Sunday, May 31, 2009

(in)visible by Ana Ventura






(in)visíveis . (in)visible I digital prints I. By Ana Ventura. 40cm x 26,5cm and 50cm x 33cm.

This feel like sort of a departure for Ana, but I really love it.

I really like the feeling of layering and texture you get, even though it's digital prints (I would really love to see the process behind the work). I must say it's a very interesting and intriguing development indeed.

(I've written about Ana and her work several times before).

Friday, May 29, 2009

Hideki Nakajima Monograph.






Hideki Nakajima Monograph. Photographs and artwork by Hideki Nakajima. Dalian University of Technology Press, 2005. 1484pp., numerous illustrations, numerous paper types and folding techniques, 265×200mm. Found via pocko, images from for print only.

"This front-to-back, back-to-front monograph for Japanese designer Hideki Nakajima is a behemoth in both size and production values. 1,484 pages, Japanese stab binding (side stitch), Paper folding technique and usage of multiple paper types."

"The bilingual book is divided into ten categories and can be read from back to front and vice versa — the book has no front or back. One side of the book is provided with a hardcover (dutch-board), The other cover is formed by ten separate semi-transparent layers."
(-- designer Nivard Thoes).



How I would love to get my hands on this book!

Over 1400 pages, different paper quality, perfectly hand-bound together using Japanese stab binding. That in itself is a feat, but the fact that such a thick book looks innovate, delicate, and intriguing (rather than like a phone book) is so impressive to me.

Very well done indeed! I'm hoping for more collaborations like this.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Analog (flickr set)






Analog (flickr set). Found via Elsa Billgren's blog.

Today (starting last night) it's gloomy outside after a long bout of glorious sunshine. I've decided to console myself with these wonderful photographs...

UPDATE: yeay, good choice: now the suns back! (even if fickle)

Monday, May 25, 2009

Artists’ Publishing Part I.






Artists’ Publishing Part I. Artists’ Books by various contributors. Exhibition at Bower Ashton Library, UWE, Bristol, UK. Images from the exhibition website.

"
A selection of books which will form part of the larger New Wave exhibition of artists’ publishing later this year (at Impact Printmaking Conference in September).

These books have been chosen to demonstrate some of the areas of interest in our AHRC supported research project see www.bookarts.uwe.ac.uk/canon.htm.

We are not concerned with categorising books by format, these publications are concerned with content; a small mirror of the world, books that are political, observational, reflective, humorous, calls to action, treatises, books that talk to each other, books that question our relationship with both the word and the world."


Please also help out with their Artists’ Books Survey (2008-2009), which is open until the end of July. The survey can be done online (or by posting it in) and sits alongside the ABTREE diagram. Your altered ABTREE diagram will be included on the exhibition wall at CFPR's conference in July and at the Impact conference in September.

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Pictures by Jeff Bridges.








Pictures by Jeff Bridges. By Jeff Bridges, with a foreword by Peter Bogdanovich. powerHouse Books, 2003. 192pp., numerous illustrations, 12.4 x 9.8". Images from FILE.

"For more than twenty years, on dozens of film sets, Bridges has perfected his own photography, shooting between takes and behind-the-scenes with a Widelux F8 camera. This fascinating, surprisingly candid body of work began as a personal project, as he recorded the arduous, emotionally intense, evanescent work of the film shoot in books that were privately printed and given as gifts to cast and crew. These are not traditional “Hollywood” pictures, but rather—despite the costumes and lighting, the crowds of extras, the stardom of the subjects—pictures of friends at work. Taken together, the pictures act as Bridges’ personal and professional diary, with actors, directors, and crew appearing as coworkers, all equal participants in the job at hand.

With a foreword by Peter Bogdanovich and Jeff Bridges’ hand-written commentary and captions throughout, Pictures promises to be a rare and exciting publishing event, offering a vision of Hollywood that is both intimately human and formally beautiful.

Jeff Bridges’ proceeds from Pictures will be donated to the Motion Picture & Television Fund, a non-profit organization that offers charitable care and support to film-industry workers."



I came across this wonderful book when I happened to catch the Actors Studio with Jeff Bridges the other day. I'm a little bit confused as to how I didn't know about it since I'm a huge fan of Jeff Bridges website, which I visit frequently, as well as FILE magazine - a collection of unexpected photography (not to be confused with this FILE magazine I've written about before), who's showcasing his work.

