The work of Austin-based photographer Casey James Wilson is hard to pin down. Wilson works concurrently in several modes of photographic representation—colorful still-life photos of mundane objects skewed by digital manipulation, impromptu street scenes, and close-ups that revel in the surface texture of the subject—creating a body of work that evades categorization and keeps us guessing. We asked him a couple of questions about his approach and style.

What draws you to the type of images you make?
“I think my approach to image making is somewhat fluid and I keep a large space for intuition to play a role in my practice. I also try to work in multiple ways simultaneously and I continue to think of the studio and the street as equally lucrative places for me to make photographs.

“In some images I am certainly more invested in the material form of a subject and want to confront this curiosity in the control of the studio, but more often I tend to find the most motivating and inspirational scenes are still the impromptu, happenstance combinations of objects and surfaces formed outside of my influence. Generally, I’m pointing at these situations that appear to insinuate digital manipulation even when represented directly, and subjects that have a certain clumsiness when translated to the photographic surface.”

By combining all of these images, what are you looking to achieve?
“To me this certain lack of continuity borrows from Czech philosopher Vilém Flusser’s ideas regarding information games and breakthroughs in the photographic universe, as well as the Theatre of the Absurd technique of engaging an audience by breaking from logic and questioning correctness. In freely combining various treatments to the medium, I’m adding to the lexicon in play and the potential to make more compelling or more complex connections between images.”

This post was contributed by photographer Trey Wright.

I approached this project with the pioneering spirit of an explorer, wishing to return to civilization with a visual record from a new land. My challenge was to depict and represent this artificial world whose appearance was varied and in flux, a land whose elements are built from repeating instances, whose light, atmosphere and display are partially determined by me, the end user. I collaged together modes of seeing, tropes and styles, composing and rendering my photographs to record what this land looked like, as well as reflect the thoughts of its creators and inhabitants.—Joel Lederer

The metaverse, a term coined in 1992 by science fiction novelist Neal Stephenson, is a collective virtual shared space—essentially the world of cell phones, email, the internet, and online gaming. The Metaverse is Beautiful is New York-based photographer Joel Lederer’s recent project that explores the ‘virtualized environments’ so many of us find ourselves in. He focuses on the digitally constructed landscapes in the online virtual world game, Second Life, designed and created by its millions of avatars. Lederer makes screen-captured photographs of these lands and titles them with the time and date they were created, reminding us of their existence only on a screen in front of us.

London-based photographer Ingrid Berthon-Moine’s work investigates sexuality and new forms of sexual representation, and the visual is her tool. She indeed has a way of seeing and presenting things, as we recall in her clever visual trickery from V, a series of men’s hairy chests beneath v-neck shirts, framed in a way that was suggestive of the female pubis.

Her recent work Marbles is a collection of closely cropped shots of classic Greek sculptures and specific parts of the male anatomy—we’re confident you can guess which parts—taken in museums, gardens, and castles throughout Europe. The final photos were enlarged with the intention of “producing an indecipherable photograph oscillating between landscape and medical documentation.” The work explores masculinity in the 21st century, both the representation of it and the idea of ornamental masculinity which until now had been largely ‘reserved’ to the female gender. It also looks at how masculinity has shifted over time, and how men have had to redefine their identity as society changes.

The Village of Reason fits, perhaps awkwardly, into various photographic genres, with images ranging from the seemingly straight to the experimental. The possible disjointedness of these studies is purposeful: I hope that the viewer will question the connections and contradictions within the works as I present them. The series asks questions but does not necessarily provide answers. It is rooted in metaphor and meant to be interrogated, as one would read a poem. Herein, one can view desires both personal and universal, as well as uncertainties and doubts about femininity and identity.—Sarah Palmer

Unlike traditional photographic projects, Brooklyn-based photographer Sarah Palmer does not set parameters for herself. Her work emerges from her interior practice, from what she reads and discovers in the world, and then from what she brings back to her studio to study or build. In this particular series, The Village of Reason, Palmer searches for tranquility and reason amid the tumult of contemporary life, at the same time acknowledging that chaos is inherent in existence.

