Boris Mikhailov

Boris Mikailov: Twilight Photography

Born Kharkov, Ukraine, 1938

'1941. I was three years old and I can still remember the bombings, the howling sirens and the searchlights in the wonderful, dark-blue sky. Blue, blue, light-blue…'
Boris Mikhailov

Boris Mikhailov made his series At Dusk in his home city of Kharkov following the collapse of the Soviet Union. In it, he uses twilight to record a society in transition and to evoke childhood memories.

Mikhailov proposes a monochrome visual language to deal with this new social reality. The photographs are tinted blue, both to make them appear 'old' and to refer to the 'blue hour' of twilight.

At Dusk also refers to Ukraine's deprivation during the Second World War, which the artist experienced as a child. Few photographs of this period survive, and there is little photographic history of Ukraine during the Soviet period, so Mikhailov proposes his
own constructed history as a substitute.

At Dusk is therefore a hybrid between a documentary and a conceptual project, recording but also staging a time that might be both 1941 and 1993, or neither.

Anthony Crossfield

From the Foreign Body Series

This series of photographs, entitled 'Foreign Body', explore the relationship between the body and the identity whilst also questioning traditional conceptions of corporeality and of the male nude.

In Foreign Body, the viewer is confronted by ambiguous, fluid bodies; bringing attention to the notion that self identity is unstable and permeable. The fabrication of individual male bodies into multi-limbed hybrids, makes his exploration of the male form at once unsettling, yet weirdly beautiful. In this exhibition, the body is presented, not as a protective envelope that defines and unifies our limits, but as an organ of physical and psychological interchange between bodies and selves.
Antony Crossfield describes his work as closely related to the manual labor of painting. His artworks comprise of several points of view, of multiple images that are compressed into a single frame of meticulous construction. The illusion of wholeness masks an uncertain and fractured reality, that defies the Cartesian idea of a stable viewpoint. Importantly, his photographs do not embellish the male form with expected beauty, instead, their diversity and flaws are embraced, echoing the traditions of the grotesque. The resulting photographs elicit an intellectual response, but also one that is visceral and even physical.
Foreign Body is Antony Crossfield’s first solo exhibition with Klompching Gallery. He has previously exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery (London), Institute of Contemporary Art (London) and Fulham Palace (London). In 2008, he was the winner of The Independent Photographer’s Terry O’Neill Award. Crossfield’s photographs have been published in The Sunday Times Magazine, Art.Es Magazine, La Maquina Contemporanea, PDN, British Journal of Photography, Eyemazing and Creative Review. An upcoming feature on Foreign Body will appear in the December/January issue of Hotshoe.

http://www.klompching.com/antonycrossfield/thumbnails.htm

http://www.antonycrossfield.com/

Epson Drivers

here

Colour Bit Depth

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_depth

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8-bit_color

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte

Fredrick Potter

Frederick potter is a Calgary based photographer and artist. He is quoted on his own site as to being "An artist, poet, philosopher and image creator, Frederick has a deep passion for creating images that break the mold and transcend the standard templates of traditional photography. His images have been published in numerous magazines and art publications, and has won numerous Canadian and international awards for his work, both in photography as well as cumpter image manipulation. A member of several international photographic assoctiations, his work is now being displayed in galleries in Germany, the United Kingdom and Australia. Frederick has been shooting since 1975 and has worked as a freelance fashion photographer for Mount Royal College, a photo journalist for Southam News and a freelance fashion photographer for many Calgary agencies. His training includes the Crossfield Institue in New York, the Scitex Training Center in Los Angeles, The Alberta College of Art, SAIT and the Banff school of Fine Arts."-Editions By Frederick

The reason that i chose Frederick Potter is because of my own interest in making mixed media art. I am rarely comfortable with just making a piece of art work with one medium. I also quite enjoy photo manipulation as well. Potter mixes a lot of his photograohs with some fine arts based techniques as well as computer image manipulation.

Peter Root

Peter Root

Artist Statement:

"Repeated, diverted, occupied, cut, pasted, fragile, developed, pushed, played, tried, tested, coloured-in, cut up, glued, looped, meticulous, rushed, tradigital, stuck, traced, hung, drawn, sliced, layered, linked, sound, sight, 3d, 2d, ephemeral, architectural, sculptural, models, micro, massive, broken, fixed, doodle, technical, simple and complicated.

The Art that I create is the result of experimentation and play. These experiments can involve highly repetitive and mantra-like procedures or can be simple, spontaneous responses. These experiments include dense and garishly coloured drawings, ephemeral and architectonic installations, meticulous sound edits and mythical, never-ending scenes created from looped video clips."

Bath 2001

Bath 2001 was made up of thousands of staples glued together and situated in my old bath tub. The smooth white enamel seemed to provide the perfect environment, a mixture between domestic and science-fiction. A rust stain built up from the dripping tap seemed to create a smog that lingers over the plug in the far distance.

Low Rise:

Low-Rise is a precarious assemblage of thousands of free-standing stacks of staples densely tessellated to create a city-like mosaic. Like a city, the staples are subject to the elements, on a micro scale. The slightest breath or vibration and the domino effect kicks in.

Joshua Bronaugh

Joshua Bronaugh

Lithuanian Love Song
2009, 27x 27 in
Oil, motor oil, gold, alkyd, and resin on canvas

Silt Upset
Oil on canvas.
80 x 120 cm [32 x 48 in]
2007

Change is the Disease and the Doctor, Both
2009, 36 x 48 in
Oil, motor oil, gold, alkyd, and resin on plastic mounted on panel

Joshua Bronaugh is an artist that is originally from many places – he spent some years in Germany, before skipping through American mountains, forests, and salt flats, landing eventually in the south. His paintings, often large in scale, focus the obsessions of memory and emotion, almost always pushing the human figure to the edges of representation and, in some instances, far into abstraction.

In 2006 he studied art in Rome and Florence, Italy, and in 2007 taught art at the Pereyaslav-Khmelnytsky State Pedagogical University in Ukraine. During the same stay, he obtained special permission to visit the infamous reactor at Chernobyl’s. This event in some ways reflects moments of his youth- he once lived at in the military installation known as Dugway Proving Grounds, a restricted location designed “to test US and Allied biological and chemical weapon defense systems in a secure and isolated environment.” (US army)

''I know from my conversations with Josh that his exposure to these events has taught him the utmost respect for the sublime, and simultaneously for the delicacy and unpredictability of life. I also know Josh feels a special affinity for the people and places of Eastern Europe- he’s been three times to Poland and Ukraine, and a scattering of countries between the Balkans and the Baltics. In 2008, he was invited to lecture Siberia, Russia.

His portraits allow him to focus feelings of longing, and to develop intellectual elaboration. Interaction of color is always at the forefront of his work, and the elements shape and composition have their genesis in motion and peripheral vision. When these principles combine, we are presented with a constant state of vibration and emergence.

In the past year he has been recognized by features in the both the magazine Create Destroy Rebuild, and on Area of Design.''

