My favourite Photographers…of all time.

On Thursday the 26th Jan I posted on my Tumblr 10 images from my favourite Australian Photographers…it was Australia Day after all! The complete list can be see here.  I know it’s been a while between posts so I thought I would share with you images from my favourite photographers of all time.  Some will be obvious, others not so much but it will give you an idea of the photography that I like and the influences that come across in my own work (this may become obvious in later posts.) I’m also inspired by Art in general (particularly painting and sculpture) , popular culture, books (I have a large collection), architecture and the urban environment.

1. Diane Arbus

Diane Arbus’ Identical Twins, Roselle N.J. 1967 was the first image that got me interested in her work.  I also love black and white and the square format, areas that Arbus excelled in.  Unfortunately she died the year I was born…I often wonder how her career would have progressed had she still been here.  For more examples of Arbus’ work, check out her site here.

2. Jeff Wall

Jeff Wall’s A Sudden Gust of Wind 1993 is a photographic interpretation of a print by the artist Hokusai.  I was first introduced to the work of Jeff Wall in my first year of Art School and I’ve been following his work ever since.  His method of exhibiting his work in large scale lightboxes is visually impressive.  More of his work can be seen here.

3. Lee Miller

As her images are strictly protected by her estate, it is very difficult to post images on blogs, websites etc…I will say this though, one of my most prized possessions is a book on her work called The Art of Lee Miller by Mark Haworth-Booth published through the V&A Museum.  Check Amazon or The Book Depository for details.  She initially started off in the industry as a model in NY for Edward Steichen, Hoyningen-Huene and Arnold Genthe.  She then went to Paris to work with the Surrealist artist Man Ray. In the early 1940′s she became a correspondent during the war and I believe this is where she did her best work.  My favourite image from this time is called Women with Fire Masks, Downshire Hill, London that she took in 1941.  You can access the archives of her work here.

4. Michal Chelbin

Michal Chelbin is an Israeli born, New York based photographer who primarily shoots portraits and she somehow seems to capture the essence of the people in her images.  The above image Alona in the bedroom, Ukraine, 2006 is from the series Strangely Familiar in which she has photographed acrobats, athletes and other performers.  In the age of digital, she shoots with film and prints directly from the negatives.  More of her work can be seen here.

5. Stephen Shore

Stephen Shore photographs the ordinary in America and focuses on the minute details of everyday life, unveiling a beauty in the banal.  He effortlessly moves between black and white and colour, portrait and landscape, large format and small. The above image was shot on Wolf Street in Philadelphia.  More of Stephen’s work can be found here.

Ok, so that’s the first 5. I’ll follow up with the next 5 in a future post. Stay tuned…

 

2012…and beyond

I must say, 2011 wasn’t one of my better years. I lost my job, gained another and then lost that. However, I’m now in a job that I love which also allows me to return to Art School and hopefully finish this bloody degree that’s taken me years so far…I SHOULD graduate by the end of 2012.

2012 will hopefully bring me much more creative inspiration, I’ll pick up my camera more often and hopefully finish reading the pile of books on my studio floor.

Wishing everyone a safe and happy NYE and a creative and inspirational 2012. I’ve included some of my recent phone pics to finish off the year. Enjoy the Summer…or Winter xxK

My lovely dog Ruby

Robyn Stacey

Robyn Stacey is one of Australia’s most acclaimed photographers. Her large and striking images have been exhibited widely in Australia and internationally since the mid 1980s. The early cinematic series, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (1985), Redline 7000 (1987-89), All The Sounds of Fear (1990-1992), and Let It All Come Down (1994 AGNSW) were based on film noir and use the collective archive of photography and film to connect with cultural memory.

This fascination with the possibilities of history to inform our present lead to her current obsession with the vast archival repositories of museums and in 2000, Stacey began researching and photographing natural history collections in Australia and overseas. Spending a number of years working with each collection Stacey’s pictorially sumptuous photographic images present the eighteenth and nineteenth century specimens, artifacts, and scientific models to a contemporary audience, revealing their aesthetic, social and historical value. Investigating each specimen’s material presence she groups and assembles them based on visual strategies drawn from the Dutch still life tradition to the scientific rationalism of taxonomy.

