it’s a rare day when i run across work that makes me stop and wish I had shot it….
i was doing some photo research for an upcoming project and ran across these two under a search for “horse polaroid”. neil krug and joni harbeck have combined their extra superpower forces for the PULPARTBOOK. trippy photos of joni shot by neil. trippy photography has always held a soft spot in my heart but these two take it to the next level by shooting the entire project in expired film and polaroids. the work looks like it’s been shot over an extended period of time in various locations but the look is completely cohesive. double up to joni; she looks exactly like giselle!!! and double up to krug for also shooting music videos. i’m so jealous…. now on to shoot my own work.
two of my big loves are fashion photography and music videos. i don’t even care when people say terrible things about the fashion photography biz or mtv… they are wrong. fashion photography is beautiful and music videos have had my heart since i saw Sade’s No Ordinary Love and wanted to be a mermaid foreva. i watch that video in its entirety at least four times a year. my other confession is that from the age of 9 to 12 i would stay up till daybreak watching fashion trance on the weekends. (if you’ve never seen it, you’ve clearly missed out)
today i fell upon these beautiful videos while surfing the web and also a list of the top 1o fashion films of the season. the video below is on there. AMAZING. it’s also amazing why more fashion photographers haven’t explored video. i’ve blogged about video before, it’s just so beautiful… whilst i was in journalism school all the talk was about how video is the new photo… blah, blah, blah. i don’t for one bit believe that video can ever replace photo but i DO DEFINITELY believe that photographers can harness the power of video and make shit amazing! like beautiful, mind blowing, art. if you are a great photographer, you have a great eye, why not try video? give it a whirl! i suppose everyone really is behind on the video wave, guy bourdin’s videos were listed in the top 10 of 2009…. hello, those videos were not made in 2009.
what i definitely DO NOT like is that all the cool fashion video work is coming from the Nick Knight/ SHOWstudio part of the world. WTF? are there really no other fashion photographers that have realized video is a really beautfiful element to add to their work? i get it, those guys are wildly intelligent and into beautiful things, but to everyone else: step the fuck up! i’m right on it…
props to kathryn ferguson for really bringing it on video #1. one of her blog posts is titled “experiments with crystals”. girl is cool. this film is tite! last two videos are nick knight, cause i just couldn’t resist posting them…
I told myself I wouldn’t look at new work until everyone started photographing like Lillian Bassman… Well hello there, Camilla Åkrans. I forgot how much I loved you.
I could go on and on about Camilla all day. She puts the double M’s to shame, photographs ladies like delicate flowers, and photographs ladies like powerful winds. This lady blows it up all over: Numéro, Vogue Nippon, Vogue China, Harper’s Bazaar… you get my drift.
Camilla Akrans, I want to be you when I grow up… or maybe in five years.
all is well in the world with camilla at the click of a mouse. hello 2010.
i’m tired. everyone’s tired. everything is perfect.
we are lucky… it doesn’t happen to everyone.
we are lucky to have youtube and find video of photographers we wish we could be. we are lucky we can shoot film and still afford to pay our rent. we are lucky we have each other to talk to about videos on youtube and not having enough money to buy film. “the luckiest people in the world”…
william eggleston, paolo roversi, and nadav kander
Looking at too many photos on the internet makes me sick… I love the internet. I love, love the internet. But let’s face it often times it is more toxic than good. I am taking a hiatus from looking at so much crap, maybe forever or until everyone starts taking making work like Lillian Bassman.
I think people knock Lauren Greenfield for lack of technical proficiency. They are all crazy.
Throughout the last part of my undergrad coursework I became disenchanted with photojournalism because everything tends to look the same. “News is important” which sometimes can translate into the newsroom as “your idea isn’t that important, shoot what we tell you cause someone else can do it too”. Not for me, my friends. But Lauren’s work reminds me that you can shoot whatever you want, however you want and still be wildly successful and respected. As long as you have a deep passion and understanding for your subject.
