Images courtesy and copyright of the artists. All rights reserved.

Born in Tehran, Iran, Anoush Abrar teaches photography at ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne, Switzerland. His work has been exhibited in several museums and galleries, including the Musée de l’Elysée (Switzerland), Harold’s Gallery (Los Angeles), and Maison Européenne de la Photographie (Paris). He has also been presented in several photographic competitions such as the Festival des Arts de la Mode de Hyères, 2003, the Art + Commerce 2004 Festival of Emerging Photographers, and reGeneration: 50 Photographers of Tomorrow. Abrar continues to work in parallel as a fashion and editorial photographer. His photographs have been featured in W, French and Japanese Vogue, Vogue Hommes International, L’Officiel, New York, Tokion, Colors, Libération, and Frog.

Manolis Baboussis was born in 1950 in Athens, Greece. He studied architecture in Florence and building restoration in Rome, Italy. From 1977 to 1998, he worked as an architect and photographer. Since then, he’s served as an associate professor at the Fine Arts School in Athens. Baboussis has had selected solo shows at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens, the Central European House of Photography in Bratislava, the Galeria Hilario Galguera in Mexico City, the Museum of Photography in Thessaloniki, the Centro d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea at La Spezia in Italy, the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center in Athens, Greece. Baboussis lives and works in Athens, Greece.

Paris-based photographer Valerie Belin was recently the subject of a retrospective that traveled to the Huis Marseille in Amsterdam, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, and the Musée l’Elysée in Lausanne. Her work has previously been exhibited at the Musée d’Orsay—where she was paired with Edouard Manet for the museum’s Correspondences series, the Kunsthalle Wein, and the Norton Museum of Art. She is in the forthcoming ICP Triennial of Photography and Video in New York City, and will be the subject of a large-scale show at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, in the fall of 2009. Belin’s work is held in many important collections, including that of The Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Cartier Foundation (Paris), and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (Paris).

Anna Lehmann-Brauns was born in 1967 and currently lives and works in Berlin. She has previously exhibited at Kunsthaus Potsdam, Kommunale Galerie Berlin, Galerie Kunstagenten (Berlin), and the Landesmuseum Linz (Austria).

Christopher Clary’s work has been exhibited abroad, nationally, and locally at some of New York City’s most challenging alternative spaces—Exit Art, Momenta Art, and Rush Arts Gallery. Other highlights include installations for SCOPE New York 09, the Denver International Airport, WORKS/San Jose, and the New York State Biennial. Clary is a current resident of Artists Alliance Inc.’s Rotating Studio Program in the Lower East Side. In June 2009, the residency concludes with an exhibition at Cuchifritos Gallery. He received his MFA from the American University, and lives and works in Brooklyn.

Venetia Dearden’s first book Somerset Stories (2008) reflects her emotional attachment to the romantic landscape of the county where she grew up. This is a touching depiction of an almost idyllic way of life, where daily hardships abound, yet spiritualism provides the binding force that creates a quintessentially British photograph of home. Widely published in the editorial market, it is with her personal vision of home, and its most intimate moments, that she has made her mark.

Matthieu Gafsou studied photography at the Ecole d’Arts Appliqués de Vevey, Switzerland. Prior to this, he studied film, philosophy, and French literature at the Université de Lausanne, Switzerland. He is the recipient of various prizes, including the HSBC Foundation for Photography Prize and the European Architectural Photography Prize. Gafsou has previously exhibited at the Centre de la Photographie (Geneva, Switzerland), Printed Matter (New York, NY), and Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts (Lausanne, Switzerland).

Oliver Godow was born in Lübeck, Germany. He studied at Bournemouth & Poole College of Art, and in 1997 completed his MA in Fine Art at Glasgow School of Art. Recently, he was an artist in residence at Durham Cathedral (2006-2007) and is currently part of the residency program at Stills, Scotland’s Centre for Photography. Godow’s work is now on show at the Talbot Rice Gallery at the University of Edinburgh, and has been the subject of solo exhibitions at The Return Gallery (Ireland), Reg Vardy Gallery (United Kingdom), Kerava Art Museum (Finland), and Schloss Wolfsberg (Switzerland). Godow’s work is presented in collections of UBS Bank (Switzerland), Kunstmuseum (Stuttgart), and HSH Nordbank (Hamburg).

