Step aside, Martha Stewart: Photo- saturated under-the-radar publications with names such as Kinfolk, Cherry Bombe, and Backyard Bill are redefining the good life—and the way we look at it. With a focus on the homegrown and handmade, this new wave of magazines and blogs is aimed at folks seeking a new style of living—creators, hipsters, and DIY-types whose alternative looks and semi-subversive values are unlikely to show up on the pages of Martha Stewart Living anytime soon. And the photographers who make the images that fill their pages are bringing an unadorned aesthetic to their work that belies its careful production.

The democratization of the visual world over the past decade has allowed fashion and lifestyle blogs like Bill Gentle’s Backyard Bill to flourish. Gentle believes lifestyle photography today is “the peoples’ photography; for the people, by the people.” Nicole Franzen, who shoots for small-circulation publications Cherry Bombe and Kinfolk as well as power players like Bon Appétit and Martha Stewart Living, agrees. She notes that this up-and-coming lifestyle aesthetic represents an “approachable luxury.” She explains: “I think it’s the young people striving to be better. I think we’re trying to change. We’re kind of rebelling against corporate America.”

Franzen’s work in particular reflects a pared-down photographic look that has grown up along with the DIY and farm-to-table movements of the aughts and the longing for authenticity that these types of magazines emphasize. She says photographers of her milieu are “trying to find the soul in things” with simple sunlit scenes that convey a feeling of approachability. “I like finding the beauty in everyday things that may be mundane,” she says. “I’ve always been a minimalist by nature.”

Former Dwell photo editor turned photographer Aya Brackett—who shoots food and still-life editorial for several of the same publications that Franzen does—says her assignments call for work that’s “beautiful and approachable” with a general trend toward natural light. Brackett conceptualizes her shoots the way she would compose a painting, she says, thinking about the play of color blocks, texture, and daylight-balanced strobes (or actual daylight when it’s available) to re-create a sunlit scene. Her process yields graphically striking photographic stories, and recently a cookbook, focusing on “slow food” and locally sourced organic cuisine. Her favorite work tends to be the “messy” food shots she does for clients like Cherry Bombe magazine, which puts a fashion and fine-art spin on food photography, and a recent personal series about “food that’s fallen to the ground and rendered inedible.”

Gentle too, is concerned with finding the extraordinary within the ordinary. “I like to play with light and colors; I like blown-out foreground textures and shadows casting interesting patterns,” he says. “I think it’s hard to decipher; that’s the magic, the umami. It’s what your eye sees at that particular moment.” But it wasn’t until after he developed his blog in 2008 that his visual language of “classic portraiture, street style, and a twist of quirky comedy” developed, he says.

The rise in this genre of photography is directly related to a cultural shift that’s taken place in creative communities in urban centers throughout the country, says Brooklyn-based Franzen. “It’s about going back to our roots. People are recognizing beauty in things made by hand. We want to know who is making things and the artistry behind it; it’s really appealing. Everyone from chefs to fashion designers to floral arrangers to furniture makers are doing unique things with their hands and taking time to master their craft.”

Gentle echoes Franzen’s sentiment: “I think what we are dealing with now is a much younger side: people who have really learned a trade and skillfully know their craft; [the photography] is more specialized and personal” than in mainstream publications, in part because of its subject.

Georgia Francis King, editor of the quarterly Kinfolk, says her publication is a reminder that another existence outside of the digital world is possible. “The rise of new technologies—and all of the amazing innovations that have come from that boom—are incredibly important to our society. However, it would be a pity if this new world replaced the old one instead of just being a welcome addition,” she says. “We’re there to remind people to slow down and focus not just on the things in your lives but the people and the stories that surround them.”

King calls her magazine’s look “clean, balanced, and detailed.” She says she looks for “original ideas and expert execution,” giving photographers mood boards pre-shoot. “It’s also important for us to constantly be staying ahead of ourselves and not becoming a stereotyped style. Too often we see photographers pitching us work that personifies Kinfolk as it stood two years ago; being able to create new work that moves our aesthetic forward instead of replicating it is key.”

But these magazines don’t deny their mainstream roots; in fact, they embrace them. Magazines like_ Kinfolk_ “are a simplified reaction to the more ornate Martha Stewart era, but that doesn’t mean that both don’t still have their place,” King says. Claudia Wu, who cofounded Cherry Bombe with Kerry Diamond (the pair originally met at Harper’s Bazaar), explains that the Brooklyn-based biannual magazine dedicated mostly to women interested in food, design, and style wouldn’t exist if Martha Stewart hadn’t paved the way. “[Martha Stewart Living] really had a huge impact on both Kerry and me. The magazine really revolutionized the food/lifestyle publication world.”

Franzen calls the first time she shot for Martha Stewart a “dream.” She sees the success of indie publications as coming from their ability to keep “a fine-tuned eye” on a smaller and more easily identifiable audience, whereas larger publications have to paint with a broader brush.

