Jun 09
Photo by Solve Sunsbo
Archive
Jun 07
JR is 25 and he owns the biggest art gallery in the world. He exhibits freely in the streets of the world, catching the attention of people who are not the museum visitors.
His work mixes Art and Act, talks about commitment, beauty, freedom, identity and limit. He is an artivist, extract of artist and activist.
After a tour of European Street Art (Carnet de Rue, 2005, Free Press ed.), he did in 2005 Portrait of a generation, portraits of the suburban “freaks” in the Bosquets (Montfermeil) and la Forestière (Clichy-sous-Bois) ghettos that he posted in the bourgeois districts of Paris (Portrait d’une génération, 2006, Alternatives ed.).
With a 28 millimetres lens, the photos are taken very close to the person. He uses black and white to differentiate from the advertising colour aggression.
In March 2007, together with Marco, he did Face 2 Face, the biggest illegal photo exhibition ever: eight Palestinian and Israeli cities, and the Security fence / Separation wall on both sides. They posted the huge portraits of Israelis and Palestinians face to face. Through this project, we showed that he can break the limits of possible (Face 2 Face, 2007, Aletrantives ed.).
With a 28 millimetre lens, portraits of people doing faces, huge posters and anonymity, JR changes some basic rules. The photographer is hidden, does not give interpretations and leaves the space empty for an encounter. As people are asked not to smile but to make faces for the portrait, they are not subjects, but actors. As the portrait is not seen in a place where people go to see Art, the passer-by is required for an interpretation. By the surprise and the question it raises, man can revisit his thinking habits and free himself from stereotypes and prejudice. This is what JR is working on. Raising questions…
The 3rd stage of the 28 millimeters project - Women Are Heroes - has already led him to Africa in post-conflicting zones to shoot the women with who he wishes to share painful stories and to testify of their desire to live. Their portraits were already pasted in Sierra-leone and in Liberia. In 2008-2009, JR will develop this project in India and in Asia.
May 20
(Image: Joseph Addison )
Bizarre concept website dedicated to a bunch of contemporary UK photographers. Weird snapshots, surreal sceneries. We like.
(image : Callum Hill)
They’re having an exhibition of polaroids at the “Old Peanut Factory” in Hackney, East London.
preview, May 22, 8PM.
22 smeed road
hackney wick E3 2NG
Check out their website : GREYVEGAS.NET
Mar 03
Nothing really new in the concept as David Hockney was doing it long time ago,
but Roberts Birze has some beautiful composite pictures in The Scattered Image, focused on the fragmentation.
I found the result of this process really interesting.
Feb 03
Babette, aka Babette Pautier, is a young and talented emerging photographer born in France and based in London. A graduate of the Arts Deco school in Paris, she has already published her work in several magazines such as Double and Intersection.
While there are many photographers out there who position their work on the thin border between fashion and art, few do it with a talent that equals Babette’s.
Her style mixes elegantly the glamourous with the painterly, ranging from neon-pop flashiness to dreamlike shadowy portraits with a distinctive film still quality. Portraits aside, her pictures of urban sceneries and eerie landscapes all bear the mark of a vision steeped as much in gothic horror as in innocent daydreaming.
Oh, and did we mention, even her website is uber cool and she’s designed it herself with little outside help. Check it out for your selves.