Jarvis’ photographs stops a moment in time as it fleets away to what could have been an insignificant and unnoticed moment. They are quite and reflective. Through his unique vision we see a glimpse of the life, movement and stillness of the city of Paris.

View more of Chase Jaris’s Tous Les Jours photographs under Projects on his website.

Canadian Photographer Edward Burtynsky has traveled the world to try and answer that issue. His photographic work brings a great variety of images that begin to answer this issue. His work includes quarries, mines, railway cuts, ship yards, oil fields, refineries, vast waste yards and the three gorges dam project in China. The diverse subject matter brings light to the bigger picture and not just on a single issue.

His work along the Yangtze River in Hubei province China shows our increasing desire for more to the point that the Chinese government destroyed 11 cities and displaced 1.2 million people to provide for the growing demand of electricity and control of the river. His photographs of the Yangtze show the waste and destruction of materials and cities that now sit buried under the river. After seeing these I realized for the first time after flooding eleven cities, new cities with homes, roads, offices, utilities, sidewalks and more have to be rebuilt using most likely new raw material which only damages more of our earth.

Burtynsky work also looks at other alterations such as a vast field of rubber tires that are sitting, breaking down into harmful chemicals in California or the removal of stone from the vast amount of quarries across the globe. Every building and road that is built more and more of this stone is removed leaving enormous scars on the landscape and essentially unusable land. When you see the big picture it is all connected and the footprint is growing and changing constantly for the worse.

His beautiful and often startling work shows the true nature of our growing demand and what it truly costs us.

The TED award was given to Burtynsky in 2005 to recognize his work revealing mankind’s impact on the environment. This award helped add financial support to www.worldchanging .com and other endeavors that can be seen on the TED website.

Click here to view Edward Burtynsky’s online portfolio.

The quality of light that Zena Holloway is able to create underwater is completely different from anything possible on dry land. It is soft but direct with a glow to it. The individual water molecules act as tiny reflectors softening the fall off of the light and filling shadows. The color palette she uses is a rich antique palette with lightly muted colors. Skin tones are also different. Coupled with a lack of gravity and impeccable technique, Holloway creates remarkable photographs with a heightened ethereal mood.

Holloway’s love for the world below the surface didn’t start with photography but with her first dive under it. This caused her to rethink her life, abandoned architecture school plans and started working at a diving school. Her plan to be a photographer was born out of work making souvenir video’s for tourists in the Cayman Islands. Her strong love for the water is what allows her to be the only photographer that works exclusively underwater and among a short list of people with the knowledge and experience to do advertising and editorial shoots there.

View more of Zena Holloway’s work on her website

His artwork focuses primarily on landscapes which can be purely nature or show how humans have added to the landscape in an interesting way such as a Japanese Torii in the midst of a vast endless ocean or an electrical transmission line lost in white abyss of snow. The imagery can be so familiar but shown in an unseeingly possible simplicity.

The unique aspect of Michael Kenna’s photography work is his variation of mood and emotion as well as the range of locations he has photographed, but his style is consistent. His unmistakable style of harmonious, subdued landscapes overtakes the subject showing that he is indeed in control and not simply taking photographs of an area or object. Kenna creates a photograph.

Over Kenna’s thirty years as a photographer he has created a large collection of beautiful landscape and industrial site photographs while continually showing work in galleries and museums around the world. He has also published several books and worked for a number of corporate clients. His website offer images that span his career. After spending some time with his images it is easy to see why his photographs are some of the most collectible photographs to be made. His vision is about consideration and perfection.

View More of Michael Kenna’s Photography

Unfinished Dreams reminds us how short life can be through a few Romanian children. Their struggle to hang on for just another day is apparent as they hope for a better future. Movila’s black and white images bring to life the sad reality of the situation and how the children make the best of it; sometimes as happy as children should be and sometimes a sense of reflection on possibly the way life used to be with a longing for a future beyond cancer.

Movila’s photographs allow the viewer to see from a distance as the subjects seem to ignore the presence of a photographer giving a greater sense of reality and keeping the photographs from becoming too painful to view. They feel as though one is looking back in time after the fact and not an immediate part of it.

View more of Cristian Movila’s Work

Joakim Eskildsen’s book, The Roma Journeys, brings to us a portion of the visible Romani people of Hungary, India, Greece, Romania, France, Russia and Finland. Eskildsen spent many months at each place over the course of six years living as a guest in Roma family homes. The extended period of time he spent gives his photographs an honest and unexploited view of their culture and way of life.

Eskildsen’s photographs are nothing short of impeccable. His awareness of the natural light is just as obvious as his connection and closeness to the subjects he is documenting. The photographs do not scream for attention nor show an intense poverty that makes the viewer feel sorry for the subjects but rather a quite subtle calling for attention. This attention does not show a want for change or help but to simply show the truth. They reflect the people and their connection with each other and the land.

Many documentaries of poverty stricken parts of the world just show the pain, grief and intense poverty while overlook the happy and normal part of life. The normal part is exactly what Eskildsen shows. Every person and culture on earth has plenty of pain and grief; for a photographer to just focus on that aspect gives a skewed view of reality. Eskildsen’s photographs seem to represent so accurately and truthfully the Roma people it is difficult to believe they were taken by an outsider.

In a world filled with technologies and convinces that are supposed to make our lives better and richer these photographs are yet another reminder that this may not necessarily be the case.

View More of Joakim Eskildsen’s Photography

Roma Journeys Images

Roversi’s style hearkens to that of the nineteenth century and even though his work is current it is difficult to place when they were taken, most likely due to his classical training in Paris by fashion photographer Laurence Sackman and his ability to deal with and bring out something real and tangible in his subjects while in front of the camera. It is obvious that he is most interested in the person in the photograph and less about everything else, but when the truly perfect moment comes and the subject gives everything the props, clothing and background seem somehow perfect and natural; not forced.

This perfection and timeless nature of the images adds to their allure and beauty and removes all thoughts of our current culture and allows us to see the images in their own pure light. Roversi’s imagery has a romantic quality as he seemingly raises the beauty and allure of the women to the highest level.

View more of Paolo Roversi’s Photography

Although Cobbings has done wonderful work around the world his attention to Greenland and his obvious love for the frozen bleak landscape shines though as his crème of the crop. His series “Surface Tension” shows the world of the uninhabitable Greenland ice caps from above the surface. As stated on his website the Greenland ice caps have been estimated to hold a volume of water that would contribute to the rise of the oceans by 7 meters globally if melted. The sheer power that this area holds is tremendous which shows though in the photographs. The simple visual impact of the photographs are brought to life with rich textures and vibrant but realistic color as in photograph number seven and ten of the Surface Tension series.

A complimenting series of photographs with a different take on the Greenland landscape is Cobbing’s “Noorderlicht“. The Noorderlicht , a restored century old schooner, sailed from Svalbard to Greenland which turned out to be a very moody journey as documented by Cobbing. The images are cold in nature and give you a sense of what one might feel like in a century old ship in the middle of a vast ocean of freezing water nearly covered in ice. The photographs puts you right on the boat with everything except the cold sprays of water as you feel the sense of seriousness and the raw power that the oceans have over you. The waves crashing up against the boat leaning it over too much for anyone’s comfort.

Cobbings way of editing the landscape down to create a true representational landscape photograph that rivals the greatest color field and non-representational paintings in feeling and emotion evoked is breathtaking. His vision of the contemporary landscape blends beauty and environmental concerns effortlessly.

www.nickcobbing.co.uk