Info courtesy of Stills Gallery. More of her work can be found here.

British Art Now – Saatchi Gallery

Apologies for the lack of posts lately…life has been hectic. I have however, been lucky enough to squeeze in visits to a few fantastic exhibitions.  Currently the Art Gallery of South Australia is exhibiting a selection of work from the famous Saatchi Gallery in London.  I must say, Mr Charles Saatchi has very eclectic taste.  I can appreciate most conceptual art but some of the work selected even gets me scratching my head.

However, instead of going on about the work I didn’t enjoy…let me show you the work I was drawn towards and surprisingly, it wasn’t all photography either.

Barry Reigate

Reigate’s series of fluorescent light sculptures were conceived as one-of-a-kind art and design originals, functional furniture catering to connoisseurs of unmitigated indulgence. The lamps are ostentatious pastiches of bad taste, pierced through (literally) with the pretentiousness of minimalist design.

The figures in this series are made from Jesmonite which is used in film sets and models.  Reigate uses this material as an association between classical plaster sculpture and popular culture.  He applies the material thickly and then just lets gravity take its course, so that there is this historical reference to Modernist painting.

I was drawn to these figures for their supposed slap-together kitschiness and their anti-pop culture stance.  It’s almost like a ‘middle finger’ to Disney Corp.

Anne Hardy

Anne Hardy’s photographs picture depopulated rooms that suggest surreal fictions. Working in her studio, Hardy builds each of her sets entirely from scratch; a labour-intensive process of constructing an empty room, then developing its interior down to the most minute detail.  Her process is an organic one – often starting with the objects first, then constructing the rooms in which to place them.

Hardy’s image Cell (above) reminds me Jeff Wall’s The Invisible Man…perhaps she is influenced by his work or it could just be a coincidence.

Standing in front of her large photographic works, you find yourself being drawn into her images – to decifer all their details and come up with a narrative.  Hardy’s images withhold the actual experience of her environments, allowing our relationship with them to be in our imagination.

Toby Ziegler

Ziegler’s creative process begins by removing the ‘hand of the artist’ and developing his image and sculptural models on the computer.  He then painstakingly re-applies traces of artistic intervention by rendering these digitised models entirely by hand.

In Designated for Leisure, the image is composed on reflective industrial fabric – the painting’s surface shifts and transforms when viewed from different angles, revealing the landscape within as a chimera of light and perspective.  I was first drawn to this painting for its sheer size but as you get closer, its reflectiveness gives the impression of a landscape from a different dimension – one that is broken down into its basic shapes and forms.

Inspired by a set Victorian Staffordshire figurines, The Liberals is made from intersecting cardboard panels.  The scale of monumentality is at odds with the use of its humble material and the roughly painted panels.  Perhaps this contradiction reflects how the figurines, originally associated with value and prestige are now symbolic of kitsch within popular culture.

The exhibition concludes on the 23rd October so if you haven’t had the chance to visit and you are in Australia, it’s definitely worth the admission fee.

Images and artist info via Saatchi Gallery.  Info about the exhibition can be found via The Art Gallery of South Australia site here.

Myoung Ho Lee

Myoung Ho Lee is a young artist from South Korea that has produced an elaborate series of photographs that pose some unusual questions about representation, reality, art, environment and seeing.

Simple in concept, complex in execution, he makes us look at a tree in its natural surroundings, but separates the tree artificially from nature by presenting it on an immense white ground, as one would see a painting or photograph on a billboard.

info via lens culture

Street Art – Nuria Mora

Ok…I know this is primarily a photoblog but I just had to share with you the work of Nuria Mora.  Her work is subtle in its approach…she works with the environment in which the work is placed and doesn’t detract from it.  It’s almost a ‘feminine’ approach to Street Art, not so much for the themes of her work but in the way it is placed in the spaces she chooses.  The photographs included here are a wonderful document of her amazing work.

