The Freeman View

Jose Navarro

José Navarro

José Navarro is a documentary photographer in the humanist tradition, with an MA in the subject from the University of Wales, and who also happens to be one of our tutors at the Open College of the Arts. He works particularly on the relationships between people and their natural surroundings, and even more specifically in remote and inhospitable environments, such as Eqypt’s Western Desert, India’s Thar Desert, the Andean Plateau (for which he received the 1998 Wilderness Award), the Moroccan High Atlas and Guyana. Continue Reading…

Martin Reeves

Raised in Brighton on England’s Channel coast, Martin Reeves created for himself a unique photographic career, one in which he combined a subject and a process both of which hold for him an aura of magic — pre-modern Asia and black-and-white infrared film. Stimulated by a Polaroid camera that he received at the age of seven, succeeded by a succession of hand-me-down cameras, Reeves pursued photography in his own way. Lasting just one day at Eastbourne Art College, he left “when I saw a teacher tear up a student’s painting in front of the class and stamp on it saying it was rubbish. I remember thinking, ‘Who are you to decide what is good and what is bad art? I thought art was about personal expression?’” Continue Reading…

Cary Wolinsky

Cary Wolinsky began working as a photojournalist for the Boston Globe in 1968 while completing a degree in journalism at Boston University’s School of Communications. By 1972, he was providing freelance photographic essays to many national magazines, including Natural History, National Geographic, and Smithsonian. His photographs have been printed in hundreds of publications throughout the world, and is best known for his international, historical, scientific and cultural photographic essays published regularly in National Geographic magazine since 1977. His numerous stories include; Sichuan: Where China Changes Course, Inside the Kremlin, Sir Joseph Banks, The Greening of the Empire, The Power of Writing, Australia A Harsh Awakening, New Eyes on the Oceans, Diamonds - The Real Story, What’s in Your Mind and, The Down Side of Being Upright.

His fine art prints are n the collections of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, Massachusetts, the Fogg Museum and the MIT Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts and the Tikotin Museum in Haifa. Continue Reading…

Steve Vidler

Steve Vidler has a unique position in photography, but one that because of its very nature is unheralded, even practically anonymous. In the days when stock photography was almost exclusively professional, and when images of places were actually in limited supply, Vidler was the most prolific and the most sold travel stock photographer, bar none. Stock photography has since changed into a commodity market supplied by anyone and everyone, but despite this, Vidler’s huge collection, fuelled by 40 years of non-stop travelling, means that he remains a significant contributor. Continue Reading…

Laura El-Tantawy

Laura El-Tantawy was born in Worcestershire, England and grew up between Cairo, Egypt and Dammam, Saudi Arabia. She graduated from the University of Georgia in Athens, GA (USA) with a dual degree in journalism and political science, worked as a staff photographer with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune in Sarasota, Florida, before becoming a freelance photographer in 2005. Having her roots in newspaper photography has played a critical role in shaping her development because the simple nature of being a newspaper photographer — covering a wide range of assignments, including sports, spot news, business portraits and feature hunting – stimulates flexibility, creativity Continue Reading…

Tim Rudman

Tim Rudman began his involvement with photography in the 1960’s whilst studying medicine in London, pursued a career in medicine but now devotes his time to photography. He developed a distinctive style of black and white, pioneering the process known as Lith Printing, on which he is widely regarded as the leading authority and practitioner. His work and publications in this field are held to be primarily responsible for its current popularity as a photographic art form around the world. His work has been exhibited in over 50 countries, gaining many top international awards, while at the same time he writes (four books published so far), lectures and runs workshops (to date in Britain, Ireland, Spain, Australia, Canada and the United States). In the excitable world of digital cameras and software, it’s easy to forget that photography transcends the latest fashions in technology. Tim has pursued a vision that is very much his own, researching and developing the craft necessary to realise it. He is a member and past Chairman of The London Salon of Photography, a founder member and subsequent Chairman of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain’s Distinctions Panel for Photographic Printing, a 20 year member of its Distinctions Panel for Visual Arts, and a past selector for the Tyng permanent collection. He is a member of the Arena group of photographers in the UK and the Freestyle Advisory Board of Photographic Professionals in Hollywood, California. His work is represented in a number of permanent and private collections around the world. Continue Reading…

Mike Yamashita

Photographer Michael Yamashita

Mike Yamashita has combined his dual passions of photography and travel for over 25 years, working most notably for the National Geographic. Specialising in Asia, he has covered Vietnam and the Mekong River, Marco Polo’s journey to China, the Great Wall, the DMZ between North and South Korea, as well as almost every aspect of Japanese culture from samurai to fish markets. Continue Reading…

Romano Cagnoni

Born in Tuscany, Romano Cagnoni is one of the world’s great photographers in the reportage tradition, with a long succession of significant work that includes Biafra, Vietnam (the first photographer admitted into North Vietnam), Cambodia, Northern Ireland, Afghanistan (the Russian invasion), Chechniya, Yugoslavia and Kosovo. He left Italy for London in 1958, where he worked with Simon Guttmann (founder of modern photojournalism with Robert Capa, Felix Mann, Kurt Hutton, Cartier-Bresson, et al), and has been published in all the major international magazines, including Life, The Sunday Times Magazine, New York Times Magazine, Observer Magazine, Der Spiegel, L’Express, Epoca, among many others. Continue Reading…

Brian Harris

One of the best-known names in British news photography, Brian Harris began his career in 1969 as a messenger for a Fleet Street press agency. After working for local newspapers in East London, and freelancing, he moved to the Times in 1976 as a staff photographer, staying until a major disagreement over his coverage of the Sudan famine in 1984. When the Independent was launched in 1986, Brian was appointed its Chief Photographer; the newspaper’s refreshing use of photography showcased his strong and typically minimal composition, coupled with a fine sense of timing, especially for expression and gesture. He remained until 1999, and since then has been freelance.

Brian’s roll call of events includes the civil war in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, the aftermath of the Falklands War, famines in Ethiopia and Sudan, every British election in the last two decades, as well as four US Presidential campaigns, the first elections in Nepal, the death of Rajiv Ghandi in India, and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

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