www.ciurejlochmanphoto.com
“Ponder food as love – to nurture and to feast upon.
In Consuming Passion, the body becomes serving plate, altar, banquet and booty. Still life transforms into emotional landscape as the line between serving and self blurs. After countless hours at the kitchen counter preparing food for our families, we began to investigate the delicate and compelling nature of nurturing.”
This is for sale on collect.give and all the benefit goes to Voices and Faces, an US documentary project created to give voice and face to survivors of sexual violence.
via collect.give
www.andreajsmith.com and her representative works on Forum Gallery.
“Andrea J. Smith’s work is derived from a classical tradition, but translates into a contemporary context. Her influences are varied and range from the simple, ordered compositions of the Early Renaissance artists, to the broad textural boldness of the colour field painters.
In 2003 Andrea co-founded and is currently the director of the Manhattan atelier, The Harlem Studio of Art. From 2005-2007, she taught periodically at The New York Academy of Art in Tribeca.”
Spring
Summer
Autumn
Winter
Flora
Fauna
Prospero
I was once left in a car at a young age. I don’t know when or where or for how long, possibly at the age of four, perhaps outside Tesco’s, probably for fifteen minutes only. The details don’t matter. The point is that I wondered if anyone would come back. It seems trivial now but in a child’s mind it is possible to be alone forever.
Around the same age I began to feel a deep affinity with animals – in particular their plight at the hands of humans. I remember watching TV and seeing footage of a dog being put in a plastic bag and being kicked. What appalled me most was that the dog could not speak back. It’s muteness terrified me.
I should say that I was a well-loved child and never abandoned and yet it is clear that both these experiences arose from the same place deep inside me: a fear of being alone and unheard. Perhaps this is a fear we all share at some level, I am not sure.
The images in this series explore that feeling, both in relation to myself and to animals in general. The camera is the perfect tool for capturing a
sense of silence and longing: the shutter freezes the subject for ever and two layers of glass are placed between the viewer and the viewed: the glass of the lens, the glass of the picture frame and, in this instance, the glass of the car window further isolates the animal. The dog is truly trapped.
When I started this project I knew the photos would be dark. What I didn’t expect was to see so many subtle reactions by the dogs: some sad, some expectant, some angry, some dejected. It was as if upon opening up a box of grey-coloured pencils I was surprised to see so many shades inside.
I hope that these pictures are engaging and perhaps a little amusing. I want to show that there is life in the dark places within us.
I will stop writing now and you can stop reading. Words can only get us so far. After all, we are all animals.
Martin, Sept 2010
Lottie
Flo
Bones
Peggy
Prince
more images on www.martinusborne.com and his blog, found on Foto8
www.christiantagliavini.com
“They say that life is grey, but maybe they just can’t capture the nuances. Look at Mrs Maggie; a mother and wife of the fabulous fifties; a life of many colourless hues. Maggie is in her early thirties and has a problem: she lives in an ultra-tidy and monochromatic limbo.
Colourful objects disturb her when they enter her little detached house against her will. Today is her birthday and she cannot seem to avert her gaze from that loud box sitting on her living room carpet. She knows that once her guests have gone home, she will have to face up to all her fears and open that present.
In the meantime, Dad has just come back from his game of golf; alas, it had to be cut short due to a sudden downpour. The Country Club lent him an umbrella to shelter him from the rain. An umbrella which is annoyingly… not red. No, it’s more than red. It’s magenta. Poor Dad cannot immagine how much disquiet he has brought home that day.
But that’s not all: Maggie’s son has stuck up a drawing near the kitchen door; a drawing of his Mummy against the backdrop of a world bright with colour, to celebrate Mother’s Day. Unmistakable colour.
Maybe Mrs Maggie will have to decide today: to carry on living with her phobia or simply to surrender to colour and to life. Maybe she has already decided. It’s there, at her fingertips.”
you should also see his project named 1503,
“nine still characters from a visionary Renaissance
portrayed in solemn, die-cut costumes to die for.
But their glances are seducing each other despite you, the observer”
found on Feature Shoot
www.michalchelbin.com and currently exhibited in two solo shows at Andrea Meislin Gallery, New York, and M+B Gallery, Los Angeles; his Black Eye book was recently published on Twin Palms.
“The images in this series are an attempt to capture human stories in everyday life, those that exist in the space between the odd and the ordinary. My images are almost always of people and they usually take the form of portraits. Most of the people I photograph have something in common; they are not the mainstream, and many of them are small town performers (For example, they could be dwarfs in a theatre play, ball room dancers or young contortionists). I try to photograph my subjects dislocated from their performing environment and set in casual settings, off stage: at home, on the street or in a park. Some of them with their costumes and others wear everyday cloths. I try to create a seemingly private moment, one where they are not performing or on stage.
The main themes in my work are not social or topical, but private and mythical; I search for people who have a legendary quality in them; a mix between odd and ordinary. My images are vehicles to address universal themes: family issues, ideas of normality, puberty with its all incumbent pains and distractions, the desire for fame. An example of this is the adolescent girls I photograph, many of them are on the verge of sexual consciousness. They are in this difficult age, torn between innocence and experience.While their bodies might be still that of a child, their gaze sometimes imply differently. I try to create an informal scene, in which they directly confront the viewer. I feel they and their stories represent with most clarity the theme that interests me the most and which is the twilight zone between reality and fantasy.
My aim is to record a scene where there is a mixture of direct information and enigmas and in which there are visual contrasts between young and old, large and small, normal and abnormal. My playground lies between the private and the public, between fiction and documentary. For me, the image is just the tip of the iceberg; it’s the gate to a story waiting to be told and which I try to depict in an appealing yet troubling way. This story is about a life full of contradictions on the battle ground between fantasy and reality. Many viewers tell me that the world discovered in my images is strange. If they find it strange, it is only because the world is indeed a strange place.
I just try to show that.”
for more images from this great project, visit the artists’ website;
found on Flak Photo