Her work is multi-dimensional.  Apart from her Street Art, she also engages in Sound and Light Art.

Here she has utilised advertising light boxes for her art.

Glass is also a canvas that is often utilised…maybe glass bus shelters wouldn’t be vandalised as often if they were decorated in this way.

and for the light show…

more of Nuria’s work can be found at her site here.  Thanks to . of paper and things . for the link.

Daniel Patrick Lilley

Daniel Patrick Lilley is a portrait/editorial photographer based in the UK.  He is interested in observing the world and the people who inhabit it.  The following images are from his series ‘Vindelis’.

more of Daniel’s work can be found here.

 

 

Patricia Piccinini

Patricia Piccinini is a contemporary Australian artist who is known for her elaborate sculptures and installations that deal with ideas revolving around genetic mapping & manipulation, body imaging technologies and media culture.  Currently, her retrospective is being shown at the Art Gallery of South Australia and consists of her entire oeuvre to date.  I was lucky enough to visit the exhibition recently which took up the entire lower floor exhibition space.

Alongside her anthropomorphic machines and hybrid creatures, I was particularly drawn to an installation called Sandman.  Using video, photographic imagery and sculpture Piccinini transports us through the mysteries of human evolution, teenage angst and the ‘car culture’ of 1970′s Australia.

Although I’m familiar with Piccinini’s work, it was great seeing all her work in one venue.  If you get a chance, get along to the Art Gallery of SA and take a look.  The exhibition concludes on the 26th June.

More information about the exhibition can be found here.  Details about Sandman or any other work by the artist can be found at her site here.

 

 

Photobooks #4

If you didn’t know already, Hijacked Vol 2 is currently available through Big City Press and the exhibition to accompany the book release is currently on tour around Australia.  Next stop…ADELAIDE.  The official opening is on Saturday 14th May at the Samstag Museum.  I’m lucky to own both the Hijacked publications with the third offering (Australia/UK) coming out in 2012.  The best thing is that submissions for the next Hijacked are still open, with details available here.

Hijacked 2 is a comprehensive and expansive photographic compendium, and the first to delineate the important artistic and socio-cultural relationship that exists between Australia and Germany. Building on the considerable success of the inaugural publication Hijacked 1 – Australia and America; Hijacked 2 showcases the diverse talents and perspectives of 32 contemporary German and Australian photographers. With a focus on the depiction and representation of the young, the boundary-riding, and fringe-dwelling, Hijacked is layered with imagery both evocative and confronting, dreamlike and rousing.

Australian Artists:
Narelle Autio, James Brickwood, Michael Corridore, Andrew Cowen, Tamara Dean, Jackson Eaton, Suzie Fox, Lee Grant, Derek Henderson, Rebecca Ann Hobbs, Ingvar Kenne, Bronek Kózka, Georgia Metaxas, Conor O’Brien, Polixeni Papapetrou and Louis Porter.

German Artists:
Johanna Ahlert, Natalie Bothur, Jörg Brüggemann, Thekla Ehling, Albrecht Fuchs, Karsten Kronas, Anne Lass, Jens Liebchen, Myriam Lutz, Julian Röder, Josef Schulz, Oliver Sieber, Ivonne Thein, Olaf Unverzart, Jan Von Holleben and Sascha Weidner.

If you love contemporary photography, definitely get to the Samstag and see the exhibition.  It finishes on the 1st of July.

All images and publication information courtesy of Big City Press.

Abstract Photography

I absolutely love artists that think outside the box by using the  photographic medium to produce interesting and often random results.

Burak Arikan has photographed a computer screen up close – the resolution of the computer screen paired with the limited focus ability of his zoom lens has produced these blurry results.

Leanne Eisen uses a cameraless method to produce her images.  She selects objects with interesting surface characteristics and moves them during the scanning process, producing complete randomness in the results.

Stephan Tillman captures tube televisions in the moment they are switched off. The television picture breaks down and creates a structure of light.

These artists are only a few of the many that are using digital mediums in new and interesting ways.  Experimenting is the key to producing a great outcome.  Ideas are endless.