Maya Meissner

The Cedar Lodge | Growing up in Northern California with horticulturalist parents, Yosemite National Park was my family’s Mecca, and in September of 1998 we took our first pilgrimage there. We stayed at the Cedar Lodge, a roadside motel. I returned to the park years later as a teenager pursuing my love of photography, excited to channel Ansel Adams and the other greats who came before me, in the birthplace of landscape photography. It’s hard for me to comprehend human horrors in Yosemite, one of the most majestic natural places on this planet.

In 2014, my mom revealed that during our idyllic childhood vacation a man tried to break into our motel room in the middle of the night. My dad scared him away by yelling; my sister and I slept through the whole thing. Five months after our trip, four women were brutally murdered in Yosemite. Three of the women, a mother and two teenage girls, had disappeared from the Cedar Lodge. The confessed killer was the handyman there.

My mom didn't have the tools to process this encounter and the twist of fate that spared our family, and so the guilt and grief festered within her for fifteen years. Learning that four women were killed in a place I considered paradise was confounding, but that I could have been one of them wasn’t something I could shake off or even really understand. I just knew I couldn’t keep these feelings building within me, like my mom had. My tool for delving into myself has always been my art.

Through research and the gathering of images, I began to lay out the disjointed narratives that crossed paths at the Cedar Lodge. To understand and illustrate my place within, or rather alongside the tragedy, my connection and my disconnect, I made collages: fracturing, obscuring, and layering images that included the photos that my parents had taken in 1998 and my teenage landscapes. I approached the project from varying perspectives because of my own confusion, but also to illustrate that this wasn’t really my story. This is not my trauma; we survived. The trauma I saw my mom go through does not compare to that of the families who lost their sisters, daughters, mothers.

To complete this project, I returned to The Cedar Lodge. I studied it closely and made new images of it. It’s terrifying to come so close to a nightmare, but I found that as I put it on paper where I could see it, the history of the place became less of a threat. Yosemite and the Cedar Lodge became beautiful again. www.mayameissner.com

Martha Ketterer

La Luna Los Cabos | La Luna Los Cabos is a visual exploration of time and nature. This work looks at our perception of motion, where time is seamless, spacious and invisible and water is physical, fluid and everchanging. Each composition consists of multiple images that allows us to feel endless motion. Here, movement is most evident at the interface, the zone between sea and sand.

This project was photographed during nights of the full moon on the Summer Solstice. The timing and location of this work was critical to its creation. Los Cabos, Mexico is uniquely situated at the confluence of the Sea of Cortez and the Pacific Ocean allowing the recording of both the moonrise and moonset over the water each evening. The moon provided beautiful light as it travels through the night sky, marking time on the sands of the tide by its physical influence and constant gravitational pull. www.marthaketterer.com

JP Terlizzi

The Good Dishes | The Good Dishes integrates memory, legacy and metaphor with my response to loss. As I witnessed family members pass, my cousins and I were each tasked with the emotional challenge of cleaning out the family home. Sorting through the heirlooms, we would determine which item should be tossed, sold, or preserved. Without fail, when it came to the family’s fine china, that item was always given to the person that most cherished its memory and sentimental value.

Growing up in a large Italian family, everything was centered around food and the family table. I remember vividly my mother’s vintage marigold stoneware dishes that she bought at the grocery store back in the early 1970s. She used them every day for as long as I could remember, and they had a life of their own. Along with my mother’s everyday dishes she had one set that she kept on display behind glass that only she handled, only she washed, and only she hand-dried; these were deemed “the good dishes.” Eating is a physical need, but meals are a social ritual. Whenever I heard, “I need to use the good dishes,” that meant one of two things in our household: the priest was coming over for dinner or it was a very special occasion. Either way, the food presentation, table dress and table manners all changed whenever the good dishes came out.