I first saw her documentary Thin on HBO years ago. At the time, I didn’t know she was a photographer but I did think that the documentary was very different from all the documentaries I had seen up to that point. She stands out to me because her work displays an unusual close bond to her subjects. You would think these people are her friends. She has covered a wide range of average America topics. The regular people that we know. What sets her work apart for me, is that she doesn’t try to make the viewer feel sorry for her subjects. She doesn’t pass judgment. It looks almost medical to me. Something about her work reminds me of Diane Arbus, Greenfield less creepy but both really investigating other people’s lives through the tunnel of a camera. No artsy bullshit. Just regular pictures of people with different lives, lives we pretend that we don’t know. Lauren Greenfield is speaking at the Blanton Museum in Austin, TX on Friday night and I will be there.
Oh yeah, how badass do you have to be to do a photo essay on the Moonlight Bunny Ranch… all photos lauren greenfield.
I am honored to announce my acceptance to Elizabeth Messina’s a lovely workshop. Elizabeth is THE most fantastic wedding photographer working today. Her photos capture the wedding spirit perfectly. I found her site a year ago and completely fell in love with her work… she shoots all film. Out of all the photographers in the WORLD, I would definitely pick her to shoot my wedding.
When she announced her workshop, I nearly lost it. I sent the application in the same day. Not only is this going to be a wonderfully organized week long workshop with all sorts of amazing artists from the wedding industry but… it is in Paris. There are tons of workshop going round the photo industry, but when I chose this workshop I had to decide what I really wanted to learn and who the best person would be to teach it. Easy decision. Southern California is the epitome of the wedding industry to me and I don’t really understand why the same value isn’t given to the Austin wedding industry. Maybe it is a different standard, wealth, I don’t know. We have great weather, beautiful people, and lakes. I don’t know but I am very very very excited.
If you don’t already know, I have a strong music video obsession that I think started when I was young by watching Disney Sing A Longs EVERYDAY.
Aside photography, music videos are where my heart is. These two are in my all time top ten, both are shot in one take. The first is Daft Punk’s ‘Around the World’ by Michel Gondry. To get the people in sync with the beat, he slowed the music down to have them be in complete sync. Thus the choppy crazy movement. The second is Feist’s ‘My Moon My Man’ by Patrick Daughters. My deep dark secret is that I have to fight the inclination to dance around backwards every time I am on a moving sidewalk as a result of this video. One of these days, I know it is going to happen and I won’t be able to control it. Now that, is a good video. And my favorite disney sing a long…. I am recreating this for my first music video.
I stumbled on these three girls over the last week and i love them. Tavi Wiliams is the genius fashion blogger behind style rookie. She is also 13. Eleanor Hardwick and Chrissie White are fashion/lifestyle/portrait photographers born in 1993. Yes, 1993. When I was 13 I used the internet about three times a month…
I like these girls because they post uninhibited work. Cute little girls with simple ideas, talent, and internet love. Maybe their work is great because it is all for fun, not for money or fame, but just cause they like it. Maybe if more people created just for the hell of creating, everything would be a lot better. Reminds me of when i made music videos with my sis and painted her face black just for fun.
Tavi knows more about fashion than most of the fashion girls in NYC. Not really sure how a 12 year old blogger becomes an internet sensations. At first I thought it was a fake, like Lonely Girl but Tavi is very very real. I like her. Everyone likes her.
Eleanor has a dreamy aesthetic with sweet photoshop skills probably fueled by her flickr account. Already commissioned for mags like Dazed and Confused and Elle Girl Korea. Chrissie’s collection of dreamy portraits will make any 35 year old photographer eat their heart out. I like that the internet community is supportive of these little tots. Encouragement is probably the best motivation for young artists, helping these girls along I’m sure. Good job, girls. Thanks for the inspiration.
“Your personality is not coming from your jacket or the cut of your
hair – and your photographic style should not be coming from a
lighting technique. Your photographic style comes from your
creative expression, from your aesthetic, from the beauty that you
can bring to the image, the emotion that you can give to the
people who are looking at your work.” -Paolo Roversi
These words couldn’t come any closer to how I feel. My feeling of the fashion photography market is that too much work isn’t based on talent but based on your phancy jaquet. I don’t really like wearing jackets. In the same interview, Roversi goes on to talk about the feeling of depth in his work. How a longer exposure somehow coveys a larger amount of depth to him. “You can’t do it with strobes” he says. I like him because his style is so elegant and he doesn’t seem to compromise on his vision. Fashion doesn’t always seem to reward beauty or vision, lots of times it rewards trends…. not for roversi.
roversi, i still love you.
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