Arrifana (Portugal), Nuno Vieira Matos, 2006 (gelatine silver print) – click to enlarge
31 December 2009
26 December 2009
21 December 2009
17 December 2009
15 December 2009
14 December 2009
13 December 2009
07 December 2009
FOCUS: “Father:Land” by Ara Oshagan
“My father died in June 2000.
A few years before that, he and I decided to embark on a project about Karabagh: a remote mountainous area next to Armenia. A region where the Armenians fought and won a fierce war of independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union. A region still with militarized borders and no political recognition. A place in transformation: the people, the land, the very way of life in political, social, existential upheaval. A place that is part of our distant homeland.
(…)
Father:Land is a project about origins and identity. A project about a place and a people emerging out of a dark history, transforming, forging a new identity, searching for themselves and a new way of life. And also about a very personal becoming, an emergence.”
in Burn Magazine
Ara Oshagan’s website
05 December 2009
04 December 2009
FOCUS: “The Accidental Theorist” by Edgar Martins
“The imagery of The Accidental Theorist is less a set of pictures than a series of moments that have become independent of causation or function. It resembles a set of location shots for unmade films from lost scenarios. I am often drawn to spaces where I can prioritise poetic memory over concrete topographies.
(…)
Shooting largely on the same set of Portuguese beaches over a period of two years, I sought to distance myself from conventional spatial representation.
Shot with a an analogue 4x5 large format camera and making use of long exposures (but not long enough to register star trails) the images are surprisingly flat. “
03 December 2009
01 December 2009
27 November 2009
26 November 2009
FOCUS: “An American Nightmare” by Michael F Mcelroy
“Howard Mallinger and his family were hit by the unexpected. They had moved to Sunrise, Florida, 3 years ago from the Bronx to live their version of “the American Dream”: they put down most of their life savings on a condominium. Life was grand, when without any warning Sheryl was diagnosed with stage 4 brain cancer. Howard was told by the doctors that his wife had only a few months to live, and they should prepare for her death. That’s when things started to spiral out of control. They got behind on their mortgage and utilities. Howard tried to negotiate with their lenders to no avail. The bank foreclosed on their home and the power was turned off six months ago. With hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills piling up, Howard had to file for bankruptcy. This is not the script an embattled Howard Mallinger, 65, planned for his twilight years. Though Mallinger is now broke and feels humiliated by his circumstances, his commitment to Sheryl and his kids is unwavering, despite battling his own ailments, including trouble walking.”
in Burn Magazine
Michael F Mcelroy’s website
25 November 2009
24 November 2009
23 November 2009
22 November 2009
19 November 2009
29 October 2009
Away
I will be away for two weeks starting tomorrow and I will not be updating the blog in that period. But I will return. Please return as well.
Road – Nevada Desert, Ansel Adams
28 October 2009
27 October 2009
26 October 2009
Untitled
Neves-Corvo Mines (Portugal), Nuno Vieira Matos, 2006 (gelatine silver print) – click to enlarge
22 October 2009
FOCUS: “Father:Land” by Ara Oshagan
“My father died in June 2000.
A few years before that, he and I decided to embark on a project about Karabagh: a remote mountainous area next to Armenia. A region where the Armenians fought and won a fierce war of independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union. A region still with militarized borders and no political recognition. A place in transformation: the people, the land, the very way of life in political, social, existential upheaval. A place that is part of
our distant homeland.
(…)
Father:Land is a project about origins and identity. A project about a place and a people emerging out of a dark history, transforming, forging a new identity, searching for themselves and a new way of life. And also about a very personal becoming, an emergence.”
in Ara Oshagan’s website
20 October 2009
Untitled
Castro Verde (Portugal), Nuno Vieira Matos, 2006 (gelatine silver print) – click to enlarge
19 October 2009
FOCUS: ‘Foreclosure and Abandonment’ by Eve Morgenstern
“Influenced by Walker Evans’s images of vernacular architecture in the United States and Bernd and Hilla Becher’s images of houses and industrial buildings in Germany, this project will be an extensive archival record of the unstable state of the American home today and will expand to include images from Las Vegas, Stockton, Tampa, Denver, Buffalo and Cleveland.”
