rubin museum

14 Haziran 2012 Perşembe

NIGHT BUSINESS | ISSUE 4 | REVIEWED AT THE COMICS JOURNAL

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Sean T. Collins reviews NIGHT BUSINESS, ISSUE 4, over at The Comics Journal. Check it out here. Here's a sample of what to expect:

It’s all deeply ugly and silly and reprehensible and preposterous. It’s also undeniably beautiful, featuring Marra’s best use of blacks to date — I’m having a hard time tearing myself away from looking at the shadows on Johnny’s cheeks and chest or Chase’s back and collarbones long enough to write this post — and paced with precisely the same manipulative expertise as the genre trash it’s pastiching.

DRAWINGS INSPIRED BY AMERICAN PSYCHO | REVIEWED AT SPANDEXLESS

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Alex Berry breaks down the DRAWINGS INSPIRED BY THE FILM AMERICAN PSYCHO Broadsheet Edition Floating World Comics published over at Spandexless. Check it out here. Here are some kind words from the review:

Ben Marra, with the possible exception of Michael Deforge, is the best artist in alt-comics at the moment.

DeForge and I hung out in Toronto this past weekend at TCAF. We're bros. Here is some more insight into the publication from the review:

The thinness of newsprint allows images to be superimposed. Visuals on the back of a page become visible on the front of a page, and vice versa. This layering effect adds background detail to the image being viewed, pocking wholes in the illustrations’ perceived perfection as lines mesh, figures distort and characters begin to move. This technique is best used on the cover page where Bateman stands smirking at the reader, wearing a fitted suite with perfectly kept hair, while holding a bloody knife in front of an apartment complex. The cleanness that Bateman exudes is shattered as the image on the back of the page begins to bleed onto the cover, adding splashes of blood across Bateman’s face and the apartment complex he’s exiting, creating the image of a messy and disoriented killer. Adding these details directly to the primary image would disrupt the “cleanness” of the page and remove Bateman’s perceived control over the book, but by using the paper’s thinness to creates ghost images, Marra’s able to create a layered effect that gives the reader a glimpse into Bateman’s psyche and his loss of control.

6 Haziran 2012 Çarşamba

Alessandra Meniconzi: Nenets Of Arctic Siberia

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Photo © Alessandra Meniconzi_All Rights Reserved

“I prefer remote and rugged places, mountainous terrain and desert."

Yes, Alessandra Meniconzi prefers to travel to areas many other travel photographers wouldn't think of going because they're truly remote and inaccessible. An excellent photographer, she's also extremely versatile, and her updated website features new galleries that cover most of the globe's regions.

Alessandra's galleries range from the Arctic Siberia to Ethiopia, from Lapland to the Silk Road, and from Greenland to Tibet and the Himalayas. She worked extensively for more than a decade in the remote areas of Asia, documenting minority people and their traditional cultures. More recently, she focused on the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions that are threatened by climate change, development, and resource extraction.

I chose to feature her Nenets of The Arctic Siberia gallery, as it's one of her most recent work. The Nenets are an indigenous people in northern arctic Russia. According to the latest census in 2002, there are 41,302 Nenets in the Russian Federation. They have a shamanistic and animistic belief system which stresses respect for the land and its resources.

Her photographs have been published widely in magazines, as well as in books for which she was the sole photographer: The Silk Road (2004), Mystic Iceland (2007), Hidden China (2008) and QTI -Alessandra Meniconzi, Il coraggio di esser paesaggio (2011).
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Rasha Yousif: Katha'Kali And More

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As a photo expedition-workshop leader, I very frequently see fantastic photographs by participants that make me wonder (after I stomp my feet in frustration) why I haven't shot them too, but I'm also glad it was these photo workshops that made these possible.

One of these photographs is the one made by Rasha Yousif of the Katha'kali dancer in full regalia, adjusting his belt. It was during The Oracles of Kerala Photo Expedition/Workshop™ this past March, and which saw us spending the better part of half a day with practitioners of this ancient dance form.

Rasha is a photographer from the island nation of Bahrain, and is a portfolio manager at a financial institution and has a Masters in Finance from DePaul University.

As Rasha writes on her blog: "One of the most memorable experiences I ever had in India was watching Kathakali dance performance. We had access to backstage makeup and costume preparations before the show. I came back from India with 6000+ photos I haven’t gone through most of them. I picked these two just to give a sneak peek of the photos that are yet to come!"

This photograph of a fisherman in Kochi is included a section of her iphone photography on the same blog, and I encourage you to explore it...there are many gems in there.

New: One Image One Sound Stories

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I am a member of Cowbird which describes itself as "...a small community of storytellers, focused on a deeper, longer-lasting, more personal kind of storytelling than you’re likely to find anywhere else on the Web."
I occasionally upload some of my photographs along with a short audio clip to it, and now have 9 stories under my name. The latest two are The Sufis of Cairo which I photographed (and recorded) a couple of years ago in one of the impoverished neighborhoods of Old Cairo.

I also uploaded another photograph of The Shadow Puppets of Kerala as well as an accompanying sound clip of the performance which we attended during The Oracles of Kerala Photo Expedition-Workshop.

It's really fun...and takes no time at all.Subscribe to The Travel Photographer

Christian Witkin: Ethiopia

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"You can read people's faces, you can see how they treat themselves, what kind of lives they live, it's all in the exterior."

Here's the work of Christian Witkin, a Brooklyn-based photographer known for his advertising and editorial work for major publications, who's now returning to fine art, the foundation of his personal photographic work.

His current projects include a massive 16-year study of India, Women, Ethiopia and a Thai Ladyboy project. I was curious to see how an advertising, celebrity and fine art photographer would depict the beauty of the Ethiopian people, and you can judge for yourself how well he's done it.

I was very interested to read in article on Cool Hunting as to how Christian took a medium format camera to 14th Street (which is one of my favorites spots for street photography) in order to build his portfolio, and that he now uses a 4 x 5 Linhof Technika (a large format camera system) when he travels. He also espouses the style of rarely cropping his photographs.

The Thai Ladyboy portraits are also masterfully photographed and composed.

Photoburst Goes Big (And Large)

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I have blogged about Photoburst, a travel photography daily contest, before...however its website was just revamped in a dramatic fashion, with its daily winning photograph large enough to take up all of my large monitor...and readers of this blog know my often expressed preference for large images.

It's a real eye-candy now!

The basis for the contest is a simple one. The best photograph submitted by its contributors is uploaded, and showcased for that day. The author of the best photo of the month receives a US$50 gift certificate to Kiva.

GastÃ£o Bettencourt, Pedro de Sousa and Pedro PatrÃcio are the three photographers behind Photoburst, and since inception, it attracted hundreds and hundreds of travel photographers and their submissions. I've seen impressive quality amongst the submissions, from well-established photographers with professionally-built websites, and from emerging photographers with Flickr galleries. The submissions range from landscapes to environmental portraiture, from candids to posed photographs.

Photoburst also affirms that all photographs contained on its website remain the property of their authors, as indicated over each photograph.

So whether you seek to participate in Photoburst's contest by submitting one of your travel photographs or just get your daily travel photography fix, bookmark its website and make it a daily destination. You're certain to get your travel photography buzz!