The Art of the Personal Project: Christian Tisdale

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:  Christian Tisdale

Whenever I travel, I love to just walk, especially off the normal tourist’s path. You get such an authentic and casual view into the lives of people who actually live there, rather than the curated spaces that line the beachfront. Real people and real moments and real spaces. I’ve always been magnetically drawn to those scenes.

On a recent trip I was walking down a side street in Old Puerto Vallarta, and I saw this incredible courtyard inside of an art gallery, with a lone figure working on a canvas painting inside. I didn’t have my camera with me at the time, so I asked the gallery manager if I could talk with the painter about shooting some photos later in the day. He said I could ask the painter directly and introduced me to Efren Gonzalez.

It turned out that Efren is a well-known Mexican artist, and an incredible person. He allowed me to spend a couple of hours shooting with him that afternoon and answering my endless questions about the exceptional things he’s done for the arts in his local community of Ajijic, Mexico. He told me about the museum he’s opening in his home to support Ajijic artists, and about the Day Of The Dead Wall sculpture work he had just completed that commemorates members of his community that have passed away.

I walked away from that afternoon with some great images, but more importantly, with a connection to this amazing person. Photography has given me so many opportunities to meet people like Efren over the years, and I’m forever grateful for that.

To see more of this project, click here

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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 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: Greg Smith

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:  Greg Smith

Altitude Adjustment: A Book of ‘Chairlift’ Pictures

Skiing and snowboarding are peculiar pastimes, sending otherwise sensible folks – and some not so sensible – into harsh winter weather, just to go up a hill and slide back down. Skiing didn’t come easy for me on the icy slopes of southern Pennsylvania, but for some reason I stuck with it and fell in love with the sport.

My first real date with Janet, now my wife of 40 years, would be driving overnight from western Kansas to Colorado’s Wolf Creek. Later, we lived briefly in Telluride, starting a newspaper, getting married, getting pregnant and getting out before another winter descended. Although we reared our children in snow-challenged South Carolina, we invested great efforts for at least annual ski trips as they got older.

I documented the kids. I documented our trips. And eventually, I started carrying a small film camera on the chairlift. I was fascinated by the patterns of snow, cables, chairs and people. I wanted to share this with my Southern belle mother. And I didn’t want to interrupt our family’s skiing too much by pausing during our day. Making pictures of and from the lift seemed a good solution.

When we moved back to Colorado 10 years ago and bought season passes at Monarch Mountain, I began documenting in earnest the in-bounds skiing experience. Eventually, I saw my pictures – now made with digital cameras – as a gentle counterpoint to the “powder porn” that sells winter sports. Such commercial – and many editorial – productions show the powdered glory of those who hike up hills or take helicopter rides with film crews to ski nearly impossible lines in perfect conditions. I wanted to show how wonderful and quirky the experience is for the rest of us who just want a few days to play in the snow – and to highlight the technology that makes that possible.

Altitude Adjustment grew as an idea and collection over this past decade. It documents the actual experience most of us have in-bounds at accessible, safe – but stoked – resorts. The Covid 19 epidemic cut our 2020 season short, and I used that lonely time to finally compile and contextualize my project in 10 chapters. A bit of a designer myself, I opted to hire a real one, David Downing of Ovid Nine Productions, whose work and collaboration delighted me. We printed through Print Ninja in China.

I call it a labor of joy – a book to remind skiers and riders of how fabulous winter sports are, and to show those who don’t brave the cold just what they’re missing. You can learn and see more – and order copies – by clicking AltitudeAdjustment.net.

Snow guns coat the slope, trees and chairlift at Timberline Ski Resort on a bitter-cold January day.
Skiers and riders take in the snow and the chairlifts at Monarch Mountain on a February day.
Skiers ride the Garfield chair over a ridge on the way to the top of Monarch Mountain.
Light snow falling under a blue sky highlights a pair of skiers crossing a ridge along the Continental Divide to reach the steep Curecanti face on a powdery March morning at Monarch Mountain.
A snowy March offers up good skiing and riding at Monarch Mountain.
A young skier tries to embrace the challenge of a rocky face at Monarch Mountain.
Skiers and riders take in fresh December powder under the chairlifts of Monarch Mountain.
Skiing and riding among chairlifts on December snow at Monarch Mountain.

