Christopher Voelker (born February 2, 1961 in Los Angeles, California - Died September 11, 2014) was an American photographer.
Christopher Voelker (born February 2, 1961 in Los Angeles, California - Died September 11, 2014) was an American photographer.
Voelker was a full-time wheelchair user due to a spinal cord injury (quadriplegia) from a high-speed, motocross accident at 16. [1]
He was predominantly self-taught, freelance studio photographer specializing in capturing counter-points of the human landscape in large-format (Hasselblad and Linhof), black and white. Hand developed prints which are an interpretation of his negatives are characterized by starkly voluptuous contrasts of body and space. The prints are expressions of something that is both personal and available for individual interpretation. With the arrival of digital photography it was a challenge that Voelker embraced. His true love, however, remained the mystery of emulsion; and film is the medium he reserves for his artistic output.
He became the first photographer with a mobility impairment to work professionally for major studios and TV networks such as Universal, Paramount, Touchstone, NBC, CBS, Lorimar Productions, UPN, WB and CW networks. Voelker has also photographed such artists as Mick Fleetwood, Billy Zane, Carmen Electra, Robert David Hall, Christina Applegate, Bow Wow, Beyoncé, Chris Burke, Brandy, Chingy, Omarion, Ruben Studdard, Fantasia, Angela Simmons and Tony Orlando. [1]
His work has appeared on national and international covers for magazines along with movie posters including The Hollywood Reporter , V Life Magazine , Teen People , TV Guide , Angeleno Magazine , Zink Magazine , 944 Magazine , New Mobility , [2] [3] Mobilitá Magazine , [4] Jewel Magazine [5] and RYK Magazine .
He has developed a penchant for photographing bookjackets and has completed over 20 different covers ranging from Mystery writers to a book by Holly Robinson Peete on a Woman’s guide to watching & understanding NFL football, titled Get your Own Damn Beer I’m watching The Game. [6]
His photographs have been exhibited in both Los Angeles and New York City and will be featured in his upcoming book of black-and-white studio nudes due to be published in November 2008 by Dennis McMillan Publications. [7]
Voelker worked for network gallery sessions, album covers and intimate portraits. He has spent the last 15 years at Voelker Studio, a synergistic space in Northridge, California. Going through different physical experiences has given Voelker unique empathy and insights into things that other people don't see. He has become a photographer of humans. [8] Voelker was compiling "Portraits of Ability". [9] The book, set for publication in 2009 celebrates the physicality of power as realized by personal accomplishment of disabled people.
Edward Henry Weston was a 20th-century American photographer. He has been called "one of the most innovative and influential American photographers..." and "one of the masters of 20th century photography." Over the course of his 40-year career Weston photographed an increasingly expansive set of subjects, including landscapes, still-lifes, nudes, portraits, genre scenes and even whimsical parodies. It is said that he developed a "quintessentially American, and especially Californian, approach to modern photography" because of his focus on the people and places of the American West. In 1937 Weston was the first photographer to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship, and over the next two years he produced nearly 1,400 negatives using his 8 × 10 view camera. Some of his most famous photographs were taken of the trees and rocks at Point Lobos, California, near where he lived for many years.
Francesco Scavullo was an American fashion photographer best known for his work on the covers of Cosmopolitan and his celebrity portraits.
Richard Avedon was an American fashion and portrait photographer. He worked for Harper's Bazaar, Vogue and Elle specializing in capturing movement in still pictures of fashion, theater and dance. An obituary published in The New York Times said that "his fashion and portrait photographs helped define America's image of style, beauty and culture for the last half-century".
Irving Penn was an American photographer known for his fashion photography, portraits, and still lifes. Penn's career included work at Vogue magazine, and independent advertising work for clients including Issey Miyake and Clinique. His work has been exhibited internationally and continues to inform the art of photography.
Erotic photography is a style of art photography of an erotic, sexually suggestive or sexually provocative nature.
Peter A. Gowland was a famous American glamour photographer and actor. He was known for designing and building his own studio equipment and was active professionally for six decades with his business partner, Alice Adams Gowland, whom he married in 1941.
Jim French was an American artist, illustrator, photographer, filmmaker, and publisher. He is best known for his association with Colt Studio which he, using the pseudonym Rip Colt, created in late 1967. Thomas parted from the endeavor in 1974 leaving French to continue to build what would become one of the most successful gay male erotica companies in the U.S.
Nude photography is the creation of any photograph which contains an image of a nude or semi-nude person, or an image suggestive of nudity. Nude photography is undertaken for a variety of purposes, including educational uses, commercial applications and artistic creations. The exhibition or publication of nude photographs may be controversial, more so in some cultures or countries than in others, and especially if the subject is a minor.
