PICTORIAL STORY NYC SUBWAY RIDERS BEFORE THE INVASION OF SMARTPHONES Hiroyuki Ito’s subway photographs reveal a vanished intimacy — strangers lost in thought in a world before digital distractions took hold. June 22, 2025 PICTORIAL STORY photography HIROYUKI ITO story MELANIE MEGGS SHARE Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link There’s a peculiar kind of intimacy that lives in Hiroyuki Ito’s subway photographs. It's not the kind born of conversation or connection — quite the opposite. It’s the intimacy of solitude. Of being lost in thought, adrift in a crowd, present only to oneself. These photographs, made on New York City subways between 2007 and 2008, capture something that has all but vanished in the decade and a half since: the unguarded inner life of strangers in public. Hiroyuki Ito has spent much of his life observing people in motion, in performance halls, on street corners, under stage lights, and deep below the city, on screeching trains beneath the asphalt. Born in Tokyo in 1968, Hiroyuki arrived in New York in 1992 more by parental edict than personal ambition. “I graduated from high school and for the next three years, I didn’t do anything,” he recalls. “I didn’t go to school; I had no job — I was a lazy bum staying home all the time. Finally, my mother got sick of me and suddenly told me to go to America and do something.” She handed him the number of a friend’s son studying music in Boston. When the young Hiroyuki admitted he didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life, the man offered a simple suggestion: “Go to New York. You might find something.” Hiroyuki didn’t know what he was searching for, only that he had to start looking. Over the years, New York gave him direction, mentors, and ultimately, a career. As a freelance photographer for The New York Times for over two decades, he covered countless performing arts events, balancing the precision of visual storytelling with the fluidity of human expression. But what he captured on the subway during his commutes, those unposed, unscripted interludes, reveal another dimension of his photographic practice: one anchored in patience and reverence for the everyday. There is no peak action, no drama. In these photographs, faces become quiet landscapes of thought. “Did I turn off the gas before I left home?” “How am I going to pay this month’s rent?” “Does he really love me?” “Will my mother be okay on her own?” We’ll never know what any of them were thinking. But that’s the point. These aren’t photographs meant to explain. They are photographs that suggest. Photography, Hiroyuki reminds us, is not about clarity. It’s about imagination. “A photograph is still and silent,” he says. “It can’t move or speak like a video. It needs the viewer’s mind to complete it.” It was 2007, the first iPhone had just been released, and though it would soon revolutionize how we live and move through the world, it hadn’t yet infiltrated the subway. Hiroyuki’s photographs, then, become a kind of archaeological record, visual evidence of a now-extinct species: the publicly private New Yorker, whose mind was their only entertainment on the ride home. “I miss the blank facial expressions,” Hiroyuki reminisces. Of course, Hiroyuki isn’t lamenting the loss of the past for nostalgia’s sake. He's well aware that times change, as do the tools we use to shape our days. “Photography is essentially about time,” he says. “It’s a record of something that is leaving us.” His images aren’t a plea for regression. They’re an invitation to see what was there and what might still be, if only we look more closely. There’s a humility to Hiroyuki’s practice that runs counter to much of what we associate with artistic authorship. He doesn’t consider himself an artist, or even a journalist. “I feel more like a municipal clerk,” he offers, “punching the clock and taking pictures every day.” That modesty belies the quiet rigor in his work. Whether documenting actors on stage or riders on a subway bench, he approaches each scene with a sensitivity to rhythm, to breath, to what he calls the “rest” in a musical composition — the moment between notes, where silence makes meaning possible. This sense of restraint, of going only halfway and allowing the viewer to meet him there, is deeply rooted in Hiroyuki’s Japanese heritage. In a city where everyone is performing, whether consciously or not, Hiroyuki knows when to look, and when to hold back. His camera is his sketchbook. “It’s like a pencil and a small notebook,” he says. “A way of making a quick drawing.” And so, these subway portraits function almost like visual haikus — minimal, contemplative, and open-ended. There is no attempt to make the subway more glamorous or more despairing than it is. Instead, Hiroyuki focuses on the ordinary magic of people simply being, lost in thought, waiting, transitioning from one place to another. The subway becomes not just a vehicle but a metaphor for a moment suspended between past and future. Between who we were and who we’re becoming. And that’s where the power of these photographs lies. They remind us of something that is both specific and universal: that we all carry secret lives, even in plain sight. That reflection is possible amid the noise. That even in transit, we might be still. For The Pictorial List community, this project opens a quiet window onto a time not so distant. One we all passed through but rarely stopped to see. Through Hiroyuki’s perspective, we’re invited to slow down, to remember what it felt like, and to rediscover meaning in the ordinary moments that once rushed by unnoticed. © Hiroyuki Ito © Hiroyuki Ito © Hiroyuki Ito © Hiroyuki Ito © Hiroyuki Ito © Hiroyuki Ito © Hiroyuki Ito © Hiroyuki Ito © Hiroyuki Ito © Hiroyuki Ito © Hiroyuki Ito © Hiroyuki Ito © Hiroyuki