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“If Eyes Could Speak, What Would They Say? (Munich)” © Haider Khan, India, Finalist, Professional competition, Wildlife & Nature
“Rhinos with injured horns suffer from pain, infections, and a reduced ability to defend themselves. Despite the pain a rhino may endure, their strength and resilience are a testament to the beauty of these creatures. As poaching and habitat loss continue to threaten their survival, rhino conservation efforts need to be supported and awareness raised to stop them being killed.”

After announcing the National winners, the 2024 Sony World Photography Awards has released the finalists and shortlisted entries for this year’s Professional competition. Now in its 17th year, the Professional division is known for its technical mastery and ability to produce original, striking narratives. This year is no exception, with the finalists and shortlist culled from a record number of entries.

From Haider Khan‘s haunting photo of a rhino with an injured horn to Adali Schell‘s celebration of the joy and freedom that cars can bring, each masterful image shows off the talent of these photographers. Just three finalists were selected for each category, and the title of Photographer of the Year, as well as $25,000, will go to someone in this pool.

“The jury was captivated by the passionate storytelling, capturing both the joys and the challenges of human existence across our planet,” shared jury chair Monica Allende. “We were thrilled by the diverse, high-quality, and creative spectrum of photography styles on display.”

A selection of the shortlist and finalists will also go on view during the 2024 Sony World Photography Awards exhibition, which begins in London before traveling worldwide. We’ve browsed the list and selected some of our favorite finalists and shortlisted entries across all of the categories. Scroll down and get treated to a feast for the eyes.

The 2024 Sony World Photography Awards has released the finalists and shortlisted entries for this year’s Professional competition.

“Playing Fennec Pups” © Lukas Zeman, Czech Republic, Shortlist, Professional competition, Wildlife & Nature
“Fennec foxes are very active, playful, and incredibly mobile. An adult male fox can jump vertically up to 70 cm and more than 100 cm horizontally from a standing position, almost four times its length.”

“L’Accalmie” © Horst Kistner, Germany, Shortlist, Professional competition, Portfolio
“A staged photography series – the set is made up like a theater stage. Analog thinking and feeling are combined with real lighting to create the final photographs.”

“Portrait, Kazakhstan” © Jorge Mónaco, Argentina, Finalist, Professional competition, Portfolio
“A portrait of an old Kazakh man in traditional dress. Due to globalization, young Kazakh people no longer wear these clothes.”

Untitled © Eddo Hartmann, Netherlands, Finalist, Professional competition, Landscape
“A dosimetrist measures radiation at the Southern ridge of Lake Shagan. This series explores a remote area of Kazakhstan known as ‘The Polygon,’ which was once home to the Soviet Union’s major nuclear testing facilities. Between 1949 and 1989, more than 450 nuclear tests took place here, with little regard for their effect on the local people and environment. The full impact of radiation exposure was hidden for many years by the Soviet authorities and only became clear after the test site was closed in the early 1990s. The location is still heavily contaminated and can only be accessed in protective clothing.”

Untitled © Adali Schell, United States, Finalist, Professional competition, Portraiture
“Lily Abbitt (19) and Zane Burrows (20) embrace on the side of the road in Topanga Canyon, California. Growing up in Los Angeles, some of my earliest memories were made in the car. Specifically, my dad’s vintage 1980s Mercedes – which he converted to run-on vegetable oil – acted as my respite. The hum of the engine, the tears in the leather interior, and the sound of his burned CDs accompanied my earliest understanding of L.A. I remember the sense of privacy that the car provided me and how it enabled my looking. In 2022, I was commissioned by The New York Times to photograph my friends in their first cars. Having spent my final teenage years in isolation due to the pandemic, the car provided me with a space to come back into touch with my community and with L.A.”

“Borax Studies” © Kevin Krautgartner, Germany, Shortlist, Professional competition, Landscape
“Borax (sodium tetraborate decahydrate) and borate minerals have diverse industrial applications. They’re used in the production of glass, ceramics, and enamels due to their ability to lower melting points and improve strength. They’re also essential in manufacturing fiberglass and insulation and as a component in detergents and cleaning agents. This project shows a rarely used method of mining borax from the air. Wells are drilled into the lakebed to reach the brine layer below the surface, and pumps are used to draw the brine solution out. The extracted brine is then pumped into large evaporation ponds or pans, which have a large surface area and allow the sun and natural evaporation to concentrate the minerals within the brine. Over time, as the water evaporates, borax and other minerals become more concentrated, and highly saturated colors are visible on the surface.”