Katy Grannan was born in Arlington, Massachusetts, in 1969. Her photographs have been exhibited at The Museum of Modern Art, the Photographer’s Gallery (London), and the Guggenheim Museum (Bilbao). She has received numerous awards, including the Aperture Award to an Emerging Artist (2005), the Baum Award for Emerging American Photographers (2004), and the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Grant (1999). Grannan is a frequent contributor to The New York Times Magazine and her work is included in the New York City collections of The Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She currently lives and works near San Francisco.

David Gray, who works as a designer in London, employs documentary photographs for a specific purpose: to create fictions that reveal an emotional if not literal truth. We are pleased to present his two latest works in different forms—Vampire, a story about poverty in Romania, displayed as an editorial layout, and Surge, about emerging China, as an audiovisual presentation with an original audio soundtrack.

Lorraine Grupe, a grandmother from Chicago, has shared her personal photo albums from the second World War, revealing the traffic of photographs to and from the frontline 60 years ago. Grupe and her six sisters would send photographs of themselves to U.S. servicemen to lift morale, sometimes receiving pictures back, along with a marriage proposal or two.

In the 1940s, Vienna-born photographer Ernst Haas began photographing and teaching photography for the American Red Cross. His first feature article on returning Viennese prisoners of war was published in Heute and later picked up by Life. Later, at the invitation of Robert Capa, he joined Magnum in 1949. In 1953, Life chose his color essay, “Images of a Magic City,” as its first major color story, and Haas went on to become the premier color photographer of the day. In 1962, New York’s Museum of Modern Art mounted its first solo color exhibition of his photographs. Haas received the Hasselblad award in 1986 but died that same year from a stroke, leaving a huge archive of black-and-white prints and color slides. Many of his finest color images have never been exhibited or published. William Ewing is currently researching this trove and preparing a book titled, Color Correction.

Tim Hetherington is a British photographer and filmmaker. He spent eight years living and working in West Africa, and his book about Liberia, Long Story Bit by Bit, is out now on Umbrage Editions and will be launched at NYPH’09. Sleeping Soldiers was shot during his six-month stint with U.S. forces in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan. In contrast to his World Press Award winning series on the fighting experienced in this region, this project takes a more subtle and universal approach to engaging the viewer in the experiences of the soldiers shown. It forms part of an ongoing project that continues his examination of young men, violence, and power. Hetherington is based in New York and is a contributing photographer for Vanity Fair.

Jacob Holdt, whose father and grandfather were ministers, was born in Copenhagen in 1947. He left school at the age of 18, and in 1967, was discharged from the Royal Danish Guard for refusing to shoot at a target in human form. He then took part in the various political movements arising from the revolution of 1968. After an argument with his father, Holdt traveled to Canada in 1970 to work on a farm. On the way to Chile to affiliate himself with Allende’s “democratic revolution,” he crossed the United States. The USA fascinated him so much, that he spent the following five years there. In 1975 he returned to Denmark with 15,000 slides. He showed his photographs in the form of a slideshow, with sound at first, to a very limited public. Interest in his pictures was so great, however, that he consented to the publishing of a book, American Pictures, in 1977. The book, in which texts, eyewitness accounts and letters feature next to the photographs, became a great success. Editions have been published in many countries. Since then, Holdt has presented his slideshow and given lectures at schools and universities in Europe and the U.S. He continues to work as a photographer for humanitarian projects.

Finnish contemporary photographer Tiina Itkonen lives and works in Helsinki. In 2002, Itkonen graduated from the University of Art and Design Helsinki. Her latest exhibitions have been in England, Germany, and Switzerland; and her work can be seen in the following collections: Moderna Museet (Stockholm), Fundacio Foto Colectania (Barcelona), DZ-Bank (Frankfurt), and Helsinki City Art Museum. For over ten years, Itkonen has traveled regularly to Greenland to spend time with, and photograph, Polar Eskimos and the polar landscape. Her book on this subject, Inughuit, was published in 2004. Of this work she says, “The empty beauty of the place, devoid of cars, roads, or signs, has a magnetic resonance which seems to have no depth in the gleaming whiteness.”

