Contemporary Photography

Summary:

Jim Brandenburg is one of the world's most renowned nature photographers. He worked for many years for the “National Geographic” and traveled the world.

We all know his pictures from a great number of publications, from exhibitions or from documentary films, he did for television. FotoTV had the opportunity to do a detailed interview with him.

Part 1 shows you how he managed to make his way from the rural areas of America in Minnesota, to get reputation on an international level. He tells us why he quit his arts-degree - for his artistic vision – and how his encounter with a wolf changed his life.

Enjoy the film.

Summary:

John Davies is one of the most important British photographers. Born 1949 in Sedgefield, UK, Davies became famous for his detailed views of the english industrial landscape. His black and white photographs tell stories about processes, changes and transformation of Great Britain. He describes his works as documentary landscape photographs.

In the mid-70s, John Davies began with the analysis of wild and natural landscapes of the British Isles and its changes caused by the climate before he decided to devote himself to the documentation of british cities. Here he concentrated on the changes provoked by the industrial and post-industrial landscape.

Some years ago, John Davies started the Metropoli project, to document the major post industrial cities in the UK from high vantage points to reveal the architectural infrastructure and topography of the city. Those tales from topographic cities were shown during a retrospective at the PhotoEspaña in Madrid and the National Media Museum in Bradford.

Summary:

After studying art, Douglas Busch worked as an assistant to Morley Baer and worked with Al Webber and Ansel Adams. Early on, Busch interrupted his photographic career to join the family business and become a jeweler. But some years later his addiction resurfaced and he founded the de Golden Busch Inc., where he started to build the largest portable camera in the world.

His works ranges from early "Street Photography", to large format black and white photographs with extraordinary landscapes and cityscapes to bizarre portraits. His latest work is a highly abstract series called "Waves."
Douglas Busch's photographs can be seen at the Museum of Modern Art, NY (MoMA), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and the Getty Museum.

In this interview, Douglas Busch gives an overview of his artistic works.

Summary:

Philippe Chancel is one of the few photographers who has had the chance to travel to North Korea several times and to photograph a country mostly unknown to the west. AsPhilippe puts it on his website: 'We are about to discover a place not frozen in time, but outside of time, a place, litteraly, like no other on earth.'

Come along and take a look behind the Iron Curtain.

Summary:

Richard Kalvar is an American Photographer and Magnum member since 1975. He has served as vice-president and president of this legendary photo agency.

"Kalvar's photographs are marked by a strong homogeneity of aesthetic and theme. His images frequently play on a discrepancy between the banality of a real situation and a feeling of strangeness that emerges from a particular choice of timing and framing. The result is a state of tension between two levels of interpretation, attenuated by a touch of humor." (Magnum homepage).

During the show presenting his current publication “Earthlings” in Paris, we had the chance to film this interview with him.

Summary:

The 11th annual Paris Photo Expo took place November 15th to 18th, 2007, in the prestigious Caroussel du Louvre.  One hundred and four exhibitors from 17 countries exhibited the latest trends in fine art photography.  FotoTV was there to meet up with a few of the exhibitors and to give FotoTV users an idea of what to expect from the biggest photography show in Europe.

Summary:

Lewis Baltz belongs to the 'New Topographic Movement' of the 1970´s and is famous for his black and white photographs of abandoned landscapes and storefronts.

The observation that technological research has shifted in recent years to disciplines that are not easily visualized (nanotechnology, nuclear power, software, communications) led Lewis to think about this is relation to photography.

His current exhibition, Sites of Technology showcases photographs of places where the technical research and development take place for companies such as Toshiba, Mitsubishi and France Telecom, where he strives to capture on film these invisible concepts. Lewis started this project at the end of the 1980s and pursued for many years.

We met up with Lewis Baltz during his exhibition in the Thomas Zander gallery in Cologne for an interview. Lewis did not want to appear on film so we can only show his images and listen to his voice.

Summary:

In these days the japanese photographer Izima Kaoru creates a furor in the art market with pictures in which he thematises the beauty of dead.

In his pictures you can discover basic aspects of the japanese culture:

You can find themes like the japanese obsession by fashion, love to nature and the nearly romantic japanese relationship to death.

He asks japanese models and actresses about the imagination of their own dead and directs their ideas in highly aesthetic pictures.

He makes series of the ideas, so that they have a cinematic character.

We met Izima Kaoru during his trip through Germany and could catch some impressions of this photographer.

Summary:

The subjects and themes that photojournalist Antonin Kratochvil seeks out have their roots in his past. He has experienced the oppression of a totalitarian regime in his past and he still protests against them in his photos.

We met him at his exhibition in Berlin and are pleased to present this impressive photographer to you.