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 there are over 30,000 commercial sex workers in Ajmer, India. They originate from marginalized segments of Indian society and are forced into the commercial sex trade due to poverty, gender inequality, lack of education, and limited skills. These women dream of escaping abusive relationships, moving their families to safety, feeding their children, investing in education, and giving their families a chance at a better life.
‘Stitched In Strength’ is a personal project that dives deep into the lives of women who have been championed through difficulty, supported through craft, and given a chance at a better life with the help of the award-winning non-profit, Anchal. My goal is not only to portray the impact of Anchal but to also shine light on the dedicated artisan women who give it life.
Artisans make 25%-100% more than they did before working with Anchal. This salary increase has led to 70% of the Artisans becoming the primary breadwinners of the family, the purchasing of first homes, and healthcare for themselves and their families. For 65% of artisans, Anchal is their first legal, recorded career. Anchal employs artisans but also conducts monthly workshops to teach skills such as entrepreneurship, leadership, women’s health, self-defense, and stress management that go beyond Anchal and promote further opportunities in their lives.
This project is an invitation for viewers to reflect on the power of social entrepreneurship, where creativity and compassion converge to create a lasting impact. The vision of Anchal extends far beyond a quilt. It symbolizes a thread of opportunity and community that can mend and enrich the lives of women worldwide.
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 advertising and in-house corporate industry for decades. 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. 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.
I created ‘The Play Project’ to celebrate neighborhood play and good health during the isolation of the pandemic. I challenged myself to build a photographic project around outdoor fun within a five-mile radius of where I live. That took me to the Peavey Park basketball courts in Minneapolis about a mile from my house.
I’ve shared these images with the players in both print and digital forms. The work earned a grant that I used to create a custom, unbound, tabloid-sized, poster book so players could share and display large images of themselves using inexpensive slip frames. I also created custom basketball cards and fine art prints for each player.
Images from this body of work have earned ten photography awards to date in Graphis, Communication Arts, IPA, American Photographer IA/IP and ASMP. The tabloid also just won a Gold award in the Graphis Design Competition.
I like pro sports and competitions like the Olympics because they give us heroes to look up to – but they are exclusive of most of us. The inclusive nature of neighborhood pick-up sports means everyone gets the ball, has fun, gets exercise, and builds friendships.
Photography really can build communities and help people feel seen. A quote from one of the players, Kenneth Walton, sums it up:
“Honestly when seeing the photos I felt a huge sense of accomplishment, community and pride. A lot of times when we play together outsiders look in with negative perceptions of us guys at the park. The pictures shine a positive light on the family we’ve built around Play!”
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 advertising and in-house corporate industry for decades. 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. Follow her at @SuzanneSease. Instagram
Heidi: You shot Super 8 movies and animations in 5th grade – that’s ambitious for a kid! Carlos: Like many from my generation, the 1970’s and 1980’s’s sci-fi movies like the original Star Wars or Close Encounters were the catalyst into the visual arts. It was the first time seeing all the behind the scenes TV specials and making of stills in magazines like Starlog and Fangoria that showed us kids how these filmmakers problem solved and came up with creative solutions. My early super-8mm films were mostly claymation with sci-fi themes, as well as creating short animated films on subjects like “The Amoeba” for school science fair projects. Everything was shot in sequence in camera until I as able to get my hands on a reel to reel super8 viewer, where I was able to tape spliced scenes together. Later on, I was able to get a Sears branded 35mm Ricoh camera and darkroom kit, and taught myself how to process B&W negatives and printing.
Did you also skate? Yes. I was heavy into the skate scene in South Florida if you could even call it a scene. This was the era when all the skate parks from the 70’s and early 80’s had all shut down, and no one was paying attention to skateboarding. Skating was mostly underground, on vert halfpipes in backyards, and of course street skating.
How did looking at urban geometric space, sequences, and movement in skateboarding impact your photographic style? Interesting question…. as skaters, we were always sizing things up that could possibly be used to skate on. Miami didn’t have a lot of those above-ground drainage ditches like they do in the western states, and unless a swimming pool was built pre-Second World War, the transitions were too tight to skate. Because of that, we were always on the lookout for what could work, or what we could scrape together to build. It was the quintessential “Skate and Create” vibe. Also, a few of the backyard ramps we would visit were owned by some of the older guys who were already in high school and just entering college age. Those guys were doing really interesting stuff with photocopy punk skate zines, creating art and photography — the real D.I.Y. stuff. Being exposed to that, really inspired me to pick up a camera and try to emulate what was happening in those zines, as well as the great skate photographers from Transworld and Thrasher magazines like J. Grant Brittain and Dave Swift.
Fast forward to a 20-year history of photographing Olympic athletes kicked off by shooting Nike’s 2004 Speed Campaign – looking back on that project can you share a few important creative moments? At that time, I was starting my career, and I wasn’t shooting a lot of sports. I was mostly focused on portraiture and fashion editorials for more independent magazines like Paper Magazine and a few smaller apparel lookbook shoots for brands. At the same time, Nike was starting to hire some fresh, young art directors, and in their words, were moving away from a lot of “runners in fleece photographed motion blurred running thru the forest” imagery from the 1990’s. They were interested in experimenting and creating photography that would be much more aligned with fashion editorials with more of a controlled studio lighting scenario while merging that look and feel with sport. The perception at that time was that “fashion photographers” would shy away from anything that wasn’t deemed “high-end apparel”, and that those sportswear brands were strictly for sports-focused photographers. That impression seemed to shift after the global recession around 2008-2009, when we suddenly started seeing those deemed as higher profile fashion photographers expanding their genre and work for these types of brands. Nowadays, with mutual branding, it’s extremely commonplace. For the Nike 2004 global Olympic campaign, Heather Amuny-Dey, a young art director at Nike, approached me to collaborate with her on this project. She had seen some of the lighting from a fashion studio shoot I did and thought the look would be a good fit for the creative direction of the campaign. Six months before we started the Nike Speed campaign, we did a preliminary shoot with a few athletes in the summer of 2003. This allowed us to experiment with the lighting and create a proof of concept for her clients. This portion of the project was shot on film. One thing that I quickly realized, was that these elite athletes only have a finite amount of energy they can expend per day during their rigorous training schedules, not to mention the concern of injury. Because of this, we might only get one, or two takes to capture whatever respective sport action. This limitation helped hone my timing in looking for the athlete’s body’s “tell”, that would happen a faction of a second before the peak of action. We also had to work little hacks with the strobe lighting packs and transmitters available at that time, to achieve the highest flash duration to freeze the action. Because it was shot on film, and also while traveling to different countries, there was a little bit of frustration in waiting a few days to get the film back from a lab before knowing if we had gotten the shot. The main campaign started ramping up in February 2004, and by that time a few viable digital camera systems had finally hit the market. I had shot with one in the interim on a small fashion brand project, and although I wasn’t fully impressed yet with the color look of the raw files, I thought this would be a perfect tool for the Speed campaign since we could instantly see if we got the shot. The art director had expressed concerns, as she had done a shoot a few months earlier with a different digital system, and the resolution and quality was subpar for their uses. The client requested we do a test shoot with this newer digital system we were proposing. We emailed the test jpegs in real-time during their project meeting in the Portland offices, and after seeing the results, they were sold on this approach. The only stipulation was that we traveled with backup film in case we encountered technical issues. The digital backs at that time were wildly expensive, so we could only afford to lease one to travel with. Nike had come out with the “speed suit” which was novel in that the apparel is like a second skin that covers the athlete head to toe. We wanted to emphasize the sleek form of the apparel, as well as the musculature of the athletic bodies in action. We explored this by edging the lighting with a hint of a warm, red tone that was focused on the trailing end of the athlete’s body, like a glowing meteor trail. We kept all the action either straight on, or profile to keep the shapes graphic. We started the shoot in early March of 2004 in a sound stage in Amsterdam. We then continued throughout the US to the various cities that the athletes were training in, then wrapped it up in Paris and London. It was encouraging to hear that all the creative teams back in the Nike global offices were excited and giving great feedback from the sample of images we were sending from the road.
