my project

A news junkie, pro photographer Brian Kuhlmann is often angered by headlines on preventable catastrophes. But he had never been so riled by an event, he says, that he felt the need to address it creatively—until the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010. “It got under my skin and bothered me for months” before he decided to put the energy to use in a photo shoot, he says.

When Ilona Szwarc moved to New York City from Warsaw in 2008, her goal was to be a street photographer in the tradition of her heroes Garry Winogrand, Joel Meyerowitz, and Bruce Gilden. So, like them, she began shooting the crowds along Fifth Avenue.Now 28, Szwarc might not have known she was shooting near the flagship American Girls doll store had she not noticed a trend pop up in her images—little girls, all holding dolls that look like they do, customized in hair and skin color as well as fashion. After stopping a few of them to learn the story, she became fascinated.

Artist Richard Mosse, 32, never dreamed he would photograph in the Congo. Nor did he anticipate working with infrared film. But in 2009, when he learned that color infrared film was slated to be discontinued, he saw a chance for a new way of working, and the two came together. “I was interested in [the film’s] original purpose as a military tool, but I was also drawn to its peculiar color palette,” he says. “I wanted to use it as a way of thinking through this conflict and the rules and conventions of war photography.”