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IRINA SEDLETSKAYA I am a Kazakhstan-based photographer exploring themes of silence, memory, and emotional restraint. My practice focuses on quiet tension, using minimal narratives and symbolic elements to create intimate visual stories. LOCATION Karagandy KAZAKHSTAN CAMERA/S Canon 550d @S_RINA_CEZAR FEATURES // Where Emotions Breathe

LIMINAL SPACES Through her art, Anna Tut aims to bring attention to the complexities of femininity, challenging societal norms and highlighting the often, unseen emotional landscapes women navigate daily. LIMINAL SPACES November 15, 2024 INTERVIEW PHOTOGRAPHY Anna Tut INTERVIEW Melanie Meggs Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link SHARE In contemporary photography, Anna Tut emerges as an artist focused on exploring profound themes through her work. Born in the far east of Russia, on the border of China, Anna’s geographic origins mirror the liminal spaces she captures in her work — spaces between the seen and unseen, the known and unknown, the external and internal. Her artistic journey began as a departure from her profession in economics, a shift that spoke to the power of artistic reinvention. This personal transition shaped the deeply introspective nature of her photography, embracing it as a means of personal expression and discovery. At the heart of Anna’s artistic practice is a desire to create work that resonates beyond aesthetics, offering her audience projects that provoke thought, evoke emotion, and carry significant social commentary. For her, photography is not simply a medium to capture moments, but a powerful tool to convey messages — each photograph is engrained with meaning, each project is a statement or call to action. Her work reflects her belief that art has the ability to shape perspectives, ignite conversation, and inspire change. Anna’s interdisciplinary approach, applying embroidery, appliqué, and collage to her photography, results in photographs that are not merely aesthetic but carry layers of meaning. This fusion of mediums allows her to create images that are as textured in their visual language as they are rich in narrative depth. These elements act as visual metaphors for the emotional, psychological, and social layers that define a person’s experience. Her latest series, “Women”, is an exploration of the complex role of women in contemporary society. As much as women have gained rights and freedoms, they still often face immense pressure — juggling roles in society, work, and family life. Anna’s series transforms her subjects into visual stories that articulate the tensions and contradictions women face today. Each image is meticulously composed, with every detail — lighting, expression, and gesture — carefully thought out to evoke a response. The portrayal of women in Anna’s work is imbued with symbolism and a sense of timelessness. Her use of shadows, color palettes, and fabric all contribute to an air of mystery that speaks to the hidden depths of female identity. In her photographs, there is a duality — a blending of strength and vulnerability, of power and grace. The 15 women featured in her project, aged between 25 and 60, are depicted as both subjects and objects of contemplation, inviting the audience to reflect on their own understandings of womanhood. In doing so, Anna challenges the viewer to consider not just what they see on the surface but the inner world that each woman inhabits — a world that celebrates the idea that every woman is an independent, multi-dimensional individual. In this interview, we explore Anna Tut’s artistic philosophy and delve into the inspirations behind “Women”. We discuss how she approaches the delicate task of portraying women in a way that honors both their individuality and their collective experience. Through her art, Anna aims to bring attention to the complexities of femininity, challenging societal norms and highlighting the often, unseen emotional landscapes women navigate daily. Her portraits act as both mirrors and windows — reflecting the reality of womanhood while offering glimpses into the unspoken depths of her subjects’ inner lives. We also explore Anna’s commitment to pushing the boundaries of photography by integrating traditional craft techniques with digital artistry, creating a distinctive visual language that is all her own. Anna Tut’s work reminds us that art can be a powerful tool for dialogue and change. She believes that photography, beyond its aesthetic function, should inspire reflection and provoke discussion. As Anna looks to the future, she remains committed to creating projects that resonate on both a visual and intellectual level. For her, these projects are more than just an artistic endeavor; they are an essential contribution to the broader conversation about gender, identity, and societal roles. “The heroines of my photographs always like the result. Women are often dissatisfied with their appearance and are tired of the portraits they typically post on social media. They want more complex images of themselves. The visual pressure on women is very significant, and when they receive an image of their persona that is full of meanings, it becomes a very unusual experience.” IN CONVERSATION WITH ANNA TUT THE PICTORIAL LIST: Can you share how your personal journey and your experiences growing up in the far east of Russia have shaped your artistic vision, and in what ways do you think these influences manifest in your photography? What moments stand out as pivotal in your development as an artist? ANNA TUT: I was born in a unique region and from childhood, I witnessed unusual creativity shaped by folk crafts historically practiced by the indigenous peoples of these territories: the Nanai, Udege, Koryaks, and others. The so-called petroglyphs of Sikachi-Alyan are included in the UNESCO World Heritage list, and the ornamental art of the peoples of the Amur region is noted for its originality and beauty. From an early age, I encountered folktales and myths that were unusual and mysterious. Uncommon musical instruments are also characteristic of the art and culture of my region. I grew up immersed in this culture, which ultimately shaped my cultural identity. TPL: As an interdisciplinary artist, you integrate various mediums such as embroidery, appliqué, and collage into your photography. Can you elaborate on your motivations for combining these different forms of expression, and how you believe this fusion enriches the narratives within your work? Additionally, how do these techniques interact with your photographic images to convey deeper meanings, and what do you hope viewers take away from this multifaceted approach? ANNA: In my opinion, photography as a medium in its pure form is insufficient for expressing the creative potential of an artist, which is why I have been engaged in interdisciplinary art for a long time. This allows for the creation of visually more complex works, as well as infusing them with more intricate meanings. I still love the classic portrait, but for the idea of my project, it was necessary to create an image. It is the image, rather than a portrait of a specific woman, that allows me to express my thoughts most accurately. TPL: In your project “Women”, you focus on portraying women in a way that acknowledges both their individuality and their collective experiences. Can you describe your artistic philosophy regarding this delicate balance? How do you navigate the complexities of representing each woman's unique story while simultaneously addressing broader societal themes and issues that affect women as a whole? ANNA: The balance between individuality and collective experience in each specific woman is not only difficult to capture but also to convey to the audience. I start by engaging with each woman, exploring her story, experiences, and dreams. These conversations help me see the uniqueness of each participant, but they also allow me to identify common themes that concern all women, such as the struggle for equal rights, the role of women in society, motherhood, careers, and personal ambitions. I choose a particular image or concept for my subject. I do not take straightforward shots; instead, I employ complex photographic techniques such as long exposure, incorporating fabrics and reflective objects into the frame. I always use meditative music during the shoots and encourage the women to move as she feels comfortable. During this time, I capture her movements and photograph what I believe she radiates. I almost never use photo editing software; for this project, it would feel "unfair." TPL: In what ways do you aim for your work to influence discussions about gender identity and the emotional landscapes women navigate daily? How do you confront the challenge of ensuring that your portrayals resonate with a diverse audience, encouraging them to reflect on their perceptions of womanhood and the various roles women inhabit in contemporary society? ANNA: First of all, I send my projects to curators and try to propose them to publications. I believe this way I can draw attention to the issues and questions I address in my projects. I can publish individual frames from the project on my social media, and sometimes they attract very angry and unfriendly comments, which makes it clear to me that my visuals have touched a nerve for someone. TPL: As a photographer, how do you navigate the balance between technical skill and creative intuition in your work? Are there specific techniques or tools that you feel enhance your ability to express your vision, and how have these evolved over time? ANNA: I always rely on my intuitive perception. And while my technical skills grow year by year, they are just tools for my mind, and I use them to expand the possibilities for bringing my ideas to life. After all, the idea is what matters most, and then each artist expresses it in their own way using the technical means available to them. This is freedom, and it is wonderful! I believe that it is through personal images that we can speak to the global issues and legal questions affecting women around the world. TPL: In your opinion, what role does storytelling play in photography, and how do you approach the challenge of conveying a narrative through your images? ANNA: I love storytelling; for me, it is an inspiring tool for engaging with the viewer. However, storytelling does not suit every project. Complex projects often require philosophical texts and can be very difficult for an unprepared audience to understand. I have projects that