Paul Mpagi Sepuya is an American photographer and artist. His photographs focus heavily on the relationship between artist and subject. He often explores the nude in relation to the intimacy of studio photography. The foundation of Sepuya's work is portraiture. He features friends and muses in his work that creates meaningful relationships through the medium of photography. Sepuya reveals the subjects in his art in fragments: torsos, arms, legs, or feet rather the entire body. Through provocative photography, Sepuya creates a feeling of longing and wanting more. This yearning desire allows viewers to connect deeply with the photography in a meaningful way.
Anna-Lou Leibovitz is an American portrait photographer best known for her engaging portraits, particularly of celebrities, which often feature subjects in intimate settings and poses. Leibovitz's Polaroid photo of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, taken five hours before Lennon's murder, is considered one of Rolling Stone magazine's most famous cover photographs. The Library of Congress declared her a Living Legend, and she is the first woman to have a feature exhibition at Washington's National Portrait Gallery.
New Mobility, launched in 1989, is a United States-based magazine for active wheelchair users. This monthly publication covers health, disability rights, adaptive technology and lifestyle topics such as recreation, travel, the arts, relationships, sexuality, parenting, employment and home modification. It also profiles successful wheelchair users, including John Hockenberry, Christopher Voelker, Brooke Ellison, Chantal Petitclerc and the late Christopher Reeve. New Mobility, currently edited by Tim Gilmer, received an Utne Independent Press Award for Lifestyle Coverage in 2006.
Ken Marcus is a Famous American Photographer, best known for his glamour photography with Penthouse and Playboy magazines. For over 40 years he has produced hundreds of centerfolds, editorials, album covers, and advertisements. His work is shown in galleries, published in books and magazines. He was chosen as Artist-In-Residence at the Yosemite National Park Museum. For many years, Marcus has lectured and produced professional workshops in the US and Internationally.
Mariano Vivanco is a Peruvian fashion and portrait photographer. He traveled the world with his family, who eventually settled down in New Zealand where his passion for photography took flight. Inspired by the likes of Steichen and Horst, Mariano moved to London in the year 2000 to pursue his career as a fashion photographer.
George Holz was born in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, graduated from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, and assisted for Helmut Newton, whom he credits with guiding his career. As a fledgling photographer, he lived in Milan and Paris, where he shot beauty and fashion for major European magazines such as Italian Vogue and French Elle. Afterward, he moved to New York City, where he set up his famous studio on Lafayette Street, traveling frequently to Los Angeles and Europe to shoot fashion, advertising, and portraiture for major publications such as Vanity Fair and Harper's Bazaar. His fine-art nudes have been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world. His shows have included “Original Sin” and “Three Boys from Pasadena – A Tribute to Helmut Newton” with fellow Art Center alumni Just Loomis and Mark Arbeit. Holz has collected a variety of prestigious industry awards over the years including a Grammy and a Clio.
Roe Ethridge is a postmodernist commercial and art photographer, known for exploring the plastic nature of photography – how pictures can be easily replicated and recombined to create new visual experiences. He often adapts images that have already been published, adding new, sculpted simulations of reality, or alternatively creates highly stylized versions of classical compositions, such as a still life bowl of moldy fruit which appeared on the cover of Vice magazine, or landscapes and portraits with surprising elements. After participating in the 2008 Whitney Biennial, his work has been collected by several leading public museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the Tate Modern. In 2010, his work was included in the MoMA's 25th Anniversary New Photography exhibit.
Fine art nude photography is a genre of fine-art photography which depicts the nude human body with an emphasis on form, composition, emotional content, and other aesthetic qualities. The nude has been a prominent subject of photography since its invention, and played an important role in establishing photography as a fine art medium. The distinction between fine art photography and other subgenres is not absolute, but there are certain defining characteristics.
Blake Little is an entertainment, advertising, and fine art photographer based in Los Angeles since 1982. He has had assignments in advertising, film, television, book and magazine publishing. He has worked with personalities in entertainment, sports and politics. His work has been exhibited in New York, Seattle, Indianapolis, Los Angeles and Japan.
Markus Klinko is an international fashion/celebrity photographer. and director,
Wheelchair sport classification is a system designed to allow fair competition between people of different disabilities, and minimize the impact of a person's specific disability on the outcome of a competition. Wheelchair sports is associated with spinal cord injuries, and includes a number of different types of disabilities including paraplegia, quadriplegia, muscular dystrophy, post-polio syndrome and spina bifida. The disability must meet minimal body function impairment requirements. Wheelchair sport and sport for people with spinal cord injuries is often based on the location of lesions on the spinal cord and their association with physical disability and functionality.
Michael Edward Ross was an American tintype photographer and lawyer. His photography work spanned 27 years. His last six years were devoted exclusively to wet-plate photography. His focus as an artist was primarily on nude portraits and landscape photography.
