Category: Personal Project

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

 

Today’s featured artist:  Fritz Liedtke

SACRED sā-krəd

2b: entitled to reverence and respect

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To see more of this project, click here.

Or Instagram, click here

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

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

 

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

Today’s featured artist: Reginald Campbell

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

Today’s featured artist:  Christ  Chavez

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

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

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

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

To see more of this collection, click here

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

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

 

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

Today’s featured artist:  John Huet

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

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

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

WHEN: August 13-25, 2019

To see more of this project, click here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To donate to this organization, chick here

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

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

 

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

Today’s featured artist:  Zach Anderson

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

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

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

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

  

To make sure you are registered to vote, click here

Or if you need to register, click here

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

 

Zach Anderson is represented by Candace Gelman Associates.

 

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

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

 

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

Today’s featured artist:  Ryan Dearth

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

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

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

To see more of this project, click here.

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

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

 

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

Today’s featured artist: Kremer /Johnson

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

To see more of this project, click here.

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Today’s featured artist:  Stephen Wilkes on Jay Maisel

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

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

Wednesday, July 31, 7:45 show

Thursday, August 1, 7:45 show

Friday, August 2, 7:45 show

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

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

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

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

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

Trailer for the film click here

Instagram: @oscopelabs and hashtag  #JayMyself

 

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

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

 

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

Today’s featured artist: Jonathan Beller

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

To see more of this project, click here.

Award winning film can be seen here.

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

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

 

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

 

Today’s featured artist:  Ashton Ray Hansen

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

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

To see more of this project, click here.

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

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

 

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

 

Today’s featured artist:  Ryan Dearth

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

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

To see more of this project, click here.

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

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

 

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

Today’s featured artist:  Aldo Chacon

SHOE WIZ

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

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

 

To see more of this project, click here.

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

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

 

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

 

Today’s featured artist:  Kate Woodman

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

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

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

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

 

To see more of this project, click here.

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

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

 

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 past Monday we celebrated Memorial Day and it is such a honor to feature these Fallen Heroes.  #neverforget

 

Today’s featured artist:  Agnes Lopez 

A recap from when this project was first posted. Let’s honor these men who recently passed.

From the artist:

“Creating portraits for this ongoing project has been an incredible experience, though days like Memorial Day make me sad when I find out that more of the people I have photographed are no longer with us.

Emilio Teodoro passed away on Saturday, May 25th. It was an honor to meet and photograph him. I will always remember the smile on his face when he received the Congressional Gold Medal. Mr. Teodoro was a 99-year-old Filipino-American WWII veteran who finally received his award after more than 70 years of waiting for his service to be recognized.

His story, like many of the FilVets I met, is one of perseverance, sacrifice, and dedication to family and country.

 

Mariano Aquisap was a veteran of three wars who received his Congressional Gold Medal in March, 2018. I shared his portrait on Veterans Day last year because the ceremony where he was honored was so emotional and cathartic. Mr. Aquisap passed away in April.

 

Flaviano Diala, was a Bataan Death March Survivor and Filipino World War II veteran who passed away in January.

Unfortunately, the brave veterans who are still here are not likely to be with us much longer. My hope is that their fight won’t be forgotten and that more people will learn about the sacrifices made by the Filipino-American people during the war and afterwards.

The Faces to Remember Project was recently on display at the Florida School of the Arts in Palatka, Florida and at the Riverside Fine Arts Series in Jacksonville, Florida. Additional shows in the Northeast Florida region will be announced soon.

To see more of this project, click here.

 

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

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

 

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

Today’s featured artist:  Cade Martin

I WAS 7 WHEN THE VIETNAM WAR ENDED. I know what I do, as most my age, from movies and documentaries. And most of what I encountered was about the ground troops, rarely about the pilots.

So when an opportunity arose to attend a reunion of F-105 Thunderchief pilots in San Antonio, I jumped at the chance.  These reunions are where the Thunderchief pilots have maintained their shared past and let one another into all that they have been and done in the years since. And owing to special circumstances, they welcomed us in—just me and a small crew.

As a photographer, I have always been comfortable learning through the lens, looking for what needs to be communicated in the architecture and life in faces.  I have used a similar approach before, renting space and setting up a booth. I like to go to the source for these group portrait projects, embed myself in the space and community they share.  Here we set up in a conference room and would pull each pilot aside during breaks in their conversations.  Over the course of three days, I observed lives reconnecting and experiences being relived. As they talked to each other, and then later through our interviews, I heard the things said echoed in what I saw through my lens—brotherhood, support, joy, pain, pride and life.

Once jet-fueled cowboys, they are still walking with a swagger born of knowing themselves. Among these F-105 Thunderchief fighter pilots, there are no secrets. They all know who they are. And by capturing their faces to accompany their stories, I hope more people can know who they are.  It was such an honor.

While I have many personal projects under my belt, I can say that Over War has been one of the most in-depth thus far; evolving from what I had envisioned as a series of Air Force pilot portraits to a project that – fifty years later -ultimately gives voice to these men who had a unique vantage point on the Vietnam war – an airborne perspective as they flew over the conflict below, the result of true dedication of time, energy, resource and heart by so many.