“Cobalt” © Davide Monteleone, Italy, Finalist, Professional competition, Documentary Projects
“Portrait of a miner at Mutoshi artisanal mining (ASM), COMIAKOL cooperative. In the Democratic Republic of Congo I documented the condition and impact of cobalt mining, which is essential for the green energy transition. The environmental and human conditions of cobalt mining have been widely reported, and the mainstream narrative faithfully describes the devastating working conditions and problematic health, environmental and economic conditions that men, women, and children are subjected to, directly or indirectly.”

“Portrait in Earthy Tones” © Natalia Garbu, Moldova, Republic Of, Shortlist, Professional competition, Documentary Projects
“Children in Moldovan villages often experience close-knit community life, engaging in outdoor activities and helping with household chores. Moldova is a nation facing a complex array of challenges and influences. Its patriarchal tendencies, economic struggles, Orthodox traditions, and historical ties to colonialism have shaped its society in unique ways. However, Moldova is also a place of resilience and cultural richness, with a diverse population that continues to seek its place on the global stage.”

Untitled © Nick Ng, Malaysia, Shortlist, Professional competition, Architecture & Design
“This seven-floor residential haven was built in the heart of Kuala Lumpur in 1962 by the famed architectural firm T.Y. Lee and Sons. Named Blue Boy Mansion, it was the epitome of wealth and success. In stark contrast to sterile modern structures, the building encourages interactions between its residents with an open design that enhances the coexistence of people and living spaces. The corridors on both sides of the building connect to a stairway that zig-zags from the ground to the uppermost units. The open stairway is not protected from rain or sun.”

“The Holy Dip” © Sachin Ghai, India, Shortlist, Professional competition, Environment
“A woman takes a holy dip in the polluted Yamuna river during the Chhath Mahaparv festival. This series shares images from one of the biggest festivals celebrated in India: Chhath Mahaparv. It depicts the festival being celebrated in the sacred Yamuna River, which is now heavily polluted by acidic wastewater spilling out from big factories. The pollution has made the water harmful to both flora and fauna.”

This year saw a record number of entries in the Professional competition.

“LGBTQIA Refugees: Fleeing Uganda” © Brent Stirton, South Africa, Finalist, Professional competition, Documentary Projects
“Lady Tina and Pretty Peter were previously jailed in Uganda for their trans lifestyle and experienced sexual assault. In May 2023, Uganda criminalized same-sex conduct for those convicted of ‘aggravated homosexuality,’ even though the Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2023 violates some of the fundamental rights guaranteed under Uganda’s constitution. Uganda’s penal code already punishes same-sex conduct with life imprisonment, but the new law legislates on new crimes, such as the ‘promotion of homosexuality’; introduces the death penalty for several acts considered as ‘aggravated homosexuality’; and increases sentences for attempted same-sex conduct to 10 years. Anyone advocating for the rights of LGBT people now faces up to 20 years imprisonment. Many LGBTQIA people have been forced to flee the country and are now in fragile safe houses in Kenya.”

“Spa Island” © Karol Palka, Poland, Finalist, Professional competition, Architecture & Design
“A spa of international importance in Slovakia. Although it is small in size, the country of Slovakia is rich in springs of natural healing water. Spa culture has been a part of the Slovakian lifestyle for hundreds of years and has become part of a secular ritual for some. In 1947, a special balneological congress decided to divide the approximately 50 Slovak spa localities into three categories of importance: international importance, national importance, and local importance. This project examines the ways in which the architecture of spas allows those establishments to be spaces of ritual and community.”

“Air Pollution” © Diana Cheren Nygren, United States, Shortlist, Professional competition, Creative
“A vista from Siena, Italy, mounted behind the acrylic, then onto a larger dye sublimated aluminum print of Death Valley National Park, California.”

“Anthurium andraeanum” © Tine Poppe, Norway, Finalist, Professional competition, Creative
“Born and bred in industrial scale greenhouses, cut flowers have no contact with nature and generate high CO2 emissions. The Western world’s supply of cut flowers used to be derived from local greenhouses, but most of the flowers we buy in our stores today have been transported by planes or lorries from digitally run greenhouses around the world: Colombia, Ecuador, and equatorial East Africa are currently the largest producers of cut flowers on the planet. The greenhouses contribute to high water use and chemical runoff, while the flowers can generate significant carbon emissions through their refrigeration and long-haul transportation – stems may be transported up to 9,600 km (6,000 miles) in refrigerated airplane holds. These cut flowers were bought at a local flower shop and photographed in front of prints of landscapes in my studio.”

