Biographies
Colby Deal is a photographic artist born and raised in Houston, Texas. He received his Bachelors of Fine Arts in the practice of photography from The University of Houston. Within his practice he explores the culmination of elements of the psychological environment as well as the physical. He shows the dynamic range of family, community and the individual by combining street photography and portraiture to capture vibrant communities. In the recent years he has incorporated the medium of sculpture and public art as a means of preserving cultural characteristics that are being erased and positively influencing his community and others alike. Colby is directly inspired by his upbringing through getting to see his family’s photographs that were mostly taken by his father. This appreciation for slowing down and concentrating on photographing what’s right in front of him, “The Now”, has led him to be more in touch with using analog photography. Deal is an alumni of Project Row Houses residency, Red Line Contemporary Art Center residency in Denver, Colorado and in 2020, was awarded an exhibition at the Houston Museum of African American Culture.
Colby became a Magnum nominee member in 2020.
Thomas Dworzak has documented many of this century’s most important news stories since the 1990s, with an unflinching eye and depth of vision.. Dworzak started travelling aged 16 to photograph conflicts in Northern Ireland, Israel/Palestine and the disintegrating Yugoslavia. Since then, he has gone on to photograph wars in Afghanistan and Iraq post 9/11, the revolutions in the former Soviet republics of Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine.
After graduating from Robert-Schuman Gymnasium, Cham (specializing in English, French, and History) he left Germany, always combining his travels and attempts to become a photographer with studying languages: Spanish in Avila, Czech in Prague, Russian in Moscow. During the Nineties, Dworzak lived in Georgia, exploring the people, culture and conflicts in the Caucasus, which resulted in the book, Kavkaz in 2010.
Significant projects include a several-month assignment in Afghanistan for The New Yorker, where he discovered studio portraits of the Taliban. This became his first book, “Taliban”. Meanwhile, images taken during his many assignments in Iraq, most of which were shot for TIME Magazine, were used to create his next book:“M*A*S*H* IRAQ”. In his most recent project, Feldpost (2013 – 2018), he photographed the ‘memory’ of WWI in more than 80 countries, producing 1568 ‘postcards’ (one for every day of the war). It was completed on 11/11/2018, 100 years after the end of the conflict.
Dworzak is also a keen curator, with a particular interest in digital culture. His work mining Instagram memes under various hashtags—ranging from animals dressed as the pope to the aftermath of the Boston marathon bombing‚—has resulted in 20 sketchbooks compiled of his findings.
Dworzak became a Magnum nominee in 2000 and a full member in 2004. He was President of Magnum from 2017 to 2020.
Chien-Chi Chang’s photography and films explore the abstract concepts of alienation and connection. His investigation of the ties that bind one person to another draws on his own deeply divided immigrant experience, as he explores the contrasting themes of hope and darkness, restriction and freedom.
Chang’s long term interest in the manifestation of restriction and freedom was explored in his project on North Korean defectors. From 2007 to 2009 , Chang travelled with North Korean defectors to document their incredibly harrowing journey escaping to China. Between 2006-2012, Chang worked on a project called Jet Lag, which explored the globalised disconnect of the “jet-setting” lifestyle, culminating in a book of the same name, published in 2015.
Chang’s work has been shown in galleries and museums around the world and is the recipient of multiple awards including the W. Eugene Smith Grant (1999) and Magazine Photographer of the Year (1998)
Chang joined Magnum in 1995 and became a full member in 2001.
Gregory Halpern is known for his intuitively rich colour photography that draws attention to harsh social realities as well as the unerring strangeness of everyday life. His work is rooted in both the real and the sublime and this approach has lead him to photograph life in post-industrial towns of the American Rust Belt, the people and places of Los Angeles and the uniquely unifying experience of a total solar eclipse. “What’s interesting to me about the world is its chaos and contradictions, the way opposites can be so beautiful in relation to each other,” says Halpern of his practice.
Though Halpern says he is primarily motivated by the desire to “create” rather than “document”, his work is powerfully affecting. A study of working conditions for janitorial staff at Harvard, created while he was a student there, resulted in a successful bid for the minimum wage and was published as a book, Harvard Works Because We Do (2003). While his images of life in post-industrial towns of the American Rust Belt were published to critical acclaim in A (2011), and show resilience in the face of harsh social and economic realities. Selected clients include The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, M Le Monde, Bloomberg Businessweek, Sports Illustrated and VICE.
Halpern became a Magnum nominee member in 2018.
Richard Kalvar has ambiguity at the forefront of his photography. Kalvar, who describes context as the “enemy”, seeks mystery and multiple meaning through surprising framing and meticulous timing. He describes his approach as “more like poetry than photojournalism – it attacks on the emotional level.” He has done extensive personal, assignment and commercial work in the United States, France, Italy, England, and Japan, among others.
