Peter is well known for his political photomontage, a recent famous image featured a gleeful and demonic Tony Blair photographing himself in front of burning oil fields. He was also responsible for the iconic anti nuclear war image from the 1980's of a missile in an updated version of Constable's haywain painting. His new book "@earth" is a photo-essay in seven chapters, combining new works, made together with Tarek Salhany, with iconic images from throughout Kennard's 40-year career. It is published by Tate Publishing.

Peter has chosen Matthew Booth as July's Critic's Choice.

HE WRITES: "Matt Booth's work is mysterious without being mystical, analytical without being doctrinaire and beautiful in spite of itself. In all his work there is a deep questioning about what is the nature of a photographic image, it's an old question, but Matt engages with it through producing outstanding images rather dry theoretical intellectual self-reflexivity.

"They feel haunted by the absence of human presence but are permeated by that presence. They are grey and flat yet feel like they could be home for any character from a late prose piece by Samuel Beckett..."

His three interiors (Untitled1, 2, 3) are made using models of a stripped down space where all extraneous detail has been removed. They feel haunted by the absence of human presence but are permeated by that presence. They are grey and flat yet feel like they could be home for any character from a late prose piece by Samuel Beckett, a wandering character who can't go on but must go on. All Matt's work had this interest in both public and private space, how we inhabit these spaces and how the built architecture is a symbol of our self image as deluded masters of the universe.

But suddenly a few years ago Matt left this lens cap on (as rumour has it) and discovered a non-image that was the surface of the photographic paper. These became black reflective surfaces that captured the fugitive image of the photographer taking the photograph. Later they became surfaces that captured other people reflected in the surface of the print. I have deliberately given a confusing explanation of how these images are made because I don't want them to be pinned down by their methodology or by a formalist analysis. Their power lies in the fact that the human presence is portrayed in a way that I haven't seen in any other photographers work. It's as if the human is shown to have passed in front of a camera and is pinned down not as a photographic image but as a trace of their actual presence. Explaining them in this way sounds pretentious. They are remarkable images, beyond words. Try and get to see them sometime."

Peter Kennard

She regularly contributes essays to books on contemporary art and writes for specialist magazines and sits on numerous panels and juries. Published essays have been included in 'The Grand Tour': Gayle Chong Kwan, (ArtSway 2009); an essay on new film and photography work by Elina Brotherus at Bloomberg PLC part of the Comma series; 'Dryden Goodwin: Cast' (Steidl 2008); 'Once more with Feeling; recent Colombian Photography' The Photographers' Gallery 2007 (which she also edited); 'Chris Coekin: The Hitcher' (Walkabout press 2007). In 2009 she co-edited 'Dark is the night: Jordan Baseman' (published by ArtSway).

Camilla has chosen Nina Mangalanayagam as her choice for June's Critic's Choice.

SHE WRITES: "I first came across this series Morfar by Nina Mangalanayagam when she was a promising undergraduate at London College of Communication. At that point the series included images of her Grandfather. As his health was deteriorating she was starting to tread difficult territory as he became a less witting subject of her portraits. However she was also aware that making the work was bringing them together and enabling her to spend precious time with him. I was touched with how she spoke and dealt with this as it suggested a maturity beyond her years. But it also demonstrated a willingness to confront complex issues in a brave and honest way, which I admired. Over time her work has broadened out to look at cultural identity and how that is in part connected to landscape, using her own family history as a source.

"...we see the presence of an ancestor in the glowing suffused light which pervades the work and seems both tender and heartwarming."

I wonder how much we see of this in these three quiet and subtle works? Made in Sweden, the country her grandfather emigrated to and the land he fell in love with, her personal connection remains only in the title. We see beautiful studies of nature all bathed with a strong northern light, which in one shot falls through a window onto some dusty cobwebs. There is a sense of exploration and that a photographic journey has been made. But what story do we read in the edit ? In one shot there is a symbolic large and ancient tree which casts its shadow on the house that stands by it. If we are witnessing a battle between nature and man, it would seem nature has inevitably won. This seems particularly so in the image of a wooden structure overgrown with clambering vines. How long will that structure remain visible before it is completely over run by the landscape around it.

She has managed in this incarnation of the work to select a quiet, yet haunting, series of images. To me this work could be read as a tender homage to her grandfather and her ode to him. He would, one presumes with his love of gardening, find it fitting that his land has been reclaimed by nature. And yet despite this encroachment there are still traces of human presence in the structures that have been abandoned and left behind. Perhaps also we see the presence of an ancestor in the glowing suffused light which pervades the work and seems both tender and heartwarming."

