In 2020, I had the pleasure of curating Analog Forever Magazine’s “Top 20 Mamiya 7 Film Photographers”. Since then, the camera’s widespread appeal has only been growing, as has the community of talented photographers using it. Why does every serious film photographer around the world know this legendary camera? It’s easy.

The Mamiya 7 is a unique medium format camera that combines super sharp leaf shutter lenses (namely the 80mm f/4) and simple yet robust electronic controls that sync its shutter across all shutter speed ranges up to 1/500th. Best of all, it’s all packaged in a beautifully stream-lined lightweight range finder package that is simply perfect for travel and documentary photography. In addition, it has an interchangeable lens system and comes with the following lenses: 43mm, 50mm, 65mm, 80mm, 150mm, and 210mm. Though, most photographers use 65mm and 80mm because they are both incredibly sharp and wide enough for both environmental portraiture and landscapes. Knowing this, it makes perfect sense that the Mamiya 7/II has achieved its legendary status relatively quickly considering it was only produced between 1995 and 2014.

I have owned my Mamiya 7ii for over 10 years and couldn’t imagine ever parting with it, so of course, I was quite devastated recently while traveling to my native Poland when I realized my camera was broken. While I haven’t been able to take any photos myself recently, I have been busy receiving many wonderful submissions for this year’s list of my top 20 images shot on a Mamiya 7/II! This year, I have selected 20 different photographers. They represent a range of talent from those just starting out, to some well-recognized artists, all of whom are primarily using Mamiya 7/II as their main camera. After seeing these artists’ work you’ll understand why my curated Instagram page is called Mamiya 7 Ruined Everything! Make sure to follow us at @Mamiya7ruinedeverything and if you are currently shooting this camera, tag your photos with #mamiya7ruinedeverything to get featured!

-Monika Murren, Co-curator of @Mamiya7ruinedeverything

20 MAMIYA 7 PHOTOGRAPHERS YOU NEED TO KNOW! - 2021 Edition

“Crete. Greece, Seitan Limani Beach“ by Marco Di Stefano | Mamiya 7ii + Kodak Portra 160

Artist: Marco Di Stefano | Location: Berlin, Germany
Links: Website | Instagram

Marco Di Stefano is a Berlin-based Photographer, originally from Adelaide, Australia. His background and education in graphic design and work as a fashion Art Director have an undeniable influence over his understanding of color theory, negative space, and light. With an emphasis on simplified compositions and attention to detail, his work has an intentionality to it that gives the impression that certain scenes have been staged. Marco creates imagery across the genres of landscape, portraiture, street, fashion, and the urban environment that is striking with vibrant colors and often dynamic landscapes. His images have an almost surreal sense of light and lines, making them hypnotizing to the eye.

“Rusty & Bones” by Vanessa Green | Mamiya 7ii + Kodak Portra 400

Artist: Vanessa Green | Location: Auckland, New Zealand
Link: Instagram

Based in Auckland, New Zealand, Vanessa Green focuses primarily on photographing people and place, with an emphasis on authenticity. She explores themes that evoke a sense of nostalgia and familiarity. She especially enjoys shooting environmental portraits of people in their homes and simple scenes within small towns around New Zealand.

Though Vanessa uses various film cameras, she relies heavily on her Mamiya 7 for her portraiture and landscape photography. I am particularly drawn to the mood and the setting in the photo selected, which provides an almost narrative level of detail about the subjects.

“Viaduct, Grisons“ by Dorian Baumann | Mamiya 7 + Kodak Portra 400

Artist: Dorian Baumann | Location: Lake Constance, Switzerland
Links: Website | Instagram

Dorian Baumann is a landscape photographer living at Lake Constance, Switzerland. His work consists of documenting his home country and its incredible landscapes. Dorian plans out his landscape work by waiting for the right conditions to bring our focus to something specific within the environment. His photographs are a reminder that successful landscape photography is not just about luck but requires careful planning and execution. He uses the Mamiya 7 to its full strength to render subtle color variations that turn his landscapes into immersive landscapes.

“Rose of the Snow” by Colleen Bates | Mamiya 7ii + Kodak Portra 400

Artist: Colleen Bates | Location: Hudson Valley, NY
Links: Website | Instagram

Colleen Bates is a mama, wife, photographer, and hop farmer based in the Hudson Valley of New York. She earned a B.F.A in Photography from the School of Visual Arts in 2001 and her work has appeared in a wide variety of publications including Guitar World Magazine, Revolver, Hamptons Magazine, and The National Gallery of Ireland.

Colleen’s work centers around representing women and she does so with passion and vulnerability. What I appreciate most about her photography, is that she is fearless in the way she represents women, resulting in both dynamic and compelling portraits.