Kalvar has published a number of solo books: Portrait de Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, 1993; Earthlings (Terriens), 2007;Drôles de vie!, 2008; Richard Kalvar: Photo Poche, 2018; Richard Kalvar: Photofile (the English-language version of Photo Poche), 2019; and Magnum, la Storia, le Immagini: Richard Kalvar, 2019. He has had important exhibitions in the US, France, Germany, Spain and Italy, and has participated in multiple group books and exhibitions in America and Europe, notably Centre Pompidou Album Photographique 1, 1979, L’Usine, 1987, and in several Magnum books, most recently Magnum Contact Sheets, 2013, Magnum Analog Recovery, 2017 and Magnum Manifesto, 2017.
Kalvar’s work has appeared in Geo, The Paris Review, Creative Camera, Aperture, Zoom, Newsweek, and Photo, among many others. Editorial assignments and even commercial work have given Kalvar an additional opportunity to do personal photography. He did many documentary stories that allowed him to disengage from documentary mode when the occasion arose.
Kalvar joined Magnum as an associate member in 1975, and became a full member two years later. He subsequently served several times as vice president, and once as president of the agency.
Lorenzo Meloni is known for his searing, artfully drawn photography covering conflicts in the Middle East. Though he is often working on the frontline—he has covered some of the most pivotal battles in the war against the Islamic State—he is also concerned with deeper themes, such as history and post-colonialism.
In 2011, he finished his photography studies and immediately joined Contrasto, a major Italian photographic agency. He lived in Beirut from 2012 to 2014 and dedicated himself to long-term projects regarding the aftermath of the fall of Gaddafi in Libya, the conflict in Syria (specifically the area of Rojava) and its impact in Lebanon, between 2014 to 2016. His work currently focuses on the consequences of the Sykes-Picot agreement and the military and political intervention of the West in the Middle East.
Meloni’s work has been exhibited in festivals worldwide including the Venice Biennale, Visa pour L’Image, Les Rencontres d’Arles, Boutographies and Fotoleggendo and has been featured in global publications including The Telegraph, TIME, Le Figaro, Vanity Fair, Internazionale, L’Espresso, La Repubblica.
Meloni became a full member of Magnum Photos in 2020.
Rafal Milach’s work explores themes of history and transformation—particularly within the former Soviet bloc—using a myriad of mediums such as photography, conceptual art, books, video and curation. Though he initially tackled subjects through a traditional documentary perspective, his later projects draw on a more conceptual approach.
Milach was born in 1978 in Poland and grew up during the collapse of the Soviet bloc. He studied graphic design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice, Poland, before ‘falling in love’ with photography the first time he picked up a camera. He later studied at the ITF Institute of Creative Photography of the Silesian University in Opava, Czech Republic, where he is currently a lecturer.
His works have been widely exhibited in Poland and worldwide, and can be found in the collections of the MoMA Warsaw, CCA Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, the ING Polish Art Foundation, Kiyosato, the Museum of Photographic Arts (Japan), and Brandts in Odense (Denmark).
Milach joined Magnum as a Nominee in 2018.
Emin Özmen is concerned with documenting human rights violations in his home country of Turkey and around the world. His deeply affecting work has brought attention to the suffering of those who are victim to natural disaster, civil unrest and corruption.
Since a few years, he has been working on his two long-term projects: Limbo, which documents the populations uprooted by the spiral of conflicts and “Hidden war” about the Kurdish conflict that has simmered for decades in Turkey. He worked in South Sudan in 2018 on the adversity and resilience of life in a Protection of Civilians camp and surrounding villages. In 2019 he travelled to Venezuela, where he covered the humanitarian crisis inflicting the country.
His work has been published by TIME magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Der Spiegel, Le Monde magazine M, Paris Match, Newsweek, among others. Özmen has won several awards, among them two World Press Photo awards and Public Prize of The Bayeux Calvados awards for war correspondents. He was a member of the jury of 2016 and 2018 World Press Photo Multimedia contests.
Özmen became a Magnum nominee in 2017. He currently lives in Istanbul.
Gilles Peress began documenting immigration in Europe in 1972. This work continues in his current ongoing project, Hate Thy Brother, a cycle of documentary narratives that looks at intolerance and its consequences.
His books include Haines; A Village Destroyed; The Graves: Srebrenica and Vukovar; The Silence: Rwanda; Farewell to Bosnia and Telex Iran.