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 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: Thomas Chadwick

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:  Thomas Chadwick

In my younger days, before I moved to the States, I used to ride. I was part of the Corinium Cycling club, rode open road time trials & trained almost year-round. During the colder months, I would venture out less often & stuck to riding rollers in my garage. I never did particularly well in the colder weather.

That’s why one day, on my way back home from work early in my time in Chicago, on a bitterly cold February evening, I came across a messenger packing his bike into the back of his car. It blew my mind that he would even consider riding in these frigid & snowy conditions. As I quizzed him about why on earth, he would choose to ride his bike in these temperatures, he told me he was a bike messenger & that he liked working in the winter months as only the most committed riders went out in these months & it meant more work & better pay. I remember him saying anyone can be a messenger in the summer, but the cold had a way of whittling out those who weren’t serious.

That encounter left an impression on me & respect for those riders who I would see braving the cold & the traffic downtown.

My further introduction to the World of Bike Messengers came when Redbull hired me to photograph Nico Deportago-Cabrera at the NACCC (the North American Cycle Courier Championships). There I got a glimpse of the world of the sense of family, camaraderie & style that links the participants together. It was the sense of community, the dress sense, and the tattoos that really drew me in. The tattoos were awesome!

That following year, through Nico, I put a call out to Chicago messengers to stop by a studio I rented for the day if they wanted to have their portrait taken. It was late winter & still bitterly cold outside & the messengers that had impressed me so when I first arrived in the country were the ones who turned up.

To see more of this project, click here

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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 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: Stephen Voss

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:   Stephen Voss

A decade into living in Washington, DC, there were still vast swaths of it I had not yet seen. I decided it might be beneficial to walk the city’s entire border, making photographs along the way as a roundabout way of getting to know more of the city.

223 years prior, at the behest of President George Washington, this land was surveyed, and stone markers were placed along this diamond-shaped border at approximately one-mile intervals. Finding each stone became a forcing function to make sure I covered the entire distance.

In researching the trip, I came across a historian who had made a similar trek in 1906. He’d pose near various stones, including one near my house which at the time was part of a farm.

The walks (taken over a six-month period) were an exercise in attentiveness and a reminder of the rhythms and pace of life in the city. I witnessed a funeral on a gray day in February, the steady flow of tourists walking along the edge of the National Mall, and the deep, overgrown woods where I’d strain to find some of the more hidden boundary stones.

When walking, I often felt like I was just on the outskirts of somewhere, the forgotten area beyond the places most people go. I remember squeezing through a hole in the fence to get to one stone, walking through waist-high grass and coming across an elaborate multi-room homemade shelter, made of wood pallets, tarps and other castaway objects. In each direction was dense undergrowth and trees and I imagine this spot was picked for its privacy, save for the occasional intrusion of a bumbling photographer.

These walks were also a foundation for understanding the city as a pedestrian, and as a place in the midst of change. The remains of a colorful mural I photographed in Georgetown has long since been painted over, and a lonely memorial to those who perished on the Titanic now has a brand-new neighborhood a short walk from the park it sits in. The walk itself feels repeatable and I’m planning to make it again this Fall with an emphasis on portraits.

To see more of this project, click here

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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 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: Carol Guzy

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:  Carol Guzy

 Originally found on NPR Picture Show

 

Haunting photos capture the remnants of everyday life in Ukraine

Six months after Russia has invaded Ukraine, and on the 31st Independence Day of Ukraine commemorating their departure from the Soviet Union in 1991, we look at the result of the war and what remains…

Eerie paintings in shades of burnt sienna. Remnants of everyday life, frozen in a macabre stillness at the precise moment time stopped when Russian bombs rained down on residential dwellings in the liberated towns of Irpin and Borodianka. Exquisite light kisses the scorched palette. Baby cribs and wheelchairs. Charred cameras that once held tender family photos. A coffee cup sits on a table near a recliner, singed and flaking. A kitchen table holds food left uneaten. What were they cooking that last day of normal?