Utilizing the passed down heirlooms of friends and family, The Good Dishes celebrates the memory of family and togetherness. It borrows the stylized rituals of formal tableware and draws inspiration from classic still life paintings. Presentation, etiquette and formality are disassociated by using food and fine china in unconventional ways as a metaphor for the beauty and intimacy that is centered around meal and table. www.jpterlizziphotography.com

Ekaterina Vasilyeva

Bermuda Triangle | ​Probably in every major industrial city there is such a place.
A place full of determination to subordinate you to it, forcing you suffocate or even just disappear. In my hometown of St. Petersburg (Russia) for me such a place are two traffic arteries or, more accurately, the Obvodny Canal and the Obukhov Defense Prospect which, if you look at the map, may well correspond to two sides of a triangle. And all three meeting points of the triangle sides belong to the Neva River.

This is the place through which you pass every time you drive from the so-called ''sleeping'' areas to the city center.

Or maybe this place is not a place? A certain border zone - in fact the District of the Obvodny Canal in the old days was the outskirts of the city and enjoyed the notoriety of a place of mystic. Regardless of such mystical glory, by the end of the 20th century - the beginning of the 21st century, the Bermuda Triangle ceased to function and, in a sense, many factories, cultural centers and even the Warsaw Railway Station disappeared.

In the mid of 19th century the Obvodny Canal was connected with the beginning of the industrial revolution in St. Petersburg and in Russia. Now collecting my story, I do populate this place with ghosts - found photos of workers from a photographic lab of an abandoned Rubber factory ''Red Triangle'', which once was very successful and prosperous.

As the philosopher Georges Didi-Huberman said: ''As far as the power of obsession changes the space, giving birth to a place, so the power of the place is reconstructs the obsession itself.
By this point, we can no longer say that it is a ghost somewhere; but we are forced to say that everywhere it becomes the air itself, which we breathe and which secrete, in the process of especial breathing, the walls around us''.
I can only modestly add that one of the artist's tasks is to question the reality. www.ekaterinavasilyeva.ru

Benedetta Ristori

LAY OFF | In recent times many states have proceeded with a reshaping of working, intensifying the pace to cope with economic crisis due to the massive challenge and competition of the international markets. We are seeing a considerable increase in shifts of night work that, in the current organizational model of production, is gradually coming to be one of the most profitable among producing and conditions of employment of labor. This mode of shift work, once the preserve of industrial sectors, is instead now spreading significantly also in the service sectors, occupying a place of first order in areas, for example, such as communications and trade, the operators of call center and operators selling to the public, characteristics of the “global village” that no longer differences between day and night.

Shift work, even at night and on holidays, now covers more than eight million workers targeted, often, of psycho-physical due to the continuous change between the “biological clock” that marks the rhythm of the body, following the natural alternation of day and night, and the requirements imposed by the “society of work” that does not recognize these natural alternations (social jet lag).

My intention with this project, is to spy on the moments of life of these workers, analyzing and showing the characteristic that, in most cases, distinguishes them: loneliness. I tried to catch this loneliness and make it visible through this timeless and spaceless atmosphere. The project is still ongoing. www.benedettaristori.com

Casey Bennett

Hub City | Hub City focuses on life in Williams Lake, British Columbia, an area of the province that has gone through significant cultural and socioeconomic transformations. Located in the Central Cariboo Interior, where individuals’ collective livelihoods and lifestyles have been, and are, currently heavily dependent upon certain industries–particularly the logging and mining industries. Generations of families have committed their lives and passed on an “identity” of working these jobs, becoming culturally bound to these careers. My photographic project hopes to instill a visually compelling collection of images of this specific place in time and the prospect for insight into the community and its individuals who have shaped a region and created the character of a place. The environment is loaded with evidence from the past that is now layered with subtle manifestations about the inevitable future.