Shortly after that campaign the book: Beauty of Speed featuring 37 global athletes was published by Nike – what was your biggest takeaway from creating that book? The book was a surprise, as I had no idea they were going to collate all the athletes we shot into a book. I think it was something that wasn’t on the table until the work came back and everyone was stoked on the results.
How did your sport work transcend into fashion and portrait work? As mentioned above, it was kind of the opposite, as the fashion work first transcended into these early sports campaigns. The only downside was once that campaign came out, clients and photo editors tended to pigeonhole me, and suddenly I was only being considered for the “athlete kicking ball in studio” shoots. It was lucrative and allowed me the budget to continue to learn more lighting techniques, but it took me a while to come across photo editors who could see past the sport angle and realize that the work could be applied to non-sport portrait or fashion photography.
Your use of color and shadow has a surreal, visceral quality (I’m struggling to define it – the viewer emotionally plugs in and there are no words) – where did that aesthetic stem from? Thanks! That’s a hard question, as I’m not sure where the aesthetic came from either! It’s probably a bit silly, but I pride myself in knowing how to light and doing things really D.I.Y. Perhaps at times that approach has been detrimental, like not hiring out a DP. For me, researching and experimenting with the lighting is still part of the fun. I can’t wrap my head around some of the stories I hear of high-end photographers that don’t know how to light themselves, or worse those who don’t even push the shutter button, as that’s a whole different world! I think I’m always trying to mix the pragmatic of what lighting will work to achieve high shutter speeds, but also be subtle enough to feel simple and just a little more elevated, yet feel real and organic.
How did your collaboration with Monica May come about? My partner Monica May is a great photographer, her work feels thoughtful and considered. The first collaboration we did together was in 2008, for an Esquire fashion story. The magazine wasn’t asking for a motion asset, but it was a nice editorial with male models in suits on a dry lake bed, the type of fashion story that pretty much shoots itself! Monica shot super 8mm, and since it was natural light, she was able to get the look cohesively with the stills. We got the film processed, scanned it, and fumbled a bit learning the editing software. We turned the final edited film to the magazine along with the stills, in case they wanted showcase the film on their website. It was extremely well received, and Esquire began to ask for these companion film pieces for our commissioned fashion shoots. Being editorial, the budgets could only allow little to no compensation for this additional asset, so they were mostly a labor of love. We used these types of shoots to learn and experiment with different processes. Eventually, we started bringing in higher quality motion cameras onto some brand ad campaign shoots (again on our own dime), and continued to hone these skills. We would do all of our own editing, not only for cost, but for the learning process as well. Editing can still be an exciting component for us because it’s like working on a complex puzzle.
Around this time, we were also getting ad jobs where on set timings would be shared with a TVC campaign. For whatever reason, the crews on the TVC motion teams were always a bit hostile and flexing some weird competitiveness with the stills team, even though we were all working for the same clients. We weren’t even taking on projects that required us to use their same set, but even with being completely autonomous, there were unnecessary complications thrown at us. We started thinking it might benefit these types of projects, especially in these pro athletes’ shoots, to school ourselves in continuous lighting that would allow us to capture both stills and motion simultaneously. The client began to see the potential and the benefit of hiring us as a team to capture both.
Tell us how you two harmonize creatively through the process. We’re both technical, but as mentioned, she’s probably the more thoughtful one in her approach. I might be quicker to jump in and try to problem-solve along the way. Monica works with the motion cameras and her team, while I mostly handle the lighting and still photo aspects so it’s seamless between the stills and motion. Sometimes we cross over. Both of us tend to be highly involved with the production process, as we tend to get a lot of the more complicated timings and multiple asset request projects. We both work the logistics as well. While on set, we are either able to capture certain scenes at the same time due to the consideration of the lighting, or able to bounce the subject’s attention back and forth between my lens and hers. We both love to edit when the project allows, and we have developed a nice workflow where Monica usually takes the first pass and creates a “trim bin” of her favorite takes, then I take that and begin to assemble an edit, then we bounce it back and forth during this process. We also found we love working with music composers and sound design collaborators, since sound can evolve and reinterpret things for these short form projects.
Is The 20 Years of Olympic Imagery a good example project. I don’t consider the 20 years of Olympic imagery as a project per se. It actually came about spontaneously over the first weekend of the 2024 Paris Olympics. I’m not a huge fan of social media, or the focus on “self branding”, but for better or worse, it’s obviously just another tool to showcase work. I’ve been reluctant to share older imagery, or ones that are heavily sport specific, with concern that the style of imagery might feel dated, or again get pigeon holed with the perception that I only shoot sports. I think the catalyst to share this work was seeing some recent Olympic campaigns with a similar aesthetic to the 2004 Nike Speed campaign, and realizing that the style within photography had once again come full circle, as trends tend to do.
I quickly edited the one minute collage film on the first Sunday of these Olympics, while watching the start of gymnastics and swim competitions, and posted it on the first Monday of the games. I didn’t have a plan going into it, so every night while watching the competitions, I would collate and resize imagery for the next days post. By not calling out brands, or the clients that these images were created for, I instead, wanted the focus to be solely about the athletes and the photography.
Life can be broken out into seasons, how would you describe your current season? I’ve been fortunate enough to have a long career so far. No huge breakouts, and I’ve never considered myself a critic’s darling, just slow and steady. I can look back and see specific projects that were stepping stones, like the aforementioned 2004 Speed campaign, and those that were fulfilling and allowed us to discover, or learn something new. With all of that, I still find that I am excited to learn new things, hopeful for what the next project will bring, and confident in the experiences that have come with the years of work. So perhaps it’s a hybrid of all of life’s seasons!
What has changed the most – you, your process, or the Olympic Games, or photography itself? That would take up another whole interview! I can attest that the landscape has changed so much since I started out, and moved even quicker in the last few years due to the sheer amount of photographers, directors, brands, social media, etc. With regard to the Olympics and photographing professional athletes, many of the changes I see are with the athletes themselves. Most of these young athletes have grown up with social media and self-branding. That can be an asset, as many understand all the publicity and brand asks of being a sponsored athlete. However, there are times I’ve seen all the self-branding and the focus of social media become a hinderance. There are also a lot more agents and PR representatives now then there used to be, and while it is necessary to have someone looking out for the athlete’s best interest, some come on set already with that “power flex”. They tend to forget that everyone is there to execute great imagery, while also creating a safe environment for the athlete. There are also a lot more brands besides athletic wear companies that sponsor the Olympics, like credit card companies, insurance companies, etc, that normally don’t shoot athletes, which limits access and timing further.