Lives led, now put on hold. Or extinguished. Precious mementoes reduced to dust. Twisted metal, empty chairs, melted microwaves. Too painful to ponder what the power of these weapons of destruction does to human flesh at the point of impact.

Civilian things. Not the stuff of combatants. Humanity’s hopes, dreams, loves — in war, they are merely “collateral damage.”

A popular cat café, once the scene of camaraderie and conversations over cappuccinos, lies in ruins. Broken glass becomes a metaphor for shattered lives. Survivors, saved from the bombardment by a fickle destiny of circumstance, visit in bittersweet homecomings to pick through pieces of their former reality.

Others will never return. Their life’s breath now a faded memory among cherished keepsakes scattered in living rooms of ash.

Carol Guzy is a 4-time Pulitzer Prize winning photographer for her work in Haiti, Kosovo and Colombia. She worked as a staff photographer at the Miami Herald from 1980 – 1988 and at The Washington Post from 1988 – 2014. She is currently a contract photographer for Zuma Press. Follow Carol on Instagram.

To see more of this project, click here

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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 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 Dyer

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 Dyer

 

           North American Indian Days is a yearly celebration of Indian ceremonial dancing that takes place in Browning, Montana, the headquarters of the Blackfeet Nation. It draws dancers from all over the western United States and Canada. It has been going on for many years. Except during the Covid pandemic. The celebration was cancelled in 2020 and 2021.

            I had been to the NAID twice before, once in 1987 and again in 2000. Both times I photographed the dancers using film. In the summer of 2022, I went again to photograph, this time using a digital camera. The celebration was billed as the “Recovery”.

            It was quite crowded. The tent where the dancing took place was too small and dimly lit and was not the best place to show off the incredibly beautiful, elaborate regalia (never call what the dancers wear a costume!). Nevertheless, the dancing took place and, as always, was accompanied by the drumming and singing…high, wailing male voices.  There are different categories of dancing: jingle dancers, grass dancers, traditional dancers, etc.

            My idea was to ask some of the dancers to allow me to photograph them. Most agreed, a few said no. Fortunately, near the tent was a ring of large tepees that gave me a somewhat neutral background to take my portraits. Otherwise, the background would have been a jumble of campers, cars, trucks, etc.

            I had a small notebook with me, and I took down the names of the dancers, their tribe affiliation, where they lived and their e-mail addresses. It’s my habit to always send the best shot of my subjects to them as a thank-you. I would also respectfully ask each if they would tell me their Indian name. Indians have an “English” name and many also have an “Indian” name that is given to them in a sacred ceremony.  I had been cautioned by a Blackfeet elder to tread lightly when asking for an Indian name. “It’s kind of personal,” she had said. Some told me their Indian names. Some didn’t. I decided not to include in my captions what Indian names I was given.

            The photographs here are what I think are my best.

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 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: Deanna Dikeman

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:  Deanna Dikeman

 

For 27 years, I took photographs as I waved good-bye and drove away from visiting my parents at their home in Sioux City, Iowa. I started in 1991 with a quick snapshot, and I continued taking photographs with each departure. I never set out to make this series. I just took these photographs as a way to deal with the sadness of leaving. It gradually turned into our good-bye ritual. And it seemed natural to keep the camera busy, because I had been taking pictures every day while I was there. These photographs are part of a larger body of work I call Relative Moments, which has chronicled the lives of my parents and other relatives since 1986. When I discovered the series of accumulated “leaving and waving” photographs, I found a story about family, aging, and the sorrow of saying good-bye.

In 2009, there is a photograph where my father is no longer there. He passed away a few days after his 91st birthday. My mother continued to wave good-bye to me. Her face became more forlorn with my departures. In 2017, my mother had to move to assisted living. For a few months, I photographed the good-byes from her apartment door. In October of 2017 she passed away. When I left after her funeral, I took one more photograph, of the empty driveway. For the first time in my life, no one was waving back at me.

