Portfolios

Robert LeBlanc: GLORYLAND

By Laura Chen - 02/3/23

Los Angeles-based artist Robert LeBlanc is a self-taught photographer with an aptitude for capturing non-traditional communities. From firefighters to hurricane survivors, his images of life lived on the fringes of society offer an eccentric glimpse into otherwise rarely-pictured social sp...

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Ruizhe Hong: So Close When You Look Away

By Laura Chen - 01/23/23

If infatuation could talk, Chinese photographer Ruizhe Hong has rendered its speech visible in So Close When You Look Away: a series of soft, intimate and sensual images that feel like love letters delivered inside a heart-sealed envelope.Read More

The Royal College of Art – Photography Department Graduates of 2022

Gabriela Gawęda - 10/24/22
From 23 – 28th September 2022 the graduation show of students of the Royal College of Art in London, UK took place. RCA is one of the most well-known public research universities in the UK with its program devoted to arts & humanities, design, architecture, and communications. The uni...

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Mateo Ruiz González: Chilluns’ Croon

By Linda Zhengová - 10/12/22

Mateo Ruiz González (b. 1989, Colombia) is a photographer and researcher based in New York. He is also the co-founder of Antics Publication, a publishing house focusing on inclusivity and the open photo...

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Katerina Lymar: Call me a slut

By Gabriela Gawęda - 09/1/22

She opens the viewers’ eyes to things that we don’t want to or are too much in a hurry to notice. Meet Katerina Lymar, a Ukrainian photographer who with the maturity of a professional doesn’t shy away from representing topics of injustice that for some ma...

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Lewis Khan: ABQ

by Gabriela Gawęda - 07/5/22

It is a fact that Albuquerque, abbreviated ABQ is the most populated city in the state of New Mexico. It is also a fact that its population reaches just above 2 million. Yet the character of the city does not let itself be defined that easily by a Google search res...

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Gian Marco Sanna: PARADISE

By Gabriela Gawęda - 06/17/22

Gian Marco Sanna (b. 1993, Italy) experiments in his photography with digital and analogue techniques. His work dives into the ecological and social consciousness where myths collide with reality. Sanna follows natural landscapes at the same time discovering human intervention in...

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Colin Delfosse: Fulu Act

By Laura Chen - 03/21/22

How can a country with no industries today become a victim of over-consumption?

Since the Berlin conference in 1884, Congo has been at the forefront of globalization. The advent of the country as the leading exporter of cobalt (a key ore in the construction of smartphones) is the ...

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Wanda Tuerlinckx: Androids

By Laura Chen - 12/19/21

In the work of Flemish photographer Wanda Tuerlinckx (b.1969, Belgium) the world of science and art collide, resulting in fascinating images that question today’s technologically advanced society and the ever-evolving relationship between humans and machines. In ...

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Weronika Gęsicka: Traces

By Laura Chen - 10/21/21

Fascinated by scientific and pseudoscientific theories, Weronika Gęsicka’s (b. 1984, Poland) projects explore mnemonics and various mechanisms concerning human memory and veracity. Fundamental to her practice is archival material, which she sources from the internet: old press...

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Kensuke Koike and Thomas Sauvin: No More, No Less

By Laura Chen - 09/20/21

In 2015, French artist and collector Thomas Sauvin (b. 1983) acquired an exercise book, produced by an unknown photography student from Shanghai University in the early 1980s, which he rescued from a recycling plant in the outskirts of Beijing for about 18 euros. The book, which comprises ...

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Anabela Pinto: Precious Things

by Sophie Beerens - 07/28/21

The cult of technology takes center stage in Anabela Pinto’s photographic series Precious Things, as she explores mankind’s precarious relationship with the devices tha...

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Tom Butler: Self Portraits

GUP Team - 07/19/21

English photographer Tom Butler (b. 1979) contorts his body, holding elegant poses that show only the top of his head. “The work reads like a contemporary dance piece; Butler’s body casting shapes that confuse and intrigue — his bald head the small, ever-present reminder th...

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Igor Elukov: Book of Miracles

by Sophie Beerens - 07/7/21

GUP Magazine is media-partnering with Belfast Photo Festival this year. For the occasion, to underline our mutual interest in addressing global issues by way of photography and to make these works available to a wider audience, we have been given the opportunity to select and hi...

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Dawn Kim: Whistling in the Dark

by Sophie Beerens - 05/4/21

‘Whistling in the Dark’ by the artist Dawn Kim (b. 1989, South Korea) presents a growing collection of black and white photographs taken at various locations across the United States and abroad — bound...

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Bebe Blanco Agterberg: A mal tiempo, buena cara

By Sophie Beerens - 04/20/21

Bebe Blanco Agterberg (b. 1995) explores the murky waters of historical truth through the lens of post-Francoist Spain, and the far-reaching implications of the Pact of Forgetting (Pacto del Olvido), a political decision brought about by both Leftist and Rig...

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Yichen Zhou: Untitled & Daily Talk

By Sophie Beerens - 04/16/21

Every year, artist Yichen Zhou (b. 1986, China) returns to the expansive plains of her birthplace of Inner Mongolia. There, she creates surreal images — usually depicting herself, performing a series of acts ranging f...

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Cansu Yıldıran: The Dispossessed

By Sophie Beerens - 04/2/21

Deep in a valley of the Kusmer Highlands, in the Black Sea region of Turkey, lies the village and ancestral homeland of photographer Cansu Yıldıran: Çaykara. Tradition decrees that the women of this village may not own the homes or the land that they live in —...

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Isabelle Wenzel – Body Movin’

GUP Team - 03/29/21

“Let your backbone flip but don’t slip a disc, let your spine unwind, just take a risk.” This excerpt from the Beastie Boys song Body Movin’ very much applies to the artistic work of Isabelle Wenzel (b. 1982, Germany), whose career is defined by an extensive, and remarka...

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Joana Choumali: Ça Va Aller

GUP team - 03/24/21

Joana Choumali (b. 1974, Ivory Coast) expresses her artistic vision through photography and mixed media, touching on issues of identity and notions of beauty in relation to the body. Much of her practice focuses on Africa and derives from her own experience as a black African woman....

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VINCENT DELBROUCK – CHAMPÚ

GUP team - 03/10/21

Vincent Delbrouck (b. 1975, Belgium), also known as “V.D.”, spent of a lot of time in Havana as a photographer at the end of the 1990s. Then he left Cuba for years. When he returned, in 2014, he didn’t want to make a documentary about the pe...

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Cecilia Sordi Campos: Tem Bigato Nessa Goiaba

GUP Team - 03/3/21

In this project, Brazilian-born, Melbourne-based photographic artist Cecilia Sordi Campos (b. 1989) considers the parallels between her migration to Australia and her separation from her partner of ten years, and how this has impacted the life she’s living. Tem Bigato Nessa Go...

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Silvia de Giorgi: Landscapes Pieces / Liquid Landscapes

GUP team - 02/17/21

By experimenting with alternative photographic processes as well as using drawing and on-site rock rubbings, Silvia De Giorgi (b. 1992, Italy) aims to reveal experiential knowledge of the natural environment that encompasses both its physical and social past. She is drawn to sit...

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Prin Rodriguez – Los Hijos de Pariacaca

GUP Team - 02/15/21

Pariacaca is the name of an “apu”, a divinity embodied in a mountain in the Peruvian Andes, located between Lima and Junin. The importance of Pariacaca in Andean spirituality predates the process of Spanish colonisation in the 16th century when local religions and belief systems we...

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Gerardo Vizmanos: Searching for Utopia

BY SOPHIE BEERENS - 02/12/21

‘Searching for Utopia’ by Gerardo Vizmanos (b. 1975, Spain) arises from an understanding that utopia itself might not exist yet we can still imagine that another reality from t...

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Marta Bogdańska: SHIFTERS

by Patrycja Rozwora - 01/29/21

For her ongoing project SHIFTERS, Marta Bogdańska – a visual artist, photographer, filmmaker and cultural manager based in Poland – took on a challenge: presenting a history from the perspective of animals.

...

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JILLIAN FREYER – 42 WAYNE

GUP Team - 01/18/21

Throughout her work, Jillian Freyer (b. 1989, US) uses female bodies to explore the experience of touch, and of emotional and physical endurance. Witnessed events and staged performances serve as a way to seek new intimacies between herself and her subjects. Physical sensations ...

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Délio Jasse – J’ai le Devoir de Mémoire

GUP Team - 12/25/20

Délio Jasse (b. 1980, Angola) is known for applying analogue techniques (painting, slide projection) to vernacular images (found passport photos, family albums) that reference the colonial history of Europe and deeply connect with diasporic issues. These appropriations and crea...

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Lucia Sekerková Bláhová – Vrăjitoare

GUP team - 12/16/20

Lucia Sekerková Bláhová (b. 1991, Slovakia) photographed the “vrăjitoare”, or witches, of Romania’s Wallachian Roma community. She collaborated with ethnologist Ivana Šusterová, an expert in the everyday life and culture of the Roma community. Together, they document...

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Michal Chelbin – How To Dance The Walz

GUP Team - 12/12/20

Michal Chelbin (b. 1974, Israel) spent three years traveling around Ukraine, documenting life inside the country’s military boarding schools. Her pictures are populated by young boys dressed in immaculate regimental uniforms and official military attire, and young girls wearin...

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VALERY POSHTAROV: THE MONK AND HIS FAITH

GUP Team - 12/7/20

Valery Poshtarov (b. 1986, Bulgaria) has created black and white portraits of monks* from different monasteries in Bulgaria. These portraits are presented as diptychs, with each priest juxtaposed with his rosary. Within the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, this string of beads is typi...

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ELENA HELFRECHT: PLEXUS

GUP Team - 11/30/20

The work of Elena Helfrecht (b. 1992, Germany) revolves around inner space and the phenomena of consciousness, emerging from an autobiographical context and expanding into the surreal and the fantastic – and even, at times, the grotesque. Helfrecht grew up in the Bavarian coun...

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Bart Koetsier: Parisian Wanderings

by Erik Vroons - 11/16/20

Bart Koetsier (b. 1975), a Dutch portrait and documentary photographer based in Paris, loves wandering the streets, to just go out for a stroll – or what in French could be described as a ‘dérive’:Read More

Ulrich Lebeuf: Khaos

GUP Team - 11/2/20

Ulrich Lebeuf (b. 1972, France) has covered every ‘act’ of the Gilets Jaunes protests since November 2018 – as a photojournalist. With KHAOS, he approaches this period of unprecedented social struggle with a renewed eye; far removed from more conventional ways of visualisi...

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Elsa Leydier: Transatlántica

by Patrycja Rozwora - 10/30/20

In 2015, the French artist Elsa Leydier (b. 1988) moved to Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and started exploring Brazilian and other South American societies. Through her work, the artist invites the audience to question the dominant ways in which photography is exploited to represent t...

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Antigone Kourakou: Episodes

GUP Team - 10/26/20

The work of Antigone Kourakou (b. 1979, Greece) discreetly leads us to the threshold of a quite unanticipated, silent introspection. By stirring up deep-rooted images and moments, her photography prompts the viewer to fill in the blanks. These elliptical scenes and oblique perso...

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IGOR PJÖRRT: BETELGEUSE

GUP Team - 10/19/20

For Igor Pjörrt (b. 1996, Portugal), who developed a fascination for astronomy in his late teens, Betelgeuse – a red supergiant star in the Orion constellation that is nearing its death – serves as a metaphor for the fragility of a queer relationship. More specifically, he draws parallels be...

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EGOR FEDOSOV: 1:26-3:24

GUP team - 10/14/20

The works of Egor Fedosov (b. 2000, Russia), produced by using digital photography and post-processing techniques, are not just photography. His rather mysterious, high-contrast ‘rephotographs’ are reminiscent of the photocopied quality of ‘zines’ and are made according ...

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Jasmine Clarke: Shadow of the Palm

by Patrycja Rozwora - 10/12/20

Every now and then, Jasmine Clarke (b. 1995, USA) has a jamais vu, the phenomenon of experiencing a situation that one recognises in some fashion, but that nonetheless seems novel and unfamiliar. This is known to be a common experi...

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PHILIP J BRITTAN: GHOSTS ARE REAL

GUP team - 10/10/20

Philip J. Brittan (b. 1973, United Kingdom) has created a series of images based on long night walks. These images are as much about feelings experienced – the sense of a vanished world – as the representation of certain places.
Ghosts Are Real was created during a diff...

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Vikesh Kapoor: See You At Home

by Patrycja Rozwora - 09/4/20

In ‘See You at Home’ the Pennsylvania based photographer and musician Vikesh Kapoor (b. 1985) explores the latent sense of loss from one’s heritage, while ageing as an immigrant in a non-native culture. It is a personal narrative, centered around family hi...

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Sharon Castellanos: Duro de Morir

by Patrycja Rozwora - 08/31/20

For as long as she can remember, the Peruvian photographer Sharon Castellanos (b. 1989) was intrigued by the medium of photography. It started by collecting pictures, which her father – a radio operator on a merchant ship – to...

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André Penteado: Farroupilha

by Patrycja Rozwora - 08/21/20

Farroupilha is the third part of the Rastros, Tracos e Vestigios (Trails, Traces and Remains) project, in which the São Paulo based photographer André Penteado (b. 1970) reflects on the formation of Brazilian subjectivity by means of a visual investigation of ...

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Anthony Bila: Izambulo zabantwana Benkholo

by Patrycja Rozwora - 08/14/20

In his series, ‘Izambulo zabantwana Benkholo’, which can be translated to “Revolutions from the children of God”, Johannesburg based director and photographer Anthony Bila (b.1986) explores how young people in South Africa navigat...

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CAMILA FALCÃO: ABAIXA QUE É TIRO

by Talita Virginia - 08/7/20

It is somehow complex to translate “Abaixa que é tiro”, the title of the latest series of Camila Falcão (b. 1977, Brazil). It is a reference to the reactions of the portrayed and their friends, who started commenting  ‘Abaixa que é tiro!&...

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Sandra Mickiewicz: Proud of the origin & Happy Club

by Patrycja Rozwora - 07/22/20

Sandra Mickiewicz (b. 1992) is a Polish documentary photographer who lives and works in North London. In 2007, her family immigrated to the United Kingdom. Passionate with people and their stories, Mickiewicz traces various communities and by gaining their trust...

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LINDLEY WARREN MICKUNAS: MATERNAL SHEET

By Linda Zhengová - 07/7/20

In ‘Maternal Sheet’, Lindley Warren Mickunas (b.1988, the USA) is reflecting on the complexity of parent-child relationships and the conceptual weight of carrying the past.

Her photographs function as re-enactments based on Warren Mickunas’ familial history performed...

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NICO KRIJNO: LOCKDOWN COLLAGES

By Linda Zhengová - 07/3/20

Visual artist Nico Krijno (b. 1981, South Africa) is based outside of Cape Town, living on a rural farm where both his studio and house are located. With his wife and two daughters away, Krijno started to work on this series of ‘lockdown’ collages in acute seclusion. The resu...

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SANTOLO FELACO: SPLEEN

By Linda Zhengová - 06/26/20

In his latest series ‘Spleen’ Santolo Felaco (b. 1984, Italy) explores the notion of melancholy by investigating the society’s current state of mind, posing underlying existential questions about the era we now live in.

Felaco was originally inspired by the French po...

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BRANDON TAUSZIK: PALE BLUE DRESS

By Linda Zhengová - 06/22/20

In ‘Pale Blue Dress’, Brandon Tauszik (b. 1986, the USA) documents the world of Civil War Re-enactments in northern and central California. The images provide an intimate look into these complex spaces, emboldening participants to brandish the Southern cause while convenient...

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Irish Travellers

- 06/20/20

In autumn 2017, Rebecca Moseman (b. 1975, United States) was given the opportunity to photograph a closed Irish community, one that still maintains a culture and traditions whose origins are lost in time. These so-called Travellers are a proud and reclusive people, who split off from set...

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GIULIA PARLATO: DIACHRONICLES

By Linda Zhengová - 06/19/20

Giulia Parlato (b.1993, Italy) is an artist based in London and Palermo. She focuses on staged photography connected to themes of history, myths and object-hood. In her work, she examines and challenges the medium’s preconceived ability to document truth, especially in the scie...

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SAM GREGG: BLIGHTY

By Linda Zhengová - 06/17/20

Sam Gregg (b.1990, the UK) spent many years abroad – up to the point he almost forgot what it means to be British. His ongoing project ‘Blighty’ is a search for Gregg’s heritage in the streets of London. The title is a slang term deriving from the Urdu word vilāyatī, me...

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SHANE LYNAM: FIFTY HIGH SEASONS

GUP Editorial - 06/15/20

Even though his passport says he is Irish, photographer Shane Lynam (b. 1980) seems to have a deep connection with France. His project Fifty High Seasons is focused entirely on the development of the Languedoc-Roussillon coastal region in southern France, known as the “Miss...

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MARIA MAVROPOULOU: INNER STATE

By Linda Zhengová - 06/8/20

Maria Mavropoulou (b. 1989, Greece) completed her studies (MFA) at the Athens School of Fine Arts in 2018. ‘Inner State’ is a series of photographs she created as a student, between 2014-2016, documenting the atmosphere of crisis in Greece.

Lost in grey and tranquilli...

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THADDÉ COMAR: HOW WAS YOUR DREAM?

By Linda Zhengová - 06/3/20

Thaddé Comar (b.1993, France) is a Paris and Lausanne based photographer juggling between commissions, editorials and personal projects. ‘How was your dream?’ is his latest documentary series portraying the recent Hong Kong protests, realised between June and October 2019....

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BRYAN SCHUTMAAT: VESSELS

By Linda Zhengová - 05/27/20

Bryan Schutmaat (b. 1983, the USA) is a Texan documentary photographer who generally sets his work in remote places – dealing with ordinary working people, the land and aspects of rural life. In his ongoing series ‘Vessels’, he photographically explores the American Sou...

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CRISTIANO VOLK: MÉLAINA CHOLÉ

By Linda Zhengová - 05/22/20

Cristiano Volk (b. 1987, Italy) photographically explores the concept of melancholia, an enduring feeling of great sadness or even a form of extreme depression. ‘Mélaina Cholé’ presents a metaphorical visualisation of how melancholy – a phenomenon that according to recent...

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JEAN-MARC CAIMI AND VALENTINA PICCINNI: LOCKDOWN RAMADAN

By Linda Zhengová - 05/13/20

Artist duo Jean-Marc Caimi (b. 1966, France) and Valentina Piccinni (b. 1982, Italy) came to a creative approach to document the rather extraordinary and unprecedented celebration of Ramadan, the Islamic holy feast, in 2020. For ‘Lockdown Ramadan’ they made s...

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AGNIESZKA SEJUD: HOAX

By Linda Zhengová - 05/11/20

‘HOAX’ by Agnieszka Sejud (b. 1991, Poland) is a story of Poland’s self-delusion. Sejud sheds light on a country where European political standards are considered radical and the mere idea of separating church from the state immediately creates unrest and turmoil. To highlight the occurrenc...

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IGNACIO COLÓ: AT THE SAME TIME

By Linda Zhengová - 05/6/20

Ignacio Coló (b. 1980, Argentina) has a background in photography history and filmmaking and he is currently working for a major Argentinian newspaper Sunday Magazine of La Nacion. For ‘At the Same Time’, his latest photography project, he documented the life of the 51-year-...

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ALEXEY VASILYEV: MY DEAR YAKUTIA

By Linda Zhengová - 05/1/20

Alexey Vasilyev (b.1985, Russia) provides an insider and honest perspective on his homeland. In his ongoing series ‘My Dear Yakutia’, he portrays the way people live in the largest region of Russia throughout the year. Being a local himself, Vasilyev manages to capture the el...

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MADHAVAN PALANISAMY: APPA AND OTHER ANIMALS

By Linda Zhengová - 04/24/20

In ‘appa and other animals’, Madhavan Palanisamy (b. 1975, India) introduces his dad as the main source of inspiration. Last year, his father suffered from a partial stroke that, unfortunately, made him immobile. “Even after my father lost his eyesight, he continued seeing ...

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MYRIAM BOULOS: TENDERNESS

By Linda Zhengová - 04/15/20

Myriam Boulos (b.1992, Lebanon) came to world right after the Lebanese Civil War. The country was fragmented and required urgent transformation. At the age of 16, Boulos started capturing Beirut to critically reflect on the city, its people, and her place among them. She uses the...

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MICHAEL SWANN: NOEMA

By Linda Zhengová - 04/10/20

Michael Swann (b. 1990, the UK) is currently completing his MA in Photography at the University of West of England (UWE Bristol). For, ‘Noema’, his latest body of work, he investigates the search for the presence of the Virgin Mary. Specifically, in two locations in which she...

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ANDREJS STROKINS: COSMIC SADNESS

By Linda Zhengová - 04/6/20

In his project ‘Cosmic Sadness’ Andrejs Strokins (b. 1984, Latvia) offers novel perspectives on street photography by capturing his surroundings with a phone while using blue, desaturated and grainy filters – aimed to evoke the ‘blues’ as experienced in the current ‘digital’ generat...

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INTERPRETING THE PLACE: ISRAEL ARIÑO

- 03/27/20

Israel Ariño (b. 1974, Catalonia) tests the limits of what is representable. His two books ‘La gravetat del lloc’ (2017) and ‘Voyage en pays du clermontois’ (2019) might be visually distinct from one another but both focus on a similar interest: subjecti...

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LAURA KOOLEN: PERFECTION

By Linda Zhengová - 03/25/20

Laura Koolen (b.1995, the Netherlands) is a Dutch photographer who uses staged photography to challenge social taboos and delve into human frailty. In her graduation project ‘Perfection’, she explores the unrealistic ideal of beauty in society driven by perfection.

The...

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José Luis Cuevas: On the Resistance of Bodies

- 03/16/20

The project On the Resistance of Bodies by José Luis Cuevas (b. 1973, Mexico) collects material that signifies violence and the vulnerability of the human body, such as photographs of crime scenes, (nude) portraits, morgue images and car accidents. Shot in Mexico City, the series represe...

