Masters of photography
These images attempt to express the restless feeling that the place I’m in isn’t where I should be and that the next location will be better. The geographical and temporal reference points in the photographs are blurred because the work isn’t about the location or time, but about a state-of-mind. The work comes from reality, but it’s a reality that’s distorted by subjectivity. It’s an expression of my state of mind during these restless off-moments.
Sylwia Makris is responsible for the photographic realization of the Old Masters project. The Polish photographer began her artistic career as a sculptor before starting to focus on photography in 2007. Through her intense artworks, which have been published in numerous art and fashion magazines, she soon made a name for herself. Her clients include actors and musicians, but also accomplished models, such as Shaun Ross and Melanie Gaydos. Sylwia’s works have an emotional depth which allows the viewer to experience the atmosphere during capture. “A face always tells more, than it knows,” Makris says. “ Photography is never just a capture of what is. It always communicates what has been, what could have been and also the suffering beneath the surface.”
The Old Masters project aims to utilize the capacity inherent in all of us to change and to reevaluate our point of view. We are therefore very pleased to present this ambitious project of Sylwia Makris.
We would also like to thank the Fashiondesigner Nina Athanasiou for creating and providing the costumes.
Old masters’ paintings that have been newly interpreted for this project continue to exert an influence on all of us. Is it possible to freely rediscover universal beauty – if it even exists? This is the question that marks the beginning and end of the Old Masters project. The works shown strive to tackle this question by emphasizing the need for a critical analysis of the often outlandish and exagerrated ideals of beauty of our present times and our society.
The famous painting “Gabrielle d’Estrées and One of Her Sisters,” for example, was recreated for the project with a breast cancer patient after a mastectomy. Models with Down syndrome impressively recreated other famous paintings used for the project. Other participators include the albino models Shaun Ross and Diandra Forrest, the transgender model Garrison Partusch, the completely tattooed Zombie Boy, Melanie Gaydos, who is suffering from a gene defect, collector of morbidities Ryan Matthews and his wife Regina, New York-based influencers like James Gallagher and Brett David, and the model Elliott Sailors, known for her experimentation with gender roles. Berlin and Munich will be represented by David Baum, chief editor of GQ, actress Nora Tschirner, electro visionary DJ Hell, nightlife veterans Frank Künster, Conny Opper and Liz Paige as well as the artist Vera Kochubey, Tanja Siren, Florentine Joop, Tristan Boettcher, author Hasan Cobanli and the siblings Lucas und Frederike von Cranach.
Over a period of one year the picture’s subjects were explored and chosen in close cooperation with the respecive models, in order for them and their personalities to be represented in the best possible way. It is thus no suprise that the selection ranges from Botticelli’s religious motives to Caravaggio, Lucas von Cranach, Gustav Klimt and Hans Baldung Grien.
Joy Goldkind currently resides in St. James, NY. She graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology, NYC in 1963. She has exhibited in numerous venues across the country and internationally including a solo exhibition at the Museo Nationale Della Fotographia in Italy, where a permanent collection of her work is now held. Joy’s photographs have graced the covers of international publications and magazines such as Silver Shotz and Eyemazing. Her work has also been featured in B&W Magazine, Photolife, Zoom Magazine, Color and View Camera Magazine
Como preludio, pese a que yo lo considero irrelevante, diré que estudié Publicidad y que, posteriormente, decidí abandonar ese mundo de un modo absoluto. Ahora tan solo trabajo en lugares que me permitan dedicar mi tiempo mental a lo que a mí me gusta. Me siento más cómodo descargando cajas o cobrando manteles que diseñando logos o charlando en una galería. Y adoro viajar, hasta el punto de que estuve viviendo varios meses en Camboya
Aprendí fotografía, fotomanipulación y dirección de arte de modo autodidacta, basándome en el concepto de “me gustaría plasmar esto, ¿cómo consigo hacerlo?”. Ensayo y error. Horas y horas. Obsesionado con el tenebrismo barroco – Ribera, Caravaggio, Rembrant…, así como con toda una galería de temas fetiche que van desde la mitología de Silent Hill hasta la Cábala judia, plasmo con mis fotos mi cosmogonía personal a base de personajes que, tanto en grupos cohesionados como a en forma de retazos sueltos, cumplen determinados papeles dentro mi ciudad mental personal. Todo es una gran obra de teatro.
Si bien no existe una coherencia geográfica y temporal concreta (no existe nada, más allá de un mismo estilo artístico, que los unifique), he ido profundizando en la idea de las series fotográficas y la reinterpretación. Cada nuevo proyecto, cada nueva serie, supone una implicación con un tema determinado; bien sean los yokai japoneses, el chamanismo prehistórico o las nueve musas griegas, me dedico a bucear entre libros, artículos y piezas artísticas relacionadas con el tema fetiche que me obsesiona en un determinado momento hasta hacerlo parte de mi y poder, de esa forma, reinterpretarlo bajo mi visión.
Mindaugas Gabrenas (1977) is fine art Lithuanian photographer working worldwide.