What are you excited about moving forward? I think moving forward Monica and I want to continue doing these types of projects, but we are also looking to hone the work to showcase some more simplified and graphic work, as sometimes less is more, in the hopes that not every shoot needs to be a huge science 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.
For a few years now, I’ve been very interested in the concept of human identity, specifically how people perceive and express themselves. The way we dress is often a reflection of how we feel about ourselves and who we want to be. Cosplayers take this to the extreme, literally transforming into comic book characters, superheroes, and video game stars as a way of exploring different facets of their identities.
I began photographing cosplayers during Comic Con in Denver as an exploration of the metamorphosis from ordinary people to fantasy, while still remaining human.
This is an ongoing project, and if you’ll be in costume for Denver’s Comic Con in 2025, please reach out. I’d love to photograph you.
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 advertising and in-house corporate industry for decades. 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. 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.
So much of who we are is passed from generation to generation—our genes, our behaviors—molded by our family. In 2017, my mother and father—who had not lived together for 50 years—died within three days of each other. I discovered many artifacts from my life of which I had no memory.
In this series, I combined botanicals with objects and photographs that I found, in order to convey a sense of memory and loss. The organic and volatile botanicals serve as a reminder of the ever-changing nature of memory and emotions—an unstable and profoundly unreliable process.
My creative process is to compose and photograph botanicals with the collected objects I have gathered from my mother’s home. I then print out the image and create yet another still life by layering more objects with the print and re-photograph it. This creates a further sense of the complex and layered emotions found within family dynamics.
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 advertising and in-house corporate industry for decades. 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. Follow her at @SuzanneSease. Instagram
Heidi: “Find a place you trust and then try trusting it for a while” was one of the truths of activist Corita Kent. What drew you to Nairobi as a home base for 4 years and counting?
KC: I get this question a lot, which makes sense! My first time in Kenya was in 2018––I’d just finished my post-grad fellowship in Arctic Norway and Finland, staying with Sami reindeer herders for nearly a year and a half (unusual, I know)––and was feeling lost. I’d studied ecology and studio art for my bachelor’s and had little idea what I wanted to do. The Arctic was amazing because I was more or less working as a long-form documentarian, staying with a few families over months, following them around, taking photos, and asking lots of questions. My project was about how climate change and tech are impacting traditional reindeer herders and their identity and culture. But I felt out of place coming back to the US, where most of my peers were working in banking or consulting, or pursuing more education––I knew none of that was for me. I visited a good friend in Nairobi, who’s Kenyan, and invited me to go ‘figure out life’ with her, and ended up staying for 8 months. It was my first time living in a city, full stop, and an African city undergoing remarkable changes at that. I just remember feeling very curious about everything, and how much buzz was going on.
I ended up moving to Nairobi, nearly inadvertently, in early 2020, which is when I started seriously looking into how to work as a journalist/documentary photographer. It was a steep learning curve, having not only zero connections to the industry, but also knowing nothing about pitching/the editorial process. But I was very drawn to it since it felt like a neat way to engage and learn about what is happening around us.
I think ultimately I’m drawn back to Nairobi time and time again for a few reasons: because it feels like home––I spent a lot of time building my community there!–– and the diversity in landscapes is amazing. I love spending time outdoors; there’s great climbing, hiking, deserts, a beautiful coast, savannahs- a lot of weekend adventures abound. From a professional outlook, it’s amazing how many underreported stories there are within Kenya, a country very saturated by journalists, both foreign and local. We’re very lucky to enjoy great press freedom, especially relative to neighboring countries since I don’t generally cover breaking news, I love working on stories that have just been sitting there for a while, years even, that no one else has picked up.
You continue to explore the mysterious kidney disease affecting coastal and rural communities in Sri Lanka – how long have you been working on this story? I first became interested in Sri Lanka in late 2022, when I was semi-stranded there trying to get a visa to India for a friend’s wedding. I ended up working on a couple of stories about how fishermen there are heavily impacted by both climate change and the ongoing economic crisis. My time there really stuck with me, and I became connected with a few Sri Lankan researchers, which is how I came to learn about the kidney disease linkage. Besides Ed Kashi’s work some years ago, which is more confined to the photojournalism realm. I hardly remember any reporting on chronic kidney diseases of unknown causes (CKDUs) in media, and feeling like that was a gap that could be filled.
How do you integrate and gain trust in the community for your photo essays that deal with vulnerable communities?
I think this is a perennially tough question to answer! Amongst my photojournalist friends, we have ongoing conversations about what we’re doing, our motivations, how the result is perceived, etc. For instance, a hot topic is whether or not to ‘parachute’ into a community (meaning, report on a place you are not well integrated in/familiarized with). There’s a harmful precedent of how this was done in the past, notably by white men, and I do think there is a much sharper awareness in the current ecosystem against that. There’s also the stance that bringing in different sets of experiences and perspectives can help tell stories and advocate for certain communities.
I usually work with a local ‘fixer’ (lingo for translator or guide), or a researcher familiar with the community at hand. They help explain my motivation for being there– what story I’m working on–to set the context for the questions I’m asking. From my set of experiences, whether it’s northern Kenya or Sri Lanka, I find that the folks I’m working with are often very marginalized within their communities due to their ethnicity or remoteness––are generally very happy to share their experiences, and glad someone is paying attention. This is not to write off very real questions about foreigners not approaching communities in good faith, but I am someone who very much believes in vibes–in the sense that it’s hard to hide your real motivation. If you’re genuine and sincere, people can sense that––it’s something that transcends cultural and linguistic barriers.
And of course, the more time you have, the better. It’s hard to photograph folks with sensitivity and intimacy if you’re only there for a hot minute. I ended up photographing the same fishing group in Kalpitiya, northwestern Sri Lanka, in December 2022 and January 2024, which isn’t something that happens often. Having a few days to hang out so people not only understand why you’re there but are used to your presence and just go about their normal business, is a real luxury.
For the recent New York Times article, how long were you there? Was that a continuation of your Atmos piece? I was there just under 3 weeks, from late January to mid-February of this year! And yes, it indeed was a continuation of the Atmos piece. I started in Negombo, just north of the capital Colombo, to Kalpitiya, and then to Medirigiriya (central) and Batticaloa (eastern), before heading south to Matara to try to get a full scope of the CKDU hotspot regions. This was my first original pitch that had gotten accepted by the Times (meaning I presented the story idea), which was very exciting–in the past, a photo editor had commissioned me to take photos to accompany the text.
