December 2011

Dianne Davis is a photographer based in Toronto. About her series, Haven, she writes:

Haven explores the romantic notion of escape into an uninhabited wilderness, a concept that has persisted in popular culture since the 1800’s. These images also act as homage to the wilderness behind my childhood suburban home.
I use diaphanous fabric as a temporary intervention in the landscape; pinned to tree limbs and hanging over branches, it is a metaphor for the many illusions that humans layer onto the wild functioning variously as filter, screen and shroud. The fabric acts as a threshold into an alluring, mysterious other world as well as offering temporary solace, safety and the ability to hide-out. Just as a child can imagine that two planks in the crook of a tree is a two-storey dream house, these gestures simulate childhood fantasies and resonate with adult visions of solace and escape.

Since 2005, artist Rune Guneriussen has been working on site specific projects in Norway that combine installation and photography. Most of his installations are not seen by an audience, only photographed. The work has been exhibited in House of Photography in Oslo, The National Annual Autumn Exhibition (Oslo), The National Art Gallery (Bulgaria) and Nuit Blanche (Paris).

via Lost At E Minor

Katie Shapiro is a photographer based in Los Angeles. She received a BFA in Photography from the California Institute of the Arts in 2007. Her work investigates the territories that surround her, always inspired by what is held deep within her subjects. Of her series ‘Malibu Sandbags’ Katie writes:

‘Malibu Sandbags’ is my current body of work exploring the cohabitation of nature and man, on the beachfront properties of Malibu. This work is a topical response to current issues of economic struggle and environmental change. The sea level is rising and eroding beaches, threatening homeowners and their residential properties. In their battle with the inevitable, the wealthy homeowners of Malibu’s Broad Beach have erected sandbags to barricade their homes and save their property. The sandbags serve as both protection of homes and de-facto privatization the public beach. This project is looking at how society divides itself into social classes as well as how dramatic environmental change might effect social relations.

Photo by Carl Warner

Kim Boske was born in Hilversum in The Netherlands and now lives and works in Amsterdam. Of her work she writes:

In the project ‘Mapping’ I rearrange the already seen, creating a ’surrounding time landscape’. I experience and capture the different forms and characters of a tree, by walking around them. These different forms and characters together reveal the whole of the tree. The different pictures I took are connected with each other in a new map of the tree. To create a resonating time and space image, the movement of the individual to the world is built up out of an infinite number of point of views and angels, which creates ‘reality’.

Photo by Andrea Bricco

Brea Souders is a fine art photographer based in New York. Of her work, she writes:

As an American with typically mixed bloodlines, I started this project to explore the many places in Europe where I have ancestry and their influence on me as an artist and a person. I created the very first photograph in this series in Italy in May, 2010, titled Sunburn in Naples. This image encapsulated my feelings – a desire to own my Italian ancestral roots, to be wholly a part of something, but an inability to do so. The Neapolitan sun burned the Irish skin that I inherited from my father’s father. Upon my return home I continued my work, creating images that reflect my research of Christianity, art history, European history, family traditions and my desire to connect all of the pieces together into one unified whole.

I recently completed a long residency in France, where I continued this project with a focus on the experience of living as a foreigner in a place where I have ancestry. The images created in France have taken a looser and more personal turn, with special attention to my own interaction with the French landscape and with objects that I found along the way. The images speak to sudden feelings of freedom, curiosity and transformation, and to a world that became larger, less static and more confounding. The resulting photographs reflect a shift that took place within me as a result of spending time in my ancestral country, France.

Richard Rowland is a Brighton based photographer. About his series ‘Urban Fictions’ he writes:

‘Urban Fictions’ is a photographic and video project funded by Arts Council England, examining the emergence of simulated urban developments in eastern China. The work documents a series of new towns being constructed based on different European architectural models, including English, French, Dutch, German and Swedish pastiches. These idealised reconstructions appear as hyperreal utopias that seek to create rather than reflect historical reality; illusory spaces connecting to the broader national narrative of modern-day China – one of consumerism, spectacle and economic expansion. Being from the UK I am fascinated by these towns and, in particular, the questions they raise about the shifting and uncertain character of an increasingly international world in which we live.

1. Amazing underwater photographs by Indonesian photographer Hengki Koentjoro

2. Portraits of the World Beard Championships by Matthew Rainwaters

3. Danielle Levitt’s sexy fashion shoot with plus sized models for S Magazine (NSFW)

4. Breathtaking photographs of deadly snakes photographed by Mark Laita

5. Exploding electronics photographed by Khuong Nguyen

6. ‘Food of the Rainbow’ photographed by Henry Hargreaves

7. Stanley Kubrick’s photographs of New York

8. Heinz Maier’s amazing photos of water drops

9. Sara Naim photographs milk as it vibrates to Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata

10. Elena Zhukova brings fictitious characters to life in her photographs