His series Fantasma (2009) was the first integral photo project with intention to explore the long exposure landscape photography in personal melancholic and apocalyptic way.
In 2011 Gabrenas came back to black&white film photography and started his Dreamscapes series. Working in severe and abandoned locations with long time ago expired soviet Svema films and old light leaking cameras, Gabrenas reflected a black&white surreal dream projection in photography.
Back to the City is the third Gabrenas‘ project, created in US. Here author combines his passion for landscape and cityscape photography by mixing an American wild landscape with New York City cityscape. Presenting works in diptych Gabrenas is trying to reveal unexpected visual parallels between two antagonistic concepts: natura et urbi.
In his fourth and still ongoing project Somnia Gabrenas is back to the theme of dreams, capturing these visions using his handmade medium format film camera and colour films. mostly affected by mold from the dark bread.
Mindaugas Gabrenas is an author of a number of personal and group exhibitions worldwide, his works were published in various photo magazines, in 2014 his works were presented in International Festival of Photography PHotoEspaña (Madrid).
Author currently focuses on 6×6 film photography and works with medium format cameras varying from Hasselblad to plastic homemade. Landscapes, waterscapes, cityscapes and melancholic dreamscapes – are the main fields of his interest.
The name René Maltête is meaningless to most of us, since we don’t often look behind the camera, but he literally altered the way photography was handled, changing the game for good and all. He grew up in the 30’s and 40’s, when most pictures were taken of staid men in severe suits looking sorely unhappy as they stared into the lens of these photographic contraptions, trying not to blur the resultant images. Photos of the era were commonly staged, with little humanity. They were largely glamour shots or grim photos taken for utility. There wasn’t much personality to them, and they certainly weren’t funny. Then came the work of René.
As time progressed and more people could get access to cameras, the technology also became more mobile and less difficult to take out into the world, where life could be more aptly captured outside of staged shoots. Candid photography began to take off, and Maltête decided he wanted to show the hilarity of the human condition, so he made street photos that were odd, quirky, and often gut-busting. Meme-makers of today and those who devise “When You See It…” lists have nothing on the masterwork of this light-bending genius.
Roberto Kusterle was born in Gorizia in 1948, where he still lives and works.
He began with painting and installation in the 1970’s, before identifying photography as the ideal means for his artistic expression.
During the following years the principal themes of his poetics emerged: a continuity between the human, animal and vegetable world, the mediating role of the body, the negation of the gaze, the constant practice of irony, ambiguity and displacement to shape an idea and to make the viewer wonder.
Photography is used to maintain the tension between fiction and reality. Kusterle has a very personal approach to the camera: the actual taking of the picture is only the last step in a complex and articulated creative process.
From Indonesia, born in Jakarta with the nick name “Memi”. Know and love photography since high school, went to college majoring in Public Relations. Currently works as a freelance photographer, has attended several joint exhibitions in Indonesia and the Netherlands.
Luis Beltrán tells the stories of his daydreams through his latest body of digital print photographs. These quietly seductive works hold a deep and moving quality of innocent desire. Figures appear at the ends of alleys, above cityscapes, and up trees; they draw you towards them, making the eye chase its new companion. Beltrán’s photos produce a dreamlike sensation, the product of their deeply saturated, yet muted, coloration. While objects around the periphery of the central image maintain a luscious intensity with their dark shadows and full mid-tones, the focus shifts as the eyes finds a hazy subconscious perspective. The figures which are central to this misty state call feelingly to the viewer. Beltrán has created a world that captures a sense of the ‘other,’ and speaks to the mind’s natural curiosity. His photos call to a place within us all and echo the inner child’s adventurous and courageous nature.
I am not a good writer, so I express myself in pictures. In photography, there are artists, there are traders, there are singers of the female body, there are masters of horrors, as touch me — I am a clown. I like to amuse people and to propose them small puzzles. My spectators invented the name of the my art direction -“scenic photoart” and they are right. My works are mainly the stories, tales and anecdotes. The photo should carry some sort of message and not just a pretty picture. It is Great Art to be able to express own thoughts through visuals so that its could be clear to spectators. Laugh and irony, it is the most direct and effective way to deliver serious thought to the most people. Humor will save the world
I was raised in a small, back-woods Southeast Texas town. I did not grow up with an exposure to art. I did not have an uncle with a darkroom. I didn’t really hold a camera until I was a grown woman. I am a self-taught artist committed to film and the traditional wet darkroom. I work intuitively in every creative element of my medium with an acute awareness of what and who has come before me. My life experiences have brought me to this place where I find myself overwhelmed with the drive to make photographs about who I am…what moves me, what I feel inside, what I believe to be sacred and enduring. I make pictures to challenge, calm, excite and satisfy my mind and heart. I share my work in hopes of leaving some permanent, telling mark on the world…that I Was Here.
Jone Reed‘s black and white photographs are as alluring as they are haunting. Whether it’s the blur of a body or the depth of shade and shadow, Reed has a natural ability to provoke emotion with her work. Describing photography as “the expression of artistic freedom,” her work transports the viewer to a place of atmospheric attraction
Sophie-Anne Herin begins her artistic career in Bologna, where she graduates at Dams.
