Hiroshi Sugimoto

This past month has been, to say the least, difficult. However, here we are now, whole and well, and looking at the fantastic photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto. And I like his minimalist style. A lot. It's subtle and fascinating and he likes his themes and most importantly I like his themes. Here, I am showcasing my favourite series of photos he's done where he's taken a photo of a film playing in aesthetically pleasing theatres at an extremely low shutter speed in order to capture the entire film in one image. In fact, I'll let him explain...

...

I'm a habitual self-interlocutor. Around the time I started photographing at the Natural History Museum, one evening I had a near-hallucinatory vision. The question-and-answer session that led up to this vision went something like this: Suppose you shoot a whole movie in a single frame? And the answer: You get a shining screen. Immediately I sprang into action, experimenting toward realizing this vision. Dressed up as a tourist, I walked into a cheap cinema in the East Village with a large-format camera. As soon as the movie started, I fixed the shutter at a wide-open aperture, and two hours later when the movie finished, I clicked the shutter closed. That evening, I developed the film, and the vision exploded behind my eyes.  

- Hiroshi Sugimoto

...

For me, this is genius. I am currently in post production of producing a short film, indeed I am the editor, and so the idea of an entire film and all of it's thousands of frames captured into a single frame, not only explodes MY eyes, but it makes my head hurt too. 

I am loving Hiroshi Sugimoto, and I feel you should too, check his other cool works HERE

More digestible information can be found HERE

Anders Petersen

Rain Dogs cover image

Holy shit, did I just learn how to make images big? And it's taken me how fucking long? Jesus Willy Christ. What a break through. And what a better time to start, at the top is the very famous Tom Waits cover everyone recognises from his classic record Rain Dogs, but before it existed with that honour, it is a part of a series done by Anders Petersen in the now-famous bar in Hamburg's red light district Cafe Lehmitz.

What I like about Petersen is the studied grittiness in his documentary photography, everything is heaped in dirt, that under-the-nail grime that belongs to the under-classes. It's enthralling to be able stare in to a subjects eyes who is burnt out on the inside and have lost all notions of inhibition. But they're not actually miserable, indeed it's joyful imagery, like making the most of a dour situation.... by hanging out with prostitutes and drinking lots. Cool. That's what I would do.

Anyway, hit up Anders Petersen's website, it's got a great archive and it's where I began: HERE

Richard Avedon

I do confuse myself sometimes. Portraiture in painting bores the crap out of me, but portraiture in photography, done well mind, is so enthralling. I imagine being asked to be a subject for a portrait means you either have loads of wrinkles, look whacky or both.

Richard Avedon had been prolific in his portraiture, photographing big, influential figures from all the arts, literature, film, music, dance and artists and fellow photographers. His work is captivating in its intimacy.

The top image has the privilege of being my favourite portrait photograph ever. It sparked off an interest in Ezra Pound, the image's subject, that later affected an essay I was writing at the time. He appeared to be a wholly complex character, knowing many other affluent figures in literature and art, dealing with unsavoury characters like Wyndham Lewis, and personal heroes like Ernest Hemingway (even though many consider he was unsavoury too, I don't I think was he was cool).

The bottom image is of much-acclaimed and well-lauded director John Ford who Avedon captured immaculately his seeming impatience and stubbornness, which portrays Ford's personality wonderfully.

I'd recommend you to head to this website where you can see whole portfolios that are uncomparable: HERE

The Body in Photograms by Red

The Body is something which is constantly and thoroughly used within archaic and contemporary art. Whether it is the all-time acclaimed works of the legends Pablo Picasso or Lucien Freud to the more modern works of Jenny Saville, Andres Serrano and Dylan Ricci.

It is a free and marvelous thing to use as subject matter. Not one body is the same and each of us have contours, freckles, scars, lumps and bumps that artists find irresistible.

For a recent project that I have done I looked at my face and other body parts in the medium of photogams. (The best way to explain what a photogram is, is to click on the Wiki link i am afraid!) Throughout my photographic up-bringing I have always loved the darkroom and the photogram techniques.

