Photographer Profiles

Mobile, Alabama-based photographer Laura Cantrell says, “Mothers trust me to capture and preserve the magic in childhood.” Her photography business in Mobile was inherited from her father who sent his 17-year-old daughter on her first assignment to photograph a train wreck with a 4x5 Speed Graphic. By assisting her dad at weddings and shooting portraits she learned lighting, posing, and how to please clients.

Vincent van Gogh once said, “Stars are the souls of dead poets, but to become a star you have to die.” Vivian Maier (1926 - 2009) was an amateur photographer who had no desire to share her work with anyone during her life, and kept a treasure trove of over 100,000 prints, negatives, and films in five storage lockers in Chicago. By several twists of fate, they ended up in the hands of a few collectors who recognized their unique quality, and are now shown in books, documentaries, museums, and galleries throughout the world.

The idea for Phil Pantano’s photographic series, “The American Worker,” walked into his office at a local steel mill in Lackawanna, New York, where Pantano holds a day job as a computer analyst. The man who came through the door was Jay “Elvis” Borzillieri, a fourth-generation steelworker whose father died in the mill. It doesn’t matter to the story what Elvis stopped in for that day, but when Pantano looked into his face a flash went off in his mind.

What we look at when we look at a Sandro portrait is an image that is as much about Sandro as it is about his subject. About that he is frank and fearless.

Nope, editorial and advertising photographer Jody Dole doesn’t go down to the dump to look for subject matter. He’s more a flea market and tag sale type, and it was at the former that he met a picker who had, in Dole’s words, “really interesting junk—and an eye for interesting things.” Which is why Dole stops by at the guy’s place now and then, or vice versa, and an interesting thing or two changes hands.

Carleton Watkins was perhaps America’s greatest 19^th century landscape photographer yet today he’s largely unknown. His breathtaking landscapes of the Yosemite Valley were instrumental in preserving the valley for future generations and paving the way for both the National Parks system and the environmental movement.

Anuar Patjane Floriuk, popularly known as Anuar Patjane, has been scuba diving for 17 years. Much of his photography in the past has been focused on travel around the globe, but lately he’s been giving in more and more to his fascination with the sea. He’s been shooting underwater for five of those 17 years and finds the camera a natural extension of his inner being, helping him explore and fathom pelagic life, especially whales, and himself in the process.