“Angelica Archangelica” © Federico Scarchilli, Italy, Finalist, Professional competition, Still Life
“Angelica has been used in traditional medicine to treat multiple health conditions. It is thought to contain various bioactive ingredients with antioxidant, antimicrobial, and anti-inflammatory properties. Researchers have also studied Angelica’s potential anticancer effects in a lab, testing Angelica archangelica extract on breast cancer cells. They found that Angelica may help cause breast cancer cell death, leading researchers to conclude that the herb may have antitumor potential.”

“Ongeziwe” © Angelika Kollin, Estonia, Finalist, Professional competition, Portfolio
“This portrait was taken in Cape Town, South Africa, as part of my ongoing project about parenthood. The nucleus of one’s existence is rooted in family; each person inherently has parents. In our contemporary society, the concept of family has evolved and now integrates and embraces both traditional and new forms. No longer confined to a mere group of individuals sharing blood ties, I believe that family is increasingly becoming a feeling rather than a particular manifestation of form. My photographic exploration examines the myriad forms that a modern-day family can take, uniting them under common and universally sought human emotions: a sense of belonging, love, and emotional intimacy.”

Untitled © Thomas Meurot, France, Finalist, Professional competition, Sport
“When you’re looking for surf in Iceland, you take anything you can, big or small. Here, Samuel Redon enjoys the small but beautiful surf in one of the most amazing landscapes I witnessed.”

The 2024 Photographer of the Year will be selected from the pool of category finalists.

Untitled © Yaser Mohamad Khani, Iran, Islamic Republic Of, Finalist, Professional competition, Architecture & Design
“In recent years, due to population growth and lack of sufficient housing, the towns near Tehran have been crowded and people have to migrate here.”

“Go!” © Tommaso Pardini, Italy, Finalist, Professional competition, Sport
“Isma shows off his potential to the surfers in the line-up. The Senegalese surf scene is growing fast and I’ve been there to document the life of Ismaila Samb, a young, promising surfer who is aspiring to become a professional. The surfers here don’t have the best equipment, but though they surf with old surfboards and wetsuits, their passion is above everything. My mission was to help Isma gain visibility and international recognition. After my visit, he travelled outside Africa for the first time and joined the Senegalese national team, taking part in the World Surfing Games in El Salvador.”

“Austin Morris, Descendant of Frederick Douglass” © Drew Gardner, United Kingdom, Finalist, Professional competition, Portraiture
” A recreation of the Civil War portrait of Lewis Douglass, with a descendant of Frederick Douglass, the anti-slavery campaigner. This was a 15-second exposure with the model held in place with a neck brace.”

“Entrance” © James Rokop, United States, Shortlist, Professional competition, Sport
“This image shows an artistic swimming team diving into the water and starting to form a shape that will eventually look like a pyramid structure designed to lift another athlete out of the water. As an official photographer for USA Artistic Swimming, I have the honor and pleasure of photographing these amazing athletes. Most of the time, the spectators do not get to see the amazing underwater formations that help propel the athletes to the surface where they perform stands, jumps, and flips.”

“Doña Leocadia” © Mahé Elipe, France, Finalist, Professional competition, Environment
“For 12 years, the indigenous association led by Leocadia Utiz has been organizing a native corn seed fair. Farmers from participating communities are invited to exchange native seeds and forgotten indigenous knowledge. According to Mayan belief, Leocadia claims to be descended from corn. Together with her family, she ensures the protection of the forest by cultivating milpa.”

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My Modern Met granted permission to feature photos by the Sony World Photography Awards.

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New York’s International Center of Photography is celebrating its 50^th anniversary with two divergent exhibitions, one sprawling, the other intimate. The first, a survey of the institution’s permanent collection, tells the story of the medium itself. “David Seidner: Fragments, 1977–99” focuses on a photographer who was best known in his lifetime for his fashion work but who maintained a parallel art practice. It’s a compelling elegy.

The show marks 25 years since Seidner died of AIDS at age 42 in 1999 and is his first stateside solo exhibition in decades. It runs until May 6 and for many will serve as an introduction. In the 1980s, Seidner had a rapid fashion world ascension. A truncated bio reads like a fairytale: a Los Angeles native decamps to Paris and by the age of 19 is shooting magazine covers and scores a multiyear contract with Yves Saint Laurent. But Seidner’s story and work are much more nuanced and complex. His legacy has diminished since his passing, but that should change with “Fragments.”