in Burn Magazine
“In this particular body of work I explore the American cities of Detroit and Oakland where the architecture and stability of the home is under duress.”
in Eve Morgenstern’s website
16 October 2009
15 October 2009
13 October 2009
Untitled
Pulo do Lobo (Portugal), Nuno Vieira Matos, 2006 (gelatine silver print) – click to enlarge
12 October 2009
FOCUS: ‘Massillon’ by Jeff Charbonneau and Eliza French
“(…) their visual language and spirit find root in a shared responsiveness to sources in 19th-century art and culture. As a result, Charbonneau & French, who have collaborated since 2003, have compiled an impressive body of work brimming with mystery and sensuality,
self-consciously but elegantly Gothic—stills, it would seem, from an Edgar Allan Poe film adaptation directed by Ingmar Bergman, or Fellini’s take on Lewis Carroll.
(…)
Although many of the images provide an erotic frisson, the effects are less soft-core than soft-edge, applying a present-day visual interpretation of the “romantic” to the true romanticism—erratic, obsessed, tempestuous—of the 19th century”
by Peter Frank in On View
Charbonneau and French website
11 October 2009
Untitled
Pulo do Lobo (Portugal), Nuno Vieira Matos, 2006 (gelatine silver print) – click to enlarge
08 October 2009
07 October 2009
From the series: Aseptic
Aseptic adj., 1. Free of pathogenic microorganisms; Using methods to protect against infection by pathogenic microorganisms. 2. Lacking animation or emotion.
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
Paris (France), Nuno Vieira Matos, 2006 (gelatine silver print) – click to enlarge
05 October 2009
01 October 2009
From the series: Deus Ex Machina
In the ancient Greek dramatic theater (and later on the Roman), to enhance the ‘terrible’ effect, a deity’s statue was lowered by means of a machinery – the Deus Ex Machina. Often, this was the turnaround point, when the divinity would bring the solution to a difficulty or to a probable dead end. Still, today’s people expect their god to bring them miracles as a reward of their faith. It is their despair that keeps the machina working.
Deus ex machina comes from Latin and is literally ‘god from a machine’. The camera, made from intricate mechanisms, mirrors and optical prisms, is a perfect alchemist tool were inorganic chemistry delivers the epistemological immortality imprisoned in the gelatinous emulsion. The camera as the machina.
Paris (France), Nuno Vieira Matos, 2006 (gelatine silver print) – click to enlarge
FOCUS: “The Muddy Pastorales” by Jindřich Štreit
“When I take photographs, I am thinking about it a lot. I admit that the village excites me still. Being in France or some other country, when I am driving a car in some landscape and looking at the people in the field, I sometimes think I will go mad. This gets me going somehow. But because one is driving there for some other reason, one says to oneself. No, you must not. I am finding myself in such difficult moments quite often…Village is for me eternal subject matter. I thought over in which other villages I still could be tempted to take photographs, in Greece, Portugal… Many other themes could be named. What is important, however, is to get oneself more under the surface.”
30 September 2009
29 September 2009
FOCUS: “Cosmos Maya” by Jan Adamski
“Today, expressions of their long lost traditions, condemned by the Catholic church are regaining life in Guatemala and Mexico. Mayan conscience in all its purity, in which the elements of nature are of great importance and where the relationship and respect between humanity and planet Earth is mutual.”
28 September 2009
From the series: Aseptic
Aseptic adj., 1. Free of pathogenic microorganisms; Using methods to protect against infection by pathogenic microorganisms. 2. Lacking animation or emotion.
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
27 September 2009
25 September 2009
From the series: Aseptic
Aseptic adj., 1. Free of pathogenic microorganisms; Using methods to protect against infection by pathogenic microorganisms. 2. Lacking animation or emotion.