incorporate storytelling, which are usually documentary projects, but I also have projects with fairly complex texts. TPL: What has been your most significant challenge as a photographer, and how did you overcome it? How did this experience shape your understanding of resilience in the creative process, and what lessons did you carry forward into your future work? ANNA: If we talk about the specifics of the work, then the work of a photographer like me is always about working with people. It’s important to spend even more time communicating with the subjects than on the actual shooting. I am naturally impatient, and I find it challenging to demonstrate patience and understanding that the subjects need time to get accustomed to the process. However, I am grounding myself more and more and allowing the process to flow at its own pace. As a result, I take great pride in myself because the response from the subjects is so much greater when there is no pressure involved. TPL: Looking back on your journey as a photographer, are there particular influences — be it other photographers, artistic movements, or life experiences — that you can pinpoint as having a profound impact on your style and approach? How have these influences evolved over time? ANNA: Photography has always been an inseparable part of my life, but I was only able to fully dedicate myself to it in adulthood, when the youthful maximalism that divided the world into black and white faded away. I realized that judgments about anyone or anything can be superficial, and only patient study of a phenomenon or object can lead to truly inspiring discoveries. When it comes to the influence of other photographers or artists on me, there are many, but among artistic movements, the philosophy of constructivism has had the greatest impact on me. TPL: In a world increasingly dominated by digital imagery and social media, how do you maintain a sense of authenticity and personal expression in your work? What strategies do you employ to ensure your photography remains true to your vision amidst external pressures? ANNA: There are indeed a vast number of digital images, and you are right that their purpose increasingly boils down to quickly conveying information. On the other hand, the artist's task is the exact opposite. Art is primarily about contemplation and reflection. Yes, art can utilize digital imagery, but it differs in its purpose, which in turn leaves an imprint on the visual itself. This is a very noticeable distinction. For now, I view artificial intelligence as a technical tool that expands the possibilities for the creator. TPL: As you look toward the future of your artistic practice, what types of projects are you currently considering, and how do you envision these endeavors evolving over the next 3 to 5 years? Are there specific themes or issues you feel compelled to explore more deeply, and how do you see your style or approach transforming as you continue to grow as an artist? ANNA: I am drawn to two types of projects: fine art projects and documentary projects. Currently, I am working on an art project about the theme of Anthropomorphic Nature, while simultaneously developing a documentary conceptual project about discarded items. I have enrolled in a two-year program at an institute of contemporary art. I believe I need to enrich my knowledge in philosophy and contemporary art in order to create conceptually more complex projects. I think that my studies will change my approach and possibly my style. We'll see where this path takes me. TPL: When you’re not behind the camera, what fun adventures or creative pursuits would we find Anna diving into, and how do they add a splash of inspiration to your photography? ANNA: I love traveling and draw inspiration from it. I also enjoy cooking. All of these activities allow me to reflect, while travels enrich me with new visuals. PORTFOLIO WEBSITE INSTAGRAM read more interviews >>> CONTOURS OF ABSENCE Where concealment unsettles recognition and ordinary spaces turn psychological, the photographs of Serhii Fett suspend identity between presence and absence. THE ART OF ATTENTION Curiosity turns portraits, objects, and places into discoveries as Len Irish reflects on a life shaped by the camera’s attention. WHERE EMOTIONS BREATHE Simple encounters Irina Sedletskaya almost missed become photographs shaped by silence, distance, uncertainty, memory, hope, and resilience. THE VILLAGE A workers’ neighbourhood becomes a living archive as Virginia Cassano photographs the people, streets, and memories that continue to shape Villaggio Piaggio. MUTABLE MORPHOGENESIS By merging scientific methodologies with photographic experimentation, Emma Varga creates images that challenge fixed distinctions between human and non-human, visible and invisible. THE ARCHITECTURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS Chad Coombs’ Polaroids are small psychological scenes where identity, memory, culture, and belief push against each other. WHERE WE BELONG Community storytelling lies at the heart of The Pictorial List’s mission, and Marlon Ramos’ photographs reflects the spirit of the place we now call home. GUIDED BY A WHISPER Guided by reflection and the quiet presence of art history, Isolda Fabregat Sanz makes photographs that resist certainty and invite the viewer to remain inside the act of looking. 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. 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. ANALOGICAL LIMBO Nicola Cappellari reminds us that the photograph’s power lies not in what it shows, but in what it leaves unsaid. THREADS OF MOROCCAN LIFE Through gestures of work and moments of community, Kat Puchowska reveals Morocco’s overlooked beauty. 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. 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. 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. UNKNOWN ABYSSINIA In Ethiopia, Sebastian Piatek found a new way of seeing — where architecture endures, but women in motion carry the narrative forward. 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. WHAT DO WE WANT? More than documentation, David Gray reveals the human pulse of resistance and asks us to see beyond the surface of unrest. CRACKED RIBS 2016 Cynthia Karalla opens up about the art of survival, the power of perspective, and why she believes each of us holds a monopoly on our own narrative. STREETS OF KOLKATA Ayanava Sil’s reveals Kolkata’s soul, capturing moments with empathy, presence and humility while offering deep insight into both city and self. PERIPHERAL PLACES A project by Catia Montagna that distills fleeting encounters and spatial poetics into triptychs - visual short stories that capture the in-between, where meaning often hides. POINTE-AU-CHIEN IS NOT DEAD Through Wayan Barre’s documentary, we are invited not only to see but to feel the lived realities of a community standing at the crossroads of environmental collapse and cultural survival. QUEER HAPPENED HERE Author Marc Zinaman sheds light on the valuable contributions that LGBTQ+ individuals have made to the cultural and social fabric of New York City. TRACES OF TIME Marked by an ongoing visual dialogue with time, memory, and impermanence, Zamin Jafarov’s long-term projects highlight the quiet power of observation and the emotional depth of simplicity. THERE MY LITTLE EYES Guillermo Franco’s book is an exploration of seeing beyond the obvious. His work invites us to embrace patience, curiosity, and the unexpected in a world that often rushes past the details.

SAID MANSEUR I am a visual storyteller and photographer from Mascara, Algeria, currently based in Algiers. My work focuses on overlooked social issues, questions of identity, human rights, and the cultural life of Algeria. Through photography, I am drawn to stories that often remain outside public attention. I use the camera as a way to observe, listen, and understand how people live within changing social and cultural conditions. My practice is shaped by Algerian heritage, but also by a wider interest in memory, belonging, and the human need to be seen. I am a member of the African Photojournalism Database, and my work has been exhibited internationally, including at Image Festival Amman and Cairo Photo Week. In 2024, I studied at École Kourtrajmé and was officially accredited as an artist-photographer by the National Council of Arts and Letters. In 2025, I founded the National Photography Salon El Forsan, a platform dedicated to promoting photographic talent and visual culture across Algeria. LOCATION Algiers ALGERIA CAMERA/S Fujifilm x10 WEBSITE https://sites.google.com/view/said-manseur/news @SAID.MANSEUR FEATURES // Proscenium Ghosts

I've had a love for street photography since I was a child, long before I knew it had a name. Not until 2017 did I take up the challenge of photographing in the streets myself. I'm drawn to ordinary people doing ordinary things. To me, it’s all extraordinary - emotion, gesture, connection, and humor. I believe that we humans are much more alike than we are different, and hopefully my photos remind people of that. I have been exhibited in Washington DC, New York, Miami, San Francisco, Paris, Trieste, and Sydney. I am part of the Women in Street Collective, DC Street Photography Collective and Optic Nerve Collective. MARCI LINDSAY I've had a love for street photography since I was a child, long before I knew it had a name. Not until 2017 did I take up the challenge of photographing in the streets myself. I'm drawn to ordinary people doing ordinary things. To me, it’s all extraordinary - emotion, gesture, connection, and humor. I believe that we humans are much more alike than we are different, and hopefully my photos remind people of that. I have been exhibited in Washington DC, New York, Miami, San Francisco, Paris, Trieste, and Sydney. I am part of the Women in Street Collective, DC Street Photography Collective and Optic Nerve Collective. LOCATION Washington DC UNITED STATES CAMERA/S Fuji X-T3 WEBSITE http://www.marcislindsay.com/ @MARCISLINDSAY FEATURES // The Extraordinary Ordinary