Anthony Cushenberry

Ben Bowthrope

Jessie Henderson

John Piowaty

To see more of this project, click here. And here

If you would like to download a PDF of the promo for 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. Her Twitter feed is branded with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram

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

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

Today’s featured artist:  Lee Jeffries

Found on Instagram: Lost Angels

To see more of this project, click here.

To purchase prints on this and other projects, click here

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

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:  Fernando Decillis

Patria Gaucha

In Uruguay, the gaucho is a national symbol of character. He is honest, self-sufficient, proud but humble, generous, brave, and most of all; he is free. The gaucho lifestyle is solitary, nomadic, gritty, and full of rich traditions. In the open grasslands, gauchos round-up cattle and wild horses. they hone skillful tricks to bend the will of large herds.

As a child in Montevideo, I remember seeing these dignified horsemen towering above my head as they paraded through the streets with their wide-brimmed hats, ponchos, boots with spurs, sheepskins, leather whips, and long, sheathed knives during the gaucho festivals. Since I left thirty years ago, I have dreamed of going back to photograph the heroes of my childhood.

Every year, in the small village of Tacuarembó, Uruguayan gauchos travel from all over the country for the Fiesta de la Patria Gaucha. They share traditional yerba mate, cook over open fires, and compete against one another in games of skill with wild horses and cattle.

The weeklong festival ends with the jineteada gaucha, where gauchos compete to ride untamed horses. The display of skill and showmanship highlights the bravery of the gaucho lifestyle, and the relationship between the men and the animals they live alongside.

To watch untamed horses in the wild is to behold the spirit of life itself, expansive, driven, without limitation. These are the faces of the men whose lives are rooted in a tradition of breaking that spirit, to carry humanity farther and faster toward one another and into the unknown.

 

To see more of this project, click here.

 

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

 

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:  Naomi Harris

EUSA – Artist Statement

On a trip to the mountains just north of Atlanta, Georgia, I came upon this odd little town called Helen. Once a thriving mining community, by the 1970s they were suffering from a recession. They called a town meeting and decided to turn their hamlet into a Bavarian wonderland bringing in tourist dollars. So today, in the Deep South, among all the gingerbread shops selling Confederate flag tee shirts, the world’s largest Oktoberfest is held, for three months.

This got me wondering, if this exists in Helen, what other American cities have been modeled after imaginary European villages. And for that matter, are there any places in Europe that were designed to look like America?

Globalization has made the uniqueness of a particular country less significant thus creating an indistinguishable common world community.We wear the same clothes, eat the same meals, use the same iPhones, we are all interconnected.  EUSA is a reaction to this homogenization of European and American cultures. Being enthralled by another country’s way of life does not mean that it is always an accurate portrayal rather it becomes a sentimental and idealized depiction; an homage to a heritage that isn’t ones own.

In America these “European” venues resemble a land of make-believe. Like something out of a fairy tale, they are magical, whimsical and quaint. In Europe their fascination lies in an America of the past, when the US was considered glorious and free, a place full of fresh starts and opportunities. The foundation of these locations was to honour the “other,” but what was once characteristic has now ultimately become a caricature.

I began this project in June 2008 photographing a weekend rendezvous for re-enactors at High Chaparral, a country western them park in the south of Sweden. There people spent the weekend living in rustic tents as “Indians” or “Confederate Soldiers” leaving all of their modern-day conveniences locked in their cars. Since then I visited over twenty-five locations on both sides of the Atlantic including Sioux City, a movie-studio-turned-tourist-attraction in Grand Canaria, Spain;‘Indian’ festivals in Germany: a Tulip Festival in Orange City, Iowa: an American Civil War reenactment in the Czech Republic; a Viking festival in Alaska; a rockabilly festival in the countryside outside Budapest, Hungary;a Maifest in Leavenworth, Washington; numerous Oktoberfests around the United States, and a variety of ‘Cowboy and Indian’ amusement parks throughout Europe.

At first sight it is often difficult to locate where and when these photos were taken; are we in the U.S, or somewhere in Europe? Upon closer examination, something inevitably reveals how out-of-place it is, and we are aware of our “error”.

In other images it is much more obvious that what we are looking at is built and artificial – a benign pastiche to the more insidious and offensive forms of cultural appropriation. These exaggerated reconstructions bear little authenticity and what was once characteristic has now ultimately become a caricature.

Photographing the visitors playing dress-up in these various maudlin locations within these two continents,my goal was to illustrate the enthusiasm we have for one another’s heritage, and demonstrate this universal phenomenon that is a reaction to the homogenization of our cultures.And through this spirit of camaraderie, if only for that moment, the participants are granted membership to one another’s culture.

To see more of this project, click here.

Naomi Harris and her project EUSA which has gone from a personal project to a published book and now an exhibition as part of the inaugural Photoville LA which runs April 26 – 28 and May 3 – 5. You can visit both the exhibition and the artist herself where she’ll be selling books (and if you’re lucky she may be wearing her dirndl) at Photoville which is being held at the Annenberg Space for Photography in Century Park, 2000 Avenue of the Stars, Los Angeles, CA 90067

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