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EXHIBITION: NIGHT WATCHING BY RINEKE DIJKSTRA

By Linda Zhengová - 03/12/20

Rineke Dijkstra (b. 1959, The Netherlands) is well-recognised for portraying specific social groups, such as mothers, adolescents, teenagers and soldiers. The key theme of her work – both still photography and video – is vulnerability, which she extracts from her subjects...

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ALBA ZARI: THE Y

By Linda Zhengová - 03/10/20

At the age of twenty-five, Alba Zari (b.1987) found out that she and her brother don’t share the genes of their Thai father. This sparked a search for her biological roots, the only clue being a name written on a business card. When nothing came up, she decided to apply her pho...

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ISABELLA CONVERTINO: TO SHOOT THE SUN

- 03/2/20

Traditional understandings tell us that when you’re born part of your identity is already set, especially in relationship to gender. In western heteronormative traditions, generally, boys are made to believe they can achieve anything, provided they’re tough. Impossible as it is to shoot the ...

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LOÏC SEGUIN: HALF-LIGHT

- 02/28/20

For Loïc Seguin (b. 1970, France), the way to deal with mourning was to establish direct connections with people around him. He finds these people in Belleville, a multi-ethnic and vibrant Parisian neighbourhood where he approaches locals from all walks of life – around t...

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EXHIBITION: FOLLOW ME BY GUY BOURDIN

By Linda Zhengová - 02/24/20

Guy Bourdin (1928 – 1991) is internationally recognized for his provocative and convention resisting images. This May, The Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography in Moscow will present Bourdin’s retrospective exhibition which will feature more than fifty of the artist’s mo...

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FEDERICO ESTOL: HÉROES DEL BRILLO

- 02/23/20

Each day in La Paz, the capital of Bolivia, a group of 3000 masked shoe shiners flood the streets. They disguise themselves in order to avoid recognition and discrimination, as their job is looked down upon by society. The photobook Shine Heroes is the result of a three-year collaboration between...

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OVER.STATE

- 02/19/20

Over.State is the first photographic project from Ilias Georgiadis (1990, Greece). It is a personal story of a young and lost person who is searching for freedom and love – an effort to explain the human condition of expressing intimacy, closeness and freedom.

Georgiadis describes ph...

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​PIOTR ZBIERSKI – ECHOES SHADES

- 02/11/20

In his art practice, Piotr Zbierski (b. 1987, Poland) touches on the meta-kinship between people who do not necessarily share the same culture or the same beliefs. For his recent project Echoes Shades (soon to become a book) he spotlights people living close to nature and communi...

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MASHA SVYATOGOR: EVERYBODY DANCE!

By Linda Zhengová - 02/7/20

Masha Svyatogor (b. 1989, Belarus), a visual artist currently based in Minsk, primarily works with the medium of photography. The title of her series ‘Everybody Dance!’ is a reference to a phrase exclaimed in the Soviet comedy film ‘Ivan Vasilievich: Back to the Future’, ...

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FUKUSHIMA NOW

- 02/5/20

Benjamin Kis (1986, Germany) started out as an autodidact, self-trained artist, followed by obtaining a Bachelor of the Arts in Munich. His main focus is on documentary photography and portraits, and he is often drawn to stories that are not widely accessible.

One of these...

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EXHIBITION: TO HANS BY VIVIAN KEULARDS

By Linda Zhengová - 01/29/20

Vivian Keulards (b. 1970, the Netherlands) breaks her silence around the addiction and death of her brother Hans, who was only thirty-eight years of age when he died in a hotel room in Berlin. His sudden cardiac arrest was caused by drug abuse. To Hans presents a personal story w...

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EXHIBITION: ADORNED – THE FASHIONABLE SHOW AT FOAM

- 01/9/20

Until 11 March 2020, Foam Museum Amsterdam presents Adorned – The Fashionable Show. Although the title might suggest so, the show is not purely centred around the concepts of fashion or what we wear. Rather, the main focus is on the notions of culture and identity, which continue to evolve ...

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JUAN BRENNER – INSIDIA

- 12/13/19

For Insidia, a personal project, Guatemala-born photographer Juan Brenner revisits his past after 10 years of sobriety. It altogether reflects on his years of addiction to drugs, night of wandering and the according chaos – and all the absurdities such a state of being brings...

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BIEKE DEPOORTER AT NRW-FORUM DÜSSELDORF

- 11/21/19

From November 22, 2019 to February 16, 2020 the NRW-Forum Düsseldorf is showing the work of five series from Magnum photographer Bieke Depoorter (b. 1986, Belgium). This constitutes the most comprehensive solo exhibition of the photographer to date.

Across these five different pr...

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OBAKE

- 11/20/19

The work of Célia Hay (b. 1991, France) questions image production with a highly physical approach to the image. She is interested in what happens between individuals d...

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SOLE HARLEM

- 11/14/19

In the series Sole HarlemLouise Amelie (Germany, 1991) and Aljaz Fuis (Germany) show the neighborhood of Harlem – only and purely Harlem. The series is the result of a year of living in and walking around this New York neighborhood. Everythin...

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SWIMMING CLASS AND JUNGLE BEES

- 11/7/19

Jurre Rompa (The Netherlands, 1990) grew up in Amsterdam and is specialized in portrait and documentary photography. Here he worked for a dutch film distributor and then moved to the island of Zanzibar for six months where he started his career as a photographer. He started his ...

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GÜLE GÜLE

- 11/6/19

Güle Güle (goodbye in Turkish) is a collection of photographs by Jean-Marc Caimi (b. 1966, France) and Valentina Piccinni (b. 1982, Italy) about the changing Turkish society. The series focuses on the country’s capital, Istanbul, and shows the multiple fa...

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THE COLLECTIVE LANDSCAPE

- 11/4/19

It has become extremely difficult to protect the Dutch landscape since pieces of land are claimed by multiple parties at once, while there is only limited space in the small country. In the battle for this limited space, the economically weak are given the least priority.

For The Collectiv...

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CREATURES

- 10/16/19

“I feel a strange sense of melancholy when I look at my photographs. As if they represent moments that I did not necessarily experience, distant moments, which generate contrasting emotions, oscillating between my present and my past.” Marta Blue (b. 1985, Italy) specialises ...

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EXCEPT THE CLOUDS

- 10/14/19

Living in uncertain times ignites the desire in humans to resist or to revolt. In Except the Clouds, Berangère Fromont (France) brings us to a philosophical contemplation of chaos, enhancing the notion of resistance present in each of us.

Athen...

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CLAXO M.

- 10/2/19

Over the last couple decades, we have become more and more interested in – if not to say obsessed with – extraterrestrial life. However: never have we had any proof, no signs of life beyond our own planet. What if they are in nothing similar to what we imagined? Carl Sagan, for example, g...

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​LOSING GREENLAND & THE END OF LOVE

- 09/26/19

On the first day of August 2019, 12.5 billion tonnes of ice melted in Greenland, which is reshaping the largest island we have on Earth. In the series Siellä missä jää sulaa (literally translated: Where the ice melts) the Finnish photographer and filmmaker Heidi Piiroinen ta...

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SOMETHING IS PUSHING

- 09/18/19

In the series Something is Pushing, Igor Pisuk (b. 1984, Poland) shows a collection of black-and-white photographs, as well as vibrant colour portraits and close-ups. The photographs in this collection are truthful and raw, and they show both the beautiful and darker sides of spe...

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THE BIRDS

- 09/9/19

For the past six years, Ulla Deventer (b. 1984, Germany) has been doing long-term research on female sex-workers in Europe, specifically in Brussels, Athens and Paris, and since 2017 in Accra, Ghana. In her work, which is best described as visual storytelling with a strong focus ...

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THREE THOUSAND TIGERS

- 09/4/19

Irene Fenara (b. 1990, Bologna, Italy) is an artist who pushes the boundaries of photography. For example, she has been working with found material and creating images with scanners. More recently, she has been researching footage sourced from surveillance cameras. She has been u...

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ALIENATION

- 08/30/19

The photo project Alienation by France-based photographer Read More

PETŐFI’S CORPSE

- 08/12/19

In the series Petőfi’s Corpse, Hungarian photographer Tomoya Imamura (b. 1991, Germany) shows the Hungarian present, where a post-socialist reality nourishes a new form of nationalism. The name of the project comes from the story of Sándor Petőfi, the national poet of the Hungar...

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MONCHEGORSK

- 08/6/19

Monchegorsk is a so-called monotown: a place where the local economy and life on the whole rely on a single or a small number of related industries. Apparently, the post-Soviet space is home to about three hundred monotowns. The question of the purpose of such towns bothered photographer Vale...

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EVELYN BECKETT

- 08/1/19

In this work, Will Harris (b. 1990, United States) confronts the complexities of his grandmother Evelyn Beckett’s dementia. By juxtaposing images of his childhood’s house with photographs that show the erased faces of his granny at different stages of her life, he restores the pi...

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PENDULUM

- 07/29/19

Stefania Orfanidou‘s (b. 1989, Greece) connection to Italy started 12 years before she was born. Her parents met in the Italian city of L’Aquila and fell in love. So, Orfanidou grew up absorbing a lot of their romantic stories related to the region and one day even visited the plac...

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BARRIO CHINO, HABANA

- 07/25/19

Barrio Chino, Habana is an ongoing photographic project by Sean Alexander Geraghty (b. 1987, France) in which he aims to document the remaining fragments of the once largest and most glorious Chinatown in Latin America. However, when you dig deeper, you realise that the story of its orig...

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SPECIALLY FOR YOU

- 07/22/19

During one of the travels around her home country, photographer Karol Palka (b. 1991, Poland) met an uncommon family: a 65-year-old mother called Danusia and her 35-year-old daughter Basia. The two women lived together, isolated from the outside world, in a house kilometers away from the...

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NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN

- 07/21/19

During the making of Nothing New Under the Sun, photographer Eva Donckers (b. 1991, Belgium) travelled for one month around the desert of Utah and New Mexico in the United States. This experience allowed her to meet many individuals with fascinating spiritual experiences who lived on the...

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CAPUT MUNDI

- 07/17/19

Santolo Felaco (b. 1984, Italy) is a photographer who loves his own country. His latest series, which also became a book, Caput Mundi, is telling a story of the Eternal City of Rome. Every photograph of the project breathes rebellion against the rules of the spiritual and poli...

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MAMA TURN OFF THE LIGHT

- 06/27/19

Petra Katanic (b. 1984) was born and grew up in Serbia. The violence of the Yugoslav Wars was inescapable at the time, and she was also being abused in her own home. The only way out was to disappear inside herself, and to fantasise about a different and more peaceful environment; a place...

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HELVETIA

- 06/26/19

Kathrin Mundwiler (b. 1984, Switzerland) started her project Helvetia after having been away from her homeland for years. Now living in the Netherlands, far away from her family and roots, she began looking at Switzerland from a distance. This is when she noticed the typical Swiss hedgeho...

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SINKING STONE

- 06/24/19

Photographer Cristiano Volk (1987, Italy) used flash and harsh light, imitating ...

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MOISSON ROUGE

- 05/27/19

In the work of Marguerite Bornhauser (b. 1989, France), incidentally encountered scenes are combined with carefully constructed compositions in such a way that we can’t know what is real and what is fictitious. Her visual language is one of intense colours, graphic shapes and h...

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DELTA HILL RIDERS

- 05/6/19

Right after the end of the American Civil War, in 1865, one in four cowboys were African American. However, this Read More

LAND OF IBEJI

- 04/25/19

Land of Ibeji was selected for GUP #60: Escape by Belgian photographer Carl De Keyzer

Yorubaland, a region that falls mainly within south-west Nigeria, is home to a surprising number of twins, a greater proportion than anywhere else in the world. Reactions to this phenomenon range f...

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SWELL

- 04/19/19

Blurry and sandy landscapes, birds, dry trees and vividly green leaves juxtaposed with details of human skin...

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HOMAGE TO BAUHAUS

- 04/5/19

Growing up in a family of workers in the textile industry in Badalona, Spain,Read More

​SPEEDWAY 3460

- 04/3/19

Right after World War II, when veterans with undiagnosed Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder were trying to find Read More

BERMUDA TRIANGLE

- 03/27/19

“There is a place that suffocates you when you walk past it, one that has this eerie feeling lingering in the air…” – starts ...

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CHICHARRÓN

- 03/25/19

Hiro Tanaka (b. 1955, Japan) started taking photographs by chance. After...

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JOURNEY TO THE INTERIOR

JOURNEY TO THE INTERIOR - 03/11/19

The concept of the American Dream that portrays wealthy, healthy and most importantly, free citizens is no longer valid. One of the first photographers to delude these values and highlight the ubiqui...

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HIGHER GROUND

- 03/4/19

With all his large-scale projects, Carl Read More

HIDDEN VICTIMS

- 02/20/19

Kazuma Obara (b. 1985, Japan) has never identified himself with his country, claiming that throughout the history of the world, his motherland has never been the innocent one. The guilt of past actions still haunts many Japanese, and Obara is no exception. However, he is one of t...

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OLD FATHER THAMES

- 01/31/19

You may have heard of the famous saying by Heraclitus: “No man ever steps in the same river twice (…)”. However, with her ongoing project Old Father Thames (2018-), London-based photographer Julia Fullerton-Batten (b. 1970, Germany) continuously steps in the waters of t...

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THE UNCANNY EVERYDAY

- 01/28/19

Jo Ann Callis (b. 1940, United States) started her experimental photography practice long ago, but without a context you could easily mistake her early colour work for something produced more recently. In fact, the work stems from the 1970s. These images from everyday life contain a certa...

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DYCKMAN HAZE

- 01/3/19

In the city parks of New York, nature thrives in the middle of the eternal action of the metropolis. Here, people retreat and relax in anonymity, and it becomes easier to be yourself. It is a haven of tranquillity during daytime, but from dusk till dawn, a different kind of people wander about, a...

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WILL MY MANNEQUIN BE HOME WHEN I RETURN

- 12/24/18

Arko Datto (b. 1986, India) considers night as the time when life is at its most sincere and intense, when people are the most truthful. Fort part one of his night-time trilogy, he took the same stroll through his northern Indian neighbourhood every evening, coming across fascina...

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AMUSEMENT PARK

- 12/13/18

Whether he shoots for a fashion campaign or for himself, David Brandon Geeting (b. 1989, United States) creates a pseudo-existence in a visual language familiar from glossy magazines. By cleverly placing three-dimensional objects on two-dimensional backgrounds such as found photo...

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ROOTS OF THE HEART GROW TOGETHER

- 12/10/18

We usually preserve our memories through photographs, but photography can also serve to discover memories.

Going through the family archive, Valentin Sidorenko (b. 1995, Russia) met members of his family he had never had the occasion to meet beforehand, or whom he had know...

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AU RETOUR

- 12/5/18

Clara Abi Nader (1989, Lebanon) left her country in 2011, and every time she returned since then, the places where she grew up would still be there, unchanged.

“I was never really able to photograph my homeland until I moved away and settled in Paris in 2012,” she ...

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VIRGINS

- 11/19/18

This online portfolio is connected to the theme of GUP #59: Pseudo, where we feature photographic projects that balance between fact and fiction.

Growing up in a small town in Louisiana, Ransom Ashley (b. 1992, United States) experienced the transition from adolescence to...

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NEW SONGS

Post title - 11/17/18

The 2016 presidential elections seem to have divided the American population in the hopeful and the scared, with conflicting feelings about the future clashing in both the private and the public sphere. What everyone appears to be agreeing on, however, is the fact that this is a new era for the U...

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PAST WITHOUT FUTURE

- 11/14/18

Gerardo Vizmanos’ (b.1975, Spain) photographic production is a rich blend of subjective emotions expressed through movement and static instants frozen in time, a juxtaposition between speed and stillness, close interaction and distance, heat and apathy. Desires, fears, love and...

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THIS IS FAREWELL

- 11/6/18

Erik Gustafsson’s (b. 1987, Sweden) This is Farewell is a self-exploratory journey through the past, an autobiographical narrative which aims to deconstruct family bonds and understand how our origins affect how we develop as humans. By returning to his place o...

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UNCANNY VALLEY & SISYPHUS

- 10/29/18

We can all look at the past and describe how things have changed, but to determine the meaning of today within its historical context is a rather difficult mission. Kata Geibl (b.1989, Hungary) has always been curious about our relationship with the present; in her most recent p...

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BLEU BLANC ROUGE

- 10/24/18

A full member of the world-renowned Magnum agency since 2010, Christopher Anderson (b. 1970, Canada) is active as a documentary photographer while also making very personal work. However many-sided, Anderson’s entire body of work can be considered as one: his journalism is as personal ...

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LOVED AN IMAGE

- 10/22/18

In Juliette Blightman’s (b.1980, United Kingdom) body of work, the boundaries between photography, painting, literature and performance seem to constantly blur and overlap. This makes it difficult to define through traditional labels. Her images at first appear to be connected by the pr...

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OVER

- 10/19/18

It is surprising how predictable human behaviour can be when seen from a distance. Kacper Kowalski (b. 1977, Poland) first noticed the patterns that occur when man occupies a geographical space while experimenting with aerial photography as he was training as a pilot. After years of captu...

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SWALLOW

- 10/15/18

Before dedicating himself to photography, Andras Ladocsi (b. 1992, Hungary) was a professional swimmer. Until the age of 18, Ladocsi spent his day divided by school, the swimming pool and his family. The rigorous routine led him to empathise with those micro communities of people constru...

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100 HECTARES OF UNDERSTANDING + NATURE LIKE CAPITAL

- 10/8/18

Even though Jaakko Kahilaniemi (b. 1989, Finland) grew up in a country covered by forests, his attraction toward nature came late. When at the age of 8 he inherited 100 hectares of forested land he reacted with indifference, discounting the importance of such a gift, hardly relatable to ...

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NULL HYPOTHESIS

- 10/1/18

In Null Hypothesis, the latest project by Jan Cieslikiewicz (b. 1979, Poland), randomness and ambiguity take center stage among depicitions of everyday events and majestic landscapes. The New York-based photographer collects pictures of the world as he sees it in a very postmodern way, u...

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UBUNTU

- 09/26/18

To be connected with everything and everyone: this is the meaning of Ubuntu, a Congolese concept borrowed by photographer Rebecca Fertinel (b. 1991, Romania) to title her latest body of work, which recently won the Dummy Award at Unseen Amsterdam 2018. The series shows a Congolese family...

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SWELL

- 09/24/18

As unsettling as Aleksei Kazantsev‘s (b. 1975, Belarus) eerie images may feel, the grainy texture and blurry figures contained in the frame originate from a place that is all but dramatic: the idyllic beach where Kazantsev’s family (and many others) used to go and sp...

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HUMAN

- 09/17/18

How are people’s lives altered by climate change? Particularly, what are the consequences in one of the now most barren areas of the Middle-East, which in ancient history was one of the most fertile on the planet?

...

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BLACK AND WHITE LIFE

- 09/14/18

Photography according to Marcel Kolacek (b. 1983, Czech Republic) has one, simple function: to break time into frozen instants and allow everyday life to be better observed, analysed, understood. Visual storytelling, however, takes much more than just a camera: Kolacek travels to remote ...

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HDR_NATURE

Post title - 09/10/18

Perhaps it was moving to a megalopolis from the Japanese countryside that made Yoshinori Mizutani (b. 1987, Japan) view nature’s shapes and colors with new eyes. In HDR_nature, his latest project, leaves, flowers, tree branches and insects interact with wind and sun rays to form patter...

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STREET SNAPS

- 09/8/18

Concrete is the backdrop of the most recent project shot by Titia Hahne (b. 1981, The Netherlands), a collection of images shot for Sony that aims to frame the habitat of skateboarders by capturing how they interact with the surrounding environment. The city, with its functional square a...

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ZOON

- 09/7/18

Casper was born in 2000. His birth was documented by his father, photographer Koos Breukel (b. 1962, The Netherlands), in portraits both intimate and affectionate. This marked the beginning of a years-long documentation – a registration of a childhood, but also proof of a strong fa...

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I’LL DIE FOR YOU

- 08/31/18

I’ll Die for You is an ongoing project by British photographer Laura El-Tantawy (b.1980), born from a personal story. The photographer’s grandfather was a farmer who worked himself to death on his own piece of land in Egypt. Inspired by this, El-Tantaw...

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HIM

- 08/30/18

Most nudes we see are female, and when a male body is portrayed, it is still usually done by a male photographer. Clearly, when it comes to nude photography, the male gaze is dominant. Even though a woman’s right to visual pleasure is more and more recognised, we’re still some way from a posi...

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SUBTOPIA

Post title - 08/24/18

What kind of connection exists between people and where they live? How are they influenced by places? The work of Adrian Saker reflects on the topic of identity and community and the connection between the two.

During a period of artistic depression, Saker was stimulated by his pa...

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CONFINE

- 08/17/18

For Italian photographer Vittoria Gerardi (b. 1996), a stay in the desert landscape of California was both physically and mentally challenging. Death Valley, one of the hottest and driest places on earth, can have an intense effect on a person. Its extremes force one to reach certain lim...

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COYOTE

- 08/15/18
 Coyote. A Film Sequence by London-based photographer and director Monika K. Adler (b. 1982, Poland) is a series of portraits of the artist and her partner taken between 2013 and 2018. The sequence of dark and grainy shots plays out like a...

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COMMON PEOPLE

- 08/9/18

Even if homosexuality is becoming more and more accepted, unfortunately there are countries where the LGBT community is still oppressed. Photographer Anton Shebetko (b.1990), born in Kyiv and based in Amsterdam, focuses on the things gay people have to endure in homophobic and conservative countr...

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You Don’t Look Native to Me

- 08/3/18

Maria Sturm (b. 1985) is close to finalizing her long-term documentation of teenagers from in and around Pembroke, North Carolina, where almost 90 percent of the population identifies as Native American. You Don’t Look Native to Me considers how young people from the Lumbee tr...

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TERRAFORM

- 07/30/18

“When we walk along a road, we alternately recognize Images, on our screens, and Landscapes, around us” says Kenta Okamoto (b. 1989, Japan).

Thanks to always looking at our smartphones, a walk through nature is not what it used to be. According to Okamoto, the version ...