Brackett says she works much differently for clients like Martha Stewart, for example, where “the stories are totally gorgeous and beautiful, but not always edgy,” she explains. “Like, you wouldn’t put a cigarette or something on a plate. You have to keep it a little more tasteful.” She says larger magazines actually tend to be easier to shoot for because of the high production value, but the additional artistic freedom she gets shooting for smaller publications and her own projects can be the most rewarding. “It’s really hard to shoot if you don’t feel inspired, or aren’t working on your own instinct. It’s hard to get anything good if you’re just doing what you think is going to be pleasing, but not what you believe in.”

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Niesha Bell and Khiry Wright, Prom Queen and King, Have Their First Dance at the Black Prom, Vidalia GA May 2, 2009

Angel Howard Before the Black Prom, Vidalia, GA, May 2, 2009

When New York City-based photographer Gillian Laub first transitioned from still to motion, it was “out of necessity” for a story about segregated proms she had been covering in Montgomery County, Georgia.

“I felt frustrated because the still photographs weren’t allowing me to tell the full and nuanced story,” Laub tells American Photo. She began the project first in 2002 while on assignment for SPIN magazine. Then in 2009, The New York Times Magazine ran the story “A Prom Divided,” which included her photographs and audio interviews of the segregated prom, igniting controversy about the school’s policy.

Within a year, the school had merged the two proms, and Laub returned to Montgomery County to document the first desegregated prom, this time ready to capture video. The “solitary and intimate practice” of still photography, she says, is often “powerful enough on its own,” but for this story, telling it accurately meant recording the students’ voices and capturing motion footage. “Teenagers in prom dresses can be very visual, but it was challenging to be able to communicate the context in the still images alone,” she explains.

What Laub encountered in Georgia was a story much more complex than she imagined: aside from the historic prom, Calvin Burns was campaigning to become the county’s first black sheriff, and a white man was charged with murdering a black man in the same region. The unfolding story she captured there became the foundation for her first full-length documentary, “Southern Rites,” which airs on HBO May 18, 2015.

Incorporating motion into her photographic repertoire went beyond pure demand for content, Laub says, it enabled her to tell a story with much more complexity. “Seeing real life unfold in real-time and hearing a person’s actual voice enables me to explore a person or a story in-depth,” she says. “I wouldn’t say it’s more accurate; it’s just different. I always like to hear peoples’ stories, so interviews have always been an intricate part of my process. The only difference now is that I am recording them.”

Laub’s award-winning still photographs and multimedia journalism often focuses on people who have been impacted by geopolitical friction, war, race relations, and gender identity. She has made a significant mark as a documentary imagemaker, so it’s no surprise that the release of her first feature-length film, along with a book of the same title (published by Damiani), and concurrent exhibition at Benrubi Gallery (through June 27, 2015), is receiving advance attention. Her first monograph, Testimony (Aperture, 2007), about Israeli Jews, Arabs, and Palestinians affected by conflict in the region, earned her Aperture’s Emerging Artist Award. Her work has subsequently been featured in such publications as The New York Times, TIME, and others.

Of her process, Laub says: “I look to art to inspire me and to help me see things in a different and new way. My favorite art gives me a visceral experience. I only hope my work can do that for others.”

Still photography has “100 percent helped and informed” her motion work, she says—she began shooting video on the same cameras she shot stills—and early on, during her transition, she was fortunate to collaborate with photojournalist-cum-filmmaker Shaul Schwartz. (She is now a member of his production company, Reel Peak Films).

Schwartz helped advise her on Southern Rites, acting as its director of photography for a portion of the film. “Watching him work and collaborating with him was really a wonderful learning experience,” she says. “We were working on a film, but with still backgrounds, so it was like speaking the same new language together, only he learned it years before me!”

Laub didn’t have any formal training in filmmaking prior to 2010, likening her production process to “trial and lots of errors.” Her advice for a smooth transition into motion: “learn how to be a one-man band,” she exclaims. “It’s not about all the bells and whistles and the great new equipment; it’s about being able to know the equipment you have well and knowing how to use it alone. I have struggled with this (since I am not a very techy person) and get overwhelmed with how much there is to know and how many decisions need to be made.”

In the end, Laub says it’s all about maintaining inspiration for one’s work, and allowing form to follow a sincere interest in the subject matter. “There are so many things I am inspired by on a daily basis: people, life, family, love, art, fear—it’s endless,“ Laub says. “I think the most valuable thing is to stay passionate. I don’t know if that’s a skill per se, but it’s the most important aspect of one’s work.”

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Eschewing the idea that constructed images have to be commercial, this exhibit speaks volumes to the photographers who have proven that intent within a photograph is just as important to the art form as the found.