Feature Shoot Contributing Editor Julia Sabot is the Associate Photo Editor at Dwell.

For NYC-based photographer Matthew Tischler’s “Untitled Screen Series,” he photographed his subjects through window screens, netting and scrims. The effect is pixelated photographs that filter out any details as well as the subject and their environment. The images are a play on photography vs. digital imaging. “Technology has enormously impacted our perception of the world,” says Tischler. “I wanted to create a visual style that was both nostalgic and modern. There is a sense of wistful melancholia and longing associated with the hazy screens – as if one was looking out a window and daydreaming. But there is also the suggestion of a visual language of structure and code imposed by the grid. I am interested in how we psychologically experience a natural landscape viewed through a window vs. a digital environment viewed through a computer screen.”

Feature Shoot Contributing Editor Carolyn Rauch is the Deputy Director of Photography at Newsweek.

The major 2010 exhibition Surface Tension at the Metropolitan Museum presented an array of photographers interrogating the surface of their photographs. Including artists the likes of Adam Fuss and Vik Muniz, this show had a lasting impact on the way I look at photography. The “surface” being dealt with in the show was clearly the printed surface of a physical photograph. Currently, in the age of tumblr where photography is consumed voraciously through the web and works are often not seen in person, I have been noticing a different kind of surface tension. Photography dealing with flatness is experiencing a digital resurgence among emerging artists, and instead of addressing the surface of a photographic print they explore the surface of your computer screen.

Three emerging artists making photographs in this way are Maurice van Es, Nico Krijno, and Kyle Laidig. Their work has in common an element of humor, an enjoyment of surface, and a proclivity for extreme visual flatness. Rather than functioning as a window, these images decorate the picture plane in a way that is akin to painting, yet makes great use of the exhaustive detail photography affords. Flatness in these images is achieved in a number of ways. Flat lighting, often on-camera flash, prevents shadows from describing the dimensionality of objects portrayed. Flatness also comes as a result of squaring a flat subject with the plane of the camera, or combining patterns to create a dizzying effect, forcing us to refocus on the surface of the image. Breaks in the surface occur tonally. These photographers are conscious of the property of luminosity inherent in viewing photographs on computer displays, and they use this extra variable to great effect.

Photo: Nico Krijno

Photo: Nico Krijno

Photo: Nico Krijno

Photo: Maurice van Es

Photo: Maurice van Es

Photo: Maurice van Es

Photo: Maurice van Es

Photo: Kyle Laidig

Photo: Kyle Laidig

Photo: Kyle Laidig

Photo: Kyle Laidig

Feature Shoot Contributing Editor Matthew Leifheit is an independent writer, curator, and photographer based in New York City.

Whitney Hubbs’ series The Song Itself is Already a Skip was presented in LA-based M+B Gallery’s booth at the New Art Dealers Association (NADA) New York art fair this year. It was presented in combination with Jessica Eaton’s work, and this was the only “straight photography” I saw on view at that fair.

Although I had trouble finding the connection between Hubbs and Eaton’s photos, with a roster of artists such as Sam Falls and Matthew Brandt whose works ride the line between photography, painting, and sculpture, it made sense to see M+B Gallery in the context of this very fine art oriented fair. It’s comforting to me to see photographers alongside the edgiest of contemporary artists like this—too often straight photography is ghettoized and separated from the world of fine art.

A Los Angeles-based photographer, Hubbs lingers sensually on the dark half of the gradient. Fawning over the monochrome transition from light to dark, she creates an elegant nightmare, a beauty of shadowy secrets. The camera renders only that which light touches, and the zones left black are central to the allure of Hubbs’ photographs. They prevent you from reading any kind of narrative into the work, and mandate a more nebulous way of looking at the pictures, accumulating in an overall mood rather than a story.

This withholding of information by Hubbs is not coy. Instead, the shadows pursue a guttural reaction, a sense-driven response. The photos revolve around nothingness, and this creates a tension strong enough to bind them together. And for photos of nothing, these make me feel an awful lot.