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
24 September 2009
22 September 2009
From the series: Deus Ex Machina
In the ancient Greek dramatic theater (and later on the Roman), to enhance the ‘terrible’ effect, a deity’s statue was lowered by means of a machinery – the Deus Ex Machina. Often, this was the turnaround point, when the divinity would bring the solution to a difficulty or to a probable dead end. Still, today’s people expect their god to bring them miracles as a reward of their faith. It is their despair that keeps the machina working.
Deus ex machina comes from Latin and is literally ‘god from a machine’. The camera, made from intricate mechanisms, mirrors and optical prisms, is a perfect alchemist tool were inorganic chemistry delivers the epistemological immortality imprisoned in the gelatinous emulsion. The camera as the machina.
Toledo (Spain), Nuno Vieira Matos, 2007 (gelatine silver print) – click to enlarge
21 September 2009
20 September 2009
From the series: Aseptic
Aseptic adj., 1. Free of pathogenic microorganisms; Using methods to protect against infection by pathogenic microorganisms. 2. Lacking animation or emotion.
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
Madrid (Spain), Nuno Vieira Matos, 2007 (gelatine silver print) – click to enlarge
18 September 2009
FOCUS: “Born Kings” by Alessandro Penso
“From the first Italian “gay pride” to the conquest of real and proper meetings, both at the local and national levels, this exuberant movement, the result of different stories and souls, has looked for a thread with a common language, speaking, above all, about the right to exist. So, in this work, the body becomes the protagonist, the soul and instrument for this assertion. As in “Born Kings” shows, stereotypes are overcome by means of the same stereotypes and, with slashing irony, a temporary identity is sought, to be discarded after a few minutes. The moments preceding the exhibitions are recurrent and it is exactly there that the complexity at the bottom of my research is to be found. The glances emerging from the masks artfully created to frame them and never to hide them are superimposed to the muscles that contract while in the shadows loneliness and affection emerge.”
17 September 2009
From the series: Deus Ex Machina
In the ancient Greek dramatic theater (and later on the Roman), to enhance the ‘terrible’ effect, a deity’s statue was lowered by means of a machinery – the Deus Ex Machina. Often, this was the turnaround point, when the divinity would bring the solution to a difficulty or to a probable dead end. Still, today’s people expect their god to bring them miracles as a reward of their faith. It is their despair that keeps the machina working.
Deus ex machina comes from Latin and is literally ‘god from a machine’. The camera, made from intricate mechanisms, mirrors and optical prisms, is a perfect alchemist tool were inorganic chemistry delivers the epistemological immortality imprisoned in the gelatinous emulsion. The camera as the machina.
Madrid (Spain), Nuno Vieira Matos, 2007 (gelatine silver print) – click to enlarge
16 September 2009
15 September 2009
From the series: Aseptic
Aseptic adj., 1. Free of pathogenic microorganisms; Using methods to protect against infection by pathogenic microorganisms. 2. Lacking animation or emotion.
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
Aveiro (Portugal), Nuno Vieira Matos, 2007 (gelatine silver print) – click to enlarge
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
Aveiro (Portugal), Nuno Vieira Matos, 2007 (gelatine silver print) – click to enlarge
14 September 2009
FOCUS: “Marilyn and I” by Yury Toroptsov
«“Marilyn and I” started in June 2005 at the Julien’s auction house in Los Angeles where a friend of mine bought an authentic summer dress designed by JAX from the personal wardrobe of Marilyn Monroe. The dress has a strong evocative power. It became an essential element of my artistic project.
(…)
With the dress folded in my photographer’s backpack I went to meet a lot of people at their homes and work places where I collected and recorded the stories of men and women of all ages and all social categories who share at least one thing in common – a strong personal emotional attachment to Marilyn Monroe.»
13 September 2009
From the series: Aseptic
Aseptic adj., 1. Free of pathogenic microorganisms; Using methods to protect against infection by pathogenic microorganisms. 2. Lacking animation or emotion.
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
Aveiro (Portugal), Nuno Vieira Matos, 2007 (gelatine silver print) – click to enlarge
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
Aveiro (Portugal), Nuno Vieira Matos, 2007 (gelatine silver print) – click to enlarge
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