portrait

Man’s Best Friend?

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Pieter Hugo photographed hyenas and their owners. Yes, their owners. In Lagos, Nigeria, men seem to keep an hyena as a pet. Using a chain as a leash, they walk around with their pets like you normally would with your dog. I wonder if this animal is a good and smart substitute for what we normally would call men’s best friend. Does a hyena really looks out for the owners best interests. The muzzles indicates otherwise.

Pieter Hugo found out the true relationship between these men and hyenas. He spent eight days with them. The men are called ‘Gadawan Kura’, roughly translated ‘Hyena handlers/guides’. They are a group of itinerant minstrels, performers who used the animals to entertain crowds and sell traditional medicines. For the complete story please visit Hugo’s website or click here.

Pieter Hugo’s website: www.pieterhugo.com

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Portraits of Nature

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Portrait photography has been a big hit ever since the invention of photography. The subjects photographed evolved along with the evolution of the camera. From dead people, stationary living people, to spontaneous portraits. Exposure times were just a little longer back then, than we are now accustomed to. Often the eyes of the people photographed in the middle of the 1800s looked weird. Due to the long exposure, people were able to stand still, but blinking and moving your eyes seemed a challenge.

Today we are able to portray anything we like. Some photographers seem to take it on them selves to photograph subjects that are not easily controlled. So long live the short exposure times and the ability to control light. Andrew Zuckerman photographed different animals in his series “Creature”. With his studio approach he photographed elephants, giraffes lions, and many other creatures. And he did this on a white background. Just like Richard Avedon did with people in his series “In the American West” (1985). Zuckerman takes the animal out of its natural habitat to show us just the animal and all its beauty.

Website Andrew Zuckerman: www.andrewzuckerman.com

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Cozy Commuters

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Earlier on PforPHOTO I posted about a series by Michael Wolf  in which he photographed windows and the small cities that exist behind them. A voyeuristic series called Transparent City. His new series, again photographs taken through windows, shows us the commuters of the Tokyo subway system. The many people (2.8 million a day) who rely on this rapid transit system are all packed neatly into small compartments.They all commute cozy together.

The photographs that Michael Wolf has taken gives us a look into the day-to-day lives of Japanese commuters. Damp windows. Emotionless faces. Portraits of people who are compressed together. Portraits of people who pause their lives from the moment they set foot on world’s busiest subway system. All on their way to do what they do. Everyday the same. Everyday together. The series is called Tokyo Compression.

Michael’s website: www.photomichaelwolf.com

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Tangible Value

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Next time I’ll find myself in San Francisco, I’ll make sure to pay a visit to Photobooth. And you should too. A retail space for classic camera gear and a gallery. But more importantly a tiny type portrait studio. They will photograph you in a unique way. On an aluminum tin type plate your portraiture is developed  in a 19th century style. This old technique shows the beauty of photography and the quality it has. Co-Founder of Photobooth Michael Shindler started this studio as a way of putting tangible value back into the typically digital medium.

And this tangible value is being put back by many others. Many photographers featured on PforPHOTO still shoot analog, e.g. Ian Ruhter (also tin type), Misha de Ridder and Alec Soth. They often describe one of the reasons of doing so, the focus it ask of you, the photographer. And if you add that wonderful quality it brings about, you can imagine why many artists love analog large format photography. Even I have bought a Linhof 4×5 field camera last year, for the same reasons.

Please watch the clip about Photobooth featured by Cool Hunting below. And the article about Photobooth at Cool Hunting can be found here.

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Peeping Tom

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A true master of photography is Dutchmen Erwin Olaf. With Anton Corbijn perhaps one of the names a Dutch-non-photography-enthusiast might know. Erwin Olaf is an artist who tries to set a mood and tell a story with his work. He isn’t out to tell his story, per se. He creates a scene in which the viewer can create his or her own story. The photographs are so wonderfully lit that a random crop would probably even produce another wonderful photograph. His latest work is called The Keyhole.

The Keyhole is showcased as a video/photo installation that, at the viewer’s own responsibility, can be watched, or be peeked at, through a keyhole. Erwin Olaf uses film and music to enhance his photographic work. And vice versa. The whole packages brings an extra dimension to this work of art. The Keyhole shows us seven individuals from their backsides. We look at them as if we have caught them doing something they weren’t supposed to be doing. The feeling one might get when sneaking a peek at something. The awareness you’ll have of doing something sneaky or even wrong, when looking at something or somebody through a keyhole.

In the video below Erwin talks about his work.

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On a need to know basis

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Everything we know about the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is what they want us to know. And see. People who are visiting the country will get a tour along the various iconic communistic achievements and symbols. Charlie Crane, British photographer, visited North Korea to photograph different places in the capital of Pyongyang. He decided, if he wasn’t allowed to get deeper underneath the surface of this ‘Stalinist Disneyland’, he would just photograph the surface itself. Resulting in a wonderful photo series of places and people of this ever so closed-up country.

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Depth and Softness

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Aernout Overbeeke, Dutch photographer, seems to approach a portrait in a similar way as Arnold Newman did. To portray a person he doesn’t just shoot the person up close and personal but includes his surroundings as well. And often takes a few more steps backwards then Newman did. By doing so Newman created an abstraction where Overbeeke creates an amazing depth in his photographs. And the softness he puts into every image is just beautiful.

Whether it’s his portraitures or his commercial work, the softness and the depth is always recognizable. A signature of a photographer that understands light. By using natural light in combination with strobes he never makes it look like a studio shoot. The natural and strobe lighting give a wonderful mix to create the perfect atmosphere.

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