The story behind this Sri Lanka story is that I’d applied to the Pulitzer Center and International Women’s Media Foundation for funding to make the reporting possible (the state of the industry is that few outlets have the means to pay for story expenses, and if you want to do it, you often end up spending your own money….). The Pulitzer Center requires ‘letters of commitment’ from publications as part of the application, to show that they will fund a story that’s getting published, and I’d gotten 3, but it was rejected. At that point, I’d invested so much time into these stories, that I thought I might as well go and do this on my budget and dime. But I’d pitched this to the science/climate editor at the Times I’d worked with previously, and 2 days after getting to Colombo, we had a call with the staff writer who was interested in the story. It was a big moment for me! I felt like I was being treated like a colleague, not just a disposable freelancer. I feel like admitting to them that I was already in Sri Lanka was a bit of a bold move, haha.
Your photos are full of emotion – is the edit difficult? You’re holding a lot of space for people/community. It’s always special getting to work on stories that are personal or sensitive. I remember having this feeling, when I met with the subject who was the most ill, whose photo ultimately wasn’t in the final edit. I had a hard time spending time with him because he was so frail he couldn’t leave his bed and was clearly in a lot of pain. At that moment, something in me just felt like it was collapsing; it felt really wrong to be there. I took a few bad photos and rushed to leave. He and his wife had both been sick for collective decades and were barely scraping by without any income. And the wife made a point of thanking me, saying no one had ever come to ask them questions about their health before. That moment, as painful as it was, kind of amplified why I wanted to work on this story to begin with, even though I didn’t feel like the right person to do it at that moment.
What would you tell your younger self now about those acknowledgments and the work that goes into them?
While being in the thick of it, as a full-time editorial freelancer, I’m not great about taking stock of how far I’ve come. But I’d tell my younger self that no one is going to permit you to do any of these things––you have to find the drive and commitment within yourself. And that what I want is actually within reach, it does take a lot of work, but the agency and feeling of being engaged is worth it. I don’t like it when people describe journalism/photojournalism as ‘more than a job,’ but in a sense, it’s kind of true. I become very invested in my work in a way that makes me feel like I need to set better boundaries, haha.
At the same time, even though I’ll endlessly gripe about how this industry doesn’t feel sustainable (at the rate I have to work/keep on top of stories, there’s an expiration date to it–it’s not possible to have a family, for instance, but I suppose that’s true for quite a few industries!), the influx of newsroom closures, the fact that rates haven’t been raised in decades––I don’t see myself wanting to do anything else. I’m a gut-feeling kind of person–at the end of the day, I love what I do, and will keep doing it unless I’m forced to change.
Congratulations on your long list of grants, awards, and recognition
– which are the most memorable for you and why?
Thank you! They are special in different ways :) being accepted as part of the Women Photograph mentorship class was a pretty visceral moment since I remember coming across the website more than 5 years ago, and just being blown away by the quality and scope of what these fantastic photojournalists were working on globally. I remember wondering if I would ever be able to make such work or have anything to contribute. I think I applied 4 or 5 times to the mentorship class before getting in!
Can you tell us about https://www.thexylom.com/ I was working with Alex Ip, the editor-in-chief of The Xylom, on a number of stories last year! It’s America’s only science outlet run by and for the AAPI community. They’re 100% transparent with their finances which is unusual, and I really respect that. As the news industry is in constant flux, it’s good to get a sense of who is funding what you read. Alex and Shreya, the newsroom fellow, were very kind in inviting me to join as the editor at large earlier this year–which basically means I’m a regular contributor. I was touched when I heard the news, and am glad that they want more of my reporting, mostly from East Africa!
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.
An eclectic and electric icon in a city brimming with icons.
Written. Wolfe. Twain.
Shouted. Vicious. Pop.
Whispered. Keroac. Cohen.
Sang. Dylan. Hendrix.
Too alive with tall tales, deep secrets and notable guests not to photograph.
New York City. Even in the most seen city, there is adventure in chasing a what-might-be-around-the next-corner feeling. My favorite work is often something that catches me in the moment, scratching the itch of the unexpected in an obscure corner of an unknown town, or on the west Side of Manhattan. I wasn’t planning on it, but the Chelsea was spinning tales that I had to listen to.
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 advertising and in-house corporate industry for decades. 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. 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.
Kids in the Hood began as a selfish pursuit of a photograph a day to push me as a creative. I came to it when my son was about 7, and he ran with a band of characters from our neighborhood. As a homeowner, I’d first come to know them as agents of entropy: they’d let the hose run too long, fight and squabble, pilfer from our recycling bin.
Over nearly 10 years of photographing them, the slow magic of parental love seeped beyond the bounds of my kid and onto the kids I got to know through my time in their world. Silently, I cheered, feared, hoped and worried about each of them. When the test of time and circumstance made the project harder – tweens going separate ways, teens inside on phones, Covid isolating us all – the nature of the work changed. Perhaps the biggest hurdle to my ultimate goal for the project was the fact that my son no longer wanted to be photographed on the regular. I struggled with this as a photographer, but ultimately my motherhood won, and I set him free (mostly). I set them all free (mostly). In the end, it was the natural arc of youth that dictated when it was time to stop. What didn’t stop is my love and admiration for each of them.
Dylan’s optimism is legendary, and it just might restore his imagination for what his life can be. I hope that Seamus will remember that joy is as important as the rest of the countless emotions in his head. Perhaps the most captivating kid in this project, Casper has always been utterly authentic and fluid. It seems they are flowing still. My son, Finn, has always seemed just a little concerned. As he’s matured, he’s colored it to look more like apathy or ambivalence to keep the world at bay. I will keep urging him, with and without camera, to trust the world, and most importantly, himself in it.
They’ve all (mostly) graduated from high school now and have chosen very different paths from one another. Almost none of them talk to each other anymore. But I do think and hope that they will forever remember where they came from and the days they spent together.
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 advertising and in-house corporate industry for decades. 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. 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.
In our latest series, “Personal Space,” we delve into the evolving landscape of the modern workplace, inspired by a New York Times article on large companies encouraging employees to personalize their office spaces to draw them back post-pandemic. This project emerged from the profound shifts we’ve all experienced in our professional lives, highlighting the blend of home and office environments.
To bring this vision to life, we purchased a standard office cubicle, transforming it into five distinct conceptual spaces, each reflecting a unique story of personal identity and professional adaptation. Each image in this series serves as a narrative, portraying how employees reclaim their workspaces with creativity, making them not just places of productivity but extensions of their homes and personalities.
Our goal with “Personal Space” is to capture the essence of this transitional period, where the line between work and home blurs, and the cubicle becomes a canvas for personal storytelling. Through these images, we explore themes of resilience, adaptability, and the human need for connection and expression in the face of change.
This series invites viewers to reflect on their own work environments and the subtle yet profound ways in which they personalize their spaces. It underscores the importance of creating workplaces that foster not only productivity but also well-being and personal fulfillment. “Personal Space” is a tribute to the enduring human spirit and its capacity to adapt and thrive, even in the most unexpected circumstances.
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 advertising and in-house corporate industry for decades. 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. Follow her at @SuzanneSease. Instagram
Each month, we pick one of our recent estimates to write about in a Pricing & Negotiating article. Helping photographers build estimates is one of the primary functions of our producers. Redacting the names of the photographer and client allows us to share valuable and educational information that would otherwise be confidential.