BOOK OLD CUSTOMS October 9, 2020 BOOK PHOTOGRAPHY Chris Suspect TEXT Melanie Meggs SHARE Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link A whimsical take on street photography, Chris Suspect’s new book OLD CUSTOMS combines visual references to Romanian fairy tales, turn of the century embroidery patterns and scenes from a remote fishing village. Chris is a street and documentary photographer from the Washington DC area in the United States. His street work specialises in capturing absurd and profound moments in the quotidian and his documentary work deep dives into various subcultures. His exploration of sub-cultures have resulted in images that are raw and intimate, making us think or evoke a reaction. They contain something unexpected. Chris’s latest book OLD CUSTOMS gathers images that were photographed over a period of three years in Vama Veche, a seaside town in Romania. Originally visiting as a guest of a photography and visual arts festival called VSLO in 2017, he was curious about the first generation of Romanians who did not have the personal experience of what it was like to live under the rule of Nicolae Ceausescu’s dictatorial state. His curiosity stemmed from his own personal experience growing up in Moscow in the seventies during the reign of Leonid Brezhnev. He recalls how dark, bleak and miserable it was for him as a young person during that time. To be separated from this political ideology by the sliver of one generation was interesting to Chris, and he wanted to explore these ideas photographically. He returned to Vama Veche in August 2018 and 2019 to work on his project. Vama Veche became known as a bastion of freedom from the prying eyes of Ceausescu in the late 1960s through the 1980s, which really intrigued Chris. To him it seemed the polar opposite of what he had experienced. The challenge for Chris was to express the experience of his youth in Communist Russia and juxtapose that with what he was seeing in the young people he met in Vama Veche in photographs. “The goal for me photographically was how to express not having known this type of oppression in my imagery. To be free from it in a sense, while acknowledging its presence without showing it’s presence, if that makes any sense,” he explains. Vama Veche is a remote village off the shore of the Black Sea in Romania´s far southeast, on the border of Romania and Bulgaria. The literal translation of “Vama Veche” to English is “old customs”. The perfect title for this project and book. The settlement of Vama Veche was founded in 1811 by Turkic people. With the rise of Ceausescu in 1965, it became known as an oasis of freedom, a rebel town where poets and writers commingled with the local fishermen. The village grew into a colony of intellectuals living in tents or renting rooms from the locals. Since those times, Vama Veche has become known as a nontraditional tourist destination. According to Chris, it has “this Woodstock hippie vibe” to it that retains the original spirit of the village, although over the course of the three years working on his project, Chris did start to notice Vama Veche changing. His main goal was to capture the sense of freedom he was experiencing through the people he met. He focused on the ideas of freedom and youth tethered to history by referencing Romanian mythology and Soviet-era propaganda, capturing the evidence of Western culture and commercialisation through his street photography, conceptual ideas, and some nude portraiture. Instead of taking a literal or documentarian approach to the layout of the book, Chris sequenced all the images together in the style of a modern fairy tale filled with beauty, magic, myth and mystery. A lot of the photographs in the book are straight street photography observations that Chris shot spontaneously, mixed with a few traditional portraits and nudes. He also shot several conceptual photographs using a mirror as a prop. This was an interesting development to his process and was something completely new for Chris. After hearing the song “I’ll Be Your Mirror” by The Velvet Underground on the radio whilst in his kitchen, he pondered the popular idea of a photograph being the mirror of the photographer and he wondered how he could turn that idea around by placing a mirror on people’s heads. In Romania, Chris created a mirror mask consisting of a round mirror mounted on a pair of protective goggles, to incorporate this idea into his project. Mirrors can connote many different interpretations and they have historically been used in art and literature to symbolise ideas of truth, discovery, wisdom, awareness, the conscious and the unconscious. When Chris discovered that he could create a sunburst with the mirror, he became enthralled with the idea that he could conceptually elevate the people he photographed into gods or goddesses. The resulting photographs reminded him of some of the iconography in old Communist propaganda posters. When showing his work to one of his Romanian friends, she told Chris that they reminded her of the legend of the Sanzienale, beautiful mythological nymphs often seen with bright yellow flowers on the crowns of their heads. During the editing process this new information opened Chris’s eyes to a potentially deeper connection with the framework of the book. The idea of incorporating this mythological interpretation of the story of the Sanzienale tied in nicely to his photographs' theme of youth and freedom tethered to the history of Romania. As Chris was creating the book he came up with the ideas of using old Romanian embroidery patterns to delineate the sequences of different segments instead of the customary blank page that is commonly used in photographic narratives. After researching such patterns on the internet, Chris found some from around the turn of the 20th century and recreated them using Adobe Illustrator. What he learned by doing this is that many of the patterns formed a secret code or language that was synonymous to that specific region in Romania. They reinforced the idea of history throughout his book. In essence, “Old Customs” is a mix of different approaches that work well together within the context of Chris’s body of work. Reflective and whimsical, this book opens up other possibilities for street photography, taking us on a journey to discover traditions, customs, folk stories and mythology, and revealing the incredible richness of ordinary human life experiences in Vama Veche. Old Customs is the third of four photo books that Chris is publishing this year. The first was Gratuity Included and the second was Leather Boyz. You can buy Chris' books through his website. PORTFOLIO CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the text belong solely to the author, and are not necessarily shared by The Pictorial List and the team.

I am universal photographer dabbling in multiple genres and narratives from the U.K and Ireland. Passionate about the arts, fashion, and travel, I try to reflect these themes into my whimsical work. LI MULLEN I am universal photographer dabbling in multiple genres and narratives from the U.K and Ireland. Passionate about the arts, fashion, and travel, I try to reflect these themes into my whimsical work. LOCATION London UNITED KINGDOM CAMERA/S Leica, Nikon, iPhone 8 @LI.MULLEN FEATURES // Whimsical Happenings

CRACKED RIBS 2016 Cynthia Karalla opens up about the art of survival, the power of perspective, and why she believes each of us holds a monopoly on our own narrative. CRACKED RIBS 2016 July 6, 2025 INTERVIEW PHOTOGRAPHY Cynthia Karalla INTERVIEW Karen Ghostlaw Pomarico Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link SHARE Stepping into Cynthia Karalla’s studio in Newburgh, just north of New York City, feels less like entering an artist’s workspace and more like slipping into a dreamscape — where reality and surrealism coexist in playful tension. You don’t merely view her work; you move through it. Towering black-and-white prints seem to murmur long-forgotten truths, while, just steps away, a garden of photographed flora traces a fragile timeline of blooming and withering — life and death unfolding in delicate harmony. This immersive, emotionally charged space is a mirror of Cynthia’s mind: curious and unafraid to rework the world around her. Cynthia Karalla isn’t just creating art; she’s actively dissecting and reassembling reality with a fearless sense of purpose and a dry wit. Trained as an architect before turning to photography and fine art, she expertly balances structure with disruption. Her visual language pulls from the raw material of personal experience, especially a chaotic and formative childhood she describes as “an insane journey.” This personal narrative forms the foundation of Cynthia’s work, giving rise to art that is both deeply intimate and socially conscious, grounded in real experience yet often infused with dreamlike, surreal elements. Her process transforms the negative — whether photographic, emotional, or societal — into something charged with meaning. For Cynthia chaos is fertile ground. Absurd Craigslist ads become biting commentary. Urban detritus is reframed as beauty. The overlooked becomes the unforgettable. Through humor, grit, and imagination, she invites us to look closer at the world’s messiness and discover the poetry hiding in plain sight. Cracked Ribs, 2016 was born out of Cynthia’s need to cope with the physical and emotional stillness following an accident that left her with fractured ribs. To combat the monotony of recovery and find meaning in the pain, she turned to photography. While performing breathing exercises prescribed by doctors, she left her camera’s shutter open, capturing hour-long exposures of each breath. Many images didn’t survive the full duration, but those that did became quiet testaments to endurance, vulnerability, and the creative impulse that emerged in isolation — turning discomfort into a meditative act of creation. With this series, Cynthia shares that deeply personal experience. By Pauline Joelle “If you have ever cracked a rib you will relate well to this next venture. In the beginning, cracked ribs are the biggest stop sign you will ever be smacked with. Your busy days come to an abrupt halt and you realize how full your days were. The simple action of getting out of bed is like a long scene in a Bela Tarr film, or a “short” paragraph by Marcel Proust. Minutes transform into hours, hours into a day, just to take care of the simple necessities of life. There is a good and a bad to it all. At first it was a ‘not good’ moment. But when life throws you a curveball there is not much you can do about it. The doctors gave me breathing exercises to do. It hurt when I tried to breathe. It hurt when I tried to move. It hurt just thinking about it all. While my camera equipment sat in the corner of my place in Italy, I laid around in wait. Waiting for life to begin again. Waiting, waiting, and waiting eventually turns into boredom. Boredom is the greatest gift bestowed upon an artist, or anyone else for that matter. It gives the child