Anyway I'm so glad I finally found it, and got to learn about the widelux camera - how I would love to own one! (unfortunately no flash though = not so good in the darkness of Sweden).

I especially find this so incredibly intriguing (from the introduction of the book 'Pictures by Jeff Bridges'): "The first time I came across one was in high school. We had been gathered together to take our class photo. The photographer had a Wide-Lux. He explained how it worked. Some kids figured if they ran very quickly, they could beat the panning lens and be in the picture twice. They were right. Years later, I started using this technique to take pictures of actors creating the theatrical masks of Tragedy and Comedy. The result was someone frowning and smiling at himself - all on one negative."


FILE magazine has some wonderful projects on (including outtakes from 'Pictures by Jeff Bridges') and if you haven't visited the site you really should! If you're interested in Jeff Bridges work outside the movie industry visit his truly wonderful website.

Thursday, May 21, 2009

The Solitude of Ravens.








The Solitude of Ravens. Photographs by Masahisa Fukase. Hysteric Glamour, 2008. 136 pp., Numerous black & white illustrations., 10¼x10¼". Comes in a slipcase.

"[...] Renowned photographer Masahisa Fukase explores the world of the raven, a constant presence in the landscape of his native Japan.

He photographs ravens, singly and in groups, in every conceivable setting, both natural and manmade.

His images are spiritually and emotionally powerful, endowing the raven with meanings that are sometimes exhilarating, at other times terrifying."


A little bit creepy, a little bit beautiful

Monday, May 18, 2009

Inside the rare desert sea anemone




Double exposures taken with a Polaroid Spectra by Kyle O. From DBL_PLRD.

I've posted some other wonderful pictures from DBL_PLRD before. So magical!

I like the little lines that's sometimes attached to the images, such as "Inside the rare desert sea anemone" (for the top image).
They really add to the images and scrolling over the images you're always hoping to find one...

Saturday, May 16, 2009

Scapegoat


Scapegoat by and with Hajen, from a performance on Hype.

I love this! Seems incredible this girl only started playing and writing music seriously last year.

What's been said:
"A coarse but strong countryside romanticism, the result of chance and chemical reactions. Melodies and chord progressions no one can fence off."


Haunting, poignant, rasping, movingly beautiful. In this live performance it's incredible how moving an untuned piano can be.

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Slanted and Enchanted


Slanted and Enchanted. From Lula Magazine S/S 09, by Nicole Nodland. Via Wicked Halo.

I love Wicked Halo's flickr photostream that I've just found. Inspire!

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Advertisements by Josef Sudek.








Advertisements. Photographs by Josef Sudek. Torst, Prague, 2008. 96 pp., Numerous black and white illustrations., 11.2 x 8.9".

"The Czech photographer Josef Sudek, who is best known for his moody, Romantic shots of still lifes and street scenes, was also an influential advertising pioneer.

His collaboration with designer Ladislav Sutnar and architect Otto Rothmayer created striking ads that rival the work of better-known contemporaries.

This aspect of his career was short-lived, however: the nationalization of privately owned businesses in Czechoslovakia at the end of WWII , coupled with the Communist takeover of 1948, made advertising largely superfluous.

In this volume, Sudek's striking commercial oeuvre is presented for the first time."

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Sven by Peter de Ru.


Sven. Photographs by Peter de Ru. Journal, 2008. 72 pp., 34 color illustrations, 9½x11". Signed copies available.

Publisher's Description:

"Sven, now aged 88, has lived for his entire life in the village of Boda, southwest of Stockholm, and lives in the house that his father built in 1925. This absorbing and thought-provoking photographic essay documents Sven’s daily life, routines and surroundings through 34 full-colour photographs presented bound in this handsome edition. Through engagement with Sven’s life, the viewer becomes conscious of different existential aspects such as the passage of time and the choice individuals face in the course of a lifetime. "

Friday, May 08, 2009

Chamarelli Viracocha



"Chamarelli lives in a multicultural country of contrasts, therefore this environment reflects in his work. Including mosaic, geometric elements, organic forms and harmonic lines connecting symbols, legends, philosophies, religions and customs of ancient and modern civilizations. Within this diversity are the strong influence of Brazilian popular culture and pre-Columbian indigenous art. His art follows the rhythm of globalization, bridging borders and cultures closer. The Characters with serious expressions live in different realities and in situations that appear surreal. Music has a very important role during the creation, helping to give flow."