Ito © Hiroyuki Ito © Hiroyuki Ito © Hiroyuki Ito Three decades after his first subway photographs, Hiroyuki Ito still rides the trains, camera in hand, eyes open to the choreography of urban life. The world around him has shifted. He doesn’t mourn the change. He adapts. He watches. He documents. And perhaps, decades from now, his images of people swiping screens and tapping icons will carry their own elegiac beauty, as foreign and fascinating to future viewers as these quiet, analog souls appear to us now. For Hiroyuki, photography is not a pursuit of drama or self-expression. It is an act of steady attention, a way of listening without words. And as long as people keep creating fleeting moments of stillness amid the noise, he’ll be there, observing, recording, and quietly reminding us to look a little closer. view Hiroyuki Ito's portfolio Website >>> Read on Substack >>> The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the text belong solely to the author/s and are not necessarily shared by The Pictorial List and the team. read more stories >>> RUPTURE REPAIR REMNANT In this reflection on rupture, Donna Bassin invites us to consider how grief settles into the body and the image, and how the slow work of witnessing becomes a form of repair. DELTA DUSK John Agather weaves image and text into a single current, tracing how music, memory, and daily life continue to move through the Mississippi Delta. SILENT BEAUTY Tamara Quadrelli photographs the world by slowing down inside it. There is no rush to explain what we are seeing. The pleasure comes from staying with it. SOLITUDE UNDER A TECHNIFIED SUN Tracing the space between movement and stillness, Héctor Morón reveals a city that persists as human presence slips by. 4320 MINUTES WITHOUT COLOR Moving between photography and narration, Mohammed Nahi traces a period in which sight could no longer be assumed as reliable, and attention shifted toward memory and duration. THE PAINTED VILLAGE OF LABANDHAR Anjan Ghosh’s photographs carry us to Labandhar, where painting becomes language, tradition stays present, and art grows through shared ground. ORDINARY GRIEF What endures when everything else is uncertain? Through photography, Parisa Azadi asks us to see Iran not as story, but as feeling. THE EVERYMAN Eva Mallis uncovers the quiet strength of overlooked lives, capturing everyday encounters in Mumbai’s industrial districts as intimate portraits of labor and resilience. IN BETWEEN LIFE AND AFTER In Cairo’s City of the Dead, families carve out ordinary lives among centuries of tombs — Paola Ferrarotti traces the fragile line between memory and survival. UNFIGURED Nasos Karabelas transforms the human body into a site of emotional flux — where perception fractures and inner states become visible form. VISIONS OF ICELAND FROM ABOVE Massimo Lupidi takes flight above Iceland — capturing nature’s abstract brushstrokes where land, water, and sky blur into poetic visions beyond the ordinary eye. UNDER THE CLOUDS Giordano Simoncini presents a visual ethnography of the interconnectedness of indigenous cosmology, material life, and the ecological balance within the Quechua communities of the Peruvian Andes. NYC SUBWAY RIDERS BEFORE THE INVASION OF SMARTPHONES Hiroyuki Ito’s subway photographs reveal a vanished intimacy — strangers lost in thought in a world before digital distractions took hold. THE GHOST SELF Buku Sarkar stages her refusal to vanish. Her photographs are unflinching, lyrical acts of documentation, mapping a body in flux and a mind grappling with the epistemic dissonance of chronic illness. WHISPERS On Mother’s Day, Regina Melo's story asks us to pause. To remember. To feel. It honors the profound, often quiet sacrifices that mothers make, and the invisible threads that bind us to them. BEYOND THE MASK By stepping beyond the scripted world of professional wrestling and into the raw terrain of mental health, Matteo Bergami and Fabio Giarratano challenge long-held myths about masculinity, endurance, and heroism. FRAGMENTS OF TIME Each of jfk's diptychs functions as a microcosm of the city, allowing viewers to experience urban life as constant fragmented glimpses, mirroring the unpredictable nature of human interactions. VANISHING VENICE Lorenzo Vitali’s portrayal of Venice is an almost surreal experience — where time dissolves, and the viewer is left with the sensation of stepping into a dreamscape. CLAY AND ASHES Abdulla Shinose CK explores the challenges faced by Kumhar Gram's potters, balancing tradition and adaptation in the face of modern pressures. ISLAND Enzo Crispino’s photographic series, “Nêsos,” invites viewers into an introspective journey that mirrors the artist’s rediscovery of his voice in photography after a prolonged period of creative estrangement. BEYOND THE BRICKS Amid Bangladesh’s dynamic urban growth, Anwar Ehtesham’s photography takes us beyond statistics and headlines, revealing the hidden lives of the laborers working tirelessly in the nation’s brick kilns. OAXACA In Oaxaca, Tommaso Stefanori captures Día de los Muertos, exploring the convergence of life and death, human connections, and enduring cultural rituals through evocative photographs of tradition and emotion. BEHIND THE PLANTS Wayan Barre documents Cancer Alley residents facing pollution and economic challenges, shedding light on their resilience and the impacts of environmental injustice. THE RED POPPY AND THE SUN By blending archival and contemporary images, Mei Seva creates a visual story that captures the ongoing struggles and moments of triumph for those impacted by displacement and circumstance. FIRE AND FORGE Alexandros Zilos delves deep into the harsh reality of sulfur mining, while also capturing the allure of the blue fire phenomenon created by sulfur deposits in the crater.

