In Illumination: An Exhibition of Fine Art Photography, the provoking and contemplative works of artists from across the globe compel us to a heightened awareness and deepened interaction with the remarkable stories they present. Scenes of discovery, confrontation, and insightful observation come together from the hands of these skilled artists to traverse zones of great personal vision which conjure a breadth of intricate world travels and perspectives. The diversity of compelling subjects across this selection of portraits, montages, and land- and cityscapes prove that the photographer's point of view is an extremely fertile way of exploring (and preserving) the complexity of the world we inhabit.

Photographer Muhammad Abdus-Sabur frequently focuses on locations of transition and liminality, where boundaries are connected and traversed: objects such as windows, doors, and bridges play a large role in his works.

Maguel Ahliksander, a newcomer to the art world, creates works that contain a wild energy, the result of years of experience building up without any outlet. These montages combine photographs from the artist's world travels with intense photo manipulation and a polychromatic palette in an almost techno-primitive body of work.

Gifted with a strong affinity for cityscapes and color, Samanta Aretino’s photographs focus on women, children, and the working class. She believes in the importance of sharing different points of view, finding something different in commonalities, and showing that there is no one right way of living life.

An avid outdoorsman and flight paramedic, Colorado artist Bo Cheatham has spent much time in Nature and hopes his landscapes will provide his viewers with "a contemplative moment and visual relief from a chaotic world." He also practices minimal post-production work and edits in-camera as much as possible, in order to clearly and honestly convey what was before his eyes when he took the shot.

Mark James Ford shoots the familiar and the far-flung alike, moving from the trees in the backyard to the distant corners of frozen winter landscapes. Shot in extreme close-up with fuzzy, oversaturated backgrounds, they loom into the frame like shadowy giants.

Artist and news anchor Hermoine Macura’s sincere photographs frankly present the Middle East (in her most recent collection, specifically the Syrian refugees) as the complex diversity of people and places that it is. The shared human experience persists in each image, in the direct expressions of the subjects and in the way that each individual interacts with the viewer and photographer.

“As a figurative travel photographer,” Max Ratchkauskas says, “it is important for me that my work reflects the essence of what I am capturing.” Forgoing digital manipulation for the most part, he relies on a variety of lenses, as well as a highly developed sensitivity to light, composition, and angle, to turn the animals, people, and landscapes that he photographs into components of a personal vision.

Irena Anna Sowinska’s works are not so much landscapes as they are smaller, more individualistic moments that show a space in time notable for its peculiar juxtaposition or surreal tinge. After shooting, she smoothes and saturates the colors, pushing them just outside the extremes of nature.

A psychologist by trade, Bruno Vangi has traveled all over the world volunteering her services to help disabled and sick children, a vocation which directly complements her “photoreportage” projects. For Vangi, photography is not only a powerful means of communication, but “an uninterrupted research of universal beauty.”