– Mikhail Hrovovsky, Prague, 2008

Anton Corbijn

Anton Corbijn

Portraits

Anton Corbijn

Anton Corbijn (born 20 May 1955) is a photographer and director from the Netherlands. He is widely acknowledged by the music industry, mainly for being the creative director of the visual output of prominent bands like Depeche Mode and U2, having handled the principal promotion and sleeve photography for both for more than a decade. Some of his works include music videos for Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence" (1990) and Nirvana's "Heart-Shaped Box" (1993), as well as directing the Ian Curtis biopic Control.

http://www.corbijn.co.uk/

Living Plant Furniture

Hey - Christine H. here.

I went back to GreenMuze for this article - as they update weekly.

I find this to be a really neat - but perhaps unrefined idea!

Enjoy!

Diminutive furniture grown from plant roots is the focus of an art project from German designer Kai Linke. The project, aptly entitled Deformation Roots, involves using various bulbs, sprouts and plants to create small furniture forms. Once a wooden frame is filled in with the roots, the frame is removed and a living table, chair or stool form remains.

“The idea referring to this concept arises out of the abstract conflict of deformations in nature. Deformations can be caused by human hand consciously or by coincidence, explains the artist in a Dezeen interview. “The intervention of humans into the growth of a plant can be described as deformation. The human is the activator for a modified plant-growth.”

Visit: Kailinke

and Visit: Deezen

For more Info.

Andrew Moore

Detroit


Birches Growing in Books



Cat



National Time

Peacock Alley

URBAN ARCHAEOLOGY

Photographs and Commentary By Andrew Moore

In Detroit there is a warehouse, once used to store books and supplies for the public-school system. Abandoned for many years, last winter it was the scene of a grotesque discovery: a homeless man had plunged head-down into the bottom of a flooded elivator shaft, and had all but disappeared in a deep block of ice; only his feet protruded. At the same time, on the top floor of this depository, where the concrete roof has partially collapsed, is an example of human enterprise that has likewise been stood on its head. There, amid a dense matting of decayed and burned books, a grove of birch trees thrives on these richly rotting words and, between the crooked I-beams and jagged slabs, their trunks rise straight skyward.

After the massive fire that leveled the city in 1805, Detroit adopted the motto Speramus meliora; resurget cineribus: "Ww hope for better things; it will arise from the ashes." There is a considerable irony in the fact that trees are literally growing from the ashes of books here today-but this is only one detail in a city whose actual decomposition extends to surreal proportions. Detroit is more than a story of physical decline, decay, and transformation; it is a city where the distortion of time is reinventing symbols for the America of the future.

My photographic interests are stimulated by the busy intersections of history, particularaly those locations where multiple tangents of time overlap and tangle. In places such as Cuba and Russia, I have found that these meanderings of time create a densely layered historical narrative. In Detroit, the usual forward motion of time appears to have been thrown spectacularly into reverse. The great wonder of Detroit's transformation is the Janus-faced role that Nature evinces through its devouring decay as well as its power of renewal.

Given the backward and upside-down narrative of this city, perhaps it's not surprising that the same people who originally settled Detroit now return to gaze upon it. Just as Americans have traveled to Europe for generations to visit its castles and coliseums, the Europeans now come to Detroit to tour it's ruins. That Detroit should inspire such reverie is a fitting homage to the odyssey of this uniquely American city.

Tia Halliday

Ink jet photographic prints

Innocence is Easy

Tuff


Enhanced

Pin-up

Born in Calgary, Tia Halliday is a Calgary-based artist and art educator. Having studied at the Alberta College of Art and Design, Ontario College of Art and Design and the School of Art Institute of Chicago, Tia recently completed her MFA at Concordia University in Montreal. Tia has received numerous scholarships and awards for her work and exhibited across Canada and in the United States

Julie Blackmon

Julie Blackmon

The Dutch proverb "a Jan Steen household" originated in the 17th century and is used today to refer to a home in disarray, full of rowdy children and boisterous family gatherings. The paintings of Steen, along with those of other Dutch and Flemish genre painters, helped inspire this body of work. I am the oldest of nine children and now the mother of three. As Steens' personal narratives of family life depicted nearly 400 yrs. ago, the conflation of art and life is an area I have explored in photographing the everyday life of my family and the lives of my sisters and their families at home. These images are both fictional and auto-biographical, and not only reflect our lives today and as children growing up in a large family, but also move beyond the documentary to explore the fantastic elements of our everyday lives, both imagined and real.

The stress, the chaos, and the need to simultaneously escape are issues that I investigate in this body of work. We live in a culture where we are both "child-centered" and "self-obessed." The struggle between living in the moment versus escaping to another reality is intense since these two opposites strive to dominate. Caught in the swirl of soccer practices, play dates, work, and trying to find our way in our "make-over" culture, we must still create the space to find ourselves. The expectations of family life have never been more at odds with eachother. These issues, as well as the relationship between the domestic landscape of the past and present, are issues I have explored in these photographs. I believe there are moments that can be found throughout any given day that can bring sanctuary. It is in finding these moments amidst the stress of the everyday that my life as a mother parallels my work as an artist, and where the dynamics of family life throughout time seem remarkably unchanged. As an artist and as a mother, I believe life's most poignant moments come from the ability to fuse fantasy and reality: to see the mythic amidst the chaos.

Julie Blackmon

Artist Statement: Domestic Vacations

Bruce Mozert

Mozert was born in Newark, Ohio, in 1916 and followed his sister Zoë to New York City in the mid-'30s; she became a renowned pinup artist, he a photographer. On his way to an assignment in Miami in 1938, he detoured to Silver Springs because he'd heard that Johnny Weissmuller was filming one of his Tarzan movies there. Mozert says that when he stuck out his hand to shake Weissmuller's, the former Olympian responded by hoisting him in the air. Eventually, the movie star left; Mozert stayed.

He likes to say that he "took to photography like a duck takes to water." But "like a fish" might be closer to the mark. At Silver Springs, Mozert pioneered underwater photography, building waterproof housings that allowed him to go deep with a camera in hand. For some 45 years (except for service with the Army Air Forces during World War II), he created scenes of people—comely young women, for the most part—talking on the phone, playing golf, reading the newspaper...underwater, all the better to show off the wondrous clarity of Silver Springs' waters.

"Everything has a picture in it, a sellable picture, all you got to do is use your imagination."

Kanji Ishii

Work from Kanji Ishii

Kanji Ishii was born in Yamaguchi Japan. He moved to New York to become one of the world's leading still life photographers. He has shot international campaigns for Dior, Prada, Chanel, Lancôme, and Hugo Boss. He splits his time between Paris and New York. In his spare time, he is an avid sailer, touring his 14ft Catalina around the New York harbor.

http://www.kistudio.info/

Peter Beste

Peter Beste


































































Peter Beste

Peter Beste is an American documentary photographer based in New York City. Known in particular for his precise and poetic portraits of subcultures. His new large scale photography book True Norwegian Black Metal (208 pages. Hardcover 11.25" x 14.25" Vice Books 2008) is a seven year exploration into the dark world of Black Metal in Norway. The country's largest musical export gives birth to this notorious subculture- an obscure mix of Satanism, Nordic mythology, horror films and extreme heavy metal which aggressively forsakes Norway's religious heritage and contemporary mainstream society in favor of Nordic heathen gods and self-afflicted isolation. Long considered sealed to outsiders, this secretive and often violent scene gained international prominence in the early 90s through an outbreak of inspired murders, suicides, and church arsons
Beste has been simultaneously photographing an in-depth study of Southern Rap culture in his hometown of Houston, Texas.