His work has been exhibited and is collected by the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, PS1, all in New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Getty Museum in Los Angeles; the Walker Art Center and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts; the V&A in London; the Musée d’Art Moderne, the Picasso Museum, Parc de la Villette and Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris; the Museum Folkwang, Essen; the Sprengel Museum in Hannover, among others.
Awards and fellowships Peress has received include: The Guggenheim Fellowship , National Endowment for the Arts grants, Pollock-Krasner and New York State Council of the Arts fellowships, the W. Eugene Smith Grant for Humanistic Photography and the International Center of Photography Infinity Award.
Portfolios of his work have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Sunday Times Magazine, Du magazine, LIFE, Stern, Geo, Paris-Match, Parkett, Aperture and The New Yorker.
Peress is Professor of Human Rights and Photography at Bard College, NY and Senior Research Fellow at the Human Rights Center, UC Berkeley. Peress joined Magnum Photos in 1971 and served three times as vice-president and twice as president of the co-operative. He and his wife, Alison Cornyn, live in Brooklyn with their three children.
Mark Power’s complex, meticulously crafted images usually made with a large-format camera have earned him a reputation as one of the forerunners of British photography. Known for his seminal work exploring the far-flung locations esoterically described in the BBC’s iconic Shipping Forecast, Power has adeptly expressed the peculiarities of social culture in places as varied as Britain, Poland and America.
His latest project, Good Morning America (which began in 2012 and is ongoing), reflects the current state of the nation while at the same time responding to memories of the cultural imperialism which crossed the Atlantic during his childhood in the British suburbs, in the form of music, film and, in particular, television. “I keep a physical and metaphorical distance between myself and the subject,” Power has said of his process, “yet I remain deeply connected. One might call it an intimate distance.” Another significant project where he again took on the role of a foreign observer, was The Sound of Two Songs (2004-2009), a five-year investigation into the impact of European Union membership on Poland.
Notable commercial collaborations include a commission by Airbus (2003-2006) to document the construction of the largest passenger plane ever built, the Airbus A380. The clarity and visual adeptness of the project resulted in three shows at the photography festival Printemps de Septembre in Toulouse. He has documented the construction phases of the Millenium Dome, The Treasury, Kings Cross station and more recently the new distillery of The Macallan.
For many years his work has been seen in numerous galleries and museums across the world and is in several important collections, both public and private, including the Arts Council of England, the British Council, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Milwaukee Art Museum, and Marrakech Museum of Photography and Visual Art.
Power lives in Brighton, on the south coast of England. He joined Magnum Photos as a Nominee in 2002, and became a full Member in 2007.
Hannah Price (b. 1986), raised in Fort Collins, Colorado, is a photographic artist and filmmaker primarily interested in documenting relationships, race politics, and misperception. Price is internationally known for her project City of Brotherly Love (2009-2012), a series of photographs of the men who catcalled her on the streets of Philadelphia. In 2014, Price graduated from Yale School of Art MFA Photography program, receiving the Richard Benson Prize for excellence in photography. Over the past nine years, Price’s photos have been displayed in several cities across the United States with a few residing in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Price became a Magnum nominee member in 2020 and currently lives and works in Philadelphia, PA.
Lua Ribeira’s practice is characterized by its collaborative nature, extensive research and an immersive approach to her subject matter. She is interested in using the photographic medium as a means to create encounters that establish relationships and question structural separations between people.
Ribeira was born in 1986, in Galicia, northern Spain. She graduated in Graphic Design at BAU School of Design, Barcelona in 2011, and earned a first-class honours in a BA in Documentary Photography from the University of South Wales in 2016. Since graduating, she has continued her academic engagement as a guest lecturer at various universities, including the University of Westminster, University of the West of England, and Complutense University of Madrid.
Ribeira’s work has received several awards and honors, including the Firecracker Grant for Women in Photography, and the Jerwood/Photoworks award. Her work has been published in book form by Fishbar, London in 2017, features in the publication Firecrackers: Female Photographer Now published by Thames and Hudson in 2017, in and Raw View Magazine‘s, “Women looking at Women” in 2016. Her work has been exhibited internationally in both solo and group shows in venues including Impressions Gallery, Bradford, Ffotogallery Cardiff, Belfast Exposed gallery, Beijing International Photography Biennale, and many more.
Other publications Ribeira’s work has been featured in include British Journal of Photography, Paper Journal, Refinery 21, AnOther, and Tate magazine. Selected commercial clients include Chanel, Carla Lopez handbags, Birmingham Botanical Gardens, and Wire Magazine.
She joined Magnum photos as a nominee in 2018.
Zied Ben Romdhane (b. 1981, Tunisia) started his career as a commercial photographer. In 2011 he switched to documentary photography and photojournalism. His work has been featured in The New York Times and The Washington Post.