In large part, the exhibit centers on projects by two photographers—Inés Dümig (Germany) and Justin Kimball (United States)—who are making work documenting the life of a Somali refugee residing in Munich, and the collapse of the coal, steel, paper, and farming communities of the eastern seaboard of the U.S., respectively. This exhibit coincides with two major events in New Mexico: Review Santa Fe and PhotoSummer.

Including photographers such as Hiroshi Sugimoto, Robert Adams, Andreas Gursky, and An-My Lê to artists like Anselm Kiefer who uses photography in several of his thickly layered paintings, the exhibition looks to contemporary usage of the medium to explore the way artists interpret the evolving world.

There may be no better place to do so this summer than the National Gallery of Art, where the museum is housing a comprehensive exhibition of photographs from its collection which got its legs with a 1990 initiative to expand upon its photographic holdings. While the collection began with a foundation of some 1,650 Alfred Steiglitz photographs, it grew to acquire some of the most preeminent masters of the medium, including Irving Penn, Robert Adams, Harry Callahan, and Ilse Bing, among others. Here, displayed in chronological order, is an exhibition paying homage to photographic icons who paved the way for photography to be revered as a fine art form. On view concurrently is “The Memory of Time,” an exhibition honoring contemporary photographers in the collection.

The resulting series is at once imaginative and nostalgic: for home, for the changing American West, for the human impact on the land, for her brother who passed away unexpectedly one year into the project. The astounding photographs appear somber and thoughtful in tone; an unexpected eulogy to the passing of time and the cycle of life.

Exploring the gamut of the photographic form—from the personal to the objective to the experimental—this exhibit is a sweeping view of varying genres of contemporary photography, presented as a visual smorgasbord from several artists who have gone on to receive photographic acclaim: including Lauren Dukoff, Olivia Bee, Corey Arnold, and Pari Dukovic.

In this realm, the artist is seeking to represent the humble nature in which we coexist with the ether, and with the animals that inhabit the air. The two exhibits are accompanied by a “chapel”-like pavilion in Millennium Park in which the artist’s photos of birds are mounted to the ceiling.

Contrasting classic portraits of those who identify as transgender, cisgender, genderqueer, and gender nonconforming with the vintage processes of 19th Century wet-plate collodion tintype and ambrotype, photographer Robyn Renee Hasty is attempting to fluidly connect the concept of gender neutrality across platforms and through time.

Studying how people identify with the material makeup of their surroundings, including series about items discarded in the “spring cleaning” process (Katie Harwood); the items and images shaping one person’s gender transition (Gary Beeber); and the way people in a library interact with tangible materials in the digital age (Christopher Rauschenberg)—this exhibit attempts to examine anthropological notions of place in a new way.

With a critical eye to the ways in which images are used within mass media and the photographic medium is viewed in the cultural landscape as a whole, the artist employed early methods of appropriation, and in one series, “Stills” shows the way the potential of human life literally hangs in the balance in a collection of press images of people falling from buildings.

The summer season is often punctuated by dizzying energy, heat waves, wanderlust, and the draw to water. In the art world, it’s all about the summer group shows that unveil emerging artists and further propel the industry’s rising stars; it can also be a time for a few standout one-person shows and historic surveys honoring the craft. Here, we’ve rounded up ten of our picks for summer photo exhibits that are sure to quench the thirst for enticing visual stimuli.

[See also: The 10 Best New Photography Books of Summer 2015]

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While Zoe Leonard may be revered for her feminist, queer rights, and AIDS awareness activism in her early work (as founding member of the artist collectives fierce pussy and GANG), she has also long been attracted to the ways in which images can be classified and ordered to play with the viewer’s experience of seeing.

Upon first entering “Zoe Leonard: Analogue,” on view through Aug, 30, 2015 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, it takes a moment to adjust one’s eyes to the sight of square images set in grids lining the three walls of the Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium. It is immediately obvious that the artist has departed from her overtly activist role to show the changing urban landscape in a more subtle form. There’s a familiarity in her stark images taken head-on of the decaying and shuttered facades of mom-and-pop shops lining the streets of New York—even as the once-ubiquitous barbershops, pharmacies, and discount goods stores of Manhattan are increasingly relegated to the fringes of the five boroughs.

As Leonard began noticing these outposts disappear from our landscape, she began to follow merchandise circulation to Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America. She went to some of the places where the goods originated and then were later returned to be recycled and resold to witness the global cycle of production. What she found were goods and storefronts in Spanish-speaking countries, for example, that bear an uncanny resemblance to their American counterparts.