space to come out to play and little problems become part of the game. In that liberating child-like frame of mind, I set up my film camera and started doing long shutter exposures of my breath. Breath is the first and the last thing in our lives and that is a big note. In the beginning of these experiments, I was home alone. My friend Maria Teresa called me to come out to play, but I could not hang out with her. Living in Italy is like being in a Fellini film. You can't help but laugh hard, so hard your cheeks can hurt for days. Laughing, sneezing, and coughing were at the top of my list of things to avoid. So, for the first three weeks of my boredom, I engaged in photographing my breath, alone. It's almost impossible to disappear in the Sassi di Matera for three weeks. The people look out for one another, and I felt honored to be included in this family. So, of course, the story was about the New Yorker who had cracked ribs. As luck would have it, some of my past models came by to inquire about me. Which opened the door for me to catch their breath in the long takes on film. It was amazing how much pain I was in, but it did not stop me from playing with my chemicals to develop the film, and scan, and review the daily shots. There is something about being locked in with your work; it takes the focus off the pain you are in. I was shooting with my 500cm Hasselblad in black and white. This camera is a medium format with only twelve shots per roll of film. I told my willing subjects what outfits to wear. One particular day we were shooting in the backyard of my friend Judith’s home, located up the stairs from my place. As the girls were ascending the staircase in their black and white outfits, some random dude yelled out loud, “Is it a black and white shoot?” It was as if Fellini was there in spirit. The girls cracked up in laughter, because no one knew the dude, and I could not hold it in either. Painful, laughter, awesome memories. The cracking of the ribs was a gift.” In this interview, Cynthia opens up about the art of survival, the power of perspective, and why she believes each of us holds a monopoly on our own narrative. What emerges is a portrait of an artist who doesn’t just reflect the world — she reshapes it. “The cracked ribs images were built within a few guidelines. The open shutter to possibly catch the unseen as movement versus the non-movement. The hierarchy of the project is the hard contrast between the light and the dark. It mimics the darkness we feel when our body is impaired, and the light is eminent on our road to recovery.” IN CONVERSATION WITH CYNTHIA KARALLA THE PICTORIAL LIST: Your early life was anything but conventional. Can you talk about your childhood and teenage years — how those experiences shaped your sense of independence, and how you navigated education, survival, and personal agency during such a turbulent time? CYNTHIA: Two weeks after my eighth birthday, my father died in a boating accident, leaving me in a situation where two women were fighting over me, one step, one birth, both claiming to be my mother. This is where my life of independence begins. The courts placed me in a juvenile facility because I refused to live with either woman, I wanted my grandma. The place was useless for education and only held the lock and key to “Time Wasted.” To not waste my time, I would dream up new ideas of escapism; the attempts and the successful adventures I did; every month, a new adventure -- 1 January - Out of an unlocked door. 10 Days gone. 2 February - Over a 16-foot fence. 20 minutes, caught. 3 March - Through an open fence. 40 minutes. 4 April - Out a third-floor window. 9 hours. 5 May - Out the back door of a car. 2 Years gone. Yes, there were failed attempts, but at the age of twelve, a child's spirit is strong; it knows no boundaries. Each time I was caught, I got three days in isolation. I enjoyed my moments of isolation, reading books, sleeping a little extra, and having my meals brought to me; this was not a punishment. The fifth time, I made it out successfully. I was missing for more than two years, and when I did return, it was with a lawyer. After this little adventure, there was nothing left to fear. Only the fear of wasting time. Pierre Bourdie, states that for some people there is a Yin and Yang in life, happy childhood, miserable adult life. And then the opposite, a miserable childhood, a fabulous adulthood. Because my childhood was cut short, in my adult life, I am making up for lost time. TPL: You’ve said that accumulating debt or financial comfort can come at the cost of creative freedom. Can you talk about that insight — how it shaped your career decisions, and how you've maintained artistic integrity without being bound to conventional success? CYNTHIA: Yes, to be in debt, it can control your thoughts and stifle your creative process. But there are those that use the financial pressure to create. Some escape in their work and exit the thought of their financial obligation. As long as they don’t think about the money and only think of their creative process, there can be success. Balzac accomplished a huge body of work; he worked through the night avoiding his financial burden as he hid from his landlord. Just like everyone else in the universe I am in debt. There is nothing we can do about it. I feel like we were born with debt tattooed on our forehead. So, I blank on it and live as if today is my last. I speak as if today is my last. I work as if today is my last. That is the greatest gift about getting older, because we know today might be our last. The only future we have is this very present moment. There is a line from Janis Joplin - Me and Bobby McGee, “Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose”. With nothing left to lose, the doors are wide open, go venture without the social restriction, escape the social prisons, and live your life. While working on a piece I might work it too much into ruination. The ruin piece opens the door to experimentation, because I have nothing left to lose. In our life there is no such thing that you own anything. “That Anything” more than likely owns you. The most precious gift in life is owning oneself. TPL: Your life story feels like a process of continuous reinvention through intuition, risk, and transformation. How do you reflect on that arc now, and what advice would you give to artists (or anyone) trying to build a life outside the lines? CYNTHIA: Back in the 1990s, I moved to Greece. I took the plane to Athens. I rode my bicycle to the boat. I took the boat to Heraklion, Crete. I spent most of the day riding up and over an arm of the Psiloritis Mountain. Once at the top, it took me 45 minutes to ride down the other side without a foot on the pedal. I had no idea where I was going. Without knowing anyone there and not being able to speak a word of Greek, all I had was my intuition. Being in an unknown land without knowing the language is going back to the basics. Each day, I would travel in a new direction. No map was needed, just the landscape. I knew where I had settled, left of the mountains and in the direction of the sun. One of the greatest life lessons I learned was while I was living in Crete. After all of my renovations, I still had no back door, and I was out of funds. For more than three days, I stressed out. How could I fix this? I had never built a door before. I did learn how to make a perfect batch of cement, but that was not going to help me build a door. After the panic attacks, I said, let’s examine a door, and in 45 minutes, I built a door with windows and all. Life is so much easier than we think; only the thought and worry weigh heavier than the action. Keeping life simple by being healthy makes everything possible. And never forget, we each have a monopoly; there is only one of us. Cracked Ribs - Isabella © Cynthia Karalla Cracked Ribs - Yard Angels © Cynthia Karalla Cracked Ribs - Angels © Cynthia Karalla Cracked Ribs - Candle Mirror © Cynthia Karalla Cracked Ribs - Girls © Cynthia Karalla Cracked Ribs - Fin © Cynthia Karalla TPL: You started a business at 19, made money, and walked away from it — much like you later walked away from architecture school and a high-paying design job. What were the motivations behind these bold departures, and how did they reflect your evolving understanding of freedom, risk, and creative integrity? CYNTHIA: I missed all of my schooling. Almost finished 7th grade, missed 8th, 9th and 10th due to the custody battle. After being tested for placement of which grade, they placed me in the 11th. After six weeks of 11th grade, we were back in court. That was then I decided no more and moved to New York to wait out the next two years for me to become seventeen. Without much schooling, because of the custody battle, I was not sure what to do with my life. My boyfriend at the time talked me into his dream, his dream to own a deli. We were so young that we had to make his mother president because we were only 19 years in age. We were located in a small town in Nassau County, Long Island, NY., across the street from a McDonalds. The McDonald's coffee was disgusting; we became the big seller of morning coffee. While we were going horrible broke, I decided to design the twenty odd salad trays by color, to peak the eyes of these coffee buyers. I went to Balducci, that wonderful place on 6th Ave and 10th St. in the West Village. I bought little containers of salads by color. Copied their ingredients by taste and captured the coffee buyer's interest. Before long there was a line out the door and then people just stopped to get inline without knowing why. Making money is easy. While we were successful in this business, it was then that I realized that we really owned nothing, it owned us. I needed something more challenging, so I left. From my early years of missing my schooling, I really appreciated being in school. The business was a good learning project, but it was concrete. You can’t move from it. Through schooling it opens the world. Knowledge within, you can move anywhere. I departed from the architectural school after I did four of the five years. It was difficult for the professors to understand that I went to school to learn, not for a piece of paper. Some schools advocate the paper and hope that you might learn something, some don’t but it is up to you what you do when you are there. At architecture school, I would ace design and fail on presentation, nine times out of ten I was still on yellow trace. Once a classmate asked me how I always ace it? I replied that it was easy, it is in all the