Aptly titled Hub City, this refers to Williams Lake as the central location that sits in the junction of Highway 97 and Highway 20, leading major routes to cities and points of interest like Kamloops (south), Bella Coola (west) and Prince George (north). www.caseybennett.net

Ira Wagner

Twinhouses of The Great Northeast | The twinhouses of The Great Northeast neighborhood of Philadelphia reflect how people share a common border. Some families choose to mark their space with a fence or shrubbery.  Others differentiate themselves with varying architectural elements and subtle changes to trim, windows and paint colors.  One family chooses to hide completely behind a tall hedge; another lives in front of the house with common backyard elements – chairs, grills, patio tables, open for all to see.  Common upkeep, such as mowing the lawn, ends at a rough approximation of the property line rather than being shared.  One side of a structure shows pride of ownership, the other is missing a shutter on a window. When borders are such an important issue in the world, these images reflect a human inclination to mark and delineate one’s space rather than share it.

The Great Northeast section of Philadelphia shows what was built in response to the search for the American dream, even within the city limits. These modest homes are variations on a theme of two side-by-side houses that share a common wall.To create some variety, architectural elements appear pasted on the front of the box – various materials, gables, dormers, rooflines and trim.Because of the shared occupancy within a single structure, little has changed in these houses since they were built.As a result, this area of Philadelphia shows much of the original intent of the architects, developers and residents.Yet, over time, small differences have emerged that reflect how people live together as neighbors, differentiate their own property, customize their slice of suburban living and make their property their own. www.iwagner100.com

Cristina Rizzi Guelfi

Dream House | In the house time slow down, hair on the floor look darker without a linoleum frame. Something scorching haunts the flats.All movement carefully crafted, taking notes of the chairs position, how the curtains let the light in, way too many ornaments on every surface. Housing women coming from nowhere, at the foot of a shitty hill, builded upside-down, little screws stabbed in the joints, wired deep under a fragile skin, right through the nails.

Flimsy monsters, dressed in chiffons and ballerinas shoes.Surrounded by the scent of hair dye blended wi' chicken soup, pulled by the hair into a crazy routine, sitting on the green chair of ambiguity ..That golden boring fine line,day after day,same old shit  either with friends or strangers. ..homes,walls painted too bright,smell of fear,a call to run away..Houses hide every secrets. cristinarizziguelfi.tumblr.com

Vamsi Krishna

Wings | The special in the mundane – stories hidden in plain sight – the devil in the details.

I do photography since I see it as the truest expression of my personality. Flowing lines, diverse and harmonic colour palettes, and rich blacks and whites are all essential elements present in my photographs. While many of my pictures have a sense of distance and objectivity, I also try to find stories in the smallest of objects.

Electric pylons, water, flora, everyday objects, street pickings, dead bugs, graves, living faces, and interesting places, are mostly the subjects I work with.

My work is heavily influenced by my complicated relationship with people, the diverse forms of music I listen to, the literature I read, and the art I appreciate. vamsifoto.wordpress.com

Jeremy Knowles

8AM WALKS | 8am Walks is built upon one simple instruction: Leave the house at 8am with a camera and walk.

This ongoing series seeks out colour and vibrancy in Germany's grey capital, and catalogues a specific time of day with a unique pattern of light. Taken as part of a daily routine over the course of over two years, images from this series document overlooked and unnoticed aspects of Berlin life and bring greater exposure to the patterns, repetitions and coincidences that disrupt the dull.


Vol. 1 of this series was made between 2017 and 2018, and features photographs taken within Berlin neighborhoods along morning walks. www.jeremyknowles.co.uk

Allen Morris

ISO | Landscape, cultivated from nature through the hands of humans in an effort to drive the needs and wants of a society, is the metaphor that I use in this body of work to explore the ideas of history, security, identity and place both in geographical and psychological terms.

 Even when living in an urban environment, I believe that there is a connection that humans seek out between themselves and the landscape that they inhabit. As creatures, we make connections to the spaces that we inhabit; we attempt to intertwine the narratives of place with our own individual story to form a connection with our geographical and psychological places in life. This drive to meld with the population that surrounds us, or the landscape that we find ourselves existing within, provides a sense of stability and security.