After spending time in the wilds of Alaska in the mid-90s, the artist—whose work has been shown in such prestigious exhibitions as “Documenta IX,” “Documenta XII,” and three Whitney Biennials—became increasingly aware of the strain material production puts on the environment, as well as the ways in which such energy and devotion is put into selling and consuming products. “Analogue” is the result of 11 years (from 1998 to 2009) using her Rolleiflex camera to document the independently owned storefronts closing throughout the city she’s called home for most of her adult life. Here, the textiles, cardboard, clothes, kitschy signage, and iconic logos represent the shifting vernacular of cities and a semblance of a crumbling American Dream.

“Analogue” is as much about planned obsolescence as it is the changing nature of the cityscape through the process of gentrification. What is most striking, however, is the absence of humans and the natural environment in these images, which are the implicit victims of mass production.

Categorized in 25 “Chapters” per the artist’s installation instructions, the serialized grids are also reminiscent of the image streams dominating computer screens and smart phones today. And that’s where the presentation of the work, six years after its completion, takes on an interesting twist in context: though the series completely predates the 2010 launch of Instagram, and is shot and printed using analogue processes, it echoes the square format and film-like filters of the images bombarding social media today. The 412 photographs are a dizzying display that, like Taryn Simon’s categorized works in a 2012 MoMA show, document a complex system in society that isn’t easy to decipher.

Leonard’s final “Analogue” chapter is a compendium of photographs the artist took in Poland of objects shot overhead in what appears to be a flea market. The way the objects are displayed on the ground, and in effect catalogued, in this very categorized series, is a meta view of the outcome of the world’s dependence on material. The trail of goods continues seemingly into infinity.

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He began documenting as a way to remember the faces he so often forgets due to his struggle with face blindness. Though he often uses photographs for the basis of these photorealistic works, he also takes the medium seriously as an artform, using it as a means to document an array of subject matter with varying formats; from black-and-white film to Polaroid composites to daguerreotypes. This survey chronicles his photographic oeuvre, from 1964 to present.

Using seemingly disparate subjects of American life — an apple tree, scenes of domesticity, a home in the suburbs — diCorcia exposes an underlying narrative in symbols rooted in biblical narratives and vibrant relics of the “American dream.”

The exhibition, which is rife with both documentary examples and mesmerizing artistic portrayals of the “Triple Disaster” is divided into two sections — the earthquake and tsunami, and Fukushima. It’s more than just a showcase of work by acclaimed artists and emerging practitioners, but also an in-depth look at the role photography plays in the understanding of major disasters. The exhibit includes photographic remnants that washed up in the debris.

Using everything from expired photographic paper, hand-made cameras, and extraneous materials used to affect light exposure, the artists included embrace chance in experimentation and reject the use of photography in order to simply record an event. In an age where photography has become ubiquitous as a means of communication, “Light, Paper, Process” reveals just how valuable the artist’s eye is.

Often posing his family members, sometimes masked, he recontextualized the traditional family portrait. In the spirit of Southern Goth, he also photographed literary icons. This exhibition brings together some 35 works (including never-exhibited rare prints) from his series “Romances,” and his portraits of writers.

This time Svenson documents those toiling with their hands in images that magnify the task in oval vignettes. His resulting works are painterly portrayals of daily life; familiar in their faceless anonymity, yet intimate in their precision. This exhibition coincides with the releases of his monograph, The Neighbors (D.A.P/Artbook, 2015).

Assembling artworks that employ only the bare minimum to create a photo — light, paper, and chemicals — the artist explores the process of capturing time through a temporal space. Here, the seventh-floor gallery has been transformed into a year-long concept-driven “photographic intervention.” Viewers are reflected in metallic photograms which in turn emit the passage of time as they oxidize, and are able to see the way light interacts on digital pigment printed on acrylic by walking around the hanging objects.

Culled from his 40-year career, these sometimes austere, and often sprawling, picture planes are inhabited by individuals who seem to embrace voluntary solitude, at-one with the fabric of their environment.

In her use of chemicals and developer to activate the sheets, she reveals their provenance in the form of fingerprints, geometric shapes from light leaks, and physical traces of expiration. Rather than freezing time with a camera, she exposes the history and attributes of these rare papers through unique chemical treatments — a contemporary take on László Moholy-Nagy’s cameraless images.

Culled from his series, “The Joy of Photography,” the works bring to life a spin on the photographic clichés of the Eastman Kodak how-to manual for amateur photographers, and in so doing, he creates mesmerizing photo collages and satirical compositions forcing us to reconsider that which has value in popular culture.

The season’s best photography exhibitions at galleries and museums throughout the country, covering documentary, fine art, portraiture, and some surprising alternative processes. See our picks for last season’s top shows.

[See also: The 10 Best New Photography Books of Spring 2015]

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To simply describe Justin Fantl’s imagery as clean, geometric, or playful—adjectives he often hears—would be accurate enough, says the Los Angeles–based photographer. Yet to do so might box his work into a single aesthetic—a proposition he rejects. In Fantl’s view of editorial photography, constructed still lifes and natural vistas mingle. His graphically charged indoor images incorporate candy-colored geometric planes whose clean lines and vibrant hues bring inanimate objects to life. His grand outdoor landscapes are carefully composed to appear as if just discovered.

