Posts made in August, 2010
BISHOP BASTIEN
(Photo credit: Bishop Bastien, After the Bloom)
Bishop Bastien’s photograph After the Bloom lends a renewed dignity to a faded bouquet. Flowers rendered in black and white seem to veer between the melancholy and the curious as the natural world is not quick to provide two tone viewing opportunities. Further, we can’t help but wonder at the human intent of the original blooms.
Visit www.bishopbastien.com to see more of Bishop’s work.
Read MoreNAN BROWN
(Photo credit: Nan Brown, Flats from the series Intimations)
The rabbit fast explosion of digital imaging saw the family album replaced by photo streams and online galleries. Family photography today is for the most part a disposable enterprise. This series from photographer Nan Brown explores youth in slow, segmented remembrances. The resulting images are not snapshots but artifacts of shared experience.
Her project statement reads:
My children allowed me to photograph them, to explore my view of them – perhaps revealing as much about my character as theirs – but I hope with honest insight into theirs. They simply trusted me as their mother. That intimacy of view is a privilege I have tried to respect.
See the rest of Intimations and more of Nan’s work at www.nanbrownphotographs.com
Read MoreAGNIESKA SOSNOWSKA
(Photo credit: Agnieska Sosnowska, The Hunt from the series Iceland; Juror’s Selection)
According to the U.S. census, the average American moves 11.7 times in a lifetime. Most stay within the same county, let alone country. Agnieska Sosnowska’s Iceland catalogs her relationship with a new country and culture, examining the transition from the strange to the familiar.
In her own words:
These images are a visual diary revealing a new path in my life. In 2005, I married an Icelander and immigrated to a farm in Eastern Iceland. The camera has served as my tool in exploring a surreal landscape and understanding a culture that has become my new home.
See more of Agnieska’s work at www.sosphotographs.com
Read MoreKERRY MANSFIELD
(Photo credit: Kerry Mansfield, Self-Portrait, Chemo 1st Cycle 01.2006)
(Photo credit: Kerry Mansfield, Self-Portrait, Chemo 3rd Cycle 02.2006)
(Photo credit: Kerry Mansfield, Self-Portrait, Chemo 4th Cycle 03.2006)
What makes photographer Kerry Mansfield’s series Aftermath hard to look at is also what makes it beautiful. Mortality is that particular aspect of humanity we prefer to acknowledge and dismiss until seemingly inevitable. Mansfield examines this inherent fragility with eloquent candor.
She writes:
It was in that spirit of unknown endings, that I picked up my camera to self document the catharsis of my own cancer treatment. No one was there when these pictures were made, just my dissolving ideas of self and a camera. And what began as a story that could have ended in many ways, this chapter, like my treatment, has now run its course. While I can’t say everything is fine now, I will say, “These are the images of my Home – as it was then”, and with a little luck, there will be no more to come.
As a photographer, I’ve spent most of my career looking deeply into the spaces we inhabit. The idea of Home – what it meant and how it felt, preoccupied my thinking. Almost all my pictures were of the spaces we live in or the things we live with. But at the age of 31, a diagnosis of breast cancer forced me to redefine my ideas of home.
See the rest of Mansfield’s Aftermath series at www.kerrymansfield.com
Read MoreSTEPHANIE HALMOS
(Photo credit: Stephanie Halmos, In Reeds at Dawn)
Lost and free – two very similar concepts differentiated perhaps only by the absence of anxiety in the latter. In an age where Googlemaps and smartphones greatly decrease the odds of ever really physically being lost again, Stephanie Halmos examines her own impulse to roam.
In her own words:
I am interested in wanderlust and dreaminess: specifically, how these ideals endure as I evolve in familial and intimate relationships. I both isolate the figure, as well as allow it open-ended narratives. In this way I am exploring the notion of being lost vs. being free.
Check out the rest of Stephanie’s portfolio at www.stephaniehalmos.com
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