Penny Dreadful
Stunning cinematography, beautiful, well told story.
Find it on Netflix. Now.
Here are just a few stills from the show:
Monday, February 27, 2017
New Artist #8
Katy Grannan
Katy Grannan, originally from Arlington, MA, discovered a passion for photography early in life, after her grandmother gave her a Kodak Instamatic 124. She never aspired to be an artist until she discovered Robert Frank and his indelible photographs in The Americans. This work changed her life.
Grannan was first recognized for an intimate series of portraits depicting strangers she met through newspaper advertisements. Since moving to California in 2006, Grannan has explored the relationship between aspiration and delusion—where our shared desire to be of worth confronts the uneasy prospect of anonymity. Together, Boulevard and The Ninety Nineunfold as a danse macabre of society’s liminal and ignored—the “anonymous”.
THE NINE, Grannan’s first feature film, is an intimate, at times disturbing, view into an America most would rather ignore. Raw, poetic, direct, and unnerving, the film is less a window into a foreign world than a distorted mirror reflecting our own, shared existence.
Grannan’s photographs are included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Guggenheim Museum, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among many others. She’s also a long time contributor to The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, and many other important publications. Grannan received her BA from the University of Pennsylvania and her MFA from the Yale School of Art. There are five monographs of her work: Model American, The Westerns, Boulevard, The Nine, and The Ninety Nine.
New Artist #7
Krzysztof Browko
Krzystof Browko, from Opole, Poland, is an IT specialist who started photographing landscapes in 2005. Photography is a passion that helps him break from his daily routine, which helps him notice things we sometimes miss in everyday life. What motivated him were photographs with perfect compositions from places he never had the chance to visit.
New Artist #6
Helen Levitt
One of the most important figures in contemporary photography is the New
Yorker Helen Levitt. For over 60 years her quiet, poetic photographs made on
the streets of the city she has inhabited for most of her life have inspired and
amazed generations of photographers, students, collectors, curators, and lovers
of art in general. Throughout her long career, Helen Levittʼs photographs have
consistently reflected her poetic vision, humor, and inventiveness as much as
they have honestly portrayed her subjects—men, women, and children living it
out on the streets and among the tenements of New York. Now in her 95th year,
Helen Levitt, though no longer making new work, is being appreciated more than
ever.
Born in Brooklyn in 1913, Levittʼs career began after the depression. In 1936 she bought a 35mm Leica camera like the one used by her mentor and hero, Cartier- Bresson and with an angled viewfinder she was able to discreetly photograph her fellow New Yorkers. In 1945-46 she shot and edited the film In the Street with Janice Loeb and James Agee, providing a moving portrait of her still photography. Levittʼs first major museum exhibition was at the Museum of Modern Art in 1943, and a second solo show, of color work only, was held there in 1974. Major retrospectives of her work have been held at several museums: first in 1991, jointly at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; in 1997 at the International Center for Photography in New York; and in 2001 at the Centre National la Photographie in Paris.
Born in Brooklyn in 1913, Levittʼs career began after the depression. In 1936 she bought a 35mm Leica camera like the one used by her mentor and hero, Cartier- Bresson and with an angled viewfinder she was able to discreetly photograph her fellow New Yorkers. In 1945-46 she shot and edited the film In the Street with Janice Loeb and James Agee, providing a moving portrait of her still photography. Levittʼs first major museum exhibition was at the Museum of Modern Art in 1943, and a second solo show, of color work only, was held there in 1974. Major retrospectives of her work have been held at several museums: first in 1991, jointly at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; in 1997 at the International Center for Photography in New York; and in 2001 at the Centre National la Photographie in Paris.
More recently, Helen Levitt has been featured in three international shows: in
2007, "Helen Levitt: Un Art de l'accident poetique" at the Fondation Henri Cartier-
Bresson in Paris; in 2008, the Sprengel Museum, Hannover, Germany chose Ms.