However, when epochal changes occur within our own individual history, the security that we seek from our physical surroundings and those with whom we interact becomes more difficult to find. It is the search for those feelings of stability in a time of place insecurity that can be seen in the photographs that comprise “ISO”.

Using the landscape as a stage on which to act out these feelings of insecurity, “ISO” explores the tense feeling of uncertainty felt while searching for something to hold on to - a place of security and permanence in which to take root. The moments of stability provided by these static objects found within these photographs provide a brief moment of security, reassurance, control, and order in the face of uncertainty and chaos.

ken collins

Light Touches Paper | Each photograph is a means to discover and develop an invented image. These photographs share the same dimensions and vertical format, allowing for a nuanced experience of interior shapes, light and tonal range. There is a purity in form, execution and materials. The attempt is to create compelling images with light and simple ordinary materials. kencollinsphotographs.com

Mariia Kokunova

THIS CITY IS JUST A VERSION OF YOU | I have no chance to get into other tram. They always run along red rails. All the trams are, actually, one single tram. All the cities are one single city. 

I'm stepping into the existing footsteps. The footsteps are running away straight, they do not wave. Reflexively I move my foot but I am not moving an inch forward. The same accurate prints appear under my feet at the same very places. The footprints pattern coincides with the length of my step. I have walked here before, outrunning myself, have let myself behind. There is no chance to step away from this path… www.mariakokunova.com 

Karla Guerrero

Jorge | For me, the meaning of family is a mystery my grandfather Jorge used to take photographs of everything developing a family archive that nowadays is unknown to me and full of interpretations. In 2006 he suffered brain damage and since then I kept his photographs. 

Understanding how visual language is modified due to illness or damage was necessary to start making new compositions with medical archives, documents, and X-ray of my grandfather. The idealization of the past is dragged by events of the present. www.karla-guerrero.com

John Kinney

Atomic Power | This is a series of photographs I took while traveling with my father in Asia. Europe, and the United States as he consulted with scientists and construction crews for nuclear reactors. Sometimes people at the reactors would wonder why I was taking photos, but my father would just say, "He knows what he is doing. Don't worry." After that no one would question it. He liked the idea of someone else taking pictures for him, and he knew I needed something to do to stay busy. These photos were taken in the late 80s and early 90s. At this point, I was fairly new to photography, and had only taken a photography class in middle school. Many of the photos were taken in a hurried manner as I was often walking briskly with a group.  john-kinney.format.com

Mark Griffiths

Healing Land | The Chernobyl meltdown was the biggest nuclear catastrophe in world history. 99 per cent of the Belarusian land has been contaminated to varying degrees above internationally accepted levels as a direct result of the disaster. The villages and towns that are in close proximity to the epicenter of the reactor have been eerily abandoned and remain desolate.

The people of Belarus are very self-sufficient, they grow their own crops and vegetables, farm livestock and source water from nearby lakes and reservoirs. With 70% of contamination coming from food and water however, the poisoned earth continues to infect those that depend on it.

An astonishing 85 per cent of Belarusian children are deemed to be Chernobyl victims: they carry “genetic markers” that could affect their health at any time and can be passed on to the next generation. A vicious cycle that unfortunately could continue for hundreds if not thousands of years.

The government of Belarus and the Ukraine established that all affected children should leave the contaminated regions for at least one month abroad every year. They believed the fresh air and uncontaminated food would give the children a vital boast to their immune system.

The Chernobyl children’s lifeline was founded to help affected children receive the recuperation they so vitally need. The charity carried out scientific research to determine whether a clean environment would benefit those affected. From 4000 children that were examined the results determined that the radioactive elements in a child before and after a 4 week visit to the U.K dropped by an average of 68 per cent. The immune system of a Chernobyl child needs a kick-start to help fight potential illnesses and diseases.

