Posts tagged: still life photography

Zebra Bookend, 2018

Stacked Turtles, 2018

Bear Gallbladder with Bosc Pears, 2018

Take a look at Christine Fitzgerald‘s still life with pears, and you might mistake it for an antique; after all, it was created using a 19th century photographic process. But if you dig beneath the surface, you’ll find something unsettling about this particular tintype: one of the “pears” isn’t a pear at all. It’s the gallbladder of a bear. “Bear parts, including paws, gallbladders, and genitals, command great prices on the black market,” the Canadian photographer tells me. Her series TRAFFICKED takes a fresh and unlikely approach to the horrors of today’s illegal wildlife trade, bringing us face-to-face with the objects confiscated by the Wildlife Enforcement Branch of the Canadian Government.

When the gallerist Giles Huxley-Parlour discusses the work of Jocelyn Lee, he doesn’t talk about seeing the work “in person.” Instead, he uses the phrase “in the flesh.” When the poet Sharon Olds writes about Lee’s photographs, she uses the same word, asking, “What is this flesh, anyway?!” And when Lee describes her own images, she tends to use the word “naked” instead of “nude.” The Appearance of Things, created over the course of about a decade, is her exploration of our bodies, their strength, and their fragility.

Mr. Gray. In the Garden of Weed(en).
Photography by Scott Southern @boro.vision, Collection of Greyspace.

Banjo. Optimus Prime, 2013. Photography by Alex Reyna @areysocal.

Some folks smoke joints or vape on street corners and be done with it; but not all cannabis connoisseurs are nearly so informal. There are a self-selecting group of smokers who prefer the accoutrements the herb calls for, finding pleasure in hand crafted glass pipes that are as complex and compelling as the drug itself. Both an object unto itself and a vessel to the promised land, pipes have evolved into highly intricate designs by artists who live the life.

This is a Pipe: The Evolution of the Glass Pipe and its Artists (Nicholas Fahey & Brad Melshenker/INSTITUTE) chronicles the history the underground scene that began 40 years ago with the Godfather, Bob Snodgrass and follows the evolution of an art that takes Louis Sullivan’s maxim of “form follows function” to a new high.

Plants have historically had a significant presence in visual arts, from the vibrant flowers in Monet’s paintings to the still and colder photographs of Karl Blossfeldt. And while the meaning and significance might have changed from one artist to the next, plants have always been a subject through which to communicate a larger message about nature, and sometimes, humanity.

Inside of a greenhouse in March 2015, the photographer Samuel Zeller found what would become a body of work that now spans over three years and several countries. In his latest photo book, Botanical, published at Hoxton Mini Press, the photographer looks at exotic plants enclosed in the warmth and protection of European greenhouses.

The Stray. Marmaduke / Shar Pei Pitbull mix, 7.5 years old (Marmaduke is up for adoption at Pacific Pups Rescue!)

The Senior. Magda / Cocker Spaniel Dachschund mix, 13.3 years old

Last year, I opened an old cardboard box to discover a long-forgotten stuffed monkey that once belonged to my childhood dog. Perry passed away more than a decade ago, but the memory of his scent rushed back to me in an instant. The tattered, time-worn toy seemed to contain so much of the life of my beloved pet, regardless of how much time had elapsed. Dogs, like humans, have objects they use and cherish, and these items help define who they are. The Los Angeles photographer Alicia Rius pays tribute to this truth in her new series A DOG’S LIFE.

“My background is in engineering and research. I quite enjoy, now, reflecting on how I became mad and that process of where the brain takes you. That I find fascinating. I think it’s quite difficult to become suicidal really. You need trigger points, some people need just need one, I needed quite a few. But once you’re there…

“The first time that I had heard the word Maytree I had been sectioned. I was in Chase Farm, Enfield, in the hospital unit. There were 4 people around the table chit chatting and 2 of those had both been guests at Maytree. It was 2005. It was coming up to the Christmas period and I didn’t think I’d get through it. One of the women said maybe you could go and stay at Maytree.

“Maytree was a wonderful safe place. I remember I was in a bad place. It really was quite bad. I couldn’t cook or do anything for myself. I used to love porridge. On the first morning Michael made me porridge and I thought… that little thing, making the porridge, was good.

