“I love old photos. I admit being a nosey photographer. As soon as I step into someone else’s house, I start sniffing for them. Most of us are fascinated by their retro look but to me, it’s imagining how people would feel and look like if they were to reenact them today… A few months ago, I decided to actually do this. So, with my camera, I started inviting people to go back to their future…” More here: tiny.cc/1en8r
Gimpel is one of the greatest early French photographers: a pioneer of street photography and of colour. His work has influenced many artists and film-makers, including Spike Jonze, who cites Gimpel as an inspiration for the look of Where The Wild Things Are. More Gimpel here.
From James Griffioen’s haunting photographs of disappearing, post-industrial Detroit.
Witty, observant photography from Oscar-winner Joel Grey.
What happens after the Disney ending. From a series by Dina Goldstein, to be exhibited in the autumn.
It’s one of my favourite times of year: the summer degree shows. First up this year is the University of Brighton’s Graphic Design and Illustration show, featuring some lovely work, including Kyle Bean’s shadow play Donna Tartt cover:
And Joe Porter’s Nijinsky-like cat:
Allison Grant’s work juxtaposes natural landscapes with manmade materials: playing with scale, creating illusions, confronting the discomfiting fact that many of our artificial creations will outlast their natural counterparts. It’s beautiful, disturbing and provocative and well worth a look. Urbanautica features her work alongside talented contemporaries like Will Govus, who is best known for his series of night shots, which feel like a cross between ET and The Shining:
For more haunting, beautiful images, making unexpected connections between objects and space, try Sema Bekirovic:
Playful, poppy fashion photography by Anouck Bertin
Right here. Via the excellent Rubbishcorp.
I love dioramas. You’ve seen them: those peculiar artificial landscapes in crumbling old museums, studded with stuffed animals perched awkwardly in death. The best of them have a curious poignancy: long-dead creatures stuffed and posed by long-dead men, half-abandoned, half-derided by our interactive digital age. This is beautifully illustrated by the work of Hiroshi Sugimoto, whose photographs of dioramas — real pictures of fake landscapes — feel like postcards from the past:
There’s a different kind of poignancy to Sugimoto’s pictures of old movie houses, reminders of a time when a film was not a squirt of pixels, but a community event. These photographs were taken during actual cinema screenings, each exposure exactly the length of the film. They have a slightly haunted feeling, a touch of The Purple Rose of Cairo: the screen seems like a doorway to another universe:
You can see more of Sugimoto’s work, and the thinking behind it, at his website: he’s modest, thought-provoking and inspiring and I can’t wait to see what he does next.
New media don’t replace old media, they just help to reinvent them. At the end of the nineteenth century, painting was considered finished. What use was art in the age of photography? As we now know, of course, photography turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to painting: the catalyst for more than a century of innovation and experimentation that continues today. Similarly, recorded sound was for a long time seen as the death knell for live music. Why go out when you could stay home? Now, however, live performances are hailed as the saviour of the music industry, both creatively and commercially. As recorded music becomes ever more available, the real thing has risen in value.
Other media, too, are changing, responding to the challenge of digital theft (we should probably stop using the term “piracy” for nicking pixels, partly because it makes it seem glamorous and partly because it doesn’t actually kill people: see graph). Hollywood is investing heavily in 3D, which it hopes will bring audiences away from their iPhones and back to the cinema, while authors like Chuck Palahniuk and Malcolm Gladwell fill theatres with their fans. Here’s a pleasingly optimistic piece by Simon Jenkins, outlining why he thinks live is kicking.
Check out the brilliant petrosphotos for more beautiful, often heartbreaking images.
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