Fox Talbot and Anna Atkins are the main proprietors of the object onto photo-sensitive paper then exposure method.....

William Henry Fox Talbot

Anna Atkins

So within this project I combined both body and photograms.

The project title being 'Primitive' enabled me to use the most greatest primitive method of producing images there is, plus it is my favourite so this was a good project for me.

I stumbled across the technique for producing photograms of my face through experimentation in the darkroom with fix on my finger tips...

Vaseline on my lips...

E45 cream on my hands...

I liked the E45 cream.

Through much experimenting I had the idea to put the cream on one side of my face and print my face directly onto the photo-sensitive paper....

It was quite a break- through as the imprint has created a foetus looking pattern or shape on the paper. I had never seen anything like this before. So I had to expand on it.

I started putting the cream on both sides of my face (above), to show contact between the two faces, as if they are kissing.

The lack of intimidating and complicated techniques within this project just demonstrate the effectiveness of experimentation and simplicity within photography. If you want your face covered in cream and fixative to create pictures which completely sum up you as an artist, then do it. Less is sometimes (well in this case) more.

These however are not all the finished pictures... there is a lot more to show. But unfortunately they are with my tutor being marked.... so... watch this space!

FIN

RED

Jake and Dinos Champman

Sorry I haven't posted in a while and neglected the blog. But am back for a reign of terror ;)

Jake and Dinos Champman I discovered in current project that I am doing in my Photography degree at AUCB, called Photography and Realism.

I am blessed with erratic and bizarre dreams which are elusive and clear as day and I hoped that this would be a great starting point for this Realism project. So within a meeting with the legend that is Hitesh Ambasna he guided me towards the Champman brother duo.

The work which I was introduced to was there constructed 'mini' scenes. Such as this...

Their work employs death, sex, Nazism, children and the actions in the consumer lifestyle.

There is such a splendid amount going on.

A lot of the work from these concept artists I cant help but feel is quite, (putting it plainly), 'fucked up'.

And I like 'fucked up'!

The work of these sublime artists evokes an emotion or terror from the audience or onlooker. The best form of art (in my opinion) is that, that scares the shit out of the viewer. It wouldnt be worth while otherwise.

Go along and get scared shitless yourself.

http://www.jakeanddinoschapman.com/

FIN

Andreas Gursky

It was Cherub The Great who alerted me to my ignorance of big, well known photographers. I realised that as an Internet fiend I appeared to have undercut those that are at the top, those that are well-known and well liked and hugely popular and headed straight into the unknown, missing out on that top sector.

And it seems Andreas Gursky appears to be the grand-daddy of that layer, take a look, he has the highest selling photograph ever, and that sold only a few months back in November 2011. Who knows where it'll escalate?

The image itself, that top'un, is a bit minimal, i.e it's a path with a river and some mist. BUT it's not just that, Cherub The Great tells me that that part of a path that runs alongside the Rhine in Germany is in an industrialised area and very busy with pedestrians. The image itself has been digitally edited to remove buildings and people and sidewalk furniture and the mist hides further buildings and whatnot.

So as a piece of work it's highly textural and work intensive, but for me in all honestly the image does feel rather bland. In other words, there's no colourful or shiny things to hold my attention. And I have a pretty poor attention span.

What is surprising is that there doesn't seem to be an official website for Mr. Gursky so here is the best I can do, GOOGLE IMAGES YAY: HERE

Anka Zhuravleva

Man, that top picture is explosive! I love photography that is subtle and nuanced and carefully framed and balanced, but when it's as high-octane and eye-grabbing as Anka Zhuravleva then it's a real sight to behold. This difficult-to-type name has been sitting idle on a list scrawled on a post-it note inside a small black notebook for waaay too long.

And just as the first is a bluster of movement the second is contemplative and as the subject locks eyes with the viewer it's also a little creepy. Especially with the ghostly limbs beneath the water's surface.