Fantl thrives on the balance between chance and control. He traces the start of his career path to a “serendipitous” encounter, he says, with a photographer, “the coolest cool guy I had ever met, with the coolest job I had ever heard of” while traveling on a bus in India during a semester abroad in his junior year of college. “That encounter planted a seed,” Fantl recalls. “I think the decision to really commit myself to photography was momentous.”

A decade later, his client list includes such heavy hitters as Google, Levi’s, Nike, Time, Wired, and The New York Times Magazine. While he’s often hired with the directive to just do his thing, his track record suggests that his work is neither ordinary nor easy to pin down.

What keeps editorial and commercial clients knocking on Fantl’s door may be his unbridled sense of experimentation. He was recently commissioned by Levi’s to shoot the product as he saw it, which resulted in an abstract, geometric perspective on the iconic jeans—a visual offshoot of other commissioned and personal projects in which he manipulates colorful paper and explores their shapes and shadows. He shuns categorization, seeking simply to remain honest to his artistic muse. Today his vision encompasses surrealistic studio craft and more naturalistic landscapes that echo the graphic symmetry of his constructed scenes.

Why the interest in disparate subject matter? “I think that each area kind of balances out the other,” Fantl says. “I feel some need to work in both genres. After I am intensely in the studio, it feels great to get out and work on the landscapes, and vice versa.” Whatever their stylistic similarities and variations, he says he doesn’t make “conscious distinctions” between the two bodies of work. “They sort of inform each other,” he says.

His parallel processes do seem to diverge, however, in the level of control he exercises over his subjects. In the studio, it’s a limitless world of possibility and a “blank canvas with lots of control,” while outside, “I have to let go a bit,” Fantl says. “I think that what I am often looking for outside is a feeling. That aspect is, in ways, the same as shooting still life. There is just a different way of going about it. Inside you have to create it and outside you have to find it, but either way you have to recognize what you’re after.” Taken together, Fantl’s editorial photography suggests a design-driven approach, using narrative, lines, and color fields to bring order to worlds both imagined and found.

Though his career arc began in college, Fantl says it was easy to take an interest in photography at a young age because there were always cameras lying around his childhood home in Hanover, New Hampshire. He approached the medium as an artist, dabbling with it in high school and undergrad classes, then became more intently focused while studying for an MFA at the Academy of Art in San Francisco. Soon after, he was taken under the umbrella of Giant Artists, a collective that represents up-and-coming photographers, illustrators, videographers, and stylists. This enabled him to start shooting on his own without the common step of assisting other photographers.

“In some ways I wish I had assisted, because I had to learn so much on my own,” Fantl says. “At the same time, I think that has contributed to finding my own style. I didn’t really have a role model or someone telling me this is how you do this, or this is how do you that.”

For inspiration and continuing education, he reads “a lot of books on design, art, architecture,” he says. “I wander around galleries and museums—just take things in. But I also think it’s important to shut that off and look inward. I make a conscious choice from time to time not to look at what other artists have done or are doing. I believe this exercise is just as important as being aware of what else is out there.”

Fantl derives special satisfaction from creatively challenging assignment work. In a recent job for Time’s 2014 “Genius” issue, he was thrilled to shoot “truly cutting-edge and groundbreaking technology” such as the Hendro Hoverboard and the Apple Watch. “It is an issue I have always enjoyed and have wanted to shoot,” he marvels, “one of those little dream-come-true assignments.” Similarly, he’s been tapped to shoot visionary products for Wired’s “Designlife” issue and a futuristic ad campaign for Android Wear, Google’s line of watchlike devices.

Whatever the setting, Fantl considers the actual craft of editorial photography a labor of love. “I have realized more and more that what inspires me is a simple work ethic,” he notes. “I think the inspiration really comes from doing the work—forging ahead with blinders on and just producing and not quitting.”

CLOSE-UP

Justin Fantl

justinfantl.com

Lives In Los Angeles, CA

Studied At Union College, Schenectady, NY (BA in English); Academy of Art, San Francisco (MFA in photography)

Awards Include Gold Medal, Society of Publication Designers Feature, Still Life, 2014; PDN 30, 2011; APA Best in Still Life, 2011; Communication Arts Photo Annual, 2011, 2010

Clients Include Anomoly, Autodesk, Bloomberg Businessweek, Cisco, Fast Company, Goodby Silverstein & Partners, Google, GQ, More, The New York Times, Nike, Old Spice, Popular Mechanics, Scientific American, Time, The Wall Street Journal, Wired

Influenced By Berenice Abbott, Andreas Gursky, Stephen Shore, Taryn Simon, Thomas Struth, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Larry Sultan

In the Bag Hasselblad H5D-50c DSLR; Hasselblad lenses (HC 35mm f/3.5, HC 80mm f/2.8, HC Macro 120mm-II f/4). “My lighting is dependent per project and can get very complex,” he says, “but I often end up using a trusty Mole Richardson 2K.”

