The Art of the Personal Project: Kate Warren

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 Warren

American Witches began as a project examining spiritually for the Washington Post Magazine. Deeply reported over the course of a month, photographer and writer Kate Warren set out to examine contemporary witchcraft. Ancient magick and witchcraft practices are experiencing a mainstream resurgence in response to the gender reckoning occurring in American culture. Contemporary witchcraft is intersectional: magick is most commonly practiced by women, people of color, poor communities, and queer people, all of whom have been disempowered by traditional patriarchal religion. From hoodoo practitioners to Amazonian plant medicine tribe to herbalists to vodou priestesses, there are all types of witches practicing across America. Rooted in a spiritual connection to the natural world, witchcraft allows them to connect to their intuition and ancestors, manifest their desires and protect themselves. By showing the breadth and normalcy American witchcraft, practices become demystified, opening a path for greater understanding of these folk spiritual traditions.

 

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 @SuzanneSeaseInstagram

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: Published Books from this year interviews

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: Holiday Photo Books as Gifts  2019

 

Andy Anderson: 

Salt:  Coastal and Flats Fishing Photography

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/p/salt-andy-anderson/1117795077/2675169959636?st=PLA&sid=BNB_ADL+Marketplace+Good+New+Books+-+Desktop+Low&sourceId=PLAGoNA&dpid=tdtve346c&2sid=Google_c&gclid=Cj0KCQiAiZPvBRDZARIsAORkq7d4lX7-sz1zs9M8rCs5RslEVa-JH7u_tecABhyqgEPHL0k3anX7J0EaAlI-EALw_wcB

 

Naomi Harris:

EUSA

http://naomiharris.com/eusa/

 

Mark Laita:

Serpentine

https://www.amazon.com/Serpentine-Mark-Laita/dp/1419706306

 

Eric Meola:

Fierce Beauty

https://www.amazon.com/Fierce-Beauty-Storms-Great-Plains/dp/1864708387

 

Max Hirshfeld

 Sweet Noise : Love in  Wartime

 

https://www.sweetnoisebook.com/store

 

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 @SuzanneSeaseInstagram

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: Michael Greenberg

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:  Michael Greenberg

Climbing Sherpa’s: Everest’s Heroes

These are the giants whose shoulders serve as the stepping-stone for westerners to become hometown heroes by summiting Everest. Little consideration goes to the climbing Sherpa’s who make sure the conditions are safe. They do the heavy lifting and take on the bulk of the risk. The Sherpa’s are the front line and have lost friends and relatives. The westerners do it for the challenge, thrill, bragging rights, and fame. The Sherpa’s do it because it’s the biggest paycheck available to feed their families.

Dasonam Sherpa
53yrs old
Summited 10 times ’97, ’98, ’99, ’02, ’05, ’06 (twice), ’07, ’08, & ’10
Saw the 2012 Khumbu ice fall accident from the Lola side where 16 climbing sherpas died. Decided to retire.
Owns 4 yaks and uses them to transport goods for Everest expeditions.
Ang Tshering Sherpa
64yrs old
Summited 3 times ’96, 2000, & ’01
Started at age 40 “to get rich”
Retired in 2004 after having an accident in 2002 where he fell 35m through the ice carrying 9 empty oxygen tanks he was transporting them down to replace.
Ang Dorje Sherpa
49yrs old
Summited 19 times
Was the climbing Sherpa for Rob Hall’s Adventure Cunsultants 1996 Everest expedition in 96 when a storm lead to the deaths of 8 climbers. The story from Everest / Into Thin Air
Currently a mechanic in Boise Idaho
Lakpa Dorjee Sherpa
63yrs old
Summited once May 14th 1983
He guided 3 climbers to the summit. The climbers abandoned him at the summit without equipment to get down. All he had was a “crumby old ice axe”. Fell and rolled down about 300m. Lost consciousness and woke up hours later without his goggles or axe, meters from the cliff. Rested 10 mins had some water. couldn’t sleep all night wondering who is going to take care of his parents when he dies, when he woke up he prayed “I’m sorry but thank you for chumulumu for saving my life” (Nepali name for god?) Remained a climbing sherpa on other mountains but refused to ever summit Everest again despite be offered more money. Kept his promise.
Kanchha Sherpa “The Living Legend”
Age 87
Summited 7 times- ’53, ’63 (twice), & last time in ’71
Last living Climbing Sherpa from Sir Edmund Hillary’s May 29, 1953 climb. The first successful summit of Mount Everest. He was 20yrs old when he snuck out of his parents’ house to meet up with Tensing Norgay in Darjeeling because he heard Tensing “had a job”.

