SNAPSHOT AESTHETIC

 

Yesterday I visited the impressive exhibition of Nan Goldin in the Photomuseum in Rotterdam. Goldin is an example of an artist who works at the most intimate level: her life is her work and her work, her life. It's nearly impossible to discuss Goldin's photographs without referring to their subjects by name, as though the people pictured were one's own family and friends. It is this intimate and raw style for which Goldin has become internationally renowned. Her snapshot-esque images of her friends; drag queens, drug addicts, lovers and family are intense, searing portraits that together make a document of Goldin's life. Goldin herself has commented on her photographic style and philosophy saying; "My work originally came from the snapshot aesthetic. Snapshots are taken out of love and to remember people, places and shared times. They're about creating a history by recording a history."

exhibition: Nan Goldin, Nederlands Fotomuseum Rotterdam

MATTHIEU

 

Photographer Melanie Matthieu, winner of the Photo Academy Award 2010.  Interesting about her work is the variation in her style, from the abstract to the raw photography, with a sensitive touch in it.

magazine: Kunstbeeld No.11

MASS-PRODUCTION PORTRAITURE

 

Andre Adolphe Eugene Disderi was a French photographer who started his photographic career as a daguerreotypist but gained greater fame for patenting his version of the carte de visite, a small photographic image which was mounted on a card. Disdéri, a brilliant showman, made this system of mass-production portraiture world famous.

http://mastersofphotography.wordpress.com/tag/francia/

MY GHOST

Adam Fuss has most often made unique images with a simple process that completely eliminates the camera - a photogram. Dependent upon the physical qualities of the actual object placed on light-sensitive paper and the length of its exposure to light Fuss has created stunning abstractions and poignant compositions from such materials as babies in water, the trail of snakes across a surface, sunflowers , rabbits and their entrails and light moving in space. Since 1999 he has worked on a series entitled "My Ghost" an evocative reference with spiritual associations realized in such images as christening gowns, transparent and absent the warmth of the intended wearer or columns of smoke captured during their brief existence. Many of these unique and intimate prints are large in scale.

http://jmcohen.com/html/artistresultsFull.asp?type=Photography

IMAGINARY TOWN: TREADWELL

I wanted to let all of you know about a wonderful lecture series hosted byAperture and presented by Parson featuring the photographer Andrea Modica. For those not familiar with Modica's work it is a blend of reality and fantasy focusing on an imaginary town called Treadwell in upstate New York. In a place where anything is possible endless narratives begin and end without reason or thought, fantasy becomes reality and forces us to question our sense of what it is. Think "Big Fish" but imagine Tim Burton with eyes of an 8x10 view camera with black & white film loaded and not quite so mental. 

http://graememitchell.com/blog/two-photographers-andrea-modica-and-alessandra-sanguinetti

A SERIES OF DISAPPOINTMENTS

 

New work from Stephen Gill, around the proliferation of betting shops in the Borough of Hackney. The discarded slips 'were shaped by loss or defeat, then cast aside. these new forms perhaps now possess a state of mind, shaped by nervous tension and grief. After these images were made, little autopsies were performed on the papers to reveal the failed bets held within.' The idea of obsolete objects being rephotographed and transformed interests me, it seemingly insignificance and at the same time the importance of trace and the human touch in these objects. 

Magazine: Eye No. 77

LUNAGRAMS

 

Lisa Oppenheim explores the underappreciated aspects of visual culture: the tell tale expressions of contemporary life which are often overlooked, exposing the erosion of information through the passage of time. Much of Oppenheim’s work is research, looking for images and objects that point to something larger and then developing strategies and techniques to make these relationships visible. In Lunagrams (1851/2010), a series of photograms, negatives depicting a lunar phase from 1851 are illuminated by moonlight of the same lunar phase in 2010, providing a translation of images of the past into the present. The source images are glass negatives taken by John William Draper, who was the first to photograph the moon. Photography as well as celestial bodies, such as the moon, can be seen as generic markers of the passing of time. The process of making these images is bringing to life which would otherwise be hidden away under a layer of dust in a library or archive illuminating the past through the light of the present.