“When I got better I thought maybe I should volunteer at Maytree. I think I have a sense of loyalty to Maytree. I find it therapeutic going there. It’s sometimes very challenging but I’ve never really thought it’s too overpowering, but when you walk through that door you never know…” – Michael

Maytree is a house in Finsbury Park, London. It has four bedrooms, and its inhabitants change all the time. As a suicide respite center, it serves as a temporary home to people in crisis. Guests stay for four days and five nights only; during that time, they can speak openly with volunteers and peers. They can talk about anything and everything, or they can talk about nothing. There is no judgement, and the environment is decidedly non-clinical.

There are about 150 volunteers currently working at Maytree. The photographer Daniel Regan is one of them. His book and exhibition project I Want to Live tells the story of this unusual house and the people who walk through its doors. 

The Crying Window © Anne Closuit Eisenhart (@lesfifoles), Brooklyn, NY

Steam Streets © Erica Reade (@ericareadeimages), Brooklyn, NY

Alexa Becker, the Acquisitions Editor for photography and art books at the influential publisher Kehrer Verlag, has selected 30 images from The Print Swap collection to be part of our upcoming exhibition at BERLIN BLUE art. This will be the fifth-ever Print Swap show and the first in Europe. All photographers who participate in The Print Swap give and receive a print; the project connects photographers across genres and thousands of miles. A different guest curator and industry leader chooses approximately 25-40 images for each of our exhibitions. We invite all photographers to submit here.

The Berlin Print Swap exhibition includes photographers from throughout the United States, England, Italy, Greece, Portugal, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Norway, Austria, Russia, and Australia. Through Becker’s selections, we travel from megacities to the vast wilderness and back again; in the spirit of the swap, we find unlikely visual cues tying together dissimilar places. When seen from above, Navid Baraty’s geometric New York City echoes Shannon Kerr’s feral Grand Canyon; Damien Drew looks out a window in Japan to see a concrete maze, while Marc Schindl peers into his rearview mirror to discover an endless landscape, set on fire by the light of the sun. Anne Closuit Eisenhart and John Duke Kisch capture worlds abstracted by rain and condensation, while Nelson Miranda and Alberto Blanco photograph underpasses more than 10,000 kilometers apart.

Please note that we are currently accepting submissions for our next exhibition, taking place early this fall in Hyderabad, India, as part of The Indian Photography Festival (IPF) by the Light Craft Foundation. The world-renowned photojournalist Ami Vitale will curate the show. Submit to The Print Swap here. As always, it costs $40/image to be included. We cover printing and shipping. All photographers who submit will participate in the worldwide exchange, and Vitale will select a total of 25 images to include in this next exhibition. Submit today!

The Potato Picker

When the Belarusian photographer Alexey Shlyk was a child, he encountered a singular type of necklace handmade by his grandmother. She had used apple seeds in lieu of diamonds and rubies, stringing them together one-by-one before varnishing their surfaces. “It has always been an object that fascinated me,” the artist admits. The Appleseed Necklace is Shlyk’s tribute to the ingenuity of his people, who, during the scarcity of the Soviet Era, made do with whatever they had.

Bay/Sky, Provincetown, Massachusetts, 1987.

New York City, 1975.

Joel Meyerowitz: Where I Find Myself (Laurence King) is a pièce de résistance, a masterful feat of publishing that sets the bar as high as it can possibly reach. The photographer’s magnum opus opens in the present day, with his most recent body of work and unfolds in reverse chronological order, leading us through a spellbinding life in photography that is simply unparalleled.

“How did I get here? Living on a farm in Tuscany. Nearly eighty years old, and once again the force of photography provokes me to think about something I’ve never considered as being of interest to me,” Joel Meyerowitz writes in the first chapter, which introduces the still lifes he has been creating between 2012 and 2017, documenting the objects of painters Paul Cézanne and Giorgio Morandi.

“I’ve always been a street photographer, first and foremost, and though I’ve danced to tunes other than the jazzy tempo of the street, it’s where my native instincts for seeing first developed,” the East Bronx native writes. “Half a century ago, I was part of a duo that walked the streets of New York City almost every day, Garry Winogrand and me. We loved it out on the streets, loved the surprise of the unexpected events, and our shared appreciation of them after they happened, and how it charged our conversations with new ideas.”