UNION RESIDENTS

during his last year in Architecture & Construction bachelor in Baku started to practice photography as a more fast and realistic tool to share his visual point of view. From that time photography became an adventure taken to explore the reality of life. He works mostly in conceptual photography to express conclusions about reality and in street scenes to observe daily activity of human race.
He is a participant of Global Conversation 2020 on United Nation's 75th anniversary and Baku Street Photo Festival, as well as a finalist of London Street Photo Festival 2020. Mathers's photographs are in galleries and private collections in Italy, Russia, Azerbaijan, UK, Georgia and USA.
Emin's stories are publishing on the media platforms and magazines. Practicing photography curation in frames of F3.7 photography union - a platform created in 2020 with Sharaf Naghiyeva. Union represents, supports and exhibits photographers on the local scene and aims for international practice.

"Photography is a proof that the moment I lived was real, a technique to share my visual experience and an extra visible dimension to that presence. By creating photographs I'm making invisible time the visible 4th dimension."

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www.eminmathers.me
Foundation page

is a portrait photographer based in Baku, Azerbaijan. The main theme of her photography is the Individual, self-expressed through portrait photography. With Emin Mathers, she has founded f3.7—a photographers' union. She is using photography as a mirror to reflect on her inner experiences. She has been exhibited on International Festival of Contemporary Art "Maiden Tower. To Be a Woman" - 2020, photography exhibitions "A letter" 2021, "Defocused" 2021, "Monochrome: Yellow to Green" 2021. Her photographs are in private collections in Baku, London, Berlin, Milan, etc. For Sharaf photography is the best form of communication and discovery.

For Sharaf, portraiture is a dialogue with life. A detail, a gesture, a glimpse is enough to bring about the rest of the vision. There seems to be hardly any breath of life in carefully premeditated and executed shots. Which is why Sharaf chooses to trust providence and her gut feeling in order to capture the right depth and angle in the viewfinder. After all, photography is a way of story-telling; tales of the important, of the forgotten, and of the dreamt.

for more:
www.sharafnaghiyeva.me

was born in Sumgayit in 1991. Grew up in Baku. Studied architecture in Azerbaijan and Spain.
She lives in Baku and works mainly as an architect. Leyla is the co-founder of Atelier "Pillə".
Her current work is mainly related to the research of different historic landscapes of her home country, restoration and adaptation of historic cities/villages. Documenting these landscapes became an alternative tool in her understanding of home land, its traditions, nature and people.
As for her, photography and filming seems to be a very interesting and understandable way to document and express various observations.

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Leyla Musayeva

born in Baku in 1991. Studied Library Information and Science, Light and Composition University - Diploma in the Fundamentals of Photography.
She explores the subject of time in the perspective of timelessness, capturing the interrupted existence of the moment. She has many publications in major photography magazines. Fidan generally takes black and white photographs and makes cyanotypes. Her love to photography comes from belief that photography can give us energy, feelings, and inspiration in life.
Fidan participated in group exhibitions by F3.7 such as "A letter" 2021, "Monochrome: Yellow to Green" 2021, Bursa Photography Festival, her works have been published in a book "The 2021 black and white photography awards".

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Fidan Nazimqizi

I am Baku (Azerbaijan) based photographer. My greatest interest is portraits of children. These photographs serve as a reminder to look into ourselves and find our inner child. I am fascinated by their frankness. I often use my own children in my photo shoots.

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FB Leyli Alakbarova

"I was born in Baku in 1995. I graduated from AUAC in 2016, after which I started working in the information technologies field. My first camera was an ordinary Samsung digital "soap box", presented for my 18th birthday. From that time on, photography began to interest me, however, I did not take this hobby seriously for quite a long time, until in 2019 I found an ad on one of our local bulletin board websites for the sale of the Soviet FED-5 film camera. I got the camera in very good condition for a penny. For me then it was a discovery that they still shoot on film. Immediately there was a desire to experiment. Over time, these experiments grew into a full-fledged passion for photography, and now, on my account, I already have a Fujica SLR, several lenses for it and many photographs taken. In 2021, thanks to the association of photographers "F3.7", for the first time I had the opportunity to participate in the photo exhibition "Defocused", which gave me an incentive to develop further."

