#pool resources

Joel Han (b. 1988) is a photographer and visual artist based in New York. He received his MFA in Photography from Pratt Institute and BA in Fine Art from Pennsylvania State University. His recent shows include exhibitions at Fabbrica Del Vapore in Milan and Pierogi Gallery in Brooklyn. Joel currently works at School of Visual Arts while living in Brooklyn.

Contemplations: My ongoing longing for intimacy lead me to a blind spot of other people’s existences. Shackled by the obligatory routine of the everyday life, I seek escapism in the brief intermissions in the mundane scenery; the familiar interiors and traces of ourselves in the city never seem to be what they appear. These self-reflective moments give relief in the quotidian life we participate in. While anonymity resonates in these places, I can’t help but view them as fragments of my own loneliness and peculiarity. I sense the distance as I gradually succumb to the routine life. This is my attempt to locate and contemplate them. By endeavoring this, perhaps, I will finally accept this anxiety as an embracement of solitude.

Stanley Bloom (b. 1987, France) works as a freelance photographer and graphic-designer in Paris. Photography has always been a deep passion and graphic design the complement and a great influence for his aesthetic vision. As an image maker and storyteller, his sensual visual language brings to light the beauty hidden in everyday life, while exploring our relation with the nature. He created and currently curates the new contemporary photography platform Velvet Eyes. He is also part of neo-soul audiovisual trio Pacific Shore.

Whispering Souls:

"Perception begins with the change of sensation; hence the necessity of travel."

Set in Quebec during a blazing summer,

this tale gathers instants from a very conscious time for me.

A time that I can feel right here, right now.

—

'Whispering Souls' seeks to trigger our consciousness, the awakening of the senses and the spirit, while experiencing life. This body of work was shot under the blazing summer during a travel to Quebec. Thanks to the abundance and accessibility of natural resources, especially the forest, people from the area enjoy a special connection to the land. Therefore, it came to me that I needed to pursue my quest for highlighting the presence of nature, which always grant me peace of mind as this instinctive feeling awakes my spirit. When shooting, I think it is important for me to free myself from a pre-established concept and escape from overthinking the process, to be able to release my mind, leaving all the space necessary in me to accommodate fresh images without judgment. I drive my attention to what surrounds me, and then begin to be aware of these little things. Moreover, traveling away from my habits has also played a role in stimulating my perception, helping me come out of my comfort zone and renew my eye. On the fence between urban and wilderness, within a quiet backdrop, Whispering Souls is an ode to the present moment where you can listen the murmurs of life.

Ana Angilau is a 21-year-old photographer based in Arizona. While her work is mainly digital now, her love of photography began in the dark room. She also studies graphic design, but is now crossing over into cinematography. Coming from a Polynesian and English background, Ana has always had a love for diversity, and culture. Most of her photography is taken in the Western United States and North West England.

Journal Entry 01: This series is part of my own visual diary, exploring the relationship we have with time and place. Timing is critical, especially in such a fast paced world. However, I believe that everything has its own time, it's own season. All of these images were taken right before the sun set, when the clouds shifted, or when the light was about to escape. The relationship with person and place fascinates me. I like capturing the awareness of that "sense of place". My perspective tends to focus always on the individual, rather than the group. My intention is to form a sense of oneness through my work. I view the world that way.

Raul Guillermo is a Peruvian documentary and fine art photographer based in Paris. He studied at SPEOS International Photographic School during 2016 and 2017. His past career was not oriented to photography, however, in 2016 he decided to follow his passion. He was afraid of doing it, but he was more afraid of being forty and never taking that jump. This was not a surprise considering that he's been taking any kind pictures since sixteen when his sister bought her first camera.

Plage Isolée: ‘Plage Isolée’ is located in different coast locations of France like Deauville, Étretat, Le Havre, Saint-Pierre Quiberon, Marseille, Biarritz, etc. I started this project officially in 2016 when I was traveling during these locations in winter.

In fact, I realized that I started this journey years ago when I arrived in France. During 2015 I was living in Bordeaux and every weekend of summer I decided to go somewhere near the ocean to enjoy it. Nevertheless, at this period of my life, I realized that I enjoy the beach during summer, but I love the mystery of the beach during winter. I think that this kind of love feeling started in my child hood since I come from Lima and my house is located 10 minutes away from the Pacific ocean. I remember that the ocean is always been the place to meditate and to observe beauty in a different way. It was the escape I needed sometimes from traffic jams and daily routines. Therefore, these series is about showing this kind of beauty to the viewer and make him or her realize that they can find inspiration even on those circumstances. ‘Plage isolée' is a reflection time about isolation and a slower type of living.

One of the objectives of this project is to address the fact that isolation is not a bad thing. I believe that in life we will find moments that we will be alone and we need to confront things in order to get where we want to be. I believe that isolation is not a synonym of failure or being a weak person. I believe that people that take the time to be alone do it in order to recharge energy and come back stronger.

During the project, I shoot landscapes, buildings, objects and people from behind. I believe that the back of a person can tell us a different story. I understand that they are looking for privacy and it should remain like that. I don’t need a face portrait of them. One important characteristic of the series is to show traces of human beings. It’s an evidence that there’s someone around and make us think about their lives. So in this way, the pictures are not about the buildings or objects that we are seen, is more about the type of living that these people can have in those places.