Presenting the work of visual storytellers from around the world. SILENT BEAUTY Tamara Quadrelli photographs the world by slowing down inside it. There is no rush to explain what we are seeing. The pleasure comes from staying with it. PICTORIAL STORY RUPTURE REPAIR REMNANT In this reflection on rupture, Donna Bassin invites us to consider how grief settles into the body and the image, and how the slow work of witnessing becomes a form of repair. PICTORIAL STORY DELTA DUSK John Agather weaves image and text into a single current, tracing how music, memory, and daily life continue to move through the Mississippi Delta. PICTORIAL STORY SILENT BEAUTY Tamara Quadrelli photographs the world by slowing down inside it. There is no rush to explain what we are seeing. The pleasure comes from staying with it. PICTORIAL STORY SOLITUDE UNDER A TECHNIFIED SUN Tracing the space between movement and stillness, Héctor Morón reveals a city that persists as human presence slips by. PICTORIAL STORY 4320 MINUTES WITHOUT COLOR Moving between photography and narration, Mohammed Nahi traces a period in which sight could no longer be assumed as reliable, and attention shifted toward memory and duration. PICTORIAL STORY THE PAINTED VILLAGE OF LABANDHAR Anjan Ghosh’s photographs carry us to Labandhar, where painting becomes language, tradition stays present, and art grows through shared ground. PICTORIAL STORY ORDINARY GRIEF What endures when everything else is uncertain? Through photography, Parisa Azadi asks us to see Iran not as story, but as feeling. PICTORIAL STORY THE EVERYMAN Eva Mallis uncovers the quiet strength of overlooked lives, capturing everyday encounters in Mumbai’s industrial districts as intimate portraits of labor and resilience. PICTORIAL STORY IN BETWEEN LIFE AND AFTER In Cairo’s City of the Dead, families carve out ordinary lives among centuries of tombs — Paola Ferrarotti traces the fragile line between memory and survival. PICTORIAL STORY UNFIGURED Nasos Karabelas transforms the human body into a site of emotional flux — where perception fractures and inner states become visible form. PICTORIAL STORY VISIONS OF ICELAND FROM ABOVE Massimo Lupidi takes flight above Iceland — capturing nature’s abstract brushstrokes where land, water, and sky blur into poetic visions beyond the ordinary eye. PICTORIAL STORY UNDER THE CLOUDS Giordano Simoncini presents a visual ethnography of the interconnectedness of indigenous cosmology, material life, and the ecological balance within the Quechua communities of the Peruvian Andes. PICTORIAL STORY NYC SUBWAY RIDERS BEFORE THE INVASION OF SMARTPHONES Hiroyuki Ito’s subway photographs reveal a vanished intimacy — strangers lost in thought in a world before digital distractions took hold. PICTORIAL STORY THE GHOST SELF Buku Sarkar stages her refusal to vanish. Her photographs are unflinching, lyrical acts of documentation, mapping a body in flux and a mind grappling with the epistemic dissonance of chronic illness. PICTORIAL STORY WHISPERS On Mother’s Day, Regina Melo's story asks us to pause. To remember. To feel. It honors the profound, often quiet sacrifices that mothers make, and the invisible threads that bind us to them. PICTORIAL STORY BEYOND THE MASK By stepping beyond the scripted world of professional wrestling and into the raw terrain of mental health, Matteo Bergami and Fabio Giarratano challenge long-held myths about masculinity, endurance, and heroism. PICTORIAL STORY FRAGMENTS OF TIME Each of jfk's diptychs functions as a microcosm of the city, allowing viewers to experience urban life as constant fragmented glimpses, mirroring the unpredictable nature of human interactions. PICTORIAL STORY VANISHING VENICE Lorenzo Vitali’s portrayal of Venice is an almost surreal experience — where time dissolves, and the viewer is left with the sensation of stepping into a dreamscape. PICTORIAL STORY CLAY AND ASHES Abdulla Shinose CK explores the challenges faced by Kumhar Gram's potters, balancing tradition and adaptation in the face of modern pressures. PICTORIAL STORY ISLAND Enzo Crispino’s photographic series, “Nêsos,” invites viewers into an introspective journey that mirrors the artist’s rediscovery of his voice in photography after a prolonged period of creative estrangement. PICTORIAL STORY BEYOND THE BRICKS Amid Bangladesh’s dynamic urban growth, Anwar Ehtesham’s photography takes us beyond statistics and headlines, revealing the hidden lives of the laborers working tirelessly in the nation’s brick kilns. PICTORIAL STORY OAXACA In Oaxaca, Tommaso Stefanori captures Día de los Muertos, exploring the convergence of life and death, human connections, and enduring cultural rituals through evocative photographs of tradition and emotion. PICTORIAL STORY BEHIND THE PLANTS Wayan Barre documents Cancer Alley residents facing pollution and economic challenges, shedding light on their resilience and the impacts of environmental injustice. PICTORIAL STORY THE RED POPPY AND THE SUN By blending archival and contemporary images, Mei Seva creates a visual story that captures the ongoing struggles and moments of triumph for those impacted by displacement and circumstance. PICTORIAL STORY FIRE AND FORGE Alexandros Zilos delves deep into the harsh reality of sulfur mining, while also capturing the allure of the blue fire phenomenon created by sulfur deposits in the crater.

DONNA BASSIN I am a Brooklyn-born, New Jersey–based photo artist, filmmaker, writer, and clinical psychologist whose work as a trauma therapist has profoundly shaped my practice. I focus on long-term projects that explore painful aspects of modern life, such as post-traumatic stress, racism, social injustice, and, most recently, environmental destruction. Before turning to photography and film, I studied art therapy at Pratt Institute and started as a handmade clay artist. Those early experiences, working directly with materials and later with patients, taught me that rupture leaves marks not only on bodies and minds but also on the surfaces we touch and shape. This awareness continues to influence my art. My photographs bear their own scars, burned, torn, sutured, or reinforced with gold washi tape, not to hide damage but to reveal trauma and loss so that healing can begin. Collaboration and community remain central. As co-creator of Frontline Arts, I worked with veterans to transform military uniforms into handmade paper, an experience that culminated in By Our Own Hand, a site specific installation at the Montclair Art Museum. These collective acts of making extend my studio practice into shared moments of mourning and repair. My approach is guided by psychoanalysis, which trained me to listen for the unspeakable, and by Japanese traditions such as kintsugi and calligraphy, which honor repair and imperfection. I draw inspiration from Hiroshi Sugimoto’s meditations on time, Doris Salcedo’s sculptural mourning, Anselm Kiefer’s scarred landscapes of memory, and Richard Avedon’s honest and vulnerable portraits. Alongside photography, I have created several short art films and directed two award