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SOLITUDE

- 07/25/18

In an age in which we’re all digitally connected, real connections seem to become harder to make. Loneliness is becoming a huge health issue. In his series Solitude, Paul Lukin (b. 1980) offers an emotional and psychological portrait of lives lived alone. The photographs are as black a...

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Jiu Valley

- 07/23/18

Jiu Valley in Transylvania is the pride of the Romanian mining industry, or at least it was. Once celebrated as the driving force behind the entire country and strongly industrialised during the forty-year communist regime, today it has gone from 179,000 miners to less than 10,000.

Females

By Teresa Maria Salvati - 07/12/18

Ornella Mazzola (b. 1984), an Italian photographer from Palermo, Sicily, is an artist who focuses on an intimate and human look. Her series Females is a portrait of women in Mazzola’s family, but it’s also broader than that. What started as a personal diary, ended up being a poetic ye...

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Big Papi

- 07/9/18

Gilleam Trapenberg (b. 1991) grew up on the Caribbean island of Curaçao with certain ideals of masculinity, while at the same time being surrounded by strong women. This duality is examined in the ongoing series Big Papi, in which Trapenberg both affirms and debunks the macho st...

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CHROMA

- 07/6/18

Life is short, and the world is immense. Most of us have at some point experienced moments of depression, combined with a desire to just leave everything behind, only to remain trapped by the routine of daily life. Marco Argüello (b. 1985) did manage to leave, and he creat...

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Money Must be Made

- 07/2/18

The ever-growing Balogun Market has no specific address because it sprawls across Lagos Island in Nigeria. Almost anything can be purchased here, at the second-largest street market in Western Africa. One particular – and ironic – aspect of its expansion is that the market has also swallowed ...

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Prodigal Son

- 06/29/18

Prodigal Son is the highly autobiographical title of a series by Vladimir Kolmakov (b. 1986) documentary photographer from St.Petersburg, Russia.

After his parents’ early divorce, Kolmakov grew up with his mother and brother spending his teenage...

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Brown Eyes and Sand

- 06/22/18

Paul Hennebelle (b. 1992, France) paints a picture of Beirut that is delicate and fragmented, a portrait of youth in a city in the making. In the context of this chaos, this perpetual construction site, the youth of Beirut is still searching for their own identity. They’re stuc...

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Hometowns

- 06/13/18

When we grow up, do we carry traces of our hometown with us? How much do the things we absorb as a child affect us later on? These are the guiding threads of John MacLean‘s photographic journey, a journey thr...

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Oyster

- 06/7/18

Children borne of troubled families can carry the unfair burdens of shame and guilt. The fear of this personal history being exposed can estrange, the fear of rejection can cripple; experiencing loss seems to make people fear it more than anything. This is why it can be so empowering for people t...

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Searching for Mu

- 05/31/18

The photographic work of Paul Cupido (b. 1972, The Netherlands) revolves around the principle of Mu: a Japanese word that could be translated as ‘does not have’, but is actually open to countless interpretations. Mu can be considered a void, albeit one with potential...

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MOONLAND

By GUP team - 05/30/18

The hard land and extreme climate—combined with centuries of isolation—have shaped the people of Ladakh in the Indian Himalayas into a peaceful, tempered existence. It does not pay to give in to one’s passions in these conditions; better to focus on survival and reincarnation. The culture d...

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TWILIGHT ZONE

by GUP team - 05/28/18

In the series Twilight Zone, Arnau Blanch (b. 1983) explores the effects of opium in dreams. His images seem to originate from the same corners of the universe where stars are made: galaxies are being born in the swirls of mysterious, cosmic matter; clouds of galactic colours both familia...

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Canadian Suburbia

By GUP team - 05/23/18

Very little is natural in the images Kyle Jeffers (b. 1998) shows us: everything here seems artificial and manufactured; the spaces we humans create are far removed from anything seen in the natural world. We paint our world in striking colours of pink, purple, and yellow, which can be f...

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AMERICANA

By GUP Team - 05/22/18

French-Russian photographer Anna Hahoutoff (b. 1993) tours the United States to challenge her childhood memories of America; its pop culture and mass consumption, but also its awe-inspiring nature. However, as her ongoing series Americana clearly shows, American wilderness is always expe...

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CHARIOTS OF FROLIC

By GUP Team - 05/15/18

Chariots of Frolic is the perfect title for Sameer Raichur’s (b. 1986) endearing series: the festive chariots seen here are fun and endearing. They are ingenious contraptions that have a wonderfully improvised quality to them: based on stock cars that have had their whole rear sections ...

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VER DE ACCIÓN

By GUP Team - 05/11/18

Antonio Guerra (b. 1983) challenges our notion of nature, its symbolism, its meaning, and our relationship to it. Through his studies of landscapes, using installations, images within images, and by toying with perspective, he explores how our understanding of nature is produced and repro...

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Dead Sea

By GUP Team - 05/7/18

The series Dead Sea by Carlo Lombardi (b. 1988) centres on the endangered Carretta carretta sea turtle, showing us the main human activities that put the species at risk as well as the efforts to protect it in the Mediterranean. It is both a dispassionate and engaging look at one of the ...

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TRANSHUMAN

By GUP Team - 04/26/18

What connects transhumanists is the belief that technology can improve the human condition by enhancing human intellect and physiology. Photographer David Vintiner in collaboration with art director Gem Fletcher present us a portrait of this global movement through fas...

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ACCLIMATE

By GUP team - 04/23/18

Balint Alovits’ (b. 1987, Hungary) series Acclimate shows us a human settlement in one of the most unforgiving environments we have colonised over human history. It makes you wonder why people over a millennium ago decided to settle in Iceland — and why they still do. Human constructio...

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UNA PROVINCIA

By GUP team - 04/18/18

Michele Vittori’s (b. 1980) series Una Provincia shows us a side of Italy we do not often see while at the same time being classically and recognisably Italian. The Fiat 500s and Alfa Romeos are there, but they are rusty and dilapidated. The beautiful landscapes and architecture aren’t...

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MARYLAND PARKWAY

By GUP team - 04/17/18

The Las Vegas Strip is famous for tourists, high rollers, flashy neon signs and even flashier hotels and casinos. While the Strip made a quick recovery following the 2008 financial crisis thanks to the money forty million out-of-towners bring to it every year, an alternative reality lays parallel...

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FROM SOMEWHERE TO ELSEWHERE

By GUP team - 04/12/18

Life is funny. And unwittingly, normal people do the strangest and funniest things throughout their funny lives. Often, though, it takes a playful, childish eye to recognise that. With adults so inexplicable, the only point of view worth taking is that of a child. This is the point of view Yot...

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SEE NAPLES AND DIE

By GUP team - 04/5/18

“If you can smell the street by looking at the photo, it’s a street photograph,” was Bruce Gilden’s response when prompted for a definition of street photography. Sam Gregg’s (b. 1990) series See Naples and Die reeks of the winding alleys and neighbourhood personalities ...

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La Nostalgia

By GUP team - 03/26/18

Antonio Privitera’s (b. 1984) images are like snapshots from childhood, where random details merge to become wonderful memories of days at the beach; of parasols and palm trees, of voices drowned out by the sea, of seeing your family in bathing suits. And those days seemed to be dominate...

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NEW ARTIFICIALITY

By GUP team - 03/19/18

Catherine Leutenegger (b. 1983, Switzerland) describes herself as a ‘photographic archaeologist’ with a fascination for technological shifts. In her long-term body of work New Artificiality, she investigates through multiple chapters the significant emergence and advancement...

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BETWEEN THE LIGHT AND DARKNESS

By GUP team - 03/12/18

In Between the Light and Darkness, Hong Kong photographer YAN Kallen (b. 1981) pays homage to the passion of traditional crafts artisans in Kyoto. Yan photographs the particular and mysterious implements of the artisans, illustrating in a way all the things we cannot begin to ex...

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A BORDER WITH A VIEW

By GUP team - 03/9/18

The Yalu and Tumen rivers form a natural border between China and North Korea. In his series A Border with a View, Albert Bonsfills (b. 1982) explores some of the border towns on the Chinese side of the rivers. On the opposite side lies North Korea, shrouded in a cloud of mystery. The co...

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BORDERS OF NOTHINGNESS

By GUP team - 03/8/18

In the infinite flow of everything, people come and go in our lives. While the presence of some can be so subtle that we hardly register when it begins or ends, with others it’s far clearer: they enter, or leave, with a bang.

In her delicate and powerful series of black and white images,...

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A MICRO ODYSSEY

By GUP team - 02/28/18

Marco Castelli’s (b. 1991) photographs are naïve in the most wonderful of ways. They hark back to a time when space travel was still romantic, when it was about exploring new societies and cultures, when all that was needed for a trip to the moon was a large-enough cannon; space was bot...

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SURFACE TENSION

By GUP team - 02/26/18

A great shift is underway in our means of communication. Increasingly, we are using visual, rather than verbal, language. Simultaneously, the imagery that we read is overwhelmingly moving to screens, creating a unified and flat mechanism of conveying information. In her series Surface Tension, Am...

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INSIDE TRASLACION

By GUP team - 02/23/18

On January 9th every year, millions of Philippine devotees crowd the streets of Manila in order to catch a glimpse of the Black Nazarene—the life-sized image of a kneeling Jesus Christ carrying the cross—as it is transferred from Quirino Grandstand to its home, Quiapo Church. The most devoted...

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IDA

By GUP team - 02/21/18

“I remember vividly the day Ida, my grand-aunt, didn’t remember who I was for the first time,” writes Jošt Franko (b. 1993, Slovenia). At a loss for how to cope with the situation, Franko took a roll of film out of the refrigerator, loaded his Leica and started to take p...

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STILL BURNING

By GUP team - 02/14/18

In his latest series Still Burning, American photographer Kevin Cooley responds to the recent La Tuna Canyon Fire, which started September 1, 2017 and went on to burn more than 7,000 acres, making it the largest wildfire in the city of Los Angeles in 50 years. Cooley writes that...

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SOUTH WILLIAMSBURG

By GUP team - 02/7/18

In classic street photography style, William Castellana (b. 1968) shows us the orthodox Hasidic Jewish community of New York, and how they conduct their lives out in the streets of Brooklyn. He has lived next door to the group for almost 20 years, but despite this continued proximity, he ...

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PLASTIC UTOPIA

By GUP team - 02/6/18

Dutch photographer Henri Blommers creates a false utopia in his series of plastic objects living free amidst nature. Rich in colour, the images are sensual and draw us in with the illusion of health and vitality within the environment. Yet, all too soon, we spy the debris in th...

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JUST PASSING THROUGH

By GUP team - 02/2/18

While documenting his travels across America, photographer Samuel Stone (b. 1992) more and more found himself missing out on important events of friends and family back home. By observing his loved ones through text messages, photos and phone calls he felt more lost than ever before. “M...

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ROMA HOUSES / NORTHERN NAPLES

By GUP team - 01/29/18

At the outskirts of Naples, Italy, in the neighbourhoods of Scampia and Secondigliano, there are the camps of Via Circumvallazione Esterna and Via Cupa Perillo. One was established in 2000 by municipal decree and one is unauthorized. The camps were intended to be temporary, housing more than a th...

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REWOUND

By GUP team - 01/26/18

The renderings of human emotions, often woven into graphic perspectives are the hallmarks of Belgian photographer Klaartje Lambrechts’s (b.1976) work. The series Rewound is based on a quote from Russian novelist Dostoyevsky: “The greatest happiness is to know the source of ...

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SELF PORTRAIT

By GUP team - 01/25/18

The self-portraits of English photographer Tom Butler (b. 1979) are nearly unidentifiable. Black shapes pop out of the images, with occasional accents of a white circle or lines – which, upon closer inspection, we can identify as the top of a perfectly bald head or the crook of an elbo...

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MAHALA

By GUP team - 01/24/18

Photographers Anton Polyakov & Anna Galatonova (both born in 1990) are among the first generation who identify themselves as “Transnistrians”, out of Transnistria, a popula...

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A GHOST CITY

By GUP team - 01/22/18

With its gleaming gold domes, ostentatious statues, as well as the Guinness Book of Records title for most white marble buildings on earth, Ashgabat (in Turkmenistan), has established itself as a showpiece capital. Spanish photographer Arnau Rovira Vidal (b. 1984) went there for work and ...

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LUCINDA’S VALLEY

By GUP team - 01/19/18

Horses, guns, Confederate flags, cowboy hats and boots: in Love Valley, North Carolina, the clichés of the American South are still alive and well. “The town itself is a dirt road off a dirt road,” says American photographer Lila Barth (b.1994), “a small Main Street and a native p...

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DON’T MAKE ME LOOK LIKE THE KIDS ON TV

By GUP team - 01/18/18

Ethiopian photographer Dawit N.M.’s (b.1996) was inspired for this series when he took a portrait of his little cousin Fitsum, who jokingly told him, “Don’t make me look like the kids on TV”. Stunned, Dawit tried to portray the real Ethiopia, as he knows it, with friendly people a...

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FAMILY FARM

By GUP team - 01/17/18

“Nothing makes me feel more at home than the smell of horse shit,” says Italian photographer Chiara Luxardo (b. 1986). She grew up on a farm near Milan and, as the years went by, found that she increasingly romanticised that nostalgic past. In search of her roots, she came across som...

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STILL BELIEVE

By GUP team - 01/10/18

One of the darkest pages of history for Gyumri, a city in Armenia, is the earthquake of 1988. Many of the inhabitants live in terrible conditions and are still struggling to make ends meet. In his series Still Believe, Czech photographer Martin Holík (b. 1985) documented the lives of mo...

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THE OTHER PART OF ME

By GUP team - 01/8/18

In this era where the rise of the selfie has superceded the self-portrait, Italian photographer Cristina Coral explores what we allow or do not allow ourselves to be and what we’re willing to show and reveal to the world. In her series The Other Part of Me, we see figures of women merge...

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PAIRIDAEZA

By GUP team - 01/5/18

Who would’ve thought the literal meaning of ‘paradise’ is a place surrounded by walls? Derived from the ancient Persian word Pairidaeza (pairi – around, daeza – wall), it must’ve been meant to refer to the idea of a secluded place where luxuriant flora and fa...

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RENAISSANCE AND RESILIENCE

By GUP team - 01/3/18

Franco-Tunisian photographer Wahib Chehata (b. 1968) gives ancient baroque and classical themes a modern twist. In this collection of images, we see a selection from two of his recent series, Renaissance and Resilience.

In Renaissance, Chehata creates theatric...

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DULCE Y SALADA

By GUP team - 01/2/18

Deep in the arteries of the Magdalena River Estuary System of Colombia, the village of Nueva Venecia is formed of houses raised on stilts, with lives and livelihood tied to water. However, Colombian photographer Jorge Panchoaga (b. 1984) informs us, the water is polluted due to t...

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THE UNIVERSE MAKERS

By GUP team - 01/1/18

Oscillating between the factual and the fictional, Italian artist Bianca Salvo’s (b. 1986) work explores the connections between beliefs and the image. For the series The Universe Makers, Salvo collected space imagery and questioned their informative function and authenticity according ...

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THE PEOPLE’S SALON

GUP Team - 12/21/17

In her series, The People’s Salon, Tamara Abdul Hadi (b. 1980, United Arab Emirates) celebrates the burgeoning creative talent of hairdressers in Beirut, Palestine, and Gaza. “It is an appreciation of their personal style and their self-expression through self-care an...

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THE MOUTH OF KRISHNA

GUP Team - 12/18/17

“In any part of the universe there is a whole universe”, write Spanish photographers Angel Albarrán (b.1969) and Anna P. Cabrera (b.1969), known collectively as Albarrán Cabrera.

The duo tells the story that inspired them, of the god Krishna as a young child: While ...

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PARALLEL STATE

GUP Team - 12/18/17

British photographer Guy Martin (b. 1983) interrogates the grey area between documentary and fiction in Turkey in his series Parallel State. Turkish former Prime minister Erdoğan used the term ‘parallel state’ after being convinced that he was being undermined by traitorous media, po...

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MEDICINAL PLANT CYCLES

GUP Team - 12/14/17

All around us and within us, cells grow and die, lifeforms are born and reproduce, populations wax and wane. Our universe is comprised of chemical reactions organized in cycles of creation and decomposition.

Australian-Polish artist Renata Buziak (b. 1973) presents these...

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TOWER OF THANKS

GUP Team - 12/14/17

Barbara Res, the mother of American photographer Res (b.1985), was the manager of construction on the Trump Tower and Executive Vice President of the Trump Organization for nearly 20 years. Yet, in the run-up to the 2016 elections, she opposed Trump’s campaign and took public stance aga...

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KRAFTORT

GUP Team - 12/11/17

Across time, ancient humans have identified certain ‘places of power’, where supposed energies emanate from the Earth and replenish us. But, what are they?

“It is difficult to define these places, and there is also no official definition,” explains German photographer Fran...

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DIGITAL DELI

GUP Team - 12/8/17

New York based photographer and/or visual artist Marco Scozzaro (b.1979, Italy) presents a multi-layered body of work in his series Digital Deli, that includes among other things photography, sculptures and video. The series envisions Scozzaro’s interpretation of the contemporary visua...

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NEW LIFE SPACE

GUP Team - 12/7/17

Medical hospitals are, by and large, pretty uncomfortable places. Sterile surgical supplies and medical equipment fill up bright and otherwise empty spaces. They’re functional; everything is optimized to prevent people from dying. Chinese photographer Zhang Wei photographs these clinic...

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EVERYTHING I WISH I COULD BE

GUP Team - 12/6/17

American photographer Kent Rogowski (b. 1974) is interested in the larger questions of how we and the products surrounding us communicate and deal with moments of pain and change. He therefore created the series Everything I Wish I Could Be, in which he composed and photographed self-hel...

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SHINY GHOST

GUP Team - 12/6/17

In her series Shiny Ghost, American photographer Rachel Cox (b.1984) documents the final years of her grandmother’s life as she’s suffering from a degenerative brain disease. The elderly lady is glamorously photographed together with peculiar objects ranging from turtle shells to hai...

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THE WU OPERA BEHIND THE STAGE

GUP Team - 12/5/17

Chinese photographer Yu Hua (b.1963) introduces us to actors of the Wu Opera, which plays an important part of the rural residents’ life in the Jinhua area. Wu Opera is a hybrid of six singing styles from different traditional genres in China. This mixture reveals the magic of ancient ...

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AND, WHERE DID THE PEACOCKS GO?

GUP Team - 12/4/17

Following a career in journalism and television-production, Japanese photographer Miho Kajioka (b.1973) decided to go back to fine art when a series of terrible events hit japan in 2011: the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster caused primarily by a tsunami, following the Tohoku earthquake...

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SKIN

GUP Team - 12/1/17

London-based photographer Rosanna Jones (b. 1994) is peeling back the skin. Her mixed media images start with prints of her fashion photographs, which she then rips, cuts, burns and otherwise distresses to break down surfaces and boundaries of identity. She paints and processes t...

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DOWN BY THE HUDSON

GUP Team - 11/29/17

In the ongoing project Down by the Hudson, American photographer Caleb Stein (b.1994) shows a record of his walks and interactions along the Main Street of Poughkeepsie, New York, a small city where around twenty percent of the inhabitants live below the poverty line. Although Stein’s ...

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SLASH AND BURN

GUP TEAM - 11/28/17

Norwegian photographer Terje Abusdal (b. 1978) operates between fact and fiction in his latest series Slash and Burn, named after the ancient agricultural method of consciously cutting and burning plant-life to create new land. Abusdal focuses on the Finnish farmers i...

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HORNLESS HERITAGE

GUP TEAM - 11/24/17

In his series Hornless Heritage, Dortmund-based photographer Nikita Teryoshin (b. 1986, Russian) explores the German dairy industry, which is creating turbo cows: high-performance, milk producing machines. Their horns, which should protect the cows and give them auton...

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INTERNAL NOTEBOOK

GUP TEAM - 11/23/17

When Japanese photographer Miki Hasegawa (b. 1973) found out 350 children across her country die annually due to domestic abuse, but only 90 deaths per year are recognized by the Ministry of Health, Education and Welfare, she decided to draw attention to the overlooke...

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DISENCHANTMENT

GUP TEAM - 11/20/17

In addition to his work as a natural scientist, Eckart Bartnik (b. 1957, Germany) has devoted himself to photography, which he approaches in the same systematic and analytical way as he examines nature. In his recent series Disenchantment, Bartnik explores the larger ...

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BRUTAL LONDON

GUP TEAM - 11/17/17

Italian photographer Alessia Gammarota (b. 1976) illustrates the bigger picture of the housing market of London: the city faces a shortage of affordable homes while increasing numbers of properties in wealthy neighbourhoods are left empty. London, the city of business, is squeezing every s...

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MUSEUM OF YOUR MEMORY

GUP TEAM - 11/15/17

German photographer Ulrike Schmitz (b. 1975) combines her enigmatic photography with film stills from Russian propaganda from the Stalinist era in her latest series Museum Deiner Erinnerung (Museum of Your Memory). Her German grandparents lived in a small Ru...

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PRIMITIVE ACIDS

GUP TEAM - 11/14/17

Thomas Gosset (b. 1982, France) is not your ordinary photographer, as he recomposes his negatives with acid, ink and paint. Everything is done by hand, from the moment he creates the settings till he develops the prints in the darkroom. In his recent series Primitive ...

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PALM WINE COLLECTORS

GUP TEAM - 11/13/17

Ethnographic photographer Kyle Weeks (b. 1992, Namibia) aims to represent the African continent without the inherent power dynamics that voyeuristic photography is known for. Having a South African father and American mother, he describes how he can easily shift betwe...

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WILD YOUTH

GUP TEAM - 11/10/17

For the kids who join the archaeological camps scattered around Russia every summer, it’s about more than just bones and dust. It’s about uncovering the mysteries of the past and, most of all, exploring their own inner world. Russian photographer Tanya Borodina (b...

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JOHNS

GUP TEAM - 11/10/17

American photographer Josh Johnson (b. 1980) captures the not-so-glamorous spot in life that everyone visits at least once a day: the toilet. We sit down or remain standing, do what’s needed and flush away what’s left behind. This curious fascination sta...