Feature Shoot Contributing Editor Matthew Leifheit is an independent writer, curator, and photographer based in New York City.

It was on the third floor of the Seattle Art Museum (SAM) in 1996 when Florida-based artist Sean Miller discovered a new subject for his work—dust. Working as an exhibition technician, one of his duties was to remove dust from the art displays: “performing this tedious, solitary, and meditative task in such an aesthetically charged environment made me consider this material in a special way. One day when I noticed a minute fiber had fallen from an African mask, I realized the art had dropped into, and joined, the dust.”

That’s when The Art Museum Dust Collection was born, an ingenious project that has had a myriad of incarnations over the years—to date the project includes dust from over 90 museums worldwide. Originally, it was started in collaboration with Miller’s SAM co-worker Phil Stoiber; they created a mail art project enlisting the help of museum employees around the U.S. to contribute dust samples and dusty white gloves to the collection.

In 2002, Miller began to photograph the dust specimens using microscopy. We can imagine the wide-eyed excitement he must have felt with that first image; “art museum dust is amazing because it is a hybrid of decaying art, the art institution, the art audience, artists themselves, and art administrators. Due to this synthesis it may be the most pure and significant material present in many museums.” Perhaps that’s why Miller’s specimens are so beautiful; they hold so much. They are also a testament to what makes a great artist—the discovery and display of something we would never have thought of.

In addition to the photographs, the project involves dust collecting performances, lectures, dust collecting equipment, wearable art, multiples, dust sculptures, and collages.

“Dust Sample from the Louvre” will be exhibitied in the upcoming exhibition, Ten Artists to Watch, from June 13–July 6, 2013 at the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art.

Microscopy of Dust Sample Collected from the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia.

Microscopy of Dust Sample Collected from the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY., United States.

Microscopy of Dust Sample Collected from the Altes Museum, Berlin, Germany.

Microscopy of Dust Sample Collected from the Barcelona Contemporary Art Museum, Barcelona, Spain.

Microscopy of Dust Sample Collected from the Nelimarkka Museum, Alajärvi, Finland.

Microscopy of Dust Sample Collected from the Galleria Nazionale di Palazzo Spinola – Genoa, Italy.

Microscopy of Dust Sample Collected from the Tate Modern, London, England.

Microscopy of Dust Sample Collected from the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden.

Microscopy of Dust Sample Collected from the the Frick Collection, New York, NY., United States.

Dutch photographer Isabelle Wenzel was invited by the Virtueel Museum Zuidas, Holland, to produce a work about the business area of South Amsterdam. “I used this opportunity to observe urban structures as being a scenario for my photographic fantasies,” she says, and created her series Building Images. “My main focus was on the normative office structures that are common in a highly organized business area. I analyzed the physical impact the structures have on the people who work there. Opposing this strongly functional environment, my photographs show figures in non-functional positions. It was my aim to turn the logic of an office upside down.”

Most of the images in the series were shot in a studio but Wenzel also got the opportunity to shoot in one of the headquarters buildings of Amsterdam’s business area. “The shooting was like a performance. We made a big mess in the office, throwing papers and shifting the furniture around. Suddenly we became aware that people in the opposite building were standing in the window, observing what we were doing, some were taking pictures with their mobile phones. We had this unexpected audience and it felt like we were doing something very important—messing this place up a bit and pointing out that we were more than the everyday routine of grey in grey.”

Feature Shoot Contributing Editor Carolyn Rauch is the Deputy Director of Photography at Newsweek.

News of doom and gloom in the press was the inspiration behind London-based photographer Thomas Brown’s series, Meteor. With warnings of an upcoming recession and negative news forecasts ahead, Brown created his ironic series—he scrunched up balls of paper, creating imaginary ‘meteors’, shooting them suspended in space. The simple series sends the message that there is little point in dwelling on things beyond our control; they are in a sense weightless.

Feature Shoot Contributing Editor Carolyn Rauch is the Deputy Director of Photography at Newsweek.