mundane day-to-day life of the pioneer by creating a cinematic visual narrative.

The series in part is inspired by the location itself. The Dalles Mountain Ranch, located in the rolling hills of the Columbia River along the historic Oregon Trail, was settled in the 1860s. The land proved to be harsh and unsuitable for farming, forcing the settlers to ranch cattle rather than harvest crops.  It was eventually lost in the Great Depression and subsequently whittled away parcel by parcel until eventually purchased by the state and designated as a preserve.  The ranch is an archetype of the fate of American ranching and now stands as a melancholic relic of an irretrievable time long since past.

 

To see more of this project, click here.

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s.  After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram

Success is more than a matter of your talent. It’s also a matter of doing a better job presenting it.  And that is what I do with decades of agency and in-house experience.