Dividing his time between the very different environments of the Isle of Man and Harvard University (where he is professor of Visual Studies), Chris Killip has recently published his first color work, Here Comes Everybody, 20 years since the seminal In Flagrante first appeared. We are pleased to present a very personal project by this great photographer: a set of stamps for the post office featuring the workers and landscapes of the tiny British island he still calls home.

A self-taught photographer, Seba Kurtis makes images that reflect his own experience as a stateless individual. Born in Argentina, Kurtis has photographed the migrant’s journey in many countries, including Africans heading for Europe via the Canary Islands and Mexicans making a life in the United States. He uses experimental techniques and operates at the boundaries of image making to assert both the unreliability of representation and the transient nature of experience.

Juraj Lipscher was born in 1948, in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Two years later, his family relocated to the city of Bratislava. At 20, Lipscher moved to Switzerland to study chemistry at the University of Zurich. It was then that he also began his photographic work. Currently, he is a teacher and photographer in Switzerland.

Edith Maybin graduated in 2006 with an MA from Swansea Metropolitan University and went on to win the title of Free Range 06 Photographer of the Year, London. She has also been selected for the AXA Art Photographic Portrait Commission with the National Museum of Wales, and the 2009 Hearst 8×10 Photography Biennial, New York. Maybin’s work is now part of the permanent collections of The National Museum Wales, The National Portrait Gallery (London), and The Sir Elton John Photography Collection. Maybin works from both Wales and Canada.

Mondongo—three young Argentine artists (Juliana Laffitte, Manuel Mendanha, and Agustina Picasso)—emerged on the art scene in November of 2000 with the show La Primera Cena (The First Supper) at the Centro Cultural Recoleta in Bueno Aires. There, they presented a series of plaster and resin masks bearing the ecstatic faces of friends and acquaintances floating around in dreamlike private worlds. Recently, in 2007 at Track 16 gallery in Los Angeles, Mondongo showed a group of paintings made from thread and wax, as well as a collection of taxidermic cats. In 2008, Mondongo collaborated with Comme des Garçons on a year-long project focusing on the fashion label’s brand image. This work was featured in exhibitions in London and Beijing.

Adam Nadel is a New York-based photojournalist. He has received both national and international recognition including two first prizes at World Press Photo. He recently completed a 5-year project on war and its consequences. Sections of this project have had a number of solo museum exhibitions, and were recognized with a NYFA Fellowship, Pulitzer Prize nomination, a World Press Photo award, and the Santa Fe Center for Photography Project Competition First Prize. Nadel has had a number of solo gallery shows, domestically and internationally, involving subject matter such as altered vistas, waterscapes and shadows.

Nadel’s photographs of American steelworkers were specially commissioned for Home for Good and are presented here for the first time anywhere. Adam Nadel gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Albert Marshall, President of Local 1277 of the United Steel Workers Union.

Kevin Newark is a photo artist and educator based in London. He graduated from the London College of Communication in 2006 with an MA in photography. In 2007 he received the prestigious Jerwood Photography Award for the first part of his “Protoplasm” series. Currently he is working on a bursary project in conjunction with the National Media Museum, Bradford (UK).

Virginie Otth was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1971. She studied photography in Vevy, Switzerland, and in 1996 spent a year in Italy working with Oliviero Toscani and Fabrica. There she collaborated on a film about old age. After that, Otth has worked as a freelance photographer with Nicolas Lieber and currently teaches photography in Vevey and Geneva.

Louie Palu is an award-winning photojournalist now based in the US. After graduation in 1991, he interned with celebrated photographer Mary Ellen Mark. Palu’s work is included in numerous collections including The Library and Archives of Canada, Portland Museum of Art and George Eastman House International Museum of Film and Photography. Canadian photographer.

Carlos Ranc studied painting at the National School of Painting, Sculpture and Etching (La Esmeralda), in Mexico City. He has been awarded a number of prizes, among them the National Funding for Culture and Arts Grant in 1996 and 1998; and the Acquisition Prize at the 19th National Encounter of Young Art in 1999. Ranc’s previous exhibitions include: Objetos para decorar at the Nina Menocal Gallery, Mexico City; Pensar lo que recordamos… at the Museo Casa Barragán, Mexico City; Piso compartido, Coartadas/Alibis, at the Witte de With, Rotterdam; Zebra Crossing at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; and Love Party II at Ojo Atómico, Madrid.