Concept: Images of a Consumer Health brand’s products being used by talent in multiple scenarios Licensing: Unlimited use of all content captured for 4 years Photographer/Director: Brand Narrative and Portraiture specialist with a portfolio of similar content Agency: Medium-sized Client: Consumer Health Care & Product Manufacturing Client owned by a large global pharmaceutical brand
Summary
I recently helped a photographer/director quote on and negotiate a project for a client seeking brand narrative content of doctors, technicians, and patients using their products.
The agency brief described photo and minor video lifestyle content of talent performing procedures within exam rooms, bathroom and bedroom home locations. The agency initially asked for an estimate including all production needs and 4 unique talent. The final use of the content would be client web and social, as well as consumer and trade publication advertising. The agency requested a 4 year Unlimited use license. They also made it clear multiple times that this was a formality for the brand and that they did not plan to use the images for OOH, Broadcast, nor POP. The agency intended to handle all retouching and video editing and asked us not to include quotes.
We included a Client Provisions section within the Job Description to note who would be handling these items as well as all products to be photographed.
The client didn’t have a prescribed shot list per se, but they did have an idea of the multiple scenarios they wanted to capture. The photographer/director and I sketched out an anticipated schedule for the talent and time needed for each scene. We anticipated 2 shoot days with the 4 talent on each day. Based on the agency, client, and how they intended content use, I suggested the fees should be in the range of $22-30k. The agency did not disclose a budget, but I felt that they might have a $110,000-120,000 project budget range and we placed the fees at $28,000 for the 2 day shoot.
I added $1,000/day for the photographer to tech scout the location in advance of the shoot and 4 pre-pro days needed.
Crew
We added a videographer at $1,500 per shoot day. We also added a first assistant at $550/day, including the tech scout. A second assistant on the shoot days to help with lighting and camera equipment management was also added. We included a digital tech/media manager at $700/day. We included a producer for 8 days to help with the crew booking needs, schedule coordination, on-site time management, and catering. These fees were consistent with previous rates the photographer had paid crew on past productions in this location.
Equipment
We included $3,800 for cameras, lighting, and grip rentals. The photographer would bring their own cameras, lenses, and would rent continuous lighting, modifiers, stands, and sandbags from a local rental house. We added $650/day for the digital workstation rental. Then, $700 was also added for hard drives to back up the content. We included $2,200 for any miscellaneous production supplies such as production book printing, tables and chairs for meals, equipment transport, hard drive shipping, etc.
Locations
The photographer/director had a local warehouse/studio in mind for the project. The studio already had some sets built that we could easily transform to suit our creative needs. We included the quoted $800/day for the studio for 4 days to cover the build days/pre-light, and 2 shoot days. A studio location manager and cleaning fees were also needed for the location, and we noted these lines separately for agency information.
Casting & Talent
We included $2,500 to cast the 4 talent, $3,360 for talent use fees, and 8 daily session fees at $600/day per talent. These fees were quoted by a casting director in that region.
Styling Crew
We Included a wardrobe stylist and assistant for 5 days each, plus an estimated $3,500 for wardrobe costs. A combo hair/makeup stylist and assistant was necessary and included. Last, we also included a prop stylist and assistant for 5 days each, plus $4,500 for anticipated prop costs.
Meals
We included $3,250 to cover meals and Craft Services for the anticipated folks on set.
Misc.
We included $1,400 for insurance to supplement the photographer’s liability and Workers’ Comp policies.
Post-Production
We added $1,000 for the photographer/director to perform a First Edit for Client Review and deliver all content to the agency on a hard drive.
Initial Results
We heard back from the agency about 2 weeks later that their client wanted to move ahead with the project but had a budget of roughly $95,000. The request was “Can you make this work for $95k? What do we need to sacrifice in order to reduce the estimate to $95k?”
I suggested that we could reduce the creative and talent fees if we reduced the duration of use to 2 years. The agency was receptive to this and asked to see those costs in an updated estimate. The agency also was kind enough to reduce their on-set headcount.
Revised Estimate
Fees
With the new use duration in mind, I suggested the fees should be in the range of $16-18k. The photographer agreed to place the fees at $16,000 for the 2 year use. Our estimate included a Licensing Options line stating the cost of extending the use to 4 years for an additional $12,000 + $1,800 per each talent. If you’re following the math, this would bring the photog’s fees to the same amount as the 4 year license estimate and increase the talent use fees a little bit.
Meals
We included $2,730 to cover meals and Craft Services for the updated headcount on set.
Everything else stayed the same on the revised estimate.
The photographer/director was awarded the project, and the production was a big success. The photographer/director was very thankful for the help and just sent me a link to view their edit of the project. I’m always very appreciative when I get to see the final work that a photographer is proud of!
If you have any questions, or if you need help estimating or producing a project, please reach out. We’re available to help with any and all pricing and negotiating needs— from small stock sales to large ad campaigns.
Heidi: You have been scanning the 1000+ slides for the past 10 years – what did you think when you first saw all the boxes of slides? Seth: Honestly, I was ignorant of the scale of the task. I had only scanned slides in small batches before. In the end, the effort felt appropriate given the subject matter. It was a struggle, just like the hike, but it also came with a real feeling of accomplishment. That said, I will likely have someone else scan a hundred slides of my parent’s thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail in 1972.
What were your feelings about handling tangible slides?
Some of my earliest memories are the slideshows my parents and friends would put on at Thanksgiving. These slides would transport me from our small farm in Vermont to wild adventures far away with crazy characters. They set the spark that would lead me on my path of adventure and exploration. That made the process of handling them that much more meaningful.
Beyond the personal side, I love the time capsule aspect of physical slides. Not only the content they hold but the little physical details, the fonts on the slide mounts, the discoloration on the edges, and the date stamps from 1974. These are from a different era, a different time. They age and change with time, there is life to them.
My father had handwritten numbers on the slide mounts. Those personal touches separate physical media from digital and give them that life. Now and again during the process, I would be struck by the fact I was holding slides that my parents had taken and curated over 40 years ago. These are the only records of this period in my parent’s life and some of the few images documenting the early days of thru-hiking. It made the project feel more profound. I made a point of putting scans of the physical slides in the book because they came to mean so much to me.
Since you’re involved in tactile experiences with The Postcard Project and other collages was this a different way to express a tactile medium? For the postcard project, I used vintage postcards from the 1930s, sketched blue ink portraits across three postcards, and mailed them separately to an unsuspecting recipient. The postcards share a lot of the little touches that the slides have. They are a tangible connection to the past, with a life to them. I have always been fascinated by taking something with that life and adding art to it.
I think the key difference between the PCT project and many of my other projects was the process of first digitizing something old, then creating something new via software, and finally printing it as a new physical book. I relished the storytelling process through the layout while infusing some of my aesthetic and style. The challenge was retaining the life of those slides in something new. I specifically left some of the images uncropped with the jagged edges of the slide showing. These imperfections are increasingly important to art as AI can create near-perfect original pieces. It is the imperfections that make art human.
I am also really intrigued by physically mailing items to people. Today most people only get packages, bills, and marketing in the mail. We are losing that unique experience of being surprised by something showing up from someone we care about. The postcard project was an opportunity for me to create that experience for people. I sent one of the PCT books to my parents’ hiking partner Bill Jahn. He had no idea I was scanning the photos, let alone making a book. It caught him off guard and I got a very loving note from him afterwards. I don’t think you can have that type of impact with digital mediums.