Beste has had solo exhibitions in London, New York, Tokyo, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Oslo, Bergen, San Francisco, Austin, Los Angeles, Tilburg, Osaka, Atlanta, and Portland. His work has appeared in American Photo, Arkitip, British Journal of Photography, Dazed and Confused, London Observer, Modern Painters, VH1, MTV, NRK (Norway), XXL and many others.

Sandy Skoglund

Sandy Skoglund

Raining Popcorn


Introductory essay by Marvin Heiferman for the exhibition of RAINING POPCORN
at the Faulconer Gallery, Grinnell College 2001
Marvin Heiferman. “Serious Thoughts are Popping Up.” In Sandy Skoglund: Raining Popcorn. Grinnell, Iowa: Faulconer Gallery,
Grinnell College, 2001. © 2001 Marvin Heiferman. Used with permission


It was more than a quarter century ago that American artists began to turn to
photography—with excitement and in growing numbers—acknowledging that it was the
medium best suited to make sense out of the complexity of late 20th-century existence.
Some artists made deadpan photographic images to document their conceptual
investigations or to comment on the quirkier intersections of art and life. Others
appropriated everyday commercial imagery, living under the skin of popular culture’s
pictures in order to understand how the photographs that claimed to represent reality
had come to be as engaging as reality itself. Still another option, one pioneered by
artists like Sandy Skoglund, was to explore photography’s power to redefine reality by
learning how to fabricate compelling fantasies and illusions.
That practice—which came to be known as tableaux or directorial photography—
demanded a knack for storytelling, a sense of style, and a repertoire of convincing
technical skills. And from her earliest major installations and photographic works to her
most recent work, Raining Popcorn (2001), Skoglund has repeatedly proven her mastery
of those skills. For two decades, she’s been a canny pop-culture showman, producing
appealing, yet ultimately disturbing artworks that never fail to attract viewer attention. It's
hard to be blasé when confronted with Skoglund’s signature, over-the-top
psychodramas. And hard not to shake your head in disbelief or crack a smile when you
find yourself, literally or figuratively, in a corner of the world where everything is covered
in uncooked chopped meat, raisins, or jelly beans.
Skoglund’s aggressive disregard of conventional good taste and “high art” seriousness
often reads as humor and lightness in an art world prone to self-importance and
pretension. But ultimately, behind the sometimes jokey and always raucous façades of
her sculptural installations and photographic images, it is Skoglund’s intention to trigger
discomfort and self-reflection. It is the darker side of her imagination that gives the work
its edge and depth, that keeps it from teetering into gimmickry and theme park
insincerity. No matter how seductive or loopy her materials, imagery, or implied
narratives might get, Skoglund is relentlessly focused on the production of metaphors
that reflect human fear and vulnerability.

Susan E. Evans

Works from Susan E. Evans

Susan E. Evans is a conceptual artist working with photography, video and new media in order to explore ideas about identity, context, structure, information processing and categorization and has work appearing in galleries, museums and private collections worldwide. Susan E. Evans is represented by WM Hunt from the Hasted Hunt Gallery in Chelsea, NY, and Gallery Lichblick in Koln, Germany.

Born Juana Ramos, adopted and then re-named, Susan E. Evans started her photographic exploration at the age of eight in a small basement darkroom. Since then, Evans’ formal education yielded a BFA in both Photography and Holography from Goddard College in 1991 and a MFA cum laude from Cornell University in Photography in 1994.

Always up for photographic exploration Evans has employed a multi-disiplinary approach to her work throughout her career and whenever possible pulls content from a variety of sources, experiences and concepts. She is currently experimenting with contemporary content in large format wet-plate photographs (Ambrotypes) and researching different language theories, anthropology and memory.

Susan E. Evans is both Assistant Professor and Head of the Photography Area in the Art and Art History Department at Oakland University in Rochester Hills, where she teaches photography, digital imaging, digital video and time based media. Evans is a member of The American Society of Media Photographers, the Society of Photographic Education, Michigan Photographic Historical Society and the College Art Association.

Sean DuFrene Photography

Sean DuFrene
from The "Jack" Series

Chatty Cathy. Neurotic perfectionist. Retired restaurant workhorse. A decent midfield soccer player. Sean DuFrene has been called many things. But those who know him agree he’s a man with a vision.
A press pass with Sean's picture, name and the words "Staff Photographer, San Diego Union-Tribune" used to hang around his neck. After some time at the newspaper, Sean felt it was time to further his knowledge with a Master of Fine Arts degree in Photography.

Sean filters his daily activities through a present-moment window, with the end resulting from a mixture of caffeine-induced enthusiasm blended with creativity to churn out the best possible image.
American Photography writer Miranda Crowell has described Sean's work as "witty, showing a need to maintain a sense of humor amid challenging times."

Mark Edward Harris (a judge in the American Photo 2009 Images of the Year Competition) has described Sean's work as "funny, yet sophisticated with an ability to bring balance of the frame to the lighting to the way every object has a purpose, his image popped."

Sean recently made the cut in the 2009 Communication Arts Photography Annual, American Photo’s 2009 Images of the Year competition and has been called "Best in Show."

Original bio found here

Charlie Schreiner Photography

(as seen from top to bottom)

From the series' of :

• From the Reticent Bondage Series
• Daguerreotypes
• From the Color Me Black and White Series
• From the Nude Series

Charlie Schreiner received his Master of Fine Arts Degree from the Rhode Island School of Design. Since 1972, he has designed office furniture for Herman Miller, Knoll, Haworth, and others in the contract furniture industry. He lives and works along the shores of Lake Michigan. Photography has always been an important tool in his business, and he also uses photography as an artistic medium, in which he now has begun to work more exclusively. He works in both color photography and alternative processes, particularly the daguerreotype.
While he has taken many different subjects, including still lifes, landscapes and portraits, his nude daguerreotypes and color photographs are perhaps his most significant and individualist work to date.
Astonishingly creative for such a difficult medium as daguerreotypes, these striking and erotic nudes are startlingly contemporary, while offering homage to 19th-century images. His daguerreotype of a stretched-out nude odalisque that is lit by the light of a television set is just one example of this juxtaposition of centuries and sensibilities.
Schreiner's daguerreotypes have been exhibited at the George Eastman House in Rochester, NY; Ohio State University; the Tri-Cities Museum in Grand Haven, MI; the New England School of Photography in Boston; the Oakland Museum; the North Light Gallery, University of Arizona; A Photographers Place, New York City; the Atlanta History Center; the Henry Ford Museum; the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art; Grand Valley State University; Center for Photographic Art, Carmel, CA; 2004 International Fine Art Photography Exhibit, Ft. Collins, CO; Soho Photo, New York City, Best of Photography 2004.
Schreiner also received an honorable mention in the 2004 Lucie International Photography Awards.

http://www.contemporaryworks.net/artists/artist_bio.php/1/3701

http://www.charlieschreiner.com/photography.html

Gabriel Wickbold

Gabriel Wickbold

Information from Photographers Website

Pointing his lenses and projecting his pop light on a mixture of materials, organic or inorganic, onto human skin, the young, 25 year old photographer from Sao Paulo, reaches an unique way of seeing sexuality, covering to strip. he explains: "The paint is a protection and at the same time revealing. It covers a women, but in character, reveals itself." To achieve this effect, different Brazilian models undress and had their forms covered with chocolate, gouache, airbrush paint, synthetic hair, coconut vines, sand and makeup, not necessarily in order. Dismissing stereotypes, Sexual Colour reinvents and exports the Brazilian beauty in format that you have never seen.