 

To see more of this project, click here

To order her book “Leaving and Wavy” click here

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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 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: Jennifer MacNeill

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:  Jennifer MacNeill

Assateague Island is a barrier island on the East Coast of the United States facing the Atlantic Ocean. The northern portion is part of Maryland, and the southern end is in Virginia. Children’s book author, Marguerite Henry, brought attention to the island in her 1947 classic, Misty of Chincoteague, acquainting young people all over the world to the spirited equines that call it their home. It was first through her books that I formed an interest in this land and its animals, however I had to wait until I was an adult to visit in person.

Since 2010 my family has been visiting Assateague Island every year at least once. We prefer to go off-season when the biting flies and beachgoers are lessened. Even in the middle of winter there is so much appreciate. I used to only go to view the feral ponies but they’re sometimes hard to locate in the cold months, so I learned to see the beauty in the overlooked elements, lichen covered branches, a mushroom growing out of a manure pile, a tree bent over time by the strong ocean winds. While the ponies are still my favorite part, Assateague has helped teach me to appreciate the beauty of nature in all seasons and I seek to show others what I have learned to see there.

  

To see more of this project, click here

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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 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: Amira Karaoud

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:  Amira Karaoud

 

Eleven hundred years ago, a remarkable early Arab historian, al-Mas’udi, compares the task of telling the Arab story to that of ‘someone who has found a scattered hoard of gemstones of all different kinds and colors, and has then strung them in order and turned them into a precious necklace.

By contemplating the individuality of immigrant and first-generation Arab women living in the United States, Heya contemplates their relationship with their identity in contemporary society. By highlighting these women’s diverse beliefs, up-bringing, and experiences, this project strives to illuminate the unique color and nuance of these Arab Women, adding color to the precious necklace of an empire.

Aida Al Masalkhi, 28 years old lawyer, born and raised in Kentucky to Syrian parents.
Mette Loulou Kohl, 33 years old, born and raised in NYC to Palestinian Lebanese mother and Danish father. Mette is an artist and educator.
Nadia Al Masalkhi, 23 years old born and raised in Kentucky to Syrian parents. Nadia is a graduate student at UC Berkley in sociology.
Linda Omar, 30 years old born and raised in Chicago to Palestinian parents. Linda is a postdoctoral research fellow in the department of health promotion and behavioral science in the school of public health, University of Louisville.
Joy Ameena Garnett 52 years old born and raised in NY to Egyptian mother and American father. Joy is a painter and writer.
Dina Fahmi, 27 years old born and raised in Kentucky to Egyptian parents. Dina is a consular at a residential center for violent teenager girls.

To see more of this project, click here

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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 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: Randal Ford

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:   Randal Ford

As a young kid, I grew up skateboarding.  I loved the movement, flow and challenge of new tricks.  But I also gravitated towards the skate fashion, style and music.  While I haven’t skated in many years, I shot this personal project as a chance to jump back into that world.  I connected with a few young kids at a local skatepark who had unique looks and styles.  I wanted to shoot a combination of action, portrait, and lifestyle shots to show the entire experience of being at the park and skating with friends.  This multidisciplinary series dips into action, fashion and lifestyle photography.  It brought me right back to those days when I was kid, spending all my time at the skatepark.  The only thing that was missing was Nirvana.

To see more of this project, click here

Instagram 

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 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

The Kung Fu Nuns (also known as the Cycling Nuns) are a large group of Buddhist nuns in Kathmandu who travel around Asia and other remote regions on bike spreading women’s rights. They travel in the hundreds and roll into villages known for oppressed women on mountain bikes (many of these areas bar women from riding bikes) and teach the women valuable life skills like engineering, how to drive, ride bikes, fix cars, etc… They also do an “Eco-Pad Yatras” (about 400 miles long or longer) on foot to pick up plastic litter and educate locals on environmentally friendly alternatives. They practice Shaolin Kung Fu for self-defense purposes and as a way to build confidence and inner strength.