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WHITEWASH

GUP TEAM - 11/7/17

Harit Srikhao (b. 1995, Thailand) photographs and creates collages of dark and often grotesque situations that occur during nationalist events in his home country of Thailand.

Through his manipulated and witty images, Srikhao attempts to make people aware of th...

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AGAIN

GUP TEAM - 11/6/17

To Hungarian photographer Zsuzsa Darab (b. 1989), photography is all about diving into the depths of her mind. The healing and therapeutic effect of photography was the starting point for her latest series Again. “It’s about the letter you’ve never sen...

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ARECIBO

GUP TEAM - 11/3/17

The Arecibo message is an interstellar radio message, broadcast into space in 1974 with the aim of reaching out to extraterrestrial life. The binary message was aimed at the current location of the star cluster M13, some 25,000 light years away, meaning that by the time the ...

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FULL SHADE / HALF SUN

GUP TEAM - 11/2/17

Peace, love and paradise: Indian photographer Néha Hirve (b.1992) gives us a glimpse inside the utopia-like Sadhana Forest community in her most recent series Full Shade / Half Sun. This community replants trees to shelter the dried-out ground in India’s dying rain...

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AT THE SEA

GUP TEAM - 10/31/17

As the base for her project, Portugese photographer Inês Marinho (b. 1990) references author Milan Kundera’s breakdown of the word nostalgia, where the Greek word “nostos” translates to “the return” and “algos” means “suffering”. The word nostalgia,...

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY WITHOUT FACTS

GUP TEAM - 10/30/17

In her mixed-media series Autobiography Without Facts, Belarusian visual artist Masha Svyatogor(b.1989) reflects on the transient state between reality and illusiveness, childhood and adulthood. Based on her experience of being thrown into the real world when growing ...

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MUES

GUP TEAM - 10/27/17

French photographer Sylvie Bonnot (b. 1982) originally started in landscape photography due to her passion to wander around in the unpredictability of untamed nature. Her travels around Australia, Japan, Ireland, Norway and Russia are brought together into a photograp...

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SER AHI

GUP TEAM - 10/25/17

“In order to capture the essence of nature first I needed to understand and imitate it,” says artist Karla Guerrero (b. 1993, Mexico) about her project Ser Ahi (Spanish for ‘to be there’). In the project Guerrero places herself in and amidst elements of nature...

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LADIES ONLY

GUP TEAM - 10/23/17

In her series Ladies Only, Mumbai-based photographer Karen Dias (b. 1987) has observed and documented an unusual sub culture that has formed in the women’s compartments of Mumbai’s local trains. Especially reserved for the female sex, women going to work and young girls going t...

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DON’T BE SHY

GUP TEAM - 10/20/17

Kathleen McIntyre’s (b.1962) introspective series Don’t Be Shy forms the unspoken story of her coming of age. In her youth, McIntyre explains, she was the silent observer, lost in her own thoughts. Her talkative family, by contrast, used to tell her, “Don’t be...

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SHAN SHUI

GUP TEAM - 10/18/17

Shān Shuǐ, which literally translates to mountain-water, refers to a style of traditional Chinese brush and ink paintings that depict natural landscapes. In their project Shān Shuǐ, S...

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SANITÀ

GUP TEAM - 10/16/17

Social documentary photographer Ciro Battiloro (B. 1984, Italy) started his project Sanità after finding a kind of ghetto in the city’s heart of Napoli: Rione Sanità. The pauperization of this neighbourhood was caused by the construction of a bridge arou...

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MADE IN ME

GUP TEAM - 10/13/17

He calls it the Camera Oralis: a pinhole camera that allows light in through the orifice of his mouth. With it, Slovenian photographer Uroš Abram (b. 1982) creates black and white images directly on photo paper, marked and marred by imperfections o...

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PHOS NOISE

GUP TEAM - 10/11/17

In his series Phos Noise, Max Slobodda (b. 1987) brings to the surface all the unknowns of the universe. Bright objects in loud colours levitate, and fluorescent white dinosaurs and pineapples hover mysteriously.

Slobodda explains the strange human quality of a...

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PLASTIC OCEAN

GUP TEAM - 10/10/17

When Dutch photographer Thirza Schaap (b.1971) moved to South Africa, she discovered her findings at the seaside weren’t organic but man-made debris. She went from treasure hunter to trash hunter. For her series Plastic Ocean, in an effort to raise awareness for the...

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TRIBE – SOMEWHERE UNDER THE RAINBOW

GUP TEAM - 10/6/17

A space away from consumerism, capitalism and mass media… does this even exist? The Rainbow Gatherings prove there is, at least temporarily, as people congregate in remote settings around the world to live embraced by nature and kindness. The events overflow with the ideal...

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E-COMMERCED ANIMALS

GUP TEAM - 10/4/17

In E-commerced Animals, Tomofumi Nakano (b.1978, Japan) shows us how easy it is to have dead animals delivered to your doorstep with the click of a mouse.

In a series of disturbingly bright coloured images, Nakano presents us with various butchered animals – ...

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RECONSTRUCTION

GUP TEAM - 10/3/17

In his series Reconstruction, Kosmas Pavlidis (b. 1978, Greece) photographs a world he refers to as a “garden”. Inhabited by bones, an isolated sheepskin, a dusty pheasant, biblical iconography, a lying caryatid, and graves, it is evidently an abando...

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NECROFILIA

GUP TEAM - 09/29/17

In his series Necrofilia, Spanish photographer Toni Amengual (b. 1980) has photographed animals in a Barcelona zoo. With the unusual title, the artist cites Erich Fromm’s concept of Necrofilia, which is an idea that the controlled nature of life in modern societ...

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LAWS OF SILENCE

GUP TEAM - 09/27/17

In her introspective series Laws of Silence, Jennifer McClure (b. 1971, United States) searched for signs of meaningful relationships and missed opportunities, trying to piece together a map of how to be. “I’ve been afraid of letting go of the life I was programme...

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BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH

GUP TEAM - 09/25/17

War lets loose all the destructive forces of mankind against itself. What kind of insanity is this? As Maxim Dondyuk’s (b. 1983) project statement says: “War takes any meaning and breeds emptiness. An emptiness that burns all around leaving just ruins, s...

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VILLA ARGENTINA

GUP TEAM - 09/22/17

A woman reclines romantically, surrounded by staged, sumptuous interiors, her body mimicking the oriental beauty in the painting La Grande Odalisque, her face, covered by a big metal pot.

In her intriguing and amusing series Villa Argentina, ...

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EPI

GUP TEAM - 09/20/17

Surreal-looking skin landscapes arise, as though skin were appearing before our eyes for the first time. In his digital collages, German photographer Odo Hans ( b. 1976) reveals new ways of seeing, by touching organic surfaces with technical complexity. Thes...

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0.65

GUP TEAM - 09/19/17

Shot in the Fribourg mountains, Diane Deschenaux’s (b. 1990, Switzerland) series entitled 0.65, which according to the artist is the typical price of Swiss milk, is a study of Switzerland’s farming industry as it underwent a period of heavy economic strai...

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POST-SAUNA PORTRAITS

GUP TEAM - 09/18/17

When it comes to his home country of Finland, Juuso Westerlund (b. 1975) says that the sauna may be one of the biggest clichés around. However, he’s quick to clarify, “It is also the greatest gift to the universe a nation can give.”

The sauna i...

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HESITATION

GUP TEAM - 09/15/17

Dutch photographer Margaret Lansink (b. 1961) captures the reservations we have about opening ourselves up to other people and about our relationship with a world in which all moments seem to quickly fade. In her series, Hesitation, Lansink’s analogue photographs of empty rooms...

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FINISTERRAE

GUP TEAM - 09/11/17

‘Finisterrae’ means so much as: end of the road. That is more or less how it feels when moving around Southern Portugal or, more precisely, the region that in the ancient Roman era was known as ‘Lusitania’ – which included approximately all of moder...

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NEO-ANDINA

GUP TEAM - 09/6/17

In El Alto, the second-most populous city of Bolivia, there has emerged a special kind of event venue. The ornate buildings, colourful and geometric, stand out against the arid landscape and neighbouring red brick buildings. In his series Neo-andina, São Paulo-based photogr...

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CYCLE

GUP TEAM - 09/6/17

In the boundaries set up within a home, can a person retain connection with their environment?

Cycle, a project from French photographer Véronique L’Hoste, contemplates this disconnect. Through the series, we follow a pensive form in a white sheet, appre...

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STILL DIETS

GUP TEAM - 09/6/17

In his series Still Diets, Italian photographer Dan Bannino...

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SPACESHIPS

GUP TEAM - 08/31/17

Have aliens invaded? Are we being shown evidence of futuristic spaceships?

Not exactly. In his series Spaceships, photographer Lars Stieger offers us a view of architectural spaces at strange angles and in isolated settings. Shown in this way, these m...

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A CLIMATE FOR CONFLICT

GUP TEAM - 08/30/17

Climate change and environmental degradation are transforming Somalia, pushing people to desperate choices and violence. Somalis live – and die – depending on the amount of rain that falls each year.

Nairobi-based photographer Nichole Sobecki (b. ...

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SHOOT THE ARROW

GUP TEAM - 08/28/17

Fascinated by the larger-than-life burlesque dancer, The World Famous *BOB*, New York-based photographer Amy Touchette immersed herself into *BOB*’s world for four years. The resulting series, Shoot the Arrow, is a documentary work on her electric life, seen in grai...

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ON PLEASURE GROUNDS

GUP TEAM - 08/25/17

Photographer Clemens Ascher (b.1983, Austria) has created a strange and slightly sinister amusement park, satirically naming the series On Pleasure Grounds. It is a fictional world where the people, guzzling synthetically coloured drinks and scarfing down junk food seem to be the spectacle...

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FLORENTINE

GUP TEAM - 08/22/17

With hand-sewn costumes and elaborate sets, Helena Blomqvist (b. 1975, Sweden) creates a fantasty world starring Florentine, a former ballerina from the 19th century. Florentine, now an aged ballerina with withered skin and grey hair, takes centre stage of ...

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MY MUSE

GUP TEAM - 08/21/17

The relationship between artist and muse is one based on mutual interest and curiosity; they share a symbiotic dependence. My Muse, a series of portraits by Jouk Oosterhof featuring her muse and former neighbor Andre, illustrates this; their coexistence form...

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FAULT LINE

GUP TEAM - 08/18/17

In her series Fault Line, New York-based photographer Sophie Barbasch captures her family in their shared experience of estrangement and divide. She metaphorizes this with a fault line, the geological splitting of the earth during an earthquake.

The s...

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BLEU GLACÉ

GUP TEAM - 08/17/17

Bleu Glacé, as described by Paris-based artist Manon Lanjouère (b. 1993) is “a ‘scientific’ study that synthetically reconstructs the Icelandic landscape.” Lanjouère studies the volatile Nordic island to inform colour, texture and mood, to design ...

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DIALOGUES OF AN INTROVERT

GUP TEAM - 08/16/17

In his series, Dialogues of an Introvert, Indian photographer Sameer Tawde (b. 1978) photographs and creates montages of everyday objects in defamiliarizing ways, drawing our attention to the separation, and sometimes alienation, between the self and the outside world. For exampl...

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TEARS AND SAINTS

GUP TEAM - 08/14/17

“If truth were not boring, science would have done away with God long ago,” wrote Emil Cioran in his book Tears and Saints in 1938. “But God as well as the saints is a means to escape the dull banality of truth.” In his eponymous series, Greek photographer Ge...

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CUTTING THROUGH THE CHAOS OF TOKYO

GUP TEAM - 08/14/17

As Nikon celebrates its 100th anniversary this year, Polish photographer Lukasz Palka captured the essence of Tokyo – the world’s biggest city and birthplace of Nikon – by cutting through the chaos to focus on the elements that make the city so special...

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PERMANENT ERROR

GUP TEAM - 08/11/17

Pieter Hugo (b. 1976, South Africa) photographed the people and landscape of an extensive dump of obsolete technology in Ghana. Western countries produce around 50 million tons of digital waste every year – most of which is piled in containers and ship...

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ZUKUNFT

GUP TEAM - 08/9/17

German-born, Argentina-based photographer Sarah Pabst’s (b. 1984) series Zukunft (German for future) centres around postmemory. In this experience, the second-generation survivors of a personal or cultural trauma ‘remember’ an event, by means of the st...

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CATCH

GUP TEAM - 08/8/17

In 2015 and 2016, Belgium-based photographer Kevin Faingnaert captured the strange and obscure world of wrestling in Europe. His series, Catch, shows the wrestlers from across Europe and the UK, after they’ve put on their costumes and slipped into their al...

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LAMENT

GUP TEAM - 08/7/17

In his series Lament, American photographer John Steck Jr. (b. 1980) draws our attention to the materiality of photography and the memories captured and lost through this quality. By manipulating the image-making process of particular photographs, Steck expo...

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INPUT OUTPUT

GUP TEAM - 08/5/17

Stefan Friedli (Switzerland) and Ulrik Martin Larsen (Denmark), better known as the interdisciplinary artist collective PUTPUT, explore the banality of objects and playfully turn the ordinary into the extraordinary. Through ...

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THE RUG’S TOPOGRAPHY

GUP TEAM - 08/2/17

The Rug’s Topography is a project that began with Rana Young (b.1983, USA) photographing her partner of six years. Young describes how, over time, they began facing an internal conflict, which pitted their individual identities against their roles in the r...

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HERE, DEATH WILL COME TOMORROW

GUP TEAM - 07/31/17

Rome, a city rich with religious and political history, has become increasingly known as a city of clichés and icons. Yet, from its party goers to nuns and everyone else in between, the city is most definitely not uniform.

In his series Here, Death Will Come Tomorrow...

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DOMESTIC ANAMNESIS

GUP TEAM - 07/28/17

In his series, Domestic Anamnesis, French photographer Adrien Blondel (b. 1986) approaches the inside of bedrooms from a new angle. Domestic Anamnesis provides a lens through which to see how memories remain alive, in the present, rather than being thoughts ...

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KOAN

GUP TEAM - 07/27/17

A koan is a learning construct in Zen Buddhism: it is a story, dialogue, question or statement used to provoke meditation in students, and illustrate the inadequacy of reasoning.

In her series Koan, Xiaoyi Chen (b. 1992, China) desires to achieve this...

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EDIFICE

GUP TEAM - 07/26/17

Edifice is a visual journey back to a time most people would like to forget. Polish photographer Karol Palka (b. 1991) documents buildings that survived the Communist regime. The photographs show the interiors of the Polana Hotel, a closed holiday fac...

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HOMELAND DELIRIUM

GUP TEAM - 07/24/17

In the spring of 2013 Istanbul’s Gezi Park was facing destruction plans which prompted protesters to occupy the park. Emine Gozde Sevim (b. 1985), currently based in New York but originally from Istanbul, was visiting her hometown to see family when the pa...

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MALANKA

GUP TEAM - 07/19/17

Ukrainian photographer Serhiy Morgunov (b. 1986) documents Malanka in his series of the same name. Malanka is a holiday where villagers in Ukraine put on gypsy, goat, nurse, hunter and devil costumes and parade from house to house while singing carols. Accor...

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NUMEN

GUP TEAM - 07/18/17

In his series, Numen, Spanish photographer Jon Cazenave (b. 1978) photographs the land, animals, and people in Spain to create an eerie narrative journey that explores the roots of humanity back into nature. As the photographer himself puts it, “the animal...

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SOLUTION

GUP TEAM - 07/17/17

In her series Solution, Russian photographer Polina Washington (b. 1992) explores the intricate beauty in everyday objects and parts of nature. From broken mirrors to flat tires to trees and sand, Washington highlights the beauty in things we usually think of as munda...

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MIMESIS

GUP TEAM - 07/14/17

In Mimesis, a new series from Canada-based, German-born photographer Birthe Piontek, self-exploration is the central focus. Piontek creates a fictional world of representation that mediates our relationship to reality and the way we encounter images of ourselves and o...

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RECALL

GUP TEAM - 07/13/17

British-born and Japan-based photographer Jacob Burge (b. 1981) explores the collision of nature and man-made objects in his series of photo-collages, entitled Recall. In his images, Burge brings together different manmade objects such as cars and computers with piece...

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SABRA

GUP TEAM - 07/12/17

Israeli photographer Oded Balilty (b.1979) highlights the dualistic aspects of the sabra (Hebrew for cactus) in his series of the same name. The sabra plant symbolizes the idea of the land as it used to be. But in the photographer’s own words, “Th...

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UNBORN CITIES

GUP TEAM - 07/11/17

In his series, Unborn Cities, American photographer Kai Caemmerer (b. 1988) explores the architectural structures and physical growth of new cities in inner-mainland China. Photographing newly-built residential buildings during the day and night, Caemmerer gives us a glimpse into...

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IN THE ROOM

GUP TEAM - 07/7/17

Italian photographer Francesca Cesari (b. 1970) brings us into the intimate space of a mother lulling her child to sleep with breastmilk. Despite this gentle act being everyday and universal, it still is often considered to be private, taking place only behi...

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PYRÈNE

GUP TEAM - 07/5/17

In his series Pyrène, French photographer Léo Delafontaine (b. 1984) captures the serenity of the Bagnères-de-Bigorre, a thermal station in the French Pyrenees. By including landscape photographs of sunsets and haze-covered mountaintops, Delafontaine high...

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STOCKHOLM SYNDROME

GUP TEAM - 07/4/17

For the past 4 years, Natalia Podgorska (Poland) has been working as a product photographer for a builders merchant. It is purely a functional (mind-numbing) office job that helps her to pay the bills. However, what began as a feeling of being a ‘hostage...

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A CIRCLE OF BLUEBIRDS

GUP TEAM - 07/3/17

When we convert the Earth’s electromagnetic spectrum into soundwaves, we hear a movement of energy. As charged solar particles hit the radioactive belts surrounding our planet, they get trapped and whirled about… it’s a chirping that sounds like birds.

Montréal...

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WILD AT HEART

GUP TEAM - 06/30/17

British photographer Beccy Strong’s portfolio Wild at Heart centres around the complexity of time and the restraints it puts on us. Between laughter and wandering eyes and between bodies of water and moss covered trees, Wild at Heart draws our attention to growth, m...

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MULTIVERSE

GUP TEAM - 06/29/17

In her series Multiverse, Elizabeth Rovit (b. Greece, 1989) explores the theory of multiple universes by uncovering personal happenings in her life and the connections that follow.

The images represent diverse moments from Rovit’s existence, whe...

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CLOSE

GUP TEAM - 06/27/17

Dualities lie at the heart of Swedish photographer Pernilla Zetterman’s (b. 1970) series Close. The series reflects Zetterman’s own memories, both beautiful and painful, of her experiences with equestrian culture and its associated cultural codes.

...

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YOUNG BRITISH NATURALISTS

GUP TEAM - 06/23/17

In her series, Young British Naturists, London-based photographer Laura Pannack highlights the beauty of nakedness – both of the body and of the natural world. She photographs young adults together and in solitude eating, laughing, smoking, playing games, and relaxi...

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EL FONDO DE LA SOMBRA

GUP TEAM - 06/21/17

Mysticism lies at the heart of Mexican photographer Dolores Medel’s (b. 1982) series El Fondo De La Sombra (Spanish for the bottom of the shadow). Through her photographs she shares pieces of her family’s contradictory and complex history. Medel photographed in Los Tux...

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GRINDERS

GUP TEAM - 06/19/17

In small, rural towns of the United States, bodyhackers are working to merge man and machine. Experimenting in home-grown labs that resemble cluttered garages and chaotic dens, they build devices to implant into their own bodies, becoming the guinea pigs of a transhuman future.

In his seri...

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TRIGGER TRASH

GUP TEAM - 06/16/17

Trigger Trash, a term coined by the American Bureau of Land Management (BLM), refers to any items left behind as a result of target shooting. In this series, Daniel George (b. 1984, USA) photographs such artefacts as he reflects on the many issues that face.

Target shootin...

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ONLY CHILD

GUP TEAM - 06/14/17

Pain and coming to terms with the past are the hallmarks of American photographer K.K. DePaul’s series Only Child. Based on her own complex relationship with her father, Only Child is comprised of collage style images based around portraits of a sombre you...

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GRASS, PEONIE, BUM

GUP TEAM - 06/12/17

Maisie Cousins (1992, UK) creates work that is undeniably uncensored. That is, she has found an application of photography that makes her subjects overly visible. It is what could be filed under art of the ‘ridiculous sublime’: as something that is funny and uncan...

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JESSICA THALMANN

GUP TEAM - 06/12/17

Jessica Thalmann (b. 1988, Canada) seeks to unravel the conventional relationship we have with photographic imagery and their material implications. Working with both her own images and archival materials, she prints, cuts, assembles and folds photographs in...

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UNSPOKEN CONVERSATIONS

GUP TEAM - 06/9/17

In Unspoken Conversations, Rania Matar (b. 1964) explores womanhood from the perspective of two important stages of life: adolescence and middle age. More specifically, she photographs mothers and daughters in quiet moments of shared company. The glances and...

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GODS AND MEN

GUP TEAM - 06/8/17

Told throughout time are the stories of ordinary men and women who transcend their mortality to become myths, icons, legends – gods who walk the earth. But what is it that elevates one individual above the rest? How does a human of flesh and blood transform into an idea?...

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TRACES & SILENCES

GUP TEAM - 06/7/17

In his recent series Traces & Silences, American photographer Andy Egelhoff (b. 1989) captures the heart of the dance music network around the world. Egelhoff took documentary photographs at after-parties, artists’ creative spaces and DIY venues in twelve countrie...

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EXPOSURE

GUP TEAM - 06/2/17

Exposure is a term that commonly refers to perceptibility and vulnerability. Through his use of black and white film, Kazuma Obara (b. 1985, Japan) makes a double entendre of the word that challenges our perception of this terminology as he portrays the life...

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GROUP CHAT

GUP TEAM - 05/31/17

What does it mean to be a young woman today? In her series Group Chat, American photographer Gabby Jones (b. 1994) begins to broach this salient question. As Jones explains, “Group Chat proudly displays the beautiful complexity of what it means to be a you...