Did your parents talk much about their archive? In some ways, I don’t think they fully appreciated what the archive represented, to them personally and to the hiking community. There had been discussions about digitizing the slides but it was not a strong push. For many years, there was no talk of the slides at all. It made the moment they opened the book that much more fulfilling. I could see in real-time the realization of the scale of what they had done.
What do you think is lost in the digitalization of family archives/history? One of the promises of digitization is that it will make the content more accessible. Instead of being stored in a stack of boxes, requiring a projector to view, they are readily available on a shared drive. The reality is that you don’t end up spending the same quality time with them. I still love flipping through photo albums from my childhood and lament that my kids don’t get that experience. This was highlighted the other day when my kids were going through the photo album on my Facebook page. I realized this was one of the only places they could see all their childhood photos. I am resolved to get some books of our photos printed now.
A task like this is daunting – how did you approach it? It took nearly ten years to complete, so I’m not sure about my approach. I made a concerted push at the beginning, getting 400 or so done in the first month. Then I would do 50 in a go when I had time. It was such a repetitive monotonous process that it was difficult to keep the momentum. When I took a moment to review the images and saw how great they were, I got motivated and pushed for the next group to get done.
Were you always planning on making a book for your folks as a gift? When I started, the only goal was to get the slides digitized and on a shared drive for my mother and father. Through the process of handling the slides and seeing the images for the first time in years, I began to feel they deserved something more. I don’t think you can engage as deeply with the photos through a screen. Once the book was printed, I spent hours flipping through it, finding new details and discovering new favorites.
Now that the book is done – what would you do differently – are you inspired to document your life?The book was made for my parents and as a result, I prioritized getting as many images in as possible. I laid out the book quickly. I wish I had taken more time on the layout and reviewed the photos closely. Once I saw the photos printed, some were much better than I had thought when I saw them on the screen and justified more real estate. I would also like to add quotes from those involved to bring more life to the images.
Personally, the process confirmed my belief that documentation, digital or physical, of these types of life experiences is important. It provides a way to relive the experience and to keep the memories alive. It made me commit to improving my photography skills and capturing as much as I could on recent trips to Greenland and Newfoundland.
Another offshoot of the PCT project was that I started doing public presentations of my trips. I had such fond memories rekindled of my parents’ slideshows and lamented that we don’t share our experiences like that anymore. I find it to be much more gratifying than simply putting up an Instagram post.
The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own. I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before. In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find. Please DO NOT send me your work. I do not take submissions.
I’ve been creating my Christmas card series since 2007.
It originally started as a joke to take a goofy portrait of myself in my single days to give to friends. It’s now turned into a serious project every holiday season that friends and family eagerly await the release of. We like to ‘out-do’ ourselves in terms of goofiness, quirkiness, or cleverness every year. It’s a goal of ours to create something that looks so real in terms of concept and execution, that if it were found on the street, someone would think that it was a real ad, band photo, or album art.
In the early years it was just me, then my cat Opie came along, followed by my wife, and now our two girls. It used to be easy to shoot something goofy, but now it’s become a fun challenge to create a realistic concept that works with all of our family members.Sometimes the concept is a loose idea that is worked out the day that we shoot and release it, and other times it’s figured out months in advance. This year’s concept is already worked out, we just need to purchase some clothing and props and shoot nearer the holiday season.
Last year’s card was the most complete to me in terms of realism and concept. We created a band, a song, album art, and merch. I recorded a simple song with my daughters, shot and designed the album art, and even had a merch site to sell t-shirts, mugs, and prints for family and friends.
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 advertising and in-house corporate industry for decades. 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. Follow her at @SuzanneSease. Instagram
Heidi: With a year under your belt, what are your top learnings from the past year? Michael: Making a magazine is the easy part – or at least it sometimes feels that way.
Editing a magazine – from commissioning and greenlighting articles and imagery to then working with the writers and photographers to perfect their work and get the assignments over the finish line – is the dream job for me. I feel beyond lucky to be doing this. But all the other stuff that comes with it? Business ops, marketing, and all the other shit… that stuff more often than not makes my head spin trying to keep it all straight and figure out the optimal way to do things. I’m constantly learning things, often things that I didn’t know that I didn’t know. As someone who has spent all my time on the editorial side in the past, wearing a bunch of different hats – from customer service rep to ad sales – has given me a new found appreciation and admiration for the folks who make everything else run smoothly. There’s just as much an art to that side of the equation.
There were 319 past issues of Summit – and then you resurrected the title, why did you pivot on the naming convention? There were a handful of reasons., When I shared my hopes to resurrect Summit with a former colleague, he asked me why I wasn’t going to just start a new magazine from scratch instead. “There are so many better names!” he said. Firstly, I just flat out disagree with him about the name – what’s better than Summit for a climbing and mountaineering mag right?! Secondly, the whole point of resurrecting a magazine is to continue an existing story – to pick up where others left off. I’ve gotten to tell the broad strokes of the story of Jean and Helen, Summit’s founders, quite a bit at this point, and I still feel humbled to do so.
But just because I’ve brought Summit back to life, it’s not as though this is the same magazine it was in 1955 or 1965 or whenever. It’s a different project. Informed by that original title, yes. But not one in the same. So simply calling it Summit Magazine didn’t feel quite right. From 1990 to 1996, there was a second incarnation of Summit under which the name was tweaked to Summit: The Mountain Journal.
Calling the new iteration Summit Journal felt like a way to pay homage to both of these former eras, yet also signal that this is something new, something different.
I didn’t necessarily expect many people to read all of that into the name pivot. If anything, it’s more about keeping the mission straight in my and my art director’s heads here behind the scenes. To make sure we always remember that this title had a long, vibrant history before we came along and brought it back to life, but also that that shouldn’t dictate or limit what it is and can be in this new era.
You’ve been blending archival and current covers – are you leaning in into brand equity or balancing photography and the whimsical design Summit was known for? It’s a bit of both. On the one hand, I think Summit Magazine’s most iconic covers are the illustrated ones by artists like Sheridan Anderson and Richard Pargeter. Continuing that tradition just felt like a no-brainer.
But doing an illustrated cover today also felt like something different in the outdoor media landscape, which has become overwhelmingly photo-centric. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that’s a bad thing; I just think the illustrated covers signal a different type of magazine.
Now, having said that, after I decided that I was going to do an illustrated cover for our first issue, I got a bit nervous. What if too many people were turned off by it? What if some people just wanted a cool climbing shot? Heck, I love an epic climbing photo as much as the next person. And so I figured I might as well do two covers – one illustration, one photo. That allowed me to have my cake and eat it. too.
And as I thought about it more, that felt like just one more way to capture the duality of this project – something old that is also something new. It suddenly seemed like the obvious way to do it. And with that in mind, we’re continuing to do two covers for each issue for the foreseeable future.
How did the archival content of Summit shape your contemporary editorial direction? While it was always U.S.-centric, the older magazines had a very worldly sensibility. I’m very much trying to carry that forward.
