30 Contemporary Practitioners Working in Photography

This list is comprised of 30 contemporary practitioners of varied mediums whose work spans the field of photography. The purpose of this is to illustrate how photography can be tackled from many approaches- film-makers, visual artists, even instillation artists and more can all consider themselves photographers. The discipline sounds at first definable and finite, but understanding its connection with other mediums brings creativity and crucial context. I have listed the practitioner, their main discipline, the medium/s in which they work and the themes they use, along with where I first discovered them.

Name: Mickey Smith
Discipline: Photographer/ Film Maker/ Surfer/ Musician
Medium: Motion picture film cameras/ Digital video cameras/ Black and white and colour film photography/ Digital cameras
Themes: Sea, stone, water and ocean elements; Energy, power and beauty. But most importantly, doing things for love alone over a living, ‘If I can only scrape a living, at least it will be a living worth scraping’.
First discovered: Can’t remember, I stumbled across the beautiful and inspiring ‘Dark Side of The Lens’, a short film created in conjunction with Astray films. And was directed to his photography on http://www.clubofthewaves.com/surf-photographer/mickey-smith.php

Name: Richard Mosse
Discipline: Photographer
Medium: Aerochrome, a discontinued range of Kodak film that picks up previously invisible infra-red light.
Themes: War and soldiers in war-torn areas, he toes the line of photojournalism, but remains quiet and veers away from distinctive, decisive moments to become more subjective. He shoots from a calm, measured and un-sensationalist viewpoint.
First discovered: Hotshoe magazine, Issue 177 April-May

Name: Alex Prager
Discipline: Photographer/ Film maker
Medium: Kodak Portra colour negative film with a Contax or Mamiya 645
Themes: ‘Hitchcock’s undercurrent of fear. Cindy Sherman’s themes of female identity. Gregory Crewdson’s nightmarish suburbs. The cartoonish drama of Roy Lichtenstein’s women. She takes all this visual language and creates something entirely her own.’ Her work is very cinematic and she produces fabricated film stills.
First discovered: British Journal of Photography, September 2010

Name: Gabriel Dawe
Discipline: Site specific instillation artist
Medium: Mixed media
Themes: He explores textiles and the connection between fashion and architecture, and how they relate to the human need for shelter. He examines the complicated construction of gender and identity in his native and attempts to subvert the notions of masculinity and machismo prevalent in the present day.
First discovered: http://www.dontpaniconline.com/magazine/style/gabriel-dawe

Name: Kubiat Nnamdie
Discipline: Multidisciplinary artist
Medium: He works in a variety of media including video, photography, sculpture, and painting.
Themes: Addresses issues related to spiritual and psychological events in contemporary society. He is interested in occult systems, the real time interconnectivity and effect of these systems on individuals.
First discovered: Dossier Journal http://dossierjournal.com/look/

Name: Demi Vera
Discipline: Documentary Photographer
Medium: 35mm colour film cameras
Themes: Demi shoots intimate moments, connecting with her subject while simultaneously constructing a self-portrait. When asked about the series she says, “Right now it’s all about the youth, and our secret night life of madness. Entering the age where we’re finding our own path, making mistakes and simply wild’n out.”
First discovered: Dossier Journal  http://dossierjournal.com/look/

Name: Kelli Pennington
Discipline: Photographer
Medium: Film cameras
Themes: Her approach to photography is natural and showcases poetic moments in life. ‘I search for small instances where I feel like I’m the only witness, moments that I think other people miss. I find inspiration in my connections with others; my relationships propel and perplex me.’
First discovered: http://nymphoto.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/conversation-with-kelli-pennington.html

Name: Michael Cappabianca
Discipline: Photographer
Medium: Film cameras, with a multi-disciplinary aspect, ‘I put my photography knowledge in perspective and see that the multidisciplinary approach to making art can still leave room for straight photography.’
Themes: His work imaginatively interprets the physicality and structure of the book.
First discovered: http://www.heyhotshot.com

Name: Jacqueline Butler
Discipline: Photographer
Medium: Photographing glass negatives
Themes: She has photographed a series of glass negatives in close up and presented some of them as landscapes. Part of the context for this work is the ascendance of digital culture and the concomitant presence of a growing body of practitioners concerned with the materiality of photographers.
First discovered: Source Magazine, Issue 70, Spring 2012