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KHRUSHCHEVKA

GUP TEAM - 05/29/17

Germany-based photographer Snezhana von Büdingen (b. 1983, Russia) pairs images of Soviet appartment buildings with portraits of their inhabitants. Named after the then first secretary of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchevkas are buildings that...

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AJNA

GUP TEAM - 05/26/17

Self-exploration and expression lie at the heart of Bangladeshi photographer Shadman Shahid’s series Ajna. The word ajna, Shahid explains to us, in Sanskrit means “the eye that one uses to see the immaterial”. The title is emblematic of Shahid...

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RETURN

GUP TEAM - 05/24/17

In her series Return, Norwegian photographer Andrea Gjestvang (b. 1981) captures the experiences young asylum seekers face following ...

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NEST (MEMORY)

GUP TEAM - 05/23/17

American artist M. Apparition experiments with paper and processes in her series Nest (Memory), a range of images that depict memories – both warm and painful.

Apparition works with chromogenic paper, stripping down the surfaces to reveal some of th...

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THE MEMORY OF C

GUP TEAM - 05/19/17

Chinese photographer Zhou Pinglang (b. 1988) captures a city and its inhabitants on the verge of an uncertain future. Shuangyashan, meaning Double Duck Mountain, is a city in Northeast China which used to be a prosperous mining city. “One black face fe...

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A PERSONAL COLLECTION

GUP TEAM - 05/16/17

At the age of 18, David Uzochukwu (b.1998, Austria) has established his portfolio with a mix of editorial, commercial and personal work. Most recently, the Brussels-based photographer worked closely with the musician Benjamin Clementine.

Regardless of...

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MANHATTAN SUNDAY

GUP TEAM - 05/12/17
American photographer Richard Renaldi (b. 1968) revels in the afterglow of New York nightlife in his body of work Manhattan Sunday. Situated somewhere between dusk and dawn, the scenes celebrate the joie de vivre in the city that never sleeps.Renaldi mo...

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POLIO

GUP TEAM - 05/10/17
Polio refers to the cruel disease of poliomyelitis and in this series, Ehtiram Jabi (b. Azerbaijan) tackles his own experience with the illness in a range of images that reflects on this period in his life.After his second birthday, Jabi’s life took a signific...

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“LOSING” AMOS

GUP TEAM - 05/9/17

In his series “Losing” Amos, 19 year old Nigerian photographer Adeolu Osibodu pays homage to his recently deceased grandfather in a series of self-portraits, in which he poses in his grandfather’s attire amidst the landscape.

The series is comprised of three shots each of four...

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MANILA GOTHIC

GUP TEAM - 05/6/17

In his series Manila Gothic, Filipino artist Lawrence Sumulong (b. 1987) presents an interpretative documentation of the current state of Philippine President Duterte’s war on drugs and the trauma left in its wake. While the war has been brutal, Sumulong s...

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THE BURNING PLAIN

GUP TEAM - 05/3/17

The Phlegraean Fields, west of Naples in Italy, are defined by their relationship to volcanic threat. Comprised of a 13 kilometer-wide cauldron-like depression with 24 craters, the fields have constant eruptive activity of gas or mud, with earthquakes and bradyseisms. Phl...

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METAMORPHOSIS

GUP TEAM - 05/1/17

Maria Pleshkova (b. 1986, Russia) faces her own personal growth in this series of black and white self-portraits, Metamorphosis. While some animals experience clear and visible transformations, like a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly, as humans we experience metamorphoses...

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SOLASTALGIA

GUP TEAM - 04/27/17

During his studies in London, Shi Yangkun (b. 1991) visited his hometown in Shangshui county in China to find that urbanisation, in only a short period of time, had changed the place tremendously. He started to feel homesick for the town he used to know, and also real...

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ADVAITA

GUP TEAM - 04/25/17

In Hinduism, advaita is the feeling of oneness with the creation of life itself. It is the heightened sense of awareness in which one sees everything in oneself and as oneself. Petros Koublis (b. 1981, Greece) explores this transparency of being in a ...

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BURIED REFLECTIONS IN THE SILO

GUP TEAM - 04/24/17

Igor Posner, Devin Yalkin, Samuele Pellecchia, and Francesco Merlini are all members of Prospekt, an agency based in Italy for which they all individually establish projects that are documentary in style and...

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THE GLEANERS

GUP TEAM - 04/19/17

In his series The Gleaners, American photographer Matt Hamon documents a small group of primitive skills practitioners who attend the annual buffalo hunt on the perimeter of Yellowstone National Park in Montana.

Hamon’s images capture the process in...

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THE ISLE OF WIGHT ANALOGY

GUP TEAM - 04/12/17

London-based photographer Derek Man (b. Hong Kong) explores his adopted country of the UK, specifically the Isle of Wight, with his images questioning the appreciation of home and cultural identity.

Anthropologist Judith Okely notes: “The Isle of Wight, thoug...

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DABU

GUP TEAM - 04/10/17

The Mosuo, often referred to as Dabu, are a Chinese ethnic minority of around 40,000 people that enjoyed hundreds of years of relative stability in a complex matriarchal structure that values female power and decision-making. The Berlin-based photographer Karolin Kl...

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DEVILS

GUP TEAM - 04/7/17

Highly secretive and shrouded in mystery, pagan communities continue to exist at the fringes of dominant Christian religious practice in Liberia. British photographer Conor Beary (b. 1989) shows a glimpse of these hidden collectives in his new series Devils. The ‘de...

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NAGAR

GUP TEAM - 04/5/17

In her series Nagar, Anu Kumar (b. 1990, India) returns to her hometown of Kavi Nagar, Ghaziabad and connects with her Indian heritage and identity in the process.

Although Kumar visited Kavi Nagar throughout her childhood, her most recent trip was remarkably d...

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LETHE

GUP TEAM - 04/3/17

In her series Lethe, the Polish-born photographer Sylwia Kowalczyk presents a collection of fragmented collages depicting how the loss of memories brings its own grief. According to Greek mythology, ‘Lethe’ refers to the river that rids memories of the dead as th...

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COMING INTO FOCUS

GUP TEAM - 03/28/17

In her latest series Coming into Focus, Ellen Jantzen (b. 1964, USA) brings different environmental surroundings into focus and explores the relationship between one’s consciousness and the change in thinking that results through relocating.

...

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VIEW FINDER

GUP TEAM - 03/27/17

In View Finder, a 2017 series of images from British artist Helen Sear (b. 1955), we see bales of hay in the field rendered as flat geometry. Distinctly rural, yet orderly in their circular precision, the images are calm black and white meditations on nature...

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WITH WHOM DO I HAVE THE PLEASURE?

GUP TEAM - 03/24/17

Photography is a visual study – it depends on what we have the power to see. So, in what way can a photographer consider an inability to see?

For Charlie Simokaitis (b. 1967, USA), this is not merely an academic question. When his daughter went blin...

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THIS IS NOT A TOWER

GUP TEAM - 03/21/17

In his series This Is Not a Tower, Denis Esakov (b. 1984, Kyrgyzstan) presents a collection of black and white architectural photographs of Soviet towers, portraying their downward shift of esteem. He describes the shift of these towers from “a dominant presence in ...

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BLACK DOG PHOTOGRAPHY

GUP TEAM - 03/17/17

In his Black Dog Photography, Dutch photographer Maarten Kools (b. 1970) presents a high contrast stream of consciousness. Forming from the artist’s personal reaction to the death of a close friend, the series of images looks at the world through a conflic...

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THE LONELY MAN

GUP TEAM - 03/15/17

Nicky Hamilton (b. 1982, UK) presents the series The Lonely Man – a slow and meticulous personal project, in which each photo took around three months to produce.

Hamilton has always been a very visual man – a talent he says he has accumulated through his c...

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CHARLIE SURFS ON LOTUS FLOWERS

GUP TEAM - 03/13/17

Almost 40 years after the devastating war in Vietnam, society there has changed its hopes and dreams. A new generation of Vietnamese has set out to create high-paced economic growth. Curiously, this new capitalist spirit develops under the strict rule of the communist party....

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DROPS

GUP TEAM - 03/8/17

In Drops, Christelle Boulé visualises the ineffable experience of smelling a perfume. Boulé developed a process that captures the image of a fragrance by placing a few drops of perfume on colour photographic paper. After drying, the paper is exposed to light and put into developer soluti...

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IN MEMORY OF A MONOLITH

GUP TEAM - 03/7/17

In Lanzarote, between 1730 and 1736, the eruptions of Timanfaya destroyed fertile land and 26 villages. The subsequent loss of 11 villages eventually forced the majority of the population to leave the island; yet remarkably, the human race still manages to overcome and survi...

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UNTITLED

GUP TEAM - 03/3/17

“I can be anything I like but first I have to know what I have been and what I am” (Lucy R. Lippard)

Untitled, a new series by Ariane Johnston Breen, revolves around notions of transformation, self-realisation and mortality. By using the sy...

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STANDING ROCK

GUP TEAM - 02/28/17

In the middle of intense, yet peaceful protests between the Native Americans, the U.S. government and Energy Transfer Partners, photographer J.R. Mankoff (b. 1981, USA) visited North Dakota to learn more about the pipeline threatening the drinking water of Lakota.

The Lakota prophec...

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THE RIVERBED

GUP TEAM - 02/27/17

Focusing on the architecture and habitats of counter-cultural communities, the London-based photographer, Ben Murphy, presents his latest exhibition series, The Riverbed. The collection display shows Murphy’s ten-year encounter in the remote mountainou...

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MIRRORS OF OURSELVES

GUP TEAM - 02/24/17

“We find duality, the mirror of ourselves, where all of the lower is in the higher, horizontal expansion, vertical emergence, it seems to be a dream, an illusion.” – Jose Espinola

Jose Espinola (b. Mexico, 1984) pays tribute to the Mexican he...

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SELF-UNTITLED

GUP TEAM - 02/22/17

In Self-Untitled, Samantha Geballe (b. 1988, USA) pulls us in close. Focused on her physicality, the project of self-portraits shows a period of three years marked by dramatic change, alternating between a state of obesity and a body half its original size.<...

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AMOR SUI

GUP TEAM - 02/17/17

Amor Sui (Latin for ‘self-love’), an ongoing portrait project by Irvin Rivera, explores one extreme form of self-love by asking subjects to make love with their own mirror image. The idea followed from a random conversation that Rivera had, which led to the questi...

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IN THE EXODUS, I LOVE YOU MORE

GUP TEAM - 02/15/17

In her series, In the Exodus, I Love You More, Hoda Afshar (b. 1983) records her changing vision of, and relationship to, the country of her birth, Iran: a relationship that has been shaped by her moving to Australia. The images explore the interplay of presence and a...

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MeError

GUP TEAM - 02/15/17

Can a self-portrait be defined by the very absence of the subject? In his project The MeError, Leonardo Magrelli (b. 1989, Italy) plays with this question by showing what mirrors reveal when we are not in front of them. The series consists of a collection of photos ta...

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JESUS, MAKE-UP AND, FOOTBALL

GUP TEAM - 02/10/17

Frederik Buyckx (1984, Belgium) rented a ‘pied-à-terre’ for a few months in a favela, sharing the inhabitants’ day-to-day worries. In Rio de Janeiro, around 20% of inhabitants live in improvised facilities located in populous neighbourhoods which lie cheek to cheeky jowl with the be...

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BEHIND THE SCENES

GUP TEAM - 02/8/17

In Behind the Scenes, Sergey Melnitchenko (b. 1991, Ukraine) gives us a glimpse at the off-stage doings of erotic dancers in a nameless club in China. Melnitchenko, who came to China to work as a dancer, gives us an unusually up-close vision of the club where he works. While subjects prepa...

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PIEDRAS NEGRAS

GUP TEAM - 02/6/17

On the cusp of the January 1994 signing of NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement, between Canada Mexico, and the US), Italian photographer Lina Pallotta visited the small Mexican town of Piedras Negras. Pallotta, interested in understanding what the...

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THE SLEEPERS

GUP TEAM - 02/3/17

In her series, The Sleepers, Elizabeth Heyert (b. 1951, USA) discloses a world rarely seen: the private interior life of sleep. While photographing subjects from above – sleeping naked singly or in couples – Heyert exposes an exceptional transformation: fr...

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​OPEN STAGE

GUP TEAM - 01/31/17

In his series Open Stage, Samsul Alam Helal (1985, Bangladesh) presents people from the ‘Dalit Community’ in Old Dhaka in Bangladesh. As part of a highly hierarchical society, their work as cleaners gives them a low status, and a community of people for society lo...

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RED NOSTALGIA

GUP TEAM - 01/30/17

Red Nostalgia is an ongoing documentary project in which Sebastian Hopp (b. 1989, Germany) photographed inhabitants of Georgia, a former Soviet country, who still feel a strong nostalgic affection towards their infamous former leader, Joseph Stalin. While the youth of Georgia have become m...

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NATURAL NATURE

GUP TEAM - 01/27/17

Human beings can be defined as a part of nature, yet most people seem to ignore their existence within it, and praise only a nature full of green. As an antithesis of this ‘old’ perception of nature, Japanese photographer Mankichi Shinshi (1984) started his projec...

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BETWEEN GRIEF AND NOTHING

GUP TEAM - 01/25/17

In 2015, a twin earthquake in Nepal and India killed nearly 9,000 people and affected another 2.8 million. Sharbendu De (b. 1978, India) opted for a creative response to the extreme stress and trauma inflicted by these events. He decided to implement performative elem...

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TAUROMAQUIA

GUP TEAM - 01/19/17

Events of the arena are spectacles for the public. Bull fights, which continue through present day in Spain, are increasingly controversial for the injury or death of both animal and man, but their defendants emphasise the ceremony involved, declaring it a sacrificial ritual...

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PIK-NIK

GUP TEAM - 01/18/17

Picnicking is far from a simple affair in eastern India. For a region that’s burdened with the blistering heat of the summer sun nearly year-round, the joy of meeting outside with food, friends and family is relegated to the brief months of tolerable weather between Decemb...

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THE CHILDREN

GUP TEAM - 01/12/17

With images that radiate innocence and joy on the one hand, but suggest trauma on the other, The Children is a series that explores the vulnerable aspects of childhood with a tough and tender immediacy, showing us a world at once familiar and strange.

Collaborative ar...

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EMPIRE TRACES

GUP TEAM - 01/10/17

Around the world, there’s still evidence to be found of the influence that the French had on their former colonies. Paris-based photographer Thomas Jorion (b. 1976) is on a mission to document the architectural traces of his homeland, abroad.

For his series E...

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ANGST

GUP TEAM - 01/6/17

Soham Gupta (India, 1988) made portraits of people that he encountered in the streets of Calcutta. Looking at their faces leaves a certain kind of discomfort. Yet, at the same time – credit to the photographer – it is also tempting to stare at them, not completely...

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UNUTTERABLE VISIONS

GUP TEAM - 01/5/17

Soaked in dreamy neon lights, the series Unutterable Visions from Tokyo-based Storm Luu (b. 1989) is a collection of brightly coloured images depicting “the personal daily minutiae of friends, lovers and strangers through scattered and disorientating fragments.”...

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GIBIER

GUP TEAM - 01/3/17

Each of the dead animal portraits by Japanese photographer Tomofumi Nakano (1978) begins with the question, “Why do we kill and eat it?”

The relationships we form with animals are many: friends, companions, workers, pests, threats… and food. Yet, these relationsh...

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BESIDES FATE

GUP TEAM - 12/23/16

In his series Besides Faith, Italian photographer Louis De Belle (1988) looks at the crossroads of commerce and religion. Every two years, there is a world fair for church supplies in the northeast of Italy, which draws more than 13,000 people of the clergy and international reli...

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THE UNCANNY

GUP TEAM - 12/22/16

In his long-term photographic project The Uncanny, Leonard Pongo (b. 1988, Belgium) captures a personal view of daily life in the mining province of Katanga in The Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Pongo started his project in 2011, photographing in Congo durin...

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WALLFLOWERS

GUP TEAM - 12/21/16

When Jonah Meyers (b. 1971, USA) travelled to Lombok, an island that lies just east of Bali in Indonesia, he noticed that all the new features that start to register when in a place far removed from what one knows, could sometimes feel surreal. “As if you’re atten...

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NON VERBAL SPACE

GUP TEAM - 12/19/16

Discrete, mysterious and somewhat surreal, Shin Noguchi’s (b. 1976) Nonverbal Space is an incredibly thoughtful series rooted in Japanese culture. Detailing moments of complete, crisp serenity in his native Japan, there is an apocalyptic atmosphere about the work due to the complete lack...

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THE LAND BETWEEN US

GUP TEAM - 12/14/16

Ning Kai (b. 1987, China) and Sabrina Scarpa (b. 1991, Netherlands) have been a photographic duo since 2013. In their series The Land Between Us, the duo aims to show the moments of revelation, equality and intimacy that they see within thinly populated areas. ...

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THE END OF WINTER

GUP TEAM - 12/13/16

The End of Winter, a photo series from German photographer Daniel Schumann (1981), started unexpectedly: with a car crash. The accident destroyed a substantial amount of Schumann’s photography gear, and prompted him to question what photography meant to hi...

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GREAT EXPECTATIONS – MISS AKEN

GUP TEAM - 12/12/16

Nigerian photographer Jenevieve Aken (b. 1989) is fascinated by how events shape characters. Her series Great Expectations takes inspiration from the eponymous novel by Charles Dickens, in which the character Miss Havisham has been jilted at the altar, and because of ...

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ALMOST FAMOUS

GUP TEAM - 12/9/16

Inspired by her experiences shooting backstage at New York fashion week during shows like Thom Browne, in which models adopt completely new personas using a mix of hair, make up and clothing, Jacqueline Harriet (b.1993, USA) started photographing the actress and celebrity impersonator Mich...

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PLEIN SOLEIL

GUP TEAM - 12/6/16

Along seaside towns, sun-worship reigns. French photographer Anaïs Boileau (1992) captures the eccentric brightness of those that chase the sun’s rays, juxtaposed with the colourful Latin architecture surrounding them. Their eyes hidden behind protective eye-wear, the women be...

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EFFLORESCENT CHERRY

GUP TEAM - 12/5/16

In his series Efflorescent Cherry, Matt Slater (b. 1994, South Africa) photographs the beauty and oddities of nature whilst in transition and captures the serene and melancholic poetry that he witnesses in its decay. He uses a variety of analogue photographic practice...

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SPARKS

GUP TEAM - 12/2/16

Humour is a rare trait in modern photography, especially with the level of wit shown by London-based Street photographer Stephen Leslie (b. 1970). Capturing everything from the unspeakably bizarre to the screamingly funny, Stephen Leslie possesses timing one might exp...

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​PUREE WITH A TASTE OF TRIANGLES

GUP TEAM - 12/1/16

In her series Puree with a Taste of Triangles, Russian photographer Alena Zhandarova (b. 1988)photographs herself in queer positions and costumes. Conflating herself with curious objects and backgrounds, her body merges with its surroundings like a wallf...

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PORTRAIT OF A GENDER

GUP TEAM - 11/28/16

In modern society, we are often posed the question of what it means to be male or female. That’s exactly what Italian photographer Francesa De Chirico (b. 1995) is trying to establish in her latest series, Portrait of a Gender, via the documentation of the long, arduous process...

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JUMPING CATS

GUP TEAM - 11/28/16

We can say with certainty that cats do not possess the power to fly… but they can jump very well indeed. In Jumping Cats, the latest series from Austria-based photographer Daniel Gebhart de Koekkoek, cats are caught airborne, frozen mid-flight in a high leap ...

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SERENITY

GUP TEAM - 11/24/16

Who says getting older has to be boring? In his series Serenity, New York-based photographer Can Dagarslani (b. 1984, Turkey) takes the assumption to task that as we get older, we have to live with some measure of calmness and serenity.

Full of bright colours a...

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NEW YORK BUSINESSMEN

GUP TEAM - 11/22/16

What does it mean to be a businessman in the 21st century? While some hold the title of ‘businessman’ to be a compliment of seriousness and success, for others, it has come to imply a distinctly negative circle of traits: of suit-clad sociopathy that values money over hu...

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THE BEAR

GUP TEAM - 11/17/16

Inspired by reports of a lone brown bear running wild in the forests of Switzerland – a bear who was eventually shot by the authorities when it got too close to human settlements – Marco Frauchiger (b. 1976) went searching deep in the woods of his native country w...

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THE FAT FOOTBALL LEAGUE

GUP TEAM - 11/15/16

The FAT Football League, a new photographic venture from Paris-based Simone Perolari (b. 1976), focuses on exactly what it sounds like: a football league created exclusively for men whose Body Mass Index (BMI) is 30+. In other words, medically overweight.

The league, created in a to...

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REIN JANSSEN

GUP TEAM - 11/10/16

Quite literally exploding with colour, Dutch-born Rein Janssen’s (b. 1983) portfolio is a macrocosmic examination of natural and man-made objects. Fascinated by colour and the many natural ways one can manipulate physical objects, Janssen freezes, burns, crystallize...

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A FRAME WITHOUT A NAME

GUP TEAM - 11/8/16

The series A Frame Without a Name is about the social consequences caused by the fear of terror. Belgian based photographer Guus Bakker (b. 1989, NL) started the project in reaction to the terrorist attacks in Paris on November 13th 2015, when he noticed that beyond t...

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KOTEKA IMPRESSIONS

GUP TEAM - 11/7/16

After seeing some traditional kotekas – personal and elaborately decorated penis sheaths that serve as a symbol of virility, practiced in Melanesia, South America and Africa – Finnish-born Kenneth Bamberg (b. 1981) pondered what his own design might look...

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​FOLIE À DEUX

GUP TEAM - 11/4/16

Folie à Deux is a photographic narrative of a fictional crime that Brazilian photographer Felipe Abreu (b. 1989) created using contemporary imagery, archive imagery and snippets of text. The series displays a visual labyrinth of clues that leave it to the viewer to ...