Marco Argüello (b. 1985) is a self-taught photographer born and raised in McAllen, TX to Paraguayan parents. He began shooting in his early twenties when he purchased his first digital SLR. He discovered analog a few years later and fell in love with the look and more importantly, the slower and more methodic nature of the medium. In 2015, his series Tungsten Beach was published in various online blogs and publications such as It’s Nice That and Fast Company which led to the beginning of his freelance career. His past clients include Art Basel, Lexus International, United Airlines, Wall Street Journal Magazine, and Porter Airlines. He has lived in Austin, Miami, and currently lives in Athens, Greece along with this wife Stefani who is originally from there.

Chroma: This series documents my surroundings during a year-long sabbatical around the world with my wife. I wanted to dissect the environment around me and focus on the kitschy and saturated nature of tourism. From outlandish decor in our hotel rooms, to selfie sticks, these photos aim to reflect those gaudy aspects of tourism that are often left out of those picture perfect “influencer” style photos.

Retha Ferguson is a Cape Town based photographer with an interest in understanding the intersection between history, place and identity through visual means. She’s been practicing through the medium of documentary photography since 2009, and has exhibited in South Africa, Lesotho, Georgia and France. Her work ranges from portraiture to candid street shots and abstract shape and color studies. Rather than limiting her style to one visual register, she seeks to join her themes by mood, and incorporate diverse formalistic approaches to tell impressionistically inclined stories. She is currently pursuing her masters degree in visual history at the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape. Her masters project is concerned with the history of Voortrekker Road as a site of fractured negotiation within South Africa as a transitional society, and apart from her thesis, the project is produced through a multidisciplinary filmic and photographic approach.

Selected Works: My work is concerned with ways we think about history in a visual way. Traditionally we think of time in the Hericlitean “time-as-river” metaphor, where we are forever surrounded by the inevitable and deterministic forward motion of time as a continuum. I’m interested in photography’s relation to the Democritean notion of time as a vast, fragmented rainfall where events occur by singular drops randomly touching each other. This notion enters a more absurd and fractured dimension, and breaks up the Western grand narrative of progress.

This is especially relevant to countries like South Africa, with a painful history of transitional justice. However it is is also relevant to all regions that have experienced dramatic change. Laura McLeod et al, in their study of transitional justice in post war Serbia, make an important point about the ‘temporal complexity’ of regions going through change: Debates about Serbia’s relationship to the past are not just about the past, or a social memory of the past, but also about the present and the future, how the past is recalled in the future and the future direction of Serbia. That is, public debates about transitional justice involve a sense of temporal complexity. I explore the ways in which the photographic image interrupts time and displaces sequential time as a fragmented constellation, and how using this conception of time could help us steer away from the notion of time as progress.

Danielle Madeley is a recent graduate from Falmouth University, U.K. whose work predominantly explores the notions of community. She aims to initiate a discussion of the society’s place within art and art’s place within society by engaging her local community in the production of work that is celebratory of their homeland.

The Knot: This series is a materialised meditation of a homeland; a record of the conflicting ideas of comfort and convulsion akin to the emotions felt with regards to home.

A community is the interwoven lives of different generations, a seamless unspoken memoir of times passed and present; a collective history that forms the foundations of the people it encompasses. The photographs are the consolidation of work made over a yearlong period, documenting the parallaxes of growing up in the county of Staffordshire and the tumultuous relationship with identity as a member of that community.

With the intention of revealing the splendor seen by those who reside within the borders of the county, the work presents an almost illusory interpretation of community life within the expanse. The Knot is a journey of introversive contemplation, made from within the verges of the motherland.

Mark Griffith is a photographer based in South Wales, U.K. He graduated in 2013 with a degree in photojournalism from the university of Wales/ Trinity St David. His work has been widely featured throughout the world and exhibited across the country. His clients include The Telegraph Magazine, Channel 4, The Smith Journal and The Financial Times among others. His work ‘The Healing Land’ received an honorable mention at the Moscow International Photography awards and in addition the work was voted as one of the ten best features of the week by Fotografia magazine. He was highly commended at the British Life Photography awards in the portrait category. And recently he has been selected for the final 30 at the Fotofilmic awards and will exhibit in L.A, Vancouver and Melbourne. He enjoys engaging with new and interesting characters and landscapes and working on long term documentary projects.

The Black Heathen: 'The Black Heathen' or gentiles nigri was a name that the Welsh called Viking invaders. The term means a dark and unwanted presence that do not belong to a widely held religion. The Black Heathen were feared throughout the land and attacks along the Welsh coastline lasted for over 200 years from the first recorded incident in 795 AD. Wales was repeatedly raided, especially by the Norse from the Hiberno-Norse kingdoms of Dublin and Limerick. Kings like Rhodri ap Merfyn, known as Rhodri Mawr (the great, 844 to 878 AD) and Hywel Dda (the Good, 900 to 950 AD) were able to rally large numbers of Welshmen to the defense of their lands with stubborn resistance, preventing the formation of large Norse kingdoms such as existed elsewhere in the British Isles. The places pictured in this series are sites where attacks were frequently recorded. Wales suffered heavily at the hands of “The Black Heathen” and blood was spilled along the shores, fields and forests in the southern regions from relentless attacks endured. To die on the sword of “The Heathen” was a fate of many Welshmen as the black tide of invaders came wave after wave.