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 @SuzanneSeaseInstagram

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: Christ Chavez (repeat to remember those in El Paso)

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:  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 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 @SuzanneSeaseInstagram

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: Dana Hursey

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:  Dana Hursey

The 14 Days Documentary Project is a collaboration of photography and film with the goal of unifying people through our commonality and shared humanity. This collection of imagery is from the “Great Britain” project and is but a small sampling of the over 600 portraits that Dana created during his “14 Days in Great Britain”. For more information on the 14 Days Project… visit: www.14daysproject.com

“14 Days in Great Britain” was as much an emotional journey for me as a physical one. To be touched so deeply by such brief encounters speaks to the heart of this incredible project. -Dana Hursey

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 @SuzanneSeaseInstagram

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: Kate Woodman

In honor of those who fought, served in the military and for Veteran’s Day (yes that was Monday but Thursdays are my day to post)

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

To many, Veteran’s Day is a day of remembrance; it is a day to embrace and experience to the fullest extent the freedoms and opportunities afforded to us by the sacrifice of many. To some however, it is a day of grief and loss, a reminder of the hole that no amount of patriotic pride can fill.

I wanted to capture that grief in my project War Widow, which documents the life of a woman as she learns of and copes with the death of her husband. War Widow deals more specifically with those moments of isolation—where she is alone with her denial, vulnerability, loneliness and even a bit of madness.

We often see those who have lost someone putting on a brave face in public, setting aside their own agony for the sake of other’s discomfort and being praised for their “strength”.  This leaves no room for grief except in extreme isolation, which further compounds the feeling that you are on your own.

War Widow is meant to challenge the expectation and veneration of stoicism after suffering loss to normalize and destigmatize grief as a very human process and show that though we all may be suffering by ourselves, we are not suffering alone.

 

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 @SuzanneSeaseInstagram

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: Doug McGoldrick

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:  Doug McGoldrick

Dinner with Mom-mom

Like many people who make a living in photography most of my work involves carefully planned images, that are being made to achieve a set goal for a client. Given my choice though I love to just go into a situation and capture what’s happening in front of me and telling a story, sometimes long stories and sometimes short stories. For this project it was a short story spending a single day with my Grandmother (Mom-mom) as she prepared a large family meal for our family, in these images she is in her early 90’s and it is one of the last large family meals she would prepare for my family before she passed. Mom-mom had quite a life, she spent her childhood in an orphanage in Philadelphia after her mother passed away shortly after arriving in the United states from Italy. After leaving the orphanage in her teens with her older sister she worked as a hair stylist and then sold tickets on the boardwalk in Wildwood New Jersey until her late 80’s, never slowing down while raising her two children. Being Italian cooking was constant in her life, bringing food from the old country to new generations of family. This meal fed 4 generations of family, passing that food culture forward. Mom-mom cooked simple meals of red sauce and pasta with few ingredients but mixed to perfection. I’m incredibly grateful I was able to capture this day when I could and only wish I had more time to spend with Mom-mo. All the recipes for the dinner I have posted on my website, dougphoto.com

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 @SuzanneSeaseInstagram

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: Eric Meola

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.

This is a personal project that I have featured before and shows the importance of personal projects.  You can order this beautiful book here

 

Today’s featured artist:  Eric Meola

FIERCE BEAUTY: Storms of the Great Plains

Stormy weather is a metaphor for our daily lives; and the faith of those who overcome adversity is the reason I’ve spent the past several years documenting severe weather. My passion for photographing storms in the Plains comes from witnessing and experiencing life in real time—nothing focuses the mind and human resolve more than a tornado riding along the horizon.