Scott Hansen

I first heard of California based designer Scott Hansen back in grade 9 when my friend brought an issue of Computer Arts UK to school. I was instantly interested in his use of texture and raster based imagery to contrast the use of clean lines and simple block shapes found in the vector work used in his work. His work despite being computer based carries a timeless and weathered quality due to his use of overlays.

The strengths and weaknesses of vector and raster graphics have long been apparent: vector is known for its clean lines and resolution-independent scalability whereas raster has a more photographic nature. Although vector graphics are particularly suited to print work thanks to their scalability, there are some things you can’t do without bringing rasters into the picture.

In the last couple years Scott Hansen has not released many more pieces but still keeps his blog up to date and seems to has shifted his focus to the musical realm producing under the name “Tycho”

David Lachapelle

While David Lachapelle's imagery is way over-the-top, I couldn't help but think of his gutsy, crazy hybrid portrait/advertising work. Although he works mainly with well-known celebrities, his work stands on its own. The thing that interests me most about his imagery is a consistent use of set design to create mood and to ad personality to his subjects. This semester, I want to work on location and in the studio, creating sets and situations and drawing inspiration from working in this manner. I also want to work with the idea of exploring the use of popular culture references within editorial/advertising-style portraiture, which David LaChapelle already does.
"LaChapelle's work continues to be inspired by everything from art history to street culture, creating both a record and mirror of all facets of popular culture today. He is quite simply the only photographic artist currently working in the world today whose work has transcended the fashion or celebrity magazine context it was made for, and has been enshrined by the notoriously discerning and fickle contemporary art intelligentsia." (LaChapelle Studio Bio)

Erwin Olaf

Erwin Olaf is a photographer from the Netherlands.  His work is controversial, humorous and provocative.  He has been commissioned by companies like Microsoft, Levi's and Nokia for advertisement campaigns.  His most famous work has been his series including "Grief", "Rain", and "Royal Blood".  

Olaf inspires me because his work his full of intruge and tells a story of life and human emotion.  His process is very important.  His research is intergral to telling his story.   He photographs in such a way that every detail is meticulous.  His sets are interesting and he chooses his color palettes and objects as to not create clutter but create an interesting environment.  His lighting choices are delicate and his choices of environments are unique.  His models are chosen with care and their poses are real and full of emotion.  

He creates work that evokes emotion in his viewers which is something I want to strive for this semester with my body of work by using environments, props, wardrobe and lighting like Olaf uses.

Erwin Olaf

Okay, so I'm posting Erwin Olaf because of this very series of images: “Paradise” is one of Olaf’s fine art projects. It is comprised of two different series, one called “Paradise: The Club” and the other “Paradise: The Portraits”. The series focuses on a group of emotionally damaged diabolic clowns being portrayed in sexually rampant situations. Old, withered faces display partially washed and smudged makeup creating a mood of unease, madness and confusion. “It was directly inspired by Rubens’ The Rape of Hipodamia, a lurid Baroque painting from the collection of the Prado in Madrid.” The styling, mood and erotic abandon were direct imitations of Rubens work yet framed as cinematic panoramas. The idea is about exploring uncomfortable concepts in a genre that often makes a majority of people uncomfortable. He’s quoted: “Rape is the use of one person’s sexual drive against the will of another. Physically and mentally, it’s the most distasteful thing there is. It’s the highest point of horrible male might, and it shows that everything that’s worth anything is fragile." I like the relationship of these two bodies of work and I'd like to take the same concept for my "Seuss" project but merge the portraits with the other photographs into one body of work.

Here's a recap on Olaf.

Erwin Olaf, born 1959 in Hilversum, Netherlands, now lives in Amsterdam where he has taken recognition as a prominent contemporary photographer and videographer since 1988. He studied at the School for Journalism in Utrecht and got his first job in photography as an assistant to photographer Andé Ruigrok. Primarily in the commercial setting of photography, Olaf’s work has extended itself and its success into both widespread commercial mediums as well as the fine art world. His work has won countless awards and has been exhibited in group and solo exhibitions across the world.

Such awards include: The Silver Lion Award at the festival for advertising in Cannes for his Diesel Jeans Campaign in 1999 and for Heineken in 2001, the Photographer of the Year in the International Color Awards in 2006, artist of the Year in 2007 for Kunstbeed Magazine and recently the Lucie award for Achievement in Advertising in 2008. His Exhibitions span from the the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Mocca in Toronto, The Chelsea Museum in New York, the Australian Centre for Photography in Sydney, The Museum of Modern Art in Moscow, and Space E6 in Shenzhen, China. Olaf has worked for hundreds of clients spanning across the world markets from Audi and BMW to Deisel, Lavazza, Microsoft, Nicorette, Nintendo, Nokia and the Coca Cola Company. He’s also been commission by Elle magazine, the Beijing Olympics, BSI and Time Magazine.

While deeply set in the advertising and fashion markets, Olaf’s work moves far from mere commission. His work is filled with humour, imagination and exuberance. The themes center on concepts of freedom, beauty, loneliness and being different: “Olaf consistently expresses his own standpoints, fulminating against narrow-mindedness, smugness, and rigid norms, but not without humor, bravura and bite. An authentic Olaf is a blow to the head, ruthlessly direct, but simultaneously wrong footing the viewer and poking fun.”

Olaf’s subject matter in photography spans from: Conceptual to Lifestyle, Nudes, Fashion and Accessories, Portraits, Still Life and product photography. While he maintains an evident studio presence to his photos, he is known for the digital manipulation he does in post.

Beatrice Coron

Coron is a book artist whom makes narratives primarily out of cut paper. Her books take on many different formats but the characters and settings of the story typically involve her signature silhouette style. Initially it was the sculptural aspect of her objects themselves that grabbed my attention as I am becoming increasingly interested in book making arts. However, as I looked deeper into her work I realized that she is dealing with (in a broad sense) similar themes with these narratives as I am with my own project.

She says in her statement, "I am fascinated by the situation of individuals in time and space and the memory process that filters their realities". This made me think about my own relation in time and space to Ulster and my own memories of the place. I think those memories and my familial ties to this place almost gives me a sense of belonging that is stronger than my ties to Canada. In a way, those memories and the memories retold to me by family members makes Ulster feel more real than my existence as a Canadian. I feel displaced here.

I think that moving forward with this project I will certainly be considering this more, and I will be examining Coron's book making methods, particularly her use of pop-ups to turn what Northern Ireland is in my brain into a tangible interactive object. In this way, I think it will more easily enable people to engage in my ideas of identity and belonging.