The old magazines were mostly filled with pretty utilitarian stuff: how-to articles, trip reports, that kind of thing. I’m not against the latter, but I won’t be putting how-to articles or tech tips or gear reviews or any stuff like that in Summit Journal; there’s more than enough of that online. Rather, I’m trying to cultivate a more literary sensibility: climbing has, I would argue, perhaps the most literary tradition of any sport out there. There are old articles in the original Summit by climbers like Arlene Blum and Royal Robbins that are literary in a way that most stuff back than wasn’t. I’m trying to take that example and fill the entire magazine with it. Also to be clear: when I say literary, I’m not talking about esoteric think pieces or mind-numbing philosophy or impenetrable MFA-style prose. I’m talking the best kind of journalism, reportage, and essays that you see in the best of mainstream pubs – The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Esquire, the Outside of yesteryear – but with a climbing bent.
Congratulations on the mention in the NYT piece – what’s your take on the future of print publishing for independent magazines? I’m wildly optimistic, as crazy as that might sound. In addition to Summit Journal, the NYT piece covered other great magazines like Mountain Gazette, Adventure Journal, Ori magazine, Emocean, and The Surfers Journal. But the article was focused just on the outdoors, obviously. A similar analog renaissance is occurring in seemingly every space, it feels like – whether traditional sports, or food and culinary arts, or what have you. I’m discovering new, wonderful magazines and magazine stores literally every single day.
For me, the Internet and digital media have gotten so big that it can feel overwhelming. I have a couple online sources I rely on, but venturing beyond that feels scary – and there’s only so much time in the day that I want to be staring at a screen if I don’t have to be. In that kind of world, careful curation and high-quality print feel that much more valuable.
I’m under no illusions that print will suddenly become the de facto distribution medium again or ever approach what it was in its heyday – no one wants that or is saying that would be good! But for delivering something different, for unplugging, for slowing down, for really absorbing a quality story and images… it’s hard to beat print for that. And I think there are enough people who agree to make it a thriving business for small, niche pubs like Summit Journal.
Have you been getting hearty photography submissions? Yes! Right out of the gate submissions and pitches were slow – no surprise there. But now that it’s been almost a year since we announced Summit’s resurrection, there’s a steady trickle of both every week. We’ve started to commission some larger photographic stories, but our bread and butter continue to be submissions of already produced work. That’s just kind of the reality of the landscape and what we have the budget and bandwidth to work with. So with that in mind, if you have any great climbing or climbing-adjacent photos or ideas, send ‘em my way! mlevy@summitjournal.com
Heidi: When did your passion for doing the sport of parkour/freerunning start and eventually evolve into photography as a practice?
Matteo: I started practicing parkour in 2014, in my second year of high school.
I started in a gym called Total Natural Training, owned by one of Milan’s oldest parkour groups: Milanmonkeys. It was newly opened at the time, so I was one of the first subscribers. I used to be a bit of a loner, often feeling too shy to express myself through words, so I found a way to express myself through movement.
It was my life back then. When I got back home from the gym I used to hop on YouTube to watch parkour videos and take notes of what I wanted to work on next. I would always buy all of Milanmonkey’s merchandise as soon as it was available and wear oversized gym pants with crazy graphics every day; the height of parkour fashion at the time.
After three years of training indoors I moved on from the gym and started training on the streets, finally getting in touch with the wider parkour community. I started going to jam sessions and other events that attract parkour athletes from all over the world, exploring parts of the city I didn’t even know existed.
It was the first sport I fell in love with, it helped me become more confident with my body and make good friendships along the way.
When I began my photography studies I felt drawn to the topic of subcultures. To better understand how passions work I felt the need to first dive back into my own and study it as something between a photographer and a practitioner.
Rediscovering such an important part of my life through the lens of a camera felt almost spiritual.
How did looking at urban space and visualizing sequences, textures, and light inform both your freerunning and the photography you wanted to shoot? Parkour content is mostly displayed in video, the viewer will see every instance of a stunt. Photography works very differently.
Based on what the athlete is going to do, you have to figure out which part of the trick is the best one to show, often having to predict when to press the shutter.
Many tricks are spectacular in real life, but when frozen in place don’t look all that interesting. That’s when you have to rely on other elements to make the photo speak, like a very dramatic light, a specific angle, or a longer exposure. These challenges were exciting to tackle, and taught me a lot about how to approach fast moving subjects with the camera
Why black and white for this body of work? Urban architecture is a fundamental component of parkour. There’s a tight interaction between the athlete and the elements of the city landscape. The grayscale highlights this connection by presenting both people and the environment with the same color and better defines the geometry of the spots, and areas of the city where the architecture allows an acrobatic interaction.
This work involves artistic movement and an intimate connection to urban space and architecture. What influences did you draw from? One of my favorite activities outside of training was scouting for spots. We would put together a little group, buy “provisions” and make little expeditions in the city suburbs or in some towns close by; take pictures of what we considered interesting, and publish them on Facebook. This eventually translated into my love for urbexing, the exploration of abandoned buildings, which also has a widespread and active community.
How did the ICP program stretch you creatively – what was the most useful learning? ICP has been invaluable for my growth as a photographer, thanks to the classes and my fellow students. It’s a great environment to experiment and to understand what works and what doesn’t within a story.
I was particularly fond of creative classes, where we explored the concept of visual art beyond just the action of photographing. Recognizing all the important elements in a story and representing them in creative ways can add layers to a narrative. For example, in my project for ICP, I included scans of drawings and phrases that the protagonists of my work left in my notebook; or used a white sheet of paper to collect footprints. These elements offer more dimensions to the otherwise flat surface of a picture. I want to experiment with that even more moving on.
How did you prepare for the ICP portfolio reviews and what was your biggest takeaway? I remember the last weeks before the portfolio review as the most hectic time in my experience at ICP. The most important thing was feedback, but since many classes ended, we couldn’t rely on periodic meetings with professors. There was a lot of scheduling and sending emails, but among the students, we were helping each other out a lot; putting sequences together and having mock interviews.
The review itself was much less stressful than I expected. At the end of the day we were presenting the project we’ve been working on for the whole year, so talking about it came naturally.
How often do you use the jam maps and is this a worldwide system for free running? Almost every major city has a spot map available to anyone; I always check them out when I travel somewhere new. They are constantly updated and include information on the spots, like difficulty or the kind of obstacles there are.
Even when a city doesn’t have a proper map it’s always easy to contact the local community via social media and get a list of the best spots.
What projects are you working on now? For my project at ICP, I went for a very different underground subculture. I documented the story of the Nocturnal Creatures Society, a young group of ravers from the New Jersey suburbs that banded together due to the lack of youth-oriented gatherings in their towns.
NCS will travel on the road throughout America this summer organizing rave parties; I’ll be there to document that.
I’m not abandoning my parkour journey though! I plan to get back to it at a later date.
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.
I endeavor to realize and document beauty every day in the people that surround me wherever I am in this life journey. I am endlessly intrigued by people especially those that appear different than me and I rejoice in experiencing our commonalities. I celebrate unity, diversity, inclusion and love for everyone from every land and all cultures.