Camilla Brown

HE WRITES: "I first came across Mehraneh Atashi through her series of photographs of Tehran's Zourkhaneh. These buildings, a mixture of martial arts gyms and religious chapels, are all-male bastions dotted around Tehran's lower-middle class neighbourhoods. The Zourkhaneh, a word which could be translated as 'powerhouses' provide a space for men to train as wrestlers and generally work on buffing up their physical prowess. The fact that Mehraneh had gained entry to some of them and been allowed to photograph of the men using them was remarkable in itself. But the photographs went beyond anthropological illustrations. They took us into the closed world where these men train watched over by icons of Islamic historic figures such as the fourth caliph Imam Ali, the epitome of Islamic martial prowess, and his sons Hassan and Hussain - all three are central figures in Shia Islam. Also present in brooding watchfulness are and contemporary Iranian leaders, the Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khameni. Mehraneh placed herself in each of the photographs, her face always behind a camera and often reflected in a mirror, - a poignant comment on the fact that here was a woman transgressing a male space.

Before the Zourkhaneh photographs were shown in Berlin in 2007, Mehraneh was quoted as saying of the West's reaction to Iran: "They are constantly looking around us but don't see who we are." In the series self-portraits showcased by Troika, Mehraneh comes out from behind the camera lens and places herself centre-stage. Her face, covered by the headscarf proscribed by the Islamic revolution hovers disembodied over her city. She looks directly at us. Is it a challenge or a plea? Spread out below her is the metropolis of Tehran in its grimy glory. In one photograph, the Burj Azadi, Freedom Tower, is clearly visible, in another there is a view of the Elburz Mountains that ring the Iranian capital and provide Tehranites respite from their overcrowded, traffic-choked city.

"The Canadian photographer Jeff Wall has said that with the arrival of digital techniques, the aim of art photography is no longer to create pictures in which the verification of truth is an issue. Instead what counts is the image's expressive power..."

The Canadian photographer Jeff Wall has said that with the arrival of digital techniques, the aim of art photography is no longer to create pictures in which the verification of truth is an issue. Instead what counts is the image's expressive power. Mehraneh's explicit use of this technology to create these images, with their multiple layering, takes us through the surface tension that exists in the capital of the Islamic republic and its youthful post-revolution populace. That tension burst into dramatic reality for Mehraneh and her husband in January 2010 when they were arrested and interrogated by police. Fortunately they were released after a few weeks.

In building up my collection I have always kept the old cliché 'Like it before you buy it' as a rule. This series of Mehraneh's takes me back to the city I spent the first five years of my life in. It led me to my old family photographs of another time when Tehran was glamorous, prosperous and self-confident but with other layers of discontent against the old regime.

That's not to say that the investment value of a work is wholly unimportant. There's a real buzz around contemporary Middle Eastern art at the moment fuelled at the top end to some extent by the sovereign wealth funds of the Gulf states that are quickly building up collections. The big three international auction houses Sotheby's, Christies and Bonham's regularly hold sales of contemporary Middle Eastern art in Dubai and London and Mehraneh's work like that of other Iranian-born photographers such as Shirin Neshat, Mitra Tabrizian and Shadi Ghadirian can only go up in value in the short to medium term."

Ali Usman

Sue has chosen Sachiyo Nishimura.

SHE WRITES: "Sachiyo Nishimura's subjects are taken from landscapes where her eyes ignore familiar green elements and are drawn to linear industrial ingredients surrounding us: telephone wires, railway lines, and in the case of this series, "Traces 2" from 2A to 2C, cables. They are the materials of her work, yielding themselves up to their translation into geometrical patterns and equations, the basis of her abstract photographic prints, and her reinterpretation of our landscapes.

Arranging each single image in a grid (in this case units of 4 x 3), each composed of fine hair-like patterns within the frames, or thicker cables, she moves from a horizontal display which conjures images of tangled nets caught in a languid river's current, to vertical patterning which suggests the wonderful dimensionality and clear air surrounding the wires and ropes on a sailing ship.

"In this work," Sachiyo says, "What I did was set up a number of operations such as copying the image and then overlapping it, and then making some variations based on the rotation of the image and different cuttings in the same image, so what you have, in the end, is four variations on the one single image."

"[Sachiyo] moves from a horizontal display which conjures images of tangled nets caught in a languid river's current, to vertical patterning which suggests the wonderful dimensionality and clear air surrounding the wires and ropes on a sailing ship..."

Her explanation of the process involved in creating these meditative, wispy abstract, neglects to mention the devotion to mathematical, scientific and minimalist compositions which lie behind it all, and are particularly relevant in this entirely abstract series, "Traces 2."

