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 are hidden creatures in our skies. Long, mysterious oscillating bodies, suspended in the air with wings marching in formation in the way a millipede’s thousand legs moves in waves. But these air bound beings aren’t visible in the decisive moment, they’re hidden within the passage of time.
Xavi Bou (b. 1979) is a fashion and advertising photographer working from Barcelona who has developed an interest in the flight of birds. In the Continue reading
Hilla Becher, best known for her and her late husband’s monochrome typology photographs of industrial Germany and perhaps more importantly the ‘Becher School’ has passed away in Dusseldorf on Saturday at the age of 81.
Instantly recognisable and often presented in large grids Hilla and her husband’s iconic photographs of Gas plants, silos, water towers and other industrial buildings throughout Germany immortalised them forever in photographic history books. Their influence among documentary photographers and artists who value their 1972 collection of pure forms in architecture has transcended generations and will continue to do so.
Without Hilla & Bernd Becher it is unlikely we would have ever got to know many of their ‘Becher School’ disciples who have gone on to carve out incredibly successful international careers themselves, among them include Andreas Gursky and Thomas Ruff.
For those unfamiliar with the Becher’s work, here’s an excerpt from BERND & HILLA BECHER, a 2006 film by Michael Blackwood.
Via Lemonde.fr via Zeit.de.
TFTP Jorg.
PBS Digital Studios have put together a short segment discussing how to approach the age old layman saying “I could do that.” It’s a phrase that photographers and artists alike often run in to when looking at what looks like unskilled art in the modern era.
The traditional answer of you didn’t, and they did didn’t quite cut it for one PBS viewer so Sarah Green got down to business. In this lovely little video, Sarah discusses several art pieces we may be familiar with and touches also on the implications the dawn of photography had.
So next time you unintentionally insult a photographer, artist or museum curator with your witty remark, take a closer look at the artwork and ask yourself what you’re looking for.
Related: Can You Tell the Difference Between Modern Art and Paintings by Toddlers. (I scored 4 out of 11.)
One look around Emily Scaife’s website is all it takes to see that this photographer is full of great ideas. Scaife uses photography, film making and illustration in her work and she has an extraordinary skill in turning the seemingly mundane into a visual delight, creating optical illusions by isolating her subject matter through either a macro lens, microscope or scanner and tricking us into thinking we’re looking at something entirely different. My favourite of these series are the ‘Cosmic Crispies‘. Scaife has given them the byline ‘Meteorological breakfast’ and they certainly make a wonderful feast for the eyes:
By photographing them in black and white against a pitch black background she makes them snap, crackle and pop in our brains as little asteroids (we’ve seen this type of imagery coming back from NASA – they’re not cheating and using Rice Crispies too are they?!). They are fascinating to look at and compare, who’d have thought each Crispie would be so different?
Here are some more from the series: Continue reading
This will go down as one of the greatest and most important photographic discoveries of the century. It doesn’t look like much, but the face third from the left is none other than that of Vincent Van Gogh attending an outdoor dinner party on a cold December in 1887. It’s significance? It’s the only photographic image ever to have been taken of the artist.
The extraordinary find was made by a pair of historians Continue reading
Phogotraphy 