Sophie Calle

Sophie Calle is a french born conceptual photographer and writer. Most of her photography has a large performance componant and breaks out of many conventions of personal, self portrait type work. Her work is inspired by human relations and the public eye. She thrives on the documentation of human vulnurability as a way to discuss identity and intimacy. She deals heavily in compare and contrast between how people choose to be viewed in thier personal lives as opposed to being in public. She often takes the role of a detective to observe and become voyeur. Process is very important to Calle, she can become so involved in her work that it blurs the line between art and life. When a boyfriend broke-up with her by email, Calle asked 107 women to read the letter and to analyse it according to their professional interest. It was set to music, re-ordered by a crossword-setter, performed by an actress, and probed by a forensic psychiatrist. Her project Suite Venitienne invloved following a man she met at a party and photographing him as he ventured to Venice. Displayed with her own notes and text, the photographs acted as strictly documentary. The following 3 images are from that series.

Howard Schatz Photography

Howard Schatz is a fine art and commercial photographer based in Manhattan.
He has made unique and extraordinary images for his advertising clients such as, Ralph Lauren RLX, Escada, Sergio Tacchini, Nike, Reebok, Wolford, Etienne Aigner, Sony, Adidas, Finlandia Vodka, MGM Grand Hotel, Virgin Records, and Mercedes-Benz.
Schatz, however, seems most comfortable working in, on, or underwater. Released in the fall of 2007, his third book titled H2O, a series featuring breathtaking images underwater. His aquatically gifted models, dancers, and performers alike, has made this series easy to enjoy, and he viewer is able almost experience the serenity of the form and frozen movement underwater. His talent as a photographer has enabled him to take advantage of the unique light, buoyant, and reflective qualities of water itself. Many of his images are of women, nude, dressed, or simply covered with a transparent cloth that gracefully covers and sweeps away from the body. The models appear as though taken from a dream.
With my project this semester, I intend to take similar images which focus on the quiet, gentle feel of the freedom from ground, lack of gravity and almost complete sensory deprivation, within the context of meditation and spirituality.

Dust Films

Dust Films is the identity that award-winning animator, filmmaker and musician Dustin McLean has assigned himself. Alongside having his work featured on television shows, countless blogs and websites, he is the originator of “literal music videos”. This is where my access point to his practice is. These “literal music videos” are a translation of what is going on in the imagery then applied to the music. Dustin changes and re-records the lyrics to songs and transforms the music video into a singing description/parody hybrid.

His practice is now changed from making video to making music to accompany a video. I still view this work as a video exploration even though it is primarily musical creation on his part. Perhaps this is because of the way in which the words and images function together, the music cannot make sense without the video. The video however can exist alone or with other audio, like it was before Dustin changed it.

I chose this to relate to my semester long project of changing lines of lyrics into imagery because I felt as though he is doing something quite similar to my idea, but backwards. He is using imagery to create lyrics, I will be using lyrics to create images. I find that after I stumbled upon his work I am able to understand how he is viewing the relation of text and image as restrictions on interpretation in this particular work. I plan to test the waters of restricted images meaning I only use exactly what is in the phrase literally. Also, I will be attempting to do loose translations around certain lyrics and bringing in ideas to the words that would be completely off track in comparison to the song, but also still make sense when related back to the image.

View more videos: The Beatles, Bonnie Tyler, Creed, A-ha.

For more Videos like this just search "literal video" on YouTube or check out DustFilms' website!

Jennifer Collier

Jennifer Collier creates textiles and craft pieces using many found objects by weaving, waxing, embedding, and stitching that turn the pieces into garments and accessories. She says that her work speaks to ideas of recycling as well as exploring the body. The work is non-wearable or functional. Not only are they about disposable organic materials but also about crating something beautiful and enduring.

‘Jennifer Collier’s work… uses the symbolic form of clothing …it is used to provoke thoughts about the fragility of the human body, but also makes us question the value we squander looking for something other than the ordinary and everyday - objects that only become painfully precious when we lose them’ Dr. Jane Webb- foreword ‘Threadbare’ catalogue.

During the duration of this semester I will be working on garments that are made up of photographs and felt that some of my interests in this project reflect some of Jennifer Colliers ideas. I think this is a good starting point as I begin my body of work this semester and think it will be interesting to see where I take this.

To read or see more of Jennifer Collier's work visit http://www.jennifercollier.co.uk

Eugenio Recuenco

Spanish photographer Eugenio Recuenco has a large body of work for a number of clients, and mainly does work that can solidly be put under the umbrellas of fashion editiorial and advertising. The aesthetic style of his photography recalls techniques from classical paintings, such as chiaroscuro (a play of light and shadow), and generally they have a strong narrative. His connection to painting is something he's spoken of in the past, noting some of his inspirations to be painters like Goya, El Greco, and Zubaran. There isn't a ton of information on the life of Eugenio Recuenco, but there is this quote from the photographer himself, where he chooses to describe just how he works:

"Eugenio Recuenco is a Spanish photographer who is a pain in the ass because he always insists on doing whatever he wants. He works for quite a number of clients both in the advertising and editorial fields all over the World who are also a pain in the ass, because they always want to do whatever they want."

I chose to post about Eugenio Recuenco, as it was his editorial work inspired by fairy tales that got me interested in his work as a whole. Though his work that is inspired by fairy tales is very aesthetically pleasing, and right in line with the kind of editorial work in fashion magazines today, I find it a little too literal, and hope to take a less obvious approach to each narrative in my own pieces this semester. That being said, however, I find that Recuenco's work is a great starting point for my visual research for this project.

For more of Eugenio Recuenco's extensive portfolio, click here.

The Independent Photo Book

(Via Conscientious.)

I've noted that information about independently produced photo books and zines (publications by small publishers or self-published work that is not available via Amazon.com or chain book shops) is often hard to come by. When I go to shops specializing in photo books - such as Dashwood in NYC - the sheer number of such publications I have never heard about always makes me a little sad, because I know there are so many publications I never heard about.

(updated below)

This situation is very similar to the one I was in almost eight years ago when I started to look for photography online. Of course, that means that the solution to this problem is obvious: There just needs to be a blog that lists independently produced photo books or zines. Enters The Independent Photo Book, a blog I started with Hester of Mrs Deane fame.

The idea behind The Independent Photo Book is simple: You email us the information about your independent photo book or zine - following the guide lines outlined on the blog - and we'll create a post with the information about it. No selection - we post whatever we get, as long as it's an independent photo book or magazine.

Let me stress that the idea behind the blog is to allow people to not only find out about the book/zine, but also to buy it. So if your book/zine can't be bought, we won't list it. And of course it's great if your book or zine can be bought at Walter's Mom and Pop Bookshop in St. Middleofnowhere, but that doesn't help anyone - so you need to send us the link to a page where people can buy the book online.

So the idea behind The Independent Photo Book is not only to advertize independently produced photo books and zines, but also to let people know where/how to get them. In other words, if someone sees a book or zine s/he likes it has to take that person only a couple of mouse clicks to order it.

Of course, both Hester and I are very busy, but we'll do our best to list books/zines as they come in (so if you stick with our specifications you'll be saving us time and work). But at times, a little of patience might be needed.