“Tom Callinan” from the Series “A Place To Come From” by Richard Beaven | Mamiya 7 + Kodak Portra 400

Artist: Richard Beaven | Location: Hudson Valley, NY
Links: Website | Instagram

Richard Beaven is a British photographer based in the Hudson Valley of New York, where he works on commissioned stories and self-initiated portrait series. His long-term approach, exploring the Hudson Valley, is to create a sense of place by documenting communities and cultures. His portraits could easily all be accompanied by a short story. He has a rare gift of making us look deeper at each subject in his photographs. There is a wonderful painterly quality to his portraits, and I recommend you check out his other work in this beautiful series, “A Place To Come From.”

Richard’s photographs have featured in The Guardian, The New York Times, T Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Terra Mater Magazine, NPR, Bloomberg Businessweek, De Zeit, BBC News, The Kodak Podcast and have been exhibited at The International Center of Photography (NY), The National Portrait Gallery (London) and Head On Photo Festival (Sydney). He was also recognized as a finalist in the Taylor Wessing/National Portrait Gallery Prize (London), National Press Photographers Association - Best of Photojournalism Awards. In 2020, he received a Furthermore grant for his book, All Of Us: Portraits of an American Bicentennial published by Daylight Books.

“Bonneville Salt Flats”” by Rob Hann | Mamiya 7 + Kodak Portra 160

Artist: Rob Hann | Location: Salisbury, England
Links: Website | Instagram

Born in England, but living in New York City, Rob Hann is a self-taught photographer who has completed over 900 commissions for many leading magazines, newspapers, and record companies. Although since 2010, he has turned exclusively to road trip photography throughout the United States to capture the Americana we are all familiar with from tv and movies. Now instead of documenting the brutal creeping sprawl of corporate America, he is seeking the magic that still exists in the spaces in between that inspire viewers to take a road trip of their own.

His photographs have been included in several group shows, and he had his first solo show at Christian Larsen Gallery in Stockholm, Sweden in November 2013 and his first solo museum show at Nassjo Konsthall in Nassjo, Sweden in June 2018. His first book, Diesel Fried Chicken was published by The Artist Edition in 2018. He has 7 photographs in the permanent collection of The National Portrait Gallery in London.

“Mary” by Jack Smethers | Mamiya 7 + Kodak Portra 800

Artist: Jack Smethers | Location: London, UK
Links: Website | Instagram

Jack Smethers is an artist and photographer based between Brighton and London in the UK. His work explores the impact of extraordinary people among communities and subcultures that would otherwise go unnoticed.

Most recently, he was one of the thirty-seven artists selected as part of the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize 2020 by the National Portrait Gallery. Along with personal work, Jack’s clients include the Fawcett Society and the British and Irish Modern Music Institute. Jack has also had work tied to 2000 Trees, ArcTanGent, Truck and Y-Not Festivals respectfully.

Jack's ongoing long-term project entitled 'White Hart Lane' looks to tell the story of the redevelopment and local community of Tottenham in North London. Now five years into the project, Jack has focused on the inevitable gentrification of the area while looking at the people that continue to make Tottenham one of the most culturally diverse and interesting neighborhoods in the UK.

Jack’s style of photography gives a deep sense of connection with the place and the people who inhabit that place. His images construct a mood and architecture of a changing community of a large city.

“FIREWORKS” by Patrick Sansone | Mamiya 7 + Kodak Ektachrome 100

Artist: Patrick Sansone | Location: Mississippi, USA
Links: Website | Instagram

In his decades-spanning practice, Patrick Sansone creates striking photographs that reference observations of stillness, lure, and intermission. Sansone’s quiet, dreamy works could double as an album of a road trip we might never have taken. Glass soda bottles, empty auditorium seats, abandoned industrial sites, and roadside vernacular are all caught in the amber of film, the artifacts of a near-mythic America. Sansone captures these moments in glimpses divorced from context - the landscapes and locales are decidedly post-human, almost otherworldly.

Born and raised in Meridian, Mississippi, the self-taught Sansone's photographs embody a Southern aesthetic, not unlike Eggleston and Christenberry. Signs of antiquity appear as recurring themes in his photographs as do moments of tranquility and grandeur. Through his camera, Sansone offers us a record of a time and place that is thrillingly intimate but forever just out of reach. Best known as a musician in the bands Wilco and The Autumn Defense, much of Sansone's photography has been made on the road...whether finding quiet moments in the momentum of touring, or on personal and solitary road trips.

Patrick’s work makes us reflect on the quiet details of small towns in the south. His work is both minimalist and full of untold stories. This makes me wonder; Is the Mamiya 7/ii the best road trip camera ever created? Or simply the most rock and roll?