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Fun Valley, South Fork, 2013.

Dave and Trish. Denver, 2013. © Alec Soth

As Above So Below, Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 2013.

Mama Goma, Gemena, DR Congo, 2014

Woman and her baby, Roque Santeiro market, 2007

Drying fish on the beach at Ilha, 2007

Projections No. 5, 2007

Bailey Island – Women, 1996

Carmen Camargue, 2013

shit buildings going up left, right and centre, 2014

Olson House Door, 2010

Renfield, 2011

Mrs. Kalyani Ghosh, Banamali Sarkar Street, north

Dover Lane, Ballygunge, south Kolkata, October 2014

Untitled (Woman, Blond), 2013

Riffs on Real Time (3 of 10), 2006–09

These are the season’s best photography exhibitions at galleries and museums throughout the country, covering documentary work, fine art and experimental image makers.

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When I caught up with Los Angeles–based photographer Lauren Dukoff, she was having a girls weekend in Palm Springs, California, but that didn’t stop her from graciously taking me on a tour through her flourishing photographic career.

Her journey started with a chance teenage friendship with Devendra Banhart, who would later help define a folk music revival. Dukoff’s acclaimed book Family (Chronicle Books, 2009) documented him and his band of free-spirited collaborators. (Dukoff’s name also appears on the credits of a couple of Banhart’s albums as a flute player, which produces a burst of laughter when I ask her about it.)

Her intimate reportage photography—reminiscent of an era when music photographers doubled as roadies—has since extended to many musicians, including Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Mary J. Blige, Katy Perry, Morrissey, and Adele, whom she’s followed since a publicity shoot before the release of her debut album, 19. All this and she just turned 30.

Your work is reminiscent of iconic images taken of Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones in the 1960s and ’70s. Is this intimate style a natural progression of documenting your friends?

A lot of it was really natural. My father was a cinematographer and director; he gave me my first camera. Growing up in Malibu, I was close friends with Devendra. He became my first subject. It started casually, (with us taking pictures of each other), as teenagers do. As his music career grew, I continued taking pictures in the same way. They were naturally intimate because we were so close. I carried that style throughout my photography.

Are there iconic music photographers you’ve admired over the years?

I love Annie Leibovitz’s early work of the Rolling Stones. Her career, from Rolling Stone photographer to Vanity Fair portraitist, has been a big inspiration for me—I just started shooting for Vanity Fair this last year and I’m really excited about it! I also love Autumn de Wilde’s work. I grew up listening to The Smiths and Morrissey and a lot of the musicians she’s photographed, like Elliott Smith and Beck. I was a fan of the music and then a fan of the photography. As a teenager having both of your mediums joined together, it doesn’t get any better.

You assisted de Wilde. How did she inform your style?

She helped me find value in my work; I got a lot of my education from her. I studied for a year at the Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara, California, and after I left the school I spent about a year feeling disillusioned with photography. Then I started interning for Autumn. I admire her not just for her photography, which I think is incredible, but for her ability to make her subjects comfortable and make the people she’s shooting feel that they are in a safe space. So when I’m shooting, I like to keep it calm. I want people to be able to really be themselves and relax. That gives me the opportunity to get something intimate or different out of my subjects.

What would you say was your breakout moment as a photographer?

In 2007, Rolling Stone published a photo I’d taken of Devendra in the recording studio. A few weeks later they called and asked me to shoot Mary J. Blige in the recording studio. I was 23, just a naïve kid. I walked in there with the same sort of casual energy that was in the Devendra picture—because I didn’t know better.

Where does your success come from?

It’s hard to say. I feel like you can attribute it to luck or being in the right place. But it’s a lot of hard work and a lot of commitment, too. Some of the best advice came from my father. He said, “There will always be people more talented than you out there. But with all the rejection in this industry, they will eventually give up and fall by the wayside. If you stay your course, you will succeed.” I definitely have had some down moments, but I stuck with it.

Knowing what I wanted to do (at a young age) helped. It had a lot to do with growing up in a creative household (my mother is an incredible cultural guide, and was always taking my brother and me to concerts). Being a photographer was a legitimate life choice. I was lucky to grow up in that environment. I’m sure in many families photography seems like a fake job, not a realistic goal.

Do the styles of music that your subjects make influence the way you approach a shoot?

Absolutely. I think a very good example of that would be Adele’s album 21, which was released in 2011. I was fortunate enough to be with her in the recording studio a few weeks prior to shooting that record’s cover—spending time listening to her write the record and record it, and then documenting that (process), I had such a good understanding of the album. The cover visual successfully connects to the music because I knew so very well where she was coming from.