Photographers René and Radka, who are from Cologne and Prague, respectively, live and work in Paris. Both photographers started their collaboration eight years ago. After working with international editions of fashion magazines and advertising clients, René and Radka extended their work to the art scene with a solo exhibition in Berlion, Moonage Daydream (2006), followed by Comme and play with us (2007), and Under Water (2009), in Paris. The latter two are dedicated to the mysterious world of children, where underwater images transport the viewer to a world of forgotten princesses of Atlantis, and René and Radka subtly revisit the story of Ophelia. In the summer of 2009, the Museo Nationale Alinari Della Fotografia in Florence will hold a solo exhibition for the photographers entitled, Dreams and Shadows. Additionally, in June, prestigious television channel ARTE will feature a documentary about their work, L’Art et la Maniere. René and Radka’s fashion photography has appeared in magazines like Vogue Nippon, French, Citizen K, Wound, Milk, Tush, Style, Beaux Art, Le Monde 2, and their commercial work includes campaigns for Kenzo, Adidas with David Beckham, Absolute Vodka, Miss Sixty, Energie, and Aston Martin.

Simon Roberts’ first monograph Motherland, published by Chris Boot, documented his one-year tour of Russia and explored notions of identity and belonging. He has recently turned his eye to his native soil, England, and we are previewing four photographs from this series. We English is an exploration of people, landscape, and leisure. The book will be published by Chris Boot and exhibited by Dumbo-based Klompching Gallery in September 2009. Roberts’ photographs have been exhibited widely with recent shows at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago and the Museum of Modern Art in Shanghai. They are represented in major public and private collections, including the Deutsche Börse Art Collection and Michael G. Wilson Centre of Photography.

Stefan Ruiz was born in San Francisco and studied painting and sculpture at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and at the Accademia di Belle Arti, Venice, Italy. He taught art at San Quentin State Prison from 1992-1998. His work has been featured in numerous magazines, including Colors (for whom he was creative director, 2003-2004), The New York Times Magazine, L’Uomo Vogue, French Vogue, and Rolling Stone. Ruiz’s commercial work includes award-winning campaigns for Camper and Caterpillar. He has previously exhibited at the Havana Biennale (Cuba, 2003), Palais Tokyo (Paris, 2003), Open Eye Gallery (Liverpool, 2005), and Les Rencontres d’Arles (France, 2005), where he was nominated for the Prix Dialogue de l’Humanité. In 2006, a monograph of his work, People, was published by Chris Boot LTD. He currently resides in New York City.

Sam Samore lives and works in New York. He has had solo exhibitions at the following: Galerie Rodolphe Janssen(Brussels, Belgium), D’Amelio Terras (New York), Galerie Gisela Capitain (Köln), P.S.1/MOMA (New York), Galerie Anne de Villepoix (Paris), Galeria Graca Brandao (Porto Gray), Kapernekas Gallery [Project] (New York), Vous êtes ici (Amsterdam), Art & Public (Genève), Centre National de la Photographie [Billboard] (Paris), and Giorgio Armani Rive Gauche (Paris).

After graduating in 2000 from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland, Philipp Schaerer worked as an architect, knowledge manager, and image creator in the field of digital image editing for Herzog & de Meuron in Basel (2000-2006). During his four years worki ng as a research assistant for the chair of Computer Aided Architectural Design (CAAD) at the Faculty of Architecture (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich) under Professor Dr. Ludger Hovestadt, Schaerer was able to continuously develop his knowledge in the area of digital image techniques. Working as an architect and image creator today, his main interest lies not only in design and in the execution of small scale projects, but also in creating images of architecture and the built environment.

David Benjamin Sherry was born in 1981 and currently lives and works in New York City. In 2003, he received his degree in photography from the Rhode Island School of Design and in 2007, his MFA in photography from Yale. He has exhibited worldwide with solo shows at Andre Schlechtriem Contemporary (Berlin), Galerie Lisa Ruyter (Vienna), and an upcoming show in September 2009 at the Bellwether Gallery (New York City).