“Olympic National Park” by Norisuke Yoshioka | Mamiya 7ii + Ilford Delta 100

Artist: Norisuke Yoshioka | Location: Brooklyn, NY
Link: Instagram

Norisuke Yoshioka is an art director based in Brooklyn, New York. Beyond his work as an art director, he spends as much time as possible traveling in an attempt to capture the power of the natural world in black and white photographs with the aim to inspire people to reconsider their relationship with nature. Norisuke’s work explores the natural world in monochrome, with a distinct focus on forests and trees. The image selected was taken at the Olympic National Park, a place that is fascinating to the artist by how for centuries, it has remained almost unchanged in its beauty. He develops and prints his own silver gelatin prints

“Squamish Sunrise” by Alon Mizrahi | Mamiya 7 + Kodak Portra 800

Artist: Alon Mizrahi | Location: Vancouver, Canada
Link: Instagram

Alon Mizrahi is a photographic hobbyist and Mamiya 7 enthusiast. He started shooting film about three years ago but only recently became interested in shooting landscapes, with a particular interest in bodies of water. Since Covid began, he has been focusing on local landscapes due to the travel restrictions in place around the world.

I appreciate how Alon elicits a magical quality from his local landscapes. His photographs invite us to explore his region of the world while at the same time granting viewers a sense of serenity and complete calm. This is precisely the kind of image that the Mamiya 7 excels at: clean lines, detail, and above all capturing the light in a unique way that can easily be attributed to the Mamiya lenses.

“Untitled” by Gulia Thinnes | Mamiya 7 + Ilford Delta 400

Artist: Giulia Thinnes | Location: Luxembourg
Link: Instagram

After taking an autodidactic approach, Giulia Thinnes is now studying photography at the Ostkreuz School of Photography in Berlin, Germany. Her work is varied but is focused on documenting humanity, her family, and her gender identity through the narrative of everyday life. Giulia’s portraits are especially compelling to me, they exude an air of vulnerability and intimacy. The photograph selected, of Eva near the river Creuse in France in 2020, shows a woman completely at ease with herself and her surroundings. Her ability to elicit this sensibility time after time is astounding.

“Red Bluff, Mississippi” by Krishna Pandit | Mamiya 7ii + Kodak Portra 800

Artist: Krishna Pandit | Location: Jackson, Mississippi
Link: Instagram

Krishna Pandit is a film photographer based in Jackson, Mississippi. Raised in the UK and Germany; Krishna moved to the US to pursue a career in academic medicine. However, the therapeutic process of deep observation and the ability to reframe the world via photography is key to how Krishna manages the stressors of working in emergency and critical care.

Krishna's work gravitates towards landscape photography and abstract minimalistic compositions that show his natural talent for showing incredible detail without losing sight of the landscapes he finds herself in. The photo above was selected due to the history of the Red Bluffs. This geological formation was created by millions of years of erosion from the west bank of the Pearl River which Krishna has displayed with incredible richness of colors and tones.

“Goodbye Summer” by Brandon Sheer | Mamiya 7 + Kodak Portra 800

Artist: Brandon Sheer | Location: London, UK
Link: Instagram

Brandon Sheer is New York City-born, London-based musician who stumbled his way into film photography after buying a $20 point and shoot camera from a flea market in Los Angeles in 2019. His love and affinity for shooting film blossomed over the pandemic where he spent most of his days roaming the suburban sprawl of Los Angeles, where he was living at the time. This allowed the artist to begin honing his skills by shooting whatever caught in his eye. For the last two years, Brandon has been searching for and capturing the dreamy nostalgia of the art deco era of sunny southern California. His use of rich and bold colors evokes the atmosphere of the works created by the historic William Eggleston.

“Andermatt” by Johannes Saal | Mamiya 7ii + Kodak Portra 400

Artist: Johannes Saal | Location: Switzerland
Link: Instagram

Johannes Saal grew up in Berlin, Germany but has lived in Israel, Turkey, the USA, and most recently in Switzerland, where he works as a social scientist. He has been shooting film since he was a child and has owned his Mamiya 7 for more than 10 years! It has been the perfect companion for his many journeys through the Middle East, Europe, North America, and Asia.

Johannes’ work is centered around urban spaces and man-altered landscapes, where he blurs the line between traditional landscape work with societies’ interaction with our environments. In some instances, like the photograph I selected, a bunker interrupts a beautiful alpine landscape. Though a surprising sight, the landscape looks perfectly integrated with this structure, a reminder of a distant history.