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NATURAL DECEPTIONS

GUP TEAM - 11/3/16

Fuelled by her mixed feelings for pop culture, Seattle-based photographer Natalie Krick (b. 1986) makes photographs that mimic and reference cliché images of sexuality and beauty. Starting from the belief that what is considered beautiful and flattering nee...

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LA FORMA BRUTA

GUP TEAM - 11/2/16

Meeting at the intersection of the aesthetics of pop art, the content of an anthropological study and the colours of Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, La Forma Bruta is Martín Bollati’s (b. 1986) most recent creative venture. Ablaze with fantastically bright...

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DON MCKENNA

GUP TEAM - 10/31/16

Following his photographic instincts to a natural conclusion, Don McKenna (b. 1952) has been impulsively shooting close to home in the Midwest since he graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute four decades ago.

Shooting the urban landscapes that surround hi...

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DUSTWOUND

GUP TEAM - 10/28/16

Injecting barren landscapes with gargantuan, digitally manipulated structures, Pouria Khojastehpay (b. 1993) invites the viewer to “immerse themselves in the future failed landscapes of ruin” in his cinematic photomontages. A collection of brutalist, dystopian an...

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BENEDICT’S HOUSE

GUP TEAM - 10/26/16

There is an ethereal elegance about UK-based photographer Ashley Bourne’s (1993) latest series, Benedict’s House, where we are offered an insight into the secluded world of the Benedictine Monastery. With a keen eye for detail, Bourne shoots in a stylishly clean a...

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MARTHA

GUP TEAM - 10/25/16

Martha is an ongoing project in which Siân Davey (b.1964) explores the relationship between herself and her step-daughter, by photographing her during the vibrant period of time as she grows into a woman. She says about the process of working together on the series: “we have ...

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COME UN FIUME

GUP TEAM - 10/24/16

Sensitive and hauntingly honest, Come un Fiume (Italian for ‘Like a River’) is a biographical, visual retrospective concerning photographer Camilla Riccò’s (b. 1987) subjects struggles with both anorexia and bulimia. Delicately responding to a wide ra...

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STRANGERS IN A FAMILIAR LAND

GUP TEAM - 10/18/16

After reading an article about the atrocities facing people with albinism in Tanzania, Nairobi-based photographer Sarah Waisa (b. 1980, Uganda) felt compelled to raise awareness about the issue. Waiswa reached out to the Kenyan Albino Society, where she was ...

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GRANDMOTHERS

GUP TEAM - 10/12/16

Grandmothers, by Polish artist Magda Kuca (b. 1993), is a sentimental project about the artist’s grandmother and her general ancestry, photographed using the 19th century ‘wet plate’ technique (wet-collodion process). The process, discovered in 1851, involves adding a solu...

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NEW WORK 2016

GUP TEAM - 10/10/16

By manipulating the exposure process in a large format camera, with the aid of some black paper and a 3D modelling programme, San Antonio-based photographer Charlie Kitchen (b. 1991) is able to perform a unique in-camera collage that results in a stunning collision be...

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EXCAVATIONS

GUP TEAM - 10/7/16

Australian/British artist Odette England (b.1975) explores the invisible social space of family storytelling through photographs by crossing into taboo territory of destroying original personal possessions. Using handmade c-prints and original snapshots from her famil...

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NORTHERN NOIR

GUP TEAM - 10/6/16

Growing up in the wilderness of Northern Ontario with a family of lumberjacks, where she would spend her time taming wolves and shooting rifles, Kourtney Roy (b. 1981) is fairly unaccustomed to social norms. Her latest project indicates this with a visual feast that transcends photographic...

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LIFTING GROUND SHADOWS

GUP TEAM - 10/4/16

In between the Tyrrhenian and Adriatic Sea lies the once third largest lake in Italy, Lake Fucino. Since Prince Alessandro Torlonia drained it in the 19th century, it lies bleak and bare with, in Di Nardo’s own words, “few things capable of sprouting up, as if...

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SAMSKEYTI

GUP TEAM - 09/30/16

Inspired by “things that aren’t real”, Connecticut-based Samantha Sealy (b. 1991) creates meaning through ‘destructive processes’ until she built a world she felt reflected her own. The result is rather surreal and ghostly, with a definite gothic edge to it ...

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I NEVER TOLD ANYONE

GUP TEAM - 09/29/16

Powerfully stark, Paris-based Bénédicte Vanderreydt’s (b. 1980) series ‘I Never Told Anyone’, sheds light on her family history in seven delicately lit frames, detailing what she describes as the oppression of her female ancestors in an age of patriarchy. Bala...

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L’ENFANT-FEMME

GUP TEAM - 09/27/16

In L’Enfant-femme, Rania Matar (b. 1964) shows the vulnerability of preteen girls from different cultures that are developing sense of selfhood, sexuality and womanhood. By photographing with an analogue camera where her subjects cannot see the immediate results of the shoot, Matar takes...

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I DON’T NEED TO KNOW YOU

GUP TEAM - 09/26/16

 When something is hidden, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It may just be that there’s a good reason for it to remain concealed. The series ‘I Don’t Need to Know You’ is a collaboration between Russian photographer Katia...

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UNTAMED

GUP TEAM - 09/22/16

Inspired by the Southern Gothic tradition, Jaime Johnson (b.1988, USA) photographs in the swamps and woods of Mississippi and Louisiana, exhibiting a fascination for life and growth as well as death and decay. Creating a story around a female character who move...

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GRANDES EXITOS

GUP TEAM - 09/21/16

Economical phenomena like gentrification, an aging audience, and changes to social dynamics – these are some of the reasons why charming places with personality can go out of business. This degradation, a transition from ‘old-fashioned’ to ‘obsolete’, is portrayed ...

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BASTERLAND

GUP TEAM - 09/20/16

There is a community living in Namibia called Baster, a name that originates from the mixed heritage of the community between German colonizers and the indigenous people. They made a community of their own, as they were not entirely Namibian but neither did they belong to th...

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LOVE LAND STOP TIME

GUP TEAM - 09/15/16

Flashing in colourful neon, the Brazilian love motels portrayed in LOVE LAND STOP TIME have an atmosphere of faded glory. Whether located in urban or rural areas, the extravagant interiors appear not to have changed for years. For lovers who meet by the hour, it looks like t...

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STILL LIVES

GUP TEAM - 09/12/16

Still-Lives, a series by photographer Eliot Dudik (b. 1983, USA) features portraits of weekend actors devoted to the re-enactments of the American Civil War. “I have learned that the motivations compelling re-enactors are incalculably complex, but generally address ...

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WINTER FLOWERS

GUP TEAM - 09/9/16

Winter is not only a season, it can also be a state of mind. Lesya Pchelka (1989, Belarus) in her series Winter Flowers visualised this very state of mind. She explains that, during the winter, she spends a lot of time indoors, looking out the window, and recreated th...

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WWII BUNKERS

GUP TEAM - 09/7/16

At first, they look like monoliths of ancient or futuristic cultures. They look like constructions that transcend time and even space. Set out in the open, where almost no other signs of civilisations are to be seen, the structures of abandoned bunkers from World War II remain.

Amsterdam-b...

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THE PHOENIX SERIES

GUP TEAM - 09/5/16

The urge to address the circumstances of one’s personal life through self-expression is one of the most moving and powerful reasons to work on a photographic series. In her Phoenix series, Sian Grahl (b. 1991, Australia) conceptualises her story to the extent of con...

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L’ABSENTE

GUP TEAM - 09/2/16

In childhood, imagination plays a critical role: believing in something makes it so. This might be what Nantes-based photographer Aëla Labbé (b. 1986) refers to with the title of her series L’ABSENTE (The Absence). Labbé describes the series as, “An ode to absence in all of its ...

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ABSTRACT PEACES

GUP TEAM - 09/1/16

Affected by a mental condition stigmatized by his community, Cape Town–based photographer Tsoku Maela (b. 1989) eventually found that he needed to process the distress of what he was going through in a creative way. His series Abstract Peaces wasn’t intended t...

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LAVISH FIELDS

GUP TEAM - 08/29/16

The series Lavish Fields by Polish artist Robert Mainka (b. 1992) takes us to the free exploration of colours, scenes and atmospheres.

In high stylized that range from studio still-lifes to found objects, from staged portraits to digital renderings, the feelings that they release ar...

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THIS IS NOT REAL LIFE

GUP TEAM - 08/26/16

Sometimes we come across a hostile place, a person or a situation, and nevertheless feel attracted to it. We do confront hostility in our lives, whether by circumstance or as a self-assigned challenge. Polish photographer Dominika Gesicka (b. 1981) travelled to Longye...

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VERNAL

GUP TEAM - 08/25/16

When beauty arises out of complexity, it is sometimes hard to be able not only to appreciate it but also comprehend it, which might be the case while looking at Vernal, a series by Polish artist Urszula Kluz-Knopek (b. 1985). The concept of “there’s no return ...

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FEVER COAT

GUP TEAM - 08/23/16

Looking at Fever Coat by Toronto-based photographer Jamie Campbell (b. 1983) we have the feeling that something has just happened, and we’re just left to wonder what. It’s like a thriller that leaves the viewer bewildered already at the beginning...

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YO SOY LO QUE SOY

GUP TEAM - 08/18/16

There are approximately 300 people in the world who suffer from a rare genetic disorder which prevents the process of full growth, called the Laron syndrome. In a remote region of southern Ecuador, there are roughly 100 people with this condition. German photographer Char...

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COMPLETE FREEDOM FOR ZEISS AMBASSADOR MARTIJN KORT

GUP TEAM - 08/15/16

ZEISS is one of the world’s leading optical companies and a trendsetter when it comes to high quality camera lenses. Architectural photographer Martijn Kort is ZEISS ambassador and knows how to appreciate the quality and durability of ZEISS lenses. In his ...

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GEORGIA GEORGIA

GUP TEAM - 08/12/16

There are two places in the world that share the name “Georgia”: one is a state in the deep south of the United States and the other is a country in Eastern Europe, in the former Soviet Union. Based on their geography, one could expect them to be vastly different, but be...

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HOUSE OF HAZE

GUP TEAM - 08/11/16

 House of Haze by Berlin-based artist Klara Johanna Michel (b. 1990) mesmerizes with beauty. Working primarily in fashion and portrait imagery, Michel uses on this series a special technique, colouring black and white negatives directly with tint...

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THE COMPANY OF MEN

GUP TEAM - 08/9/16

The culture of being exposed to, and choosing to look at, nudity is a strange thing. While we in the West are somehow comfortable with our long relationship of female nudes, our relationship to male nudes in more fraught with difficulties. “The representation of eroticism ...

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YOU, RIVER OF MY TEARS

GUP TEAM - 08/8/16

Miriam Stanke (1983, Germany) went to visit a remote mountainous area of Eastern Anatolia with the Munzur river and valley at its heart. This is Dersim, the historical heartland of the Kurdish Alevis or Kızılbaş, a very heterodox religious group that has been oppressed and att...

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MEATPACKING

GUP TEAM - 08/5/16

The Meatpacking District in Manhattan is a neighbourhood formerly known for its gay nightlife, transgender sex workers and leather clubs. In her series Meatpacking, New York-based photographer Dina Litovsky (1979, Ukraine) shows how the nightlife has changed in the di...

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SHEPHERDS

GUP TEAM - 08/4/16

The life of a shepherd is one ruled by the changing seasons, the fruits of the land and, increasingly, one that is at the mercy of a rapidly changing culture and global economy. In a small Slovenian settlement in the foothills of the Kamnik-Savinja Alps, Velika Planina (Grea...

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(PHOTO)GRAPHY

GUP TEAM - 08/3/16

(PHOTO)graphy by Hong Kong-based photographer Sheung Yiu (b. 1991) is a still life series aiming to examine photography’s limits when it comes to representing reality. “When an image is printed on a sheet of paper, the paper acquires the appearance of the s...

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TRYOUTS

GUP TEAM - 08/1/16

New York based photographer Ryan Caruthers (b.1994) presents his series Tryouts, a personal depiction of the isolation and unease he felt during his formative years, towards sports. Affected by a physical condition that contributed to his estrangement from any athleti...

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LOVE KILLS MY WORDS

GUP TEAM - 07/29/16

Norwegian photographer Øistein Sæthren Dahle (1988) began photographing his series in 2009, during a period when he was beginning a relationship and also a close friend had died. The contrast between these events marked the work’s progress till present d...

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GREETINGS FROM MARS

GUP TEAM - 07/27/16

Paris-based photographer Julien Mauve (b. 1984) confronts us with an immediate reflection: while more than 500 years ago, we defined archetypical explorers through events like Columbus ‘discovering’ America, an explorer nowadays is a robot called Curiosity, now mo...

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SUSPENDED BOUNDARIES

GUP TEAM - 07/26/16

In her ongoing project Suspended Boundaries, Boston-based photographer Sara Romani (b. 1987, Italy) focuses on how photography translates reality: what goes through the lens of a camera gains the value of a language, and therefore is given a meaning. Romani, who studied set design and thea...

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MILKY WAY

GUP TEAM - 07/24/16

The exploration of our vast universe may start with something small: a seed. Inspired by the hypothesis of panspermia – that life exists throughout the universe and is distributed by meteoroids, asteroids, comets, planetoids and even unintentionally by spacecraft – Finni...

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FROM HERE ON OUT

GUP TEAM - 07/21/16

Alex Nelson (b.1989, USA) deals with the issue of her parents’ divorce in the series From Here on Out, a five-year-long meditation on how this event has affected her nuclear family, and how the established roles have evolved through the years, influencing interpersonal dynamics.

...

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BLUE BASTARDS

GUP TEAM - 07/20/16

Blue is the colour of sadness and blue is the colour that Osaka-based photographer Mikel Berradre (b. 1985, Basque Country) used to tint his photographs for the series Blue Bastards, in an attempt to illustrate certain aspects of Japanese society that he regards as m...

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FAR FROM HOME

GUP TEAM - 07/18/16

Far From Home is a series by Switzerland-based photographer Youqine Lefévre (b.1993) about kids living in a foster home on the mountains. This work relates to the personal experience of the photographer, a key element to understanding the series’ subj...

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TRANSITORY ITEMS

GUP TEAM - 07/15/16

Transitory Items, a series by Swiss photographer Douglas Mandry (b. 1989) recalls at first sight the photographic experiments of the early 20th century, in which shape has the primary role in the composition of images while the figurative significance loses...

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WINTER WONDERLAND

GUP TEAM - 07/13/16

Takeshi Suga (1982, Japan) takes us along on a journey through wintertime Japan, across snowy landscapes and frozen quietude. Originally inspired by the 1934 song ‘Winter Wonderland’, which is quite a common holiday season song in Western culture, Suga says that while many Ja...

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HETEROTOPIEN

GUP TEAM - 07/11/16

Heterotopien by Karsten Kronas (b. 1978, Germany) is a series about Beyoglu’s throbbing life, a personal depiction of Istanbul’s neighbourhood where the photographer lived for two years.

Despite the personal approach of the series, its title already...

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ON BEING

GUP TEAM - 07/8/16

Wanting to depict the emotional tide of adolescence, Niki Boon (b. 1974, New Zealand) started photographing her eldest daughter, who had recently turned 11. “I am intrigued with the the evolution one goes through at this significant and vulnerable stage”, explains Boon. “I regard it ...

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A CONFUSING POTENTIAL

GUP TEAM - 07/6/16

“What do humans need in order to love?” asks Julia Steinigeweg (1987, Germany). Does it require a shared exchange of emotion, or is love ultimately felt and experienced alone, individually?

Looking at relationships formed between humans and lifeli...

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THE DREAMKEEPERS

GUP TEAM - 07/4/16

Intrigued by the transformative quality of masks, Polixeni Papapetrou (1960, Australia), began looking into the types of masks available in toy stores. She noticed that many masks were comical caricatures of the elderly and became interested in the idea of the elderly as ‘other’. Despi...

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3P’s

GUP TEAM - 07/1/16

Lizette Schaap (1987, The Netherlands) learned about the sustainability principle 3P’s (People, Planet and Profit) during her engineering education. If this triangle is not balanced, one or more elements will suffer. In this series, 3P’s, she tried to re...

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MONIA

GUP TEAM - 06/30/16

When communication breaks down, a camera can sometimes be used to come to a better understanding. Monia is an ongoing project by Italian photographer Giovanni Cocco (b. 1973) which explores the photographer’s relationship with his sister Monia, who was born with...

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DARK ROMANCE

GUP TEAM - 06/29/16

Amsterdam-based photographer Geert Broertjes (b. 1987) takes us on a journey through the night, roaming through dark streets lit up by enigma, seeking solace in short-lived romances in hallucinatory bedroom scenes.

“In 2012 my mother, grandmother and aunt pas...

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SILOQUIES AND SOLILOQUIES ON DEATH, LIFE AND OTHER INTERLUDES

GUP TEAM - 06/27/16

Coupled with life is death. Yet, for all our contemplation and celebration of life, we still struggle to speak effectively about its counterpart. In his new series, produced in collaboration with the Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences in Portugal, Edga...

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OLYMPUS X GUP: EXPLORING THE NEW

GUP TEAM - 06/25/16

Raised in the United States, and currently residing in The Netherlands, Gavin de Boer is a young and talented photographer who started photographing landscapes and animals. Nowadays Gavin focuses more on portraying people. A...

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THE FOUR

GUP TEAM - 06/24/16

The Four by Jillian Freyer (b. 1989, USA) is an ongoing project that started as “an effort to explain and detangle” the relationship between the author’s two sisters, their mother and herself. The series is a collection of fragments, imperfect details and cl...

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SENSELESS

GUP TEAM - 06/23/16

After reading Richard Sennet’s anthropological and scientific studies, in which he states that technological advances have made us more and more detached from nature, creating a passive culture that deprives our senses, Glasgow-based photographer Laura Thompson (198...

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BORN ON THE BAYOU

GUP TEAM - 06/22/16

Matt Henry (1978, UK) continues his work with photographic fiction in his latest series, Born on the Bayou, taking influence from the genres or crime, American gothic and the stylings of the ‘60s. The series is comprised of staged images using a cast of actors, with...

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IN ABSCENCE

GUP TEAM - 06/20/16

Society places expectations on its citizens through labels; templates of existence. These expectations can be so pervasive that they’re even internalised, making it difficult, if not impossible, to arrive at an individual truth, or to take a genuine look in the mirror.

...

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PLAY

GUP TEAM - 06/17/16

The objects of a residence are inanimate, yet draw meaning from our ability to understand their significance in building a life. Dutch photographer Edith Diederiks (1984) returned to the house where she grew up, and began to play. Chairs, duvets and curtains...

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THE PURPLE ROOM

GUP TEAM - 06/15/16

For Spanish photographer Helio Léon (1987), the boundaries between life, dreams and imagination are thin. Researching how the past and present are connected, and how his past has effected him and made him into the person that he is now, Léon returned to th...

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ARKANUM

GUP TEAM - 06/12/16

Architecture is an essential part of our modern existence. Through the centuries, architecture has became our natural environment, and alongside technological advancements it is tasked with contributing to improving human activities.

Arkanum, a series by Berlin-based ...

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RADIUS

GUP TEAM - 06/9/16

How far can you go until intimacy leads to aversion? With his series Radius, 28-year-old Ukrainian photographer Yura Kolomiets seeks to discover the distinction between romanticism and vulgarism. People’s desires often stay secret, behind the walls of thei...

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HELLO I’M NORA

GUP TEAM - 06/8/16

For some people retiring and ageing can be experienced as a way of disappearing, as one’s ‘utility’ in society is no longer required. One has only to accept the fact that the body is not as efficient and appealing as in the past years.

In her latest project Hello I’...

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A ROAD NOT TAKEN

GUP TEAM - 06/7/16

A border is a conceptual notion, something we create through agreement or force. As such, they can often be imaginary, their very presence somewhat ambiguous or arbitrary. In his series A Road Not Taken, German-American photographer Jasper Bastian (1989) mak...

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UNDER MY SKIN

GUP TEAM - 06/6/16

Emotions are very often invisible, yet we all know they exist. What occurs under the skin will occasionally materialise in behaviour or appearance, but just as often, can be suppressed or hidden. As a result of some inclement health issues, Dutch photographer Camille...

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NARRATIVES OF DESIRE

GUP TEAM - 06/1/16

Hamburg-based photographer Hayley Austin (1984, USA) looks head-on at the intimate relationships of couples in her new series Narratives of Desire. Through these environmental portraits, we find ourselves in the private spaces of cohabited apartments, witnessing moments fuelled b...

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THE KITSCH DESTRUCTION OF OUR WORLD

GUP TEAM - 05/31/16

According to Canadian photographer Benoit Paillé, photography is not a representation of what is real, but creates its own reality. For over a year, Paillé travelled through the vast landscape of Canada whilst living in his truck. Living in a vehicle for so long cha...

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BELIEF

GUP TEAM - 05/30/16

With technological innovation and global communication, our world changes faster than we can fully process – and yet, religious beliefs continue to hold firm value for individuals and societies, irrespective of culture or the specifics of particular religions. While it’s increasingly common t...

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OSHICHI

GUP TEAM - 05/27/16

One day, Japanese based photographer Michiko Chiyoda visited a doll museum and came across a doll that had once been used in the Ningyo Joruri Puppet Theatre, one of Japan’s representative traditional performing arts. Chiyoda researched the roots of the doll and fou...

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WHITE IS NOT A COLOUR

GUP TEAM - 05/25/16

On July 22, 2011, right-wing extremist Anderes Behrind Breivik detonated a bomb in the streets of Oslo, then shot dead 69 people on the island of Utøya in Norway. This attack was Europe’s largest terrorist attack at the time, killing more than 75 and injuring more than 30...

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INDEFINITELY

GUP TEAM - 05/23/16

Melbourne-based photographer Katrin Koenning (Germany) created her photo series Indefinitely with an interest in people’s physical and emotional connection to place and movement through language, culture and continent. The series was shot in Australia, New Zealand a...

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OBSESSIVE BECOMING

GUP TEAM - 05/20/16

“To me, the photograph starts as a recording of light. It doesn’t matter if the final outcome is made of pixels, grains or pure data.” – Carson Lynn

When you look at American photographer Carson Lynn’s series Obsessi...