Edward Steichen is one of the most prolific, influential, and controversial figures in the history of photography. During his 70-year career he was involved in every major domain of photography, which spanned the gap between pictorialism and modernism, and the divide between art and commerce. He pioneered modern advertising photography, while revolutionizing fashion photography in his role as chief photographer for Vogue and Vanity Fair. After fifteen years of work in his studio, Steichen felt that he had exhausted the possibilities in the domain of commerce. Then, realizing that exhibitions were also a form of artistic expression, Steichen took on the directorship of the photography department at The Museum of Modern Art. There, he produced his magnum opus, The Family of Man (1955), which remains a landmark among 20th-century exhibitions. Steichen’s first posthumous European retrospective was held in 2007. Organized by the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography, Minneapolis, and the Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne, it travelled to Switzerland, France, Italy and Spain.

Joni Sternbach was born in the Bronx, New York. She graduated from the School of Visual Arts with a BFA in photography and completed her MA degree at New York University/International Center of Photography (ICP) in 1987. She has taught for many years, and is currently a faculty member at ICP teaching wet plate collodion. Sternbach’s solo exhibition, SurfLand, which captures portraits of surfers in tintype, opens at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, in May 2009. SurfLand was recently seen at the String Room Gallery at Wells College in Aurora, New York, and will also be at Blue Sky Gallery in Portland, Oregon, in November. Sternbach’s first monograph, SurfLand, will be published in May 2009 by Photolucida.

After working more than 20 years in the music business, Bruno Stevens decided to become a photojournalist in 1998. He currently focuses on the fate of civilian populations in tension or war zones. He has worked in Mexico, Haiti, the former Yugoslavia, Chechnya, Afghanistan, India, Israel, Palestine, Iraq, Darfur, Libya, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Uganda, Pakistan, Kenya, Somalia, Angola, Lebanon, Cambodia, Algeria, Iran, Laos, and Georgia. Stevens’ work is regularly published in Stern, Libération, The Sunday Times Magazine, Time, Newsweek, and Paris-Match.

Hank Willis Thomas, an artist-in-residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts in the San Francisco Bay Area, has published his photographs in numerous books and publications, including Reflections in Black: A History of African American Photographers (W.W Norton, 2000), and 25 Under 25: Up-and-Coming American Photographers (powerHouse Books, 2003). His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums nationally and internationally, and he has been honored with a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship Award, and the 2007 Renew Media Arts Fellowship. He is currently collaborating with Ryan Alexiev on a public installation at the University of California, San Francisco.

Robert Walker was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, in 1945. He graduated from Sir George Williams University, where he studied painting. Walker has participated in photography workshops with Lee Friedlander and Gary Winogrand. He has previously exhibited at the George Eastman House, Goldsmiths Gallery, University of London, the Fogg Art Museum, the Musée de la Photographie, Fotografie Forum International, the Museum of Art (Lodz, Poland), the Jan Cunan Museum, and the Musée de l’Elysée. In 2003, Walker was nominated and elected into the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.

Patrick Weidmann was born in 1958. He now lives and works in Geneva. He is the winner of numerous awards for his contributions to the world of photography, including honors from the Zuger Kulturstiftung Landis & Gyr 2003, Atelier Schönhauser 2000, the Prix fédéral des Beaux-Arts 1997 and 1998, Prix de la fondation Moët Hennessy suisse pour l’Art 1997, among others. He has had six solo exhibitions in various galleries and has been part of three exhibitions in Switzerland. His most recent publications include: Bimboplastie (2007), Nec Plus Ultra (2006), Tibune de Genève, Nec Plus Ultra (Kunstbulletin), Le Journal du Jura, and La Liberté de Fribourg.

Grant Worth grew up in the forests of central Wisconsin. In 2001, he received his BFA in Photography and Imaging from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Enthusiastic about sound and image, utopian ideals, and the ephemeral, Worth’s work has been exhibited at the Daniel Reich Gallery in New York City, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, Tate Liverpool in the UK, and the Arnhem Fashion Biennale in the Netherlands. Recently, he was featured in a three-person Polaroid show with Andy Warhol at Vanderbilt University. Worth lives and works in Brooklyn, and is currently represented by John Connelly Presents in New York City.