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The Pink Choice (Maika Elan)

“People like to say they are open-minded, but they don’t act like it. For example, every time a story about a gay couple is in the press or on TV, either their faces are blurred or they pose with their backs to the camera. And those stories almost always have to do with drugs, AIDS, or some sort of sexual scandal. When it comes to movies, homosexuals are either idealized or, again, presented as sexual deviants. You never see the actual people. You don’t see that they are real people.”

Throughout 2011, street photographer and documentarian Maika Elan set out to record the intimate domestic lives of Vietnam's unseen and unacknowledged gay couples. Seeking to avoid the common, sensationalized depictions of homosexual men and women as sexual deviants and tragedies in the making, her goal was to capture moments of everyday human affection, comfort and calm in the safety of lovers' shared homes and living spaces.

Read more about this project: -VICE interviews Maika Elan: Photographing the Loving Gays of Vietnam -The Independent Photographer: THE PINK CHOICE

John Becker (Brooklyn, NY)

Jessy Bou-Dagher (Beruit, Lebanon)

Website | Portfolio

Gundula Blumi (Berlin, Germany)

Portfolio | Instagram | Twitter | Flickr | Tumblr: @gundulablumi

“I like the different emotional nuances of our existence, including the dark ones. I find interesting what is beneath the surface. Everything that is underneath is actually lively, interesting, and lovable.”

Gundula Blumi is an experimental photographer who specializes in using the analogue format to create fantastical landscapes that can fall anywhere from the eerie and dreamlike to the sublime and colorful. Among other techniques, she frequently uses water, light, or materials like prismatic glass to create blooms of color in dark environments.

For anyone interested in learning more about her artistic process and philosophy surrounding her work, she has been featured by numerous publications. Here are just a few of them:

Elizabeth Jordan (b. New Jersey)

Portfolio | Instagram

“Years ago an esoteric consultant summed up my experience as being ‘of the earth.’ I think that’s true of my personality and my work, and because they’re both so connected, the natural world is a starting point of ideas. Nature has taught me that there isn’t any sentimentality about life and death in that world—life is temporal and very fragile. I’m trying to make pieces that are about that ephemeral place where something can be both vulnerable and powerful.”

Elizabeth Jordan is an artist working primarily in sculpture. She was born in New Jersey and has lived in Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Florida and New York. Her work uses multiple materials to produce unique, organic forms, often using animals in cryptic, otherworldly scenarios as vessels for her subtle storytelling.

The Laws of Magic is a series of sculptures consisting of rabbits and hares made from wood, leather, wire and mesh, and which represent life, death, and the spiritual experience of participation with nature.

In early 2016, she participated in an exhibition at the Cornell Art Museum in Delray Beach, where her on-going work titled “The Lives of Birds” was installed. Elizabeth Jordan’s other works—including artists books and prints— can be seen at: www.enjordan.com.