Sasha Maslov
Location: New York, USMaslov (born in Ukraine). After finishing his education he traveled for some time and settled in New York City at the age of 24. Since then he has established himself as a photographer renowned for his work in environmental portraiture and visual storytelling. Maslov has a keen eye for the unnoticed and builds comprehensive visual narratives with his photographs.
His series Veterans: Faces of World War II explores the lives of people who participated in the Second World War across the globe, 70 years later.
He lives in Brooklyn where he has a portrait studio, and spends a lot of time on the road working on stories and developing his own projects.
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Ray Neutron
Location: Atlanta, Georgia, USClients: Apple, Airbnb, Pepsi, ESPN, Under Armour, Jack White, BBCICECREAM, Rocnation, Reach Records, Wolf & Shepherd
Ray “Neutron” Spears is an image-maker based in Atlanta who is devoted to showing stories rather than telling them. Through motion and still imagery he captures authentic and ephemeral scenes, oft-described as “cinematic documentary”. Past clients include Apple, Jack White, Pepsi, ESPN, BBCICECREAM, Under Armour and more.
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Ben Arpea
Location: Paris, FranceClients: Hermes, Acqua Di Parma, Casa Monti, Monoprix
Born into a family of art lovers and collectors, Ben Arpea has been immersed in a rich artistic universe since childhood, where he began creating, drawing, and painting. Ben Arpea gained recognition in 2020 with a series of paintings in which he developed a singular artistic language characterised by geometric abstraction evolving towards the semi-figurative, utilising flat areas of colour and texture. He pays homage to the figures of modern and contemporary art that he admires – Tom Wesselmann, David Hockney, Jonas Wood, André Breton – and is fully part of a new generation of creators from art, design and fashion, celebrating colour and material in a simple and immediate relationship with the times. Anchored in a dreamlike dimension oscillating between semi-figurative and abstract expressionism, Ben Arpea’s work questions the century-old motifs and canons of classical landscape and still life, reinterpreted through a contemporary artistic language. Between the real and the unreal, Ben Arpea paints frozen and perfect images, proposing a moving interpretation of pop art and surrealism. Ben Arpea always draws his inspiration from suspended moments, gleaned from his travels.
Ben Arpea invites the viewer to enter into synesthesia with his paintings, each one being invited to project his or her own memories in an intimate and familiar dialogue. Omnipresent in his creations, the dream becomes a poetic experience that translates on the canvas by singular forms and meticulous work on colours and textures, infusing his work with a melancholic and unreal softness.
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Blaise Cepis
Location: NY & LA, USAClients: Smirnoff, Jamba Juice, Adidas, Calvin Klein, Instacart, Vaseline, Velveeta, Puma, Modern Animal, Target
Cepis is an established photographer and director known for creating work that is bright, warm, playfully absurd, subtly opulent, and a touch surreal—a celebration of the exaggerated human condition and the unique traits that make people unforgettable.
After graduating from Parsons School of Design, Blaise began his career as an Art Director at leading agencies like JWT, Mother, and Sid Lee, shaping campaigns for iconic brands such as Vespa, Cadillac, Red Bull, PepsiCo, Absolut, and Smirnoff. Since stepping behind the lens, he’s seamlessly blended his commercial experience with fine art sensibilities to craft work for an impressive roster of collaborators, including Calvin Klein, Adidas, Standard Hotels, Virgin Hotels, Away Travel, Remy Martin, Velveeta, Bombas, Chevrolet, Headspace, Parade, Impossible Foods, The New Yorker, NBC, and Vice.
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Omar Victor Diop
Location: Paris, FranceClients: Louis Vuitton, MOMA, Lavazza, Lancel, Pernod Ricard, Jonak Shoes, Thames & Hudson
Regarded as one of the most important Senegalese photographers of his generation, Omar Victor Diop was born in Dakar in 1980 and was brought up there. He now divides his time between his birthplace and Paris.
From a very early age, Diop cultivated his vivid imagination as much through photography as through literature and history, leading him to hone his talent in several art forms, from collage and creative writing to fashion and textile design. His influences include the major African portrait artists Mama Casset, Seydou Keïta and Malick Sidibé, the French creator Jean-Paul Goude, as well as several Flemish and Spanish painters of the Renaissance.
An invitation to take part in the ninth edition of the Pan-African photography biennial Rencontres de Bamako (Bamako Encounters), held in 2011 in Mali, marked the true beginning of Diop’s professional career as a photographer.
Diop’s work is now part of major institutions collections — such as the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, the Brooklyn Museum in the United States, the Musée de la Photographie de Saint-Louis in Senegal — and has been shown in exhibitions at high-profile international events, such as Paris Photo and the Rencontres d’Arles in France, the New York edition of 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair and Kyotographie in Japan. His images also appear regularly in magazines around the world, among them Harper’s Bazaar, Spanish Vogue and Madame Figaro. In addition, as an art director, Diop has led campaigns for many clients, such as Lavazza, Lancel and Pernod Ricard. His first monograph, Omar Victor Diop, was published by 5 Continents Editions in 2021, followed by a travel book with Louis Vuitton Editions.
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InstituteTM (collectively Institute Pictures, Institute Studios, & Institute Artist) is redefining how stories are produced and told in the 21st Century. Founded by Producer Frank Evers and Director/Visual Artist Lauren Greenfield, we are a multiplatform production company representing auteur-driven storytellers across commercials, photography, fine art, film, and technology — and producing original work across every screen that those stories live on. Our multiplatform expertise and established global relationships in entertainment, commercial, fine art, and journalism create unmatched reach and cross-pollination of creative work. A film commission informs a photography campaign; a fine art practice shapes a commercial; an editorial relationship opens a documentary. Few companies operate fluently across all of these worlds. Institute was built this way from the ground up.
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