She works as an actress in various theater companies, participating also in some theater productions with the Navile Theatre.
In 2006 she moves to France in Paris : here she continues her artistic training by studying Barbara Dauville’s Drama Therapy and she pursues her research on the body at Peter Goos Center of Dance.
In 2008, by meeting the artist Marino Catalano, she approaches photography: a study that she will deepen by attending the Master of Photography at Turin’s European Institute of Design, choosing in this way to side with the viewer, to stay with those out from the scene, those watching at, those waiting for what happens or “falls
Harold Eugene Edgerton, born in Fremont, Nebraska, on April 6, 1903, was the inventor of stroboscopic photography. Beginning in 1921, he studied electric engineering at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, later at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. There he worked as an assistant in 1927 and from 1928-68 as a professor. Edgerton’s uncle taught him the basics of photography when he was 15.
Many of my photographs are difficult to make. Some can even be dangerous. I do not want to have someone else coming in harm’s way taking the risks I need to take: to lean out off a cliff or stay underwater for the sake of my picture. We control how much pain we can tolerate; such information is unknowable by anyone else. Some of my pictures might look simple, but in reality they can test the limits of what a human body is capable of or willing to risk. Thus I title them self-portraits, so the viewer knows who is in the picture and who took it.
Home
Thomas Dodd is a visual artist and photographer based out of Atlanta, Georgia who has developed a style that he calls “painterly photo montage” – a method he employs in editing software in which he crafts elaborately textured pieces that have a very organic and decidedly non-digital look to them. His work often has mythic and quasi-religious themes that pay homage to Old Master art traditions while at the same time drawing from psychological archetypes that evoke a strong emotional response from the viewer.
Although his artwork resembles paintings, his pieces are entirely photographic in nature, fusing many images into a cohesive whole. His larger works are often presented in a mixed media form that adds a depth and texture that complements the photography beautifully.Thomas began his career as a visual artist in 2005. Before that, he was best known as the harpist and songwriter for the 1990s musical group Trio Nocturna, a Celtic Gothic ensemble that put out three critically-acclaimed albums (“Morphia”, “Tears of Light” and “Songs of the Celtic Night”) and performed at author Anne Rice’s annual Halloween balls in New Orleans, as well as spawning an offshoot band called the Changelings. Thomas also played harp on two albums by Michael Gira (the driving force behind the influential post-punk band the Swans) – “the Body Lovers” and the Angels of Light “New Mother”.
The images that Thomas creates are basically a visual equivalent of the music he composed in the 1990s. Mythic themes and their relation to emotions and psychological states continue to be his primary subjects and motivations
Most of us loves balancing on the border of our own desires and reality. Everyone has own dreams , creates a world, people and places through the eyes of unbridled imagination. That is what concerns the series „ Dreams”. These black & white artistic photographies, infecting an intriguing look at everything that surrounds us, what is or may become a cause of labor of the mind, thoughts, imagination, illusions. In this creative photography series, dreams turn out to be extremely moody frames which combines the minimalism and incredible attention to detail, realism and surrealism, anxiety with aplomb. These are the adversities that are in contact with each other on the border of two worlds, they show various possibilities which open up our imagination, creative vein, and above all, (un)realistic dreams. The main roles in my experimental photography play the photo heroes. Portraits are very physical, tangible indeed, specific, full of expressiveness and individual character. Their existence clearly distinguished in the foggy landscapes, nostalgic entourage, lyricism and intimacy interiors and places to which they were assigned or simply grasp just there. In fact, we can not be quite sure whether the surrounding world belongs to them or perhaps they were placed in it intentionally, specially pushed into another reality. In additional, there are often quite strange attributes with which they have to overcome. It is worth to notice puzzling gestures or specific set of silhouettes. Characters are trying to communicate something, speak with their eyes, signs, they send signals. Looking at the every creative photography you can ask yourself: is it real or dream? Where are these romantic views from, who are these people, why is it made on this way? A lots of questions. Questions can therefore be the basis to reflect on the reality of dreams and how huge can be human imagination, to what does it lead, what do our dreams tell. In this case, the creator of the various worlds is the author of this experimental photography, it is up to him the stay of every person, he is the master each of the perpetuated situations. This kind o artistic photography, seemingly having to be documentation of reality, becomes some reflection of fantasy, fun and stare into each other, making own surrealist thoughts which might have a chance to be represented in the real world. But it only depends on the individual viewer’s gaze to the dreamy theme
Helen Warner is a fine art photographer and film-maker living and working in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Originally from Toulouse in the South West of France, Helen is a graduate of The Queen’s University of Belfast where she mastered in Cinema and Modernism. Her photography is deeply influenced by story telling, supernaturalism, and the irish landscape. With the use of inexpensive materials and props, Helen manages to create fantastical and emotive images which seem to capture the crescendos of many untold stories. Helen has recently moved into the realm of film making, having directed her debut short film ‘pollen’. It has recently made it into the official selection for the aesthetica short film festival in november 2016.
Guardar
