My biggest inspiration is my curiousity and wanderlust.

Name: Joe Dixey
Hometown: Nottinghamshire, but I now live and work in Brighton.
Style of photography: Socio-political landscape documentary.
Type of camera(s): Hasselblad 500CM
Website: Currently working on a website, for the meanwhile I am using my blog – joedixey.tumblr.com

What gives you inspiration?

I guess my biggest inspiration is my curiousity and wanderlust. Without them, I wouldn’t have found interesting things to photograph.

What are your influences?

Simon Roberts, Ben Roberts, Andy Sewell are photography that are currently influncing my work, but this often changes. A constant influence on me is the writings of Minor White. 

Why did you choose these photos?

I chose these photos because they are from a project that is very close to my heart. They are a documentation of a small English village that I grew up in but moved away from. It is an attempt to recapture childhood memories, and to capture what it is like in such a village in the 21st century and how they have shaped the landscape in which they live.

What does photography mean to you?

A romanticisation of the mundane.

Photos:

Copyright reserved by Joe Dixey

Photography to me is a way to show existing things in a different way than they might be physically or consciously perceived by visually studying a subject.

Name: Aleksey Kondratyev
Hometown: Detroit, Michigan
Style of photography: Landscape
Type of camera(s): Toyo 45A
Website: http://cargocollective.com/akondratyev, Flickr & http://standquarterly.com/

What gives you inspiration?

A lot of different things give me inspiration. I took an anthropology class recently, and the concept of ethnographic studies has influenced the way I went about photographing this series, ‘Fabricated Adventures.’ Looking at others’ art is always a big inspiration as well. I currently co-run a quarterly photo journal called Stand, and the photographers that we feature, and the work that people submit are always a big inspiration.
 
What are your influences?

Lately I’ve been influenced by a lot of different mediums. I really like the work of Caspar David Freidrich and other Northern European painters from that time period. In terms of photography, I’ve been influenced by Nadav Kander, Jessica Auer, Peter Bialobrzeski, and Joel Tettamanti a lot recently.
 
Why did you choose these photos? 

I chose these photos because I feel they best represent the new project that I’m working on.

What does photography mean to you?

Photography to me is a way to show existing things in a different way than they might be physically or consciously perceived by visually studying a subject.

Photos:

Copyright reserved by Aleksey Kondratyev

Even our thoughts and our imagination constantly finds its limits.

Name: Robert Schlaug
Hometown: I’m living in a little town near Nuremberg, Germany.
Style of photography: Landscapes, (everyday) architecture, urban landscapes, human intervention in nature
Type of camera(s): Different Canon cameras
Website: http://www.robertschlaug.com

What gives you inspiration?

As a photographer for me it’s important to go with my eyes open through daily life and thereby develop a glance for the mundane and banal. To see things that others no longer perceive in the hustle and bustle of everyday life and in times of total sensory overload. Some years ago the title of one of my exhibitions was: At second glance. This expresses exactly what I mean. This second glance I want to reproduce with my photographs.
 
What are your influences?

I’m influenced by the photographers of the New Topographics like Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Henry Wessel, Jr., Stephen Shore, also by the German photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher and their student Thomas Struth. 
 
Why did you choose these photos?  
 
These four photographs should be represent my work and make my main subjects clear:

First: I mainly want to demonstrate the influence of the human being on the environment, nature and landscape. Therefore is the focus of my work documenting the impact of human activity: our consumption and suburban sprawl by expulsion of  new industrial estates, shopping malls and residential areas on the edges of cities. The transfer of housing and dwelling from the inner cities to the suburbs and the emptiness and desolation of the older part of small towns and medium-sized cities.

Second: The houses in which people live all over the world are very different. In Germany, you used to be able to tell from the way a house was built in which region it was situated. Nowadays this is less and less the case. The availability of all possible construction materials has led to a standardization and uniformity of residential architecture. Each house can be found in any place in Germany. As everything is technically feasible, more and more anonymous, more-complicated and bizarre houses have been built. Simple designs have become a rarity. Uniformity and banality on the one hand, and uniqueness and weirdness on the other hand, are of course a big attraction for the photographer. Therefore, these homes have been one my favorite subjects for many years.

Third:  I have been photographing for years the impact of tourism and the real estate boom and crisis in Spain.

Fourth: My digitally processed series “limited area” deals with human limit experiences. In a time when one considers the possibilities of humanity for unlimited, the individual human experiences its limits and its limitations in daily life on a daily basis: Sometimes we think we run into a wall, stand in front of a precipice, not knowing how to proceed further or suddenly opens up before us on an insurmountable wall, and we know no way out. Even our thoughts and our imagination constantly finds its limits. We often feel the narrowness of the space physically, too. My images try to put all these experiences visually. 
 
What does photography mean to you?

Working as photographer is my great pleasure. Photography is a challenge to my creativity. So photography occupies my mind day by day.  I’m always looking for new projects. I’m  always interested in how we get involved with landscapes, with environments, how we design places and modify them and use the space and the landscape. 
 
Photos:

Copyright reserved by Robert Schlaug

It’s the ability to show people how silly things really are.

