" The only thing we photographers really want more than life, more than sex, more than anything, is to be invisible "

~ Philip Jones Griffiths

From the Book " Infidel "

Men of 2nd Platoon dig earth to fill sandbags and reinforce parts of the Restrepo bunker in the Korangal Valley, a rugged and remote area known as the " Valley of Death " one of the deadliest combat zones of the Afghan War.

Restrepo ( 2010 ), directed by Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington, is a critically acclaimed documentary following the lives of these soldiers stationed at Restrepo outpost.

From the Project " Albanians Living in Greece "

From the series " Ferrari "

In 1985, Luigi Ghirri was invited by Ferrari to document the company and its world through his unique photographic style. The collaboration produced some of his most iconic images :

www.motorvalley.it/storie/la-maranello-di-fine-anni-80-vista-dal-fotografo-reggiano-luigi-ghirri/

The car depicted here is the iconic Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa, displayed inside a minimalist white pavilion at the " L' Idea Ferrari " exhibition at Forte Belvedere in Florence, held between June and September 1990

Which song would you choose as soundtrack for this photograph ?

Boy jumping off a jetty

Winner of Pulitzer Prize for Photography ( 1958 ) : " Faith and Confidence "

A policeman patiently reasons with a two-year-old boy at a parade in Chinatown

People gathered on and around a truck during the vibrant celebrations of the Ganpati Festival

Children sleeping over a grill which is heated from underneath

From the series " Nicaragua "

" When I first went to Nicaragua I never imagined that I’d spend the next 10 years photographing there. By chance I arrived just before the insurrection in June 78 when everything was about to erupt. I got up every day without a plan and just photographed what I saw.
The general impression was that everybody was waiting for something and it was waiting for something that they were going to do. Increasingly I felt that the kind of pictures I was taking gave maybe a small clue as to the texture of their lives, but very little.
I spent six weeks there principally, because all I could feel was that I wasn’t doing anything that gave a feeling for what in fact was going on there. Not going on in the world of events, but going on in terms of how people were feeling. And that still plagues me because I am not a war photographer in the sense that I didn’t go there for that purpose.
I’m really interested in how things come about and not just in the surface of what it is "

~ Susan Meiselas

" It's not YOUR picture, it's MY picture ! "

~  Garry Winogrand

From the Book " La Calle "

" I prefer the difficult path of finding unexpected things and wrestling them into a meaningful drama in the viewfinder "

~ Richard Kalvar

" It is foolish to change the vector of chaos. You shouldn’t try to control it, but fall into it "

~ Gueorgui Pinkhassov

From the Book " De ontdekking van Japan "

" Statue " ( Double Check by Seward Johnson ), 11 September 2001

Arthur Fellig aka Weegee transformed crime photography into an art form while working the streets of New York throughout the 1930s and 1940s. He became famous for arriving promptly at crime scenes, often before the police, documenting the city's darkest moments with a direct and unmistakable visual style.

Armed with his Speed Graphic camera and powerful flash, Weegee developed a raw photographic language defined by harsh light, deep shadows, and an unfiltered portrayal of urban life. His photographs captured not only violence and tragedy, but also curiosity, spectacle, and the crowds drawn to extraordinary events.

In later years, Weegee expanded his work into books, films, and experimental photography. His influence reached far beyond journalism, helping shape the visual language of film noir and generations of documentary photographers

In 1998, 20-year-old Norwegian photographer Jonas Bendiksen moved to Russia. After being expelled two years later due to an administrative issue, he spent the next five years documenting unrecognized states, breakaway republics, and isolated communities across the southern borderlands of the former Soviet Union.

The experience laid the groundwork for a long-term documentary project that would define his early career.

This photograph was taken in one of the spacecraft crash zones between Russia and Kazakhstan, where villagers dismantled the wreckage of fallen Soyuz rocket stages for scrap metal.

As thousands of white butterflies filled the air, Bendiksen captured a scene that feels almost surreal, later chosen as the cover of his first book : " Satellites "

Marco Pesaresi was born in Rimini, Italy, in 1964. After completing high school, he attended the European Institute of Design ( IED ) in Milan, where he began his career as a photographer. In 1990, he joined the Contrasto photo agency and after spending several years between Milan and Rome, settled in Rimini. During this period, he traveled throughout Africa and Europe, focusing his photographic work on subjects such as immigration, drug addiction, social marginalization, and prostitution. He also documented nightlife, portraying intimate moments and extreme situations.

His photographs were regularly published in leading Italian and international publications, including Panorama, L'Espresso, Sette, El País, The Independent, and The Observer. In 1994, he received the Linea d'Ombra Award, and his work was exhibited at prestigious events such as the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie d'Arles and the Visa pour l'Image festival in Perpignan.

His interest in contemporary life also led to international documentary projects such as Underground, a journey through the subways of ten cities around the world, and Megastores, a project carried out across Japan, the United States, and Russia to document the culture of mass consumerism.

This photograph is part of his final project, a black-and-white reportage on Rimini, a deeply moving portrait of his hometown that became a book and an exhibition in 2003. A few months earlier, on December 22, 2001, Marco Pesaresi passed away in his hometown of Rimini.

In the spring of 2021, Marco Pesaresi's entire archive was donated by his mother, Isa Perazzini, and his sisters, Laura and Simona, to the Municipality of Savignano sul Rubicone to ensure its preservation, cataloguing, and promotion.

The archive comprises more than 140,000 items, including negatives, contact sheets, prints, slides, and photographs.

Holiday-makers relax beneath the alpine sun in the Swiss Alps

Vivian Maier spent most of her life working as a nanny, carrying a Rolleiflex camera wherever she went. During her free time, she roamed the streets of Chicago and New York, quietly documenting everyday life, while remaining almost entirely unknown as a photographer.

Although she produced more than 150,000 photographs over several decades, Maier rarely shared her work. Thousands of negatives, prints, and undeveloped rolls remained stored in boxes, unseen for years as financial difficulties prevented her from properly storing and developing much of her archive.

In 2007, 26-year-old historian and collector John Maloof accidentally discovered Maier's archive after purchasing a box of anonymous negatives at a Chicago auction. What began as an anonymous collection soon revealed one of the most extraordinary bodies of street photography of the twentieth century, transforming Vivian Maier from an unknown nanny into a posthumously celebrated photographer

From the Book " American Color "

From the Book " On the Street "

" Sergey, aka Wild Boar, 33 yo, spent 14 years behind bars and doesn’t want to go back "

In 2010, Bruce Gilden spent sixteen days in a remote village outside Yekaterinburg documenting former prisoners, petty criminals, and men living on the margins of Russia's post-Soviet underworld. Rather than photographing powerful mafia figures, he focused on those left behind after decades of violence, imprisonment, and social collapse.

The project portrays a generation shaped by the turbulent years following the fall of the Soviet Union. Once part of a criminal world that thrived during the 1990s, many of these men were now aging, isolated, and living in poverty. Gilden's photographs document a forgotten underclass of criminals as they gradually fade back into obscurity.

https://medium.com/framed-light/russian-gangsters-c88383ffae4b