Anka Zhuravleva has many interesting ideas that results in outstanding photography, and all viewable on her beguilingly minimal website: HERE

Clarence John Laughlin

I do regret being so negligent of this here little corner of the internet. But it's mine and I do enjoy it when I pay attention to it.

I stumbled across Clarence John Laughlin a while ago and it came from one of the most unlikeliest sources, from an interview with Phil Anselmo (it's probably not that one) and even a Down song is named after Laughlin's most famous book 'Ghosts Along the Mississippi'.

Reading up on him feels kind of familiar, we share a love of language and, I delusively think, had a large vocabulary, what's more he had early aspirations to be a writer, my current fair now, but then developed a keen interest in photography, same here on all counts. So it is interesting to see this familiarity around his person and his direction of photography.

His photography feels evocative, like an echo of infused memories emerging as one image. It is ghostly, phantasmal even, starker in the grainy black and white.

Join me in buying the prodigious Ghosts Along The Mississippi

See more HERE

And see even more HERE

Love it.

Hey! I've a Photo

Also I have some more HERE. They're super cool so, yeah, GO FOR IT, or don't. Or head here, that's super cool too.

Quayola

THIS IS SO AWESUM.

Quayola is a visual artist who experiments with video, photography, design and live performance mediums and I find some of his works to be stunning. An emphasis on some mind. A good example is his project 'Partitura', a video of which you can see above.

Partitura is a custom software to generate realtime graphics aimed at visualising sound. The term “Partitura” (score) implies a connection with music, and this metaphor is the main focus of the project. Partitura aims to create a new system for translating sound into visual forms.

I do find this to be incredible, and something I want immediately. We have all experienced the crappy visualisers of audio on our media players and I for one can see no correlation of what is projected visually in relation to whatever I play. It doesn't actually transform the audio, there is no visual actualisation. What is cool is Quayola has seemed to have created something that does generate the audio into something visual.

I always imagine a film that is imbued by music, I always feel music has a story to tell. Sometimes the film isn't always a narrative, sometimes it is just shapes and colour and abstract form, a good example of this is Electric Wizard's 2010 record 'Black Masses' which in my head is a giant black ball of sludge.

I like this a lot, I would buy the 'Partitura' software if I could. I've already watched that video three times.

Hit up Quayola's website to read up on his works, they are very interesting: here

Henri Cartier Bresson

I feel like we've been neglecting great photographers of late and so here is the fantastic Henri Cartier Bresson.

The big thing I love about Bresson's black and white photography is his ability to tell an engaging narrative. His images display emotive stories that are relative to the viewer. Panic, anxiety, loneliness, whilst also able to capture great images of warmth and love.

Bresson held the ability to reveal emotion in an encapsulating black and white photo.

My personal favourite image is the one at the top of the post. A man sharing a moment of loneliness or despair on the step of a pavement with a stray cat, framed by huge forbidding walls. It has it's own melancholic beauty.

I do also very much enjoy the second image, all those children peering down in a curiosity spiral. It too is rather beautiful.

You can check out Henri Cartier Bresson's offical site: here

View more exceptional photographs: here

Alphonse Mucha

Alphonse Mucha illustrations are remarkable, his beautiful lithographs feel way ahead of it's late 19th century time. The excruciatingly detailed women detailed in his paintings have influenced countless of pretenders, one of the most obvious contemporary artists off the top of my head is John Dyer Baizely, whose work I am a big admirer of, albeit Baizely has more of a fascination with flowers and dismemberment. It is the warm, perky, natural colours which enamour me to Mucha's work, and it complements the gorgeous subject matter. Amazingly, it is Alphonse Mucha, a name which I indeed love saying, no one's called Alphonse anymore, who was the pre-curser for the French art movement Art Nouveau, which you can read about on good ol'wiki: here.

Moreover, you can read up more on Alphonse Mucha: here. He is indeed an interesting fellow as it seemed he had an internal struggle between his fine art aspirations and his commercial successes.