winning feature documentaries, Leave No Soldier and The Mourning After. Film and video allow me to expand my photographic work into time and motion. My photographs, writing, and interviews have appeared in Tricycle, Lenscratch, Fotonostrum, Grazia, Borderline Press’ Facsimile, Lens Magazine, FLOAT, LandEscape Art Review, Dodho Magazine, The Hand Magazine, Analog Forever, Vostok Magazine, and Overlapse’s Stir the Pot. I received a 2024 Puffin Foundation Artist Grant and a 2021 New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowship, and I was recognized as both a Top 50 Photographer and a Finalist for Critical Mass from 2022 to 2024. My series The Afterlife of Dolls was featured on New Jersey PBS’s State of the Arts, and Portraits of the Precarious Earth appeared in “The Art of Repair” on Rhode Island PBS’s Art Inc. I have held solo exhibitions at the Newport Art Museum, R.I.; the Montclair Art Museum, N.J.; the Morris Museum, N.J.; the Passaic Arts Center, N.J.; Mira Forum, Porto, Portugal; and Espaço D’Artes, Lisbon, Portugal, as well as in SaveArtSpace’s billboard project in Brooklyn, N.Y. LOCATION New Jersey UNITED STATES CAMERA/S Sony, iPhone & Diana Pinhole WEBSITE https://www.donnabassin.com/ @P1NHOLE.DONNABASSIN FEATURES // Rupture Repair Remnant

PICTORIAL STORY RUPTURE REPAIR REMNANT In this reflection on rupture, Donna Bassin invites us to consider how grief settles into the body and the image, and how the slow work of witnessing becomes a form of repair. March 8, 2026 PICTORIAL STORY PHOTOGRAPHY Donna Bassin STORY Donna Bassin INTRODUCTION Karen Ghostlaw SHARE Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link Rupture is not an abstract condition but a lived one, registered in bodies, relationships, landscapes, and images. This text unfolds as an inquiry into how damage is acknowledged, carried, and worked through over time, without denial or premature resolution. Moving between artistic practice, psychological listening, and material process, it traces an ongoing engagement with mourning, witnessing, and repair, not as a return to an original state, but as an ethical labor that remains partial and unfinished. This inquiry lives at the center of Donna Bassin’s work. A Brooklyn-born, New Jersey-based photo artist, filmmaker, writer, and clinical psychologist, she works at the intersection of art making and trauma care, where attention itself becomes a form of devotion. What breaks matters. What remains matters. She returns to her subjects over years rather than resolving them quickly, allowing loss and memory to shift, settle, and deepen in their own time. Before turning to photography and film, Donna studied art therapy at Pratt Institute and worked as a handmade clay artist. Working with earth and touch taught her that surfaces remember. Decades of work as a clinical psychologist and community worker with trauma and complex mourning deepened this understanding. Rupture leaves traces not only in bodies and minds, but in the materials, we handle and the images we hold. History gathers in wear, fracture, and repair. That awareness continues to shape her visual language. Her photographs resist seamlessness. They are burned, torn, punctured, sutured, and reinforced, sometimes with gold washi tape, so that damage remains visible and palpable. These gestures are not embellishment. They are acts of insistence. The image must carry what it has endured. Repair is present but never concealed. The scar is not erased. It stands as evidence of survival and of time passing through. Collaboration and community extend this ethic beyond the studio. As a founding member and president of the board of Frontline Arts in New Jersey, Donna worked with veterans to transform military uniforms into handmade paper, a collective act of mourning that culminated in By Our Own Hand, a site-specific installation at the Montclair Art Museum. In these shared acts of making, the studio opens outward. Grief becomes something held together. Memory becomes communal. What cannot be undone can still be witnessed. Donna’s practice is shaped by psychoanalytic listening, an attention to what is spoken and what remains unsaid, as well as by Japanese traditions such as kintsugi, which honor imperfection and visible repair. Her work resonates with artists who hold time within material form, including Hiroshi Sugimoto, Doris Salcedo, Anselm Kiefer, and Richard Avedon. Across these influences and through her own sustained inquiry, Donna asks us not to look away, but to remain with what has been marked, and to recognize that repair is not a conclusion. It is a practice. The question beneath my work is straightforward: how do we live with what has been torn within us, between us, and around us without looking away? For me, repair begins with acknowledgement: naming the injury, registering the loss, and refusing the pressure to smooth it over or move on. Only then can mending begin, not as a reset but as a process—partial, visible, and ongoing. Loss, trauma, mourning, and witnessing run through everything I make. I’m interested in how loss is metabolized (or not), how people protect themselves from the unthinkable, and how meaning evolves over time within relationships. I work in series and long-term projects, returning to subjects over years rather than resolving them quickly. This sustained attention has shaped bodies of work addressing social injustice, PTSD, and moral injury, and, more recently, the environmental crisis. In my series, Portraits of a Precarious Earth, I approach damaged and disappearing landscapes not as neutral scenery but as vulnerable subjects — sites where human action, denial, and responsibility are inscribed. The work asks how we bear witness to environmental harm without aestheticizing it away and how attention itself might become an ethical response. I’m an artist working in photography, a filmmaker, a writer, and a clinical psychologist specializing in trauma and complex mourning. These roles are not separate; they form a single practice. Psychoanalytic training has taught me to listen for what is spoken and what is withheld, for what appears indirectly in gesture, tone, and the objects people keep. In the studio, I work with the same attention. I don’t treat images as declarations. I treat them as encounters; places where contradiction, vulnerability, and resilience can sit side by side without being forced into closure. Formally, my practice often begins with the camera but does not end there. I work with photographs as physical objects, not merely representations. I intervene on the surface, tearing, burning, puncturing, reassembling, suturing, and layering physical prints. These actions are not embellishment or disguise. They are the content. I want the photograph to carry history, its vulnerability, and endurance, so the viewer meets not “perfect” beauty but a surface that has survived. The repair is visible; the scar is not hidden. I document what exists, then build a second truth on the image’s skin, the way people build second truths about themselves. I care deeply about