Also, there are probably a zillion things that can be improved, but Hester and I thought it's important to get the ball rolling, and then we take it from there. Be a bit patient, and in no time there'll be a great place to look for all those photo books and zines you didn't even know they existed.

Update (7 Jan 2010): It's probably important to make this clear - the new blog is centered on solving some of the distribution problems that independent book/zine publishers have. That's why publications that can be bought on Amazon or in regular book shops are excluded, and that's also why books that can be bought via Blurb's shop will not be listed. But if you print your own book (or have it printed) and then have boxes of them in your home, trying to get them out - that's the situation The Independent Photo Book is intended to address. Of course, we'll see how this all works out, at this stage, nothing has been finalized, yet.

Update (8 Jan 2010): As you can see, there already are various books listed, all of which you can buy - and some were already bought (as we were told). So if you have an independently produced book or zine to sell send in your info!

(Conscientious.)

Photoshop before there were computers: "The Art of Retouching and Improving Negatives and Prints"

(Via Conscientious.)

One of my finds of a trip to Troubadour Books (which might be the closest you can get to being inside Borges' Library of Babel; see a couple of posts about Troubadour here and here) is a book called "The Art of Retouching and Improving Negatives and Prints" (ThARINP), which, and this I learned just now, is available at the Internet Archive (Needless to say, I prefer my 1948 copy). ThARINP tells you how photographers Photoshopped portraits before they had computers.

Why do this? ThARINP has this to say:

If you're a commercial portrait photographer (remember those ubiquitous portrait studios?) this made a lot of sense. For example, a pimple is the "unessential" that the camera's lens can't ignore - so as the photographer you have to break out your tools and get to work. Here are some of those tools (I rotated this Figure):

Changing the order of the sample images a little bit, here are some of the "before" and "after" examples from the book. The first must have been lifted from an earlier manual:

The second is very subtle, and it's more or less along the lines of the kind of standard portrait Photoshopping we are very used to:

The final example is less subtle, and of course, we are very familiar with it, too. It might come as a surprise to some that even before computers and Photoshop existed photographers were able to so blatantly (and more or less convincingly) manipulate photographs:

Note how the "after" image has a certain look of artificiality - just like those heavily Photoshopped people on magazine covers, which all look as if they were androids.

Of course, if you're familiar with the history of photography, you know that photographers have always been able to change photographs in very drastic ways. But I thought given all this talk of Photoshop it would be good to show some examples of photo manipulations that are sixty years old.

If you want to know how photographers did it, read the book. As I mentioned above, there is a copy available online at the Internet Archive. Of course, going to an actual shop like Troubadour is more fun - who knows what else you might find?

(Conscientious.)

Hartford Art School Limited-Residency MFA Program

(Via Conscientious.)

There is a brand-new photography MFA program I have become involved with, the Hartford Art School Limited-Residency MFA Program. Limited residency here means that unlike in other MFA programs, the photographers work independently, meeting with their advisers and teachers for an intensive on-campus session in the Summer (in Hartford), plus for off-campus sessions in the Fall and Spring. The latter will happen in locations such as, for example, New York City or Berlin/Leipzig (there will be others, yet to be confirmed) - places where there is a strong photography presence, and there will be direct interactions with practitioners there, as well as with advisers and teachers who will travel along.

This approach to obtaining an MFA offers some advantages over the standard one, especially, of course, for photographers who would have problems with leaving family and a job behind to move somewhere for two years to get an MFA. And I'm sure I don't have to explain what is to be gained from traveling to New York or Berlin, to meet accomplished artists living and working there or to see important museums and galleries.

If you look at the people involved with the program, you will find quite the selection, and of course, it's a privilege for me to be in this company. Faculty include Robert Lyons (director of the program), Mary Frey, Alec Soth, Doug Dubois, Michael Schäfer, Hellen van Meene, and myself. In addition, there are various lecturers to be brought in, including Adam Bartos, Marc Joseph Berg, Alice Rose George, Thomas Demand, and Ute Mahler.

If you have questions about the program, it's best to use this form. Enrollment is open now, so if you're thinking about getting an MFA, here's a new option for you!

(Conscientious.)

Douglas Capron

Hydrology : Visions In Ice

I am inspired by transformations and transitions that occur within nature, people and music. My photographic opportunities often arrive unexpectedly and I am always fascinated by how our perception of time alternates with various life experiences. I hope my work travels beyond graphic emotional impact and that it will provoke and sustain a subtle dialogue with the viewer.With my current series, Hydrology: Visions in Ice, my goal was to share with viewers the ephemeral mystery that occurs when water transforms into ice in a natural setting. The resulting formations are surprisingly dynamic, organically expressive and complex, and pose more questions than are revealed beyond an aesthetic perspective in our relationship with the most basic element that sustains us all. I was fascinated by the elaborate, unpredictable and beautiful shapes. These formed and morphed on a small lake in a city park over a few days as winter temperatures started to descend and the crystallization process began and then further, gradually evolving into mysterious patterns of solid ice announcing the arrival of winter.
I photographed this project through the use of long exposure times at night to eliminate glare during the day which allowed me to retain detail and texture.

— Douglas Capron

http://www.lensculture.com/capron.html?thisPic=1

http://douglascapron.com/artist.asp?ArtistID=6505&AKey=YPFHN7A4

BBC

BBC article on photography by blind people.

Photo Technician Hours

Alberta College of Art + Design

Photography Department - Hours of Operation

Photography Technician – Dean McLean

dean.mclean@acad.ca

Digital Print Lab / Photo Studios

General Availability

8:00AM – 4:00PM Monday to Friday Lunch 1:00 – 2:00

Not available during scheduled Technical Demos / Faculty support

Photo Equipment Cage

Equipment Sign Out

12:00 PM to 1:00 PM Monday to Friday

Equipment Returns

8:15 AM to 9:15 AM Monday to Friday

David Zsako

Rooster and Hens


The Cluster


Cross

Church Interior

DAVID ZSAKO (Alberta)

works on paper

"My family left Hungary when I was very young, during a transitional phase in the country’s history. The Hungary I revisited in the summer of 2006 is a different world than the one I had left as a little boy.

With 'Limited Memory', I traveled to places that go back several generations in my ancestry, and revisited people from my childhood including family members and friends. I have created a series of images, part biographical and part documentary, to get a sense of how people in a rapidly developing nation, (with whom I have deep personal connection with), are coping with hastened infrastructural growth and industrial advancement, while at the same time dealing with a deteriorating economy.

I have used the medium of photography and the aesthetics of selective coloring to convey a sense of struggle between fact and memory. Each photograph is a narration of cold remembrance intertwined with a dose of emotional weight, that when viewed as a whole, speak of my journey to rediscover my past in the present."

http://chaccanada.org/en/projects/index.htm

Tim Barber Photos

Tim Barber Photography
from "Personal - Notes 1"
No Titles on the photos

Tim Barber grew up in Amherst Massachusetts,

lived for a few years in the mountains of Northern Vermont,

studied photography in Vancouver B.C and now lives in

New York City. A photographer, curator, publisher and

designer, Barber runs the online gallery www.tinyvices.com,

where visitors are encouraged to submit photographs and

artwork. He launched the independent publishing house

TV Books in 2008, producing unique books, artists

monographs, zines and posters and has recently curated a

series of 5 photography books published by the Aperture

Foundation.