books they prescribed for us to read. The boy looked at me confused, he never read the prescribed reading material. School is what you make it, the paper may be important for some, but the bottom line is what you learn, because school is just the appetizer to the main course. P.S — The most important card in your wallet is your LIBRARY CARD. Well now it might be Google and YouTube. In the field of architecture, I was on door and window details for almost three months before I was moved up. Being the youngest and the only girl on the design team was the dream job. In the work field it is not really how many degrees you hold, it all comes down to how good you are and that your bosses can make a profit off of you. I was lucky to have a project manager that once worked for I. M. Pei. The project manager, Paul was one of the designers for the National Gallery of Art in D.C., he had a very open mind. His words to me were always, Cynthia this is insane, so insane, it will work. The clients always loved it. The thing about design is that your mind is attached to problem solving, twenty-four hours a day. A drawing board is a must in the residence, or you will sleepwalk to your drawboard at work. The brain does not know how to stop. Right out of school I moved to a neighborhood where the seeds of gentrification were being planted. We really don’t know about gentrification when it is the printed word, but living through it is a real eye opener. Well, let me tell you about my hood; 51 of the 53 buildings burnt down to make way for the new money developers to build. One building we were able to save was filled with Grandmas and Grandpas, all above the age of 70. So many carted off to the hospital suffering from heart failure and scared daily. It was heart wrenching, that is when I started questioning what I am doing? Am I designing for people or the developers? This is when I left the field of architecture. TPL: Looking back on your path — from survival and rebellion to creative reinvention — how do these experiences come together in your art today? What have they taught you about transformation, and what message do you hope others take from the way you've chosen to live and create? CYNTHIA: “Photography is Dead” — These words of David Hockney are echoing around the world. I beg to differ; it is now getting interesting. Back when the camera first came into existence, the portrait, the landscape painters were, “What are we out of Business?” No, this brought in a new light, new ideas all the Art-isms were born. Artists had to think in a new way, because we had a new language and it is a visual one. Just as social media hit the airways, the portrait photographer was now being removed, as to what he thought the subject should look like, whereas now the subject becomes the author as to how they want to be presented. In the 90s, as soon as the digital camera hit the market, with one push of the button everything became Hallmark. Every time I bought a new digital camera, I spent the first day reading the manual and the second day breaking the camera to escape that Hallmark curse. I first started with the film camera, then on to digital, until I exhausted all possibilities. I return to film because there were so many more discoveries to be made. Building on the past knowledge but twisting it into the future. We all know what we should not do; the film negative is so precious, I splashed it with bleach, cut it in angles, shot during high noon, took sandpaper to Bergger fiber darkroom paper, sketched with a developer and shot with the shutter open for two minutes, all to transform the unknown into the known. This is one part of thought in transforming photography, but all of this comes from the transformation within oneself. There is a story I wrote during the pandemic about one of my escapes from the juvenile center, the one of me going out the third-floor window. After writing it, I thought, did I write this once before? I did, twenty years before. It was the same story but within those twenty years I had grown. The tragedy of the story now became humorous. The first writing of this story is still hard for me to read; the second writing is with the eyes of growth and the understanding of the world we live in. Every childhood is the perfect dramatic nightmare of their personal story or film. We are all blessed with the growing pains, and once we realize that it is the right of passage we can move on and grow, because we are all in this together. I will end this with these words from Muhammad Ali — “The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.” TPL: You mentioned that even breathing was painful, and yet breath became the central focus of your work. How did your body’s limitations translate into the visual language of the project, and in what ways did the act of photographing become a form of healing or resistance? With cracked ribs, breathing is the physical therapy to mend. So much in life we take for granted. We breathe without much thought about it, we breathe, we live, we don’t we die. This simple action took less time than trying to slide myself out of bed. In the beginning I asked for homeopathic medicine, the next day I was back asking for drugs. I was a mess in this beautiful land, the Sassi di Matera, in the Basilicata of Italy. My work is never premeditated, always experimental up to a point. With the basic knowledge of the workings of the camera, you can dive into experimental territories. In order to run you need to know how to walk first. So, learn the basics because there are no failures. Failures are the entryway to new ideas, to build on. The cracked ribs images were built within a few guidelines. The open shutter to possibly catch the unseen as movement versus the non-movement. The hierarchy of the project is the hard contrast between the light and the dark. It mimics the darkness we feel when our body is impaired, and the light is eminent on our road to recovery. In the past I had a bad accident, where all the doctors told me that it was going to be two years of physical therapy and a lot of drugs. I refused the drugs and their thoughts. In nine months, I was back in action. Through drawing and making art the pain would leave my thoughts, making my body able to relax and mend. The body is amazing as to how fast it can heal. I think what takes the longest is for the mind to heal. There are studies that are out there that state; It is Mind over Matter. Our mind is the owner of our body. We can fix our body through thought and image. Locking myself into shooting, developing, editing, helped me forget the pain and without the thought of pain, the body relaxes to heal. As life would have it, it was a negative that needed to be turned into a positive by making me think in a new way. And this brought about this series Cracked Ribs. Boredom is the word for Recharge! TPL: Boredom and isolation are often seen as negative states, but you describe them as a gift. How did the enforced stillness of recovery and the solitude of your time in Matera create space for artistic experimentation and play? CYNTHIA: Boredom is the word for Recharge. When I was studying at the Art Students League, I made an energy chart, so I could possibly understand my creative energy. Why some days everything flowed so effortlessly and other days NOT. My daily chart consisted of; What I ate? How much sleep? How many pages have I read? Fights with my Boyfriend? At the end I would rate my creative energy from what I produced in class. Then I started studying the masters; Matisse, Pollack, Barnett Newman etc. Our primary energy in one week is only 25 hours. Then we have second and third power through the rest of the week. Art makes us naked, it discloses how we live our life and what we eat for breakfast. Art is the telltale sign of the amount of strength we have in energy. Art is everywhere; you just need the energy to capture it. When in isolation you can hear your words in your head. We all have the creative gene within us. Some like to work in the turbulence, my preference is a much simpler way. Be healthy, only give your body the good that will give and not take away. This is my way to go down the rabbit hole and find Christmas. On lovely Matera — The people in Italy are fabulous, Fellini is everywhere, laughter can make cheekbones cry, and the sun shines the most beautiful light. At one time when I first came to the Sassi di Matera, because of my friend Dorothy, I wondered how anyone could live in such a predictable little city, every day the same, nothing new. I learned after a few years how predictability was a solid ground that you can build on and not be the flower victimized by the storm. TPL: You chose to shoot with a medium format Hasselblad using black and white film, with only twelve exposures per roll. What did this technical choice offer you, and how did the slow, deliberate nature of this process mirror or contrast with your personal experience at the time? Did the tactile elements — loading film, developing negatives, scanning — offer a kind of therapeutic ritual or structure during your recovery? CYNTHIA: Every day is like Christmas. Loading the film is wrapping the gift. Pushing the button is the unknown gift. Developing is the unwrapping of the gift. Viewing the results is “the surprise”. When we shoot at times, we have an image in our head of what we wanted it to be. In our everyday life we do the same. And instead, we get something else than what we envisioned, but the beauty is there, unfortunately sometimes we are too young to know it. Gary Winogrand left this earth with 2,500 rolls of undeveloped film. Winogrand would wait two years before developing his film; he waited those two years to erase the image and emotional attachment of what he wanted. His theory opens the door to see the unpredictable beauty that is in front of us. It is the camera that teaches us to see what is there. It is the same with life and the expectations that society deems as success, while we chase an image in our head, we miss the beauty of life itself. In six weeks, the pain disappeared like the flick of a light switch. Only because my thoughts were in the project, my body felt less pain as it healed. My dailies knew that without the cracked ribs I would have been shooting something else. So, the bottom line, it was worth it to crack my ribs. TPL: Time seems to play a significant role in both the subject matter and the method — long exposures, slow recovery, and extended periods of stillness. How did this sense of stretched time shape your understanding of breath, pain, and