other works on Andrei Tudoran’s website; found via Mihai

“For a few Peruvian “soles” the girls of Canadian Café Bar will talk to you, flirt with you, make you feel special. This is how it works: You buy them a drink and they’ll sit with you. Buy them a few and they’ll spend the whole night with you. But they won’t sleep with you, although some men have tried, and probably gotten away with it.

I met one of the girls after stumbling upon a “sexy calendar” photo shoot she was posing for at a beach in Lima. I asked her if I could shoot her sometime. She said, sure. I naively thought she would be eager to do it. Instead it took a bit of negotiating. I had to pay her. She took it seriously though, and offered to do whatever I wanted while we were together.

Karla

Angelina

Julia

She worked at the bar for the same reason she posed for me, to pay for her school. Most of these girls didn’t do it for pleasure, but out of necessity: to survive in the big city after moving here from the Amazon, for instance; or to feed a child out of wedlock. These women came from humble origins, unlike the girls I grew up with before I moved away.

I left Lima, Peru when I was barely a teenager. My latent curiosity for the opposite sex to be satisfied somewhere new. These portraits are an attempt to revisit this curiosity. I too wanted to see how it felt to be in the company of these women, by making a connection through the act of photography. I discovered this brought me closer to a place I call my home.”

Milagros

Jael

Karla

more images on Canadian Café Bar and other interesting projects on João Canziani’s website; found via LPV Magazine

“Time for Print or Test for Print, often abbreviated TFP, is a term used in many online photography communities describing an arrangement betweeen a model and a photographer whereby both parties invest only their time and expertise in order to advance their portfolios and improve their skills. No money is exchanged.

This body of work is a catalog of portraits from Model Mayhem shot over the last four years. Time for Print attempts to catalog the desire for fame, beauty, and exhibitionism in today’s Internet Age. The photographs serve as a foggy mirror to mainstream fashion, beauty, and portrait photography. The models were cast online and agreed to be photographed for no payment in their homes, at a hotel, or the photographer’s studio. ”

Maurice

Mika

Mark

Geena

Rob

Sabine

more images and other interesting projects on Emiliano Granado’s website

“With these portraits, I am interested in uncovering a facade of identity. It is fascinating to consider the intricate variety of traits that we as individuals choose, or unconsciously adopt, in creating the persona that appears to be our ‘identity.’

Living in Los Angeles, this constructed presentation of our selves seems especially pronounced. Often, it appears that the layers we accumulate and adopt in creating a public identity interfere with what we’re actually feeling and who we actually are.

Several years ago, when I met one of the models that I ended up photographing (and who inadvertently inspired this project), I began wondering why an attractive, healthy model in this famously glamorous and trendy city would choose to rid herself of the individual trademark of hair that seems to play such a central role in how we are defined. She explained that she wanted to overcome the stereotype of how most of us express -what she believed to be- a very conventional and predictable definition of beauty, and opt instead for something more striking where the expression of her face and the look in her eyes would be clearly seen. I found her decision compelling, vulnerable and yet quite bold – she was exposed, and in that exposure there was something very distinct and real beneath her gaze. I was struck by the extreme choice she had made in presenting herself to the world. There was nothing for her to hide behind with her shaved head; even clothed, she looked naked.

When shooting these women, I tried to capture something universal -yet elusive- that ordinarily escapes a lot of popular portraiture. I avoided any artifice and pose, and observed that by discarding traditional expectations of femininity, my subjects conveyed a powerful, distilled authenticity. A certain reductive truth emerged from the shadows. My camera was part x-ray, part stethoscope, and I glimpsed a sublime moment in the lives of these individual souls.”

more images on fotovisura.com