Alphonse Mucha is a popular guy so you can:

Hit up his official site to read up on the man: here
See a comprehensive list of his works: here
If you feel really good about yourself you can buy his posters: here

After the jump a photograph of the man himself.

Some O' Mine Photographs....

(click each image to enlarge, the top image does look much better when clicked on)

So in Bath it has been glorious weather recently, absolutely beautiful sun, and it is the first day of the year where I've only gone out in a t shirt. Obviously with trousers too, not just the shirt.

On campus at Bath Spa we have a stunning lake which is brilliant for lounging around on a sunny day under a tree, which is just what I did for three hours yesterday reading Ernest Hemmingway. It was good. Then I found a spider had crawled onto my collar which was not cool. Not cool at all.

The bottom image was at a ruins of a mill by a stream which is also on campus and I had to climb through some thicket to get there. It's the view through what I guess was once a circular window.

Eadweard Muybridge: Landscape Photography

(click each image to enlarge)

Eadweard Muybridge wrote his name in to the history books for the invention of the Zoopraxiscope, a device which is essentially the first movie projector: "The zoopraxiscope projected images from rotating glass disks in rapid succession to give the impression of motion." Muybridge had helped move photographic technology into film.

As you can see above, Eadweard Muybridge not only dabbled with the creation of film, he was also a most excellent landscape photographer, with my favourite of his subjects being the gorgeous natural beauty of Yosemite Valley in Calfornia.

Photographing Yosemite Valley didn't come without its problems, especially given as it was the late 19th century, here's a short explanation of what Muybridge had to keep in mind:

"Finding the right light and view was the challenging beginning to an equally demanding process of outdoor collodion wet-plate photography. This was the most progressive technique available, invented in 1851. Before taking shots, Muybridge's dark-tent needed to be pitched and his camera equipment and chemicals unpacked and prepared. Then wet plates were sensitised in the tent whilst exposures were made outside; to be developed immediately afterwards."

It is astounding hearing of the process it took to even take one photograph, and the fact after Muybridge's first expedition in Yosemite they came back with 260 images ready to be sold! Phew!

Eadweard Muybridge has a very able website which has all the possible information you could need on his work, including the Zoopraxiscope and Landscape work, aaaand you can access it: here

Adrian Samson

'The Monkey'

I'm Runnin'!

(click either to enlarge)

I am ACTUALLY excited by Adrian Samson's photography. I have been pouring over his portfolio on his website for the past hour, just sitting with my jaw hitting the floor. Adrian Samson's images are a delight to view, I don't think any deep concept are sitting behind them, simply put they are just good looking, a real pleasure as a viewer.

The top image, 'The Monkey' reminds me of Jeff Koons' large, loudly coloured, placticky art and is part of a series, whilst the bottom image didn't have a title but I felt "I'm Runnin'" was appropriate. It's part of a series of photographs that shows Samson experimenting with digitally enhancing the images.

I completely implore you to check out Adrian Samson's portfolio on his website it is brilliant: here.

Roger Deakins

'No Country For Old Men'

'The Assassination of Jesse James'

'Wall.E'

'True Grit'

(click on each image to enlarge)

Roger Deakins is a cinematographer, and frankly he is probably the most lauded; a critically and fan acclaimed cinematographer. Roger Deakins' work is out-of-this-world brilliant. If one were to attempt counting the number of great films he's been a apart of you'd have to use more than just your fingers and toes.

Man Ray

Man Ray is a name that should be known by all - a keen Photographer. He is simply quite odd and quite arrogant. A lot of his work was within the darkroom, creating my all time favourite Photograms. Although he had to take it a step further by naming them Rayographs.... after himself. Anyway enough...enjoy!!

For more of The Ray's stuff click here, here or here.

Thank you

Ansel Adams

Seeing as we are posting landscape at the mo, I thought I would post the greatest Landscape Photographer in the World. Ansel Adams. Just simply because his work, shot in America, is amazing!!



He also looks like someone who I would want as a Grandad!
Click here for more