photography itself? Did the long exposures create unexpected results that reflected your mental or physical state in ways you hadn’t anticipated? CYNTHIA: Breathing was my daily recovery exercise that left me thinking all about the breath. I thought about catching my breath on film similar to an earlier project I did call, “Move, Don’t Move”. The past project was all about catching the energy of the people in five different situations. Through two-minute exposures the models sat in the company of a lover, family, work buddy, friend and then a solo shot. All the models picked their poses, some extremely difficult to hold for the two minutes. I was building on an old project. While busy with loading, developing, test scanning, and viewing, time passes quicker than one would like. Being locked into the present moment the mind does not feel the pain of cracked ribs. This was my salvation, filming. I know if I sat still, the pain would be unbearable. The objective is to move and breathe through the pain. The end result, without the premeditation and expectation of what it should look like, was all a wonderful surprise, just like life happening as it is. There was only one image that was redone to be pushed to a final image. Angels, we shot it one day. I developed the film, scanned it and sent it to the models. They all loved the image and were shocked when I said, “We must do it again”. The lighting can be better, and we did it, that was about as premeditated as I get. With my work I try to keep it as close to life as possible. That is the magic, bringing in real life instead of the imagination of what life could be. It is what it is and that is pretty special and that is what I want to capture, the unknown that is there, teaching us to see. Cracked Ribs - Hands & Basil © Cynthia Karalla Cracked Ribs - Basil © Cynthia Karalla Cracked Ribs - Happy 50th Birthday © Cynthia Karalla Cracked Ribs - Carla Face © Cynthia Karalla Cracked Ribs - Carla Flute © Cynthia Karalla TPL: Looking back at CRACKED RIBS now, how do you see it fitting into your broader body of work or artistic journey? Do you feel this experience changed your approach to image-making or storytelling? Would you ever consider revisiting this theme — through new technologies, writing, sound, or installation — to expand its impact and resonance? CYNTHIA: Cracked Ribs is consistent with all of my work, taking what negatives life dishes out and turning them into a positive. Remembering it is a learning gift from the universe, to make us think and see in a new way. My work has no visual stamp that says, “it is a Karalla”. Stamping out a visual is suffocating as it leaves no room to explore the unknown. Looking at a Picasso you know it is a Picasso; it has that visual stamp. But viewing Anselm Kiefer’s work it has that universal feeling without the visual stamp. His stamp is the power of thought and execution. My stamp is the thread of life that dictates the present. When I was bleaching my negatives, I was asked about the process that I was using. When I explained that I was using my original negative and not making a copy, there was a big gulp. Just as we venture in life, we do not make a copy of ourselves to live life. I wanted my negatives to be a part of life, to have that human element somehow attach itself to it. To be more than just a recording, to have the effects of life also attached to it. Through the ever-new technology that is forever changing by the second, in so many ways I still love the old school with modern thinking blended together. Not that long ago Dogme 95 was founded by Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg. In short it was a movement for the directors to escape the movie producers and become artists. Their shooting style was raw, with handheld cameras and even the actors would have no idea what the script was about. It was all in finding the new, walking the edge of the unpredictable. Even Robert Altman with his actors in the film Mash, he let them find their own words to define the characters. Venturing into the unknown opens the doors of finding what we don’t know. So, trying new things is always an adventure. When I stop, I will be six feet under until then I will experiment forever, because I love Christmas. TPL: You live in New York City but maintain a studio in Newburgh, about an hour north. How does moving between these two environments influence your process — and what kind of commitment does it take to maintain a practice across both urban and more rural spaces? CYNTHIA: The contrast is night and day. NYC is rich in diversity; we love this city because of it. Manhattan is the greatest example that the whole world can live together in harmony. In Newburgh, when I first came here, I saw the division between black and white and just thought — No, I don’t want to live through this again, this is my childhood, Grosse Pointe meets Detroit. But and this is a very good BUT, there are a lot of artists moving up here and when you see the police officers being involved in community projects, it secures my heart. TPL: Outside of photography, what practices, routines, or passions help sustain your creativity — especially when you're not actively making work? CYNTHIA: I love Instagram because of the food recipes. My kitchen is the perfect place for playing in it. The first thing I do every morning is a smoothie. Most important is health, with health everything else is easy. I don’t drink alcohol or coffee. I feed myself things that are giving me the energy to play to see and catch the art of life. Also working on my home, I love my home. Right now I am working on the hallways. Hallways are magical, transitional from one space to the next. Most hallways are left blank, mine might be a bit over the top, but worth the walk. And lest not forget driving, I love the road. The road is therapeutic and over the top interesting. You are a voyeur on the road viewing the drivers’ naked personalities. It is another whole other type of art. You have your characters; the polite drivers and then your speed demons that just found the gas pedal. Lest not forget those that break the law always driving in the passing lane below the speed limit. I am driving anywhere between two hundred and five hundred miles a week and what I find that is most impressive is the women drivers behind the wheel. They are owning the road with confidence, not as our mothers or grandmothers riding as the passenger, those days are gone. We are living in the best of times. History is in the making as we have hit rock bottom with our political situation. The Road is open for new ways of life. All of life is Art. No matter what is thrown at you, throw it back as a work of Art. Art is not a job, it is a way of life. Just before Ed Kock’s passing. In a 2009 interview with The New York Times, former New York City Mayor Ed Koch stated, “I've had a wonderful ride. I've done what I wanted to do.” PORTFOLIO WEBSITE INSTAGRAM read more interviews >>> CONTOURS OF ABSENCE Where concealment unsettles recognition and ordinary spaces turn psychological, the photographs of Serhii Fett suspend identity between presence and absence. THE ART OF ATTENTION Curiosity turns portraits, objects, and places into discoveries as Len Irish reflects on a life shaped by the camera’s attention. WHERE EMOTIONS BREATHE Simple encounters Irina Sedletskaya almost missed become photographs shaped by silence, distance, uncertainty, memory, hope, and resilience. THE VILLAGE A workers’ neighbourhood becomes a living archive as Virginia Cassano photographs the people, streets, and memories that continue to shape Villaggio Piaggio. MUTABLE MORPHOGENESIS By merging scientific methodologies with photographic experimentation, Emma Varga creates images that challenge fixed distinctions between human and non-human, visible and invisible. THE ARCHITECTURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS Chad Coombs’ Polaroids are small psychological scenes where identity, memory, culture, and belief push against each other. WHERE WE BELONG Community storytelling lies at the heart of The Pictorial List’s mission, and Marlon Ramos’ photographs reflects the spirit of the place we now call home. GUIDED BY A WHISPER Guided by reflection and the quiet presence of art history, Isolda Fabregat Sanz makes photographs that resist certainty and invite the viewer to remain inside the act of looking. 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. 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. ANALOGICAL LIMBO Nicola Cappellari reminds us that the photograph’s power lies not in what it shows, but in what it leaves unsaid. THREADS OF MOROCCAN LIFE Through gestures of work and moments of community, Kat Puchowska reveals Morocco’s overlooked beauty. 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. 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. 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. UNKNOWN ABYSSINIA In Ethiopia, Sebastian Piatek found a new way of seeing — where architecture endures, but women in motion carry the narrative forward. 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. WHAT DO WE WANT? More than documentation, David Gray reveals the human pulse of resistance and asks us to see beyond the surface of unrest. CRACKED RIBS 2016 Cynthia Karalla opens up about the art of survival, the power of perspective, and why she believes each of us holds a monopoly on our own narrative. STREETS OF KOLKATA Ayanava Sil’s reveals Kolkata’s soul, capturing moments with empathy, presence and humility while offering deep insight into both city and self. PERIPHERAL PLACES A project by Catia Montagna that distills fleeting encounters and spatial poetics into triptychs - visual short stories that capture the in-between, where meaning often hides. POINTE-AU-CHIEN IS NOT DEAD Through Wayan Barre’s documentary, we are invited not only to see but to feel the lived realities of a community standing at the crossroads of environmental collapse and cultural survival. QUEER HAPPENED HERE Author Marc Zinaman sheds light on the valuable contributions that LGBTQ+ individuals have made to the cultural and social fabric of New York City. TRACES OF TIME Marked by an ongoing visual dialogue with time, memory, and impermanence, Zamin Jafarov’s long-term projects highlight the quiet power of observation and the emotional depth of simplicity. THERE MY LITTLE EYES Guillermo Franco’s book is an exploration of seeing beyond the obvious. His work invites us to embrace patience, curiosity, and the unexpected in a world that often rushes past the details.

