Magdalena Wosinska has been a favorite at PLANET since we first introduced her in the spring of 2012. What we loved about her then is what we love about her now – an unabashed freedom and spontaneity in her life, and an inseparable link between her life and her art. She best summed it up in her very first interview with us: “I love what I shoot, it’s my real life, it’s my breath. I couldn’t ask for anything more.”

Three years later, and Magdalena has continued to live free and document, rising in the photography and art world on the same breeze she entered with. Her new book, The Experience Vol. 1, presents the latest installment of her journey with a lens. One series that has taken shape over the last few years has been self-portraits she’s been taking of herself in various locations from her travels, with her back to the camera and almost always nude. What began as a simple and clever way to get around Instragram censorship, took on a life of it’s own and has developed into a unique, and ongoing, self-portrait series. We’re pleased to present a slideshow of this series below, as well as a brief interview about it with Magdalena.

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Robert Presutti is one of this year’s Global Travel photo contest winners. He has been working and living in New York City for the past 18 years. A large part of his work is dedicated to travel. Assignments have taking him to countries like Italy, France, Germany, Poland, Portugal, Georgia, Japan, Mexico, Colombia etc… In the past two years he has been working on two major projects, one in Colombia, in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta with the Kogi and Arhuaco indians for a future exhibit at the Smithsonian and the other project in Georgia with the nuns of the Phoka monastery. Robert also contributes to the New York Times regularly.

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Andrew Geiger placed second in the portrait category of this year’s Global Travel Photo Contest with an image from his ongoing work documenting the many vanishing cultures of the world. Geiger recently returned from the Rajasthan region of India, where he witnessed the inevitable disappearance of its traditional dress and ancient customs. “I have realized from my travels that documenting these places and people will be the only way for my children to experience the native customs the younger generation from these places are shunning,” he tells PLANET. Although he travels extensively, Geiger still has yet to find a place as beautiful and special as his home state of Montana, where he lives with his family.

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Lung Liu won fourth place in the portrait category of our 4th Annual Global Travel Photo Contest. Liu is a photographer working out of Vancouver, Canada who’s produced in-depth studies of Thailand, Vietnam, and Haiti after the earthquake. He was born in Vietnam between two conflicts, and spent time in a refugee camp as a child before being sponsored by a church to live in Canada. A road trip down the majestic US west coast inspired him to travel internationally for photography.

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Juliette Charvet placed third in the general category of our 4th annual Global Travel Photo Contest. Juliette is a French photographer based in New York City, specializing in street and travel photography. After graduating from the Paris School of Journalism, she spent over a year in Vietnam and Lebanon, perfecting her photographic skills at the news agency AFP. She now travels extensively with her camera, always trying to capture the world in its most comprehensive authenticity. “To me, travel photography is about seeing our surroundings with wonderment,” she says.

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Ian Spanier placed third in the portrait category of our 3rd Annual Global Travel Photo Contest. Ian Spanier, a NY based photograper, began taking photographs at six years old when his parents gave him his first point and shoot camera. Ian’s first full book of published work, Playboy, a Guide to Cigars arrived in cigar shops November 2009 and the public version hit retail stores Spring 2010. The book is a collection of his photographs made in six countries spanning two and a half years. His newest book project, Local Heroes: America’s Volunteer Fire Fighters, a collection of portraits made across the US is due out Fall 2012. Ian credits much of his inspiration to the original masters of photography as they shot what they saw. For him, there is no “one” subject that he photographs; he also chooses to shoot what he sees.

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William J Palank is an environmental portrait photographer based out of San Francisco. His love for international travel and little-known places started after his birth on a US Air Force Base in France, when he was given a free ride in the cargo hold of a military transport airplane at the age of two weeks. Palank is also a fine art printer and a teacher for Leica Akademie North America.

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Giordano Cipriani won Grand Prize in the General Category of our 4th Annual Global Travel Photo Contest. Cipriani is an Italian photographer who began his career as an underwater documentary photographer. His work is influenced by the human body, the element of water, and his travels, which have earned him shows everywhere from Japan to Washington, D.C. Of his winning shot, Cipriani says, “I loved my journey to Ethiopia discovering the Suri tribe. Shots of that beautiful culture came out from my heart before from my lens.”

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