When the talk is about photographing celebrities, most inevitably think about the person in front of the camera. Actually, though, the one behind it is of much greater importance. Because it's the photographer who sets the stage, chooses the lighting, and selects the lens. The photographer's work turns the person in the picture into an icon, or the photos into the witnesses of a personality. Today, hardly anyone makes this kind of art as imaginatively as the Leica-wielding photographer Manfre...

The photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin have been inseparable from the fashion and art scene since the 1990s. Very early on they made use of digital processing and distortion. Sometimes a delicate retouch was enough, and sometimes they took it to the apex of gross contortion. Through their strongly expressive manipulations, the couple developed a pictorial vocabulary of their own, and they continued to develop it in their themes. Their work is extravagant and gaudy. At the s...

The Yangtze River photographed with a large format camera: “A work of a genius and an eye-opening experience.”– Zelda Chaetle