To see more of this project, click here

Instagram

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 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: Jay Fram

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:  Jay Fram

Tahlequah is a small town in Cherokee County, Oklahoma. It’s in the northeast corner of the state, with rolling hills and lush greenery, and it’s where I grew up. Earlier this year, I leveraged my personal history there to land a job to produce a “rural America” image library for a major telecommunications company. I was really excited to produce this high-level project in Tahlequah, to feature the people and places of my hometown and bring some economic benefit to the area. I assembled a crew and hired a local to help me connect with potential subjects, but a few weeks prior to the shoot date the client killed the project. I was disappointed but decided to take advantage of all the time and effort invested by shooting it anyway, as a personal project.

I set out to document the land and the people of my hometown as a sort of straightforward homecoming, but I found myself unable to ignore the political and geographic polarizations that are so prominent in our country in this moment. They’re nothing new for me – as a kid with country roots living in big progressive cities for the past thirty years, I’ve often felt a tension between my love for the land and family friends of my hometown, and my desire to create some distance from it. I felt pulled to make some sort of statement about that tension through this work, and indeed there were some captures in the first edits of this series that carried a more cynical gaze. In the end, though, that wasn’t the story I wanted to tell.

Instead, what I found myself making was a tender reminiscence: a portrait of generous people and hard work in a rural part of middle America, the close heaviness of heat and humidity, undergrowth, weeds, open spaces, tradition. Rather than an uncritical celebration or a caricature of rural America, I wanted to hone this project to give a sense of how it feels to actually live there, from someone who can honestly say, “I grew up just down the road.”

Tahlequah, Oklahoma
Three Springs Ranch organic farm owned by Mike and Emily Oakley in Rocky Ford, Oklahoma
Cherokee County, Oklahoma
Three Springs Ranch organic farm owned by Mike and Emily Oakley in Rocky Ford, Oklahoma
Cherokee County, Oklahoma
Family owned logging company Denton Timber on job site near Proctor, Oklahoma.
Cherokee County, Oklahoma
Cherokee County, Oklahoma

To see more of this project, click here

Instagram

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 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: Paul Edmondson

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:  Paul Edmondson

State of Main

For the last 25 years I’ve been taking extensive road trips across the American west, searching for desolate locations for my landscape photography work. Most often on these trips I try to avoid driving on major highways and instead choose the smaller, county roads that crisscross the country. As a result of this slower, off-the-beaten-path approach to road travel, I started to become curious about the towns, street corners, buildings and farms that occupy so much of rural America.

After Trump won in 2016, it felt like many of the communities I was passing through started expressing the MAGA ethos in ways that I never could truly understand or grasp. And the visuals relating to American patriotism suddenly seemed politically charged and deeply partisan. But there was also the timeless and sometimes quirky small-town iconography that often caught my eye. I wanted to see if there was a way to combine these different elements into a cohesive body of work that expressed my own interpretation of today’s small-town America. I was also deeply inspired by Walker Evans, Stephen Shore, and many others.

When I started the series in late 2020, the working title was simply ‘Main Street’, but as the project neared completion I asked my gallerist Jenn Singer what else she thought might work – was there a more effective way of describing what the images conveyed? We agreed on ‘State of Main’, which I think more accurately describes the work. In many ways the series is an expression of the American dream – for opportunity, independence, and patriotism. But it’s also a study of hard times, abandoned homes and shuttered stores. It’s these dualities that interest me the most, and how in the end, it’s nature that almost always seems to win.

Paul Edmondson is an award-winning photographer best known for his minimalist landscapes of the American West, often in the places where humans and the natural environment intersect. He lives with his family in Seattle, Washington.