David Seidner, Francine Howell, Azzedine Alaïa (1983). Courtesy of David Seidner Archive, International Center of Photography © International Center of Photography

“I want this show to be the beginning of the retelling of his story,” said its curator, Elisabeth Sherman. She was unfamiliar with Seidner when she joined ICP last year and discovered his archive. “To open up these boxes and see this lush, highly saturated, fragmented fashion work and then see these platinum print portraits on fiber paper of incredibly important contemporary artists,” she recalled, “it felt like these were done by two entirely different people.” Sherman was moved by his scope. “He’s attached to beauty and glamour,” she explained. “He’s interested in classical sculpture and Old Master portraits. On the other hand, John Cage is his biggest influence. He’s a fashion photographer, but he defines himself as an artist. I found that duality something to celebrate.”

Seidner’s art practice informed his fashion work and vice versa. His portraits for gallery shows were hyper-stylized. He employed experimental techniques for ad campaigns and magazine spreads like shooting models refracted in mirror shards. A throughline in Seidner’s broad oeuvre is that it’s rife with art history references from the ancient Greeks to John Singer Sargent to the Surrealists and beyond, and that it’s so anachronistic that it’s hard to relegate to an era.

“From the very beginning, he’s making handmade objects,” Sherman said, “fragmenting and piecing together images. In the ’70s, he’s making portraits of John Cage, Rauschenberg, Lucinda Childs—cutting them out and taping them together by hand. Then later when the work doesn’t look as fragmented or distorted, he uses light and shadow or blurring to achieve the same effect that a broken mirror or some other earlier technique did. That cutting up of the image literally and figuratively is there the whole career.”

David Seidner, Tina Chow (1978) and Adelle Lutz (1978). Courtesy of David Seidner Archive, International Center of Photography © International Center of Photography

Los Angeles

In the mid ’70s, Adelle Lutz managed the front of her brother-in-law’s Beverly Hills restaurant, Mr. Chow, which was like the Studio 54 of Chinese cuisine, a glitzy convergence of all creative vectors (Lutz’s sister, Tina Chow, was married to the artist and restaurateur Michael Chow). “Everyone came in from old Hollywood to the young flashier Hollywood. I was in the catbird seat,” Lutz recalled. “I was in a position where I could observe everyone and see how they treated each other and pick and choose who I wanted to know.”

One customer stood out: a teenage David Seidner, who would regularly come in by himself. “At the time, he was very gangly and uncoordinated. He would become much more elegant,” she remembered. “He was awkward. I don’t know how we started having our conversations.” Before long, she started posing for him.

“The first photo I remember doing with him I was wearing his mother’s silk dress and lying down in their driveway,” Lutz said. “I remember it was, ‘No makeup! Only put Vaseline on your eyelids.’ And I’m going, ‘What? Why is this kid telling me I have to lie down in the driveway? It just all seemed wrong.’ And then… he took these beautiful photos. That’s when he was starting to do those segmented images, the composites.”

David Seidner, Lucinda Childs (1978). David Seidner Archive, International Center of Photography © International Center of Photography

“He was incredibly gifted and mature for his age, and I’m not just saying that because he was my brother,” Jaime Seidner said. “He was into photography from a very early age, and he had drug me with him to a dark room that you could go to and pay by the hour.”

Seidner became intertwined with Lutz’s family for the remainder of his life and photographed the sisters multiple times. “I still come across these little notes and postcards that David would send to my parents from India and images,” Lutz says. “He was generous with his work. David wasn’t just a talented photographer. He wanted to have an exquisite life. His writing was very precise, very beautiful. His interiors were unlike anyone else’s. He could find the one great piece out of a total snarl of junk. He was methodical. He loved perfection. He had an eye and a rigor and an appreciation of classics. You could see that in his photography, the way he would have people pose, it tended to be very classical-like statues.”

David Seidner, Anne Rohart, Yves Saint Laurent (1983). Courtesy of David Seidner Archive, International Center of Photography © International Center of Photography

Paris

When Seidner was in his late teens, his father died. Shortly thereafter, he moved to Paris to study art history and literature at American University in Paris (he was fluent in French, German, and Italian). Another expat, Robert McElroy, would become a friend, and for a time, his agent. “The family situation was difficult for David,” he said. “When he arrived in Paris it was closing a lot of doors, but more importantly, it was a lot of doors opening—a place where he might actually creatively and personally have a sense of belonging.”

