Discover The Amazing Winners of AAP Magazine 10 Portrait
We’re delighted to reveal the names of the 24 talented photographers who won “AAP Magazine #10: Portrait”
These amazing photographers come from 14 different countries, their work reflects their personal aesthetic and unique approach to portrait photography.
After spending a lot of time looking at hundreds of submissions, Sandrine Hermand-Grisel, Editor of All About Photo, considered multiple unique and timely work. Many projects were worthy of winning, but in the end she chose to showcase innovative approaches to portraiture alongside striking traditional work. She was amazed by the quality and the wide range of work submitted. All winners will have their work published in AAP Magazine 10 Portrait
The Winner is Trevor Cole (Ireland) with his series Tribal traits and traditions in Africa
Abushe is a young boy of the Ari tribe who lives on the streets of Jinka in the Omo Valley of Ethiopia. He has cornflower blue eyes as a result of a genetic mutation.
To capture people and landscapes and the interactions between them in the light of a world in transition is to encapsulate an inimitable moment, which will never again materialise. My own ‘take’ as a geographer photographer!
Born in the City of Derry, but I have lived most of my life outside the bounds of Ireland; in England, Singapore, Togo, Italy, Ethiopia and Brazil. I returned to Ireland (Donegal) in 2012.
My photography, together with travel, have become two of my life’s passions. My photography focuses predominantly on culture and landscapes; images which reflect a spatial and temporal journey through life and which try to convey a need to live in a more sustainable world. I seek the moment and the light in whatever context I find myself and endeavour to use my photographic acumen to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary.
I lead small photo tours in my ‘own Donegal’ and Ireland but also to other destinations. I lived in Ethiopia from 2006–2010 and since then have returned to take photographers to the Western and Eastern Omo, Harar, the Danakil desert and the highlands of Ethiopia. Additionally I take photo tours to Chad, Angola and South Sudan, Iceland, Namibia and India as well as travelling myself to discover and capture in new locations.
Taking portraits of people in the marketplace, street or in a tribal village requires interaction. There are clandestine shots which are often taken with a longer lens and are discreet but most of my ‘people’ based photography is a product of inter-personal moments. I like to spend time, talk, get to know those who are being photographed. I always ask and even when my efforts are rejected I always respect their choice. Sometimes, even with difficult subjects, spending a little time and using a little humour can yield positive results. In Ethiopia or South Sudan most people are relatively easy to photograph except, perhaps, for those who are more conservative culturally and religiously. Even then, I relish the challenge and will certainly try!
All About Trevor Cole
Exclusive Interview with Trevor Cole
Trevor Cole’s Website
Alternative Visions
Trevor Cole
The 2nd Place Winner is Tim Franco (South Korea) with his series Illicit Ink
An obscure South Korean law makes tattooing technically illegal. Although this does not stop a growing number of underground tattoo parlors to open in people’s home or in hidden rooms, it does pose a challenge for a young generation looking to express themselves beyond the imposed ideal South Korean look — often controlled by the Kpop and cosmetic industries.
The tattoo history is actually centuries old in Korea. Sailors marked themselves with frightening shapes to scare away the monsters that inhabited the deep seas. But things changed during the Joseon dynasty when tattoos were used to mark robbers for their crimes and slaves as a perpetual mark of punishment. In the 20th century, South Korean gangs inspired by Japanese Yakuza used tattoos as a distinctive mark. This rather dark history of the art created a negative perception that has endured to this day in this very conservative society. Nowadays, a new generation of Koreans influenced by pop stars, Western athletes and television programs see tattoos as attractive and fashionable. But the ban remains in place.
Those portraits of young South Korean Tattooists who chose to defy laws and cultural standards have been captured directly on pieces of 8x10 inches negative photographic paper.
Tim Franco is a French-Polish photographer born in Paris in 1982. In 2005, he moved to China where he started documenting the country’s incredible urbanization and its social impact while collaborating with newspapers such as Le Monde, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. In 2015, he published his first Monograph — Metamorpolis — the conclusion of five years of work on the rural migrations in the fastest urbanizing city in the world: Chongqing. It is during this time that Tim developed his style of working mostly with analog cameras and bringing a minimalist aesthetic to documentary photography. While applying those principles, Tim started to focus his work on portraiture. Experimenting with different photographic processes, he wishes to give a voice to underrepresented communities. In 2016, Tim Franco moved to South Korea where he started working on a long term project about North Korean defectors.
All About Tim Franco
Metamorpolis
Tim Franco’s Website
Timfranco
The 3rd Place Winner is Harvey Stein (United States) with his series Projected Memories
These portraits are meant to be somewhere between abstraction and representation, between the commonplace and the extraordinary, between reality and dream, between the condition of entrapment and the possibility of release. The combining of face and projection expresses the merging of present and past, collaged to reflect the complexity of memory overlapping fantasy, the confusion of identity, the mutability of the flesh and ultimate death. The work is a layering of myth and reality, the actual and the imagined, the universal and the personal.
In Harvey Stein’s long and wide-ranging career as an engaged photographer working in the documentary tradition, he has utilized the medium to create photographs that capture the spirit and vitality of the people and places he depicts. His prime focus is to connect with his fellow human beings in intense and close-up images that form his long-term photo book projects. Stein’s time working in communities from Harlem to Coney Island, and from Midtown New York City to Northern Italy to Central Mexico has resulted in eight books (and one to be published September 2020) and over 85 one-person exhibitions that reveal his personal style and commitment to building human connections with photography. His long term documentary investigations of groups as varied as identical twins, Coney Island people, inhabitants of Harlem, artists in their studios and People Living with AIDS have resulted in compelling and evocative in-depth visual/text essays that help illuminate the human condition.
All About Harvey Stein
Exclusive Interview with Harvey Stein
Harvey Stein’s Website
@stein.harvey
Discover the full list of winners on All About Photo: https://www.all-about-photo.com/all-about-photo-contest.php?cid=13