Do you always try to develop this kind of rapport with your subjects?

It there’s the opportunity and we like each other, yes (laughs).

What does your kind of photography mean in a world where social media has changed the way celebrities allow us access to their lives?

Access was more coveted when people didn’t share as much. Bt there can still be these really special amazing moments for a documentary photographer. Again, I think dele is a great example, because her career skyrocketed while I was photographing her. Capturing her making the 21 record, the album cover, touring, the 2013 Grammys, and 2013 Academy Awards—I was very aware I was experiencing something special, and it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

You shoot daily film.

I am a medium-format film shooter; I don’t really shoot a lot of 35mm. I’m comfortable shooting digital for studio portraits, but as far as my documentary photography goes, I won’t shoot digital. That has to be on film for me. It calls back to the old rock and roll photography aesthetic of the film grain and the black and white. I still shoot with a Mamiya 645 and my Mamiya RZ67 with Ilford 3200 film. I stockpiled all that Polaroid 3000 (laughs). It’s an aesthetic, it’s a technical choice, and I think it’s an emotional choice for me. I love shooting on film.

Also, when you’re doing documentary film photography, it slows you down a bit and makes you choose your frames wisely. I get better images if I know I only have 15 frames when a moment is happening. It really makes you focus and make good decisions. The never-ending rapid-fire of digital—I don’t know, it kinda makes you lazy.

How do you see music photography evolving?

The wonderful thing about photography is that our existence in this universe is being documented, and now that documentation has just exponentially increased. I think that’s incredible. There are more ways for people to share and fans to see more of their favorite musicians. I think it’s a really great thing. But I also think that now there’s more of a place for really well curated art books made by photographers or musicians.

What’s next for you?

I’ve been shooting a lot more fashion, which is fun. It’s something I didn’t think I would be interested in. But it’s been a real growing experience for me as a photographer—it kind of took me by surprise. I like to think that whether I’m shooting musicians, actors, or models, it’s all about collaborating with creative people. I’ll be inspired by someone’s music or by a designer’s gown, and that will end up affecting my choices and how I approach the shoot—like the lighting I’ll use, or how I’ll frame the shot, or something else. I let my subject guide me and just see what happens.

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“If you compared the genre of photography I work in to literature,” Evgenia Arbugaeva says, “it’s close to magical realism.” Raised in the Russian Arctic and currently residing in Paris, Arbugaeva, winner of this year’s Young Photographer Infinity Award from ICP, makes photographs that marry the documentary with the romantic.

Take, for example, her most recently completed series “Weather Man,” borne from one of her many visions for projects revolving around barren landscapes and solitary existences. It features Vyacheslav Korotki, who lived and worked far from civilization as a meteorologist in the Arctic outpost of Khodovarikha (he has since retired his post). Like the ethereal nature of his lifestyle, there’s a kind of phantasmagorical element to Arbugaeva’s inuitive process of finding him. “I knew this character existed somewhere in one of the Arctic outpost stations, so (in 2013) I went aboard an icebreaker ship that delivers supplies,” she says. “I was looking for this person and luckily he was there. Maybe it’s magic.”

With the help of Photo de Mer, a French grant program that funds photo projects about the sea, Arbugaeva completed “Weather Man” during two visits with Korotki. The portfolio was later published in The New Yorker. Of the experience, she says, “I thought it was quite beautiful…showing this work in the busiest and craziest city in the world…and then there’s this hermit. I liked the contrast.”

Arbugaeva doesn’t simply go out and document her subjects. Instead, she says, “I think about and study the (project’s) aesthetic so it’s in me when I enter the field. Intuitively, I start to lean toward a certain genre of painting, literature, and music. By the time I’m photographing, I’ve already soaked myself in the art that inspires the project.” For “Weather Man,” she looked at Russian and European oil paintings, taking in their “picturesque, dark mood and classic compositions,” she says. “And I listened to lots of cello.”

For all their beauty, photographing in these places can be grueling, and sometimes even dangerous. For the series “Mammoth Hunters,” which was published in the April 2013 issue of National Geographic—another impressive credit for the 30-year-old photographer—Arbugaeva ventured back to her home region to document a community of people who search for valuable mammoth tusks on the mostly uninhabited Kotelnyy Island. The trip, she says, “changed me not only as a photographer, but also as a person.” It was here, with the help of her brother who was assisting her on the shoot and a doctor they called on a satellite phone, she sewed 12 stitches into a man’s hand after he was badly injured by a boat propeller. It was a feat she had never imagined having the courage to do. “I started to be more patient,” she says of how the voyage changed her. “With this climate and this location, nothing depends on you alone; you are fully dependent on weather and on other people and the impression you make on them. Your life depends on others.”