Seidner met Gabrielle Tana through Tina Chow. Tana had come to the city to get a master’s degree in philosophy but became a music video producer (she’d segue into film). “We were kindred spirits,” Tana said. “He loved literature and art. We went to museums. I learned a huge amount from him. He was extremely erudite and sophisticated and fun and kind of difficult. He was exacting. Perfection was everything. He was intolerant for less than excellent and [had] a sense of exquisite beauty. The complete aesthete.”

“He was very social,” Tana said. “He was part of a certain kind of sophisticated gay community. He was very grown up and old before his time. There was still that romantic idea of being an American in Paris. But it was like an echo of the past. He was a romantic. I remember going to Tangiers and him asking me to take a present to [author and composer] Paul Bowles. He loved that whole sense of history and culture and it was something that he yearned for. He would seek those kinds of people out. He had enormous regard for writers and artists.”

David Seidner, Yves Saint Laurent/Violeta Sanchez (1983). Courtesy of David Seidner Archive, International Center of Photography © International Center of Photography

Samia Saoma had an eponymous Paris gallery (Robert Mapplethorpe was on her roster). “David visited several times. That’s how I met him,” she recalled. “He talked easily to people and was engaging.” Saoma became a friend and mentor and began presenting his shows in 1978. She also posed for a remarkable segmented portrait. “There was something really fresh about him and how he was working,” she explained. “These images that were cut in several sections and then put together again, it was very unusual and different from everything you saw.” Saoma never showed Seidner’s prodigious number of fashion editorials.

“Fashion was a way for him to make a living,” Tana said. “The work that really mattered was his personal work. He considered himself an artist—that was his identity. He loved fashion. There was no snobbery. He thought he was privileged that he was able to do it and loved doing it. It just wasn’t the only thing that mattered to him.”

Violeta Sanchez was a stage actress when she met Seidner at a Paris art opening. “We hit it off immediately,” she recalled. “We spoke on the phone for three hours and agreed to meet at his studio. He wanted to shoot nude pictures. He had a beautiful turn-of-the-century studio with northern light, but he was broke. It was winter and there was no heating. He wanted me naked, lying on the concrete floor, on which there were big pieces of broken glass. It was so frigid I couldn’t take one more minute of it. David was someone that didn’t press the button quickly. He always made sure that he had exactly what he wanted. I get this phone call the next day. David said, ‘I’m terribly sorry and mortified, I guess I was intimidated, but I didn’t put the film in the camera properly. Would you do it again?’ I had to laugh, and I said, sure. The pictures came out stunning.” Sanchez would become a close friend and go-to model.

David Seidner, Yves Saint Laurent/Violeta Sanchez (1983). Courtesy of David Seidner Archive, International Center of Photography © International Center of Photography

“If David had his preference, he would’ve done every single sitting with Violeta,” said McElroy. “They had a special connection. When he was shooting her, she was one of the few people that he allowed to express herself. With David, everything was so particular, the angle of the head, where the hand went—it was his vision. But he allowed Violeta to add her own energy.”

In the early 1980s, Paris was the uncontested fashion capital. It was also a time of experimentation and evolution. Rule-breaking upstarts like Thierry Mugler, Claude Montana, and Jean-Paul Gaultier redefined French chic and by the mid-decade the stars of Japanese anti-fashion Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto would shock the Paris fashion week establishment with their deconstructed mystique and dark palettes. Seidner’s work, increasingly rife with classical references and throwback allure, was more in tune with the old guard—an aesthetic alliance that allowed him to transition out of his starving artist period.

“David was very much tied to the world of Saint Laurent,” McElroy said. “He got that unprecedented contract. The elegance of Saint Laurent was a perfect marriage. David. St. Laurent was the last of a certain kind of a designer. There was never another. The world dramatically shifted after that. It was St. Laurent and Lagerfeld and then the new world started—Thierry Mugler, Claude Montana, and all those people.”

Photographer David Seidner (Photo by Robert Mitra/WWD/Penske Media via Getty Images)

“It certainly wouldn’t happen now that someone like Pierre Bergé with this enormous Saint Laurent empire would just pluck a young American like David and give him a platform, but he did. It was just magical, but the world was just a very different place. There’s no analogy in where we are now. It was perfect for David that he was young at that time when those kind of possibilities were available to talent like his.”