His recent exhibitions include Views of Tunisia (Arles 2013), After the Revolution (White Box, NY 2013), and Zones d’Attente (Clark House, Bombay 2013), kushti (Maison de la Tunisie, Paris 2013), Fotofest Biennial in Houston Center for Photography (Houston , USA 2014), Sahel (1×1 Gallery, Dubai 2014), Trace (MUCEM, Marseille 2015) , Afrotopia African biennale of photography (Bamako , Mali 2017), and the Biennale of the photographs of the contemporary Arab world (France , Paris 2017).
Romdhane published his first book West of Life in 2018 with Red Hook Editions.
Prizes and awards include, selection for the Prize 6X6 Global Talent Program 2018 with World Press Photo Foundation, participant of Joop swart masterclass with World Press Photo, winner of the POPCAP award (Africa Image, Basel, 2015).
He is the Director of Photography of Fallega (2011), a documentary film about the Arab Spring in Tunisia. Ben Romdhane was a participant in World Press Photo’s 2013 Reporting Change initiative, member of the collective “Rawiya” and “Native”.
Zied Ben Romdhane joined Magnum as a nominee in 2019.
Lindokuhle Sobekwa is a South African photographer born in Katlehong, Johannesburg in 1995. Sobekwa came to photography in 2012 through his participation in the Of Soul and Joy Project, an educational programme run in Thokoza, a township in the southeast of Johannesburg. He studied with Bieke Depoorter, Cyprien Clément-Delmas, Thabiso Sekgala, Tjorven Bruyneel and Kutlwano Moagi.
Sobekwa’s early projects dealt with poverty and unemployment in the townships of South Africa, as well as the growing nyaope drug crisis within them. His ongoing works, as well as revisiting those early themes, also deal with his own life – for example his relationship with his sister, Ziyanda, who died after becoming estranged from her family.
In 2013, Sobekwa was part of a group show in Thokoza organised by Rubis Mecenat at the Ithuba Art Gallery in Johannesburg. His essay Nyaope was published in the South African newspaper Mail & Guardian in 2014. The work was also published in Vice Magazine’s Annual Photo Issue, and the De Standaard the same year.
In 2015, Sobekwa received a scholarship to study at the Market Photo Workshop where he completed his foundation course. His Series Nyaope was exhibited in the ensuing group show, Free From My Happiness, organised by Rubis Mecenat at the International Photo Festival of Ghent in Belgium. In 2016, he left South Africa for a Residency in Tehran, Iran, with the No Man’s Art Gallery. The same year his work was displayed in the travelling iteration of Free from my Happiness.
His work features in the book Free from my Happiness edited by Bieke Depoorter and Tjorven Bruyneel . He also took part part in the group show Fresh Produce, organized by Assemblages and VANSA at the Turbine Art Fair in Johannesburg. Lindokuhle Sobekwa is also an assistant to the Of Soul and Joy Project Manager as well as a trainee at Mikhael Subotzky Studio.
In 2017, Sobekwa was selected by the Magnum Foundation for Photography and Social Justice to develop the project I Carry Her Photo With Me. In 2018, he received the Magnum Foundation Fund to continue with his longterm project Nyaope, and has been selected for the residency Cité des Arts Réunion.
Sobekwa became a Magnum nominee member in 2018.
Chris Steele-Perkins has produced some of the most iconic images of British society in the last half-century, exploring youth subcultures, poverty and community with artful sensitivity. His more than 45-year career has seen him travel widely, making significant bodies of work in his home country of Myanmar, as well as Japan, Africa and Afghanistan, all of which have received critical acclaim.
After marrying his second wife, Miyako Yamada, he embarked on a long-term photographic exploration of Japan, publishing Fuji in 2000. A highly personal diary of 2001, Echoes, was published in 2003, and the second of his Japanese books, Tokyo Love Hello, in March 2007. His documentation of rural life in County Durham, which was published as Northern Exposures in 2007. In 2009, he published a collection of work from 40 years of photographing England – England, My England. His book on British centenarians, Fading Light, was published in 2012 and his latest book A Place in the Country, a year in the life of a great English Country Estate was published by Dewi Lewis in 2014.
Steele-Perkins has worked on commission for many high-profile publications including The Sunday Times magazine and The Guardian and selected commercial clients include Nissan, Purina and Spencer Hart.
He continues to work in Britain and abroad. His recent project, documenting diversity and migration in London, was published as a book The New Londoners, in summer 2019, while a book on his work in Japan will be published at the end of 2019.
Steele Perkins became a member of Magnum Photos in 1979.
