Edward Steichen (1879-1973) was a pioneering photographer, and probably the most versatile and prolific of his era. His subjects ranged from portraits and landscapes, to fashion and advertising, to still-life and war photography, and to dance and sculpture. His manner of handling his multi-faceted career was considered radical and controversial, and laid the foundations for how contemporary photographers crisscross the fields of editorial and advertising today. Fairy Tales and then grounds them within a new context and composition that ignites new meanings. “The structure is a bit complicated. But then, the genre of investigating events is complicated. Plus, stories are complicated by their very nature. I am not interested in the simplicity that is offered in mass storytelling.

I see Liulitun now through Inri's eyes, its rambling, riot of greenery—vine tendrils reaching out into space, grasping for each other, like the new lovers united after a nine month separation of agonising, mute phone calls—and bohemian ambience offering a delicious space in which to breathe freely. I see the sensuality of their half-eaten dragon fruit, suggestive, moist and magenta-skinned; the shy declarations of their bare feet touching; Inri's wonder at the unfamiliar foods in local stores, the rows of strange meats in plastic wrap, culinary mysteries to lay on their table; red roses, hot crimson and belligerent with fragrance; carnal-ethereal moments of the sort we pray never to end, those moments of corporeal discovery in which the tangled limbs of self and other become momentarily indistinguishable, and in the eyes of one's mate you see your own soul; the journeys and homecomings; the mundane rituals of the everyday that make the string of moments hold together in the irreducible chain of subtle repetitions and variations that you come to call your life. work for the prize was a nod in the direction of a more subjective way of working. I don’t believe that photography is objective, and not many people By exploiting and exploring the technical process of etching Soltau realised the possibilities of touch in the engraved lines on the etching plate. This offered her a sense of being able to feel the action and physicality of etching and, from this, of being literally able to trace a visual tactility of the human form. two haunting series Moksha and Ladli. Both are an indictment of India’s patriarchal society. Moksha is about outcast widows who have found refuge in the holy city of Vrindavan, where they live in ashrams and worship the god Krishna in temples. Their dream is to reach Moksha – or “heaven” – to be liberated from the painful cycle of death and rebirth. Each portrait is cast aside. This sadness was often countered by the heartening bonds and sisterhood that the widows created amongst themselves, bolstering one other and empowering the community in a way that I hadn’t expected.

GAST ANIMA CLASSIC HAVANA

Clayton Maxwell: Could you please tell us about your surrealist, fantastical series titled Rose, C'est Paris?

Likewise, Shidomoto captures that separateness between one’s own mortality and the light that will survive it. To look at these photographic mayflies is to share in Shidomoto’s effort. We are “joyfully to see” as much as we possibly can—to embrace, if only for a moment, all those things which cannot last. CM: You are famous for photographing very beautiful women. What have you learned about your own definition of beauty?

Witkin is the most profoundly religious photographer in the history of the medium and probably the most god-haunted American artist of our time. His Journal is essentially a chronicle of his spiritual life.