McElroy attended the first YSL-commissioned shoot. “Violeta was of course one of the models and David did it in the courtyard of his building,” he said. “It was not at all what fashion production became. Everything was quite simple and scaled back. There was not anyone there other than David to oversee anything. The clothes arrived and it just happened. There wasn’t that team of people. The entire business changed so quickly into a completely different animal. That moment suited David perfectly where he had control over every element of what the photograph could become.”

Sanchez was intimately connected to the YSL world. “He and Helmut Newton shot the most campaigns,” Sanchez said. “In-house is not exactly the term. David became part of the family. If they liked you, they really liked you. Fashion didn’t mean anything to Saint Laurent. He was fashion. So, he did whatever he liked. Of course, he had to refresh the whole thing from time to time. They saw David’s work and that he was not just a fashion photographer. They loved when people were not just one thing.”

David Seidner, Yves Saint Laurent/Anh Duong (1986). Courtesy of David Seidner Archive, International Center of Photography © International Center of Photography

Seidner met the young ballerina Anh Duong at the Paris nightclub Le Palace. “He took my Polaroid and suddenly I was doing the Yves Saint Laurent campaign with Tina Chow,” Duong said. “Before I met David, no modeling agency would take me on. Being mixed race and looking different, everyone turned me down. David was so well-respected. Having him choose you, suddenly, your career is launched.”

“He was working mostly for European magazines. The Americans were not ready for that kind of style. He was very couture. It was a little like Erwin Blumenfeld. His style was very ’50s where women posed with a lot of eyeliner, super elegant. Which was not the aesthetic of the ’80s—big shoulders, big hair. David was very much in his own bubble. At that time, Bill King was the biggest photographer when women used to jump in the air and have their hair blowing.”

Duong was added to the Seidner’s coterie of regular models. Many were discoveries who could bring something else to the table. “He had a very small group of women that he loved and he would use them over and over,” she explained. “Tina Chow was definitely his muse. She was a married woman. She was not like a young girl just starting in life and ready to travel all over the world for modeling. She had this established life.”

David Seidner, Hat by Balenciaga (1988). Courtesy of David Seidner Archive, International Center of Photography © International Center of Photography

Seidner’s shoots were notoriously arduous. “It was purely about the aesthetic,” Duong recalled. “I adored working with him, but he was difficult. He would make you pose forever in one position. I was young, so I had the stamina. I could hold the pose forever coming from classical ballet. It was excruciating, but you knew the picture was worth it.”

“People who only worked with David saw this sort of control freak,” McElroy said. “He was not a light person to work with. But in his personal life, he could be incredibly silly and fun. When talking to people that just worked with David, they can say, ‘oh my god, he’s kind of scary.’ He was so specific. He knew exactly what he wanted before he clicked a shutter. He either saw it or he didn’t see it. In all the conversations we had over the years, I don’t recall him ever discussing what other photographers were doing. It was of absolutely no interest to him. He had his own vision.”

Colombe Pringle, the editor of Vogue Paris from 1987 to 1996, frequently commissioned Seidner. “With David, you didn’t always get what you expected, and that was wonderful,” she said. “These days people expect exactly what they want. I couldn’t work today. We didn’t care about marketing. We had no idea about all that.”

David Seidner, Yves Saint Laurent/Violeta Sanchez (1983). Courtesy of David Seidner Archive, International Center of Photography © International Center of Photography

For all of his perfectionism and control of the image, Seidner doesn’t convey a completely orderly sheen. There is a sense of wabi-sabi in the images and a behind-the-curtain reveal of the grit of Paris. It belied his complexity. “His French was wonderful. He was very cultured. He knew everything about everything, whether it was design, furniture, art,” Duong said. “It was almost like he was acting. It was hard to believe he grew up in America. It was a little bit like [Andy Warhol’s manager] Fred Hughes, whom I also knew. You know, sophisticated, very in the art and fashion worlds, reinventing themselves completely like a persona, and being very social, knowing all the right people. Fred was friends with all the aristocrats. David was friends with Paloma Picasso. All the best of Paris.”

Duong continued: “He was completely not from his time. I suspect he really cut himself off from his background. People can reinvent themselves and create this whole world around what they love. And Paris was part of that. I think that David had a darker side to him, I suspect he was going wild at night. It was the ’80s. I think he was very tortured because he tortured people and he tortured himself the most.”