The built environment, static and inanimate, is the stage upon which a walking choreography is played out. The humans, who bring the animate, are spatially arranged as though carefully directed. Have they been conditioned already to act like automatons or self-absorbed passersby uncannily acting out parts in mental isolation? I don't actually direct images but adhere to the rules of candid street photography. I'll often 'build' a shot by waiting for a satisfactory outcome in real time. This, according to other commentators, is perhaps why the images ring true as documentary. Often shot in a half light with a muted colour palette, there at first seems something sad about these corporate scenes but there is an intention to transcend the mundane by sometimes making comical comment on our increasingly designed environment. STREETMAX 21 The built environment, static and inanimate, is the stage upon which a walking choreography is played out. The humans, who bring the animate, are spatially arranged as though carefully directed. Have they been conditioned already to act like automatons or self-absorbed passersby uncannily acting out parts in mental isolation? I don't actually direct images but adhere to the rules of candid street photography. I'll often 'build' a shot by waiting for a satisfactory outcome in real time. This, according to other commentators, is perhaps why the images ring true as documentary. Often shot in a half light with a muted colour palette, there at first seems something sad about these corporate scenes but there is an intention to transcend the mundane by sometimes making comical comment on our increasingly designed environment. LOCATION London UNITED KINGDOM CAMERA/S Fuji x100s, Nikon D700 WEBSITE https://streetmax21.com/ @STREETMAX21 FEATURES // Street Choreography

I work at the intersection of analogue photography, performance, and self-portraiture. Using double exposure and RA-4 color printing, I create layered images where body, memory, and environment converge. Each negative is a starting point for reinvention, transformed through gestures, distortions, and chance. My practice, shaped by feminist politics and personal history, seeks to reveal what is often hidden — trauma, silence, shame, menstrual cycles — turning them into spaces of resistance and reflection. Through this process, I aim not to represent but to uncover, inviting viewers to reconsider what it means to see, to remember, and to return to themselves. LAETITIA HEISLER I work at the intersection of analogue photography, performance, and self-portraiture. Using double exposure and RA-4 color printing, I create layered images where body, memory, and environment converge. Each negative is a starting point for reinvention, transformed through gestures, distortions, and chance. My practice, shaped by feminist politics and personal history, seeks to reveal what is often hidden — trauma, silence, shame, menstrual cycles — turning them into spaces of resistance and reflection. Through this process, I aim not to represent but to uncover, inviting viewers to reconsider what it means to see, to remember, and to return to themselves. LOCATION Berlin GERMANY CAMERA/S Pentax 67, Pentax ME Super, Nikon FM10, Olympus OM1, Canon AE1 WEBSITE https://laetitiaheisler.com/ @LAETITIAHEISLER FEATURES // What Remains, What Emerges

SOCIOLOGY OF EVERYDAY LIFE Capturing the sociology of everyday life, searching for human faces and emotion, brings Neslihan Uslu closer to photojournalism. SOCIOLOGY OF EVERYDAY LIFE March 11, 2021 INTERVIEW PHOTOGRAPHY Neslihan Uslu INTERVIEW Melanie Meggs Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link SHARE Photography has the ability to capture and communicate stories in a way that no other medium can. For Neslihan Uslu, a Turkish-born photographer living in Antwerp, Belgium, photography is a way of life. Combining her studies in sociology and photography, her artistic practice is about uncovering the everyday stories of our lives. To her, the nuances of everyday life are the most powerful and beautiful stories that can be told. Neslihan's passion for documentary photography began three years ago when she moved to Antwerp. In her desire to learn more about this new city, she saw photography as the best way to do this. Every week she would focus on a different topic, seeking out the hidden stories that were hidden away in the streets of Antwerp. Her images are a reflection of her passion for looking at both the ordinary and extraordinary through a photographer’s eye. She looks for emotional moments and captures them in an honest and cinematic style, creating a visual dialogue of the beauty of everyday life. Neslihan Uslu's work is a powerful blend of fine art and photojournalism. It is a tribute to her dedication to capturing the subtle stories of our lives and the emotion that lies within them. Her work gives us a glimpse into hidden moments that many of us would never have the opportunity to witness. Through her lens, we can experience the intimate beauty of the everyday and appreciate the unique stories of our lives. “In my opinion, sociology is bold, but photography is even bolder. What I want to express with my photos is to convey events, social problems, situations, sometimes everyday life and routines as much as possible, to show real lives and feelings. I also want to do this by keeping the story plain and simple, without trying to transform or reproduce reality. Photography is already reproducing its reality through the eye of the photographer.” IN CONVERSATION WITH NESLIHAN USLU THE PICTORIAL LIST: Neslihan please tell us about yourself. How did you become interested in photography? NESLIHAN USLU: I was born and raised in Istanbul. I have been living in Antwerp for about 3 years. I've been the photographer of the family since I was young. But it was more about taking snapshots and recording everything. I started photography training in AFSAD (Ankara Photography Artists Association) the year I decided to study Sociology at the university in 2000. I feel like I’m still at home while developing photos in the dark room. During my 4-year university education, photography training and projects continued simultaneously. During this period, I also had the opportunity to participate in group exhibitions. My focus on documentary photography was continued with my thesis. This was the breaking point for me. While I was writing my thesis on "Othering and Labeling in Modern Era: Romani people living in Turkey”, I met many people, took many pictures and I had the opportunity to learn a lot about photography. That's why Josef Koudelka's Gypsies project is always very special to me. TPL: Tell us more about the series of images from Chinatown that you have shared with us. Could you elaborate a bit on your thoughts on the concept and how you manifested your ideas into a documentary project? NU: Actually, this short study is one of the first steps of my work on the “cultural importance of festivals and their perception in different cultures” that I want to do in the long run. Festivals are an impressive way to celebrate culture and traditions. At the same time, we come together with our loved ones and share happiness. It is important for cultural solidarity. In addition to this, it can evoke different emotions in different cultures. What I wanted to show was the difference and similarity of the emotions it aroused in people from different cultures through the Chinese New Year celebration. To put it better, it was the cultural perception of this celebration. Before the celebrations, I went to Chinatown many times and observed. That gave me the information about the photos I will be taking: where I should stand, from what point of view I will see. I don’t think I can easily tell a story that I don’t have an idea about, whether it is a documentary or a photojournalism. TPL: Sometimes you combine your Sociology into your Photography. What do you want to express through your photography? And what are some of the elements you always try to include in your photographs? NU: In my opinion, sociology is bold, but photography is even bolder. What I want to express with my photos is to convey events, social problems, situations, sometimes everyday life and routines as much as possible, to show real lives and feelings. I also want to do this by keeping the story plain and simple, without trying to transform or reproduce reality. Photography is already reproducing its reality through the eye of the photographer. When I think of myself as a viewer, the photographs that awaken a feeling in me, make me ask myself questions and think critically feed me. I want them to inspire similar feelings in those who look at my photos as well. I believe that the more we present to the world, the greater steps we take for change and development. That's why Lewis Wickes Hine, the photographer and sociologist who documents child labor, is one of my idols. Hine's images of working children helped change the nation's labor laws. Through his photography, Lewis Hine made a difference in the lives of American workers and, most importantly, American children. I'm trying to include the connection between the sense of place and people in my photographs. I think this allows me to tell my photo stories more powerfully. TPL: Where do you find your inspiration to photograph? NU: I find my inspiration in history. Everything that has witnessed history means a lot to me. Maybe that's why I love to chat with old people and listen to them, to go around antique markets and second-hand bookstores. TPL: Do you have a favourite place to photograph? NU: Everywhere that I can find documentary photos and stories. To be honest, I think the events and the connections you establish make the difference, not places. Nevertheless, the historical streets in İstanbul that start from Istiklal Street and end in Galata Tower are always a journey to my heart and my childhood. I also like to go to the old passages and shoot in low light conditions there. TPL: Do you have any favourite artists or photographers you would like to share with us, and the reason for their significance? NU: There are many photographers and artists. Master photographers always inspire me, teach me to see and narrate. Dorothea Lange, Vivian Maier, Bieke Depoorter, Semiha Es, Ansel Adams, Sebastião Salgado, Alec Soth, Ara Güler, İzzet Keribar, Martin Parr, Josef Koudelka, Emin Özmen, Alex Webb…Their works play a big role in making me who I am. Cinema and my favorite directors also make me look at photography differently. I learn how to use tones, whether in monochrome or in color, and how to take dramatic photographs through cinema. I think it is necessary to keep the intense and fertile relationship between cinema and photography in order to do a good job in photography. Jean-Luc Godard expressed "Photography is truth. And cinema is truth 24 frames a second." I absolutely agree with this. At the same time, the magical world of cinema contributes to my imagination in every way. Vittorio De Sica, Lars Von Trier, Ken Loach, Nuri Bilge Ceylan have a special place in my heart. And all of my photographer friends who live in different places of the world. We also have a photography group called Antwerp Photo Collective in Antwerp and I am inspired by all of them. I find it historically and sociologically important to convey culture from generation to generation. Being able to explain a cultural structure that I know makes me feel both excited and responsible. We're losing so many memories and I want to keep them alive. TPL: Do you have a favourite quote, lyric or saying that especially resonates with you? NU: In an interview, Ken Loach says, “You have to find a story you have to tell. It should be a story that you must tell, not a story which might have been a good one when you tell.” I'm trying to do this with my camera. It takes me into photography, pushes me to research and learn. TPL: Does the equipment you use help you in achieving your vision in your photography? What camera do you use? Do you have a preferred lens/focal length? NU: I currently have equipment that I love very much. I use Fujifilm X-T3. I want to have a medium format camera in the long run. I take most of my photos with 35mm f/1.4 lens and 50mm f/1.8 lens. However, sometimes I need different equipment and lenses, depending on the style of the photo I want to shoot. 