As climate change intensifies, I want to photograph the grandeur and fierce beauty of nature. I’m inspired by the small towns, the people, and the experiences that come with driving the back roads in the center of America. This is a place of adversity and resilience, and FIERCE BEAUTY: Storms of the Great Plains is my record of the road trips that gave me insight into a profoundly spiritual landscape.

Luck and perseverance are bookends to photographing and chasing storms on the Great Plains. Standing in gale-force winds, under rain, pelting hail, and lightning strikes, you feel a lot of adrenaline pumping as cumulonimbus clouds metastasize, spreading out over miles of land and rising tens of thousands of feet into the lower stratosphere. Weeks of long days often end in frustration as one storm collides with another, each undercutting the next one; and a more than 600-mile chase day ends in a dreary drive very late at night to a dark motel in a prairie town where even the fast-food franchises are closed. Batteries need to be recharged, lenses cleaned, and images downloaded to a laptop, as well as backed up. Then comes sleep—sometimes restless, other times instant, deep, and far too short before the morning weather briefing.

As a photographer, your vision is always evolving. What you see and how you see it are part of you, so I take notes no matter how tired I am, and then wake up early to walk the streets of the towns I might never see again. Exploring is not about the trip, but about the journey, and about looking inward.

If I have one goal, it is to capture the essence, the light, and the grandeur of the Great Plains on a two-dimensional, flat sheet of paper. The image at Wolf Point, Montana, which begins the essay “The Revelation of a Fierce Beauty,” happened in a moment of serendipity—one of our group had lost his wallet in some tall grass, and we traced it sixty miles west to our last location on the previous day. As some of the others searched along the ground, I looked out to the landscape of shadows and light, with white cotton-puff clouds hovering over the undulating green land. It was the Great Plains in a single photograph, and I knew it was an important image for the book. It was serene, vast, and in its mix of textures it personified what I felt about being in a place that wraps its arms around you and doesn’t let go.

In photographing storms, my interest is in a specific moment when a storm’s structure—its architecture—and the light, color, and texture of the clouds are revealed. In order to capture these moments, the photographs in this book were made with a series of high-resolution “full frame” digital cameras: I used a mixture of Sony, Nikon, and Canon cameras, with sensors ranging from 22 to 42 megapixels.

I used a variety of extreme wide-angle lenses, ranging from a 10 mm Voigtlander to a 14–24 mm Nikkor and a 16–35 mm Sony GM; as well as intermediate focal-length lenses, and telephotos as long as 300 mm. The technology of lenses and digital sensors is rapidly evolving, and I have become agnostic in the era of digital cameras. Wherever the ground appears in a photograph, I particularly wanted to show its texture, as it usually occupies just a sliver at the bottom of the photographs, but is so important to the scale. I like to travel with as little gear as possible, often using just two cameras, each with a “dedicated” lens so there is no risk of getting water or dust on the sensor under what are often very trying conditions. At times, just standing upright against the wind is an exercise in futility.

I electronically “processed” all of the images in this book using Adobe’s Lightroom program, reproducing the image the way it appeared at the moment of capture, but adjusting the clarity and contrast to emphasize the details that are lost when photographing through strong downpours of rain and hail. Often, the delicate character, the mood, and the soul of a photograph are lost during processing, so I come back to images months, sometimes years, later and look at them again. Many of these images were made very quickly, within only a few minutes, before high outflow winds, strong downdrafts, and large hail made photography dangerous.

I want to capture something that brings you into the photograph. There is a tendency in the age of video to shoot time-lapses of storms. Although motion—especially motion over time—can be interesting, I am more concerned with capturing the subtle beauty of one particular moment, so that it can be studied. Storms are exquisite structures of transformation, and what I love about them is that they change rapidly from second to second as the storm goes through its life cycle. At times, I have to remind myself to photograph, as a large part of the experience for me is standing at the edge of a field of wheat, listening to the wind, and watching the storm. Storms on the Great Plains are a uniquely American landscape, and they need to be listened to and watched, as well as photographed.