Name: D Yee
Discipline: Editorial and fine art photographer, also draws and paints
Medium: Digital cameras
Themes: He’s very influenced by cinematography, studying visual work involving human figures and stories. ‘For my street work, it’s just a lot of aimless wandering and patience while framing each moment as if I’m shooting a film that I see before me.’
First discovered: http://www.fuelyourphotography.com

Name: Stephen Gill
Discipline: Conceptual documentary photographer and mixed media artist, bookmaker and technician
Medium: Mixed media and a 1960’s plastic camera.
Themes: He captures the transience, and sometimes, fragile beauty, of this once dilapidated area of London now undergoing huge change under the shadow of the Olympics. His documentary photographs record almost a decade of his life in Hackney and he confesses his obsession with the area.
First discovered: British Journal of Photography, July 2012

Name: Paul Hayes (aka DJ Hazy)
Discipline: Photographer
Medium: Canon 500d (Rebel Xti) with two lenses: a Canon L series 24-105 f4 and the EF-S 10-22
Themes: Paul’s workflow varies from picture to picture, depending upon the result he is aiming towards. He tends to work at a bit of a frantic pace and does things on instinct. Quite often, he will get to the end result and think it is nice, but then he cannot even remember how he reached it.
First discovered: http://www.fuelyourphotography.com

Name: Chloe Sells
Discipline: Visual artist
Medium: Large format cameras (Contax 645 and Linhof 4x5 cameras) and darkroom techniques
Themes: She intends to discuss experience, and how it is informed both consciously and unconsciously in response to environment.
First discovered: Hotshoe, Issue 176, March 2012

Name: Richard Ayoade
Discipline: Director
Medium: Cinema
Themes: His purpose was to capture that delicate moment in some adolescent lives when idealism and trust lead to tentative experiments.
First discovered: Submarine, 2010

Name: Zarina Bhimji
Discipline: Photographer, film maker and installation artist
Medium: 16mm film, Polaroid and other cameras
Themes: An incredible sense of poetry and how this relates to her process, the relationship between her land and her work, established through revisiting sites and absorbing them. Whilst her landscapes are deathly still, it’s secrets hidden- photography rendered fundamentally unable to articulate the full extent of the violence, fear and trauma of the country.
First discovered: Hotshoe, Issue 176, March 2012

Name: Gary McParland
Discipline: Landscape photographer
Medium: Canon EOS 5D
Themes: ‘With my images I try to convey the drama and the mood in that moment and hopefully capture these beautiful locations in the best light possible.’
First discovered: 500px

Name: Bas Princen
Discipline: Photographer of architecture
Medium: Digital camera
Themes: He photographs architecture, earning a reputation for documenting the vast structures and spaces he might once have helped create. (originally trained as an architect) His images blur the artificial and natural, where the real and imagined are hard to separate.
First discovered: http://butdoesitfloat.com

Name: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan
Discipline: Freelance/ portrait photographer
Medium: Digital Camera (Canon EOS 400D)
Themes: His priority on photography is suggesting or questioning what lies beneath the surface. With an academic background in literature, his interest is in stories and the texture of lived experience. Often working in portraiture.
First discovered: Digital Camera Photographer of the Year 2008

Name: Agatha Nitecka
Discipline: Photographer/ Sculpture
Medium: Digital Cameras
Themes: She incorporates poetry and film in her projects and collects love letters. Her work is playful and interactive, the viewer has to narrate the story as if it’s their own. She intends to sculpt with light, and with her fashion photography it is more about the story that she can evoke with the clothes. When she photographs it’s as if she’s writing a short story or poem.
First discovered: Oh Comely, Issue 1, June/ July 2010

Name: Atomic Attack
Discipline: Graphic design/ media company/ Typographers/ Art directors
Medium: Heavily digitally manipulated photographs, sometimes with additional hand-drawn elements.
Themes: They use colour and line in an explosive manner, overwhelming detail and geometry that together forms a cohesive unit. Their images usually feature nature quite heavily within them but in a very abstract way.
First discovered: Romantik (book) published by Die Gestalten Verlag, 2006