To see more of this project, click here

Instagram

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 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: Jim Wright

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:  Jim Wright

ARTIST’S STATEMENT / JOURNALS

“What began some years ago as a way to explain to my family
exactly what I did for a living has turned into a lifelong project that
now involves meditation, writing, painting, photographs, clip art and
at times a “pop art” documentation of my journey through life.
Throughout the years, my journals have evolved from a way to
document past shoots into a way for me to actually document
myself on a more ethereal level. I use hints of people, place and
things to remind myself of the many courses and adventures that I’ve
not only taken in my career but more importantly my life. I like to
refer to many of the pages as “visual streams of consciousness”
based upon mood and emotion. Some of the written vignettes are
based in truth some in fiction. It is then left to the viewer to decide
which they believe. The painting, mixed media and graphics derive
from my love all things in an artist realm. I really enjoying editing and
rearranging graphics in order to send a new message. And of
course, the photographs which are my true passion are a
culmination of all of the previously mentioned elements.”
-Jim Wright
6/30/22

To see more of this project, click here

Instagram

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 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: Ron Haviv and Lost Rolls America

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:   Ron Haviv & Lost Rolls America

Do you have an old roll of film lying around—in the back of a drawer or tucked in a shoebox? Wonder what’s on it? How long has it been sitting there—5 years? 10 years? 20 years? Longer? Lost Rolls America opens the magical reencounter with the past to anyone who possesses unprocessed film rolls.

This project celebrates the role that photographs play in shaping the construction of memory. Imagine the old snapshot of a relative that brings back memories of family gatherings; or the image of a younger version of yourself wearing a shirt you haven’t seen, let alone thought about, in over a decade. The Lost Rolls America archive combines photos from the past with present-day recollections inspired by the found images.

 

The archive is a visual repository of America’s past: from the west coast to east coast; from post-World War II immigration, a 1969 Vietnam War protest to the aftermath of September 11th and beyond, from special occasions to mundane moments, all that constitutes daily life captured on film but then often forgotten. The pictures offer poignant and even surprising glimpses into which images are most meaningful to America’s visual past.

 

At a moment when the American landscape often feels divided, Lost Rolls America reveals the myriad ways the country is in fact united. Certain themes carry across the photos, regardless of race, gender, age, and geographical location: the value of family, the innocence of childhood,the memories of lost loved ones, and the exuberance of travel, to name a few.

 

With partners FujiFilm, PhotoWings, and Photoshelter, the project invites participants to provide one to two rolls of film, which is developed and scanned free of charge and made available back to them. Participants then privately choose one to two images and in a small write-up, explore the meaning of the photo and the significance of viewing a piece of their personal, sometimes lost past. Sincere and emotional, the responses are evocative words that speak to us all. The archive is an amazing testament to how much photography plays a role in remembering our own pasts.

 

To participate: click here 

To see more of this project, www.lostrollsamerica.com

Original story on this project was a feature by Jonathan Blaustien

 

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 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: Claudine Williams

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:  Claudine Williams

 

Birders of NYC

I have always been a birder, but the hobby had taken a backseat for a few years to family and work obligations. At the beginning of the Covid pandemic a lot of those obligations had ceased to exist (school lunches, photo shoots, etc.) and I became re-enchanted with the world of birding. Every morning I would wander NYC downtown parks with binoculars in hand, looking and listening for migrating birds. It brought serenity during an anxiety-inducing time. It’s a beautiful thing to see and hear a warbler in spring or fall.

Then in May 2020 an unfortunate incident occurred between two people in Central Park, a birder and a dog owner. I don’t want to mention names because they had their names mentioned enough. The incident planted a seed to start a portrait and interview series on birders in New York City. My regular work is mostly corporate and editorial portraits, and no one was booking at the time. To me it was necessary to start a project I could legally and safely do since New York City was still under social distancing and masking orders. The vibrancy of the birding community became apparent to me via eBird, Cornell University’s bird recording program. Every day it was inspiring to see the reports from people all over the city on the birds they have seen in places like Central Park, or Jamaica Bay. I loved getting these reports and wanted to get to know these fascinating people and show who they were.

I didn’t personally know a lot of birders during that time period, so I decided to use social media as a way to find them. Instagram was not very helpful, but I hit the jackpot with Twitter. The NYC birding community (as well as other birding communities) are very active on Twitter. I started to periodically send out tweets looking for participants to be photographed and interviewed. Those tweets got retweeted and so on. One of those tweets contained a photograph I had taken of a woman birder. Ted Floyd, editor at Birding Magazine (magazine for the American Birding Association) saw the tweet and asked if I’d be interested in publishing part of my project and of course I said yes. He chose to publish women birders because historically birding has been a male-oriented hobby.

