fototazo Begins Mentorship Program

© Natalia Lopera

fototazo is launching a mentorship program as we start the new year. The program matches young, emerging Colombian photographers with mentors from across the spectrum of the photographic world - gallery owners, bloggers, academics, art directors, and working photographers. The goal is to provide the mentorship photographers with commentary and advice on their work from professionals in the field and to expand their network and knowledge of resources beyond Colombia.

The process will be a semi-public one. Images from the photographers will occasionally be posted on this site along with commentary from the mentors under the belief that their advice and insight will frequently be useful to other photographers and seeing how they look at and talk about photographs will be of public interest.

© Oscar Ulloa

The program will begin with four photographers, each matched with two mentors:

Photographer: Oscar Ulloa
Mentors: Matt Johnston co-runs The Photo Book Club as well as Phonar; he is a Professor at the University of Coventry in England; Kevin Thrasher is a photographer based in Richmond, Virginia

Photographer: Natalia Lopera 
Mentors: Julia Schiller co-runs the site Actual colors may vary; Oliver Schneider co-runs the site Actual colors may vary

Photographer: Daniela Serna 
Mentors: John Edwin Mason runs the blog John Edwin Mason: Documentary, Motorsports, Photo History and is a Professor at the University of Virginia; Wayne Ford runs Wayne Ford's Posterous and co-runs The Photo Book Club

Photographer: Aura Lambertinez
Mentors: Charles Guice is Founder of Charles Guice Contemporary; Gwen Lafage is Founder of Gallery Carte Blanche

Bryan Formhals, Founding and Managing Editor of LPV Magazine, will be serving as a floating mentor and guest critic, periodically reviewing work from all four program photographers.

© Daniela Serna

The mentorship program photographers will be delivering new work to the mentors in roughly a month at which point some of the work and comments will begin to appear in subsequent posts.

© Aura Lambertinez

f100: Pierfrancesco Celada and Flore Aël Surun

© Pierfrancesco Celada

fototazo has asked a group of 50 curators, gallery owners, blog writers, photographers, academics and others actively engaged in photography to pick two photographers that deserve (more) recognition - the underknown, the under-respected as well as not-appreciated-enough favorites. A little more information on the project is available in the first post in the series here.

Today we continue the series with responses from Gwen Lafage.

We began the series with responses from Nicholas Nixon, Matt Johnston, Blake Andrews, John Edwin Mason, Aline Smithson, Colin Pantall, Michael Werner, Liza Fetissova, Laurence Salzmann, Bryan Formhals, Richard Mosse, Shane Lavalette, Amy Stein, Amani Willett, Wayne Ford, S. Billie Mandle, Leslie K. Brown, Gordon Stettinius, Marc Feustel, Hin Chua, Adriana Rios Monsalve, Daniel Augschoell, Larissa Leclair, Elinor Carucci, Pieter Wisse, Daniel Echevarría, Natalie Minik, Qiana Mestrich, Jason Landry, Rona Chang, Stella Kramer, Joanne Lukitsh, and Yumi Goto.

© Flore Aël Surun

Respondent: Gwen Lafage is the founder of Carte Blanche, a project dedicated to emerging photography from around the world. The project will be first launched this fall online and then in San Francisco as a photography gallery and bookstore.

She also blogs regularly about the photography that questions and inspires her life. Originally from Brittany, France, she now lives in San Francisco.

Selections: Pierfrancesco Celada and Flore Aël Surun. Both are talented young European photographers who have succeeded in creating powerful emotional and question-raising bodies of work.

© Pierfrancesco Celada

Pierfrancesco Celada explores solitude in the modern Megalopolis. His long-term project in Japan shows isolation and loneliness in crowded environments. His images depict the complex emergence of individualization that is probably even stronger in modern cities than in countryside. In a society where ways of communicating have multiplied through modern technologies, he captures the opposite phenomena highlighting the lack of real communication and human relationships. By capturing scenes of daily life he questions the paradoxes of our time and brings us back to our relationship to the others… Moreover each one of his images is well thought and beautifully executed. I look forward to seeing the next part of his series as he is now back to Japan!
Watch this: http://vimeo.com/24687277

© Flore Aël Surun

Flore Aël Surun is a French photographer who belongs to 'Tendance Floue', a French collective that I particularly enjoy. They’re a group of engaged documentary photographers who are not afraid to shout what they think with strong images. Flore Aël Surun tells each of her stories with an over sensibility, with femininity and elegance and makes each one a beautiful testimony about life, death, love, ‘survivors’. “Because [as she says] their survivals of any orders get her to the heart without a warning.” And I believe that each one of her image gets to our heart without a warning. They’re aesthetically beautiful and emotionally fascinating. Through her approach Flore Aël Surun teaches us the power of personal documentary photography and its undeniable artistic appeal.