TRIBULATIONS

Spurred by the rapid disappearance of the world's indigenous peoples and their oral traditions, Phil Borges abandoned his dentistry practice to pursue his first love, photography. For the past 25 years, he has traveled to the farthest reaches of the globe to meet with persecuted Tibetan monks engaged in nonviolent struggle and embattled tribespeople of the Ecuadorian Amazon who must defend their way of life by any means necessary. Through interviews and portraiture, Borges documents his subjects and their tribulations with dignity, and conveys their rarely heard stories.

http://www.philborges.com/

BENCH STORIES

Gilles Sabrie is a French photographer based in China. I discovered his work when a friend send me his blog link. Gilles Sabrie’s series "The Bench of Tianmen" is a photographic work about people sleeping, waiting or living on the famous square benches. I really like the idea, and I specially like the pictures. It’s weird but I have the feelings that they were shot in a studio even if I’m sure they weren’t. On Gille’s website, you can also look at his others great stories.

http://www.gsabrie.com/#/intro

OLMETA

http://www.olmeta.com/

MORRISROE

Mark Morrisroe’s subjects were his friends, lovers, and his everyday surroundings. The imagery of his photographs and 8mm films combines the diaristic with the melodramatic, presenting the post-punk scenes in Boston and New York through a lens of vivid and romantic degradation and decay. He worked with the immediate medium of Polaroid, while also experimenting with the photographic process, creating layered and hand-painted prints, photograms and cyanotypes. His resulting works are searing and frank portrayals of the display of selfhood, sexuality, illness and death.

http://prefmag.com/weblog/?p=4358

NARRATIVE

 

“I’ve never seen myself as a war photographer. This is about narrative. I’m very open to any visual conceits and any possibilities at my disposal to better explain to people the ideas I’m exploring. I like art photography, I like still life, I like war photography. I like to include everything to weave a tapestry to explain to someone, ‘What happened?” (Tim Hetherington)

book: Long Story Bit by Bit, Tim Hetherington

PARIS OPERA BALLET

Gérard Uféras, the French photographer who spent more than a year behind the scenes with the dancers of the Paris Opéra Ballet, has recently published In the Company of Stars, an unusual and strangely beautiful book.  Scarcely ever in tutus and stripped of all artifice, members of the prestigious company are portrayed going about their everyday life at the Palais Garnier. Over a hundred photographs show the dancers backstage in the wings, in the elevators or simply warming up in the rehearsal rooms before a performance.

book: In the Company of Stars, Gérard Uféras

ALBINO BALBINO

Albino siblings Esthefany Caroline (l) and Kauan Fernandes (r) play with their cousin Taina (c) outside their home in the V9 slum of Olinda, in the northeastern state of Pernambuco. Three of five of the Fernandes family's children are albinos, which according to genetics professor Valdir Balbino of the Federal University of Pernambuco is a very rare occurrence concidering the parents and two children are dark-skinned Afro-Brazilians.

http://blogs.reuters.com/photo/2009/08/31/editors-choice-best-photos/

CONTROL

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7c2_B_cWK_M

Shoot Me Film Festival in The Hague organized an extraordinary retrospective with the Dutch photographer and film maker Anton Corbijn, wellknown from his music videos for big names like Nirvana, Depeche Mode, Johnny Cash and Coldplay. His last movie The American was mainly in the publicity, but "Control" is the first film he made in 2007, it's clear Corbijn is a visual artist, the style is like his Kodak Tri-x photographs. It's a biography of Ian Curtis, and his life in the band Joy Division. From a little town boy he changed in a tortured soul with epilepsy and depression. He's lost control.