For all her success, Arbugaeva is not unfamiliar, however, with the struggles of the emerging photographer. “I know it can be very hard for young photographers to get work these days,” she notes. Having great work and putting herself out there was key. “With National Geographic, for example, I met an editor at a portfolio review and I showed the project to her and she really liked it. They commissioned me to finish it.”

She also notes that having an unusual idea can catch the attention of would-be clients and help garner photographic honors, such as her inclusion in PDN’s 30 New and Emerging Photographers to Watch in 2013 and a Bright Spark award in Magenta Foundation’s 10th Flash Forward competition. “The topics that I’m working on are hard to get access to and are something people haven’t seen before, so it’s easier to get assignments and get published,” she explains. “The Russian Arctic is a kind of blank spot on the map, especially for Western people—there isn’t really much information coming out of this region. I think I’ve been lucky with that.”

But luck isn’t the half of it. Arbugaeva has traveled far toward her goal of becoming a photographer. She lived in the small town of Tiksi in the Russian Arctic until she was 8 years old, and then her family moved to Yakutsk, Siberia, “the coldest city on the planet,” she says, where she lived until age 16 and her parents still live. “I was lucky to be born there,” she says. Because there’s not really much happening in the town, I learned to be excited by colors and shapes. It’s always snowing. And in the tundra there are no trees; it’s a vast space, so everyone who appears in this context becomes interesting and worth studying. I think this has influenced me as a photographer.” In 2010 and 2011 she returned to Tiksi, which became the subject of her first dreamlike series and several accolades: a Magnum Foundation Emergency Fund grant; the 2013 Leica Oskar Barnack Award; and publication on The New York Times Lens Blog and in the French newspaper and its magazine Le Monde.

Arbugaeva is also fortunate to have parents who encouraged her to travel and who exposed her to photographic adventures. “My dad (a former biology teacher) was always showing me films of lions in Africa or Jacques Cousteau’s underwater series,” she explains. “He was telling me in such bright colors what it would be like to travel. Some of us fulfill our parents’ dreams, and I’m happy that my dad’s dream and my dream matched.”

Arbugaeva was first exposed to photography as a profession when she was 15, during an exchange program in Connecticut. A teacher showed her a catalog of colleges that teach photography, along with books by Mary Ellen Mark and Richard Avedon. “I was like, ‘You can go to college for photography?’ It was a revelation. In Russia at that time, no parent wanted their kid to be a photographer. It almost didn’t exist as a profession.” She ended up going to college for Art Management in Moscow before deciding to revisit her interest in photography in 2009, completing a one-year Photojournalism and Documentary Photography certificate program at the International Center of Photography in New York City. There she made the series “Forever Beautiful,” documenting aging women whose main career asset was their beauty. “It was a life-changing experience for me because I hadn’t studied art or photography before. It sort of flipped my world upside-down,” she says of the program.

She explains, however, that it was difficult to remain in New York City. “After school I was struggling,” she says. “In New York there is so much great art. I was overwhelmed by it.” Two years ago, she decided to move to Paris for its “creative scene and location,” which makes it easier for her to travel to Russia for her projects and to visit family.

Now, in addition to traveling to Russia for two assignments she’s currently working on for National Geographic, she’s decided to temper the arctic cold with a personal project in Tanzania. There she’s working with an anthropologist from Cambridge University to create a fictional story about actual abandoned science stations leftover from British colonial times. “The character [I’ve created for] the story is an older Tanzanian man who used to work for a famous British scientist. Once the station was abandoned he didn’t have a job. But he still comes to the lab, and he cleans the floor and he keeps the lab mice, and he still collects the precious insects and puts them into a collection.” This series reflects her interest in people who create their own worlds, who, she says, “are alone in their own universe but are not lonely. It’s like a world within a world within a world within a world.”

She admits that it can be easy to lose herself within these worlds. “Sometimes I go and photograph other people’s lives—jumping from one person’s life to another person’s life—and I start to question: What is my life?” She says the key to not burning out is to keep some separation between life and work. “I think it’s important to leave free time—not only for hobbies, planning, and daydreaming, but also simply to do nothing.” Above all, her love for her art still shines.

“Photography used to be my hobby,” she says. “But now it’s my everything.”

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Yossi Milo Gallery, New York, through January 25 yossimilo.com

British artist Julie Cockburn is a master at bending the lines—altering photographic images through collage and embroidery, transforming landscapes with layered objects, and using vintage imagery to construct her own revisionist narratives. She discovers ephemera and secondhand imagery by trawling the internet—as well as garage sales—and her methods of reconstructing these pieces partly stem from her training as a sculptor. Her process, she says, is like “having a conversation with the image…perhaps adding what seems to be hidden there or missing, unspoken. I often feel that the original images were somehow waiting for me to complete them in this way.” Cockburn’s new book, Conversations (Tycoon Books), accompanies the exhibition.

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