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 @SuzanneSeaseInstagram

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: Ben Franke

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:  Ben Franke

Swerve Kings

While in SoHo, I saw a group sitting on these cool looking bikes. I asked to take their photo, which they obliged, and then told me: “watch this.” They stood in front of their bikes to stop traffic on Prince and Mercer and a rider named Obloxkz whipped down the block doing a wheelie and then quickly leaned back far enough to drag his free hand on the ground. This was my introduction to bike life.

Since that day, I have been interested in these bikers and have learned more what draws them to it. Biking gives them a sense of community, which they described as “bikes bring bonds.” While they are swerving through traffic in New York, and sometimes shutting down the streets during rideouts, they have formed a large community centered around riding, wheelies and swerving.

With Swerve Kings, I aim to capture these riders through portraits and in action to try to convey the feeling I first got when Obloxkz flew past me that first day in SoHo.

 

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 @SuzanneSeaseInstagram

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: Aaron M. Conway

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:  Aaron M. Conway

When capturing a portrait I want to make sure the subject’s personality comes through. I want the viewer to feel that they have some connection with the subject and understand their story. Sometimes that is with a smile or it’s a stare. It’s the creator’s job to bring the subjects true self out sometimes in just a short period of time.

When approaching this project I knew I needed to take the familiar subject of youth boxing and make it my own. I wanted to create a series of portraits of these boxers that they would be proud of. That shows their dedication and intensity. Along with highlighting the organization that helps these athletes grow both physically and mentally.

As I sat across from these kids I kept asking for their “Fight face”. Within the first few images I realized that everything was lining up. None of us had ever met before and they were able to take the focus they learn from their coaches and apply it to the photo. We moved throughout the gym capturing all aspects of their training to create this series of images.

We have now started the printing process and will be delivering large format prints to each of the kids. This is an important part of my process; I enjoy holding the photograph and not just viewing on a screen.  Now they can have something tangible from the photo-shoot versus something that could fade away in our digital 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 @SuzanneSeaseInstagram

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: David Bean

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:   David Bean

“I’d trade all my tomorrows for one single yesterday.”
― Kris Kristofferson

Nostalgia is a funny thing. No matter how old we are all, of us look back on our younger days with a certain sense of longing. They’re the “good old days” even if they really weren’t.

We don’t want to go back to the painful parts of our past, but we sometimes dream about revisiting the culture and environment; the music, fashion, sounds and smells that were a part of our upbringing.

I’ve lived in over 30 towns and cities, in 11 states and went to 6 different high schools. I’ve lived on hippie communes in the country and tiny apartments in the city. My memories of the past are varied and diverse. I often find myself longing to go back to South Florida in the late 80’s/early 90’s. Even though I was young, lonely and lost during that period, there’s a magic to that era for me that I can’t escape.

One day I had the idea to revisit the past through a series of photo shoots that captured the lives of youth/young adults in the U.S. over the course of 4 decades; the 1960’s, 1970’s, 1980’s & 1990’s. My goal was not to just create a homage to these periods, but to make the photos look as if they were shot in their respective times.

I tried my best to keep all of the props authentic, even down to the Coke and McDonalds products used. I searched out and bought items online from eBay and when not available I printed out replicas and made them myself.

All photos were taken with a Canon 5D Mark IV and Profoto B1 and/or A1’s. I didn’t want to “cheat” and use film for these shoots. I wanted to show that I could re-create time periods using modern technology.

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 @SuzanneSeaseInstagram

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: Spencer Humphrey

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 @SuzanneSeaseInstagram

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: Max Hirshfeld

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 @SuzanneSeaseInstagram

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: Kate Woodman

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 @SuzanneSeaseInstagram

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: Fritz Liedtke

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.

Portland Photographer

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 @SuzanneSeaseInstagram

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: Reginald Campbell

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 @SuzanneSeaseInstagram

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: Christ Chavez

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 @SuzanneSeaseInstagram

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: John Huet

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 @SuzanneSeaseInstagram

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.