the image’s materiality, its weight, grain, fragility, and resistance, and I’m drawn to the edge of the photograph, where the frame typically contains and controls. Sometimes I let the photograph resist that containment. I push the boundaries of two dimensions by layering prints, lifting corners, building relief, and letting thread, paper, and tape move the image into space. I want the work to register viscerally, engaging the senses and the body. A puncture is not just a mark; it’s a small act of violence and a record of it. A burn is not only a formal device; it’s an interruption that changes what an image can hold. Stitching can be read as repair, but also as urgency: as what must be held together, what cannot be restored, and what is still in need of care. Beauty matters here, too. I use color, light, and formal balance as thresholds that allow looking, especially at what many people would rather avoid. But I try to keep beauty ethically awake. The goal is not comfort; it’s attention. My engagement with women’s issues is longstanding and specific. In my psychoanalytic writing, editorial work, and community practice, I’ve remained close to feminist questions, with particular attention to motherhood and maternal subjectivity, how attachment, memory, and mourning shape a mother’s inner world, and how cultural ideologies press on women’s lived experience. I’ve written about female development and sexual difference, including how “difference” can illuminate women’s complexity or be used to confine it. I also address embodied experience, including infertility, reproductive loss, and the stigma that often surrounds them. Across these efforts, the aim is consistent: to broaden what is thinkable about women’s inner lives without reducing them. That commitment extends into my filmmaking and community-based work. In my award-winning feature-length documentary, Leave No Soldier , I deliberately included women who have served, including Vietnam-era nurses as well as female soldiers from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their presence pushes back against a cultural reflex that frames war experiences and moral injury as exclusively male stories. For me, this insistence on visibility is an ethical intervention that foregrounds women’s labor, endurance, injury, and post-war psychological lives. The same ethical stance shapes my photographic series My Own Witness . It uses black-and-white portraiture and charged, familiar objects to make social fracture intimate, entering the body, the face, and the domestic and national imagination. © Donna Bassin, My Own Witness: Rupture and Repair. Aya © Donna Bassin, My Own Witness: Rupture and Repair. Tacy © Donna Bassin, My Own Witness: Rupture and Repair. Philemona © Donna Bassin, My Own Witness: Rupture and Repair. Shontel © Donna Bassin, My Own Witness: Rupture and Repair. Messiah © Donna Bassin, My Own Witness: Rupture and Repair. Chad and James © Donna Bassin, My Own Witness: Rupture and Repair. Danielle © Donna Bassin, My Own Witness: Rupture and Repair. Dulce © Donna Bassin, Precious Scars: Monastery © Donna Bassin, Precious Scars: Kyoto © Donna Bassin, Precious Scars: Geishas © Donna Bassin, Precious Scars: Monk © Donna Bassin, Precious Scars: Jizo © Donna Bassin, Precious Scars: Bridge © Donna Bassin, Precious Scars: Monk Alongside photography, Donna Bassin works in film, extending these ethical questions into time and lived duration. Her award-winning documentaries Leave No Soldier and The Mourning After examining moral injury, loss, and the long reverberations of violence. These films continue her sustained attention to what follows rupture rather than what neatly resolves it. Whether working with images, objects, sound, or collaborative processes, her practice is grounded in listening to what is spoken, what is withheld, and what quietly endures. This sustained commitment has been recognized through numerous honors and exhibitions, including Time and Wisdom of the Land awarded Best Series by LA Photo Curator in 2024, multiple selections and finalist distinctions from Photolucida’s Critical Mass, recognition as a Top 50 Photographer in 2022 and Finalist in 2023 and 2024, support from The Puffin Foundation and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and residencies such as the Baer Arts Center in Iceland. Her work has been presented at institutions including the Morris Museum, Newport Art Museum, Montclair Art Museum, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and in international exhibitions across Europe, Asia, and North America. In photography, film, writing, and clinical practice, Donna resists closure. She stays with what has been torn, within us, between us, and around us. Repair is not framed as restoration, but as an ongoing act of attention, visible, imperfect, and necessary. The altered surfaces of Portraits of a Precarious Earth echo the marked bodies, domestic objects, and intimate interiors found in Donna’s work centered on women’s lives. In both, grief and endurance are inscribed rather than concealed. Repair unfolds slowly and remains visible. Whether the subject is land or body, the work asks what it means to remain present with what has been damaged, and what it requires to care for it. Donna Bassin’s environmental work and her women-centered series are united by a shared ethical stance: a refusal of erasure. Across landscapes and across bodies, her images insist that injury be seen and that healing not be mistaken for disappearance. Vulnerability becomes a site of meaning, and attention becomes a form of care. view Donna Bassin's portfolio Website >>> Instagram >>> The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the text belong solely to the author/s and are not necessarily shared by The Pictorial List. read more stories >>> RUPTURE REPAIR REMNANT In this reflection on rupture, Donna Bassin invites us to consider how grief settles into the body and the image, and how the slow work of witnessing becomes a form of repair. DELTA DUSK John Agather weaves image and text into a single current, tracing how music, memory, and daily life continue to move through the Mississippi Delta. SILENT BEAUTY Tamara Quadrelli photographs the world by slowing down inside it. There is no rush to explain what we are seeing. The pleasure comes from staying with it. SOLITUDE UNDER A TECHNIFIED SUN Tracing the space between movement and stillness, Héctor Morón reveals a city that persists as human presence slips by. 4320 MINUTES WITHOUT COLOR Moving between photography and narration, Mohammed Nahi traces a period in which sight could no longer be assumed as reliable, and attention shifted toward memory and duration. THE PAINTED VILLAGE OF LABANDHAR Anjan Ghosh’s photographs carry us to Labandhar, where painting becomes language, tradition stays present, and art grows through shared ground. ORDINARY GRIEF What endures when everything else is uncertain? Through photography, Parisa Azadi asks us to see Iran not as story, but as feeling. THE EVERYMAN Eva Mallis uncovers the quiet strength of overlooked