In the continued blurring of borders between the art world and photojournalism an innovative project has sprung to life on the shores of Tate Britain. As newsworthy photographs from around the world roll in a computer brain mines its gallery archives looking for similarities. The resulting matches can be beautiful…
Researchers developed an artificial intelligence Continue reading
Back in the 1970s the photographic art world was experiencing a transformation of sorts. The rise of the celebrity photographer, especially in America set a precedent in the contemporary art market. Photographer’s work started selling for serious money. Mike Mandel, then a student of the San Francisco Art Institute noticed the change and put his mind to creating a body of work that would first satirise but later memorialise the celebrity photographer of the day.
In what would turn out to be an audacious undertaking, Mandel would spend the next Summer travelling the length and breadth of the United States on what he called a Continue reading
There’s a good chance most readers won’t even get as far as clicking the link to this page. They’ll see the thumbnail, recognise Shutterstock‘s unmistakeable watermark logo and consider it either a poor use of imagery, theft or a think piece on a still life painting we couldn’t even find an original image of.
But it is. The watermark is actually part of a Paul Stephenson painting.
Disregard Magritte’s The Treachery of Images (1929) and consider the physical painting in front of you, as it will be in StolenSpace Gallery from tonight onwards. The grandiose frame exists, as does the canvas and its paint. However, Continue reading
In 2011 Sabato Visconti removed the memory card from his digital camera to inspect his photographs and discovered an unusual glitch among the files. Random zeroes had been added to Jpeg files. What should have been simple reproductions of any one given scene turned out to be visualisations of his technology dreaming. It was accidental, but profound and this simple glitch lead Visconti on a path he now embraces; breaking software to push the boundaries of photographic imagery.
Visconti’s latest project concerns the popular social networking app SnapChat, most famous for its ephemeral approach to photographs that ‘self destruct’ Continue reading
On Tuesday we published an article describing a lucrative photography position available at the US National Park Service with the tag line Skills Required: Large Format Photography. Garnering significant interest from the analog community and poking the never ending coals of the film vs digital debate the post went viral through re-blogs, retellings of the story and different spins to receive worldwide attention. The term “Ansel Adams” an inevitable connection to be made began trending on Twitter and continues to do as of writing this article.
The story essentially highlighted exciting proof that film was not dead – despite the phrase having being uttered in both positive and negative forms for the past three decades. This, coupled with Continue reading
Canon have released another promotional film aimed at inspiring photographers to unleash their inner creativity. However the well intentioned advert shows us anything but. Instead of creativity we get to witness adults acting like children who still like to break everything they touch.
Creativity or Destructivity?
During the episode a group of 6 photographers take turns in manipulating an object and taking a single image unlike any of the previous. The premise is quite neat, kind of like their last Continue reading
Cutting the imperfections from our final selection is something we as photographers are all familiar with. We’re used to striving for clean, crisp, tack sharp images that can only be bettered by the next model in line. There are some of us though that have begun to embrace those imperfections, even dare I suggest invoke them with the *groan* Instagram filters.
Some wise and sombre words from English musician Brian Eno on struggling to embrace the odd quirks in the current medium at the forefront of technology.
Digital imaging technology is slowly pursuing that line of perfection. New models of cameras are now focussing on areas that only a few photographers require leaving errors either intentional or devastating. A ruined digital file can’t be repaired as easily as a faded print.
Off the top of our Phogotraphy heads the only obvious mainstream digital camera imperfection we can recall over recent years is the purple fringing on the iPhone 5. If you can think of any others that may one day be considered a unique feature, let us know in the comment section or via social media.
On Friday morning I found myself entering into a paradoxical situation with Matthew Inman, owner and creator of The Oatmeal comic. His latest publication expressed a feeling felt more and more by content creators, especially photographers that we had to share it here – so I asked him for permission directly.
Would it be OK if I shared your ‘exposure’ comic on Phogotraphy as I feel it will resonate well with our followers. I cannot offer payment, but I promise to link back to your original content and credit where necessary.
I essentially offered The Oatmeal payment in exposure for a comic which discussed that exact issue.
I’m a douche. Here it is.
Matthew didn’t reply directly to my request, he did however (I naively believe the public comment was directed straight towards buffoons such as myself) create a later post with a ‘shareable’ image. He also promised in the comment section to send everyone an invoice and do unthinkable things to our Facebook pages – It’s not something we’ll be repeating here.
Via The Oatmeal… of course.
One of Phogotraphy’s favourite artists Jasper Elings, has created an insightful picture book without pictures.
As the Internet age brought forth picture sharing, it was inevitable that some pages didn’t load smoothly and when pictures don’t load properly a placeholder is used instead. Elings has cleverly taken these images and subverted our idea of what a picture book should look like, instead creating a conceptual photographic art book full of imagination and wit. This is what the empty internet looks like, and it is actually surprisingly colourful. Continue reading
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