This project will most likely be on-going, and potentially expand to other big cities. Thank you for viewing my project.

 

To see more of this project, click here

Instagram: 

 

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 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

Sisters

In 2018, I worked with a company to create a tutorial focused on color theory for photographers, which was sort of an exploration of how to employ color for maximum visual and emotional impact in an image. “Sisters” was the culminating series created for the tutorial, designed to showcase how color could be used effectively in set design, wardrobe and post processing to help tell a story.

In the process of coming up with ideas for this shoot, location scouting and sorting out the curriculum for this course, I really started to think hard about ideas and art that has continually interested and influenced me over the years; and two things that I always find myself coming back to are first, this  infatuation with relationships—the varying dynamics therein, how they manifest and play out in different ways—and second, Americana and American culture—particularly from the vernacular perspective.  

So when I think about these sort of themes, I start to think about artists like Normal Rockwell or Edward Hopper, or Andrew Wyeth, who are really sort of the champions of Americana art, and have spent their artistic careers portraying the beauty in the vernacular American life. Particularly, having grown up in the Northeast, I have found myself more and more drawn to the work of Rockwell, and his vignettes of every day scenes—nothing monumental, just ordinary people in the moment. Growing up visiting my grandparent’s house when I was little, they had a magnet on their fridge of Rockwell’s “Girl At Mirror”; and I remember becoming so enamored with this girl, dressing up as her—braided hair, nightgown and all—and would recreate this scene regularly. 

Rockwell’s gift was in his ability to both immortalize and humanize the past, which, as an artist and a historian, is something that resonates deeply with me. For this series, I wanted to pay homage to these great Americana artists, while infusing some of my own experiences as a sister and daughter. Shot on a goose farm in rural Missouri, this series explores a day in the life of two sisters and their mother, capturing vignettes of their interactions—those humanizing moments of play, tenderness and bonding. Its set, styled and color graded in an early 20th century fashion, but these relationship dynamics are meant to transcend any specific time period. 

 

To see more of this project, click here

Instagram

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 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: Luke Copping

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:  Luke Copping

 

After my family left Canada and moved to the United States, we settled in Youngstown, NY, just down the street from Historic Old Fort Niagara — the oldest continuously occupied military site in North America. Many of my early memories of living in the US involve the historical reenactors that I would regularly see at The Fort, in the surrounding park, and in the small central area of town. Especially during the large encampment weekends when reenactors would travel from near and far to descend on the fort and town in period-accurate clothing. It wasn’t unusual to see groups of soldiers stepping into a grocery store, muskets over their shoulders – to buy snacks and beer for the weekend-long party and historical festivities. As much as these reenactors valued the authenticity of their costuming and campsites, it was always an interestingly anachronistic experience for spectators like myself. One that made an impression for years to come.

For this particular series of portraits of reenactors and historical interpreters, I decided to focus on the war of 1812. However, the fort was used during the Colonial Wars, Seven Years’ Wars, and the Civil War. During both world wars, it was a barracks and training station.

The American, French, And British flags fly over the fort – the Three nations who have occupied it at one time or another as they competed for the support of the Six Nations Confederacy and used the fort to control access to the western great lakes.

I plan to return to the fort soon to create a series of portraits of reenactors specializing in the Seven Years’ War and the fort’s staff of indigenous historical interpreters.

War of 1812 Reenactors at Old Fort Niagara In Youngstown NY
War of 1812 Reenactors at Old Fort Niagara In Youngstown NY
War of 1812 Reenactors at Old Fort Niagara In Youngstown NY
War of 1812 Reenactors at Old Fort Niagara In Youngstown NY
War of 1812 Reenactors at Old Fort Niagara In Youngstown NY
War of 1812 Reenactors at Old Fort Niagara In Youngstown NY

 

To see more of this project, click here

Instagram

 

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 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.