Name: Kong Yun Lee (aka Ricor)
Discipline: Photographer
Medium: Uses film and natural light
Themes: Produces photographs of people that are surreal and timeless with a vintage mood. ‘I love to capture fragile moments, and try to figure out the sensitive, elegant and intrinsic quality from them with my camera’
First discovered: Oh Comely, Issue 6, June/July 2011. http://inverselive.com/

Name: Aya Brackett
Discipline: Photographer
Medium: Digital and Film cameras
Themes: Her love of food and design informs her photography and fuels a constant search for the unusual and inspiring. ‘My photography draws heavily on an appreciation of still life painting and often incorporates themes of food and the natural world. Deliberate arrangement of the subject matter is often essential to my photography process.’
First discovered: http://www.ayabrackett.com/

Name: Kevin Morosky
Discipline: Photographer
Medium: Disposable camera and Yashica T4
Themes: With an impeccable sense of fun, Morosky believes the idea of not documenting his adventures is a sin. His portraits are intimate, and due to his candid process, immediate. They are personal snapshots and the lack of formality in his approach allows the viewer to get close to the subject.
First discovered: Oh Comely, Issue 6, June/ July 2011. http://morosky.tumblr.com

Name: Richard Wentworth
Discipline: Sculptor/ Visual artist and photographer
Medium: Mixed media, film photography, instillation work
Themes: A kind of layering of the world: How things go into freefall, how connections are made, broken, remade, lost and found again. And most importantly, his city life.
First discovered: The Guardian, Visual Arts section 09/10/01

Name: Todd Selby (The Selby Is In Your Place)
Discipline: Portrait, interiors, journalist and fashion photographer and illustrator
Medium: Digital
Themes: Initially documenting friends within their homes, Selby photographs interesting people in creative spaces, offering an insider’s view of creative individuals in their personal spaces with an artist’s eye for detail. With a penchant for exploring real-life spaces and the personalities behind them, Selby chooses subjects whose domestic habitats are no less colourful than those of fantastic fiction. He revels in ‘maximalists’ and the overt.
First discovered: http://www.coolhunting.com

Name: Martin Newth
Discipline: Photographer, light artist
Medium: Long exposure film cameras, camera obscuras, projections and light impressions
Themes: He uses long exposure times in almost all of his work to form a narrative, stories pass through spaces as the shutter is open to create transient, telling work. He works heavily with the basic simplistic qualities of light and image, his technology is basic but elevated through a creative use and unusual methods.
First discovered: http://www.martinnewth.com/

Name: Pablo Gnecco
Discipline: Installation/ Visual Artist
Medium: Mixed media
Themes: Uses light and projection work to create large interactive instillations. He is very playful and is focused, on colour and aesthetics, and living foolishly.
First discovered: http://designmilk.com

Name: Joel Barhamand
Discipline: Photographer
Medium: Film
Themes: ‘My work is the mix of the real and the surreal. I photograph the bizarre and beautiful moments that occur in front of me and recreate remembered moments from my past.’
First discovered: I attended a public lecture that he conducted at Broadway Cinema in Nottingham.

Name: Alain Delorme
Discipline: Photographer and visual artist
Medium: Digital Camera, heavily manipulated images and exaggerated photographs. Photoshop.
Themes: He challenges the complexities in modern society, dealing with challenging issues of what is ethical, varying subject from project to project. ‘Manufactured Totems’ conside the social and economic paradoxes of modern Shanghai While the series ‘Litttle Dolls’ questions the identity of the little girls who are playing with their looks as contestants of beauty contests through a pixel surgery as Alain Delorme puts it.
First discovered: http://www.juxtapoz.com

Name: Jakob Nylund
Discipline: Photographer/ Art director/ Typographer
Medium: Digital and film
Themes: He looks at people and narrative. There is an element of documentary photography in his work as he records everyday activity spanning a wide range of people. But there is warmth and fondness in his work. His photojournalistic nature seems to be natural and personal as it feels he becomes part of the scene he is photographing.
First discovered: http://formconspiracy.se/