dvd: Control, directed by Anton Corbijn

SOMETIMES IT MAKES ME THINK

To come across Anne McAulay’s work in a world awash in images, is a revelation. It immediately catches your eye, engages your mind, and evokes an emotional response. Whether it’s a photo taken in the metro, of an art lover admiring a classical painting, or a child playing in the street, through her eyes these common sights evoke a photographic response that cuts through, and demolishes the clichés one is usually presented with. Her visual quickness and intelligence is so acute that, when looking at her work, I sense that she has a ‘third eye’ - a camera eye that is directly connected to her quirky brain, and thus able to give me a thought provoking new, and unexpected interpretation of everyday life. Sometimes her work makes me smile, sometimes it makes me contemplative, often it makes me laugh, and invariable it makes me think. 

http://annemcaulay.com/

VINTAGE ATOM

Haunting imagery from 1945 to 1962, when the US military was detonating hundreds of nuclear bombs in the atmosphere; photographers struggled to document the destructive effects of the explosions. George Yoshitake, 82, is one of the few cameraman who is still alive. With a special camera with a shutter that worked incredibly fast he captured some close up explosions of a nuclear bomb.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/09/14/science/20100914_atom.html

AESTHETIC TERROR

"I have been a witness, and these pictures are

my testimony. The events I have recorded should

not be forgotten and must not be repeated."

Check Ted Talk with James Nachtwey: 

http://www.ted.com/talks/james_nachtwey_s_searing_pictures_of_war.html

 

http://www.jamesnachtwey.com/

NFF: SON OF BABYLON

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbNfnnKEDmg

The last day of the Nederlands Film Festival I visited the closing film “Son of Babylon,” in Arabic and Kurdish with English subtitles, opens a few weeks after Saddam Hussein’s fall in 2003. Following his capture, many Kurds went on journeys to try to find their loved ones who had disappeared during his regime in a genocide that claimed more than 1 million lives. The story opens as 12-year old Ahmed, beautifully played by Yasser Talib, begrudgingly follows his grandmother (played with the perfect balance of stoicism and anguish by Shazda Hussein) from Kurdistan to Nasiriya and beyond in search of Ahmed’s father who went missing in 1991. During their road trip, they encounter all sorts of characters, including a former Baathist soldier who perpetrated atrocities on Kurds. Through his character, the movie explores redemption and, in a way that is touching yet unsentimental, examines the damage done to those committing the horrific crimes as well. Director Mohamed Al-Daradji was part of the audience during the film and closed the night with an amazing touching speech.

http://www.cinema.nl/artikelen/6623251/son-of-babylon-slotfilm-nederlands-film-festival

DAMN GOOD PICTURE

 

Shown is “Untitled”, 1981, (from the rich and poor series) from Jim Goldberg. Allowing the subject to write their own description and include it in the presentation of the image clearly breaks the distance between subject and viewer. I’m always surprised how frank the comments are on the photos. It remains to be seen how long the art world will support a non-ironic stance that only a few photographers are using to address complex social issues.

newspaper: De Volkskrant

EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHJBdDSTbLw

Streetartist Banksy's 1st documentary "Exit through the gift shop" was already last april in cinema in the US, finally he made it to the Dutch theater. Banksy got world famous by his graffiti art as a political activist, but his identity is the best kept secret. Go check out this movie about his own work and other streetartists, the new punkmovement.

http://www.artsy.nl/2010/04/film-van-banksy/

I LIKE AMERICA AND AMERICA LIKES ME

Joseph Beuy's most famous Action took place in May 1974, when he spent three days in a room with a coyote. After flying into New York, he was swalthed in felt and loaded into an ambulance, then driven to the gallery where the action took place, without having once touched American soil. As Beuys later explained: "I wanted to isolate myself, insulate myself, see nothing of America other than the coyote." This work "I like America and America likes me" was exhibited in De Keukenhof, a cultural heritage in Lisse, The Netherlands, an exhibition of contemporary art in historic environement. The title of the work is filled with irony. Beuys opposed American military actions in Vietnamm, and his work as an artist was a challenge to the hegemony of American art.

exhibition: Van Bij De Buren, Kasteel De Keukenhof te Lisse