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BOAS NOITES

GUP TEAM - 05/19/16

In the rural villages of the Spanish region of Galicia, Jesús Madriñán (1984, Spain) photographed young party-goers as they pause from the revelry for a portrait. The flash of Madriñán’s camera draws an uncommon amount of light into scenes often shrouded in dar...

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TECHNICALLY INTIMATE

GUP TEAM - 05/15/16

Young girls posing provocatively in front of a small phone camera – it’s something we’re now used to seeing, but normally without so much insight into the goings on surrounding the photo. Inspired by the increasing ubiquity of these seemingly private images acr...

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THE RECONDITE

GUP TEAM - 05/13/16

In a world supported by facts, even the most die-hard sceptics among us (want to) believe in magic. Humans can’t help it; though we try to be logical, irrational beliefs are hardwired in our psyches. Since childhood, American photographer Grant Gill has believed in ...

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WASTELAND

GUP TEAM - 05/11/16

Recycling waste not only benefits the environment, it breathes new life into old objects that were once destined for the landfill. In his series Wasteland, Portuguese artist Pedro Maia (1983) works with waste material produced by an analogue film lab and degraded film...

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COMING SOON

GUP TEAM - 05/9/16

In 1997, when Israeli photographer Natan Dvir (1972) first arrived to his new home city of New York, he was overwhelmed by the huge commercial advertisements that dominate the urban landscape. Larger than life, the billboards have become such an everyday par...

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EKATERINA

GUP TEAM - 05/6/16

Since the invention of photography, it’s been used to capture performances – and in today’s ‘age of the selfie’, self-expression in front of the camera has never been more popular. In his series Ekaterina, Swiss photographer Romain Mader travels to the U...

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FAT

GUP TEAM - 05/5/16

London-based photographer Beata Stencel reflects on consumerism and waste in her series FAT. What appears at first sight to be extraordinary universes are in fact close-up looks of an everyday substance: fat.

Fat is often riddled with negative connotations, in ...

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PORTRAITGRAPHS

GUP TEAM - 05/3/16

In his series Portraitgraphs, Manuel Velasquez (Honduras) combines two features that are commonly used to distinguish one human from another: face and voice. Inspired by the algorithms used in facial recognition systems, Velasquez created a data-driven manipulation of...

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ZENITH

GUP TEAM - 05/2/16

In a society in which the church plays a major role, it is still a taboo to talk about topics like sexuality. In her photo series Zenth, Margo Ovcharenko (1989, Russia) connects religion and sexuality, two topics typically considered separate by society, even though t...

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INNER SELF

GUP TEAM - 04/28/16

Western culture has traditionally viewed gender as a binary concept, with two rigidly fixed options: male or female, both grounded in a person’s physical anatomy. The idea is so common that it is a relatively new phenomenon to be challenged; we are born, assigned a sex, an...

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ROCK SALT

GUP TEAM - 04/27/16

Trona, a small mining town near Death Valley (California) was established in 1914 to house a workforce extracting borax and soda ash from Searles Dry Lake. American Trona Corporation owned and operated the town, building housing and schools, shops, dance halls, cinemas and a...

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HEALING PLANTS FOR HURT LANDSCAPES

GUP TITLE - 04/26/16

In her series Healing Plants for Hurt Landscapes, Laurence Aëgerter (1972, France) looks to photography as a means of recovery from disaster. Rather than looking head-on at victims or dealing directly with those who have been harmed by tragedies worldwide, ...

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THE REGENERATION OF COMPLEX SOCIETIES

GUP TEAM - 04/25/16

The Tōhoku earthquake of 2011 was the most powerful earthquake in recorded history to have hit Japan. The earthquake triggered powerful tsunami waves, which, in turn, caused a nuclear disaster. The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant complex and the associated evacuation zones affected hundred...

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BODY BECOMING

GUP TEAM - 04/21/16

With her series Body Becoming, Leah Edelman-Brier (USA) confronts ideals of beauty while questioning the resilience of the body. Focusing on elements that draw our attention to corporeal decay and ill health, like excess weight, rotten teeth and eczema, Edelman-Brier accentuates ...

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BLANK

GUP TEAM - 04/20/16

Here I am still on the road. Wandering through layers of tangled moments. Sometimes circulating or irreversibly moving forward, I let my body flow and capture the truth.” – Yuki MoritaWhen Yuki Morita (1989, Japan) was 19, he hi...

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HUMANITY

GUP TEAM - 04/19/16

As society begins to awaken to the impact of the technological revolution, and reckon with the day following the dawn of the information age, artists use their work to both reflect and look forward. In his series Humanity, Kazuto Ishikawa (1983, Japan) consi...

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TANGIBLES

GUP TEAM - 04/14/16

With his series Tangibles, photographer Carlos Collado (1977, Spain) focuses on the moment in which an artwork leaves the showroom and is handled by curators, scientists, restorers and other museum staff. In this transition, the reality of the object changes along with its contex...

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MOVING PORTRAITS

GUP TEAM - 04/12/16

Turkish photographer Barbaros Kayan (1982) portrayed Syrian refugees who had to leave their homes in Kobani to escape to Turkey and have been settled in refugee camps. The grey, barren environments of the portraits make us aware of the poor living conditions in the camps. However...

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AGAINST IDENTITY

GUP TEAM - 04/12/16

Influenced by the research of anthropologist Francesco Remotti (1943) about the problematic character of human identity, photographer Valentina Murabito (Italy, 1981) wanted to create a series of portraits that would break the rigid rules of implying a stron...

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DARE ALLA LUCE

GUP TEAM - 04/11/16

A photograph can have multiple lives. By taking vintage photographs and physically manipulating them, Amy Friend (1974, Canada) participates in an orchestration of destruction to arrive at something new.

In her series Dare Alla Luce, an Italian term meaning ‘to bring to ...

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NEVER – NEVER LAND

GUP TEAM - 04/6/16

In 2014, Rebecca Rütten (1991, Germany) travelled to Central America and began to photograph a group of long-term travellers who had settled in a hostel on an island. People from all over the world collected in this wooden fairyland, in pursuit of the same dream: to break free from societ...

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SODLEY-ON-SEA

GUP TEAM - 04/4/16

The Great British seaside town: depicted as a place where the sun always shines, one can feast on jellied eels and 99p ice creams whilst lounging on a striped deck chair and the only form of transport is by donkey. This sunny stereotype is challenged by Mark Page (1967, UK) in hi...

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VANITY

GUP TEAM - 04/1/16

What if you meet a stranger at night who tells you he’s a photographer and wants to photograph you naked? Giorgio Papadopoulos (1981, Spain) met people in bars and, after a talk, he invited himself to their private residences to capture a glimpse of their personality. In high contrast bl...

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MOVING URBAN LIFE CAPTURED BY THE NEW PEN-F

GUP TEAM - 04/1/16

The original Olympus PEN-F first hit the streets in 1963. It was a revolutionary camera that triggered the half-frame camera boom of the 1960s and 1970s. Now, 53 years later, Olympus offers a digital update of the Original PEN-F. The camera, which looks retro and therefore similar to the original...

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THE HORIZONTAL MODE OF A WAKING LIFE

GUP TEAM - 03/30/16

Theatrical and often absurd still-lifes of arranged food and everyday objects, like a quail’s egg, octopus, coffee sleeves, aluminium foil and toilet paper, are the subjects of Jiaxi Yang’s (1989, China) series The Horizontal Mode of a Waking Life. After being pla...

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REDUCTION

GUP TEAM - 03/28/16

In case we of modern times, embedded hard in the throes of digital media, are ever tempted to forget that photography started as an alchemical, physical thing, let us remember to look at its remnants. Alison Rossiter (1953, USA) creates her camera-less photographic works with mat...

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L’INACHEVÉ

GUP TEAM - 03/24/16

The photographic medium is used by many to document what is happening in front of the them. But what if what is happening in front of you is an elusive present – one that is constantly shifting and changing? French photographer Julien Lombardi (1980) uses photog...

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DRAKE’S FOLLY

GUP TEAM - 03/23/16

In the early 1800s, after the emergence of stories of a black liquid seeping from the ground, the then fledgling Seneca Oil Company (Pennsylvania) sent Colonel Edwin Drake, a retired railroad worker, in search of this elusive substance. As seemingly unproductive progress was...

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FRACTURES

GUP TEAM - 03/22/16

Dominated by stark colours and geometric shapes and surfaces, these abstract images by British photographer James Reeve evoke, at first glance, visions of alternate realities. However, the images in Fractures are actually quite terrestrial. Reeve photographe...

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COSMOS

GUP TEAM - 03/21/16

The great outer reaches of space meet earthly microscopic bacteria in this series from American photographer Marcus DeSieno (1988). As a starting point, DeSieno appropriates images from NASA and other space agencies, exposing them onto positive slide film. T...

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Elefantentreffen

GUP TEAM - 03/18/16

The winter motorcycle rally The Elefantentreffen takes place during a weekend in January or February in the Bavarian Forest, where the temperatures are often below zero. Conditions are tough: the bikers don’t have any facilities but tents and straw. Despite the frost and s...

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THE TWELFTH NIGHT

GUP TEAM - 03/17/16

With his photo series The Twelfth Night, Italian photographer Emanuele Camerini (1987) visualized a popular legend from Kalsoy (Faroe Islands), which he discovered during his study in Denmark. It is believed that once a year, on the twelfth night after Christmas, seal...

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MY SWEET HOME

GUP TEAM - 03/15/16

The meticulously constructed scenes in Korean photographer Jisun Choi’s series My Sweet Home seem so perfectly made that the work approaches the surreal. Clean symmetry and crisply chosen colours, together with an obsessive level of control over every deta...

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WOLFGANG

GUP TEAM - 03/14/16

Wolfgang Ernst Pauli (1900 – 1958) was one of the founders of quantum physics, nicknamed the ‘Conscience of Physics’. He was also known, however, for a trait a little less honorary. Legend has it that when Pauli entered a room, experiments would fail and machinery woul...

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JUNCTURE

GUP TEAM - 03/11/16

Thinking about death can evoke uncertainty and fear, however, our mortality could be seen as something liberating and enlightening as well. With her photo series Juncture, Ebony Finck (1987, Australia) visualized a story about the sensitive subject of our transition between the s...

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IMPERMANENT SCULPTURES

GUP TEAM - 03/10/16

Vitor Schietti’s (1986, Brazil) light sculptures will never be perceived as a whole by a human witness. However, in his ongoing project Impermanent Sculptures, Schietti is able to capture light sculptures by making use of his favorite photography techniques, long exposure and l...

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TESTAMENT

GUP TEAM - 03/9/16

The bizarre scenes of Testament, in which couples and families, dressed only in their undergarments, interact with and are absorbed by strange, vibrantly coloured sculptures, make you want to take a closer look. To investigate heavy burdens and how we carry them, American ph...

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PATHOLOGIK

GUP TEAM - 03/8/16

German photographer Andreas Rzadkowsky takes as the starting point for his imagery a question: when does photography turn into a painting? The result is a series of highly processed images, unapologetically expressing signs of their physicality and manipulations, like...

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YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THEIR FACES

GUP TEAM - 03/7/16

Surveillance, and surveillance photography, has an ever-increasing presence in our daily lives. Yet, despite the fact that we are all under surveillance, on the street and in public and private areas, there’s still an unconscious judgment we tend to make when we see images of people under surve...

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TESTAMENT, VOLUME I

GUP TEAM - 03/5/16

American photographer Kris Graves photographs black men in studio portraits that, while carefully arranged, offer a sensitivity in line with a genuine encounter. In taking a similar aesthetic approach to each man’s portrait, Graves manages to emphasize...

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INTERGALÁCTICO

GUP TEAM - 03/4/16

Not all stories are meant to make sense. In a series of black and white photographs and illustrations, Guilherme Gerais (1987, Brazil) introduces us to an alternative view on an unknowable universe. “The series is presented as a map, a guide, a trail to a ritualistic journe...

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MÉDULA

GUP TEAM - 03/3/16

With his black-and-white photo series Médula, which is the Spanish word for marrow, photographer Camilo Amaya captures impressions of his experiences and memories. Drawing together disparate subject matters and sceneries, Amaya reveals visual thoughts that are someho...

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NESTING IN THE WOLF TREE

GUP TEAM - 03/2/16

French-Mexican photographer Alexandra Serrano takes a poetic walk through the woods in her series Nesting in the Wolf Tree. Contemplating the dual meaning of a forest as both a place where one can seek shelter, as well as a place of unknown danger, Serrano c...

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MY FIRST DREAM

GUP TEAM - 03/1/16

The astronaut Neil Armstrong once said that when he looked back at the earth from the moon, he didn’t feel like a giant – instead he felt very, very small. In the series My First Dream, London-based photographer Diego Brambilla (1978, Italy) combines photography, ...

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THE WOODS

GUP TEAM - 02/28/16

In folklore, the woods are seen as a place of magic; a place rarely travelled and where things are not always as they seem. Having grown up on a hundred-acre parcel of land, Canadian photographer Darren Rigo knows this too well. As a child, he explored the woods and s...

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WHEN WATER COMES TOGETHER WITH OTHER WATER

GUP TEAM - 02/26/16

In this series, architect and photographer Claire Laude (b. 1975, Orleans) combines isolated aspects of landscapes with people into installations of decaying spaces. Through these constructed images, she creates an awkwardly artificial environment in which traces of life feel lon...

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FOOL’S GOLD

GUP TEAM - 02/25/16

Since its inception, photography has been used as a way of collecting data, marking events and documenting evidence. Tal Barel (Israel) explores the institutions which, like photography, produce, organise and structure knowledge in her series Fool’s Gold. Focusing o...

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UNFADING

GUP TEAM - 02/24/16

The vibrantly coloured backgrounds in French photographer Christoph Soeder’s (1989) series Unfading immediately catch your eye, but the people that he portrays in front of them pull you in. These women are all affected by the autoimmune disease alopecia, a condition...

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OFFCUT, THE EDGE

GUP TEAM - 02/23/16

Learning to live in a new place can be a strange, disorientating process, especially if you move and have to adapt to an entirely new culture. Offcut, The Edge is the ongoing project from Chinese photographer Zhao Qian (1990), who moved from Shanghai to San Francisco ...

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DOLLYPALOOZA

GUP TEAM - 02/22/16

The legendary American country singer Dolly Parton once famously said “it takes a lot of money to look this cheap”, inspiring thousands of performers during her long and still active career. Dollypalooza, held in New York City, is the annual celebration of the national t...

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CHAOTIC FORMS

GUP TEAM - 02/20/16

Providence-based photographer Brett Henrikson uses the physicality of the photographic object in an unconventional way, combining the craft and alchemy of darkroom processes with collage techniques. Rather than providing the viewer a realistic window into our world, H...

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INFLATED

GUP TEAM - 02/19/16

What do princesses, bumble bees, bunnies, lobsters, squirrels and Batman all have in common? Together, they form an integral part in the absurd fictitious world of Christine Andersons (1964, USA) series Inflated. According to Anderson, she u...

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THIS WORLD AND OTHERS LIKE IT

GUP TEAM - 02/18/16

Current technology in exploration means that we are able to receive images of planets and stars millions of miles away, undecipherable to the human eye from earth, having only been witnessed by a robot. American photographer Drew Nikonowicz (1993) investigates the role of the modern explor...

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ARTIFACT

GUP TEAM - 02/17/16

Brooklyn-based artist Sophie Kahn (1980) shows a fascinating interpretation of what it means to photograph life by combining 3D-scan technology with ancient bronze casting techniques. Her work speaks to the impossibility of capturing more than a trace of the...

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HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT

GUP TEAM - 02/16/16

Paper is often seen as a material on which to place art, be that a drawing, a photograph or some other creative expression. At first glance, New York City-based Patricia Voulgaris’ images of dismembered limbs covered by abstract forms, made of what appears to be folded paper, may seem pe...

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SELECTION OF WORKS

GUP TEAM - 02/15/16

According to Dutch photographer Bastiaan Woudt (1987) “Black and white photography is pure and doesn’t distract”. In this selection of recent work, containing single images all produced in 2015, he constructs stark photos with a certain kind of focus a...

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THE TWO DIMENSIONAL SHADOW

GUP TEAM - 02/12/16

With the ever-present nature of social media taking up increasing time and space in our lives, most of us have a curated online persona we convey to the outside world, with some so sophisticated, they are almost impossible to find flaws in, no matter how different from their...

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BLOCKS

GUP TEAM - 02/11/16

Hong Kong photographer Dustin Shum explores the living conditions inside the artificially engineered residences of happiness with his series BLOCKS. Shum looks at the renovated and brightly coloured residences, which try to gloss over the image of public housing as ‘cheap r...

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MY AIR FORCE

GUP TEAM - 02/9/16

Vojtech Veskrna (1988, Czech Republic) has been fascinated since his childhood with flying. While spending most of his childhood in claustrophobic and unpleasant rooms of block housing, he kept dreaming about space, both for his mind and body. In his series My Air Force, he inclu...

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ARCTIC COAL

GUP TEAM - 02/8/16

London-based documentary photographer Anna Filipova documented the current living situation on Svalbard, a cold, dark and isolated island in the Arctic Ocean, situated about midway between continental Norway and the North Pole. Norway and Russia are the only two nations with sett...

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PAPER SKIES

GUP TEAM - 02/5/16

The colour ‘sky blue’ is a hue that is easy to picture in the mind, a light, slightly greyish blue that is often seen painted on the walls of baby boy’s bedrooms or bathrooms, but in fact, the sky can present many different shades, from icy and pale, to deep and rich. ...

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HART

GUP TEAM - 02/4/16

Mysterious thick fog covers the wild landscape, rolling down hills or sitting ethereally on top of cold water. Brazilian photographer Laura Del Rey (1985) acknowledges the incomprehensible engine of nature in her series Hart, made in collaboration with cinematographer Alziro Barb...

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FACE OFF

GUP TEAM - 02/3/16

Facial recognition systems, which attempt to automatically recognise an individual in a picture based on coordinates of facial features, date back to the ‘60s. The implications of developing the technology at that time, prior to mass available digital photography and the n...

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SEEING A RAINBOW

GUP TEAM - 02/2/16

There are many eye-catching moments in the everyday to be found, it is just that us adults rarely notice them, having lost our child-like wonder for the world around us. Dries Segers (1990, Belgium) captures these fleeting moments in his series Seeing a Rainbow, in which the spectrum of co...

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ECHOES

GUP TEAM - 02/1/16

According to a study by Focus Magazine, 76 per cent of Italians believe in ghosts and around half claim to have seen one. Photographer Barbara Leolini (1988) decided to investigate ghost-hunting groups in her native country, questioning: what happens when your rational mind cannot explain ...

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UNIVERSAL SYMPATHY

GUP TEAM - 01/28/16

Greek philosopher Plato wrote that when a person died, their soul rose to the night sky, becoming part of the stars. Glasgow-based photographer Alan Knox scattered the ashes of his grandfather onto photographic paper in his series Universal Sympathy, making them appea...

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GRASS

GUP TEAM - 01/28/16

Italian photographer Michele Tagliaferri (1980) tries to break the perimeter of the photograph by capturing the energy that was kept within the photograph; an invincible energy that creates, transforms and destroys the life that surrounds us. To Michele, every photograph is born ...

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SAME PLACE

GUP TEAM - 01/27/16

Since the abolition of apartheid, South Africans have been working towards a more integrated society, where everyone lives together in one community, but there are still tensions and separation between races. Swiss photographer Claudio Rasano (1970) noticed the apparent divide and document...

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NOTHING HAS CHANGED

GUP TEAM - 01/25/16

Inside every human being is an animal instinct, a primordial urge that reminds us of our ancestors and when we were wild. Polish photographer Agnieszka Gotowała (1986) captures the relationship between the body and nature in her series Nothing Has Changed, ...

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SOLAR PORTRAITS

GUP TEAM - 01/23/16

It is difficult to imagine life without electricity, to power our mobile phones or light our houses at night, but in Myanmar, only 26% of the country has access to the electrical grid. The country previously known as Burma is surrounded by economic heavyweights such as China and India, who have d...

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HARRODSBURG

GUP TEAM - 01/22/16

British photographer Dougie Wallace reflects on the most pressing social issue of our time in a visual journey through the growing wealth divide. His series Harrodsburg, a reference to Harrods, the most renowned luxury department store of London, can be seen as an up-close wealth...

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OFF THE STRIP

GUP TEAM - 01/21/16

Ask anyone what Las Vegas looks like and you’ll often receive the same answer: glittering lights and huge casinos. It is not even necessary to have visited to be able to picture the city in your mind. But besides the glitz and glamour of the strip, there are suburban, resi...

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DEFINING LINES

GUP TEAM - 01/19/16

The Sovereign Base Area of Akrotiri in Cyprus is one of the two British Sovereign Territories created in 1960. It is autonomous and has as its head of state the British Monarch. But, there are no border barriers, no customs offices. Daily life for civilians carries on along the peninsula, right n...

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NKIRUKA OPARAH

GUP TEAM - 01/15/16

Nigerian-American photographer Nkiruka Oparah (b. 1985) researches what cultural identity looks like in a digital age. Oparah combines photos that she finds online, with self-portraits, drawings, still images from video, and digital collage. The result is a colourful series in wh...

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TRAPS AND FLAGS

GUP TEAM - 01/13/16

It is hard to find someone who enjoys the biting cold of winter, but the residents of the frozen lakes of Maine often have to withstand temperatures of -23° C (-10° F) and colder in the darker months of the year. In his series Traps and Flags, Penn Chan (USA) has captured these people, s...

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ELEMENTS

GUP TEAM - 01/11/16

Human beings often consider themselves superior to other animals, able to control their instincts and impulses, but in Elements, Russian photographer Anna Block (1982) reminds the viewer that no matter how civilised, untamed forces of nature still reside inside them. Block pursues the noti...

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EUSA

GUP TEAM - 01/10/16

Globalisation has transformed culture into a permeable substance, absorbing or being absorbed by neighbouring nations. Ideas, fashion and cuisine travel fluently across physical and digital distances – sometimes melting into an existing identity, and other times being adopted as an exotic annex...