By the mid-decade, the onslaught of AIDS was decimating the creative spheres and hitting close to home. Tina Chow died in January 1992 at the age of 41. Seidner had learned that he was seropositive sometime in the 1980s.

David Seidner, Tina Chow/Chanel (1984). Courtesy of David Seidner Archive, International Center of Photography © International Center of Photography

New York-Miami

“There’s something strangely calming about feeling so close to the continuum,” Seidner said in a 1993 interview in Bomb magazine. “I look at a flower and I don’t think it’s any less beautiful because it only blooms for two days. I think of how green turns to black as it decomposes and how, in turn, black engenders green. This is lofty and poetic and sophomoric and clichéd, but I think about it a lot. I think about recognition and existence in very Cartesian terms. About vastness and my true insignificance in the reality of it all. I prefer to think in Eastern terms of it all being illusion.”

Seidner moved from Paris to Manhattan. Tana recalled his Crosby Street loft: “It was dark and it was sort of reminiscent of Rue Daguerre, but it didn’t have quite the same oomph. He was already sick at that point and struggling with it and going to the gym a lot. He always ate very healthy and was self-disciplined about taking care of himself. It was before there were any drugs. We lost Tina before we lost him. It was horrible. And it was also after such a glorious time. So many gifted, fabulous people were lost.”

David Seidner, Self-Portrait (1992). David Seidner Archive, International Center of Photography © International Center of Photography

Also coalescing was a sea change in fashion and photography built upon point-and-shoot immediacy and naturalism, with scattershot sub-genre offshoots like grunge and heroin chic. Photographers like Jurgen Teller were redefining the landscape. Seidner was even further out of step than before. “Things had moved so dramatically into a different worldview, particularly with fashion photography,” McElroy said. “It was about something happening in the moment, which is the opposite of how David worked where everything was in his mind. He already saw the photograph before it was taken, which is why he actually shot very little film. When he looked in the camera, if he saw the image that he already had in his head, it was just a matter of a few clicks. Which is completely opposite than what everyone else was doing at that time—let’s keep shooting and see what randomly happens.”

The photographer and artist Jack Pierson befriended Seidner in New York. “He had this air of hauteur, which he deserved,” he recalled. “He was also really darling when he liked you. I remember going to Odessa with him in East Village, which was a Greek diner. He wasn’t pretentious. He just seemed to have the most perfect, exquisite life.” Seidner’s work stood out for Pierson. “He was giving you old school glamor in the ’80s,” he said. “He wasn’t a household name. His work still looks contemporary today now because he was trying to do something against the grain of the time.”

Pierson sensed that it was a time of transition for Seidner. “I have no doubt he was an artist,” he said, “but there is a difference between being an artist and being in the art world. Even Richard Avedon struggled with the same thing. People weren’t accepting of the concept of art and fashion being the same thing as easily back then. And subtly, I don’t think it’s so acceptable now.”

Installation view of “David Seidner: Fragments, 1977–99”. Photo: Jeenah Moon. Courtesy of International Center of Photography, New York

Seidner leaned further into portraiture and the contemporary art, blurring all of his interests. One series of nudes echoed Greek statues. He also had a decade-long project of documenting artists’ studios and taking a head-on portrait (of subjects such as Brice Marden, Cindy Sherman, Richard Serra). Many would be compiled along with his razor-sharp prose in the Assouline book Artists’ Studios (now out-of-print; it’s well-worth it if you can find a used copy). The images document the cloistered worlds of intimates like Felix Gonzales-Torres and Joan Miller, and Seidner vicariously embraces the chaos, mess, and allure of his subjects’ spaces.

Seidner also used his work to confront the AIDS epidemic in an era when just being out as HIV+ was an act of defiance and activism. He was on the board of the Community Research Initiative on AIDS and shot portraits for research campaigns. He wrote a memorable diatribe in The New Yorker decrying the empty virtue-signaling and trendiness of the ubiquitous Red Ribbon.

“When David became ill to the point where he made it clear that he just couldn’t continue the fight any longer, he spoke to Gaby and he said, you know, you are the person that needs to go to Miami with me and see me through this. Robert can’t do it, he’ll fall apart. Which would have been true. Gaby had to close her business basically. She devoted herself to being with David and seeing him through that last stage of his life,” said McElroy.