Another thing I really like found over at Rojo Magazine.

Wednesday, May 06, 2009

Dear Friends – American Photographs of Men Together, 1840–1918


Dear Friends – American Photographs of Men Together, 1840–1918. Exhibition at Kulturhuset, Stockholm, Sweden. Curated by David Deitcher.

This is so interesting:

"This exhibition examines a rich and pervasive, yet largely unacknowledged, tradition in nineteenth-century American photography in which men commemorated intimate friendships by posing together. Their poses could be surprisingly intimate, as is demonstrated by photographs of men holding hands, gazing into each other’s eyes, entwining arms or legs, or resting in the shelter of a comrade’s accomodating body. Such displays of tender, even fervent affection will puzzle contemporary viewers who approach these photographs from a vantage point that differs radically from the conditions in which they were made.

The roughly 60 daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes and early paper prints that form the focus of this exhibition were drawn from public and private collections in the United States. They suggest a surprisingly broad-minded attitude toward intimacy between men, one that challenges the conventional view of the Victorian era as more inhibited than our own.

Lending poignancy to these photographs is the fact that the majority of them are anonymous. They were dispersed following the deaths of the sitters only to resurface over a half-century later at flea markets, photograph fairs, and antique shops where enthusiastic collectors—most of them gay—rescued them from oblivion.

“Dear Friends” demonstrates the extent to which same-sex intimacy between men was acknowledged and publicly sanctioned throughout much of the nineteenth century. Depicting men from every class, race and walk of life—from urbane gentlemen to factory workers and farmers; from college chums and athletes to cowboys, soldiers and sailors—these photographs suggest that the bonds of friendship could be romantic in ways that we would identify as sexual but that Victorians, in their state of pre-Freudian innocence, would not.

These highly suggestive and ambiguous photographs attest to the fact that the nineteenth-century “cult of friendship” encouraged public displays of male affection of a kind that only later, toward the end of the nineteenth century, came to be considered perverse and criminal. Only then did the stigmatization of same-sex affection impede such fluid, romantic ties between men, and radically alter the meaning of their remarkable photographic legacy.

“Dear Friends” employs a multi-layerered approach to installation, incorporating ephemera and fragments of pivotal “period” texts to document the historic transformation of friendship, masculinity and sexuality, and to demonstrate the social preconditions for the existence, abandonment and subsequent retrieval of their photographic traces.

“Dear Friends” has been organized by guest curator David Deitcher, and corresponds with his award-winning book of the same title, published by Harry N. Abrams (2001). Deitcher writes: “Looking at these photographs has made me wonder about the kind of affection that the men in them actually shared. How was it that such men were so comfortable posing so closely together? As anonymous photographs, they remain stubbornly ambiguous objects.” Deitcher provides an entirely new perspective on male friendship in the 19th century, on early photography’s importance in the constitution of intimate same-sex relations, and on the essential role of shifting social values in determining the meaning of photographic imagery."

Monday, May 04, 2009

nineprintmakers


nineprintmakers. Colin Aggett, Robert Geers, Keith Hunter, Noonie Minogue, Tessa More O'Ferrall, Sumi Perera, Susan Spencer, Sarah Warley-Cummings and Annabel Wyllie. Exhibition at the Riverside Studios, London, UK.

"nineprintmakers return by invitation to Riverside with their third exhibition of new work exploring the possibilities of a variety of techniques - etching, aquatint, monoprint, collograph, mixed media and more experimental approaches.

In previous shows nineprintmakers have gained a reputation for producing a wide variety of images and almost a hundred will be on show, all available for sale, framed or unframed."

Saturday, May 02, 2009

dynamic equilibrium


Dynamic Equilibrium by Anna Taratiel.

"ROJO® presents Dynamic Equilibrium, a site-specific art installation by Anna Taratiel as part of Milan Design Week."

I like this room (installation) that I found over at Rojo Magazine.