I believe that at its core portraiture is a somewhat intrusive act. It is my duty as the photographer to minimize that intrusion and to connect as honestly, thoughtfully and respectfully as I possibly can.
My latest personal project This Is What Jewish Looks Like started over a year ago through a desire of mine to represent people with truth and dignity. In this first phase of my project, I photographed 60 Jewish people of diverse backgrounds, race, and origins over the course of 3 days. This imagery was compiled in collaboration with Reboot and released as a Public Service Announcement on MTV, Paramount, Showtime, and their affiliated channels in celebration of Jewish American Heritage Month.
As with all of my work I am dedicated to finding that beauty that we all share as human beings floating around on this planet and I treasure our connections. I am only scratching the surface with where I am going next with this project of capturing diversity and inclusion in the Jewish faith. I welcome you all to follow along.
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 advertising and in-house corporate industry for decades. 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. 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.
Waterway is an ongoing project I started in 2009 just after buying a house on the Detroit River.
This series of images is focused on foggy mornings when things are quiet, calm, and surreal.
It’s a magical time to be on the river as threads of mist permeate from the water into the cool air leaving it a horizonless abyss, disorienting, removing any visual reference to direction.
It’s a time to explore, watch, and wonder as the breeze rolls blankets of fog into various tunnels of sight and the sun’s rays of light fight relentlessly to burn through the thick moist air.
Sometimes without warning the fog will just vanish leaving this mysterious place behind, and you’re left waiting for the next time the fog will play with your mind.
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 advertising and in-house corporate industry for decades. 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. 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.
I am the father of a young boy and the only child of a single mom. I’ve never met my dad.
I’ve been traveling around the US to take portraits of fathers and sons from many different cultural, ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds. The different ways you can grow up in this country are astounding but many challenges for fathers and sons and the love between them are still the same.
The most basic role of a father is to protect his child while also allowing the kid to learn and grow by failing and getting hurt (but not too much). It’s a constant balancing of preaching caution and abandon. On top of that there’s the expected guidance in inter-personal, scholastic, tech-related, sexual (dear Lord, no!), and financial behavior. Plus installing a basic value system for dealing with a constantly changing world. What could possibly go wrong?
Obviously, the father-son-relationship is incredibly influential for both. Many times, a son will follow in his dad’s footsteps, and most dads have to make big life changes to accommodate their children. Children might have to return the favor when their parents grow old.
I’ve tried to capture all of these things in my images. But the glue that holds everything together is the love between a parent and a child. It’s primal and fundamental. If it’s not there for whatever reason, it’s probably hard to have a good lifelong relationship and it’s probably hard for the child to develop all the tools needed for a good life. If the love is there, there’s a good chance it will carry father and son through all their difficulties and shortcomings. Probably everybody who had a child can recall the feeling when your baby’s lying on your chest. It’s glorious and terrifying all at the same time and it really changes your life forever.
Andrew & Homer, Brooklyn, NY, 2016
Homer is 9 days old in this image and I think you can see here the foundation of everything. The love between a parent and a child is so primal and fundamental. If it’s not there for whatever reason it’s probably hard to have a good life-long relationship and it won’t be easy for the child to develop all the tools he or she needs for a good life. If the love is there, there’s a good chance it will carry father and son through all their difficulties and shortcomings. Probably everyone who has had a child can remember the feeling of your baby lying on your chest. It’s glorious and terrifying all at the same time and it changes your life forever.
Fung Kit (Michael) & Wing-Hong (Andrew), Mountain View, CA, 2023
Fung Kit immigrated from China to study in the US. He stayed on and became an engineer for Hershey’s Chocolate in Pennsylvania. He and Andrew live now in separate apartments at the same complex in Silicon Valley where Andrew is the founder of a tech startup. Andrew invited his friends Brian and Louisa for a game of mahjong with his dad. (Fung Kit mopped the floor with the young people.)
Jason & Chester, Jupiter, FL, 2018
Jason is a firefighter and surfer. He’s very concerned about safety in his professional life, but as is apparent in this image, he’s also confident in his physical abilities. Like everything in life and fatherhood, it’s about balance.
Jonathan & Benjamin, Randolph, NJ, 2021
Jonathan is a lawyer who is very passionate about hunting. He is the owner of a deer hunting camp in the Poconos. While Benjamin is still too young to go on a proper hunt with his dad, Jonathan is teaching him how to track deer, look for signs of wildlife in the woods and search for antlers that the bucks shed.
Wyatt & Mike, West Point, NY, 2019
Mike graduated from West Point 30 years before Wyatt. He spent 4 years in the Army before he rejoined civilian life. He returned to West Point to celebrate Wyatt’s graduation from the military academy.
Paul & Sonny, San Francisco, CA, 2023
Paul is a craftsman who works with artists to build their creations. He and Sonny went through a very rough time, Paul’s dad passed away and their family dog died while Sonny’s mom had a life threatening health crisis. To keep themselves occupied and grounded they’ve built things like a soapbox car together. Here Sonny is practicing his welding skills in his dad’s workshop.
Paula & Jonathan, Brooklyn, NY, 2018
Paula is a father who transitioned from male to female when she was 61 years old. Both she and Jonathan are pastors. Paula, when she was a man, was a televangelist and ran a mega-church on Long Island. After she transitioned she lost all her jobs with that church and she now leads a small congregation in Colorado. Jonathan, who is the pastor of a church in Brooklyn, wrote a book about the experience of his dad becoming a woman (it wasn’t easy). They gave a TED talk together shortly after our shoot.
Raul & Mario & Salomon & Ramon, Abiquiu, NM, 2021
Salomon was one of the founders of the Abiquiu Volunteer Fire Department. His son Mario is also a volunteer in the same department, Raul is a professional firefighter in Los Alamos, and Ramon is a retired professional firefighter for the Navy in Virginia. They all live in Abiquiu now.
Voodah & Rahmel, Brooklyn, NY, 2019
Voodah is an artist who collaborates with his son in a series of videos. He taught Rahmel meditation and encourages him to meditate often to create a space for himself in a crowded life.
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 advertising and in-house corporate industry for decades. 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. 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.
In my images of Muay Thai kickboxers, I traveled to Bangkok, Thailand, capturing these athletes at various training camps and stadiums where they compete. This project captures the dedication, rich tradition, and vibrant pageantry of Muay Thai kickboxers, revealing a world where physical prowess and spiritual depth converge.
My fascination with Muay Thai stems from witnessing the unwavering commitment of these athletes. With my images I aim to show the rigorous training, the moments of silent contemplation, and the dynamic energy of these athletes. The fighters’ expressions, the intricate details of their ceremonial attire, and the intense action sequences all tell a story of honor, respect, and the pursuit of excellence.
This project is a visual homage to the athletes who dedicate their lives to mastering Muay Thai, preserving its legacy for future generations. It is an invitation for viewers to witness the beauty and discipline of this ancient tradition, celebrated in the heart of Bangkok.
The ceremonial rituals, the intricate details of their attire, and the dynamic movements in the ring are all captured to convey the beauty and discipline inherent in Muay Thai. This project is about the spirit and passion that these athletes have for their craft.
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 advertising and in-house corporate industry for decades. 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. Follow her at @SuzanneSease. Instagram