Archive for the ‘photography’ Category
16
Mar
2010
Bruce Gilden on the Other Side of The Camera
What Coney Island mobsters have to do with Haiti and the smell of New York City streets.
Bruce Gilden is easily the most iconic street photographer of our time, particularly notorious for his merciless and indiscriminate use of the flash. Rich and raw at the same time, his portraits live inhabit the strange and mesmerizing world of orchestrated spontaneity.
This short WNYC documentary about Gilden and his approach to street photography reveals as much about his creative angle as it does about his delightfully prickly and irreverent personality as the tables take a rare turn and put the master of urban voyeurism in front of rather than behind the camera.
I use flash a lot because flash helps me visualize the feelings of the city — the energy, the stress, the anxiety that you find here.
Gilden’s photographic bluntness is beautifully balanced by his more subtle but no less meticulous eye for the intricate character of the city, its nooks and subcultures and wonderfully awkward idiosyncrasies.
If you can smell the street by looking at the photo, then it’s a street photograph. You feel like you’re really there.
Gilden’s photoessays and portfolio on the Magnum Archive (the recent sale of which is another fascinating story) are also a treasure worth ogling.
And while all of his books are an absolute must-read for photography and cultural anthropology enthusiasts alike, we find the 2002 Haiti particularly powerful in light of the recent tragedy — a graphic portrait of all that was and a surreal prophet of all that was to be.
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01
Mar
2010
Beyond Burton: Art Inspired by Alice In Wonderland
Floating children, the rabbit hole of the social web, and what Dali has to do with manga.
We’re all about the cross-pollination of disciplines and creative domains. So we love seeing one kind of art inspire another inspire another. Take Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland, on the lips — and eyeballs — of the world with this week’s much- anticipated release. The film was, of course, inspired by Lewis Carroll’s 1865 children’s classic of the same name (which also sprouted two other excellent films, one in 1933, starring a trippy Cary Grant, and one in 1966 for the BBC), and has in turn inspired a variety of artwork in its own right. Today, we focus on three such examples of art inspired by Alice.
NAOTO HATTORI
Japanese-born, New-York-based artist Naoto Hattori has a very distinct, Salvador-Dali-meets-manga aesthetic. This illustration inspired by Alice In Wonderland is one of the most stunning pieces of digital artwork we’ve seen in months.
Hattori’s work is part of the Curiouser and Curiouser exhibition at Gallery Nucleus, which opened this weekend and features interpretations of the iconic story by artists who worked on Burton’s feature film and beyond.
ELENA KALIS
From Moscow-born, Bahamas-based artist-turned-underwater-photographer Elena Kalis comes Alice In Waterland, a surreal and whimsical underwater series that blends the alternate-reality feel of Carroll’s world with a wink at the wicked innocence of Burton’s representations.
We love Kalis’ incredible play of light and color, amplified by the water’s reflective properties in a way that combines softness with intensity to a stunning effect.
CHRISTINA TSEVIS
You may recall Greek illustrator Christina Tsevis, whom we interviewed a few months ago. Much to our delight, Christina recently got in touch with us to let us know that Glamour Greece discovered her via our interview and asked her to create a series of Alice In Wonderland illustrations for the magazine, some of which were reprinted as t-shirts.
Brimming with Christina’s signature style of 2D/3D haunting innocence, the work is a beautiful journey into texture, color and pure whimsy.
Here’s to the power of the social web, the ultimate ride down the rabbit hole.
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