Lara Jade Photography.

Lara Jade.

LARA JADE, born 1989, currently resides in Central London.

Her career began early at the age of fifteen, when she picked up a camera and started experimenting with self-portraiture, romanticism, and fantasy photography - themes which are still present in her work today.

At only seventeen she started her own business, Lara Jade Photography. Originally taking on small clients, she soon picked up a strong understanding of the business qualities needed to deal with her high demand for work. To this day she hasn’t looked back, moving from strength to strength, becoming the youngest photographer to shoot at the world famous Spring Studios to date.

Her exploration with themes, coupled with a love for the works of Tim Walker, Ellen Von Unwerth and Mary Ellen Mark have inspired the unique creations seen in her daily work.

Lara’s much sought after romantic and conceptual feel with a hint of darkness with maturity beyond her years makes her one of the most promising photographers around. She also continues to be a source of inspiration for millions of other photographers and artists. A reflection of this is the 11 million hits on just one site showcasing her work (DeviantArt).

Lara is currently working worldwide alongside leading agencies in both London and Milan. She is signed with Milan-based agency Sudest57, who spotted Lara’s talents and signed her early on. A number of sponsorships followed, including Bowens Lighting, Samsung, and DataColor. Lara was also winner of the Public Choice Award at the 2009 AOP Open Awards.

A strong pursuit of perfection means Lara spends all her spare time working relentlessly on her ever-improving portfolio.

The Last Sitting.

The Last Sitting- Bert Stern

I have always been quite intrigued in life back in the 1940's and 50's, and at the same time i am amazed by Marilyn Monroe and how she came to be a sex symbol for her time and even now it precedes into our time too . So I chose to do a blog entry on her, and her very last photo shoot "The Last Sitting" before she died of a drug overdose six weeks later. The photos were taken by Bert Stern. As well, I have quite often associated fashion photography with vanity, and I believe that Marilyn Monroe pertains both vanity and grace into her photo shoots.


"The "Last Sitting" has become a legendary shoot of Monroe, not only because it was the last semi-nude glamour shoot she would ever participate in, but also because of the haunting quality of the images."- Mahalo

• ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bert Stern was born on October 3, 1929 in Brooklyn, New York, he worked mainly with advertisements and photography.--In June of the same year his best known pictures were taken: shortly before Marilyn Monroe's death, Stern received the permission to hold a three-day photo-shoot with the actress for Vogue. The photos were successfully marketed world-wide as the last sitting after the diva's death.- Ketterer Kunst

Rising Water World Images

Hey, guys! Here's my post - I'm kind of totally into the green side of things so I came across a group that has a hand in both.

They go by Studio Lindfors

And I got this article from GreenMuze - which is an AMAZING site. Check it out if you have time - there's a whole Green Art section to it too!

The future of our warming world with rising seas levels is the focus of a series of illustrations by New York-based designers Studio Lindfors. In the striking and serene images, the designers explore what New York will look like in a few hundred years time.

The Aqualta Project images are so compelling as they depict communities adapting and thriving to their new environment as opposed to resisting the changing world – a perspective not very prevalent in environmental art or discourse.

Studio Lindfors explains their vision of a tranquil future, “Residents repurpose rooftops for farms and greenhouses. Wetland ecologies and oyster beds thrive and take root to better protect coasts from future storms The cities are shown without combustion – engines, power plants, all emissions are rendered obsolete – resulting in cleaner, quieter neighborhoods. Aqualta reveals an adaptable city infrastructure capable of acclimating to nature.”

All the images are based in New York City.

Enjoy!

Christine Howell

Catherine Chalmers

Catherine Chalmers

American Cockroach\Food Chain

Excerpts from a Conversation

from American Cockroach (Aperture 2004)

Insects are a window into the unimaginable. Their biology and behaviors are routinely bizarre and enigmatic to us – they are refreshingly outside the human perspective. I think that our experience can be enhanced by an attempt to understand and give meaning to other life forms. Yet, is it possible that a human-centric viewpoint is setting the stage for an impoverished environment?

* * *

Where nature and culture collide is a nexus of fear and confusion. With my previous book, Food Chain, I wanted to explore a basic process of the natural world – killing and eating, being eaten alive – away from which we have endeavored to civilize ourselves. The carnage in Food Chain was deeply disturbing to many viewers. Although I spent much of my time on the project providing meticulous care for the animals I worked with, many viewers blamed me when they saw, for example, images of a snake eating a baby mouse – as if I had killed the mouse. I was fascinated by the strange disconnect between what people seem to want to believe happens in nature and what actually does happen. The snake, of course, needs to eat, regardless of our opinions.

* * *

With American Cockroach, I am interested not so much in troublesome behavior as in an animal humans find problematic. The roach, and the disgust we feel for it, make for a rich conduit to the psychological landscape that inculcates our complex and often violent relationship with the animal world. I can think of few species that are as thoroughly loathed as the cockroach. But interestingly enough, although they carry this heavy burden of our hostility, they don’t do very much in terms of behavior. They don’t eat in a dramatic way, and they certainly don’t have the wild sex life of, say, the praying mantis. They don’t sting, bite, or carry the dangerous pathogens that flies, mice, and mosquitoes regularly do. Having a cockroach in your kitchen is not like having a venomous snake living in the house. There’s nothing about the animal that is life-threatening. The dichotomy of the roach being a loaded subject, yet in habit, a fairly blank canvas, allowed me to bring more to this work.

Adam Jahiel

Adam Jahiel

Adam Jahiel, has had a varied professional career. He has worked extensively for the motion picture industry, working on projects as varied as Out of Africa to HBO comedy specials. But, Jahiel is also drawn to adventure projects, most notably as the photographer for the the landmark French-American 1987 Titanic expedition. His work has appeared in most major U.S. pblications, including Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, National Geographic Society and others. Jahiel's work also has appeared in literally dozens of books, including the acclaimed "The Day in a Life of" series.

www.adamjahiel.com/biography.html

PHTG.326 Critique Schedule

Week 4: Group A Critique / Group C Sketches

Week 5: Group B Critique / Group D Sketches

Week 6: Group C Critique

Week 7: Group D Critique

Week 8: Group A Critique

Week 9: Group B Critique

Week 10: Group C Critique

Week 11: Group D Critique

Week 12: Group A Critique

Week 13: Group B Critique

Week 14: Group C Critique / Group A Final Edits

Week 15: Group D Critique / Group B Final Edits

How to Size Images for Printing

Full size video here.

