My photography is an expression of my curiosity for people and the places they inhabit. I am particularly drawn by interactions between people and with the structures that surround them in the urban landscape.
When not working to a project my photography is generally unplanned, always candid and in public. All images derive from single shots. I delight in capturing the spontaneous events and occurrences that unfold before the camera’s lens transforming otherwise mundane scenes into moments of theatre
I work in both digital and analogue formats; processing my work in Lightroom and the darkroom.
Only recently have I opened up my street work to public view.
I hope you enjoy some of the images you find here.
Kevin Fletcher is an internationally recognized cinematographer and photographer.
All of these photographs were taken on a single street in Portland, Oregon - a heavily travelled route that thousands of people navigate every day. Often derided and by some even considered ugly, it is not known for its ease or hospitality, but nonetheless, it is a necessary and functional part of the city. Like many photographers before me (Robert Adams, Stephen Shore, Narelle Autio, and William Eggleston, to name just a few), I am drawn to the sublime beauty and stories that exist in places like this; places so normal, so daily, and so banal that we tend to overlook them.
The Avenue of Roses is less than a mile from my house; its title is far prettier than its reputation. It is the northern end of the Cascade Highway, and also carries the less poetic name of 82nd Ave. It used to be the rural outer edge of the city. However, consistent urban growth has tsunamied right up to and over it creating a taught rope of pavement compressed on both sides by gentrification and increased housing prices. It has also become a socio-political line that divides the inner portions of the city, epitomized by ‘green’ modernization and increasing wealth, from the perimeter neighborhoods that don’t benefit in the same way.
This project is a look into my backyard – a look at my city. A documentary about 82nd Avenue against the backdrop of Portland’s rampant urban growth and a look at how we, as denizens, have at times prospered, but have also suffered from it. Every city in the world has an “avenue of roses”: a place depicting the multi-layered relationships humans have with their constructed environments and urban landscapes. A place reflecting the socioeconomic strata of the broader city, and a place that speaks not only to isolation and disenfranchisement, but also speaks to how communities come together within these complex spaces. Welcome to the Avenue of Roses
Cameron Lee Phan is a Vietnamese-American photographer based in New York City. Their work focuses on portraiture, self-portraiture, and documenting moments of synchronicity.
"The best part of me is you" is a project discovering my own identity as a man, by using photography I am about to decipher who I am through the people I am drawn to photograph. I can see how the more effeminate man becomes more accepted in society as we move into a generation of men who are more openly expressive in challenging what is typically conceived as masculine. Some of the men photographed in the project I’ve known for years and others i've only had a few interactions with before asking to photograph them but all of them have shown me a part of my own identity in them.
Toby Glanville's photographs have been published and exhibited internationally and are held in collections including the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; The Bruce Bernard Collection; The British Council & The National Portrait Gallery, London.
Born and raised in Texas, Lauren Withrow began photographing at the age of 15. Now based out of New York City, her portrait and fashion images are heavily influenced by cinematic themes.
Gordon Parks was seventeen when, in 1929, he first met Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington in the back of the Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis. A veteran of Harlem’s famed Cotton Club, Ellington was widely recognized as one of the jazz world’s leading figures—and he was in the process of effectively reinventing the genre by blending big-band orchestral arrangements with solo improvisation. By contrast, Parks was living on the streets, playing piano in flophouses, hanging around nightclubs and pool halls, and skipping school. He was enthralled by Ellington’s style, grace, and musical genius.
Ellington became a hero for the young man. Decades later, in 1960, Parks was overjoyed by the opportunity to tour with Ellington’s band, calling it “a trip through paradise” (To Smile in Autumn, 1979). By then, Ellington was the foremost big-band leader, having recorded with John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, and Max Roach. In his photographs, Parks revealed his admiration for the musician’s pensive elegance, magnetic personality, and exceptional stage presence.
Born in 1971 in Beijing, Yang Fudong received a BFA in oil painting from the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, in 1995 but pursued his artistic career in filmmaking and photography. Influenced by a wide range of visual references and formal considerations, Yang often stages contradictions between present social conditions, classical Chinese cultural tropes, and modern film culture to explore broader historical, social, and political themes. Featuring fragmented, overlapping, and abstract storylines, his film style is notable for its long suspended sequences and frequent use of black-and-white.
Yang’s first feature, An Estranged Paradise (1997–2002), depicts the journey of a reticent young intellectual, Zhuzi, who suffers from an undiagnosed malaise. The film follows the disconsolate protagonist as he wanders the streets and parks of a rapidly modernizing Hangzhou, trying to make meaning of an environment from which he feels estranged. His psychological displacement conveys the sense of an individual unmoored by sweeping social change.
Starting in 2003, Yang embarked on his most epic and celebrated work, the five-part opus Seven Intellectuals in a Bamboo Forest (2003–07). He produced one film per year, and the pentalogy, which explores dissonances between real and ideal worlds, was featured at the 2007 Venice Biennale. The title references a famous story about third-century Daoist sages, who were revered for their sharp political commentary and uninhibited hedonism. Yang retells this tale in a contemporary setting, and the film series follows a group of stylish young literati who similarly shun the complexities of urban life and retreat to the countryside. However, a simpler life proves too difficult, only adding to their psychological and moral confusion. Like several subsequent works, his films and videos are dreamlike, atemporal, and visually beautiful.
Yang has had solo exhibitions at Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2005); National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (2010); Kunsthalle Zürich, Zurich (2013); and Yuz Museum, Shanghai (2015), among others. His work has been exhibited in group shows such as Fruits de la passion, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2012–13); Bentu: Chinese Artists in a Time of Turbulence and Transformation, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2016); What About the Art? Contemporary Art from China, Qatar Museums Gallery Al Riwaq, Doha (2016); and Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World, Guggenheim Museum (2017–18, traveled to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao [2018] and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art [2018–19]). It has also appeared in Documenta, Kassel, Germany (2002); Liverpool Biennial (2004); Venice Biennale (2003 and 2007); Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane (2007); Guangzhou Triennial (2008); Performa, New York (2009); Shanghai Biennial (2010); and Sharjah Biennial, United Arab Emirates (2013). A finalist for the 2004 Hugo Boss Prize, Yang lives and works in Shanghai.
In 1957, Life assigned Gordon Parks to illustrate a recurring series of articles on crime in the United States. The editors wanted to examine not only rising rates of criminal misconduct but also the perceived lack of response to such activity. Parks embarked on a six-week journey that took him and a reporter, Henry Suydam, to the streets of New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Many of Parks’ images are low-lit, with figures shown in shadow, reflected in mirrors or windows, and blurred in motion. Later Parks vividly described episodes from this assignment, most notably traveling with two ethically questionable Chicago policemen as they went on drug raids, and the chilling execution of convicted murderer Thomas L Johnston at San Quentin. After a preview of the series in the September 2 issue of Life, the first full-length article was published on September 9. The introductory image in the article is of a man’s face in silhouette as he speaks into a radio transceiver while sitting in a car. The only light entering the frame is a soft white glow cut with blue and red circles on the rain-spotted windshield beyond the figure. This dark image typifies the gloomy, grainy style of the entire series
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