New Artist #12

Ron Galella

Ron Galella (born January 10, 1931) is an American photographer, known as a pioneer paparazzo. Dubbed "Paparazzo Extraordinaire" by Newsweek and "the Godfather of the U.S. paparazzi culture" by Time magazine and Vanity Fair, he is regarded by Harper's Bazaar as "the most controversial paparazzo of all time".

He immortalized many celebrities out of the public eye and gained notoriety for his feuds with some of them, most notably Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Marlon Brando. Despite the numerous controversies, Galella's work has been praised and exhibited in art galleries worldwide and he has been cited by Andy Warhol as his favourite photographer.

During his career, Galella has taken more than three million photographs depicting public figures.

New Artist #11

ok, this one is not technically a "new" artist to me, in fact I know him personally. He's a cool dude and very talented and everyone else should know about him.

Justin Henry Miller

JHM is a painter with a very distinct style, one subset of his work is paintings on vintage photographs:  Practical effects photo manipulation.  

ARTIST STATEMENT:

The images in my work are derived from a synthesis of influences including: science fiction, anatomical illustration, cartoons, controversial trends in science, general themes in nature, and personal experiences. Growing up on a horse farm I witnessed first-hand, man’s conscious manipulation of nature.  Selective breeding and the factory-like production of an annual crop of new animals was the norm.  Seeing my father perform artificial inseminations, ultrasounds, and inoculations on this livestock proved to have a lasting impact. I have become increasingly interested in the closing gap between, science fiction and science-fact.  Cloning, transgenic breeding, surrogate mothering, surgical augmentation and food modification are just a handful of supposed advances that have sparked my imagination.  I approach my work imaging the experiments that have gone awry and try to create a world where the byproducts resist expiration.  The juxtaposition of organic forms with sustaining mechanical devices suggests man’s imposition.  This relationship also creates an ambiguity between coexistence, infliction, and dependence.  Also important to note, is my consistent use of a synthetic, “candy-land” palette employed to seduce viewers into this uncanny world.  The results are images of biomorphic beings, fluctuating between success and failure in their own pastel world of desolation. My new exhibition, "The Fallout Kingdom," creates this parallel world, providing a glimpse into the aftermath of our own planet’s seemingly inevitable demise.  Despite this vanitas, the characters in my paintings display a whimsical resiliency, as they salvage the leftovers and reclaim the detritus to carve out a new candy-coated existence.

http://www.zggallery.com/miller_cv.htm

New Artist #10

Sebastian Kim

Fashion Photographer

Sebastian Kim's work can be found in Harper's Bazaar UK, i-D, Interview, Muse, Numéro, Numéro Japan, W, and Vogue,, with incredible ad campaigns for Alexander Wang, Calvin Klein, John Galliano, and Opening Ceremony. Whether shooting celebrities or models, individually or in groups, he tells stories though fashion photography in a sexy, tasteful manner.

New Artist #9

George Hurrell

George Hurrell (1904–1992) was the creator of the Hollywood glamour portrait, the maverick artist who captured movie stars of the most exalted era in Hollywood history with bold contrast and seductive poses. This lavishly illustrated book spans Hurrell's entire career, from his beginnings as a society photographer to his finale as the celebrity photographer who was himself a celebrity, and a living legend.

From 1929 to 1944 Hurrell was the “Rembrandt of Hollywood,” creating portraits of Marlene Dietrich, Norma Shearer, Bette Davis, Carole Lombard, and Joan Crawford that were a blend of the ethereal and the erotic. His photos of Jane Russell sulking in a haystack made the unknown girl a star—without a film credit to her name. He immortalized leading males stars of the day from the Barrymores to Clark Gable and Gary Cooper. Latter photo shoots magnified the glamour of the likes of Warren Beatty and Sharon Stone.

Through newly acquired photos and in-depth research, photographer and historian Mark A. Vieira, author of Hurrell's Hollywood Portraits, offers not only a wealth of new images but a compelling sequel to the story presented in his earlier book on Hurrell. Hurrell was himself a star—rich, famous, successful. Then, at the height of his career, he suffered a vertiginous fall from grace. George Hurrell's Hollywood recounts, for the first time anywhere, Hurrell's rise from the ashes—how movie-still collectors and art dealers pulled the elderly artist into a nefarious world of theft and fraud; how his undiminished powers gave him a second career; and how his mercurial nature nearly destroyed it.

The photographs that motivate this tale are luminous, powerful, and timeless. This book showcases more than four hundred, most of which have not been published since they were created. George Hurrell's Hollywood is the ultimate work on this trailblazing artist, a fabulous montage of fact and anecdote, light and shadow.

excerpt from his biography: George Hurrell's Hollywood: Glamour Portraits 1925-1992

City Girl on a Farm

This weekend, I visited Oklahoma.  My husbands family are all legit cowboys, as in they are ranchers, farriers, and actual farmers, excluding his family unit, who move to St. Louis when he was a child.  I myself grew up in a city and am not entirely sure how to handle myself on a ranch, but I did go on a photo excursion while we were there.  My Grandpa-in-law passed away in December and my Grandma-in-law is not at her best, so we went and helped her clean out and organize their things. This included their whole house, a barn FULL of things they had collected over the years, and several smaller outbuildings.  Here is my photo journal of the trip...

My version of
"farm-appropriate" footwear
and a rototiller(sp?)
whatever that is.

 

Cow skeleton

Three generations

Gigantic cactus

This is the fur imprint of a dead cat?
Apparently other animals ate/carried
off the bones and other stuff.

This is my husband and brother-in-law
trying to fit in in found cowboy hats and
hoodies?  I believe they both also had
on athletic tennis shoes...

Must Watch

Penny Dreadful

Stunning cinematography, beautiful, well told story.

Find it on Netflix. Now.

Here are just a few stills from the show:

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.