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FICTION

GUP TEAM - 01/8/16

Sometimes the eye can trick you into seeing something that is not really there, in periphery vision or even, right in front of you. Swedish photographer Stefan Bladh (1976) plays with what he calls “illusory reality” in his series Fiction, taken during many years of travelling. The ima...

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MAGNIT

GUP TEAM - 01/5/16

Siberia is often seen as a symbol of extreme cold and isolation, or even synonymous with the gruelling punishment of the gulag. Today, however, the region takes on a new interpretation as people in Russia come to talk about it as a magical place for energetic and spiritual healing.

Sparsel...

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PINE TREE BALLADS

GUP TEAM - 01/1/16

Tradition, folklore, familial bonds, nature and poetics are separate stars connected in a single sky in this photo series from American photographer Paul Thulin (1971). The setting is Gray’s Point, where Thulin’s family has returned each summer for over ...

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MATRIMANIA

GUP TEAM - 12/31/15

“Everything that’s great about India and everything that’s wrong with it can be summarised in a single wedding”, says Indian photographer Mahesh Shantaram (1977). Though he became known in his home country primarily as a wedding photographer, Shantar...

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REACTION

GUP TEAM - 12/28/15

In the world of the smartphone, with apps such as Instagram and Tumblr, we are constantly bombarded with images that all look the same. We become numb to them and seek out uniqueness. Saba Gilaki (1988, Iran) aims to break the mould with her series Reaction, featuring...

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LAND OF NOTHINGNESS

GUP TEAM - 12/25/15

Namibia is a country named after a desert, so it is quite easy to assume that the majority of land would be filled with desolate emptiness. Maroesjka Lavigne (1989, Belgium) photographed the sandy landscapes of Namibia in her series Land of Nothingness, capturing an eerie beauty ...

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INVISIBLE

GUP TEAM - 12/25/15

The loss of a family member can be absolutely devastating, hitting everyone differently and leaving a lasting mark on those affected. When New York-based photographer Jordanna Kalman’s mother died suddenly, she found herself unable to continue with her previous work...

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SECOND CHANCE

GUP TEAM - 12/24/15

For many people, the opportunity to go to school and finish education seems like something that is certain, never thinking that there may be some obstacle or reason to give up school. Greek photography duo Panos Charalampidis and Mary Chairetaki decided to capture people who had dec...

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RUPTURE ZONE

GUP TEAM - 12/23/15

Russian photographer Yanina Boldyreva (1986) and Ukrainian photographer Alexander Isaenko(1976) have joined forces to create a photo series that shines light on ‘The Rupture Zone,’ a place of military conflict between Ukraine and Russia. The photographic duo focuses on the e...

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STILL LIFE MEMORIES

GUP TEAM - 12/21/15

In Tehran and other Iranian cities, there are numerous female musicians, painters, photographers and other creatives, but they are suppressed by a government that deems their practice to be against Islam. Claudia Willmitzer (1982, Germany) documents the imaginary world of these women in St...

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SECOND NATURE

GUP TEAM - 12/18/15

For as long as American photographer Sarah Malakoff (b. 1972) can remember, she has had a preoccupation with domestic interiors, constantly rearranging furniture and other items. Her obsession continues in the series Second Nature, in which she demonstrates...

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THE CULT OF SELF

GUP TEAM - 12/16/15

Our eyes capture thousands of images every day, so many in fact, that it is impossible for us to appreciate the beauty or strangeness in the mundane. Charles-Henry Bédué (1980, France) photographs observations of his daily life in The Cult of Self, made in normal moments throughout the d...

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THE TWO LABYRINTHS

GUP TEAM - 12/15/15

In The Two Labyrinths, Michel Le Belhomme (1973, France) takes on one of traditional photography’s biggest darlings: landscape and its representation. Describing landscapes as the “ultimate romantic subject”, often expressed as contemplative or breath-taking, Le Belhomme co...

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SHADOWLINE

GUP TEAM - 12/14/15

“It all started with that one skull”, a symbol of mortality and vulnerability, a reminder that everything has its end, discovered by Polish photographer Michal Korta (1975). He found this animal skull whilst on a walk and after photographing it, created the...

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HOPE AND GHOSTS

GUP TEAM - 12/10/15

Over the past three years, Sebastian Palmer (1979, UK) has been living with and photographing marginalised sections of Brazilian society. In São Paulo, where 70,000 people migrate every year in search of better conditions, life can be particularly hard – ...

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INTERFERENCE

GUP TEAM - 12/9/15

In her series Interference, Danish photographer Anne-Mai Sønderborg Keldsen (1991) brings together two separate entities, to form one, imagining the idea of two waves, meeting on the shore and creating another wave, travelling in a new direction. Interference investi...

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THE TREATMENT

GUP TEAM - 12/8/15

Spa towns first originated in Britain in the 18th century, but have had a lasting effect in German culture, which boasts over 300 spa towns, where people go to rest, recuperate and ease health problems. Alexander Krack (1981, Germany) explored some of these places in his series ...

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IN DREAMS

GUP TEAM - 12/7/15

Mythology and the human spirit are themes explored by Greek photographer Petros Koublis (1981) in his series In Dreams, in which wild animals and ghostly apparitions are set against a backdrop of even wilder nature. Unspoiled landscapes, such as an empty coastline and overgrown swamps are ...

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THE SECRET LIVES OF FRUIT AND VEGETABLES

GUP TEAM - 12/4/15

The sight of a gaseous yellow ooze emanating from a cantaloupe melon might be slightly unnerving to most people, but Maciek Jasik (b. 1978, Poland) uses this smoke-like substance to represent symbolism attached to food in The Secret Lives of Fruit and Vegetables. The modern world has separ...

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A NEW AMERICAN PICTURE

GUP TEAM - 12/2/15

American Photographer Doug Rickard (1968) took advantage of Google Street View’s massive image archive to virtually explore the roads of America over a four-year period. With his photo series A New American Picture, Rickard searched for forgotten, economically devastated, and largely aba...

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WALÉ, SECOND LOOK

GUP TEAM - 12/1/15

For the Ekondas pygmies in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the most important moment in the life of a woman is the birth of her first child. The young mother is called Walé (‘primiparous nursing mother’). A walé carries both responsibilities and status: she returns ...

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EL NIDO VACIO

GUP TEAM - 11/30/15

The relationship between family members seems like the strongest bond that one can feel, but over time and distance, these bonds can lose their strength. Since moving to Spain in 2013, Italian photographer Diambra Mariani (1982) has been preoccupied with the notion of distance, both geogra...

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DESPITE ME AND YOU

GUP TEAM - 11/26/15

In this world, there are many terrible things that have to exist, in order to see or understand the good. For example, there would be no bravery without fear, and no honesty without deceitfulness. Paris-based photographer Pamela Maddaleno (Italy) explores these ideas ...

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BLANK

GUP TEAM - 11/25/15

The window: a pane of glass designed for people to be able to see in- and outside of a building, the epitome of transparency, can be rendered completely useless by the simple act of whitewashing. Spanish photographer Josep Maria de Llobet (1973) captures windows of closed bank buildings in...

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IF YOU HAVE A SECRET

GUP TEAM - 11/24/15

In 2009, photographer Irina Popova (1986) left her home country of Russia and since then, she has been looking through her archives for an image that represents the connection to her Motherland. The ‘mysterious Russian soul’ however, is by nature complicated, uncontrollable and absurd,...

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I CAN SEE RIGHT THROUGH YOU

GUP TEAM - 11/23/15

Family albums often overlook the negative, highlighting only the happiest memories from daily life and special events, to be remembered and looked back upon with nostalgia. American photographer Erin Geideman captures the opposite in her series I Can See Right Through...

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CITYSCAPES AND LIVING PLACES

GUP TEAM - 11/20/15

Certain places, such as New York City’s Times Square, have been photographed and reproduced so many times, it is possible to believe you know it inch by inch, even if you have never stepped on US soil. South African photographer and mixed-media artist Deborah Kanfer plays with the landsc...

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PERIPHERAL DRIFTWOOD

GUP TEAM - 11/19/15

There is a part of the EU in South America: Guiana is a French territory that uses the Euro and sits 7,000 kilometres away from the continent. Ariane Pfannschmidt (1984, Germany) photographed the people and places in this last vestige of French colonialism, in order to discover a new side ...

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FLOWERWORK

GUP TEAM - 11/18/15

A burst of red, white and pink on a deep black background, colour spreading from a central source across the image. On first inspection, it looks like a firework, but on second glance it becomes clear that these colours aren’t coming from pyrotechnics, but from flowers. Sarah Illenberger...

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DIARY OF AN ITALIAN BORDER-WORKER

GUP TEAM - 11/16/15

There are many people who live on a country’s border, and must cross it every day in order to work, journeying only a few kilometres into entirely strange territory. Fabrizio Albertini (1984, Italy) documents some such people in his series Dairy of an Italian Border-worker. Albertini sta...

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WHERE THE LAND RISES

GUP TEAM - 11/13/15

On January 23, 1973, a previously unknown volcano erupted on the Icelandic island of Heimaey, splitting the island open and eventually, increasing its size by 20%. Scottish photographer Peter Holliday travelled to the volcanically active archipelago in 2014 to document the island...

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IRRLICHT

Post title - 11/11/15

The power of mythology transcends time, carried through generations, changing and yet not losing force. Although many modern cultures enjoy legends, they rarely take them seriously. In this series from German photographer Yana Wernicke (1990), named Irrlicht, the German word for will-oR...

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BELLO PÚBLICO

GUP TEAM - 11/10/15

Hair is a rather complicated thing, with hidden meanings nestling between strands: in Western society, especially for women, it is desirable for most body hair to be removed and yet, the hair on your head should be prized, coiffed and cherished. An unwieldy mane is often a s...

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DECEITFUL REVERENCE

GUP TEAM - 11/9/15

Abandonment is one of the great fears and often a difficult subject to broach, but Igor Pisuk (1984, Poland) explores the dark world of loneliness in his on-going project Deceitful Reverence. He documents the world around him, photographing people or subjects that are close to him, ...

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DADS

GUP TEAM - 11/4/15

Photography is typically used to convey presence or reframe a memory, but Camille Lévêque (1985, France) turns this idea on its head in the series Dads, highlighting the disappearance of a certain male figure in family portraits. Touching on the subject of an absent father that can affec...

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FRONTCOUNTRY

GUP TEAM - 11/3/15

Between 2006 and 2013, Lucas Foglia (1983, USA) traveled throughout rural Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, and Wyoming to report on a boom in mining and energy development that is transforming the contemporary landscape there – often in the b...

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LEARNING TO SWIM

GUP TEAM - 11/2/15

The bond between a mother and daughter is like no other and yet, as the child grows, the connection changes, develops and can become fraught. Alicja Brodowicz (Poland) explores this relationship in Learning To Swim, about the physical and emotional distance that incre...

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ICONS

GUP TEAM - 10/30/15

For Slovak photographer Evelyn Bencicova (1992), the combination of academic knowledge, her interest in aesthetics and her will to communicate a strong and active message to the audience are the most important aspects of creating her work. In her photo series ‘Icon...

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THE WAKE

GUP TEAM - 10/29/15

Christian Vium (1980) explores historical and his own perception of ‘the other’ in his series The Wake, in which he re-traces the steps of the anthropologists and photographers Frank J Gillen and W Baldwin Spencer. Between 1875 and 1912, Gillen and Spencer documen...

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INTELITY

GUP TEAM - 10/28/15

Electronic chips are present in many people’s everyday life and contain information that, when combined, can reveal almost every detail of the owner’s lifestyle, from earnings and expenses to opinions and identity. Maximilian Tomozei (1986, Romania) portrays chips from cell p...

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THE RED WEST

GUP TEAM - 10/28/15

‘Indian Hobbyism’ is a practice that originated in Germany in the 1920s and grew in popularity throughout the Eastern Bloc during the Communist period. The cultural mirroring of Native American societies still exists today, acting as a form of escapism, but the people who take part are incred...

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MILITARY COMMISSARIAT

GUP TEAM - 10/26/15

“Everyone knows what is happening in Ukraine right now, this is about it”, China-based Ukrainian Sergey Melnitchenko (1991), states about his own series Military Commissariat. It’s true that the situation has been so well covered by the news that it doesn’t ne...

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URBANISTAN

GUP TEAM - 10/23/15

The word ‘Urbanistan’ conjures images in the mind of bustling foreign cities, from the hectic roads of Mumbai to the ordered chaos of Tokyo, but Slovenian photographer Matjaž Krivic has decided to capture the road less travelled. In a sort of antidote to the busi...

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THE OTHER SIDE OF VENUS

GUP TEAM - 10/22/15

Bodily change and self-confidence play a major role in the realization of one‘s identity. The act of seeking recognition from the other arouses the central tenet of portrait photography: The issue of identity and self-image. German photographer Anna Charlotte Schmid ...

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THE HUNT

GUP TEAM - 10/18/15

For the Udege people of the Primorsky Krai region in Russia, tigers hold a special status in both their culture and environment. Though the Udege hunt animals as part of their survival, as a spiritual and superstitious peop...

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INCIPIENT STRANGERS

GUP TEAM - 10/16/15

Siblings can become distant and turn into strangers as they each grow and forge their own path in life. Photographer Yoshikatsu Fujii wanted to understand the reason behind his parents’ divorce, so he decided to try looking at his family as he would strang...

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DE TANTES

GUP TEAM - 10/15/15

For the past ten years, Dutch photographer Marlies Swinkels has been taking photos of her four great-aunts in De Tantes (The Aunts). Riek, Toos, Nellie and Jo (who passed away in 2009) all live together in their own, carefully structured world. None of them ever marri...

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SUPERNATURAL

GUP TEAM - 10/14/15

Ukrainian photography duo Synchrodogs often deal with the surreal in their images and their new photo series Supernatural is no different, acting as an exploration of the unknown. The project deals with intuition, the subconscious and natural phenomena unable to be explained by s...

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REMOVED

GUP TEAM - 10/14/15

In today’s society, it is possible to be constantly ‘connected’, reaching out to people by texting, checking-in, tweeting and more. Supposedly, this makes us more social, contacting friends and distant relatives, but in fact, it isolates us from the present and those around us. Eric Pick...

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NOT SEEING IS A FLOWER

GUP TEAM - 10/12/15

For Maroesjka Lavigne (1989, Belgium) the island of Japan seemed to be an isolated world far away. The Western world has cultivated a certain image of Japan, based in part on ukiyo-e pictures. These ‘pictures of the floating world’ created an unreal and idealized image of Jap...

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IT’S NOT FOREVER

GUP TEAM - 10/12/15

Caring for a newborn baby is one of the most emotionally tumultuous times in anyone’s life. A mother can feel like a robot, unable to connect with the outside world, and like she has lost a part of herself. Ani Zur (1979, Ukraine) documents this formative ...

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I AM DARIO

GUP TEAM - 10/9/15

We live in a time in which fame seems to be more achievable than ever, but for some, it remains just out of reach. Gianluca Abblasio (1977, Italy) follows one such hopeful in the series I Am Dario, about a man who works in a bingo hall in Rome by day, but transforms into a rock star at nig...

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SURREAL ARCHITECTURE

GUP TEAM - 10/8/15

Architecture has the ability to evoke emotion, associations that can be related back to childhood or a familiar memory. Matthias Jung (Germany) combines this familiarity with his fondness for collage to create Surreal Architecture. He believes “a latticed window conveys coziness, framewo...

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SOUVENIR D’UN FUTUR

GUP TEAM - 10/7/15

The Grands Ensembles in Paris is a group of housing estates originally built to solve demographic growth, rural outflow and house a migrant population, while meeting the needs in modern housing. It is often portrayed by the French media as a neglected scar on the map. In the on-going project Souv...

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POULTRY SUITE

GUP TEAM - 10/5/15

The humble chicken is rarely a bird that is portrayed as noble or worth celebrating, but Jean Pagliuso’s (1963, USA) series Poultry Suite may challenge the viewer’s perception on just how beautiful this bird can be. Pagliuso grew up in Southern California, where she helped he...

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TRES DE MAYO

GUP TEAM - 10/2/15

With a nod to the 19th century Goya painting of the same name, Tres de Mayo, American photographer Adam Jason Cohen (1986) explains how this artwork provided inspirations that are subtly reflected in his work: “If you look at the painting, it’...

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UNREAL CITIES

GUP TEAM - 09/29/15

In the photographs of Victor Enrich (1976, Spain) buildings all over the world are getting some wild renovations. He was ten years old when he started to draw unreal cities. Eventually, his love of photography came to equal his fascination for architecture. After working in the f...

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WOVEN PORTRAITS

GUP TEAM - 09/25/15

It is the strange nature of photographic images that intrigues American photographer David Samuel Stern (1982): they have the unique ability to reflect the real, while being limited as two-dimensional, static pieces of ordinary matter. Portraiture, like phot...

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IT’S JUST LOVE

GUP TEAM - 09/24/15

The porn industry is one of the most profitable and yet controversial markets in the world today, often subject to widespread scrutiny and criticism. French photographer Sophie Ebrard aims to change people’s perception of pornography through her photo series It’s Just Love. S...

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YOUNG LOVE

GUP TEAM - 09/24/15

In close collaboration with Halal and Karen Rosetzsky we are proud to present to you Young Love, Rosetzsky’s first book about youngsters in love for the first time.

This high end coffee table book ...

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SOMEWHERE IN ENGLAND

GUP TEAM - 09/23/15

The English landscapes of London-based photographer Polly Tootal (1978) teeter between descriptive places of self-assured Englishness and ambiguous places of generic anywhereness. In looking at parking lots and playgrounds, suburban housing complexes and shopping centres, she dir...

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GOLDEN YOUTH

GUP TEAM - 09/18/15

Eclectic individualism takes a collective identity in these portraits of the youth culture in Johannesburg from Oliver Kruger (1977, South Africa). Working with a melange of source material, with accessories referencing various geographies and time-periods, ...

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CLOSED EYES

GUP TEAM - 09/16/15

“Symbols and rituals have long been part of human nature as a bridge to access what our senses cannot,” writes Danish photographer André Viking (1989) about his series Closed Eyes. “By being a universal language and a symbolic surface, photographs become a similar brid...

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RETRACE OUR STEPS

GUP TEAM - 09/14/15

Since the 2011 earthquake of Fukushima, residents have been displaced, unable to return to their former lives. The quake, tsunami and following nuclear fallout which all contributed to Fukushima’s present inhabitability have rendered the city a ghost town, a strangely quie...

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NATURE

GUP TEAM - 09/11/15

Since the 2011 nuclear meltdown in Fukushima, Japan, which led to mass evacuations, entry into the affected area has been restricted: a ‘no go zone’. Guillaume Bression (1980, France) and Carlos Ayesta (1985, Venezuela) have been making a yearly visit to docu...

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ABOUT FORTY YEARS

GUP TEAM - 09/10/15

Nicholas Nixon (1947, USA) has always worked with a large-format camera, with negatives measuring 8×10 or 11×14 inches. The purpose of this is to include every minute detail of the subject in order to capture life with ultimate precision. The artist revels in variation ...

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PARIS VIEWS

GUP TEAM - 09/9/15

Charles Baudelaire’s assertion that “what one can see in sunlight is always less interesting than what happens behind a pane of glass” is endorsed by Gail Albert-Halaban (1970, USA) as she shares glances into personal residences of Paris, evidencing th...

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BOLSHAIA VOLGA

GUP TEAM - 09/7/15

Once the grand focus of Russian literature, the Volga River that flows through the nation was nourished by generation after generation as the population attempted to preserve its grandeur. However, the communities and industry that once tended to the river have now abandoned...

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THE PROCESSION OF SPECTRES

GUP TEAM - 09/2/15

“This body of work represents a step from behind the veil of ideas and techniques to find earnest revelations of my struggle to be whole with my fragmented sense of self.”

The vast, serene landscapes of self-portrait artist Ville Kansanen (1984, Finland) explore the ever-changin...

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SANNE SANNES – COPYRIGHT | ARCHIEF

GUP TEAM - 09/1/15

Sanne Sannes (1937-1967) was the agent provocateur of the Dutch photography scene in the 1960’s. His grainy, black and white, intimate and erotic portraits of women, who he photographed in intense and ecstatic sessions, went against all the traditional rules of photography....

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SIGNS

GUP TEAM - 08/31/15

“Many things we meet in daily life appear inert and lifeless and so are overlooked. Closer scrutiny reveals that they’re furtively signalling each other, emitting unfathomable messages, as in some scene from a horror sci-fi doomsday movie, the kind that always end in tragedy.”

With a...

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LIVING ON THE EDGE

GUP TEAM - 08/26/15

Outside of Bratislava’s mainstream society, an unconventional community has taken shape. Facing the reality of homelessness, individuals – mostly former criminals and some drug addicts – choose to create their own society where they can live by their own rules.

...

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THE SPAGHETTI TREE

GUP TEAM - 08/24/15

Italian migration to the British cities of Bedford and Peterborough in the 1950s formed foreign societies whose culture the rest of the country was largely ignorant to. These communities’ desire to preserve their culture inspired Lucy Levene (1978, UK) as she encoun...

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THERE ARE NO HOMOSEXUALS IN IRAN

GUP TEAM - 08/23/15

“In Iran, we do not have homosexuals like in your country,” former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed whilst visiting Columbia.

Laurence Rasti (b. 1990, Switzerland) visits Denizil, a small town in Turkey, where some of Iran’s gay refugees have relocated in sear...

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CULTURE OF THE CONFRONTATION

GUP TEAM - 08/21/15

“This confrontation is eternal, it started ages ago and will continue again and again.”

Maxim Dondyuk (1983, Ukraine) experienced first hand the winter of 2013 that changed Ukraine, yet his series conjures associations that move between the realms of reality and fiction...

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I AM GEORGIA

GUP TEAM - 08/19/15

Georgian photographer Dina Oganova (1987) has lived through her nation’s changing faces: formerly part of the Soviet Union, the country won independence before going on to lose parts of itself during civil war.

Despite her homeland’s continuous transformation, Oganova displays a...

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