Michel Valentino

Michel Valentino

WASTELAND - CHILDREN OF THE EVOLUTION

Wasteland 06

Wasteland 11

Wasteland 04

Wasteland 03

Eyemazing Magazine
WASTELAND - CHILDREN OF THE EVOLUTION
INTERVIEW by CLAYTON MAXWELL
Clayton Maxwell: Michel Valentino, the German-French-Arabian photographer and filmmaker has a story to tell, and it’s not just about his diverse background. His latest photographic project, The Wasteland, is visceral commentary on the state of things in Berlin, and the world, today. - Tell me about yourself, your work.
MV:From 1990 until 2000 I worked as a special effects artist for movies and as film director for commercials and music videos. I had lots of fun with this work. Then I stepped out of it all for two years to collect new ideas all around the world and finally moved to Berlin in 2003. I tried to restart my career, which wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. So I became more of a visual artist than a classical filmmaker as I was before.
CM: On your older version of your website you said: “If my pictures help some people to see things in a certain way it’s probably to look at serious things non-seriously. Everything’s serious. Everything’s not serious.” Can you explain how that comes through in your photography?
MV: That quotation stands for all of my works, it’s not really about The Wasteland. It’s about my own pull between serious art photography and non-serious commercial works, which I have to do for a living. I like doing commercial campaigns, but I do sometimes not like the messages they tell. And that’s what I try to change with my photography and art. That stuff I make for the industries – advertising campaigns and fashion photos – are not even serious at all. They are illusions of fantasy worlds people would like to live in, but they don’t. Like in my photos for Ray Ban, Metropolitan, Katarina Witt, Gucci and so on. Or in music videos I did in my early days for some artists with no deeper goal than to say: “Look at me and my pimping style of life.” But they take themselves very seriously and tell the people it is a goal in life to be worth more than others, by wearing expensive clothes most people can’t afford or driving big cars and blowing gasoline in the air as if they never heard of environmental pollution. Stupidity revolves ever more around itself in our “civilized” society.
CM: In contrast, your images from The Wasteland seem very serious. Can you tell me more about your message here?
MV: In The Wasteland, people live in oxygen masks because of global mass- destruction, they are wounded and dying slowly. They did not analyse the things around them enough. And in the end they eat themselves, like the system we live in – it corrupts and collapses a bit more every day. The oxygen masks also stand for the breathless situation we all are in and the universal shaping of society by fashion.
CM: What inspired The Wasteland project?
MV: Most of all Berlin itself is the inspiration. This city is so fucked up and dirty and poor and trashy like I never have seen or experienced before. I guess it has to do with the Wall coming down 17 years ago. I tell you, another 15 years and Berlin will be the number one real-Mad-Max-end-of-time city of Europe. I hate this town so much, and on the other side, I love it. I never have experienced a more controversial city before, and I’ve lived in a lot of cities. My parents moved and travelled around the world a lot. Here in Berlin everyday young kids steal and fight each other for some Nike sneakers or Gucci handbags or cell phones – the U.S. has this problem as well! America’s advertising psychology, MTV and the big movie industry teaches the young generations how to become hustlers and tells young girls to act like porn stars. Everything seems to fall apart.
In The Wasteland photo story I also tell about the new German patriots – you can see the flag in the background. For all other countries worldwide, it is a normal fact to present the national colours in public, in pictures and so on, but not in Germany. Yet everything changed with the World Cup this year in Berlin. Suddenly people show flags and sing anthems like in the past (in World War II). Berlin is again the capital of Germany, as it was before the war. The World Cup was tinged with the propaganda of the past. It was amazing and frightening at once – a new kind of patriotism. And since then, many people who denied their German origin before, today shout out loud and proud, proud to be German. These days are very strange days, in Berlin right now. So, the flag in Wasteland is a symbol for the new/old History of Germany and its military past and destruction.
CM: Are you in these photographs, or just behind the camera?
MV: My wife and company-partner Dita Cernohlavkova (and some friends) and I are in front of the camera. It was very important to me to create an authentic situation, that’s the reason why I act in the photo story too – to feel the claustrophobic and uncomfortable element of the oxygen masks and the nakedness.
CM: Why did you become a photographer?
MV: I see myself more as a catalyst of the things around me. I collect (mind) pictures and impressions and try to interpret these. I still do commercials and music videos for international industries, which is fun, but that work does not give me much sense, and so I searched for another medium to express my feelings and thoughts better. I am not a rebel or anarchist, and in my work I become a realist. But I still try to have the eye of a child in my way of looking at pictures – like a child of war, who wishes better days and more colour back to the world.
CM: Oxygen masks pop up elsewhere in your work – how did you get interested in using them in your photographs?
MV: You can find oxygen masks all over Berlin. The Russians sell them on the streets like food for a couple euros. Since 9-11 the selling boomed. So we’ve been in contact with them every day. So I though to use them in a shoot, and I tried one on. In that moment, I was so afraid of the idea of living with them for the rest of my days, so the idea of Wasteland struck.

TEXT BY CLAYTON MAXWELL© All pictures: Michel Valentino
© 2008 Michel Valentino

Olivier Metzger

Olivier Metzger

Nightshot

Olivier Metzger holds his wandering suburban few random rainbows. With his new series, Nightshot, the artistic Olivier Metzger seems to have shifted dramatically: from day to night, sanitized interior world of the tertiary wandering owls in the open air, light and flat stalls the chiaroscuro tearing at the darkness some daydreaming ... Yet there remain a constant concern of the plastic composition flirting with the painting, an attraction for architecture and contemporary materials, a discreet place still left under amusing and poetry. Beyond again, Olivier Metzger Nightshot continues with his exploration of the ambiguous relationship between public sphere and private sphere. Olivier Metzger turns his gaze on intermediate spaces, in between, the stumbling blocks, friction, meetings between reality and its double. Rummaging disorders incongruous meetings and uncanny familiarity of the modern world.

Jeff Wall

Jeff Wall

Works from Jeff Wall

Jeff Wall is a reference in contemporary photography and his works have been an influence since late seventies to the present. Curiously, the work of Jeff Wall hasn’t followed the typical boring coherence of most photographers who spend their time repeating the same kind of photograph once they have reached celebrity.

On the contrary, Jeff Wall has experimented different ways of understanding photography. Probably, the most well-known by the art critics is that which came from documentary to cinematographic or better said …from the almost documentary to almost cinematographic, because the existence of these poles excludes each other to exist entirely. We always feel suspicious about the reality or falsity of what we see. In that sense we could understand Wall as a fine falsifier, even of what it is supposed to be photography itself. Consequently, an important part of his work can be seen as an interesting reflection about language itself or representation and society, if you like (we can’t forget here the importance of social reflection in his work). But in some cases, Jeff Wall manages to scape from this dichotomy and reaches the feeling of see something for the first time. Then he puts himself behind documentary. In other cases, Wall looks for spectacular images, but not in the cinematographic sense that we talked before, but just in an amazing sense. But some times, we can find pictures which Wall is less interested in meaning than in significance. Then we can discover a gaze close to post minimalism who enjoy just looking.

How to Make Contact Sheets on the Public Access Computers

Full size video here.

American Pixels

American Pixels is a project by Joerg Colberg that uses jpeg compression algorithms to create compelling images.

From the technical notes:

ajpeg is a new image compression algorithm where the focus is not on making its compression efficient but, rather, on making its result interesting. As computer technology has evolved to make artificial images look ever more real - so that the latest generation of shooter and war games will look as realistic as possible - ajpeg is intended to go the opposite way: Instead of creating an image artificially with the intent of making it look as photo-realistic as possible, it takes an image captured from life and transforms it into something that looks real and not real at the same time.