lives, capturing everyday encounters in Mumbai’s industrial districts as intimate portraits of labor and resilience. IN BETWEEN LIFE AND AFTER In Cairo’s City of the Dead, families carve out ordinary lives among centuries of tombs — Paola Ferrarotti traces the fragile line between memory and survival. UNFIGURED Nasos Karabelas transforms the human body into a site of emotional flux — where perception fractures and inner states become visible form. VISIONS OF ICELAND FROM ABOVE Massimo Lupidi takes flight above Iceland — capturing nature’s abstract brushstrokes where land, water, and sky blur into poetic visions beyond the ordinary eye. UNDER THE CLOUDS Giordano Simoncini presents a visual ethnography of the interconnectedness of indigenous cosmology, material life, and the ecological balance within the Quechua communities of the Peruvian Andes. NYC SUBWAY RIDERS BEFORE THE INVASION OF SMARTPHONES Hiroyuki Ito’s subway photographs reveal a vanished intimacy — strangers lost in thought in a world before digital distractions took hold. THE GHOST SELF Buku Sarkar stages her refusal to vanish. Her photographs are unflinching, lyrical acts of documentation, mapping a body in flux and a mind grappling with the epistemic dissonance of chronic illness. WHISPERS On Mother’s Day, Regina Melo's story asks us to pause. To remember. To feel. It honors the profound, often quiet sacrifices that mothers make, and the invisible threads that bind us to them. BEYOND THE MASK By stepping beyond the scripted world of professional wrestling and into the raw terrain of mental health, Matteo Bergami and Fabio Giarratano challenge long-held myths about masculinity, endurance, and heroism. FRAGMENTS OF TIME Each of jfk's diptychs functions as a microcosm of the city, allowing viewers to experience urban life as constant fragmented glimpses, mirroring the unpredictable nature of human interactions. VANISHING VENICE Lorenzo Vitali’s portrayal of Venice is an almost surreal experience — where time dissolves, and the viewer is left with the sensation of stepping into a dreamscape. CLAY AND ASHES Abdulla Shinose CK explores the challenges faced by Kumhar Gram's potters, balancing tradition and adaptation in the face of modern pressures. ISLAND Enzo Crispino’s photographic series, “Nêsos,” invites viewers into an introspective journey that mirrors the artist’s rediscovery of his voice in photography after a prolonged period of creative estrangement. BEYOND THE BRICKS Amid Bangladesh’s dynamic urban growth, Anwar Ehtesham’s photography takes us beyond statistics and headlines, revealing the hidden lives of the laborers working tirelessly in the nation’s brick kilns. OAXACA In Oaxaca, Tommaso Stefanori captures Día de los Muertos, exploring the convergence of life and death, human connections, and enduring cultural rituals through evocative photographs of tradition and emotion. BEHIND THE PLANTS Wayan Barre documents Cancer Alley residents facing pollution and economic challenges, shedding light on their resilience and the impacts of environmental injustice. THE RED POPPY AND THE SUN By blending archival and contemporary images, Mei Seva creates a visual story that captures the ongoing struggles and moments of triumph for those impacted by displacement and circumstance. FIRE AND FORGE Alexandros Zilos delves deep into the harsh reality of sulfur mining, while also capturing the allure of the blue fire phenomenon created by sulfur deposits in the crater.

We are on a mission to discover new photographers, and the most pictorial and interesting photo stories out there. SPOTLIGHT / Donna Bassin New Jersey UNITED STATES AARON RUBINO ABBIE BRIGGS ABDULLA SHINOSE CK ABHAY PATEL ABHISHEK SINGH ADAM SINCLAIR ADESH GAUR ADRIAN PELEGRIN ADRIAN TAN ADRIAN WHEAR AGATA LO MONACO AHMET HOJAMYRADOV AJ BERNSTEIN ALAN THEXTON ALEJANDRO DAVILA ALESSANDRO GIUGNI ALEX FRAYNE ALEX GOTTFRIED BONDER ALEX RUTHERFORD ALEXANDRA AVLONITIS ALEXANDROS ZILOS ALEXEY STRECHEN ALICIA HABER AMY HOROWITZ AMY NEWTON McCONNEL GET ON THE LIST © John St.

The Pictorial List is a global online magazine exploring the beauty and complexity of all things photography. FOUNDATIONS OF PRACTICE ART EXHIBITION February 07 to April 04 Foundations of Practice marks the beginning of The Pictorial List's journey - an opening not only of our new artspace, but of dialogue into the practice of the artist. RUPTURE REPAIR REMNANT In this reflection on rupture, Donna Bassin invites us to consider how grief settles into the body and the image, and how the slow work of witnessing becomes a form of repair. Latest features PICTORIAL STORY SOLITUDE UNDER A TECHNIFIED SUN Tracing the space between movement and stillness, Héctor Morón reveals a city that persists as human presence slips by. PICTORIAL STORY 4320 MINUTES WITHOUT COLOR Moving between photography and narration, Mohammed Nahi traces a period in which sight could no longer be assumed as reliable, and attention shifted toward memory and duration. PICTORIAL STORY THE PAINTED VILLAGE OF LABANDHAR Anjan Ghosh’s photographs carry us to Labandhar, where painting becomes language, tradition stays present, and art grows through shared ground. INTERVIEW WHAT REMAINS, WHAT EMERGES Laetitia Heisler transforms risk, memory, and the body into layered analogue visions — feminist rituals of seeing that reveal what endures, and what quietly emerges beyond visibility. INTERVIEW WHAT WE ARE, WHAT WE DO Culture lives where art and community meet, and in this space Alejandro Dávila’s photographs reveal the unseen labor and devotion that sustain creation. INTERVIEW ANALOGICAL LIMBO Nicola Cappellari reminds us that the photograph’s power lies not in what it shows, but in what it leaves unsaid. INTERVIEW THREADS OF MOROCCAN LIFE Through gestures of work and moments of community, Kat Puchowska reveals Morocco’s overlooked beauty. INTERVIEW IT STARTED AS LIGHT…ENDED IN SHIVERS… Between intimacy and estrangement, Anton Bou’s photographs wander — restless fragments of light and shadow, mapping the fragile terrain where self unravels into sensation. INTERVIEW WITH EYES THAT LISTEN AND A HEART THAT SEES For decades, Rivka Shifman Katvan has documented the unseen backstage world of Broadway, capturing authenticity where performance and humanity intersect. PICTORIAL STORY ORDINARY GRIEF What endures when everything else is uncertain? Through photography, Parisa Azadi asks us to see Iran not as story, but as feeling. INTERVIEW DIPTYCH DIALOGUES Through the beautiful language of diptychs, Taiwanese photographer Jay Hsu invites us into a world where quiet images speak of memory, resilience and hope. PICTORIAL STORY THE EVERYMAN Eva Mallis uncovers the quiet strength of overlooked lives, capturing everyday encounters in Mumbai’s industrial districts as intimate portraits of labor and resilience. INTERVIEW UNKNOWN ABYSSINIA In Ethiopia, Sebastian Piatek found a new way of seeing — where architecture endures, but women in motion carry the narrative forward. INTERVIEW IN BETWEEN LIFE AND AFTER In Cairo’s City of the Dead, families carve out ordinary lives among