Previous constructions have included the 2006 "Composition series" and "Out of Scale" which are assembled in galleries as vast grids composed of small prints separated by a crucial white gap to create a recognizable industrial landscape. Narrative isn't typical of Sachiyo's work, but that year, she was using a familiar process (the opposite of creating a jigsaw where individual pieces reveal little or nothing alone but pieced together tell the story; in this case, each piece holds an abstract pattern awaiting the viewer's personal interpretation, then seen as a whole, it becomes differently poetic and the patterning constructed from fragmented industrial scenes, stark chimney stacks or curving railway tracks, the story of industrial mystery is emphasized by her dedication to monochrome photography.

Some photographs work best standing alone, others make better sense hung in series or united in a grid. For Sachiyo, the grid is clearly the fascination. In terms of photographic references, there are suggestions of early Becher works and Düsseldorf experimenters, but unlike them, she empties the scenes of recognizable entities and jumps entirely into abstraction – closer to painting than photography. Viewing the "Traces" series on prints from my inexpensive printer, I see the blur of over-printing and visions of Idris Khan's work, then switching to the screen the full beauty of Traces 2A – "Analytical Re-composition of Urban Landscape" comes into focus and pulls me into its depths."

Sue Steward

Watch a video in which Sue introduces photographer Mehraneh Atashi.

Karen has chosen Renhui Zhao.

SHE WRITES: "I first came across Renhui Zhao's photographic work "Blind" on the cover of Portfolio Magazine in May 2009. The photographs were taken from the point of view of the observed; in turn watching their observers hidden behind invisibility cloaks.

The published images are a part of a larger online project: "The Institute of Critical Zoologists". It is a work that is conceptual in its approach, challenging the truth-effects of the photography. Artists such as Jeff Wall, Olivier Richon, Juan Fontcuberta, Clare Strand and Mark Dion have ventured into this territory developing a practice, which challenges the spectator by the blurring of boundaries between fiction and fact. This is a development that is rich in its consequences on the object of photography in the digital age and it was already well grounded in the 1970's conceptual art practices by artists such as Mac Adams, Victor Burgin and Christian Boltanski.

"It is as if Renhui Zhao has staged the future with a knowing irony by photographing the possible disappearance of human kind..."

By developing a critical gaze in the way humans view animals, Renhui stages and performs zoological experiments that hover between fiction and fact. In "Blind" the photographer/observer is covered by a cloak or blind that makes him disappear into the environment. There have been recent scientific breakthroughs using calcite that have created a real possibility of "invisibility cloaks" being developed for camouflage, particularly for military uses. By using cloaking devices perfected by scientists, zoologists can be invisible observers, perfectly hidden to fit into whatever environment necessary.

It is as if Renhui Zhao has staged the future with a knowing irony by photographing the possible disappearance of human kind. In this work, which is part of a larger developing project online, the invisibility cloak becomes a metaphor for our human future. Camouflaged human observers act as if their gaze does not affect the observed, avoiding any interaction or response from animals that are being rapidly pushed to extinction."

Karen Knorr

Eva has chosen Aliki Braine's images.

SHE WRITES: "I was immediately intrigued when I first encountered Aliki Braine's defaced landscape photography. Photographs that have in some way been altered, marked or damaged, thus preventing the photographic image from fully retaining its documentary function, consistently fascinate me.

Braine has used a hole-punch to create holes on the surface of her negatives, which she then prints. This disrupts the usual mirroring effect of photography and emphasises the materiality and ephemeral nature of the photograph. The black 'holes' become dark voids that draw you in.

This mutilation of the negative is striking and violent. The image is purged; sections of the recorded landscape are censored (we do not know what happens to the discarded holes). As most of Braine's work depicts the landscape, the violence seems directed towards traditional genres of landscape photography – a refusal to let the landscape image be merely beautiful and serene.

"This mutilation of the negative is striking and violent. The image is purged; sections of the recorded landscape are censored..."

Much has been said, by Susan Sontag and others, of the inherent violence of photography and, in spite of the camera-gun metaphor becoming a contemporary cliché, Braine's work reinvigorates the comparison. Braine's series "Hunting" is a novel visual depiction of the act, or idea, of shooting. In 'The Hunt" and "Hunting" the photographs are set within a forest. The forest is where civilization ends, where our unconscious fears take form.

By obliterating parts of the photographed forest, Braine leaves us to fill in the blanks ourselves. A new imaginary world emerges, personal to each viewer. The title "The Hunt" suggests that this might be the scene of some horrific event, the aftermath rather than the event itself. The black spaces are sparing us the details: the image is censored. What kind of hunt has taken place? Braine enriches her images by making her viewers imagine rather than just experience."

Eva Stenram

www.evastenram.co.uk