“Shopping Cart in Snow” by Christopher Stein | Mamiya 7ii + Kodak Portra 400

Artist: Christopher Stein | Location: NY, USA
Links: Website | Instagram

Frank Lloyd Wright said, “We create our buildings and then they create us.” I believe as an artist and a long-time student of design, I am most interested in the invisible hand that guides humans through spaces - Chris Stein

Chris Stein is a photographer and educator based in central New York. Being an introvert and growing up as an only child has informed his work of capturing quiet and liminal spaces of the man-made world. As he has watched the consumerist paradigm shift to digital he has been inspired to create his current project called Consumerist Geometry. This series is a direct response to the dying shopping malls and shopping culture that is shifting and rapidly moving to allow our whole lives to be lived through our smartphones. His aim is to document the unnoticed areas of physical consumer culture through scenes of abandoned spaces, objects, streetscapes, and landscapes. His keen eye for design and attention to detail is apparent when we view his photos.

“Alice in her kitchen - St. Germain - France, 2021” by Marjolein Martinot | Mamiya 7 + Ilford HP5

Artist: Marjolein Martinot | Location: France
Links: Website | Instagram

Marjolein Martinot is a Dutch self-taught photographer, based in France. She was drawn to photography from an early age and has continued using and exploring the medium throughout her life while raising a family of six children. Her photography touches on the poetic while striving to remain authentic and true at the same time. She aims to evoke sentiments by using and mixing different photographic approaches and analog cameras. The prime focus of Marjolein’s work is on everyday life: family, friends, and the places and things that touch her.

Marjolein has participated in various photography classes and workshops and works on personal projects and commissions. Her portraits emanate a sense of immediate intimacy and warmth at the same time, sometimes capturing just a single moment that could create a story in its self. There is lyricism in the way she presents her subjects.

“Piotrek / Warszawa, Poland” by Patryk Sawicki | Mamiya 7 + Kodak Portra 400

Artist: Patryk Sawicki | Location: Warsaw, Poland
Link: Instagram

Patryk Sawicki bought his first film camera 3 years ago and analog photography has quickly become his passion. He draws inspiration from books, trips, and his favorite cinematographers/photographers. His biggest dream is to turn his passion into a career. Patryk is one of the few Mamiya 7 photographers who uses a flash for his portraits, and I found that intriguing. He uses this technique to create bold, fashion-inspired images.

“Green Road” by Sean Schmidt | Mamiya 7ii + Kodak Portra 400

Artist: Sean Schmidt | Location: Portland, OR
Links: Website | Instagram

Sean Schmidt is an artist living in Portland, Oregon. His passions include film photography, ultra-distance trail running, and the music of the Grateful Dead. Sean describes his photography as “a way of keeping myself out of trouble,” and his current and ongoing project "Chautauqua" as an ode to "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance."

The majority of Sean’s work centers around Americana in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. His work explores a mood of a place, depicting both people, architecture, and landscapes. I was immediately drawn to his landscape photo of the green road. The image of the forest, dominated by deep and lush textures creates a feeling of mystery and an invitation to explore it further.

“Londerzeel at sunset” by Jakob De Donder | Mamiya 7ii + Kodak Portra 400 — “Londerzeel at Sunset” by Jakob De Donder | Mamiya 7ii + Kodak Portra 400

Artist: Jakob De Donder | Location: Londerzeel, Belgium
Link: Instagram

Jakob De Donder is a student in film studies and visual cultures, he is also a hobby-photographer who made the switch to analog about a year ago. He originally stumbled into photography through cinematography and has since been fascinated by good light coupled with the tonality found in film images. Though Jakob is one of the newer Mamiya 7 converts, he has quickly come to appreciate the camera’s ability to capture light in his streetscapes and landscape photos.

“Port of Ostend in Belgium” by Beau Maes | Mamiya 7 + Fuji Pro 400H

Artist: Beau Maes | Location: Ghent, Belgium
Link: Instagram

Beau Maes has just recently discovered Mamiya 7 and it has quickly become his favorite camera. He focuses on documenting his life and travels, and the Mamiya is his favorite tool right now. He largely captures landscapes, where he can display serenity and beauty. I chose his image for its simplicity and its clean lines. It has a three-dimensional quality.

ABOUT THE CURATOR

Monika Murren is a Polish born photographer based in the Hudson Valley, NY. She has spent a large part of her adult life in the New York and Seattle area and has relocated to the Hudson Valley in recent years.

Her photographs express her passion for the intimate landscapes of Eastern Europe and the untouched beauty of America. As a dedicated environmentalist, Monika’s work seeks to document the vanishing beauty of her surroundings. In doing so, she hopes to both inspire and bring attention to the beauty and fragility of these places.

She uses medium format film photography (Mamiya 7ii) and focuses the mood of landscapes in black and white and color. Her pieces range from topographical landscapes to works that bring the viewer into intimate contact with nature. Her work has been shown in galleries around the Hudson Valley.

Connect with Monika on her Website and on Instagram!