Name: Kensington Leverne
Hometown: Oxford
Style of photography: Documentary / portraiture / landscape….
Type of camera(s): Mamiya 7, Mamiya RZ67, Wista 5×4 field camera, Mamiya Press Universal, Canon 5D mark II (whatever I can get at the time!)
Website: www.kensingtonleverne.com

What gives you inspiration?

The mundane and ordinary – the silly little things that people don’t bother to stop and look at. I like Anna Fox’s ‘Resort’ series, everyone takes these absurd moments for granted, so someone has to draw attention to them.

What are your influences?

I go to a lot of fashion shows and events, it’s like an anthropological experiment. It’s great to tease out a human element from the chaos – like a funny smile or gesture from one of the models. Either that or focus on the absurd – the big screens and projections, the clothes and make-up, or the juxtaposition between the building and the sets that are built inside of them – all the things that warp reality a little. In that sort of environment all those things are taken for granted. 

Why did you choose these photos? 

They make me smile.

What does photography mean to you?

It’s the ability to show people how silly things really are. Or just to draw out a human element from a complex social environment. Sometimes it feels like if there wasn’t me there to photograph it, people wouldn’t even notice. I see this with a loads of photographers at the moment.

Photos:

Copyright reserved by Kensington Leverne

I’m not easily inspired by outside factors.

Name: Sarah Hermans
Hometown: Zutendaal, Belgium
Style of photography: Documenting… something…
Type of camera(s): Pentax mg, Pentax 6×7
Website: sarahhermans.com

What gives you inspiration?

I’m not easily inspired by outside factors. I think what works best for me is pushing myself when I feel stuck and feel both fear and excitement about where I might be going. I get motivated to go out and photograph by looking at form and abstraction. I really should have bought Safari by Anders Edström last week.

What are your influences?

Mark Rothko, Wolfgang Tillmans and Stephen Shore have really influenced my way of looking. ‘La Melancholie de la Photographie’ on Atget has made me understand my  motives to photograph a little bit more.

Why did you choose these photos? 

I felt like it.

What does photography mean to you?

I realized I often look at the world as something quite abstract that I can’t really get a grasp on. So I photograph? No, it mostly just feels like this is what I should be doing.

Photos:

Copyright reserved by Sarah Hermans

For me photography is about collecting and capture moments in life that I want to remember. 

Name: Nina Hove
Hometown: Kristiansand, Norway.
Style of photography: mix of color and black and white personal documentary.
Type of camera: Contax T2 and Pentax 67.
Website: www.ninahove.com

What gives you inspiration?

My inspiration comes mostly from nature. For example walking in the forest or climbing a mountain. For me this is like meditation, and I find inspiration from silence as much as walking along a busy street in a city I have never been before. I also find inspiration from looking at old vintage photographs, the pictures that are simple and unsofisticated without any other intentions than capture a precious moment on film.

What are your influences?

Some of my influences comes from great artists like Edward Hopper, Roy Anderson, Anders Petersen, JH Engstöm, David Lynch, Gerhard Richer, Andrej Tarkovskji and Bjørk.

Why did you choose these photos?

I choose these photos to show the general atmosphere that is a red tread throughout my work. A sort of poetic and quiet mood, with lot of inspiration from nature. 

What does photography mean to you?

For me photography is about collecting and capture moments in life that I want to remember. I also use photography as a personal diary, to understand myself and the world around me better.

Photos:

Copyright reserved by Nina Hove

Photography is a constant challenge to find something unique and beautiful in the world.

Name: Andrew Jensen. My friends call me AJ.
Hometown: Okemos, Michigan. I am currently studying photography at Northern Michigan University.
Style of photography: Landscape, mostly.
Type of camera(s): Mamiya 7II
Website: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ajtatersalad/

What gives you inspiration?

Long walks alone with my camera, empty strange places, wasted landscapes, and overcast skies. Also unexposed rolls of film and cold beer.

What are your influences?

I am always looking at the work of young photographers on flickr, especially the work of Salva Lopez, Jordan Small, Daniel Ribar, and Bruno Zhu. Robert Adams and Stephen Shore are also big influences on me, as well as my photographer friends Andy and Julian.

Why did you choose these photos?

These photographs are all fairly new, and I’m very excited about them. They may be part of a larger series eventually.

What does photography mean to you?

Photography is a constant challenge to find something unique and beautiful in the world.

Photos:

Copyright reserved by Andrew Jensen

It’s mind-blowing how humans shape the physical world. 

Name: Wouter Van de Voorde
Hometown: Canberra, Australia
Style of photography: Landscape
Type of camera(s): medium format rangefinder, 35mm point and shoot, …
Website: woutervandevoorde.com & blog.woutervandevoorde.com

What gives you inspiration?

Reality, it’s mind-blowing how humans shape the physical world. 

What are your influences?

Aboriginal art, surrealism (beyond Dali), American History X, Philip Lorca Dicorcia and the cool people that surround me.

Why did you choose these photos?
 
These are 4 pictures of my ‘fifteen’ series, I just picked some of my darlings.

What does photography mean to you?

More than it should, a big chunk of my happiness and sanity depend on me creating images.

Photos:

Copyright reserved by Wouter Van de Voorde

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