Levitt as the recipient for the Spectrum International Photography Prize which
was accompanied by a major retrospective; and FOAM Museum Amsterdam,
mounted another major retrospective in October, 2008. She is a 2008 recipient of
the Francis Greenburger award for excellence in the arts.
New Artist #5
Eric Johansson
Erik Johansson is a photographer and retoucher from Sweden based in Prague, Czech Republic and Sweden. He is working on both personal and commissioned projects with clients all around the world. Erik doesn't capture moments, he captures ideas. With the help of his camera and Photoshop the goal is to make it look as realistic as possible.
Wednesday, February 22, 2017
Reflections upon learning more
Reflections upon learning more...
I like the darker, creepier stuff, and its how I want my work to look. Since I am no good at photography yet, I'm not sure how successful that is turning out, but here's to progress:
Also, I'm surprised to find I am enjoying writing this blog...
New Artist #4
Bernice Abbott
Berenice Abbott can be considered the photographer of New York City. A revolutionary documentary photographer, Abbott was born in Springfield, Ohio, in 1898, and studied for one year at Ohio State University, Columbus, before moving to New York in 1918 to study sculpture. While in New York, Abbott met Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, two of the founders of the Dada movement, an artistic intellectual movement that emerged as a protest to the senseless suffering of World War I. Dada artists sought to question convention and tradition through seemingly nonsensical works presented in performances, literature, and the visual arts.
Moving on to Europe in the 1920s, Abbott worked from 1925 to 1929 as a photographic assistant to May Ray in Paris. Through her work printing Man Ray’s photographs, Abbott herself discovered her talent as a photographer. In 1926 Abbott had her first solo exhibition in the Parisian gallery, Le Sacre du Printemps. This exhibition featured Abbott’s portrait photography in which she captured personalities associated with avant-garde art movements. Portraits of film director Jacques Cocteau, author James Joyce, artist Max Ernst, and poet Edna St. Vincent Millay were featured. During this time, Abbott also became interested in the work of Eugène Atget, a leading French photographer who was celebrated for his photographs of the streets of Paris.
Upon Abbott’s return to New York in 1929, she moved away from portrait photography to documentary photography akin to Atget’s images, using the city as her subject. During the 1930s she embarked on a project to capture the transformation of New York into a modern urban center. Abbott was particularly interested in the physical changes that the city had undergone, its changing neighborhoods with huge skyscrapers replacing older low-rise buildings. She began a series of documentary photographs of the city as part of a Federal Works Project Administration initiative carried out from 1935 to 1939. At the end of the project, she published her photographs as a book entitled Changing New York.Abbott favored a straightforward, yet dynamic, style that featured strong contrasts and dramatic angles. “Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium,” Abbott said, “it has to walk alone; it has to be itself.”
Abbott became picture editor for Science Illustrated in the 1940s and continued in that role through the 1960s, expanding her subject matter to include scientific images. She moved to Maine in 1966 and continued as a science photographer, approaching the world around her methodically, as she had done with her portraits and images of New York. Abbott continued her photography until her death in 1991.http://www.phillipscollection.org/research/american_art/bios/abbott-bio.htm
Monday, February 13, 2017
New Artist #3
This dude is not so much a photographer as he is a curator of awesome creepy antique photos, but an artist none the less.
Ransom Riggs
"A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. A strange collection of curious photographs.
A horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason. And somehow—impossible though it seems—they may still be alive.
A spine-tingling fantasy illustrated with haunting vintage photography, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children will delight adults, teens, and anyone who relishes an adventure in the shadows."
-goodreads
I love reading and I pride myself in finding interesting and unique books. While this one is no longer in obscurity since Tim Burton is currently making the trilogy into movies, it is still extremely unique. It is illustrated by a series of real, antique, found photographs, all of a strange or creepy nature. Here are a few examples of the photos, but I would definitely recommend reading it. Especially before you see the movie, because the book (as is almost always the case) is much better.
Monday, February 6, 2017
New Artist #2
Diane Arbus
Check out the link above for a full collection of her photos, but here are just three examples that I really like.
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