Seidner moved into a mid-century modern house on the beach. “For a long time, he was able to keep living a certain kind of quality of life,” Tana said, “and he was brave and he could do it. And then it just became too hard. He was in so much pain and he was miserable. But he fought. It was work that kept him going. And beauty.”

David Seidner, Orchid (1999) and Orchid (1999). Courtesy of David Seidner Archive, International Center of Photography © International Center of Photography

“David’s love of photography continued until his very last days,” McElroy said. “That’s when he did that brilliant series of orchids which are so outside of what you would ever think of when you look at David’s work. Those are a departure, but very much the kind of thing that you see a lot of artists at the end of their lives do—work that makes you think, where did that come from? It’s a different kind of creativity when people know that they’re near the end. Something clicks creatively and you have these magic moments.” Seidner died in June of 1999.

The orchid photos hang in the final corridor of “Fragments” at ICP. They are bright washes of soft-focus color. The blurred flowers are abstracted and inhabiting two realms. Poignantly across from them on the other wall is a gauzy, dream-like black and white photo of Tina Chow. Shot from above, her hair is shorn into a Joan of Arc coif and her face is obscured and turned away from the camera. She’s wearing a voluminous 1951 Balenciaga silk cape; it flows around her and she’s walking off into the distance.

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Rochester, N.Y. (February 29, 2024)—The George Eastman Museum continues its 75th anniversary celebration with the opening of the exhibition New Directions: Recent Acquisitions on Saturday, March 16 in the Project Gallery. New Directions features work acquired by the museum over the past five years, and showcases significant developments in photographic practice.

Throughout New Directions, the photographic image figures as a tool to fortify—but also unsettle—ideas about history and identity. Major themes in the exhibition examine the power of archives, digital image culture, the social structures of race and gender, and the landscape as a repository for history. While some of the artists embrace photography as a documentary medium, others develop strategies to destabilize the authority of the image. The many tactics on view include appropriation, abstraction, performance, montage, serialization, and other creative and conceptual interventions.

Alongside photographs made in the past decade, the exhibition includes works by artists who were often overlooked or marginalized in the past, but whose contributions are touchstones for contemporary art.

New Directions also features a selection of photobooks from the museum’s Richard and Ronay Menschel Library. The featured publications take many forms, from traditionally bound pages to more sculptural or even puzzle-like constructions.

Photographers and artists in the exhibition include An-My Lê, Annie Hsiao-Ching Wang, Baldwin Lee, Eileen Quinlan, Erica Baum, Ilse Cardoen, Janice Guy, Joan Lyons, Justine Kurland, Keith Smith, Ken Gonzales-Day, Lola Flash, Meghann Riepenhoff, Sophie Calle, and Zanele Muholi. The exhibition is curated by Phil Taylor and Louis Chavez, Department of Photography.

The exhibition title echoes New Acquisitions/New Directions/New Work, 1981–1989, which was on display for the museum’s 40th anniversary. 

Admission to New Directions: Recent Acquisitions is free with regular museum admission.

SPECIAL PROGRAMS

Wish You Were Here: Baldwin Lee: Looking is Harder than it Looks
Thursday, April 11, 6 p.m.
Dryden Theatre
A first-generation Chinese American, Baldwin Lee is a photographer and educator known for his photographs of Black communities of the American South. Founder of the University of Tennessee’s photography program in the early 1980s, Lee is currently a professor emeritus at the institution.

Tickets are $10 for non-members, and free for George Eastman Museum members and students with a valid ID. Visit eastman.org for more information and to register for the event.

About the George Eastman Museum
Founded in 1947, the George Eastman Museum is the world’s oldest photography museum and one of the largest film archives in the United States, located on the historic Rochester estate of entrepreneur and philanthropist George Eastman, the pioneer of popular photography. Its holdings comprise more than 400,000 photographs, 41,000 motion picture films, the world’s preeminent collection of photographic and cinematographic technology, one of the leading libraries of books related to photography and cinema, and extensive holdings of documents and other objects related to George Eastman. As a research and teaching institution, the Eastman Museum has an active publishing program and, its L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation’s graduate program (a collaboration with the University of Rochester) makes critical contributions to film preservation. For more information, visit eastman.org and follow the George Eastman Museum account on Facebook, as well as the @eastmanmuseum accounts on Instagram, TikTok, and Threads.

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Promotional Images for New Directions: Recent Acquisitions are available to download: https://eastmanmuseum.box.com/v/newdirections.

Media Contact: Nate Smith
(585) 327-4813
nsmith@eastman.org