Okay, I know PforPHOTO is about the Art of Photography. So a post about McDonalds doesn’t seem to fit in the premise of this website. But really understanding product photography and using it in such a way that people really are getting hungry when looking at them, is an art in its self. So above a video about the way McDonalds photographs their hamburgers. This goes to show what a good photo can do for any product.
Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde puts clouds indoor. I came across his work and was fascinated by the photos of this surreal images of clouds. A wonderful mix of the ordinary, clouds and a room, put together in a situation that could never exist.
Berndnaut Smilde’s website: www.berndnaut.nl
Photography has long surpassed the field of merely capturing reality. Ever since Man Ray, artist have used the camera like a painter uses his brush. What we see is never truly what is really going on. Take the work of Edwin Zwakman. This Dutch visual artist creates scenes, inspired by real life, and reconstructs them by memory in his studio. Landscape photography with the control of studio photography. The result is amazing. Life like scenes of what seems to be ordinary Dutch places. Perhaps a take on Dutch constructed landscapes. Every inch of it designed and thought of in an office. Controlled like Edwin does in his studio. Manipulation on a wide scale.
Edwin Zwakman’s website: www.edwinzwakman.nl
In the series “Habitat” Belgium photographer/artist Xavier Delory looks at prefab houses. House that can be found on the countryside of Belgium. And perhaps even in other western countries. One specific type of houses can be found here, called ‘Clé sur porte’. Or “Turnkey”. From which the definition is” Urban prefab cluster of similar forms implanted in the landscape without any effort of integration.
I look at the photographs and see visually interesting landscapes. Xavier depicts these houses almost as a representation of a social mega-trend. With little adjustments to the houses we see a closed up habitat were we, the individual, live our lives. Perhaps the words “without any effort of integration” says it all. We are all living in a society that builds on individuality by presenting us choices. And in the end the choices made per individual are not so different at all, yet we all feel unique. And all life our close-up lives without really trying to integrate.
Xavier Delory’s website: www.xavierdelory.be
Dutch photographer Arjen Zwart, based in Istanbul, Turkey, photographs the back alleys of Istanbul in his series ZIFT. He finds art on the walls of buildings. The walls have been treated with tar to make them waterproof. This practical usage of this black stuff brings about unintended beauty, or pieces of art as he calls it. And it reminds him of the works of great artists like Mark Rothko and Kazimir Malevich. The different shades of black, the structure of the walls and the surroundings make for some beautiful photographs. Arjen makes us look differently at the ordinary structures and buildings surrounding us. And showing us the abstractness and beauty in these ordinary places.
Arjen’s website: www.arjenzwart.com
One of the wonderful things art can do is make you look at the world differently. French artist Philippe Ramette‘s photographs do just that. If you still believe photography gives an objective view of our world, Phillipe Ramette surely shall make you think twice. And if you think Photoshop has something to do with his photographs, you are wrong. Ramette’s playing with gravity like many art works do with ones emotions. His surreal works of art not only makes you think differently about the art form of photography but also about men’s relation to nature and its rules.
The wonders of nature have alway been a thankful subject for artists. Dutch photographer Misha de Ridder, a man who lives in the city of Amsterdam, tries to relate to the wilderness, to the greatness of nature and in the end to the nature of his own existence and inevitable death. He does this beautifully with his photography. He is looking for those untouched places. True nature. Nature at its best. For example an extraordinary shaped tree, the shape of a mountain or the different atmospheres and lights that nature brings about at different moments in time. And by the use of a large format technical field camera, a 4×5 Linhof Technica, he is able to really capture those places that lack the intervention of men. The details, the colors, the softness, all are wonderful and does make you look and think twice about us humans, about how you as an individual relate to that overwhelming beauty and perhaps just to take you away in that ever inspiring subject that is nature.
Some statistics are just too mind-blowingly incomprehensible to digest. Luckily there is an artist who tries to translate incomprehensible data into comprehensible works of art. His name is Chris Jordan. Chris visualizes statistics in his series “Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait”. For example, he visualizes the consumption of plastic bottles in the United States every minute by using 400,000 plastic bottle caps in his artwork called Caps Seurat. And he shows us 2.3 million folded prison uniforms, equal to the number of Americans incarcerated in 2005.
Chris isn’t pointing any fingers. He just wants to show the U.S. who they are at this moment in time. His visualizations are making it very clear that certain things in American culture, maybe even western culture, are open for reform. Visit his website to see at all of his visualizations. You can zoom in on the works of art to really dig into the statistic. Below you also find the talk he gave at TED in 2008.
Website: www.chrisjordan.com