centuries of tombs — Paola Ferrarotti traces the fragile line between memory and survival. INTERVIEW THE PULSE OF THE STREET Moments vanish, yet Suvam Saha holds them still — the pulse of India’s streets captured in fragments of life that will never repeat. DELTA DUSK John Agather weaves image and text into a single current, tracing how music, memory, and daily life continue to move through the Mississippi Delta. OPEN CALL IN AN INSTANT Have instant film tucked in a drawer or fresh from the camera? We are gathering Polaroids, Instax, and all peel-apart surprises for this fun instant exhibition. Family snapshots, artistic experiments, awkward haircuts — every square counts. Join us and let your instant memory meet the wall. MORE INFO New York, New York! PICTORIAL STORY NYC SUBWAY RIDERS BEFORE THE INVASTION OF SMARTPHONES Hiroyuki Ito’s subway photographs reveal a vanished intimacy. INTERVIEW FABRIC OF NEW YORK VISUALS Elle Clarke lives NYC — snapping its heart and hustle with her smartphone, one real city moment at a time! INTERVIEW NOD OF RECOGNITION B Jane Levine’s portraits give a playful wink — inviting a nod of recognition to the hidden stories we all carry inside. INTERVIEW NEW YORK IMPROVISATIONS Fast-moving, off-kilter, witty, raw and classic film noir define Bill Lacey's photography. PICTORIAL STORY MERMAID MAGIC AJ Bernstein captures the magic of the Mermaid Parade—where fantasy, freedom, and community come together in a sea of color and joy. INTERVIEW GOTHAM MEMORIES Jeff Rothstein clicks, time unfolds — capturing the heart of the city in timeless frames, from 1969 to today. PICTORIAL STORY TAKING THE PLUNGE Carol Dronsfield takes the plunge with the Coney Island’s Polar Bears, capturing the chill, the thrill, and the heart. INTERVIEW THE AUTHENTIC GAZE Amy Horowitz says “Don’t Smile”— and in doing so, captures the real and wonderfully unscripted faces of New York City. VOLUME ONE- NEW YORK BUY NOW CALL FOR ART CODE GIRL CODE GIRL is a curated multi-media exhibition presented as part of Women in Public Space. Following the Memorial Day Weekend mural commission, this women's and gender expansive group exhibition expands the dialogue into the Artspace through interdisciplinary practices including photography, painting, printmaking, sculpture, video, film, animation, and expanded media. MORE INFO © Parvathi Kumar, Desiree Washington (2020) join the Pictorial Community >>> Follow us on Instagram #thepictoriallist @thepictorial.list Load More SILENT BEAUTY Tamara Quadrelli photographs the world by slowing down inside it. There is no rush to explain what we are seeing. The pleasure comes from staying with it. Interviews you may have missed REPRESENTING THE PEOPLE Camille J. Wheeler documents Austin's streets, with a particular focus on its homeless community. COMEDIANS Steve Best documents the British comedy scene, backstage and on stage, the highs and lows, and the joy of being a comedian. QUARANTINE IN QUEENS Neil Kramer's humorous and compassionate lockdown diary has gone viral. ENROUTE TO THE PINES Robert Sherman shares his documentary series about drag queens celebrating the 'Invasion of the Pines'. SERVICE INTERRUPTION Wojciech Karlinski documented Poland train stations during the pandemic, highlighting their formal and aesthetic side. VOICES OF THE NILE Voices of the Nile by Bastien Massa and Arthur Larie is a project documenting the relationship of Ethiopians with the Blue Nile. BREAKS FROM REALITY The magic only dreams are made of become reality for viewers as they engage in the poetic imagery of Mariëtte Aernoudts. BEYOND THE STORY Through her documentary photography, Christina Simons is compelled to tell the stories of those who are unable to do so themselves. © Russell Cobb Stay up to date Subscribing to The Pictorial List means joining a community that values visual storytelling. You will get exclusive content, inspiring pictorial stories, thoughtful interviews, book reviews, and more — delivered weekly to your inbox. Media Partners

Share your visual journeys, ignite the imagination, inspire our photographic audience with the passion you have found through your photography. Let’s expose new ideas and create new ways of seeing, together at The Pictorial List. BE PUBLISHED © Jean Ross Join The Pictorial List — a foundation of possibilities for contemporary photography — where artists connect through publishing and conversation. Our mission is to build a living framework for artists to be seen, read, supported, and remembered, expanding visibility and opening pathways for opportunity through thoughtful presentation and community. © Mariette Aernoudts 2026 PHOTOGRAPHER FEATURES We are accepting submissions for upcoming Photographer Features on The Pictorial List for 2026. This call is open internationally to visual artists who work with photography across all approaches and stages of practice. get started © Meryl Meisler 2026 PICTORIAL STORIES Pictorial Stories brings photographs together to form narrative. For 2026, we are opening space for projects that move beyond the single image and ask to be read as much as they are seen. get started 2026 OPEN CALL IN AN INSTANT EXHIBITION Have instant film tucked in a drawer or fresh from the camera? We are gathering Polaroids, Instax, and all peel-apart surprises for this fun instant exhibition. Family snapshots, artistic experiments, awkward haircuts — every square counts. Join us and let your instant memory meet the wall. more info © Karen Ghostlaw 2026 OPEN CALL CODE GIRL EXHIBITION CODE GIRL is a curated multi-media exhibition presented as part of Women in Public Space. This women's and gender expansive group exhibition expands the dialogue into the Pictorial Artspace through interdisciplinary practices including photography, painting, printmaking, sculpture, video, film, animation, and expanded media. more info Thank you to Nicola Cappellari for his kind donation of his beautiful book - MAREA DO YOU HAVE A BOOK? Send your book to the Pictorial Foundation Art Space at 105a Ann Street, Newburgh, NY 12550, and become part of our growing creative community. Each donated book becomes a permanent part of the Pictorial Library — an evolving resource dedicated to inspiring artists locally and building a living archive of visual and written expression. Donated books are not for sale, and no payment is provided. Pictorial Foundation reserves the right, at its discretion, to withhold from display or promotion any book that does not align with our values and mission. Contributing artists will receive a small feature and acknowledgement on our websites and Instagram stories. There is also an option to sell books through our Art Space, with a 30% commission per sale, or no commission for Foundations Friends . For further information, please contact - foundation@thepictorialist.org On a weekly basis, we present a selection of curated Photographer Spotlights in our gallery on Instagram. If you would like to be considered simply follow us @thepictorial.list and @pictorialfoundation and tag us so we know you would like to be featured.

