Sebastiao Salgado

Sebastiao Salgado is a Brazilian social documentary photographer and photojournalist who has travelled to over 100 countries to take his photos. He describes his work as a ‘Recording of humans in their natural condition’ and has made a collection of images from the 1970’s and onwards after previously training as an economist before swapping careers and becoming a photographer. His photographs are presented in the form of an artist published book, which demonstrates the view of the result of globalisation and also show the reality of the world including poverty as a very strong theme.

‘Globalisation describes the spread of communication, technologies and production.’

Salgado is a black and white photographer who uses a 35mm film camera to produce his atmospheric, moody and powerful photographs, which he would have printed himself. The images also show the struggle and have an air of despair about them, which reflects the state of the world.

The photographs are educational style pictures and gives out the message to people of ‘can you live with this world?’ 
Salgado has travelled to over 100 countries throughout his career for the projects, most of these have appeared in numerous press publications and other books such as Other Americas (1986), Sahel: l'homme en detresse (1986), Sahel: el fin del camino (1988), Workers (1993),  Terra (1997), Migrations and Portraits (2000) and Africa (2007). Touring exhibitions of his work have been and still are travelling worldwide in many countries. A long time gallery director Hal Gould has said that he considers Salgado to be one of the most important photographers of the early 21st Century as ell as giving him his first show in the United States.
He has been awarded numerous major photographic prizes as well as being a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and an honorary member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences in the United States. He has also been awarded The Royal Photographic Society's Centenary Medal and Honorary Fellowship (HonFRPS) in recognition of his sustained and significant contribution to the art of photography in 1993.
In 2004, Salgado began a project named 'Genesis' which is aimed the presentation of the unblemished faces of nature and humanity, consisting of a series of landscape and wildlife photographs, as well as of human communities that live with the same ethics and morals as their ancestors.
He is now working on a long term self assigned project of which now many have been published as books such as 'The Other Americas', "Sahel', 'Workers' and 'Migrations'. The latter of the two are extensive collections of images from all over the world, his most famous being of a gold mine in Brazil names Serra Pelada. He is currently working on a project named Genesis, photographing landscape, flora and fauna from places on the earth that still havent been taken over by humans.

Brian Griffin

Griffin is a British born photographer that has been photographing for over 40 years from the 1970 using a 35mm film camera before advancing in to the digital age of photography.
Influenced by Tony Ray Jones in his childhood, his family and friends didn't encourage him to have a career in photography as it was a subject that was looked down on that didn't bring a lot of financial income. He ignored others opinions as he knew from the beginning that photography was the route that he wanted to persue and went on to complete a diploma in photography before travelling which inspired him to take a lot of documentary style photographs of street scenes and other objects that he came across.
He has specialised in portrait images which he then enlisted the help of a friend (Barney Bubbles) to give a unique twist to by sketching line drawings on to the prints and eventually it became a self-published book. A lot of Griffin's work is portrait images of Bubbles using his apartment as a backdrop, inspired by Casper David Fredrick, and self made lighting equipment as his budget was restricted when he started out as a photographer.
Griffin has also completed commission work for magazines such as the Financial Times to earn more money as well as photographing big name celebrities such as Sir Paul McCartney.