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Foundation page

Baku-based artist Malak Bayramli was born in 1996. She graduated from the Film Studies and Criticism faculty of Azerbaijan State University of Culture and Arts in 2018. At the present she is pursuing photography besides her speciality. She is aware of the visual effect of photography and can artistically improvise on the things she sees with her eyes. As an artist and a photographer she is always focus on social and local topics and willing to express them with the way of criticism. Criticism is a visual approach and way of expression language for her. She has observed the fact that her country is on the crossroads of traditionalism and modernism, and presented this new "period" in her works. She finished her work on the joint project "Red Ribbon" organized by the Tbilisi Photography and Multimedia Museum under the mentorship of Justyna Mielnikiewicz in 2019. The same year Malak worked on the other photo the collaboration of UNICEF and Nargis Magazine mainly focus on Woman, children and well-being. At the result of the project all of the works of Malak exhibited at Azerbaijan Modern Art Museum and most of her works is sold during the exhibition.

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Mələk Bayramlı

Jeyhun Huseynzade. In 2020, during quarantine, someone who stumbled upon the camera thought for sure - Why not. Then he began to get acquainted with people who shoot on film and from this he get carried away even more. "By making a frame on film you feel the uniqueness of each frame and while there is an opportunity in our time to experience analog, I prefer it to digital." says Jeyhun. He loves nature photography the most. It fascinates him with the level of gaze, it shows the volume of space and that real moment that is absorbed on the surface of the film. From 2021, after participating on "Monochrome - yellow to green" he became a member of photography union F37. "I take a picture feeling emotionality and close to the subject, I capture only this frame."

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Jhun Husseinzadeh

"You hunt for a film roll, insert it carefully into the camera of your choice, look for the right light, capture the frame, and... the magic is still going on! It will continue until you have taken all the remaining shots, and in this wildest expectation, the highest sacrament is kept."

Medina is a film photographer based in Baku, Azerbaijan, and Łódź, Poland. She started her photography history with a Japanese film camera Minolta as a gift of her dreams in 2019. The first shots, the trial of various film rolls, the play with light, and this process started to be never-ending from a particular moment. Medina began trying herself in photoshoots in 2020, experimenting with different styles, camera rolls, and locations. Going through all this, she came to the main rule of the whole history of film photography, - to appreciate the very idea of a film photo, to avoid defiling it with robust post-processing and especially color correction. The film creates its own story based on what you try to show through your lenses. Each new film's character and story are written by all sides involved.

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Medina Rzayeva

David Finestein is an American artist based in Tbilisi. Born in Birmingham, Alabama to Ukrainian parents, he attended the Alabama School of Fine Arts followed by New York University. His photography highlights contrasts through shape and color (or lack thereof). After several years of organizing exhibits for emerging artists in New York, David moved to Tbilisi in 2022 to open Dissolution, a space for contemporary artists, both Georgian and international. His works exhibited numerous countries like USA, Korea, Armenia, Rome etc.


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David Finestein

Vlad Valerian Iakubovskii is an artist and a teacher working with the mediums of digital and analogue photography, writing, and video. Originally from Pomorye, The White Sea, he is now living and travelling in Georgia, fleeing the war Russian state is waging against Ukraine. By sharing personal experiences of modern-day reality in his emigration with his photographs of suburban and industrial areas and far-off regions and notes from his travels later remade into stories, the artist speaks about the bigger socio-economic picture of the dire state of things. "I was working on a digital photo series about my hometown, the land that rests on the snowy shores of the White Sea. It was never finished. The decisions of those with the power to destroy have led me to the magnetic shores of the Black Sea. So, ever since then, my art has been this or that way about my experience of emigration. I've faced utter and complete politicization. Lost countless friends and made even more new ones. Hitchhiked through the entire western Georgia and northern Turkey. I've been lost, angry, given up, and risen back up again to continue my struggle. My notebook and my camera have always been by my side."
Vlad's recent artistic endeavours include a screening of his short "Wisps" in one of the emigrant's spaces in Tbilisi; graduation from an online department of the Rodchenko School of Art and Photography; an anti-dictatorship exhibition of documentary and art photographs of his travels around Turkey during the recent presidential election in Roots Gallery in Pisa, Italy; and an upcoming exhibition of his photographs and texts made while travelling in the western Georgia, it is now being hosted by déréal digital. He is now working on an analogue photo and writing series about Anaklia, Georgia.

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Vlad Valerian Iakubovskii