HÉCTOR MORÓN Self-taught and based in southern Spain, I began developing my fine-art photographic practice in 2019, following an earlier audiovisual work, Brutus (2017). My work focuses on long-exposure and ICM imagery, through which I developed Allegorical Abstractionism — a visual philosophy that redefines ICM through a Mediterranean Baroque sensibility: solar, emotional, and incandescent, where light becomes both matter and metaphor. My major series (Eden Tree, Encrypted Sun, Volcano Sea, Alhambra Triptych, Tree Series, Abstraction Series, Paths Series) establish a dialogue between the physical and the divine, situating my practice within the contemporary avant-garde of experimental photography. LOCATION Granada SPAIN CAMERA/S Sony 6300 WEBSITE https://hectormoronphotography.com/ @HECTOR_ALLEGORICAL FEATURES // Solitude Under a Technified Sun

ANJAN GHOSH My photography is an ongoing dialogue between people, place, and time. I seek to bridge the widening rural–urban divide in India by documenting the dignity, resilience, and quiet poetry of everyday life in communities that often remain unseen or unheard. My work focuses primarily on Bengal, where tradition, labor, faith, and survival intersect in subtle yet powerful ways. I am drawn to the beauty of the ordinary — a fleeting gesture, a weathered face, a ritual performed without spectacle. These moments carry profound emotional weight. I photograph not to sensationalize hardship, but to honor humanity. At the heart of my practice is a belief that photography can preserve memory. In a rapidly urbanizing nation, rural lives and traditions are disappearing at an alarming pace. Through long-term engagement with villages, labor communities, and aging populations, my work becomes an archive of lived experiences — not frozen in nostalgia, but alive with truth and complexity. My photography is both personal and political. Choosing to look closely is an act of resistance against indifference. Photography, for me, is an ethical commitment — to see with care, to represent with integrity, and to tell stories that endure beyond the moment they are captured. LOCATION Kolkata INDIA CAMERA/S Canon EOS R Mark II, Canon EOS 5D Mark IV WEBSITE http://anjanghosh.org/ @anjan.ghosh FEATURES // The Painted Village of Labandhar

MOHAMMED NAHI I am an Algerian photographer whose work explores the human condition through street and documentary photography. My practice is grounded in observation, intuition, and lived experience, often focusing on everyday moments, social rituals, and the emotional undercurrents of public spaces. I am particularly drawn to themes of identity, memory, and vulnerability, using photography as a tool to question reality rather than simply document it. Through my images, I seek to create visual narratives that balance honesty and poetry, inviting viewers to slow down and reflect. LOCATION Aflou ALGERIA CAMERA/S Fujifilm X-T1 @MOHAMED_NAHI1 FEATURES // 4320 Minutes Without Color

JOHN AGATHER From leading business ventures across diverse industries to creating meaningful art through music and photography, my journey reflects a unique blend of entrepreneurial leadership and creative expression. I was born in Mexico and am now based in San Antonio, Texas. I began photographing in black and white at fourteen, spending long hours in the darkroom where I found both discipline and refuge. My work centers on documentary and street photography, driven by the pursuit of moments as they unfold. I draw inspiration from photographers such as Atget, Erwitt, and Cartier-Bresson, whose approaches to observation and timing continue to inform my practice. I am a member of The Raw Society, and my work has been published in Street Photography Magazine, Air Speed Magazine, Menorca – Es Diari, and the Raw Society Substack. Alongside photography, I am an entrepreneur and a singer-songwriter with several albums to my name. LOCATION San Antonio TEXAS CAMERA/S Hasselblad X2D II 100C WEBSITE https://www.johnagather.com/ @JOHNAGATHER FEATURES // Delta Dusk

TAMARA QUADRELLI My photographic work emerges from an intimate dialogue with the ordinary architecture of the Italian landscape. I am not interested in celebrated monuments or tourist icons, but rather in those fragments of the built environment that we inhabit daily without truly seeing: a pastel-colored facade dialoguing with the sky, the geometric shadow of a shutter, the corner of a building that becomes pure chromatic abstraction. My research focuses on visual synthesis, on the elimination of everything superfluous to reveal the poetic essence of vernacular architecture. Each image is a work of subtraction: I isolate, I simplify, I transform the banal into the extraordinary through the calibrated use of color, light, and geometric composition. My chromatic palettes — powder pink, dusty blue, Mediterranean ochre, sage green — are never casual, but the result of patient research and waiting for the right light. What fascinates me is the capacity of minor architecture to tell stories without words, to be a mirror of a cultural identity that manifests itself in details: in the way a community chooses its colors, in the proportions of windows, in the texture of weathered plaster. My photographic approach is contemplative, almost meditative: I seek those moments of grace in which form, color, and light merge into perfect harmony. LOCATION Friuli Venezia Giulia ITALY CAMERA/S Panasonic Lumix GX 80 WEBSITE https://www.tamaraquadrelli.com/ @TAMARAQUADRELLI FEATURES // Silent Beauty