Magazine: Kunstbeeld No.11

NEW OLD MASTER

 

Dutch photographer Desiree Dolron acute vision meshes traditional documentary photography and computer enhancement, by mixing these two methods, Desiree achieves her powdery, glowing effect – allowing her pictures to look almost like paintings.

http://mariadelcastillo.com/blog/?p=170

LIQUID FILM

These wonderfully quirky and artful photographs are not made with digital tricks. Laurence Demaison plays delightfully with film photography and with the idea of photography. Taking full advantage of showing what the camera sees (sometimes over long periods of exposure) compared to what the human eye cannot or does not see, she pre-visualizes each photograph up to a certain degree, and then lets chance and intuitive performance intervene. As a result, her photographs seem to bend light and time, distort the appearance of her own human body, and hold secret coded messages in their multiple reflections, refractions, visual repetitions, and semaphore-like gestures that become smears of light in darkness.

http://www.lensculture.com/demaison.html

DIETER APPELT

 The images is a record of Appelt's performances, the best known documented by "Liberation of the Fingers." In the attempt to purge himself of wartime childhood memories of decaying bodies, Appelt set out to become one himself: he whitened his body with marble dust and wrapped his hands and legs in linen, as if preparing for burial. The artist was not only burying himself alive, as it were, but resurrecting himself, that is, functioning as his own Christ--or shaman, in the tradition of his contemporary Joseph Beuys.

Book: Dieter Appelt, The Art Institute of Chicago

MOVING DOCUMENT

In 2003, photographerTrent Parke and his partner Narelle Autio set off on a journey around Australia. But this was far from a quaint sight-seeing tour. Parke and Autio delved into what Parke describes as "dark country", the places far from the easy gentility of the major cities. The result is his remarkable photo-essay Minutes to Midnight. This essay documents an Australia rarely seen by any one individual. From the glittering cities to brutality of life in the bush; from the shining faces of hopeful children to the trenchant hopelessness of those affected by alcohol and drugs, this is an excellently constructed essay and one that's also deeply affecting.

http://www.dvafoto.com/2010/06/little-brown-mushroom-releases-new-trent-parke-book/

Magazine: Eye no. 77

ASSOCIATION & SUGESTION

Association and sugestion are the keywords for the work of photographer/artist Paul Bogaers. In his works he makes a combination of his own photographs and material he found, by combining this he's creating new surprising meanings to those images, it makes the viewer think.

http://www.nederlandsfotomuseum.nl/component/option,com_nfm_agenda/task,view/id,132/Itemid,166/lang,nl/

SOUVENIR ROUGE

 Carolle Benitah started taking photographs when the fragile chance happenings of life were imposed upon her. At that time, photography worked as support, as an existential crutch, and also as a new sense organ, in front if the reality was hard to grasp – like in the case of an illness, as presented in her Autoportrait au rideau rouge, or the transition from childhood to adolescence, from the age of twelve to the age of thirteen in the series Twelve.

http://darkroomsinnorthernlight.blogspot.com/p/pandorian.html

FLOTSAM AND JETSAM

Peter Tonningsen collects odd things that wash up on California beaches near his home. He then scans them on a flat-bed scanner, and arranges those images artfully, and with a sense of humor, to create grids that have a loopy sense of logic. 

http://www.lensculture.com/

JUUL

This campaign is organised by one individual: Juul Hondius. In 1994 he came for a period of six months to the Czech Republic to work and study as a photographer. During this period he decided to undertake action against the widespread discrimination of Roma. This campaign is a reaction on the extreme situation of Roma in a society were they are not wanted, but do belong. The majority of Czech citizens prefers to ignore the Roma, some would even prefer the Roma dissapear. Juul Hondius decided to fight this ignorance by making Roma visible on the streets of Prague. He made a selection from the many portraits and added thought-provoking texts to them. These posterdesigns where blown up to very large seizes; from 1.5m.x 2m. up to 4 x 5 meter Now, more than two years later, the photograhps are finally covering the walls in the city of Prague. As a follow-up project of the campaign, the posters will be photographed again being they are taken down, in order to document any positive and/or negative responses to this media-campaign. In this way, the feed-back of the Prague population can be documented.

Foam International Photography Magazine