This year 8 children were brought to the pristine county of Pembrokeshire in West Wales, U.K. the region is considered an area of outstanding natural beauty. The environment boasts clean air quality, blue flag beaches and spectacularly dense woodland and breath taking countryside views.

The children participate in a number of recreational and educational activities and outings during their stay, from long sunny days at the beach to indoor karting. They also receive free medical check ups including eye tests and dental appointments to ensure a clean bill of health.  The aim of the charity is to make the experience as enjoyable as possible while the clean air and unpolluted land takes its natural course of healing the wounds

Marco Barbieri

The Granary | An epiphanic journey through nationalism, religion, economic crisis, a glorious past and a failing infrastructure in Ukraine, the second (and often forgotten) biggest nation in Europe. Shot in medium format during two trips to Ukraine in 2017 and 2018. www.mbarbieri.com @_m_barbieri

Adam Razvi

MY MAY YOUR MAY | ‘…the shadows of reality, so to speak, emerge out of nothing on the exposed paper, as memories do in the middle of the night...’ - W.G. Sebald 

The work addresses the relationship between photography and memory like a pair of untrustworthy twins. Reflecting on past events in Zurich and Athens encountered by two individuals, (who now live together as a couple in London), the individuals return to reclaim fragments of memories - four years removed from critical experiences, which took place simultaneously in May 2014. Collectively, a new narrative is born, as the reality of actual events blur and transform with the passing of time. 

The series’ contact sheet, is traditionally a working-tool for photographers to glimpse what they have captured on a roll of film. The sheet helps to situate a single image within a wider context. But this contact sheet is not to be trusted. Freud suggests that recollections of past events are distilled by what we want, or perhaps need to remember. Indeed, consciously or not, we are not passive viewers of our experiences.  Freud's notion is visualised with prints of enlarged details extracted from the contact sheet, which can be considered significant and traumatic 'fragments of memory'. For every year passed from the actual events that took place, another fragment has been produced by making a contact print from the preceding print. This results in a chain of distortion – perhaps a more truthful representation than the original photograph or projected memory, highlighting photography's limitation to show 'the complete picture' and memory's subjective and non-fixed nature.   

The work is made solely with analogue techniques in a black and white darkroom. As unique objects, the 20''x24'' prints embody durations of time and processes, representative of the memories reflected on and examined by the protagonists. 

Stefano Barresi

Eulogy to Solitude | The Solitude is normally a feeling that's people considered negative but is also one of the most universal feelings that exist. When the disorder of the world is rising, even the background noise grows to cover any coherent signal and that's when we hear the strong call of the sense, the most true and pristine.

The sense of the origin The return to our origins is the pursuit of our loneliness that leads us to the comparison with the other's loneliness. In your solitude you have a time to knows yourself to think about your positive qualities and your negative side. You have a time for understanding the world around you and find consciousness.  

So if loneliness can teach something then it is not wasted time. I think that, if you are not able to be alone with yourself, probably you will not be able to really be with others. Walking with a camera in hand, looking around catching details even unintentionally looking for that sense that otherwise can not be caught so by osmosis between the bla bla bla of worldly chatter because; "there is nothing like the solitude of an endless walk for poor roads, where you must be miserable and strong, brothers of the dogs." (Pier Paolo Pasolini)

 Eulogy to Solitude is a part of a project that i called "About photography". I hope that you can look at this series of photos as a meeting between mine and your solitude. And enjoy it. www.instagram.com/maskedsuperhero

Max Heller

This collection of images was taken over the past several years, shot while visiting my grandparents in upstate NY.  Ever since I was a kid, visiting this place has always felt something like a journey through time. Tucked away in the hills and river valleys just south of the Adirondack range, the village of mohawk sleeps quietly. Here amidst the rust belt decay I find beauty in the physical erosion, fossils and gemstones, glacial potholes and other traces of the ancient past.