35mm prime lens is always my favorite. It is a wide angle lens and it helps me have a more accurate perspective. It's enough to capture powerful images. I also have zoom lenses but I rarely use them. I like my camera being small and quiet but I always have to carry a spare battery. I do my analog shots with Nikon F80 and Leica Z2X, even though less often. I'm a fan of cinestill film. TPL: When you go out photographing, do you have a concept in mind of what you want to shoot, or do you let the images just "come to you", or is it both? NU: I often let the images come to me when I go out shooting. Maybe I will encounter something new that I do not know or I will see something I am familiar with, from a different perspective. I keep a sort of photo diary. Sometimes I just give myself homework about a specific theme. I am trying to create a photo series about the theme. For example, from the people who are reading at the café to the street lamps, from the women dressed in green to the bins, from the joy of victory to the someone who seems unhappy, there can be a variety of subjects and emotions. Also, even when I have a concept in my mind and shoot about that, the results I see are different from what I plan. Sometimes this makes me happier, sometimes it causes me to throw everything away and rework the same concept. It helps me to realize long and extensive projects. TPL: What are some of your goals as an artist? Where do you see yourself or hope to see yourself in five years? NU: I want to reach more people with my photos. I'm building my website (www.neslihanuslu.com ) and it will be accessible in February. I would like to publish my project that I am working on and dedicate it to my parents. I would like to present my 2nd draft project to a publishing house in Belgium and work on it in collaboration. I have a long way to go, and I love this feeling. Some things will change along the way and this will influence my approach to photography. TPL: You mentioned that you are currently working on a documentary project 'Crimean Tatar Villages.' Could you tell us about it. NU: I find it historically and sociologically important to convey culture from generation to generation. Being able to explain a cultural structure that I know makes me feel both excited and responsible. We're losing so many memories and I want to keep them alive. I am a Crimean Tatar from my father's side. My grandfather settled by migration to Turkey after a difficult period. My father was born and grew up in Eskipolatlı, a typical Tatar village in Ankara. Crimean Tatar is spoken among themselves. This group has a unique culture and lifestyle. This is what I was born in. I listened to the stories and witnessed this culture. I will especially focus on the food culture and domestic life. I will do photo shoots and interviews in Eskipolatlı village in order to maintain the cultural heritage and introduce this culture to future generations. Due to Covid-19, I couldn’t travel to Turkey and I couldn’t make the shots that I had planned last spring. For the moment I continue to do interviews. If everything goes well, I aim to complete my project within a year. Unfortunately, while I was writing my thesis, I could not reach the references that I wanted and I think I know the difficulty and the meaning of this. For this reason, I want it to be a small contribution for those who are interested in the subject. TPL: When I am not out photographing, I (like to)… NU: Watch movies, spend time with my family and friends, cycle, do handicrafts and travel. PORTFOLIO WEBSITE INSTAGRAM read more interviews >>> CONTOURS OF ABSENCE Where concealment unsettles recognition and ordinary spaces turn psychological, the photographs of Serhii Fett suspend identity between presence and absence. THE ART OF ATTENTION Curiosity turns portraits, objects, and places into discoveries as Len Irish reflects on a life shaped by the camera’s attention. WHERE EMOTIONS BREATHE Simple encounters Irina Sedletskaya almost missed become photographs shaped by silence, distance, uncertainty, memory, hope, and resilience. THE VILLAGE A workers’ neighbourhood becomes a living archive as Virginia Cassano photographs the people, streets, and memories that continue to shape Villaggio Piaggio. MUTABLE MORPHOGENESIS By merging scientific methodologies with photographic experimentation, Emma Varga creates images that challenge fixed distinctions between human and non-human, visible and invisible. THE ARCHITECTURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS Chad Coombs’ Polaroids are small psychological scenes where identity, memory, culture, and belief push against each other. WHERE WE BELONG Community storytelling lies at the heart of The Pictorial List’s mission, and Marlon Ramos’ photographs reflects the spirit of the place we now call home. GUIDED BY A WHISPER Guided by reflection and the quiet presence of art history, Isolda Fabregat Sanz makes photographs that resist certainty and invite the viewer to remain inside the act of looking. 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. 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. ANALOGICAL LIMBO Nicola Cappellari reminds us that the photograph’s power lies not in what it shows, but in what it leaves unsaid. THREADS OF MOROCCAN LIFE Through gestures of work and moments of community, Kat Puchowska reveals Morocco’s overlooked beauty. 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. 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. 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. UNKNOWN ABYSSINIA In Ethiopia, Sebastian Piatek found a new way of seeing — where architecture endures, but women in motion carry the narrative forward. 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. WHAT DO WE WANT? More than documentation, David Gray reveals the human pulse of resistance and asks us to see beyond the surface of unrest. CRACKED RIBS 2016 Cynthia Karalla opens up about the art of survival, the power of perspective, and why she believes each of us holds a monopoly on our own narrative. STREETS OF KOLKATA Ayanava Sil’s reveals Kolkata’s soul, capturing moments with empathy, presence and humility while offering deep insight into both city and self. PERIPHERAL PLACES A project by Catia Montagna that distills fleeting encounters and spatial poetics into triptychs - visual short stories that capture the in-between, where meaning often hides. POINTE-AU-CHIEN IS NOT DEAD Through Wayan Barre’s documentary, we are invited not only to see but to feel the lived realities of a community standing at the crossroads of environmental collapse and cultural survival. QUEER HAPPENED HERE Author Marc Zinaman sheds light on the valuable contributions that LGBTQ+ individuals have made to the cultural and social fabric of New York City. TRACES OF TIME Marked by an ongoing visual dialogue with time, memory, and impermanence, Zamin Jafarov’s long-term projects highlight the quiet power of observation and the emotional depth of simplicity. THERE MY LITTLE EYES Guillermo Franco’s book is an exploration of seeing beyond the obvious. His work invites us to embrace patience, curiosity, and the unexpected in a world that often rushes past the details.

Broadway Bares is an annual fundraising event benefiting Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS — a vibrant celebration where performers of all kinds, from stars to chorus, offer their presence, their energy, and their bodies in the name of something profoundly meaningful. I choose to be part of this powerful tradition — camera in hand — drawn by its unique fusion of generosity, artistry, and purpose. Backstage is where the magic begins. The transformation, the anticipation, the community — it’s electric. From the intricate makeup and dazzling costumes to the palpable sense of unity, every moment is rich with emotion and story. I’m compelled to document it. The Broadway Bares experience pulls me in completely, and through my lens, I strive to honor the spirit, courage, and connection that define it. RIVKA SHIFMAN KATVAN Broadway Bares is an annual fundraising event benefiting Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS — a vibrant celebration where performers of all kinds, from stars to chorus, offer their presence, their energy, and their bodies in the name of something profoundly meaningful. I choose to be part of this powerful tradition — camera in hand — drawn by its unique fusion of generosity, artistry, and purpose. Backstage is where the magic begins. The transformation, the anticipation, the community — it’s electric. From the intricate makeup and dazzling costumes to the palpable sense of unity, every moment is rich with emotion and story. I’m compelled to document it. The Broadway Bares experience pulls me in completely, and through my lens, I strive to honor the spirit, courage, and connection that define it. LOCATION New York UNITED STATES CAMERA/S Past: Nikkromat, Canon D5, Canon DOS-5D | Present: Sony Alpha a7 WEBSITE https://rivkakatvan.com/ @RIVKA_S_KATVAN FEATURES // With Eyes That Listen and a Heart That Sees

With my images I try to show the duality of things, images, thoughts. Faced with a unique reality, a "beautiful" or unique image, with the processing, with the union of several images, that reality is transformed before our eyes, it ends up presenting itself in a totally different way, harder, deeper, perhaps more reflective. I interpret photography as an interior way of expressing concerns, fears, thoughts; a deconstruction of the same reality. TONY REMARTINEZ With my images I try to show the duality of things, images, thoughts. Faced with a unique reality, a "beautiful" or unique image, with the processing, with the union of several images, that reality is transformed before our eyes, it ends up presenting itself in a totally different way, harder, deeper, perhaps more reflective. I interpret photography as an interior way of expressing concerns, fears, thoughts; a deconstruction of the same reality. LOCATION Sitges SPAIN CAMERA/S Olympus OM-D, iPad @TONYSITGES_RG FEATURES // New Realities